A/N: Whew, made it through another week of school. I'll probably take a hiatus next week, since finals are coming up in two weeks and I really need to catch up with school work! There is some drama in this chapter... I hope I handled it well!

Masked Man 2: Gosh, I can't imagine how you even read it with those p align things, I'm glad I could remove them... sigh. I think Christine's vulnerability makes us all cheer for her as the underdog!

Tsuray: Rehearsals are going to be so fun with Charlotte around, mwahaha.

emeraldphan: Charlotte's definitely going to be doing lots of things with petty tricks, tsk tsk...

And thank you to all new followers -hugs-

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Chapter 5

Christine patted down her hair nervously as she stood in front of the building Erik Chanteur stayed in. It was a short bus ride away from the supermarket she worked at, a tall building nestled in a group of similar skyscrapers, their metal and steel facades looming down haughtily. He lived in an upscale part of town, just a short distance away from Christine's neighbourhood, which was filled with short, squat terraces that gave off a homely feel. No, the place Erik Chanteur lived in was all cold and foreign.

She entered the building. A doorman sat at his table, observing the CCTV feeds from the screen before him.

Christine cleared her throat nervously and the doorman smiled up at her.

"How may I help you, miss?"

"Ah, I'm here to see Mr Chanteur," Christine fumbled in her pocket for the address. "He lives on this floor."

The doorman looked at the piece of paper. "Mr Chanteur, yes, that's the penthouse apartment. Please go right up. I'll buzz his apartment to let him know that there is a visitor."

She thanked the doorman and made her way to the large, solitary lift. She stepped in, and pressed the button for the correct floor.

When the glass doors slid open again, she was looking at a large steel door. A small plaque emblazoned with the word "Chanteur" hung above the peephole. Christine paused, unsure of what she was supposed to do, when the door swung open to reveal Erik Chanteur, dressed in a moss green ribbed sweater and grey pants.

"Good… good evening, Mr Chanteur," said Christine, her throat suddenly dry. "I'm here for our lesson."

He said nothing, the exposed side of his face as devoid of emotion as the white mask on the other side. He merely stepped aside to let her enter. She entered his house cautiously, removing her shoes and placing them on the metal rack beside the door. His house smelled like pasta and freshly baked bread.

"Have you eaten?" He asked abruptly, right as Christine's stomach rumbled.

"I came over right after my shift ended," she explained sheepishly. "But it's alright, I…"

"How can you sing on an empty stomach?" He asked fiercely. She shrugged, biting her lip, unsure of how to respond.

He gestured to the dining table, which held a large bowl of pasta and a plate of freshly baked bread. "Eat." He demanded. "My housekeeper makes splendid bread and pasta."

"Oh, I know," Christine said without thinking. "I eat dinner at her house often."

At his querying look, she explained, "I know Mrs Gables very well; we are neighbours."

"Ah," he said, a look of recognition dawning upon his face. "I should have realized, seeing as you are always around her daughter."

Christine smiled slightly, and moved to the table, where she took a bowl of pasta and some bread, painfully aware of Erik Chanteur's gaze on her.

After she had eaten, he waved to her to follow him, and led her to a door in his apartment. He opened it, and stepped inside. Christine's mouth dropped open. It was his music room, and it was a room that looked like she had stepped right into a dream. The room was obviously quite large, with floor length windows that were covered by heavy cream drapes. The drapes were pulled back from the windows and tied with tasselled ropes, revealing the night sky dotted with stars, and the skyline of the skyscrapers in town. Christine could almost see the multi-coloured lights from flashing billboards on some of the buildings in the distance. A large grand piano dominated most of the room, and along one side of the room stretched a huge mahogany bookshelf stacked to the brim with manuscripts, scores, and music-related books. She spied a few very valuable first editions up on the highest shelves, neatly arranged and preserved in glass boxes. A large wooden clock hung on the wall, intricately carved with patterns, besides a few still-life paintings. There was a writing desk covered in stacks of manuscript paper, some already scribbled with pencilled notes on the staves. The bulbs arranged in an abstract pattern on the ceiling cast the room with a warm, golden glow, and the stereo system in one corner of the room was playing a soothing song.

Christine could not help but breathe in sharply in appreciation.

He looked down at her, clearly amused. "I gather you like my music room, Miss Sangare."

"Like it?" She breathed, her eyes wide. "It's magical. It makes me want to sing."

He looked at her closely for an instance, but did not say anything, and merely moved to lift the cover of his grand piano. "Shall we?"

"What if I can't sing again?" She asked, her eyes wide.

He shrugged. "You will sing."

And wondrously, she did. As she stood before the piano, her hands trembling slightly, her mind was filled with self-doubt. But he placed his hands on the ivory keys and looked straight at her even as his fingers danced across the keyboard, and she felt herself captured by his intense gaze once more. He held her gaze steadily as he played out the opening chords of the song, and somehow, just somehow, she opened her mouth and sang. Perhaps it was his commanding presence, or the way his green eyes filled her with warmth even when the rest of his face was so expressionless, but Christine felt alive enough to sing.

