Ghostly Hauntings:
Summary: As part of ghost hunting society Mai investigates a high school and finds herself being haunted by the ghost of a teenager called Naru who refuses to leave her alone until she finds out what happened to him. The journey brings them closer together and she soon finds out that not everything is as it seems with the spirit. AU. Naru x Mai.
Chapter 1:
Mai struggled to juggle all the coffee cups she was holding and open the door to the club room at the same time. She hated being on drink duty. The designated person was supposed to be Yasuhara who hadn't turned up at the society for a few weeks, apparently because he was studying.
Their club hadn't been considered popular enough to get one of the better room so they couldn't make their own drinks. Instead one of them would go to the coffee shop and lug all the drinks up the stairs to the top floor. They rotated so it was fair.
"Here's your frappe, Keiko-chan," she managed to put the cardboard cup down without spilling everything. "This one's Michiru's iced coffee."
She handed the relevant plastic container to Michiru and moved onto the next person.
"I have your English tea here, John," she smiled at their blond and male member.
"Thank you, Taniyama-san."
That left her with the green tea. She sat down at the table and checked for any sign that they were expecting clients. John was reading the bible, Keiko was texting on her phone and Michiru was taking a selfie. Clearly they hadn't taken any appointments whilst she had been waiting in the coffee shop on the other side of the campus.
"No clients then?" she asked anyway.
Keiko looked up from her phone. "Nope."
Mai sighed and switched her attention to looking out the window. It was a beautiful day outside with a blue cloudless sky and a temperature that was comfortably warm. When she had started university she had imagined joining an exciting society and spending lots of time doing fun activities.
Instead she had joined a society that did nothing. They were the paranormal society and did consultations for people that believed they were being haunted by ghosts. So far only five people had come and those people had been imagining it.
Mai would have left the society last month, but she had paid the membership fee and wouldn't get a refund so she was determined to get value for her money. She took out a book she had taken out of the library and settled down for a read. They were just going to do nothing again for the next two hours. It had been the agenda for the past four meetings, do nothing and hope a client turns up before the time is up.
Something happened when she was getting to the good part of the book. The murderer was about to revealed and then Keiko squealed. Mai got a fright and accidentally dropped the book.
"Don't do that, you gave me a fright," Michiru whined. "Is it a spider again?"
Keiko glared at her. "No, it's a case!"
Mai allowed herself to feel a little excited. Maybe they were going to do something fun? She stood up and went over to Keiko.
"I was texting my brother and he told me that his school is haunted. He begged us to do something about it because everyone is too scared to stay and study after school."
"Isn't your brother in high school?" Mai questioned.
"Yes, he is in his final year," Keiko replied as her phone buzzed again. "I have another message. He says that he hasn't seen it, but he knows people that have. It's probably because he goes to cram school instead of staying behind."
It was beginning to sound like the start of a good mystery to solve. Mai's mind started to buzz with the possibilities. Maybe they could do an exorcism or a summoning, they could use the EVP recorder that had just been gathering dust in the corner.
"Should we take it on?" John asked.
"We don't have anything to lose by taking it on," Michiru said.
"I agree, if it's turns out to be nothing except mass hysteria so be it. We haven't lost anything apart from club hours," Keiko agreed.
"We can still hone our investigation skills as well," Mai answered.
"That's right," Keiko grinned. "We will benefit from this case either way. I'll call my brother and get some more information from him before we make arrangements. Someone should inform Yasuhara about it as well."
Within half an hour they had all of the necessary information they needed for preliminary investigation of the case. The ghost had never been seen before 5 o'clock, it was a male ghost wearing a school uniform, so far no one had been close enough to confirm it was the uniform of the school. It didn't appear every day, there wasn't an apparent pattern yet to its appearances. None of the teachers had seen it yet either.
There was only one question left.
How were they supposed to investigate it?
This was the main source of the debate between the four of them, all with very differing opinions.
"We are going to have to break in at night," Michiru said with a suspiciously eager glint to her eyes.
"We shouldn't break the law. If we get caught, the society will be closed down and we will have criminal charges on our records," John protested.
John was the conscience of the group. He was always fair and above board. Keiko and Michiru were the opposite so a contrast was very necessary.
"We just have to not get caught then," Keiko retorted. "Mai, what do you think?"
All three of them turned to her and Mai groaned. She had become the person that settled all of the society disagreements when Yasuhara was absent.
"We don't have much choice in the matter. The ghost comes out late so we can't just visit the school during lesson hours on some pretext. Perhaps we should just use your brother to investigate instead."
