Nuclear Fusion


IMPORTANT! Read this! DL, DR!

Pairings: Friendship!GeneMai.

Genres: Angst & Hurt/Comfort

Disclaimer: I will never own Ghost Hunt, 'kay? All rights reserved by all concerned parties.


Secondary Reaction
Taniyama Mai + Oliver Davis
[Catalyst: Eugene Davis]


So I sing and I shout…
Paradichlorobenzene
I scream without knowing the reason why…
Paradichlorobenzene
Can you be satisfied with the way things are?
Paradichlorobenzene
Might you change if you tore free from all these rules?
Paradichlorobenzene, sung by Kagamine Len

I was just chilling out in the corridor where my classroom was located, waiting for nobody in particular, when Gene spotted me and broke away from the gaggle of fangirls surrounding him to greet me.

"Hi," was his breathless statement.

"Hi," I echoed back, distastefully eying the girls that he had left—they were all shooting me annoyed and envious looks. "What now?"

"Well, I want to apologize in advance but I think I can't go to our tutor session for today," he said with a truly apologetic look. I felt a swell of disappointment in my chest.

"What? Why?"

"I'm expected to be somewhere else today, and they'll go ballistic on me if I ditch them… and besides, I've asked—no, convinced Noll to take my place. He'll be a better teacher."

"What!" I exclaimed. I had been quite afraid and rather irritated of Noll's standoffish attitude ever since we first met. "But—!"

"Come on, just this once? I promise you'll never have to be forced to be alone with him after this afternoon."

Did he just read my mind? Ugh.

He gave me a quick smile and a fleeting look before hurrying away from the girls.

I was busy feeling disappointed when the apparent leader of those fangirls rounded on me.

"Ne. What are you to Davis-san?" she demanded quite suddenly, tossing her dyed brown hair back over her shoulder. I stared back at her.

"What?" I asked blankly.

"You must've known something we don't. Otherwise, why'd he even waste his time talking to you?"

"Well, you're mistaken," I said coldly. "And if I do know something about him that you didn't, what's the problem? I mean, it's not even your business…"

"Gene's business is the whole school's business," the girl said arrogantly. I was instantly incensed.

"And why is that?" I replied venomously. "Gene is not the school's toy! He's a living, breathing, genuine human being that sometimes gets fed up because of people who stick firmly with the status quo! People like you!" I crossed my arms. "If he has to deal with you girls all the time, maybe I would even help him kill himself. Just saying." And with those triumphant words, I turned on my heel and strode down the end of the corridor, turning to the hallway to the right just to find myself running smack onto Oliver Davis.

"Erm…?" I was flabbergasted. And a bit embarrassed. Maybe he heard me answering back to my seniors—?

"Follow me," were the only two words that escaped his lips, and with a foreboding seems of doom, I dared not disobey, and grudgingly went after him.


"Where are we going?" I protested as we broke out into the chilly winter air.

He didn't even grace me with a look, but instead just walked faster. "Will you just shut up and do as I say?"

He led me to as far as the grade school building, where he whirled at me and stared with intense blue eyes. I flinched under his gaze, making him scowl.

"Gene asked me to tutor you in Chemistry," he finally said. I was relived that he hadn't brought the subject up.

"Yes, he told me," I said feebly.

"Well, Taniyama-san (he sounded as if he didn't like my name at all, which made me grit my teeth), can you please give me a valid reason as to why I should?"

"Um, because I suck at it?"

He scoffed. "You said it."

It made me send an unfriendly look at him. "What?"

"Nothing," he said blandly, and I finally decided that he wasn't the least bit cute. "I shall await you at dismissal then, Taniyama-san. Take care that you see me at my classroom. And in case that you don't know where my classroom is, it's just right beside yours." And giving me a highly bemused glance, he stalked off, unluckily immune to all my dagger glares.

Why can't he be nice to me? At least just for Gene's sake? Grr, he drives me mad!


"You're going where?" Michiru looked as if she couldn't believe her ears. "But—but that's the lion's den!"

We were grouped around my desk and talking about every triviality in our lives right after the ringing of the dismissal bell, until the subject suddenly switched to my dilemma. In other words, Oliver Davis's sudden role as my Chem tutor.

"To Oliver-senpai's classroom," I sighed. "I know, right?" Sooo, if Gene was a cat, would that really designate Noll as the lion? Hmm… Rats, I forgot that he was English…

"No way, are you really that brave to face him?" Keiko said with a look that made my courage shrivel up. "I mean, he was…"

"I must," I sighed, gathering heart. "If I wanted to pass that Chemistry exam next week, I must."

"Ganbatte," Michiru told me with a sigh as they waved me off. "I hope you make it out alive."

