Author's Notes: Yay, I actually got this done early! This is for everyone who worried what would happen to Masako in the last chapter. Let's see what happens next…
Previously on Ghost Hunt: Inception…
There was a loud cracking sound, and Masako screamed again, this time with John's loud yelp piercing the air in a terrifying duet. The group below watched as the wooden planks under the Australian exorcist splintered.
CRACK!
Almost as if in slow motion, the boards snapped, and the medium's grip on John's arm was broken. The priest made an attempt to grab at her again, but was pulled back before he plunged as well. Even from her vantage point, Mai could see Masako's eyes widen in sheer terror as her short black hair whipped about her pale face, hand outstretched as if she could grab at John again as she fell…
Case File #1: Skeletons in the Closet
Part 6
July
Day 2 (cont.)
"Sh-she slipped," John gulped as the paramedics gently lifted the girl onto the stretcher. "She slipped and I couldn't catch her in time…" He buried his face in one hand.
"It's all right, John. It wasn't your fault." Takigawa gripped the sobbing Australian's shoulder reassuringly, though whether it was for John's sake or his own it was hard to tell.
Masako had fallen three floors, landing on the scaffolding left at the second level with a sickening thud and lying too still for anyone's comfort. Naru had to restrain Mai from running to the girl's side blindly and instead held a tight grip on her wrist as he led the way to make certain that she too did not run into some kind of misfortune. When they'd made it to where the medium lie unconscious, they found the rest of the group already there, Ayako checking the girl's vitals while screeching for someone to call an ambulance. As Mr. Otonashi put in the fervent call to emergency services, Takigawa was supporting an utterly horrified John, who looked ready to pass out.
And now they were all back on the ground, watching in trepidation as Masako's prone form was being rolled to the awaiting ambulance, its lights blazing and siren set to blare the moment the doors in the back shut. The only things they'd heard so far in regards to the medium's condition was that she was still unconscious and had a concussion and fractured collar bone. It was good thing she'd been wearing her hardhat, they said…
Mai clung to Naru's arm, doing her best not to sob as Masako was quickly wheeled by. She couldn't forget the look on the girl's face as her hold onto John was so suddenly and frighteningly gone and she plunged downward. If it hadn't been for the workmen there, John would have fallen as well.
She squeezed her eyes shut in futile attempt to block out the replaying images, unconsciously gripping her boss's arm even tighter. The action caused a set of dark blue eyes to slide in her direction, softening only slightly before returning to their usual icy countenance.
"I need my arm back, Mai." He spoke lowly but firmly. His assistant muttered an apology, releasing his by now almost numb limb and hugging herself in place of clinging to him.
Sparing another unnoticed gaze down upon her, he walked over to where Monk and John were. In the background he could hear Sendo commanding his work force to look at the scaffolding where Masako had been, demanding an explanation immediately.
"Father Brown." The Australian's head shot up, normally clear blue eyes suddenly bloodshot and strained. Not even Naru could deny that the man was a wreck in his current state. "I want you to accompany Miss Hara to the hospital. You should have yourself checked out as well." He indicated the growing blood stain coming from the left side the exorcist's chest wear the material on his shirt had been torn from the breaking planks.
John looked down at his injury detachedly. "Yeah… sure…"
As Takigawa took the injured priest over to the ambulance where Masako was quickly and carefully being loaded into, one of the workers ran up to them, sweating profusely and breathing harshly. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Mai recognized him as one of the carpenters who'd been talking to Sendo the day SPR had arrived to the site.
"Mr. Sendo," he panted, stopping right in front of them. He gripped his kneepads as he bent over in an attempt to catch his breath.
"What is it, Ayanokoji?" the foreman demanded, clearly disturbed by this latest scare.
"Just… found out… the problem…" Ayanokoji swallowed, clearly on the verge of tears. "Not like the others… warped board on the scaffolding… my fault… forgot to fix… s-so sorry…"
Sendo frowned, but it was Mr. Otonashi who moved to give the trembling worker a gentle pat on the shoulder. "It's okay," the CEO said. "With everything that's been going on, I doubt anyone would have remembered warped boarding. It isn't your fault." He looked over to Naru apologetically. "I'm sorry about Miss Hara, Mr. Shibuya. I certainly hope she'll be all right."
'So do the rest of us,' Mai thought to herself. Even if he didn't show it, she knew Naru was concerned as well. They all were. And with the horrified expression engraved on his face, even "Hawkeye" Katagiri was no exception.
