#stickydoona

Mob swallowed.

“Practice” had been handling several items that Reigen had collected over the years in his work. There were a few that hadn’t been so bad - accidental deaths, a few survivors. But for every ‘not-so-bad’ one was something terrible. At least he had stopped immediately throwing up. That was something.

There were already a few reporters outside the sliding glass door that had been marked with police tape, warning no one to enter. One of them looked to be about Mob’s age: a cute girl with strawberry-blond, short hair and a pocket camera around her neck. When he could feel her looking at him, his eyes went straight down at the ground, opting to focus instead on each, shaky step until he finally picked his foot up to go over the tape and --

“Hey, you can’t be in here,” a gruff voice said as a hand that was so large it took up his entire shoulder stopped him. The square-jawed man in uniform glared darkly from under his cap. “This is a crime scene.”

A tiny voice inside of Mob’s head hoped that they would be found out and escorted off the premises. ‘Nice try, Shishou,’ he would say (Reigen gave him a hard time about the title, but he could tell he liked it), ‘I suppose we’ll have to start with a smaller investigation, and we can-’

“It’s okay, officer.” Reigen had appeared closer at his side, picking the policeman’s hand off Mob’s arm like it was a bug that had lighted there. So calm and collected, like this was as natural as getting into an exclusive event. “He’s with me. New recruit. I know, they just get younger every year, am I right?”

The muscular man seemed neither pleased nor convinced by Reigen’s conversational tone. “I’m going to have to see some credentials. Name?”

With a satisfied smile, Reigen pulled out the large packet of paperwork from his breast pocket. “Private investigator Reigen Arataka. I’ve got my identification here, too, in my wallet...oops.” Mob watched as the papers “slipped” out of Reigen’s hand and spread in a mess across the wooden floor. “Bureaucracy just makes a mess of things, doesn’t it?”

Mob was about to take a knee to assist in grabbing the forms when he noticed Reigen’s pointed look, a little nod encouraging him forward. As quickly as he was being detained, he was inside the small living room area that has been covered with tiny numbered placards next to pieces of broken wood, glass, splatters of what Mob figured must be blood. The room actually seemed like it was from a scene in a television show, and Mob recalled what Reigen had said about it not actually being lived in, that it was currently for sale. “The cops were called when the neighbors saw smoke,” he had explained. “I guess it was fairly contained, though. No structural damage to the house.”

The unpleasant burning smell suddenly got worse, hitting him so hard he raised his hand to cover the bottom half of his face. Mingled in with the aroma of something like burnt charcoal was rot. Meat. The entire room felt like it was abuzz with static energy and white noise in his brain, the uncomfortable warning signs of resonance. His skin crawled, and he scratched into his palm with his nails to try to distract himself, to keep from being overwhelmed by the terrible discomfort of it all. When he stepped around the couch to avoid an investigator chatting on a cell phone, he nearly stepped on the body.

The body.

A choked gasp escaped into the air before he could focus to stop it. It was covered by a white sheet, all except for a hand, fingers bent into a gruesomely permanent clawing fist, the skin a deep red mottled by black burns. To his psychic sense, the prone figure was like a black hole, sucking everything into itself: life, air, energy, time, so strong it made him feel like a wrong step would send him spiralling into some other dimension.

“Immolation,” an inspector was saying into a tape recorder, studying the floor around the shrouded corpse. “Current evidence indicates that burning of the body was post-mortem, and death occurred outside the vacant house, as the building shows no sign of struggle. The suspect appeared to have transported the body here, wrapped in fire retardant tarp, and then coated only the body in flammable fluid. Burns on the floor indicate that some sort of material was used - butcher’s twine, perhaps - to start a small flame that travelled to the hand, holding a book of matches. Suspect was gone before the body became ablaze.”

When a hand slapped his back, Mob let out a squeak of surprise, and he realized he had made fists so tight that his nails felt stuck to his palms. When he let them loose, his hands were shaking. “How’re things going over here?” Reigen asked quietly.

“This is a restricted area,” the tape-recording investigator said as he slipped the small device in his pocket.

“Shishou...um, papers…” Forming sentences clearly wasn’t going to be Mob’s strong suit in this case, which was okay, since Reigen took over the talking immediately.

“We’ve already been cleared at the door. We’re here to take a closer look around the victim. My...intern is specializing in forensics. Top of his class.”

