"Are you in love with me, or Gene?"
Naru's harsh voice lashed out at Mai, the surrounding forest suddenly seemed looming, threatening, the big trees leaning in to stop her from getting out.
She stared at the ground, her hand covering her mouth, tears filling her eyes.
"I didn't know it was him," she whispered.
Looking up, she realized that Naru had gone. Mai's eyes widened and she began chasing after him through the forest, calling his name, dodging vines and tripping over tree roots. Naru kept reappearing in her mind, cold eyes flashing, voice like a whip.
"Are you in love with me, or Gene?"
The ground beneath Mai gave away, she instinctively grabbed a nearby tree root and held on her dear life, she began calling for help. Naru appeared, looking down at Mai from the edge of the chasm. She called for him to help, but her voice suddenly began sounding feeble and distant, as though it was coming through a very old speaker. She reached out her hand, but the distance seemed to lengthen tenfold. "Naru!" Mai called, "Naru, please, I'm slipping!" And it was true, with each passing second, Mai lost more of her grip.
Naru simply stood there, grey eyes flashing with unforgiveness. "Naru, please!" Mai pleaded, she was bound to fall any second now.
"Naru?" Mai whispered, tears falling.
Naru still did nothing, all he did was watch.
And Mai fell.
She fell into the endless darkness below, Naru's voice following her all the way down.
"Me, or Gene?"
"Me, or Gene?"
"Me, or Gene?"
"Me, or Gene?"
Things were laughing, striking out at her, lashing out, hitting her on the cheek, the back, the arms, Naru's voice continued to follow her, his voice reverberating and overlapping. It stuck in her head, vibrating around it, like white noise, and with each time he said it, his voice became colder and more cruel.
She was falling, falling, falling, tears fell from her eyes and she felt a splitting pain in her chest, blood started leaking out where her heart was. Mai put her hands on her chest in a desperate attempt to stop the pain, but when she brought them away, there it was, still beating, in her hands.
It was her heart.
Slowly, the pain increased and a crack appeared down the middle. Now she was crying and felt like she would never, no, like she could never stop. Curling into a fetal position, she cried the entire way down, holding her broken, bleeding heart.
Naru's voice kept on tormenting her, following her, becoming more and more cruel.
"Me, or Gene?"
Things were morphing, changing around her, and suddenly, the chasm she was falling through had become complete darkness.
"Me, or Gene?"
She was still falling, the blackness pressing in on her, suffocating her, Naru appeared before Mai, face hard and his eyes dead.
"Me, or Gene?"
Mai lurched awake, a cold sweat covering her body, breath coming in short, heavy gasps.
A swirling, unpleasant feeling took place in her stomach and she immediately launched out of bed and sprinted to the bathroom, barely making it the toilet before her dinner came back up.
She flushed the toilet and slowly walked back to her bedroom, Mai looked at the clock, trying to discern the numbers in the darkness.
2:45
Now let's stop here.
4 years before, when Mai was only 16, she broke a very expensive camera and accidentally injured someone else in the process. The man in question was assistant to Kazuya Shibuya, a 17-year old paranormal researcher and owner of Shibuya Psychic Recearch, nicknamed SPR, he was also very arrogant and narcissistic, leading Mai to nickname him Naru. In order to compensate for the camera, he prompted to work off her debt as his assistant in place of the man she had injured.
That led to Mai taking up a job at SPR and investigating many cases involving paranormal activity, some fake and some not, with SPR's team. Naru as the arrogant boss, Lin Koujo, a silent onmyoji, Masako Hara, a doll-like medium, John Brown, an Australian priest, Hosho Takigawa, a guitar-playing monk, Osamu Yasuhara, a cheerful college student, and Ayako Matsuzaki, a vain shrine maiden.
Mai was happy there, she loved her friends and her life, but it was soon discovered that Mai was actually latent psychic and had many abilities. Not long after that, on a case, they found out that Naru was actually the famed Doctor Oliver Davis, a revered English paranormal researcher. He was in Japan looking for his dead twin brother, Eugene, who was always visiting Mai in her dreams as a spirit guide.
They found Gene's body and Naru, despite Mai confessing that she like him, left for England with Lin.
Sighing, she lay back down, still shaken from the nightmare. She hadn't had a dream like that since Naru and Lin left for England 4 years before. That was the very last time Mai had seen Naru, she received a termination notice the very next day, not long after that, everyone else left too.
Ayako went back to her medical training at her parent's hospital, Monk went back to touring with his band, John went back to Australia, Masako continued her tv show, Yasu lost touch after he left for college, and Mai was left all alone.
She managed okay on her own, she graduated high school with top grades, but didn't have nearly enough money to attend college. She worked as a waitress for a while before opening her own café.
Since then, she'd really just been managing, she hadn't seen anybody since then, and since then, there'd been nothing in her life that Mai had really enjoyed. Baking was the only thing that gave her some semblance of happiness again, it cleared her mind, made her think clearly.
With thoughts of what she would bake for breakfast, Mai fell asleep again, her nightmare all but forgotten.
~~~~~~~TiMe SkIp~~~~~~~
Mai smiled as she set the tray of doughnuts, muffins, and other assorted pastries down on the counter, glancing up, she noticed that people had started to line up outside the door, her café wasn't well-known, but those who came always came back.
She sighed and readied her regulars orders before checking the time again.
6:27
Moving with almost no thought, she flipped her CLOSED sign to OPEN, unlocked the door, and let the customers in. Soon after, all the regulars cleared out, and all Mai had to do was bake some more cupcakes and wait for the lunch rush.
When it came around, though, she wished she had closed up.
In the middle of all the chaos everywhere, Mai had found time to write down all her sales, in the middle of her data, the door jingled, signaling that someone had come in, "Hello!" she Mai cheerily, not taking her eyes off the paper. She heard footsteps walking slowly up the the counter and an odd feeling suddenly struck her, almost like... foreboding.
She stopped writing as a pair of shiny black shoes stopped just barely in her eyeline.
"Tea, please," said an extremely familiar voice, "Earl Grey,"
It was like something had taken hold of her neck, forcing Mai to look up, she raised her eyes and her blood ran cold.
The same black clothes, the same well-groomed hair, and the same grey eyes.
It was Naru.