The darkness of the guest room is oppressive, a stark contrast to the glittering, artificial gold of the Queen's Selection. Arlen lies curled in a tight, protective ball, the fabric of his oversized sweater damp with the silent, salt-heavy tears he finally allows to fall. He clutches Dex's favorite toy—a small, ragged stuffed mouse—against his chest so hard it leaves a mark on his skin.
Every breath feels like he's inhaling broken glass. The penthouse, usually a sanctuary of invisibility, now feels like a tomb. Without the soft weight of the cat at his feet or the rhythmic *purr* that served as his only anchor, the silence is a physical weight, pressing the air out of his lungs.
He's not just crying for Dex. He's crying for the "Tragic Prince" who had to beg for his dignity, for the mother who was lost to the smoke, and for the realization that even his attempt to buy his freedom had been snatched away by Milia's titanium credit card. He is indebted to the woman who loathes him, and the weight of that debt feels like another fire he can't escape.
***
In the master suite, Milia isn't sleeping. She is sitting on the edge of her bed, her feet bare against the cold silk rug. She's staring at the door.
She should be satisfied. She's the savior. She's the one who held the power tonight. But every time she closes her eyes, she sees Arlen on that clinic floor, looking like a man whose soul had been surgically removed. She remembers the way his voice broke when he said her name—no 'Miss,' no 'Ma'am.' Just 'Milia'.
It sounded like a plea. It sounded like a truth she wasn't ready to handle.
Driven by a restless, jagged energy she can't suppress, Milia stands up. She doesn't put on her robe. She walks through the dark penthouse, her footsteps silent, until she reaches the door to the guest wing. She shouldn't be here. It's a violation of her own rule: Stay out of my sight.
She reaches for the handle, intending to just listen, but the door is slightly ajar. Through the sliver of space, she sees him.
He is a broken silhouette on the bed, bathed in the dim, blue light of the Manila moon. The sight of him—slender, trembling, and clutching a cheap cat toy as if it were a holy relic—hits her with a visceral, sickening jolt of reality. This wasn't an act. No one could stage the way his shoulders are shaking, or the hollow, whistling sound of his grief.
She pushes the door open, her presence cutting through the gloom. She doesn't turn on the lights. She stands at the foot of his bed, her shadow falling over his curled form.
"Arlen," she says, her voice a low, raspy thread. It isn't sharp, but it isn't soft either. It's the voice of a woman who has run out of insults.
Arlen flinches violently, gasping as he tries to sit up, his hazel eye wide and bloodshot in the dark. He frantically wipes his face with the sleeve of his sweater, trying to reclaim the mask even now.
"I... I'm sorry, Miss Milia," he stammers, his voice thick with tears. "I didn't mean to make a sound. I'll be... I'll be invisible again. I promise."
"Stop it," she commands, her voice cracking. She walks around to the side of the bed and sits down. The mattress dips under her weight, a jarring intimacy they've avoided for a month. "Just stop with the apologies. I'm tired of hearing them."
She reaches out into the darkness, her hand hovering over his shoulder. She wants to pull him back, to tell him to be the "Masterpiece" again so she can hate him more easily. But instead, her fingers graze the soft wool of his sweater.
"I called the clinic," she lies. She hasn't called yet, but she knows he needs to hear it. "They said his vitals are improving. He's sleeping."
She looks at him—the pale line of his throat, the way his jet-black hair curtains the burn on his face. Her eyes burning with a strange, fierce conflict.
"You told me you were trying to buy your own invisibility," she says, her voice regaining a hint of its aristocratic edge. "But you're the loudest ghost I've ever met. Every time I think I've finally erased you, you find a new way to haunt me."
She leans in closer, the scent of her expensive perfume mingling with the salt of his tears.
"Who are you really, Arlen Adelaide? Are you the boy in the fire, the host in the lace, or the man who's trying to save my life by destroying his own? Because I'm starting to think... I'm starting to think I've been shouting at a mirror this entire month."