The inspector looked like he was about to say something when the sound of a muffled voice came through on his bluetooth earpiece. He inclined his head before muttering, “Roger,” and then looked up at Reigen again. “You have five minutes.”

“Plenty of time.” The hand still at Mob’s back gave him a tiny shove. “Go ahead, Mob.”

For a second, Mob couldn’t even fully figure out where to start looking. He hated the idea of touching the body, but even just a cursory glance around the area confirmed what the officer had said: there were no signs of violence there, in the room itself. There were a few undisturbed books on a shelf, a bowl of brightly-colored apples atop the counter leading into the kitchen. And touching either of those or any of the other sundry fake items set up for open houses wasn’t going to help so…

Kneeling down, the room somehow getting quieter as the ringing in his ears intensified like a high-pitched electronic feedback, Mob reached out and brushed his fingers against the hand. There was something in it - pieces of paper? Wood? - and then Mob wasn’t there anymore.

“Please...don’t…”

The room is messy. A bed for two. Photos on the wall. Unwashed clothes piled on the floor. Balled up tissues by the nightstand. The woman - middle-aged, dressed in a flowery housecoat - is holding the thin line on her throat where the blood is pouring out onto the polished floor, turning the white linen of her clothes a stark crimson.

He stares down at her, at the glistening black leather gloves he wears, at the thick red fluid dripping from the edge of the simple blade in his hand. She makes a grab for his pant leg, and he dances out of the way. No, he won’t let her stain him, he thinks as he picks up a small handkerchief from the dresser and wipes it down.

“Why…”

He shrugs. Why not? No need to say it, though. The answer won’t matter in another thirty seconds. Give or take.

The phone vibrates in his pocket. He ignores it.

She’s quieter now. Blood loss has caught up. That makes it easier. Or quieter at least.

The plastic on the front of his suit crinkles loudly in the now-quiet room, and he glances at the mirror across the room. In the dark, the moonlight shines off his covers, touches his red cheeks, and he’s smiling. It doesn’t feel like he’s smiling, but it’s there, like a gash cut down to the bone.

As her life fades, he picks up a book of matches from the dresser as well, slipping it into his pocket as he begins unfolding the bundle of plastic sheeting.

Someone was calling his name. Soft, far away. Like it was coming from a light at the end of the tunnel in his eyes. The hard floor was beginning to make his knees ache, and when he blinked again, the tears made tracks down his cheek. Reigen was talking to him louder, just saying his name, over and over, and that hand - her hand - was there, gripping the remains of the matchbook, and people were looking at him, staring at him, uncomfortable, angry, disappointed, disgusted, and…

“Are you okay?” Mob didn’t even realize that he was panting until he tried to respond. Sweat dripped to the floor, and he didn’t want to be there anymore.

“Yeah” was finally all he could say before he looked back, towards the glass door. He couldn’t quite see around the couch, but there was a sensation there, like a presence staring into the house. Reigen stood looking back as well, as if there was something more to the faces looking in at them.

Several policemen appeared to pull them away from the body, out of the area, like there was some expiration to Reigen’s magic, and as they were finally back out again in the cool afternoon air, that feeling - that watchful aura - was gone.

Had he imagined him?

Once they were outside again, Reigen glanced around, distracted. “I’m going to have a smoke and talk to someone real quick. Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

Mob was still uneasy on his feet, and he wanted to stop him, to tell him that he *recognized* the woman, but the connection between his body, his brain and his mouth simply weren’t working. It felt like his entire existence was made of loose seams that were unraveling the more he moved, the more he breathed, and his thoughts swirled around in his head like vegetables in a stew.

“Hey!” Mob jumped a little when he saw the girl with the camera appear next to him. It made his stomach clench and ache, and he was suddenly aware of how warm and humid he felt in the hoodie he had worn.

“Hi,” he said, dumbly, barely a mumble.

“I’m Ichi Mesato. I’m interning with the Seasoning Press. I saw you in there, and I just wanted to make sure you were okay.” Her smile was bright and kind. “Us interns need to stick together, right?”

“Uh...yeah…”

“Let me give you my number,” she said, fishing out a business card. It had bubbly font and little stenciled bubbles around her phone number and email address. Not exactly the most professional, but Mob still felt his heart roll over once. No girl had ever given him her number. “Text me anytime! I’d love to go get some tea or something!”

