Chapter Text
The office looks unbearably wide and empty in the light of the grimy windows. There are dust mites floating through the air, fairy-lights in a dismal little box. It looks lived in only because of the squalor.
Reigen Youko stands in the last remnants of her brother’s legacy and finds herself unimpressed.
She turns on the lights. The single ceiling lamp flickers a bit before kicking in. The furnishing is minimal, and it smells like a noxious mix of cigarettes and incense, cloying in a way that sticks to the back of her throat. She starts digging through the desk for paperwork and the moneybox. All she finds are magazines for countless different trades, shady occult business flyers, wrappers for convenience store food, and cigarette cartons. She shakes out a garbage bag and begins stuffing it. With each drawer full of trash she finds, her movements become more frantic. Frustrated. Hopeless.
Oh, Arataka. You lived like this?
“Excuse me. I came because I saw your sign.”
Youko jerks away from the desk at the sound. Swallows. Customers, of course. “Just a moment!”
The customer is tiny. He looks eight, maybe younger. He’s still wearing his elementary school backpack.
“Listen…Right now Spirits n’ Such is, well,” she hedges. She’s not good with kids.
“I’m, uhm, an esper,” the boy says softly.
“...Hah?”
“There are times I can’t control my powers, and it’s scary,” the kid presses on.
Is this the kind of thing Arataka dealt with every day? The kid looks searchingly at her, and Youko sighs. "Sorry kid. The owner of Spirits n’ Such is out right now, okay?”
The boy droops. “Oh…When will they be back?”
Youko droops too. Deeper than the kid. She goes practically boneless, the admission like a knife through the puppet strings of obligation that were keeping her moving.
“He won’t be. He’s not coming back.”
“Eh? Why?”
“Dunno. Doctors dunno either.” She looks back at the office. “Well…he knows. He says he got cursed. Told anyone who would listen, his powers won’t work on it, so it’ll just stew there forever and ever until he dies.”
He has maybe a few months. The doctors don’t know what’s wrong with him, but the side effects are obvious.
“He has powers too?” Despite the depressing answer, the kid looks more hopeful than ever. “Uhm, I don’t have anyone to talk to about this. Do you think I could help? Could we talk then?”
Youko raises an eyebrow. “Ahh…right, with those esper powers?” The boy nods. He looks serious. Fuck is she ever bad with kids. “Listen…I have to clean up this office and then take care of a lot of important adult stuff. I know you want someone to talk to, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to come to him right now.”
“But…”
“Sorry, kid.”
Youko feels heavy. She’s not sure she has the energy to do this. The office smell is choking and tacky, only speeding along her headache. Not just the garbage, but finding that paperwork, his personal effects he left behind, the furniture…
She grips the window to open it and let in some air, but when she bumps the half-pulled blinds they drop down, and the window doesn’t even shake. She’s not sure it’s meant to open.
She can’t cry. Not yet. She can’t waste time crying.
“Let me.”
She barely has time to register that the kid is still there before a sort of textured current runs over her hands, making her jerk away. The blinds snap up on their own, and the window rattles. With an abrupt snap, it flies open, letting in a current of fresh air.
Youko turns to see the boy with his hand outstretched. When they make eye contact, he goes shy, and looks around nervously before fixating on the window on the opposite side of the room, behind Arataka’s desk. The blinds fly up with a wave of the boy’s hand, letting in the searing light of the late-afternoon sun and shedding a cloud of dust. The window shakes more than the other one, but jerks open as well.
The cigarette-and-incense scent is washed away on the new air current, and Youko is overtaken by the feeling that maybe she doesn't want it to.
“Hey, kid…What’s your name?”
==+==
If the psychic powers didn’t already alert her, Youko would start believing in the supernatural just from the condition Arataka’s apartment is in.
The feeling of dread seems outside her, more a physical blanket over the building than an emotion she’s experiencing. The door to his place looks like a threat, a shapeless shadow at the end of the street, exuding the vague sensation that it isn’t safe here.
The other occupants of the building seem to be in agreement; they huddle in the empty lot next to the building, too confused to literally flee their homes but knowing they shouldn’t go inside.
The child — Kageyama Shigeo — clutches onto her and looks up with big, fearful eyes. “That doesn’t look like a ghost…”
“Ah, well…He said it was a curse, so it’s a curse.” Common sense dictates that curses aren’t real, but the boy is psychic, so this feeling must be a curse, right? Youko wonders what it looks like to the boy. She imagines something hideous and roiling, glaring down at them somehow. It wasn’t like this when she left, so it must be growing too, heaving with the effort of expanding further, a tumor writhing in the sun.
