Chapter Text
Now that Ritsu is psychic, he understands the difference between psychic colors and normal colors. He has to suspect that someone like his brother, who grew up seeing both, wouldn’t be able to tell so easily, but to Ritsu it’s clear. The colors of spirits and auras aren’t just more vivid, they actually have something extra, like they’re in a slightly different spectrum, or like there are things he can know just by looking at them. The easiest study subject is Dimple, since he’s usually hanging around (at least until he sees Ritsu watching him)—Ritsu has learned that Dimple is a different shade of green depending on how he’s feeling. Sort of. The color isn’t different, but it looks different.
There are also, sort of, psychic impressions that people leave. He’s not totally sure they’re real, but he can sometimes see anxiety lingering on his brother’s school supplies, or, on his workout clothes, the determination that didn’t come out in the wash.
Ritsu can also immediately tell when he sees an aura, because it doesn’t look like anything else in the world. He can immediately tell that the person he just saw out of the corner of his eye is psychic. He spins around, nearly bumping into someone, and mutters an apology as he tries to catch up. The brilliant red aura, glowing with confidence, deforms politely around other students—it looks like rain in slow motion and reversed, or like fluttering strips of paper floating upward. By the time he’s caught up to the red aura’s owner, he’s cross-referenced long glossy black hair and a tennis racket case and concluded that it’s Takane Tsubomi, the idol of Salt Mid.
Of course she’s psychic. Just like Hanazawa. Then he thinks, why didn’t my brother ever mention this?
“Takane,” he calls out, and then hastily tacks on, “senpai,” for the sake of politeness.
She turns, disturbing the slowly-turning leaves in her aura. “Kageyama-kun, wasn’t it? What’s up?”
“I have something I want to talk to you about,” he says, and lets his aura burst into being around him. He can’t see it, but he can feel it, and he knows how much of the hallway he’s making his own.
“…What is it?” asks Takane. She gives no sign that she’s seeing his aura, and he frowns slightly. Why is she pretending?
He opens his mouth to respond, but runs immediately into the wall of I don’t actually know what I want to ask. To play for time, after an awkwardly long silence, he says, “Can’t you see my aura?”
She raises her eyebrows. “Your aura? I’m not really into playing pretend any more. Especially not with people I don’t know.”
“I know you’re psychic, you must be able to see it.” He lowers his voice even further and takes a step closer. “I can see your aura. You’re not even trying to hide it.”
“Psychic,” she says flatly. “I’m psychic. And you’re psychic. Please take this in the kindest way possible, because I know how it feels, but I think you might be… seeing things.”
Ritsu grinds his teeth and drops his school bag so he can levitate it at eye level. “I’m not seeing things, and neither are you. I literally have psychic powers.”
Takane stares at the bag for way too long. In her aura he can see a muddy confusion of different reds—probably she doesn’t even know what she’s feeling right now. And that’s weird, because he was expecting plain and simple surprise, if not calculated disinterest. “I… have to go,” she says finally, still staring. “To tennis practice. Will you still be here at 16:30?”
“I can be,” he says. He regrets it as soon as it comes out of his mouth, because he has no reason to do this at all, but he can’t back out now that he’s given his word. Oh well. As she dashes off to her practice, he catches his bag out of the air and opens it up to look for the mystery novel he brought to read at lunch. If he’s going to be waiting for two hours, at least he’ll have time to figure out what he actually wants.
Fifteen minutes later he’s staring at the same paragraph in his novel, slowly coming to the conclusion that what he wants is to spend time with a psychic who doesn’t know his brother. He hates it. Quite honestly, he doesn’t want to accept ‘wanting a friend.’ It seems… pathetic? Ritsu isn’t the kind of person who has friends. At best he has enemies, and at worst people who consider themselves his friends against all evidence. Logically, of course, wanting a friend is not pathetic, most people probably do, but past experience suggests that logic isn’t really Ritsu’s strong suit. Much as he hates to admit that too.
