#montparnasse tower

[hsundholm]

Late Sunset in Paris by Henrik Sundholm Via Flickr: Sunset from the Montparnasse Tower in Paris, France.

[itsawritblr]

Chap. 6 of “The Cocoon Splits” is up!

Chapter 6,  “Spat.”

[thesingletraveller]

10 More Paris Experiences to Make You Fall in Love with the City of Light

So you’ve explored the main tourist sights in Paris (maybe even some of the ones highlighted here in Top 10 Paris Experiences For Your Next Solo Trip), and now you want to continue your explorations. Here’s another ten experiences that will continue your love affair with Paris! #1. Cross the Seine on Solferino BridgeIf you’ve read my one-day recommended itinerary article (First time in Paris?…

[xtruss]

A Defense of the Ugliest Building in Paris! The Tour Montparnasse Has Never Been Loved.

— By Colin Marshall | August 1, 2023

The Tour Montparnasse, at left, is shown with the Panthéon in the foreground. The tower offers the most expansive view of Paris from above—and the only such view that doesn’t show the tower itself. Photograph by Etienne Laurent/Getty Images

The sole skyscraper in central Paris celebrated its fiftieth anniversary recently, though “celebrate” may not be le mot juste. When the city’s official Twitter account wished the Tour Montparnasse (“Montparnasse Tower”) a happy birthday, the responses were hostile even by the standards of that platform, ranging from “Quelle horreur” to “La pire chose qui soit arrivée à Paris depuis les Nazis” (“The worst thing to happen to Paris since the Nazis”) to simply “Non.” Since I happened to be in town, I went to visit Paris’s least beloved building for the commemoration of its first half century. Nothing was out of the ordinary for a quiet Sunday afternoon: Falun Gong members sat in cross-legged protest on the concrete plaza; rough sleepers huddled against the walls and stairways of the complex’s shopping center; T-shirted tourists went straight up to, and came straight down from, the fifty-sixth floor.

That floor is occupied by a panoramic observation deck, which offers the most expansive view of Paris from above—and, more important, the only such view that doesn’t show the Tour Montparnasse itself. That oft-heard half-joke repurposes a similarly waspish remark attributed to the playwright Tristan Bernard about the Eiffel Tower, which, despite his resentment, has become a globally beloved symbol of French civilization. It’s a rare Paris postcard that fails to include the older tower, and a rarer Paris postcard still that fails to exclude the newer one. (Even the hooded sweatshirts for sale in the Tour Montparnasse’s own gift shop bear the image of the Eiffel Tower.) Nowhere else has such a physically conspicuous building arguably made so little obvious cultural impact; if, after fifty years, Parisians no longer ignore the Tour Montparnasse, that may be because they no longer see it in the first place.

One can hardly deny feeling something un-Parisian, even anti-Parisian, exuded by the dark, Kubrickian slab rising out of its nineteenth-century surroundings. But nor, on closer inspection, can one deny the traces of élan in its design. In “La Tour Montparnasse 1973-2013,” the French journalists Sylvie Andreu and Michèle Leloup’s history and collection of reflections published for the building’s fortieth anniversary, the late architect Michel Holley, who was initially involved in the project, praises “the fissures that lighten its shape and its oval character, along with the lateral indentation.” Another deceased peer, Claude Parent, adds that “it wasn’t quite the modern American skyscraper, the glass parallelepiped, but something different, a European flavour, with ledges. They showed a certain quest for form in the vocabulary of the parallelepiped: that touch of visible architecture with its lateral folds, which straighten it and give it its verticality. It is intelligent, this tower, and if it was deliberate . . . so much the better!”

Many of those quoted in the book who express appreciation for the Tour Montparnasse belong to the architectural professions. This will hardly come as a surprise to detractors who file it alongside Boston’s brutalist City Hall as structures only an architect could love. Boston City Hall and the Tour Montparnasse were once ranked the ugliest and second-ugliest building in the world, respectively, but, apart from standing over the kind of plaza invariably described as “windswept,” the two have little in common. The standard rebuttal to enthusiasts of Boston City Hall is that, however intensely they may appreciate its aesthetics, they don’t have to spend their days inside it. If the Tour Montparnasse lacks brutalism’s raw-concrete sublimity, it also lacks that style’s propensity to practical dysfunction. In the words of the architect and urban designer Virginie Picon-Lefebvre, one of the main experts called to comment on the building’s fiftieth anniversary, “it was really comfortable to work there.”

Indeed, the Tour Montparnasse was conceived as a means of introducing high-tech modernity into postwar Paris, which, though spared widespread bombing, had nevertheless fallen over time into a state of general dilapidation. This function secured the building a perhaps unexpected supporter: André Malraux, the novelist, art theorist, and decorated Resistance member, who was appointed as France’s first-ever Minister of Cultural Affairs under Charles de Gaulle, in 1959. A somewhat contradictory figure, Malraux was both aesthete and public official (a combination difficult to imagine outside France), and also an advocate for both preservation and modernization. Out of the former impulse came, among other projects, the restoration and subsequent architectural lockdown of the once aristocratic, now trendy district of Le Marais; the latter enabled the construction of the Tour Montparnasse, as part of a neighborhood-wide development scheme that necessitated eliminating not just several streets but also forty-four hundred homes that constituted “îlots insalubres” (“unsanitary islets”).

In “La Tour Montparnasse 1973-2013,” Jean Digne, then the president of the now defunct Musée du Montparnasse, relates having heard that seven hundred artists’ studios were also destroyed in the process. This must have underscored definitively that Montparnasse was no longer the bohemian paradise of the interwar period, when it had been the quarter of choice for Picasso, Dalí, Modigliani, Hemingway, Beckett. Even in their day, the neighborhood’s infrastructure strained to accommodate its population: the rail station Gare Montparnasse, from 1852, was put forth as a candidate for replacement in the nineteen-thirties. More than twenty years passed before that project began in earnest, by which time it had expanded to include a set of residential buildings, a commercial center, and the tower. Just as Chaillot hill has the Trocadéro, the Place de l’Étoile the Arc de Triomphe, Montmartre the Sacré-Cœur, and Mount Saint-Geneviève the Panthéon, Malraux reportedly proclaimed in the late fifties, “Montparnasse will have its landmark!”