It was likely because of this that he silently handed the folder containing the pass codes over to Lin before nearly dashing over to Mr. Otonashi, who looked to be quite ill after watching Masako's fall.
A heavy dread weighed down upon the jobsite as the emergency sirens of the ambulance blared, slowly fading into the distance as the vehicle transported both Masako and John to the hospital.
…
It was two hours later that SPR received a phone call from John. While Masako was apparently going to be fine despite her horrifying descent, the hospital doctors were still running tests and checking on her continuously, and wouldn't be releasing her for at least three or four days to make certain she would be okay.
But that wasn't the only news he called to deliver.
"Just before she fell asleep from the medication they gave her, Masako asked me to relay a message for her," the priest said over the phone, blue eyes darting over in the direction of the now slumbering form on the other side of the room.
"She said that she felt no less than fifteen spirits trapped in the business part of the complex. And that's not the only thing…" he swallowed before continuing. "According to Masako, they're all crying and screaming that they want to get out. That they want to find someone."
There was a brief silence.
"Did she say anything else?"
"No, nothing," said John. "After that, the medication took over and she fell asleep."
He thought he could hear the sound of the SPR director's voice speaking to Lin for a moment.
"I want you to stay with Miss Hara until further notice. Call me if she says anything else when she wakes up."
"Don't worry, Kazuya. I'm not going anywhere."
…
7:18 PM
Later on in the day Yasuhara returned, Katsu appearing half an hour after. Upon hearing of Masako's accident, Yasu immediately began asking how she was and if she would be all right. Katsu merely bit her lip, and her light eyebrows were furrowed in what Mai could only assume was concern.
Naru, ever the workaholic, quickly dragged them back to the situation at hand the moment they sat down in the small couch that Takigawa had been laid up on the night before. After the incident, he'd gone right back into what Mai sourly called his "investigation mode", and sent everyone back to checking the equipment, which resulted in the discovery of five broken cameras, and one of the thermal imagining camera sporting a cracked lens.
Needless to say, the SPR direction was not currently in a good mood. The countless tea orders he'd thrown at Mai throughout the day and the continuous tapping of his fingers against Otonashi's desk were clear indications of that.
"What did you the two of you find out?"
Yasuhara looked over to Katsu. "Ladies first," he offered with a slight bow.
Katsu gave him a wry look, but shrugged. "Whatever." She pulled a small pad of paper from her bag and leaned back on the couch. "Okay, while Yasuhara decided to talk to the neighborhood families and everyone, I decided to take on the more… overlooked members of our fair society."
"Overlooked?" Mai looked at her questioningly.
"Homeless folk and kids who don't like to go to school, mostly. And a street gang or two."
"Whoa… you didn't tell me that part!"
Katsu smirked at the college student's horrified reaction. "You said to get as much information as possible, right? When it comes to old buildings and construction sites, the best places for gossip aren't always conventional. So while you went after the old ladies and casual shoppers, I went for the least obvious information sources."
"But street gangs?" Ayako was equally as outraged. "That's dangerous! What if they hadn't liked you trespassing on their territory?"
Katsu simply shrugged it aside. "I'm here, aren't I? And look! I'm still in one piece!" She grinned a little at the now practically seething shrine maiden. Yasu's lips were pursed in evident displeasure.
'Why would Katsu go up people like gang members?' Mai wondered, frowning in the girl's direction. 'I'd be scared if I even walked by people like that!' She shuddered at the thought.
"And…?" Naru, ever the businessman, prompted impatiently. "Did you come across anything interesting?"
"Actually, I think I did." She looked down at the notepad. "According to what pretty much everyone said, the old building that used to stand here supposedly had a reputation for being haunted."
"Seriously?" Takigawa leaned in to hear better.
There was a click, and everyone's heads shot up. John soon found himself as the center of attention.
"Sorry for the interruption," he apologized, shutting the door behind him. "I just got back from the hospital. Masako's doing well, but the doctor told me that she needed to rest, so I decided to come back here to help."
"How are you doing, John?" Mai asked, noticing that he now wore a new shirt.
"I'm all right," he said, sitting in the open chair next to Lin, who was currently sitting behind his laptop in an attempt to record Yasuhara and Katsu's findings. "It was a nasty cut, but they stitched me up and told me I'd be all right. They did give me a prescription for antibiotics, though, so I wouldn't get an infection. Other than that, I'm fine."
