11

"Another thing I've found to be critical when you have an anxiety or depression disorder is to visit those who love you, in particular, your parents. My mom isn't perfect, but being with her eases me in ways I could have never done alone. The same goes for my grandparents.

It may sound self-serving, but surround yourself with people who love you. Visit family. Take your time with them. It will remind you that living isn't all about suffering. It's about loving too."

I actually managed to stay awake. Granted, I couldn't have slept even if I wanted to with my brain flying around in circles over the dumb dream I couldn't hang on to. But my eyes hurt like a mother and my head pounded along with them. In fact, I ached all over, as though I were sick with the flu or had been crunched into a suitcase all night long.

I got some EM recordings of voices and the wispy tail end of a sigh. When I showed them to the prof he discounted half of them and only kept two recordings as anything worth considering. I found I didn't care. Past the pain, I was numb.

And yet I knew this numbness. I knew it all too well.

"You didn't have dinner," he said, eyes still on the laptop. "You should eat, maybe take a nap. I'll look over the tapes and let you know if you caught everything."

Probably not. But I nodded and ambled my way to the kitchen. It was still too early for college students to be up, but I had enough daylight to see my way to another bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios. The sweetness tanged into my mouth almost harshly, making the corners of my jaw hurt. After I finished, my tongue and mouth felt sore, as though I had chewed on sandpaper instead.

Gladly, I didn't meet anyone on the stairs, and made it back to my room unperturbed. I locked the door behind me, suddenly sick at the idea of someone barging in and seeing me like this, and went to curl up in my cold bed.

It didn't smell like mom either.

Even so, I eventually fell asleep and woke up with less soreness, but no less numbness. The bed had warmed from me, and I could smell the coconut shampoo on my hair. So, maybe a little bit more like Mom.

I laid there for an hour wondering if I really wanted to go downstairs. Eventually, though, I got up, took a shower rather than a bath, and dressed myself. Footsteps hammered up and down the stairs, and at one point I heard Takigawa's raucous laughter. Though no one caught me on the way down to the parlor, or base.

Lin was at the monitors. He glanced up as I walked in. Sitting on the couch, with the laptop in his lap and a pile of papers on the coffee table by his knee, was the professor. He must have taken a shower and whatnot while I was asleep, because he seemed completely unruffled and well blackety black black dressed as usual.

When he looked up at me, I saluted.

"Reporting for duty, sir!" I said, finishing it off with a cheesy grin that felt far too easy.

He nodded. "Have you had lunch?"

"Not yet, sir!"

"…do you really have to do that?"

"Play along, sir!"

"I'd rather not. There are sandwiches in the fridge. Get one and come back, we'll review last night."

I did so, soldier marching from the premise to said sandwich.

He had a second laptop open for me when I got back, along with some headphones.

"You had some EMs last night too that you missed. Also, there are similar cold spots in a few other places besides room 6."

So I got to work and gladly lost myself in it. There was no point to it. It was long and boring. But I guess it was good training for being a mall security guard. Fallback plan for if I sucked butt at ghost hunting, which I probably would.

And I was tired. So tired. My eyes still stung from being open.

Why bother?

I ended up rewatching the same hour three times because I realized I hadn't caught anything. Even as I finally managed to grasp that nothing had happened except for that one recording of the sigh, I moved on to the next hour and found I couldn't concentrate. Luckily, my prof didn't see the need to babysit me the whole time. I was meant to report on my findings. Thankfully, there was no projector or classmates to display it to, though the prof was bad enough.

Suddenly, the idea of writing a report sounded as exhausting as cleaning an entire house while horribly sick. I didn't feel too far from it either. The sandwich didn't much care for me, or rather, my stomach hadn't been up to eating in the first place.

Ayako came and sat on the coffee table at some point, frowning.

"Your eyes are all puffy," she said. "Are you okay?"

"Just had a long night staring at screens," I said lightly, smiling at her.

Her frown only deepened. "Really, though, you look awful. Are you sure that was it? Was the prof mean to you? More than usual, I mean."

"Nah. He actually made me some tea. Crazy, right?"

But she seemed to doubt that too.

"If you need more sleep," she said. "Don't hesitate to let me know and I'll take care of the prof and his scary assistant, kay?"

I was touched. Or rather, I wanted to be. The numbness wouldn't allow it.

"Sure." And through my smile, I found I didn't want to be bothered. It was hard enough already to concentrate. "Thanks, Ayako."

She just nodded and got up to go do whatever she had been about today, which based on some notes the prof had left on the desktop of the laptop next to me, had been making calls to people about their ancestors or old relatives that had used to live in this house.

Not soon after she left, the prof came in to hand something in a mug to his assistant and a package of what could have been vanilla wafers. Lin accepted them most graciously, and Naru came towards me. Rather than sit beside me, he took up Ayako's place on the coffee table and took up his laptop.

"Mai," he said. "There was a disclaimer with this case. If you are feeling unwell, you can leave."

I didn't look at him for a moment, though I did take off my headphones to let him know I had heard him.

"It wasn't a bad dream," I said. "It was actually a really nice dream. I'm fine."

He raised the eyebrow at me which said he doubted everything.

And for a moment, I basked in his blue gaze. I took in his smooth black eyebrows, the mouth that never smiled, and the firm, proud cheekbones.

I could break myself on that face, I thought, like a wave on some rocks.

"I'm fine," I repeated.

He sighed that big long exhausted thing he seemed to reserve for me. "Alright. But if you startle me breaking out in hysterics like that—"

"I can't control what I dream!" I cried, alight with humiliation. Did he have to describe it like that? Was that really what I looked like to him? A hysterical woman?

"—I'm sending you home," he finished, as though I hadn't said anything. "Is your report ready?"

It probably would never be ready for him. "I just got started."

"Well, hurry up. We got an attic and a cellar to investigate after this."

"We didn't do that on the first day, why…?"

"Because I knew half-way through our six days I'd get bored," he clicked his fingers. "I don't hear any keys clicking."

I rolled my eyes and went back to the arduous task of pushing out a report.