Archive of Our Own

Serizawa is having a problem. Well, less of a problem and more like a…well…

“A curse” Reigen deadpans from where he’s lounging in his chair, feet up on the desk beside his closed laptop, crossed at the ankles.

“Definitely a curse” Dimple cuts in, floating around Serizawa’s head, “curses smell like burnt toast”

“Toast?” Reigen sniffs the air.

“Well you wouldn’t be able to smell it” Dimple scoffs and then doesn’t dodge the book Reigen throws at him, he just allows it to pass through him and hit the wall.

“I think” Serizawa wrings his hands, “I think it was that case last night”

“The spirit with the…” Reigen holds up his hands, palms forward, over his eyes.

The spirit they were hired to exorcise took the form of a woman in a white kimono, long black hair, lips like a bloody gash across her face, and red roses where her eyes should have been. In the moments before Serizawa had vaporised her, she’d turned her face between him and Reigen, and laughed, a hollow, scraping excuse for a laugh that chilled him to the bone, before she was nothing more than grey flakes, like ash, falling to the ground and disintegrating into nothing at all.

“Yes” Serizawa nods.

Reigen removes his feet from the desk and sits up straight, “give me the particulars. The details” he waves his wrist in a circle, “what exactly makes you think you’re cursed?”

“Um” Serizawa’s eyes flick between Reigen and Dimple, “it’s hard to explain, so it’s probably best to wait for it to happen again”

*

Shigeo drops by after school. Reigen is engrossed in something on his laptop, typing furiously and scowling. Serizawa is just sitting on the couch feeling listless when it starts again.

It feels like something prickly is in his throat, and he coughs once, Shigeo’s eyes snap to him immediately.

“It’s you” he says and Dimple floats through Reigen’s desk to hover near him, “I could sense something wrong”

“You can smell it, right?” Dimple says and Shigeo nods.

Serizawa coughs again, clapping a hand to his chest. It’s the same thing that happened earlier in the morning when he was at home, alone. It  feels like a burning sensation crawling up his throat until he coughs them into his hand, two perfect red petals.

“Ah” he says, holding them, not sure what to do with them.

Shigeo looks down at them and back up at Serizawa’s face.

Reigen watches with an air of detached interest.

“Did you swallow a bouquet of roses?” He asks, raising an eyebrow.

“No, I…” Serizawa coughs again and another petal floats out and lands on his thigh.

“I think we need to find out more about that spirit” Reigen says, pushing his chair back with a loud scrape and standing, “come on, we’re paying our client a visit” he says the word client with a venom that surprises Serizawa.

He asks about it when they’re in the taxi, when he’s finally stopped burping up petals for the moment.

“I’ve been arguing with her over email all morning” Reigen mutters, “I don’t like her”

“So that’s what you were doing” Serizawa says, “you looked like you wanted to strangle your computer”

“I contacted her as soon as you said something was wrong” Reigen murmurs, his gaze fixed firmly out of the car window. It makes Serizawa’s heart skip a beat.

As soon as it does, he feels it again, the clawing up his throat, this time, though, it’s something bigger.

He chokes and Reigen snaps his head around, looking at him with wide eyes.

“Serizawa” Reigen says, reaching out, and Serizawa coughs something small and round into his own palm.

It’s a perfect little rosebud.

*

“Not my problem” the woman says, her brow arched and her mouth down as soon as she answers her door and Serizawa explains what’s going on.

Reigen shoves his foot into the doorway before she can slam the door in their faces.

“Actually” he says, businessman voice in full effect, “as per the terms of your original contract,” he keeps his foot in place, pulling a folded piece of paper from his inner pocket, “you withheld crucial information about the spirit we exorcised for you, which led to the endangerment of my valued employee” He smiles, big and slow, “so you can let us in and explain yourself, or we can get our lawyers involved, for breach of contract”

She pulls her soft, beige cardigan tighter around her body and grudgingly lets them in.

Lawyers, Serizawa thinks with a small amused smile, what lawyers? His heart swells again, and he coughs a red petal onto the front of his tie.

*

“This…is something that’s been passed down through the generations of my family” the woman says, her name is Hana, and she’s in her mid-fifties, probably. She’s an elegant woman, her grey hair is up in a neat bun, and she’s wearing a soft cardigan and a long skirt. Now that Serizawa is getting a proper look at her in the light of her living room, she looks exhausted.

