Dangerous Souls

Just a Little Green

Chapter 4-"It's My Fault"

Day 3, 4:08 P.M.

"Hi, I'm looking for a friend of mine, he's researching a local business and I offered to come and help him," Mai said to the librarian at the main desk. "He's a young man with blond hair."

"Yes, dear," The librarian said lifting up her glasses. "He's in one of the conference rooms on the second floor."

"Thank you!" Mai took off for the stairs, earning a shush from another librarian. It had been a while since she was a part of the research process, sure she had to take Yasuhara's place when they did the case at the office building last month, but that was different and in the moment she only remembered half of it thanks to her not so friendly neighborhood demon. This time she would be helping John research the property instead of researching workers.

Maybe we do need to research workers too, she wondered as she scanned each conference room she passed. The only issue is the activity has really quieted down since we got here, other than the vines grabbing my ankle, there really hasn't been much. And none of the attacks have been surrounded by a specific person or persons. Definitely not a hoax like the office case, though there is a shot that the attacks might be caused by a hex. It wouldn't be too hard to hex plants into attacking people, right?

"There you are!" an excited voice exclaimed, earning a shush from a distance away. Mai turned around to see the blond priest smiling carrying an armful of newspapers. "I'm hoping you have a little more luck than me. There really isn't much abnormal with the info I've found so far."

"No unsual deaths? How about any deaths?" Mai asked as she held the door for the conference room that John had taken residence in.

"Not that I've found, at this point I wanted to go through the newspapers around the time of when the property changed hands to see if anything was reported, rumor or otherwise. Or maybe an obituary for the former owners." The priest plopped the papers on the table next to his notebook. "Unless you have a better idea of where to look."

"Do you have the names of the previous owners?" Mai asked as John handed her his notebook. It was written in English but Mai was about to make out the two Japanese names written at the bottom of the page. "You didn't find obituaries online for either of these people."

"I found several actually, unfortunately names like Ito and Nakamura are very common and there wasn't any mention of the greenhouse in their obituaries. I was hoping that maybe something in the newspapers but clue me in on which obituary is actually correct."

"Well, do we know what was here before the greenhouse?"

"Originally, it was a family's home but after the industrialization of Tokyo it turned into one of those family run businesses. Reiki I believe was the specialty," John explained, spreading out the newspapers. "That's why the building still seems like a house with a yard, it stayed that way until the 1980s when the Ogawa family bought it and built the greenhouse in the backyard."

Reiki? Like Izumi...I wonder if maybe I should see her again for a session...focus Mai! "Why don't you look into the Reiki family and I'll look into the family that owned the property before them?"

"Sure, you might need to get more newspapers though, I only brought in ones from the 60s to the early 80s," John said with an apologetic shrug.

"No problem, I'm gonna see what else I can find on the computer before I go searching the papers," she said sitting down at the only computer in the room.

***

Lin was not having much luck as he drove through the village of Kariwa in the Nigata Prefecture. His Shiki weren't really helping any more than Oliver's vague description of his vision. Japan may be an island, but it was huge compared to a tiny human. Even if that tiny human was at least six foot four.