She takes Shigeo’s hand. “It’s okay. Just push on it when we go in.”
The residents look at them with cautious interest when they approach. They want to see someone go inside and be fine. They want to be proven wrong about this dread. She almost feels bad for walking straight up to her brother’s door.
It is locked. Youko resists the urge to cuss. She doesn’t have a key.
“Taka, open the door!” She shouts.
Silence.
If the curse is so big she can feel it outside the building, what happened to her brother?
Youko repeatedly slams her palm against the door. “Taka! Open up! Taka!”
She can’t hear anything.
Youko shoots a desperate look at Shigeo. The boy startles, and raises his hand hesitantly. There’s an audible click, and when she tries again, it opens — and stops again, at the chain on the door.
“Shit!” She spits, both at being stopped and the concentrated terror that leaks through the crack, a seeping physical something that she can't see or feel yet she still recoils from.
Shigeo adjusts his sweaty palm in her grip, and the chain slides through the lock and falls. Youko gathers herself. She has nothing encouraging to say. She didn’t believe in the supernatural until those windows flew open, and this is a steep learning curve for her.
“Remember. Push,” is all she has to offer, and she shoves through the door.
A stale wind rushes past them, tasting like Arataka’s apartment — cigarettes, musty second-hand clothing, sweat, and some sort of savoury sauce — but feeling like death itself is pushing through her. For a moment she experiences fear beyond everything that has ever frightened her, fear too primal to put to words, an existential dread that stops her in her tracks.
Then Shigeo shoves his hand forward and the feeling is gone, leaving only an empty hallway.
“Taka?” She calls.
Silence.
The curse, if it’s even that, is practically visible now. She can see it in the shadows clinging to the corners like soot tags, the way molten red edges ooze into place as something invisible drips down the wall and dissipates as the substance thins. She wants to tell Shigeo to look away, but she doesn’t know from what. He looks petrified. She wants to be guilty about this, but if he wasn’t here, what could she do?
“Taka!” Youko calls.
His apartment is tiny, she knows. The hall is only the length of the little bathroom's walls. They just have to walk past the entranceway and she’ll see him.
Youko takes a trembling breath and begins walking forward. The curses on the walls glow red like disturbed embers as they move, visibly pressing up against whatever invisible force Shigeo is using to keep them away. It gives her enough confidence to swallow her anxiety and charge into the main living space.
And stop dead.
Arataka is lying on the floor. His head is arched back unnaturally, and a pool of blood is growing slowly under his matted hair. More blood flows from his nostrils and bubbles between his lips. Dark streaks run down his chin, dripping onto his shirt that's soaked all the way through with blood, blood, so much blood. His face is white and his lips are colourless.
“ARATAKA!” Youko screams. She drops to her knees next to him, touches his face, shoulder, hand, where should she touch? When she presses a thumb against his throat, fresh blood pours out of his mouth and trickles lazily down the side of his face. “Taka, can you hear me?”
For a terrifying moment, Youko feels like she may be holding her only brother’s corpse, but then his throat jumps, and more blood spurts out, much thinner this time. He convulses a few more times, and takes in a ragged, bubbly breath.
Youko whips her head to Shigeo. The kid’s face is unreadable, but the air broils around him, putting on a pressure even heavier than the curses around them.
“DO something!” She shouts.
It snaps the boy out of whatever fog came over him. He jolts forward, raising both hands. Tears stream down his face.
All the air is sucked out of the room. Youko’s ears pop. The windows crack under a sudden pressure.
And suddenly it’s just a room. A little dim, small, unkempt. Ordinary and unassuming. A shard of glass falls from one of the windows and shatters on the floor.
Arataka explodes into a coughing fit in her arms. She drops him, and he rolls over to continue coughing, so hard he starts gagging. She rubs his back. “Okay?”
Arataka spits out one last glob of something that doesn’t look like blood and peers over his shoulder at her. His eyes immediately focus on who's behind her. Shigeo has yet to drop his hands, even though he's shaking. “Wh…Why is there a kid?”
“This is Kageyama Shigeo, he’s an esper. He saved you,” says Youko.
Shigeo flinches and drops his arms. “But…I couldn’t get all of it.” His voice trembles.
Youko is prepared to panic, but Arataka leaps to his feet— then collapses against the wall. Youko can see the shard of his coffee mug that must have sliced his head on the floor. He's lost a lot of blood, and now it's fucking everywhere, yet her brother acts like he can’t even see it, and is in the peak of health. “All of it? Don’t sweat it kid. The reason us spiritualists exorcise things instead of sealing is because sealing requires maintenance. Look at me, all this is from the incredible tension between my powers and the unspeakable force within me. This kind of power gets sealed in ancient temples by entire teams of priests! You’re just being my team this time!”
