Disclaimer: I don't own any of this and I'm not trying to sell any of it.

AN: This story takes place after the manga finishes, so if you haven't read all of it—or at least researched everything there is to know about the series—then don't blame me for any spoilers because you have now been warned （ _ ) v

Updated 6/13/18

~o0O0o~

CASE 1: BRUISED AND BATTERED

And in a blur we parted…

~o0O0o~

Gene's funeral went by in a rush. Security was enlisted to keep reporters away from the small chapel where he was cremated. His parents were distraught that they couldn't give him a proper burial.

But… with how terrible he looked. Cremation really was the only option.

Naru didn't have a choice, and flew home to England to be alongside his family, Lin following behind.

"A--" My voice was choking up as they prepared to leave the office for the last time. "Am I ever going to see you again?"

Naru's gaze is dead. Dark bags sit heavily under his eyes. It's been days since he's last slept. "Of course, Mai. Once my mother has settled down, I will come back. There's work to be done here."

I nodded my head and forced back the happy tears that are welling up inside me.

I'll get to see him again!

Without another word, he left.

~o0O0o~

The ringer on my phone wakes me up with such virosity that I fall out of bed.

"Ow!" I whine, rubbing my head. I just collided into the floor with it. Tossing the duvet off of the bed, I search for my phone as the dream I had begins to fade from my mind.

It's only been two weeks since he left, Mai! I remind myself. It'll take longer than that for him to come back.

For two weeks now, I've sat idly by as I wait for Naru's return. School drags on without the frivolous goings on that happen at SPR. Until Naru returns, our group has disbanded and we've lost contact with one another. I miss my colleagues a lot, but there's still three months until he comes back.

I find my phone and sigh with relief. Right in time! I answer the unknown number before my voicemail can come on.

"Hiya sleepyhead!" English pours out of the receiver in a singsong way and I can't quite place the voice. It sounds familiar.

"Hello?" I greet the woman in Japanese.

"Good morning, Mai! I'm having the most frustrating time getting this darn coffee machine to work. Everything is in kanji and the only thing in English is the brand name. Noll says that you normally handle the coffee and tea making so I was hoping you could come by the SPR office and help me out please?"

SPR? What woman would be at SPR right now?

"M-Madoka-san!?" I blurt out.

She chuckles and I imagine a big grin on her face.

"The one and only."

"I'll be right there," my voice is filled with elation. I click off my phone and quickly get dressed before racing out the door.

SPR is back in business!

~o0O0o~

As it turns out, Madoka never left Japan. She was touring the country, allowing Naru and his family time to grieve in England, alone. Eventually, she got bored of sightseeing by herself and decided to reopen SPR to the public.

"So what did you do in Japan?" I ask as the coffee machine starts to brew. Looking around, I see that a fine film of dust has already begun to settle on everything.

"Let's see," she thinks, trying to mull everything over in her head. "I pet the deer at Nara forest. Toured various shrines and temples in Kyoto. Visited Hiroshima. Went shopping in Osaka… And I saw Tokyo tower!" She beams at me.

"Wow! You did a lot!" I say, hiding behind a sheepish grin. In the last two weeks I either went to school or sat at home and maybe did homework. The coffee pot soon signals it's done with a beep and I fill a cup for her. She takes her coffee black and shuffles into Naru's office, leaving the door open behind her. Without any further instruction, I decide to take it upon myself to start cleaning the place from top to bottom.

It's not like I have school today anyway.

~o0O0o~

"Naru?"

The cloud of my mind dances around me gently as I awake within a dream. Before me, I can barely make out the face of my boss. The image is blurry, like a pane of frosted glass is separating us.

"He needs you, Mai. He needs you to be better," Naru says.

"Who needs me?" I start to ask.

~o0O0o~

As the alarm from my phone goes off I snap awake. Groggily, I look at my phone to see what time it is.

Six in the morning? I sigh as I stand from the bed. Right, I get to work at SPR this morning! A smile crawls across my face and I begin the morning with an extra skip in my step.

At SPR, I help Madoka by filling out forms and paperwork to help her get the job re-established. Nostalgia rushes over me the longer I work within the quaint office space. I'm happy to be back, but also a little sad that my friends still aren't here with me.