“Sure…”

Suddenly, Reigen reappeared, tugging Mob’s sleeve. He smelled like tobacco, and he shoved his hands into his pockets. “Come on, Mob, let’s go get some udon.” Reigen steered him away by the shoulder even as Mesato continued waving at him. Once they were out of range for her to hear, he muttered into his ear, “Listen to your mom, Mob. Don’t talk to the press. It always ends poorly.”

“She seemed nice, Shishou,” Mob said, reluctant, still flipping the card around in his pocket. He was grateful, too. The little taste of normalcy and kindness made him feel more awake and alert, drawing him out of the darkness of what he had seen.

“Ah, to be young again…” Reigen mused, shaking his head as they wandered down the street, away from the darkness of the house. “What did you see? When you were in there?”

Mob stopped, the visions in his head flashing back. He didn’t want to think about the face of the dying, but he had to, because... “I think it might have been Mrs. Lin.”

“Your neighbor? I just talked to her this morning. She was fine. I mean, she’s been hounding me about finding clues about the stranger who gave her husband the poisoned apple, but --”

“Try again.”

Reigen frowned but pulled out his flip phone, pressing a few buttons and raising it to his ear. Mob could just make out the persistent ringing, over and over again, and all he wanted was to be wrong. A full minute passed. Nothing.

“Okay,” Reigen said, his jaw set. “Let’s go check it out.”

---

If the blood on the floor - not just the black, dry pool in the bedroom but the drips of it on the stairs, smearing the unlocked doorknob on the inside - hadn’t been enough, Mob knew the mirror.

That’s where he had seen him.

Smiling.

“Mr. Arataka?” He looked up to find the tense and pensive face of the woman staring down at him, wringing her hands at the open window of the house’s second story landing. “Have you found anything yet?”

“Mrs. Lin, I have to insist that you let me get a full observation of your home. This is the most crucial point in my work. If I don’t concentrate, it is very likely I will miss a vital clue in tracking down your husband’s killer.” He made sure to emphasize this last part, as if to say that there was no way that he would not be able to find the man (or woman) responsible unless it was because of some misstep by his client.

“Of course! My apologies!” She hurriedly closed the window, and Reigen let out a sigh that mingled relief with aggravation.

Pulling a pack of cigarettes out of the pocket of his trenchcoat, he smacked it against his hand a few times before slipping one out and lighting it. That would buy him maybe another twenty minutes, thirty at most, he figured. And that would put him having been out here for an hour. A whole hour with nothing to show for it.

Why couldn’t the guy have been shot? Or stabbed? Or...damn, anything other than poisoned? That was at least something he could kind of work with. There was usually some scuffing on the floor, or even something left behind by the police that he could turn around. His first thought was the wife - just because the police had ruled her out meant nothing to him, they fucked up this kind of thing all the time - but even her household cleaners were natural. Baking soda. Vinegar. Lemon juice. But what then?

As he finished his cigarette and started wandering down the sidewalk to toss the butt into the street, Reigen felt eyes on him and looked up. There was a boy - early teens, maybe? - in a pressed black tunic, carrying a briefcase and staring at him with a passive expression. There was something to him, though, that made Reigen feel like the hairs on the back of his neck were creeping up.

Reigen dropped the cigarette, putting it out with his toe and trying to ignore him, but then he spoke in a flat, quiet voice. “Do you work for the police?” he asked.

“I’m not a cop, if that’s what you mean,” Reigen answered, putting his hands in his pockets. “I’m a detective.”

“Are you here about Mr. Lin? I thought the police hadn’t found anything.”

Reigen narrowed his eyes but walked up to the boy. He was short, just about standing to Reigen’s shoulder level, and his hair was cut in a bowl style that probably made him look even younger than he probably was. “Right. That’s when I come in. I’m the guy that finds what the police miss. Do you know anything about Mr. Lin?”

The boy’s eyes seemed to look past him, back at the house, even beyond. It was like he was looking through him, through everything, and Reigen briefly wondered if he should break the conversation off entirely. The kid was kind of creepy and seemed like he might be sick or ---

“The rock garden. In the back. He was really proud of it. I don’t think Mrs. Lin liked it very much. She wanted a real garden.”

“That...seems like a fairly common dispute.”

“And he ate an apple. Every day.” He paused, then added, “But that day, a man gave it to him. A stranger.”

“The day he…?”

“Shigeo!” They both turned to see another boy coming out of the house across the street from the Lins. He seemed brighter, more chipper, and he ran up to them. “I thought you had left already for university.”

