Lord, Im Trying To Save My Friend Today. Ill Risk My Life Fighting Against My Enemy. Please Spare My

Lord, I’m trying to save my friend today. I’ll risk my life fighting against my enemy. Please spare my friend.

opla is.. changing my brain chemistry..

Nobody understands the bond between a girl and the mediocre book she read when she was 13 years old.

I'm back on my Ghost Hunt bullshit and I just need people to appreciate all the different kinds of love and affection that are so openly displayed by all the characters through the original novels, the manga, and the anime (even if the anime ends before The Big Reveal.)

It hit me more than ever this read through just how much of an "Oh, that makes sense," moment the others go through when they realize Naru has been grieving Gene the whole time and how it affected his personality. Leaving aside Mai and Naru's personal dynamic at that point, the way Hosho, Ayako, John and Yasu show such genuine sympathy (despite just mercilessly dragging his ass when they confronted him about being Oliver Davis) shows how much they care, and what they do to express it, and the biggest part of that is making sure he knows he's not alone and he never has been, even after his parents show up. The Davis' pinpoint Hosho and Ayako as the two other adults who've supported Naru through thick and thin (when they didn't know him and had no obligation to keep coming when he called, because it takes so much for Naru to ask for help) and their gratitude is palpable on the page.

And that's not even getting into the way that, through all her own feelings, Mai tries to re-assured Masako that Naru never hated her for knowing immediately about Gene-- he just wasn't ready for *anyone* to know-- and yet, he took her comb in The Bloodstained Labyrinth as his own way of making sure she was still alive, knowing at any moment he could be seeing her death the way he saw Gene's--which shows how glad in *some way* he was that one person knew about Gene; knew why Naru was in Japan at all.

Ayako is another character whose affection for the others shines through, most obviously in Forbidden Past-time and Haunted Mansion. She drives everyone back to her apartment *literally drenched in blood*, lets them shower (and deals with Hosho sitting around in just a towel and shorts while his clothes wash) and then ends up passed out with John in sheer exhaustion. Then there's her sheer, stubborn love in Haunted Mansion, despite how (really, unfairly) scathing Hosho was of her almost for the whole book (and at least some of that is because he pushed her to do the exorcism instead of waiting for John, and there's got to be so much guilt there--he's more angry at himself than he is her, and I think, on this read-through, she knows that.)

What comes through for Naru, and really everyone by the end is that grief is just love trying to remember what it looks like in the dark, and that shared grief--like a chain of people holding hands, groping for the light switch--helps love remember itself just that much easier.

I've never seen a writer capture that sentiment better than Ono Fuyumi. Nothing her characters do ever feels out of character or beyond reason, especially once you find out what Naru's real deal is.

It will never not be a crime that the Ghost Hunt anime didn't finish out the novel series. That short little moment at the end of the Haunted Mansion/Cursed God anime adaption isnothing compared to how they all come together as a found family when Naru finally finds Gene, and is forced to reveal that he's actually Oliver Davis.

Not only that, but when I first read the eighth novel, Hosho putting all the pieces together about Naru's true identity felt antagonistic. On my third/fourth read-though, it didn't feel that way at all: in fact, it felt like Naru was letting Hosho say everything he couldn't bare to up to that point, and Naru just seems... relieved. Relieved and a bit proud, because he genuinely did very little other than being his sarcastic, cynical self to hide who he was.

More than that, even though Mai tries to stay on the sidelines because she's dealing with all her own feelings, she can still see how grateful Naru's parents are that he and Lin weren't really alone -- they know how much having other adults around to back Lin up and occasionally put Naru in his place means and are so, so grateful for Hosho and Ayako.

The Feels. They kill me.