Adrien knew he was dead.

  His schedule was incredulously tight and it would be at any hour that he was sure exhaustion would kill him entirely.

This was the first time he had ever slept in. Granted, it was only an extra hour of sleep before he had to be ready but this was the first time he had ever had an entire morning to relax for himself.

That was until Kagami flooded his inbox with messages asking when he was planning on coming over so that she could move away.

  Adrien couldn't have cared less where she went, but at this point he just wanted her out of his life. If he could somehow help in any way, shape or form, he'd do just that.

Of course that meant sacrificing the only time he had off in such a long time, but whatever got the job done.

  Adrien hadn't recieved any messages from Marinette since the night he was promised she would reply to him, but Adrien wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. Before they both split, they had been so busy with their previous commitments. 

Marinette was always booked with school during the day and her night shifts at the bar when that was over. 
Perhaps she couldn't get back to him because she was too busy. 

  Adrien groaned, his bed feeling completely empty now that he wasn't sleeping beside his wife or his pet anymore. There was a hole in his chest that tugged at his heart relentlessly. 

  There were days he wanted to cry, and Adrien often got to that point, but he remained stubborn enough to keep himself together. 

He turned over to his side, his hands rummaging through the bedsheets for something. Anything to give him comfort. He was always so used to finding someone beside him, but each time his hands came up empty, Adrien only died a little more inside.

   "She took the cat," he mumbled to himself, his voice groggy with sleep as his hands clutched onto the empty bedsheets. "She took the fucking cat!"

He groaned, loosening his grip from the sheets and then reaching for his pillow. He placed the pillow over his head, his heart sinking into the sour acid in his stomach.

  He had never felt so alone in his life - and he thought the neglect he received from his father was bad. Adrien kept his eyes closed beneath the pillow, hoping that one day he'd just die and become a forgotten fossil of his bed. He was sure to let his misery overtake him, he either wanted to suffocate or slam his head through a window, but for now, he'd allow the silence to scream at him. 

   That was until his phone started ringing.

Adrien groaned, he knew who that was and it sure as hell wasn't Marinette.
  He didn't want to answer, and he knew that despite Kagami causing a ton of problems in his relationship with Marinette, he had gone ahead and made that ridiculous promise to help her move her things. 

He still couldn't understand why she continued to pester him about helping her, when Adrien knew without a doubt that she must've had other choices. Adrien hated to know who else she slept with while they were together, but that was a can of worms he'd never open. 
  It was better to leave it in the past.
Adrien hated that part about himself. He felt that he was too kind. His mother taught him to never break a promise and that's how he was raised, it didn't matter how horrible the person was.

  Everyone deserved respected, and everyone deserved to be loved. Going back on his word made him feeling like he was disappointing his mother in some way.
Adrien couldn't do something like that.
But he'd be lying to himself if he didn't admit that he was slowly losing his patience. 

  The faster he helped Kagami move, the faster she could leave and the faster he could properly make time to speak to Marinette. It would be one huge step to finally getting on with his life. 

  Adrien reached up, gripping the pillow and tossing it to the other side of the bed. He sat up with an impassive expression and he quickly reached for his phone.

His eyes simply narrowed at the unknown number that appeared on the screen. It had been such a long time since he had deleted Kagami's number, even he forgot what it was.

  Adrien hovered his thumb over the reject button, but hesitated. His shoulders rolled forward and he bit his lip. 

"Fuck it. I guess I'm doing it..." he sighed, a frown tugging on his lips as his thumb pressed into the accept button.
_________________________________________

"Thanks for coming by to help..." Kagami murmured, her voice incredibly chipper at the sight of Adrien's perspired body. "I didn't think you'd actually follow through on your promise. I guess I misjudged you after all."

  Adrien sighed as he placed one of her boxes into the moving truck. Despite the weather being particularly cold that morning, Adrien had been moving so much stuff he broke a sweat in freezing weather. They had just finished moving all of Kagami's big furniture such as her bed, her dressers, her sofa her old fencing gear.

  Adrien had every intention to leave after that, but Kagami had convinced him to help her remove the remaining boxes.

   So he reluctantly agreed. 

"I didn't think I could be that much of a douche today, despite the lack of sleep," Adrien replied, tugging at his shirt that had become damp with sweat. He glanced down at himself with a grimace.

  He was sure he had a couple of hours left before his next photoshoot, but by the way Kagami had him whipped, he wasn’t sure if he'd have enough time to grab a shower before then. 

If he arrived smelling like sweat, Nathalie and his father would have his head. If he decided to grab a shower and arrive late, Nathalie and his father would still have his head.

  There was no winning in this fight. 

