"Father! Father!" an excited Christine, now a girl of 10, exclaimed as she rowed the gondola onto the shore of the lake as quickly as she could. "Father, come quickly!"
"What is it, ma cherie?" Erik asked as he rose from the piano bench where he'd been working on new music, raising his eyebrows at his young daughter.
She hopped off of the gondola and rushed over to him, clapping her hands together for a brief moment.
"Oh, Father - it's wonderful news!" she breathed, her grey-green eyes widening. "They're reopening the opera house... they're rejuvenating it!"
His heart skipped a beat. "Truly?"
"Truly, Father. They're opening it up again tomorrow, at the public auction, when they relight the chandelier with electric light! They've already hired new managers and choristers and everything!"
She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself down. This news had almost been too much for her to handle - she had been wishing for multiple years that the Opera Populaire would reopen; she'd had an intense desire to see it in action, and now her wish was coming true.
The man in front of her, however, had mixed emotions about the news he'd just received. The Opera was reopening. Did that mean that The Phantom would have to resume his duties after nearly 50 years of unwilling retirement?
A large part of Erik wanted to be The Phantom again, but now that he was a parent, he had to think seriously about how it would affect Christine. He didn't want to be infamous again if it meant that it would harm his daughter in any way.
After a moment of silence, he glanced down at her flushed, excited face and finally replied hesitantly, "Well, that's... wonderful, dear."
She frowned slightly. "You don't seem very happy about it, Father. I thought you would be since you were The Phantom when the Opera was open before. Aren't you going to do it again?"
Damn! It's almost as if she's reading my mind, he thought to himself, wincing inwardly. Then he replied with a heavy sigh, "I'm not sure, Christine. I'm not sure whether I'll be The Phantom again or not now that I have you to think about."
"What do you mean?" she asked, raising her eyebrows in confusion. "I shouldn't affect whether or not you decide to be The Phantom again. You're the one who will or will not be The Phantom, not me; so why are you thinking of me?"
"Because, love, when I was The Phantom, I was gone quite often, haunting the Opera for hours on end. I can't exactly do that and raise you at the same time. I have to have my priorities in order" He paused. "Although it would be nice to earn 20,000 francs a month again... and to have Box Five..."
A thousand memories of 1870 ran through his mind, and then he looked back down at his daughter's expectant face and said to her, "Well, let's go to the auction tomorrow, the two of us, and then I'll think about it."
She smiled and clapped her hands together again in excitement. "Oh, good! I can't wait, really."
"Well, now you need to get excited about going to sleep - it's late," he replied with a smirk. "Had I known that you'd be out so late, I wouldn't have let you go. Now that you're home, though, you're going to bed."
"Sweet dreams, mon ange," he then finished, leaning down, pressing a kiss to the top of her head, and then gently pushing her in the direction of her swan bedroom.
"Oh, but Father!" she exclaimed in protest, but then she proceeded to go into her bedroom, close the door behind her, remove her mask, and crawl into bed, pulling the covers up to her chin. She knew that there was no need to be tired when the chandelier lit up in all its newfound glory the next morning.
The next day, Erik and Christine went above-ground to the upper levels of the Opera Populaire, together in the outside world for the first time. They hid themselves in the shadows and watched the auction.
"That's Raoul," he whispered to her under his breath, motioning to an old man in a wheelchair. Then he motioned to a woman who was a noticeable number of years older than the wheelchair man. "That's Madame Giry, the woman who used to be my go-between when I had a message to send to the employees of the Opera."
She looked extremely enthusiastic upon seeing these people.
"It's so exciting to see people who you've told stories about, Father!" She then saw her father's facial expression and added hastily, her face becoming serious, "Not that I'm excited to see Raoul, mind you."
After looking down at his daughter for a moment, he shrugged and then turned his attention back to the auction, his eyes narrowing after a few moments of silence.
"So that's where the monkey music box went!" he hissed, looking rather irritated.
She, too, glanced back at the auction and raised her eyebrows when she saw the music box that he was referring to.
"What about the monkey music box, Father?" she inquired. "What's so special about it?"
"I made it when I was about your age," he explained. "It was with me as my only comfort for years. When I escaped from the lair that night all those years ago, I left it there, and when I returned shortly thereafter, it was gone. A mob member stole it, I supposed, and now they're selling it."
The two then silently looked on as Raoul and Madame Giry continued raising the bidding price against each other in order to make sure that they each were the one to get the music box, and eventually, Raoul received it for the price of 30 francs.
"Lovely - Raoul got it... the person I specifically wanted to not get something of mine a second time." He sighed. "That's the way it is, though, I suppose."
After a moment's pause, her face lit up, and she patted his arm in excitement. "Look, Father! I think they're about to put up the chandelier!"
"Lot 666, then - a chandelier in pieces," the auctioneer said to the bidders. "Some of you may recall the strange affair of The Phantom of the Opera, a mystery never fully explained" - at this, some of the bidders glanced around the supposedly-empty Opera nervously.
"We're told, ladies and gentlemen, that this is the very chandelier which figures in the famous disaster," the auctioneer continued. "Our workshops have repaired it and wired parts of it for the new electric light. Perhaps we can... frighten away the ghost of so many years ago with a little illumination."
The auctioneer then glanced at the men who had apparently repaired and rewired the chandelier. "Gentlemen?"
The cover was thrown off of the giant chandelier, and the electric lights came on. As soon as they did, Christine could have sworn that she heard a brilliant song coming from an invisible organ that played inside her head and her head alone.
It continued as dust that had been gathering on the chandelier for many years rose into the air and swirled around the observing bidders. Suddenly, although she hadn't been there, the colorful past of the Opera she lived in was coming back to her with each centimeter that the chandelier rose. Her face started to flush with all of the excitement, and as it did, she glanced over to her right at her father.
Erik's eyes were closed, and his face was lifted upwards. The past that he had in this Opera, the good and the bad parts, was rushing back to him, and he could feel a change within him.
"Take me back... please..." he whispered.
Then, suddenly, the invisible organ music stopped playing inside Christine's head, and when it did, Erik lowered his face back to normal level as if he, too, had heard it. His eyes opened, and Christine saw a new electricity that she'd never seen before sparking in them.
"I'm back," he whispered joyously to her as he looked down upon her, a brilliant smile coming to his face. "The Phantom of the Opera is back at last!"
Little did the two of them know it, but when he said that, the point of no return had been passed.