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Serizawa liked Dimple, but he didn’t quite know what to make of him.
During slow hours in the office with Reigen, the spirit flitted about, full of energy and endless commentary. Always bursting with criticisms--and words always genuine, however sharp.
With Kageyama, he was a bit quieter, sulkier. It reminded Serizawa of a doberman, maybe, or one of the tiger mothers who skulked in the trees behind their babies on the nature programs he’d taken to watching. Every now and then, Dimple would interject with some unnecessary bit of advice, muttered half-heartedly (usually to be ignored or calmly declined). When Dimple did allow himself the honesty of showing the boy his love, it was tough, cackled out with a toothy grin and a ruffle of his bowlish black hair. And with Tome, Dimple argued, back-and-forth banter not unlike that he shared with Reigen.
Behind all their backs--sometimes clearly addressing Serizawa, sometimes seemingly just waxing softly to himself--Dimple was transparent, peppering on about how something Kageyama had said made him laugh, how excited he was to spend the night at Reigen’s to binge the new crime documentary they’d been hooked on. Dimple was secretive with his kindnesses when it came to all these people he knew so well.
But Serizawa, it seemed, was the exception.
When Serizawa walked in the office door every morning, Dimple fluttered close just to say hello. When Serizawa laughed at one of Dimple’s many wisecracks, Dimple puffed out his proverbial chest as if he’d won the lottery for the rest of the day. It was off-putting at first--hell, it was off-putting now, considering the about-face Dimple made when he’d eventually return to his snappish conversations with Reigen.
But when Serizawa was feeling anything less than stellar, Dimple was there, too. Silent, radiating sympathy.
He woke up one morning from a nightmare undusted and pulled off the shelf: something about losing control, concrete cracking and opening in a gaping maw to swallow him whole. Serizawa seized in his sheets when his eyes snapped open to a plain white ceiling, the familiar sights of his bedroom and the sounds of the street down below.
He allowed himself the ten minutes before his alarm was to sound for a moment of weakness, head in hands as he sat on the side of the bed and wept.
How frail of him, how foolish. He washed his face and hair bitterly, breakfasted and dressed and avoided the mirror.
Coward, coward. One year out; he was better now, he wasn’t supposed to falter like this. Breaking down, if briefly, was going to put him in a sour mood for the rest of the day--the week, maybe, unless he could rack up his growth again and prove that things were amended now.
Dimple and Reigen seemed to be in a light mood amongst themselves when he walked in; a rarity that made him all the crabbier. Dimple lounged on his employer’s desk, hands waving about in meaningless gesticulations as they jokingly pondered the best way to go about a job that had just come in.
Dimple asked if Serizawa wanted to see it, and Serizawa said no, he’d better get started on the paperwork he’d slacked on yesterday. Voice riding on the spiny back of a growl. He cursed his transparency. Dimple and Reigen hushed their chatter to silence.
Reigen worked, Serizawa worked, Dimple paced through the air.
Every few moments, the spirit would inch closer to Serizawa’s desk.
Serizawa, who didn’t deserve sympathy, even if it came from this strange, ignorant party. As if he knew how it felt to break his stride; he always seemed to be brimming with confidence, even in those rare moments of softness.
Dimple was barely two feet from the desk now, and he opened his mouth, some sickeningly piteous syllable on his tongue, surely--and Serizawa stood, looked towards Reigen.
“Could I bum a cigarette?”
Reigen blinked away from his work, looking between Dimple and Serizawa with uncertainty painting his features.
“I didn’t realize you smoked.”
“Not often,” Serizawa said.
“Um…” Reigen met Dimple’s eyes for a moment. “Sure, yeah.”
Dimple gaped as Reigen pulled a pack from the depths of one of his desk drawers. “Reigen,” he said. Just that.
“Relax; I keep ‘em on hand for emergencies. Look, I haven’t even opened them. Here you are, Serizawa.” He held out the tobacco for Serizawa to take, and Serizawa did so hastily, hurried out of the office and into the building’s stairwell. Up one, two flights, out onto the roof where he gasped for breath in the cold morning air.
He stepped up to the rail, glanced down at the earth below, and stuck the cigarette between his lips.
Damn. In his impatience, he’d forgotten to ask for a--
“Light?”
Dimple hovered beside him.
Serizawa sighed and nodded, shielded the spirit’s tiny fingers beneath his own as they flicked and conjured a little green flame. The end of Serizawa’s cigarette crisped to embers. He leaned back, inhaled deeply, breathed smoke into the wind.
“Did Reigen send you up to ensure I didn’t make the jump?”
“No,” Dimple replied, soft voice incredulous, “but now you’ve got me worried I should.”
“Don’t be silly,” Serizawa muttered. To himself, if anything: “Things haven’t gotten
that
bad.”
“But they are… bad,” Dimple prompted him, dipping minutely closer.
Serizawa looked at him, the worried crease in his brow, apple cheeks downturned by a frown. He never looked at Reigen that way, even when the man came in with red around his eyes or the last night’s liquor and vomit on his breath. Matter-of-factly, Dimple would push into the back of Reigen’s head, pull him into the office restroom to wash up or lean back in his seat and engage in a long internal conversation that put them both in a sort of fugue state. It was businesslike, almost; Serizawa couldn’t imagine Dimple’s words with Reigen were anywhere near as tentative and gentle as those he heard now.
“Dimple,” Serizawa asked in a sigh, ignoring Dimple’s prying, “why are you so kind to me?”
Dimple blinked.
“Because I like you,” the spirit said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Serizawa scoffed. “To say you
like
Reigen or Shigeo would be a drastic understatement. Is it because you think I’m too much of a baby to take the biting wit you show them?”
