Chapter 4: Cutting Algae Part One

[mp_strikinglyblessed]

Texting was a pretty neat function. It was widely adopted by every teenager except the one he, Reigen, had so generously gifted a phone to do it with. Mob was diligent to a fault about picking up his calls, but texting? Still a work in progress. Mob was getting better, though. After all, how else was Reigen supposed to give him a heads up about big jobs before the end of the school day? Excepting the occasional friendly lunch break chat.

That was of course assuming the phone was still intact. After their chat last night, Reigen wasn't so sure. It wasn't like Mob made a habit of texting him first.

Reigen squinted at the clock on his second-hand laptop he'd just replaced the shattered one with. 12:05PM. He had found a decent deal on one in a flea market but there was something off about the graphics. Parts of the screen were always slightly out of frame and most of his day had been spent trying to uselessly dink with the display options until it was righted, but instead he just ended up with a resolution that was too small.

'Ugh. New laptop, and if we're really unlucky, a new phone? I'll just garnish it...' Reigen pulled out his phone and fired off a text to his pupil. You didn't get washed away, did you? Your phone's still working, right?

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[mp_strikinglyblessed]

Reigen adjusted collar of his rain jacket and brushed his bangs into a more orderly alignment before opening the door. They were on their way--luckily, when they emerged from the ryokan, the sun was still strong in the sky. No sign of rain yet, but the air was still thick with moisture. The stony path leading around the ryokan to the castle was dry, but the moss was fat underfoot with hydration.

"I've been thinking...there's quite a bit of similarity between prayers and curses. Don't you think so, Mob?"

[spiritsandsuchtrainee]

Mob took a moment to consider that. "Yeah, I suppose so. They both come from the same place. Desire."

[mp_strikinglyblessed]

“Rather insightful, Mob,” Reigen said with clear approval. Did Mob seem more thoughtful lately? “It’s said that the root of suffering itself is desire, after all. What do you think about that?”

[spiritsandsuchtrainee]

"I don't know if desire is always a bad thing." Mob desired to have muscles and to protect and help others. None or those things seemed bad. "It's probably the actions we take because of that desire that are sometimes bad."

[mp_strikinglyblessed]

“The actions we take…the mistakes we make…our hopes…and our attachment to a specific outcome…”

The wind suddenly whipped at them as they emerged from the windbreak of the trees to the coast. It was still a walk over a large rock shelf before they got there but the castle was suddenly well within sight. Reigen took a deep breath — the smell of the seaweed was especially strong. They kept walking and the form of it manifested bit by bit through the sea mists. The closer they got, the louder the crashing waves did too. The tide was low but from the way it battered the rocks the threat of it rising and sweeping away any wanderers was clear.

“You know…despite it’s infamy, this castle inspires a sense of protection and duty in many people from the village. Let’s tread respectfully.”

[spiritsandsuchtrainee]

"Right," Mob said in agreement. "Teru's granddad donated a lot of money to its preservation."

[mp_strikinglyblessed]

"That so? ...Wait. What's his granddad's name?"

[spiritsandsuchtrainee]

"Terukatsu," Mob answered simply. "Why do you ask?"

[mp_strikinglyblessed]

Reigen cleared his throat a little too harshly. "And you're only mentioning this now?"

[spiritsandsuchtrainee]

"I didn't think it was important."

[mp_strikinglyblessed]

'Seriously!?' Reigen closed one eye as a crashing wave sent up a particularly salty spray towards them. "Not even as a, oh, fun little factoid about your good pal?"

[spiritsandsuchtrainee]

"I didn't know until recently, either." Mob gazed out at the sea as they passed. Mob decided he liked the sound of it.

[mp_strikinglyblessed]

Reigen took another deep breath - the air was so thick with salt and moisture it exfoliated the insides of his nose. 'This is Mob we're talking about,' he reminded himself. Then, when he exhaled, there it was.

Kona-Zanshō Castle. There, in the mists, it had snuck up on him somehow.

It stood as the stormy coast's lone sentinel, rising up out of the rock, it's base carved from stone. He tilted his head far back to assess it from it's base to the tallest tower, silhouetted against the sun. Reigen was struck by how isolated it felt--it was like everything else around it had been eroded. Usually castles of this type had beautiful complexes surrounding them, but there were only faint vestiges of what once was.

The swooping roofing--the shikoro-buki, named for their resemblance to samurai helms--framed the windows that looked out in every direction. 'Like eyes', Reigen thought.

