CONTACT
My Rude Awakening

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Ghost Hunt. I wouldn't be writing this if I did.

WARNING: May contain spoilers from the manga and novels, including Akumu no Sumu Ie.

CHAPTER 4
Path of Least Resistance
Published: 07.17.2014, Edited: 09.25.2015

Mai was updating the database of case files on her work computer when she heard her boss call for his tea.

She went to the kitchenette to prepare his favorite, Earl Grey, as usual and headed to his office. After knocking and getting the permission to enter, she made her way to Naru's desk.

"Mai!" he said sharply.

She let out a squeak when his hand caught hers just as the teacup was about to slide from its saucer. The electricity that coursed through her body upon contact startled her. It made her wonder briefly if it was just a figment of an overactive imagination.

Her gaze fell on their hands that were still touching, causing her to flush deeply. She quickly pulled her hand away after seeing that the teacup was safely placed on his desk.

Once she was back at her desk, she slapped her cheeks and scolded herself for being so clumsy and for spacing out while she was working.

"Pull yourself together, Mai!" she encouraged herself under her breath. "You're NOT an idiot, no matter what your narcissistic boss says!"

It was Noll's lucky day.

An opportunity to test his hypothesis had presented itself in the form of stray highlighter marks on Mai's face. She fell asleep while reading her textbook and the highlighter was abandoned on the floor without its cap.

"Mai," he called out to her gently while caressing her face. She let out a soft groan.

"Five more minutes," she murmured.

"Mai!" Noll spoke more forcefully.

Mai jolted upright in her chair. Her bleary eyes focused on him as she gathered her wits.

"What do you want, Naru?" she asked menacingly with a matching glare.

The random streaks of neon pink on her cheeks made it difficult for Noll to take her seriously at all. Without a word, he instinctively reached out to cup her face and started rubbing the marks off her face with the pad of his thumb.

"N-naru! W-what do you think you're doing?!" she demanded with a trembling voice, moving away from his touch.

"Removing the highlighter marks off of you," he said indifferently, although the warmth in his eyes betrayed his amusement. "You look even more stupid with the pink lines all over your face." The young man smirked as he continued, "I am only doing you a favor."

He silently watched as she struggled to restrain the retort that was about to escape her mouth. A minute later, his smirk widened when she moved her chair closer and fixed her eyes on him.

"Please make sure you erase everything," she requested timidly, blushing deep red.

He cupped her face with both his hands and let his thumbs feel the warmth and smoothness of her skin. He immediately read her the moment his hands touched her. The visions were longer, most likely due to prolonged contact, but they were in third person, much to Noll's relief. This time, he was simply an observer, and he watched as her past and future played out in his mind like a movie, with the scenes all jumbled up.

"Nngh~ Naru!" Mai exclaimed. "You're rubbing too hard, it hurts!"

His eyes rolled in annoyance. "Just bear with it. It is almost done."

"I said it hurts, Naru!" the girl cried out while wincing in pain.

Lin suddenly appeared from within his office with a bewildered expression. The older man took in the scene before him and sighed in relief. He had assumed the worst when he heard the sounds from the reception room and was thankful that things were anything but that.

"What are you doing, Noll?" Lin inquired, eyeing his charge suspiciously with a raised eyebrow.

The question hung unanswered in the air as the younger man finished erasing the last of the ugly streaks on the girl's usually flawless face.

Soon enough, Noll gave her face one last look before patting her cheeks gently and then letting go. Then he finally responded to his guardian's query in a bored tone.

"I was helping Mai look less idiotic."

A smug grin formed on the young boss' face as he strode back to his office, leaving his two employees speechless.

To say that Mai was having a bad day was an understatement.

She woke up late for school.

The train she was on was delayed.

She slipped and fell on her butt in the school's washroom after missing the Wet Floor sign.

It started raining as she made her way to the office and she left her umbrella at home.

Now, Naru was asking for his afternoon tea, but she just found out that they ran out of it.

The high school girl exhaled loudly in frustration. She was done rummaging through all the cabinets and drawers and not even a single tea bag, regardless of the flavor, was in existence in the office.

All of a sudden, she felt a presence behind her. She turned around abruptly to check who it was, only to bang her head really hard on the door of the overhead cabinet that she had left open. Her vision became blurry for a moment as pain spread throughout the area that had been hit.

Cool fingers trailed across her forehead. A gentle current passed through her entire body upon contact. When she looked up, she saw Naru wearing a displeased frown.

"You have hurt yourself again, Mai," he stated softly with a sigh as he shook his head in disapproval.

"Ah~!" she moaned in pain and instinctively turned her head away when his fingers reached a sore spot.

"I am not surprised you got yourself a large bump. The hit sounded so loud, I thought the cabinet door had been knocked out of its hinges," he said in a slightly mocking voice.

