A/N: Apparently, when I tell my brain "side project," it interprets that as "time to refuse to be able to write absolutely anything other than this." So here I am again, I guess, much earlier than expected.

This chapter is dedicated to Yuuri, the least featured school friend of Mai's in fics (aside from that other one who isn't even named and may or may not even exist depeding on which adaptation of GH it is)

"So?" Naru asked as they sat on the nearly-empty train running on another familiar line. "Where is it this time?"

"Are you curious?" Mai asked with a grin.

"I'd like to know where I'm being dragged off to."

"Serves you right," she told him with a snicker. "You're always ordering us around without explaining anything."

"In my case, it's because you wouldn't understand even if I did," he pointed out, to which she scrunched up her nose.

"Maybe you're just not any good at explaining," she challenged. "After all, I seem perfectly fine when Mori-san teaches things."

"Madoka wouldn't know the difference between how to operate a toaster and a thermography camera."

"Is that any way to talk about your boss?" She demanded.

He smiled sarcastically. "In that case, do you plan on changing the way you speak to me?"

"Urk." Her lips twisted indignantly, but she had nothing to say in reply, and she could only hang her head in defeat.

The train rescued her as it slid gracefully onto the station platform, and she stood up quickly, gesturing at Naru to follow. Though he raised an eyebrow when he saw the name of the station they were disembarking at, he didn't comment until they were already circling the walls of her school.

"What prompted such a change in attitude that you would decide to go to school on a Sunday afternoon?" He asked dryly.

"You'll see," she told him, scanning the area to locate her target. When she spotted the school's rarely-used back gate, the designs in its metal bars and its low height making it perfect for climbing, she pushed herself up and leapt nimbly to the other side. She could see the reluctance on his face as he followed, but Naru kept his word, if nothing else, and follow he did.

But not without a snide comment, of course. "You're adding trespassing to your list of hobbies?"

"It's not trespassing. It's my school, isn't it?"

"Climbing over a locked gate onto property that doesn't belong to you would normally be classified as trespassing," he pointed out. "And even if your definition held, it isn't my school, which means you're aiding and abetting."

"And when did you become such a stickler for rules?" She scoffed. "If I remember correctly, someone made up a complete scam about compensation for a camera that was perfectly insured… right on this campus."

"With that memory of yours, I doubt you do remember correctly," he said indifferently, but his face was turned carefully in the other direction.

She ignored him, instead heading for the familiar path of cherry trees—half-barren by now, of course—that led to what had once been a decrepit wooden building. Now that even the remains of that mess of lumber had been cleared away, it was obvious that the area where it'd once stood sunk visibly in the middle, just as Naru had guessed. She knelt down at the center of the sort-of-crater, running her fingers over a few pebbles and loose dirt as she lost herself in recollection.

"You'll need more tools than that if you plan to take up gardening," came Naru's sardonic voice. Evidently, he was still irritated at being dragged halfway across the city first thing in the morning.

From her kneeling position, she tilted her head up to look at him as he approached from behind, but looking from that angle made him appear upside-down in her field of vision, and that was even more dizzying than usual. She gave herself up to gravity and flopped backwards, lying idly on the ground; it was surprisingly mesmerizing to watch the sky, the way it seemed to stretch endlessly up, up, up. "I have you, don't I? I bet you could think of something if you really tried."

"Unfortunately, I have no interest in fruitless labor," he informed her, bending over to brush a few tiny rocks out of her hair, though the gesture only succeeded in getting even more dust in it. "Is there a reason you've suddenly lost all capacity for ambulation?"

"I haven't, whatever that is," she said. "I was just remembering. This is where we met, after all."

"Your memory is worse than I expected. We met in the AV room."

She grinned triumphantly. "So you do remember!"

He looked a little annoyed. "Probably better than you do."

"Well, anyways, that doesn't count," she said dismissively. "Because I wanted nothing to do with you the first time."

"And knocking over a shelf, injuring my assistant, and breaking an expensive piece of equipment changed your mind?"

"No," she admitted, "but it's not like I had a choice after that." She scowled. "Because you're a con artist."

