Shadow's Adventures in Paris:

Mylène's Melody

Shadow was in class, writing down notes when all of a sudden, a crumpled up sheet of paper had collided with his face. He picked it up, opened and tried to read what was written; unfortunately, most of it was scratched out and the rest didn't really make sense. It was mostly just a bunch of jumbled up similes and metaphors that appeared to have been written in the form of a poem, but none of it made sense.

Shadow then scanned the room, but couldn't determine from whom it had come from. Giving up, he dropped it on the desk and continued taking notes, only to stop when another ball of paper flew past his face and collided with Nathaniel's. While Nathan was tending to his assaulted eye, Shadow scanned the room again. Still no sign of the culprit. He took a deep breath and continued his work. And then a ball of paper hit him in the face. He picked it up and scanned the room, but no one looked guilty. He dropped it and continued writing after striking the entire classroom with a glance of suspicion. A ball of paper whished past his face and he caught it before it could hit Nathaniel's. Nathaniel raised his head is surprise after his brain had finally registered what had just happened. Shadow crushed the paper in his hand, stood up and then raised his opposite hand.

"Excuse me, Ms. Bustier," Shadow said with enough volume to allow the whole classroom to hear him, "I would like to make an announcement to whomever is throwing these at us." Shadow raised the hand with the paper ball so that everyone could see and spoke directly to the students. "If I get hit in the face with one more crumpled up sheet of paper, I will personally return every single last one of them directly to your face!"

Everyone was shocked by Shadow's hostile announcement.

"Now, Shadow;" Ms. Bustier said in a calm but strict manner, "although I appreciate you deciding to use your words to deal with the problem, outright threatening your fellow classmates is totally unnecessary and completely unacceptable." She then directed her focus to address the whole class. "That being said, would the one responsible for the paper please come forward and apologize?"

Mylène slowly stood up and turned to Shadow and Nathaniel.

"I'm sorry." She said to them, timidly. "I didn't mean to hit you. I'll stop now."

Shadow scanned her face thoroughly for any traces of deceit or malicious intent, but found none. He believed that she really meant what she said.

"Alright." Shadow responded as he sat back down. "I'll accept your apology."

Once the class had ended Shadow noticed a silhouette of shade over his backpack as he was loading it with supplies. He looked up and saw Mylène standing before him looking nervously around the room.

"Um… H-hi, Shadow." She said nervously. "Um… About those papers, I—"

"I already said that I forgive you."

"No, it's not that. It's just… Well, uh…"

Shadow looked at her with growing impatience.

"Care to get to the point? I have to get to my next class."

"Um, would it be alright if I talked to you… privately first?" She looked at Nathaniel, and the two boys understood what she meant.

"Oh! Uh…" Nathaniel looked to see if Shadow wanted to agree.

"Go on ahead. I'll catch up." He said.

Nathaniel nodded his head and walked away to his next class. With him gone, the classroom was empty, not counting the two of them.

"Alright, we're alone. Talk." Shadow requested bluntly.

"Um, are you… any good at… music?" Mylène asked nervously.

Shadow raised an eyebrow.

"Y~es?" He responded cautiously. "Why do you ask?"

She responded by reaching into her backpack and pulling out a sheet of paper.

"Here. Read this and tell me what you think."

As Shadow took the paper, he couldn't help but notice the nervousness in her voice, as though her very life was dependent on this. Shadow read the words on the paper that she had handed over to him.

"Wait, hold on!" He said after he finished reading. "Are you trying to write a song?"

"Yes. I am." She almost looked and sounded ashamed. "Is it any good?"

Shadow read the paper one more time.

"Actually, it has to be absolute worst thing that I've ever read."

Mylène dropped her head in shame.

"I really am the worst at this."

"Why are you even doing this?"

"Well… it's for my boyfriend, Ivan… I wanted to get him something special. And I know he loves music, so I thought I could write him a song."

"Ah! So that's what all the paper throwing was about."

"I'm really sorry about that!"

"Forget it. I already forgave you." All the pieces fit together. "So let me get this straight. You what me to help you write a song for your boyfriend. Is that right?"

"Yes! Can you help me?"

"Of course I 'can', but I don't see why I should."

"Oh. Never mind." She said in defeat.

And with that, she walked away with her head down. Shadow watched her walk away, feeling somewhat guilty. He didn't understand why, though. He barely knew this girl, so why should he help her with this small, inconsequential issue?

At lunch, Shadow told his friends all about the encounter.

"So you're not going to help her?" Asked Marinette.

"Why should I?" Shadow asked in turn.

"Um, because you'd be doing something nice for someone other than yourself?" Alya answered questioningly.

