A/N: Sadly, I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho.

Spirit Detective Saga
Chapter Five - The Transfer Ghost

The days passed one after another. Keiko kept her spirit beast's egg close at all times as instructed, but it'd not yet shown any sign of hatching soon. Botan's best guess was that she had a few months more to wait before it would. That was further off than she'd hoped but sooner than she'd feared when Prince Koenma had opted not to give her a concrete time frame to plan around.

Keiko spent her days attending school alone despite the classmates who surrounded her. On occasion, Yūsuke bothered himself enough to show up, but he went to visit her comatose body more often. She appreciated where his heart lay, but he really had his priorities in the wrong order.

Her free time outside of school had gone to other pursuits. The world possessed plenty of ways to put it one way or another: kishi kaisei, carpe diem, c'est la vie. She'd died. She'd become a ghost. But what use would there be in moping? She would make the absolute most of her circumstances until the very day she returned to her body.

So during her nights, Keiko wandered the world with Botan, ostensibly in search of other ghosts but mostly for the sake of sightseeing. Via the Spirit World, they could get anywhere on the surface of the Earth within minutes, though Keiko intended to take a weekend to journey through the center of the Earth just to say she'd been there. She'd have Botan meet her in Rio de Janeiro to escort her home. It was only a shame the moon was so far away.

When they did run into other ghosts, Botan did her duty and either left Keiko to explore on her own or, as she slowly grew more open toward, gave her very clear instructions on how she could assist. It surprised her (though in hindsight it shouldn't have) to learn that Botan was fluent in every modern language of consequence and then some. Keiko spoke only two: Japanese and, in a limited capacity, English. The latter let her communicate to some extent with most everyone they encountered, however, to her relief.

Here and there, Keiko snuck in a little time for her spiritual exercises. She yet lacked the precision necessary to emulate fine motor skills, but little displays of power no longer left her exhausted. She'd made progress down the path of a poltergeist, and that encouraged her to remain diligent.

The day after she visited Oxford with Botan and toured the university therein, Keiko decided it was time to start expanding her academic horizons. All Sarayashiki Jr High had to offer her that no one else could was Yūsuke, and it was a roll of the dice at best if he would show up on any given day. So she left. There were other schools out there. She would spend a few days attending class at each and then move on to the next. While she would freely admit there were more efficacious ways to learn the curriculum, she expected she would have to wait until next winter to officially sit her third term of this school year again anyway, since no teacher would accept that, honest, she'd attended as a ghost, so it was no great loss.

Rugafuji Jr High, Keiko found, was much the same as Sarayashiki with only little variations. The faces were new. The interactions, familiar. The building felt foreign. The layout, nearly identical. The textbooks read a little differently. The material, the same. Sure, the teachers had a different lecture style and, from her perspective, presented the material out of order, yet it hadn't been as hard as she'd expected to change schools. Maybe because she'd always pressed herself so hard to excel, filling in any gaps only felt like another homework assignment.

All in all, Keiko had a pleasant stay at Rugafuji with no major incidents.

In her school hopping, Keiko had overlooked how many old faces she would run into. Her primary school classmates had all gone their separate ways after graduation. A few, like Yūsuke, went with her to Sarayashiki, but most attended a school closer to home. Such was a sad fact of life, although if she were to be brutally honest, she'd only ever missed one or two of them.

Iwamano Jr High had one such face, Matsuo Suekichi. If she remembered correctly, the other students had often bullied him for some stupid reason that escaped her. She vaguely recalled Yūsuke having helped Matsuo out on occasion, though, which had been sweet of him.

At any rate, Matsuo had joined the boxing club. Keiko popped in on one of his practices after school for a few minutes. He had good form, a lot of power behind his punches, and genuinely seemed to enjoy the sport. Botan came to fetch her before she could watch one of his sparring matches against an actual opponent, but she wished him well. It was nice to see he'd found a place to make his own.

After bouncing around schools for a while now, Keiko admitted that she'd grown curious. Kasanegafuchi Jr High had a bad reputation as the 'yakuza prep school', and after only a day observing the students and attending classes there, she had a very difficult time refuting that and even less desire to do so. She hoped Yūsuke and Kuwabara joined forces and beat those thugs into the dirt.

