"Oh, Shigeo, I forgot to ask, what did Kei-kun need the other day? He wasn't here for very long..."

It was Sunday, three days after Kei had shown up in the late evening and left like the Shinigami was nipping at his heels. Shigeo forced himself not to sniffle at the reminder, and glanced up from his cereal; Kaa-san was looking at him, Tou-san was picking at a piece of egg, and Ritsu was silently staring at his plate.

"Did Kei-kun come over? Good lad, good lad," Tou-san said absently. "Shame his psychic power makes so much trouble for him."

Shigeo himself wasn't affected by it, so he just nodded along. "Um, something bad happened. Aniki has to go live somewhere else until –um, well, for a while."

"I'm sorry to hear that, dear," Kaa-san reached over and smoothed his hair down a little. "I know you two were close."

"...Mhm," Shigeo scooped up another mouthful of cereal, still fascinated by the wooden spoon that for some reason his powers didn't bend or break. He thought about the envelope Kei had pushed into his hands, and the suggestions listed within that he was going to have to work through sooner rather than later. "But... he said he'd come back, one day." Kaa-san nodded with a faint smile on her face, and across from him Ritsu clenched his fists tight. "Oh, uh, Kaa-san, can I go to the park today? Since there's no school?"

"Just bring Ritsu along," she said, as if Shigeo needed the suggestion when he was still trying to get his brother to talk to him, but Ritsu frowned slightly.

"I don't wanna go."

Their parents blinked and looked at the two of them –Tou-san's forehead creased a little as he chewed on his rice. "Well... alright, Ritsu. Shigeo, if you still go to the park be back by four o'clock, okay?"

"Yes, Tou-san."

Discouraged at Ritsu's rebuke, Shigeo nevertheless went out after lunch. Spring was tentatively making its strides into the winter chill, and there were more people out walking than he'd seen the past few weeks. Shigeo paused at the intersection closest to the park and looked down at the letter, at the neatly written address close to the end of Kei's parting words, and with a deep breath he turned and started walking down the opposite street.

He vaguely remembered the house from when Kei had brought him there to treat his black eye, but approaching it on his own was a bit more nerve wracking than he'd anticipated. But he'd promised Kei, he'd promised that he'd prove everyone wrong about him, and he wasn't going to be the person who couldn't do anything because he was scared. So he looked under the flower pot on the porch and found the key, and quietly let himself into the house, and looked around at the eerie, silent place nervously but determined.

Shigeo took the stairs with socked feet, and almost had to remind himself to breath the silence was so thick. The amount of accumulated dirt and grime around the corners and the trash strewn about the hall was enough to let Shigeo know that the relative cleanliness he'd seen in the kitchen was all Kei's doing –the second floor was dark and still, and Shigeo only managed to make himself move forward through sheer force of will.

There was a basket of laundry next to an open door –it was clean, but hadn't been folded and by the lack of a detergent smell had either been sitting there for awhile or hadn't been washed with it in the first place. When Shigeo peeked into the room, he jumped at the sunken eyes staring at him from the futon, set in the face of a pale, thin woman with Kei's nose and hair colour. But she didn't say anything, and when Shigeo looked closer he saw that her hair was stuck to her forehead with sweat and her eyes were glassy –she was sick.

"...Himekawa-san?" he asked tentatively, and she blinked slowly at him. Her hands gripped the blanket over her briefly before they went slack like she didn't have the strength to do even that much.

"...Who...?" her voice was throaty and cracked along the edges, and when she took a breath it rattled in her chest. "In my... house..."

"Um, Himekawa-san, I'm –I'm Shigeo," he edged into the room and folded to his knees close enough that she didn't have to strain to look at him, but far enough away that she didn't get nervous. He always got nervous whenever people came near him when he was sick, even if it was his family. "Kei-aniki, he asked me to check on you."

"Kei... you know... my Kei?" she squinted at him, and it made her look much older than Shigeo thought she was with how her skin stretched. "Too... tiny..."

"He called me his li-little brother. But –but he had to leave." Shigeo sniffed a bit and swallowed to try and keep it down. "He wanted you to-to be okay, Hime-Himekawa-san."

"He's... so good to me..." Kei's mother sagged back into her pillow and closed her eyes. "Why did he... have to... to take after his father...?"