“No, not yet,” the weird kid - Shigeo - said. The tense air around him had seemed to evaporate, and Reigen blinked. University? He was that old? “I was answering some questions about Mr. Lin. Did you want to walk with me to the bus stop, Ritsu?”

Before he could stop him, Ritsu pulled Shigeo away, starting down the street. “Yeah. Come on. We’re going to be late. And you know Mom didn’t want us talking to people about what happened to Mr. Lin. It could be someone from the tabloids.”

“He said he was a detective.”

Ritsu gave Reigen a look that was almost a scowl. “You’re way too trusting, brother. Anyone could tell you they’re a detective. And they could be lying.”

Before he turned to continue, Shigeo and Reigen locked eyes once more, and there was that strange feeling, and he looked from the detective to the house - to the garden - and then they turned the corner and it seemed like the world started spinning again.

“What the hell,” Reigen said to no one. But even as his mind was concocting all the reasons why it shouldn’t matter what he had said or the weird observations he had made, he found himself wandering back to the rock garden, looking around it with fresh eyes.

That’s when he noticed something he knew he had seen in passing but had thought nothing of: a large rock that sat next to an impression in the fine gravel. It was very slight, like a crescent moon around the edge of it, but it looked like it had been picked up and moved a fraction. Taking off his coat and rolling up his sleeves, he strained and heaved the stone a foot from the spot. He knelt and pushed away the smaller stones, and that’s where he found, barely buried, a brown, rotting apple core.

There. He had his ‘something.’ And that was a start.

---

As Reigen got on the train headed back to his office, he pulled out his phone and hit the speeddial.

“Serizawa here,” the deep voice responded on the other end after the second ring.

“Hey. It’s Reigen. I need a connection for someone in the chem lab downtown.”

There was silence, then scratching, as if from a pen on a pad. He and Serizawa had worked together for years after meeting in the police academy. Serizawa had graduated with honors while Reigen...well, he never said that he failed. He simply had a conflict of interest and didn’t complete the testing process. Serizawa had worked on the force for a while but had been promoted as some sort of liaison to the city council, but the two had stayed in touch. He always seemed to know somebody, always had a ‘guy’ for him: forensics, hacking, whatever he needed.

“I like that you’re still trying to help people,” the dark-haired man had said over drinks once. “I’m rooting for you, Reigen.”

“DNA? Foreign materials? Or what?”

“A little bit of all of the above,” Reigen said, his hand in his pocket holding the apple core he had picked up in a plastic sandwich bag. “Potentially poison.”

“And what kind of item are we talking here?”

“Uh...foodstuff. A fruit. An apple, actually. Mildly aged, some decomposition.” The scratching on the other end of the phone had stopped. In fact, the line had gone silent altogether. “Serizawa?”

A beat. “Sorry, I thought someone was coming to my desk.” He repeated the details back verbatim and then tapped on his keyboard for a minute while Reigen stared down the track at the coming car. As he got on and found a seat, Serizawa continued. “I can get you squeezed in at Shouyu Corp at the corner of 8th and 11th. Ask for Makeshima.”

Makeshima. Shouyu Corp. “You’re the best, man. Let’s get some takoyaki and beers soon. My treat, especially if this job pays off.”

He could hear the other man smile on the other end. “We’ll see. Later.”

Reigen hung up just as the train pulled away toward the city with a heavy, grinding rattle.

---

A few days later, Reigen stood outside of the house belonging to Shigeo. Shigeo Kageyama, he had found out after doing a bit of a search online. The family had lived at the same residence for about twenty years: husband, wife, two sons. The model family.

Unless, of course, one of the sons was a murderer.

He had watched and waited from the small alley across the street for several hours the last two days to get a handle on the family’s schedule. The mother seemed to stay at home for the most part, but the husband worked, and Shigeo and Ritsu went to school from roughly 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Then, Ritsu left again at 7 p.m., usually not returning until close to 10 p.m. Give his age, Reigen figured he was probably attending some kind of college prep course.

As soon as he was gone again, Reigen walked up and knocked on the door. Mrs. Kageyama answered, drying her hands on the front of her housecoat. From the scattering of suds on her forearms, he figured he must have caught her while doing the dishes. “Yes? Can I help you?”

Reigen cleared his throat and spoke the script he had practiced while waiting. “Good evening, Mrs. Kageyama. My name is Reigen Arataka, and I’m a counselor at Paprika University. I’m here to speak with Shigeo about his potential path for studies. Is he available?”

