Author's Note: Here it is, guys! The chapter you've all been waiting for! Enjoy!

She did as she was told and took her leave with a few polite words, following directions from a member of staff to the entrance to the backstage. It took a few wrong turns down hallways she didn't even recognize, and some trial and error, but finally she arrived at her destination. From her vantage point, she could see through the wings and onto the stage, and down a lit hallway to the dressing rooms. There, she found one of the larger dressing rooms open for the singers, stepping in quietly with the hope of not drawing too much attention to herself. Of course, this was nearly impossible. Not only was she stunning, but she was also the youngest person in the room by far. She had grown used to it by now, but that didn't mean the others had.

"I hope this night is over with soon, I am missing Carmen rehearsals for this. Of course, I was going to say no, but Dr. Greene asked me so nicely-" A woman, wearing the same lilac dress that Christine spotted on stage, was chatting away until she noticed her in the mirror. "Oh hey, you're the kid from the Institute. We were wondering who you were."

Soon, everyone in the room had turned to face Christine, who went white as a ghost in the doorway. She smiled politely, trying her best to keep from trembling. "Yes, hi… I'm Christine." She felt exceptionally stupid with such a small response, but it was all she had to say.

"How old are you?" A man, looking to be in his late twenties, asked, his voice sounding a deep baritone.

"Eighteen."

"Oh my god, you're fresh out of high school!" A contralto exclaimed, holding back a laugh. "Soprano, presumably?"

She nodded, and they all nodded back, not seeming surprised.

"Well, luckily for us, you are on last, which means we get to watch you sing." The woman in the lilac dress was presumably trying to be kind with this statement, but there was an underlying tone of something that Christine did not quite appreciate. For the life of her, she could not tell if they thought of her as a joke, or whether they were threatened by her. Or both.

She brushed off this feeling as best as she could, trying not to think of it too much, choosing instead to stay silent while she made herself a cup of tea from the complimentary drink station in the dressing room. She found somewhere to sit, putting some distance between her and the pack of singers that seemed to be silently judging her. Calm down, Christine. They don't matter, none of this matters. Drink the tea, relax, breathe. Breathe, that last word in her head echoed in Erik's authoritative, yet comforting voice, forcing her to take a breath and reorganize her thoughts. Hearing his voice, even in her head, seemed to set her priorities straight. Having something warm to drink cleared her throat was well as her mind, and soon the minutes were slipping by in a haze of polite, yet tense conversation. After all, she could not completely alienate the people she was sharing a dressing room with.

First, one singer left for the stage, then another, then another. For a few of them, Christine forced herself to stand and watch them from the wings, knowing that not doing so would be a wasted opportunity to learn. But, her mind was not in it, and her feet felt like lead as time seemed to drag on, frustratingly slow yet impossibly fast all at once. She continued to sip her tea, to keep her throat warm, knowing that soon it would be her turn on the stage.

For Erik, watching the performance was his own form of personal hell. He, along with the other headmasters of institutions being represented tonight, were seated in Box Five, which boasted the best view of the stage. After the first two performances, they all seemed to blur together into a great compilation of shameless vocal gymnastics. Comments from his colleagues including "this one's mine" or "mine's up next" were followed by rather gaudy displays of range, trills, and other nonsense exhibitions of vocal agility. Not only did it look like a dog show, but it sounded like one. What the singers lacked in genuine vocal talent, they made up for with a complete lack of taste, for all of them were dressed to the nines without an ounce of professionalism or style. As if to distract himself from the nightmare that was unfolding in front of him, he silently thanked himself for hiring a designer for his student. At last, as if the universe decided that he could not and should not withstand any more, he finally followed with his golden eyes a petite figure, dressed in black, cross the threshold to the stage.

"And this one is mine," he murmured pointedly, just loud enough so that his colleagues could hear him. This was the moment he had been waiting all night for. For the love of God, Christine, don't screw this up.

He, along with most of the audience, sat up a little in their seats at the sight of her crossing the stage. The rumor had spread that a particularly young artist, from the Institution, was making an appearance tonight, a girl that none of them knew and all of them itching to find out about. Perhaps this was a charity case, and they were being made to watch her perform as part of some outreach program for younger students. Yes, that seemed to be a logical explanation for the proceedings, and they would all be forced to give their polite congratulations to her after the performance as part of some confidence-boosting regime. Either way, Erik would quite clearly tell that most of the donors in the audience were preparing themselves for something particularly bad, bracing themselves for a meek display of some marginal vocal talent that they probably would barely be able to hear anyway. Yes, she was the only singer that opted out of using a microphone, upon Erik's request. Maybe this was a mercy, most of the audience reassured themselves. He smiled as he witnessed the sudden shift in the mood of the audience, for this newfound sense of nonchalance would only add to their shock once Christine's voice touched their ears.

