Under Oath | Ladynoir ✓

09 | patte de velours

ADRIEN STARTED STUDYING ON THE balcony.

School stopped for no man, not even Hawk Moth. This morning he set his science textbooks and digital devices on the small bistro table outside, the grand piano just visible inside the window. A light breeze stirred fallen leaves and at his books, but the weight of the hundreds of pages won out. Behind an even layer of clouds, the sun painted the world white.

Adrien could claim this arrangement was better than his stuffy bedroom for mood or for focus—natural lighting, fresh air, feng shui, whatever—but it was because of Ladybug, as always. She had a grip on his mind like no other.

If she happened to swing by again, she would see a perfectly functional, perfectly organised young man keeping up with his studies. Not the drunken, pathetic mess she'd found on Sunday. Adrien cringed and laid a palm on his forehead, the cold shock of seeing her ghosting down his spine. The embarrassment of how low he'd fallen. His inability to pick himself back up.

It was the most humiliating moment of his life—and he'd been through lots of humiliation in the last two weeks.

After a few hours of lecture revision and assignment work, Adrien walked past the scene of the crime on his way to the kitchenette—the couch where he'd woken to that magnificent, heartbreaking woman backlit by sunlight from the window, disorientedly thinking she had to have been a dream—for a study break. Coffee.

While the machine frothed out a cappuccino, Adrien drew his iPhone from his pocket. He punched in the private number for his Cat Phone and then the encrypted PIN, the bypass for checking his superhero voicemails with his civilian cell service provider. Not that he needed to check. There was only one message, and he'd replayed this voicemail so many times that he could probably recite it from memory.

"Hey, kitty. I have something important to discuss with you, and it's probably easier to talk in person. I'll be at our usual spot," Ladybug said, stating a date and time. "See you there. Bug out."

He'd immortalised the lull between there and bug as if his Lady might have wanted to say something else but decided at the last minute to hold her tongue. He'd branded into his head the way kitty rolled so naturally off her tongue, the results of years of partnership and camaraderie.

Plagg was getting annoyed at him, frankly, because he listened so much and never did anything about it.

"You ever think of, you know, replying?" he asked, eyes fixed to the TV screen.

The wiry strands of the kwami's whiskers shook wildly as he jumped across the buttons of the PlayStation console. (Adrien had initially told Mayor Bourgeois that he didn't need any of his personal items delivered, until Plagg indignantly corrected him.)

"I've thought of it," Adrien answered, the emphasis putting a frown on Plagg's face.

"Even just a text, Adrien?"

Adrien placed the iPhone and cappuccino on the coffee table as he sat down and watched Plagg's current round of Ultimate Mecha Strike III. "I don't have the energy to be her sidekick right now, and Chat Noir has nothing to say to her."

Plagg paused his video game. "What do you mean? You're her partner, not her sidekick."

"Really, Plagg? She's the Guardian." Distributing Miraculouses, collecting identities like passport stamps—entrusting him with little of them—and sending civilians into the front lines of law enforcement. "Ladybug has a whole team of assorted superheroes now, and she hasn't needed or wanted my help for the last two weeks."

Ever since she thrust that iPhone into his hands again, pieces of the outside world had lodged in the chinks of his armour. News reports and Ladyblog updates that he couldn't escape—couldn't resist checking just to see her face, even if it wrecked him. Rena Rouge and Carapace were poring through the police's akumatisation databases to consolidate evidence, together, of course.