He scrubs a hand aggressively through his hair and resolves to stop thinking about it. At least if he offers to train her to use her psychic powers he can pretend it’s because he’s a good person or because he wants her to fight evil or something. When really it’s because he’s hoping she’ll understand at least—
He’s not thinking about that.
He stares at the first paragraph of the chapter, and can’t even read the first sentence. Maybe he’ll have more luck with his math homework.
By the time Takane comes back, looking rather damp, Ritsu has managed to finish half of his math homework and he’s finally in the right mindset to do the rest. He doesn’t even notice her until she clears her throat and, probably by accident, flares her aura. It’s much clearer now; the emotion reflected in its color seems neither positive nor negative, but rather unswerving. When he looks up at her she says, “I think I am psychic. But to make sure, can you tell me what that means? And tell me… what does your aura look like? I want to know I’m seeing the same thing you are.”
“No-one can see their own aura, but I’ve been told it glitters,” says Ritsu. “And it’s probably blue, like my brother’s.”
“Right,” says Takane, and nods. “Wait, is Mob your brother? Is that why you’re psychic?”
The fact that his brother is who he is—that’s precisely the reason Ritsu is psychic. But that’s not what Takane means. “I imagine that we’re both psychic for the same reason, though I don’t know what that reason is. And to answer your other question, being psychic means being able to see auras and spirits, as well as having some other kind of unique power. The one my brother and I have is telekinesis.” Best not to mention Hanazawa for now—he seems to have every unique power, which makes them considerably less unique.
“Spirits,” says Takane. Ritsu thinks of spirits as the least interesting part of what he just said, but he nods. “What do spirits look like?”
“Anything, really. They’re brightly colored, and usually they have the wrong number of eyes or legs. Most of them look like… not animals, but monsters. And some look like humans, more or less.” Ritsu himself has seen about three spirits in his life; this is information he got by asking his brother.
Takane lets out a long sigh, and her aura clears even further. It looks like luminous red glass now. “That explains a lot, thank you. If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like to ask you to teach me how to use my powers.”
“Why?” asks Ritsu. “I want to know whether you have a good reason or not,” he says, although he has already decided to say yes. The only thing her answer will change is his opinion of her, not his actions.
“There’s someone I need to show.”
Ritsu raises his eyebrows at her—is she trying to impress someone with her psychic powers?—but before she can say anything else he says, “All right. We can start today, if you want.”
She looks a little surprised, but says, “Okay. We should go outside, though. I don’t want to get in trouble with the custodians.”
Nobody has questioned Ritsu’s right to be there while he’s been waiting, but that could have something to do with the fact that he put on his student council armband for that exact purpose. He gathers up his homework and follows her out to the back of the school, where she hops up onto a low wall while he tries not to squint in the sudden bright sunlight. He levitates himself up onto the wall—partially to show off, and partially because she’s a few centimeters taller than him and he’s going to look like an idiot if he fails a jump like that. Anyway, she looks suitably impressed. “The first thing you’ll probably want to be able to do,” he says, “is manipulate your aura. If you don’t learn to hide it, any esper can easily identify you, like I did.”
“Is that a problem?”
“It can be. There are people who are willing to use that information to hurt you. Hopefully they’re not nearby any more, but it can’t hurt to be careful.”
“How can I protect myself?” she says, suddenly intent. The quality of her intense focus is certainly impressive. Even her aura’s ragged shape smooths out, so that it looks more like the flame of a blowtorch than a bonfire.
“First, like I said, by hiding your aura. If they’ve already found you, you’ll need a barrier for defense and your unique powers for offense. But working with your aura is the first step. Before anything else, try suppressing it.” She makes a face that he interprets as a request for more information, and he shrugs. “It’s outside your body. It needs to be inside. Do what seems right to you. That’s how I learned it. You should be able to feel how big it is, anyway.”
Takane closes her eyes. Ritsu stares at her, since it’s not rude to stare at someone who can’t see you. He waits. After a few minutes she makes a quiet noise (of triumph, he thinks) and then her aura disappears. “There,” she says. “What’s next?”