I waved back at them and bravely made my way to the fourth-year classroom directly beside mine. If I was correct, class… B?

But before I could even peek past the open doorway, a short girl with her dark hair cut in a bob and with delicate china doll-like features stepped out of the room, then glanced at me with a nonchalant air. I immediately recognized her as Hara Masako, another one of the popular faces in the campus because of her prettiness and her status as the only heiress of an extremely wealthy family. She was in the same year as me, though, so I wondered what she could have been doing in a fourth-year classroom.

She was staring at me with something like irritation, so I felt obliged to speak up and greet her.

"Konnichiwa, Hara-san."

She narrowed her deep brown eyes and tossed her head before ignoring my greeting and strolling off. I sighed at this and finally looked into the classroom. He was seated by the window, reading a book, and as if by instinct, looked up and saw me. Or maybe that term was inaccurate. He literally met my eyes.

He gestured for me to come in, so I timidly wove my way through some of the seniors gathered in my path and stood by him. He looked much less severe without the forbidding look that he had before, though. He just looked sort of expressionless and rather calm.

Truth be told, he looked nothing short of stunning. Compared to Gene's casual, windswept look, Oliver's imperturbable neatness reminded me of a kind of classical, unruffled elegance that I thought only belonged to photos in fashion magazines, frozen in time and unchanging under glossy paper. I again asked the gods what this extreme good fortune could mean, and secretly thought that he must be more at home in the most formal of clothes, and wear them beautifully. Gene was more of a free spirit, so I think he'll be stifled in formal settings. Maybe that's why he always lets the first buttons of his uniform unbuttoned.

"Will you please stop gawking at me?" he suddenly said, making me start and blink at him like an idiot that he so obviously thought I was.

"Er, are we going?" I asked tentatively.

"We should," he said coldly, shutting his book with a snap. "Let's get this over with. And quickly."

Ugh. He must be spoiled rotten by his parents. As long as he doesn't open his mouth and go on looking his best, though, I'm content.


"You're on what lesson now?" he asked me as we sat opposite each other in the school library. I would have preferred the familiarity of the quad, but I decided that Oliver was far too unfriendly to even suggest that idea to him.

"Rates of reactions," I answered. "Effects of a catalyst on reactions, to be more exact."

"Hm," was his remark, which I read as a sound of disbelief at my incompetence. "Well, what do you know about this subject so far?"

"Well, I do know that catalysts speed up chemical reactions…"

"That's right," he nodded. "For example, you can use palladium to speed up a reaction between carbon monoxide and oxygen. If you balance the equation—" He wrote said equation on a piece of paper and made me balance it (I was quite nervous at the sudden task, but balanced it quickly), before taking it back and teaching me how catalysts work.

He was such a straightforward guy compared to Gene. But I do admit that he's good at this academic stuff. I could understand most of the lesson by the time he shut the book and stared expressionlessly at me, a perfect picture of tranquillity made by an extremely artistic deity.

"Ehem…" I cleared my throat expectantly as he continued to stare at me with wonderfully dark blue eyes.

He blinked two times in quick succession, his long eyelashes as light as feathers, and said neutrally, "You're now friends with my brother, aren't you?"

Huh? That was the most out-of-the-blue question that I've ever been presented with…

"I guess you could look at it that way," I answered cautiously. He tapped his pen calmly on the table as he continued to watch me, the icy upturn of his brows making me sweat it.

"Well, I've seen most of his friends," was Oliver's serious reply. "And if you were a bit more brighter than I've taken you to be, you might've noticed that not one of them has brains enough to fill a Chinese teacup. And trust me, they're the smallest teacups in my mother's collection."

"Oh, I see," I said rather waspishly. He made me feel as if I were a grade school student. "I think I understand what you were trying to imply."

"Good." He stood up and brushed off imaginary dust from his slacks before bowing slightly at me. "Then, Taniyama-san, could I expect you to be at least one notch more sensitive compared to those morons who call themselves my brother's friends?" His blue eyes flashed. "Gene may have been a lot of things before, but now that he's destroyed everything with a single stupid—" He caught himself at the last syllable and swallowed visibly, his gaze dropping to the floor as without another word, he strolled off, his Advanced Algebra book safely under his arm.

The glass doors of the library closed after him.

I watched his retreating figure wonderingly, while musing at the fact that while Oliver seems to be content to stand in his brother's shadow, that doesn't dampen the strength of his presence any one bit.


"So what really happened?" Gene asked me the next morning, which was a Saturday. He had called me out of the blue and we met up in front of Shibuya 109. And now, we were loafing in the nearest park, my eyes turned to the iron-gray sky as I sat on the swing and he amiably pushed me.