Shigeo sniffled again, and Kei's mother made a noise like she was in pain –she squeezed her eyes closed but tears still escaped them, and she didn't attempt to wipe them away even as they dropped off her cheeks and began to wet her hair and the pillow underneath. Shigeo clenched his hands tightly on his knees and tried not to let the lump in his throat grow, but it was difficult.

"Kei-aniki asked me –he asked me to check on you. I know you-you have a hard time, Himekawa-san," Shigeo explained, anything to distract him from his distress. "So-So while K-Kei-aniki's gone, I'm g-going to help you. Any-Anything you need."

"I... I need my Kei back..." she sobbed, but her hand reached out, trembling, and held fast when Shigeo grabbed it with both of his. "That stupid boy... leaving us... leaving me..."

Kana-obasan, as she eventually told him to call her, passed out from exhaustion not long after that. Despite his promise, Shigeo didn't know what needed to be done at all, so he settled for making sure there wasn't anything going bad in the fridge nor that there was too much garbage piling up before he left for home. He left a note and a glass of water on the low table in Kei's mother's room and promised to stop by after school the next day.

It could be said that, following that point, Shigeo's life was measured in the times he was fighting and the times he was helping.

The first time Shigeo ever started a fight it was a month after Kei had left town and a boy from the next class over had teased Tsubomi until she cried. Since the high school boys it was the first time Shigeo really felt close to an explosion, but he managed to hold it in, barely, until he reached Hyun-Ki's junkyard. Kei had made good on his promise to arrange an outlet for his powers with someone he trusted, and while Kim Hyun-Ki had been a little wary of letting a kid do dangerous work like crushing cars, Shigeo had explained his situation and the man had acquiesced, although he'd made it a point to meet with Shigeo's parents about it. Shigeo managed to get through three days worth of car crushing and junk sorting before he felt settled; when he approached that boy after school with his powers pleasantly low and punched him square in the mouth, Shigeo felt satisfied and not much else.

His mother fussed over his black eye when he got home later that afternoon, but even after he told her why he did it she didn't scold him. Instead she rubbed cream on his bruises and bandaged his scrapes and made him promise her something; if he was going to start acting like his older brother, she wanted two things.

"First, you have to be home to sleep, to eat breakfast with us, and let me stop you if you go too far. I know you're just trying to help others, Shigeo, like Kei-kun helped you, but you're still my baby. So I want you to trust me and tell me the truth." Shigeo had sniffed and cried, and nodded, and sorely missed Kei as his mother hugged him around the shoulders. "And second, never get involved with the people who made Kei-kun have to leave. I could bear anything else."

Shigeo had let his mother rock him for a few minutes and thought very hard about that, before he agreed and told her firmly she never had to worry about that.

"Because I hate Yakuza," he explained, and that was that.

(Subconsciously, Yuko knew there were things she couldn't help her son come to terms with, even though she desperately wanted to. Liking a girl, having psychic powers, and losing someone like Kei-kun were the biggest of those things.)

Two weeks later, Shigeo let himself into the Himekawa home and found Kana-obasan awake and in the kitchen –she was sitting at the kitchen table staring blankly into a cup of water, but she was up all the same. Shigeo greeted her and surveyed the damage; a few dishes piled up, the garbage needed emptying and Obasan had spilled something and not had the energy to clean it up. As he shuffled around she didn't move an inch, but the moment he came back into the kitchen after placing the bag of trash in the outside bin, she sobbed.

Shigeo was by her side in an instant, a damp cloth in one hand and the other grasping hers. Kana-obasan hunched over on herself and cried, gasping out all of her fears at the same time about what had happened to Kei over the last month and a half. There had been no correspondence between them, wherever he was, and it was tearing his mother up from the inside even though she knew it would be dangerous for Kei to call. Shigeo cried a bit alongside her and when her arms couldn't lift up on their own he wiped off her face like he used to do to Ritsu; when she collected herself, she hugged him and apologized and told him Kei would be proud of him, and Shigeo cried a little harder.

Shigeo and Ritsu had their first fight three months after that. It was early in the morning near to the end of the school year and Ritsu had been under the weather for a few days –not enough to keep him home, so their mother asked Shigeo to walk Ritsu to school, just in case, and of course Shigeo had agreed immediately.