It was time, Keiko decided, to peek in on Meiou High. She knew enough math and science to keep up. She had a strong enough grasp of kanji that she doubted she would stumble over even the more obscure characters she might need to read. She'd even internalized her wandering student status enough that her uniform changed when she switched schools. She could do this! She was ready!

That last point was the one thing Keiko hadn't prepared herself for. Oh, the girls uniforms were a lovely shade of burgundy with gold trim and buttons. The skirt might have been a bit shorter than she was used to, but she didn't mind too much. She wore it well. But whoever had decided to put the boys in a dull lavender needed to be expeditiously fired forthwith. Oh, certainly, no one would ever doubt what school they attended, but that was the only compliment one could give the designs.

Well, there was one boy who managed to make it work, but he had matching luxurious red hair falling past his shoulders and probably hadn't been made to cut it only because it would start a riot if he did. If he didn't model, he certainly should.

Keiko couldn't quite remember where she'd been going with that thought.

At any rate, on her way to class nearly late, something truly remarkable happened.

"Morning," a girl with short black hair yawned out as Keiko passed her in the otherwise empty corridor.

A few moments went by.

Shock straightened Keiko's spine and widened her eyes. She threw herself backwards without bothering to turn about. Unintentionally, she passed through the girl from but moments ago, eliciting a shudder from her similar to how Kuwabara reacted when she drew near. That all but confirmed it. Only one final test remained.

"You can see me?"

"Yea—" The girl yawned again. "Sorry. Late night. The poor living have to sleep."

A little smile pushed itself onto Keiko's lips.

"Nice to meet you." The girl's eyes scanned Keiko, noting the usual tells of a mixed ancestry, particularly her brunette pigtails and rounder eyes. "I'm Maya Kitajima. Maya is fine."

While Keiko hadn't exactly been starved of human contact, a strange relief to speak with someone living washed through her. "Yukimura Keiko," she replied, struggling to keep her bubbling enthusiasm from boiling over. "Not actually a hāfu, but feel free to call me Keiko. I can't tell you how happy I am to meet you."

The girl chuckled understandingly. "Likewise. You're the first normal ghost I've run into. Most are…" A thoughtful expression crossed her face. "Hang on. I've heard your name before. Aren't you that girl who died saving some kid?"

Seeing no need to argue the point (she'd acted with the best of intentions), Keiko replied, "Not exactly. I'm technically alive, just…"

"Disembodied?"

That worked.

"Huh. I didn't know that was possible."

Keiko, curious, asked, "Do you know a lot about ghosts?"

"Just what I've observed over the last year." That specific time frame drew Keiko's attention, but she tucked it away for another day. "Why? Need some help?"

"Oh, no. Thank you, but I have a ferrygirl looking after me until I can get back into my body. She answers all of my questions. To be honest, she can be quite the blabbermouth. I'm not sure if she's supposed to have told me half the things she has. Spirit World policy is to let the living be, you see, and I'm only mostly dead. Which, actually, I think means she would frown on you and me talking. Hmm…"

Maya simply said, "I won't tell if you won't."

And that, Keiko decided, also worked. With a friend around who she could share an actual conversation with, perhaps she would stay at Meiou for longer than she'd intended.

Keiko pointed to a line and said, "You made an error here. See, you left out the plus x y-squared from the prior equation."

On a small notepad Maya had bought for silent conversations between them during classes, she wrote, 'Thank you,' and then put her eraser to work. Her math homework was due in ten minutes, and someone, who shall remain nameless, had forgotten to finish it the night before. While Keiko wasn't willing to do any of it for her (it would take her too long to give dictation even if she were), checking a friend's rushed work for errors fell well within consideration.

Several days had passed since they'd first met, and in that time, their friendship had blossomed. Keiko couldn't say that Maya was normal, but what did that really matter? So what if she could see ghosts and did very little to hide it? So what if she loved the occult? It wasn't as though none of it were real. She was bright. She was friendly. She fit perfectly into the new normal that had become Keiko's life.

Math class started just after Maya finished her assignment. She breathed a sigh of relief when she passed it forward to the instructor and more or less checked out during the lesson that followed. At its heart, it was only more of the same material from yesterday anyway, so Keiko didn't say a word.

Or rather she did but only to ask a question that had been bothering her. "How long have you been able to see ghosts?"

'About a year,' Maya wrote. 'Right after I went through a coma of my own, actually.'

"Really? What happened?"

