A/N: A break again! More NaruxMai fluff for everyone. Yay.

I'm Sorry

"Naru, no! You can't do that!" She stepped in front of him and held her arms wide to block her boss from leaving his office, eyes desperately pleading him to reconsider. She did not budge from her spot even as she shot him a very nasty glare.

"I can, and I will," he said bitingly, tightly grasping one of her outstretched arms and pulling her slightly away from the doorway. "It's the only way. She has become too consumed in her need for revenge that she is unable to be reasoned with."

"Y-you'll kill her!"

"She is already dead, Mai," he deadpanned as he tugged one more time, tipping her slightly off balance and she fell forward into him. He grabbed her shoulders and brushed her aside completely.

Still, she was relentless in her attack. "You'll be robbing her of the afterlife, Naru! Please, don't do this!"

He let out a sharp breath in pure exasperation and wheeled around to glare at his impertinent assistant. In a dangerously low growl, he repeated once again, "We have already exhausted all avenues to try and properly excorcise her spirit. There is no other choice. Three people are already dead due to her influence and if we do not make a choice soon, more people will die. Or are you okay with that in your conscience?"

Mai felt the tears flow freely across her face as she scowled back at him, determined to make her point across. "She didn't choose to be a vengeful spirit! Those people were the ones who made her suffer-they tortured her for so long, Naru, and didn't even have the mercy in them to finish her off! They're the ones who turned her into a monster!"

"That is not an excuse to condone her actions! There are two more people in danger. Are you telling me we should do nothing?" At this, Mai bit her tongue and clenched her fists. He continued in the same half-raised voice, "And do you seriously naively think that she will stop after she gets what she wants? Vengeful spirits are those who have fully descended into perdition and have no more sense of what's right or wrong. Do not prove yourself more stupid than I think you already are."

With those last words, she let her fists fall. Her tears now flowed like a deluge, and her face, full of determination just a few minutes ago, now screwed up into a pained grimace. For a moment her lips quivered but she bit it back. Monk and the others, who had given them their privacy by waiting silently outside the office, now quickly gathered around and tried to calm the heavy tension between the two.

"H-hey, let's pull back a little bit here," Bou-san said mildly.

While still holding her own against his pointed gaze, Mai sniffled and brushed away her tears. She took a deep breath and with a surprising calmness in her voice, said, "You wouldn't understand her pain. You're too rigid, too arrogant with your morals; you only see in black and white."

He only stared at her. Eventually, in the midst of her sniffling, he countered, "Our job is to stop the spirit from hurting anybody further. It is not to administer justice."

"It's all just a job to you, you unfeeling asshole." Bou-san called out her name to admonish her, but she ignored him. "You never consider other people's feelings, their reasons why they do things. All you care about are results. And so now you're going to wipe Hiroka-san out of existence because she's devolved into an evil being, which she never would have become into in the first place if these monsters never touched her." She sniffled one last time and wiped the last of her tears. "You have no qualms about harming the real victim as long as you finish the job. You're a heartless monster."

"Mai! That's uncalled for!" Bou-san called out sharply once again.

"No need, I'm done here." Naru turned around and exited the building wordlessly.

The towering Lin moved to follow him, but turned around toward Mai's vulnerable figure and bowed slightly, his lips tight and slightly downturned. He opened his mouth to make an excuse for his young charge's aggravatingly stolid behavior, but figured it wasn't his place to do so and instead said, "Excuse us. We should finish everything up by tonight and should have no further need for your help. Taniyama-san... please do not forget to lock up the office when you retire for the day." Mai just gave him a tiny nod and as soon as he closed the door, he heard her explode back into tears.

-00000-

"I have informed the client that we have successfully banished the spirit. This case is now officially closed," Lin said in his business-like tone, his eyes focusing on the road in front of him as visibility was slightly poor due to the falling snow around them. He didn't need to look to know that the boy beside him was in an incredibly foul mood, for the car was currently several degrees colder than the already frigid temperature outside. He tried to turn the heater up further, but it was already on full blast.

"Noll, calm down." His hands were getting quite numb from the biting cold.

A sharp exhale came from his companion. Then a much slower breath in, and a controlled out. He did this several times. "I wasn't losing control."

"No," was all Lin could say, not wanting to provoke him further. He drove on in silence, thankful that at least the temperature inside had gone up to comfortable levels, until they reached their apartment building. He maneuvered the car into their parking lot and exited the vehicle, thinking Noll would soon follow suit, but when Noll didn't come out of the car, Lin frowned and poked his head back in. "What are you doing?"

Noll was still scowling, his brow furrowed, and he clicked his tongue in annoyance. He exited his side of the vehicle, but to Lin's surprise, instead of walking away toward the building, walked to the driver's side and gently nudged him out of the way to re-enter the car. He held out his hand. "Key."

"Where are you going so late?"

"Out."

Lin placed the key in Naru's outstretched palm and sighed. "Be careful driving, the road is a little slippery." He closed the door and stood back as Noll started the engine. Before he could pull the car out, he knocked on the window, prompting Noll to roll it down.

"What?"

"Try to not lose your temper again."

-00000-

Mai sighed into her pillow. She was curled up in her futon, her thoughts ambling about in her head as she recalled her epic fight with her boss that afternoon. Now that she thought about it, something like this had happened before as well. During the Ryokuryou High School case, when he had planned on using the hitogata to take the full brunt of the curse instead of actually turning it against the students-hadn't she been completely in the wrong then?