He played the piano accompaniment as she sang, and often he stopped her mid-way through the song, correcting her techniques and scolding her on her lack of emotion. Occasionally, he demonstrated to her the way he would prefer her to sing the song, and each time, Christine was a little star-struck at how beautifully his voice flowed from his throat. Mrs Gables had not been lying when she had praised the man's voice. Christine was surprised at the all the small details that he pointed out to her, little nuances that she would never have noticed if she had learnt how to sing the piece by herself.

At the end of two hours, he finally stopped, looking slightly pleased.

"I think we should call it a day," he said, before he looked at the clock and frowned. "I did not realize it was so late."

He followed her out of the music room, shutting the door firmly behind them. "How are you getting home? Perhaps I should get my manager…"

"I'll just take the bus," Christine said hurriedly, slipping her shoes on and darting out of the door before he could say anything else. "Thank you for the lesson, Mr Chanteur."

Erik was left to stare at the door closing behind her. For a moment, he had wanted to insist that she take the car home, but no, he had promised himself not to go down the same path again.

"Has she left already?" Nadir asked from behind him. Erik turned to see his manager coming out of his room in the apartment. He nodded to answer him.

"I thought you would offer the car," Nadir commented, as he headed into the kitchen to fetch himself a glass of wine. "I was looking forward to a conversation with her."

Erik frowned. "There will be no need for conversations with her, Nadir. Besides, it would be best if I remained as distant as possible."

"I thought you wanted to teach her?" Nadir asked wryly, sipping on his wine. Erik glowered at him darkly.

"Teaching her does not mean that I have to be friendlier," he retorted. "It means that I teach her what I know, and help her achieve her goals of singing on the stage."

Without waiting for Nadir's response, he marched back into his music room, where he threw himself furiously into composing. The sound of the chords from the piano and the therapeutic scribbling of notes onto manuscript paper were a balm to his soul, and they brought him away from unhappy memories, memories that threatened to haunt him even now.

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"Fancy grabbing some dinner together?" Meg asked as she untied the laces of her pointe shoes. "Mum's going to be out in town doing some shopping, so I've got to figure out dinner by myself."

"I can't," said Christine apologetically. "I've got something on."

Meg's eyes narrowed. "Are you keeping something from me, Christine?"

"No," replied Christine, a little too hastily. "I just wanted to practice for the upcoming rehearsals. You know I can't sing in the presence of company."

Meg still looked suspicious, but thankfully, she let the matter drop. Christine felt a little guilty lying to Meg about her lessons with Mr Chanteur, but she feared that if Meg knew, there would be a chance that someone else would find out. Earlier that day, Christine had been walking through the corridors on the way to her next class, when a dark-skinned man had stopped her suddenly, passing her a note from Erik Chanteur which had requested for her to drop by again for a second lesson.

Christine took her time with the laces of her own shoes, waiting until Meg had left, before she hurriedly kept her shoes in her locker and grabbed her bag. She walked quickly out of the Academy and headed to catch the bus which would bring her back to Erik Chanteur's house.

In a little less than an hour, after a quick dinner at the deli down the street from the Academy, she was standing before the tall, cold, building once more. The doorman nodded at her in greeting, recognizing her from the previous day. Christine stepped into the lift and waited for the giant metal contraption to bring her up to his house.

Just as the lift doors opened, the door to his house clicked open as well, giving Christine a small shock. She squeaked in surprise.

"Henry buzzed me to let me know that you were coming up," he said as way of explanation. Christine assumed that 'Henry' was the doorman. She smiled tentatively at him.

"Good evening, Mr Chanteur," she said.

He did not reply to her greeting, merely raising his eyebrows and nodding his head. Then, he turned and walked to his music room. She followed in his wake, her eyes shifting around his apartment. There were many closed doors, and she wondered briefly what lay behind those doors—if those rooms were as magical as the music room.

This time, when he sat down on the piano bench, he did not start their lesson immediately. Instead, he asked Christine the one question she had been waiting for, yet dreading.

"Why can't you sing in front of a crowd, Miss Sangare?"

"Stage fright?" She whispered. "I look at the crowds, and my throat seizes up."

"You could sing in front of me," he said accusingly, as though Christine had refused to sing during her first audition on purpose.

"I don't know why, Mr Chanteur," she murmured, looking down. "If I knew why, I would be sure to take advantage of the reason so that I could sing again."

"I know you used to play the lead role in productions," he said, drumming his fingers on the cover of the piano. "Why the sudden change? What happened two years ago?"

She took a deep breath. "My father passed away."

He frowned. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"He was the reason why I started to sing, Mr Chanteur. My papa was my first music teacher, and he made me love music. He made me love to sing."

"And…?" He prompted her as her voice died off. "Do you not love to sing any longer?"

"No," she protested. "But after papa died… I just… I couldn't. I couldn't look at the crowd any longer, knowing that he wouldn't be there smiling at me, proud of his only daughter. He was there for every single one of my performances, be it a small recital for my classes, or the big scale theatre club production. And now that he's gone… I think I saw no reason to sing any longer."

