EDITED
As Mai opened the door to the SPR office one Saturday morning and entered, the autumn wind rushed inside after her. Outside by the cherry blossom tree, the smell of red tea wafted through.
Mai dropped her stuff at her desk and after doing her routine sensing, delivered her customary tea to Oliver and Lin in their respective offices, received a breathtaking kiss from Oliver in greeting and settled down at her desk with her on tea to begin her work.
A couple of Lin's shiki floated out to keep her company. Occasionally playing with her hair or ruffling the papers she was working with. Interestingly, they no longer looked like blobs to Mai. They had begun to take on a slight colour and form an animal like shape. The two that was out with Mai in particular looked like a green sparrow and a blue fox. Mai smiled at them and patted them occasionally as she worked.
It wasn't long before the sound of the doorbell ringing disturbed her. The clients who just came in looked like girls in high school.
"Not here. I heard that this is where they do investigations on ghosts, but..."
"Yes. That's right," Mai said suddenly remembering just what case they came in for from her past life.
The two girls looked at Mai with their round eyes. They were about the same age as Mai. They looked surprised.
"What kind of situation are you in?"
One of them answered in a timid voice. "It's about this headstrong girl. The one...who was possessed by a fox spirit. Can you help her?"
"Is it a fox spirit?"
"Yes. ...My friend. A doctor looked at her, but she just seems to be getting worse. A spirit showed up too. Is the director here?"
Mai directed them to the sofa.
"Take a seat. I'll get the director for you shortly."
Mai knocked on Oliver's door before entering his office and shutting it behind her.
"Naru, we have two girls with a case. Please pay attention to what they say and don't give them a direct no. While I know what they say won't immediately interest you, we are going to get flooded with requests for this same case. We need to take it."
Oliver looked up at Mai. "Is this one of those cases?"
"Yes. It is."
Oliver nodded and got up following Mai out the door.
The girls sitting on the sofa were all uncomfortable, sitting so closely together that their shoulders touched. When Mai left Oliver's office, she noticed they were tense and pale.
Oliver walked calmly to the sofa, as his head tilted down slightly as he spoke.
"Nice to meet you. I'm the director, Shibuya."
The girls looked dazed at Oliver's looks.
Suddenly the the two girls shrieked, their eyes staring into each other's.
"What are the details of your problem." Oliver spoke in a cold manner, annoyed at the noise.
They opened their mouths simultaneously.
"That...!"
Then they looked at each other.
"Only one of you needs to explain," Oliver said coldly.
They looked at each other again, and then the girl opened her mouth.
"Umm. There was a classmate who was doing kokkuri at school last month. A friend of ours saw it too, and it seems that she's been possessed by a fox spirit. Since then, she has been acting weird."
"Weird?"
"Sometimes she acts strange. She says and does weird things."
Oliver sighed softly.
"Be more specific."
The girl hesitantly lowered her head.
"Oh... In the middle of class, she jumped onto a table, laughed, and then cursed the teacher. Also, one time in P.E., when we were practicing the long jump, she suddenly ate...sand from the sandpit."
"Whoever died then must've been that kind of person. This is serious," the girl emphasized.
Oliver's fingers entwined together as he pondered the situation.
"And you want the fox spirit to leave," he said presumingly.
"Yes."
They nodded their heads.
Lifting his head, Oliver glared at Mai before looking back at them.
"Leave your details with Mai. We'll contact you if we decide to take your case."
He responded as he stood up.
"Well then."
They let out an indignified scoff, but Oliver didn't take notice. His pitch-black eyes turned toward me.
"Mai, can you make some tea and ask Lin to join us in my office once you've seen them out?"
"Yes."
Without turning around, Oliver continued to walk toward his room.
After the stoic man shut his door, Mai turned towards the girls.
"Sorry... Here, things are a little different."
The girl laughed bitterly.
"...But, it's terrible. If only you could see her!"