He shrugged. "I didn't lie. You just never asked if the insurance—which I offered to show you—would cover the damage. Your ignorance is your own fault."

"I bet that's what con artists say." She stuck her tongue out at him, but she suspected that the fact that he was quite literally looking down on her somewhat reduced its effect. Sufficiently motivated by the thought, she picked herself back up and dusted herself off. "I have forgiven you, though. I'm generous, aren't I?"

"Incredibly," he told her, sarcasm dripping from every syllable. With her head now soundly separated from the ground, whose debris seemed to cling to her hair with a mind of its own, his efforts finally succeeded in disentangling loose rocks and lingering confetti pieces from her hair. It was a good thing she kept it short, she supposed.

"I did get to meet you because of that, so I suppose it wasn't all a bad thing. It almost makes me think I should try breaking more cameras."

"The next one really is coming out of your paycheck," he informed her.

"It was a joke," she emphasized, playing with one of the buttons on his shirt. "Can't you think of it as a good thing? I might never have gotten to know you if I hadn't—"

"Maimed Lin?"

"That's exaggerating."

Naru scoffed. "You would have."

He said it with such certainty that she looked up at him with suspicion. "What?"

"You attract disaster to the point that it's almost supernatural," he clarified. "You were bound to get involved somehow."

"Are you saying that we were destined to meet, or something?"

"I was speaking of probability. The concept of destiny is inherently a teleological fallacy," he disagreed, and she rolled her eyes.

"Oh, whatever. Let's keep going," she said, tugging lightly on his sleeve and turning her head, dislodging his fingers from her hair in the process. "This way."

He followed quietly this time as she led them farther down the path to a new building she'd only see a few times before herself, so new that the birds hadn't yet had a chance to decorate it with their own form of art, and the smell of fresh paint still lingered on its walls. She reached out to touch its smooth, bumpy surface, the unexpected coldness of it eliciting a shiver.

"It's the new school building," she explained. "They started construction right after the old one collapsed, and it's just been finished. I thought you should see it."

"I'm not interested in your school's architecture," he said flatly.

"I know," she said, rolling her eyes. "But I thought you should see it, anyways. It wouldn't have been possible without you, after all."

Naru shrugged disinterestedly. "This piece of land has always been empty. Whether or not the old building was there wouldn't have affected its construction, and anyways, the building collapsed on its own."

"I know that, too," she told him, "But I still think it wouldn't have been built if not for you. I think, somehow, the old one had to be cleared out first before we could really think about building this one—not just the building itself, I mean, but that weird feeling it gave."

"Those stories still scare you?" He asked, raising an eyebrow.

"No!" She answered, a little too emphatically. Her eyebrows drew into a frown as she rushed to justify herself. "I mean, not those stories in particular, but it's normal to be a little scared still, isn't it?" She said defiantly. "Of course I've gotten used to them now, but they have tried to kill me a few times. Even people are scary sometimes, after all."

He only gave a light snort in response, and she turned back to the building indignantly as she pulled out a key from her pocket and unlocked the door.

"Theft, now?" He asked, looking pointedly at the key.

"I'm borrowing it," she emphasized. "Yuuri got permission to use it for club activities over the weekend."

"I didn't realize I'd signed up for your club," he said dryly.

"It was in the fine print."

"Of which contract?"

She threaded her arm around his in reply and pulled him through the door.

Only a few steps through the door, he stopped abruptly, and she nearly fell over backwards when she didn't stop walking in time. "Wait," he said in a low voice. "Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Her eyes flew up in alarm as she glanced around.

He narrowed his eyes. "Do you have a thermometer?"

She blinked uneasily. "No way. You're kidding, right? A ghost? Here? It was only built a few weeks ago!"

Naru didn't say anything, though, and his face was as impassive as ever. Her grip on his arm tightened, and she unconsciously edged closer.

"Hey… Naru… If there really is one, what should we do? We have to find out what it is first, right? Should we really be staying here? Should we… should we tell the school? Have them close off the building?"

"That won't be necessary."

She looked at him uncertainly. "Are you sure? What if it's dangerous?"