She trailed off, her eyes prickling with tears. Her reply to Erik Chanteur had brought back old memories of standing centre stage, beaming out at the audience as she tried to spot her papa. He had always tried to get a seat in the front row, and she would usually glimpse a sight of him, clapping vigorously in his seat, a smile framing his whole face. He had been so proud of her; on the car ride home, he often enthused about her voice, and talked about how her mother would have been proud of her, if she had still been alive.

"Then you lie when you say that you love to sing," he said coldly. "For you only loved the praise you received for the music."

"That's not true," she whispered, looking up at him through eyelashes that dripped with tears. "How could you say that? I loved—love to sing, and I just can't anymore, not after papa…"

"Your father was the reason you sang?" He snapped. "After he passed away, you saw no more reason to sing again? What do you call that, if not a love for the praise and adoration your father heaped upon you every time you sang? If you truly loved music, nothing would be able to stop you from singing. In fact, I very much doubt that your father would have liked to see you unable to sing after he passed away. If you do not get over yourself, Miss Sangare, you will never sing before a crowd again."

"I don't think you could ever understand the pain I felt," Christine said, her voice rising in volume and her face turning red. "He was my friend, my teacher, and my father. I loved him; he was the only parent I'd ever had. When he died, it felt like a part of me died along with him. I didn't feel alive enough to sing. I couldn't sing without remembering that he would never hear me sing ever again. And I know he loved to hear me sing. How could you understand the pain, the grief I felt when my papa passed away?"

"Yes, I cannot understand, because my own father passed away before I ever had a chance to know him." Erik said very coldly, and very quietly.

Christine paused in her tirade. "Oh," she said.

It seemed that they had reached a stalemate. Christine could not exactly blame him for not being able to understand the grief she had felt, and yet she was still furious at him for so simply assuming that she had sung only because she had loved the attention.

"Perhaps I cannot understand," Erik said slowly. "But the fact remains that you can only move on from here. How many more years? How many more years of silence, Miss Sangare? I find that if you look deeper within yourself, you will realize that my words, though biting, have some grain of truth in them. You cannot bear to sing in front of a crowd again because you know that you'll never hear your father's praise again, never feel the attention he lavished upon you."

"Enough," Christine said angrily, barely able to keep her rising temper in check. "It would be presumptuous of you to say so, Mr Chanteur. It is grief, and grief alone that keeps me from singing."

He stared at her silently for a few moments. "The day you get over yourself, Miss Sangare, will be the day you are able to sing before a crowd once more. And you'll realize that singing, requires no praise and no adulation, but only the gratification of having achieved your own dreams."

"I think I should leave now," Christine said, unwilling to listen to his harsh words any longer. "I am sorry that today's lesson did not work out, Mr Chanteur. Perhaps we can schedule one for another day."

Without waiting for his reply –she had no wish to listen to it anyway—she turned and left the room. Her eyes burned as she stuffed her feet into her shoes and left his house, not tears of grief this time, but rather tears of anger, and humiliation. She felt as though he had used a knife to carve up her insides and reveal all her little secrets and fears, and she felt raw and exposed.

On the bus ride home, Christine tried to calm herself down. And as she stared out of the bus window, at the streetlamps passing by in a flash, she thought about what he had said.

It was not true, she comforted herself. She could not sing any longer after her papa had died, because… because… Christine buried her head in her hands and groaned.

Perhaps Mr Chanteur had been slightly right. But only slightly.

When her papa had died, Christine had been faced with the realization that there would be no more praise. There would be no more waiting on the front steps of the Academy after the performance, waiting for her papa to bring the car round, his face lit up with a bright smile. She had been faced with the horrifying reality that the one man who had called her his "little songbird" affectionately, and had nothing but affection to bestow upon her, was gone. It had left her with a cold, empty feeling every time she sang.

And the next time she had tried to sing before a crowd, she had failed, and slowly, the lead roles had been taken away from her. Perhaps it was also the shock that there was nobody to comfort her like her papa had always done, coupled with the grief, which had made her stop singing altogether. She had continued signing up for auditions and practising on her own, but her heart had not been in her singing. She had once dreamed of singing on the stage—in the past two years, that dream had been nothing more than a fantasy, since she had not moved one step closer to it at all.

Until she had met Erik Chanteur, who had believed in her voice enough to call for a second audition. He had coldly commanded her to sing again, yet his eyes had been warm and filled with promise. When Christine looked into his eyes, she had felt hope.

She thought of what he had said—that singing required no praise and adulation. She gritted her teeth in determination, sure that she did not need his help any longer to sing. I'm going to show you, Erik Chanteur, that I didn't sing merely for the praise. I sang because I loved to sing.

And I vow to you, I'll sing again.

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A/N: Whew, what a hurricane. Lessons, then no lessons, whatever next! Please favourite/follow/leave a review to let me know what you think!