Hyper! (Vol.1)

Film Reel

"So you're telling me, you've met Ladybug and Chat Noir. Again. And you still have no clue who they are?"

"Not sure yet," I admitted.

I was in Théo's studio, hunched over a stack of printed article clippings. A chilled can of Mr. Banana's Bananalicious Milkshake was present on my right, ready to be chugged in desperate moments. Théo himself was busy with a new statue of his, a miniature. He was making a new one for a new hero named Pegasus, and he had a tough time hunting for a good snapshot of him, whether online or from the papers. So he improvised, at most. He'd been working on it for days. The dreadlocks required a monk's patience to sculpt.

I skimmed over the headlines.

LADYBUG SAVES THE DAY... AGAIN!

ANOTHER VICTORY FOR TEAM LADYNOIR

A NEW RECORD? VILLAIN DEFEATED IN LESS THAN ONE MINUTE

Last but not least, the ever-persistent:

WHO IS LADYBUG?

"Don't sweat it, Mireille," Théo said. "Just treat it as a hobby. Have fun! You've already got your life as a student and your weather reporting gig to deal with."

I rolled my eyes. "Says the boy with a dozen side jobs."

"Eleven," Théo corrected. "And I don't do them all at the same time, you see. It's like picking food from a buffet. I choose what I want to do, when I feel like doing it."

"Lucky you've got talent to spare," I huffed. "Don't you ever get fired?"

"Non, ma chèrie," drawled Théo. "Believe it or not, I'm indispensable!"

"Your fake goatee seems to benefit you a lot."

"I sure made the right decision not to get rid of it." He scratched his chin. "Helps bypass age restrictions."

"The magic of make-up?"

"Yeah."

Goatee aside, Théo's reputation as a jack-of-all-trades apparently has something to do with his obsession with online courses. He'd graduated a free course in cooking, fortune-telling, crochet, interpretative dance, bonsai trimming, web designing, and arranging furniture according to feng shui, among countless others he hasn't bothered to mention. Sculpting is sort of like his passion, the activity he likes doing best. He runs a free course on sculpting. (I forgot what website it's in.) He's never been a supporter of formal education—dropped out of school by his own will at age thirteen—as he believes it hinders his potential. One of the few opinions he has to which I strongly disagree.

I don't know if I've written this somewhere before, but I met Théo while he was working for an assistant cameraman at TVi. We met at the break room and hit it off after finding out we had many shared interests. We talked for hours about superheroes, swapped theories and everything, over cans of soft drinks from the lobby vending machine. Then the bouquet of roses came, followed by the Champs-Élyseés. One thing led to another.

There was a time when we were trapped in a photograph together on our date, thanks to the villain Pixelator. We were scared to death, sure. But Théo found a way to cheer us up. "Hey," he'd said, "even if we'll be trapped here forever, at least I can tell you about all the crazy internships I've been in. You won't feel bored anymore."