Chapter Text
“It’d be great if these spirits would choose a nice place to haunt for once,” Reigen commented as he swung the flashlight in a lazy arc.
“Reigen-san, please take this seriously.” Serizawa’s eyes darted around the room. Between them, Mob stared silently ahead.
“I am, I am.” Reigen very seriously splashed his galoshes around in the flooded basement. Mold dribbled down the concrete walls. Something occasionally plopped into the water – either debris from the ceiling or the supporting pillars or both. The weight of centuries hung heavily in the air.
Their client this time was a short, gaunt man who kept blotting his face with a damp handkerchief. Apparently, he had been trying to build a mall or something, but when the workers dug down to begin setting the foundations, they had found a weird basement.
The basement wasn’t the issue, of course. It was the curse. Spooky sounds, vague sightings, blah-de-blah. The typical stuff people say when they unearth something old and unsettling. Since a lot of investors’ money was riding on the mall, the man was willing to pay quite a sum for this problem to go away. Reigen had eagerly taken the job, telling him that they would do an initial inspection of the area and give an estimate based on how much exorcism (repainting) needed to be done. That was back when he figured the whole thing was people jumping at shadows. But no, guess it was supernatural after all.
“You see it yet?” Reigen asked, in the manner of someone who had already seen it but was checking if you’ve seen it, y’know?
Serizawa squinted. “I’m having trouble pinpointing it…”
“It has a very big aura,” Mob added. “It’s hard to pick out a specific location – “
And then everything went dark.
Well, no. Not exactly that. Maybe more like, the world disappeared behind a dark fog.
That didn’t seem right either. It was like…the world itself had been a fog. And something behind Reigen had blown it away.
“Mob?” he called out, swinging his flashlight, but it seemed the flashlight too had been merely fog. “Serizawa?” And he couldn’t hear his voice. Well, he could , but not in the way that he’d normally hear it. Because he wasn’t speaking the way he normally would either. His voice was a voice, but working under different rules. His voice was a concept. A voice*, perhaps.
Reigen was starting to suspect that his mind was trying to comprehend an unfathomable plane of existence and failing horribly. Honestly, the idea that he was in an unfathomable plane of existence made his hair* stand on end.
You don’t like being yourself much, do you, something said* behind* him.
Reigen steeled himself and turned, like an idiot, because of course he couldn’t turn. He could try to turn*, but he didn’t even know if this was the sort of place* where turning* happened. “What are you, a therapist?” he retorted*, stubbornly ignoring the way his sense of self* was breaking* down*. His mind kept telling him to run, but he couldn’t, not without feet. He could maybe run* with feet*, but he didn’t even know what running* was, or if he even had feet*. What was he*, anyways?
There was a hint of movement*, a pull-squeeze-float-fall sort of affair, his* perception* stretching* thin*, being guided* towards* an entity*.
“Hey,” Reigen* said*, “cut that out.”
I can help with that, the voice* said*, leaning* on* his* shoulder* in a tender-teasing-threatening way. Why don’t you come over here?
It was an invitation, but not a choice, and that hint of movement* shifted* – he* was being reeled* in*, and what the hell were Mob* and Serizawa* doing? What was taking them* so long*? Was this* happening* to them* too? Was there no escape* –
The world* burned* bright*, then the world flashed into bewildering existence, color and sound and air and feeling and breathing and everything that came with it, and then Reigen passed out.
When Reigen woke up, he* was momentarily overwhelmed until he reminded himself how the actual world worked. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, partially reacting to the sudden light and partially to assure himself that he could.
He was in the hospital. Which made sense, given what happened to him. Not that he knew what happened to him, but if it was anything like what happened* to him, then it was probably not great. He would have to thank Serizawa and Mob for getting him here. Actually, he should thank them for getting him out of whatever that was in the first place. Give them a vacation. Give himself a vacation. Reigen had a newfound appreciation for his ability to comprehend the world and he was going to take some time off to comprehend the hell out of it.
