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There are a couple of hairs caught in Marinette’s woolen jumper. Kagami wants to reach out and pick them off, put them away on her desk, let them rest in the sunlight–
“Buginette, you’re not supposed to shed this much,” Adrien says, laughing as he gathers the hairs before bopping her chin and kissing her–
–so she may have this later. At least this.
Adrien is usually the one to initiate the hang-outs with all three of them. With the way he twists his hands sometimes when Marinette isn’t around, Kagami thinks he still doubts whether she’s forgiven him. The way Marinette will sometimes check in with her about whether she wants to hang out just the two of them or all three tells her he’s not the only one.
(Kagami is grateful for the occasional small mercy. Of course she’s forgiven him; the problem is, she’s forgiven him a bit too much.)
She tells everyone that she’s lost her appetite for ice cream this summer. What she fears is this, just now, happening in front of everyone: André the ice cream man giving her a once-over when he sees her before scooping up some mint and some strawberry with black chocolate chips.
“People don’t usually get both of these together,” he mutters, “and I can’t say that I understand the combination myself, but who am I to judge true love’s taste?”
He hands her the ice cream, and for a second, Kagami feels seen but not judged, and it’s almost enough to trick her into thinking it’s all fine.
“Thank you, Monsieur,” she says, and he waves her off as she leaves.
“I guess all of our parents just think that giving us, like, what we actually want and need is overrated,” Chloé says, head resting on Kagami’s thigh.
She’d splayed herself all over the place as soon as Kagami had sat down on her couch, and Kagami has long since lost the will to fight Chloé on anything non-essential. It’s nice, anyway. Chloé is one of those people with whom physical contact is surprisingly easy.
“My mother promised me my own Tesla when I was 15, but when I asked her for a set of paintbrushes, she told me I was being greedy since I wouldn’t be pursuing art seriously enough to make use of them,” Kagami says, the memory coming to her unbidden.
Chloé snorts. “Well, you are greedy. Not in that way, though.”
Not indeed, but then Chloé continues, “You’re greedy in the same way Luka is greedy. When you don’t get what you want, you only want it more.”
Kagami cocks an eyebrow. “Isn’t that envy?”
“No, then you would be trying to destroy it. Trust me,” Chloé says, voice low, “I’d know. It isn’t even really jealousy, ‘cause your issue isn’t that somebody else has something, it’s that you don’t – somebody else having paintbrushes doesn’t mean you can’t have them. We’re talking non-excludable goods here, of course.”
“Of course,” Kagami replies, then picks up her glass of water, her throat feeling very dry all of a sudden.
“Letting go is a good thing, Kagami,” Luka tells her. He’s watching her watching them.
She nearly laughs in his face.
Kagami is greedy. She feels like she’s become greedier since she started wielding Longg - greedy for more power over herself, more freedom, more, more–
– but she knows what her mother would say to that as well. That hoarding dragons are more of an Occidental thing than a Japanese one (though those guarded precious jewels and artifacts in the myths), that this is just another example of corrupting Western influence. Just like whatever notions Kagami has in her head about love, and him, and her, and–
–them.