“It’s like…” she waves her hands around a little, pursing her lips as she tries to put it into words, “have you ever had a crush?”

The two men nod, and then exchange eye contact. Serizawa ducks his head.

“Unrequited love” she continues, “but it’s more than that, it’s stronger. It manifests itself in this way, the flowers, when the party with the crush believes it to be hopeless, or it could even manifest if the person you love dies” she looks down at her hands, “the ghost…spirit, you called it, was my great-aunt”

*

She tells them that her aunt was in love with a local boy, one-sided love, so she got the curse.

“We call it Hanahaki” she says, sipping the green tea she got for them all a few minutes prior, “throwing up flowers”

Serizawa’s hands ball into fists on his knees.

“We don’t know where it originated from, but my great-aunt, Tsubaki, she has been the worst case that my family had ever seen. We think it was because her love was so…obsessive” Hana sighs, places her teacup down, “usually the curse starts with just coughing up petals, then as the person’s feelings get stronger, full flowers can form. If the object of affection returns the love, that’s the cure”

“And if not?” Reigen interjects. Hana turns to look at him.

“The flowers bloom inside your lungs and you die”

*

Serizawa has been in love with Arataka Reigen for almost a year.

It started out with little things. Reigen giving him a job was a start, but there were the small acts of kindness that came with it, buying him a proper meal when he’d noticed Serizawa was eating nothing but instant noodles for days on end. Cutting his hair and shaving his face for him, cramped up in Serizawa’s tiny bathroom, just before he started working at Spirits and Such. Being genuinely, unequivocally kind.

“That’s it?” Reigen says, incredulously, “love or death?”

Hana smiles ruefully, “pretty much” she says, “although, how hard is it to get someone to fall in love? All the small things that make up love”

Serizawa glances at Reigen.

“What happened to Tsubaki, then?” Reigen asks, “how come she went all…” he raises his hands to his eyes the same way he did before.

Hana frowns a little, “well, she was different, she…” she gasps, places a hand over her mouth, the garnet ring on her finger glints in the light. She whispers the next part, “she was believed to be psychic”

*

They leave when it starts to get dark, with Hana promising to look into her family history to see if there was anything she could find that might help.

“She’s changed her tune” Reigen says, in the back of the taxi.

“I guess she actually wants to help now that she realises” Serizawa glances out of the window at the scenery flashing by, “how dire it is”

“Shit” Reigen swears, “but you’re not crazy and obsessive, so, you won’t go all homicidal and rose-eyed”

“Wasn’t that all just part of her psychic ability, though? It magnified the curse, or that’s what Hana seems to think”

Reigen grimaces, and sits in thoughtful silence until they get back to the Spirits and Such office, where he then sits at his desk and steeples his fingers together.

“Who do you love?” He says, breaking the minutes-long silence, and Serizawa chokes on the sip of bottled water he’s drinking.

“That’s the key to all this, right?” Reigen continues, “you have someone you love and they don’t love you back, or you think they don’t, so, we need to get them to fall in love with you”

“How am I supposed to do that?”

“You don’t get to be Japan’s greatest conman without learning a thing or two about seduction” Reigen leers at him, and Serizawa hates this side of him, the sleazy crook persona.

As soon as he thinks it, he gets a sharp, searing headache behind his left eye. He gasps, shooting a hand up to clutch at his face, just as he starts to cough, again.

“Serizawa” Reigen says, getting to his feet. Serizawa shakes his head, moving his hand to catch the petals. He coughs, feels something hit his hand, and when he opens his eyes it’s not petals, or a rosebud.

Scarlet drops of blood cover his palm.

*

Serizawa’s apartment is small, just a glorified room more than an apartment, really. He has a small table, a tiny kitchen area, and a pull-out bed. After living in his childhood bedroom for most of his life, it’s like paradise.

He sits slumped over at his table and wills the pain in his chest to stop.

Hana emailed Reigen a few pages of her family history that she could dig up, but there’s nothing conclusive, just a few people getting the hanahaki curse, and even then, only one or two have ever died from it, because in the vast majority of the cases, their love was reciprocated.

There’s no mention of Tsubaki at all.

Serizawa sighs, resting his cheek against the polished wood of the tabletop, feeling like he should just resign himself to this fate, as there’s no way Reigen would ever look at him as anything more than a trusted colleague, or at most, a friend.