He takes a brief moment to dislike her for her easy grasp of aura manipulation, and then shoves his feelings into the drawer in the back of his head where they belong. “Barriers,” he says. “Harden your aura into a shield around you. Usually they’re like a sphere with you in the middle.”
She nods, and closes her eyes again. After a minute or so she says, “How can you tell if you did it?”
Ritsu manifests a barrier around himself—it’s something he only learned two days ago himself, when he asked his brother to teach him in case someone else tries to kidnap him. If only he’d known before everything with Claw, he wouldn’t be covered in bandages right now. He probably looks like a delinquent. “I guess I can tell if it’s working because I feel protected. If you get there, I can try touching it to see if it’s solid.”
He watches Takane sitting there with her eyes closed and her aura churning until she frowns and blinks slowly. “I don’t think it’s working,” she says. “I’m getting really tired. I’d like to go home for today and try again later. When is good for you?”
In other words, what time allows Ritsu to escape his brother’s notice for the longest? It’s not that he wants to keep secrets, per say, and maybe his instinct to hide his activities is something he should be getting rid of… but he doesn’t want his brother to know yet. Or, really, ever, but that isn’t likely. Anyway, it will be best if he does this on the days when his brother has work. He’s going to have some explaining to do today. “Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays are preferable,” he says.
“Right. I’ll see you tomorrow, then? Same time?”
“Sure.”
Takane nods, and walks off without even saying goodbye. He can’t help but approve, somehow.
“I’m home,” calls Ritsu. A few moments later, after he’s taken off his shoes, his brother pokes his head around the top of the staircase and says,
“Welcome home, Ritsu. You’re back late.”
Ritsu doesn’t hesitate, because he spent the whole walk back preparing for this eventuality. “There was a bit of an emergency with the student council that I had to take care of. It’s due to the fact that Kamuro is stepping down as president.”
“Ah, I heard about that,” says his brother, drifting down the stairs after him as if pulled by Ritsu’s gravity. “At the assembly. But then Mezato said I should run.”
Is his brother actually going to run for student council president?! Ritsu is glad that he’s looking inside the refrigerator at the time so his brother can’t see his shock. “That’s quite… surprising.”
“Well, she said it would show I have good leadership skills,” mumbles his brother. “She said it might make a certain person pay attention to me.”
“Oh! Nii-san, are you trying to impress someone you have a crush on?”
His brother’s face gets a little pink and he doesn’t say anything in response, so Ritsu figures he was right on the mark. Ritsu smiles at him, and he looks away. After a long silence, during which Ritsu starts scooping rice into a bowl, his brother says quietly, “Can I ask if you can… not call me that… any more?” Ritsu freezes with the bowl halfway to the microwave, wondering if he just heard right. “It’s not that I don’t consider you my family, don’t worry. I don’t know if I can explain right now. But I will explain. When I figure it out.”
Ritsu jerks his arm back into motion, trying and totally failing to make it look like a normal movement. What kind of a response can he give to that? “Okay… Shigeo.” His own brother’s name sounds strange coming out of his mouth, devoid of the years of meaning he attaches to nii-san, devoid of the respect and admiration he means to convey when he addresses his brother. “I’m very interested to know, when you’re able to tell me.”
“Thanks, Ritsu,” whispers his brother. When Ritsu looks back again with another question forming on his tongue, his brother has already vanished up the stairs again.
Ritsu cannot even guess what’s going on in his brother’s head.
--
Tsubomi did horribly at practice today, but she doesn’t really mind. She barely noticed. She was too busy rearranging her entire universe and her understanding of her own brain. She’s still trying to fit all the pieces together now, as she’s taking the bus home.
First, it’s all real. There’s a reason most medications don’t make her stop seeing things, and it’s because she’s not hallucinating. She’s not crazy. She just needs a little more visible evidence that she’s really psychic, and then her mom and stepdad can finally stop wasting money on antipsychotics she doesn’t even take. She never much liked the side effects, and add to that the fact that she actually started hallucinating for a few days when she went off them—
She’s not psychotic. She’s psychic.