"That's good to hear." Naru looked back over to Katsu. "You may continue, Miss Shinormori. You said the old building was claimed to be haunted?"
"Yeah, at least that's what going story is." She scanned over her notes again. "There used to be an old apartment complex here that'd been standing since around the 1950s. It changed hands several times before finally shutting down sometime in the Lost Decade*, and since then it's been left to rot."
"But during the time it was operational, it wasn't limited to apartment housing alone," Yasuhara interjected. "In fact, during the 1970s and the early 1980s, a portion of the first floor was used as a laundry facility. In the late 1980s, it had been used as a soup kitchen and shelter for the homeless."
"But all that ended when the asset price bubble collapsed*," Katsu continued. "The building had been falling into disrepair for quite some time – I guess the reason it kept changing hands so often was because no one could afford to keep up with it – it stopped being used officially as an apartment complex following a series of code violations. A year after the last owners abandoned it, the building was declared to be partially (if not fully) condemned by the city council. After that, people decided to stay as far away from it as possible. Or at least the adults did. The neighborhood kids and vagabonds didn't always listen.
"When I talked with a few members of the one of the local street gangs, they weren't initially too keen on answering my questions. When I asked them if they'd ever used the building for initiation purposes, however, I got some pretty interesting responses."
"Initiation?" Mai frowned, a sign that she didn't understand.
"Whenever you try to enter into any kind of group, business or otherwise, you often have to pass some form of initiation in order to prove your worth," Naru explained. "Think of it in the terms of attending high school here in Japan: in order to be accepted by the school you wish to attend, you have to pass their entrance exams for placement."
"Oh."
"With gangs, it's basically the same concept; the only difference, though, is that gang initiations usually aren't very pleasant," said Katsu. "Sometimes it's theft, sometimes it's harassment – initiations vary among groups. Apparently, one of the more popular gang initiations around here used to consist of breaking into the old building in the middle of the night and not getting caught. From what I gathered, not many people were able to pass. One guy told me that a freshman in high school who'd tried the initiation wound up having a massive anxiety attack and had to be rushed to the hospital. As it turns out, he'd somehow gotten locked up in a closet somewhere on the sixth floor and something wrapped around his neck. If it wasn't for the middle school kid who was with him during the initiation, he might've died from terror alone, if not asphyxiation."
There was an awkward silence that followed as everyone let the information sink in.
"Was there anything else?" Naru asked after a time.
"Yeah, there was. A lot." She shifted in her seat and looked up at him with a frown. "After they tore the building down, the local gangs decided to shift their initiation activities and sought instead to target the construction site rather than moving on to robbing local convenience stores like a few of the other groups apparently seem to favor.
"They told me that it was pretty simple stuff: just jump over the fence, steal a few things, make a mess, and then take off before a beat cop came by. For their last initiation, which was about three months ago, they decided to have the newbie steal some of the equipment – simple stuff like ropes, chains, and whatnot – and put them in the wrong places. Another part of the initiation was to break into the foreman's office and make," she coughed, "late night calls, as they put it, on the office phone, and under the name of the foreman on the jobsite.
"I actually spoke with the kid who'd undergone this initiation. Even though he'd passed, he told me the whole thing was really weird. He said that the following morning, he and the gang stood back behind the fences and watched what happened when the construction team came in. But instead of finding the chains hanging from the fourth floor scaffolding rails and the ropes stretched across various sections of the apartment complex, the crew wound up hauling the chains from the fifteenth floor of the business building and recoiling the ropes when they found them in the basement level, which hadn't been separated at the time. And a lot of the equipment had been damaged as well."
"But you said that he was only supposed to just misplace things and make a crank call," John interjected.
"Yeah, and that was all the guy did," Katsu said. "The rest of the gang hadn't even stepped foot on the site – they were watching him from an alley off to the side.
"As it turns out, the only thing that came out right was the prank call – they heard about the foreman getting a phone call about it from the CEO."
"So how did the equipment get damaged?" Yasu mused aloud.
The interloper shook her head and shrugged. "They don't know. They were there for a really long time and spent the night in the alley. The kid doing the initiation said that he was too nervous and excited to sleep, and he didn't remember anyone passing by that night. Considering the situation, I'd have to believe him: anyone whose nerves are that wound up is bound to notice if even a cockroach scuttles by."
Mai and Ayako shuddered at the analogy – neither of them like the idea of cockroaches.
