"Try" by Pink
(A.N) This was hard for me to write. Sad Mai is just hard. :/ But, anyways, I still haven't decided on the song for Part III! Any and all suggestions are welcome, non-English works included as long as there is an English translation available. I hope you enjoy this installment!
It was lunch time for Mai Taniyama. Feeling moody, as she often was of late, she chose to take her meager lunch to the roof for some quiet time. She loved her friends to death, but… Well, Mai had a lot on her mind.
It's all that idiot narcissist's fault!
Mai hadn't been to the SPR office for weeks. She knew that, technically, it was closed and everything, but there hadn't been any cases in a while. Madoka had told her that there was no need for her to come in if there was no work to be done. So, she had been sent on her way, though she still got paid the same fee as she would have if she'd been working. Mai was generally uncomfortable with this, but Madoka wouldn't budge and the money appeared in Mai's accounts despite her protestations.
School took up most of her time now. Mostly because she had so much to catch up on. Unfortunately, she found it incredibly hard to focus. She couldn't help but think about her "real" boss, Naru. Or should she start thinking of him as Oliver Davis? She wasn't sure anymore.
Then again, Mai wasn't sure of much anymore.
She thought about him all the time. It was bordering on obsessive. She knew that. But she just couldn't help it. She wondered about what he was doing. She wondered if he was alright. She wondered why he hadn't just told her and the others his real name from the beginning. She wondered why he had just kept lying to and misleading her.
Mai wondered, in particular, why on earth he thought she was in love with his dead twin brother. Stupid Naru, she fumed silently, kicking the concrete wall lining the roof in frustration. Pain immediately zinged up her leg. "Ow!" she grumbled indignantly.
Settling her aching foot under her, Mai finally sat, though she made not move to eat. Maybe it's better to just stop asking why. It's not like Naru would explain it to me anyway. Naru would insult her in all sorts of dry, sarcastic ways if she voiced any of these questions to him.
The young woman gazed out over the landscape. It was chilly enough that she was wearing a coat over her uniform. It was probably too cold to be eating outside, but it hadn't snowed yet. She felt that, until the snow came, there was no pressing reason why she couldn't keep coming to the roof. She didn't like winter. She found it bleak and colorless. Plus, she and ice didn't get along very well.
Not event the chill in the air could cool the fire that burned in her chest. She couldn't pin down if it was anger or desire or something else she couldn't name. And while she couldn't quite decide what it was, she burned, and it hurt.
She thought, for the first couples weeks, that it hurt so much that she was going to die.
But, at the end of each day, she realized that it hurt a little less.
She got up every day and tried as hard as she could to be happy because she knew that, as bad as rejection felt (not to mention the empty place in her chest which never seemed to ever be filled), she would feel better eventually.
Of course, that didn't mean that she didn't want Naru to come back.
In fact, she thought about him coming back all the time. Even dreamed about it. The previous night, she'd had a rather mundane dream about Naru having Lin make all the arrangements. Which, of course, made sense. Naru rarely got his hands dirty with ordinary details.
She couldn't believe that she fell for him as easily as she did. Why could she "unfall" for him just as easily? She couldn't believe that she'd been duped by every single lie about who he was and what he was doing in Japan. She should have known that something wasn't right.
He never lied to you about anything else though, just his background. It was that insidious little voice, different than her intuition, nagged. She tried to ignored it as much as possible. She felt that was the quickest way to work her way out of the emotional mess she'd become.
And week after week, she realized that she could force herself not to think about him more effectively. She could forget for a little when she was doing something with her friends or working really hard on impossible math make-up assignments. It was just every now and then, like today, when she couldn't help but reflect.
I wonder if, when he comes back…?
Mai bit her lip and folded her arms over her chest, brow furrowing. Maybe when Naru came back, she could try with him again? After all, he couldn't argue with her (or use Gene as a defense) if she tried again. Though she wasn't sure that she could take a second round of rejection.
There had to be something she could do to stop the burning.
She wondered, frowning, if it was too late. Maybe she'd ruined everything by speaking up. Too soon, she chastised herself. It was an old argument she'd been having with herself for going on two months now. It usually coincided with a pep talk. You are not going to just "get by" in life! You are going to enjoy it! With or without that stupid narcissist!
Mai was always good at cheering herself up. Her shoulders squared, and her head was held higher. There was no reason why she couldn't be happy, even if she knew that she would have been just a tiny bit happier if Naru had… Ah, just stop thinking about it, dummy!
She tucked her dark brown hair behind her ears and looked over at her untouched lunch box, checking her watch right after. She still had time to get back to the classroom to eat with Michiru and the others.
Mai gathered her things. She wasn't a quitter. It was time to start planning her grand operation on how to convince Naru of her sincerity when he came back.
Nothing was going to get better if she didn't get up and try.
Operation: Oliver Twist would commence as soon as he arrived back in the office!
(A.N.) I know it's not very long, but I hope you liked it anyway! Please, please, please drop me a review and let me know what you think! Cheers, darlings!