A/N: Okay, so I don't know why my formatting keeps messing up, but thank you to those of you who let me know. Here is the chapter again, and hopefully it is readable this time.

Chapter Twenty – Who Are We?

Mai could not take her eyes off of it. She did not understand. Nothing was making sense anymore. Just when she thought she had solved the problem, figured out who she was and where she came from, something new had to destroy her growing sense of identity.

When she had first laid eyes on the image, she had not known what she was looking for. It just looked like a random picture of a group of children, except Yasuhara had scrawled a huge red circle around and around two faces – two identical faces.

They were young, so young that maybe, just maybe, Mai thought, it wasn't who she thought it was. Maybe they were just a pair of twins who resembled her and her sister. It was hard to tell at such a young age.

"This doesn't mean anything!" Mai declared, pushing the photograph back at Naru. She tried to force conviction in her voice, but she ended up sounding more angry than certain. She stood abruptly, brushing nonexistent dust from her short khaki skirt. She wanted to storm off, but something held her there. Maybe it was the new level of maturity she felt she'd acquired since Naru's recent rejection. Or maybe it was something else.

"Mai, be reasonable," Naru snapped, sending her a sharp look that made her pause her hands and narrow her eyes at him.

"Reasonable?" Mai questioned in a soft and incredulous voice. She threw her hands up. She felt like the air was warming around her, making her blood boil. "Reasonable?! What does that mean, Oliver? None of this is reasonable! All it is is … is… speculation!" Mai jabbed a finger at the photo, at the two toddler faces circled in bright red. She knew she was losing herself in her emotions, but she did not stop herself, not even when her teacup toppled from its perch on the side table and shattered at her feet. "Those girls are obviously the children of Yuuki and Sam, of course they look like me because Yuuki looked like me. It means absolutely nothing! I grew up hours away in a small home with my mother and my father and my sister and …"

Mai stopped there, because there was nothing more for her to say. She had so few memories of when she was young, so she couldn't really tell much more about her life at such a young age. But there was one thing she did know. She took a deep breath, closing her eyes and trying to cool herself, quite literally. Finally, when she no longer felt that the air around her was boiling her skin and blood, she spoke again.

"I know who my mother was, and she was not Yuuki. There is no way that I came from that orphanage. It is just a huge coincidence."

Mai opened her eyes. Naru was watching her with an expression she'd never seen on his face before. It was something between wariness and … interest? When he'd seen she had calmed down he leaned forward, resting his chin delicately on his folded hands in front of him. He studied her intently and unabashedly.

Mai's cheeks reddened and she glanced down to avoid his eyes. She blinked down at the shattered glass and sticky tea pooling at her feet. "Did I do that?"

Mai did not remember knocking the tea to the floor. She vaguely remembered hearing it crash, but not of actually knocking it over. Then again, she had been waving her hands about carelessly.

Naru did not answer her question. He simply leaned back in his chair and sighed, kneading his temple with his pointer finger.

"I'll clean it up," Mai said quietly.

…..

When Mai returned to the room after cleaning the mess she had made, she was holding a new steaming cup of tea and had something small cupped in her other hand. Naru couldn't help but to relax a little at the sight of the tea Mai had made for him, but he could not release all of his tension.

Mai placed the tea on the table next to him and then held her other hand out. Hesitantly, Naru reached out and felt her drop something small in his open palm.

"You looked like you had a headache," Mai admitted, sitting down on the couch across from him. "I thought you might like some medicine."

Naru had to fight the instinct to smile. He smirked instead, not holding back his naturally teasing tone. "Paying close attention to me, are you? Well, I can't blame you. I am quite attractive."

Mai scowled at him, but it was a much more serious expression than his teasing called for. He hated to see her genuinely upset (usually his teasing made her mad, but an entertaining sort of mad), but he was also glad to see her being expressive again instead of holding on to that too-bright smile she'd been wearing when the rest of the group had been there.

The temperature seemed to drop suddenly, and Naru narrowed his gaze at his young assistant. But she simply breathed heavily out of her mouth and looked up at him steadily. The chill in the air seemed to die away.

"You know," Naru drawled, "We could easily prove this isn't you and your sister in this photo, if it is indeed true."

"What? How?"

"Simple." Naru smirked. He loved it when he figured something out before her and got to tease her. Not because it proved he was smarter, he already knew he was smarter than most, but because he loved to see her frustration. "Do you have any photos of you with your family before you were four years old?"

…..

"I should have something in here …" Mai trailed off as she ducked her head underneath her bed. Naru took the chance to glance around the small room.

He could tell that Mai was eager to prove his speculation wrong, that she wanted to immediately show that she was indeed not the same girl as was in the orphanage photo. He knew this because she had brought him directly to her tiny apartment in search of a photo, and, as far as he knew, Mai had never ever felt comfortable inviting anyone over to her apartment before.

