1
9:00 PM
"Mai, tea," a raven haired man ordered from within the confines of his office. It had been a long and particularly droll day, even for him. Every file was organized, proper paperwork of the office had been finished yesterday, there was a somewhat suspicious lack of cases to review, and there had been no new clientele today. Not even the irregulars had dropped in for a visit. At least then he would have something to divert his attention for a few moments. Something that could not raise the suspicions of anyone nearby.
"But Naru, it's nine o'clock! I've already done my overtime!" his assistant complained from the now open doorway to the outside world. His assistant was a brunette girl who had a loud personality. She also assisted him on cases in more ways than simply filling out paperwork. Her instincts were to be trusted a majority of the time and often it was her gut that allowed him to make the safe and necessary leaps in logic to solve their cases that much faster. He would have been able to solve many of the cases without her, but her ability certainly made his job that much easier and gave his team that much more of a safety net.
Contrary to popular belief, the girl was normally on time to her work place. Perhaps this was because of the new policy he had implemented. At the end of each month, missed work time would add up into overtime where the worker would pay him back. Since this implementation, neither Mai nor Yasuhara made a habit of becoming late. Not even on a Saturday morning after yet another of Yasuhara's insane Friday night parties.
"Then make one last cup of tea before you leave. I will lock up," the man retorted. He waited for the sounds of his order being followed and was rewarded five seconds later when he heard the sound of rustling and then the footsteps of his assistant cursing her way into the kitchenette. With familiar, routine sounds in his office, he felt as though he could somewhat relax. If only for a small while. Perhaps he should work on that side project as he had been toiling over ever since he had returned to Japan. There was a reason, after all, that he refused any dinner request she received.
Should he fail, he would not want her to be holding onto a mere memory of him.
"Naru?" Her voice broke through to his consciousness. The young man turned his face to look at Mai. And when he did, every red flag in his mind went up. He knew that look in her eye. She was nervous. Usually she got this look while they were on a case and she was determined about following her instinct, which often put her in harm's way. Occasionally, she got it prior to her asking him to go with her to dinner. He had never explained his reasons for turning her down every single time. However, he had always stated "later" or "not now". Never a definite "no" so he could keep his hopes up. It was truly selfish of him, but he never really told her "no" for that reason. So she kept asking. So one day he might be able to tell her "yes".
"I cannot accompany you to dinner tonight," he recited as he gathered a few miscellaneous reports out of his desk drawer. However, before he could realize his mistake and note that he had actually gathered documents that were connected to his side project—the one he did not wish for Mai to find out about at all—her face had erupted into a shade of fiery red and she looked as though she were an angry bear on the loose.
Was it so horrible that he found it attractive even now?
"I was simply saying, Orriburu, that I have a very bad feeling right now," she spat, the usage of his given name-however mispronounced-catching his ear. Either his repeated rejection had elicited far more anger than he had anticipated or she was quickly becoming frightened by the feeling that she had. Given the fact that she was warning him at all, he decided that the odds were slightly more in favor of the latter motive. If it were so, there could be something very disastrous coming. If it were the former, then her emotions may be interfering with her instincts and he had nothing to worry about.
"Your intuition?" he supposed aloud, placing the papers face down on his desk. He saw her eyes follow the documents, but he knew she would not ask. As predicted, she attempted to squash her own personal curiosity in favor of his privacy and nodded.
"I've been having it since I walked into the office this morning, and I thought it would go away by the time the day was out, but it's only gotten stronger," she explained, holding her tea tray to her chest. Her eyes gleamed with that far-off look that she naturally acquired whenever she was troubled by any one subject. "I know that I'm fine, because whenever I thought of my plans for tonight, the feeling would ease up for a little bit. It only got worse when I thought that maybe you would spend the entire night here at the office or something."
"Mai, I do have an apartment," the man chided. However, his attempt to rile her up had been unsuccessful. She stared at him with a forceful intensity, and he knew that her intuition was more than likely screaming at her. He weighed the possibilities in his mind. Were her instincts yelling at her that he was in danger here in the office, or that danger was lying in wait for him? And furthermore, was there even any danger at all? Could her instincts simply be running hot and cold, as some mediums had been known to do?