“Of course not,” Dimple hissed.
“You pity me.”
Dimple opened his mouth to argue, then shut it, contrarian frown softening to something far sadder.
“You don’t know all that much about me, do you?” he said.
Serizawa took a shallow drag from his cigarette. “No. I guess not.”
Dimple looked out over the skyline, lips curling into a melancholy smile. “When I woke up dead, so to speak, I didn’t have a single memory of my life. It made it all the worse knowing, in spite of that, what it meant to be human: I remembered the way society and language functioned; I remembered love, celebration, religion, sex--I couldn’t connect to any of it; I couldn’t remember experiencing any of those things. And the spirit world doesn’t work anywhere near similarly, save a few vague parallels; I was starting from scratch with all these disconnected concepts I couldn’t use, nor recall in any meaningful way.”
Serizawa twiddled the cigarette between two fingers.
“And how do you think it felt to wake up with human binaries so clearly in mind, but no features to suggest either end of the supposed spectrum?” Dimple cracked. “When I say I started from scratch, I’m really not kidding!”
Serizawa allowed himself a weak chuckle.
“I… I had to reinvent myself. Decide who I was with nothing to go off but these stupid red spots.”
“I like your spots,” Serizawa said softly. Failing to fight his appreciative smile, Dimple carried on.
“Naming yourself is something that means the world to so many people. Spirits, even, especially when they can only really be themselves in death. But to
have
to do so, and--suddenly, without even a moment to ease yourself out of who or what you once were--that’s terrifying. Every now and then I still feel like I’m… plummeting into nothingness, so fast I don’t have a second to register.”
“Like the Earth’s opening up,” Serizawa whispered, “and swallowing you whole.”
Dimple nodded.
“Simultaneously, I have to deal with being invisible to, isolated from the general populace, and… being under constant scrutiny by the people who
do
see me, having dug myself much too deep into the hole of a new personhood, living with the life I’ve chosen for myself.
“That isn’t to say I’m unhappy,” Dimple added, seemingly as an afterthought. “Theoretically, I could up and change it all again. But I don’t, because there are people in this life I love far too much to upheave, and for some reason, they love who and what I am, too. But it’s hard sometimes, certainly.”
Serizawa stared at Dimple, eyes teary from the steady little vine of smoke creeping from the cigarette in his fingers. He took a drag.
“Maybe if I’d gotten to know you at a different time, things would be different between us,” Dimple murmured. “As it stands now, though, I’m kind to you because we’re alike, and… I think I’m trying to be kind to myself, in some roundabout way.”
A tear slipped down Serizawa’s cheek. Not just the smoke, then, nor the cold--he reached up to thumb it away, sniffling softly. “I could do to take after you.”
“What happened?” Dimple murmured.
“Nothing, really. I had a nightmare, and… felt ashamed of myself for letting it set me off, even after all this time.”
“It’s a vicious cycle, isn’t it?” Dimple agreed. “If Shigeo were here, I think he’d tell you cut yourself some slack. It’s easy, you know, to only commend yourself for forward movement--but your negative emotions are a part of you, too. It’s not fair to expect the opposite and punish yourself when things turn out differently.” Dimple’s eyes rolled up to the cloudy sky, and he laughed. “Heaven knows the kid learned that the hard way.”
Serizawa just nodded, vigorous, wiping at his eyes as he did so.
“It’s good to know I’m not alone,” he whispered, “though I can’t say I expected
you
to be the one in my corner in all this.”
Dimple shrugged. “Isolation digs its claws in wherever it can find a foothold. If things had turned out differently for the others, I’m sure one of them would have ended up here in my place, talking to you.”
“I’m glad it was you,” Serizawa murmured, dropping his cigarette onto the concrete rooftop and smudging it beneath the toe of his loafer. “Not that I needed a reason to like you--rather, a reason to trust that your friendliness wasn’t a sort of condolence.”
“As if you deserve that,” Dimple smirked, turning his nose up in mock haughtiness. “Boo-hoo, you had a bad dream. Everybody’s got ‘em; why should
you
carry a burden for something that even happens to the freakin’
dead
, for Christ’s sake?”
“You too?”
Dimple’s hard smile softened. “I said we were alike, didn’t I?”
Serizawa leaned back against the rail, arms crossed.
“They’re just memories I can’t control in an unconscious state. Spirits miss out on the abstractions the living get to see in their dreams.” Dimple looked out over the dreary morning sky. “They’re monotonous.”
“You don’t talk about them all that often, do you?”
“Not much to tell. Anyone who knows me can guess pretty well what I see.”
Serizawa looked at him awhile, the bittersweet set to his features beneath this silvery sky.
“You don’t have to tell me any more than you see fit,” Serizawa eventually said, “nor all in one sitting, but--I’d like to know you, Dimple. If only to find some solace in having found a like mind.”
Minutely, Dimple smiled at Serizawa as if he were the only being left in the world--rife with relief and kinship. Sometimes he looked at Reigen and Kageyama that way when their backs were turned.
“I usually see another evil spirit named Mogami. I’m sure you’ve heard a little about him from Shigeo,” Dimple began.
They spoke for a long time. When the clouds finally broke, releasing their hail of silver raindrops down upon the city, Dimple and Serizawa went back inside to find Reigen on his way out, looking for them. For the most part, Dimple proceeded to stay near Reigen for the rest of the day, affectionate and seeming to vy for the familiarity of his occasional touch.
But he looked over to Serizawa every now and then--and whenever their eyes met, the spirit smiled.
Serizawa smiled back.