Only after nearly a decade of political squabbling and financial difficulty (cleared up thanks to the bracingly pragmatic intervention of the American real-estate developer Wylie F. L. Tuttle) did the project’s building permit come through. The Tour Montparnasse opened on June 18, 1973, fifteen years after it was first proposed. By that time, it looked less like a bold declaration about the future than a faintly embarrassing relic of the past. Eugène Beaudouin, Urbain Cassan, Louis de Hoÿm de Marien, and Jean Saubot, the architects who had collaborated on the building’s design, were hardly youthful revolutionaries in the first place. (Beaudouin and Cassan were born in the nineteenth century.) Les Trente Glorieuses, France’s thirty-year period of rapid postwar economic growth, was running its course. “The party was over and architecture was screwed,” Parent says in “La Tour Montparnasse 1973-2013.” “The momentum of the 1950s, exciting for everyone, even the public, was fading.”

Nor did any appetite remain for tall buildings. In 1977, a thirty-seven-metre height limit was imposed within Paris, exiling high-rises to outlying districts like the business center of La Défense. (In 2010, at the behest of then mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, the limit was raised to a hundred and eighty metres for offices and fifty metres for housing in specific areas.) “The new skyscraper on the Boulevard du Montparnasse is almost an accident,” Saul Bellow wrote, after a visit in the early nineteen-eighties, “something that had strayed away from Chicago and come to rest on a Parisian street corner.” Unremarkable though it would look in a major American city, the Tour Montparnasse is made ridiculous by its isolation in Paris. A few politicians have proposed knocking it down (easier said than done, given the three-hundred-way division of the complex’s ownership), but the problem of its supposed ugliness could just as well be solved by changing its context: surrounding it with a cluster of other towers, or even punctuating the whole of the city—tastefully, bien sûr—with skyscrapers.

Such solutions assume that the lessons of the Tour Montparnasse have been learned. Observers bemoan everything from its height to its interruption of the line of perspective down Rue de Rennes (an objection that may strike Americans as a parody of French fussiness) to its gray-brown color, which, as the journalist and architect Philippe Trétiack says, in “La Tour Montparnasse 1973-2013,” “has a touch of the nicotine stain about it.” Several of the book’s contributors identify the tower’s truly unforgivable sin as the fact that it is built atop a broad concrete base. Trétiack calls this design element, a common feature of skyscrapers of the sixties and seventies, “a rupture in the urban fabric,” framing it as an expression of a classic French tendency in the organization of space: “It is our Versailles side, our yearnings for power that force everyone to climb flights of stairs to access the ‘thing,’ to penetrate the building.”

This aspect of the Tour Montparnasse reminds me of another building of the nineteen-seventies, albeit one designed by a thoroughly American architect. When I lived in Los Angeles in the early twenty-tens, I would pass through John Portman’s Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites, enchanted by its futuristic atrium lobby, with its concrete banquettes cantilevered above extravagantly spurting water features. Like the seedy shopping mall at the Tour Montparnasse’s complex, whose Galeries Lafayette department store closed in 2019, the Bonaventure’s retail area had clearly fallen on hard times. What spaces weren’t sitting vacant were occupied by off-brand eateries and haphazardly stocked gift shops, the result of a lack of foot traffic exacerbated by the difficulty of navigating the looping floor plan. But another factor is the hostility of the building itself to the street, which the hotel meets with a blank four-story concrete podium.

Atop that podium stands a quintet of cylindrical glass towers whose appearances in countless Hollywood movies have made the Bonaventure one of Los Angeles’s few recognizable architectural signifiers. The Tour Montparnasse has a patchier résumé in French cinema, beginning with Luis Buñuel’s “The Phantom of Liberty,” from 1974, in which a gunman on the high-rise’s still-empty thirtieth floor picks off passerby in the streets below (and, in a characteristically Buñuelian satirical turn, becomes a celebrity after his capture). The building has a larger role in “La Tour Montparnasse Infernale,” a slapstick action-thriller parody in which the comic duo Éric Judor and Ramzy Bedia play a pair of dim-witted window-washers who get caught up in a terrorist attack on the building. Given this subject matter, it was the film’s good luck to come out in early 2001.

Had they not been destroyed on 9/11, the Twin Towers, too, would have marked their fiftieth anniversary this year. But, as a work of architecture and a presence in the city, would that design now be much better regarded than the Tour Montparnasse? Minoru Yamasaki’s World Trade Center also drew criticism from the beginning, and for similar reasons: their inordinate scale, their separation from their environment, their essentially technological nature. On a more basic level, colossal form clashed with mundane purpose: both the Twin Towers and the Tour Montparnasse were conceived as nothing more than large office buildings. In “La Tour Montparnasse 1973-2013,” the landscape architect Pierre-Marie Tricaud says, “What I find shocking is that before it, only public buildings—political or religious—stood out from the urban fabric; there is an association between form and function, and you wonder why it is this structure that has taken over the sky.”

The Tour Montparnasse, the World Trade Center, and the Westin Bonaventure Hotel went up during the long postwar push for “urban renewal,” which involved scraping “blighted” neighborhoods off the map in order to build privately owned megastructures meant to replicate attractions of the urban environment in an enclosed, controlled space. The effects of this ethos are most lamented in U.S. cities, where the slick, vertiginous kitsch of Portman’s signature atrium hotels has become emblematic of the era. But the practice arguably began a century earlier, in Paris, through which Baron Haussmann plowed his wide boulevards to create those lines of perspective so vigilantly maintained today. Aberrations like the Tour Montparnasse only underscore how much Paris remains Haussman’s city, its core frozen in a nineteenth century whose built environment can be restored, and in some cases discreetly renovated, but which—so the severity of the restrictions implies—can never fundamentally be improved upon.

Architectural fashion treasures hundred-and-fifty-year-old structures but derides fifty-year-old ones; hence the works of brutalism that have faced the wrecking ball in recent years. “The destruction of brutalist buildings is more than the destruction of a particular mode of architecture,” Jonathan Meades says, in his television documentary “Bunkers, Brutalism and Bloodymindedness: Concrete Poetry.” “It is like burning books. It’s a form of censorship of the past, a discomfiting past, by the present. It’s the revenge of a mediocre age on an age of epic grandeur.” In “La Tour Montparnasse 1973-2013,” Picon-Lefebvre takes a similar perspective on the high corporate style of the sixties and seventies, exemplified by the Tour Montparnasse: “We have very unfairly erased those years and their architects, who demonstrated an optimism and a momentum we have completely lost.” But, she says, “young people today are fascinated by that period, and many of them want to work on renovating its buildings.”

