A/N: This is kind of stupid but I just needed to procrastinate, ahaha. Takes place about a month or two before GH canon starts.

It was just a normal spring afternoon. There was no particular reason behind his decision to take a detour through the children's section of the library that day. Nostalgia, perhaps, or even mere impulse. As he ambled through the low, wooden bookshelves, the thin stripes and bright colors lining them assaulted his eyes, a surrealist landscape to a mind that had become all too accustomed to thinking of libraries as endless corridors of towering metal frames filled with old, greying covers.

It was only a few minutes in before he realized the idea had been a terrible one; the colorful photos of frogs and the cheerful illustrations of planets and lightbulbs dragged out unwanted memories—memories of a simpler time when planetary pull was nothing short of magic; and who needed real magic when your twin could speak to dead people? Did you know? I found Lord Byron yesterday, and he told me about this one time… The look on Luella's face when Gene had recounted the story was horror incarnate; where did you pick up that kind of language, young man? 'No summoning dead Casanovas until you're eighteen' became a house rule after that.

Lost in thought, he almost walked right by it. As it was, he'd already taken three steps past the offense in question before he had to physically backtrack to take another look at the glaring problem with the bookshelf to his left. The problem in question was a small, well-worn dark blue picture book with pages that were wrinkled at the edges, sitting smugly on the featured displays right between a brand new hardcover titled Gravity and another that read Laws of Motion. Ten Classic Ghost Stories for Kids, the book proclaimed. He checked the shelf again just to make sure; yes, this was the nonfiction section.

Kids, he thought scathingly as he reached for the thin volume, flipping through the pages. Weren't they taught to put a book back in its proper place after reading it these days? And the absurdity of the stories was incredible. He'd yet to see a ghost that actually looked like a shapeless blob covered in a white sheet. Did anyone actually find these scary? Was this really the sort of thing normal kids found interesting? He flipped through the other nine stories just to make sure.

It was only begrudgingly that he made his way to the library again two weeks later. Trips to the newspaper archives were never pleasant, and it wasn't because he only ever needed to go through them for the obituaries, no. It certainly wasn't because he'd come to associate the square, black print and fragile, dust-colored paper with endless lists of names and dates and names and dates and descriptions of people who didn't exist anymore. In a way, they were lucky. Print was immortality. But when, when, had research and discovery become this?

Regardless, what had to be done, had to be done, and he ignored the square characters that swam across his field of vision even after he slammed the last binder shut and stood up. Strictly speaking, he didn't need to go through the children's nonfiction section to get back to the entrance, but it wasn't exactly farther, either, he reasoned. And the hideous rainbow array would at least wash away the hours bent over the stiff black-and-white lettering of the obituaries.

Out of sheer curiosity, he slipped into the physics section just to check if that collection of ghost stories was still there. Of course, the probability was slim to none, since it was hideously out of place, and the librarians must have noticed. Or even if they hadn't, some snot-nosed brat who couldn't tell the difference between a microbolometer and an actinometer had probably mistaken it for an actual science book and taken it home. But, still, he checked, because he dealt in absolutes, not conjecture.

It wasn't there.

Instead, in its place, someone had lovingly arranged another grossly out-of-place volume titled The Haunted House, complete with watercolor illustrations of an amusingly anthropomorphic building. That wasn't it, either; there was another one, The Floating Pumpkin Head, by the section about dolphins. It was proof beyond doubt; someone was doing this on purpose.

It would be an exaggeration to say that he'd made a trip to the library just to see if someone with, apparently, a lot of free time had continued their absurd endeavor of misplacing books from the fiction section on the nonfiction shelves. He did, after all, have legitimate work to do here. Granted, he could have done it later, but procrastination was hardly among the seven virtues. And granted, he didn't necessarily need more reference books for it, but it never hurt to have more sources.

If that had been his goal, though, he would have been sorely disappointed; only the regular collection of nonfiction greeted him that day. He scanned the displays of all the bookshelves, even ducking down briefly to check the shelves themselves just in case another Floating Pumpkin Head had been stealthily camouflaged between the other thin paperbacks. Still no luck.