What the fuck is he talking about?
Shigeo sniffles. The tears are still sliding down his ruddy cheeks with no sign of stopping. “You have psychic powers too?”
“Of course I do!” Arataka’s expression softens. He kneels down to the kid’s level and presses a firm hand on his shoulder. “But I can’t use them right now, so that was really dangerous. You saved me — Shigeo, right? Shigeo. You saved my life.”
Oh, Youko realizes. Shigeo is crying. The first thing Arataka saw was that panic. She remembers in high school Arataka had a gift for preventing any situation from escalating; it was compulsive. Apparently it still is. He still knows exactly the right thing to say too, because it's got the kid practically glowing. “So you’ll be okay?”
“Oh, yeah, definitely! A little curse like this can't bring the 21st Century's Greatest Psychic down! The real issue is the regular old blood loss.” He jabs a thumb at the shattered mug in the puddle of blood on the floor. “Gotta go to the hospital for that. You want to practice the sealing arts on the drive over?”
The kid nods. “Can I ask about controlling powers?”
“Ask as many questions as you want!” Arataka staggers over to his bed and picks up his laptop. His eyes are fixated on Shigeo's face, gauging his emotional state carefully. “You can, uh, keep asking, you know…every day! I plan on buying a house in the neighborhood, and we can work on it together, I suppose. And you can keep on coming to check on how that’s going. A real learning opportunity for, uh, esper abilities. Right kid?”
Youko shakes herself out of her stunned silence. “House? With what money?”
“Oh, this job normally doesn’t pay much, but uh,” Arataka reels back so far he almost falls and snatches a piece of paper from his desk. It’s a cheque. “This particular customer was, ah…generous with his commission.”
Youko stands on shaking legs and takes the cheque.
She falls right back to her knees.
==+==
A dark shadow slides across the streets of Seasoning City, both illuminated by the street lights and not, a shape defined by an absence.
With every spark of coherency, it shivers with red energy. It has thoughts, but they are shapeless. There is something it should be doing, but it doesn’t know what it is. There is something that could help, but it’s been forgotten. It is hungry.
In the end, it follows itself. It traces the sensation of locations it has been. It mindlessly tracks decaying remnants of places-that-once-was, tasting for the memories and finding none. All the way to an old building with a glowing sign. The name of the business is drawn over in marker. The shadow can read it, and those words become part of the jumble inside it. It gives off red sparks.
Up the stairs and under doors. The feeling is more intense now. It has never been here. It has been here.
There’s another shadow here. A little wooden statue on the shelf exudes a cloud of malevolent energy. The shadow approaches, and the crimson envelops its edges. With a snap, the other shadow is snuffed out, and the energy is pulled in. Swallowed.
The shadow settles.
It threatens to become the shape of a person over the course of hours. It remembers the shape. Narrow, stretched thin, hair in his eyes. It bubbles just under the surface. It knows who this is.
Around midday, someone comes to knock on the door. The shadow slides through the wall. There is another shadow here too, clinging to this person’s shoulder. The shadow is hungry again. It leans forward, invisible to the visitor, and breathes in the whisp of energy. It becomes part of him, pulls him together from disconnected atoms, and he can finally think.
Keiji, he remembers. I am Mogami Keiji.
==+==
The ghost world has been partying all week, and Dimple most of all.
Someone ganked Mogami. Nobody’s seen him in over a decade, so it was a really scary couple of months when his vengeful spirit started trying to build itself back up again. That guy was just as ravenous in death as he was in life, devouring Dimple’s hard-won followers, and there was a very real threat of the entire city being a no-fly zone for the undead.
Dimple doesn’t know how they pulled it off, and he doesn’t care. All he cares about is that Mogami vanished as suddenly as he appeared, they can all eat unaccosted, and Dimple can repopulate his network.
The latest feast is an urban legend building in the woods. He and the gang want to slurp it up before the belief becomes too concrete, at which point it could become a predator for them. Eat or be eaten and all that. Normally the group falls in line behind him, as he’s the strongest spirit in the group, but they are partying, and plenty run ahead with the knowledge that Mogami is gone. He can hear the exalted shrieks of spirits chewing on the rumour from a mile away.
The shrieks raise in pitch.
Then they go silent.
The first thing Dimple thinks is that they miscalculated the strength of the urban legend. But Dimple is planning on becoming a god, he has plenty of experience digesting strong rumours. He continues on. He even feels smug about the way they feel they have to run.
