Miraculous Unoshots

April Fool's Day

For the last few days, Adrien Agreste had started noticing that his friend, Marinette DuPain-Cheng, had seemed sort of down. He wasn't sure why and no matter who he asked, even Alya, nobody knew what seemed to have her so down. Whatever it was, though, Adrien knew that he had to fix it. No friends of his would be sad on his watch. And with April Fool's Day coming up, he had the perfect idea on how to make her smile. 

April 1st, he prepared his trap. It didn't take long , as all he really had to do was write on a piece of paper and drop it through the slits in her locker, but he was still proud of himself. 

Now, all he had to do was wait.

~

Marinette kept her head low, as she had gotten used to doing in recent days, as she walked towards her locker. Alya walked beside her, prodding her for the reason she was so down, but Marinette knew she couldn't talk about it.

The pressure of being a superhero was finally starting to get to her head. On top of that, Chat Noir was putting more and more pressure on her to try to start something between them ever since she caved one late night on patrol and she told him that she might have had feelings for him, but wasn't sure yet. The cherry on top was that Alya had been pestering her to help her uncover the identity of Ladybug, despite her promise a few months ago to cease her search. All of it was getting to be too much for Marinette and had pushed her into a depressive episode. 

As they reached the lockers, Nino came over and pulled Alya away from Marinette, leaving her alone in the lockers to finally be able to take a breath. However, that breath was cut very short when she opened her locker and saw a small piece of paper flutter down to the ground. She looked around to see who might have placed it in her locker, but the room was completely empty. She bent down and picked it up.

"' I know what your secret is?'" She read aloud, dropping the paper right back to the floor again as she gasped and recoiled from the paper. Despite her previous scan of the room, she looked around again. Marinette reached once more for the paper, her hand shaking violently this time.

"No, no, no, no, no, no. Not now, not today. Why does everything have to all happen at once? How does someone know? Who put this paper here?" She wondered out loud, knowing she was completely alone. She worked herself into a panic attack and ended up skipping her first period to stay collapsed in the locker room, her kwami working to calm her down and reassure her that everything would be okay.

By the time the bell for second hour rung, she was stable enough to go to class, knowing full well that she couldn't skip much more school because she already missed so much due to her duties as Ladybug.

"Girl, where were you?" Alya asked as Marinette slid into her seat. 

"I ah, I felt sick so I had to sit in the nurse's office?" She lied, trying to turn back down to her book. Alya could always tell when she lied, Marinette knew that. But Alya also always knew never to push so she simply nodded and turned down to her own school book.

However, throughout the rest of the school day, Marinette could all but focus on her school work. She kept repeating the time and address that were written on the back of the note to herself, trying to decide if she should go. If she didn't, would the person reveal her secret to everyone, ultimately causing Hawkmoth to be able to take her miraculous and win? 

If she did go, would the person try to blackmail her into keeping her secret?

She kept trying to envision who might show up there, but each possibility only seemed more and more impossible. She had always been so careful so as not to reveal her identity as Ladybug. She didn't even know how it was possible that someone knew.