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Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of Ghost Hunt.
Naru had been expecting Mai's room to be decked out in lurid shades of girly colours and he braced himself to be blinded by a senseless pink haze when they reached her door. When Mai finally got the door to open (it had a habit of being stuck), it was hardly that. True, the walls were papered in soft pink and yellow rosettes and the edges of the white writing table was carved with so much flower and fruit it looked edible, but at least it wasn't uncomfortable to look at. The translucent bed hangings had been tied back neatly with plain gold ribbons. All in all, it was a room with taste and little fuss.
Mai set the little frog on the table. "Were you serious about sleeping on my bed?" she asked it anxiously. Naru sniffed. "Do you expect me to sleep on the floor?" he said and went to examine the ink pot and pen on the table instead. The girl blushed slightly. "Well, I could clear out a drawer for you. And you'll need water. I can put a bowl out." The frog shrugged its little green shoulders elegantly. "If it suits the lady of the house," he replied. Mai's face flushed again. "Oh, but I'm not, really." She sat down on the chair and propped her chin on her elbows. "This is my guardian's house." She looked at him thoughtfully. Naru found himself feeling rather uncomfortable at being examined at such a close distance. He could see himself reflected in her hazel coloured eyes for goodness sake. "I can see that you have freckles," he said in a tone that implied that he, Naru had flawless skin. "And you," the girl retorted, "have speckles and stripes. I don't see what there is to compare about. And anyway, a frog wouldn't know anything about human beauty."
"What makes you think I'm not secretly an enchanted human?" Naru asked, nettled.
"Are you?" the girl asked.
"Get me some paper."
The girl huffed in annoyance before plunking a piece of paper in front of her unwelcome guest. "You could say thank you, you know," she observed as Naru began working out how best to hold a pen with webbed feet. As he began writing in an amazingly neat script, Mai found to her annoyance that she was being grandly ignored once again. Grumbling unhappily to herself, she decided to have the long delayed bath that she ought to have had the day before. "I'm going to have my bath," she said as two maids entered, bearing with them a large wooden tub. And, before Naru realised what was happening, he found himself shoved unceremoniously into a cluttered drawer filled with feminine knick knacks, including a very tacky gilt toad brooch. As he fought to untangle himself from a dozen chains, bits of lace and skeins of coloured ribbons, he heard one of the maids speaking. "Mai-chan. His Excellency has just arrived with a guest and requests that you meet her now."
His Excellency? The last thing Naru had expected was that he should have hopped right into one of his ministers' private country house.
When Mai entered the sitting room, with its white and old gold upholstery, she found a visibly harassed Lin standing by the fireplace with a slender young girl that looked to be about her age. "Ah," said Lin in a relieved sort of way and failed to notice that his ward still had some stray leaves decorating her rumpled clothes. "May I introduce you to Her Highness, Princess Masako of Nihon. She would be staying with us for a week." The princess bowed briefly. "Pleased to meet you," she murmured, with a surreptitious glance at Mai's crumpled blue gown. The brown-haired girl blushed. "I'm pleased to meet you too," she said and curtseyed. Lin seemed satisfied by this apparent politeness from both parties. "Masako-hime with be staying in the Blue Room. While the housekeeper is getting it ready, would you please entertain Her Highness? I am wanted urgently at the palace," he said. "Of course I will," Mai said cheerily. Lin nodded. "Hime-sama, it is unlikely that I will be able to find the time to discuss the trade agreements until the day after tomorrow. I am most apologetic for the delay, but as you have realised, this is a most unfortunate time for us. Mai and I will do our best to see that your stay here is a hospital one." The girl inclined her head gracefully. "Of course. I will wait as long as it needs until the Prince of your country is well again before we proceed with the talks."
As Albion's Trade Minister left the room, he found himself colliding with someone coming round the corner. "Oh dear! Pardon me, Your Excellency!" the younger man smiled politely. Lin groaned inwardly when he recalled that the university was closed for a week too. He waved aside the student's apology vaguely. "Are you visiting Mai?" he asked instead. To his distress, Yasuhara shook his head. "Oh no, she just offered to let me stay here instead of the inn at Grimmwood," he replied with what Lin felt to be far too much enthusiasm. "I heard that the Princess of Nihon is staying here too, while the palace is under curfew due to His Highness's illness."
"Yes, indeed," Lin said unenthusiastically and then sneezed with a gloomy sense of foreboding. "Most kind of you to open up your home," the student rambled on cheerfully. "I hope the matter with the prince blows over quickly."
"Indeed, so do I," the minister said with feeling before departing for the palace once again.
The Princess of Nihon's stay at the minister's country home was not a success, even when judged by Yasuhara's overly optimistic estimations. "Oh, she can't stay mad at a fellow guest at The Last Homely House forever, you know," he said comfortably as he stroked Beast, who was currently fast asleep on his lap. Mai didn't agree. For one thing, the princess only had to stay mad for a week before she moved to the guest room at the palace and/or Yasuhara went back to his university quarters. "What if she refuses to conduct the trade talks?" Mai asked. Yasuhara laughed. "Of course she would. Maybe, she'll even agree to Albion's conditions quickly because she wants to go back home quickly."
"You're one to talk. It's your fault in the first place," Mai grumbled. Earlier that day, when Yasuhara had said that he and Beast would be planning the in-dinner entertainment, she hadn't thought too much about it. Preparations of the Blue Room had been delayed because Princess Masako had not liked some of the… more permanent fixtures in it; like the position of the bed and she had been distracted by that.
"Do all Albionnese sleep with their bed facing the door? Miss Taniyama, please have your housekeeper arrange it so that it faces south." She eyed the ceiling in polite disdain. "And are all your ceilings so low?"