[spiritsandsuchtrainee]

"It feels pretty lonely," Mob remarked. Many of the things he said aloud were direct almost to a fault, or would have been thought as weird to a normal person. This probably fell in the latter category, but Mob wasn't at all worried about being judged for it. This was his Master, after all and he was anything but normal. "I thought it might be scary, but it feels sad."

Mob reached out with his psychic powers, trying to penetrate the field of emotion he felt beyond it. It pierced through and was struck with a wave of anger as

"And angry," he added. "That's kind of strange, isn't it? Usually the sadness is buried beneath the anger. I don't think I've ever felt it the other way around."

Mob may not have the slighest clue about the emotions of other humans. Spirits were always easier for him to read.

[mp_strikinglyblessed]

"Emotions are strange that way." Especially when it came to spirits. Reigen wondered if they even had the chance to put that restoration donation to good use yet.

[spiritsandsuchtrainee]

"We really need to be careful." Reigen had already made that clear earlier, but it was worth highlighting again. "If we agitate the spirits, we'll likely run into trouble." Just look what might have happened with Asa.

[mp_strikinglyblessed]

'"Carefully," he says,' Reigen thought with a small smirk. 'He's turning into a chip off the old block.'

"Of course. We're not going to do anything unnecessary. Once we find the source of the unrest, we'll resolve it. That's all." Reigen began his ascent up the the south facing-wall on the rocky foundation, step by step. The winds whipped at them harder the higher they got. Not only that, did the air feel thinner? That was absurd, of course. They weren't that far above sea level. Reigen tugged at his collar once when they reached the top to face the gate. Then, he walked through--and suddenly overcome with a sense of vertigo, he took one step back right out.

[spiritsandsuchtrainee]

Reigen's back bumped against Mob's front. "Master, are you okay?"

[mp_strikinglyblessed]

“Yeah, of course,” Reigen said after harshly clearing his throat once—and then again. That gave enough time for the world to stop spinning. “We spirit specialists have sensitive ears and even small changes in air pressure take a moment of getting used to…”

[spiritsandsuchtrainee]

Mob stared blankly up at Reigen.

"I don't feel anything."

[mp_strikinglyblessed]

"Of course you don't. I said Spirit Specialists. You're a rookie, remember?"

[spiritsandsuchtrainee]

If Mob was at all offended by being called a rookie, it doesn't show on his face, which remains as neutral as ever.

"Maybe I should go in first."

[mp_strikinglyblessed]

Reigen's ego won out and he stepped right back into the waiting castle, flashlight at the ready. "No, no, that won't be necessary. I've, ah, properly attuned myself to the spiritual energy here."

Luckily, the sense of dizziness was faint, then it was nothing at all. 'Heh.' As if some musty old castle could get the better of him for long. He turned his light on and shined it at the floor first--yeah, it was steady-looking--and then at the rest of the room. It was an antechamber, but notable was the scaffolding. So, that restoration fund was going somewhere...slowly.

The next thing his light fell on was a lot more attention-grabbing. Fusuma paintings greeted them, and he approached one to get a better look. Every one depicted a red-crowned crane. Despite the faded linework, the red at the top of their heads was as striking as a fresh drop of blood.

[spiritsandsuchtrainee]

Mob was relieved that Reigen seemed to recover so quickly. It made it easier to concentrate on reaching out for any dangerous spirits in the area. Unfortunately for the both of them, the negative energy is too dense for him to root it out at its source. At least from here. It'd be like swimming through an enormous bowl full of jelly. If they got closer, it'd be easier.

"I'm not sure which way to go," Mob said, though his feet continued to carry him forward. "Do you have a map? I might have an easier time if we're closer to the building's middle."

[mp_strikinglyblessed]

"There's the Great Hall right up ahead. That's the middle layer of the main keep." Reigen took his time studying every painting and every carved figure. He couldn't touch them, despite how much he wanted to--he was a man of great respect after all.

Finally, he peeled his eyes away and lead the way down to the Great Hall. It was there that the sense of grandeur now long-gone really sunk in and he had to pause to take it all in. The light caught shapes and carved out shadows. What he could see right away were the elaborated grid ceilings and silhouettes of the paintings on the walls. The floor was raised after a certain point, which was surely where the reigning shogun sat. Reigen fixed his light on that spot to catch glimpses of the tokonoma--the way the art and architecture came to frame whoever sat there was fascinating. Even after centuries had passed, the effect it had on him spoke to the castle's power.

'Sorry I called you musty,' Reigen thought. He was drawn to one wall in particular where the door had fallen through, and down that way was another hall. For whatever reason, without saying a word, he was immediately compelled to venture into it. Candles flickered to life wherever he passed, but he didn't even pause to look.