My Other Half

CH 1

12 years later

Morning light shone through the curtains, the part in the draps was open wide enough that no matter where I faced, the sunlight still burned through my eyelids. I finally sat up deciding it wasn’t worth it to try and go back to sleep and left the comfort of my bed to get breakfast. I brushed my hair and teeth before descending the stairs to the kitten which was giving off the warm buttery pancake smell coated with caramel maple scent of syrup.
“Happy birthday dear!” My mom turned to me, my eyes widened seeing my parents busy flipping pancake after pancake with an already prepared stack on a shiny white plate ready for me.
“Only a few more hours till your red string appears!” My dad called over to me in his big booming, yet gentle voice. He lowered the heat for a moment as he walked over to embrace me. When he pulled away, I could see tears of joy gathering in his eyes. “I’m just so happy! My little Marinette is all grown up now! It seems only yesterday, you just learned to walk and were running around the bakery, now you're learning to spread your wings and fly, running around the world this time.” he walks back to grab my breakfast for me. “Enjoy sweetheart.”
“Thank you papa!” I smile and kiss him on the cheek before digging in. My phone pinged with a message from my best friend Alya. I miss her dearly, a couple years ago, she had to move to pairs for her dad’s work, we still text daily so it’s not that bad.
    A: ‘Happy bday girl! Check the news! The famed Chat Noir has his 18th birthday today too! What if your soulmates?!’
I giggled reading her text. Chat Noir is a Paris hero, about a year after Alya moved to Paris, he showed up using his powers to help people in danger.
    M: ‘No way, it’s probably someone who likes the cat puns he spews after every incident and interview’
    A: ‘Who knows, you could secretly like them.’
That's somewhat true, I found them charming, yet at the sametime, too obvious. They’ve all started becoming overused. I had a list in my room of more puns I thought up that he could incorporate into his battles and interviews if I ever met him. However, me meeting his is about as likely as him being my soulmate.
I started feeling uncomfortable talking about my unknown soulmate and I tried to redirect the conversation.
    M: ‘So how are you and Nino?’
A couple months before, Alya turned 18 and found Nino. Not on purpose really, she was following Chat for an interview for the Noir Chat she started in her blog. She had just started looking for her soulmate when she heard about robbery, figuring Chat would show, she ran to the scene. Afterwards, she had a hard time getting through the press to Chat Noir before he left. She couldn’t get through and once everyone dispersed, she ran to catch up, she didn’t look where she was going and ran into Nino. They say the red string, Alya immediately forgot about the exclusive interview and they went for lunch on their first date. I didn’t get any sleep that night texting with Alya who was over the moon about it.
I immediately snapped out of my memory and looked back at my phone to see that it had turned off on me but left a ‘1 new message from Alya’ pop up against the black screen. I clicked on it in hopes that she got distracted with my question.
    A: ‘Oh my goodness girl! We’re great! We just got our first apartment!’
    M:‘Congrats!’
    A: ‘I know! Anyway, I should leave you now, from what I know, the string should appear any minute now, 9:15, right”’
    M: ‘Thanks, and yeah, any suggestion on how to find them?’
    A: ‘Google maps, hold it so it's in line with the string and try and find a place in that direction.’
    M: ‘Thanks, i'll try that.’
I set down my phone and stare intently at the clock hanging on the wall in the kitchen, watching the second hand take a painstakingly long time to get to one, measly moment. The clock hit 9:15.

Nothing.