They had walked only two blocks together when Ritsu stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and frowned deeply at the pavement in front of him. Shigeo paused and waited for his brother to start moving again, and then Ritsu spoke in a wavering voice.

"I'm... going this way," he said, and pointed at a street up ahead that would bring him to Salt Elementary a few minutes later than if they continued on straight. Shigeo nodded in understanding.

"Okay, let's go."

"I'm going by myself," Ritsu blurted, and his cheeks flushed red.

Shigeo turned to look at his younger brother quizzically. "Kaa-san wants me to make sure you get to school, so I have to go with you." He took a step closer to grab his brother's hand and froze when Ritsu leaned away.

"I don't care, I'm fine," he insisted; he was clutching the straps of his backpack very tightly. "I don't need you to walk me."

70%

"Kaa-san said I have to. You're sick," Shigeo's chest felt tight and he tried to remember what Kei had told him, but his head was quickly filling up with static. "Ritsu-"

"I don't want you to walk me!" Ritsu exclaimed. "I've been doing it this whole time! Ever since you met that bad kid-"

"Don't talk about Kei-aniki like that!" Shigeo protested, the tight feeling moving to somewhere behind his eyes. "You never even met him!"

"I don't wanna meet someone who does bad stuff!" Ritsu's face was completely red now, and he'd taken a step back. "He made you bad! You beat up Marui-kun!"

"Marui-kun called Kawaki-kun something so bad he started crying!"

(After the high schoolers, Ritsu spent a week at home recovering from a fever and he always pretended he was asleep when Shigeo checked on him; he was scared of that brief glimpse of something under his brother's skin. He thought he would get over it, but then he kept leaving the house for school earlier than Shigeo and at the kitchen table he couldn't make himself speak. So he stewed. Maybe it was fright at first, but whatever it was now hadn't gone away.)

"That doesn't mean you can hurt him!"

"He hurt Kawaki-kun first! I have to take care of the people around me!"

90%

This was wrong, all wrong. Shigeo hadn't meant to make Ritsu upset, hadn't meant to start yelling back; but Ritsu just didn't understand. Kei-aniki had helped them and then taught Shigeo how to stand up for himself, and he said that Shigeo had to take care of the people in his life! If Shigeo wanted to do that without relying on his psychic powers, then he had to use what he had left.

Ritsu reeled back like Shigeo had swung at him. "You didn't take care of me!" he shot back, and when he started crying a second later it hit Shigeo like a physical pain. "S-Stupid Sh-Sh-Shigeo! I-I –I h-hate you! Leave me alone!"

"Ritsu!"

Shigeo stared, aghast, as Ritsu sprinted away from him, and when he tried to follow a second later his brother was nowhere to be seen. He let out a distressed, high pitched noise in the back of his throat and wrapped his arms around his stomach, then backed into the wall of the nearest building; Ritsu's words echoed in his head over and over.

A great CRACK! sounded, and when he looked down there was a long fissure in the asphalt of the road, exposing the packed dirt underneath. Shigeo made another helpless noise when he jerked his foot away and another crack appeared in a different direction, splintering this way and that to look like the branches of a tree.

"Oh no, oh no, no, no, stop!" Shigeo pleaded and kept as still as possible. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to –nnn, Kei-aniki, how am I supposed to stop?!"

But of course, no one answered him. Shigeo remained frozen on the little side street for over an hour, afraid that if he moved the whole street would split in two. When people started walking nearby he finally got up the courage to take a step, and then another, and then he got to running –he ran all the way to the forest on the south side of town. It was the first time Shigeo would ever skip school, although in the years to come it wasn't what Shigeo would remember that day for.

It was the first time he broke his promise to his mother, as well. But just that one time, he couldn't bring himself to feel bad about it.

Then, there was Onigawara Tenga.

Ever since Shigeo had given Honda a what-for, the older boy hadn't come near him –Onigawara, on the other hand, had eventually taken Shigeo's sudden spine as some sort of challenge. It quickly came to be that, not long after Shigeo and Ritsu's falling out, you could regularly see Shigeo walk home alone from school only to be stopped and challenged by Onigawara.