He thinks about calling Shigeo, but the idea of unloading his deepest secrets onto a teenager makes him feel pathetic.

A green glow permeates his peripheral vision, and he lifts his head to see Dimple bobbing up and down gently in front of him.

“Dimple-san” he says, “what are you doing here?”

“Everyone else might be a moron” Dimple says, “but I can see right through you”

“What do you mean?”

“The person you’re in love with is Reigen, right?”

Serizawa feels his face heat up, and he averts his eyes just as Dimple exclaims, “ha! I knew it”

“Maybe I should stay at home tomorrow” Serizawa mumbles, feeling that old urge to hide come back in full force.

“Humans are complicated” Dimple snorts unkindly, “why not just tell him? That’s the easiest solution”

“It’s not, though” Serizawa says, feeling panicked, “because…because there’s no way he likes me back” he coughs up a few petals that scatter like confetti, Dimple eyes them as they flutter onto the table, “or, worse, he’ll think sleeping with me is the solution, and he’ll do it, and it won’t mean anything, and I hate him for that” he gets a searing pain in his skull, again, and doubles over with a gasp, coughing, his throat raw.

He tries to breathe but he can’t, and he feels tears on his cheeks. Lifting a hand, he touches the wetness on his face, and looks at his fingers. Blood.

Dimple says his name, but his vision is already growing spotty.

Before he can reply, he passes out.

*

Two days pass. After he’d fainted he awoke to Shigeo bursting his front door in with a psychic wave after Dimple had gone to get him.

But now, he just sits alone in his apartment. It’s swelteringly hot but he can’t bring himself to move over to the window to open it.

His chest feels tight, and he wheezes every time he tries to take a deep breath.

The deep, grey wave of depression sinks over him, familiar in its suffocating comfort, after all the work he’s done to carve out a life he can be proud of, this is how it’s going to end, after all.

His eyes close, slowly, and then snap open when there’s the jangle of keys at his front door.

He sees Reigen walk into the room and his heart swells, which makes him cough up a cloud of little red petals.

“Shit” Reigen says, and then, “this has to stop”

He moves to crouch in front of Serizawa, “you can’t just wallow this away. You look awful”

“Thanks” Serizawa deadpans, suddenly very conscious of the fact that he hasn’t showered, shaved or cleaned his apartment in a couple of days. He’s hunched on his untidy bed in a ratty t-shirt and sweatpants.

There’s empty water bottles and instant noodle pots scattered over his kitchen .

“No, I mean…” Reigen sighs, “you look like a guy who’s been...cursed”

Serizawa thinks he was cursed long before this, he says so.

Reigen stands, brushing down the front of his grey suit trousers with his hands, which he then holds out to Serizawa.

“Come on”

*

“Just like old times, huh?” Reigen says, rolling up his shirt sleeves. Serizawa is leant up against the bathroom sink, a towel round his shoulders, his heart beating a mile a minute.

“You sure you don’t have anything better than this?” Reigen asks, holding up the pink plastic disposable razor. Serizawa shakes his head.

“You know these are for women, right?”

“They’re the same product, just pink” Serizawa replies, “and the store was out of the men’s ones, so.”

“Fair enough” Reigen shrugs. He leans round Serizawa to root in the cupboard beside the sink for shaving cream.

“Did you…um..” Serizawa feels himself flush at the proximity, a petal working it’s way up his throat and making him cough a little into the back of his hand, “have you heard anything else from Hana?”

“Actually, yeah” Reigen finds the canister of shaving cream and moves back again, “she mentioned something about a relative who might know more about the crazy flower-eyed bitch” he coats Serizawa’s face in the foam, with a gentleness Serizawa often wonders and maybe hopes is reserved just for him. Reigen picks up the pink razor and uses his other hand to tilt Serizawa’s chin up as he begins to run the blade over his skin, “the easiest way out of this is just to tell the person you love, that you love them, still”

“And have it reciprocated”

Reigen rinses the razor in the sink and uses Serizawa’s hand towel to wipe the excess shaving foam from his face.

“Is that so impossible?” Reigen murmurs and for one, single moment, Serizawa swears his heart stops altogether.

Reigen leans in slow, his lips parted, and Serizawa feels like his brain is overheating, that he must be dreaming or something. His hands come up to grip Reigen’s biceps as they lean in closer, open mouths brushing, and he feels a tension in Reigen’s body that he immediately doesn’t like.