But the urban legend isn’t overpowering anyone. It’s lying on the forest floor, decaying like a carcass. The energy it’s giving off as it expires swirls violently, sucked into the image of a single ghost, a black shadow threatening to take the shape of a person in pulses of red.
It’s a strong spirit and absorbing the rumour pretty recklessly, so it’s obvious to see why most would run. If Dimple didn’t know any better, he’d avoid this guy just because it looks like it’ll be a pain in the ass to overpower. But he does know better. Spiritual energy is in everything, from people to grass. Strong spiritual energy will look vivid the way this guy does. Yet…Dimple has dealt with countless psychics over the years, and they’ve got something wrong with their energy. It feels like it’s covered in fingerprints, so quintessentially them that you gotta chew on it before you can even absorb it.
This isn’t just a powerful spirit. It’s a powerful esper spirit.
And it’s not just a powerful esper spirit. That vicious red with the wild sandpaper texture; Dimple’s seen it before.
Mogami. He’s back.
Mogami doesn’t have a face, which is always a real fucking bad sign with powerful spirits. It’s a sign they lack a lot of self-awareness. The face is usually the last thing to go. But it’s not just that; Dimple can see that the developing facsimile of a body doesn’t look how it did when Dimple last saw him in person. Less threadbare, less shrunken. Younger. He wants to be at his prime.
Dimple eases back, but he’s already been noticed. The red static pulses to create the faded impression of a human body rising to stand. The urban legend’s energy whips wilder around Mogami, absorbed faster and faster, until it finally vanishes.
They are alone in the clearing.
Dimple anticipates an attack, but when Mogami moves again, it’s simply to walk away, back towards downtown Seasoning City. Mogami’s pace is meandering, but consistent. He doesn’t even fly. He looks like a drunk wandering out of a bar.
It couldn’t be…
Dimple tests the distance. No matter how close he gets, Mogami doesn’t react. He just plods along as an unstable person-ish cloud.
It isn’t until Dimple is right next to his head that he turns. He inspects Dimple with a red eye-like shape that fades in-and-out. Tentatively, it pulls at Dimple’s energy. It’s curious, like it isn’t sure whether it should.
“Hey, don’t eat me! I’m here to negotiate!” Dimple snaps.
To his amazement, Mogami stops.
Oh, it is.
“You’re not Mogami anymore, are you?” Dimple wonders.
“Am I?” The spirit whispers. It sounds both muffled and like the wind through leaves. He’s pretty far gone. “I think being Mogami Keiji is all I know.”
“Mogami was one scary customer. He turned himself into a vengeful spirit before he even died. Do you wanna exact vengeance on anything?”
The spirit shifts. “Hungry.”
“All of us are. You…you’re just a regular ghost. Do you remember how your exorcism went? When they got you.”
“It’s coming to me.”
“Because they did get you. 15-odd years of resentful energy. Kaput.” Dimple comes in so they’re cheek-to-cheek. “You’re way too strong to really destroy. Me, even I can bring myself back from just atoms, there’s no way you can’t. But what’s a resentful spirit with no resentment? They sucked it all right out of you. What’s Mogami Keiji without it? You, you’re a husk. A shell they scooped out. You’re nothing.”
Mogami stops.
Then he begins trying to suck Dimple up again.
“Hey hey hey hey, stop it! I’m trying to be helpful here!” Dimple howls. Mogami reluctantly stops, but the impatience is obvious from the way his red energy roils. Best talk fast. “You’re nothing…but your reputation! Listen, I’m kind of a big deal around here. I can’t have any threats to my turf, but it’s my responsibility if some spirits think they’re a big deal because they ate Mogami Keiji. So how about I protect you? You don’t have to do anything! Except, you know, be yourself. I’ll show you aaall the best places to feed, y’know?”
“I know where to feed,” Mogami rasps, and continues on.
“Yeah, but safely? C’mon! You look like you barely know your ass from your elbow right now, could you really fight back?”
Sucking again.
“Hey! I’m just saying!”
“I know where to feed. Safely.” Mogami stops in front of an old building. The white sign on the side has ‘Spirits and Such’ scrawled on it with what looks like a combination of marker and dollar store paint. Mogami phases through the door, and Dimple reluctantly follows up the stairs and to the office entrance.
Mogami points at the door. “I only need to wait in here. The spirits will come.”
“So you’re haunting the office? That’s just going to make you more unstable,” Dimple mutters. Mogami must know the risks of haunting a single location, he realizes; that’s why he’s out hunting tonight. “Where’s the tenant?”
