Chapter Ten – Coincidences and Hurt

Naru was shocked, to say the least. He didn't wait until Mai had completely calmed down, even though he knew it was the polite thing to do. He stood up.

"Mai," The girl looked up at him, and there was a familiar pain and numbness in her eyes. It was the same emotion he had dealt with himself when he had found out about his own twin. Naru scowled. To think, Mai had been dealing with a similar situation and he had never known… The thought of that made him angry. "Why didn't you tell me you had a twin? You said your family was dead."

Mai gave him a long look. She seemed to be caught between sadness and anger. At first Naru thought she was going to snap at him for having been so inconsiderate. He didn't know that Mai's anger was directed toward someone else.

Mai looked down, obviously trying to get a handle on all of her emotions. "It didn't seem important," was all she said.

Naru did not find the answer satisfying. It only grew his curiosity. But the harsh look from Ayako reminded him that this was not the time nor place for such discussions.

Mai sighed, swiped a finger under her eye, and stood up. She dusted herself off, as if the motion might get rid of her negative emotions as well as the dirt. "Keiko, you can go. If you have any more information, please email me."

Mai spoke in her usual chipper manner, but the words made her unspoken message clear: I can't deal with anything more you have to say right now. For once, Naru didn't blame Mai for her typically unreasonable emotions.

Mai turned and smiled at Keiko, and Naru had to wonder at how well she pulled it off. It suddenly hit him that maybe Mai's happy responses to everything in the past may have been nothing more than an act; a mask not unlike his own.

He didn't want to think that Mai may not be as happy as she let on.

Mai spoke to Keiko for a moment and then the two left together. Presumably, Mai was showing Keiko to the door. Always polite his assistant was, no matter how unreasonable the circumstances.

The group was silent and the room turned cold with unspoken words as soon as Mai left. No one knew what to do or say and, for once, Naru was caught in somewhat emotional turmoil with the rest of them. He was speechless.

Finally, he broke the silence. "Did anyone know anything about this?" He asked. There was a general shaking of heads, and Naru let out a quiet sigh of relief. He didn't really understand why, but he didn't want to think that one of them knew anything about Mai's twin and he didn't. Anyways, being that he was the one with experience with missing twins, it should have been him she spoke to first. Not some singing monk or a crazy priestess or anything.

"I can't believe this," Monk said, shaking his head in disbelief. Ayako nodded in agreement. "Our Mai. She has a twin that she never told us about." He paused, something on the tip of his tongue. Naru thought he knew what the monk was thinking and decided to bring it to light.

"Why was she keeping her twin a secret from us?" Naru asked, and there was none of the hurt or betrayal that he felt in his voice, as there would have been in monks had he been the one to voice the thought. But Naru wasn't talking about betrayal. "What is it that Mai is trying to keep secret?"

No one had time to speculate on the matter because, in that moment, Mai returned. She was wearing too big a smile for the situation and it was clear to everyone how much the young girl must be hurting. But none of them could look at Mai now without wondering at what she was hiding from them. Naru was right. Clearly, she thought something in her life was important enough to deliberately keep it a secret from them.

Mai clapped her hands together, successfully pulling everyone away from their inner thoughts and forcing their eyes on her. "Okay!" The girl smiled. "Who wants tea?"

"No tea."

Mai looked shocked when she turned to look at Naru. "What?" she questioned, "No tea for our favorite tea loving narcissist?"

Naru's eyes narrowed at her and he was truly tempted to begin their usual bickering (or, more pointedly, his coolly pushing her buttons just to see her lose her head), despite how inappropriate it would be for such a situation. But, again, Ayako shot him a look and he thought better of it.

Ayako was really an annoying person.

"Everyone is going to continue their work while you and I," Naru looked pointedly at Mai, "go talk about this new development." When Monk went to open his mouth Naru added quickly, "Alone."

The rest of the SPR team got up and began to go their separate ways. "Mai, meet me in the base in ten minutes." Mai nodded and began to leave when Naru thought better of his decision and stopped her. "Bring tea," he said.