That absolutely sounds like something a crazy person would say, but Tsubomi is more than ready to try out not being a crazy person. What is it like? Is it like not having to put active effort into pretending to be normal every waking moment? Probably yes. At least if you’re not psychic. She’ll still have to pretend, and that leaves a bitter taste in her mouth. But she’s not crazy!
She wonders if she should tell her sister, but Fumi is a skeptic. She won’t believe anything either, unless Tsubomi can present solid evidence. It’s just a little hard to keep it in, now that she knows. She’s not crazy.
She spends the rest of the bus ride scribbling a shaky picture of herself lifting up her parents with her mind. She particularly enjoys drawing in their shocked faces, and Fumi’s delighted laughter. What powers does she have? Kageyama didn’t say what other things people can do besides telekinesis, but she’s heard about the power to exorcise ghosts, mind reading and hypnotism, seeing the future, things like that. She’d rather have telekinesis, honestly. It would be really convenient for carrying heavy things, and she would probably be able to fly if she trained hard enough. Seeing the future would just be too stressful, and she’s never going to need to exorcise a ghost or hypnotize someone. Mind reading seems a little evil for her taste. Mind reading and mind control are the kinds of powers that only villains have, in stories. Maybe tomorrow, when she sees Kageyama again (and when she has energy again) she’ll find out what power she has.
Kageyama, too, is unexpectedly down-to-earth for a popular boy. Maybe that’s what people would think of her, too, if she stopped trying so hard to seem like what she should be. But he’s really just blunt, almost to the point of being rude, the way Tsubomi usually isn’t unless she’s with her best friends. Probably the best thing, though, is that he doesn’t have a crush on her. She was afraid for a moment that what he was about to say was a confession! She gets enough of those. Even today, Takenaka was staring at her during practice, and he’s usually pretty okay. Is it conceited to think every boy who looks at her has a crush? Even if it’s turned out to be true so often? She doesn’t want to go down this path of thought again.
Luckily, this is her stop. She hastily shoves her notebook back into her bag and jumps off the bus. In the moment just before her feet touch the ground, she pretends they’re not going to touch it at all.
“I’m home,” she calls as she steps out of her shoes at the door.
“Heeeeey,” yells Fumi from the room they share. “Come say hi! I’m doing homework and I don’t want to be.”
Tsubomi pushes open their bedroom door. Fumi is lying on the rug staring at one of the workbooks that’s open in front of her. How she does multiple workbooks at once Tsubomi has never been able to figure out, but it seems to work for her. “How’s studying going?”
“In my professional opinion, English should be abolished and Japanese should become the official language of the world. It makes about ten thousand times more sense. How was school?”
“About the same as usual. We had a test in science. I think I did a pretty good job.”
“Ah, you’re so smart, baby sister, I bet you aced it. If only you were the older one you could help me with my homework. But being smart isn’t a replacement for being in high school, I guess. Oh, Mom and Dad are gonna be late tonight. Do you mind cooking, or do you have a lot of studying to do?”
Tsubomi has kind of a lot of studying to do, but she likes how meditative cooking is. It’s satisfying chopping vegetables and choosing spices, even if she always chooses the same spices and chops the same vegetables. “I’ll make dinner. You can come study in the kitchen if you want to keep me company.”
“Sure thing, baby sister. And you get to hear my complaints about how dumb English is.”
“Explaining your complaints helps you learn,” says Tsubomi.
“That’s why you’re the smart one!”
Tsubomi doesn’t want to be the smart one. But neither Fumi nor her parents care, because she can’t tell them.
“I’m ready,” she says, dropping her bag. Kageyama looks up from his book. Honestly, he looks terrible. Exhausted. She can’t figure out whether he looks like that all the time, or if maybe she’s projecting.
“Good afternoon, Takane-senpai,” he says. “So nice to see you again.”
“Neither you nor I cares much for pleasantries, right? I know I’m tired of them.”
It’s a bold move, and for a moment she’s afraid she wasn’t reading him right. But then he snorts, and a small smile briefly crosses his face. “All right, I’ll try not to bore you with too much politeness. Where did you get to yesterday with barriers?”