Mrs. Kageyama blinked, her expression neither convinced nor dismissive.

Reigen pressed on, “The faculty and staff are very concerned that Shigeo is given the right degree of focus, and we want to give him the one-on-one instruction that he needs so he will have a bright future at the school. I’m sure you care even more about making sure that he gets the most out of his education.”

“I...of course. Would you like to come in, Mr. Arataka?”

He couldn’t help smiling, concluding that he truly had planned for everything. “Thank you, Mrs. Kageyama, but I’d rather not. We want to maintain a sense of separation between home and school, so it would be best if Shigeo and I can take a walk outside.”

“Oh, of course. That makes sense.”

Damn right it does.

As she shuffled off up the stairs, Reigen took a glance inside the house. It seemed normal enough - living room, dining room, expansive kitchen - though Mr. Kageyama must have had a decent job to be able to have this large of a domicile.

“I told you you should have considered a major before you started! Now Mr. Arataka is taking time out of his evening because even your school is worried about you, Shigeo!”

“Sorry, Mom…”

When Shigeo finally saw Reigen standing there are the door, he opened his mouth, brows furrowing slightly, but Reigen gave him the most subtle shake of his head. Not that he had had to worry much; Mrs. Arataka all but shoved Shigeo out the door, closing it behind him.

“You’re not…” Shigeo started.

“No. I’m not from your university. But I wanted to ask you a couple of questions. Come on, let’s go for a walk.”

The young man paused, looking from Reigen to the door. He knew he didn’t have any choice, so he started following, a few steps behind. That’s a bit suspicious, Reigen noted. Was he going to make a run for it? He stopped walking, and Shigeo did as well a few feet behind him. He moved toward him. Shigeo moved back. Quite suspicious.

“What’s wrong, Shigeo? Are you uncomfortable?” he asked.

“Mob.”

“What?”

“Only my family calls me Shigeo. Everyone else calls me Mob.”

Mob. Like John Doe, in America. Nobody. Unidentifiable and unextraordinary. Why would he think that?

“Okay. Mob. So, what’s the deal?”

“You found it.”

Now he was getting somewhere. Reigen folded his arms so his hand was close to the gun that he absolutely shouldn’t have had. Not on his person. Not at all, really. No matter how much it made him feel safer in situations like these. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

Even in the dark, Reigen could see a shine to Mob’s deep, dark eyes. He was still looking at him, silent, perhaps fearful.

“You can talk to me, Shi -- Mob. It’ll be better if you just come clean. We can make arrangements. Keep this from blowing up in front of your family.” Reigen pinched the inside of his elbow, a trick to keep his hands from shaking. The good cop routine didn’t always work. “Tell me.”

Mob didn’t look like he was going to run. He didn’t really look like he was going to do anything. But then he started talking.

“I can see what happened, in places like that. When people die or when someone kills them. It’s like a movie playing out in my brain, but also like virtual reality. It’s like I was there, and I can see it through their eyes.”

“Through the victim? Or through the killer?”

Mob didn’t answer, staring at his feet. Great. So the kid was potentially a murderer and mentally unstable.

“So, it’s like...a psychic thing?”

Mob nodded once.

Yeah, right. “They found cyanide on part of the apple skin that was left. You can imagine how this looks, Mob.”

He had thought that being direct might be the easiest way to get a confession, but he frowned when Mob shrugged. “I was in school that day. And that night, Ritsu and I went to get ramen at the shop near campus, to celebrate him getting a perfect score on his practice exam for university.” Wringing his hands, he refused to meet Reigen’s gaze. “You don’t believe me.”

Reigen couldn’t deny that he had felt something that day, when he ran into Mob in front of the Lin residence. Something that hadn’t felt suspicious or even bad per se. Something...different.

“I believe you,” Reigen said. It didn’t feel entirely convincing, being this far away, but he knew that Mob would only evade him if he approached, so he kept his distance. “Why don’t you come back to my office? I want to show you something.” When Mob’s face tightened by a fraction, he added, “I don’t have the authority to arrest you, Mob. And the police can’t without actual evidence. I just want you to look at something.”

Mob stood, considering for a moment, and finally he nodded. “I have to be back before it gets late. I have homework.”

Who the hell was this kid? “Uh...sure. No problem.”

