Chapter Thirteen
When the media announced the death of Adrien Agreste it was announced as a tragedy, an accident that shouldn't have happened. The young man just happened to find his way onto the roof and just happened to fall. It didn't matter what the cameras showed. It didn't matter that it was very apparent that each move was purposeful. It didn't matter that the footage showed Adrien stepping onto the edge of the roof, stepping off, smiling as he did so, no fear or regret in his eyes.
What was strange was the flickering and the static the cameras picked up. It seemed like Adrien was talking to someone before her fell, someone right beside him... Some people said that the poor boy was losing his mind after his mother disappeared. He didn't mean to kill himself. It was an accident. Others guessed there was a ghost.
The words 'Adrien Agreste is Next' became immortalized at the school, everyone talking about how the ghost got him. No one believed Adrien killed himself. Nino became obsessed with finding this ghost, looking for any school history about a girl named Marinette, the only clue Adrien had given him before he died. He didn't have to search long before he found leads. There were newspaper articles about the tragic death of Marinette Dupain-Cheng who seemingly killed herself after she was rejected by a guy she fell in love with. Nino was shocked that the school legend actually had a true origin story. His searching eventually lead him to a reporter named Alya Cesaire who happened to be Marinette's best friend. She told Nino about Marinette as a person and how she suspected Marientte's death was murder, listening to evidence from Alya's classmate, Lila. She reassured Nino that Marinette was a kind person, and even in death, she would be kind to Adrien. She was probably just incredibly lonely.
Eventually Adrien Agreste's death became old news and most everyone forgot about it. Society accepted that the young model would never grow up, and just be a young model forever. The one place that didn't forget was College Francoise Dupont.
Ten years after death of Adrien Agreste students were talking about the pair of ghosts that haunted the school. The story had been twisted over the years and no two retellings were ever the same but there were some things that stayed consistent. The general story everyone seemed to agree on was this: there was a female ghost, one who was incredibly beautiful. She died when she had her heartbroken and jumped off the school roof when she was rejected by some jerk. She then decided she would get her revenge and every year she chose a boy to lure to the roof to kill. It took twenty years but she finally seduced someone, the boy of her dreams, the love of her life, and lured him to the roof, possessing him and causing him to jump off. He now haunts the school, wandering the halls, trying to drive others insane so he's not the only one driven mad by a ghost. They would kill people unless they were appeased.
Of course this story couldn't be further from the truth. Neither Marinette or Adrien tried to kill anyone. They would spend their time guarding the students from more malicious spirits attempting to harm the school. They would sit in class and learn as much as they could. They would read books in the library, pouring over them for hours, discussing what they had read, leaving the books on the tables the next day for the librarian and other students to find. They would hold hands and sit on the roof together, watching the students in the courtyard go about their lives, wondering what they would be when they grew up. They liked it when the students talk about them, laughing at the myths the students had created. At least the myths would lead to their favorite day of the year.
On the last Friday of every October, in an attempt to appease the ghosts that supposedly haunted them, the students would gather on the roof and throw flowers off, getting anemone to signify death, mourning the ghost's lives, red roses since the reasons the ghosts died was because of love, foxglove to dispel evil, and tea rose, to signify they'd never forget the two that died. Once the flowers were gathered the students would go onto the roof and throw the flowers off. The tradition started out with just two or three students, but eventually it became a school sanctioned event. Once the flowers were thrown everyone would go home, no one allowed on campus so the ghosts could pick up the flowers in peace.
Adrien and Marinette would gather the flowers and present their bouquets to one another, smiling as they did so. They both decided being dead wasn't so bad since they got to spend it with the one they loved.
The bouquets would mysteriously appear on two particular desks every year, the one where Marinette had sat as a student, and the one where Adrien sat. The fresh flowers from the day before would be completely dead, dried, like they had been dead for years. Occasionally someone would see two students sitting on a bench in the courtyard, pouring over a Shakespearian textbook from the library. They would turn away one second and look over and see they had disappeared. Sometimes the two would give into the legends, pretending to be the evil ghosts the stories made them out to be, like overturning a desk in the middle of class when someone said something horrible about the other, but they never did anything to harm another. They didn't need another ghost in their halls. They had each other and that's all they needed to be happy for eternity.
"Marinette?" they had the same exchange everyday.
"Yes, Adrien?"
"I love you." He would take her hand in his and kiss it.
She would smile at his words and use her hand to pull him close and give him a kiss on the lips. "I love you, too."
It's done! I can't believe it! 13 (14 days including Friday the 13th) of this challenge to myself! I'm hoping I can do something similar at Christmas, but the idea won't be so last minute so I'm not trying to write a short chapter everyday between work… I hope y'all enjoyed this litter journey we went on! This story had an unusually happy ending for me… most of my horrors on my other account have more tragic endings… Welp!
So here's the results of the poll and the consensus is… we believe in ghosts! Over seventy-five percent of us, actually! Seven believers and two that don't! We all seem to like the scarier things, don't we?
I've got two other stories going on right now, Constellations, which is a soulmate AU which is going on for an indefinite amount of time, or I have Err:LadybugExe which is a SciFi robot AU about love between a man and a robot which had three more updates! If you're interested go check that out! Or y'all can wait until I do the same thing at Christmas! I hope to see y'all soon!