Chapter One

Despite my so-called position of lead investigator, the scheduling was decided by Naru beforehand. Due to the apartment complex's proximity to our own office, we didn't have to leave until after my classes were done for the day. Though, that might have been because Naru claimed I shouldn't be missing more school than absolutely necessary: lest I become the stupidest girl in all of Japan.

His words. Not mine. (Of course~)

Our car arrangements were the same as usual but that didn't stop me from letting myself get worked up in the ride over. Working with Naru and Lin for so long, the silence was normally calming. Today the silence pierced my head and made me even more anxious.

When I pushed myself out of the van, part of my excitement depleted. I knew that there was no way that wherever we were going was going to be super exciting (considering it was only about an hour drive from the office) but this was...normal. Average, at the very best. Heck, it pretty much looked like my apartment complex. And I was supposed to believe this place was haunted?

It was nothing more than a simple apartment complex, with eight floors. While it was a novelty because we normally investigated houses...but I still felt the impending sense of dread that Naru was setting me up for some big joke. Like I would get up to the apartment and he would be all:

Just kidding! You really thought I would let you be a lead investigator! This is what's wrong with the apartment! Let's go home now!

Except Naru wasn't exactly one to joke around. And the others would certainly be pissed if they cleared the week for a practical joke.

Maybe this was an elaborate excuse to give us a vacation?

No, he's not that nice. I sighed.

I glanced at Naru who had opened his door and unbuckle yet remained in the car. He refused to meet my eyes. Instead, he opted to keep reading the book in his hands as we waited for the other car to show up. It was in English, as usual...but upon closer inspection of the title, it didn't appear to be one of his scientific books he read for his thesis research. (No way! He's reading a book book? Like fiction?)

"Y'know I was almost thinking that you weren't capable of having any fun."

He glared at me. "And what's that supposed to mean?"

"I think it's the fact you've deigned to read a fiction novel, Noll." Lin thankfully saved me from having to answer, walking around the car to open the trunk. "It's very uncharacteristic of you." He didn't say anymore and opted instead to begin moving some of the equipment out.

Naru rolled his eyes. "It'san English classic (not to mention a ghost story)." He turned to Lin. "You shouldn't do that. The boss hadn't told us what to do yet." Naru's eyes flicked to me and I flushed.

"If you're gonna be patronizing—"

"Should I ask Yasuhara-san to lead instead? Despite your seniority?"

My cheeks burned. He smirked, turning his nose back to his book. I glanced to Lin, who shrugged (but did in fact, stop, when Naru instructed). He leaned against the back of the van and my nerves bundled in my chest. Was I gonna be able to handle this if Naru's just going to act like a petulant child? It was too overwhelming.

"I told you Big Boss would make things awkward before we got here!"

I whipped around at the sound of a car door slamming and Yasuhara-san's sing-song as he approached us. The rest of the team followed, all of them seeming to be in relatively good cheer. Seems they had a better drive than I did. Part of my anxiety whittled away. I smiled. "Did you all make a wrong turn or something? You started out right behind us!"

Bou-san shrugged with a sheepish smile. "Perhaps I took a wrong turn to satisfy the terms of a friendly wager made in the car."

"A wager?"

Yasuhara-san cheered, wrapping an arm around my shoulder. I stepped out of his grasp but his smile never faltered. "Yeah, Ayako-san and Hara-san owe me and Takigawa-san a night out. John opted to play the neutral party this time. So no dinner for him"

I peeked over at John, whose face was flustered. "I didn't want to speculate your potential arguments with Shibuya-san."

Arguments? Ah, right. I'd already forgotten that Naru had already threatened to take my new position.

"I see you all still act like children even if Mai is in charge."

Ayoko smiled. "Aw, Naru-chan, aren't you going to show some respect to your boss? That would be 'Taniyama-san' to you."

"Ayako," I warned, feeling my cheeks burn. "Don't listen to her, Naru."

"I wasn't planning on it."

