A/N: I've added a new story to The Musical Archives! I'd recommend checking it out after you finish this chapter, or else the second half will be a little anticlimactic. Without further ado, enjoy~!

Suddenly, the door to the closet opened and bathed Whitley in light. She looked to her right and saw Ms. Lefévre standing over her. "Whitley!" she exclaimed. "Everyone's been looking for you! How did you end up on the floor of my closet?" Then she followed Whitley's gaze to the ceiling. "You came from the attic, did you?"

White looked down at the brown-haired girl, who still seemed to have her attention focused on something in some other reality. Her face was pale, and there was a distant look in her eye. White didn't know Miss Daaé all that well, but she didn't think this behavior was normal for her. She helped Whitley to her feet and noticed a crumpled note in her hand. "What's that note you have there?" White asked.

Whitley stared at the note like she wasn't sure it was actually there. Finally, she murmured, "He gave it to me…"

"Who gave it to you?"

"H…he did. The angel," she stuttered. "The Angel of Music gave it to me."

White folded her arms thoughtfully. This statement raised so many questions, but she didn't want to overwhelm the poor child. One step at a time. "Why don't you sit down?" she said, gesturing to the chair opposite her desk. "I'll get you a glass of water, and then we'll have a chat."

Whitley nodded and sat down. She hadn't thought about how she would explain to others what happened to her, so her first instinct was to fall back on the one thing that Hugh had told her to do: "To others, call me your angel, and nothing more."

White placed a plastic cup of water on the desk in front of Whitley and took a seat on the other side. She waited until Whitley had taken a sip before beginning her interrogation. She figured she would start with simple yes or no questions, and move to the more difficult questions later. "The one who left you in my closet…was the Angel of Music, correct?" White asked.

Whitley nodded.

"Have you met him before?"

Whitley hesitated, then shook her head.

"Did you just meet him in my closet?"

Whitley shook her head.

"Where did you meet him, then?"

"M-my room."

"This morning?"

"Last night."

"So you spent the night with him?" White asked dubiously. "Where was that?"

Whitley bit her lip. "I will not be discovered on anyone's terms but my own," Hugh had said. People knew about the Phantom, but no one really knew who Hugh was…and for now, he didn't seem to want them to. She could accept that, but now she was beginning to wonder if she had said too much just by saying that she had met him in her room. She decided the best course of action was just to shut up about it. "I-I'm sorry, I can't say," she said, getting to her feet. "But I need to get ready for rehearsal…"

"Don't be ridiculous, you just had a huge performance last night," White said. "Which you performed splendidly at, by the way. You shouldn't need to rush out to anything."

"I'm sorry, but I believe that decision should be up to my managers, not you," Whitley declared bravely.

White opened her mouth to respond, but suddenly there was a knock on the door. Whitley opened it and found Mrs. Giry on the other side. "M-miss Daaé!" Mrs. Giry exclaimed. "How did you end up in the BW Agency office, dear?"

"A-an accident," she replied lamely.

"An accident," Mrs. Giry repeated, narrowing her eyes at Whitley. The two women stared at each other silently. Finally, Mrs. Giry sighed and said, "Well, you had the rest of us worried sick, vanishing without a trace like that. I ought to go tell them you're all right."

"Would you like me to bring her back to her room?" White offered from behind.

"Oh! White, you are here," Iris said. "Actually, I came here to give you the list of actors that Mr. André needs for the next performance. If you could get the paperwork started on that while I go tell the managers that Miss Daaé has returned, I'll come back for her."

White accepted the list from Iris and scanned it quickly; there were only a couple requests for Pokémon that she didn't already have on hand. Those would be with her agent at Pokéstar Studios. She decided to call him up and ask him to transfer them over quickly, and then she'd ask Whitley more questions about her disappearance.

While Ms. Lefévre was on her Xtransceiver, Whitley slumped back into the chair. She didn't want to talk about her night with Hugh, she didn't want to be stuck in an office with White Lefévre, and she didn't want to be treated like an incompetent little kid who was incapable of walking back to her room by herself. Hugh's note was still in her hand, but she had no idea what it might say and was a little wary of opening it up with someone else around.

Curiosity soon won her over, though, and she carefully unfolded the note. Wrapped inside was a plain gold ring: smooth and flat, no jewels, no engraving. The note itself looked like it had been written by a third grader, a messy scrawl of red ink that was made even more difficult to decipher by the creases in the crumpled paper. Finally, she managed to make out the message on the paper:

Wear this on your finger.