"It's not," he told her, smiling sardonically. "The only thing resembling a ghost here is Taniyama Mai."

Her eyebrows furrowed as she tried to wrap her mind around what was going on, and when realization hit her, her head jerked upward in indignation. "You tricked me!"

"You jumped to conclusions on your own."

"Only because you said such misleading things!"

"You should have known better than to think that I'd make such an assumption less than two minutes in," he countered.

"I should have known better than to trust you in the first place." She scowled at him. "Does it ever get lonely up there on your high horse? Of course not, because your overinflated ego and your own reflection are more than enough company for you, you damn narc—" She broke off suddenly, a look of concentration on her face. "Did you hear that?"

He sighed. "Mai, you can't use the same tr—"

"Shh!" She pressed a finger to her lips urgently, and this time, they both did hear it—the sound of light footsteps, the crunch of leaves being trampled underfoot, coming from just outside the building. It was the sort of creature who'd inspired fear in humanity since the dawn of time.

"A teacher," she breathed in horror, grabbing hold of Naru's hand and making a break for the nearest classroom. She threw the door open as quickly as she could without making too much sound, then closed it again and pushed the both of them under the teacher's desk in the corner of the room.

In the dark, cramped space, she could feel both of their heartbeats palpitating loudly, rhythmically, almost like drums—or maybe it was just hers being loud enough for two. Her day pack was shoved against the desk, the hard edges of the boxes inside pressing painfully into her back through the fabric. On the other hand, Naru was nearly pressed against her front side, their limbs tangled in an inextricable mess and their combined body heat quickly warming the small space as they both froze in terror. Or, at least, as she froze terror, and he probably just didn't care.

"So much for permission for club activities," he exhaled, so quietly that she was only able to hear because his face was mere inches away from her ear. Yep, he definitely just didn't care.

She didn't dare speak or even move until the footsteps receded, and even then, she waited a good five minutes until she was certain that no one was nearby. Only then did she edge her way out from under the desk and breathe a sigh of relief.

"You realize," Naru said sarcastically as he stood up, never missing a chance to rub her oversights in her face, "that had we been caught, being caught at the door would have been much less compromising than being caught in your idea of a hiding place."

She desperately pretended not to notice the heat creeping onto her cheeks. "Well, the idea was not to get caught at all," she said bitingly.

"Which would have been an excellent notion, had it not been for the fact that the opening of the desk is clearly visible from the door."

Her forehead wrinkled as she took a few steps back to size up the room from the doorway and realized that he was, of course, correct. "Then why didn't you say so earlier?" She muttered, but he ignored her. "Forget that," she ordered. "We're going upstairs."

He sighed but followed her up the stairs and down the hall anyways, a skeptical look on his face as she opened the door to each classroom in turn to examine it. Finally, she found the one she was looking for and darted toward the window, almost pressing her face against the glass in excitement.

"Doesn't it look nice?" She breathed. From that angle, the two rows of cherry trees lining the school path spread out perfectly beneath her. Nobody thought of September as the season for looking at cherry trees, but the red and gold foliage blazed like fire in the afternoon sun, and the fallen leaves carpeted the ground in luxurious velvet. The rich brown branches, where exposed, had a regal sort of solemnity to them that wouldn't lose to any great oak or grand mountain. "They're a little half-bald, but they look perfectly dream-like, don't they?"

"So your best idea was dragging me here to see half-bald trees?" Despite his words, there was a hint of amusement in his voice.

"Well, they're still pretty," she defended. "And they sort of reminded me of you."

"Half-bald trees remind you of me?" Less amused.

"Well… You don't have to put it that way," she told him. "Anyways, I thought it would be nice to eat here."

His mouth quirked into a sarcastic line. "That you might have come because you'd suddenly developed a passion for learning was too much to hope for after all."

"Oh, be quiet. It's Sunday. Not everyone has as little of a life outside of work as you do."

"Oh? Do enlighten me; what do you usually do on Sundays?"

"… Work," she admitted. "But that's different."

