Chapter Text
Shigeo was never alone. Even when he was by himself in a room or there were no people around outside, he could hear a constant murmuring. For a small child, it was odd enough that no one understood what he was talking about whenever he mentioned it. Even Ritsu couldn’t hear anything when the quiet voices were speaking right over his shoulder.
Eventually, he resorted to simply ignoring them, but this proved to be difficult when he was trying to read or sleep. Once, while alone, he politely requested that they quiet down, but to no avail. He couldn't see them unless he focused really hard on his surroundings, and even then they only appeared to him as small specks of light, floating around without a care and completely unaffected by gravity. The soft voices were always there throughout his life, but he never sought to pursue them or figure out what was going on.
“Well, have you actually heard what they’re saying?” Reigen replied one day when Shigeo asked him about it, followed immediately by “The voices are too weak and small for me to hear, so it's up to you.”
And so, in the silence of his bedroom, in his classroom at school, and even in Reigen’s office, he listened closely to the whispering, and found that they were continuously saying the same things:
“Be careful.”
“Take heed.”
“Stay away.”
“Not safe.”
“Get back.”
Shigeo only wondered whether these were warnings to him personally, or if they were warnings to the people around who came too close to him.