I have thoughts and feelings about Teru. Thoughts and feelings have become a one-shot.
-------
The Hanazawa kid was strong. Reigen understood this thoroughly. It was clear from the shock and scale and heat of every psychic attack Hanazawa launched, from the shockwaves that rocked Reigen’s footing and the blowback that singed his cuffs when he blocked his face from the heat. And it was clear from the articulation of Hanazawa’s movements, the speed and the agility and the precision of his motions that perhaps had less to do with psychic abilities and more to do with a total mastery of his physical body. And it was clear from Hanazawa’s drive to keep trying, again and again, in the relentless face of failure.
The Hanazawa kid was not as strong as Mob. Reigen understood this thoroughly. It was clear because if this were Mob, they’d have escaped long before now. And it was clear because Hanazawa made a point to mention—no, to apologize—as often as he could, that he was not as strong as Mob. Even after Reigen had requested him to stop.
Reigen considered this all somewhat unhappily as he sat across from Hanazawa. Reigen was parked in something that was almost a lawn chair, but if that lawn chair were crafted by an entity that forgot what shape humans usually are. It hunched his knees close to his chest. Hanazawa sat in an equally-weird chair, in the opposite manner, tilted forward as he rolled strange bandages around the greasy wounds that covered his forearm like leopard spots.
“Sorry, Master Reigen,” Hanazawa said, not looking up, but surely sensing Reigen’s eyes on him. “I wasn’t able to hit it. I have more ideas for what to try next. It’ll just help if I wrap my arms up first.”
“I’m not rushing you, H—Teru,” Reigen answered. Right, he wanted to go by Teru. Just Teru. No doubt because Mob was just ‘Mob’ to Reigen, and Teru did not want a title more formal than what Mob received. It was just a little hard, since Mob exclusively referred to him as Hanazawa-kun. “I am, in fact, of the opinion that we are taking a well-earned break. I think you should relax for a bit and have some of this… Tak—Tok--Tyokyoki… with me…” Reigen squinted at the illegible packaging of the rations which had been materializing at a continuous pace around them.
“What… is that?” Teru asked.
Reigen ripped open the packaging, which opened along a ripcord instead of any actual reasonable packaging. “It looks sweet. It—nope—fish, definitely. Oh and red bean? It—hmm…” Reigen pulled out the… shape. Which was about the best description of the things in the packaging. They were shapes. He bit into it and chewed. “Hmm. It is not very good. But it is food.”
A new package appeared beside Reigen. He leaned over in his weird chair to get a better look at it. “Good news. We have a second option. Which is whatever that is.”
Teru nodded, but he went back to rolling his bandages.
“Are you not hungry?” Reigen asked. He took another bite of the Shape. He stared at Teru, who was lit by the thing that wasn’t exactly a campfire between them, but could maybe be called a campfire if you thought a bubbling cauldron over a campfire was all one continuous entity.
“I just think I should focus on defeating the spirit. I’ve kept you here long enough.”
“I’ve told you. It’s no bother.”
A lot of vast and black almost-nothing spanned to fill all the space behind Teru and his equally weird chair. Reigen considered this as almost-nothing, and not nothing-nothing, because it held a certain “visual static when you press your hands to your eyes” quality to it. It was nothing if you stared directly at it, but became “a lot of things just barely glanced in the corner of your vision” when you let it drift to your periphery.
It also materialized a lot of weird rations and bad campsite gear, so it couldn’t be nothing.
Teru let out a little defeated laugh. He snipped the bandage roll (which was less a roll, and more of a cube that might be capable of rolling down a hill if you put it on a hill that was steep enough) and used his powers to solder the edge of the bandage in place.
“I’m sure this is taking a lot longer than you expected,” Teru continued, because he couldn’t abandon his apology. “You’re used to tackling these cases with Kageyama-kun.”
“I came in here with no expectations.” Reigen folded his arms as he said this. His elbows almost touched his bent-up knees. “Whatever pace you solve this at is a perfectly fine pace.”
“I should at least have come more prepared. I was naïve to think nothing severe would happen when I told Kageyama-kun I’d cover his shift.”
“No, you were right. This is unusual,” Reigen agreed, to the other person trapped in the pocket reality that was carved somewhere between the overlapping armpits of parallel dimensions, or something. “Highly unusual. Maybe only once a month or so do we get a case like this.” Reigen took another piece of Shape and bit it. This one was chewier.
“You can end this, if you want,” Teru said quietly. “It won’t hurt my pride. I can’t solve this. I don’t want to keep you here. You were probably expecting to get home tonight.”
“I told you already, I am in no rush to get home,” Reigen said through a mouthful of Shape, finger waggling toward Teru. “I am completely fine with however long it takes for you to crush this spirit and get us free.” And this was a true statement, if only because Reigen had no other choice in the matter. It was either Teru broke them free, eventually, or he’d be eating infinite Shape for dinner for the rest of his life.