"Either way, I'm glad you came to see me for the last time," Kagami murmured, placing a smaller box on top of a larger one. "At least our final goodbyes won't be spiteful. I understand you want me gone for good, but I was hoping we could at least keep in touch every once in a blue moon." She shrugged, taking in a deep breath before properly watching him as he stacked a few heavy boxes and lifted it with a grunt.

"I guess we'll have to see about that," Adrien replied honestly. His heart sank into his stomach at the thought of not hearing from Marinette.

  Adrien knew he was stupid - Kagami was the reason she had left in the first place. Coming back to help her would possibly make matters worse, but Adrien couldn't just brush her off like that.
  He was with her for four years, there was a part of him that held onto the Kagami he thought he knew back then, but that part of him was out of focus. 

That part of him was slowly letting the Kagami he knew go. 
  It had been so long since he lived with his mother, and when she disappeared and he was with his father he was completely neglected from both the inside and outside world.

  It was very clear that Adrien changed since he got married, he saw the ugly in the world and he saw ugly in people that he never thought would betray him. 

He wasn't the same dense, pliable and naive person like he was last summer. Adrien was starting to grow tired of people walking all over him and lying to him.

  He may have given off the impression that he was clueless, but he wasn't that fool anymore.
All he had to work on was saying no, and despite the thick skin he grew over the course of several months, he couldn't go back on his promises.

That aspect of him was the only thing he had left to hang onto his mother, and he wanted that to remain integrated into him for the rest of his life. 

"You sure?" Kagami mused, pulling Adrien out of his train of thought. "I want to smile at my new life, but you know how much I'm going to miss you." Kagami set down a pile of boxes, exhaling as she casually glanced at Adrien who simply walked out the room.

  Her brown eyes latched onto him, a frown tugging at her lips as frustration began to grow in her blood. She was desperately trying to get back what they had, but it didn't matter which way she tried it. It only made him more withdrawn.

She sighed, bending over to grab her stack of boxes and lifting it.
  Her cheeks flushed red as she held them close to her body. She blindly stumbled out the front door, and slowly began to descend the stairs with her items.

  She placed her boxes beside the truck, exhaling as Adrien started to stack them neatly into the trunk so that she could have proper room for the rest of her things.

Kagami pouted, her bottom lip protruding as Adrien resumed his work, keeping his back towards her. 

  "Are you going to ignore me?" Kagami asked, crossing her arms as Adrien continued to focus on his work. "I've been trying to maintain a conversation with you since you arrived. This is literally the last time we are supposed to see each other and you're spending it completely neglecting me and pretending like I'm not even here."

  Adrien sighed, clenching his jaw as he placed the last box in the corner of the truck. He simply turned, bending down to grab the boxes that she had placed there.

  "Because you asked me to come down to do a job. I came to help you move just like you asked," Adrien explained, his voice flaccid as he placed the other boxes inside of the trunk of the truck. "I understand it might be the last time we see each other, but I told you before I came that I had a tight schedule. I'm here to get the job done." Adrien paused so that he could wipe the sweat away from his brow. "I didn't come here to lolly gag, I didn't come here to flirt and I didn't come here to rekindle old feelings or talk about our past. However we leave this area is totally dependent on you, but I told you once before and I'll be more than happy to tell you again, I have to be somewhere else after this, just be glad that I use my only few hours off to be here to help instead of sleeping."

  Kagami glared at him, watching as Adrien walked away, keeping his back faced towards her as he headed for the stairs that led back to Kagami's apartment.

  "So you're just going to pretend I'm not even here? I'm pleading with you," Kagami sighed, following him with slumped shoulders. "I want my last memories with you to be fond," she whined, moving faster so that she could reach out to him. 

  The frown on her lips only grew deeper as Adrien picked up the pace, slipping out of her hands once more. 
"Come on-" she pleaded, her voice drowning out between breaths as she tried to keep up the pace alongside him.

"Don’t you want to look back at our memories fondly?"

  Adrien rolled his eyes, turning at the end of the hallway to enter her apartment.

"I really don't have time for this," he groaned, his teeth grinding shortly after. 

The sad truth was that Adrien used to reflect on his memories with her fondly, but that was way before he realised that they were all lies. She was a figment of his imagination. Everything she was, he wanted to believe she really inhibited, but that just wasn’t the case. 

  Kagami stepped in behind him, her eyes glaring at him as he simply returned to her work room and began to stack the boxes up accordingly.

At this rate, Adrien was beginning to feel antsy. They didn't have too much to work with next and he figured that the more he carried out, the faster he'd be able to run back home, grab a shower and get to work. Of course, he'd have to skip a few meals to make time, but a little bit of hunger couldn't hurt him. 

  Adrien shifted his weight, listening to Kagami mumble under her breath and toss things into boxes with frustration. She furrowed her brow, flinching as her aggression tipped a box over that sat on a counter top.

