It was no secret that Mai loved kids. So Yuki telling Mai to 'Go play Onee-chan' was completely understandable, though slightly embarrassing to the nineteen-going-on-twenty year old. Mai wondered through the halls, all the while contemplating the strange dream she had that night when she bumped, quite literally, into someone.
"Oh! I'm so sorry! Are you okay?" Mai knelt down to help the boy up. It was one of the twins from earlier.
"Hai. I'm fine. What about you, Onee-sama?" Intelligent green eyes looked up at Mai for the second time that day.
"I'm fine. Yue?" Mai hazarded a guess at the twin's identity, not expecting to be right but his cheerful nod proclaimed that she had guessed correctly.
"I'm very sorry, Onee-sama. I wasn't paying attention to where I was going, and ran into you again." He looked somewhat downcast, as though he were worried that she wouldn't like him any more.
"It's alright. I wasn't paying attention either, so the fault is mine as well." Mai smiled at Yue and he smiled back. Once more, Mai felt the need to be proud, not only of Yue but of Shing as well, along with the desire to take care of them. Of course Mai felt that way about just about everyone and everything but this was different. Earlier, when Yue had run into her, she felt the same pulling sensation. Well, not quite 'pulling' per se but that was the closest thing she could think of.
"Ne Onee-sama, would you like to see the room that Shing and I share?" Yue looked up at her hopefully and Mai felt this was something of an honor. From the way the twins had seemed earlier, Mai had the distinct impression that, while not antisocial, the boys did prefer each others company over the company of their peers. It seemed that, with this in mind, very few people would be invited into their room, though she was sure that many came in without invites.
"I'd love to. However, you can't call me 'Onee-sama'. It's too… stuffy. Onee-chan I will answer to but not 'Onee-sama'. 'Kay?" Mai smiled as she took the offered hand.
"Okay!" And they walked down the hall with Yue leading the way.
Meanwhile at base…
"Okay, Naru-chan! Have you figured out how to tell Mai that you love her yet?" Yuki hadn't even waited ten minutes before engaging in her favorite pastime, teasing Naru. Though no one else in the room noticed it (except for Lin, of course) the black clad teen blushed slightly, which to the Chinese spell caster and American psychic, was a dead giveaway to how right Yuki really was. Needless to say, neither man liked the psychic's smirk as Yuki whipped out her green notebook and pen.
"What are you doing?" Naru asked Yuki in English, his British accent making the 'what' sound more like 'wot'.
"Well, it's obvious, to me at least, that you do like Mai. It's also obvious that you have no idea how to tell her and also that you're afraid to tell her. After all, when she told you that she loved you, you asked her if she loved Gene. However, when you take into consideration the fact that she hadn't even known about Gene, was rather cruel, because it left her feeling very confused. So, the only thing to do is the following: One, you must write down everything that you think makes Mai who she is, even the things that annoy you are part of what you love; Two, you must talk to your extremely patient older brother and ask him if Mai has ever told him that she loves him, I doubt that he'll say yes. Specify that you mean in the romantic sense, not familial sense; Three, buy her something for her birthday, nothing expensive just-"
"I get it, I get it." Naru cut Yuki off with a wave of his hand.
"Just in case, I've written it all down. Okay?" Lin sighed as Naru glared at Yuki, who simply smiled back.
"You shouldn't antagonize him." Lin's deep voice broke the silence.
"I'm sorry Koujo but I can't help it. It's fun! Besides, he loves Mai and she loves him. It's not my fault that he's dense." She crossed her arms and pouted, making it hard for Lin not to go over there and kiss her. Something he was sure she knew.
With Mai in the twins' room…
Mai wasn't surprised to see that the room the twins slept in was emptier than that of children with their own homes. However, it did shock her to see numerous books on parapsychology on the small bookcase. She even recognized one or two that Naru had written under his real name, Oliver Davis.
"You two are fans of Oliver Davis, huh?" Shing nodded at her then went back to his book.
"Yeah, he's cool! So is his brother, Eugene. It'd be cool to meet them one day." Yue began to show her all his little treasures. About five minutes later, Mai excused herself to go back to base but not before making sure that both boys knew where to find her if they needed to.
Mai wondered what Gene would think, if he knew that he had a mini fanclub.
Back at base…
When Mai entered base, Naru was the only one there. He looked up when he heard her sigh as she sat back down.
"Anything interesting?"
"Well, I ran into the twins again. They admire you and Gene." Mai stretched out on the couch that Yuki had occupied just moments before. Naru looked startled so she continued on. "They have a lot of books in their room about parapsychology, some of them I know you wrote. I recognized the titles, you see. So, I asked if they liked Oliver Davis and they said yes. Yue, the one that ran into me earlier, mentioned that Eugene Davis sounded like a cool person as well. Of course, as with any case of hero worship, they would love to meet the Davis twins, not knowing that they've already met one and that their chances of meeting the other one are definitly not in their favor. They'd probably have to die to meet your brother and I wouldn't want that."
Naru nodded at her, then went back to reading his notebook.
'Stupid Narcisst! Oh, who am I kidding? I love him anyway.' Mai drifted off to dreamland as the pages in the notebook turned.
Mai's dream…
Gene was rather enjoying himself, after all, it was sunny and warm at the house. Although he, like his brother, was clad in black, Gene had decided to kick back and relax, with his feet propped up on a wall, hands behind his head and the top three buttons on his shirt undone.
'Idiot scientist. He needs to stop wearing black Ah, here comes Mai!' Gene smiled as the spunky teen materialized. Gene was once again struck by the irony of falling in love after dying. Mai was wearing a pair of short cut denim shorts, pink and black striped leggings, a black tank top with a button down short-sleeved pink safari shirt over it and a pink and black scarf keeping her bangs out of the way. He noticed that her tennis shoes had been spray painted pink with black stripes, no doubt Yuki's handy work.
"Gene!" His smile widened as Mai jogged over to where he was lounging.
"Hello, Mai. Long time no see. How are you?" She rolled her eyes as she noticed the newspaper in his hand (though how he got the paper was beyond her) was turned to the comics.
"Well, my name not in the obituaries and I'm not in hospital, so I'd say I'm doing good. How about you? How'd you get a newspaper in limbo?" She sat down beside him and stole the sports section.
"I can get just about anything I want here, provided I'm awake."
"Hmm. So, what do we have info. wise?" She looked up at him as she folded the sports section in half and handed it back to him.
"Not much. Nothing interesting in the world of sports?"
"Nah, not a thing." She made a face as she said that, before filching the comics out of his hands.
"It seems that there aren't any spirits here, so you might want to have Noll do a hypnotic suggestion on a few of the kids. Best to do it with groups of five or six at a time. You know how it goes and give me that back!" He took the comics back.
"Okay, so this is still going to take a while and we can't narrow it down by when these kids got here because it may be that having a new kid here was the catalyst for on of the kids who had been here longer."
"Yeah. Sorry I can't help more. Oh, can you do me a favor? Tell Noll to stop wearing black, it's gotten old." He smiled as Mai laughed.
"Okay, tell Naru to stop wearing black. Got it. See you later!"
"Bye!" Gene watched as she faded away in the same manner that she came. He looked at the fountain and unbuttoned the next button down on his shirt.