"Don't worry, I called in reinforcements," Madoka says.

~o0O0o~

The first one to join us from the break is Yasuhara.

Yasu looks like he's grown an inch over the last few weeks, making him a full head taller than me now and I imagine he may reach Monk's height at some point. He still wears his thin-rimmed glasses but jokes about having some thicker rims for when he's feeling particularly edgy. I ask why he doesn't invest in contacts and he says he has some, he just never remembers to wear them.

Yasu's attending an intermediate college now, this way he can keep working on the side without worrying about cramming for difficult tests all the time. His main objective is to save up funds and study abroad in a foreign university after finishing his mandatory generals.

With him around, the paperwork filing and organizing becomes tremendously easier. Within a week, the mountain of work we had dwindles to mundane, daily chores that accompany every office job. Even though he flies through our job's bookkeeping without any problem, I can tell that college will take a toll on him if he keeps working. Light bags are forming under his eyes from the late-night researching and studying he has to do, and in-between assignments in the office, I find him working on school work. His normally tamed hair that would fall neatly down either side of his face is also growing longer and becoming shaggier. Yasu doesn't complain though, and maybe I'm just imagining the stress because whenever he talks to Madoka or me, he has that same cheerful smile on his face as before.

The second to join us is Ayako.

During the break she made a personal trip to her parents' hospital to visit and help around as a nurse when needed. Later, she told us that it is one of her rituals to visit the large tree that had taught her when she was a child; she was there to care for and attend to it. The ceremonies she tried to have with the tree were opposed by her parents—who wish she would give up on her psychic fantasies and finally go to school to finish her doctorate. When she received my text stating that 「SPR is back in business!」 she jumped at the chance to end her trip and came back to help us on the first train she could.

Yasu and I are sitting at the coffee table in the main room when we hear her. Her boots clank loudly up the steps to our office, perched on the second floor of a duplex. She barges into the entrance with great enthusiasm, the door chime singing behind her. As always she is wearing an outfit put together with designer labels. Even her sunglasses look expensive and for a second I both envy her and feel annoyed by her gloating. But when she takes the shades off and looks at me with that wistful smile, I can't help running over to her and giving her a hug.

Because of Yasu's help, there isn't a whole lot for Ayako to do now that she's here; so the four of us putt around the office until our first client arrives—scheduled for an interview today.

The case is mediocre by our normal standards, but Madoka doesn't want to take on a anything challenging when she only has three members assisting her, one of which is still relatively inexperienced (me), another of which isn't good at exorcising anything unless old tree spirits are nearby (Ayako), and the third of which isn't a psychic at all (Yasu).

Now that I think about it, why is Madoka accepting cases when the team's so ill-equipped anyway?

Regardless, after the dinging of the office's doorbell a short and careless-looking old man comes in for an interview. His name is Furui Nioi and he's barely taller than I am, more like John's height than anything, with numerous wrinkles etched into his tan skin. His voice shakes while he talks and he ends up repeating some of his words to us as they stumble nervously out of his mouth. Furui tells us about odd things happening to his granddaughter and then hands us some photos.

"Please.. Please, will you help me?" Nioi-san asks. Yasu, Ayako, and I turn to face Madoka, waiting for her answer.

"Of course we will."

Furui nods his head a countless number of times and then leaves the office, Yasu volunteering to help him down the steps to the plaza.

~o0O0o~

"So let's analyze the case then," Yasu begins the next morning. He reaches into his briefcase and pulls out the case file; examining the notes that we took during the interview with Furui, as well as the ones that he researched before we started the drive—he wasn't able to turn up much. Yasu might not be a psychic, but it is nice having a second Naru handy; especially since he lacks Naru's infuriating personality.

"Well, we know that his granddaughter is being possessed by something," Ayako says from the front seat. She is riding shotgun while Madoka drives. "And the bruises on the child's back and arms show that the spirit is definitely the violent type," she adds, referring to the pictures the old man had brought with him.

"She's too young for it to be a poltergeist. Plus I don't think there's enough evidence to point there anyway," I augment, somewhat from experience and also because I want to seem knowledgeable. Too bad Naru isn't here to see me acting smart.

