36. "I've got something to tell you." She gestures for him to lean closer to her eye level, but upon doing so she pinches the bridge of his glasses and pulls them from his face. And before he realizes what she's done, she's running from him, laughing and twirling the sunglasses around in her fingers. Shizuo stands dumbfounded for moment, then races after her. Mai spins on her heels to check if he's following, then slips the glasses over her eyes and dances away, skipping and spinning on her toes. He's always been a fast runner, but Mai is petite and able to slip through spaces he can't.

She squeezes through a break in a chain link fence.

He vaults over it.

She darts between individuals in a crowd.

The crowd hastily moves aside for him.

She takes the stairs in the park.

He leaps down them.

And then he finally manages to seize her wrist at the bottom. Mai spins to face him with a teasing smile and pulls the glasses off her face and offers them back, eyes gleaming. "What's going on with you all of a sudden?" He asks, plucking the pair from her fingers and situating back over his nose where they belong. "You're awfully cheerful today."

"Do I need a reason?" She fiddles with the end of her braid, grinning and avoiding looking at him directly.

He likes it when she does that, he realizes. It's cute. He smiles and hesitantly reaches for her, trailing his fingers under her chin and tilting her face upward so he can kiss her. There's a warm, cinnamon smell about her he's never noticed before. Mai pulls away and grins up at him. "You're beautiful, Mai." Her face reddens and she turns away, stammering a nervous thank you along with a jumble of syllables he can't even understand, but he decides he doesn't care and pulls her close to him.

Her small frame expands and collapses as she takes a deep breath to calm herself. "I'm glad I met you. It's been almost half a year now, hasn't it?"

"Yeah, it has." And to think….a half a year ago, he thought she was just another woman coming into the office to plead on behalf of her deadbeat boyfriend.

-0-0-0-

Author's Notes: Sorry about the slower updates, I'm kinda hitting a minor writer's block for this one. I'd been writing and scrapping ideas for Chapter 36 and I just wasn't satisfied with any of them until I found this in my old notes. There may be a very short hiatus-(Emphasis on short: I can say with absolute certainty this break won't be any longer than a month. Not even a month, actually)-after this chapter so I can take some time to reevaluate where it is now and how to draw out the next segment.

This just seemed like a good point to pause and take a breather.

Thank you to my readers, reviewers, favoriters, and followers for sticking with me this far. I hope you enjoyed this chapter. You're all awesome!

Ghost Hunt is owned by Fuyumi Ono and Shiho Inada.

Durarara! is owned by Ryohgo Narita, Suzuhito Yasuda, and Akiyo Satorigi.