It could be worse, in all honesty. The spirit seemed to like them—or liked Teru, at least—like a plaything, or a friend, or a pet. All Teru’s attempts to defeat the spirit read, perhaps, as a game, and the spirit got fonder of them with every fresh attempt at slaughter Teru made. The spirit seemed more than happy to materialize whatever supplies Reigen and Teru needed out of this pocket dimension to keep them going, even if the spirit maybe hadn’t studied up on what supplies look like.
“You are doing well, Teru. I mean it. You’re stronger than I was at your age,” Reigen continued, which was a statement he found to be immensely helpful to provide, as it admitted nothing about his current power level, but was a good pick-me-up for a younger-than-him esper who needed to hear it. Historically, that had always been Mob. But it could be Teru too now.
Teru did not answer. And when the silence drew out, a new and bothersome thought wriggled its way into Reigen’s mind.
“Do… you… need to get home on time tonight?” Reigen asked, and he asked it with exceeding caution, because if the answer was ‘yes’ then Reigen still had no way to get either of them home any faster. But maybe he could think of something.
Teru shook his head. “I don’t need to get home. And it’s summer break. I don’t need to be anywhere for a long time.”
Reigen considered this. He considered how much of a lucky answer it was, and also found himself deeply unhappy with it all.
“Don’t you need to get home to your parents?”
Teru shook his head. “They live overseas.”
“And they don’t check in on you?”
“They do, just, occasionally. I don’t think they’d worry if I didn’t respond for a while. They know I’m self-sufficient.”
This also bothered Reigen. And bothered him because it was a completely correct and completely accurate description of the Teruki Hanazawa boy in every case Reigen had ever interacted with him. Self-sufficient, capable, reliable, efficient, a truly stable powerhouse of an ally and Reigen was not even entirely sure where Mob had found him.
And all of those were generally positive things, until Reigen found the image clashing with the exhausted and injured boy in front of him who was fighting his every nerve to avoid expressing anything to contradict that image.
Reigen had been watching that exterior unravel bit by bit over the tens of hours that had passed. He’d been watching Teru gas himself back up for every fresh attempt at exorcising the spirit, which had been quite admirable to watch the first eight or ten times, until it edged into harrowing in a way Reigen was starting to understand.
“You live alone then?” Reigen continued, and if he kept his tone light and unconcerned, he could pass it off as casual conversation.
“I do. Well, my parents pay for my apartment… I wouldn’t have the money for it myself. So it’s not really right for me to claim I live alone.”
“You’re 14, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, I didn’t have money when I was 14,” Reigen said, tone precariously casual, sinking deeper into his weird chair. He looked up at the black almost-nothing overhead, arms folded. “And I certainly did not live all by myself. …Who does your grocery-shopping?”
“I do.”
“Laundry?”
“I do.”
“Clothes shopping?”
“I do.”
“Who takes care of you when you get sick?”
“I do. It’s not very hard.”
“Who do you talk to when you have a problem?”
At this, Teru hesitated. There was a spark of concern in his eyes when Reigen looked at him, like Teru was afraid he was blanking on the answer to a test question.
“Kageyama-kun… helped me out a lot… with something important, one time.”
“Uh-huh.”
“He um—last week I told Kageyama-kun the store ran out of stock of my favorite mochi. He agreed that was the worst.”
“Okay. But you don’t talk to Mob every day, do you?”
“Well, Kageyama-kun is busy. And he has a lot of friends. I wouldn’t impose—”
“—And what about real problems? Who do you talk to about real problems?”
“I don’t have real problems, luckily,” Teru answered, and maybe it was the exhaustion from ten hours of spirit fighting, but he looked a little sick when he said it. “I can handle everything, and I have a really easy life.”
“No one can handle everything…” Reigen remarked, but he let his voice drift a little sing-song, let his eyes wander up to the almost-nothing sky, so that Teru could choose to avoid the accusation in Reigen’s words if he so wanted to.
Reigen tipped back in his weird chair, and it was at no risk of tipping over because it sat too weirdly against the ground. He considered having another bite of Shape, but he really did not like Shape.
Silence settled like ash.
“I guess I’m not handling everything. I’m failing to handle this spirit. I’m sorry, Master Reigen.”
“The spirit is not your responsibility,” Reigen concluded. “This is psychic practice, at best, and is not a true responsibility that belongs to you.”
“I owe it to Kageyama-kun.”
“Nothing you do in here will have any effect on Mob, positive or negative. Nothing that happens here is owed to Mob.”
“I have a responsibility to use my powers to help people.”
“Do you?” Reigen asked, tipping a fraction more back, and then forward, arms still folded. He looked at Teru again. “It’s nice to help people. It’s a nice thing to do. But your powers are your own. I think you can use them how you want.”