"Look, I think what you said is true," Mai said in a reassuring voice. "How about you give me your name and school, and I'll compile a report of your problem. It's very likely that we will look into it."
And then their faces brightened.
"Really?"
"I guarantee it."
Mai took out an SPR pen, and the talkative girl eagerly took it. The sound of the pen scribbling on the paper. She wrote the information with round characters.
"Name...Itou Kiyomi. Occupation...High-school freshman. Address..."
Afterwards Mai saw them off and once they were gone, tucked the paper into an empty folder on her desk. She then made tea, send the bird and fox to grab their master while she waited. Then both of them entered Oliver's office to talk.
Once the three of them were seated and holding their cups of tea, Oliver started.
"Mai, explain."
Mai sighed. "OK, those two girls are just the start. Two more requests will come today. Tomorrow Bou-san will come in with a request from one of his band fans and then the principal will come in. The fox spirit possession is just one of the many strange things happening at this school.
It all links back to a girl who discovered she could bend spoons. It caused a panic splitting the school into two. It all came to a head when one of the teachers forced Kasai-san to bend a key on stage in assembly. She did. The teacher reacted negatively and it resulted in the girl yelling about cursing him to death. Not long after strange things started to happen."
"It sounds like the girl did curse them." Oliver observed.
"She didn't. But she certainly is getting the blame for it. The culprit is someone close to her. She uses the focus on Kasai to protect herself. I'm not sure how much else to tell you without giving the whole thing away but I will say this. Be careful who you give your full name to at this school. The curses are individualised and usually personalised. There's nothing we can do about Masako. She's too well known. Someone probably needs to make sure that she doesn't get pushed down the stairs. Not that she's actually needed on this case. There are no actual spirits involved."
Lin looked suspicious. "It's sounds like your talking about an Onmyouji..."
"Good guess, Lin, we're dealing with hitogatas. Lots of them." Mai nodded. "In my last life I made the mistake of telling the poor girl that Oliver was an onmyouji. Well, I didn't know any better at the time. She told the person who was guilty and that person cursed him. I also made the mistake of telling that guilty person my full name after adamantly refusing to believe that the accused girl was to blame by proclaiming her innocent. She then cursed me because she was afraid that I'd cause a chain reaction. If everyone stopped believing that Kasai had done it, they might cotton on to her instead."
"Anything else we should know?" Oliver asked.
"Nothing I can say without spoiling it for you. I need to leave some mystery for you after all." Mai replied with a smile. Then it dropped. "Except... Try to solve the case before you end up in hospital, please?"
"Why would I end up in hospital?" Oliver asked worried by the look on Mai's face.
"Using your PK to clear the rubble at the bottom of a man hole to prevent us from getting too hurt when we fall in it."
"... Well, that makes sense." Lin commented before he left the couple in the office and headed to his own.
"Are you sure we weren't dating in your past life?" Oliver asked.
Mai laughed. "How could we? You were too busy pandering to Masako and her blackmailing. I doubt you ever took much notice of me other than to insult my intelligence and wind me up with your lack of manners. There was so much I didn't know back then." Mai ended with a sigh.
"If I made a habit of teasing you like that, I must have noticed you." Oliver pulled her around the desk and into his lap.
"I doubt it. You were too focused on searching for Gene for anything else. Out of the office during the down times more than in it. You spent the entire time until that point in a constant bad mood with frustration."
"Impossible." Oliver muttered as he captured her lips with his own.
There was no more talking after that.
...
The next day was Sunday. It was a fine, autumn day, with the wind blowing gently and a clear sky hanging above. The heat wasn't as intense as it normally was.
Mai looked outside the window beside her desk briefly before staring at the three papers spread out in front of her. Yesterday, they had three requests for the same school, and Mai knew more were coming in that day. They were all piling up. One was a request to exorcise a ghost, another to exorcise a fox spirit, and then one about a poltergeist.
She looked at the name of the school. Yuasa High School is an all girls private high school near Tokyo.