"Is there anyone else who might know about the old building and its history for being haunted?" asked Naru. "Someone who's lived in the area for a while and is familiar with the building itself?"
"Well… not really," Yasuhara answered as Katsu closed her notepad. "There aren't very many people who have been around for all that long – a lot of the older residents have moved out over the years, and everyone else belongs to the kind of well-to-do families that prefer to overlook neighborhood ghost tales. And there's absolutely no one that I found that lived in the building prior to its closure. One of the local general store owners told me that the church group that ran the soup kitchen closed down about fifteen years ago and its members have since moved out the area."
"But there is one guy who's been around for a while," Katsu said, earning raised eyebrows from both Yasu and Naru. "His name's Ichiro Taka; he was mentioned by a lot of the street urchins around here. According local gossip, he's been here for nearly thirty years, and he's been left as homeless intermittently since the economy went bad. They told me that he was always warning people about going into the old building that used to stand here, but it wasn't exactly clear why he was so vehement about it."
"Hang on. You said his name was Ichiro Taka?" Yasu shuffled through his notes.
"Yeah. Why?"
He pulled a note-laden page out of the pile. "As it turns out, Mr. Taka came up on several occasions today when I went around interviewing everyone in the vicinity. They talked about the old abandoned building that used to stand here apparently being so dangerous that not even the homeless people would use it for shelter if they could help it. It was during these conversations that I'd heard the name 'Ichiro Taka' brought up. When I asked who he was, they told me that he's an elderly homeless man who's lived here in Nakameguro for at least three decades. He's also apparently the instigator of the warnings attached to the old building."
"Does anyone know where we can locate Mr. Taka?" Naru inquired.
"No idea," Yasu admitted.
"I know." They looked at Katsu in mild surprise. "He usually hangs around the Meguro River, and sits at this bench with some old proverb carved into the back. He wasn't there today, but if you want I can try again tomorrow."
Naru nodded. "Do that, and bring him here if at all possible."
"Gotcha."
"Now then…" the group quickly silenced, anticipating the next round of orders. "Given that the previous building had a history of suspicion to it, and taking into consideration Ms. Hara's earlier statement and the amount of accidents and disasters occurring here, it would be safe to assume that something was left over."
"Is that even possible?" Mai inquired.
"If it wasn't possible, I would never have suggested it."
There was a round of amused snickers as the brunette's face went bright red. Even Katsu couldn't help but crack a smile at the girl's reaction. Upon seeing this, Mai calmed down some.
'It's to know that she can genuinely smile, even if it's just like that. She had me worried for a while.'
"All right, enough." The warning tone of their leader's voice quickly placed the trailer into silence.
Naru looked around with some kind of self-satisfaction before continuing. "Tonight, I want everyone out and investigating. Lin and I will remain here at base for the time being; we'll rotate groups so everyone does something and takes a turn at keeping an eye on the monitors. Takigawa, I want you, Mai, and Miss Shinomori to investigate the basement and first floor of apartment complex. Get temperature readings, check the cameras, everything. And make sure you explain things to Miss Shinomori as you go along."
"All right! It looks like I get to hang out with the lovely ladies!" the monk cheered, pulling Mai into a hug.
Naru frowned inwardly at the interaction, but chose to ignore it. "Ms. Matsuzaki, Yasuhara, and Father Brown – I want you to check out the business complex, in particular the second floor and the unfinished third floor. Those appear to be the most active areas."
They nodded in agreement.
"And for the last time: under no circumstances is anyone to go off alone." He gave Mai a meaningful look, earning himself her tongue sticking out in his direction. "Miss Hara's accident today is not something I want to see repeated. If any of you decide to act against this order, then I'll have no choice but to remove you from the case." A quick glare silenced the oncoming protests. "In case you haven't forgotten, this not only a construction site, but a construction site over a building that was presumed to be haunted prior to its demolishment. If none of you can see the severity of the situation, then you're all bigger idiots than I'd previously assumed."
…
8:15 PM
"Okay, all we need to do is check things out and then we'll report back to Naru." Mai looked over her shoulder and grinned in her new partner's direction. "Have you got your hardhat and flashlight?"
"Yup," Katsu replied, tipping her hat back so it didn't fall into her face. After managing to cajole Naru into letting her join, Yasuhara had managed to sneak another hardhat out from Tomei Construction Company's stash, and bestowed it upon the bemused girl, along with the effects left over from the team's earlier "personalization" festivities. Poor Katsu had to make do with a few garishly colored flowers, the few bullet holes that Yasuhara and Monk hadn't claimed, and a couple of permanent markers.
