No one had suspected a thing when that morning Adrien's desk was found empty.
Nino had simply sat in his seat as if nothing had happened, spreading a bit more his textbooks and pencil case on the desk over what should have been his best friend's space, and Alya just complained about how she was not going to be able to use her phone during the lesson without Adrien's voluminous golden hair to cover up for her.
Marinette found that weird, as she thought that Nino's head should have been more than enough to hide her extracurricular activities during class, but didn't question her friend's logic. Knowing Alya, she had probably made a thousands of trials from their teacher's desk, turning her head to the side at different angles and moving on the chair in various positions while looking towards her usual seat in order to see how to avoid to get her phone taken away. Also, there was a good chance that Nino had helped her - or better said, had been forced to help her - so the results of her research were probably pretty accurate.
In all honesty, the possibility that Alya could have actually done something of this kind didn't really surprise her: Alya's phone was her lifesource, a sort of prolongation of her arm, and she would have done everything to keep it as long as possible. There wasn't a time during the entire day where the two could be seen separated. It was understandable, as her blog made her phone constantly buzz because of the many notifications she received. Marinette really wasn't bothered by the constant background noise that accompanied her throughout the day; her friend's face, full of joy and excitement at any new comment, was the cutest thing and it was worth the trouble they could get into.
Her blue eyes involuntarily fell on her friend now, who was in the middle of having a curious conversation with Nino. Her phone had been put aside, her hands resting on the desk in front of her. Marinette hadn't really followed what they were saying, but she was pretty sure that Alya wasn't pleased.
"What do you mean 'I have never seen it before?'"
The boy instinctively backed away from the angry girl, his eyes begging Marinette for some help.
"I just…" he opened and closed his mouth multiple times, unsure of what to say. He was terrified. "I don't… I didn't know about it?"
He looked again at Marinette. What should have been more of a statement sounded like a question, a desperate call for Alya's approval. Unfortunately, Marinette knew her friend well enough to know that that simply was not going to calm her down.
"Nino," she said, hissing his name between her sealed teeth. "I've been talking about it for the past two days!"
He didn't even try to answer her. He had become completely still, panic probably overflowing him and preventing him from doing the slightest movement. His golden brown eyes almost spelled out help to the blue-haired girl.
The truth was, Marinette had no idea of what Alya was talking about either. Admitting it made her feel like an awful friend, but she knew that she hadn't been paying too much attention to what had come out of the girl's mouth in the past days. Akumas attacks had been frequent and had all happened, just for her joy, at night, and she had collected only little sleep as a result.
She didn't even know how she had managed to wake up and drag herself to school up to so far. Actually, now that she thought about it, it was all probably thanks to Tikki's effort to push her out of her comfy bed.
A soft, almost imperceptible whimper brought her back to reality. Nino was staring straight at her, his mouth closed in what could have been awarded as the unintentional creepiest smile of the year.
Time to change the subject.
"Sooo," Marinette started, trying to put on her usual smile. She didn't really have much faith in her chance of actually grinning in a normal way, she knew that she was an awful actress. Her identity as Ladybug had been put at risk many times because of that. "Do you guys know where Adrien is?" She really hoped that his friend would buy it and get distracted by the whole kill-Nino-thing for a while.
She was quite surprised when the boy himself answered her.
"Dude, I was about to ask the same to you, to be honest."
This seemed to catch Alya's attention.
"You mean that he hasn't told you that he wasn't going to come today?" she asked.
Nino seemed to relax at her question. Marinette noticed with pleasure that he was actually breathing.
"Nope." He leaned a bit on the girl's desk. "I mean, he's done that before, so I'm not that worried. I'm pretty sure that he's either sick or that his father threw in a photoshoot at the last minute."
Marinette wasn't exactly satisfied with his answer, but her teacher came in right when she was about to open her mouth again to ask more about the boy.
Ms. Bustier smiled at the teens, her bright eyes sparkling with her usual contained excitement, and asked the students to take out the work from the previous day in order to continue it.
The class had been focusing on the school play, an original script written by the collaboration of many students, but heavily influenced by the world of Alice in Wonderland. Ms. Bustier had simply adored the concept, making the students work hard on many ideas and concepts for the play.
Marinette hadn't had the chance of reading the script yet, but knew that it was going to be something that she was going to like. She knew that the group that had actually came up with the idea had been formed by Juleka, Rose, Alix, and Nathanaël; they were all very different from each other and had probably worked together to find something balanced that everyone could enjoy. Also, judging by the extremely positive reaction of their teacher - enthusiastic little smiles and her decision of dedicating an entire week on starting the project - it had to be pretty good.
Everyone had been assigned something different to do. Nino was searching for some good music to use for the soundtrack and Alya was making extensive research about how the world of Alice in Wonderland had been depicted in other theatrical representations.
Marinette, for her part, had received something more of her liking: she was designing the clothes for a character, the Queen of Hearts. This task had greatly inspired her, and her sketchbook was full of quick doodles of different dresses.