I gave him a sour look and planted my feet on the ground, accidentally making stones fly as he pushed me again and made my boots skid on the hard, snowy ground. He paused when he noticed that I had been trying to stop my ascent.

"Well, Mai-san?" Yup, we had already progressed to first-name terms as the winter had progressed, the suffix "-san" added onto my first name his way of giving me a sort of mixed familiarity and respect. He drops the honorific, though, when he wants to annoy me, or whenever he shows off his playfulness.

"He's a jerk," were the words that came out of my mouth.

"Oops," he said apologetically. "I did remind him to go a bit easy on you…"

"No, he was an easy teacher," I sighed. "My problem with him was his personality. He's… he's…"

"So sarcastic that calling him rude won't even cut it?" Gene supplied.

I nodded.

"That's Noll," he answered simply.

"I think he doesn't like me," I mused. "And he didn't say it, but he seemed to be curious as to why we hang out all the time ever since that incident. He might've harassed me directly if it was in his book, but luckily, he didn't."

"I see," Gene frowned. Then he brightened. "But I do think that he doesn't think of you as bad either."

"Hah. That was a laugh and a half." I moodily kicked a piece of gravel on the ground and watched it fly.

"Seriously. If he hadn't taken a liking to you, he must've just ignored you and not bother playing the bad guy at all." He playfully draped himself over my back and started talking into my ear. "Know Hara Masako?"

"The real question should've been, who doesn't?" I shot back, pushing him away, and he cheerfully acquiesced by gracefully stepping back a few more feet from me. "I mean, she's got to be the only unanimous celebrity in my batch…"

"Yeah? Well, she's gone around to coming at my house 'coz of my little Noll-chan." He occupied the swing beside me and turned his head to look at me, bright blue eyes shining. "And of course, neither one of us is stupid enough to not know that she fancies him."

"Er," I muttered feebly. "It's got nothi—"

"But you know what?" Gene interrupted me suddenly. It was a bad habit of his that constantly annoyed me, a remnant of his popularity that constantly irked my polite side. "Noll doesn't even pay any attention to her. I end up as the one doing all the chatting up."

"Really? I couldn't think of how anyone could turn down Hara Masako," I said with a dubious frown, and Gene smiled.

"Come on, Noll is really particular in his tastes," Gene said cheerfully. I think he was poking a bit of fun at me, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. "And while Hara Masako is most people's type of girl, Noll isn't most people, you know."

"Huh. I wonder why," I mumbled dolefully.

He rumpled his hair exasperatedly, the mannerism lending him his famous look, that of excessive carelessness without overdoing anything. "Ah, that is the mystery, isn't it?"

"I think I'll rename him because of his attitude," I suddenly decided. "Turning down girls who like him… and not even caring if they look up to him? Well, isn't that like Narcissus?"

Gene whistled merrily. "You learned your Greek mythology, Mai-san. Frankly, I'm impressed."

"Shut it."

"Then, wouldn't we normally call him narcissistic?" he continued, smiling widely at me as he pushed off his feet against the ground to get his swing moving. He had already swung for a few moments before I had come up with a reply.

"I'll call him narcissistic Naru-chan, then," I said decisively, and we both laughed, the sound of our merriment piercing the clear air.

As our laughter died down and a comfortable silence ensued, I then decided that I loved doing this with him. He was such a comfortable guy.


Time flew fast, and spring practically made us all stand on our toes as the four year levels of the high school department breathlessly prepared for the annual foundation festival held every January. To the seniors, it meant that this will be the last time that they'll ever celebrate the festival as bonafide high school students, so it wasn't surprising that they prepared the most extravagant and flashy displays.

Of course, Gene was part of the graduating class, so the pressure of the festival left no vacancy on his already cluttered schedule to even think of persisting to teach me Chemistry during this period. However, knowing that it was inevitable, I concentrated really well on my studies and so managed to rise over my ever-present mud pool of C minuses by the time the actual day arrived.

The festival was held in a day so nice that I could hardly bear remaining inside the campus, instead opting to walk through the milling crowds in the quad to savor the sweet air. The sky was blue, blue, blue… And yeah, it was totally cliché in a very nice way. Maybe the prayers that I said last evening took effect. I dunno.

Anyways, to cut the long story short, I did what normal students do best on festivals: I squandered a quarter of my last paycheck on the festival. Well, it only happens about once every academic year, so why not… Besides, all the proceeds will go to the scholars of the PTA. It's not as if I was recklessly throwing away money here. I am a working student, after all.