And something went so instantly tense in Teru that it derailed whatever line of thought was simmering on Reigen’s tongue. Reigen stared. He let his weird chair ease down properly. He watched the stiffness leave Teru’s body, and watched his eye-contact drop, as Teru shifted to acting like he’d never reacted.
“Sure. Maybe.”
“Hang on,” Reigen answered, flat. “You didn’t like that.”
“It—it’s fine advice! I think your teachings are good, Master Reigen,” Teru added hastily, afraid of the imagined insult he’d flung. “I’m just not someone who should be trusted with using my powers however I like.”
Reigen stared back at Teru, and he read whatever wasn’t being said with his words, and was being blatantly broadcast by his exhausted face.
“You’re afraid of hurting people.”
At this, Teru let out a laugh. A genuine and deep one, both loud and scathing. The brightness vanished a fraction from his eyes when he met Reigen’s eye-contact. “I’ve already hurt people.”
“Haven’t we all? To some degree?”
Teru shook his head. “You didn’t know me before I met Kageyama-kun. I used to… only hurt people with my power. Everything I did was, in one way or another, to hurt someone.” Teru went quiet a moment. He was thinking about something. And it was almost like the flame from the campfire-cauldron would no longer reflect in his eyes. “I almost strangled Kageyama-kun to death, did you know that? I put my hands around his neck and squeezed until he couldn’t breathe, and held until he lost consciousness.”
This did, finally, wipe the careful composure off Reigen’s face. He felt something dense and cold like ice drip down his spine and coil in his stomach.
“I um… didn’t… know that,” Reigen answered, coming to the internal conclusion that maybe Mob shared far less of his life with Reigen than Reigen had believed. “Why did you do that?”
“Because Kageyama-kun wouldn’t fight back with his powers. I wanted to prove something to him. And he wouldn’t even hurt me. Not even when I had my hands around his neck.”
There was something like awe in Teru’s voice, and it could almost eclipse the self-hatred that poisoned every word. But Reigen could hear it.
“He got that from you, right?” Teru continued. “That was your philosophy to start. Don’t use psychic powers to hurt others. We're all just normal people. It’s admirable. It made me want to change my whole life. I want to prove myself to Kageyama-kun, so he knows just how much he did for me. I want him to know I’m not like that anymore…” Teru’s voice trailed off. “…I still have a long way to go. I still have a lot I need to do to prove it.”
Reigen considered this quietly. He took comfort, almost, in how familiar this felt by now.
“I would never have guessed you had a past like that. I look at you, and I don’t see a boy that would hurt people. I think Mob looks at you the same.” Reigen rocked his chair again, just a bit. “Mob’s a special kid. He forgives people so quickly. You can ask him yourself, but I’ve never seen him mad at you.”
Teru said nothing. He slowly rolled back his other sleeve, grabbed the weird bandages, got to work wrapping his other arm.
“Do you plan to atone forever?”
Teru stiffened.
“I don’t understand.”
“Do you have an end-goal in mind? Is there a finish line, after which point you will forgive yourself for your past? Or do you plan to be like this forever?” The weird chair tipped a bit this time, and Reigen caught himself hopefully-smoothly enough to hide the fact that it had tipped. So he stopped tipping the chair, and looked directly at Teru, whose bandage roll hovered stationary—twice wrapped—around his right arm. “I feel like a lot of things I know about you are starting to make sense. Nobody should worry about Teruki Hanazawa, because he doesn’t deserve that concern until he’s made amends for who he used to be? Something like that?”
And—again—maybe it was the exhaustion of so many hours fighting that brought the slight tremor into Teru’s body. Maybe it was the weird shape of his equally weird chair catching up to him that made him just a bit less stable. Maybe it was an ember from the weird fire getting into his eyes that made him put down the bandage and hastily swipe a sleeve across his face.
“You’ve already changed yourself. I don’t see anything left that’s worth punishing. So why not start living now?”
And when Teru still said nothing, Reigen added.
“You can start with me. I never knew you before. You’ve never done anything bad to me. You owe me nothing. What does Teruki Hanazawa get to be like to someone he owes nothing to?”
In fractions, Teru folded in on himself, and it was almost impressive, considering the weird shape of his weird chair. He let his face fall into his hands, gingerly, just lightly enough to not rub against any of the burn wounds peppering his skin.
“You’re really kind, Master Reigen. I knew that already, of course, from Kageyama-kun. I just wasn’t expecting you’d be kind to me too.” Teru lifted his face a fraction out of his hands. “Who am I, if I’m not someone who owes you something…? I think I’m scared, because if I can’t defeat a simple spirit like this, how do I expect myself to protect people from the other terrible things I might attract? I think I’m frustrated, because I should be better than this, and if I’m not good enough for this, what am I really good for?” Teru dropped his hands. His shoulders slumped. He stared at the ground. “I think I’m tired of going home alone at the end of the day, and knowing no one will ever check on me.”