“Don’t know,” Mogami says.
“If you haven’t seen them in a few days, they’re probably not coming back. And in that case, the customers will slow down. The landlord will close the office. You know? Life goes on. You used to be a psychic, don’t tell me you forgot about how business works.”
“Rent,” Mogami mutters. Something uncomfortably close to resentful energy crackles through him. It’s disturbing, but Dimple reminds himself everyone with half a braincell has residual resentment about paying rent.
“Right, rent. People need to be living to…To…Hm. Hey.” Dimple flies in close again. “Here, how about I sweeten the pot. You and me. In this office. I can make it happen. People will still come with their ghosts for as long as you want. Sounds good?”
Mogami looks at him. Then slides into the office.
Dimple zips after him. “Once in a lifetime deal! I’m not kidding, without any energy, you’ll be ripped to shreds out there! Did you know? Every spirit in this city haaaates you. They’ll go after you just for being Mogami!”
“They can try.” Mogami raises a hand, red energy rising like molten sand, and an intangible force squeezes around Dimple. Dimple is thrown heavily against the wall before he can even think to phase and is pinned there.
Shit. Dimple had underestimated how strong a hollowed Mogami would be. He struggles in place, trying in vain to condense himself to break free. With one last wild flail, he flares his energy out, and several objects go flying. One of them collides with the floor and fills the entire room with a flash of white light. Mogami flinches back and Dimple slips away in the moment of instability.
He zips back to hover near the door. “E-Even if you’re strong, you’re right, you know? This is a really good place to haunt! You don’t even have to do anything! I’ll take care of it!”
Mogami isn’t listening anymore. He’s kneeling down to inspect what flashed; a polaroid camera. He turns it over in his…Dimple hesitates to say hands, but even as he watches, Mogami begins developing fully defined fingers.
“Ah…And spirits don’t see the world the way humans do! They get trapped in their own head. Me, I’m old enough, I relearned. Do you remember how to parse the real world?” Dimple flicks the lights on and zooms in close again to yank the photo from the device. He holds it up for Mogami to see. “Look at this. This is the world of the living. Is this really what you see?”
Mogami leans forward, and eases closer still when he starts picking up on the shapes on the developing film. He takes the photograph carefully. Soon enough, the picture becomes legible; furniture, tile, an open window…and nothing else. No currents of energy, no radiating spiritual aura coming from the world. No Mogami. The section where his spirit should be takes longer to develop, but when it’s complete, he is still invisible to the lens.
“You can call me something of a professional at being dead,” Dimple presses. “And a professional at messing with humans. It’s my specialty. I can get you this office. I can make it yours, no matter how invisible you are. Don’t you want something to be yours?”
Mogami is still staring at the photo.
He sits like that for a few more minutes. Processing. Then he takes the camera and takes a polaroid of Dimple. He takes out the picture and stares at that one too.
Dimple is getting impatient. “...I can even get you a digital camera. You can see the picture instantly. Can you get a digital camera by yourself? Hm?”
The shapes of an office without Dimple begin forming. Dimple is suppressing his energy, and it’s obvious even as it starts taking shape that the photo won't react to his presence.
“I understand.” Mogami rises and compares Dimple to the photo. “I need time to be like you.”
“And I can give you time!” Dimple aims two thumbs at himself. “You’re plenty strong, time is all you need, am I right? Just let me take care of you!”
Mogami walks with that staggering pace over to the desk, all open drawers with a trash bag left next to it, and collapses into the seat there. “That’s fine.”
“Really?” Dimple bounces back and forth around Mogami’s head. “I mean, of course! This is the beginning of a great relationship, I can tell! It’ll be you and me, partner!”
Dimple, Mogami, and Mogami’s reputation. Once the rumours start spreading about Dimple having the Mogami Keiji on retainer, new doors are going to open for him. They’ll be practically handing food over to him, and there won’t be any fighting over energy sources. He’ll end those arguments by walking into the room. And he doesn’t even have to do anything except maintain this stupid office!
Dimple looks around. He wonders how Mogami found this place. Following a whiff of malicious energy? Or maybe it has something to do with who ganked him. It’s strange for the place to be just…abandoned all week. It looks like they didn’t even finish clearing it out.
No problem. Someone related to the owner will come by eventually, whether it’s a relative or the landlord. A little possession, and boom, the place is maintained for one more month.
This really is Dimple’s day. No, week. No, year! He spins cheerfully in the air. If there’s any sign he’s destined for godhood it’s this; the world really does open up for him!