There was something about the small hours of the morning that made everything slightly creepy. Mai and Yasuhara were watching the video feeds while Noll slept on the sofa behind them.
"This is how I like him best," Mai muttered with a sly glance to their boss.
"Unconscious?"
"He can't insult me this way," she replied with a snigger. "Or demand tea."
Yasuhara stifled his laugh.
"If you stopped doing stupid things, I wouldn't feel the need to point them out," a low voice said.
Mai jumped out of her seat only to realise it was Noll who had spoken. Yasuhara did not withhold his laughter this time and Noll smirked.
"Well if you're awake you can watch the screens! You're not the only one who is tired!" Mai retorted with a scowl.
"Sure, all that strenuous thinking must have tired you out," Noll said as he sat up. His hair was ruffled up from where he'd been lying on one side.
Mai was so tired that she did not argue. Noll vacated the sofa as Mai unpacked her sleeping bag. Noll hadn't used one but slept in his clothes with his head on a cushion.
Mai fell asleep almost as soon as her head hit the cushion. Noll, who had been stretching his legs, walked over and pulled her sleeping bag up so she was covered sufficiently. Yasuhara watched the action with a small smile before quickly turning back to the screens.
"Anything yet?" Noll asked quietly.
"Nope, but I know Mai isn't happy about this," Yasuhara replied. "She said it wasn't her intuition, but I'm not sure she's being honest."
"What makes you say that?"
"Just how she was behaving before," Yasuhara said. "Maybe I'm reading too much into it."
Noll scanned the screens before taking his seat.
"Mai made a flask of tea, there's probably some left," Yasuhara said, indicating the silver flask on the desk.
Noll took it and poured out a lukewarm cup of tea. He drank some in the hope it would wake him up a little.
"You can sleep if you want," he suggested to Yasuhara. "I don't expect any activity tonight."
"It's okay," Yasuhara said as he sat back in his chair. "Why did we take this case?"
Noll did not reply. Yasuhara looked around, expecting to find Noll ignoring him, but his Boss was staring avidly at one of the screens.
"There," he said, pointing. "Rewind camera ten."
Yasuhara hurried to comply. The video reversed and began playing again. The two young men watched as something moved in the shadows.
"An animal?" Yasuhara suggested.
"None of the windows are open."
Yasuhara reversed the tape again and played it at half speed.
"It looks vaguely humanoid," Yasuhara commented. Noll was taking a note of the timestamp in his notebook. "But there are no details. Should we put the lights on?"
"No, I suspect it would not appear if we did ."
Yasuhara frowned at Noll but had no chance to question it when a large bang was heard from above.
Mai sat bolt upright and struggled to release herself from the confines of the sleeping bag.
"What was that?"
Yasuhara was searching the screens for any physical cause of the noise.
"Door slammed," he said finally, pointing to screen twelve. "But there is no other movement."
"Curious."
"Curious?" Mai repeated quietly. Yasuhara caught her tone and they shared a concerned look.
"What should we do Boss?"
"Go back to sleep, Mai," Noll said. "We keep watching."
"Boss, we don't have an exorcist with us, if there is something here-"
"No point," Noll said. "None of our exorcists could do anything."
"What do you mean Naru?"
"I have my suspicions about what this is," he said. "But we need more evidence."
Mai and Yasuhara shared another look.
"What do you think it is?"
"Go back to sleep, Mai," Noll repeated. "I'll know once we have more evidence."
Discontented, Mai lay back down. She watched the screens from the sofa, but nothing else happened and slowly, she drifted back off.
Yasuhara woke Mai up at around 5 AM so that he could get a little more sleep. Mai made a fresh flask of tea to share with Noll and they sat in silence watching the screens. The sun rose slowly and light filled the room despite the curtains covering the window.
"Naru, I think that camera has fallen over," Mai said, pointing at one of the screens. Sure enough, the image on the screen was wonky.
"I will go and correct it," Noll said. "Stay here with Yasuhara."