"Why you—" Mai was about to begin a series of insults to counter her arrogant boss, but he cut her off by flicking the sore spot he had found earlier. "Owww, Naru! What'd you do that for?"

He turned around without responding and got some ice from the small fridge. Mai leaned against the counter and waited silently as he placed the ice cubes in a clean Ziplock bag and then lightly pressed it against her recently acquired bump. She took the bag from him and continued pressing the ice against her forehead.

"Eh~ So you can be nice, too, Naru?" she questioned him in a playful tone, tilting her head to one side.

"I simply fear for the remaining brain cells in your head." Naru casually replied while he headed out of the kitchenette.

Mai huffed. "Will it kill you to admit that you were worried about me?" she shouted from behind him.

The young man stopped in his tracks and slowly turned around. "What made you think I was concerned about you?" he asked back impassively, leveling his gaze with hers.

"My instincts told me so!" she retorted. Then she added in her mind, I can also see it in your eyes.

His eyes narrowed teasingly as he asked, "Have you ever considered the probability of your instincts being wrong?"

As soon as he finished talking, Naru turned away from her and strode back to his office, leaving Mai with her bump and the ice.

She let out an angry huff.

"He didn't even let me thank him!" she whispered to herself after hearing her boss enter his room.

A few days later, Mai began panicking because she had been too clumsy during the past few weeks. She kept on making mistakes and she was dreading the sermon from Naru, which she might get soon if she did not improve her work. She was so not looking forward to being called stupid, idiotic and all the other variations of the word. Damn her intelligent, narcissistic jerk of a boss for having such a wide vocabulary.

She was tired of being insulted, but it seemed like she just couldn't get things right no matter how hard she tried. It was even more embarrassing for her since her handsome employer was always within the vicinity during her episodic blunders AND he never failed to save her in some way or another.

And to think that I was the one who insisted that I didn't need him to save me! The girl berated herself mentally. Way to go, Mai! You're just proving yourself wrong. Again… But then, it's not too bad to be saved by Naru, right?

After his indirect rejection, she honestly wanted to stop liking him because the ambiguity had become unbearably painful, yet every time she thought she was getting over him he would do something that pulled her back in, and she would be entangled once more in her one-sided love affair. No matter how much she resisted all and any affection she held for Naru, she just couldn't stay away from him. Her resolve wavered every time she looked into those captivating blue eyes of his. Her heart would clench tightly in her chest whenever she caught a glimpse of his impossibly beautiful face. She almost lost her mind whenever he touched her – accidentally or otherwise – and it didn't help that she kept on feeling the proverbial jolt of electricity when he did.

It seemed that all her efforts at un-loving him were futile. She already tried being cold to him, stopped bickering with him and even distanced herself from him, but these didn't work at all. Maybe it would be better if she simply made herself believe that he cared about her – even just a little – to ease the overwhelming pain in her heart. She should probably cut herself some slack and just honestly and thoroughly enjoy the attention that Naru had been sparingly granting her. After all, she was too young to be lamenting over failed love. She was only eighteen and the rest of her life was in front of her. She would have her fun.

Naru's scathing remarks be damned! She thought to herself.

Mai's introspection was interrupted when her mind wandered to their latest case.

She groaned inwardly.

He definitely saved her there, like a proper prince charming but with a sharp tongue. Everything was still so vivid in her mind, most especially the pleasant sensations from being completely covered by his supple body. Of course he did it to protect her and she absolutely felt so safe back then – and so precious at the same time – as he pulled her against him and held her close so desperately that she didn't want the moment to end. She blushed as she recalled how intoxicating his scent was, like tea with mint and something manly that she could not identify.

A dreamy sigh escaped her lips as she indulged herself in the memory of being so close to Naru.

Everything began at square one, where the promiscuous rabbits decided to play a dangerous game.
On the seventh day, all of them were sent to hell.
The wrathful, sullen rabbits were punished in their circle until the end of time.

You have 30 minutes to solve the riddle.
If you do not find the room with the bomb, the entire hotel will blow up.
If you find the bomb, well, who knows what will happen then?

Happy hunting!

Mai was asleep when the clue was sent to their smartphones. It was sent at exactly 3:00AM and they had a 30-minute time limit before the entire hotel was blown into smithereens. The culprit this time was not a ghost, but a sadistic, derailed psychic who wanted revenge on the high-profile owner of the luxury hotel. Noll only realized this after one day of observation, and it was too late. He was beyond furious at himself for not figuring it out sooner.

The perpetrator was hiding somewhere in the hotel and had been playing nasty games with them. The young boss was determined to put an end to it. Takigawa and Matsuzaki were sent to the hospital due to heavy injuries they sustained during their encounter with the crazy psychic. Only Noll, Lin, and Mai remained in the base.