Christine's own ears, in fact, felt as if they were stuffed with cotton. As she stood in the wings, her heart was racing in her throat, her hands were trembling, her eyes glazed over with a sense of fear that she could not push away. When the sound of applause for the singer before her filled the air with its thunder, it sounded to her like it was far away, or underwater. She tried desperately to calm herself, to control her breathing, to keep herself from fainting right there, but she hardly felt alive. She probably looked a wreck then, and the small crowd of singers behind her had good reason to predict her eminent demise upon that stage. As they watched her every move curiously, she felt like a spectacle, felt trapped inside of herself, felt everything all at once like a storm that was welling inside of her and threatening to crash. Breathe, focus… Christine, get ahold of yourself, please just get through this…

And then... She stepped onto the stage. She stepped onto the stage, and she felt her breath stop. She forced herself into the light, felt the artificial warmth on her skin… and her heart stopped. Her mind stopped… time itself stopped. She felt herself stop, as if held by some invisible force deep inside her, center stage. And in that moment, everything was still. Blissfully, mercifully still. The quiet shifting of the audience seemed too distant to be significant, and each passing second felt simultaneously like a flash and an eternity. She felt the stares of thousands of people watching her every move, and yet she felt so open, yet so closed off at the same time. The very essence of the stage seemed to rearrange her consciousness, slow her breathing, clear the rushing in her head until there was just quiet. Quiet… and music. A piano, playing a familiar melody, but with different hands… She listened to that music, which seemed to pull her into the present, remind her of where she was and why she was here. She focused on the melody welling up inside of her like a long-forgotten memory… And she sang.

That first note was was so tantalizingly soft, yet so unbelievably beautiful, that it plunged the audience into a silence so deep that a pin drop would sound like a cannon in its depths. Erik, just for a moment, closed his eyes in a wash of relief, for he distinctly recognized the voice he heard in his dreams, the voice he heard lesson after lesson, every day. In that first note, he knew immediately that she was not going to disappoint, and he felt himself relax as he listened, now without apprehension, to his songbird. He felt, rather than saw, the entire audience lean forward a little in their seats, as if drawn by an invisible force to the ethereal soprano voice that now flooded the auditorium. In the first stages of its training, yet already so naturally gorgeous, it resembled a siren's song in the swirling of the high seas. A small smile pulled at his lips, for without any electronic enhancement, her voice was allowed to freely echo off of the walls and flow like a waterfall of sound into the ears of its listeners.

Christine hardly knew herself as she sang that night. She tried to force herself to focus, to pay more mind to what she was doing, but the music flowed so naturally from her lips that it felt futile to stop the cascade. To her guarded delight, she noticed the influence of Erik's teachings on the very essence of her voice, and in that moment she realized why he taught the way he did. On the stage, his techniques and adjustments felt like second nature, and everything that he had been ceaselessly correcting over the course of his tutelage fell into place before her ears. Even Erik, listening intently in his seat, was surprised at the amount of control she maintained, for he was certain that she would lose a good amount of technique to nerves and anxiety. As if to disprove this theory all together, when it came to parts of her pieces that were designed to display the extent of her natural range and agility, they were not gaudy or standoffish like the singers that came before her. She did not hold back, for once in her life, but there seemed to be a collective consensus around her considerable lack of egotism. For the audience watching her, the stage presence of the girl in front of them was so earnest, so honest, that it was impossible to not fall in love with her. She was not singing for the accolades or the stuffing of her own ego; no, she was singing for the simple beauty of the craft, which resulted in a breathtaking performance that was both endearing and refreshing. And, before she knew it, it was over.

The silence that now enveloped the auditorium was breathtaking. The entire audience, down to the very last man, was suspended in time, suspended in disbelief, until… applause. Deafening, ceaseless applause, that refused to stop even when Christine took a second small bow. Faced with the encounter of a full standing ovation, she now had a conundrum: leave the stage, or stay where she was, both of which possibly resulting in the impression of her as arrogant and rude. Yet, even as she thought of exiting, some unimaginably strong force rooted her to the spot, forced her to absorb the wordless, overwhelming praise that was being pushed on her by thousands of spectators. Now, the only thing running through her head was… please don't pass out, don't pass out, don't pass out. And, mercifully, her body held out on her, allowing her to remain conscious as she locked gazes with a pair of unmistakable, glowing eyes in the center of her vision.

Erik could not have been more proud of her, and it showed as he gave her an exceptionally rare, yet overtly genuine smile that seemed to reassure her from so far away. Although, he also silently chuckled to himself, for his pupil seemed to be at a fundamental loss of what to do. Even after a performance like that, she still needed to be guided as to how to proceed, and he did not hesitate to provide her that comfort. He mouthed something to her, unable to tell how she would perceive it from such a distance, but she seemed to get the message. You can leave now. And she did not need to be told twice. As she took one more small bow and exited the stage, he wondered fondly that if his lessons could produce a voice like that in just under a month, then what was to come in the coming seasons? To what lengths could he take this girl, what horizons could she reach? He did not know, but he was overly anxious to find out. To him, she was the enigma.