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“Master?”
“Yeah?” Reigen asks, not bothering to turn around. He just continues his rummaging through the many cabinets of his office.
He knows he has a first aid kit somewhere around here.
Technically, Reigen could probably just tell Mob to run his scraped up palms and knees under some water, and dry them. It wasn’t like he was about to get an infection in the few hours he had left at the office.
But still, Reigen doesn’t want to send Mob home looking like hell. He doesn’t need any reason for the kid’s parents (or worse, his demon of a younger brother) to call him up, demanding to know why their son is hurt.
The spirit hadn’t been that much of an issue really. It just caught them by surprise. Sweeping in out of nowhere, and knocking both off them off their feet. When Mob had tried to exorcise it again, he ended up getting shoved off of a short ledge, leaving his knees and palms scraped up and bleeding after all was said and done. By the time that Reigen got to him, the ghost had been cosmically shredded.
Scraped up knees typically weren’t a big enough deal to send an employee home. But given the fact that most typical employees aren’t eleven, Reigen figured he could make an exception.
But when he’d offered to take Mob home after the day’s excitement, Mob had just shaken his head. He had practically begged, or at least as close to begging as Reigen figured a kid like Mob could get, Reigen to let him work the rest of the day.
“I can still work,” Mob had said. “I promise. It doesn’t hurt. I don’t need to go home yet.”
And Reigen, damn it all, hadn’t been able to say no to him.
Still, when they made it back, he had simply told Mob to hop up on his desk so he could try to take care of the bleeding at the very least.
There is a long stretch of silence, and for a moment, Reigen figures Mob must have simply decided to leave his question unasked.
But then, Mob speaks up again, in a timid, quiet voice, that Reigen almost misses- “Am I a monster?”
Reigen nearly drops the files in his hand in surprise, and whips around at that, his back cracking unnaturally as he nearly loses his balance.
“What?”
Mob looks away, his feet kicking lightly, thumping against the wood of the desk, before stopping abruptly, almost unnaturally. He looks troubled.
Reigen stares for a long moment, then finally shakes himself, and manages to ask, “Mob, why on Earth would you think something like that?”
Mob’s shoulders curl forward almost imperceptibly, and his eyes stay glued to a point on the floor. “That spirit called me that. When I exorcised it. It said I must be a monster.”
Reigen feels something uncomfortable shift in his chest, and something like anger lash at his throat. But he manages to regain his composure, and simply says. “Oh? That thing? Well, don’t bother listening to-”
“And those guys,” Mob rushes to continue, cutting him off unexpectedly. Reigen blinks in surprise and confusion. “That time after I- after Ritsu,” he breaks off, and Reigen feels his heart clench in his chest. Mob is always vague about what exactly had caused him to be so afraid of his powers. But Reigen got the gist. “They didn’t want to come near me after,” Mob manages to force out. “They kept saying a monster hurt them.”
Reigen doesn’t know what to say.
“And-” Mob looks like he’s trembling. “… Other people. A couple of times.”
It takes a moment for that to sink in.
Reigen’s blood boils.
Just who the hell was walking around, trying to dehumanize a little kid for having powers? Calling him a monster?
And Reigen has no doubt- there’s a specific connotation to a question like that being directed at Mob.
At times, people will ask that question, of themselves or others, as a way of questioning their morality.
But no. When they asked it of someone like Mob it wasn’t a question of morality, but of humanity.
Are you really even human? It asks.
And Reigen- Reigen’s a little furious with himself for not noticing before now.
If this has been happening at least since those months before Mob came to him, then that means that this has been a question lodged in his student’s mind for nearly a year now.
Over a year, of a kid, asking himself, “Am I a monster?”
Just for having powers.
Reigen has to take a steadying breath.
His anger isn’t going to help here. Mob is asking him a genuine question, and he wants a genuine answer. Reigen can’t just sweepingly dismiss the people who have planted such a thought in his head. Because that leaves the possibility of lingering doubt. Mob might always still wonder- what if they are right.
Which means, Reigen’s going to have to try and come up with some kind of game plan here.
He turns back to his rummaging, trying to give himself more time to think things through, but he keeps Mob in the corner of his eye as he asks, “Do you think you’re a monster?”
