Chapter 7: Serenade for Strings

[spiritsandsuchtrainee]

Mysterious flickering lights, circuit breakers tripping, and outages were all affecting the Seasoning City metro line for weeks. The trains weren't on time and neither were the people of Seasoning City. Timely bosses who usually chided their salarymen underlings for their tardiness were huffing and puffing as they raced from the subway in a desperate attempt to make it to their desks before the clock ticked down to 8 AM.

They weren't the only ones huffing and puffing, though; Mob and Reigen had chased their target down and cornered him before he could make his way to another train line and the two were exhausted. It was nothing short of a miracle that the two of them had managed to make it to the last train of the night before the doors closed behind them.

Mob collapsed one of the train's empty seats, his damp palms pressed down atop the poly-cotton blend of his gakuran slacks. It was only by sheer miracle that they weren't soaked through. Sweat seemed to be pouring from every pore on Mob's body.

"Sorry," Mob said apologetically. "If I had been faster, we wouldn't have had to do so much running."

Comments

[mp_strikinglyblessed]

'Tch. Damn persistent kid', Reigen thought with a mixture of frustration and grudging affection as he salted the water.

"Fine. I'll allow Reigen. No honorifics needed. But, as we've established, not at work. And only when we're alone."

[spiritsandsuchtrainee]

"Okay, Reigen." It felt stranger for him to say Reigen without "Master" next to it than it did for him to say Arataka-chan. Maybe it was because he had said Reigen so many times that saying "Master" whenever he said the name just came naturally.

Mob continued chopping away. "I asked earlier, but... did you mom cook for you a lot, too?"

[mp_strikinglyblessed]

"She did. She keeps her own garden. Everything in the house was always fresh." Reigen covertly rubbed some dust off his rice cooker and pulled out a bag of rice. He measured it out and dumped it into a bowl to begin rinsing it--a vital step in the process! "She mails me produce sometimes, actually."

[spiritsandsuchtrainee]

Mob stopped chopping his potato3s just long enough to glance over at Reigen. "But you don't see her very often."

[mp_strikinglyblessed]

"I don't. They live out of town in the family home. I didn't grow up in Seasoning City, after all."

[spiritsandsuchtrainee]

"Where are you from?" Mob really didn't know a lot about Reigen at all.

[mp_strikinglyblessed]

"Mitarashi. It's not as big as Seasoning--more like a town, really. But it has plenty to see. A lot of nature and greenspace." Reigen finished rinsing the rice and measured out the water for the rice cooker--adjusting until it passed the knuckle test. "I moved away for college and decided to settle here."

[spiritsandsuchtrainee]

"I'm all done," Mob said after he made one final chop. He surveyed them with a discerning eye. "They're not all even, though."

[mp_strikinglyblessed]

Reigen appraised them and transferred them to the boiling water. "They'll do. Don't worry about it. We're mashing them up."

As Reigen rinsed the residue off his fingers, he cringed--the wonderful interwoven symphony ensemble in the background was broken up with abrupt silences and harsh whirring. "Ah, damn it. Not Tchaikovsky." He waved and gestured at the end table it was sitting on. "Hey, Mob, can you find another CD in one of those drawers? Something with Satie."

[spiritsandsuchtrainee]

"Sure." Mob headed for the end table and pulled open one of its little drawers. He shuffled through a CDs when all of a sudden...

...Mob wasn't holding a CD case.

"Um..."

He was holding a condom packet.

[mp_strikinglyblessed]

"Satie's French!" Reigen called over his shoulder, standing on his toes to reach for the wakame on top of his fridge. "Or...just look for a cover with a piano."

[spiritsandsuchtrainee]

"Oh, yeah," Mob said, setting the condom down on top of the table to focus on finding the right CD. "Oh, I think I've found it."

Mob held up the CD for Reigen to see.

[mp_strikinglyblessed]

Reigen turned, bag in hand, to confirm--the smirk of approval was quickly wiped off his face when he noticed the gold foil packaging emblazoned with a '0.01' in full view.

[spiritsandsuchtrainee]

Mob blinked. "Reigen?"

[mp_strikinglyblessed]

"Uh-huh. Okay. That's the right one. Put it in, please."

[spiritsandsuchtrainee]

"Sure." Mob stood and pressed a button to open the CD tray. "Should I start with the first track, then?"

[mp_strikinglyblessed]

"Yep. That's fine." His voice was stiff and cracked like he hadn't had a drink of water in a week.

Reigen didn't even remember the last time he had stocked up--not that it even mattered these days. It wasn't like he had gone through everything just to throw them out, per se, but he wasn't exactly leaving them around willy nilly...

Well. There was no use pretending neither of them had seen it. And he didn't care to call more attention to it, but if he didn't instruct Mob to do anything with it, it would just remain there for the rest of the evening. Taunting him.

"And, uh," he cleared his throat, "you can toss the garbage." He motioned at it.

[spiritsandsuchtrainee]

Mob turned to look at what Reigen was gesturing to, then turned back to look at Reigen.

"It's not used, though."

[mp_strikinglyblessed]

"It's expired."

[spiritsandsuchtrainee]

Mob picked up the condom and turned it around in his hand, looking for an expiry date. He had no idea that these things could expire.

"Oh, it has."

[mp_strikinglyblessed]

The light of the packaging caught Reigen's eye as Mob fiddled with it just to rub salt in the wound. "I told you! You don't have to fact check me, okay!? I know what I'm talking about!"

[spiritsandsuchtrainee]

"What do you have an expired condom for?"

[mp_strikinglyblessed]

Unable to take the sight of it in Mob's hand anymore, Reigen zipped up to him and plucked it out of his hand. "Because it wasn't expired when I bought it."

[spiritsandsuchtrainee]

"How long does it take for a condom expires?" Was it like produce and expired in a few days/weeks? Mob felt more comfortable asking Reigen these things than he did his own mom.

[mp_strikinglyblessed]

"A few years if you store them properly. Maybe a week if you don't." Reigen tossed it in the small trash bin beside his computer desk. He sorely, sorely wished that he could have expected having this talk with Mob going into the evening, but...it was what they were doing now.