What the girl turned out wasn't half bad, given what little she had to work with. A few flowers were scattered across the bill, connected by a green vine-like line she created with one of the markers. With a black marker she'd created a simple but attractive intertwining vine pattern that went all around in a band. Like John, she'd written a few sentences on her headgear, but Mai had absolutely no idea what they meant. Ironically, it was John who'd been able to explain them to not only Mai but a few of the others in the group.
…
"It's Latin," he explained, looking down at the scrawl. Yasuhara had managed to get a hold of the interloper's headgear after she'd disappeared to one of the portable restrooms on the site. He'd been lucky to have gotten his hands on the item – Katsu was unnaturally overprotective of her possessions, they'd noticed. She'd taken her bag with her.
"Latin?" Ayako raised an eyebrow. "How could she possibly know Latin?"
"Hey, Yasu, do you know any Latin?" Mai asked.
The college student blinked. "Well, yeah. Virtually everyone knows at least one word or phrase of Latin – it's the root of the Romance languages, and it's the source of many borrowed words and phrases. I think I'd be surprised to meet someone who didn't know at least one word of Latin; despite being considered a dead language, it's still used worldwide. But I don't think I've seen anything like what Katsu's written."
"What's it say, John?" Monk looked over the Aussie's shoulder, and pointed to the phrase on their left. "Let's start with this one."
"Ego ascendero scala ad astra," John read. "I ascend the stairway to the stars."
"'The stairway to the stars'?" Ayako repeated. "Just what does that mean?"
"What does what mean?" The all stiffened at the sound of Katsu's voice. Turning around, they discovered the girl staring at them blankly, a cold fury seeming to swirl in her eyes.
"We were just wondering what all the writing on your hardhat says, Katsu," Mai said, trying her best to remain calm. "That's all."
The interloper tensed.
"What all did you want to know about?"
"Well, what's the 'stairway to the stars'?" said Yasu.
An odd look passed over her face. "It's a concept. An idea someone I once knew had about being able to go beyond the sky and reach the farthest stars in our dreams. I fell in love with the phrase and I've been writing it on things ever since. The phrase 'stairway to the stars' was actually inspired by some song, but I've never heard it. Probably American. The person who came up with the saying was a huge fan of American rock music."
"Oh…" came their response in unison.
"Hey, is this another music reference?" Mai asked, taking the hat, turning it around, and pointing to the lengthy scrawl on the back.
Katsu grinned a little. "Sort of. It's more like a variation. It's from the same person who wrote the stairway to the stars line."
"It sounds as though he was well-educated in Latin," John remarked.
"Actually, I think he just like the idea of learning a supposedly dead language." She laughed a little. "Dead. Now that's one thing Latin isn't."
"If you're all finished congregating in the kitchen…" Naru's warning tone came laced with crackling static from the walkie-talkie latched onto Takigawa's belt. The monk snatched up the communication object and rolled his eyes.
"Don't worry, we're going," he responded. Latching the device back onto his belt he looked at the others. "Okay, guys. Naru's getting antsy, so we'd better get going."
"Naru?" Katsu sounded confused. "I thought his name was Kazuya?"
"Oho! That means you haven't heard about Mai's little nickname for him!" He put an arm around her rigid shoulders and pulled her out the door. "You see, it came up over a year ago, when –"
"Wait! Katsu, you forgot your… oh, never mind." Mai sighed and looked down at the interloper's hardhat, the foreign letters staring back at her. If it had been English, Mai might have been able to decipher at least some of it. But again it was in Latin, and Mai was as familiar with Latin as a polar bear might have been with the Sahara Desert.
Out of curiosity, she flipped Katsu's hardhat upside down and was surprised to find more – and shockingly familiar – writing staring back at her.
In bold lettering, the following words were written:
またあなたの夢の中でお会いしましょ う
"Mata anata no yume no nakade oaishimashou," Yasu read over her shoulder, startling the brunette into nearly dropping the yellow headgear. "That's weird. And here I thought she had a penchant for writing in foreign languages."
"There's something strange about that girl," Ayako stated, arms folded. "I'm beginning to wonder if there's more to her than she's letting on in regards to this case."
