Adrien ran down the C-Deck promenade, hair tousled, jacket dishelmed and teary eyes. Angry, furious and wanting to end it all, he didn't bother to say one final "excuse me" to Mrs. Iris Burnside, whom he bumped into. The shocked Mrs. Burnside dropped her jaw into the shape of an "O" when Adrien's right shoulder brushed against her left. He rushed through the second class promenade, not even bothering the people below his class who watched him pass by, unaware of his troubles.
Marinette, smoking a cigar and thinking about her dream boy throughout the starry sky, saw a flash of yellow pass her. Curious to investigate, she followed him to the stern on slow footsteps.
Unable to stop in time, Adrien slammed against the base of the stern flagpole and held onto it, panting. He stared out at the black water that was the Labrador Current. It was as black as death...the death of himself.
Perhaps I'll drown, he thought morbidly. Maybe the propellers will hack me to pieces.
Adrien stood like a figurehead in reverse as he looked down at the name "Lusitania Liverpool" adorning the stern. He climbed above the railing as quietly as he could be, took one last look at the ship and turned slowly to look down at the water being churned by the four propellers. He felt almost against the thought at first, but he had ultimately decided his fate. He was just about to throw herself when a high pitched voice broke the silence.
"What are you doing?"
Adrien turned his face over his right shoulder at the navy haired girl he had seen earlier. They were the only two on the stern, save for two sailors; Thomas O'Mahoney and Herbert Fleming. Taking in her features, he recognized her and before either of them could mention where they first saw each other before. Marinette resumed her voice.
"If you're doing what I think you are doing, I'd advise you not to do it."
She extended her right hand towards him.
"Give me your hand," she said in a motherly tone. "I'll pull you back over."
Adrien whipped his face back down towards the water.
"Don't come any closer! I'll let go."
"No you won't."
Adrien looked over his left shoulder again, confused as though an epiphany struck his head.
"What do you mean I won't? You don't know anything about me, now go away!"
Marinette shook her head, she removed her shawl and prepared to remove her heels.
"I can't just walk away and pretend like nothing happened. If you let go, I will have to jump in after you."
"Don't be silly," Adrien nodded in denial, wiping the tears from his face. "You'll be killed."
"It may be a twenty foot drop, but I am a good swimmer."
"A twenty foot drop is enough to kill you, even in the water."
"I'm not saying that it would hurt," said Marinette, taking off her right shoe. "But it hurts even more when you feel the cold water."
She plopped her right boot down on the deck. The sound of the shoe hitting the deck caught Adrien's attention. A picture was forming inside his head, a picture of ice.
"How cold?" he asked after three seconds passed.
"Freezing," she said like it was nothing serious. "Maybe thirty degrees below zero. We should be over the wreck of the Titanic by now...or, so I think."
She stood up after removing her left boot, now her pale pink socks were exposed.
"As much as I find hypothermia to be a 'chilling' subject. I remember back in China, I grew up near Lanzhou, when I was five, me, my mother and father went fishing on the Huáng Hé, or the Yellow River as your country calls it."
This was all new to Adrien, speaking to an obviously Chinese girl was the start of an eye-opening experience.
"I've never fished before," he said, despairingly.
"I see," Marinette spoke with doctoral tones. "You're an indoor boy. But let me remind that once you touch the water, it hits you a hundred pin needles attached to your body. You can't breathe or think about anything but the pain...so how about it?"
She slowly extended her right towards his left, and Adrien, finally accepting the reality of the situation, took her hand and turned around. Their eyes were locked onto each other and somehow they seemed to fill his entire universe.
"Anyway...I'm Marinette Cheng."
"I am Adrien Agreste."
"I guess I'll have to write that one down."
Adrien chuckled, not having felt this sense of humor before his mother died. He lifted his right foot onto the rail, then the next, and finally he was on top of her. His balance started to slip and Marinette shrieked, fearing he would crushed by his seemingly muscular weight. Herbert Fleming and Thomas O'Mahoney heard the scream and headed for the stern just as Marinette, awkwardly clutching Adrien, fell to the deck with a plop. With their eyes locked tighter than before Adrien beamed a silly smile at Marinette's face of shock. She was feeling dazed and disoriented from her head colliding with the deck.
"What is all this?" asked Fleming when he reached the flagpole.
Marinette's dress was torn, and the hem was pushing up above her knees, showing one ripped stocking. He looks at Adrien, the first class boy with his jacket out of shape, the steerage girl clearly in distress, and started to draw conclusions.
"Don't move," O'Mahoney glared at Adrien and turned to Fleming. "Find the master-at-arms."
Twenty minutes later, Adrien was being detained by Mr. William Williams, one of the two masters-at-arms serving aboard the ship. Marinette sat on the deck, wrapped in her shawl as Charles Frohman offered her a cup of brandy, which she declined. Chloé was there, distressed by Adrien's alleged actions.
"How could you do such a thing, Adrikins? Especially at your age? What made you think you could put your hands on that girl?"
She pushed against his face for further interrogation.
"Was it lust? Was it...passion? Was it..."
