Yo! Thank you to all readers so far!
There was a lot on Naru's mind. Thoughts about the case. Thoughts about Mai. There were numerous pieces to this puzzle, and Naru knew they needed to be put together before they could truly continue with their case.
From what they had discovered so far, there were five spirits in the house: Jack, Suzaku, Shin, Ryou and May.
Of those five spirits, three of them were dark: Jack, Suzaku, and Shin. Two of them were more normal: Ryou and May.
All five of the spirits had some sort of reason to be in Akira's house.
It also seemed like all five of the spirits, dark or not, were connected to Mai and in fact, the entire case was, really.
As for the timeline…
The family was originally the Yaoshima family. For unknown reasons, Jack stayed with them for some years until his strange death. Mai seemed to vaguely recall May having something to do with it. The cause of death was still unknown, but there was certainly a chance that some sort of psychic ability or the like had something to do with it. If Mai had abilities, May also could have had them.
Though the death was no doubt an accident, May was frightened, at least according to Mai, which then led her to take the blame for the situation to protect May.
It was possible that Jack's spirit was near his body when Mai made this claim, leading him to believe that Mai was the one who had truly killed him. If he was incredibly attached to his life and angry enough, it made sense that he had, in a sense, lost himself in that anger and vowed for revenge against Mai.
Approximately a year later, Jack's spirit possessed Akira, using him to hurt the rest of the family, focusing especially on Mai who had to be taken to the hospital due to the injuries.
Akira and Mai's mother probably weren't able to reconcile from what happened and quickly divorced. Her mother then remarried, and they then became the Taniyama family, consisting of Mai's mother, her step-father, her adopted older brother Shin, her older brother Ryou, and herself and her twin sister May.
Some months later, Jack struck again, likely possessing someone who then kidnapped Mai. Shin managed to rescue his sister, but was shot and killed in the process, and he then began haunting Jack, who in turn, was haunting Akira, though that was probably because he wanted to be able to possess him whenever he saw the chance to get more revenge.
That chance came yet again a few months later, when Jack again possessed Akira, and this time had him kill Mai's step-father and older brother Ryou.
Three years after that, Suzaku, Mai's step-father's brother was killed. Unfortunately, they knew little about that-Madoka and Yasuhara were still looking for more information. Whether Akira was involved they weren't sure, but it was fairly safe to say Jack had something to do with it, considering Suzaku's spirit was also in the house. The only real clue they had was Gene saying the same person was behind it, but whether he meant Jack or Akira, they weren't sure.
Another three years later, Jack once again possessed Akira and used him to kill Mai's mother and twin sister. At school that day, Mai wasn't harmed herself. At this point the spirits of both Ryou and May arrived at this house as well.
Somewhere between all of this, Yaoshima Akira changed his name to Hideki Kiyoshi, and he still had no contact with Mai. Jack was clearly still doing something here, but he seemed to have decided to leave Mai alone, because she hadn't mentioned any more incidents since she was ten.
Naru sighed inaudibly. There was quite a bit of information to go over. While it was true they had a number of facts, there was still much speculation as well, and that wasn't helping things. The facts were correct, of course, but the same couldn't be said about the speculations.
Naru sighed again, a little louder this time. He had to speak to Mai. He had to tell her the truth. They weren't going to be able to solve this if she didn't know.
No, that wasn't true. They could still solve it, but Mai needed to know the truth. This was her life, after all.
"Mai."
She glanced over at him. "Yes?"
"…Come with me."
That's it for now. Looking forward to reviews! Laterz!