...
"Naru-chan."
Mai could hear the sound of the door opening, followed by a rough voice. Takigawa had arrived.
"Yo! Mai-chan, how are you feeling?"
Takigawa waved at Mai with a bright smile on his face.
Mai looked at him when he entered. Black hat, black sunglasses, black everything. Except for the hot pink t-shirt he was wearing beneath his coat.
"Afternoon Bou-san. How was your concert?"
"Eh?! How'd you know? Went great. Give me some ice coffee," he commanded as he slumped onto the couch. "Please, the vending machine's too far away."
"If you're that tired, then you should be panting right now."
"Don't be so mean. I had a lot of work today."
"Whatever."
Mai knocked on Oliver's door, poking her head in. "Naru, Bou-san is here with his request. He's demanding an ice coffee. Want a tea?"
"Yes, please. I'll be right there."
Mai nodded and went to the kitchen and poured Takigawa's ice coffee into a glass cup. It was his favourite. She then prepared tea for herself, Oliver and Lin, placing the four cups onto the usual tray. She dropped Lin's cup into his office before stopping at her desk to pick up her folder and heading out to the seating area with the rest.
"Naru will be out shortly." Mai commented as she set out the cups.
"So how'd you know I was at a concert?"
"Your clothes. You're a professional bassist with your own studio. You have your own band, but the lead singer isn't very good. Today, you were playing back up."
Takigawa's jaw dropped just as Oliver came out into the main room.
"Bou-san."
"Yo."
"Today we were talking about work."
"No kidding."
"I mean it. It sounds like a complicated case, so I thought I'd borrow your knowledge."
Oliver took a seat beside Takigawa, and Mai handed him his tea, before sitting on Oliver's other side.
"A complicated case?"
"Yes. Actually—this a request from a fan of my band. She's a high school student from Tokyo..."
"Band?"
"Yeah. I'm a professional bassist with my own band." After he heard the news, Oliver looked surprised.
Takigawa raised a brow at Oliver's surprise. "So how did Mai know, if you didn't...?"
"Mai's special. She knows a lot of things about everyone."
Takigawa looked like he wanted to ask further but the look on Oliver's face stopped him.
"It's a request from one of my fans, Taka. She's a high school student, and there're some weird things happening at her school. I have a bad feeling about it."
Oliver was silent and attentive.
"That girl said that there's a desk in her room that's cursed. In the past three months, the people who've sat in that desk all had accidents."
"...This sounds cliche," Oliver remarked.
"You can't say that. This situation is different, because four people had the exact same accident."
"...Didn't Japan have the highest amount of accidents in history this year?"
"I thought you'd say that. But unfortunately, that's not the case. This isn't a simple traffic accident. All four of them were dragged by a train. Their arms got caught in the door. And this happened to all four of them. In the past nine months, the seating arrangement changed three times, and four different students have sat there. One person was injured slightly, but the other three sustained large injuries. Well, fortunately no one died. Don't you think this is strange?"
Oliver's hard gaze showed that he was deep in thought.
"And that's not all. One of the girl's teacher used an art prep room, but then a ghost showed up and the teacher was sent to the hospital. He's still vomiting blood, but no one knows why."
"There seems to be a lot of strange incidents happening at that school. It's not just a simple ghost story. There seems to be other accidents and illnesses going on in their school. That girl also said..."
"Hey, Bou-san. The school is 'Yuasa High School' right...?"
Takigawa looked surprised.
"What...? It is Yuasa High School. How did you know?"
Mai handed over her folder to Oliver with the requests she'd taken over the weekend.
"Yesterday we had three requests. All from Yuasa High School"
Takigawa snatched the folder from Oliver.
"This request..."
"Was that fan of yours Itou Kiyomi? Her friend saw someone do Kokkuri, and now she's possessed by a fox spirit. In the second request, Miura Satoko said a ghost touched her, and now she's having liver problems. And in the third request, a poltergeist showed up in a club meeting."
"...What do we do?" Takigawa groaned.
"It's not just a coincidence," Takigawa declared.
"We know." Oliver said.
"Naru-chan, what should we do? Are you just going to ignore this?" Takigawa asked.
"We're waiting on one more requester." Mai responded for him. "He should be here any minute now."
That's when the door opened. Mai's anticipated guest had arrived.
"Um..." the guest muttered.
An old gentleman came into the room.
Mai got up to greet him and the man handed her a business card.
"Noboru Mikami, principal of private school: 'Yuasa High School'" read the card.
"There have been a number of strange incidents happening at my school, so I was wondering if I could request an investigation."
...
They arrived at Yuasa High School on the following Monday. Before proceeding with the investigation, they wanted to hear the staff's and students' accounts of the incidents. Oliver and Mai went inside the school. Lin went around and got some information already.
Since Takigawa also received a request from this school, he went there as well. And so SPR and Takigawa represented separate entities.
It was a typical school. It wasn't old, but it wasn't new either. It wasn't wide, but it wasn't narrow. It seemed like there was an adjacent building that used to be part of the student union. But now it's old and rotting, so now they're in the middle of demolishing it.
When they arrived at the school, they saw the PE teacher teaching softball to the students.
The PE teacher saw the principal with them. Afterwards, Principal Mikami was waiting for them in the main office. Oliver introduced Mai and Takigawa to the principal. Even though all he said was, "This is my assistant."
"I'm Gosokurou-sama. Nice to meet you."
Then the principal introduced them to a middle-aged teacher. "This is our student advisor, Yoshino-kun. He helps the students. If there's anything you need, please don't hesitate to ask."
Yoshino bowed lightly. His bad complexion made him appear nervous.
"Anyway, there have been a lot of accidents and illnesses lately," the teacher said, "one-fifth of our staff is on leave, and this has been a hindrance to our classes. The same thing is happening with the students... In any case, the strange rumors have spread not only to the students, but also to the teachers. Everyone seems to be losing it. —Well, it'll be better if you could hear the complaints from the affected people themselves. Since you've requested it, I have prepared a small conference room for you to use. You can use this room as your base. If you need anything else, feel free to ask me."
"I've informed the students and teachers about this and told them they could see you after school in this room. But I don't know how many people will come."
"Feel free to investigate the school however way you want. You can do whatever you believe to be convenient here. I give my best regards to you," the principal said.
Oliver bowed slightly. "You can leave it to us, sir."
After they left the principal's office, Yoshino guided them through the school. Then he lead them to the room designated as their base.
"Here it is," the teacher announced.
Yoshino-sensei looked back at them. His eyes rested on the tallest figure, Takigawa.
"Are you the leader?" He asked.
"No, no. The leader's over there."
Takigawa pointed at Oliver.
Yoshino turned to look at Oliver. Then an uneasy expression appeared on the teacher's face.
"Well...I also have something to talk to you about."
Oliver calmly looked at the teacher, then nodded.
"I'll listen. ...Did it happen here?"
Mai looked at the door. Above it was the nameplate, "Small Conference Room".
"...I see."
Yoshino opened the door. There was a big table inside, along with a white board and a small shelf. It looked unused.
Oliver carefully scanned the room.
Yoshino encouraged them to enter.
"Tell me the details," said Oliver.
Yoshino looked back at him, the lines on his face reflecting his uneasiness.
"...Well, the thing I've wanted to talk about was..."
Oliver nodded.
"We will protect our client's privacy. You don't need to hide anything from us. By all means, please tell us the details."
Yoshino nodded. His forehead was covered in sweat.
"Um... I hear knocking sounds at night."
"Does this happen in your house?"
"Yes, at first it was. It's a soft sound, but I woke up anyway even though I'm a heavy sleeper. It's a knocking sound on the windows and doors... And then when I checked it out..."
Yoshino became hesitant. Oliver silently prompted him to continue.
