CONTACT
My Rude Awakening

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Ghost Hunt. I wouldn't be writing this if I did.

WARNING: May contain spoilers from the manga and novels, including Akumu no Sumu Ie.


CHAPTER 3
Initial Reaction
Published: 07.10.2014, Edited: 09.25.2015


Mai had been avoiding Noll lately and it irked him. She did not respond to his usual baiting anymore. She would just look at him, shake her head slightly and then sigh. It was starting to get on his nerves and not even her tea could calm him down this time, but he still wanted some anyway. He always did.

"Mai, tea!" Noll demanded from inside his office.

The beverage was promptly delivered to him after a few minutes without a single word from the high school girl. She turned around and left the room silently as soon as she placed the tea on his desk.

He drank his tea as usual as he flipped through reports and files on the desk. He grew bored of them after two hours or so of non-stop reading so he decided to go out to the reception area. The young boss was surprised to see Mai bent over her desk writing something intently. He crept closer to her so as not to disturb the girl and looked over her shoulder. She was struggling with her math worksheet. He could not stop himself from pointing out her glaring mistakes.

"Mai, you answered numbers 2, 6, 9, 13 and 18 incorrectly," he stated condescendingly. She was startled by the sound of his voice so close to her ear. Noll straightened his posture and leaned against her desk as he continued, "Most of your mistakes are due to carelessness..." His words trailed off. Her head shot up to retort with eyes burning with rage, but he spoke faster. "…but this does not surprise me at all considering how impulsively idiotic you always are."

The young woman looked away from him and exhaled loudly to dispel her anger. Her head hung low as she said quietly, "If you've satisfied your compulsion to insult me, please leave me alone already." Mai went back to solving her math problems.

She was at it again, he thought. He saw Yasuhara frown at him from the corner of his eye, yet Noll pointedly ignored the other man. He was simply being his usual self so why was everyone giving him a hard time now?

The blue-eyed teen strode towards his office to resume his work. When he reached his desk, he found his teacup empty. He was about to call for a new cup, but decided against it because he did not know how to handle his extremely silent assistant.

His mood significantly darkened.

He used to complain a lot about Mai's loud voice and incessant talking, yet there he was right now, unable to handle the silence she was giving him. A deep frown slowly marred his handsome face.

All thoughts pertaining to the brunette were pushed away to the back of his mind for the moment as he attempted to recover the focus he needed to complete the half-finished report waiting in his laptop.

Little did Noll know that this uncomfortable situation would continue in the days to come and he would not be able to disregard it for too long.


The SPR team was on another case when it happened.

Noll had already called out everyone's tasks as soon as they reached the room designated as their base. He assigned Mai to set up the base with him to keep her out of trouble – at least on their first day. It was easier to keep an eye on the girl when she was next to him. After the drowning incident, he did not like to take his chances when it came to her safety.

"Mai, secure the shelves." He commanded flatly. "'Lin and I will be placing the monitors there shortly."

"Yes, boss!" she acknowledged playfully, saluting as she made her way to where the shelves were.

Mai seemed to be in an extremely good mood, he noticed. It was probably because she fell asleep without dreaming on the way to the countryside hotel they were to investigate. Noll was willing to bet that she had good sleep because her head was leaning against his shoulder. He clearly saw how his assistant relaxed when he so graciously let her snuggle against him in the van earlier. This was certainly an improvement from the usual moody and guarded disposition she seemed to have adopted as of late.

"Done!" she exclaimed with pride five minutes later. "What's next, Naru?"

"Tea." He replied without looking up from the report in his hand.

"Hmph! Tea addict." She murmured to herself, and then continued, "He hasn't even done anything yet!"

"I beg your pardon, Mai?" He finally raised his head to gaze at her blankly.

"Nothing, Naru~!" she sang sarcastically.

The brunette proceeded to make the tea for her boss. A table at the back of the base was set up with an electric kettle, just as she had requested from their client and host so she could make Naru's tea anytime without having to leave the room.

Noll and Lin worked on setting up the monitors and hooking up the rest of their equipment inside the base. They halted their work for a while to drink the tea Mai made for them, and then finished it. Afterwards, the young boss asked Lin to position the cameras where he had indicated on the blueprint, much to the older man's displeasure.

Lin left the room quickly to complete his task, leaving Noll and Mai all alone.

"Mai, come here," the blue-eyed teen called out. "Take care of the controls. I will instruct Lin on the positioning of the cameras."

"But that's boring, Naru, and I suck at handling electronics," she whined.

"I do not pay you to have fun at work." He countered bluntly.

The girl sighed and did what she was told reluctantly. She quickly pressed the buttons to configure the video feeds from the cameras. She could hear her boss giving out commands to the microphone on his own headset. After an hour of setting up and positioning the cameras (Lin was able to do it faster than Mai or the rest of SPR irregulars), all the video feeds were already online and data collection was well underway.

Noll was checking the monitors behind Mai when he decided to tease her out of habit. They had been watching the feeds for the past 10 minutes and nothing extraordinary was happening – just as expected.

He bent down and whispered very softly in her ear, "Mai, tea."

His action totally caught her off-guard since she was watching the monitors intently. A squeak escaped from her mouth out of shock. Then she fell from her swivel chair sideways and hit the floor before she even knew what was going on.

Everything happened so fast that even Noll was surprised, but he did not let it show on his face. He stepped closer to his fallen employee and offered her a hand as an apology. He did not expect her to get hurt from his little prank, but her reaction amused him greatly.

Mai took his hand to quickly pull herself up from the floor, then let it go as soon as she was standing. She was startled to see her employer frozen as if in a daze, his eyes blank and his hand still hanging in the air where she released it.

"Naru?" she asked while waving a hand in front of his eyes. "Naru, is there something wrong?"

Noll blinked rapidly as he regained his own vision. He started seeing flashes of Mai's recent memories in his mind the moment her hand came in contact with his. It seemed he lost himself for a minute or so as he was flooded with images from the past.

"I'm fine," he said nonchalantly as he saw her worried expression.

"Are you sure?" Her hand reached out to touch his face, but he grabbed her wrist lightly to stop her. Once again, his mind was assaulted with a surge of images upon contact. It made him slightly dizzy, but he was conscious enough this time, unlike earlier.

"I'm sure, Mai." He assured her quietly as he dropped her hand. "Just give me the tea I asked for. Now."

"Jerk!" She huffed and started ranting as she made her way towards the back of the room to prepare his tea. "Is it so wrong for me to be just a little bit concerned about you?! Huh? Fine. I don't care anymore, stupid scientist…"

The young man sat down on the chair his assistant had vacated and tried to recall what he just saw in his mind. He could distinctly remember the images of college and scholarship application forms, report cards with above-average grades, and a career aspiration survey form.

He closed his eyes for a moment to improve his focus.

There were also the images of the rest of the SPR team with concerned looks on their faces as they talked to him – to Mai, technically, since those were her memories – and finally, an image of himself smiling sadly with a lake as the background, and another one where he was completely soaked and looking down at her with both anger and relief in his eyes.

His eyes shot open when he heard Mai walking towards where he sat. He continued his analysis as he watched her approach with his tea.

Based on what he saw, Noll knew that he had unwittingly performed psychometry on the girl. The fact that he was only able to do so now utterly bothered him. He admitted that they had been physically in contact several times already in the past year or so, but he never saw anything from her. The issue required further investigation, but he let it go for now because they had a case to solve.

Mai placed the tea in front of him as she observed him with concern (despite what she had declared only minutes ago). He moved his gaze towards the monitor to check what the rest of the team was up to. His hand automatically reached out for the teacup and raised it to his lips. He savored the scent of the Earl Grey before drinking it.

As Noll sipped his tea calmly, it finally hit him.

He could use his psychometry to figure out what was going on with Mai.


AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thanks for sticking around for my story~! I appreciate all the reviews, favorites, and follows. I changed the summary slightly, because it seems like the old one gave people the wrong idea. *grins* I'm so sorry if that were the case! I would love it if you can give me some feedback regarding my work (the pace is too slow, it is lacking in fluff, etc.) so I can improve on my future chapters. I look forward to hearing from you!


EDIT: I fixed some minor grammatical errors pointed out by my editor (my sister). All succeeding chapters were also edited, but no changes were done on the story details.