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Taniyama Mai closed her eyes, grabbed one of the cards in her hand randomly and slapped it down on the table. When Ayako didn’t say anything, she cautiously opened her eyes and peered down.
“Oh. Heh.” She laughed nervously. “Looks like I won again.”
Ayako slapped her own card onto the table with a scowl. “You seem to have all the luck today.” She crossed her arms. “Are you sure that you’re not cheating?”
“I’m not trying to!” Mai protested. “It’s just--sometimes they just pop into my head! I can’t stop it.”
“Uh-huh.” Ayako gathered the cards. “I think you’re getting better at this. Maybe we should have you read tarot cards during our next case.”
Mai shivered. “I would really rather not.”
Bou-san flopped down beside her in the couch. “Why not? It would be quicker than waiting for you to fall asleep--hey! No hitting!”
Ayako frowned at him. “Can’t you see she’s uncomfortable?”
“No, no!” Mai waved her hands. “It’s just... I went to a reader when I was younger and--well, he got a lot right. I just... It’s sort of scary, you know?”
Bou-san sat up. “You do know that most readers on the street are pure charlatans, right?” he said, reaching over to squeeze her shoulder. “It’s hard enough for someone talented to read the future; for you to find a random person on the street that can do it... The odds aren’t in favor.”
“I know.” Mai looked down at her hands in her lap. It’d been a while since she thought of it -- that what she’d been told two years ago on that afternoon on the way back from school had come to mind. That she had had that shiver of unease that came from thinking of it. “It’s just--I didn’t really ask for it. He called me over -- by name! -- and then everything he said to prove himself seemed to happen and--”
“Your brain really is pea-sized,” Naru said flatly.
Mai squealed, nearly pitching herself off the couch. “Naru!”
Bou-san, who’d banged his head on the lamp as he shot to his feet, rubbed his forehead. “Maybe we should put bells on you.”
“Most tarot readers speak in generalities,” Naru continued, ignoring both of them, “to enable you to find what you’re looking for in their readings. He would’ve read his findings off your reactions and verbal cues.”
“But--” she began.
“Listen to Naru,” Bou-san told her. “There’s no point in getting hung up on something that was likely pure chance -- or something he picked up off you.”
“No.” Bou-san frowned at Naru, who blithely continued, “It most likely was a real reading.” At their looks, Naru rolled his eyes. “I didn’t say the man was the one doing the reading. We’re talking about Mai here -- most likely she did the reading and the man unintentionally relayed her findings off her reactions. It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibilities.”
Ayako nodded thoughtfully. “That would actually make sense... Two years ago, that would make it around Mai’s--” She stopped, awkwardly. Mai blushed furiously. “Anyway, it makes sense.”
“What did he tell you then?” Bou-san wondered after an embarrassed beat. “It must’ve been something weird if it’s stayed with you this long.”
“Just...things,” Mai hedged. “That I would get into my high school, that I’d find somewhere to live when I decided to move out.”
“That wouldn’t have upset you though,” Ayako pointed out.
Mai looked away. She didn’t want to tell them about the other things -- about a boy with two opposite personalities, about ghost stories, about-- She pushed it out of her mind. Then she remembered something, something she didn’t mind telling them about. “He told me that he saw me dreaming -- and that there was something strange about it.”
“That would fit perfectly with you,” Bou-san agreed, dead-pan.Then he frowned. “That does seem awfully specific though. Most tarot readers I’ve met keep to subjects like health, your love life and trivial things.”
“Why don’t Mai try to read the cards here?” Ayako suggested. “She’s been lucky with them so far,” she added with a sour twist of her mouth.
“It’s not tarot cards,” Mai protested. “And I don’t know how to read them anyway!”
“It’s not about the cards,” Bou-san explained. “They’re just your focus. A talented person could read your future with flyers off the street.”
Mai blinked. “Really?”
A pack of cards thumped onto the table. She looked up to find Naru watching her impassively. Looked like he was in favor as well. “Guess I could try,” she mumbled, reaching for the cards.