"I want you to promise me that you'll stay on-guard tonight when you leave for your famed apartment," the woman stated, sarcasm dripping from her final two words. Her glare had not abated. She was serious, as Oliver realized with a barely suppressed groan.
"I do not need you to inform me of the necessary precautions I must take," he stated. He always watched his back, an almost paranoid habit of his which was gained from his many psychometric visions as well as his experiences with British media. However, since returning to Japan, he had found himself doing less and less of said habit. Perhaps it was time once more to reinforce the eyes in the back of his head…
"…and maybe then you'll take into consideration that other people do actually care for the safety of a narcissistic jerk like yourself and actually listen when others are worried about you!" Mai yelled as she slammed the office door shut. The young man rubbed the forefront of his head, fairly annoyed at this point. She, above all people, should know that he always took her opinion into consideration, even if he had missed a majority of her anger-propelled ranting.
However, he considered that by the time he saw her the next morning she would have forgotten about her little tantrum and he would not have to do anything to appease her. At this stage, she was angry and frustrated. If he were to guess, she would have already gone through her cycle of emotions by the time she went to sleep. The young man suppressed a dry chuckle as he pulled out his checkbook and wrote out Mai's amount, then did the same for Yasuhara. He would mail the checks on his way to the apartment, as was customary for the last day of any month.
With that, Oliver Davis packed up the papers he required, drank his tea, and neatly placed the two checks into his briefcase. As Mai was no longer around to somehow discover what his side project was, he was free to continue his work on it inside the office that he was so very accustomed to. Still, he did not want to admit that the warning had unnerved him. He would take the necessary items to his apartment and continue investigations from there.
These were the last thoughts Oliver paid heed to before he locked up the office and began making headway to his apartment, all the while keeping one eye on the road and the other on his surroundings. Perhaps Mai was influencing him more than he appreciated as he began to be uneasy as well.
9:56 PM
By the time Oliver had arrived at his apartment, he had begun to feel quite foolish. Or quite deceived. To his knowledge, Mai's intuition had never failed her, yet did this same courtesy extend when the safety of others was in question? Perhaps it did not, given that her abilities could be easily classified as a method of self-preservation. The preservation of others might as well be hit and miss with Mai.
Oliver shrugged out of his black coat and set his briefcase on a nearby table in front of the only single-seat couch in the room. The apartment he had chosen for himself was by no means extravagant. It was a simple Japanese apartment that was nearly half a mile from the office. Close enough to never be late, far enough so that way he might not have any potentially unwanted houseguests. The only furnishings he had were those he deemed necessary for the proper functions of eating, sleeping, personal hygiene, and occasional work. Aside from one or two personal effects, the apartment could have belonged to anyone that could be passed on the street.
The telephone rang, as it normally did at ten o'clock in the evening. The young professor and manager sighed as he picked it up, already anticipating the conversation that lay before him.
"Hello, Oliver," a familiar voice called from the other side of the phone. Happy, as it always was, to hear her son's voice once again.
"Hello, mother," the young man returned. He took the telephone with him to the couch where he decided to sit. He placed the phone in the crook of his neck as he unclasped the briefcase and began to lay the papers out in a meaningful pattern. "I take it the case father took last night has been completed?"
"It was an open and shut case," the Englishwoman stated, slight sorrow in her voice. "The elderly woman turned out to have split-personalities and her family had refused to seek out help for her. Quite a shame, actually, as she was actually very kind for a majority of the time."
"How did such a case appear at father's desk?" the young man mused, picking up a paper. He knew that cases in either Japan or England were not what his mother called him for, but it was the only sort of idle chit chat he could stand. He would never tell his mother he was grateful to her for obliging him. "Surely one of the other, newer investigators should have caught such a fact before it arrived in the hands of a senior investigator. Otherwise, I might be inclined to believe that BSPR is slipping."
"Oh, if the chairman could hear you say that he would have you imported right here simply to scold you, honorary title or no," Luella chided, though her adopted son could hear the smile in her voice. For some reason or another, whenever he made chiding yet completely true remarks about the parent company, her mood would lift. It was the only comfort he knew how to give her, so he continued to give it.