Eh? I knew he would never call me by my surname, considering I've been calling him 'Naru' since I started working for him. But he didn't have to say that out loud.

"So what's the plan of action, little boss?"

Yasuhara-san's simple question started a mess of Bou-san and Ayako asking similar questions, on top of each other. All three of them had different opinions on how I should start the day. Unpack. Split into teams. Interview the building. Lunch (Dinner?). So many suggestions and I knew they were all wrong.

John and Masako remained quiet, though I'm sure both of them were amused to see my distress. I glanced over to Naru, who was pointedly still focused on his book. His face, however, was curled in annoyance. Any more of this and... I don't want to think about it. I looked to Lin, who nodded.

I could do this.

"Please be quiet, guys. I need to focus."

They went silent and turned their attention back to me, thankfully.

I took a steadying breath. "I'll go up to meet Watanabe-san with..." I looked over my friends, feeling my nerves bubble up again. Dang it. I swallowed my fear and closed my eyes. No need to get worked up before I even get started, regardless of Naru edging me on. "I'll go up with Yasuhara-san and—and Naru? We'll scope out the apartment and figure out how much space we're dealing with. Then we can determine what equipment to bring up."

I opened my eyes in time to see Naru nod, stuffing his book back to the car and pulling out his case notebook to replace it. I sighed quietly, smiling.

So far, so good.

Leading my co-workers up into the apartment is enough to make my nerves return full force. It isn't until I found myself in front of apartment 12 that I realized that it's really happening. I'm really leading an investigation.

"It's very small," I whispered. It's small, I repeated mentally. Too small. My fingers curled into fists

"Normally with a case this small we would have tried to use another apartment in the building as our base. However, the superintendent wouldn't return my calls." Naru's voice was soft in my ear and I flinched as his breath tickled my neck. "Best way to prevent a situation like this when you do this yourself is to only accept larger houses with lots of room."

I nodded, letting myself relax a little bit. "Thank you."

I don't know if it was intention to calm me down, but he certainly helped. Then again...the way he said it, it sounded like I would be the one making decisions on where our bases would be. Or like I would have any sort of voice in the cases we worked on. It worked for the Agawa case because he was too tired to argue.

"Why would I be accepting cases? That's your job."

Yasuhara-san snorted but he didn't have the opportunity to make whatever joke he was planning on before he choked on a grunt. I could only assume Naru elbowed him. While my boss never usually resulted to physical violence, I couldn't help but giggle.

Naru glared at me and motioned to the door. Right.

Time to begin.

I braced myself and knocked on the apartment door, my stomach jumping circles all over again.

Watanabe-san opens the door with a wide smile on her face.

"Shibuya-san! And your assistant, uh, Taniyama-san, right?" Her eyes flicked over to Yasuhara-san as she brought us into the entryway. "I apologize, I don't think I remember meeting you at the consultation?"

He smiled at her, waving her words away. "No, no. I was in classes at the time. I'm Yasuhara, one of Shibuya-san's researchers. Taniyama-san's researcher, too!" He added cheerfully. "I'm a student at a local university."

Watanabe blinked. She turned to assess me. "Taniyama-san, you have a need for a researcher?"

My cheeks flushed. Normally I was my own (very poor) researcher but I couldn't tell her that.

"Taniyama-san will be working under my supervision as the lead investigator on the case," Naru supplemented, waving his hand in my direction

The woman's brows furrowed as if at this moment she regretted the decision to hire us. "A high school student?"

I bowed deeply. "I've been with SPR for just about two and a half years, please do not worry." I stood up straight and met her eyes. "I've learned from the best, so I will do my best to solve your case in a timely manner."

"Very well." She seemed pleased with my statement and pulled us farther into her apartment. "Let me take you on the grand tour."

Watanabe said 'grand' except I couldn't shake the feeling that this place was too small.

