You're my dearest lie || Miraculous Adult

Chapter 38

Liam Neeson Nightmares - Junkie XL

Adrien

Day 319.

The same as every other day. Which passed as quickly as the ticking of the wall clock echoing in my head.

That was all that was going through my mind. No thoughts. No emotions. Emptiness. Familiar emptiness.

Trapped in a time loop in which I didn't exist.

I didn't even notice my PR manager informing me about the next modeling job at my desk.

"The next catwalk is right after your Bac exams to represent your father's new collection," I heard her say dully, but the meaning of her words didn't register with me. She must have mentioned something as she turned around, possibly pulling something out of her bag.

I don't know, I didn't even see it out of the corner of my eye. All I did was sink my veiled gaze into the expensive white marble table.

"You're going to represent the beginning of the show and I'm going to show you the concept that the agency has come up with," went in one ear and out the other.

My manager must have taken out her iPad when the screen slid under my field of vision.

But I didn't consciously register this. Not even when she called up some kind of sketch that made no sense in my head.

Everything was a blur and the letters were threatening to run out.

I was in a soft trance that was numbing me, and yet I could feel the emptiness eating me alive with every passing second.

Maman was dead forever.

My father was a murderer.

And Marinette? Lost forever.

Too much had happened yesterday. So much that my pain threshold couldn't take it anymore.

With several expensive bottles of Champagne Cognac and a few ecstasy pills under my belt, I was surprised that I hadn't closed my eyes for the last time yesterday.

The hope that Maman would wake up at some point had always been the only thing that had kept me alive in this captivity. The only thing that didn't want to separate me from this world.

I never wanted to leave sooner than she did.

And now I wondered what I was doing here in this hollow, bare reception room of the Agreste estate. The walls in the typical, unbearably bright white that made up hell on earth.

After I'd made it back to my room at night, high as a kite, I felt like all my fibers were bursting at once. The time after my high had begun. The side effects you were always warned about.

My first thought was why I had let myself be persuaded to swallow these drugs.

I have no idea how loudly I must have screamed. It was such an unspeakable pain that ran through my body that my mind had erased the memory of that night for me.

I could only remember my dark room, the full moon shining coldly through my windows. The muscle cramps had been unbearable.

And yet it was only now that I realized how fucking lucky I had been at that moment.

No one had noticed yesterday that I must have been out for almost five hours. Which was actually impossible in my otherwise so controlled and timed day.