*horror music plays*
A/N: I LIIIIIIIIVE! *brushes off ashes* So I'm super tardy to the fandom, I know, but better late than never, eh? Please ready your Ghost Hunt BINGO cards; it's another "Mai has disappeared/Mai is dead" story. BOOM! First stamp is a freebie! BUT (EVERYBODY, CALM DOWN, FOR I HAVE A "BUT"), I got tired of Mai contracting amnesia, of Mai running from Naru, and ESPECIALLY of Naru dropping all contact with Mai over the years. Naru is so bull-headed and persistent when he cares about someone (the entire Ghost Hunt series had him tracking Gene's body, for Satan's sake!), and he obviously gives a rat's ass about Mai enough to speak so informally towards her, to save her, and even to comfort her on more than one occasion. I feel it's still within Naru's character to pursue Mai if he got wind that she had fallen on hard times or disappeared completely, so I'm giving you a mystery wrapped in a cliche. Please forgive me for and do your best to ignore any plot holes you might encounter.
Things to note: The way psychometry is explained and used in this fic is that visions are shown of an object's history, causing more strain on the psychic the further back they probe. I would like to explain the instance of Naru knowing of Gene's death through psychometric visions while touching clothes that were nowhere near Gene at the time of his death, as a sort of psychic twin-bond sprinkled with some psychometry.
Genres: mystery, romance (MUCH later), and a sprinkle of drama
Disclaimer: only saying it once… I don't own Ghost Hunt.
Summary: The local papers reported that, in her recklessness to save a life, Taniyama Mai had died a gruesome and fiery death. A survivor hailed her as a hero. They saw the certificate, accepted the news, and mourned before her grave. There is always a skeptic.
Prologue:
Their Abrupt Separation
SPR had received a request from Kujukuri. Naru, Lin, and Yasuhara packed up the equipment before a pouting Mai. "Ah! Stupid entrance exams! Why did we have to get a case now of all times?" she agonized.
Yasuhara laughed in the face of her misery as he packed. Lin silently kept to his task of loading the van. Naru was the only one to actually answer her, "If you weren't so dumb, you could have probably come with us, but an idiot like you needs as many chances to test into university as you can get, Mai."
"WHAT?!" Mai shouted indignantly. Naru looked at her from down his nose, and she scrunched her face in displeasure. She stuck out her tongue before diving back into her textbook. Her lamentations were quickly replaced with grumbles as she loudly scribbled down more notes to prove that she was studying. "Like I need more than one… okay, maybe two tries…." Half an hour later, a shadow fell over her book and notes. Mai glared up at Naru. "What now?"
"You'll still need to come in to accept calls and listen to messages, but you can study with the heater on." Mai's eyes widened. She was slightly taken aback by his generosity. He handed her a list and a spare set of keys. "We're running low on some supplies, so restock them while you're at it. Oh, and get some more tea leaves, black; none of that flavored or fruit compost that you and Matsuzaki seem to favor."
"Compost!" Mai huffed. She folded her arms and turned her head away. "How dare you! I'll have you know that strawberry and raspberry tea is super delicious!"
Naru glared at her as if she had personally insulted him. "It's a waste of money; just buy juice if you want something with fruit."
"Boss, we're ready when you are!" Yasuhara called from the door.
Naru kept his eyes steady on Mai. "Just restock the office according to the list. We'll be back within a week's time, so do try not to lose us any clientele." He smoothly slid away from her and to the door. Mai stuck out her tongue at his back and almost bit herself in withdrawing it when he paused at the open doorway to shoot her a warning glare. "Oh, and don't forget to turn off the heater and lights and to lock the door each time you leave. If I even think you left anything on overnight, it's coming out of your pay, as well as anything stolen if you forget to lock up."
He closed the door just as Mai threw a notebook at it. "I KNOW!"
Yasuhara kept Mai updated through their group chat on LINE with Takigawa, Masako, John, and Ayako. Naru and Lin both did not have the app and refused to download it. In their down time, Yasuhara and Takigawa sent her funny stickers and memes, John had his encouraging messages ever since she told them about her needing to study, Masako scolded her for slacking, and Ayako reminded her to rest and eat well. On the first day of the case, she sent selfies of her studying. She even took one of her with a box printed with pink swirls and bright red berries and a steaming cup of tea, requesting that Yasuhara show Naru to spite him.
When her boss personally called her to reprimand her for frivolous spending, she confessed that she used her own money and laughed at him even as he hung up in the midst of her guffawing. She had been thinking about inviting them to hang out in the office when she got an update from the chat: Naru had called in Takigawa, John, Masako, and Ayako to join the Kujukuri case. Apparently, the genius had deemed the situation serious enough to call everyone in by the second day. There were a lot of road trip selfies from Takigawa, Yasuhara, and Ayako. The chat was loaded with them when she checked after the first day they met up.