"But-"
"Watch my progress on the cameras," Noll said, cutting across her words as he picked up a walkie talkie. "If anything happens, wake up Yasuhara and come together."
Noll ignored Mai's hissed protests and left the base. Mai scowled and turned back to the screens. She watched his progress up the stairs and down the corridor towards the bedroom where the camera had fallen - the same bedroom where the door had slammed in the night.
But when he was about to turn into the room, he changed direction and turned left instead of right, into the opposite room.
"Naru," Mai said through the walkie-talkie. "That's the wrong room."
"Well, the camera has fallen over in here."
The screen's image turned as Noll returned the camera stand to its upright position.
"Then the screens are in the wrong order," Mai said. "No, wait, the doors on the wrong side- What…?"
"Mai? What is it?"
"Naru, you're in both rooms," Mai whispered. She stared between the two screens that covered the two bedrooms. "I think there must be a glitch."
"I am going to wave in front of the camera," Noll's voice said from the walkie-talkie. "Did you see it?"
"Yeah, on screen twelve but… You just did it on screen thirteen too. There must be a delay and we hooked up the same camera twice."
"Not possible, those cameras only have one output feed." There was a silence. "I will go and look in the other room."
"No, wait!" Mai shouted. "Wait I'll come up!"
"No, remain there," Noll insisted. Mai's face screwed up in anguish as she watched her Boss walk to the door on both camera feeds, one the mirror of the other. Mai sucked in a breath as Noll's hand touched the doorknob in one feed and then the other a second later.
One of the Noll's opened the door. But when Mai looked to the other, he had gone.
"It's gone Naru, the other you, it just disappeared."
"I'm coming down, wait there."
Mai rolled her eyes. Where else was she supposed to go? Instead, she reversed the two tapes and watched them again.
"No…" she mumbled. Noll entered the base. "But you were just there!"
"What?"
Mai reversed the footage again.
"You were on both screen twelve and thirteen," she said before hitting play. "But now…"
"Screen thirteen shows no activity," Noll surmised, his own eyes flicking back and forth between the screens.
"I swear it happened," Mai said quickly.
Noll nodded.
Yasuhara stirred behind them. Mai looked around.
"Should we wake him?"
"No."
Mai frowned at Noll.
"What do you think it is?" she asked quietly.
He didn't answer but replayed the tapes again. He then switched on the thermal imaging camera and viewed the same timestamp. Both rooms appeared a few degrees colder than the rest of the house.
"The only evidence we have is the temperature drop," he muttered. "Some will dispute even that due to my abilities…"
It struck Mai that Noll was not talking to her at all but to himself. Grumbling, she mentioned she was going to make more tea before stalking out of the base and towards the kitchen.
The smell of the teabags helped her relax a little as she waited for the kettle to boil. What had that been? A glitch in the electronics? Sleep deprivation catching up with her? Or… Something else?
"We ought to start breakfast," a voice said behind her.
Mai jumped and spun around.
"Naru! Don't sneak up on me like that!" she admonished. "I thought we were waiting until Yasuhara woke up. Talking of Yasuhara, you shouldn't have left him alone and asleep!"
"Would you cook something?" Noll asked, ignoring her reprimand.
Mai turned around as the kettle boiled to pour the water into the cups.
"I can put some rice on if you want," she said as she poured.
"Mai?" a voice called from the corridor. Mai looked around. Naru was no longer in the kitchen. "Who are you talking to?"
He was in the corridor and walking towards her as if he'd only just come from the base.
"I was talking to you…" Mai said slowly. Her frowned deepened as she looked around the kitchen and finally to where Noll stood in the doorway. "Nothing. I must be tired."
Noll studied her face for a moment.
"I've woken Yasuhara up, he'll come and assist with breakfast in a moment."
"Sure," Mai replied. "Here's your tea."
She handed the cup over and turned to look for the rice.
Author's note: Okay so I asked you to guess about the title and one person was disturbingly close! But not quite! Though maybe this chapter will make it a little more obvious?
Please review :)