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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[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.

[spiritsandsuchtrainee]

Though Mob had been deep in focus, he didn't neglect to see the candles that lit up as Reigen passed.

"I suppose this means we're headed in the right direction," he observed as he followed along, just a scant step behind his Master.

[mp_strikinglyblessed]

It certainly felt like they were going the right direction. It didn't occur to Reigen to check or to question his own certainty (or Mob's, for that matter) on this. He just kept walking until he was staring into another room. There was more natural light than ever filtering through the shoji screens here. That wasn't what immediately drew his attention though. No, it were the wooden bookshelves with their shelves wide open lining the walls.

Reigen mouthed something to himself and gravitated towards the west-facing wall in particular where the books were still neatly mounted. A scroll had rolled out to display a long poem and he started reading right from the top.

[spiritsandsuchtrainee]

Reigen rushed in the library (was it a library?) so quickly that Mob barely had a moment to register a blink before his eyes were frantically scanning a scroll mounted on the wall.

Maybe it was something important? It had to be if he was this deeply focused on it.

But the silence between them grew. Mob was accustomed to the silence. Until recently, he was alone a lot of the time. But he wasn't accustomed to silence when he was in the same room with Reigen. He had enough words to speak for the both of them.

"Master," he began, somewhat hesitatingly as he stepped in after him. "Is everything okay?"

[mp_strikinglyblessed]

"Why wouldn't it be? Just look at all this!"

[spiritsandsuchtrainee]

This was far more disturbing to Mob than any self-lighting candles would be.

"Is this necessary?" he asked. "We really should be focusing on the job."

[mp_strikinglyblessed]

"Eh?"

It was like someone dumped a bucket of cold water on Reigen.

What the hell WAS he doing?

Still, even at his most perturbed, he wasn't about to appear uncertain in front of his student. He moved out of the way of the hanging scroll and gestured meaningfully towards it. "Mob, Mob, Mob, Mob. Mob. I certainly can't expect a rookie to understand the importance of this right off the bat. Come closer--read it. Really take it in."

[spiritsandsuchtrainee]

Oh, so his Master had his reasons. He shouldn't have doubted him.

Mob joined Reigen and began to read the scroll. But as much as he tried, he couldn't seem to find a connection. Then again, he wasn't really good at this kind of thing, anyway.

"I don't really get it," he admitted, turning to look at Reigen after spending a long moment absorbing what he read.

[mp_strikinglyblessed]

'The Crane's Return of a Favor.'

"Keep thinking on it. I would be stunting your critical thinking if I just handed you the meaning."

Reigen did an about face towards one of the doors to continue on his way. Sliding the battered door open was more of a formality but he was rewarded with lingering traces of sunlight shining down on an open courtyard. He could tell from the patches of thick shadow from the clouds that the sun wouldn't be there for too much longer.

In the courtyard, nature had reclaimed what history had left; moss and vines covered the ground, the walls, and even the trees like a blanket. Even one season of neglect from the locals unable their restoration would set them back dearly. If not for one sunbeam shining on it, Reigen could have missed the small structure across the way.

[spiritsandsuchtrainee]

Mob turned his focus and re-read it a second time with such intent that he didn't even realize that Reigen had drifted outside.

"Um, Master?" he called out, setting the scroll down. When he didn't get a reply, Mob's feet carried him out into the courtyard after him.

"Oh, a garden." Or at least it used to be. Now it probably couldn't be called that. It'd take a lot of work to get it back into the state Mob was sure it was in a century before.