"It would seem that way," John agreed. "But if Kazuya thought she would be a problem, I don't think he would have allowed her to work with us so readily."
"There's something strange about that, too," Yasu said. "I mean, I know I was being entirely serious when I suggested that we let her in, but I didn't actually expect him to agree to it like that. Do you think that maybe he knows something about her that we don't already?"
"Maybe…" said John.
Mai frowned in thought. She personally didn't see anything wrong with Katsu: the girl was what she supposed a person could consider a mixed bag, but not too bad. The incident with Monk had been a complete misunderstanding, and she seemed to be really good at getting information so far. The only points against Katsu's favor so far were Katagiri's insinuations. And going to street gang members for information didn't come across as ordinary behavior…
Katsu was pretty odd, the Mai thought about it… and she was so guarded…
Still…
'See you again in your dreams…' Mai frowned down at the tidy Japanese scrawl on the inside of the hat. 'I wonder what that could mean…'
"Hey, Mai!" Takigawa called out. "Hurry up before Naru decides to call back and complain that he wants more tea!"
Mai sighed, and placed her own hat atop her head before looking back into Katsu's hardhat.
She let out a gasp.
She hadn't seen it before ('But how could I have missed it?' she wondered), but she saw it now, just under the dreams phrase:
ジーン
'Jīn?' she couldn't help but wonder. 'Who on Earth is Jīn?'
…
"You guys be careful over there!" Takigawa hollered to the three figures venturing towards the looming business building in the twilight. "That place is the most active, so don't let your guard down."
"We'll be fine," Ayako called out loftily. "You just make sure you don't injure yourself again. I can only patch you up so many times."
"I heard that, you old hag!"
"Would you like to add a concussion to your ailments?"
"You three be careful as well!" John interrupted, waving back a bit nervously. The monk sighed wearily and rubbed the small his back, silently wishing Ayako would have forked over the acetaminophen like he'd wanted.
"Hey, uh… Takigawa, right?" Mai snapped out her thoughts to find Katsu attempting to engage in conversation as they made their way to the skeletal apartment complex. The girl fumbled a bit with her flashlight. "Sorry for the beating I gave you the other night. I usually have better self-control than that."
He patted her head (or rather, her returned hardhat) and chuckled. "Hey, don't worry about it! You apologized already, remember? And besides, if I'd been in your position, I would've clocked me, too!" She gave a weak smile in response. "Oh, yeah, and you don't have to call me Takigawa – feel free to call me Monk, like everybody else."
Katsu looked at him incredulously. "Hold on… you're a monk?"
"Yup – straight out of Mt. Koya." He laughed. "Don't worry – you aren't the first person I've gotten this reaction from. My main gig is playing the bass for a local rock band in Shibuya."
Mai leaned over and in a theatre whisper said conspiratorially, "Monk's stage name is Norio."
The newcomer wrinkled her nose and cocked an eyebrow. "Norio?"
"Yeah, that's what the band decided to call me." Monk laughed sheepishly. "Hey, I know! If you want, I'll see if I can get you a ticket for one of our concerts!"
"Yeah, and they're really good, too," Mai added. "I've seen them play a few times. We can go together."
Katsu looked at the two grinning SPR members and smiled. It was a small, practically miniscule kind of smile – but it was warm and sincere. "You know… I think I'd like that."
"Then it's a date for sure!" Takigawa moved between the two girls and slung an arm each over their shoulders, pulling them in for a near-suffocating embrace. "So let's get to checking out this spooky place and get back so we can make Naru and Lin actually do some work like the rest of us!"
A/N: *The Japanese asset price bubble refers to 1986-1991, when Japan experienced trade in high volumes and stock and real estate prices inflated greatly; there was more money in banks, and loans and credits had become easier to obtain, which I suppose influenced the amount of spending. Everything following that, however, went downhill and Japan suffered an economic downturn that lasted from 1991 to 2000 – called the Lost Decade (though recently the years 2001-2010 are sometimes included, making it Lost Decades or the Lost Years).
Well, there's a lot of mystery surrounding the incidents at the construction site, but how much of is attributed to the supernatural? Mai and the others are about to find out in the next chapter, so be on the lookout! Special thanks goes to Cuz-im-just-that-awsum, Aoi Kitsukawa, and Foxgrl18 for your reviews and to everyone who added this story to their favorites and/or alerts lists – thank you so much! Feedback is welcome and appreciated!
Until the next chapter! ^_^