The Tour Montparnasse is set to undergo its own long-discussed renovation, originally scheduled to finish by the time of Paris’s Olympic Games next year. But the work shows no signs of having begun, and, perhaps in anticipation of its replacement, the tower’s exterior has been allowed to fall into a state of mild dereliction, with several windows on each of its faces covered by what look like pieces of wood. The project will involve making the now dark glass walls transparent while installing vegetation-filled spaces, including a rooftop greenhouse, in order to achieve what the renovators, a group formed by three French architecture firms, call “a complete sustainable ‘green’ makeover of the façade.” Just like the original, this is a design wholly of its time—our time—when the idea of “sustainability” plays much the same role that“modernity” did in the nineteen-fifties.

It was in environmental terms that Daniel Libeskind, who worked on the design of the Twin Towers’ even taller successor, One World Trade Center, defended the Tour Montparnasse. “Parisians reacted aesthetically, as they are wont to do, but they failed to consider the consequences of what it means to be a vital, living city versus a museum city,” he told T, the style supplement of the Times, in 2015—and, what with “the carbon footprint, the waste of resources, our shrinking capacity, we have no choice but to build good high-rise buildings that are affordable.” The officialdom of Paris seemed to accept this, approving the construction of a new skyscraper, the Tour Triangle, that same year. Though it will be shorter than its predecessor, the Tour Triangle has already outdone the older skyscraper in another respect, having inspired, while still under construction, enough outcry to cause the reimposition of the thirty-seven-metre height limit. As the acclaimed architect Jean Nouvel put it in a recent documentary about the Tour Montparnasse, “In France, we are beheading champions.” ♦

[runs-4-pinkcupcakes]

Paris is breath taking!!! 🩷

[grothesqua]

Views of Paris

[highlights-in-town-scoobydoo]

EIFFEL TOWER and Tour MONTPARNASSE, Paris, France

[eupat]

[wolfephoto]

Champ de Mars - Paris (2023) https://www.flickr.com/photos/burtgummer/53196485934

[iricordichemiuccidono]

This is how you fall in love.

[hsundholm]

Golden Paris Clouds by Henrik Sundholm Via Flickr: Evening in Paris as seen from the roof terrace of Montparnasse Tower.

[uptoolateart]

The Paris Special did some really interesting things with Adrien's apparent 'death wish'.

We've seen it so many times - him sacrificing himself for Ladybug, or jumping off Montparnasse Tower in Gorizilla, or preparing to cataclysm himself in Guiltrip.

Then in the Paris Special, we saw his alter happily accept Cat Noir's cataclysm, as if it's a sign of strength how much pain you can take without breaking.

Later, when Shadybug takes Claw Noir's miraculous, she rubs his face and reveals the scars he's been covering up with makeup. Superficially, they're the scars from overusing their magic. Symbolically, he's hiding his emotional scars. I assume she does the same, when she goes to school. The point is, he's there showing off how much pain he can handle...but it's all a front. Underneath, he's fragile and hurting.

Then, at the end of the special, our Adrien voluntarily meets Claw Noir's cataclysm. As already noted, he's done this kind of thing so many times before. But he doesn't want to be hurt. He trusts he won't be - just like he trusts Ladybug to save him each and every time he takes one of those literal leaps of faith.

In fact, that's the gift he gives Claw when he touches his hand - faith - much like Ladybug shows Felix faith in his ability to make the right choice, in Emotion. She sacrifices herself, trusting that he will bring her and everyone else back. Likewise, Adrien risks sacrificing himself, trusting that he will somehow be okay - that Claw won't kill him. It demonstrates that sometimes all people need is to feel like someone believes in them, to help them believe in themselves.

When he touches Claw's hand, he seems to cancel out the cataclysm with his positive energy. His optimism and love overcomes destruction. All of this is to say he does have it in him to resist all the Cat Blanc nightmare stuff. He's far more powerful than he seems to believe he is.

I thought this was the most beautiful, important moment in the whole special.

[hoshologies]

⌗ nct dream as romance tropes

syn. exactly what it says on the tin. the dreamies as different romance tropes, some common, some not.

pairing. nct dream/gn reader.

gen, tropes, & rating. romance. college, missed connections, faking dating, strangers to lovers, matchmaking, friends to lovers, one sided pining. 16+.

warnings. (potentially) underage drinking, profanity.

word count. 3.6k (approx. 450-550 words per member).

mark lee is the boy you spend spring break with. you’d managed to get on a study abroad trip to europe for the vacation, but as the only person from your friend group going, you’d worried about spending the week and a half alone. thank god, then, that mark is also the only one from his friend group going.

you connect during the bi-weekly class sessions leading up to your departure, sitting alone near the back of the small lecture hall. you chat before the faculty leader starts speaking and you giggle amongst yourselves when you have to step into the hallway to practice getting on and off the subway, your arms linked so you don’t get “left behind.” when you both decide to take the charter bus to the airport, mark is the one who packs his suitcase early and heads to your apartment to help you stay awake and do last minute cleaning before he drives you both to the meeting point. you sleep on his shoulder the entire bus ride, in the seats at your gate, you even manage to have seats next to each other on your overnight flight and you fall asleep watching a movie together and sharing your blanket.

spring break is full of the two of you wandering rome together, sharing cups piled high with gelato at the piazza navona, and navigating the parisian subway from the city center to the catacombs. he takes pictures of you on his film camera in st. peter’s basilica; you sneak a selfie together with the ceiling of the sistine chapel, your faces cut off halfway. you climb the bell tower of the duomo in florence, laughing breathlessly when you make it to the top, and you walk the gardens of the palace of versailles together, shoulders brushing as you take in the scenery and chill air of a mid-march morning. on your final night, you watch the eiffel tower glitter from montparnasse and you swear mark looks like he wants to kiss you; you want him to.

but then the trip is over and you go back home. you share seats on the charter bus again and you fall asleep on his shoulder again. he takes you back to your apartment, walks you to your door all bleary eyed and sleepy. you’re worried that this is the last time you’ll see him as you stand at your window and watch him get into his car and drive off. looking at the picture a stranger took of you and mark on the ponte vecchio, his arm around your shoulders and his gaze fixed on you rather than the camera, you realize you cannot let this be the end.

huang renjun is a missed connection. he’s the boy you see all over town, but never work up the courage to introduce yourself to. he’s tall and lanky, always dressed so nice and looking so out of place among everyone else. he’s got soft features, all gentle edges and round, sad eyes. you always find yourself wanting to wrap him up in your arms, fantasizing what his body slotted against yours would feel like. is he warm, soft as he looks?