Reigen leaned into his knees. His back was hurting. He knew if he wished aloud for a new chair, the spirit would give him one, and it would undoubtedly be fucked up in a different way, but it might hurt his back a little less. But Reigen held off on that thought, because it wasn’t the right time for that.
“You said you don’t have money. Would you like money?”
Teru looked up.
“Do I want… money?”
Reigen flipped a hand out. “You’ve proven yourself far more than capable on this trial run. Your instincts are exceptional. Your power level is solid. Your commitment speaks for itself. And my business is growing—in fact, our case-load has skyrocketed this summer. Spirits are like mosquitos. They adore the heat and humidity.”
“Are you hiring me?”
“Only if you want.” Despite his earlier better judgement, Reigen tilted back in his chair again. “You don’t owe me a yes. You don’t owe me any specific answer.”
“Do you think Kageyama-kun would mind?”
“1. No. 2. It’s my business and I’ll hire employees as I like.”
Teru let out a little noise from his nose, and it wasn’t an unhappy one. He looked down at the bandage roll he’d abandoned, and he picked it up, and continued wrapping his arm with fervor.
“Any answer I give will be moot unless we get out of here, won’t it?”
“Maybe. Not that that’s a terrible thing. We’ve got so much Shape, and also—” Reigen leaned to squint at the other food package. “—Thing, to eat.”
Teru tore the bandage roll and smoothed his bandage down. He stood. And excitement brought back some life to his eyes.
“Then I think I should exorcise this spirit properly first, before I give you my answer.”
Reigen nodded, matching Teru’s smile. And in a clap like lightning, Teru was gone, a yellow afterimage burned into the back of Reigen’s eyelids from the flash. The explosions, and the shrieking, started up fresh, and for a moment, Reigen felt almost peaceful.
“Hey—hey wait a second,” Reigen added, rocking aggressively in his chair. “This chair sucks! Before you fight Teru again, Oh Great Spirit Thing, gimme a different chair. This chair sucks!!!”
Reigen miscalculated one kick of his foot too many, and he toppled his chair over.
…
“You shoulda seen it Mob,” Reigen mused, tilting himself forward and back in the office chair which was well-designed to take this sort of abuse. “It was really incredible. Unlike anything else I’ve ever seen. It was like if you took fish paste and mashed it up with the memory of red bean paste, and wrapped it all in mochi you made out of wet paper shreds. It was not good.”
“Oh,” Mob answered. “Okay. Then I’m glad I wasn’t there.”
“Did you have fun camping?” Teru asked.
At this, Mob nodded enthusiastically. “It was fun. Ritsu caught a frog.”
“What did you do with the frog?” Reigen asked.
“Ritsu put it back.”
“Good, good,” Reigen nodded. “I suppose we were all camping, in a way.”
“I thought you and Hanazawa-kun were exorcising a spirit.”
“The spirit brought the camp equipment.”
“Okay,” Mob said, with seemingly no desire for any elaboration.
“I’ve never been camping,” Serizawa said, who had dutifully scooted his chair to the far edge of his desk to make room for Teru, who was currently standing and not actually sitting in the second chair propped at the desk. “Is it usually fun?”
“Yes,” Mob said.
Reigen bobbed his head non-committaly. “Well……. You know what, yeah, actually.” He nodded. “I would say it was pretty fun.”
Reigen was not looking directly at Teru, but from the edge of his vision he caught the relief that seemed to ease across Teru’s face at the declaration.
“It should not really have been camping. I just took a long time to exorcise the spirit. Luckily Master Reigen was patient with me.”
“I am infinitely patient,” Reigen answered. “As long as I am provided with infinite Shape to eat. BUT, I am not patient today,” Reigen declared, which was kind of true, because he’d gone home the night before with his back hurting and hardly slept because of it. Reigen gestured strongly toward the door. “If no client walks in that door in the next 30 minutes, I’m calling it quits for today, and you all get to go home.”
Mob and Serizawa nodded. Teru alone seemed not to react.
“Also, Teru—” Reigen redirected his ostentatiously displayed hand to now gesture to Teru, who startled a fraction. “You’re new. So you should know, seeing as I run an agency which disposes of spirits most nefarious and scheming, whose evil machinations may follow my dedicated employees home, it is policy that I will contact you once you arrive home to ensure you are safe. This applies on days off as well, because evil does not take a day off.”
“Ah, I see,” Teru answered. And he straightened, and the look he gave Reigen was perhaps the least guarded Reigen had ever seen the boy. He wasn’t exactly smiling, but there was a dusting almost like one on his face. “Then I will be equally diligent responding.”
Reigen smiled back.
Quietly, not quite to any specific person, Mob intoned, “I don’t think Master Reigen has ever sent me a message like that.”
