The Mob (System)

Chapter 10 - Alters: Shigeo & ???%

Reigen Arataka was never a type of person to burn out easily – especially if he found something intriguing. Then, he felt the overwhelming will to expand and experience more, listen more, see more and acknowledge more. That's why it was amazing for him interact with new systems and help them. Every time a new patient stepped into the room, of course welcomed by Reigen's wide, comforting smile, it felt like a different journey. Every system was different. The diversity of them also amazed Reigen. The variety of abuse they went through, the coping mechanisms they built, the type of alters they had in their systems... These elements matched with each other in a way, since all his patients suffered from the same type of a disorder – a childhood trauma related dissociative disorder. But human's soul was yet to be understood by the scientists and Reigen was the one to hope to be the first to achieve it.

This was how he felt now as well, sitting in his favourite armpit and keeping a normal, calmed face. From time to time, he took a sip of his coffee or said something, but now he mostly just listened. Well, he worked as a therapist. He was required to listen and then speak. But first listen.

All the therapy sessions he had with Mob System up until that time were somehow similar. As for the beginning of the therapy with the systems that had just realized they were systems. Now, they were discussing the alters. One by one.

Shigeo was in therapy for over two months now. Time passed quickly and Reigen was quite surprised to realize it. But as for two months, he thought this system really made great improvement. They started communicating more within the system, Shigeo achieved the access to the inner world, Negative slowly but surely tried to understand his host and how he experienced emotions. Musashi accepted the fact that he was in a system.

Everything was going good but not good enough for Reigen to had thought that Mob System was ready to talk about Unknown Percent – their persecutor, who seemed to hold trauma.

However, apparently it was and today wasn't the only therapy session when the Mob System decided to actual say something more about ???%. The first time it happened was a week earlier, when Reigen had been having a session with Shigeo only. At the beginning, they had discussed some situations that had happened in the last few days. Since one of them included ???% and said that he had fronted and had had a panic attack again, Shigeo, for some reason, had decided to continue and speak more about this particular alter.

"Did he react anyhow to things Teruki said to him?" Reigen had asked, after having listened to Shigeo. Kageyama had explained the whole situation – he had been watching a movie with Teru that contained some violence. Being sensitive to this topic as he always was, he hadn't felt entirely comfortable with watching this movie. Teruki had noticed it and said that they could turn it off, but Shigeo had assured him it was okay. Then, according to his words, he had started feeling worse and lightheaded. The world had started getting blurry. The last thing he remembered was Teru turning off the tv and telling him something, while looking into his eyes.

"No" Shigeo had answered. "Teru said that Unknown Percent didn't react. He just crumbled and sobbed, throwing fists in the air. He couldn't breathe and nothing worked, even though Teru was trying to help him ground..."

Reigen had started thinking. Now, knowing what happened, he was even more confused than at the beginning. Even though ???% and White both weren't able to speak, it seemed, and probably both held trauma, they acted somehow different while being upfront. It puzzled him. Unknown Percent didn't seem to be in the front when he was, according to Teru's words. He must have been extremely dissociated at that time, even though he was upfront and was connected to the outside world. At least in a way.

Reigen wanted to ask about what possibly made both of these alters mute. They were trauma holders, therefore he assumed that these two facts were a cause and a result. But he knew it was useless to ask now – trauma processing was yet to begin. It wouldn't be a good choice to start it now – especially since Shigeo didn't hold trauma and the only alters, who Reigen assumed now, did were both non-verbal.