She pulled him into his own bedroom and shut the door behind them. "You might want to sit down," she said.
He sat on his bed. She sat down next to him and let out a long breath. "I know this is going to sound like a joke, but I promise you that everything I'm about to tell you is one hundred percent true."
He waited while she collected her thoughts.
"There's something called Dragon's Blood. All of us – that is, me, you, Naoki, and Li Mei – have it. Dragon's Blood kind of...enhances abilities that we already have and makes them sort of... I guess the easiest way to describe them is psychic powers. I'm sure that you're going to remember more and more about yourself as we go along, so you'll realize that it's very different from the magic in kids' books, but for now it's the best summary we've got."
"Kangai" was definitely interested. "So what can I do?"
She tilted her head. "You seem to have an extremely empathetic relationship with the dead. If you touch a corpse, you can relive their final moments. You also feel it when someone is murdered nearby."
So that's what Kangai had been doing when he touched Jonathan's body. It also made sense that it'd been so easy to inhabit Kangai's body and consciousness.
"What about you? What can the rest of you do?" he asked.
"Li Mei can feel the emotions of everyone around her" - Ahhh, I see... "Naoki has a perfect memory. He crystalizes his experiences and is constantly reliving them..."
"And you?" Kangai asked curiously.
What do you think, Kan? said Aki's voice in his head. She winked at him.
"Woah!" he jumped up, putting his hands to his ears. "How did you – can you teach me that?"
She laughed. "Sorry. We all have to stick with the kansei that we've got."
"Okay..." he sat back down. "I have one more question."
She stiffened, but met his gaze head on. "Anything."
"Did I have a crush on you?"
She blinked. Opened her mouth. Closed it again. "No," she said.
"Well, I definitely do now," he said, giving her his best boyish grin. No girl had ever said no to that grin when he was Jonathan.
She stared at him. The silence stretched on. "Um," she said. She seemed totally at a loss.
He felt a flash of anger. Who was she to turn him down? "Do I have some sort of highly contagious disease that's making you make that face?"
She laughed. "No, but...you're practically like my little brother. It'd be gross."
Jonathan felt the sting of resentment in his chest, but masked it with embarrassment. "Shoot, I didn't know it was like that!" He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "Sorry."
"That's okay!" she chirped. He was beginning to realize that when her voice got too happy, it was most likely because she was hiding some other emotion. "Do you have any other questions?"
"Just one, um..." he paused for a suitable amount of time. "It seems like Li Mei doesn't like me. Did I do something to her?"
Aki leaned back on her hands and sighed. "Li Mei is very...complicated, but I can tell you for sure that it's not that she doesn't like you. It could just be that she's picking up on all of our confusion and fear, and it's making her upset."
Maybe. But if she could pick up on the emotions of everyone around her, she definitely would have noticed that "Kangai" was actually a lot more calculating than he let on. Which means that she either knew exactly what he was, or at least she had a very good idea.
Maybe it was time to have a chat with Little Miss Psychic.
"Something wrong?" Aki's gentle voice interrupted his thoughts. He looked up questioningly. "You looked kind of...far away. Were you remembering something?"
He shook his head. "I thought I had the edge of a memory, but when I tried to catch it, it disappeared."
She looked disappointed, but smiled at him anyway. "That's all right. They'll come when they're ready."
Not if I have anything to say about it, Jonathan thought.
"And now it's time for the real fun!" she said, standing. He noticed with no little annoyance that this time she didn't offer to help him up. "We've got to find out who killed Jonathan. Maybe doing detective work will jog your memory a bit."
The irony was not lost on Jonathan, but he knew better than to start laughing in front of Aki. "Great. In fact...I think I already have an idea of who might have done it."