On her third day alone, and her first round of exams, she sent what she thought were comical before and after selfies. Masako pointed out that she just looked tired in both pictures. It was on the fourth day and the second and final round of her entrance exams that she sent a picture of herself, obviously taken by someone else, posing victoriously in front of her school along with a message:
15:22
Just got out! It's finally over! \(^0^)/
I'm gonna drop by the office and then go home.
After that, the chat was dead from her end. Mai did not send another message, photo, or sticker. She did not reply to any other texts, nor did she pick up her phone. In fact, her phone had been disconnected when Takigawa had tried to call her. Yasuhara and the irregular SPR members grew concerned. When told of what happened, Naru didn't even glance up but reasoned that, "The idiot probably did something to break her phone, or lost her charger. She doesn't have a landline, and she most likely doesn't have our numbers memorized or written down."
His logic calmed them slightly. However, their worry was still present, and Takigawa and Ayako not-so-subtly urged Naru to stop showing off and hurry it up. Luckily, Naru's title as a genius was no empty thing. He closed the case late into the fifth day, mostly to end the pestering, and the team spent the evening driving back to Tokyo. A ninety minute drive stretched to two hours thanks to traffic and road reconstruction, and it was grueling. Takigawa could not stop fidgeting, Ayako kept checking her phone every other minute, John was clutching a rosary to his chest, and Yasuhara sat quietly alongside a stony-faced Masako.
Over twenty-four hours passed, and Mai still had not contacted any of them.
It was well past midnight by the time they returned. They went straight to her apartment and knocked on the door for a solid minute before her landlady came, shouting irate reprimands on her way up the stairs. When she saw on which door they were knocking, she stopped mid-tirade and beckoned them downstairs with a sullen face. She went straight to her stack of paper recyclables and handed Naru the top newspaper after flipping a few pages. She locked the door behind her, before they even read it. Takigawa banged on the door in confusion, the others watching and wondering. Naru began the short walk back to the car as he read. He quietly hailed a taxi in the chaos and left without a word to anyone.
They finally noticed his disappearance when Lin called out for him and received no response. Naru did not answer Lin's messages, nor any of his three calls. Lin lied and told everyone that Naru went back to the office to finish some paperwork and bid them a rushed goodnight.
Lin drove straight to the office and was relieved to see that the lights were on. Naru's door was closed, but Lin could hear him typing. It was strange that he was hitting the keys loud enough to be heard through the door since he was usually so quiet and his fingers light. Lin scanned the sitting area. On the table was a white and pink box of teabags next to an abandoned cup of half-drunk tea. Across one of the chairs he found the folded newspaper they had received from Mai's landlady. He set his keys down and picked the paper up, flipping through the pages. There were articles about sports, a concert… and a house fire? Lin paused and felt the blood drain from his face; a sickening feeling crawled up his spine. There was a picture of the charred ruins of what used to be a house, a family photo consisting of an older gentleman with two girls of different schooling age, and Mai's school photo.
His good eye zoomed through the article, catching key words – Yamasaka family, house, fire, Taniyama Mai, body, burned, recognition, but nothing stuck beyond them. His mind was overworking itself in its futile attempt to process the overwhelming information. He frantically flipped through the newspaper, absently hoping to find more details on the incident. The assistant stopped when he found a square of missing information, neatly cut out from the obituaries. His hand went to his mouth as the something chilly shot into his chest and bloomed. He didn't want to jump to conclusions, but he also couldn't help himself. His mind shut down. She wasn't… No… She couldn't be!
Lin was startled from his shock when Naru smoothly strode out of his office. The younger man said nothing but held tightly to a square newspaper clipping as he slipped on his coat and threw his scarf round his neck. Lin could hear him mumbling to himself, "I told her to turn off the heater and to lock the door if she were to leave. She's lucky nothing seems to be missing. I'll need to have a word with her after I find her."
The older man ran to and stopped him, laying a firm hand on Naru's shoulder. He was incredibly tense. "Oliver," he said in English, "where are you going?"
Naru kept his eyes on the door. Nothing in his body language showed that he acknowledged his assistant, but he replied in Japanese, "To find Mai." He turned head to look back at the older man. His voice had been clipped and impatient, and his eyes held a hard edge to them. The rest of his body was still, disturbingly so, and there was a tightness in his fine jaw. "Let me go, Lin," he demanded. There was a silent threat that he would use his PK should he be denied.
