I was going over the scene in ep.07 where Reigen is reflecting before telling Mob he has grown, and I finally noticed that Reigen has his clothes torn in his thoughts…exactly like they were torn by the sword when fighting Claw last season. Which was intially weird to me because Reigen’s words here are as negative as possible, despite that moment where he took the hit being one of his best towards Mob.

And then it hit me, Reigen probably doesn’t know he helped Mob. Reigen likely remembers his involvement as a failure.

The audience knows that it was Reigen telling Mob that he could run away that saved Mob, to the point of him becoming 100% grateful and accidently transferring his powers. But the audience knows because the narration told us so, Reigen was never told this.

For Reigen, that whole mess was one where he went to help some kids in danger, tried to put sense into the villains’ minds and it backfired into pissing them off. He failed so badly Mob was terrified and Reigen had to tell him to run away. And then unknowingly began using up Mob’s powers to little success, needing Shou to step in to save them in the very end.

Perhaps Reigen has come to the conclusion Mob gave him powers to protect him due to being slashed in the back. So as far as Reigen ever knew, he turned out to be another liability Mob had to protect, and nearly doomed them by taking Mob’s powers rather than have Mob deal with it all himself.

He was never aware of how much he saved Mob, and now he considers his involvement in that moment a failure where he held Mob back by being there.