"The keywords are most likely square one, rabbits, seventh day, hell, and punishment," Lin said.

"Let us start with the rabbits. What comes to mind when you say 'promiscuous rabbits'?" Noll asked.

"Sex," Lin replied seriously, fighting the blush that was creeping up his face. "Pardon my language, but have you ever heard of the saying 'fucking like rabbits'? I think that is how people describe a couple that produces too many children in a short period of time. It means they are having a lot of sex."

Noll hummed as he let out a smirk. He did not expect Lin, his ever-stoic guardian, to volunteer such information.

"So it is about sex, huh?" Noll contemplated. "What does it have to do with 'square one' and 'seventh day'?"

"Could it be pertaining to the seven days of creation?" Lin suggested.

"What does it have to do with sex, then?" Noll countered.

"Sex can be viewed as an act of creation," Lin explained, and then added quickly, "After all, you can create a baby during sex."

"I know that!" Noll snapped, rolling his eyes in exasperation. "There is something off about that reasoning, though. Why must it start at 'square one'?"

Silence filled the room as the two men considered all the possibilities.

Sex. Promiscuous rabbits. Babies. Square one. Seventh day… Noll closed his eyes and let the words swim freely in his mind. Lin watched as his charge thought deeply while tapping the table with his index finger.

"Sex. Rabbits. One. Seventh." Noll snapped his finger in realization as his eyes snapped open. "It is about the Fibonacci sequence!" he exclaimed in a frustrated tone. "It is the mathematical model of the reproduction of rabbits. How could I have missed that?" he murmured to himself, but Lin heard him anyway.

"The clue says we should start with 1 and get the 7th term – the seventh day." Noll opened his black notebook and wrote the first few terms of the Fibonacci series.

1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34…

"The seventh term is 13," Lin pointed out.

"So it is the 13th room, since the hotel only has 7 floors and each floor has 20 rooms. Which floor is it?"

The older man glanced at the clock. "Noll, we have 14 minutes left."

"Shut up, Lin. I am thinking." Noll said harshly without looking up. "…the rabbits were sent to hell. Why? And they were punished in their…circle." He grabbed his laptop and opened a web browser. "What do you know about the circles of hell?"

"Dante's Inferno? That is about it, I guess. I never had the chance to read it," Lin replied vaguely.

"The rabbits were wrathful and sullen…" Noll recited, and then continued. "They were punished for their anger... in the fifth circle!"

The blue-eyed teen stood up from his chair at the same time Mai sat up abruptly from the couch, as if she was jolted awake by electricity.

"The bomb is in Room 513!" Mai announced frantically the moment she woke up from her slumber.

"I know," Naru replied hastily as he rushed out of the door.

"Wait, Noll!" Lin called out, but was ignored by the younger man.

"NARU! YOU CAN'T!" she shouted in panic as she rose from the couch to run after him. "NARU!"

She turned to her other companion as they chased after Naru. "Lin-san, we have to stop Naru. The bomb will explode 10 seconds after the door of the room has been opened!"

They moved as fast as they could, but were met by the crazy psychic on the way.

"Taniyama-san, go on ahead. I will take care of this," Lin assured the girl.

Mai continued chasing after Naru who had gone further up the hotel. When she finally caught up with him, she was out of breath and he was already in front of Room 513.

"NARU, DON'T OPEN THE DOOR!" she screamed from the end of the hallway.

Her warning went unheeded. Naru had already turned the knob and pushed the door open. It was then that they heard the shrill ticking of the bomb.

"GET AWAY FROM THERE, NARU! IT'S A TRAP! IT'LL EXPLODE IN 10 SECONDS!"

She stood frozen in fear.

Upon hearing her words, Naru ran towards her as fast as he could and reached the opposite end of the hallway just as the ticking sound became louder and faster. He pulled her against him, covered her head with his arm, and threw both of them to the ground right before the room in question exploded behind them.

The explosion was loud, but the damage from it was isolated in the vicinity of the room. Debris from the blast barely reached the area where the two teens were.

"Are you alright?" Naru asked Mai with undisguised concern on his face while he looked down at her.

"Yeah," she moaned loudly. "My back hurts, though. You could've been more gentle."

"In case you did not notice, I was in a hurry," he answered with some difficulty. Only then did she notice that he was panting hard from all the running he had done.

"Are you alright?" she returned his query back to him, gazing up to face him.

"Still alive, at the very least," he replied weakly while closing his eyes as he collapsed on top of her from exhaustion.

Mai let out a pained groan as his weight crashed onto her small body. A small blush formed when she realized that it came out sounding too sensual.

Her boss hummed knowingly, then accused her in a cool voice, "You are enjoying this."