"I have more important things to do than—"

Again, a paper ball had collided with the back of Shadow's head. Some of the others chuckled in response while Nathaniel reached over to pick it up. He pulled it back to its original shape and read its contents, pulling a face in response to what was written.

"Wow. I know writing isn't really my strong suit, but this is really bad." He said as he read the poorly written song.

"She's only trying her best." Marinette said in Mylène's defense. "She just wants to give Ivan the best possible gift she can give him."

"If only she wasn't such a terrible lyricist." Marinette looked at Shadow disapprovingly as she ate. "Scowl at me all you want. It's the tru—?!"

Again, a ball of paper hit Shadow in the head.

"You know, if you help Mylène just this once, she'll stop throwing those at you."

Shadow thought it over. Would it be worth the trouble just to get her to stop throwing those at him? After another hit to the back of the head, he had an immediate answer. Shadow then got up with his lunch and walked over to Mylène's table. He surprised her by dropping his lunch and sitting down beside her.

"Alright, let me see what you've got." He said, swiping her notepad and proceeding to read it.

"But I thought you didn't want to—"

"That was then. This is now." He finished reading shortly after he had interrupted her and placed the notepad down. "I'm not sure how you did it, but this is somehow worse than the last one."

Mylène dropped her head in shame.

"What am I going to do?! I don't know the first thing about writing music."

"That's clear as beryl." Eventually, an idea came to Shadow's head and he gave Mylène back her notepad. "Here… Meet me in the music room after school."

Shadow arose from his seat with his tray and began to walk away. Mylène looked at her poor attempt for a song and began scribbling out some words to rewrite them.

"Don't." Shadow said, appearing behind her and freeing the pencil from her grip.

"Because we're going to need the paper?" She asked.

"Because you need to stop throwing things at my head." He stated, roughly handing back her pencil.

"Oh." She responded, taking it.

Later in the music hall, Shadow and Mylène sat alone. Shadow had an acoustic guitar strapped around him, clinging to his back while he held the notepad and pencil in front of him.

"Now, what are you trying to say in your song?" He asked her.

"Well… I want the song to tell Ivan everything I love about him." Mylène explained.

"Care to expand on that?"

"Oh! Well, he's always protective of me. He makes me feel safe."

"Mm-hm…" As she spoke, Shadow would write down what he heard that he thought would be useful.

"He's really sweet."

"You don't say."

"I love his passion for music."

"Okay."

"And he's always supporting me whenever I need it the most."

"Uh-huh."

"And even though we don't have everything in common, we can respect each other's differences. Just being with him always makes me so happy."

Shadow stopped writing and began thinking. He then put the pad and pencil down and pulled the guitar over his shoulder so that he could play some cords to hear how they would sound. After a few trials and errors, Shadow finally found the perfect melody for the song and Mylène couldn't help but get lost in the music. He then stopped playing.

"Ivan likes heavy metal music, right?"

"Huh?! Oh, yeah. He does. Why?"

Shadow continued to think.

The next day, Ivan was bobbing head back and forth to the song on his phone. It was heavy, it was metal, it was romantic, it was sweet, it was serene, but most of all, Mylène's voice was the one singing. There were actually two voices, Mylène's voice was soft and serene while the second was loud and raspy, which was to be expected of the vocals in charge of all the screaming. It was a combination of his two favorite things; Heavy Metal and Mylène.

"Well, do you like it?" Mylène asked nervously as her boyfriend removed his headphones.

"'Like it'?! I love it!" He exclaimed with a massive smile, picking up his girlfriend and swinging her around before pulling her close. "You really made this for me?"

"With a lot of help from my friends. I really wanted it to be perfect. I wanted it to explain all of the reasons why I love you."

"I love you, too, Mylène. And everything you do is perfect."

As the song that could barely be heard through Ivan's headphones continued playing, Shadow and Alya watched the romantic scene play out from a distance.

"Thanks for the help with the editing." He said.

"Just doing what I can to help out my friends." Shadow rolled his eyes at the word "friends", but did not say anything against Alya's notion, nor did he stop smiling, for even he had to admit; this felt really nice. "So, any chance I can hire you to—"

"No." He said, finally ceasing his smiling.

"But it's for my little—"

"No."

"Oh, c'mon!"

"Not happening."

Shadow got up and walked away, but Alya continued to follow.

"My family will pay yo—"

"Don't care."

"It would make two cute girls really—"

"I'd rather fall from space again."

"Hey, now that's rude!"

"Leaving now."

"I'm sure Marinette would love to—"

"That won't work this time."

"She just loves rock stars!"

"Still don't care."

Aaaaand… this goes on for about the entire day… he never agrees.