#there was a point i was convinced reigen didn't know his name

[questioninglogic]

how long do you think it took for reigen to learn mob's name is shigeo

[liarian]

Past (Part 1)

@jellybe-gets-creative This week doesn't love me but I intend to make good on my promise. So I'll give you today the prologue and let's see how the week goes :O

His mother gave him a hug as soon as she saw him walk in the door but Shigeo didn't allow himself to shed a single tear. It wasn't like he had time to berate Teru for leaving him when Ritsu was still in the hospital.

It didn't even matter when Shigeo had barely been his usual self for months. Things couldn't have ended any other way when for days on end, apathy had barely let him out of bed; the world, just background noise. Even being sad had been too much effort.

For a moment, Shigeo hadn't even been able to understand Teru's words.

He almost preferred not to know how things had ended up like this after the weeks he was unable to remember a single thing. Asking questions made him too nervous every time Teru apologized. Shigeo had seen the bruise extending from his ribs and covering his entire back.

Meanwhile, Ritsu was still in the ICU and it could only have been his fault.

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Shigeo still didn't understand what had led him to think that opening the consulting office was a good idea but exorcising spirits had never given him any problems and, at that point, anything was better than staying at home.

Anything was better than enduring the glum silences.

At home, no one seemed willing to talk, as if that thing inside him didn't exist. As if it wasn't his fault that Ritsu was still in the hospital. Shigeo almost would have much prefered to be hated. At least he would have known what to do with all his guilt. In the end, his father had signed off on the personal loan Shigeo needed to rent the small office.

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Ritsu's prognosis was favorable and they had finally moved him up to a room the day Reigen-san had walked into the small office, the posters of her son's disappearance hugged against her chest.

"They say you can find lost objects and the like, could you try to find him?" The woman offered him one of the posters. "I know it will sound silly but he's been missing for three days and the police aren't doing anything. "

The picture was of a boy, no more than nine or ten years old, with a jagged smile and straw-colored hair falling either way over his forehead. It wasn't the first time he'd seen it, hanging in store windows and on neighborhood lampposts.

"Objects, yes. not people. I'm not that kind of psychic, I don't think I can help you" Shigeo looked at the picture one last time before handing it back to her.

And they were usually cursed objects, or afflicted by some other psychic presence. Wedding rings or old relics, like paintings, wristwatches. Once, even a music box. But Reigen-san was talking about a kid. What did she expect him to do? Start spinning a quartz pendant around on a map of the city? That only worked in the movies.

"Could you give it a try? Some classmates said the last time they'd seen him was in the haunted house just up the road but when they went to inspect, there was nothing there. Maybe if you went you could read his psychic trail or something. Anything, no matter how small."

"What's his name?" The desperation in the woman's voice made his heart shrink.

The boy seemed to look at him quizzically from the picture.

"Arataka."

"I'll see what I can do." Shigeo sighed, convinced it was a hopeless case.