Rather than an abridged version or something along the lines of they would speak in detail later, Maya answered, 'No idea. This occurred at my previous school. I ended up unconscious in a forest. It was actually Minamino who found me.'

Keiko glanced up from the notepad to observe the redheaded supermodel two rows back and one seat over. He looked focused on the lesson, but she thought she saw a hint of either boredom or annoyance in his thin frown.

'He carried me to a hospital,' Maya continued writing while Keiko was distracted. 'Took days for me to wake. Seemed fine at first when I did. Found holes in my memory later. Eventually pieced together that I stumbled upon something supernatural from what I was missing. Details unknown. Certain Minamino forgot stuff too. Been interested since. First saw ghosts the following week.'

The story left Keiko frowning. "And Minamino hasn't mentioned seeing ghosts to you?" From how freely Maya spoke to her, she doubted he wouldn't be aware of her ability.

'Nope. Asked him once. Doesn't believe in ghosts. Kind of sensitive about the subject. His mom is really sick.'

Now that made Keiko all the more concerned. "When did she fall ill?"

'Unrelated.' Maya underlined the word for emphasis.

"If you're sure." Keiko spared a glance Minamino's way. "At any rate, I'd like to ask my ferrygirl about your situation."

Without hesitation, Maya wrote, 'No names.' This time she underlined it three times and with a vigorous flourish at that.

Keiko planned to keep to the barest, most superficial details possible and said as much. Other than someone from Spirit World, she didn't know what other supernatural being Maya could have run into and didn't want to risk a second memory wipe. A soul devouring monster would have just eaten her, after all, and another human would need both a reason and the resources to bother.

And now that Keiko knew of the possibility, she should ask Maya sometime to help her write a journal in case she forgot everything after she returned to her body. Thinking back on their conversations, Botan had implied she wouldn't on several occasions, but she'd never explicitly asked.

Time passed quickly in more idle conversation with all that out of the way. When math came to an end, they paid proper attention in the following classes. Unlike math, where one could glance at a string of definitions, equations, and proofs to absorb the material in five minutes, history, Japanese, and the like required more active attention to the lecture to understand it.

Soon, the school day came and went. Keiko parted ways with Maya early when the latter left for her club training. Volleyball was Keiko's sport, not track, and while she could keep Maya company throughout her runs, that was not on the agenda today.

No, today, Keiko would attend the nominal gardening club consisting of exactly one member who maintained the school grounds' flora: Minamino Shūichi. She had no intention of outing him if her suspicions proved correct, but she did need to get all the facts. And that meant she needed to perform a very simple test.

Keiko found him behind the school tending to a flowerbed. He had a gardening shovel in hand to clear out the old to make way for a collection of new winter flowers on her right. On his left, a small pile of weeds had grown, waiting for incineration.

Not bothering to sneak up on Minamino, for avoidance would give its own answer, Keiko floated toward him so that they would come face to face. She held out a hand when she drew close to swipe through him. That should force a reaction to her presence if he were spiritually sensitive.

Then Keiko felt something most certainly not a hand slither around her ankle. It held her fast when she yanked her leg forward. Upon looking down, she found a vine or root had shot out of the ground. It somehow had her tethered and refused to let her go.

"Well, this does save me some time."

Keiko's head snapped up. Minamino stood up and directed a cutting stare straight at her.

"You are no ordinary ghost," he observed in far too suave and neutral a tone for the calculating edge to his eyes. "And I do not appreciate your presence here."

An involuntary gulp slid down Keiko's throat. If she'd been meant to feel threatened, Minamino had succeeded. She felt very menaced right now!

Minamino held out an open palm to his side. A second plant tendril erupted from the ground and deposited into it—

Eyes wide, Keiko cried, "How?" She glanced down to her skirt pocket and, to her dismay, did not find the little bulge of her spirit beast's egg, the very egg that now sat innocently in the palm of Minamino's hand.

"Curious," he mumbled as he held the egg up to better examine it. He circled round the flowerbed in the meanwhile to stand only just out of Keiko's reach on her leash. "Where did you find this?" There was no threat, no explicitly implicit consequences for lying, but there hardly needed to be.

"Spirit World." With any luck, complete and unfiltered honesty would spare Keiko any trouble. She technically had connections in high places, though whether they would do anything for her was another matter entirely. "Prince Koenma gave it to me. I'm not supposed to be dead, and I need to hatch it to get back into my body." More firmly, she added, "Please return it."