Think of me when you use it…

-H

Whitley realized too late that Ms. Lefévre wasn't talking on her Xtransceiver anymore. "So this Angel of Music also goes by 'H'?" she remarked, leaning over Whitley's shoulder.

Whitley yelped and pulled the note closer to her chest, even though there wasn't any point trying to hide it now. "H-he never called himself that before," Whitley stammered. "I don't know what it means." This was technically true, but she knew what it probably stood for.

Then the ring fell out of the note into Whitley's lap. "He gave you a ring, too. How sweet," Ms. Lefévre said drily.

Whitley decided not to respond to this comment, instead picking up the ring and holding it in her palm. Then she slipped it onto the ring finger of her right hand. It slid down her finger easily and stayed there, a perfect fit. The ring felt cold against her skin.

White stroked her chin thoughtfully. She was almost certain that she knew who this 'H' character was, but there was one piece of the puzzle that didn't fit with what she knew about him. "Whitley, why did the Angel of Music visit you?" White asked.

Whitley was saved from having to answer this question by the door being flung open, and Blake running in. "Whitley!" he exclaimed. "You're really alright!" He pulled her into a hug, surprising her. But his strong arms were comforting, and Whitley felt herself able to truly relax for the first time since waking up that morning. He pulled out of the hug, but kept his hands resting on her shoulders. "After you disappeared last night, I was so worried about you. What happened?"

Whitley couldn't meet his warm gaze and cast her eyes to the ground. "I don't want to talk about it," she mumbled.

"What?"

"I don't want to talk about it," she repeated, a little louder.

"But why–" he started to ask, but cut himself off. "No, I understand. That will be a story for some other time. You look like you need to rest a bit first."

"That's exactly what I told you, Viscount of Chenonceau," Iris snapped from the doorway behind him. He whirled around, a sheepish smile on his face. "But you just couldn't listen to me, hmm? Well, perhaps you'll listen to me this time when I say I'll escort the lady back to her room on my own!"

Blake gave her a small nod. He squeezed Whitley's hand as Mrs. Giry led her away. "I will see you tomorrow, Whitley!" he called brightly.

As soon as the door closed, Blake turned around and asked Ms. Lefévre seriously, "Did she tell you anything?"

"A little," White replied. "She said that she met the Angel of Music for the first time last night, and she spent the night with him."

"So she really was visited by the Angel of Music…" Blake murmured.

"You know something about it?" White asked.

Blake nodded. "When we were in grade school together, Whitley's mother told us many stories to entertain us. One of those was about the Angel of Music that visits musicians with a pure heart and teaches them, so that they sing or play with an angelic beauty. But I never believed that such a spirit actually existed…"

"Well, she certainly sang like an angel last night," White commented. Now she was starting to doubt the accuracy of her guess – her old friend couldn't sing like an angel. "So it seems our theater has an Opera Ghost and an Angel of Music."

"You mean – the Opera Ghost really exists?" Blake asked, narrowing his eyes.

"Of course he does," White said, rolling her eyes. "Who do you think made that backdrop fall yesterday – a stagehand with too much time to kill?"

"Perhaps," Blake retorted. "I still do not believe in ghosts."

"I never said he was a real ghost," White replied. "He's a living, breathing person just like you or me. He just calls himself the Phantom of the Musical, and this season, the Opera Ghost."

Blake folded his arms. "And you never told me this before because…?"

"You never asked," White replied coyly.

Blake rolled his eyes. "So…is he a stagehand?"

"He used to be my chief stagehand," White admitted. "He resigned after the chandelier accident – you might've heard the chorus girls talking about it."

"The accident…where the chief stagehand was killed?" Blake said drily.

"That's the one," White said. "Except he wasn't killed…that's just what they wanted to believe. Makes for a better story that way."

"What happened to him, then?"

White leaned back in her chair. "It's basically just as they say. We had just wrapped up our third season, and we were storing all the set pieces and equipment to reuse. I was short-staffed and a little overwhelmed, so when the chief stagehand asked me what to do with the fog machine above the chandelier, I just told him to take it down while I went and helped someone else. And instead of borrowing a Flying-type Pokémon to carry him up there, he decided to climb up on the chandelier itself somehow and take the fog machine down." She groaned and buried her face in her hands. "He was trying to do something with an Escape Rope to help him balance on the chandelier when I got back. I called out to him to stop, but…" She sighed and leaned back again. "Whatever he was trying to do with that rope didn't work, and he slipped off the chandelier.