you see him at your favorite cafe, keeping to himself while he studies and drinks his coffee and picks at his french toast crepe. you spot him on campus, backpack slung over his shoulder on his way to class or laying out on the greens and reading a book. some days, you’re lucky enough to catch the same subway car as him, earbuds in and his eyes trained on the horizon through the window. sometimes, you even end up in the same aisle as him at the convenience store down the street from your apartment. you stand opposite each other, considering your different choices of ramen.

still, with all your instances of seeing him, you’ve never scrounged together the courage you feel you need to talk to him for the first time. even if you could, one glimpse of that lopsided grin of his would have you crumbling anyways, a weakness before you even get the chance to ask for his name. so you resign yourself to only admire him from afar and he, completely unknown to him, will forever be known as the “cute cafe boy” amongst your friend group.

you spend months like that, cherishing the glimpses you get of him. because you often exist in the same spaces with the same schedule, like the cafe on tuesday afternoons at eleven in the morning, you decide to give the barista money one day, tell them that you want to pay for his coffee when he gets here, describe him as the tall, lanky boy with the big brown eyes and gentle voice; they always know who you’re talking about. you tell them to not tell him who paid for it, just that a stranger wanted to pay forward some kindness.

when he arrives and orders, the barista relays the message and they swear up and down the wall it was a stranger, but the glance they cast over his left shoulder is telling. when he turns away, his eyes land on you, too wrapped up in your laptop to notice. but he’s too shy to say anything and so when he gets home, he writes a missed connection posting on your community’s page, the same one your friend frequents to look for free or cheap furniture.

you were at the greenhouse cafe today (tuesday) around 11:15 in the morning. i went there to study and get coffee, but the barista said someone had paid for it already. you wanted to stay a stranger, but if you’re the person i think you are, i want to thank you properly. ramen at the convenience store by our apartment buildings?

maybe your friend oughta pass this on to you.

lee jeno is a friend of a friend, who your friend manages to convince to fake date you for a couple of group outings. she drags you to so many big group events, like drinks at the favorite bar or clubbing or even group movie nights at apartments. out of a group of ten, you and jeno are the only two single ones. it can be annoying being the only singles, especially when you’ve made it perfectly clear that you don’t have an issue with not seeing anyone right now; it’ll happen when it happens, you find yourself saying at least once a week, it’s just not a priority right now and i don’t mind it.

jeno faces the same line of irritating questioning, so when you’re out with your friends beom gyu and haechan (the instigators of the group), haechan suggests a scheme to get the rest of your friends off your backs. “just pretend you’re dating for a little while. act a little coupley at our hangouts and then, like… just say that you decided your lives are going in different directions, so you’ve broken up, but it’s amicable and there’s no hard feelings! simple as that.”

beomgyu cosigns almost immediately, a mischievous glint in his eyes, and it kind of scares you. the number of times this duo has instigated things, harmless as they may be, is something to be worried about. you’re a little skeptical, but when you look over at jeno, he’s looking back at you. he gives you a nonchalant shrug and an easy it would get them off our backs for a while. it’s not like we have to actually go out on dates or anything.

it’d just be acting, sure, and you’ve never particularly been into jeno, but his last sentence stings a little, somewhere deep and dark within you. regardless, you ignore the subtle hurt and you nod, mimicking his shrug. sure, why not?

the next time the whole group is together, you and jeno sit together, shoulder to shoulder. almost immediately, yeji picks up on it and nearly squeals. what is this? are you dating? when jeno confirms, the whole table starts shouting, including beomgyu and haechan, the masterminds behind this whole thing (beomgyu tells you later that it was to make it look like they were surprised too). she asks when it happened, why, how, congratulates you both on your new relationship, says it’ll be great for you guys to not be ninth and tenth wheeling on hangouts anymore.

you both go on like this for a while, showing up to the bar or the club or your favorite local diner or even hangouts at someone’s apartment and sitting together, jeno’s arm draped around you or your head on his shoulder. you show up and leave hand in hand. every once in a while, he’ll even drop kisses to your temple or hairline to really seal the deal.

but your mind can’t tell the difference between what’s real and what’s fake, and the lines start to blur. you swear you’re starting to imagine things: fond glances from him, is he holding you just a little tighter or is that a figment of your imagination, why’s he lingering at your front door after dropping you off at home? there’s no chance that’s all for show, right?

lee haechan is the neighbor of the family you’re working as an au pair for. you’re young and fresh out of college, but instead of going straight into a regular job, you decided to go abroad. you were lucky to find a great job as an au pair for a couple and their seven year old daughter; they offered room and board, a good salary, and weekends off (unless needed) in exchange for your services in taking care of their child and helping maintain the house. you confirmed almost immediately and left for their country within the week, nothing but two suitcases and a carry-on.

during your first week, you stuck mainly to your host family’s house, only really leaving to drop off or pick up the daughter from school. but when the weekend rolls around and the parents are off work, they tell you to do some exploring, giving you their personal recommendations for all kinds of stores, restaurants, and cafes. the mother ushers you goodnaturedly to the front door and tells you not to come back for at least two hours, to enjoy and get to know the area, especially if you’ll be around for as long as they need you.

so with a little bit of pocket money and your backpack, you’re left standing on the front lawn with no earthly idea where to go first. you’re just about to pull out your phone and look up the closest location they recommended when a call of hey! startles you. you nearly jump out of your skin and turn to look at the person who interrupted you. he’s decently tall and broad with honey bronze skin and a life-changing smile.

he waves you over and meet him at the edge of the front lawn, his eyes bright and airy, untouched by negativity. he introduces himself as haechan, the grandson of the woman who lives next door. he tells you that he’s going to university here in the city and lives with his grandma, which surprises you; it’s really not as bad as it could be, a twenty something year old living with his grandma, he tells you, i come home to a warm meal every night. but he shakes his head, getting himself back on track.

“anyways, my grandma mentioned something about the neighbors getting a nanny and i haven’t seen you around before, so that must be you, right?”

you nod, telling him you’re an au pair (fancy term, he interjects. cooler than nanny) from abroad and you’ve never visited this country before. he smiles, radiant and welcoming, and suggests that he give you a tour of all the best places, promising to make it worth your while. when you mention that the parents told you not to come back for at least a couple of hours, he nods dutifully and says, “i’m the best tour guide you could possibly had. we’ll be gone for four hours minimum.”

it makes you laugh, the look on his face, and infected by his sunny personality, you shrug, giving him a why not? you could do with a local guide.