"So if it's an actual spirit, how are we going to find it? Plus if there aren't any trees around how are we going to exorcise it?" Madoka says, finally chiming in. Her tone is friendly but it only sparingly masks the seriousness in her voice.

"I suppose you can't exorcise anything?" Ayako says with a snap. She tries to compose herself quickly; not liking the fact that she's essentially useless at exorcisms without live trees nearby.

"I'm just a humble ghost hunter," is Madoka's response. Her gentle smile is back and her magenta locks bounce as she faces towards the road again.

"Maybe we can teach Mai how to exorcise spirits then?" Yasu suggests with a witty grin.

"Me? Exorcise a spirit? I can't even see them," I say with anguish.

Why is the conversation turning on me now?

I'm not that great... Sure I have premonitions, and at times I've experienced the events that occurred in a spirit's previous life.

And I suppose there was that one time I astral projected myself to Masako…

But what does any of that have to do with exorcising spirits?

"That's not true though. Didn't you admit that you met Naru's older brother out in the forest? You talked to his spirit while you were awake. He wasn't an orb or anything even; you saw him full bodied," Ayako says. We're finally turning onto the long driveway that leads to the old man's house and I berate myself for hoping our quick arrival will end this conversation. Ayako's about to say more but I jump in first.

"That's true, but even Masako said that it was probably because I'd become very familiar with him by that point. Plus, I haven't seen him or any other spirits since," I argue. It has been over a month now since Gene was found and I haven't had any contact with him.

The car slows to a stop outside a lot of small, pearl white houses. A few people peer at us from their windows, interested at who the four strangers are parked in the middle of their neighborhood. Already my face is heating up and I want to shy away from their doe-eyed stares.

"We're here," Madoka says. "Let's unpack our stuff."

We clamber out of the car as Madoka pops open the trunk. While we bring the luggage to the house, Madoka is already at the front door, knocking on it. A woman answers, and Madoka introduces herself by asking where we can set up base. The woman, whom our case file labels as Furui's daughter, glares at Madoka. Ayako, Yasuhara, and I wait for instructions for where we can set up our equipment: a couple of cameras and stands, two small televisions, and a switchboard to control everything; looking at each other with mixed expressions. Without the van Naru and Lin had been renting, we were only able to bring standard materials, meaning even our equipment for this case is lackluster, and now our client's daughter is upset with us too.

The house itself is as small in the inside as it looks from the outside, adding to the list of un-coolness for the job. On second thought, it's good that Naru isn't here. He probably would have never accepted this case in the first place but even so, our predicament is so laughable that I'm happy the dumb narcissist isn't present to ridicule us. The mission should be easy, but our team is badly prepared.

I'll prove him wrong though! We're going to beat this case without his, Lin's, Monk's… John's… or even Masako's help.

Oh man...

The other's notice that my mind has wandered off as I think about the missing pieces of our SPR puzzle.

"What are you fantasizing about?" Ayako asks, grabbing my attention. I wave her off with a shrug and we go back to walking down a narrow hallway in the house.

Oh right, the house!

I look around and collect my surroundings. It's compacted on to two low-ceiling floors, with a tiny hallway connecting the living room to the kitchen and laundry room, plus a downstairs toilet room, and one extra bedroom on the ground floor. Upstairs there's a main bedroom and three smaller rooms; one of which is an office, and then there is also a washroom. From what I can tell, the entire house has wooden flooring—minus the tatami mats in the living rooms and bedrooms—normal. The walls are also all decorated in the same nasty, peeling green and gold wallpaper. We decide that Yasu will sleep in the office upstairs and we three girls will sleep with the equipment in the spare room downstairs. The other three rooms are for the grandfather, his granddaughter, and the woman who greeted us at the door, as well as her husband.

The atmosphere is uncomfortable and tense in the house. Unnecessarily quiet while we setup our two cameras, one in the main room downstairs and the other in the young girl's bedroom. The father and mother watch us like cats waiting to pounce on a unsuspecting mouse, their eyes focused and overly observant. When we finish setting up and take a break in our base, we hear them arguing with the grandfather over the mic, asking him why he had even called us here.

"Was.. it not you.. Jitsu-san, that said you feared.. a spirit had gotten hold.. of young Rika-chan?" the old man says, long pauses drawn in between his words. His frailness causing difficulty as he speaks. "Why.. would.. I hesitate.. in calling experts to our household.. in hopes of dispelling.. this spirit?"

"They're hardly experts," Jitsu says, glancing towards the camera with a tantalizing gaze and an unimpressed voice. The starkly woman hides strands of greying hair under globs of brown hair dye. She's pulled back as much as she can into a tight bun that is slowly beginning to come apart. Jitsu presses down the hem of her clean cut skirt and adjusts a bow that accentuates her grey jacket, before clicking her tongue at us. "And I will not stand to have a video camera placed in my daughter's bedroom, let alone my house!"

With a sigh, I leave our base and bow slightly to apologize before climbing up the stairs and moving the camera into the hallway. Across the wall as I head up the stairs, I find happy pictures of Jitsu and her husband from when they were first married. Photos of smiles and shy hand holding, group outings with friends including shots outside of bars, in parks, and on bridges, but there's no trace of their daughter. No stepping-stone pictures that show her as she gets older; when she was born, her first steps, her first birthday… nothing...

"Onee-san," The young girl, Rika, says while I entered her room after a quick knock.

She looks neither happy nor upset by my presence, and continues sitting on the floor, leaning against the forest-green wall while she stares aimlessly towards the ground. She's wearing a tattered, secondhand dress, pink with white polka dots on it and lace garnishing the ends. Dirty white stockings cover her legs, but one of them has fallen down enough for me to see a bruise. She notices my glance and quickly tugs it back up to her thigh, turning away from me in the process.

"Are you shy, Rika-chan? Why don't you come downstairs and I'll introduce you to the rest of my team?" I ask, trying to cheer her up with the idea of meeting new friends.

"Is it my fault that you're here?" Is all Rika says. Her voice still quiet and unmoving.

"N-no, why would it be?" The smile I was giving her drops a little. "Your mother told your grandfather that a spirit has been haunting you, so he summoned us here to help get rid of it."

"A spirit?" She looks up at me. Her small and confused face is so cute I can feel my heart melt a little and I want to laugh and grin. I don't though. I do my best to stay focus and not dissuade her from talking to me.

"Yeah. Do you have a special friend that no one else can see or talk to?" I say.

"Bunny-chan?" Rika stands up and rushes to her pink-colored futon that's folded and sitting in a corner of the room. Under a mountain of small square pillows, she finds and grabs hold of a fat, plump rabbit doll. "I'm the only one who can talk to Bunny-chan."

"Can I hold her quick?" I say and she hands me the stuffed animal.

Normally, if the doll is being possessed—or is acting as a container for a spirit—my instincts will jump in and I will feel an ominous presence. I don't though. In fact, I don't feel anything while I hold the bunny doll. The white rabbit is beginning to grey with age and a seam has started to tear, so I hand it back to Rika gently.

"Here you go." I say to her and she takes the bunny back with ease. Now that my introductions are done, I proceed with my task of moving the camera.

Before I walk back downstairs, Rika wanders over to me. "Don't tell mama that I talked to you, okay? I don't want her to know I was talking to a stranger."

"Don't worry, I won't tell," I say with a smile before she heads back to her room.

It's weird that she's worried though. We are staying at her house after all...

~o0O0o~

The atmosphere downstairs hasn't settled. Jitsu and her husband refuse to let us eat dinner with them, won't share their food, and won't let us use their kitchen to cook ourselves. So we are stuck eating inside of the spare room, munching on cold takeout that Madoka had to drive half an hour to get. The room was small before, but with the futons folded and taking up the wall space, our equipment set up, and the four of us squeezed together trying to eat I feel like I'm suffocating.

"The cameras aren't picking anything up yet," Yasu says, examining one of the televisions in between mouthfuls of rice and lukewarm curry.

"Spirits tend to be less active when someone new shows up. It could be a few days, maybe a week even, before we see normal activity," I say. Wow, I sound a lot smarter when the rest of the team isn't here to show me up.

"I'm not sure we'll be welcome for that long," Madoka says half heartedly. "Hopefully Mai can have more information gathered for us in the morning." She beams over a radiant smile, filled with un-encouraging encouragement.

Please don't pressure me Madoka-san…

"Hurry up and finish eating Mai," Ayako snaps, but I can tell she's joking. "We need you to start dreaming so we can get out of here." I ignored her, though it's weird having everyone rely exclusively on me for a change. I can feel the weight from their reliance on me. It's like a large rock is sitting on my chest, so heavy that I can't lift it and the air is slowly escaping from my lungs.

What if I can't come up with any answers?

As I fret, we finish eating and decide to tuck in for the night. Only minutes after we go to sleep I hear Rika's grandfather tucking her in to bed, their voices being caught on the camera. Jitsu and her husband are caught on the camera too, bickering loudly about how they wish we would leave, lest we "find out."

The bickering eventually turns into them arguing. He tells her to, "quit being such a bitch."

She tells him, "someone has to man the house."

There's some clambering and then a slapping noise before everything goes silent. I look around the room and see Ayako sleeping peacefully, unaware of the fight. Madoka and my eyes connect for a moment. She looks concerned, but brings a finger to her lips, urging me to stay quiet. Then she closes her eyes as well, and goes to sleep.

For the next few hours all I can hear is the faint whisper of a TV, but it sounds more like static than anything. I'm surprised Madoka and Ayako can sleep with the noise. As a drawn out yawn escapes me, I dig into my bag to grab my cell phone, quietly checking the time. Three in the morning already? The hum of the television finally clicks off and soft footsteps pad up the stairs. With a sigh of relief, I close my eyes, and as usual, am quickly overtaken by sleep.

~o0O0o~

Darkness surrounds me like clouded shades of black, dripping and oozing across my line of vision.

But as I open my eyes, a soft luminous cloud of fog begins to envelop me, lighting up my surroundings, yet blocking out anything else from view. The glow from the clouds is nearly reflective and I can almost make out an image of myself in the cascading plumes.

Is he here?

I looked around, turning my head left, then right, then left again before desperately circling my full body in an attempt to spot him. This is the same as it always is, so where is he?

"Naru?" I call hesitantly. No. Not Naru. "Gene-san?"

And there he is. A cloud wisps away, unveiling Gene's tall figure as he stands in the distance. He's dressed from head to toe in a black suit; still mourning his own death. His black hair barely framing his face. My once spirit guide walks towards me and, although his pace is slow, he appears before me in under a second.

"It's nice to see you again, Mai," he says. His voice is like Naru's, only warm and inviting, rather than cold and closed off. No honorifics, just like Naru says it too, and the tenderness in his tone lingers in my ears, sounding the same as when Naru speaks with concern. My face is heating up as I imagine Naru talking to me like this. For a second I remember my confession to Naru, and how he told me those feelings were for Gene.

Do I really love Gene over Naru?

"Why haven't you crossed over yet?" I say, shaking off my thought and making myself comfortable in the cloud.

"I need to leave Noll with an adequate assistant. He used to rely on me for a great deal, but I can't be there for him now. I'd like to teach you."

"Teach me?" There's no way I could amount to Gene's level!

"Yes, we'll start off small and gradually increase your power," Gene says, cutting to the chase. There's no 'hey it's been a while' or anything of the sort. "The first thing I'd like you to do is start keeping a dream log."

"Dream log?"

"That's right. Every time you have a dream you'll write the date, the time, and then of course the dream." He smiles cheerfully. "I guarantee that doing this alone would impress Noll."

"Alright, I'll start keeping one then." Before I forget, I add, "Is there an evil spirit in this house?"

"There is nothing that I can show you as of now," Gene says. "If you begin to keep the dream log then maybe some clues will turn up. Acquire the log, then take a few naps tomorrow. That is the only advice I can give you." He vanishes in silence, his presence simply disappearing, fading into the fog as I slowly rise into consciousness.

~o0O0o~

"Mai? So, how was it? Did you learn anything?" Ayako asks as I sit up from the hard futon Furui-san has leant us.

I shake my head 'no' before remembering. "I did see Gene though, but he just said to take a few naps today in hopes of piecing together any clues that might turn up." I turn to Yasu, whose sipping tea with Madoka in the corner of the room. I didn't even hear him come in. "Do you have a spare notebook I can have by chance?"

"I do actually," Yasu says.There's a ring in his tone despite how early it is. After digging into his backpack he reveals a thick, three-subject notebook, and hands it to me.

I open the large book, which is a rich purple color, and write the date and time on the corner of the first page. Next I write my dream entry.「Met Gene again in my dream. He told me to take naps in hopes of piecing together clues.」

"What are you doing?"

Jitsu's holler echoes loudly down the short hall and into our room. We hurry over to the kitchen and find her glowering at Rika, who is standing beside a broken glass of milk, the contents creating a puddle on the floor by her feet.

"I'm sorry mama, it was an accident," Rika cries. She bites her lip and slouches away from her mother, frightened.

"Why are you so careless? Clean this mess up now!" Her mother yells before noticing us. "What are you lot staring at?"

"We're looking at you," I snap. I can't believe this woman would yell at her daughter like this. "Why are you making Rika-chan clean this up? Sure she spilt the milk, but she's a child. If you want to make her clean it then you should at least pick up the broken glass first so that she doesn't hurt herself!" Without Monk here it seems I can get away with throwing a tantrum. I try to cool myself down but it was easier to do that when I had him to restrain me.

Ayako grabs my ear and tugs. "Quiet, Mai, don't speak to our clients like that."

"That hurts, Ayako!"

"Owe," Rika gasps. She holds up her hand and reveals blood. On queue, she has gone and cut herself through the rag she was trying to soak the milk up with.

"You're completely useless. Go to your room," Jitsu orders to her daughter, waving her hand in the direction of the stairs.

"You won't even check her hand? Get her a bandage?" I'm the one yelling now, before being pulled away from Ayako. I break out from Ayako's grip and bound up to stairs, rushing over to Rika. She and her grandfather are in the hallway and he's already looking her over. After examining the finger he determines that there aren't any shards of glass stuck within it, cleans, and bandages it.

"Thank you.. for having concern.. for my granddaughter," he says once he's done.

"Why wouldn't Rika-chan's mother do any of this herself?" I wrap my hands around Rika and hug her tightly. How could a mother be so cruel?

"Rika-chan's mother has.. a very short.. temper," the old man says with a forced grin. "We're.. used to it.. by now.. I suppose." He leaves the room with me following behind him, remembering that Rika doesn't want to get in trouble for being near a stranger.

Downstairs, Madoka tells me to apologize to Jitsu. Even though I can't forgive the woman for treating her daughter the way she had, I suck up my pride and ask for forgiveness for my behavior. I have SPR's reputation to uphold after all.

"You really think a stuck-up teenager can gain my forgiveness?" Jitsu chortles. I glare at the ground, but as I raise my head I put on my fakest of smiles before leaving the room. I think it's about time I took a nap.

~o0O0o~

As the darkness fades away, I find myself standing within and without Rika's bedroom. I'm viewing it as though I am the wall itself, yet my vision is centered on Rika's futon and the few feet of floor around it. Her bunny is sitting poignantly on top of the many pillows she has stacked on her bed.

From the corner of my line of vision, Rika enters the room as if she has been thrown onto the floor. Her bedroom door slams shut and Bunny-chan teeters at its resting spot as the walls shake. Rika wobbles, steading herself into a crouch on the floor. Tears are streaming across her cheeks and she looks torn between standing and running or bowing down for forgiveness.

"Please… Don't hurt me," she whispers apologetically to a figure I can't see. "Don't hurt me."

~o0O0o~

Her words still echo painfully through my head after I wake up from my power nap. My heart is racing from the shock of what I've seen. I feel like I've had an epiphany but I can't piece the information together. Sighing, I grab my log and write a new time and entry: 「Rika can see the force that's attacking her.」

That doesn't make sense though.

When I asked her earlier she said she hadn't seen anything that no one else can. And the only thing that she can talk to is her rabbit doll.

And her rabbit doll isn't being possessed. I'm positive about that...

I groan, grabbing my head in frustration, desperately trying to link everything together. I know what's wrong, somewhere deep inside myself I already know the answer, but it doesn't want to reveal itself yet. But why? I growl, frustrated. The others in the room look at me shocked but I don't say anything to them.

"Are you sure you won't tell us what you saw?" Madoka presses.

"Not until I'm ready… Not until I know for sure." I don't like that my own mind seems to be hiding things from me.

"But Mai, if you have the answer wouldn't you want to share it with us so we can get out of here?" Ayako says.

"I don't know the answer yet."

Before she goes on, Madoka stops her with an outstretched arm and a shake of the head. I give her a quick, thankful nod and ask if there's anything I can grab for them at the nearby convenience store. I need some fresh air to clear my head and the small crowded room is too stuffy for me to stay in any longer.

~o0O0o~

Later that evening, Rika's father and I meet outside of the front door, getting home at the same time.

"Will you be leaving soon?" He grumbles, and then enters the house without waiting for my reply.

"As soon as we figure out what's hurting your daughter," I say under my breath. His ear twitches in my direction, but he ignores me and heads for the dining room to eat with his family.

Our team eats the rice balls I got from the convenience store inside the base again. Yasu makes another comment, saying that neither the regular camera nor the thermal camera has caught any abnormalities in the living room or the upstairs hall. The thermal camera is the one positioned upstairs. When I was setting it up, I pointed it towards Rika's room so that we could hopefully detect fluctuating temperatures through the wall.

But no detections or changes have been made.

With no activity to go off of, Ayako and I play koi-koi while Yasu works on school work and Madoka taps away on her computer. She's the only one with a connection to the internet in the old house because of a Wi-Fi plugin she has. I envy her as the night goes on and Ayako tires from our card games. Soon she's pulled out a book to read and I lay on the floor restless, hoping something will happen soon. I pull out my phone and look for a recent update to one of the cell novels I'm following. I know I would have received a text if I had, but a girl can hope. As a disappointing sigh escapes me I close my eyes and hope I can sleep through the noise of my friends and the house residents.

As I rest atop the floor my mind thinks back to the things I had written in my dream journal and the things that Rika and her grandfather have said. My thoughts begin to consume me and I nod off further into the depths of unconsciousness.

~o0O0o~

"What have you learned so far?" Gene asks, meeting me in the familiar cloud in my dreams. I ponder over his question.

"We were shown pictures of Rika's bruised body. She has wounds on her back and arms. And the other day I discovered a bruise on her leg as well," I begin explaining to him. "Her mother is the one who told Furui-san about the spirit, but I couldn't sense anything possessing the doll, and Rika seems more scared of her mother than a spirit."

Which is understandable considering her mother forced her to clean broken glass!

Plus Furui-san did also admit that Jitsu has a short temper...

Suddenly, the cloud is gone and I see that I'm back in Rika's room, viewing her futon as though I am the wall again. Rika flies into the room, but this time the entity becomes clear. Her mother storms in and smacks Rika as the young girl pleads for the violence to stop.

I don't want to see this!

~o0O0o~

I jolt awake and quickly take in the dark room; calmness coming over me as I ground myself; taking in deep breaths of air and focusing on reality. Then I noticed the extra visitor in the room.

"N-naru?" I squeal; slamming my hands to my mouth as I try to muffle the noise; Ayako and Madoka are still sleeping.

"There's a big difference between me and Noll," Gene says and I realize he's glowing; a faint white-green light covering and surrounding him. He sits beside me on the futon and I feel the air around me grow colder.

"Was that psychometry?" I say to Gene quietly, referring to my dream.

"I'd say it was visualized intuition. Basically, your intuition spoke out so clearly that you were able to see it in your dream. It's similar to psychometry but also very different, and unfortunately, despite the fact that your intuition is normally spot-on, there's no way of proving your dream was right unless we obtain more facts," Gene says.

"Isn't that normally how it goes?" I sigh as I stumble in the dark, looking for my dream log. I finally think to use the light app on my phone so that I can see while I write my new dream down.

"It is, that's why Noll uses all this equipment and it's also one of the reasons why you're keeping the dream log," Gene says.

Then it hits me. Researchers always have to make note of everything they study to show absolute proof in what they're doing. So that's why Naru will be impressed that I'm taking it upon myself to log my dreams into a journal.

"So what should I do? I know there isn't a spirit here," I say.