The tour would have taken a lot less time if Watanabe-san didn't have a story for each and every room. For the short time they lived here, she certainly had a lot to say about the small apartment. How in the kitchen, she finds herself dazedly coming in and out, forgetting what she had gone in for only to remember what it was a few minutes later. In the bedroom, the young woman had a tendency to lose track of sentimental items. The day she realized they were missing, the next day they would be back exactly where they were supposed to be.

If you asked me, what we're dealing with is less likely any paranormal activity and instead a severely forgetful (and stressed) woman.

"Ah, Taniyama-san, here." Watanabe-san took my hand as we circled back to the entryway and I flinched, feeling cool metal dig into my palm. "For your safekeeping."

Looking down, I opened my hand to find a keyring with a single key attached. It could only be for the apartment. And it looked like the original key, not a shiny new copy. I paused. "Does that mean you won't be living here through the duration of the investigation?"

I mean, that was better for us. More room for us, but even Naru looked relatively surprised by the turn of events. He, of course, was super great at hiding his emotions. I was not.

She shook her head. "No, my husband and I decided to stay at his mother's house until you figure out what's wrong with the apartment here." Her hand flies to her stomach. "We actually just found out that we're expecting, so it isn't safe to bring a baby into a home like this."

'It's not a dangerous place,' I protested in my head. But I didn't voice anything, because as I thought it, my stomach twisted. Was it my intuition telling me that it's not dangerous? Or just my knowledge of the case?

I offered her a weak smile. "Congratulations." Naru and Yasuhara-san parroted my sentiment, Yasu- san going as far as to shake her hand. "We'll make sure we let you know the findings, as quick as they occur. That way you can bring your family home as soon as possible."

Watanabe-san smiled at us, her smile warm. "Please don't hesitate to call if any questions arise."

Right.

Except I know that it's probably in my best interest to avoid superfluous contact.

"What're your plans, Little Boss?"

Yasuhara-san, I groaned mentally. Stop calling me that.

I thought quickly, tapping on my chin. "When we get base set up, Lin-san will stay monitoring. He'll help us with camera angles when we start setting up. And..." I scanned over the room. My eyes landed on our resident priest. "John, you'll stay with him."

The blonde jumped, turning his eyes on me but he didn't say anything. He never worked with Lin but right now...I couldn't think of any other place to put him. There was no reason to set him up on an exorcism without knowing what we're dealing with first. I shrugged an apology at John and turned back to the group.

"Yasuhara-san, I'm counting on you to interview the other tenants on this floor. Ask them if they experience the same mischief or anything that might be considered paranormal phenomenon." I twist my lips. "Masako, please go with him and report back on if you can sense any spirits."

They nodded; Masako didn't even complain like she would have normally if I told her what to do. I turned to Ayako and Bou-san. "You two are on dinner duty, when base is set up. Over dinner, we'll reconvene with each other and compare notes. We'll have you two start blessings as needed after Yasu-san's and Masako's walkthrough of the building."

While they might have been temporarily peeved that I decided to pair them together just like Naru had a tendency to do, neither of them dared protest. They just wordlessly nodded and accepted their responsibilities.

And now the only person left is...

Naru~

He looked at me with raised brows, as if he was challenging me to tell him to do something he didn't want to do. For a moment I considered ordering him to make tea. But there were two problems with that: 1) he would get really mad at me 2) he's not exactly proficient at making tea (he over steeps it or burns the leaves).

I smiled, teasing. "And I'll be with you, Naru. We'll be doing cameras and temperatures just like the good old days of when you first hired me. Gotta make sure you're still capable of a job that isn't sitting on your butt and watching a screen."

He scowled but didn't argue.

I grinned, following him and the others out and back down to the van.

I win~

The base was set up rather quickly after the lot of us brought up the equipment. As much as I enjoyed teasing Naru about his penchant for avoiding doing the work (and by extension, me doing all of the work) he was fast and efficient in doing my usual job of setting up the cameras.

He'd even taken the opportunity to explain one of the newer cameras that was recently shipped in. Normally, I might have been annoyed...but today, for some reason, he wasn't particularly arrogant when explaining. His voice was matter-of-fact and left no room for questions. It was one of the first times in a long while that I was happy to learn something new (probably since my first cases, to be quite honest).