Mai really didn't know what else to say. Of course Michiru waved it away.
"No way are we putting this in the hands of my brother- he's an idiot. We have to find another way."
"We could ask the school for permission," John suggested.
This sensible sounding suggestion got shot down immediately by all three of them. Mai shook her head at him.
"John, I have no idea how it works in Australia, but you can't ask a school to give you access in the evening to investigate ghost occurrences that none of the teachers have seen," Michiru said pityingly.
"Were going to have to break the rules then," Keiko announced. "Let's hope we don't have to go there ever again."
That evening Mai regretted eating dinner whilst she was crouched behind a bush outside the school gate. Her dinner of instant ramen was sloshing uncomfortably around her stomach. The only consolation was that John was probably feeling worse.
She flinched when someone touched her shoulder and whirled round to see Yasuhara, their society president grinning down at her.
"You're so easy to scare."
"Shut up! I could have screamed the place down and revealed everything," she whispered.
It appeared that Yasuhara was able to join them for the evening. She wished Michiru had told her beforehand to avoid the scare.
"I'll give you a leg up over the back wall," he said cheerfully. "The others are all waiting there."
That explained why no one else was crouched behind bushes in uncomfortable positions. They walked around to the street behind the school and as promised Yasuhara gave her leg up so she could climb the wall. It gave her a flashback to the one time where she was late for school and tried to climb the wall only to fail miserably and get caught anyway.
Luckily she managed it this time and landed in a flowerbed. Yasuhara jumped down a few seconds later and made her squeal again.
She felt like she was being glared at and realised that the rest of the club were waiting on the paved path a metre away.
"Don't mind Mai," Yasuhara said in a low voice. "I like scaring her."
"If you two get us caught…" Keiko warned.
Yasuhara shot her a warning look in return and then rapidly changed the subject.
"Well, we are here now. How do we get in?"
Keiko smirked. "I asked my brother to leave a window unlocked for us to climb in. It should be around here somewhere."
Keiko's estimation of 'around here somewhere' turned out to be a little skewed. Mai found the unlocked window around the other side of the building and climbed through first to end up in a very nondescript school corridor. She took out her flashlight from her backpack and shone it around. There were a few posters detailing club events and the school cultural festival, but that was it.
"Where are we?" she asked.
Behind her Keiko was struggling to get her leg over the window frame so Mai helped drag her in.
"We're in the south corridor. The ghost doesn't appear around here. We need to go up the stairs twice and head towards the third year classrooms."
Due to the fact that Mai hadn't attended this school she felt disorientated in an unfamiliar location in very dim light. It was also eerily silent apart from everyone's breathing and it didn't help that it was a cold night which meant that the wind blowing through the corridor from the open window was chilling.
They reached the third floor without any issues apart from John tripping up the stairs in the poor light. The group gathered outside the toilets to discuss how they were going to investigate.
"Some of us have lectures first thing tomorrow so we don't want to be here for too long. We need to split up so we can cover as much ground as possible," Yasuhara said.
The uneven number of them meant that the groups were not well arranged. Michiru paired with Michiru and Keiko with John which left Mai alone.
"I can't do this alone, it's scary," Mai protested. She was now feeling even more terrified than she had been before.
She had assumed they would all stick together and it wouldn't be too bad. Yasuhara caught sight of her white face and took pity on her.
"Mai, you can follow behind us to check for things," he said and Mai breathed a sigh of the relief.
Sometimes having Yasuhara around as a good thing rather than an annoyance like it was most of the time.
Mai followed Yasuhara and Keiko staying a metre behind them to see if there was anything they hadn't seen. It turned out that there was nothing out of place or strange about the art corridor although one of the plaster busts made her jump for a second.
When they passed a classroom Mai saw something out of place through the window in the door and slid open the door for a closer look, fully prepared to call out if there was something.
There was nothing out of place in the classroom and she spent a moment at the back of the room recalling some of her memories of high school. Some of them were good, some were downright embarrassing and some of them she didn't want to recall. Luckily she didn't have a failed confession to a senpai to cringe about.
She turned to go and something materialised at the front of the classroom. Was it the ghost?
The apparition was a male with black hair, pale skin and blue eyes and was wearing a black blazer and trousers. Mai opened her mouth to shout for the others and only a croak came out. Her fear had caused her to lose her voice.
The ghost stared at her directly in the eye and spoke, causing a chill to run down her spine.
"You can see me, can't you?"