“lead the way.”

na jaemin is the frat boy whose friends dare him to date you. he sees you often at the parties his frat throws, always in tow with your more outgoing, popular friends. he’s not entirely sure how you become a hot topic among his friend group (he thinks it’s because you’re so different from the rest of your group), but you do. on nights they get drunk, they often end up discussing you, how you ended up in that gang of friends when you so clearly do not fit in with them; even when you do look like you’re enjoying yourself at a party, you never quite get to the level your friends do.

one night, the discussion turns to a rumor that they heard going around about you: you’ve never had a boyfriend. his friends laugh about it, busting their sides over something so insignificant and so not their business. jaemin doesn’t find any amusement in it; if anything, he thinks it’s kind of cute, if it’s even true. the boys take notice of his silence and when seungmin casts a scheming glance around the table, jaemin feels a chill run through him.

“jaemin,” the younger boy drawls. “dare ya to date ‘em.”

jaemin immediately shakes his head. “the fuck’s wrong with you? that’s fucked up. i’m not doing that for a stupid ass dare.”

seungmin shrugs and leans back in his seat, head tilted back as he takes a drink out of his natty light. a laugh ripples across the group of boys and jaemin has to hold himself back from rolling his eyes; he’s not cruel and he’s not doing that to you, not when you’ve been nothing but sweet to him in the few conversations you’ve had. but then jeongin, the worst culprit of provoking everyone and instigating shit, says it’s because jaemin is too goody-too-shoes, too lame to do something and against his better judgment, jaemin jumps in, heat creeping under his skin, scorching him from the inside out.

“fine, i’ll do it, but i’m expecting compensation for any date,” he says hotly. “you’re paying for it all since it was your stupid ass idea.”

the group almost protests, but jaemin silences them with a deadly look. he reminds them a second time that they’re the ones who came up with the idea, he’s not paying for this out of his own pocket (at least not yet).

when he waltzes up to you at the next party, a seagram’s escape from his own personal stash in his hand for you, you’re immediately suspicious. but his smile is soft, his gaze impossibly softer, the whole of it disarming. he chats you up easily and by the end of the night, your number is secure in his phone, your text log pinned to the top of his messages, and a potential plan to go get breakfast at a hole-in-the-wall diner next week. he smiles when you turn back and wave to him as you’re leaving.

this whole thing is supposed to be a bet, but he’s always wanted to get to know you better, so if he can get his stupid ass friends to bankroll all the dates he plans to take you on, he figures it’ll be killing two birds with one stone.

zhong chenle is the boy your friend has a crush on. he’s in your general psychology class; he sits a couple of rows behind you in the lecture hall, always has the best discussion board posts, always sets the high score for every test, quiz, and assignment. he’s also involved in the choir on campus and he lives in the same dorm building that you and your friend do.

you see him on campus in passing all the time, frequenting the dining hall and the library on the same schedules. your friend, iseul, is almost always with you during these instances too and she starts crushing… hard. you can’t say you blame her: he’s pretty and intelligent and kind of mysterious. you’ve heard whispers of him being the campus crush, which doesn’t surprise you in the slightest.

one friday night, a little bit gone off a blue razzberry beatbox, iseul pleads to you on your dorm room floor, kneeled on the hard linoleum floor and hands pressed together, the whole nine yards. she wants you to help her get with chenle, she really likes him but because she doesn’t have a way of meeting him naturally, you’re her next best bet. she makes you a million promises: she’ll do your laundry for a month, she’ll buy the groceries for the room, she’ll buy your coffee at the campus cafe for the next year, whatever it takes.

she’s near tears when you finally cave in and help her; she hasn’t spoken a single word to that boy, but she’s already so whipped and you’re not sure if you’re ready to hear her whine if you say no. she’s very lucky that you have a group project for your gen psych class and chenle is in your cohort. you don’t have a single clue about how you’re going to play cupid for her, but you suppose you’ll figure it out as you go.

when you, chenle, and the other two members of your group meet for the first time, you’re ready to help iseul bag the man of her dreams. but the more your group meets, the more time you spend sitting next to chenle, his body heat tangible and his cologne invading your senses, the more you exchange ideas and small talk, the more you realize that you like him quite a bit, more than you should.

and then you start hanging out with him outside of the project too, getting coffee or sharing a table at the library or eating dinner on the nights that iseul doesn’t join you for a meal. he laughs at your jokes, asks questions, talks to you about things other than academics. the more you spend your time with him, the harder it gets to want to matchmake him with iseul.

but you made her a promise and you’d be a bad friend to break that promise.

park jisung is your first love, even if he doesn’t know it. he’s a million of your favorite romance tropes rolled into one: childhood best friend, boy next door, campus crush. everything about him is so sweet and kind and cute, it’s next to impossible to not fall in love with him, not when he has everything in the world going for him.

you grow up together, your moms best friends since high school, so you’ve been raised as best friends since birth. you’ve had joint birthdays, matching gifts, a shared cake, all of it. all of your big duo achievements have been celebrated together and you’ve been each other’s dates to every high school dance, including your senior prom. it’s just always been you and jisung, always intertwined, forever written in the stars.

you both decide to go to the same college, manage to get assigned to the same dorm building and into the same gen ed classes because neither of you can imagine going through university without the other. it’s not that you’re codependent (at least not unhealthily so), but he’s your self-proclaimed life partner. you don’t have to follow the same path, just ones that are parallel to each other.

but when you start university, he quickly becomes the heartthrob of your dormitory and then the entire campus. jisung, as he always has been, is oblivious to the extra attention he gets from your classmates, the glances they shoot him in the dining hall, their less than innocent invitations to hang out in their dorm rooms. despite your decades-long friendship, you’ve never really talked about crushes or love or anything of the sort and he’s never given any indication that he likes you romantically, so there’s no reason for you to feel that sharp, ugly pang of jealousy in your gut when another classmate leans a little too close towards him to ask a question while you’re standing in line at the dining hall, waiting to swipe your meal cards.

but you do. it is sharp and painful and terrifying the way you feel so viscerally upset when your peers, girls and guys alike, try to make passes at jisung. you always knew you felt differently about your childhood friend, the one you’ve known since literal diapers, but not to this extent. and you realize one night while you’re drinking contraband alcohol in your dorm room that your feelings stem from a place in your heart you can trace all the way back to eighth grade when he asked you to be his date to the valentine’s day dance when the person you asked rejected you very publicly.

park jisung is not yours, not officially, but your heart has belonged to him for years and you’re too deep in to take it back. maybe if he was just a little less oblivious or you a little less anxious to put your friendship on the line for it.