"An accident," Adrien replied. "I made a foolish decision by coming over here. I swallowed an overdose of the sea air and I nearly slipped when I went to the flagpole."
He indicated his head to the aforementioned pole.
"I was leaning far over to see the propellers. They felt pretty fascinating, how they worked and all and I was curious I just slipped, and I would have gone overboard, but Miss Cheng here saved my life, nearly at the cost of her own."
Chloé looked at Marinette and immediately saw that she was Chinese. Although China was just about as neutral as America around this time, she saw them as nothing more than a useless race only fit for building railroads.
"So you wanted to see the propellers?" she asked again out of curiosity.
Adrien nodded, and Frohman, a Broadway playwright having travelled across the sea many times before, had some knowledge of naval technology.
"Boys and machinery do not mix," he uttered.
Mr. Williams looked over Adrien's left shoulder and asked brutally.
"Was that the way of it?"
Adrien and Marinette exchanged winks, intent on keeping the real events a secret.
"That's exactly how it went," Marinette replied.
"Well, I say the girl is hero then," Frohman said proudly. "Good for you, miss. Now how about another drink?"
Mr. Williams removed the cuffs from Adrien's wrists and Marinette got to her feet as Chloé escorted Adrien back inside.
"Shouldn't I also have little...reward of sorts?" Marinette asked in a reminding tone.
Chloé was rarely a generous girl, but thought that an exception wouldn't hurt after several other moments in her life where she rewarded a few other people with money at the last minute of changing her mind.
"Sabrina, I think $20 should do it?"
"Is that all you can give her after she saved my life?" Adrien was displeased. "The least you can do is give a poor girl like something even greater."
He was thankful that Marinette did not hear the "P" word. Then, Chloé thought of even generous idea. She turned back to Marinette and appraised her condescendingly.
"Perhaps you can join us for dinner sometime during this voyage. Then you can tell us all about your heroic tale."
Marinette was feeling even luckier. Dinner with a troupe of rich folks seemed like a delicious dream come true.
"Sure, count me in!"
Chloé, understanding this, turned to go, putting a protective arm around Adrien. She leaned close to Frohman as they walked away.
"This should be amusing," she muttered with spite.
As Sabrina turned to leave, Marinette whistled after her.
"Mind if I have a cigarette?"
Sabrina, while concerned about "modern women" like everyone else, happily tossed a silver cigarette to the Chinese girl, with a matchbox to go with it.
"Thank you," she said in her native Chinese.
Then Sabrina noticed something else, her eyes were darting down on Marinette's boots.
"You'll want to tie your shoes."
"Thanks for reminding me," chuckled Marinette as she knelt down.
"And yet there's one thing that puzzles me: How were you able to remove your shawl and shoes so quickly in the time it took for Adrien to slip so...suddenly?"
She smiled and left. Marinette went back under the promenade shelter, resuming her smoking and her thoughts.
Back in the Regal Suite, after telling Gabriel about the events that took shape in the past hour, Adrien decided, out of his own respect for Chloé, to sleep with her in Lady Allan's bedroom. He had just changed into his light blue pajamas when Chloé herself came into the room with a small box.
"I know you have been upset," she said sympathetically. "And I do not pretend to know why you decide to just jump off the ship after it leaves the port."
The box in her right hand was aiming at his face before it started to lower to the level of his own right.
"I was going to save this for the wedding, but I thought that now seemed like a good time, especially when one has his or her own wedding planned three years ahead of time."
She opened the box and inside
She opened the box and inside...was a ring. A black ring with the green paw print of a black cat in the cameo, a symbol of bad luck, even though neither of them believed in superstition.
"Good gracious," said Adrien numbly.
"I know," Chloé flirted. "Perhaps it's a reminder of how much you love cats."
She placed the ring on Adrien's right ring finger, staring at it.
"They say it was worn by the Egyptian cat goddess Bastet and they called it a Miraculous Stone."
"It is overwhelming," said Adrien, locked into the timeless details.
"It came from royalty and we are royalty, aren't we Adrien?"
Chloé wrapped her arms around his neck, her face demanding a kiss of "thank you". But Adrien kept observing the ring and when Chloé went to bed, he crept back to his cabin and wrote in his diary.
"Dear Diary,
I have decided to live on and make my life more meaningful, with or without Chloé. I met this girl named Marinette Cheng who pulled me back from the railing, and somehow I feel like she is better than everyone else I know, possibly due to the fact that she is from third class and she is Chinese, which is a pretty exotic country in the opinions of my fellow peers. Probably even more exotic than India where Nino comes from.
Additionally, Chloé gave me a wedding ring which she claims is from an Egyptian goddess. Black cats may be a superstition of bad luck, but it feels like something worse...a cold stone binding me to her. The original owner Bastet using her powers beyond mythology to have me and Chloé married all too soon. I think Chloé only gave me this gift to reflect the light back onto herself, to illuminate the greatness of her power as the daughter of a French politician.
And now it is time for bed.
See you in the morning,
Adrien"
Had he waited six more days, his suicide attempt would have been more appropriate. But of course, he didn't.