CONTACT
My Rude Awakening

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Ghost Hunt. I wouldn't be writing this if I did.

WARNING: May contain spoilers from the manga and novels, including Akumu no Sumu Ie.

PROLOGUE
When Bickering Gets Old
Published: 06.27.2014, Edited: 09.25.2015

The dynamics between the boss, Oliver Davis, and his former assistant and now part-time investigator, Mai Taniyama, was changing. It had been half a year since Noll (and Lin) returned from England and the pair's regular verbal battles had become stale as of late. Noll did not tease Mai as much as before – or so the rest of SPR thought.

The others were unaware of the fact that Noll started inconveniencing his assistant with unnecessary physical contact, which seemed to set her off the edge and made her blush even more furiously than before. He looked forward to watching her fidget under his gaze afterwards. He thought Mai would take his teasing with a little more finesse and poise, since she was older now, at eighteen years old, and was about to graduate from high school. The only notable improvement to her reaction was the lack of post-contact verbal assault, which made him glad because he did not want the others to find out what he was up to. After all, what he was doing was borderline sexual harassment; he was definitely not looking forward to a lawsuit of that kind, although he might be served one if either Bou-san or Matsuzaki-san heard about this. Noll pondered over her lack of violent reaction and considered for a moment or two that she just might be enjoying this as much as he did.

In all honesty, Noll did not do this simply for his amusement. He was concerned about his assistant and her growing silence. A few months ago, Noll realized that Mai stopped sharing things about her life to the team. She was not as open as she used to be. She was now always on guard whenever he was there and he was constantly distracted because he cannot figure her out anymore. She had become quite skillful in hiding her emotions and her face rarely betrayed what she was really feeling. A part of him was impressed with the girl's progress since she was the type who wore her heart on her sleeve, but the rest of him hated it because he cannot tell what she felt and it bothered him to no end when he cannot read his assistant like he used to. It was not as if he could just ask Mai out for tea and have a heart-to-heart talk with her. That was not his style. He was a man of few words. He would not survive such an emotional talkathon because he admittedly did not possess the necessary skills to comfort her.

He found the solution to his predicament when his hand briefly came in contact with hers while they were setting up the base for one case. His mind was uncharacteristically idle that time, and all of a sudden, flashes of her recent past appeared in his mind upon contact. He froze in place for almost a minute in shock. After recovering from his daze, he realized that he could use this method to find out what was up with Mai. She had not been making sense as of late and Noll was almost desperate to get to the bottom of things because (as much as he hated to admit it – even in his mind) he cannot stop thinking about her and it was significantly reducing his productivity during work hours.

Before he knew it, Noll had already begun doing a series of experiments to prove his hypothesis. He would touch Mai at opportune moments in the most nonchalant or accidental manner that he could pull off. He would then study the images from her past that would pop in his mind. Afterwards, he would lock himself in his office and record the parameters of that particular encounter in his notebook for further analysis.

He begrudgingly acknowledged the fact that it was a pathetic use of his psychometry and that he might even regret doing this in the long run, but his pent up frustration had reached an all-time high. Mai was never in the mood to share anything about her life to anyone so he had no choice but use such roundabout – and not to mention exhausting – way of finding out what was bothering her. He did not understand this new fixation of his so he simply shrugged it off as a way to regain his productivity.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This fic is based on my headcanon on Naru's psychometric abilities. I'm posting the prologue to test the waters (i.e. to find out if it's interesting enough), and if you're curious about it, please do leave a review. Everything – including the "experiments" – will be explained in the future chapters. Just to be clear, the story is set after the case in the Ghost Hunt sequel, Akumu no Sumu Ie.

EDIT: I fixed some minor grammatical errors pointed out by my editor (my sister). All succeeding chapters were also edited, but no changes were done on the story details.