People say that life after death is either heaven or hell, resurrection or reincarnation, void or purgatorial life. Whatever people believed in.
The truth was, life after death was nothing.
(It was nothing, like the way you know the air is in the atmosphere but you can't see it. Like the way the Earth rotates on its axis but you can't feel it. Like the way you know there are other planets in the universe but you can't see them.)
It was there, and you knew it was, but it wasn't visible.
That was how Mai felt. She wasn't very religious before she died. She didn't religiously follow a bible (ha!), nor did she set times for praying. She didn't have a defined belief system, like John and Ayako and Bou-san. Her set of beliefs were a mix of what she believed.
She was not a saint before she died. But she was not a sinner.
She was simply Mai Taniyama.
And then, she was nothing.
Mai was dead, so she knew that what was before her eyes had to be some sort of sick and twisted final goodbye from Earth.
She shouldn't have been there. She shouldn't have been standing, mist-like, on the side of the road where she knew was the place Gene was murdered. She wasn't sure how she knew, but it was like her dreams, when she knew things and followed a role inside of them.
And she shouldn't have been hearing a heartbeat monitor pulsing in her ears.
This shouldn't have been happening to her.
Mai was dead, for Gods' sakes! She shouldn't have to- to watch someone's murder and then listen to her heartbeat flatline before finally dying.
Death was supposed to be a reprieve from her problems. And it was.
But now, it's not.
As Mai stood there, staring blankly at the spot where Gene seemed frozen- like a glitching video, his pixels disappearing for a few then reappearing. A foot taking a step onto the road but then, like a tape being rewound, him being right back on the sidewalk- she felt something tugging at her.
It felt like someone pulling the back of her shirt collar, dragging her away. Like Naru did when she tried touching his fancy English books, or when she tried to go through his diary (Journal, he'd hiss at her).
Except- she felt it on her soul. Harsh, pulling and yanking, like it was trying to raise her up. To pull her out of a well and tether her to Earth. Like. . .
And suddenly, she knew what to do.
The heartbeat flat-lined in her head, and she knew why she was standing there.
And she became physical- alive- once again. But her old body- it was dead.
She was dead, the nineteen, almost twenty year old Taniyama Mai with a useless right eye and a limp in her leg when she walked too much.
She was Taniyama Mai, and through some god- some religion, something, she was given the chance to live again.
If she had turned away from Gene, she knew she would wake up in her body, because the heartbeat was too loud, too normal, for her to just- die. It was this or that, Gene or Pain.
She would be crippled- for life, if she was being honest- because no one survives jumping off a bridge with no lasting injuries.
But- she had the chance to, and Mai didn't turn away from Gene. Didn't do a 180 and walk away from the road he was standing on, away from the crime and the opposite direction of the red car she knew would be speeding down the road a few seconds later. She didn't think about how she could go back and have another chance at life with Fahra, Furihiko, and Maya. Or with that boy who worked at the cafe across the street who kept sending her flowers and trying to get Mai to give in and go on a date with him.
The thought didn't cross her mind that she could go back to her old life and reconnect with her old friends- family- and try to do better. For herself, for the world, for the members of the disbanded SPR that deserved more than what was probably going to be a plastic card sent to them telling them she'd died.
All she thought of was Gene. And Naru.
She might have been being too selfless. The fact of the matter was that she wasn't dying, either way. And she. . . Would rather suffer in Hell, than go back to living in a dingy apartment with a snobby med school student, a drug addict, and a bipolar girl who refused to take her medicine so she could keep a job for more than one month.
Mai's life wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Having roommates is fun the first few weeks. Less rent pay, more money for you.
But slowly, she began to hate it.
And then the accident happened.
And life didn't seem worth living then.
So really, was she actually being selfless? Going back to the living to save Gene from death? To keep Naru from losing his brother? To keep the Davis family together?
She didn't know. She didn't think she was being entirely selfless, though. Because if- if she was going back in time, to the time of Gene's death, three weeks before Naru's arrival in Japan, and four weeks before she started to work at the SPR, then.
Then she could change the outcome of her life, too.
She would change things, for herself and Gene and Naru, because above all, those two deserved a chance at happiness the most.
Mai woke up in her old bed at her teacher's house. The sun was shining through the florescent white curtains like it always did, right around seven AM, and she could faintly hear the sound of an egg being cracked open, with the sizzling hiss that came right after.
She heard the woodpecker that always stayed at the tree close to her window outside, letting out his average tapping noise. The smell of honey wafted through her mildly opened window, mixing with the grass' scent.
Faintly, she registered that her leg didn't have that hollowed, painful bouncing back and forth feeling to the inside of it anymore.
But she noticed that her right eye wasn't. . . Exactly as good as it was when she was sixteen and living with her teacher.
She could see, but everything from it was blurry blobs, unfocused like teardrops dripping onto a thin paper and spreading the ink and colors around.
"Mai, honey, are you up? Breakfast is ready," Her teacher called from behind the white door and in the kitchen.
For a minute, Mai was still as her heart beat as fast as a bullet train. But then, disappointment crushed her like cement blocks falling down onto her shoulders, painful and bone-breaking and entirely like her hopes plummeting into her stomach.
She couldn't even read the name off a poster on the wall from that eye.
And then, she was crying.
She came back to save Gene and her sight wasn't even restored all the way.
A/N: first few chapters are short because I haven't gotten to the Part With Gene, lol. also, mai seems kind of selfish in the last line but give her a break she's stressed okay. also. someone message me about ghost hunt i'm desperate to talk to someone about my headcanons. please my children are starvinggg,f
PS IF I ACCIDENTALLY USE MEI INSTEAD OF MAI its because I'm used to typing mei bc that's my friend's name
omg also thank u all so much for all the feedback I got on this! I didn't expect much since it's a dead fandom and pretty small but! I'm very happy thank u all
also I reuploaded this bc it said it was published and updated on the 27th but that's the first time I published it? I uploaded the second chapter today (may 4th)? anyways goodbye