“Mai.” Lin appeared from whereever he’d been hiding, stopping her before she could touch the cards. “Reading the cards while upset is not a good idea.” Naru glared at him, but Lin continued nevertheless, “Your emotional state weighs in heavily in these things, as you should know.”
Mai looked at the cards. She didn’t really want to do this, but on the other hand... “I need to know,” she said. “The things he said--I need to know if they were true.”
Lin exhaled sharply. “Very well, then.” He let go, then swept his gaze over the others. “We should form a barrier around her. With her lack of education, reading cards is as much an invitation as an ouija board.”
As the others began to scramble around her, Mai grabbed the cards and opened the pack. She shuffled the cards randomly -- it was a regular pack of playing cards, the same kind you could get for 200 yen off the street. How were she supposed to get anything off the ace of spades anyway? How did you read a clover four?
“Mai?” Ayako called gently. “You can start whenever you want.”
Mai nodded and shuffled the cards another time. What was she supposed to do? Just pick a card? Or spread them out? With a mental shrug, she closed her eyes and picked one card from the stack in her hand. Then, following an impulse, she picked a couple of more before putting the remaining cards on the table. She didn’t open her eyes, feeling as if being blind...helped? Or something.
She placed the cards as straight as she could on the table, hoping that she had the right sides up, then tried to concentrate. For a moment, the only thing she felt was awkward. Then--
Water. Deep, dark waters lapping against her mind. She shivered, nausea climbing up her throat. This, this was-- “It’s the same,” she whispered. “It’s the same thing.”
“What?” Bou-san said gently.
“Water,” she said. “A lake--it’s cold, and so deep. It’s as if I’m drowning, as if--” Naru popped into her mind, but not the Naru standing behind her. It was the smiling Naru, then one that lived in her dreams and visions. But she couldn’t talk about him. “There’s children too,” she realized, “a school, I think. We’re going there, on case. I guess the lake is nearby.”
Her heart clenched. Then again, then-- “Ow!” She bent over, hand going to her chest. She massaged her skin, gritting her teeth as her heart throbbed, clawed against her rib cage. He’d died--the boy she’d seen two years ago, he’d died-- She knew it, could feel it -- he’d come, just as the man said and he’d died--
“Mai!” A bright light flashed, and then she blinked, her eyes suddenly open. Bou-san hovered in front of her and she could feel someone’s hands on her shoulders -- Lin, she realized. “Are you all right?”
The pain was gone, completely gone. She couldn’t remember what she had seen as clearly either, the memory dulled as if it it’d been years instead of moments. “What happened?”
Lin spoke from behind her, “You read too deeply, would be my guess.” She could hear the scowl in his voice. “I believe you might have a talent for this.”
She would really rather be without it, Mai thought crossly, if this is what it brought. Bou-san moved away to grab a blanket for her. She could see the cards now and--she blinked--they were lined up perfectly in a row of five. Four kings with a queen in the middle.
“Maybe this wasn’t a good idea,” Ayako said off to the side. Mai looked up. Ayako looked worried. She tried a smile, hoping it’d ease her mind. From the lack of change of expression, she gathered it hadn’t.
“She won’t do it again,” Lin agreed. “It’s too dangerous without training.”
Mai ignored them after that in favor of wrapping the blanket around herself and snuggle deeper into the couch. Bou-san was still beside her and she hesitantly leaned against him, then let her head rest on his shoulder when he didn’t seem to mind.
The boy, she thought, the boy that the man had told her about two years ago. Could she have saved him if she hadn’t been scared off by the accuracy of the reading? He’d been alive, she knew that, just as she knew that he wasn’t alive any more. Then again, she’d only been twelve years old and still the ward of her teacher. What could she have done? How could she have convinced a teenager that his life was in danger?
Without realizing it, her eyes had begun drooping. The world faded as she dropped off, and for a moment, she stepped into that other world where the smiling Naru lived. He was waiting for her, looking sadder than she had ever seen him before.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he said.
What wasn’t my fault, she wanted to ask, but before she could, the dream world faded away and she was properly asleep.