"Well," Mai began, but the princess interrupted her. "I had expected the Ministers of your country to be better housed."
When Mai had finally escaped from Masako, she found herself instead faced with a terrified maid, who said that one of the drawers in her desk was shaking madly. Naru! When she managed to wrench open the door, she found herself facing a furious little frog. "What are you doing?" she asked it in annoyance. "I'm getting dry and my skin's flaking," the frog snapped. "In a few more hours, I would have died. Is this how you treat a guest?" With a sigh, she took a ladle to the now cooled bathwater and scooped some of it into a bucket. "Here," she said as the frog leapt into it with a small splash.
"Now, no peeking," she warned. "I'm going to have my bath."
The rest of the day whirled by. Mai, finally clean and dressed in a fresh pale pink gown found herself helping the aging housekeeper and two footmen to swing round the heavy bed in Masako's room as well as any other specifications that she had. By the time they were done, Mai realised that it was almost time for dinner and that she had not vetted Yasuhara's "in-dinner entertainment" as he had called it. But, when she rushed into the dining room, no one was there yet, even though the table had been set. Then, she saw something crawling near her plate and discovered that Naru had in fact been waiting there already.
"Mai, tea," he said on catching sight of her.
"It's dinner already. Shall I get you wine instead?" she asked distractedly. The frog gave her that look that she was starting to dread. "If I wanted wine, I would have requested for it instead of tea," he said sarcastically.
"What's this? I did not realise that Albionnese kept frogs as pets."
Masako had entered the dining room as well. Now that she was not wearing the elaborate headdress that she had been earlier in the day, Mai was surprised to see that Masako was in fact shorter and less imposing than she had first appeared to be. "They don't," both Naru and Mai said together and then looked at each other, slightly startled. "The evidence indicates otherwise," Masako commented with a raised eyebrow as she sat elegantly opposite Naru. "Still, I'm rather curious. Are there many magical frogs in Albion?"
"No, and from my knowledge, I'm the only one."
Mai watched the exchange curiously. "You aren't scared of frogs?" she asked the other girl with some surprise. The princess raised a long kimono sleeve to her face. "Of course not," she said snootily.
As the dinner commenced, Mai couldn't help but wonder where Yasuhara had gone. It wasn't like him to miss out on free food, and she was just about to get up to check when a loud melodious clang sounded from the lawn and Yasuhara burst abruptly into the dining room through the French windows, with Beast in tow. Masako shrieked faintly. They had been serving soup and the poor servant who had been ladling the princess's portion was so traumatized that he spilled the entire bowl onto her.
"My kimono!" she hissed, having collected her wits. "My lady Masako," Yasuhara was now speaking. "Allow me to welcome you to Albion! Tonight, two residents at The Last Homely House will present to you a musical piece composed specially for the occasion of your visit." As Masako watched with frigid politeness, Yasuhara placed Beast (with a very ludicrous pink bow tied round his neck) on a chair next to him. "The lyrics might be familiar to you, Ohime-sama," he smiled, glasses gleaming in the candle-light and struck a pose with his guitar.
"Brrrrrreeeaaaaakiiiinng theeeeeeeee siiileeennnnncccce,"
Strum. With a nudge from Yasuhara, Beast also joined into the fray with his caterwauls.
"Offff an annnnnciieeeennnt poooond,"
Strum.
"Aaaaa froooogg juuuummmppeed intoooo the waaaater"
Yasuhara looked soulfully around the room before strumming alarmingly again.
Extra loud strum. Mai twitched.
"A deeeeeeppp resonaaance!" Strum.
There was a long silence. Masako sat as though frozen to her gilt-edged chair. "Mastuo Basho. Late seventeenth century poet from Nihon." Everyone rounded on Naru who was the one who had spoken. "You are acquainted with the work of one of our haiku masters?" Masako asked, surprised and a little pleased. The little frog took a polite sip from the pink floral tea cup.
"May I ask what your area of study is in at the university?" he asked Yasuhara as he sat down at the table with his usual cheer. "So glad that you asked, Shibuya-san. I'm specialising in eastern languages." As Mai absorbed this new piece of information bleakly, Masako eyed the student stonily. "You must excuse me, but my kimono sleeve is soaked," she said.
"But, won't you stay for dinner?" Mai asked desperately.
The princess stared at her in disbelief as Yasuhara produced a blank canvas from seemingly nowhere and announced, "Next item! A watercolour painting in the style of Suzuki Harunobu! Wait," he called as Masako practically ran out of the room, near impossible as it was to do so in her kimono. "But you are to be the subject of my painting!"
"Oh stop teasing her already," Mai said with a sigh as she helped herself to the half eaten dessert. Yasuhara only laughed and didn't reply. The princess had locked herself into her room, and shortly after Mai had knocked on the door incessantly, the door had been opened by one of the black clad personal servants who shooed her away rudely after requesting that all meals were to be sent up from now on.
"So, Shibuya? I see that you are proficient in eastern languages as well?" Yasuhara said as he deposited Beast in a wicker basket by the veranda.
"Some Japanese. I'm better speaking than writing it."
"Have some more tea," he offered and then shook the tea pot when nothing but a few drops trickled out. He held out the teapot to Mai with a smile.
"Mai?"
The girl sagged. Since when had she become her two new guests' maid?
"I'll go boil some more."
Author's notes: Where there is Yasuhara, there can only be chaos! XD
Matsuo Basho and Suzuki Harunobu are real people, and you can check out more about them from Wiki. The haiku which Yasuhara was happily mauling is one of Basho's more famous works and has been translated variously. The version I borrowed is translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa.