Chapter Text
Mai had gotten the call from Naru in the middle of a particularly boring and long day at school and hadn’t hesitated for even a moment to inform her teacher that she needed to leave early for her job, and then running out of the building and into the warm summer sun.
It was days like these that she loved her job the most. Just this morning she had been dragging herself half-conscious to school so she could sit through another mind numbing English lecture that was never going to stick. Now she was merrily skipping her way through town to the Shibuya Psychic Research office building where her coworkers were waiting for her.
“I’m back~” Mai said, opening the door and shivering at the sudden drop in temperature. She allowed the door to swing shut behind her and looked around, expecting to see Naru, or at least Lin, but neither of them were anywhere to be seen.
Odd, she wouldn’t have been called in to the office if they were both out. Naru still didn’t want her messing with the mail, or answering the phones despite her being a relatively reliable employee these past couple of years, and the fact that Monk had long since spilled the secret of Naru’s identity and their parent company to everyone already. According to him she’d “do something foolish and lose the company an important client.” But Mai was convinced there were other ulterior motives, surely she didn’t put her foot in her mouth that often.
“Naru! Lin!” she called out in case they were in the backroom, hiding from her. When she still didn’t receive an answer she crossed her arms and huffed loudly.
“The nerve of that guy! Calling me out to work on such an important day and not even bothering to show up.” She pouted, not at all disappointed to be alone, and started making herself comfortable.
“If it’s that important you can go back.”
Mai jumped and quickly turned around. “Naru! I didn’t hear you come in!”
She forced a smile and ignored the small voice in her head telling her that he’d snuck in on purpose to scare her, instead finding her gaze moving to the people that had entered with him. They were foreigners, one was a woman with light orange hair that caught the sun in such a way it couldn’t have been anything but natural, and the other was younger with a pretty average mop of messy black hair, but the most startlingly blue eyes that Mai had ever seen.
“That’s because, despite the competition, you’re the least observant person that works here,” Naru responded, leading the two foreigners into the backroom without so much as an introduction. Mai was just about to stick out her tongue at the door and put on the tea kettle for their clients when Naru turned back around. “Go help Lin, he’s getting stuff out of the van.”
Damn, he caught me. “Yes boss,” she said before slinking away.
Well, it wasn’t like she was going to be much help entertaining the foreigners. She’d skipped English class more often than not, and it wasn’t exactly a subject she felt like studying outside of school no matter how many times John offered. So she just huffed one last time and went back outside to help Lin.
He was waiting at the van, his hands still empty and a puzzled expression on his face. It reminded Mai of a lost puppy a little bit and she had to make sure to school her face into an appropriate expression so he didn’t think she was teasing him.
“Lin?” Mai stepped closer leaning to look at whatever could be stopping him from just grabbing the stuff and bringing it inside. “What... is that?”
Lin didn’t answer so much as grimace, a hand going to rub at the bridge of his nose. His distress clear, Mai let herself take another look, trying to piece together what she was seeing with what little she knew about the paranormal and their work in studying and dispelling it.
It was... well it was a bunch of random technology? At least, it was probably technology. But to be fully honest, it looked like a pile of parts someone found in a garage then soldered together into… weapons? At least half the things in there were probably supposed to be some kind of gun. There was a baseball bat in the corner, painted the same shade of vaguely futuristic gray the rest were, but without the glowing green parts. There was also a pile of thermoses, some very ugly looking belts, and a fishing rod. Mai found herself grimacing almost as much as Lin.
“He wants us to bring that into the office?” she asked, turning to her coworker as he began gathering the more innocuous devices. He sighed.
“He doesn’t want it in the van.”
Right, they couldn’t exactly use the van if there was- wait was that a lipstick container? Was this from their clients? Had they jerry-rigged their own ghost hunting equipment? How had Naru not laughed them out of the car when they tried packing all this?
Oh right, Naru didn’t laugh. Mai chuckled to herself, grabbing one of the more gun-looking objects.
“Careful Mai,” Lin said, his own armful of gadgets glowing faintly.
“Huh?” It was rare for Lin to actually address her directly, so she looked up at him only to see the same pained expression from before but pointed directly at the gun in her hands.
“I don’t know what they put in those things,” he clarified. Mai nodded, trying not to think about the unfamiliar green substance oozing out and contaminating her. Would she get sick leave? Naru was usually pretty good about paying his employees, but he was also weirdly stubborn. Like the time he paid a full hospital bill without insurance just so the rest of them wouldn’t find out his real name.
“Hey Lin,” Mai figured she’d take this rare opportunity of him talking to her, due to their shared misfortune, to ask a question that was pressing on her mind for some time, “Are you really okay moving to Japan permanently like this? Wouldn’t you always be uncomfortable in a country you hate?”
To his credit, Lin took the question in stride, but then again he took everything in stride. “True, but Naru… recommended I use a form of immersion therapy. Besides, you were right before. I can’t blame you for your country's actions any more than people should blame me for my country.”
Mai nodded, “China.”
“Hong Kong.”
“Isn’t that in China?” she asked, confused. Lin was a Chinese Taoist. Didn’t that mean he was from China?
Lin shook his head, disappointed. “Mai, you need to stop skipping school so much.”
“But then you’d miss me around the office!” Mai smiled and held the door open, her arms not as full as Lin’s. When they were finished delicately piling everything in the corner and were about to make another trip, the door to the back room opened and Naru stepped out for a moment.
He looked stressed, and Mai found herself wondering just what it was these new clients needed that had even Naru reacting like a kid forced to eat his vegetables. “Mai.”
“Uhh yes, Naru?” Mai asked, letting Lin leave to get the rest alone. She wasn’t much help in the first place. “What do you need?”
He looked back at the closed door behind him, then back towards Mai. “A baby-sitter.”
“What?” But before Mai could ask for clarification, he was back behind the door and shoving the younger of the clients that he’d entered with earlier, out towards her.
The boy just waved and said, “Ohio,” with the worst accent she’d ever heard.
Struggling not to laugh, since her own English would hardly hold up to criticism, she waved and said good morning back, before leading him to their guest lounge and offering him a seat.
“Do you want some tea?” she asked, but he just grimaced.
“Any chance you have a coffee pot?” he asked. There were dark circles under his eyes, like he hadn’t slept for days, and she almost offered to let him take a nap on the couch instead. But Lin would probably kill her if she did that. She nodded and went to fix a pot, careful to keep an eye on him while she did so.
The boy was much younger than Mai had first assumed, now that she could properly see him. His demeanor made him feel older and his height didn’t quite match up to Japanese kids his age. If she looked close enough, he looked like he hadn’t even made it to high school yet. Then again, Mai could hardly say anything about that, since she was supposed to be in class right this second, and only her contract with Naru as a member of the Japanese branch of SPR allowed her to skip.
“Hey, take a picture, it’ll last longer,” he said, noticing Mai staring at him, as unsubtle as she was.
“What?” she asked. “Is that some kind of American expression?”
The boy frowned. “Isn’t it enough I learned how to speak, now I need to know all your expressions too?”
Mai chuckled, he was kind of like John, except smaller and angry. Where John spoke with an exaggerated kansai dialect, he struggled with pronunciation in general. He didn’t seem to be particularly rude, or annoying, and his Japanese was perfectly competent so Mai was at a loss for why, exactly, he had been kicked out of whatever the meeting was between Naru and his cohort.
Maybe he was just bored at the thought of being stuck in an office, listening to Naru speak work jargon and prices when he could be outside, in the sun, where it’s lovely and nice, and clearly summer.
“Hey,” she poked him on the shoulder, causing him to glare up at her. “You wanna get ice cream?”
“I’m not twelve.”
Mai huffed, “Fine, I’ll just get ice cream for myself then. You can wait here with the boring people.”
She opened the door and walked out, but she didn’t actually leave the premises. She waited right outside the door and was rewarded when eventually the kid followed her out.
His earlier glare was softened by embarrassment and Mai forced herself not to laugh or tease him, even if that was what certain other members of their office would do. She hummed softly in acknowledgment and led them down the street to her favorite ice-cream shop. Ice cream was the ideal snack in this weather, otherwise Mai would have offered something more traditional as a way to welcome him to Japan.
However, the kid didn’t seem to calm down on the walk. If anything he seemed more stressed than before. So much for Mai’s fool proof plan.
“Those guys…” he started, seeming to struggle with his words- Did he not have the right vocabulary? So far he hadn’t seemed to struggle with that particular aspect of the language. He only really seemed to struggle with idioms and pronunciation, “You trust them?”
“With my life. They’re like family to me,” Mai answered instantly. But instead of being reassured, he flinched when she mentioned family, and Mai frowned. Why was it that everything she said was the wrong thing to say?
“Whatever, we have to get back soon, I don’t want to leave my sister alone with two strange guys in a foreign country.”
So the other foreigner was his sister. Was he an orphan like her? It would explain why he was here with his sister. She could be his legal guardian.
It would also explain his attitude. Mai shook her head. There was no reason to try and guess what was going on, she was never good at that kind of thing anyways. It was entirely possible they were here with their whole family and their parents were just at work or something.
They walked in silence for a couple minutes before he spoke again. “I’m Danny.”
“Danny?” Mai parroted. Was that a nickname or did he consider them friends despite barely having a full conversation and almost getting into a fight over ice cream?
He didn’t seem to register her confusion though. “I figured we should at least know each other’s names if we’re going to be working together for a while.” Ah.
“I’m Mai Taniyama. What brought you into SPR today anyways?” It didn’t hurt to get her questions out now, while he was in a talkative mood. Maybe she could find out details of their case before Naru begrudgingly handed them their usual crumbs.
“My sister, she’s working on her PhD on the psychological effects of the paranormal on those who experience prolonged or repeated interactions. You know, priests, ghost hunters, paranormal researchers etc…” Danny said, not struggling once with the pronunciation of any of those words, despite Mai barely being able to keep up herself.
“Wait,” She stopped walking, forcing Danny to follow suit and turn towards her, “You aren’t clients?”
“No? We’re from the American branch of the Society for Psychic Research. Didn’t that Oliver guy tell you that when he called you in?”
That Oliver guy?! Mai struggled to keep a straight face, “Do you mean Doctor Davis? We all call him Naru.”
Danny just squinted his eyes, “How do you get Naru from Oliver?”
Well, she wasn’t going to admit it was short for ‘Narcissist’. There was at least some pride in having Naru as her boss. “Isn’t Noll the shortened version of Oliver in English?”
Danny didn’t seem to believe her, but she smiled anyway, like she had nothing to hide, and he begrudgingly accepted it. “Must be some weird English thing, could have sworn you were calling him a narcissist.”
Mai almost choked.
“This is the ice cream place right?” Danny asked, going inside without bothering to wait for an answer. Mai quickly followed, only to find him staring blankly at the different Ice cream flavors.
Mai got out her purse, she could be the cool big sister and pay for them both. “See anything you like?”
Danny just frowned, his cheeks going a bit pink. “I can’t read them.”
“Then I’ll just order for both of us!” Mai offered, getting two red bean flavors with cones.
Danny accepted the ice cream hesitantly. “If this tastes awful I’m throwing it at you.”
Mai just rolled her eyes and led them back outside, “If you’re going to visit the country, you’ve gotta appreciate the food right?”
She watched carefully as Danny took his first taste and smiled warmly when he quickly went about devouring the entire thing. Mai’s own was melting onto her hand so she quickly started licking the cream off her fingers before taking a large bite.
Her hand was still sticky when they made it back to the office, but the tense air that had been surrounding Danny had relaxed significantly, so she considered it a win.
“Mai, there you are.” Naru greeted her just as she opened the door. “We have a case.”