"Nobody was there. I looked through the curtains and saw a hand knocking on the door. A thin, white, feminine hand. After I see it, the hand stops and the sound is gone. At first I thought I was just seeing things, but then the knocking goes on every night..."
"Is it just a knocking sound?" Oliver asked as he took down notes.
"Yes, just a knocking sound. I was scared. There were times when I didn't want to go home, so I went out at night. But it's the same wherever I go. Whether it's in the bar, or at midnight, or just in the vicinity, I always hear that knocking sound. If I don't open the door or window, then it just keeps knocking until the morning. ...Recently I haven't been getting enough sleep."
Oliver nodded.
"...That's what I thought. So does anyone else hear this sound?"
"Yes. My family hears it too, but they don't really care."
"I see." After muttering to himself, Oliver turned around and faced Takigawa.
"Bou-san, make some mantras."
After saying that, he turned to face Yoshino.
"We will give you a cleansing tag to seal off the evil spirit. Never open the window or door at night. And please refrain from walking by yourself at night. The knocking sounds may continue, but don't worry. ...We will have to investigate more."
"...Okay."
Takigawa left the room to write the mantras. Afterwards, Yoshino took the charms and bowed. Then he left the room.
"...That was sudden. What do we do now?" Takigawa asked.
Oliver shrugged and looked at his watch.
"If we wait, class will end soon," Oliver replied. "We can let the students come in and tell us about the incidents. It's almost the end of the day."
...
The first group who came to the conference room included Itou-san, the girl who came to SPR earlier. Her friend had been possessed by a fox spirit. She looked nervous.
Oliver told the six girls who came to sit down as he prepared the tape-recorder.
"I want to confirm the incidents that occured here," he said.
As Oliver spoke to Itou, all the others became nervous.
"As I recall, your friend has been possessed by a fox spirit. Is that right?"
"...Yes."
"Is she here today?"
"No, she has been staying home for a long time now. Her mother won't let her leave the house even though she seems to be healthy now."
Itou looked back at her friends for confirmation, and they nodded.
"Please tell me the situation again."
Itou repeated the story. The group of girls murmured agreements, and the SPR team were able to get a better grasp on the story than from what they had heard in the SPR office.
One day that girl just suddenly did something really strange. Her unusual actions (jumping onto a desk, running around the classroom, and then crying and laughing aloud) became worse (bad-mouthing others, proclaiming prophesies, just a lot of things that didn't make sense). In the end, she jumped into the pool on a cold day, and then she swallowed sand, pebbles, and chalk.
"Did she hurt anyone?" Oliver asked.
"No, she didn't."
"I see. —You said she was possessed by a fox spirit. Why do you think so?"
"That's because..."
Itou looked back at her friends.
"That's because she said so herself," one of the girls said.
"Yeah," another girl agreed.
After they heard the details, that girl seemed to have said her friend was possessed by a fox spirit.
Oliver lightly tapped his desk with his finger.
"Well, at the time we thought nothing of it. When someone's at that state, wouldn't you think she's sick? Wouldn't it be a good idea to take her to a neurologist?"
The group of girls started to whisper to each other. Eventually it was Itou who answered.
"It's because...she said, 'I am Oinari-san's servant, the white fox'. And she started acting strange after we played Kokkuri-san last month."
"Kokkuri-san... With paper and...what else? Glass? Goblets? Did you use any of those?"
"No, we used a pencil. We wrote five characters onto the paper with a pencil."
"...I see. It sounds quite simple. Did you have fun with it?"
"Yes." Keiko nodded.
"Nothing else was strange, but... Kokkuri-san didn't return, and we didn't make fun of him either. But, as we were leaving, she said something weird."
"She told us she felt like she was possessed. She complained that her shoulder felt heavy."
"That's right. She started acting strange the very next day."
"Yeah."
The girls started to talk amongst themselves again.
"...Okay. Where did you do Kokkuri-san?"
"In the classroom. First year, room three."
