2
Discovery
Giroro shook Natsumi gently again, urgency filling his mind too much for him to worry about what his past life had been- what he had become once again. His consciousness was too worried about the outcome of his beloved. Whether she knew of his feelings or not- and currently, she didn't- he would be always there for her, to guard her and comfort her.
Natsumi's eyes fluttered slightly, then opened halfway. Giroro breathed a sigh of relief, but then froze at the first word the girl uttered.
"Angel?"
Giroro's heart took off. That couldn't have been meant for him, couldn't possibly belong to him. She thought he was someone else, someone from her previous life's past-
And then a flood of images raced through his mind.
A young girl, crouched at a stand full of candles in a small stone chapel, lighting a candle under the name Daaé…
The same girl, only slightly older, lacing on ballet pointe shoes for the first time, a look of pride on her face…
The girl, now about sixteen- Giroro now realized it was the girl Natsumi transformed into- dressed all in white and singing a beautiful song at her debut, standing in for that insufferable Carlotta…
The feeling of the girl pressed up against him as he held her, singing of leaving the world she knew before and succumbing to his music…
Wait.
It couldn't be. Giroro knew what those scenes were from, there was no doubt about it… but he had never even seen The Phantom of the Opera. So how could…?
"Angel?" Natsumi asked again, uncertainly.
Ignoring the feeling of immense warmth racing through him, Giroro steadied his voice. "No, Natsumi. It's me. It's Giroro."
"My name's Christine," she murmured groggily, then her eyes closed again.
Casting a quick glance to the Keronians' agape faces, Giroro said, "She's trying to adjust. I need to get her to bed." And with that he slid one arm under her back and the other under her knees, then stood up and carried her out of the secret base and to her bedroom, trying to ignore the extreme case of déjà vu he was experiencing.
When he had finally tucked her in, Giroro slumped down on Natsumi's desk chair and stared down at the floor, trying to figure out what was going on. Natsumi called me Angel, he mused.
And that was when he noticed that things looked a lot… smaller. Confused, he ran a hand up his face until it connected with… hair? Okay, so he was a human in a past life. He could handle that. But then Giroro lifted his right hand up to his face as well… and it collided with porcelain.
Slowly, ever so slowly, Giroro slid his hand to the side of his face and pried the offending object off. Lowering the object to his lap, he nearly gasped at the object in his now-gloved hands.
A white half-mask.
"No," Giroro said aloud. "It couldn't possibly…"
And here he pressed the mask back on his face and raced to Natsumi's closet, flinging the door open to reveal the full-length mirror inside. And then nearly fainted.
A tall, dark-haired man stood before him. He was clothed in nineteenth-century clothes- a dress-suit and tailcoat with a cravat and cloak- but it was the man's face that caught Giroro's attention. It was dark and very handsome, but half of it was covered in a ghostly white mask- the very mask Giroro had held in his hands only seconds ago.
Giroro knew this man. He had seen him all the time on posters of Natsumi's favorite movie-musical.
"Oh my God," he murmured. "I'm the Phantom of the Opera."