He turns his face and Reigen’s nose bumps against his cheekbone a little before the other man pulls back, his mouth turned down.

“Who told you?” He asks, and Reigen sighs.

“...Dimple” he says.

“If you’re only doing this because you think it’s the quickest way to fix the curse” Serizawa says, his voice oddly cold, even to his own ears, “then I don’t want it”

Reigen’s lips thin, and he averts his eyes. A conman, Serizawa thinks, through and through.

Suddenly, a sharp pain shoots through his body, from his chest to his skull, and he pitches forward with a grunt. It feels like something jagged is working it’s way through his system, something rising up, but it’s not the flowers, not the curse, it’s his own power.

He straightens up, his hair rising, goosebumps pimpling his arms, his legs.

“Seri…” is all Reigen manages to get out, eyes wide, before Serizawa uses his powers to push him across the tiny room, hitting the opposite wall with a grunt and a sickening crunch.

“How dare you” Serizawa says, his voice echoing, his body starting to float, toes barely scraping the floor, “make a fool out of me!”

Reigen peers up, his face twisted in a combination of shock and pain.

“Serizawa” he croaks, “your face”

Serizawa steps more firmly onto the ground, his aura still pulsing, throwing out purple light that he knows Reigen can’t see.

He turns to face the bathroom mirror.

Blood pours from his eyes and his nose, making him look monstrous.

Just as he thinks this, his vision swims and he passes out.

*

He wakes in a garden. Soft sunlight dapples through the trees and all he can hear are birds, a river running gently and the soft, rhythmic knock of a shishi-odoshi.

Looking down at his hands he realises they’re  not his own, they’re small, and soft, and he’s wearing a white and pink kimono. Long black hair pools in his lap, and he immediately knows that he is Tsubaki.

A man turns the corner, entering into the garden, his face young and handsome. He’s holding a bouquet of white chrysanthemums.

Serizawa’s, Tsubaki’s, heart swells at the sight of him.

“I brought you these, darling, I just had to see you before I go to my father’s house”

Serizawa feels Tsubaki smile.

“Thank you” he says using her voice, “they’re beautiful”

“Not as beautiful as you” the man says, and then the dream, if it even is a dream, changes.

He’s in a house, this time, he thinks. He’s standing on the roka outside of a screen door, his heart thudding in his chest, he feels such profound misery so quickly compared to the serene happiness of just a second ago that it hits him like whiplash. His body hurts, pinpricks, and he looks down at his, Tsubaki’s, hands, to see thorns protruding from the delicate skin, there.

He reaches out and opens the door, and the man and the woman inside spring apart as if burned.

“I can explain!” The man says, the same man from before, his handsome face contorted with fear.

Tsubaki’s voice is hurt and rough when she screams, “how dare you make a fool out of me!”

Serizawa feels the psychic energy expel from him, familiar yet still scary, and the woman is thrown backwards across the room. The man, holding a sheet over his naked body, screams, but it’s cut short by Serizawa waving Tsubaki’s hand and his neck snaps to an unnatural angle. The woman lifts her head, struggling, her arm outstretched. Serizawa can see purple and white sparks in her palm, she’s aiming at Tsubaki but she’s too weak.

There’s an antique mirror hanging from the wall and Serizawa catches his reflection. Tsubaki looks frightening, blood pouring from her mouth as she screams and snarls, and he wonders how she can still see, with the two perfect red roses where her eyes should be.

*

Serizawa wakes in a cold sweat in his living room.

Shigeo is sitting beside him cross-legged, sipping from a water bottle. He sniffs the air as Serizawa cracks his sore eyes open.

“Burnt toast” he says, “it’s getting stronger”

There’s a clanging sound over by the stove, and Reigen comes into view, battered and bruised, with a cup of ginger tea.

He smiled ruefully, “so that plan went out the window, huh?” He says, handing Serizawa the cup.

Serizawa scowls and Reigen actually flinches.

“I think I’ve figured it out” Serizawa says, “I had a dream about Tsubaki. Well, it was more like…I was Tsubaki”

Reigen sits opposite him, leans his elbow on the table and rests his cheek in his palm.

“Okay” he says, “and what conclusion did you come to?”

“Tsubaki believed her love was reciprocated, and that was enough to quell the curse” Serizawa sips his tea, “but he was cheating on her”

Reigen gasps like Serizawa is telling him the plot twist of a Monday-night drama. Shigeo side-eyes him.