  His green eyes fixated on the mess she created as all of her belongings scattered across the floor at their feet.

Part of Adrien wanted to be spiteful and leave it alone. She was having a fit, she should have been the one to clean it. But the more he thought about it the more he realised how ungentlemanly that would be, and it went without a doubt that his mother raised him a lot better than that. 

  He rolled his eyes, ignoring Kagami as she hastily began to stack her boxes with a flushed expression.
  Adrien bent over, picking up the scattered mess that Kagami had every intention to leave on the floor. 

He hastily threw her items into the box, a flaccid expression on his face as he was nearly about done with her mess, but something caught his eye.
Beneath the cardboard box, Adrien could specifically spot a white plastic card protruding from the edges.

  It wasn't in Adrien's nature to be as nosy as he was, but there was something in his guts that had willed him not to ignore it.

Curiously, Adrien slipped his digits beneath the box, casually tugging the card out from underneath. He had every intention to ignore the card, but the younger photo of his ex-girlfriend printed on the front caught his attention. 

  Adrien kept his eyes on the card, his heart squeezing in his chest at the photo of Kagami on what appeared to be an old identity card. 

  He missed that part of her. The small freckled smile on her face, the bubbly look in her eyes and the innocent face shape brought him way back to when he first met her in his father's home. It was before all of this happened. Before she cheated, before she lied, before she became the spiteful person she had some how morphed into at this very moment.

  Adrien wanted to believe that there was hope they could at least be friends, and that the old Kagami he thought he knew would somehow permeate back to him, but he knew that it was a lost cause.

With him having every intention to be with Marinette, he knew that her green eye would make things difficult for their relationship and drive Marinette away, and he simply couldn't have that. 

  Adrien sighed, glancing down at the card with a solemn expression. His thumb brushed against the plastic, caressing the words imprinted on to the card.

Café des Deux Moulins
Tobacco counter 

Kagami Tsurugi

Adrien furrowed his brow, his eyes reading the printing on the card over and over again. His thumb paused at the edge of the card. 

  For a brief moment, Adrien was finally able to drown out the noise of Kagami harshly throwing her moving boxes on top of one another with frustration of neglect.

There was something about the name on the card that seemed incredibly familiar. It was almost as if the wheels in his head began to turn and Adrien started to feel a sick feeling in his stomach.

  It was only then that it finally clicked.
He pressed his lips together, his heart squeezing in his chest as his scalp went utterly cold. 

  Adrien dropped the name-tag into the box, his stomach turning as his skin soon grew warm.

"It was you..." Adrien breathed, his green eyes lifting up to Kagami who turned to glance at him with confusion.

  "What?" Kagami asked, grabbing a box and tucking it beneath her arm. She shifted her weight, blinking with confusion. "What are you talking about?"

  Adrien clenched his jaw, slowly straightening up with a passive expression, despite the anger that had started to push through his blood.

  "You were the one Felix knocked up. It was you..." Adrien reiterated, his voice growing cold as his eyes turned into a cold hard stare. "You were his mistress. You were the one he met at the tobacco counter. You were the family friend, you were with him before you met me. You knew about his girlfriend that he was with at the time..."

Kagami froze, her face growing pale as sweat immediately began to bead at her hairline.

  "I...I don't know what you're talking about," Kagami breathed, clutching the box tightly, her cheeks growing pink. "I don't know a Felix. I never dated anyone before I met you. I already told you that you were my first love-"

"Cut the crap, Kagami," Adrien interjected, his voice sharp as he tried his best not to allow his anger to get the best of him. "You know exactly what I'm talking about. It all makes sense now. The fact that you were more experienced than me, the way you treated Marinette, the way you lied to me and especially with the way you immediately clung onto me when we met." 

Adrien paused, sliding his hands into his pockets, his eyes remaining trained on Kagami who immediately looked away.

  "What does it matter? How does my past define who I am now?" Kagami replied, his eyes dropping down to the ground. "As far as I'm concerned, anything that happened before I even met you doesn’t say anything or have anything to do about my relationship with you..." her voice trailed off, the lines beneath her eyes deepening. "I did his girlfriend a favor. He wanted to leave me behind with a kid. It was only a matter of time before he would eventually do the same to her. I took that sacrifice, I suffered because of him, I had to abort my baby so I could live a normal life." Kagami paused, glancing back at Adrien with a reciprocated stare. "She should be grateful..." 

Adrien glared at her, the words that slipped from her lips bouncing off his ears as he simply could not believe what she was telling him.

  "S-So not only do you admit it, but you're also sick as well. Do you have any idea what you just said?" Adrien replied, his eyes glaring at her with utter and obvious disdain. "You've possibly become the most selfish person I've ever met. It's so hard to empathize with you, when all you've ever done to me was lie."