We made it back to base with time left before the others arrived back. I made tea for the room (to save Naru the embarrassment of revealing his incapabilities) and we were able to engage in Naru's worst nightmare: idle chatter.

And when I said we engaged in idle chatter, I mean I talked endlessly. Naru was annoyed, given his tense body language. However, he couldn't complain. Not only was I boss but I also made him tea. Instead, he read his book and ignored me as I prattled on.

I took the opportunity to talk without interruption about school. Who was dating who. Who failed what tests (not me! My grades are doing a lot better than I expected thanks to Yasuhara's tutoring). I looked pointedly at Naru, informing him that, even though my friends are all dating people right now, they still ask me about 'that really cute ghost hunter you work for' and 'if he's still single.'

"I think Michiru would leave her boyfriend if you gave her a chance." I singsonged, erupting into giggles.

He continued to ignore me.

I sighed. So much for teasing to get him to join me in conversation. "How can you even read with me making all that noise?" He glared at me, looking up from the pages. If I gave him the opportunity to get a word in, I knew he would tell me that he was ignoring me. At the same time...he'd been on the same two pages for about twenty minutes I knew he wasn't actually ignoring me. "What are you reading anyway?"

Naru relented, lifting the book up so I could see the title. "Turn of the Screw. Henry James."

John made surprised noise, turning away from the computers and leaning toward the couch I shared with Naru. "Oh, I read that one in secondary school."

I blinked. Naru sighed. "It's high school in Australia, Mai."

Oh.

The blonde priest smiled. "Don't worry, Mai-chan." His voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. "I didn't even like the book. It was dreadfully boring."

And with John's cheeky remark, Naru went back to ignoring us.

Maybe he didn't like his actual entertainment to be labeled as boring—especially considering so many of his actual research could be qualified as 'boring' (and I never failed to remind him).

Luckily, the door swung open and we weren't left in silence for too long. Instead, our friends started trickling back in.

"We're ba~ack!" Yasuhara cheered, towing Masako (who looked displeased to have needed to spend so long with his exuberant attitude).

She pulled her arm away and hid her face behind her kimono—probably also hiding a scowl. "And before anybody asks, no, I don't sense any human spirits in the building. Or in this apartment, for that matter."

I grinned cheekily. "Aww, isn't that what you always say, Masako?"

She glared and turned up her nose. But before she had the opportunity to object the base door was held open and Bou-san and Ayako piled in behind them. "No ghosts mean no blessings, which means we're free for the night!"

I clucked my tongue before Naru could offer his two sense (and he would, I could see his lips purse and his grasp on his teacup tighten). "Not quite, we still have to remain diligent. Just because Masako can't sense human spirits, doesn't mean that we're not dealing with something either not on her wavelength or something...not human."

Bou-san jutted his lip out. "Jou-chan, you really do sound like Naru-chan. It's unsettling, please stop."

I rolled my eyes. And yet...now that he mentions it. I think I definitely don't have enough jobs for the amount of people Naru enlisted to help. I turned to him, gnawing on my lip. "Naru, I think we could have done this with just the three of us. Even four of us," I amend, motioning to Yasuhara. I definitely hate the interviewing thing.

Naru just shrugged, the corners of his lips turning up in a smirk that he promptly hid by taking a sip of his tea. "It was in my best interest to make sure you weren't too uncomfortable for the job."

What did that mean?

"Well if the Big Boss and the Little Boss are done pretending we don't exist, I insist that we start with dinner. I'm starved."

It was enough to silence the room. My eyes flicked back to Naru, trying to rework Naru's words through my head. But he had decided to remove himself from the situation entirely and was currently leaning over Lin's shoulder, asking technical questions very softly. I sighed. Whatever it was that he meant, he probably only intended on confusing me.