Oliver looked up at the rough map of the school, which was on the board. He was clearly contemplating something.
"Please write down your friend's name and contact number. I will investigate this thoroughly."
After Itou left, the next group, which included Kugayama Minori, came in. A student who looked slightly younger than Mai, and a student who looked older than Mai, came in as well.
"Your request regards a...poltergeist in a classroom," Oliver stated.
"Yes...erm, about that." Kugayama nodded nervously.
"In the track and field team, strange things happen in the dressing room. Lockers are toppled over, and equipment get scattered all over the floor. Then our equipment stopped working too."
"Did you not think that someone was trying to sabotage the team?"
"We thought so, at first."
"Of course, we thought someone was just up to mischief. We changed the key to the locker room. But there was nothing wrong with the key. One night, we even stayed by the locker room to catch the culprit, but no one came."
"I see. Yes, that is strange."
The other student nodded in agreement.
"But when we looked away for a moment, the shot puts, which were in boxes, were lined up perfectly beside each other on the floor."
"...I see." Oliver nodded slightly.
"Are poltergeists behind all these things?"
"I don't know..."
Kugayama bowed her head.
After Kugayama left, Satoko Miura's group came in next.
Although Takigawa and Mai began to feel this to be tedious, Oliver persistently questioned the people who entered.
"So you are...Miura-san?"
"Yes."
Surrounded by friends, Miura had to stand on tip-toe to show us where she was.
"Please listen. It seems that someone got possessed."
"Yes...we'll see."
She started to act strange after she did Kimodameshi last month.
"There's a 'closed warehouse' in the gym. Several years ago, the caretaker of the warehouse died. Since then, there are rumors that strange things have been happening there."
The other girl picked off from where the previous girl had stopped.
"We did Kimodameshi after we finished our tests."
"Okay."
"We told hundreds of ghost stories there, and nothing strange ever happened. Except for this kid."
The girl pointed at Miura.
"I felt really bad."
"In the daytime, I'll see strange shadows. Since then, the strange figures will return the very next day."
"Please elaborate," Oliver said.
"Yes. Um, say I'm using the sink, okay? And then I see a figure. The mirror...reflects the wall, and even though it's odd, there will be a strange shadow on the wall. The weird part is there's also a rope on the wall, and it's in the shape of a noose."
"That's it, then."
The next, plump girl opened her mouth.
"Didn't Ei-chan get hospitalized? I had a bad feeling about that."
After saying that, the girl spoke to Oliver.
"Yeah, Ei-chan is hospitalized now. After we did Kimodameshi together, ghosts of children have been showing up at her desk. After a few days, Ei-chan had to go the hospital because there was a puncture in her stomach."
"It's true. She would suddenly feel frozen in the middle of class, and when she looked down, she'd feel something touching her stomach. So...when she bent down and looked into her desk, she'd see a hand stretching out, massaging her stomach."
"We all screamed."
"She thought it was weird because the ghost would often massage her stomach, but then disappear soon after. She told me that when I visited her yesterday."
Tapping his finger on the table, Oliver was thinking again. He crossed his arms, a hard expression on his face as he faced Takigawa. Oliver looked like he was about to leave.
But then Miura's group returned. Sighing, the Mai and the others were tired out when the last group, including Takahashi Yuuko, came in.
One of the seats in her class is cursed. The last person who sat there was dragged by a train.
Yuuko faced Mai, then Takigawa shook hands with her, a crooked smile plastered on his face.
"You really came—" she said in adoration.
"Seems like it."
Then Takigawa introduced everyone.
"That handsome guy over here is the president of "Shibuya Psychic Research", Shibuya. And the little girl over there is his assistant, Taniyama."
"Nice to meet you." Yuuko smiled mischievously.
"Same here."
"I want to hear the entire story."
Takigawa turned around to look at Oliver, who continued to speak.
"Is the person involved in that accident here today?"
Mai looked at the group of eight in front of them.