A long period of silence stretched in tense anticipation while Minamino considered her response with a blank expression. She had no idea if he believed her, or only believed that she believed that, or however deep one wanted to go down that rabbit hole.

Minamino at last closed his fingers around her egg and then tucked both hands behind his back. "I propose a deal," he said.

"With a thief?" Keiko snarked. She always did that, and it always got her into more trouble, and she just couldn't help it.

But not this time. Some emotion too muddled to comprehend broke Minamino's mask for an instant before it resettled. He ignored her comment and carried on with his proposal. "You will keep your Spirit World contact away from this school."

Keiko had planned on doing so anyway for her own reasons, so she didn't mind. The school didn't have a secret evil sub-basement or some such nonsense. The worst case scenario, she figured, was that Minamino had escaped whatever Maya had run into last year with his memory intact and identity unknown.

"In exchange, I'll help you hatch your spirit beast early."

"And get me out of your hair faster, right?" If that wasn't a win-win for Minamino, Keiko didn't know what was. He allowed a small smirk to play out across his face, but she paid him no mind. "How?"

The second tendril from earlier, or perhaps a new one entirely, rose from the ground and waved with large, purposeful movements between the two of them. Minamino was clearly trying to make a point, but Keiko had no idea what one. Naturally, she arched her brow, and he thus elaborated on his offer.

"I can infuse your egg with a portion of my own not inconsiderable power."

Keiko frowned. "That won't work. If I don't hatch it myself, it won't bond to me." She reached out to take the egg back but felt the yank of the vine at her ankle as she stretched the limits of her freedom. "Look, will you just let me go? I don't want Spirit World poking their noses around here anymore than you do. I don't know how they'll take me talking to the living outside of dreams."

The vine holding Keiko, to her surprise, actually uncurled and retreated into the ground. She looked up from it back to Minamino and wondered if he believed her or if he was merely confident he could catch her again. It could be both. And probably was.

But he didn't return the egg.

Keiko held out her hand expectantly.

"For both our sakes," Minamino began, "I strongly urge you to accept my offer. Forgive the obvious comparison, but this egg is much like a plant. It absorbs energy of the soul in the same manner that a leaf takes in light. As the leaf grows toward the sun, so too does your egg adapt to the most plentiful source of food. As the leaf utilizes only specific wavelengths, so too does your egg discard energies dissimilar to your own. So long as you continue to provide for the majority of its growth, you will win the bond."

So, roughly, Keiko could cut her wait time in half. That was, of course, under two assumptions. Minamino had to both match and not exceed her spiritual output. From how he'd controlled those plants, she thought that entirely within the realm of possibility. The other matter was that of qualification.

"Can you prove your claim?"

Minamino considered the matter for a few moments. "To continue the metaphor, leaves are green because they absorb red light more efficiently. Can you sense spirit energy?"

Keiko shook her head. But Botan could.

"Then I suggest you ask your ferrygirl to teach you," Minamino said as though he'd read her mind. "You will find your egg devours yours greedily and a control subject's poorly. Would such an experiment satisfy you?"

"Not wholly." The key point of this exercise was that the spirit beast would let Keiko return to her body. The bond and, prior to that, the hatching were but steps along that path. Mixing energies could potentially cause problems at multiple stages. However, the experiment would demonstrate that Minamino knew far more about the subject than she did. As such, she relented. "But perhaps we can invest some trust into this outside of our mutual ability to ruin each other's life. There won't be any side effects?"

"Nothing that would negatively affect your return to life," Minamino replied confidently. "Perhaps some minor influence upon the beast's form and a natural affection for myself."

Keiko could live with that, though she gave the matter a few last moments of consideration. The precise instructions the prince had given her for her test was to 'keep the egg with her at all times', not to hatch it. In the most literal sense, she'd failed that task already through no true fault of her own. Otherwise, he'd not said she couldn't seek out assistance in her ordeal. Then again, he'd not told her all of the rules himself and had left Botan to do that as they arose. She should probably look into that. But pending any such restrictions, Keiko decided to tentatively accepted the offer.

"I'll be performing that experiment first," Keiko insisted. "And obliquely consulting my outside source."

Minamino, naturally, replied, "Of course."

