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Adrien took a deep breath and started applying foundation on his face. He knew from his modeling career that a simple foundation and lip gloss can be life changing, appearance-wise.
Looking back at his vanity mirror doesn’t really sit well with him. It brought so many bad memories. The lights were always hot and blinding and the amount of hands touching him wasn’t really something he got used to despite his father’s insistence that it will be.
Once he finished his light makeup, he turned on the ring lights and set up his tripod and camera. There were some tiny mishaps with his mic but Nino managed to help him this time around. Thank god his friend was a DJ.
“Okay” Adrien exhaled and put on his cat mask, “It’s show time!”
“RenaRogueFT asks ‘Who’s your camera guy? Will he show his face soon?’”
Adrien laughed and looked behind him as if he could see what was happening outside his room,”Sorry. I just drag him to man the camera sometimes. I don’t want to push him into the limelight if he doesn’t want to. Though a cool alias might be nice. I’ll ask him if he wants one!”
Adrien laughed one more time and scrolled on his laptop to find another question. “Ah, this one is good! Anonymous asked ‘Why cat? Is there any reason why you choose Chat Noir?’”.
Before he could think of an answer, Adrien started reminiscing of that fateful day.
Adrien opened the door in his room and sauntered on the foot of his bed. He didn’t even bother turning on the lights or closing the bedroom door. He just sat on the foot of his bed and removed the ill fitting tie from his neck.
“Adrien…”
Adrien awoke to someone calling his name. He honestly don’t know how long the time has passed or if he even managed to fall asleep.
“Adrien,” Someone called again, this time Adrien can see in the corners of his eyes a figure of a woman in front of his room. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?”
There was a bit of an edge on his tone and Adrien didn’t bother hiding it. He stood up and walked to the woman. “Kagami, marriage, really!?”
“I’m…” Kagami looked down and played with her hands, “I thought he would let you do the degree you want if we make it official.”
“What, you think getting out of this cage just to jump straight to another one is good!?”
Kagami’s eyes widened and tears began to fall, “Is…is our relationship a shackle to you?”
Adrien’s emotions finally simmered down and realized how mean he was. He wanted to say more but he couldn’t hurt Kagami any further. Instead he started pacing in his room trying to cool off some steam.
“Adrien, answer me,” Kagami tried to look at him. Her face was riddled with pain and tears. “Is getting engaged to me really that bad?”
Adrien bit his lip and balled his fists, “I need to get out of here.”
Adrien opened his huge windows and hopped off as easily as all the times he had done before. He could hear Kagami’s protest but he didn’t look back. He just walked and walked until he couldn’t see the mansion anymore. Until he couldn't realize where he was anymore.
The streets were dark and empty. It was very late when that dreaded dinner ended anyways. Kagami was/is his girlfriend. They were having dinner in which Adrien and Kagami had to wait for hours for his father to even arrive.
Life has been stressful these days. It has been stressful before but now it has quadrupled in measure. Adrien wanted to teach but his father deemed it an unfit profession for an Agreste.
They have been arguing about it for the entirety of his senior year. But the man was stubborn. Adrien was half-way dreading of striking a deal to go back to modelling just to be granted to choose something he wants for once.
Kagami was one of those things forced upon him. Don’t get him wrong, Kagami was a nice partner but not someone he would date willingly.
Adrien thought Kagami had his back but in the end, she was just like him. The engagement was a non-issue for Adrien. He knew it was coming a mile away but for Kagami to just decide for the both of them to enter into one just rubbed him the wrong way.
Adrien kicked the can he saw on the pavement and groaned. He just can’t shake off these negative emotions.
Instead of a hard clank, however, Adrien heard a small ‘Ow!’ in front of him. The streets were dark but he could see a vague silhouette of a woman facing a wall.
“Sorry,” Adrien mumbled, which caused the other person to jump up in surprise. The girl positioned the canister in front of him and sprayed him some red paint. “Hey!”
