You're my dearest lie || Miraculous Adult

Chapter 37

Back to life - Junkie XL

Marinette

Alya suddenly stopped and looked at me, perplexed. For a moment, I regretted the sentence, but I knew I couldn't have held it back any longer.

"Wait, Chat Noir?"

She blinked several times, as if she needed a moment to even consider the possibility.

"Yes," I said curtly.

I didn't know if that was a good idea. But I had to confide in someone or I would burst.

"Okay," she replied quietly as we walked on. "How... did it come to this?"

And I began to tell her. How I had met him on a rooftop, how he had collapsed and how I had looked after him in my room. Of course, I left out the details about me as Ladybug that might make Alya skeptical. But I told her how much I inexplicably trusted him and he trusted me. I had the feeling that I knew his innermost being. Knowing his soul.

I was grateful that Alya neither grimaced nor laughed at me. She just listened to me as I stared at the sidewalk moving away beneath my feet.

"I can't describe the feeling, Alya, but there was something. It's like I already know him. That's why I feel so bad about Luka."

Alya suddenly snorted.

I looked up at her in confusion when she stopped abruptly and looked at me, shaking her head.

"Okay, that was a nice story. Now tell me it's a joke."

Confused, I stared at her. She still had that grin on her face, but her eyes looked distant and serious.

"Tell me it's a joke," Alya repeated more clearly, but her fake smile disappeared this time. "That everything you've told me is made up."

I opened my mouth uncertainly, but didn't know what to say. I had never seen Alya like this before. I was telling the truth, and even if I wasn't, why was she looking at me so incredulously?

I had no idea what was going on.

"I... Alya, I'm serious, why don't you believe me?"

My voice was strained with tension.

"Yes, Marinette, I do believe you," she said quietly, uncertainty suddenly flitting across her eyes. "I believe you, but that's also the problem. Because I have the feeling that you've gotten yourself into something."

I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion. Before I could say anything back, Alya looked intently at the road.

I tried to say something back when my friend pointed her chin in a certain direction with a petrified expression. I followed her gaze...

...when my questions were suddenly extinguished.

Silently, I looked up at the next property on the street, where a person was staggering on the balcony, trying not to fall over.

Alya wasn't so distant because of me. It was because of the person in the black suit, who was obviously drunk as a skunk and trying to sneak out of the estate.

It only took a millisecond to recognize him. It was Chat! But what the hell was he doing there?

Wordlessly, I start walking faster along the high fence without turning my face away from him.

I'd never seen him so out of it. Even when he had a fainting spell, he had seemed somewhat composed.

But this time it was different. He looked as if he had lost the will to live.