“Don’t look at me like that, Mob” Reigen scoffs, “this is juicy stuff”

“She found out” Shigeo says, quietly. Serizawa nods.

“It seems that way” he says, “and then the curse manifested itself in the way we saw, the violence, the anger. It warped with her hate” he purses his lips, “I don’t know what happened after that”

*

The first thing Serizawa notices when they step inside the house is the flowers.

They’re everywhere. Bunches on the wall hung to dry, huge vases full of extravagant arrangements litter the floor, and piles upon piles of flowers fill the modestly-sized room. Among them is a small old lady, knelt in front of a glass vase, snipping the stems of some orange lilies.

“What is with this family and flowers?” Reigen  mutters beside him, completely at odds with his salesman’s smile.

Hana shoots him a look. She definitely heard.

“Our family have been renowned flower artists for generations” she says, and then louder, “Auntie, these are the gentlemen who…”

“Tsubaki” the old woman says, her eyes wide, looking right at Serizawa.

Reigen’s eyes shoot between Serizawa and the woman before he says, “yes, my gifted colleague and I were the ones who sorted out your family’s little ghost problem and I…”

The woman holds up a hand and he shuts his mouth with a click.

“Mamoru” she says in her trembling old lady voice, “was my brother, and Tsubaki” she looks at Serizawa again, “was my cousin”

“So Mamoru and Tsubaki were cousins?” Serizawa asks, she nods.

“It was an arranged marriage” Hana says, “Tsubaki was the most beautiful girl in the village”

Serizawa swallows, averts his eyes, only thinking of Tsubaki with her violent face, the red roses and the thorns and her bloody, slashed lips. He can’t imagine the beauty under all that terror. The old lady sighs as if she heard his thoughts.

“She was beautiful” she says, “and all the men wanted her. She wanted Mamoru”

“So” Serizawa licked his lips, “he went along with it to please the family”

“That’s how things were done, back then” Reigen says, crossing his arms, “so he only…pretended to love her back and she believed he did, and that’s what quelled the curse?”

“Quelled it, yes” Hana says, pushing some of her grey-streaked hair behind her ear, “but it didn’t get rid of it completely, like it would have done if Tsubaki’s feelings were truly reciprocated”

The old lady lifts a hand and curls her fingers inward, a come-here gesture, at Serizawa.

“I would like to speak with you” she says, “without that one”

Reigen scoffs, “hey, lady”

“It’s fine” Serizawa pats Reigen’s shoulder. He shudders out a small cough and catches the petals in his other hand.

“Okay” Reigen says, pointing at him, “but at the first hint of anything weird, I’m coming in. I’m not above kicking a grandma if the need arises”

Serizawa grins at him, “I know” he says.

*

“She was a maid in my father’s house” the old lady says, “the woman Mamoru fell for”

Serizawa reaches up to fiddle with his tie. He feels nervous being in the room alone with this woman. There’s something about her. He can smell something burning but chalks it up to the incense she’s got gently smoking on shelves against the wall.

“What happened?” He asks, “I had a dream…a vision. One minute Tsubaki was so happy, and then she was filled with nothing but rage”

“She found out” the woman says, simply. She looks at Serizawa with her pale eyes, and it’s almost like she’s seeing straight through him, or not really looking at him at all.

“Our family” she says, “are like you”

“You’re all psychic?”

“Not all. But some” she smiles, sadly, “Tsubaki wasn’t the only one, but she’s the most infamous. After her, we have been ashamed of our gifts, and hidden them. I can see her in you. Her love, her hate”

“I hate him, sometimes” he whispers, like a confession, “is that what’s doing this to me?”

“It’s your love for him that’s doing this” she says, kindly, “it’s your hate that’s twisting it. I think Hanahaki is beautiful and terrifying, like Tsubaki herself”

She holds out her small, gnarled hand towards his chest, but doesn’t actually touch him. His breath wheezes out of him, and he can feel the flowers in his lungs, and tears prick his eyes.

“So…so it wasn’t only her abilities that caused what happened to her? It was the hatred and betrayal she felt?“

Serizawa remembers the woman, her attempt to ignite her own powers as she lay broken on the floor, as Tsubaki snapped Mamoru’s neck.

“The maid…she had abilities too?” He asks, feeling as if this whole story is a puzzle with a missing middle piece.