“Stand back! I have more of that where it came from,” The girl shook the canister some more and positioned it in Adrien's direction.
“Wait,” Adrien raised his hands in surrender and replied, “I’ve come in peace.”
Due to the darkness of the alleys, Adrien could only see a vague silhouette of the girl. To him, it looked like she was squinting her eyes and pouting her lips as if contemplating something.
“Why are you here then,” The girl asked and went back to what she was doing.
“…Getting some fresh air?” as Adrien said that, the girl pushed the nozzle of her canister and started painting on the wall. The smell of the paint caught him off guard and it managed to elicit some coughs out of him.
“This is not the place for you then kitty,” the girl pulled down the handkerchief that was tied around her face and said.
“…Kitty?”
“The way you appeared just now looked like a lost black cat.”
“I am…” Adrien said as he remembered his hunched back, hands on his pockets and gloomy expression looked just a few moments ago. Not to mention he was still wearing his all black suit from dinner. “…not”
“Mhm,” The girl hummed with playfulness in her tone, “Sure you do kitty.”
“Stop calling me a cat!”
“Someone’s grumpy.”
“Sorry,” Adrien sighed and decided to sit across the pavement where the mysterious girl was doing some graffiti. Or that was what he thought she was doing. The piece wasn’t complete yet so right now it looked like scribbles to him.
“Rough night?”
“Yeah…” Adrien answered. The girl was so comfortable to talk to somehow. He can’t pinpoint it but she feels like someone he could confide in. “Girl troubles.”
“Did you guys break up or something?”
“Worse,” Adrien chuckled at the ridiculousness of it all, “She told my father we are getting engaged.”
The girl was clearly taken aback. Adrien’s statement resulted into a big black line in the center of her work. “Yikes. You sound like someone from my age too. That’s gonna be sudden.”
“I knew my father and her parents were arranging it. They let us meet for that reason in the first place. I just hate that she has done what I hated the most.”
“And that is?”
“She thought it was okay to make decisions for myself. She knew how controlling my father is and how I hate it. And she’s doing it as well,” Adrien just kept rambling. It was cathartic. Just letting everything out to some random stranger. “I wanna choose for myself. I wanna solve this issue of my father not approving my choice of profession by myself. I wanna be free.”
After that tirade of emotions, the alley was covered with complete silence. He didn’t feel bad letting everything out. But he could tell she stopped working on her work and was just staring at him. For what reason he doesn’t know.
“What do you want to do then, kitty?”
Adrien winced and blushed. He doesn’t really like the nickname this mysterious girl has given him. “I dunno. Cancel the engagement, I guess?”
“No, kitty. What do you want to do? In general. In life.”
“I…I wanted to be a teacher. I want to work with kids. I want to tell them how nice and cool science can be.”
“Do you see yourself having that future with your girlfriend right now?”
“What…” Adrien was confused. She was asking something normal yet it felt weird. Like the questions don't make sense somehow. “What do you mean by that?”
“This is a whole can of worms but are you really happy where you are right now? Are you happy with who you are with?”
“I…” Adrien paused, he was speechless. “Kagami’s nice.”
“Nice?” The girl laughed and put her hands on her hip, “If that’s the only requirement for getting engaged to someone, no one should be single right now. Break it off if you don’t want her to get even more hurt.”
Adrien was confused. It felt like she was angry at something, maybe even at him. Her words had a certain edge to it. Like she was projecting something to him.
The confusion was now gone and this time he could see in her body language and grumblings that she also had something to talk about. Instead of getting angry that this mysterious girl was projecting her problems to him, he was fine. In fact, he was curious.
“That sounded coming from experience,” Adrien said coyly, “Care to share it in class?”
The girl groaned and scratched her head in frustration. Clearly Adrien hit the jackpot. It was actually nice that the spotlight shifted from him. Talking to someone about random things made his anger cool quite a bit.