.
.
.
.
.
"The f..fire?"
The word hangs in the air, thick and suffocating, heavier than the smoke that had once filled his lungs. Arlen freezes, his entire body going rigid. The hand that had been clutching Dex's toy mouse flies to his face, his fingers digging into the jet-black hair that curtains the left side of his forehead. It's a frantic, desperate gesture of concealment, a reflex of fifteen years spent trying to bury the mark of that night.
"H..how do you know about that?" he whispers, his voice cracking into a jagged, raw sound. His hazel eye is wide, fixated on her with a look of pure, unadulterated terror. The "invisible ghost" has been seen, and the exposure feels like a second burning.
Milia doesn't flinch. She remains seated on the edge of the bed, her shadow looming over him in the moonlight. She sees the way his fingers tremble against his temple, the way his breath has become shallow and panicked. The cynicism she had used as armor for the past month feels increasingly brittle, like glass ready to shatter.
"I'm a Madrigal, Arlen," she says, her voice a low, steady chime that lacks its usual sharp venom. "I don't like being lied to, and I don't like mysteries in my own penthouse. I looked into you. I saw the archives. The 'Adelaide Summer House tragedy.' I saw the photo of the boy with the bandage."
She reaches out, her hand moving slowly, tentatively, until her fingers brush against his wrist—the one currently holding his hair over his scar. She doesn't pull his hand away, but the heat of her touch is a silent demand for him to stop hiding.
She thinks of the Adelaide tycoon, Julius, and the cold void in the family records.
"You're a terrible liar," she adds, her voice regaining a hint of its aristocratic steel. "You told me you were doing this to gain my 'pity.' But you've spent a month doing everything in your power to make sure I never felt a single thing for you."
"W..why does it matter, Miss Milia? I'll be gone by the end of the trial and nothing will change that. You already have my signature." Arlen answers, averting his gaze.
Milia's grip on his wrist tightens, not with the intention to hurt, but with a sudden, grounding force. She stares at him, her eyes tracing the way his fingers still desperately claw at his bangs to hide the scar. The silence in the room is heavy with the scent of antiseptic from the clinic and the lingering salt of his tears.
"It matters," she says, her voice a low, vibrating thread of sound that fills the space between them, "because I don't like being played for a fool. I spent a month thinking you were a shark, Arlen. I thought you were some calculating social climber using your 'fragility' as a hook to drag me into a marriage I didn't want."
She scoffs, a sharp, bitter sound, and finally lets go of his wrist. She leans back, her silhouette dark against the blue-tinted shadows of the guest room.
"Is... isn't it supposed to be easy for you to end things if you just continue to think that way about me?"
The question hangs in the cold, blue air, hitting Milia with the force of a physical blow. She stares at him—this man who is offering himself up as a sacrificial lamb, begging her to continue hating him just so the path to her freedom remains unblocked. It's the ultimate act of erasure, a final attempt to buy the invisibility he so desperately craves.
"Yes," Milia whispers, her voice a jagged, raw sound that vibrates with a sudden, uncontrollable fury. "It was supposed to be easy. It was supposed to be a five-month countdown to getting my life back from a parasite."
She stands up abruptly, the mattress spring groaning as she looms over him. Her hands are clenched at her sides, the silk of her robe rustling like a warning.
"But you're not a parasite, are you, Arlen?" she demands, her voice rising, losing its melodic, public-facing polish. "A parasite takes. A parasite drains you until there's nothing left. But you... you're just a ghost trying to apologize for being haunted. You're working yourself into a hospital bed to buy me an exit I didn't even ask for."
She reaches out, her hand moving with a sudden, fierce determination. She doesn't grab his wrist this time. Instead, her fingers catch the edge of his bangs, sweeping the jet-black hair away from his left eye.
Arlen flinches, a soft, wounded sound escaping his throat, but she doesn't let go. For the first time, in the unapologetic light of the moon, she sees the scar—the jagged, silvered remnants of the fire that had claimed his mother and his future. It's a map of pain that sits right next to the clouded, hazel iris that has seen things she could never imagine.
