Intersect
Disclaimer: Ghost Hunt was created by Fuyumi Ono and published (anime) by J.C. I am in no way affiliated with any of the above-mentioned individuals/organizations. This is a fan-made derivative work in which I gain no material profit, only entertainment.
Warnings: Spoilers, and lots of them. If you don't know that Ghost Hunt novels exist, you probably shouldn't read this. For those of you who have read the novels: I haven't. This is mostly speculative divergent timeline-esque fiction of very little redeeming value. Basically a brainstorm in fic format.
Summary: Mai, Naru, and ghosts: years later, and a portrait of things to come.
Prelude: Still Life in Colour
There is a photograph of them on the windowsill. It is something Mai usually overlooks, only pausing for a moment's reflection when she dusts between photo-frames and the pink crystal vase holding the plastic flowers (nothing like a real flower, which is beautiful and prefect and dead within the week). She notices it no more than she notices her chair, or carpet, or the pens scattered over her desk, or any other piece of furniture she'd collected over the years; it simply is, and she never really thinks about it until she does.
Except that's a lie, sort of.
Memory is a funny like that. Sometimes Mai will be sitting in a café sipping coffee and watching the cars go by when she sees a group of girls – high school girls in their uniforms, with the hems of their skirts rolled up to show off their young, flawless legs – chattering, skipping over the sidewalk with the gaiety of youth. Sometimes this makes her smile, and sometimes it makes her spill her coffee. Mai sits and thinks of a different group of girls, girls who used to sit in a classroom and tell ghost stories and giggle over cute boys. They'd waited for her once, sitting on a park bench well into the night.
Mai wonders idly if those girls, too, wait for their friends well into the middle of the night; if they hold hands and skip down the sidewalk grading boys ("He's definitely a nine!" "No way! Get your eyes checked! Six at most! Six!" Will the both of you cut it out? He's looking at us!"); she wonders where they will be in another five, six, seven years, and if they will keep in touch.
Human beings, she thinks, are a marvel. If she lives until she is a hundred and fifty, she still doesn't believe she will understand them at all. She doesn't know if this is a good thing, or a bad thing, but she does know that it just is, and so she finishes her coffee and doesn't think too hard on it. She pays, leaves a tip; goes home. And just like that, the shutters of her mind shut on a piece of her life, and she is too busy thinking about tomorrow's deadlines to think much about people she doesn't talk to anymore, not really.
But it's true that if her mind skips forward, it also skips backwards. A photograph can take her back; a cup of tea, a flash of blonde hair – all these things sometimes leave her standing on a street corner until the crowd around her moves forward, across the street and onwards; in a moment, she too, moves on.
Today Mai dusts carefully around the silver frame and smiles absently back at the eight faces staring forever frozen in digital colour. The clock hanging on the wall tick-tick-ticks at her to hurry up with its Cheshire cat grin and Mai obeys, tossing on her coat and grabbing her purse on the way out. Outside, the autumn wind is a little bit blustery, a little flirty, swirling leaves around her ankles and toying with the ends of her scarf.
It's just another day in the world. Mai smiles at the sky (blue and beautiful, and not a cloud in sight) and moves forward.
Next update:
Chapter 1: Mnemonic Device