"She's here."
Yuuko indicated a girl in the back.
"I'm the second person to get in an accident, but..."
"I wanted to say the story back then, but," the girl hesitated for a moment.
"It happened when I tried to get off the train. Well, I was getting out of the train, right? As I was leaving the train, someone tugged my arm. It was really forceful. My arm got stuck in the door, and the train started moving, so I ran to keep up with it. There was nothing else I could do, right? Anyway, I fell and was dragged along the platform. This went on for five meters before the train stopped."
Her shoulder was dislocated, and her leg broke. She removed her cast last week.
"Did anyone see you get dragged by the train?"
"About that."
Everyone turned to look at the girl.
"There weren't many passengers on the train that day. No one was near the door when my arm got stuck."
Oliver scribbled down some notes.
"What time was it?"
She reported the time the incident happened, as well as the situation of the other victims. After answering the questions, Oliver went on:
"Do you know why these accidents happen to people who sit in that desk?"
The girls exchanged doubtful looks.
"We don't know...right?"
They whispered to each other.
"...I see. Thank you."
He shut his binder with a slam. Then Oliver turned around to face Takigawa.
"I want to see the desk."
"Ah, well, I'll show it to you."
Yuuko's hand shot up into the air.
The girls brought them to Yuuko's classroom. It was classroom 2-5.
The classroom was on the second floor in the south wing of the school. The cursed desk was near the window.
"Over there."
After she said that, Oliver walked over to the desk. As he touched the desk, his dark eyes narrowed.
"Is anyone sitting here now?"
Yuuko shook her head.
"Nope. The last person who sat there is in the hospital now."
"Was the desk ever moved?"
"No, it has always been over there."
Oliver was contemplating.
After a while, he looked satisfied and left the desk.
"I heard that your teacher was behaving strangely."
Yuuko is nodded again.
"That's right. He said he saw a ghost in class, so now he's not coming to school. He wasn't the type to believe in them either. But now he's in the hospital. They say that he still sees ghosts in his hospital room, and that he's suffering from Neurosis."
"Okay... Thank you."
Oliver placed his hand on his chin. This was an expression he often showed when he was thinking.
"Naru, since we're here, you should look under the desk." Mai told him quietly.
Oliver nodded and crouched down to look under the table. Turning his head to look at the underside, his expression hardened. Very quickly he reached up with one hand and ripped something off. When he stood up he held a hitogata in his hand. He tucked it into a pocket before they headed back to base.
Two teachers were waiting in the meeting room when they returned. One teacher said he saw ghosts in the car mirror when he drove.. The other said that he felt like someone was following him even though no one was. In addition, the two said they often heard eerie sounds.
Anyway, after they finished receiving the inquiries, Mai made tea for everyone. Oliver carefully took out the hitogata of his pocket and placed it on the table between them. Written on it were the words "The person who sits at this desk."
"This is really bad." Takigawa said. "Mai, you knew?"
Mai nodded.
"Look at the sheer amount of incidents that occur here."
Takigawa looked at the notes that Oliver took then back to the hitogata.
"...I guess there's no point in trying to exorcise anything, then."
He let out an exaggerated sigh and then looked at Oliver.
"Naru-chan, do we have to look for all of the hitogata?"
"Yes. Only by burning them and throwing the Ash into the river will the curses stop. Of course, we also need to find the curser so we can prevent them from making more."
"Oh, that does work, but how are we going to find them all. Looking at all those enquires there must be dozens of hitogatas hidden around."
"That's the easy part actually." Mai said. "Most of them are at the bottom of the man hole into the field behind us. Only one or two others need to be found elsewhere, like the gym."
"Seriously?" Takigawa remarked as he faced Mai.
"As for the curser... You might was to ask Keiko or Yuuko the next time they stop by about the Kasai Panic."
Bou-san frowned. "You. Why can't you just tell us straight out what we need to know?"
"Now where would the fun be in that!" Mai giggled.