Caged

Setting the Record Straight

Everywhere Marinette walked, whispers followed. Before, she had heard a few things here and there, but now it was a constant, annoying buzzing. Some even dared to point. Some gave gleeful looks. Others, pure envy. And one word kept standing out from the not-so-silent conversations: Marichat.

It was a dumb ship name someone came up with over the Internet. But the damn thing caught on. Yet Marinette refused to die of embarrassment. No way she was giving the whole school the satisfaction of seeing her become flustered over a silly name.

Because it was a silly name. There was no Marichat.

No. Marichat.

"Ugh," Marinette groaned under her breath.

"That's like the third time you've done that," Alya complained, slamming her notebook shut. The two were sitting on a bench at lunch time, working on their Physics homework. "Spill girl. What is it?"

The pig-tailed girl did the same with her book, resigning any attempt at concentration.

"I just keep thinking about everything," she flailed her arms in frustration. "Can you believe they gave us a ship name? It's like I say one thing, and they understand the complete opposite. And worse, they're horrible at hiding it. Like seriously, I'm standing right here! And from right here, I can see Aurore pointing at me!"

Marinette sent a sharp look to the blonde in the baby blue dress a few meters away. Aurore silently yelped, before turning tail as quickly as possible. The designer huffed.

"Mari," Alya sighed, placing an arm around her best friend. "Just ignore them. They can whisper all they want, it's still not gonna make their rumors true."

"But they keep spreading them!" Marinette groaned. "I feel so powerless."

"Girl," Alya pressed her friend's shoulder, "I promise this will all blow over soon. Something new is gonna come up and they'll forget all about Marichat."

Marinette gave the redhead a deadpan look at the mention of the ship name. Alya raised her hands in surrender.

"I'm just saying," she added.

Marinette sighed. "I'm gonna take a walk. Need to clear my head."

After an 'ok' from the young reporter, Marinette left the bench to walk the halls. It didn't stop her from thinking about everything that had been happening, but at least it gave her a chance to process it, even if it was just a little.

It still boggled her how one measly video caused everything to blow up so suddenly. If only she hadn't gone to that dumb interview. Or, at least, had kept her mouth shut.

Absentmindedly, she took out her phone. She had avoided it at all cost, ever since the number incident. Sure, her parents had changed it, but it was still the same phone, and all the messages were still in the memory of it.

She frowned at it. Those messages really didn't need to be there, did they? Marinette opened the messaging application and started scrolling through them. Most of them were either positive or curious, but there were several nasty ones that did not deserve a spot in her device. Determined, she started to delete them.

Marinette had already deleted around eight messages, when she stumbled across one she had almost responded to. It was an unknown number, but she could still remember looking at the words sent and genuinely smiling. She tapped on it, to realize the person continued to message her until the number was changed. It was all positive and encouraging speech.

Why hadn't she responded? Oh, right, Adrien had interrupted her. And it had been a weird day, too.

In other words, she forgot.