“She was…” the lady whispers, “she…” she closes her mouth with a click and her pale eyes dart to the door, where Hana is waiting.

“Auntie” Hana says, “you need your rest”

*

They sit silently in the taxi on the way home. They’d dropped Hana off first, and she’d looked at Serizawa sadly, told him she’s sorry that nothing more can be done.

Neither of them speak a word to each other, and Reigen pays the driver and follows Serizawa up to his apartment, shutting the door behind him before he says, “you’ve been crying. If that old bitch did anything to you’ll I’ll…”

“When you” Serizawa looks down at his feet and back up at Reigen, “when you were going to kiss me, did you mean it?”

“No” Reigen says, his eyes sliding to the side. Serizawa’s chest hurts. He grunts, and bends a little.

“I mean!” Reigen panics, “I did that because Dimple said it would help, and I tried to hurry things along, but I do…I uh…”

He reaches out and takes Serizawa’s hand, the gentleness of it is at such odds with his usual brash demeanour that Serizawa feels like he might cry again.

Reigen’s eyes widen,“shit!” He says, his hands moving to cup Serizawa’s jaw, his thumb swiping at Serizawa’s face and coming away bloody.

“Did you realise” Serizawa’s head swims, like he’s going to faint again, “she didn’t blink at all”

“Who? The old lady?”

“Yeah. Also she stopped talking to me the moment Hana came into the room”

“I don’t like Hana” Reigen says, wiping the blood from Serizawa’s face with a tissue, now, “it feels like she’s leading us round in circles rather than actually trying to help”

“Both of them” Serizawa says, his voice hazy as he feels sleep start to overwhelm him, “need to lay off on the incense. Their houses stink of it”

“Incense?”

“I could smell it burning”

Serizawa feels tiredness so bone-deep that he can feel himself being dragged into sleep as soon as he lays on his bed, above the covers, fully dressed.

*

He knows he’s dreaming because everything is hazy and slow. He’s in his bathroom, again, and Reigen is there, standing between his legs. The sound of the razor rasping against Serizawa’s skin is so loud it fills the corners of the room. His breath hitches every time he feels the blade slide across his face, and Reigen has a fiery, intense look in his eyes that’s doing nothing to quell the heat coiling in Serizawa’s pelvis.

“Do you love me?” Reigen whispers and his voice is quiet but loud at the same time and sends electric shivers down Serizawa’s spine.

“Yes” he grinds out, canting his hips forward, trying and failing to find any friction, “yes”

Reigen moves in impossibly close, “flowers” he says, running his thumb over Serizawa’s eye.

“What?” Serizawa pants, still incredibly turned on and confused. The room shifts sideways.

Then, he is Tsubaki again. Rage and grief fill his mind, it hits him like a train.

He stares at Mamoru’s lifeless body, and feels the rage ebb out of him.

When he looks up at the cracked mirror, Tsubaki’s face has returned to normal. She has streaks of tears down her scratched cheeks and she turns her eyes to the girl, who is still alive, but breathing shallowly.

“You shall feel the pain I’ve felt” Tsubaki says, reaching out a hand towards her.

The girl wheezes, coughs, and a petal flutters out from between her lips.

*

“I can’t get hold of Hana” Reigen says, as soon as Serizawa steps into the office and takes a seat on the client sofa, his brow furrowed and his tie loose, as if he’s been pulling at the knot, “I’ve called, I’ve emailed, nothing”

Serizawa tries to shake off the dream. The smell of burnt toast permeates his nostrils and he thinks about the night they went to Hana’s house to exorcise Tsubaki, how strange it all felt. He remembers the way her body melted away at the slightest brush of his powers, it was all so easy, too easy.

He sits up straight so quickly that Reigen turns to look at him with a start.

“She did it on purpose” Serizawa says, everything clicking into place, “I wasn’t cursed by Tsubaki”

“I think you hit your head when you passed out” Reigen says, “have you not been paying attention the last few days?”

Serizawa looks him dead in the eye, “I wasn’t cursed by Tsubaki” he repeats, slowly, “I was cursed by Hana”

*

They’re in the car, Reigen managed to tip the driver enough money to go just the wrong side of the speed limit.

“You’re sure Hana is the one behind it all?”

