The Mystery
She doesn't know, sometimes, why
she feels this way around Loki-kun.
Mayura has been around long enough and caught enough muttered comments
from her father to know that she has the sixth sense of a paper towel. (And not a cursed paper towel, like the one
she read about last week, even though Loki-kun had just rolled his eyes and
said she wasn't allowed to see American tabloids any longer.) She thinks sometimes that that's part of why
she likes to search for her mysterious mysteries.
There's something, she thinks,
that exists beyond what most people see in life. There are things that can only go unexplained because most people
don't even realize that they occur. She
grew up in a Shinto temple and has learned much about how to care for that
temple, but she's just as aware that her father doesn't believe in
spirits. Of course, she's also finally
realized that it's probably because he can sense them and is afraid of them
that he denies their existence. She was
annoyed, at first, to realize that her father could see so much more than she
could, that he could see what she wanted to see all her life. Then, seeing the fear in his eyes when he
seemed to be looking at something that wasn't there, she realized that her
father probably wanted just as badly to see as little as she did.
When she first met Loki, she was surprised that a child could be a detective. She nearly declared him a mysterious mystery right there and then, but something kept her quiet. Something in her told her that she'd learn much more about him if she watched and waited and didn't say anything until she was fairly sure of what she knew. Even then, she realized after a time, he would probably just smile and laugh and tell her that it wasn't something that she needed to know or worry about. It annoyed her that he would act superior to her. No matter who he was. No matter what he was. No one, she thought, had the right to act superior to someone else that way. People were designed to work together and help each other. Even if he was a higher class than she was, and better at most things than she was, and (honestly) prettier than she was (to the point that she worried about that Higashiyama-kun, but that was another thought for another day.)
Of course, after a good amount of time, the things she knew amounted to: Yamino (and presumably Loki) know a lot about Norse mythology. Loki has a stick and summons it not unlike that girl in that show who has cards and a friend who has a camera and follows her around. Loki and Yamino are cousins except they're not. Loki is rich (she was not out of it enough to not understand how much money a house like that in the middle of Tokyo would cost). Loki, despite declaring firmly that he was not interested in mysterious mysteries, was.
After extensive consultation of a book about Norse myths, she came to a few more conclusions. The seaweed spring made much more sense. Freyr also made much more sense. Loki probably did not know he had named himself after a god who had borne children and probably slept his way into Asgard. She hoped. Though, given Loki…Of course, that was when it occurred to her to wonder why Loki didn't have a last name, which brought on more interesting questions such as who his parents were, why he was living in Tokyo, and why he never went to school. All of which pointed to one thing and one thing only. Loki wasn't normal. …which she'd figured out anyway.
It was frustrating, she found, to see more and more things happen and not know why or how they were happening. To not know who the people around her might be, because she didn't think they were who they said they were. The biggest mystery was all around her…and she couldn't solve it.
Until she saw the Boy. It didn't, of course, make sense at first. She didn't think of boys that showed up and smiled as mysteries. She didn't think of them much at all, really, which was probably why she was Koutarou-kun's friend rather than just another face in the crowd. It was only later, weeks later, that it came to her.
It was as she'd thought. If she asked, he wouldn't say anything more than he'd already said. "Boku wa boku." So she waited again, because, she'd learned, a mystery that was solved wasn't the same as one that was still waiting to be solved, and she didn't want to know what might happen if she told Loki the answer to this one.
***
"Loki-kun?"
"Yes, Mayura?"
"Who are you?"
A smile. "I'm me."
A/N: "the Boy" is Kakusei!Loki. …and I really think that if Mayura, even anime Mayura, stopped to think, she'd know who Loki was. She's not stupid, just unobservant. The ending is almost verbatim from episode two of the anime. This is an anime-based fic (though I've only seen through 19, so if Mayura finds out in canon, this will obviously be AU). I won't base stuff on the manga, because my extent of knowledge of the manga is what's been scanslated by HemuLoki, who are the most wonderful people ever.