I turned to Bou-san and smiled. "We'll get started with dinner and compare notes, if you'll please."

The tension in the room relaxed as the food was distributed around the base. Naru and Lin stayed glued to the screen, John relinquishing his seat at the table to Naru wordlessly. I almost objected and called both Lin and Naru to the table to meet with us...but I decided against it. If they had anything important to add, they would. After all, it's supposed to be me working as the lead.

I'm confident that they wouldn't let me flail.

At least...I'm pretty sure they wouldn't let me fail.

I turned to my researcher as we all settled in with our takeout boxes. "We already heard from Masako that there were no ghosts. What did the interviews say?"

Yasuhara-san smiled, leaning back on his arms. "There's no other reports of any activity similar to this apartment. At least, not with any of the tenants that are home. Let me tell you— there are a lot of people not home."

I blinked, setting down my takeout box. "Not home? But—"

But it's not close enough to the holidays to justify a mass departure from the building. Unless...

I turn back to Yasuhara. "Tomorrow, I want you to talk to the superintendent and ask how many people actually live in this building. Ask if he knows of previous tenants that might have had problems with activities." I twisted my lips and picked my food back up. "And see if you can charm some of the locals on the street into telling you about any odd stories pertaining to the building."

He nodded and pulled out a pocket notebook to add his new jobs. "Sounds like a plan."

"And the rest of us?"

The rest of them? I turned to Ayako, who voiced the question. "I won't know until we review the footage from the night..."

It was always like this on cases where we didn't have too much activity. And then again...we wouldn't have had so many people until absolutely necessary. Whatever Naru said, I still wish it was a smaller group to start out with and expanded as needed. Like we always did.

She snorted.

I gave her a brilliant smile. "Unless you're volunteering to research with Yasuhara-san? I have to warn you, he'll be doing a lot of walking and I'm not sure you brought walking shoes. But feel free to join him if you feel obliged."

John interrupted. "I'll go with Yasuhara-san

I smiled. "Thank you, John."

Ayako's cheeks burnt bright red as John steps up to my snarky request. "The monk was right," she whispered, grumpily. "Just like Naru."

She was right; I was channeling Naru to my best ability. But she didn't have to know that I knew she knew.

"What was that, Ayako?"

She averted her eyes, turning her nose back down to her takeout. "Nothing."

That's what I thought~

I ended the night the way we did when SPR was just a tiny office. Just the three of us. Lin and Naru watched the monitors carefully and I did what I knew best. I made tea.

In the kitchen it was deadly quiet. I couldn't even hear the soft sleeping noises from the rest of our crew in there. Humming quietly to myself, I put the kettle on the stove and busied myself with pulling out mugs and thinking about what needed to be done the next day. And all I could really think about is that I should have taken a note from Naru: I should have made myself a case journal.

Ah, well. Too late to worry about that.

When I turned back to the counter, one of the mugs I set out was gone. Strange. I swore I just set three aside. Now there were only two. Oh, well. Must've imagined it. I reached up and opened the cupboard to find a new one. My heart skipped a beat. There it was: the mug I would have sworn I just took out.

I hesitated a moment but grabbed a different one instead.

That was strange. I refused to let myself dwell over the situation, though my hands shook as I completed the brewing process. I was suddenly very glad that I was alone in the kitchen. An onlooker would have immediately known something was wrong. Nothing was wrong. Nothing I couldn't handle.

It was just a misplaced cup.

Making it back to the base, I wordlessly handed Naru and Lin their mugs. I turned immediately away and found myself piling onto the couch at the edge of the room. I didn't feel like going over to the sleeping rooms just yet, not when I could still see that stupid mug I thought I had whenever I blinked.

I looked up and found Naru's eyes settled on me. He arched a brow, barely. "Did something happen?" His voice was even.

I forced a smile and burrowed myself farther into the couch cushions. "Of course not."

Whether or not he believed me was unclear. But he did leave me alone. He nodded and took a sip of his tea as he turned back to the monitors.

The rest of the night was quiet.