© hoshologies 2023. do not translate, copy, or repost my work on any site.

[sariahsue]

Wherefore Art Thou (My)stery Lady

When a failed attempt to let Chat Noir down easy ends with Ladybug learning his name, she does what any lovesick teenager would do: teases him mercilessly. Ch 1 Ch 2 Ch 3

Chapter Four

“She really hasn't given you any more hints?” Nino asked. “It's been five days!”

Adrien loved group projects. It meant that there was a chance that he could visit with friends outside of school hours. And given how lucky he had been over the past few days, it didn't even surprise him when Ms. Bustier partnered him with Nino on their history project. 

They sat on his floor together, taking a much-deserved break. Adrien was rereading his texts from Ladybug again, looking for any clues he might have missed. 

Nino was right. It had been five days. Five long days of torture. He hadn’t seen her since their rendezvous on top of Montparnasse Tower, but she had seen him. She’d sent three pictures she’d taken of him when he wasn’t looking. He had his back turned in each one, and he’d been in large crowds as he walked in the hallway in between classes or at the end of the day. Times where there were so many people around that he couldn’t narrow down who she could be, which was deliberate on her part, he was certain. 

They were so close, and he still couldn’t find her.

His phone buzzed with an incoming message.

My Lady – I accidentally called you Kitten in front of my best friend this morning. So embarrassing!  My Lady – I told her I chose that nickname because of all the stupid cat emojis you send me. Adrien – Is that permission to keep sending them to you? My Lady – No.  Adrien – Too bad. Adrien –  😻😽😸

Nino shuffled over, and Adrien scanned the message quickly. Nothing that would arouse suspicion if read. 

“‘My Lady’?” Nino said, reading the contact name at the top. “Getting a little possessive already, huh?”

“No!” Adrien flipped his phone over to hide the messages. “Uh, ‘My’... is short... for ‘mystery.’ She's a mystery lady, but that was too long to fit. So, My Lady.”

“I don't believe you at all, dude, but I'll give you full points for that excuse.” Nino returned to his spot on the floor and started scrolling through his own phone, which he kept hidden from Adrien's view. “You like her already, huh?”

“Yeah,” Adrien said. He and Nino hadn't talked much about it, aside from that first day. Adrien had been too busy trying to piece together who Ladybug was, and he was getting frustrated. All he'd done so far was eliminate everyone in the school. Realizing he missed her on his first pass, he tried again. He looked at the yearbook, made a list of everything he knew about her, spent almost all his time in class puzzling over her, and he'd still come up empty. 

“You should ask her out,” Nino said. “I've known her for a long time, and I think you two would be good for each other.”

Adrien nodded. He'd always thought so. “I asked already.”

“You did? Why didn't you tell me?”

“She said yes, assuming I could figure out who I'm asking!” Adrien flipped onto his back and stared at the high ceiling above him. “You’re not allowed to give me any hints, but what is she like?”

“How's that not a hint?”

“Because I already know what she's like.” He raised the phone, implying that he’d gotten to know her through texting and not midnight rooftop strolls. “I just want a different perspective. Maybe I just need the same information from a new angle.”

“If she gets mad at me, I'm blaming you.”

“But she wants to go out with me, right? So you're really trying to help her.”

“How about this,” Nino said. “I won't tell her if you won't.”

“Deal.”

Nino had been typing away on his screen, cap hiding his eyes, through the whole conversation and finally lifted his head. 

Adrien listened intently as Nino started listing Ladybug's familiar traits.

“She's very creative and sweet, but still tough when she wants to be.” 

Adrien knew both of those well from fighting alongside her. She could come up with the most ridiculous plans and execute them flawlessly. She'd stare down a monster and then turn around and help someone who'd been trying to kill her moments before. 

“She's good at video games.” Another one that he knew, but had forgotten. He'd have to write that down on the list.

“And she can be pretty shy and nervous sometimes. It took her forever to tell you that she likes you.” 

Adrien hadn't thought about it like that. She'd admitted to being anxious and awkwardly obvious about her crush (not that he'd been able to figure out that clue either), but he hadn't mentally added that trait to his image of her. She always seemed so confident and self-assured, and he loved that about her. He'd only ever seen her truly nervous on that first day. 

“That's all you're getting.”

“None of it was really new information,” he said. “But thanks for reminding me of some things.”

“Sure, dude.”

Adrien's phone alerted him to another message. 

My Lady – So... Mystery Lady, huh?

Adrien turned to Nino. “You texted her about that? Since when have you had her number?” 

“Since the day she got her phone.”

My Lady – That was smooth. Plus, now you can use my favorite nickname! Adrien – I could just break into Nino's phone and check his messages, you know. My Lady – That would be cheating! Don't you dare!

“Am I going to do this project by myself?” Nino asked. “Or should I call your girlfriend and ask if I can borrow some of your attention?” 

“Sorry, sorry.” And he was, until the next text from her came in. Nino sighed but didn’t complain as Adrien reflexively reached for his phone.  

My Lady – Kitten, my homework is boring, and I don't want to do it. Talk to me.  Adrien – What do you want me to say? My Lady – I don't know. Anything. Adrien – Okay... 

He searched the room for inspiration but found none. The first thing that caught his attention on his phone was his name for her.

Adrien – What did you name my contact? My Lady – Uh...  My Lady – …  My Lady – Nothing...  Adrien – Nothing as in just a blank space, or nothing as in something that you don't want to say? My Lady – NOTHING Adrien – Uh huh. So what is it? Adrien – Hm? Adrien – Aren't you going to tell me? My Lady – No.  Adrien – Why not? My Lady – I'm going to delete your number if you don't stop asking! Adrien – That won't do anything. I'll just text you again, and then you'll have it again. My Lady – Please unsubscribe me from your mailing list.  Adrien – Is it just a string of hearts or something? My Lady – The number you are trying to reach has been disconnected. Adrien – Or maybe it's “Hot Stuff”? My Lady – New phone. Who dis? Adrien – Wow. It must be reeealllly embarrassing if you don't want to tell me this badly.  My Lady – FINE! My Lady – When I found out who you were, I changed your contact to “Future Husband.” OKAY?!?!?!