With an indifferent shrug, he was just about to head toward his actual destination when a rustling sound from a few shelves over caught his attention. He turned his head to size up the intruder, who looked every bit as out of place in this section as The Floating Pumpkin Head. She was perhaps middle school age, wearing short brown hair and a furtive glance around the narrow space that seemed to mean that she thought she was being stealthy. How that could be possible when the wooden shelves didn't even come up to her shoulder, he didn't know, but they did say that ignorance was bliss.

"Those look like fascinating books," he remarked out loud once she was within earshot. "But last I checked, the children's fiction section was on a different floor."

The middle school girl's eyes flew to him with shock, and she almost lost her grip on one of the books she was holding; evidently, she hadn't spotted him. "Huh?" She said blankly.

"The Spirit in the Valley," he quoted, reading off the title of one of the volumes in her hands. "That certainly sounds relevant to…" He cast a quick glance at the shelves to check which section they were in. "Astronomy."

"What?" She answered with a nervous laugh. "No, I mean—uh, yes, I love the astronomies—er, the planets!"

"Right," he said dryly. "Almost as much as the library staff loves re-shelving misplaced books, I'm sure."

If possible, she looked even more nervous. "Ahh… Yes… Of course… They must really…"

"Incidentally, I noticed a copy of Ten Ghost Stories for Children around here the other day," he commented off-handedly.

"It wasn't me!" She blurted out, then immediately looked aghast. He raised an eyebrow.

"Did I say it was?"

"Okay, okay, it was me." The middle schooler said begrudgingly, her shoulders sinking in defeat. "Don't tell anyone? Please? I won't do it anymore.

"So you did know you were being a nuisance," he said with a quiet scoff.

She lifted her head to frown at him indignantly. "I'm not trying to be a nuisance. I mean, it's not like I wanted to cause trouble. I just thought it would be kind of nice if a kid saw one of these in the science section and got to keep believing that it is real science for a little longer. You know, kinda like Santa Claus?"

"You're willfully spreading misinformation," he pointed out.

"They're kids," she objected. "Kids should have fun. And aren't ghost stories and haunted houses fun? I mean, haven't you ever wished that spirits could be real or something?"

"No," he said bluntly.

She scowled. "You must be fun at parties."

"Certainly."

The girl fixed him with an intent stare, as if trying to evaluate whether he was being serious or merely joking. After a few seconds, she seemed to give up and folded her arms with a huff. "So, are you planning to tell?"

"Tell what?" He asked, checking his wristwatch indifferently. "You just have a keen interest in…" He gave the shelves beside him another disparaging glance. "Astronomy books for primary school students, right?"

A wide grin broke across her face. "Yes!"

"It probably does suit your level of literacy," he conceded. The grin on her face promptly melted back into indignation, but before she could respond, he turned away. "At any rate, I don't have any more time to be wasting here. Try not to misplace any more books."

"Try not being such a stick in the mud," she called from behind. He didn't look back to confirm, but he suspected she'd stuck her tongue out at him, too. He didn't have a chance to check, anyways; the corner of the hallway had come up, and he rounded it without hesitation, falling back into the comfort of more familiar walls. The exchange faded quickly from his memory, no more than another tiny drop in the flow of time. It was just another spring afternoon.

He realized, idly, several days later, as nothing more than a passing thought, that he had never asked for her name; reporting her would have been impossible anyways, even if he'd been so inclined. But, he figured, it would have just been a waste of breath. After all, he doubted they'd ever meet again.

A/N: A silly idea that popped into my head, and also because dramatic irony is one of my favorite things. I do realize I'm stretching the boundaries of suspension of disbelief here since the probability that Mai could have run into Naru shortly before meeting him and not recognized him again is pretty slim, especially given how she goes on and on and on about how attractive he looks from day one, but, ack, whatever. (Though, honestly, I am calling unreliable narrator on this count. Is Naru really that attractive? And is everyone really making that much of a fuss over him? Above average looks, maybe. Supermodel-grade, even, possibly. But, really, Mai, 'melting moonlight inside the twilight abyss'? I sense bias here. (I couldn't even make that up if I tried. That is copy/pasted straight from the unofficial English translations of the novels.) (And I am only half-kidding with this whole argument.)