He snorted lightly as she shrugged off the day pack on her back and extracted the two cloth-wrapped bundles inside. Despite their previous misadventure, the little boxes were still in good shape, and their contents were packed tightly enough that they hadn't shifted around… too much, at least. She untied the blue cloth around one of the boxes and pushed it toward him.

"I made them this morning," she said with a hint of pride. "Actual morning, I mean, not eleven or whatever it is you call morning. There's no meat or anything inside," she added.

"That's a new skill you've acquired," he commented.

"Matsuzaki-san has been helping me practice. She says I ought to know how to cook, since I live alone."

"So even she can be correct at times."

"Don't be rude. Anyways, shouldn't you learn, too? You live alone now as well."

"The particular arrangement of food hardly affects the nutritional composition," he remarked with disinterest.

She scowled. "That would be more convincing if you weren't so picky."

"I'm not picky."

"Aren't you?" She challenged. "You won't eat sweet things, you won't eat meat…"

"Vegetarianism is a matter of lifestyle, not of preference," he interrupted.

"… or things that are over-salted, or too bland, or overcooked, or undercooked…"

"Do you expect me to eagerly swallow something blatantly inedible?"

"… or things that are too 'leafy,' or too mushy, or that require peeling or cracking or disassembling of any sort…"

"Of course I have preferences, given the option," he snapped.

"'The arrangement of food doesn't affect the nutrition,'" she repeated, mimicking his sarcastic tone down to its details.

"That was merely a statement of fact."

"Yeah? Well, here's another: 'Naru is picky.'"

He sighed and gave in, or gave up—she could rarely tell the difference, or whether there was a difference at all when it came to him. She grinned in triumph, but the tone of his next words somehow threw off the exhilaration of victory.

"So, this is the 'debt' for the second year?" He asked, and it bothered her that she couldn't quite puzzle out what he meant.

"That's right."

He was silent for a minute, and his gaze drifted out to window to the gold-bedecked trees, the light from the setting sun dyeing them an even more vibrant shade of scarlet."The last one… is for the first year." It was a statement, not a question.

There was such quiet contemplation in his voice that she looked up in surprise and nearly asked him if he'd already guessed where she wanted to go, but if there was ever such a thing as a stupid question, that would be it. Of course he had guessed.

"Yes…" She answered uncertainly, and for a brief moment, she wondered if she shouldn't call it off after all. It was territory that neither of them were very good at venturing into. She didn't know if she could carry through with it; she didn't know if he would carry through with it, but, she supposed, the mere fact that he wasn't already up in arms in protest was an encouraging enough sign.

He exhaled softly. "It's nearly dark."

"That's perfect. We won't be able to see if it's not dark."

He cast her a brief glance. "You have it backwards."

"I don't," she insisted. "I'm right." She hesitated and looked at him with concern. "Naru… Are you alright with it? It'll certainly be painful, won't it?"

"Are you going to say I shouldn't keep avoiding things?"

She shook her head vigorously. "I'm only being selfish."

"Well," he allowed with the faintest trace of a smile, "I suppose I do owe you for three years."

"Do you think it's really fine? Is it too intimate of a gesture?"

"You're worried about that now?"

"I was thinking about it before," she protested. "But you wouldn't have agreed to anything if I had wavered."

He looked up at the ceiling. "Since it's you, it should be fine."

"Even though I didn't know him until after he… died?"

"Does that make a difference?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "I thought and thought about it, but I came up with a different answer each time."

He sighed, and it seemed like he really was thinking it over. "It doesn't," he finally said with certainty, and she believed him.

A/N: I don't know why Gene refuses to give up the ghost in my writing even when I had intended to make it fluffy. I suppose it couldn't be helped to a certain extent, since they are twins, and given the plot... I think it's probably also because, to me, Gene is what makes death "real" in Ghost Hunt, though. Ghosts and spirits and curses are all very nice and well, but they don't really hit home in the same way. One of these days, I will manage to write something that has nothing to do with him, though. Definitely, someday.

Anyways, thanks to everyone who spent a few minutes out of their day on this silly mess, and I hope you've enjoyed it so far!