“I don’t know.” The answer is soft, lost, confused. Afraid.
Reigen’s heart aches for him. But right now, that didn’t help either of them.
Okay, so, if he wants to approach this in a way that Mob will understand…
“Well,” Reigen tries, “what would you say makes a monster a monster?”
“That they’re… bad?” Mob offers, tentative.
“Well sure,” Reigen says, almost dismissively. Best to play the part of nonchalant teacher. That’s his best bet right now. “But plenty of things are bad. But that doesn’t make everything that’s bad a monster.”
Mob is silent for a moment, and Reigen manages to turn his attention to his task for long enough to finally, finally find the damned first aid kit. It had been hiding somewhere in the back of the cabinet, and Reigen grabs it, brushing off the dust.
“They’re not human?” Mob tries again.
Reigen turns to his student, fully this time, the first aid kit in hand, and nods, pretending to be lost in thought. “Yes. But you’re human, aren’t you?”
Mob looks down again, his fingers tightening their grip on the edge of Reigen’s desk.
Reigen feels his stomach churn. “Mob?”
“I think so. I don’t know,” Mob repeats, and it sounds wrong, like the words are sticking in his throat.
“Okay. Well, what makes someone human then?” Reigen asks, setting the first aid kit on the desk, and then grabbing a chair and dragging it in front of his student.
“I don’t know,” Mob says again, sounding increasingly upset.
Reigen hums in thought, opening up the kit to check its contents. There’s a small bottle of antiseptic, a few balms, and more than enough bandages of varying types.
But he’s not really paying enough attention to it. He’s too busy wrapped up in trying to figure out how to convince an eleven year old kid that he is in fact a human being.
He lets the lid to the kit fall closed, and turns his attention to Mob again.
“Well,” he begins, “I would say that someone’s human if they have a heartbeat.” Reigen lightly grabs Mob’s wrist, startling the boy into looking up at him, as Reigen presses two fingers to his pulse point. He waits a beat. Two. Then- “Check.”
Reigen is starting to get the hang of understanding Mob’s minute expressions, but this one is unreadable to him. Still he smiles, trying to be reassuring, as he moves on, listing, “If they breathe.”
For a tense moment, Mob stares up at him, his chest and shoulders unmoving. Reigen just raises a brow, and waits. He doesn’t have to wait long, before Mob’s chest deflates all at once, and Reigen can hear the sigh leave his mouth.
“Check,” Reigen says. “If they think. And we’re having this conversation. A conversation you brought up. Which means you were thinking about it. So. Check.”
Reigen pauses, placing a finger on his chin, tapping as he fakes thinking through his next item. Mob watches, silent, looking enraptured, when Reigen makes an- ‘ah-ha!’ gesture. “And, most importantly,” Reigen finally continues, “humans have emotions. They feel things.”
Instead of reassuring him however, Mob’s shoulders curl in even further, and he looks even more discouraged.
Reigen has to resist the urge to kick himself, and quickly moves in front of his student, placing a hand on Mob’s shoulder.
“It bothered you, didn’t it?” Reigen asks gently. “That they called you that. It hurt your feelings.”
Mob’s eyes shine, almost unnaturally, and for a terrible, terrible moment, Reigen thinks he might actually cry.
“I guess so,” Mob says, voice thready.
“Well then,” Reigen says, smiling softly, “I’d say you sound pretty human to me.”
Mob’s expression wavers for a moment, and then, surprisingly, he returns the smile. It’s soft, a bit watery, but it’s there.
“But-” And then it’s gone. Collapsing as Mob’s expression turns conflicted once more. “But I’m not… my powers aren’t normal-”
“Hey, now,” Reigen chides gently, plopping into the chair in front of his desk, and staring up at Mob. “Think about who you’re talking to here. I have powers, and I’m human aren’t I?”
It’s a lie, of course, but at times like this Reigen remembers why he started this whole charade to begin with.
Mob still looks conflicted, but he answers, “Yes,” without hesitation.
“That means your human too, then,” Reigen says definitively, nodding as he tapped Mob’s knee. “Powers don’t change that.”