Naru was not taking this opportunity for granted. If she was going to let him see her apartment then he was going to use it as a chance to further study her. Not because he was interested in the young girl, he told himself, but because he wanted to solve the mystery around her past and the abilities that seemed to be surfacing.

But there was very little he could use here to understand that. In fact, he was coming to think that Mai knew very little about her own past and her abilities, so it seemed unlikely that her apartment would reveal any clues.

Still, he took the chance to glance around. The apartment was small, just a living room/dining room/kitchenette in the front with a tiny bedroom and adjoined bathroom in the back. He had never really imagined what Mai's apartment would have looked like, but he should have known it would be small. He was her employer, so he knew how much she made. After paying for tuition and groceries and utilities, a small apartment would be all she could likely afford.

And although the apartment itself wasn't all that nice looking, Mai had kept it in good order, making the inside appear much more homey, and even luxurious, than it in actuality was. Naru made a note to consider offering a raise to his young assistant in the coming months. He might be proud, but he wouldn't be unfair with his pay. He had the money to offer her anyways.

So, he couldn't say he was surprised that her apartment was so small or that it was located on the outskirts of a poorer neighborhood. He would admit, however, that he was surprised by how organized his young assistant really was. And it wasn't often that Naru would admit to being surprised. Clothes, and there weren't all that many of those, were stored either in a small hamper in the corner or hung in her closet neatly. Her bed was made with the corners of the sheets folded almost as though she'd been trained in the military to do so. When Naru glanced through the open bathroom door, he made note that all of her things were not scattered about on the bathroom counter but stored out of sight.

Oliver Davis allowed his eyes to scan the little bedroom. There was a shelf in the corner where Mai had stored her books and a few photos within frames. These books, Naru noticed, were not the shojo manga and romance novels he had expected. Many of them were research books or classics, one or two even in English. He wondered briefly if she had actually read these, as he was pretty certain she had told him she could not speak English very well.

The photos Naru recognized immediately. They were of the SPR group primarily. There was even one with Naru himself in it.

While Mai continued to climb beneath her bed in search of whatever she was looking for, Naru stepped up to the bookshelf. He did not crouch to look at the one photo that contained faces he did not recognize, but he did bend slightly at the waist. The photo had a young girl who appeared to be Mai with a young woman and man on either side.

Naru picked it up from it's place low on the shelf, pushed back as though Mai had meant for it to be hidden and private.

"Mai," he spoke, holding the frame up closer to his face, "Are these your parents?"

"What? – Ow!" Mai exclaimed, her voice muffled from her place beneath the bed. Naru turned and watched the girl emerge, rubbing the back of her head where she had likely smacked it on her way out. She stood, holding a little wooden box in her hands.

Although Oliver Davis did not show emotion, he could read them well. That was how he noticed Mai's tensed posture the moment she noticed what Naru held in his hands. But, unlike his brother, Naru did not have the abilities of a medium, nor did he have the instincts that Mai seemed to possess, so he could not decipher why, exactly, that she seemed so uncomfortable at him holding the picture.

Slowly, Mai laid the box on her bed. She nodded.

"And this is you? You're – what? – six here?"

"Well, actually, since you know about Mei, I guess I can tell you. It's my sister. I – I guess I just thought it was right to have at least one picture, but people don't know I have – had – a sister, so …" She shrugged.

Naru studied the picture for a moment more, taking note of the woman and the man's dark black hair and pale skin, and how this contrasted with the bright brown-haired girl in the middle. He chose to say nothing though as he place the photo back where he had got it.

When he turned back to his assistant, she was rummaging through her box. "These are all the pictures I have," she explained, "There has to be one in here somewhere." The last part was spoken softly, and Naru knew she was not talking to him. Still, he kept his eyes trained on her.

Time passed and still Mai said nothing. She simply continued to flip through photos, over and over again. Naru was becoming impatient. He had better things to do with his time, and he was just about to say so when Mai gave a loud sigh and dropped down onto her bed. She let the photos scatter at her feet.

When Mai put her head in her hands, Naru had to fight the instinct to go to her. He was startled at the feeling which overcame him, even if it were only for the shortest second.

His mind replayed the memory of Mai calling to his twin brother in her sleep, and that did the trick, doing away with whatever instinct he'd had a moment ago.

"I can't prove it, Naru," Mai was saying, hands still hiding her face from view. "I –" she stuttered for a second. Finally, she looked up and caught his eye, holding it intensely. But it wasn't the kind of intensity Oliver Davis was secretly hoping for, deep deep down where even he would not acknowledge it. It was a desperate and broken sort of intensity. "I can't prove that I've always been with my parents, that they eve are my parents. I – I can't prove Mei and I aren't the ones in the orphanage picture."