"Er, dude?" Nino asked curiously. "Something wrong?"
Lila fumbled for her phone.
Adrien repeated the film title and the year it was made, surprisingly calmly.
Despite how (albeit unintentionally) hurtful and horrible Lila's lies had been this time, Marinette could not help feeling a very smug satisfaction as Lila clearly found the right webpage. All the colour drained from her face.
"E-er …" she stammered.
"Yes?" Adrien pressed.
"It's … Emilie," she said hesitantly.
"Surname?" he demanded.
She gulped. "A-Agreste."
Everyone else gasped, and a stunned silence fell.
"So where exactly did you meet my mom last week?" Adrien said clearly, folding his arms. "I'd be very interested to know, especially since no-one else, including me, has seen her in nearly a year."
Their classmates all turned to stare at Lila, who was now growing steadily more scarlet in the face.
"You know, Lila, after I saw Ladybug deny she had ever even met you, I could have told everyone you were a liar. But I didn't, because I made the mistake of not thinking it was worth it. I didn't want to expose you as a liar, because I don't like hurting people. But what you just did was not cool, and I really wish now I'd told the truth earlier."
"A-Adrien, I'm so sorry! I didn't know—"
"That's not the point. Your lies can hurt people, whether you mean them to or not, and—I wish I'd realised that sooner. I don't want to hear another word out of your mouth unless it's honest."
The silence that followed in the classroom was astronomical. Adrien took a deep breath and turned around. "Marinette, I'm really sorry."
"You're not the one who has to apologise, Adrien," Marinette replied, giving Lila a filthy look.
"I mean for not coming forward and backing you up before. Everyone's been giving you such a hard time because you didn't buy her tall tales; I should have said something. I wish I had earlier."
"Y-you were right about her," Alya stammered. "I'm sorry too, Marinette; I really just thought you were just jea—I mean … I should have trusted you."
The others started falling over themselves to apologise for not believing her too, everyone speaking at once. Marinette got the gist, however.
"It's okay, everyone. I forgive you. I know it looked like I was just paranoid. She was good."
"How did you know she was lying, anyway?" Alya asked.
Marinette flashed back to the time Alya had asked her that recently, remembering that when she had started to reply, she had become flustered out of fear of revealing she was Ladybug. But Adrien's admitting to what he had witnessed between Ladybug and Lila had just given her an idea.
"I was actually in the park that day." She turned to look at Adrien. "When you and Lila were together, and then Ladybug turned up?"
"Oh."
"I didn't want to say anything, since it was that incident which turned her into Volpina. But now everyone knows about it anyway …"
"You were really there?" Adrien asked, sounding confused.
Marinette could practically hear Alya thinking Yeah, totally spying on you, dude, behind her smirk.
"Y-yeah. I, er …" Marinette quickly searched for an explanation that was less humiliating than admitting she had gone all green-eyed monster, and remembered the other reason why she had been there. "I saw you two in the library earlier, just when she stole your book."
9: Just keep digging
Start from the beginning