---

Reigen kept his office separate from any of the evidence he had picked up over the years. He didn’t want any of his clients to pick up anything they shouldn’t, and he definitely didn’t want to disturb any of his more casual customers (lost cats, stolen property, things that didn’t involve gruesome death).

There was one piece he had kept. It was from a closed case, in which a man had stabbed his wife to death before hanging himself. Reigen had been hired by the woman’s family, and had told him that they did not believe that her husband had been the one to kill her. Reigen had found the knife in a trash chute, but it had been covered in grease and muck and garbage juice, having landed in a restaurant dumpster. When he tried to take it to the police, they told him that he might as well have fished it out of the river for all the good it would do. “Go home, Reigen,” one of the cops had said, waving him off. “Even if it is, what good does it do when the killer already did the court’s job for them?”

He had kept it, as a reminder to himself that this was the right path. That even if he was faking it half the time, he was still better than the assholes who didn’t fucking care at all.

Along with the knife, he picked out a few other blades while Mob sat in his office: a switchblade he had bought when he was a kid. A sushi knife he had gotten for his kitchen (and then never used because he hardly had time to cook). A hunting knife. Even a machete he had picked up as a conversation piece.

He put them each in bags and brought them back in, all but dropping them on his desk. “So these are all weapons from unsolved crimes, Mob. Can you tell me about them?”

“Why do you have them? Why aren’t they in an evidence locker with the police?” Mob asked, politely curious.

“They’re unsolved crimes. They don’t have to be in evidence if they can’t be tied to the event,” Reigen lied.

“But --”

“Mob.” He tried not to sound short or terse, no matter how impatient he felt. “This is very important. You could do these victims’ families a lot of good if you can glean something from these knives. So. Please. Tell me what you see.”

“Okay…”

Reigen sat in his leather chair and watched as Mob picked up each blade. The machete first - no reaction - and then the sushi knife. Again, nothing.

Then, he touched the knife he had found in the chute, and it felt like the air in the room was suddenly sucked out.

Everything seemed suddenly colder, heavier, as if somehow gravity itself had been increased. Reigen’s head started aching, but he tried to keep focusing on Mob, whose eyes had gone wide, nearly white. “Why don’t you love me anymore?” Mob whispered, his gaze indirect, as if talking to someone who wasn’t there. His voice changed. It was...a woman’s voice. “Why would you choose him over me?”

“Mob…” Reigen said.

The boy looked up. There was a twitch at his mouth. Not a smile. No, not at all. And now, the voice was different. A man’s voice. “I can’t live without you, darling…”

And then, the moment was over. It was as if a switch had been flipped, and the room was still, a blissfully normal, mundane stillness. The only sound was both of them breathing, and then the clatter of the knife falling to the hardwood floor. And finally, a choked noise, and Mob heaving into Reigen’s trash can.

“It’s okay, kid,” Reigen said, on his feet, rubbing his back. “You did good, okay? Just let it out.”

Mob said nothing, the retching turning a bit to crying, then hurling once more.

Reigen poured him a glass of water from the bottle he kept by the window and then handed him a few tissues. It felt like his hands were moving on their own, because he was realizing this was real. Mob wasn’t bullshitting him. This was...something on a whole different level.

“I think she was seeing someone,” the dead woman’s sister had said. “Another woman. But she wouldn’t have...would she?”

When Mob finally recovered, he kept his distance from the desk, as if afraid to even be close to the knives now. But even regardless, he looked up at Reigen with bloodshot, determined eyes. “If you can take that one away, I can try the other ones. I have a few more…”

Was he serious?!

“Uh, no, that’s okay. You don’t want to overextend yourself. You’ll end up exhausting your power.”

Mob turned his head a bit, curiously. “How do you know? Have you ever met someone like me before?”

“Of course.” Reigen felt a bead of sweat drip down his side, and he ignored the clenching in his stomach. “But I had to make sure you were the real deal. I can help, Mob. I can teach you to focus your powers and use them for good. We could work together. Part-time. And I could give you...some university credit. Maybe a small stipend.”

Mob turned away, rubbing his arms. What would he have to do? Actually offer him some other benefit? Travel? Insurance? “Can you…”

“What?”

“Can you keep telling my mom that you’re working with me at the university? She’ll be really mad if I’m getting a job and not focusing on my studies full time.”

Reigen slapped his forehead. Was this kid for real? “Sure, Mob. I can do that. So you’re in?” He extended his hand, face set, his expression professional despite how much his heart was doing a little dance, unable to wait to get started.