Well, the main attraction of the day was really the culminating program that we were holding in the auditorium at the end of the day. And in turn, the main attraction in it was the intermission number by the Davis twins. Yeah, people just can't seem to get tired of marveling at twins (plus points if they're identical!), so they really were the novelty. And the mysterious Oliver was also going to expose himself in the limelight for once, so it was a double eye candy treat. Although, maybe Gene dragged his twin into it for maximum brotherly participation. Or maybe he was psychic, read my thoughts, and was humoring my desire to see Oliver more often in the public eye. I can't decide which of them was the correct answer, though.

I was not really surprised at the theme of the song that Gene chose to sing for the culminating program. Maybe it had been one whole season since "it" happened, but I somehow knew that the scar that "it" left was still prominent on his person. But you know what? Unlike the majority of the student population, I don't think that his attempted suicide can affect my image of him as that perpetually smiling guy who can be quite the introvert at times. Really, I was more surprised by the mere fact that he chose a VOCALOID song and a fast one at that, but that was beside the point.

"For what do I sing?
Paradichlorobenzene
I just sing without understanding why…
Paradichlorobenzene
Yes, I ran, seeking the answers…
Paradichlorobenzene
Though I knew there was nothing out there for me to reach…"

His singing voice was to die for, I'll give you that. The lyrics were a bit on the abstract side, but his playing and singing was enough to drive fangirls wild. Er, myself included, although unlike the others, I could see his true intention in singing that song out of countless others in front of the whole student body.

"So let's sing, let's dance…
Paradichlorobenzene
So let's scream, let's shout…
Paradichlorobenzene
Dogs, cat, cows, pigs, everyone…
Paradichlorobenzene
So let's go mad, let's fall asleep
Until we fall apart...!

"I hate rules, I just don't want to be held down
So I run away, forgetting everything around me
I hate to be told what to do
I want to be a little wicked
I slip out of my house in the middle of the night
And run through the town
'Why am I alive? What's my purpose?' I asked a stray cat
The cat said nothing in reply,
Just looked at me through spiteful eyes
I drank up some coffee that I couldn't stand to drink
And looked up at the clouded sky
'What am I capable of right now?'
I don't even know that much…"

Ah, his true intentions. Even Naru-chan (hehe), who was accompanying him on the keyboard, had his eyebrows drawn together in an expression of concentration as he quickly breezed through the chords, Gene's voice never tripping once on the insane speed of the song. I admired him for that. Could you say paradichlorobenzene in Japanese without twisting the letters? And at the speed that Gene was singing those lines? I can't.

"So I sing and I shout…
Paradichlorobenzene
I scream without knowing the reason why…
Paradichlorobenzene
Can you be satisfied with the way things are?
Paradichlorobenzene
Might you change if you tore free from all these rules?"

Maybe you'd have seen the way that he was looking all around the audience as he sang those last verses if you'd been next to me in that crowded auditorium. Challenging them subtly. Challenging the status quo wholeheartedly like a battering ram.

Yeah, I love his voice, but I've fallen in love with his message. There's a world of difference between those two terms.

"Yes, I'd like to spill my guts to someone, anyone…
Paradichlorobenzene
I'll wield justice in the fight against evil…
Paradichlorobenzene
With justice as shield my stress melts away…
Paradichlorobenzene
As we stop wandering we don't realize…
Our foolish deeds…!"

His eyes were blazing as he belted out the few next verses, the guitar that he was playing restless under his grasp as the last chorus drew near. Gene sang the final lines:

"So let's sing, let's dance…
Paradichlorobenzene!
So let's laugh, let's covet…
Paradichlorobenzene!
You and me and everything…
Paradichlorobenzene!
So let's go mad, let's fall asleep
Until we fall apart...!"

The last chords were marvelously done, and the applause was deafening as they left the stage. Gene was smiling like his old self, a fact that I instantly noticed. And yet, did you know another thing that I noticed when they finished the number?

…Naru-chan had met my eyes once again when he left the stage. Ugh… why did I have to blush so hard? I thought I was crushing more on his twin?

Damn Gene, you catalytic trickster.


A/N:

A plot twist for Christmas, guys! Merry Christmas!

Yay. Finally finished churning out this chapter! It's fun whenever I get to pick a title for every chapter I write. :)

A note of interest: Paradichlorobenzene is a chemical used as substitute for the naphthalene in mothballs. Needless to say, it's rather fatal when ingested.

I noticed that the Kagamine twins of VOCALOID get the most of those chemistry-based songs… *sigh* Twins…

Yeah, Chemistry was my best subject in my third year. It's loads easier than Physics. Hurhur.

Also, this chapter focused more on Naru and Mai because I was kinda building up on the pairing. Heehee. Next chapter we'll have all the tension and stuff between the twins.


Give a poor writer an excuse to update. Review!