That morning, Mizuiro sat on a courtyard bench in front of Karakura High School. It was early and few students had arrived. He thought it best for him to be there early to insure he would be there before SPR, he wanted to be sure they found their way in the school. It had been an infuriating hassle to convince his administration that this was necessary. He made himself out to be a fool to them but eventually was able to coax them into agreement after insisting that the safety of the students could be at risk. Though they agreed, the whole idea of Shibuya Psychic Research coming to Karakura High was skating on thin ice with them. Mizuiro knew this and it pushed him to be there that morning so he could coordinate SPR and keep the operation running.
He planned on corralling the group and their equipment into the building swiftly and quietly and even had an empty classroom set aside as their "home base." Since it was so early, he assumed that getting them through the building would be easy enough.
Mizuiro had been staring down at the ground running through his thoughts when he noticed someone in his peripheral vision. Looking up, Mizuiro saw Uryu Ishida walking on the sidewalk towards the school.
He wasn't surprised. Even though Uryu was one of the people that was involved with… whatever it was that was going on, Uryu was still an enthusiastic student. It wasn't strange to see him there so early. What was worrying Mizuiro was the fact they the lot of them kept leaving midday to go God knows where and do God knows what. So in a way, it was a relief to see one of them show up so early, at least Mizuiro knew that one of them was still putting forth the effort. After a swift swing of the door, Uryu Ishida disappeared into the building.
Mizuiro returned to his thought and about ten minutes after Uryu's arrival, he saw a black van driving towards the school. The van came to a smooth stop directly in front of Karakura High and he watched as three somewhat familiar figures filed out of it.
Karakura Town was about an hour and a half away from the SPR office. That meant that Mai was going to have to sit between Naru and Lin, two of the most antisocial people she knew, for that entire hour and a half.
She liked being close to Naru, and didn't mind Lin either, but these car rides made her want to stab herself in the kidney.
Mai leaned back into the seat and shifted her head to look at Naru. He was reading one of his files again. 'There's no way those files are that interesting.'
She crossed her arms and sighed. Since she had nothing better to do, Mai decided that she would deliberately stare at Lin while he drove to see if she could get some kind of reaction. It quickly became blatantly obvious that Lin was either ignoring her or he was too focused on driving to notice her staring at him at all. Mai narrowed her eyes and mustered up all of her brainpower to send Lin "look over here" messages with her mind.
Unfortunately, since the car rides were so boring for her, these kinds of things happened more often than not. Mai would come up with stupid games to distract her mind while the time passed. When Mai really thought that Lin was about to look over, she felt Naru shift next to her.
"You do know that people would find you strange for staring at them like that. You're lucky that Lin knows that you're just an idiot."
Mai whipped her head around. "I'm not an idiot! I just have nothing better to do during these car rides because neither of you ever talk about ANYTHING."
"I'm quite sure that we're talking now." Naru continued to read his file while Mai fumed.
Instead of immediately responding to his smartass comment, she tightly closed her eyes and rubbed the frustration out of her temples. "I'm going to sleep." Mai twisted herself so that her back was fully facing Naru and rested her head on Lin's arm. She didn't ask, but it didn't seem to bother him so she kept her head where it was for the next thirty minutes.
Luckily for Mai, she was able to spend that entire thirty minutes sleeping peacefully without a single sign of a dream of any kind.
Her dreamless sleep was interrupted when they drove over what felt like a pothole and the jolt of it was enough to wake her.
When Lin noticed that Mai had been disturbed from her sleep, he said simply, "There's a great deal of damage on this road." He kept his eyes on the road and Mai slowly sat herself upright.
Mai rubbed her eyes and looked out the front window. What she saw confirmed what Lin had said, there were potholes and long, very noticeable cracks all over the place.
"We'll be there in about fifteen minutes anyways so it doesn't matter." Mai looked over at Naru. She noticed the file in his hand and thought, 'Really? He's still reading it?'
"Naru—" She was about to ask him what was so interesting about those files when she felt a horrible pressure that her entire structure curl in on itself. She tried to raise her arms to brace herself on the dash but soon realized that the pressure wouldn't let her move at all.
Her eyes widened in shock and pain and she tried to say something, anything at all, but all she was able to choke out were pieces of words and none of it made any sense.
Naru and Lin were both saying something to her, she knew that, but she couldn't hear them, their voices were muffled and were being muted by a loud, screeching noise that rang like a siren in her ears.
Mai stared straight ahead at the road with tears filling her eyes. Her mind reeled, 'Please stop… I can't take this!' She was panicking now and felt the beginnings of a black out when she saw a black mass blur across her vision. Through the pain, she noticed two things and only these two things, everything else was mixed into a static mess. One, that towards the top of this obscure black mass was a strangely placed orange blur moving with the black. And two, the mass was outside of the car. It wasn't just her eyes failing her, it was there, and it was directly in front of the van.
Suddenly, the pressure began to lift. She drifted slowly back into the seat and sighed a breath of relief at the disappearance of the eerie pressure. To her surprise, she had made it through the experience without blacking out.
Mai cautiously raised her arm and when she knew she could do it, she put her hands to her face to wipe the tears away. "What was…" Mai leaned forward and cradled her now aching head in her hands while her elbows rested on her knees.
The colors, lights and noises around her slowly morphed back into their proper place. With her hearing returning to normal, Mai could hear Naru telling Lin to pull over. She raised her head a little too quickly and winced from the pain but was able to say, "No, don't pull over, I'm fine… I just felt something, it's fine, keep driving."
Lin slowed down and glanced at Naru, waiting for his boss to decide what was best to do.
Naru hesitated and looked at Mai sitting there with her head in her hands. He sighed then gestured to Lin to keep driving. He realized that they would be there very soon, pulling over would be pointless.
Naru shifted his vision to glare out of his window. He rested his right elbow on the side of the car door with his chin in his palm. His mind was instinctively working through what he knew of the case so far and he wondered if what had just happened to Mai had anything to do with it. Without even realizing what he was doing, Naru set his left hand on Mai's back as if he was trying to comfort her.
He hadn't processed where his hand was until he suddenly heard Mai muffle out the words, "I'm fine, Naru. It's just a headache."
Naru swiveled his head and glared at his self-acting hand. He didn't say anything, just removed his hand and continued to stare out the window.
Lin stifled a smirk at his boss' abrupt sign of affection and continued driving down the oddly broken down road that led to Karakura High School.