She twists her mouth. “Not very far. Just envisioning a shield doesn’t really seem to be helping.”
“When you say envisioning,” he asks, carefully marking his place and putting his book away, “do you mean thinking about how it looks? Because it doesn’t need to look like anything. It just needs to be hard and strong.”
She’s honestly not sure how she was doing it yesterday (what with all the world-shattering revelations, it’s a bit of a haze) but she shuts her eyes anyway and starts envisioning the hardness of a shield around her. A good shield is firm and solid and thick, and this one will enclose her. Wherever she is will be the safest place to be. She wrestles with that image for a while until she finally feels like she has a grasp on the feeling of safety, and then she says, “Try tapping it now.”
She feels her barrier shatter at the touch of his finger—it built up so slowly that she could hardly tell, but in one splintered moment she definitely felt it being destroyed. She opens her eyes and scowls.
“You’ll get better with practice,” says Kageyama. “Do you want to do that now, or on your own time?”
Will she be able to tell how strong it is on her own time? Maybe not, but surely it’s like meditating and it will naturally increase her abilities if she tries over and over. It always works in anime. “On my own time. I won’t waste yours making you sit here and watch me think. The last thing is finding out what my unique psychic power is, right?”
“You might not have only one,” says Kageyama with a shrug. This is certainly news to Tsubomi—she leans forward eagerly. “Maybe it’s not exactly common, but I know at least one person who has… four different powers. He’s, hmm, special, though. Oh, and him.” Kageyama grimaces, apparently thinking of a very unpleasant person. Tsubomi wants to ask, but doesn’t think he’ll tell her. “The ones I know about are telekinesis, pyrokinesis, clairvoyance, telepathy, illusions, cursing I guess, advanced aura manipulation, strengthening your muscles… that guy could manipulate gravity, and he could teleport…”
“Cursing is a psychic power? Isn’t that… a little…”
“In this case it means changing the properties of an object with psychic energy. I didn’t come up with the term. In any case, there are many different kinds of powers you might have. We can test for the most basic ones first. So, telekinesis—try moving your tennis racket with your mind.”
“I don’t know how to do that!” What is it with Kageyama telling her to just do things she doesn’t know how to do? They’ve known each other for all of an hour, total. If he’s such an expert, why doesn’t he know what she’s supposed to be doing, exactly?
“Just picture it happening, and engage your aura.”
As if she knows what that means. She makes sure her aura is outside her body, anyway, and then tries to reach out with it while picturing the racket lifting up into the air. It’s a delicate balancing act, and she’s probably going to get horrible wrinkles from frowning so much over her psychic powers. But it’s worth it when suddenly the racket…
Um.
Splits into two rackets, one of which flies into the air. Does that halfway count as telekinesis?
Kageyama leans forward and waves his hand through the floating racket. Surprised, she lets her concentration go, and it dissolves. “That was an illusion. Congratulations, Takane, you’ve found one of your powers. It’s a hell of a lot less creepy than the way the other guy did it, too. Still, he was showing us our friends being murdered…”
“Stop,” says Tsubomi. “What are you talking about? Yesterday you told me people would want to hurt me. Now you’re talking about a bunch of people with incredible powers who already used them to hurt you. Will you please tell me what happened?”
Kageyama meets her eyes. If anything, his habitually serious expression has grown even more intense. “On Friday I and a group of psychic children were kidnapped by an organization called Claw whose members were powerful espers. My brother and his friend and his master came to rescue us. Still, we were almost killed probably half a dozen times. We were ultimately saved by… someone who I think was just playing with us. In summary, I hope neither you nor I has to go through that again. But I fear we might.”
It’s so melodramatic that Tsubomi doesn’t want to believe him. It sounds like one of the delusions they keep telling her she has—that she can see when someone is lying, or that everyone is watching her, waiting for her to mess up so they can laugh at her or hurt her. But Friday was only four days ago, and she can see he still has wounds from something. And last time he told her what sounded like an unbelievable lie it turned out to be true. She swallows. “Great. And you’re training me to defend myself against people like that.”
