A twitching boy—purportedly possessed—is brought onstage, strapped down to a wheelchair. The show's producers tap Kirin Jōdō to do the live exorcism, but he defers to Reigen instead. Reigen resorts to his time-honored and useless Salt Splash technique... but wait. It seems to be working here? This kid is acting. If this is an act, surely all in attendance know this too? He pulls out every flashy move in his arsenal for half an hour until Jōdō reveals to the audience that the child isn't possessed at all. Jōdō, the host, guests and audience then proceed to dismantle him in front of the watching world, shattering his carefully-built reputation in seconds.
This bad news has legs. Inukawa lets Mob in on the buzz: his master is now a laughingstock, but Mob assumes it's part of his shishou's plan.
In the dark, Reigen seethes in his office. He has no plan. All his attempts to contain the media dumpster fire fail, including recruiting the regulars at his local bar as character witnesses. When he gets home one day, the reporters staking out his apartment complex—now a regular occurrence, it seems—harass him into holding a press conference.
It's morning. Reigen sits onstage, blinded by camera flashes. He's drawn a blank: why are these people here again? Ah, right. To rake him further through the muck. In the hail of questions, one he isn't sure how to answer triggers a flashback...
...Three years prior. Reigen is sitting in his office, bored out of his skull, ready to quit again. His door creaks open to reveal a shy, obviously upset little boy who announces that he has psychic powers. He can't control them and is scared. Reigen decides to humor him for a bit and send him home. He serves him some hot tea with a side of life advice (read: bullshit). When he spills his own cup everywhere, the boy halts it in mid-air-splash and returns the steaming liquid to its vessel, giving the no-longer-skeptical man an idea...
Back to the present. Reigen breaks his silence to send a message; the room rumbles in response. Cameras and other eminently breakable objects take flight; the floor under the reporters rolls as if sitting atop an angry seismic fault, filling the air with screams. While the whole room freaks out, Reigen snidely ends the press conference and heads home.
On the way, he encounters a familiar face. A face he hasn't seen in some time...
Tropes appearing in this episode include:
- Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Reigen, implied. He'd apparently left his previous successful career in sales out of boredom. We see him contemplating another career change right before the then 11-year-old Mob walks into his office; he reckons he's become little more than a glorified masseuse at this point. While he seems to be highly skilled at it—judging from the glowing client leaving Spirits and Such—it doesn't satisfy him.
- Jerkass Realization: And hard. Reigen dissociates during the press conference, returning to the first day he met Mob. While he clearly admires the child, Reigen acknowledges that he'd used him for years, that he'd been contributing to Mob's social isolation, and that he'd said some incredibly cruel things to him. He becomes a much kinder and far more respectful boss after this.
- Nice Guy: Mob. After calmly rage-quitting Reigen's employ for an unspecified length of time, he forgives the phony psychic's harsh outburst. Mob tells him that he always knew his shishou was a good guy.
- Reigen was willing to listen to him without judgment, and offer some (actually really good) advice despite not taking his claims of psychic ability seriously at first. That kindness and the emotional space the man has held for Mob since is not lost on the teenager, despite the disrespect he'd endured at Reigen's hands over the years. The phony psychic's bullshit saved Mob's life.
- Vicariously Ambitious: Implied as to why Reigen decides to take Mob on as his apprentice; it's the closest he would come to being special himself.
- Wrong Genre Savvy:
- Reigen—like Jōdō—correctly deduces the possessed kid isn't possessed at all, but fails to realize that the audience isn't in on the joke and that he's not on a fully-scripted show. Cringe ensues.
- Reigen seems to run into this often: despite his years-long association with Mob, who sees spirits all the time, he assumes that the world around him shares his skepticism.