"Look at me," she commands, her voice trembling with a mixture of rage and a sickening, new-found empathy. "You want me to think you're a villain? You want me to believe that you're some calculating Adelaide shark? Then stop acting like a saint! Stop giving me waivers! Stop licking wine off tables and telling me it's for my own good!"
She lets go of his hair, her hand lingering for a fraction of a second against the heat of his skin.
"I can't just 'think that way' about you anymore because I've seen the boy in the car, Arlen," she says, her voice dropping to a low, painful whisper. "I've seen the man who would trade every cent of his pride to save a cat. How am I supposed to walk away and tell the world I was the victim when you're the one who's been bleeding this entire month?"
She scoffs, a bitter, hollow sound, and turns her back on him, walking toward the large window that overlooks the shimmering lights of the city she supposedly owns.
"You think you're buying your invisibility? You're not. You're just forcing me to look at you until I can't see anything else. You've made my 'perfect life' feel like a lie, and you did it without saying a single cruel word."
She turns back, her eyes burning with a dark, resentful light.
"I'm not signing that waiver tonight. And I'm not letting you go back to that club to be pawed at by strangers just so you can move into a hole in the wall and disappear. If you want to leave, Arlen, you're going to do it as a man, not as a ghost that I've finished exorcising."
Arlen's eyes widened from Milia's statements. "B..but I need that job Miss Milia. To...to be able to support myself and Dex once we disappear."
Milia lets out a sharp, jagged laugh—a sound that is more of a sob than a mockery. She turns from the window, her silk robe billowing as she closes the distance between them again. She doesn't sit back down; she stands over him, her presence filling the room, her eyes burning with a fierce, protective rage that she doesn't know how to name.
"Support yourself?" she repeats, her voice trembling. "By being the 'Tragic Prince'? By letting women who aren't fit to breathe your air touch you because you think your pride is the only thing you have left to sell?"
"You're an Adelaide, Arlen! Even if your grandfather is a cold, calculating bastard who sidelined you, you have a name that means something. And you're trading it for... for what? For a studio apartment and a cat?" She shakes her head, her jet-black hair falling over her shoulders. "You're so obsessed with being a ghost that you're literally haunting yourself."
She leans down, her face inches from his, forcing him to see the conflict in her hazel eyes.
"I spent a month trying to find the crack in your mask, Arlen. I wanted to break you. I wanted to see you snap and yell at me, to prove you were the villain I needed you to be." Her voice drops to a pained whisper. "But I realized tonight... I was trying to break a man who was already in pieces. I was shouting at a house that had already burned down fifteen years ago."
She reaches out, her hand hovering before she finally, firmly, takes hold of his shoulders. Her grip is tight, as if she's trying to anchor him to the present, to this room, to the life he's trying to flee.
"You aren't going back to that club," she commands, the power-suit-wearing artist returning to the surface, but with a new, raw edge. "I won't allow it. If you need money to feel like you aren't a 'nuisance,' I will pay you. Call it a salary for being my 'temporary-fiancé-consultant' or whatever lie helps you sleep. But you are done letting the world handle you."
She looks at the scar she just uncovered, her gaze lingering on it with a heavy, unblinking intensity.
"You want to disappear?" she asks, her voice cracking. "Fine. But you'll do it because you want to be free, not because you're trying to buy your own erasure. Until these five months are over, you are staying right here. You are going to eat real food, you are going to sleep, and you are going to stop apologizing for the fact that you survived."
She lets go of his shoulders, her fingers lingering on the wool of his sweater for a heartbeat too long before she pulls away, tucking her hands into the folds of her robe.
"Dex will be home in forty-eight hours. And when he gets here, he's going to find a master who isn't a ghost. Do I make myself clear, Arlen? Or do I need to call Ren and buy the entire 'Queen's Selection' just to fire you?"