"I believe he would have to find me first. The only fact he is truly aware of is that I am residing somewhere in Japan, furthering the cause of parapsychology with a small branch of SPR that is headed in Tokyo, Japan," Oliver reminded her. The only persons who knew of the great Oliver Davis's specific location were his parents, Lin—who now acted as a messenger between the head branch and himself and therefore traveled between the two countries often—Madoka, and only the closest of his coworkers based in Japan. Everyone else was a pumpkin and therefore did not have the right to know his current exact location. "He is also under the impression that I operate the office remotely, dispelling any thoughts that the only place I could possibly be is here in Tokyo."
"The only flaw in your plan is that the only time I can call you is on my mobile during my lunch break," Luella mused aloud. "This is the only time I'm fairly sure I can catch you at home and ask you about how your day went."
"It went fine," Oliver stated, answering the implication in such a way that was surely himself. He felt no need to address the fact that his mother only called while she was on her lunch break. She often left the office to grab a bite to eat in the café across the street, which is from where she called him. If someone followed her, she made sure to drag them out and engage in conversation with them for a few moments, dispelling their confidence in any type of surveillance they might have had previously.
"You know I want more details than that," the mother chided her son, attempting to wheedle more information from him. True, gathering such information from this boy was akin to taking oil from a water spout, but it could not deter the woman from trying with all of her might. "Tell me about Mr. Takigawa or Miss Matsuzaki."
"They did not arrive in the office today, nor did they inform me of their plans."
"Oh." She sounded slightly disappointed. She quickly moved on. "Miss Hara or Mr. Brown?"
"Also absent," Oliver replied, scanning over yet another page. He already knew most of this information due to a year of intensive study and research. His efforts had brought new facts to light, new pieces of evidence to be examined, and a second look at the scene had given him one more vision which had spurred all of this effort into motion.
"Mr. Yasuhara and Miss Taniyama had to have been there," Luella asserted, digging for something that she could listen to. "Unless you gave them a day off…?"
"I did nothing of the sort," Oliver returned. "Yasuhara-san left today at his appointed time as he did not come in late this month, yet Mai had to stay in four hours to make up for her tardiness on the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and twenty-ninth."
"My goodness!" the woman exclaimed, somewhat shocked. "What caused her to come in late on those three days in a row?"
"Personal matters that I did not delve into to discuss with you, mother," Oliver replied, effectively snapping that portion of conversation shut. In truth, he and Mai had already arranged for her tardiness those three days. He had, of course, offered to simply allow her off scot free due to the severity of the situation she had been presented with, yet she had claimed that she would have felt horrible had she taken that route. In exchange, she had agreed to work one hour of overtime for each day she missed while dealing with her own personal situation. He had called her every night to ensure her mental, emotional, and physical safety. The twenty-ninth had been a different matter altogether.
"I see…" she mused aloud. "Is she all right? She was such a dear the last time your father and I visited."
"She is in excellent health, I assure you," Oliver stated as he set the seventh paper down. He picked up another article, this one in connection to a certain area three years prior. He was searching the missing persons' list for the third time. This time, he marked a few more faces off of the list. Slight defining features crossed three more names off of the list.
"That's good," she stated, the smile back in her tone. Oliver was satisfied his mother was pleased over something, even if he himself was becoming more and more frustrated with each passing second. The first vision he had received had been nothing more than a pair of shoes and the shade of a car. Anyone who possessed a hint of intelligence would have rid themselves of the car or possibly hidden it away from the world.
The second vision he had received implied the latter.
Oliver entertained Luella for a few minutes more before she had to take her leave and return to her office job at BSPR. Despite being elderly, she herself was one of their top investigators—sans psychic ability, of course. With her husband—Oliver's adoptive father—at the head of the department, the two of them often got the harshest cases and generally made it through splendidly. There were only three cases the duo had not solved in all of their years of service to BSPR. Those three had been solved courtesy of Oliver, who had allowed his parents to take the credit for their resolution in the end, despite the initial objections the duo had raised. It had been the combined efforts of Gene and himself to get the duo to accept the credit.
The raven-haired man let out a huff of frustration as he stood. Only a matter of three steps took him from his position on the couch to the cradle of the phone, where he promptly replaced the device. Without pouring too much thought into the conversation he had engaged in, he returned to his paperwork. In the back of his mind, he noted that he would probably not sleep in his own futon tonight.
It was more than likely he would fall asleep in his single-seat chair, pondering over the two visions that would help him in riddling out the identity of Eugene Davis's murderess.