"No, I'm not!" she screamed with all her might underneath him, her cheeks flushing even more.

She tried to push him away from her, but her efforts were useless since his dead weight simply pushed her back harder against the ground to keep her in place.

Then she remembered that Lin was left with their enemy.

"Oh no! Lin-san's still with the crazy psychic!" she informed him in a panicked voice.

Naru did not make any effort to move from where he was. He only opened his eyes and looked straight at her.

"Lin can easily take care of that second-rate bastard. It is better to stay out of his way while he does so," he declared with full confidence, although she detected anger in his voice at the mention of the culprit of the case. "That useless psychic is hardly worth anyone's time, really."

"So what do we do now?" Mai inquired in resignation.

"Wait for Lin to come and get us," her boss said nonchalantly as he closed his eyes once more.

"OK," she replied, then after a short pause she announced, "Well, in any case, I should go check out Room 513."

Her attempt to get away from him was thwarted again. He was too heavy to push away, and for some reason, her body refused to cooperate so she couldn't find the energy to shove the young man off of her.

"What is wrong with you?!" she demanded angrily as she tried to get away from him.

"Mai, behave yourself," the young man reprimanded her sternly with his eyes still closed. "You are not going anywhere."

"At least get off of me, Naru!" she practically begged while still pressed beneath him.

"No," he rejected her request harshly, and then explained in a condescending tone, "You will run into trouble again the moment I let you go."

"That's not true!" Mai exclaimed stubbornly while shifting like a relentless child under him. Mai was about to add something, but was effectively silenced when Naru rested his hands on either side of her body to trap her on the floor and to prevent her from moving further.

He opened his eyes and stared at her seriously.

"If you do not stop moving, I will –" his threat was interrupted by Mai.

"Kiss me?" she finished for him with a flirtatious wink.

"Cut your pay in half for this month," he corrected her flatly while smirking.

"This is sexual harassment, you know!" she complained violently, her eyes flashing with defiance.

"Not when you are so obviously enjoying yourself," Naru stated smugly, and then added to rile her up even more, "Which is exactly what you are doing right now."

"You're wrong!" she insisted ferociously. "That's not true!"

He then shifted slightly on top of her and she resisted the urge to let out another groan.

"You are such a bad liar, Mai," he whispered in a low tone against her ear, then continued after a short pause, "And I am never wrong."

"You're so despicable, Naru!" Mai immediately countered, then muttered under her breath, "You're not adorable at all!"

Naru let out a small smile and looked at her directly. "Like I said, bad liar," he murmured teasingly.

She gasped at the rare sight, and then quickly huffed in disagreement. She impulsively adjusted her head so she could hear his heart beat. Its rhythm was even and steady, unlike her heart's erratic one.

"Stop moving, Mai," he chastised mildly. "Or else I will think that you are taking advantage of my body."

Mai could only huff again in both embarrassment and frustration at his statement after burying her blush-tainted face in his chest, while Naru remained still, not moving at all from their awkward position.

When she called out to him after a few minutes, she was surprised to find out that he was already asleep. She just realized now how extremely tired he was. After all, he had not slept a wink during the night and had spent so much energy on running earlier.

While waiting for Lin to arrive, a brilliant idea suddenly crossed her mind.

Since Naru already convicted her earlier for a crime she had yet to commit, she decided to do exactly what he had accused her of. It was a rare chance and she wasn't about to let it pass. She giggled quietly.

"I'll gladly take advantage of your body, Naru~!" She whispered softly to her sleeping boss. "Don't worry, I'll be gentle."

She carefully pulled her arms out from under the unconscious form of her boss and hugged him tightly. To her astonishment, his body completely relaxed after she embraced him. She felt the tension in his muscles ease up as she boldly ran her hands up and down his back. A huge smile took over her face when she realized that his body liked what she was doing.

Heh~! At least Naru's body is rather honest with me. She thought to herself smugly.

Mai tilted her head to press her ear against his heart once more. Eventually, her own body also relaxed, and soon enough, she was lulled to sleep by the calm beating of Naru's heart.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thank you for your feedback~! Your reviews, follows and favorites inspire me to write more. Here's an extra long chapter for everyone! I hope you enjoyed it. I had so much fun playing with both Mai and Naru's contradictory nature. I apologize to those who were disappointed because the first parts of my story are lacking fluff. I hope this chapter makes up for it.

PS. I just found out after reading the novel translations that Naru occasionally taps Mai's forehead during investigations. He never initiates unnecessary contact such as this with anyone except her. I find this so adorable and I'm rather disappointed that they never showed this in the anime/manga. Most of the cute Naru x Mai contact from the novels were edited out. It's so sad.

EDIT: I fixed some minor grammatical errors pointed out by my editor (my sister). All succeeding chapters were also edited, but no changes were done on the story details.