Mai smiled to herself as she left, walking quickly to the kitchen.

The familiar actions of making Naru's tea soothed her, and she was glad Naru had given her this chance to be by herself for a moment. She needed to collect her thoughts, to decide what she was going to tell her make-shift family.

It wasn't like she had much to keep secret. It was just that no one actually knew about the story she was about to have to share with Naru.

Mai carried the tea to the base and, for a moment, she thought she heard her sister's voice, telling her it was okay. But when Mai jumped and quickly turned around, no one was there. She sighed.

"Here's your tea, Naru." Mai said, setting the cup down in front of him as soon as she arrived. Naru was sat in his usual seat, his usual cold expression on his face. Mai took a seat across from him and nervously picked at a piece of dust on her sweater. Taking a sip of tea, Naru began.

"Well?" He asked, raising his eyebrow with a pointed look. Mai swallowed and then deflated.

"I'm sorry Naru," she said, not able to meet his eyes out of shame. "I didn't really mean to keep her a secret from you. There just… there wasn't really a good time to bring it up. I… I really am sorry." Slowly, Mai looked up from her lap to meet the narcissist's eyes. He studied her for a moment and then nodded.

There was a silence and Mai tilted her head curiously at Naru's face, which was growing more and more uncomfortable looking as time passed. Finally, he said what was on his mind. "You saw your sister's death. Was it third person or were you…"

The last part to the question was left unspoken and Mai suddenly understood why Naru had grown uncomfortable. But she also understood why he was asking.

"I was her. In the dream, I was my sister when she died. I saw it through her eyes."

Naru nodded slowly and looked away. "I'm sorry," he said. And, again, he was struck by how similar their circumstances really were. Because, he too had had the horrifying opportunity to experience his twin's death through his own eyes.

He turned to look at Mai again. He had one more thing to clear up. Clearing his throat he looked down and spoke at his tea cup.

"Mai, why didn't you say anything. When I told you about Gene… you still kept this a secret from me. Why?" He cringed. Why had he just said she had kept it a secret from him, not the entire group, as if it was something personal?

But Mai didn't catch his phrasing, or at least she must have not thought it was strange of him to put it that way.

She frowned, looking guilty. "I'm so, so sorry Naru. I didn't want to keep it from you. I guess… I guess, at the time, there was so much going on. And I just was so shocked at how crazy big of a coincidence it must have been. To think, you and I would meet and work together. That we would both have twins who were missing, and both be orphans, and both have some sort of psychic powers and have a twin with psychic powers. It's just… It's sort of overwhelming."

Naru understood exactly what she meant. Unlike for Mai, who had known about this for some time, the huge unlikeliness of this situation was just hitting him. Naru didn't believe in fate, but this coincidence was almost too big to handle.

"You're missing one," he said, and Mai cocked her head in confusion. He cringed but met her eyes. "We both found out about our twin's deaths by experiencing it ourselves."

Mai looked startled, and then grief washed over her. "Yes, that too," she admitted. "But we have something that makes us different too. Mei and I weren't on good terms. Unlike you and Gene, we've never been close. In fact, I haven't seen Mei since I was ten."

That was surprising to Naru. He knew that nothing could have separated him and Gene for that long, save death itself. It was strange for him to think that some twins weren't as close as him and Gene had been.

"What happened?" Naru asked.

Mai shook her head. "I don't know. I have almost no memories of anything before my mother died. But Mei left to go to America when we turned ten, only two weeks after mom died. Only Mei could tell you what happened. She never explained why she left me like that."

"Mai, it could have been that Mei didn't have a choice. When it comes to young orphans… sometimes siblings have to be separated." Oliver just thanked the gods, or fate or chance or whatever was out there, that he and Gene managed to be adopted by the same family.

Mai shook her head. "Mei was given a choice. Stay in Japan with me, or go to America and leave me behind. She decided to leave." Mai took a breath and let it out slowly. "Naru, my twin decided to leave me, and I don't know why."