Marinette didn't come into school the next day. Alya was left irritably tapping her foot as she fiddled with her history textbook before she finally snapped, directing her venom at Nino in front of her. "Where is that girl? She's never come in this late!" Nino turned to face her, confused.

"What's wrong?"

"Marinette isn't here!" Alya fumed. Nino's eyes widened.

"Isn't she?" In an exasperated reply, Alya gestured to the very vacant seat beside her. Nino nodded. "Oh. Yeah. She isn't." After a moment he asked, slightly worried at Alya's clearly growing anger, "Where is she?"

"How should I know?" Alya was close to snapping now. "I thought you might have an idea!" Nino shrugged and shook his head, before turning to Adrien who was sitting beside him, his head down and appearing deeply immersed in the history of Marie Antoinette.

"Hey, Adrien? You don't know where Marinette is, do you?" Adrien merely shook his head.

"M-Marinette?" Adrien mumbled, his eyes wide. He looked first to Nino and then to Alya, who was growing red in the face. "I-I mean, she could be ill," he mumbled quietly. Alya slammed her books on the desk with a crash, and Adrien and Nino winced.

"Marinette's never ill, ever! She's just decided to not come in today! I can tell! Something's upset her and she hasn't told me what it is! I swear to God - if anyone's done anything to upset her or piss her off or hurt her I'm going to kill them..." She proceeded to scan the classroom through her black rimmed glasses as if looking for guilty candidates. Adrien moved slightly further down into his seat.

Alya didn't speak much for the rest of the day, only muttering to herself angrily, "stupid Marinette... if Chloe did anything I'm going to make her pay... but seriously where the heck has she gone?" Adrien waited for everyone else to leave before calling Natalie on the front steps of the school.

"Natalie? It's me. I, I know I was supposed to come home today but I was planning to stay at, uh, homework club. For- for, um, chemistry! I, uh, need to revise, yes, revise,  yeah, yeah, it's important, end of term tests and stuff. I'll be about two hours. Maybe more. It depends, on, on how bad my, no, it's okay, I can walk - seriously! Yeah, I'll be fine. Okay. Thanks."

He hung up and immediately set off in the direction of the Dupain-Cheng bakery, knowing he had a few hours to talk to Marinette. She was so embarrassed she couldn't even come to school? Was it that bad for her? Adrien kicked a pebble irritably. He'd genuinely wanted to talk to this mysterious 'Ladybug' and actually, kind of liked her, even though he'd never known who she was. He'd had encounters with Marinette in the past, nearly kissed her, for crying out loud, (admittedly for Nino's project, but still) and it was inevitable that there would be something there, no matter how small. Screwing up his face determinedly, he knew he had to try.

Marinette had stayed home all day. How could she face him now? She'd had a crush on him for so long, how could she look him in the eye and pretend that it was okay? Feigning a headache and a stomach cramp she'd stayed in her room and attempted to immerse herself in a book. This had worked until she looked over at her desk and was greeted with Adrien's winning smile looking down at her from every modelling magazine she'd been able to lay her hands on. Tears brimming in her eyes, she jumped up and tore down every single one from her wall, pin board and even his colour coded schedule she'd made. They all ended up in the bin, scrunched up so tightly you couldn't tell who it was. When she was done she felt slightly better for a moment. She reached into the bin, opened up one of the pieces of paper and saw his green eyes, smiling up at her again. In a moment she found herself in tears.

Adrien knocked gently on the door of the bakery and a small Chinese woman answered, smiling widely.

"Hi," he stammered, aware of his flushing face, "I'm Adrien, a friend of Marinette's, from school, I thought she might want today's notes, I, uh, I brought them over for her, because I knew she found this stuff hard, er, could I give them to her?" Marinette's mother nodded warmly.

"She's upstairs, she says she wasn't feeling well," Mrs Dupain-Cheng leant towards him, speaking quietly, "I think something was wrong with someone at school. If it was that Chloe girl again -"

"I don't think it was Chloe," Adrien said, "I just wanted to, well, to see how she was. You know, because she's a friend. I didn't want to see her upset."

Mrs Dupain-Cheng smiled at him again, gesturing up the stairs to the trap-door to Marinette's room.

"I'm sure she'll be very happy to see you, she's just up there."

I'm not so sure about that, Adrien thought to himself, a flush creeping up his cheeks. He made his way up the small staircase leading to Marinette's room, and with a deep breath and a huge amount of trepidation, opened the trapdoor.