“Is it something purrsonal,” Adrien asked, making the girl groan even louder.
“I am now regretting giving you that nickname.”
“What can I say,” Adrien shrugged and winked at her, “It suits me.”
“Hearing you talk just made me remember my boyfriend.”
“Not ex?”
“Not ex.”
“What happened?” Adrien thought the question was too forward but instead, the girl faced him and sat at the pavement as well. The light was still covering both of their faces but he can see some brief glimpses here and there.
“That’s the thing! Nothing happened.”
“You want him to propose?”
“Oh no no no no! God no!” The girl waved her hand incessantly. “I feel like we don’t love each other the same way.”
“Do you have to?”
“I know you can’t! But he always says yes to me. If I’m angry, he says sorry. If I want to hang out, he will go out. If I want to be left alone, he lets me be.
“You sound like a handful,” Adrien joked. He was ready to see her protest but she just curled into a ball. She pulled her knees to her chest and hugged them. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s fine.” The girl wiped some of her tears and continued,”He left for uni and we’ve been dating long distance for the whole school year. He’s so understanding that I don’t know if he even likes me. He doesn’t seek me out. He doesn’t say he misses me. Am I dating a wall? He’s a nice guy but c’mon! Make it known that you even crave me for one second.“
“Sorry,” The girl wiped her tears again and continued, “ That’s why when I heard about you and your girlfriend it just stung. If you don’t like her as much as she does, for her sake please let her go.”
“I…” Adrien was left speechless.
“Honestly kitty, the girl wants to marry you so you can be happy and here you are worrying about university applications,” The girl laughed as she cried some more. “You two clearly have different priorities in life. Those…Those kinds of relationships don't last long.”
“Only idiots ,like me and her, cling to people like you guys.”
“But I like Kagami,” Adrien balled his fists, “We’ve been through thick and thin together and she has been a nice and caring girlfriend to me for years.”
“But not enough to get engaged to her?” The girl asked. It was true. Now, he gets what she meant. “If you tell her that to her face, you will see her heart break into a million pieces.”
“How about you?”
The girl laughed and finally stood up. She started doing her graffiti again and finally said, “I guess I do have to practice what I preach.”
The two went into complete silence after that. Normally, Adrien hates this kind of atmosphere. Whenever silence envelops the Agreste mansion, it suffocates him. It felt like it was waiting for him to just submit and say yes to his father.
But this time, the silence was comfortable. He just listened to the girl’s canister fill the silence for them. But after a while, Adrien did get bored. He started telling her cat puns and the more annoyed she was, the most successful he thought the pun was. He never had a chance to hang out with someone like this before. It was actually refreshing.
“About your father,” The girl said, pulling Adrien out of reverie, “Don’t compromise.”
“What?”
“I know it’s hard, I know it seems impossible. I know the feeling of being put into a pedestal. Being thrown into a role you hardly can do. But I feel like you already lost when the first thing you think is to meet him halfway. It’s your life. He has to be the one to meet you halfway.”
“You don’t know my father.”
“But I know you kitty,” The girl said with utmost conviction. She turned to him and her blue eyes pierced through him. “You are the type to say ‘you don’t understand what I feel’ or ‘why bother telling him he’s just gonna say no’, ‘conforming to his demands is easier than fighting him’. Am I right?”
Adrien smiled and surrendered.
“Sometimes we are all so caught up in our head that we forget the simplest option available. Talk to him. Tell him everything. For once kitty, be free. Sometimes the shackles we have on ourselves have become self-inflicted.”
“And that’s how I met someone who called me Chat Noir. It stuck to me honestly. Also, I think I look good in—“ Before Adrien could continue he noticed that the camera had been long dead. He honestly doesn't know how long he has been talking.
“This won’t make a good video at all,” Adrien took the camera and smiled, “Maybe I’ll keep my origins to myself and Ladybug a little bit more.”