Most of the time Shigeo turned him down. Most of the time Shigeo was sad and tired; drained from using his powers at the junkyard or from helping Kana-obasan on one of her bad days, and all he wanted to do was get home. Even if it was awkward and stilted now at the dinner table with the fast-widening rift between him and his brother that he wasn't sure how to fix.

But, on occasion, Shigeo would spot Onigawara approaching him and his blood would boil, and the two of them would start trading punches within minutes. Most of those times they parted ways not even a half hour later, bumped and bruised but a content sort of aching, and that would be that.

It was the first –and only –time they got caught that things changed between them.

Shigeo's parents and Onigawara's grandmother were called into the Koban where the two scuffed up boys were sitting sullenly next to one another, a single officer at the desk simultaneously watching them and going through his paperwork. The adults arrived at nearly the same time, greeted each other outside before they went inside to collect their errant youth; the officer welcomed them and proceeded to outline the situation.

"We received reports of two minors fighting nearby," he said, watching the two of them for any reaction. "When we responded, we found these two lying on the ground, in this condition."

"Wait, so you didn't catch them fighting?" Tou-san asked calmy, making the officer turn a little red.

"They match descriptions given," he said.

"Shigeo, honey, what happened?" Kaa-san tried. "Why don't you and... Onigawara-kun tell us what you were doing?"

"Tenga, tell us," Onigawara's grandmother urged. "It's alright dear, don't be nervous."

For a moment, Shigeo's and Onigawara's eyes met, and in that instant they knew that if they wanted to, they could ruin the other boy's life. While fighting wasn't exactly taken very seriously in a court of law for minors, there would be serious repercussions to a police investigation on a school and social level. At best, it would linger on their records until they reached their majority and could influence the schools they wanted to go to or the clubs they were interested in or anything.

"Nothing happened," Shigeo said first, with the old neutral expression he used to pull to calm his powers down. "I don't know who was fighting. We were at that park on a race."

"Son, you both match the descriptions we received," the officer tried to remind him in a stern voice. "The sooner you tell the truth, the better things will be."

"I'm not lying," Shigeo said seriously. "We weren't doing anything."

The adults all turned to Onigawara, who was looking at Shigeo in surprise –he had been sure that if either of them was going to be thrown under the bus it would be him, since he had bullied Shigeo when they were younger. He wouldn't have expected the younger boy to cover for him like this, especially not when there was the chance that Onigawara could turn it all back on him without a second thought.

"Yeah, I dunno what he's talking about," Onigawara said, and before anyone could take that the wrong way he pointed at the policeman. "We were lying down tired after racing, and he comes in and tells us we were fighting! We weren't doing nothing!"

Shigeo's mother turned to the officer with a smile on her face that didn't reach her eyes.

"What, exactly, do the descriptions our kids supposedly match actually say, Officer?"

After a week had passed and things returned to normal, Shigeo and Onigawara left school at the same time and walked out into the clearing in the forest Shigeo had made when his powers went haywire, and they had begun fighting again.

But after, when they were on the ground completely spent and gasping for air, they didn't go their separate ways, content to meet another day. This time Onigawara helped Shigeo stand up, and the pair of them hobbled back down the hill together; roughed up and wincing, but thinking to themselves that it was nice to have someone who could watch their back.

And it was a year following Kei's abrupt departure that Shigeo was out walking in the market district in the early afternoon, school out on a half day and Onigawara sick, so not much else to do but go to check on Kana-obasan in a few hours. It was here that he was distracted taking a corner, and it was here that the preclude to the story ends; with Shigeo knocked to the ground.

"Oh, it's a kid," someone said from above him, and Shigeo looked up.

The two men in front of him both wore sunglasses, while the short one was dressed in a green bosozoku jumpsuit and the taller one was clad in a dark suit with a garishly coloured undershirt. The first had a shaved head and tattoos peeking out from under his collar, the other had scars and a missing pinkie. They were talking loudly, they were looming over Shigeo, whether to see if he was okay or intimidate him he never found out –because Shigeo saw red when the clues clicked into place in his brain.

They were Yakuza.

"Get –away –from –me!" Shigeo shouted, and he lashed out with his foot to catch the shorter one in the knee. The man cursed in pain and Shigeo felt a brief stab of satisfaction before a hand grabbed his collar and yanked him up to his toes.