"Fortunately, the rope was tied to the chandelier and it stopped his fall," White continued. "As I was flying up there on Barbara – my Vullaby – to help him down, he moved to grab the lowest tier of the chandelier instead. But for some reason, even though he had to use both of his hands to get there, he wouldn't hold on to it with his right hand." A pensive expression crossed her face for a moment, and Blake could tell that she had pondered this action many times. "But I suppose it didn't really matter anyways. Just before I could reach him, the chandelier fell. It's not like it was that old; I guess the chain just wasn't meant to hold that much weight for extended periods of time."

She paused a moment to lean forward and point a finger at Blake. "Now, this is where those girls' story really veers from the truth. Anybody else will claim that I used Barbara to save myself and abandoned him. But that's not right at all – Barbara and I dropped down right after him, but by the time I grabbed his hand, I could tell that she wouldn't be able to slow our fall enough before we hit the seats. Then, just as the chandelier started to shatter…the two of us were suddenly teleported to a chorus girl's bedroom, and we landed on the bed there."

"Who teleported you?" Blake asked.

White shrugged. "I still don't know. And that's probably why people are more willing to believe the ghost story than mine."

"Your story sounds more plausible to me," Blake said matter-of-factly. "So you landed in an unoccupied bedroom. Then what?"

"We had a…disagreement," White said cautiously.

"A disagreement about what?" Blake asked.

"I'd rather not discuss that," she replied stiffly. "It's personal. He went home after that and he officially resigned the next day. Everybody else thought it was suspicious, though, and since the next time he was seen at the theater he was calling himself a ghost, they all thought he had died and was now haunting the theater."

Blake frowned. "I do not mean to be rude, Ms. Lefévre, but if you have known exactly who the Phantom was, why have you never tried to stop him? He–"

"Because I've seen him!" White snapped, glaring at Blake. He met her gaze warily. She exhaled slowly, closing her eyes. "I'm sorry, that was unprofessional. This is a bit of a touchy subject for me, you see. I don't like to talk about it much."

"I understand," Blake said, politely nodding his head. He still had more questions, but it wasn't necessary for him to ask them immediately. He had bothered the Theater's owner more than enough for one day. "Thank you for sharing this with me, Ms. Lefévre. I appreciate it."

White breathed out a sigh of relief. "It won't go on forever," she mumbled to herself. To Blake she said, "Have a good day…Viscount."

"You too, Ms. Lefévre."

A/N: This chapter is the first one to be completely original to my story - no songs or dialogue from the musical used/referenced in this chapter. The musical kinda skims over what happens with Christine between her return from the Phantom's lair and the production of Il Muto (the next opera), aside from a later song implying that she didn't tell Raoul what happened. I wanted to develop that a little more in this chapter and the next. Oh, and I also wanted to include a chapter to give you more insight into White's character, as she becomes very important later on.

There are some kinda obscure references in this chapter, so I thought I'd mention those. The ring from Hugh is a reference to Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera, the book that the musical is based on, where the Phantom gives Christine a ring with the promise that he will always protect her as long as she wears it. Meanwhile, the text on the note is a reference to an NPC in the BW2 games who gives you presents after you make enough movies in Pokéstar Studios. She can give you either a Full Restore or a Big Pearl, the latter which is an item that literally only exists to be sold for a high price, but she always says, "Take this. Think of me when you use it..." Blake's question "The Opera Ghost really exists?" is a reference to the opening line of the Leroux novel: "The Opera Ghost really existed."

The chandelier accident that White talks about in this chapter is my version of the infamous chandelier crash that happens near the beginning of the book, right before intermission in the musical, and near the end of the 2004 movie (which is based on the musical). It was alluded to at the beginning of chapter 3, when Bianca was telling ghost stories to the chorus girls. The two big differences between my chandelier crash and the others are that mine occurs before the story begins and that mine was an actual accident - in every adaptation where there is a chandelier crash, it's caused by the Phantom. If you want to know more details of the accident, check out the next chapter of The Musical Archives :)

And, finally, now that you know a little more about White's relationship with the Phantom...what do you think of it? Do you sympathize with her, or do you think she should have done more to stop him? Do you think there's more to the story? Do you think she's even telling the truth at all? Or do you not care about their relationship at all and just want me to shut up about it and get to the romance already? I'd love to hear your thoughts~

Up next: what happens when the managers won't listen to the Phantom's demands.