Right now she was working on a short, practical red dress, and was looking at the cards that she had received from her teacher as a reference to help her include some details that would refer to her royalty.
Her sketchbook disappeared from her sight, appearing again in Alya's hands.
"You don't mind if I take a look, don'tcha?"
Marinette tried to take it back from the girl's hands, but failed as she hid the small book behind her back.
"Don't look at them! They are all so bad!"
Alya raised an eyebrow. "Mari, from what I've seen they are pretty damn amazing."
"You always say that." Marinette snorted.
"Because it's true! Your designs are amazing, even Adrien said that, remember?"
Oh, she remembered. She remembered every single second of that one-sided conversation.
"He was just being nice…"
She wasn't blushing… right?
Alya's grin told her otherwise. "Girl, you fell hard for him, I swear. I just say his name and you become red like a tomato."
Crap. Change the subject, Mari, don't let her tease you about this in class!
"He… He is working on something like this too, you know?"
Her friend looked at her, confused.
"Ms. Bustier wanted him to design the King of Hearts… or at least that's what I heard in class," she continued.
"Adrien? Designing clothes?" Nino turned around, joining the conversation with a small laugh. "Oh man, he can't draw for shit... Why did she ask him in the first place? Why not Nathanaël?"
Marinette knew that she should have answered him, but she couldn't. Her brain had just frozen, she was dead. Had he been listening to what her and Alya were saying? The more she thought about it, the more appealing fleeing from the country sounded.
"He's working on the backgrounds," she heard Alya continue. "And trust me, that's a lot of work already. Maybe she thought that his father was going to help him with the designs?"
Adrien Agreste. Gabriel Agreste. Fashion. Clothes. Don't let him notice that you are dying inside, Mari. Think about something else, for the love of god.
By this time, Alya had started to notice that her friend had stopped breathing. She was now looking at her, quite surprised and scared at the same time, but was trying hard to not let Nino notice any of her worries.
"His old man helping him?" He laughed. "Not a chance. Trust me, he's really not the type."
"If you say so," the dark-haired girl concluded, not asking any more questions and starting to type on her laptop, completely ignoring the boy in front of her.
Nino decided to turn around, for the girls' joy, quite surprised by Alya's sudden reaction, but too lazy to actually ask her anything about it.
As soon as she was sure that their friend wasn't looking at them, the girl raised her head, looking at Marinette. She had one of her sympathetic smiles printed on her face, and Marinette gave her in return one of her awkward thank-you-for-saving-my-ass grins.
The rest of the day passed slowly, but smoothly, and Marinette found herself at home sooner than she expected.
As soon as she entered her room, she let herself fall onto her bed, dropping her bag somewhere on the floor. There was no school tomorrow, she didn't necessarily have to finish her homework that afternoon and she was exhausted. Everything could wait right now.
"Tikki," she mumbled, her words muffled by the pillows. "I'll take a nap. Wake me up if something important happens."
If Tikki replied to her, she didn't hear it; her mind was too busy concentrating on every muscle of her body relaxing against the soft mattress.
She was pretty sure that she was dreaming when she was woken up. She had trouble recognising who was shaking her by the arm at first, she really just couldn't see who it was, she was too sleepy.
Or maybe she didn't care. Probably both.
"Let me sleep," she protested.
"Marinette, this is super important," she heard someone that sounded like a distressed Alya say. "Wake up! It's about Adrien!"
Just like magic, her vision cleared up and she sat up, lying with her back straight on her bed.
So it was Alya after all.
Marinette looked at her, still trying to get away from the dreams' world. Her chocolate eyes couldn't hide her fear, and her quick breath suggested her that she definitely wasn't okay. Had she run all the way here from her house? For how long had she stayed there, trying to wake her up?
"Alya? What happened?"
The girl opened her mouth, but immediately closed it. Her lower lip was trembling, just like her delicate hands. She closed her eyes, breathing in slowly, and reached for her phone in her her jeans' pocket.
She gave it to Marinette, looking at the 'play' icon with fear as her friend tapped the wide screen.
The video didn't run for long. After a couple of frames, Marinette had already stopped it to look at her friend with wide eyes, hoping to detect something, anything on her face that could tell her that this was all just a sick joke.
Her blue eyes travelled again on the screen, looking at the two figures tied up to two chairs, each one quite far from the other. The first figure was a man with a black bag over his head, and the other one was someone that resembled far too much someone she knew.
Adrien.
A/N: I don't even know what the hell this is. I didn't even read it twice, I am literally just posting it as it is.
Oh well, I'm sure it will do okay.
Don't expect a lot of quality from me people, unfortunately I don't have much time to correct or write at all, so I'll do what I can :(
Kind of a boring chapter, but I needed to settle some boring things for later on and I HAD to put awkward Mari because she gives me life.
By the way, this is probably the first and the last time in which you'll have such a happy chapter, so enjoy it eheheh