“I like to think of it as a good deed in return for my transgressions,” he says pleasantly. Is he talking about the thing with the student council? He wasn’t being especially melodramatic about being kidnapped. That’s just how he talks. What the hell.
She lets out a long sigh. “All right. So let’s find out what other powers I have so I can fight powerful psychics when they try to kidnap me. Inevitably.”
“That’s the spirit, Takane. So, have you ever seen the future?”
--
Shigeo calls Hanazawa on the walk home from work. “Hello, Hanazawa-kun.”
“Kageyama-kun! A pleasure, as always, to hear your voice. What can I do for you?”
“You… know things, right.”
“What a peculiarly vague question, Kageyama-kun. I certainly know some things. Many, even. But I wouldn’t claim to be omniscient. Was there something in particular you wanted to know, or just to reassure yourself that I am a man of many qualities?”
Shigeo looks up toward the sky, trying to sort through that sentence. After about twenty seconds she gives up. “I mean, do you know anything about, um, not being a boy. Being a girl, maybe.”
“Do I know what it’s like? Not really. Girls are surprisingly close-mouthed on the matter. Why do you need to know?”
Shigeo pauses for a long time again, trying to work up the courage to say it. Hanazawa isn’t going to judge her for it, he’s very understanding. And even if he can’t say anything helpful it will still be good to tell someone. She needs this to exist outside her own head, so she can’t take it back. “I’m thinking of being one. A girl. I thought you might know if that’s possible.”
There’s a staticky scraping noise on the other end of the line, as if Hanazawa is shifting his phone. “I don’t know if it’s possible. I’m not really sure what you mean.”
She feels as if she’s shrinking inside her own body. She really was hoping Hanazawa would know. He seems so worldly. “It’s just that I… a while ago, for work reasons, I was dressed as a girl and a lot of people thought I was one. And I really liked it. Recently I’ve started getting anxious about Ritsu calling me his brother. So I know I want to be a girl. I just don’t know if I can.”
“Kageyama-kun, I would like to give this matter the serious consideration it deserves. Which is why I’m going to hang up now and do some research, which I will later report to you. Do you have an email address?”
Shigeo does not have an email address, or even a computer at home. Eventually Hanazawa persuades himself to stop by Salt Mid after school and give her printed copies of what he finds, even though it will look a lot more suspicious. He makes a very determined-sounding promise to find something by the next day, says goodbye, and then hangs up. Shigeo is left staring at her phone, wishing that she hadn’t decided to do this while she’s supposed to be preparing her speech. Now, instead of getting one vague worry off her chest to concentrate better, she has two sharp and immediate worries both trying to get her attention.
This means she can’t concentrate on her homework at all, and she’s sure she’ll get a zero on both the assignments that are due tomorrow, which adds a third worry that she can’t do anything about right now. With three worries, she can’t even pay attention in class the next day and now she won’t know how to do the assignments for later in the week, which makes a fourth worry. Maybe… maybe she can ask Ritsu?
When Mezato grabs her by the arm at lunch and tows her into an empty classroom, she’s almost relieved. At least if she messes this up she’ll still only have four worries, even if one of them might get bigger. Four is her limit; she keeps forgetting what one or another of them is, but it doesn’t stop her worrying about them.
“Focus, Mob-kun!” says Mezato, snapping her fingers in Shigeo’s face. Shigeo flinches and blinks. She can’t tell Mezato that focusing is the one thing she’s totally unable to do right now. Partially because she can’t and partially because talking is really hard at the moment. “The election is on Friday, which means you have three days to finish getting ready. There’s no way you can slack off now! Let’s hear your speech again.”
Shigeo reaches for her notes, but Mezato snatches them off the table and hides them on her lap. “You should have it memorized by now! Come on.”
With great effort, Shigeo brings to mind the first word on the page, which is ‘greetings.’ “Greetings… Salt Middle School…” she says, and then gets stuck. She looks up at Mezato, who is frowning at her.
“You got further than that yesterday.”
“Sorry.”
Mezato sighs. “All right, have your notes or we won’t get anywhere.”
