Once we reached my apartment, I saw that Filo and Raphtalia were waiting for us by the entrance. There was also another limousine parked outside my apartment- soon my neighbors would be wondering why it was that so many limousines were near my house- and it would be an issue if my landlord suddenly thought I was loaded and then decided to up my rent. That said, I had a good idea who was in that limousine- Filo's guardian.

Out of that limousine, stepped out someone who looked like a teenage girl, so it occurred to me that my assumption may have been wrong. Her hair was dyed silver, and her features gave her away as a foreigner. Melty ran up to reunite with Filo, and Eclair trailed behind her, so I was left to greet this stranger alone as she approached me.

"H-Hello? May I help you?" I asked her.

"Are you Naofumi Iwatani?" she asked. Her Japanese, despite her features was nearly impeccable.

"Uh, yes."

"Ah, I see. First of all, I wish to thank you for taking care of Filo-tan," she said. "I am her guardian, and I go by the name of Fitoria."

Wait- what? She looked younger than I was!

Annoyance crept over my face- did this lady really have to come this late? I almost felt like giving her an earful for taking such piss poor care of Filo, but then she began talking.

"Before I express my gratitude, would you kindly please accompany me on a stroll? There is something I wished to speak to you about in private, away from prying eyes," she said.

I glanced towards Raphtalia, who seemed confused, and I gave her a signal saying that I was going to be with her soon. "Okay."

I had thought by 'stroll' she meant that we were going to be going on an actual walk somewhere, but no, she meant that she wanted me to ride with her in the limo. Well, I would normally not follow a stranger into their car, and the whole thing gave me 'I have candy, just get in my van little girl' kind of vibes, but Fitoria looked unthreatening enough that I thought nothing of it.

We didn't drive too far and came to a local café, one I hadn't been to before as I thought was too tacky and overpriced for my taste- it was the haunt of housewives with too much time on their hands and the like, but Fitoria led me inside and I followed her.

She ordered a coffee, and I had honestly had had enough cans of that while trying to stay awake already that if I took anymore I wouldn't be able to fall asleep that night so I declined ordering anything.

She took a sip of her coffee before she began. "I initially wanted to show my deepest appreciation for taking care of my ward," she said. Then, she glared at me with a ferociousness that I had not been expecting. "However, my mind changed into wanting to give you some other kind of words when I saw this!" She showed me the article from before, showing Raphtalia and Filo together on her phone.

"Yeah, what about it?" I asked her.

"FIrst of all, Filo is a celebrity," she said, nostrils flaring as if she was talking to an idiot. "She can't be seen in appearances outside of her contract." Drat, I hadn't thought of that. "That, however, is the least of my concerns- I could patch that away. No, what makes me furious is that you would take advantage of her in this way."

"Take advantage of? I just wanted to have her play a game with-"

She then glared at me again. "I know what it was you were doing." She took a sip of coffee. "Did Filo ever tell you why she ran away from home in the first place?"

"No," I said. And honestly, I was feeling quite defensive, being attacked like this. She said that I was exploiting Filo? What on earth was she doing then?

"Let me start at the beginning," Fitoria said. "Both of her parents had raised her from a young age to be a performer- they had come to Japan and she was being groomed to be an idol. For a while, it seemed like everything was going alright. She got her big break but then as it turns out... her parents had been spending her money. Not only that, they were financing lavish vacations and the like hoping that she could repay them back... and when it got too much and their line of credit was cut, they abandoned her. At the tender age of six, she was practically an orphan."

My stomach boiled at the thought of parents like that- but I still didn't get why that would make her angry at me.

"At first, Filo went on... still acting and playing- I took her under my wing at the time," she continued. "And that wasn't easy, I tell you, there were a dozen people ready to exploit her further, and I never wanted to see that happen to that little girl. 'If I act well, my parents will love me and come back' was her thought process, and so she went on for two more years. I didn't have the heart at the time to break the news to her- though looking back this was a huge mistake. One day- she just snapped. She couldn't take it anymore and she had a panic attack while on a set. She was hospitalized in a psychiatric facility for six months, and though she was discharged, she... while she kept working, because that was all that she knew, but she was never the same person."

I took a moment to take that all in. "Wait- why haven't I heard anything like that?" Filo was famous, if there was something like that in her past, I was sure that either Melty or Raphtalia would've found out and told me about it.

"I kept it all on the down-low for her sake," Fitoria said. She finished her coffee. "And so, I think you can understand, Mr. Naofumi, that after protecting her for so long, I do not appreciate yet another person trying to exploit her for their own fame and fortune."

I remembered what Filo had said when she had first met me and Raphtalia- she seemed to want to find a new mother and father. Was that it? Was that the reason she had run away from her house?

While I understood where Fitoria was coming from, I felt that she was being far too harsh with me. And the fact that this all had been Raphtalia's idea only cemented in my mind that I was actually right. "Hey- you were the one who refused to take her because you were too busy, right? And keeping her wasn't cheap- if you had asked for a babysitter instead, they would've charged far more than simply-"

"It's money you want, huh?" Fitoria said, her gaze and tone becoming all the more frosty. She whipped out a pen and wrote a check. "There, that's for one million yen, that would easily cover a week's cost in a luxurious hotel, wouldn't it? I think that's more than fair to pay for your time and company. I also trust it's enough that you won't bother her ever again." I didn't accept the check, but then she stuffed it into my front shirt pocket despite my protests and said that it was time to go.

I wanted to protest, but there was a finality to her statement as she beckoned for me to follow her back to my apartment. For the first time in my life, I did not want to accept someone's money, and I was fuming all the way there, though if I was hot as fire, she was cold as ice, and didn't given any hint that she noticed how I was feeling. I had heard the term 'ice queen' being thrown about for girls who were cold and distant, and that epithet certainly fit her to a T.