a/n: A little thought on Mai's mind connection. This is part of my oneshot anniversary celebration! I've spent four years on fanfiction, whoo!
dedication: To the thousands of possibilities waiting for us.
disclaimer: I don't own Ghost Hunt.
summary: There's a chirpy, brown-haired girl that keeps showing up in his dreams. - Mai, Gene.
switched
He disembarks in Japan. There's a case he's checking out on his own – he's an adult. He can do things by himself. But still, he misses his brother and he's tired from the long flight, so he falls asleep the minute his head hits the motel room pillow.
There's a girl in his dreams. He's lucid dreaming and he stares at the girl. The girl stares back, blinking furiously. She looks like she's about to cry.
"Hello," he starts off easily. Inwardly, he's wondering why he can't even book a room in a motel without ghosts appearing – he has a curse. But it's good for his job, so he doesn't complain.
"Hello," the girl responds. He doesn't ask her name – some ghosts don't respond well to that. Instead, he gets his information from her appearance.
She's clearly Japanese, late teens. Summer clothing and quite expensive at that. She's looking at him like she's trying not to cry, so he must look familiar to her.
"What are you doing here?" he asks, and the girl blinks at him. One hand goes to cover her mouth in shock and she turns a deep red. He's confused.
"I'm so sorry," she blurts out, and disappears.
He wakes up, bewildered.
An hour later, he's willing to brush the incident aside. He's asked the motel manager and there's been no strange deaths in the past century. He's called his brother – no strange cases on that side, either. Putting it aside as a case of random astral plane walking, he focuses on the case.
There's a cabin in the woods, and it's rumored to be haunted. Every once in a while, hikers go missing. The owner of the property wants to clear it up – there are wealthy buyers looking and he doesn't want them to go missing.
So he settles in at the nearby town and starts looking through the archives. The librarian sets him up with old newspapers, but he's not that good at Japanese, and he's only reached through half the stack when he decides to call it a day.
The girl shows up again. Somehow, he's not surprised.
"Hello," he says again, deciding to be a little more forward. "Why are you here?"
The girl opens her mouth, closes it, and opens it again. "A school bus full of children," she says finally, "It went missing. The teacher's the one that took it – she killed all of them, one by one."
Then she disappears.
He asks about the bus directly and the librarian directs him to the correct newspapers. It happened in a nearby town. A teacher took her entire class out on a field trip, none of them returned. They never found the bus either.
Ghosts bent on revenge were deadly. Children bent on revenge?
He shudders and hopes it isn't the case.
Unfortunately, by the time he finishes reading the articles, he's forced to conclude that it might be true. The bodies that the police were able to find had marks of gruesome strangulation. The children might be enacting their deaths on innocent people.
The girl twists her mouth when he says that and doesn't meet his eyes. "Go alone," she says softly, "They target more effectively in a group."
He does some more research. All the people that went missing were in a group. He decides to go alone.
He finds the cabin easily enough. It's not spooky at all in the midday light. He steps past the doorframe, wincing as the floorboards creak. He walks through the rooms, noting the absence of any presence whatsoever.
Then he feels it. An icy chill, seeping its way down his spine. He turns, half-dreading the sight.
A group of children are playing in the room – their hands are clasped and they're spinning in a circle, singing a song. He feels sick – the children can't be more than six.
When they finish playing, they turn to him and smile. "Hello, oniichan," they course. He manages a wan smile in reply.
"You should watch out, oniichan," one of them says solemnly.
"Or she'll get you too."
The ritual paper is already at his fingers as he spins. The teacher, he surmises, but she looks nothing like the smiling young woman in the papers. Her mouth is twisted and her skin hangs haggard on her face. He finishes the chant and waves the paper.
She's gone.
He doesn't have to turn to see the children start to disappear – already the air is getting warmer.
He goes to sleep quite content. His case is solved and he'll be back in England by the end of the week. But when he closes his eyes, the girl appears again, looking more frantic.
"What is it?" he asks again, though he despairs of getting an answer. He thought that she wanted justice for the children, but it's apparent that isn't true.
She worries at her lips and mumbles something indistinct.
"I'm sorry?" he asks again. She looks at him, stricken.
"Be careful."
He wakes up with her words ringing in his ears.
The bus that's supposed to take him to the airport has broken down and he decides to walk. It's a few miles to the next town and the empty road will give him the solitude he needs to think about the girl's words. Ghosts always have an agenda, but he can't figure out what the girl wants.
He automatically steps to the side when he hears the distant roar of an engine. She seemed so worried and it looked like she was trying to warn him. But he's left with only vague advice and he's frustrated.
He's still thinking about the girl when the car runs him over.
"Oh my god!" the girl screams, crumpling to his knees. He stares at her in shock – the situation hasn't fully sunk in yet.
"This wasn't supposed to happen!" she wails, "I changed so much!"
"What?" he asks.
"I told you to be careful!" she turns on him, as if it was his fault he got run over.
"You weren't very specific," he points out.
The girl nearly pulls her hair out in fury, glaring at him. She mutters something about idiocy and families and turns to him, her face deadly serious. "You want specific?" she says, "I'll give you specific. Do not move, do not flinch, if you can – do not breathe. Pretend like you're dead."
"What?" he asks again. She's crazy.
"Do what I say!" she stares at him, and he finds himself convinced by the burning emotion in her eyes. It looks like she's desperate – desperate not to lose him? He doesn't know what's going on.
He comes back to reality as the car door opens. He keeps himself still even as a thousand injuries vie for attention. He can hear the click of heels and a sharp gasp as the driver looks at him. He doesn't know who it is and why he's listening to the girl, but he doesn't move.
Eventually, the driver gets back in the car and drives away. He waits until he's certain she's gone before painfully extracting his thankfully intact cell phone from his pocket and calling for help. His passable Japanese is rendered worse from the pain, but he manages to give directions.
The girl doesn't show up when he's in the hospital, nor when he's discharged and on the plane back to London. He figures that saving his life was her last good deed, even if he still hasn't figured out how she saved him.
But she appears again as soon as he goes to sleep in his own room.
"Now, tell me," he demands as soon as he sees her, "Why are you here?"
The girl smiles, "It's okay. I've changed enough. I can tell you now."
"Changed what?"
"My name is Mai," she holds her hand out, "I worked for a company called SPR, Shibuya Psychic Research, under a man I called Naru." He starts in shock. "Naru came to Japan to investigate his brother's death and decided to help out in paranormal investigations along the way."
"What?" he asks, becoming painfully aware that it's a question he asks often.
"You – Eugene Davies, are the brother that died. You were run over by a woman in a car. When she discovered you stirring, she ran over you again, then dumped your body in a lake. You're the reason that Naru moved to Japan, the reason he founded SPR, and the reason he's been miserable for the rest of his life."
"You saved me," Gene says, astounded by the information she's telling him.
"You saved me in another life," she smiles, "I thought I should return the favor." He can see the tears threatening to fall.
"You changed the timeline," he says softly, aware of the magnitude of her decision, "My brother will never move to Japan and found the company you work at."
"No," Mai says.
"You love him," Gene says, seeing her face twist.
"Yes," Mai admits.
"Why are you doing this?" he asks.
"Because I love him too much," Mai says, "And the only thing he ever wanted was you, alive."
"Mai," Gene says softly, stepping forward, but she's dissolving as he speaks.
"Goodbye, Gene," she says past the tears streaming down her face, "Take care of Naru for me."
She's gone before he reaches her.
tbc
a/n: Sad, I know, but I wanted to write a reverse of Gene helping Mai in her dreams, and it somehow turned into Mai playing a time-traveling martyr.