Shigeo gratefully takes the page of notes and looks at them. Very slowly she reads, “Greetings, Salt Middle School. I’m Kageyama Shigeo, and I’m running for student council president…” Very slowly she reads the rest of the page, mostly without knowing what she’s saying. Her forehead is soaked with sweat by the time she finishes with, “Thank you.” She looks up at Mezato again.
Mezato is leaning on her hand. She looks dissatisfied, Shigeo thinks. “Mob-kun, I’ve never in my life heard a worse speech than that. What gives? You did a pretty decent job yesterday!”
“I’ve been worried. About schoolwork.”
“Grades aren’t doing any better, huh? Well, maybe your teacher will cut you some slack once you’re on the student council.” That’s a very optimistic way of putting it. Shigeo isn’t expecting to get elected. It’s more that she can’t back out now because Mezato would find creative ways to make her life hell. And it will be over in a couple of days. “Anyway, make sure you practice at home before tomorrow. You don’t get notes for your speech, so you really have to memorize it! Good luck, Mob-kun.” She slaps Shigeo on the shoulder and leaves the room. Shigeo suddenly realizes that she was so worried she forgot to eat lunch, which makes… how many was it, again? Six worries?
She at least remembers to wait for Hanazawa after school, and he walks with her to the consultation office. “Here’s all the stuff I think you’ll find useful,” he says, pressing a folder full of neatly squared paper into her hands. “Don’t try to look at it now, it’s a bit windy today and you might lose something. Anyway, to summarize…”
She tries to concentrate on his words. She really does. But they don’t seem to penetrate the barrier of anxiety that’s been erected outside her brain. “Kageyama-chan,” says his voice suddenly. She stops, as surprised by the name as she is by his face suddenly peering at her from only a few centimeters away. “Are you all right? You seem pretty…” He flutters his hand in the air, and then finishes the sentence as if the gesture were a word—“…today.”
Shigeo has no clue what that means. Her brain is stuck on the one thing that got through the barrier. Kageyama-chan. She needs to save it so that later when she can think again she’ll be able to analyze it. “…Yes?” she says after a while.
“You should go home and rest. I don’t think you’re in any condition to be fighting spirits. But I’m sure you’d rather go to work anyway. At least the chance of actually having to do an exorcism is pretty low.”
“…Thanks.”
Hanazawa shakes his head, and hooks his arm through hers to steer her toward the consultation agency. “Just make sure you get plenty of rest when you get home, all right?”
She doesn’t. Not that she does any of the other things she’s supposed to be doing, like her math homework or practicing her speech. She huddles into a corner of her room and reverentially opens the folder Hanazawa gave her. The first page is a printout of a website defining the word ‘transgender.’ The second page, when she looks, is a news story about a woman who wasn’t always a woman. With difficulty, Shigeo reads through most of the rest of the articles; although her heart is becoming lighter, her head isn’t getting any clearer. At some point she hears footsteps right outside her door, panics, and shoves the articles into her folded futon. But it’s just Ritsu outside saying, “It’s time for dinner, n… Shigeo. Are you coming?”
“Yes, Ritsu.” She’ll have to tell him eventually. She wants to tell him. Just… just, not yet.
His footsteps fade, and she lets out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding. She looks down at herself to make sure she’s decent to go down to dinner, as if what she was reading might have rubbed off on her somehow. She looks the same as she did before she started reading, but that seems impossible. She feels so different. Larger, maybe? Like she actually fills up her own body.
She has a lot of trouble eating dinner that night. Her spoon won’t stay still in her hand; as soon as she picks it up it rolls into an oddly-shaped tube. Ritsu has to untwist it five times during the meal, and every time Shigeo’s fingers grow clumsier with nerves and slicker with sweat.
Only half a minute after she excuses herself to wash her dishes, Ritsu comes to stand behind her. “I can tell someone’s bothering you. I want to be here for you, okay? After everything you’ve done for me.”
Shigeo turns to stare at him with wide eyes. She swallows, and nods. “Soon, Ritsu. I promise.”