Mob shifts closer to the edge of the desk, giving Reigen a better angle for the cuts on his knee, then argues, “My powers can hurt people.”
“You don’t do it on purpose do you?” Reigen dabs anapestic on the cuts, and Mob flinches.
“No!” Mob insists, sincere and frantic, animated in a way he so rarely is.
Reigen hears something slam behind him, a drawer or cabinet most likely, and he doesn’t turn around.
Mob shrinks in on himself, and his voice is smaller, flatter once more as he says, “No, never.”
“Then why would that make you bad?” Reigen asks, as he peels a large band aid from its wrapper, and sets to covering Mob’s knee.
Mob is quiet at that.
“Besides,” Reigen says, and he doesn’t look up as he moves on to the next knee, “it’s like we were saying earlier. Monsters aren’t people. And, therefore, people aren’t monsters. And you’re definitely a person.” He can feel Mob’s eyes on him, and this time, he does not flinch when the antiseptic touches his knee. “Don’t get me wrong. People can do awful, awful things. But that doesn’t make them monsters. Monsters don’t get to choose if they’re monsters or not- they just do bad things because that’s all that’s in their nature.”
Reigen’s not even sure if he’s making sense at this point. But this is important. He wants Mob to understand. He needs Mob to understand.
“Humans though. Humans choose between right and wrong all the time. To say that anyone who chooses wrong is a monster diminishes that choice.” Reigen finishes placing the band aid, and when he looks back up, Mob’s eyes are locked on him, dark, and rapt with attention. He leans back in his chair, tapping its arm with his forefinger. “People don’t have the excuse of being mindless monsters who can’t do any better. When they do something bad that just makes them a bad person. But… in that same way, people can also choose to do something right as well. And so long as that choice exists, they can’t be a monster.”
Mob’s gaze moves beyond Reigen’s right shoulder, staring out at nothing for a long moment.
“Do you understand?” Reigen asks.
Mob frowns just slightly, seeming to mull through what Reigen has told him.
“Maybe?”
Reigen sighs, and taps Mob’s hand, gesturing for his palm.
“Well,” he starts, trying to think of how to best illustrate his point to Mob.
Mob may be oblivious and niave, but he was by no means dumb. At times Reigen simply had to work out how to best put things in terms Mob would understand and relate to.
“You know how you have the ability to do good or bad things with you powers?” Reigen decides on asking.
Mob tilts his head slightly. “Yes…”
“And you know how some of the spirits we exorcise seem kind of… mindless. Like they’re just left over negative energy, so they can only ever lash out and hurt people? Like the lizard spirit from the park?”
“Yes.”
Both of the scrapes on Mob’s hands had been cleaned. Reigen considers the box of band aids on his lap, but he doubted any of them would really do the job. Hopefully, for now, that would be good enough.
“Well, that’s the same as the difference between humans and monsters,” Reigen says, as he directs both of Mob’s palms back down, and then drops his hold. “The spirit was a monster because it couldn’t choose. But you can choose, which means you’re human. And not a monster.”
Mob stares down at his own hands, and lowers them to his sides. “So,” he says, his brow scrunching up just slightly, “everyone can choose… and so long as they can choose to do good, they’re not a monster?” He looks up to Reigen in askance.
Reigen nods. “More or less, yeah. They may be a bad person, but that’s something they chose to be.”
Mob’s gaze moves to the ceiling, as he appears to mull that over. Reigen watches him carefully, running through their conversation up until this point.
And then, he has to resist slapping himself upside the head-
While discussing monsters is all well and good it doesn’t necessarily strike at the heat of the situation.
“And hey,” Reigen says, standing, trying to play it cool, “just so you know- you’re nowhere near a bad person. Okay, Mob?” He ruffles the kid’s hair. “Don’t doubt that for a second.”
Mob gives him a small smile, and Reigen feels the weight lift off his chest, and his anger ebb away, into something cooling, like relief.
“Even if you are a little dense sometimes,” Reigen adds, teasing.
What? He’s got an image to uphold here.
Mob ducks his head, a bit sheepish. “Thank you, Master Reigen.”
Reigen can’t quite hold back his own smile as he packs up the first aid kit.
“Any time, kiddo. That’s what I’m here for.”