I can do this. It was easy actually. A normal case, and all the monitors and equipment to be set up and –

That was it; we fell into the usual routine, like nothing happened. The same old – like he never left, and I never confessed and my heart wasn't something handled indelicately.

To be honest – out of sight out of mind was a pretty good adage for about a month in. I'm no desolate, despairing, weepy girl and I won't let him reduce me to tears for longer than necessary. Especially since I had my own life to sort out. I knew how to be independent and it wasn't like we weren't friends-of-a-sort. I wasn't going to be petty or pining.

So what was this heavy feeling that had slowly been building in my chest?

It was him; it was always him. No matter what he might think – or hadn't thought, knowing him – about it. I loved him. And it wasn't some stupid schoolgirl crush or fantasy, or some misguided and displaced affection.

This is why it kills me, literally kills me, to be in the same room as him.

We have conversations and I smile and talk and laugh amongst everyone in the group.

And I count and tally every time he talks to a girl that isn't me. I berate myself when I have nothing to add to a conversation. I fade into the background and obscurity; a spectator in what I wanted to be included in.

Was it always this way?

Was I always like this? Did I always have nothing important to say? Was he always this harsh?

Why does talking with him…being around him…leave me with such a well of self-doubt?

I watch as other girls are able to make competent conversation with him, it doesn't matter that I consider them my closest friends, it doesn't matter that we're all friends… all together in one big group… I still feel inadequate next to their wits and experience and I hate myself for feeling this way.

I talk with others in the group and I can almost feel him judging me – hell, I'm judging me – and coming up with the ditz, the idiot, the girl who just laughs and smiles and says stupid things.

So I had to get out of that room.

If I stay away from him, I can stop with these bad feelings that I never used to have. I can find my friends, hang out, laugh unexpectedly, and forget about him.

So why am I still thinking about him…?


Witch: Yeah basically love stinks. I've gotten into Ghost Hunt fanfiction, been reading for a little bit, then I met up unexpectedly with the guy I confessed to (who turned me down) just before he left for uni. Sound familiar?

Yeah, the parallels struck me too. Frick. I'm the stinking tragic heroine of a manga. And that was yesterday.

So I put down my thoughts in a Word Doc and this is what I came up with. A first first-person fic(I think) about what Mai feels when Noll comes back to Japan unexpectedly and immediately whisks her on a case. The case where there's that secret detective that thinks Noll killed Gene(because even though I don't have/haven't read the novels doesn't mean I don't try to keep my fandoms as canon as possible). When I got into this fandom a couple of years I never expected to revisit it in the form of fanfiction, and certainly didn't expect to have gone through the same thing as Mai when I did.

Love, manga and a love of manga move in mysterious ways peoples.