  "I didn't lie to you about anything!" She retorted, immediately turning her back to him while her cheeks flushed deeply. "I didn't invite you over to snoop through my things. I would have loved to talk, but not about any of this. The only thing I'm willing to talk about is how to repair our relationship."

  "Our relationship?" Adrien asked, his own cheeks fuming with anger. "You really want to talk about our relationship when you just admitted you were aware that Felix was cheating with you and you clearly admitted that my cousin knocked you up!" Adrien yelled, the disbelief lacing into the base of his voice.

  "I told you that I don’t want to talk about that!" Kagami snapped, her eyes widening as she glared back at him with a stern expression. "Just drop it!"

  "So what was I to you?" Adrien questioned. "Just some fool to replace the first fool? Our entire relationship was not genuine. It seems as though you've never had a real relationship in your entire fucking life. All you ever did was lie!"

   "I told you to drop it!" Kagami interjected, her voice pitching above his. "I don't want to talk about what happened in the past!"

"Because you saw me as a rebound? Were you just jumping to who was next in line?" Adrien replied, his chest heaving with anxiety and anger. "I know you knew we were related. Everyone knows that Felix is my cousin. Was this your plan the whole time? To jump to people who are beneficial to you?!"

  "You were never my goal in the first place!" Kagami ululated, tears pooling into her eyes as even her eyes grew pink with frustration. 
  Adrien paused, an awkward silence enveloping the two of them as the words Kagami had just called out struggled to seep into his brain.

  He wasn't her goal in the first place?

Adrien furrowed his brow, watching as Kagami obdurately spun around, with the intent to leave him behind in her apartment.

  "What do you mean by that?" He questioned, his chest growing tight as he began to follow her towards the door that led into the hallway.

  Kagami ignored him, her eyes trained onto the front door as she only wanted to escape the apartment.

She mentally cursed herself for being so reckless with her things, the last thing she wanted was for Adrien to discover that she had slept with his cousin a few months prior to meeting him.

"Kagami!" Adrien objected, reaching out and grabbing her hand. He tugged her back, forcing the smaller woman to face him and look him in the eye. "Tell me what you meant by that!"

  "I wanted to get back at him, okay?!" Kagami wept, her hands gripping onto the box until her knuckles grew white. "He hurt me. I didn't want him to think he was a fucking God! To do what he did to me and then try to leave me behind with a baby!"

  Adrien froze, his green eyes glancing into hers as he heard the cracks in Kagami's voice. His hand slowly loosened around her wrists, and within moments his arm dropped to his side.

Kagami used her other hand to hastily wipe away the tears that had started to stream away from her eyes. Her chest heaved with anxiety and she shifted her weight, ignoring Adrien as she could vividly feel his eyes burning through her skin.

  "I wanted him to hurt just as bad as he hurt me. He left everything behind to start a new life, while I stood here and struggled with the shit he left me in. My mother didn't leave these voids in me, it was him!"
Adrien pressed his lips together, his soul feeling completely deflated. 

"So...you were just dating me to get back at my cousin...?" Adrien asked, his voice growing quiet. He wasn't sure how many times she could break his heart, but Adrien knew without a doubt that this was the final straw.
  He wasn't going to let anyone hurt him anymore. 

  "I...I didn't mean for it to be like this," Kagami stammered. "Those were my intentions when we met. I thought you were going to be just like Felix so at the time it didn't matter to me." She sniffled, rubbing her eye with her free hand with a frown.

  Adrien simply blinked, it was almost like he was pulled into a trance. He had always suspected his entire relationship was a lie, but the fact that she confirmed that it was, sent an odd ringing sensation into his ears and made him sick to his stomach.

"B-But then I got to know you," Kagami continued. "I got to know the real you and before I knew it, I found myself falling for you faster than I could even-"

"Just stop..." Adrien breathed, his expression going completely impassive. "I-I don't want to hear it." He glanced down, sliding his hands into his pockets as Kagami closed her lips and remained still.
  Adrien reached up, running his hand through his hair. He couldn't even find it in himself to be surprised anymore. He shifted awkwardly, leaving the area of small boxes far behind him as he began to walk towards the door.

  At least he had helped her move most of her things. He didn't believe the rest would be a problem for her to continue alone.

   "Don't call me anymore. I don't want to see you ever again," Adrien murmured, ignoring Kagami the moment her eyes widened and her lips parted.

  Before Kagami could even get a word in edgewise, Adrien had already walked through the open door and slammed it, leaving her alone once more in her half empty apartment.

  Kagami glanced down, her heart sinking into her sour stomach acid. She squeezed her eyes shut as tears began to burn from behind her eyelids.

  She couldn't believe how badly she fucked up, once again.