He leaned back in his chair and took in the harsh hospital lighting, the sickly hospital smell, the stale hospital sounds, and thought: isn’t it weird for a patient to be sitting in a chair?
Reigen sat up again. He wasn’t in a hospital bed. He was next to a hospital bed; apparently had been resting his head on it, as if he had dozed off. It seemed unprofessional to hospitalize a patient and not even give him a hospital bed, especially since that put him in the uncomfortable position of explaining to another patient why he was hogging part of their bed, so Reigen looked up to apologize to the patient and saw that the patient was Reigen.
He opened his mouth to scream but didn’t, because he was in a hospital for goodness sake. There were people trying to recover here. Including himself, apparently.
Alright. Okay. Putting aside the “just went through a whole existential crisis in some sort of eldritch plane beyond human reckoning and being immediately confronted with the sight of his own body” panic attack for now. There’s some important things he needed to figure out.
1. Is that Reigen’s body?
Reigen shifted to look at the foot of the hospital bed. The clipboard there named this guy as Reigen Arataka, which was certainly his name. He was reasonably certain that there were no other Reigen Aratakas, and even if there were, the probability that they would look exactly like him was ridiculously small. This didn’t rule out things like doppelgängers or shapeshifters or anything, but he couldn’t really imagine a creature going through the trouble of looking like him just to land itself in the hospital. That sounded like a lame thing for a creature to do. So, until more information presented itself, he was going to treat this as a bona fide Reigen Arataka.
2. Is Reigen alive?
Frankly, this probably should have been the first question because if Reigen was fully invested in anything, it was being alive. But determining if the body was Reigen was pretty important to this question, so whatever.
The hospital was very useful in answering this, as hospitals were also generally invested in the question of whether someone was alive; the heart monitor next to the bed beeped steadily. He could see his chest move with every soft breath. Also, there was an IV drip, and he didn’t actually know what those did but it was probably related to being alive.
As for himself, he was very certain he was Reigen. How did it go? “I think, therefore I am”? There you have it, ipso facto and all that, mystery solved. Reigen the body was alive, and Reigen the mind was alive.
3. Is Reigen a ghost?
This seemed like the most obvious reason why Reigen would be sitting here looking at Reigen in a hospital bed. The whole being alive thing sort of threw a wrench in this theory, but astral projection was a thing. That was basically being a ghost. Not that he knew how to astral project, but hey. Shit happens.
He wasn’t really sure how to answer the question though, given that he had never been a ghost before. He had seen ghosts, sure, but usually that was when they wanted him to see them. And the ghosts that wanted him to see them typically looked really, really scary. Reigen looked down at his hands, which looked a lot like normal hands and not at all like ghost hands. When he pushed them against the bed, they just sank into the mattress like normal hands did, and didn’t phase through them like ghost hands do. But was it possible for a ghost to trick itself into thinking it was alive? There was a movie like that, wasn’t there? Well, maybe this was something he’d have to ask Dimple and the others. For now, inconclusive. Next question.
4. How long has Reigen been unconscious?
But Reigen was still staring down at his hands pressed into the bed. Something nauseous was crawling up his throat.
These hands did not look familiar. But it wasn’t like he bothered to look at his hands much in the first place, right? He was being oversensitive because of that recent experience of unreality. But as he continued to stare, he started to notice. His nails looked a bit jagged, like they had been chewed. His skin was darker than it should be. The sleeves of his suit were blue. The suit itself was a thicker, coarser material. His face felt itchy. Even his hair felt weird, not that he could say why.
Another question bubbled to the surface, one that he wasn’t sure about asking because he wasn’t sure what the answer would do to him; but there was no stopping it, because this sudden awareness of his physicality demanded that it be asked.
4. Who is Reigen?
He tore his eyes away from those hands and peered at his faint reflection in the heart monitor, which told him that Reigen was, in fact, Serizawa.
He let himself scream this time, but made it short. And only once, because he was still in a hospital for goodness sake.