"Do not chastise yourself so", Val gently said. "I had not seen you either".

"No?", Adrien asked. He would have thought his own feelings far too visible.

"No", Val smiled. "I had only wondered. Sometimes, the things you said, the things you did -- I had wondered if you, too... But I thought it had been my own wishes that made me see more than was real -- and so, I could not see you all the same, and I would not ask; as your mentor, it wouldn't have been right for me to put you in that position", Val said.

Adrien paused. "Right", he could only say. It really was that simple, all of a sudden. It all had been plainly before him; only now he could see.

"I hoped that, if you felt the same, you would tell me one day", Val said, and he slowly closed his eyes as the pulse of his blue light surged, "but I had long put my hopes to rest".