If Plagg could see his face right now, Adrien was sure the kwami would gag. He was probably smiling like an idiot. She really thought that it was a possibility?

“You good, dude?”

Adrien only nodded because how was he supposed to explain? Ladybug - LADYBUG - really had decided that she wanted to marry him?!

She was also still waiting for his response. Probably anxiously. Should he gush about how much he loved her or continue with his teasing?

Teasing won out.

Adrien – Oh, Bugaboo, you didn't even buy me a ring yet! My Lady – SHUT UP I'M GOING TO CHANGE IT Adrien – Please don't. Adrien – My ring size is 29, in case you were wondering.  My Lady – That's not even a real size. Adrien – Oh.  Adrien – Father doesn't sell jewelry, so I don't know anything about it. Haha. My Lady – Average sizes are usually between 5 and like 10 or 11. My Lady – In case you were wondering... My Lady – Mine’s 4 and a half.

---

Adrien walked into school the next morning (on time, thankfully! The photographer had been 10 minutes late to the shoot and traffic was horrible all morning) ready to watch the front door for any stragglers who showed up late. He still didn't have any ideas about who Ladybug could be, and he was starting to think he was missing the obvious. So he stood in the middle of the courtyard and scanned faces as they trickled in, but no one in particular stood out to him. No girl was the same height, looked just right, sounded like her, or moved the same way. Over several minutes, the courtyard started filling up. Starting from the doors, he slowly rotated until he’d done a full circle, double checking if someone had slipped past him. Nino was the only one in the crowd who caught his attention.

“Hey, bro!” Nino said, waving as he approached. “You look distracted, which means you haven't figured it out yet.”

“No! And she still won't give me another hint!”

“That's because you have enough to figure it out with, man. You're trying too hard.” He swung an arm over Adrien's shoulders. “Just look at your contact list and find the hole. Should be obvious, my dude.” It was easy for Nino to give advice. He had found out who she was the easy way ages ago.

But Ladybug kept telling him that, too. Plagg, when he didn't avoid the subject entirely, said much the same thing. 

Adrien reached for his phone, but his scroll through his contact list was interrupted by an incoming text image. 

There he and Nino were, in the middle of the crowded courtyard, looking at his phone. Adrien's head snapped up. The photographer had been directly in front of him on the upper level, but that area was now deserted. 

“Come on,” Adrien said. “Maybe we can catch her.” 

He took the stairs two at a time while Nino hollered for him to slow down. Adrien had no plan to do anything of the sort. His Lady had been there just a few seconds ago. She couldn't have gotten far. 

Reaching the top step, he took another look around. There were a few corners that she could be hiding behind, or she could have ducked into a classroom. He debated for only a second. What would Ladybug do if she was trying to trip him up? Probably go where the most people were so she could hide in plain sight. He poked his head into the nearest classroom. A few people waved to him, but no one he knew well enough to have traded phone numbers with. 

He tried a few more, then doubled back and checked the alcoves. There were a lot of people that he knew, and because he was in such a hurry, all of them seemed to want to say hello to him. He stayed only long enough each time to give a very hurried explanation that he was looking for someone in order to excuse himself before running off again. 

“Hey!” Nino said, finally catching up with him. “Will you slow down?”

“Did you see her anywhere? Please tell me that much. Did I overlook her again?”

“I haven't seen her,” Nino said, taking off his hat and fanning himself with it. “What did you eat for breakfast, man? Rocket fuel? I haven't seen you run like that since the last akuma. Or…” Nino put his hat back on and smiled, “do you really just want to find her that bad?”

Two minutes after running out of the courtyard, Adrien found himself up at the top of the stairs overlooking it. He walked to the railing, where Ladybug had been standing when she took her picture of him. She'd been so close, and she'd slipped through his fingers again. He needed to figure her identity out soon, or she’d be the death of him (in the best way possible). 

The courtyard was emptier than it had been a few minutes prior. The flow of students through the front doors had been reduced to a trickle. Only a few stragglers remained at the bottom of the stairs, waiting to go to class until the very last second.

“I think the bell's about to ring,” Nino said, tapping him on the shoulder. “We should go.”

Adrien sighed. Another attempt to find her had ended in failure. 

They trudged back down the stairs to their first class. A few of their friends were ahead of them in the hallway, including Alya and Marinette, who were whispering together. He heard Alya congratulating Marinette about something. He heard only a few words, “likes you a lot!” and “interested.” What were they talking about? He picked up his pace, hoping to get close enough to catch more of the conversation, but Nino called out to them over the crowd to get their attention before he reached them.

Alya cut off her next sentence abruptly and spun around, eyes going to Adrien first before landing on Nino.

“Good morning!” Marinette said, eyes shining. Was he imagining it, or was her gaze lingering on him longer than it usually did? “What have you two been up to this morning? Looking for that mystery lady of yours again?”

“You know about that?” Adrien groaned. “How many people know?” 

A few people shoved past him to get to their classrooms. He hadn't realized they were blocking the traffic.

“Nino told me about it,” Marinette said, starting to walk forward again. “He said you were having some trouble figuring out who she was. Do you want some help?” Behind her back, Nino and Alya exchanged deadpan looks.

“Yeah,” he said. “That would be great. I've tried everything I can think of.” 

Marinette thought about it for a few seconds, tapping her finger to her lips in a slow, exaggerated movement. He glanced down at the finger briefly before turning his attention back to her eyes. 

“Have you tried tricking her into giving you more information? Like ask her about something that happens at school today that only some people know about. Then, if she sees it, you have fewer people to guess from. Maybe you could cat-ch her that way?” She put more emphasis on the first half of the word “catch,” but he wasn't sure why. “What about the assembly today?”

“That's a great idea, Marinette! Thanks!” That was a fantastic idea. The assembly was only for their grade, and if she saw it too, that would really narrow down the pool of candidates. And even if she didn’t, he could exclude an entire grade from his search. He would have to word his questions just right, so she wouldn’t think he was asking for another hint. If she knew he was looking for a way around the rules of her challenge, she might not answer. Or worse, be unhelpful on purpose.

“You're welcome,” she said. “I really hope you find her soon.”

Adrien blinked, surprised to find himself and Marinette alone in the hallway in front of their first period class. His mind was still thinking up exactly how he would pose his questions to seem the most innocent. 

“Really, Marinette. Thank you. I really want to find her.” 

She beamed at him as the bell rang, and they both ran for the classroom door. 

