For six long months Erik toiled over his organ as he worked to finish his opera, Don Juan Triumphant. On a few occasions he did meander through the opera house, observing rehearsals and watching as everyone slowly returned to their day to day lives after the chandelier fell.
He even dared to check on Christine. Through her dressing room mirror, Erik caught a glimpse of her life. The vicomte sent flowers for her nearly daily. Erik wondered what could possibly make the man feel so inadequate that he would need to reassure her of his love for her so often, but then it struck him.
It was a show. Christine had, no doubt, told the vicomte of his passageway behind her mirror. They knew he would be watching- they were counting on it. He couldn't trust a single thing he saw through the mirror in her dressing room.
Such effort applied to angering the opera ghost… If they only knew how angry the truth made him. This public show was, at best, a mild amusement. The fact that they were attempting to dupe him made his eyes flash with rage that was ever building behind his seemingly calm exterior.
The mask he wore to hide his disfigured visage served to disguise further ugliness now. Ugliness his mother had seen but he had refused to acknowledge. Surely one's soul couldn't be as horrible as a face not even a mother could love?
Erik's anger reached a deeper point within him as he watched Christine enter her dressing room, two days before the annual December masquerade. He watched her from just beyond where she could see through the mirror. He watched as she brushed her hair and he closed his eyes as she changed from a rather extravagant costume back into a simple dress, temporarily baring parts of herself that were not his to view.
As she turned to leave the room, she paused and in an exaggerated motion she bent down and sniffed one of the larger, more vibrant flowers from her suitor. Erik felt something deep within him snap, and as Christine opened her dressing room door, he bellowed, "You will curse the day you did not do all that the Phantom asked of you!"
Christine froze, one foot out the door. Slowly, she turned her head until the mirror was just barely in her peripheral vision. She stared this way for a moment, as though she expected him to come out and steal her away again, but no such thing happened, as once the words had torn themselves from Erik's throat he had turned and fled.
Raoul came to collect her shortly after and she decided it would be best to act as though nothing had happened. Back in his home, Erik was seething as he put the final touches on his costume for the masquerade. He would have all eyes on him.