In Vino Veritas (Ghost Hunt) (NaruxMai)

In Vino Veritas

In Vino Veritas

Chapter 2:

There was a dead silence after the knock and then the SPR sprang into action. Everyone except for Naru stood up to clear space for the client. Lin answered the door whilst Yasuhara went to make some tea.

The client turned out to be an elderly lady dressed in a flower patterned yukata. Lin led her to sit on the sofa opposite Naru.

The scientist regarded her with emotionless eyes, he was still worrying about Mai, but he had enough focus on the client to come to a conclusion about her. The client's eyes were red rimmed and had black bags underneath, suggesting that she hadn't had a very good night's sleep for several nights running. He decided that she was most likely to be consulting him about a poltergeist, judging from the signs of insomnia.

"What is your name?" he enquired as Yasuhara handed her a cup of tea.

"Hana Kudou," she said and accepted the tea.

"What do you wish to consult the SPR for?" Naru asked as Lin passed him the black notebook which contained information on all the cases that the SPR had ever handled.

"I own a Ryokan and my daughter and grandchild help me. Recently, there seem to be ghosts present. I am losing business rapidly and my daughter has been attacked several times."

"What kind of ghosts?"

"For the first month only my daughter could see the ghost and it would only pull on her leg or arm or frighten her, but after it pulled her down a flight of stairs, the attacks escalated and all the guests began to see ghosts."

As he was listening Naru noted that the client's daughter reminded him of Mai who had always been a terrible magnet for anything that was supernatural.

"In what way did the attacks escalate?"

"Blood started regularly coming out of the shower in my daughter's bathroom and mirrors everywhere keep cracking and one of the guests nearly drowned in the ornamental pond," Hana informed him.

Naru stopped taking notes for a second. Something about the client was bothering him.

"Why did you come here, to SPR? We have only just reopened today."

The client gave him a sharp look. "My daughter was talking in her sleep last night, I shared her room as she has been unstable due to all the attacks. She said "Shibuya Psychic Research" and muttered something about a narcissist."

At hearing her words, Naru dropped his pen, Lin stiffened and all the other members of the SPR who were hiding in Naru's office, gasped.

"What is your daughter's name?" Naru asked in a voice that was one pitch higher than his normal tone.

"Maaya Kudou," she said, puzzled at his reaction.

Naru picked him pen up and resumed his notetaking. It wasn't Mai after all, but something told him that there was more to the case than met the eye.

"We will take your case, Kudou-san," he said with one of his plastic smiles.

Having a case to solve would stop him worrying about Mai and there was a chance that the client's daughter might have some connection to Mai, if the words that she had said in her sleep were any indication.

At 10 o'clock in the morning, a plain black van pulled up outside the Ryokan and all the members of the SPR piled out and stretched their arms. The Ryokan was situated on the outskirts of Tokyo and the van had been caught in several traffic jams on the way.