"Then…fine." As a bit of minor revenge for having put her through this negotiation, Keiko added, "You can be my baby daddy."

That well and truly caught Minamino off guard, judging by the flabbergasted look on his face. This time when she held her hand out, he returned her egg without a fuss. Sadly, he also collected himself quickly and offered her the small, dry smile of someone affecting politeness. While she was sure he had something suitably witty to say if she only gave him the chance, she didn't want to hear it.

"So how will this work?"

Minamino evenly stated, "Granting me custody during school should suffice."

Ah, Keiko had set herself up for that one, hadn't she?

Later that night (or the prior morning, depending on perspective), Keiko and Botan made their way to Central Park in New York City. Thousands filled the space even at this early hour and time of year. Sleds and ice skates had supplanted bats and balls, and more snow than home got all year round covered the ground and coated the trees. It was gorgeous. She promised herself she would return someday with her body in tow to properly enjoy the park.

A visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art was, of course, in order. They'd only made it a few minutes in when Keiko had a striking reminder of who exactly she'd come with. Botan snickered at a painting and made a colorful remark about the subject's attempt at portraying himself in the best light possible.

It took a few seconds before Keiko recalled that Botan had never mentioned how old she was.

As they continued through the exhibits, Botan provided commentary or context on much of them. There couldn't possibly be very many people who could provide a better guided tour. That said, Keiko politely avoided guessing her age based on what she knew little about or had only heard of second-hand.

They went to Times Square next, and it quickly became apparent that Botan hadn't toured it in years. To Keiko's surprise and embarrassment (but not Botan's, who'd seen everything at one point or another), there were a lot of shops explicitly selling sex in one way or another. Every manner of vice could be found somewhere. She even witnessed two robberies in the short while she spent there and only just resisted meddling with the living to resolve the situations. But they did bump into an advertisement for an interesting new musical, The Phantom of the Opera, so their time hadn't been a complete waste. They quickly made their way to the theater and settled in to wait for the afternoon performance.

Ironically, they sorted out an actual phantom of the theater upon their arrival. Botan only noticed it once they drew near. This nicely provided Keiko with the opportunity to ask the first of many questions she didn't want Botan looking into too closely.

"Can you teach me to sense spirit energy too?"

Botan chuckled. "Are you rethinking applying to become a ferrygirl?"

"No, it just seems useful. I actually ran into someone who could see me today."

The only comment Botan made to that was, "Ooh, how unusual. Anyone interesting?"

Keiko shrugged. "She lost her memory of everything supernatural, so if she could do anything more or had a history, she couldn't remember. She's certain she only started seeing ghosts after that, though. Any idea on what could have happened to her?"

"A few things come to mind," Botan mused. She placed an index finger to her jaw in a familiar habit as she racked her brain for ideas. "There are a few very rare techniques known to humans which could have that effect. Then there are — well, no, they're not native to this world. I don't think they'd even grow here."

The keyword 'grow' set all sorts of alarm bells to ringing in Keiko's head. "Grow? As in a plant?"

"Well, yes," Botan replied. "The name escapes me, but the pollen of its flower can induce memory loss."

That was too much of a coincidence to ignore. And that meant Minamino had erased Maya's memory, which checked out, Keiko supposed. He'd made no secret of wanting to keep his secrets to himself. She resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose when she then put together that he'd only acted once she'd started asking questions about him. And now she presented a complication he could no longer avoid or remove without someone taking notice.

Keiko was going to have to be very careful in how she handled Minamino.

"Anyway, my original question?"

It took Botan a moment to remember that Keiko had asked how to sense spirit energy. "Oh, yes. I suppose it would be good for you to learn how to steer clear of spiritual dangers. It's not hard. It's really just a matter of exposure training, although I admit there's a significant degree of natural talent involved. But nothing ventured, nothing gained! I'll emit a large amount of spirit energy, and your job is to learn to listen to the part of you that reacts to it."

Taking the opening Botan had given her, Keiko asked, "Will that affect my egg? It just absorbs free spirit energy, right?"

"Not at all. It picks up stray energy all the time. So long as you keep it close, you'll be fine."

That partially confirmed Minamino's theory, and Botan hadn't even had to think about it. Keiko took that as a good sign that he meant well at least in so far as he wanted her to leave his school as soon as possible.

"Ready?" Botan asked.

Setting everything else aside for now, Keiko nodded.