“She’s psychic, I can’t believe I didn’t see it before” Serizawa says, “Tsubaki, the exorcism, all of it was fake. Tsubaki didn’t die when she was in the grips of the curse, she died later, after passing it on. Hana needed someone with psychic abilities to pass the curse along to, so she lured us there by hiring us”

“Bitch!” Reigen exclaims, slamming his fist against the car door. The driver looks at then through his rear-view with a furrowed brow but says nothing, just drives faster.

*

Hana’s house is dark when they get there. Serizawa blasts the door open and she freezes, her hands in a suitcase. She stands up straight and looks at them. There’s something different about her now, in a white button-up and jeans, her hair not in the neat bun she had before, but falling in loose waves over her shoulders. She smirks her red-lipsticked mouth at them.

“So, you figured it out” she says, “but it’s too late, I knew you two wouldn’t be able to get your shit together in time”

“It was all fake” Serizawa says, “you must be very powerful, to be able to conjure up the ghost and the old lady like that”

“The old lady was fake!?” Reigen yelps and Hana laughs a cruel laugh.

“Of course she was”

“Was all of it a trick?” Serizawa asks.

“Tsubaki was my mother” she says, “and I inherited more from her than that disgraceful curse! I had to find a psychic to pass it on to, just like she did” she sighs, “I wouldn’t have even had to work so hard if you hadn’t threatened me with your lawyers, but it looked like killing time by feeding you those stories worked like a charm”

Reigen smirks, “there were no lawyers, lady. But thanks for helping us figure out all your bullshit”

She shrieks, lifts her hands and throws a shockwave at them. Serizawa uses his own powers to plant his feet, but Reigen gets pushed back and hits the wall with a yelp.

“Reigen!” Serizawa shouts, his voice hoarse and his breath ragged, and Hana laughs again.

“There’s no point in whatever this is” she says, gesturing between Serizawa and herself, “you’ll be dead in no time”

He rushes over to Reigen while she’s speaking, and kneels beside him. Reigen groans.

“My back” he says, trying to sit up and flopping back against the wall.

“It’s okay” Serizawa says, softly, “I know what I need to do, now” he turns, frowning, to face Hana. She’s still smiling a triumphant smile, “you used Tsubaki against me” he says, throwing his arm out towards her, “but she was helping me all along” Hana’s eyes widen and her smile drops, she takes a step back.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about” she snarls, her dark aura flickering around her like flames licking the air.

“She showed me. I don’t need my feelings returned” Serizawa says, “because I can just pass the curse on…and I’m giving it back to you”

He closes his eyes, thinks of Reigen, and Tsubaki, and all the times he’s been hurt in his life. He thinks about Hana, desperate, her feelings, her love not returned so she resorted to passing on the curse to him. He channels all of it, all the love and the rage, and feels it exit his body.

He screams as it rips from him, and Hana is screaming too.

When he cracks his eyes open he sees her choking, her body twisting as branches and thorns stab and grow their way out of her skin. She screams as her flesh tears, the thorns dragging her skin apart. Her eyes and mouth bleed and her breath is short and ragged, vomiting out full roses. She locks her bleeding eyes with his, wide and scared and furious, and they bug out, impossibly large, until red roses push through her sockets with a sickening crunch that makes Serizawa flinch and turn away, then her body contorts once more, and she stills, looking more rose-bush than human.

*

Serizawa wakes up again, blinking in the bright light of the Spirits and Such office.

“You have got to stop doing that” Reigen says, sitting at the end of the couch by Serizawa’s feet, “passing out this much can’t be good for you”

“…Hana…” Serizawa tries to speak but his throat feels like it’s on fire.

Reigen snorts, “that bitch is dead” he says, but his bravado is fake, he looks unsettled. The image of Hana contorted in impossible ways with thorns and rose stems breaking through every inch of her skin is burned into Serizawa’s memory too.

“Did you mean it?” Reigen says after a while, his eyes shifty, “that you don’t need your feelings returned”

Serizawa purses his lips, sits up a little, “I guess so. I feel happy now that you know, but I don’t expect anything” he says, and finds that he means it.

“What if” Reigen looks at a point somewhere over Serizawa’s shoulder, his hand moves to Serizawa’s ankle and rests there, “what if I do…like you back?”

Serizawa feels his face break into a grin, “that would be fine too” he says, and Reigen nods.

“Okay” he says, “okay”

Serizawa laughs, and pulls Reigen down into a kiss, and his body feels light, and his breath comes easy.