Lin held their eye contact, searching him a little more. Then, with his hand still planted on Naru, told him, "It's cold. Allow me to brew some tea for the road. Just wait, and I'll drive us." The younger man narrowed his eyes suspiciously, but nodded and turned his head back to the door, refusing to budge. Lin collected the teacup and the box of strawberry and raspberry teabags from the coffee table. He dumped the old tea, and left the cup for later washing.
No one in the office would drink such tea anymore, so he stepped on the bin's pedal. The lining rustled softly as the metal lid sprung open. He was about ready to empty the teabags into the bin when Naru stopped him. "What are you doing? I know it's complete rubbish, but if we toss out her compost, the idiot will demand compensation. Just set it in one of the cupboards for her."
Lin froze. The box of dried and bagged fruit weighed five kilos heavier in his hand. He swallowed the saliva pooling thickly in his mouth. Naru's dark eyes were staring at him, waiting for him to obey and challenging him to disobey. The assistant silently nodded and released the pedal, the lid falling back over the bin with a quiet thud. Naru's eyes were glued to the box as he watched as it made its safe voyage from Lin's hand to a shelf.
Naru exhaled audibly through his nose in approval before turning back around to the door, waiting. Lin quickly boiled up some water and grabbed two boxes. He filled their thermoses with boiled water and dropped a tea bag in each, discreetly snapping open two capsules and dumping the powdery contents into Naru's thermos before slipping the red and white casings into his pocket for later disposal. The over-steeping would have Naru complaining, but it would to disguise the extra bitterness. Lin turned off the heater and grabbed his keys.
At the sound of jangling metal, Naru turned off the light and opened the door. "We've wasted too much time," he stated. "Let's go."
Lin checked his phone's battery and swirled the thermoses around before stowing them away in his bag. He snatched a bottle of water, just in case, and followed his charge out the door. In the car, Naru frowned at the heat of his tea. Lin passed him the water to help speed up the cool down. He sighed when he was finally able to sip at his tea without burning his tongue and directed Lin down the road. His face scrunched slightly to show his displeasure in drinking the strong tea, but he said nothing. They drove along in a straight line for ten minutes. As they approached a four-way intersection, Lin asked, "Which way?"
No answer. He glanced over at the passenger seat and found Naru fast asleep. The pills had kicked in faster than he had expected. Lin sighed in relief and went straight for a few meters before pulling off to the side. He took out his phone and went through his contacts. He had five people to call immediately, but he didn't know who should receive the bad news first. Definitely not Hara Masako... Yasuhara? Brown? Matsuzaki?
His fingers moved on their own and the phone rang once, twice, until, "Hello?"
At hearing the voice, Lin felt his throat constrict. What was happening? "H-H…" He coughed; the dryness of it irritated his throat. Both his eyes and his nose burned. Was it a delayed response? He rubbed a hand over his mouth before clenching his eyes shut.
"Lin, did you find Naru?" the inquisitive voice asked.
Lin leaned back against his seat and turned to look at the sleeping man beside him. "T-Takigawa-san…" he said softly, shakily, "I need you to help me… tell the others…."
"Sure... Tell them what, exactly?"
The heat from the car mixed with that of his roiling emotions, so Lin exited the car. He slammed the door behind him with a little more force than necessary and shivered in the bracing winter night. The cold helped to clear his head for a bit, but he still felt unsteady and fell back against the car. Without the distraction of having to keep an eye on a conscious Naru, the weight of the news he planned to deliver was setting in and sticking his tongue to the roof of his dry mouth.
"Lin… what's going on?" Takigawa's voice went from helpful to wary.
"Taniyama-san was involved in a fire."
There was a pause and a sharp inhale from the other end of the phone, "… W…W-What?"
"The newspaper," he started explaining, "talked about a fire. Her photo was in it. She was in the house after it caught on fire. I went to check the obituaries, but it was missing an entry. The article mentioned a body burned beyond recognition, and… I think it was her." It all came out like water from a broken dam. He couldn't stop himself; he had to tell someone because Naru did not seem like he had been in a listening, or even rational, mood when they had left the office.
"Wait, Lin, you can't be serious!" Takigawa shouted. "Slow down, man!" He was panicked, and his voice hitched, "Please… you can't be serious…. This can't be happening."
Lin peered into the car at Naru. Even asleep, he was still gripping something, a clipping. Lin opened the door and climbed over his seat, ignoring the incoherent rambling coming from his phone. He gently pried the piece of paper from Naru's hand and unfolded it. He gave a soft cry at seeing its contents.
"What is it now?!"
"I..." Lin swallowed heavily, "I found… Naru… had the missing obituary." He turned on the car's lights to get a better look at it.
"… No…"
"It says she… died, about… two days ago…."