With Marinette’s help, and a little bit of his Lady’s luck, he might know was behind the mask by the end of the day. And he couldn’t wait.

Chapter Five

---

Tag list: @eclipsesmoonshine14, @alittlewolf2, @mlbigbang

[wolfstarshipping]

March Masterlist (Wolfstar Fic Recs)

These are all the fic recs I posted in march, it's a mix between some of my personal/all-time favorites as well as some fics I've just discovered and read more recently that I wanted to share with you all, it's mostly different kinds of AUs and some angst, enjoy!

1. take me as I am by orphan_account, Shira_a (48.494 words, modern AU, demon AU)

2. The Door through the World by Amuly (95.903 words, non-magic AU, fantasy AU)

3. The Long Way Home by hollyivydruzy (177.337 words, modern AU, non-magic AU, university AU)

4. Beneath a Big Blue Sky by eyra (68.298 words, modern AU, non-magic AU)

5. Marauder Ink by jennandblitz (91.312 words, modern AU, non-magic AU, tattoo parlor AU)

6. Staying Strangers by 3amAndCounting (313.586 words, modern AU, non-magic AU, university AU)

7. The Weather Inside by earlybloomingparentheses (ebp-brain) (43.240 words, post hogwarts/first war)

8. Discards by picascribit (76.032 words, modern AU, non-magic AU)

9. Beekeeping in the Daylight by halictus (50.961 words, modern AU, non-magic AU)

10. A Night Off From the War by picascribit (3291 words, first war)

11. Impossible Things by accioromulus (13.952 words, non-magic AU, modern AU)

12. Swing and a Miss: A Secret Santa Tale by sreka (smodernlife) (6444 words, modern AU, non-magic AU)

13. A Dark and Silent Overture by eyra (9664 words, modern AU, boarding school AU)

14. Hold Back the River by mcdynamite (3369 words, marauders era, post-prank)

15. June, and Other Natural Disasters by montparnasse (5524 words, post hogwarts)

16. the time when you were mine by renaissance (9404 words, modern AU, muggle AU)

17. When the Wolf Comes Home by earlybloomingparentheses (2640 words, PoA)

18. No One Can Know by MorlayWritings (5589 words, marauders era, post hogwarts)

19. How Remus Got His Groove Back by RealityShowJunky (42.766 words, modern AU, non-magic AU)

20. As the Moon Knows the Stars by mcdynamite (48.825 words, soulmate AU, everybody lives AU)

21. Pas de Deux in the Upper West Side by wilteddaisy (30.831 words, modern AU, non magic AU, ballet AU)

22. Fits You Well by Snowfilly1 (1027 words, epistolary)

23. Whatever Words I Say by orphan_account (23.656 words, modern AU, non-magic AU, band AU)

24. Heartstones by eyra (4599 words, modern AU, non-magic AU)

25. Remember Me? by moonage___daydream (4146 words, AU, post azkaban)

26. Casanovas of Gryffindor Tower by lostpennies1 (9955 words, marauders era)

27. Apartment 2A by vicariousteria (8558 words, muggle AU, modern AU, musician AU)

28. The Bent by earlybloomingparentheses (40.257 words, wizard AU, everybody lives AU)

29. Found by heartofspells (1320 words, sirius lives AU)

30. Pomegranate by Anonymous (19.700 words, marauders era, different houses AU)

[coffeebanana]

Ladynoir + "He hadn't looked at her like that in years."

Thanks for the ask!!! So kajsfbkjf this is from months ago, and I want you to know that literally my first thought upon reading this prompt was "oh. that's so good". So good that I had to put it aside 4 months apparently 😂. But it's my goal this month to empty out my ask box, and better late than never!! (If I remember correctly was the ask game was to send a pairing and one sentence and I was supposed to write the next 5? But I don't know moderation so this will be more than 5 ahaha.) *** He hadn't looked at her like that in years. Like she was infallible. Like he'd follow her to the ends of the Earth, fully knowing the planet was round and he was really promising eternity. Like maybe, despite everything, he still loved her. (Like he hadn't betrayed her.) But a pair of sparkling eyes didn't make up for the last two years. They didn't make up for the oceans of tears she'd cried, and they couldn't slow the river of turmoil roaring through the city streets, where their cries of joy had once graced the skies. The time for forgiveness was over. Chat Noir didn't seem to have gotten the memo.

Ladybug clenched her fists at her sides as a gust of wind tore past them. The top of Montparnasse Tower had seemed a neutral place to meet when she'd first suggested it, but now...she followed his gaze across the roof, her stomach churning when she remembered one of the first times they'd stood up here. Well, maybe "remembered" was the wrong word. She'd seen the picture more times than she could count--on the Ladyblog, on billboards, in magazines--but now more than ever, she couldn't for the life of her figure out what had prompted her to kiss him.

Tonight, his words cut into her attempts at speculation.

"You came," he said. Even now, his voice was a warmth that battled the wind and wrapped itself around her for a brief moment of time. A moment of calm.

The icy wind burned her cheeks when his words fell away. "I said I would," she replied shortly. "I'm not the one who breaks promises."

His expression faltered at that, but she looked away before she could fully register it. She wasn't falling for his tricks.

She especially wasn't falling for his next words.

"I'm sorry." He took a small step closer, and she took a larger one back. "You're sorry?" She laughed, the bitterness she'd swallowed for years finally bursting free. "For what, exactly? For abandoning me? For joining the Shadow Moth?"

For breaking my heart? Chat bowed his head. "For everything. I never wanted to hurt you, my la--" "I'm not your lady," she interrupted, ignoring the part of her that still very much wanted to be. The part of her that had played through scenarios just like this one in her dreams.

(In those dreams, she always took him back. She took his face in her hands, and he ran his fingers through her hair oh so carefully. His claws scratched lightly against her scalp. His touch sent shivers down her spine. In those dreams, she could never figure out what exactly he tasted like, but his lips didn't leave much else to the imagination.) "I know that," he said. "But I...you have to understand, I never wanted this. It wasn't my choice, Ladybug."

She snorted. "Right. And I'm just supposed to believe that?"

"No." He shook his head sadly. "I brought proof."

He took another step closer, and this time Ladybug didn't move away--she was so tired of fleeing. She did however raise her yo-yo defensively as he reached into his pocket, but all he pulled out was a silver ring.

She eyed it warily. "What's that?" "An Amok," he whispered, his voice almost lost to the howl of the wind. "Mine."