"Get some rest, and in the morning tell Madoka," Gene answers before vanishing into the night like a fading dream. I wonder how I'm supposed to sleep knowing what I now know... Of course I pass out almost instantly.

So I knew all along. It just took a while to come to terms with everything and accept it as true.

That's why it was so hard for me to piece everything together at first...

~o0O0o~

In the morning, I pull our small team to the side and explain what I've deduced. Madoka asks to see my dream log, even though it only has three entries, and then takes everything into consideration. As she mulls it over, Ayako gapes in shock and Yasu laments over the abuse.

"Alright then, everyone, pack up the equipment. We're leaving," Madoka says with an instructive snap.

"But, what about Rika-chan?" I say, my voice rising from shock. I wasn't expecting her to simply drop the case.

"There's no point in staying if there aren't any spirits around. We're ghost hunters, not Child Services, and we don't have enough proof to go to the police anyway."

I realize then, that Madoka and Naru are more similar than I thought. He did learn from her after all. But Madoka is so nice; she can't possibly want to leave after learning about this, can she?

As if knowing what I'm thinking, Madoka smiles reassuringly. "Don't worry. I plan on saying something to our client before we leave."

I nod my head and shrug my shoulders. There isn't anything I can say or do that will change her mind and I understand that. I help Yasu move the equipment out of the room while Ayako folds up the futons and places them in the closet. Madoka spends her time sitting in the front of the car and talking on her cellphone in a serious manner. Within a few hours our stuff is loaded into the back of the car and we are saying our goodbyes to the family, the father of which is at work again.

"So.. you're sure there aren't any spirits..?" Furui-san asks, his voice desperate. He truly hopes there might be a spirit causing harm to Rika.

He must have known all along…

Madoka's usually smiling and aloof expression is cast away for a frown. "Yes, and I must say, you should reconsider how your granddaughter is being treated by the other members of this household." She turns to stare amenably at Jitsu, her eyes burning with distaste.

"And what are you suggesting with a look like that?" Jitsu says, growling angrily at Madoka.

"There is nothing I can say for I am but a humble ghost hunter," Madoka says with a sing-song like voice, her smile coming back with a large dose of sarcasm. We wave farewell to the family, openly ignoring Jitsu, and proceed to the car.

Even though there is little we can do for Rika, I know that the grandfather will make sure she isn't hurt again. I don't know how I know, but it is a strong feeling within my gut and a firm voice within my mind that tells me so. So I know it's true. As I sit in my seat I noticed Gene staring at me from the other side of the car door.

I start lowering the window so I can talk to him.

"You don't have to do that, you can hear me speak just fine with the window there," Gene says once the window is opened halfway. His ghostly voice isn't muffled by the glass.

"Oh, my bad," I say and start to roll the window back up.

Gene laughs; a large grin on his face. "You're funny. I'll see you back at the base." And with that, he's gone.

"Who were you talking to Mai?" Yasu asks, turning to look at me as he enters the car on the other side.

"Wha~? N-no one," I say quickly, my hands rising in defense.

"Looks like Mai can see spirits," Madoka says as she pulls the car away from the house.

"No, I can't," I say, trying to argue.

Gene doesn't count. Does he?

"Maybe it's just one spirit specifically," Ayako says slyly. They all know I had that dream with Gene in it.

With a lot of teasing ahead of me I make myself comfortable for the long ride to Shibuya, wondering when the rest of our team will join us. For once I have mixed feelings about seeing my friends. I miss them and want to be alongside them, but I also like that I alone solved this case. Okay, I guess Gene did help me as my spiritual guide, but still, I wasn't in the background doing grunt work for once, and I actually made a difference.

Ayako and Yasu must have stopped teasing me, or maybe I drowned them out. All I know is that their voices barely sound in the background as I resolve to become a stronger psychic so that I can help on cases just as well as Monk, John, and Masako. Then, before I know it, I have drifted off to sleep again.

I wonder what dream awaits me around the corner of my mind.

~o0O0o~

AN: I've recently picked this story back up to finish it, but I'll be going through every chapter and updating them again. It's been like 6 years since I started this series and not only do I want to complete it, but I want to make the current content better. I've hoping to update the current chapters on a weekly basis, but as always review help motivate me!