Today she had been too much of a hypocrite, telling him that he never considered other people's feelings. Hadn't she been doing the same to him? She just realized after he left that of course he had to have felt some remorse at his decision (it also helped that Bou-san, Ayako, Yasuhara, John, and Masako talked to her at length in an effort to calm her down), but right now it was more important to save the lives they could protect. And although Mai didn't want to acknowledge it at first, she finally listened to her instinct telling her that Hiroka was no longer the same girl. She had been twisted into pure evil whose thirst for blood and revenge completely engulfed her being.

When will she ever learn that Naru always weighed the pros and cons of every decision first before deciding on an answer?

In the darkness of her room, she burrowed her head deeper into her pillow and let out a scream. A sudden knock at her front door startled her and she snapped her head toward the clock on the floor beside her and frowned. It was already close to midnight. Whoever could be calling in?

Tentatively she turned on all her lights and tiptoed toward the door, holding her breath as she peeked through the peephole. She gasped and immediately yanked the door open, suddenly shivering after letting in the cold December chill. Before her stood Naru, wearing the same black trenchcoat he had since the morning, his scarf wrapped several times around his neck. He was in the middle of rubbing his hands together and blowing hot air into them. He blinked at her and asked, "Sorry, were you already sleeping?"

She shook her head and bid him to step in, blinking rapidly. What on earth was he doing here at this late hour? After closing the door behind him, she led him to her sofa and went straight to preparing him a cup of tea. They awkwardly stayed in silence until the kettle screamed. When she walked back towards him to hand him his tea, he had already removed his coat and scarf and was watching her studiously. She only had one loveseat, so she had no other choice but to sit down next to him.

"So... what brings you here so late?" she asked, hoping her voice wasn't too flippant for she still needed to apologize to him.

"I came to apologize," he said wisftully. "I lost my temper at work today and made you extremely angry. I'm sorry."

"This scenario again!" she thought, annoyed at her inability to stop turning a deep shade of red. Outloud, she cried, "No! That's not fair, you did it again!" She looked at him with fiercely shining eyes and her breath hitched at her breast. Why did Naru always have to make her feel this way? "I was the one who lost my temper and said pretty horrible things to you. I was too quick to point fingers at you and criticize your decision even though if only I thought about it more I would have realized that you were right all along. I should be the one sorry! You don't have to apologize... you're not fair," she finished lamely, staring back down into her lap. Her heart was beating fast and she somehow felt herself extremely happy.

Naru let out a sigh and said in a surprisingly gentle tone, "How do I ever win with you? When I say the wrong things, you get mad. When I apologize, you get mad." Mai looked up and met his soft gaze.

With a shy smile she said, "No, I'm not mad. Just... how do you always do that?"

"Do what?"

She answered in a whisper she was sure he couldn't hear. "Make me happy..."

When she didn't elaborate further, he continued with just the slightest bit of hesitation. "I was too harsh to you this afternoon and that just made it harder for you to accept the difficult choice we had to make. " Then with a slight smirk as was very becoming of him, added, "Even though in the end I made the right call."

Mai half scoffed, half laughed. "Are you really apologizing, or what?"

"I was, but then you said I didn't need to."

"Did you really come all the way here at this late hour just to apologize?"

At this, Naru stiffened and turned a very slight shade of pink, suddenly realizing how irrational and silly he had acted. Couldn't he have just waited until tomorrow to settle their difference? Why had he been so consumed with the idea of making up with her that he just had to drive back out in this weather and rouse her from bed? "For that... I suppose I must apologize as well. I wasn't thinking. I'm keeping you up so I better go." He made the motion to grab his things, but Mai caught the sleeve of his shirt and pulled him back down.

With a tiny voice and a crimson face, she said breathlessly, "No, please. Can you stay longer? I actually wasn't asleep yet since I'd been thinking about you." At this, Naru coughed and unbuttoned the top of his shirt to loosen the tightness around his throat, then awkwardly let the hand that Mai was currently clutching rest back on his lap, unsure what to do next. Realizing how she must have sounded, Mai's eyes bulged and she quickly shook her hands in front of her, "I-I meant I was thinking about how I was going to apologize to you. That came out wrong!"

It took a few minutes before the tension around them dissipated into bearable levels. Naru wondered briefly whether it had always been like this between the two of them, but realized that perhaps it was the fact that he was inside her apartment alone with her so late at night that had to do with the electrifying tension surrounding them.

Finally it was Mai who spoke. "Thank you. For coming out here and talking to me. I feel better now that we're not mad at each other anymore."

Naru stared intently at her, then merely grunted. "Good." The tightness around his chest abated until it disappeared completely and he breathed freely.

He never wanted her to suffer. It made his chest ache. He had been severely irritated with himself, knowing that the tears she shed that day were directly caused by him. With him being just a simple idiot scientist, it was difficult for him to know the things he ought and ought not to do around her. Luckily, unlike others who held him to perfection like a god and thus had very high expectations for him never to make a single mistake, Mai was very understanding and forgiving of all his imperfections. It was part of her endearing charm that drew him in so strongly toward her. Still, he figured he should be more careful in the future as surely even her good heart had its limit. "Good," he repeated, "That makes me feel better, too."