Destined Ties:

Chapter 7:

It had been a long day for Mai. Progress had been made with the case and then with her personal life. She had said that she was happy for Naru to consult Bou-san and everyone else if he needed to. She accepted that they were going to need some help at some point and that she needed to move on from what had happened when she was younger and this was the way to do it.

The card that Naru had given to her showed that they had set up their own small business together to solve mysterious cases. She was glad that they had continued on with what they had enjoyed doing together. Perhaps Ayako had stopped claiming everything was due to a site bound ghost by now and Bou-san's exorcisms might have a higher success rate.

Her cooking skills had come into use as well. It turned out that neither Lin or Naru could cook or neither had any intention to and they usually got takeout so Mai had cooked something for them.

Now she was getting ready for bed. She had just finished buttoning up her pyjama top when she heard a knock at the door. Naru was right on time.

"I'm glad that my parents don't know anything about this," Naru commented dryly as he sat on the chair next to her bed. "My mother would have palpitations if she heard I was in a female's room."

That made Mai blush fervently. She appeared to have the again have the honour of one of Naru's first times.

"What do I need to do?" Mai asked and fluffed the pillows.

"Lay down like you usually do and relax. I am not going to ask you to do anything hard yet."

Doubtfully Mai lay down and pulled the duvet up to her chin. The mattress was a lot more comfy that her usual so she was already relaxing.

"I'm relaxed," she said.

"That was quick," Naru said with some amusement.

"I'm easily distracted," Mai admitted.

"Close your eyes and relax. This will not work if you fall asleep too quickly."

Mai closed her eyes. It was hard to sleep without sleeping pills so she wouldn't have trouble fulfilling that request.

"Concentrate on that desire to fall asleep and think of what is going to happen tomorrow. Keep both those thoughts in your mind."

Mai could tried to keep hold of that elusive tired feeling that kept evading her and also consider what was going to occur the next day. Her legs and arms began to feel heavier and she had no desire to open her eyes again like she usually did. Naru hadn't told her what they were doing the next day so she couldn't guess accurately and it exhausted her so she fell asleep and into a dream.

She was walking alongside Naru and they were discussing latent psychics. She was unable to control the words coming out of her mouth so she simply listened. Apparently she showed signs of being one.

"Where are we going?" Her future self finally asked much to Mai's happiness.

"Here," Naru said and gestured at the restaurant ahead of them. Mai recognised it as being the one that was around the corner from Naru's apartment. "I'm taking you out for lunch."

"That is kind of you," Mai said.

Just as Mai was wondering if it counted as a date she felt herself being pulled out of the dream. She woke up with a start to find Naru's face right in front of her and extra weight on her bed.

"What did you dream of?" he asked and moved off the bed. "It was a little hard to wake you up."

"Am I a latent psychic?" Mai enquired sleepily.

"You are almost certainly one," Naru confirmed. "I had been planning to tell you tomorrow."

"Well you did and you took me out for lunch."

Naru's reaction was to smirk. "I thought you might see that."

Mai was understandably confused especially since she had just woken up.

"How did you know?"

Naru clasped his fingers and looked thoughtful. "I made a conscious decision earlier to discuss latent psychics with you and to spend a lunch break with you tomorrow. I wanted to see if you would dream of a future event that was practically confirmed to happen first."

"I see," she replied. She did understand what he had said, but not the significance.

He appeared to guess what she was thinking. "It was just an experiment. There are lots of different things I would like to try especially since you mentioned that you were able to dream of past events."

"Why have I been able to dream about things before without using the method you taught me?"

"In some cases it could have been you channelling your unconscious fears into dreams. Other times. With your previous cases, your subconscious mind was concentrating on solving the case and produced the dreams. These are just theories by the way. I need more data."

Mai flinched. He was right about that. Her worries had often manifested themselves into her dreams. More recently she had been concerned about Naru so that was probably why she had been able to dream about him.

"I have a hypothesis that on some level you can sense what is going to happen and that produces your dreams," Naru mused. "You do have good instincts. That has been evident."

Mai was reassured by the compliment. He hadn't added that she had instincts like an animal this time as well. She was beginning to wish that she really had explored her abilities more when she was younger instead of fearing them.

"You can sense danger quite well as well. I am assuming that I will not die tomorrow because you chose to dream of our excursion rather than my death," Naru continued on.

"Are you wanting to do any more experiments tonight?" Mai yawned.

Naru stood up and moved the chair to its original position which was against the wall.

"No, you can go to sleep. I need to write the results up."

That made her sound like some kind of lab rat. She reminded herself that she was getting good benefits out of being a lab rat.

"Good night, Naru," she said.

"Sleep well," Naru replied and closed the door.

There was a lot to digest from the short session and she was too tired to analyse it at the moment so she made herself comfortable again and quickly fell asleep.

The person in the room next to hers was feeling the opposite. Naru was keen to type up his observations instead of going to sleep. It wasn't like he was able to sleep at night anyway. He always had nightmares about Gene.

There were two reasons for wanting to destroy the curse: revenge and protection. He did want to avenge his brother's death and he didn't want the curse to continue to kill of his family's bloodline.

He opened up his laptop and located the folder of the files that he had devoted to Mai Taniyama. They varied from her address to photos of her supplied by Masako Hara. Now he added a new file about her abilities.

She had more abilities than everyone had given her credit for. He had a desire to help her out of empathy. He had not enjoyed having PK and psychometric abilities when he was younger at all. Dreaming of the future was another ability altogether that had large consequences. It was entirely possible that she had experienced these consequences at some point.

He would be lying to himself if he believed that he wasn't curious about what had happened in her past, but he also understood why she had chosen to abandon her abilities. It was clear that no one around her had been able to help her.

Naturally he could probably find out what had happened by asking Masako Hara. He had noticed that she seemed to quite like him. He also considered asking her an invasion of Mai's privacy so he had no intention to.

That night Mai dreamt of the past. Of her cases with Bou-san, Ayako, John, Masako and of course, her boyfriend Yasuhara. Of her high school life that had been blighted by people finding out about her dreams.

She woke up breathing heavily and sweating from the one where she was called a freak. Mai sat up in bed and sighed. That particular dream had been a recurring nightmare that she had suffered from before the sleeping pills.

Her withdrawal from investigating with the others had been mainly due to the rumours and comments and because she didn't want to know the future all the time.

She sat up in bed and sighed. If she was going to live with her dreams now and control them she should be able to find a way to avoid that dream.

One concern she had was that seeing her former investigation partners again would trigger all the dreams of the past to come back in full force. That was why she had lost all contact with them deliberately. She was afraid.

She lay back down and stared up at the ceiling for a while until her eyes started to close involuntarily. She might as well think about the case whilst she was tired, it could produce a dream.

She thought of Naru and about his probably dead brother. What had happened to him?

She fell asleep with those thoughts in her mind and something interesting happened.

Her dream was different to usual. It was a lot darker with the only source of light being herself. There was only darkness ahead of her as she stumbled along until she came across a slowly growing ball of light.

The ball of light expanded into a person dressed in black. He also had dark hair and pale skin. When they locked eyes she realised that he looked exactly like Naru.

"Naru?" she asked aloud.

A/N: I spent most of this week in a laboratory at university and stayed there quite late for my data collection so I have not finished the next chapter.

This means that this story is now on hiatus. I cannot confirm when I will be able to update again. It might be Easter or summer.

Thank you to everyone who has supported this story so far.