"Calm down you shitty brat!" The tall one sneered.

"Lemme go you –you –Yakuza trash!" Shigeo spat, the rarity of his anger overwhelming him –but he didn't feel his powers so much as twitch –until the one holding him up swung and the blinding pain in his cheek stunned him into silence.

"Little punk. They're getting younger and younger," the tall one said, and unceremoniously dropped Shigeo like a sack of rocks. "C'mon, Ryusui, I'm not into fighting toddlers."

"Shitty kid gave me a bruise, I swear..." the short one mumbled, but he followed his companion away even so.

65%

Shigeo sat there on the pavement and scrubbed his angry, hateful tears away, wishing he was strong enough to fight back. Maybe if he was, stupid Yakuza couldn't treat people like dirt, maybe he could've helped Kei-aniki somehow, maybe he wouldn't feel so bad about attacking that man when he hadn't even done anything and he could just hate him like he was supposed to. Maybe he wouldn't be so useless.

"Oh, man, hey kid, are you okay?" a new voice asked, just a little above him and to the right. Shigeo peeked and saw that it was an orange-haired man in a pink dress shirt and grey slacks who was kneeling next to him, a concerned expression on a tired face.

Shigeo tried to sniff his tears away so he could answer, but the man had evidently already come to a decision –he said a quiet 'wait here' and stood up to his full height, and then he marched off after the two Yakuza members.

Shigeo watched, mystified, as the man tapped the Yakuza on the shoulders and stood back as they turned and loomed over him, too. He said a few somethings accompanied by wild gestures with his arms and pointed once to Shigeo, and then when the Yakuza began yelling hotly he pointed near his chest, or maybe just at himself. Regardless of what it was, the two gangsters paled, straightened, and spoke very rapidly before they bowed in both the man's and in Shigeo's direction before they hightailed it around the corner and out of sight.

"Morons," he man muttered when he got back to Shigeo. "Come on, kid, my office is just next door. I'll get you a cold compress and some tea."

"...uhm, okay? Thanks, mister." Shigeo said hesitantly.

25%

It was a very tiny office, Shigeo noted when he followed the man through the door. There were bookshelves and a couch, a coffee table and a desk with a computer, and then two other doors, one with 'employees only' and the second with the word 'studio' on the glass. There were a few potted plants scattered around, and then a small kitchen with a sink and a hot plate underneath a cupboard with a microwave, and all of that next to a third, thinner door with W.C. painted on the wood.

Shigeo sat down on the couch while the stranger put some water on and dug through his small fridge for a compress, which he handed Shigeo along with a towel before he went to his cupboard for teabags and mugs. As he watched him with the cool seeping into his cheek, Shigeo noticed that the man had a scar that twisted a corner of his mouth up into a perpetual smirk, and then another up from his cheekbone into his hairline, like whatever had made it had jumped a bit.

"This is your... office, mister?" Shigeo asked.

The man nodded absently, a hand fluttering out from his hip to his forehead and out into the space next to him in the span of a second.

"Ah, right, pardon my manners!" he placed a mug he'd procured onto the counter and went to his desk, where he plucked a business card off a little stand and presented it to Shigeo with a flourish. IT was simple and printed on thin cardstock, and as Shigeo read it the man recited the information. "Reigen Arataka, the 21st century's greatest psychic investigator, at your service! Exorcisms are only on Saturdays. Pardon the office, I've been away for a few days on a case..."

Shigeo frowned up at him. "So you investigate Psychics?" he asked, and didn't know how he felt when Reigen shook his head.

"Well –that is, I suppose I could –but I mean, I am the best investigator there is, I simply also happen to be Psychic!" Reigen flung his hand out again dramatically, but it was dampened when he faltered and glanced at his laptop. "Wait, is that why I still only get ghost cases...? ANYWAY! Welcome to Spirits and Such Investigations! Keep us in mind if you know anyone who might require some help looking into things."

"Oh..." Shigeo muttered, and then accepted the cup of tea. His mind swirled on Kei and all the things he'd told him about the ESPers his father had worked for, and then the way Reigen had made the Yakuza turn tail and run, and he had an idea. "Reigen-san?"

"Hm? What's up kid?"

"Could I hire you to look into a Psychic?"

/