"I.. I just didn't want to disturb your dinner with your boyfriend." Arlen replies, his voice trembling.
"Disturb my dinner?" Milia repeats, her voice cracking with a sharp, jagged irony. She swerves the SUV around a heavy truck, the tires screeching a protest that mirrors her own frayed nerves. "You think I give a damn about a celebratory appetizer while you're handing yourself back to a man who sells people like hors d'oeuvres?"
She takes a quick, searing glance at him. He's hunched over in the passenger seat, his hands tucked into his sleeves, looking so small and fragile in the neon glow of the dashboard lights that she feels a physical ache in her chest—one she tries to drown in another surge of adrenaline.
"I left Liam at the table, Arlen! I walked out on a five-star meal and a month's worth of 'perfect' public appearances because you decided to play the polite martyr!" She slams her palm against the steering wheel, the sound sharp in the confined space. "Why do you keep doing this? Why do you keep acting like your safety, your life, is a 'disturbance' to me?"
She pulls the car over to the side of the road with a violent jerk, the engine idling with a low, menacing hum. She kills the headlights and turns to face him in the dim shadows of the cabin.
"I told you I was going to handle Ren. I told you I was going to pay the vet," she says, her voice trembling as she reaches out, her hand gripping the fabric of his sweater to force him to look at her. Her eyes are wide, hazel depths swirling with a terrifying mix of fury and something that looks dangerously like panic. "And you still went. You went back to that place... in sandals... to apologize for wanting to be free."
Her voice drops to a low, painful whisper. "You're not a ghost anymore, Arlen. You stopped being a ghost the second you held that cat in my foyer and asked me to save him. So stop trying to disappear. Because every time you do, you're making me chase you, and I am 'not' a woman who chases."
She stares at the scar peeking through his bangs, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm. "If you ever do that again—if you ever think that a 'dinner date' is more important than your own dignity—I will personally lock you in that penthouse and throw away the key. Do you hear me? You are not a 'nuisance.' You are an investment I refuse to lose."
She lets go of him, her fingers tingling, and slumps back into the driver's seat, her head dropping against the headrest. The silence in the car is absolute, save for the rhythmic ticking of the cooling engine.
"Liam is probably halfway to a scandal-sized meltdown by now." she murmurs to the windshield, her voice weary and thick with an emotion she won't name.
"I'm sorry, Miss Milia. I always make you angry." Arlen apologized, his fingers fidgeting with each other over his lap.
"If I hear one more 'sorry' tonight, I'm going to drive this car into the Pasig River," Milia snaps, her voice cracking with a jagged, weary sharpness.
"I'm sorry!--" Arlen instinctively replies but he quickly cupped his hands over his mouth to silence himself.
Milia stares at him through the gloom of the car's interior, her chest rising and falling with jagged, shallow breaths. The sight of him—eyes wide with terror, hands clamped over his own mouth as if to physically restrain his instinct to apologize—hits her like a physical blow. For a month, she had demanded his silence, his invisibility, and his submission. Now, seeing it perfected in such a raw, desperate way makes her feel a sudden, sickening wave of self-loathing.
"Oh, for god's sake," she whispers, her voice losing its razor-sharp edge and crumbling into something weary and hollow.
She doesn't restart the car. She just sits there, her gold-clad silhouette slumped against the driver's door, looking at the man she has spent thirty days trying to break. She realizes with a start that he doesn't need to 'confess' to manipulation; the only person being manipulated was her—by her own pride, by her own need to be the victim in a story where he was clearly the one suffering.
"Take your hands down, Arlen," she says, her voice low and devoid of its usual melodic command. "You're not going into the river. I'm just... I'm tired."
She reaches out, her hand hovering in the space between them before she finally lets it drop onto his, gently but firmly prying his fingers away from his lips. His skin is cold, a stark contrast to the humid night air pressing against the windows.
"I spent years curating a perfect life," she murmurs, staring at the dash. "Liam, the music, the penthouse... it was all supposed to be simple. Then you showed up with your mismatched socks and your dying cat and your god-awful habit of being a martyr."
She turns her head to look at him, her hazel eyes shimmering with a mixture of resentment and a new, terrifyingly honest clarity.
"You're not an inconvenience, Arlen. You're a wreck. And apparently, I'm the only one with a high enough security clearance to see the damage."
She reaches into the pocket of her gown and pulls out the wad of 'host' bills she had snatched from him at the vet, along with the signed waiver. With a slow, deliberate motion, she rolls down her window and holds them out over the asphalt.
"The money stays in the drawer. We'll use it for Dex's specialty treats or whatever it is you do for fun that isn't licking tables," she says, her voice regaining a bit of its aristocratic firmness. "But this?"
She tears the waiver in half, the sound of the paper rending sharp in the quiet cabin. She lets the pieces flutter out into the night breeze, watching them dance away like white ghosts.
Arlen's eyes dilated with sheer shock as he watches the torn waiver being taken by the wind. "W..why did you do that, Miss Milia?"
"Because it's an insult, Arlen," Milia says, her voice trembling with a fierce, cold intensity. She watches the last scrap of white paper disappear into the Manila shadows, feeling a strange, jagged relief in her chest.
She turns back to him, her eyes burning. "I told you at the club that I'm the one who decides how this ends. You don't get to buy your way out of my life by selling your pride to strangers. You don't get to 'remove yourself' like you're some piece of trash I accidentally brought home."
She leans in, her perfume—that sharp, floral scent—filling the small space of the car, clashing with the faint antiseptic smell still clinging to him. "I'm not signing a document that lets you disappear into some hole in the wall as a nameless shadow. If we're going to end this, we're doing it because the five months are up, not because you've successfully erased yourself until there's nothing left of you to find."
She reaches out, her fingers catching his chin, forcing his wide, bewildered gaze to stay on her. Her grip is firm, but for the first time, it lacks the intent to bruise. "You think you're being selfless? You're being a coward, Arlen. You're trying to escape before I can see the person behind that 'Masterpiece' mask. Well, the waiver is gone. Your 'escape fund' is back in my kitchen drawer. And for the next four months, you're going to stay in my penthouse, and you're going to learn how to occupy space without trying to apologize for it."
She lets go of him, her breath hitching in a way that betrays her own exhaustion. "Liam can wait. My career can wait. But I will not be the woman who let a man break himself just to grant her a favor she didn't even ask for."
She restarts the engine, the low growl of the SUV filling the silence. She shifts the car into gear, her jaw set in a hard, defensive line.
She pulls the SUV back into the flow of traffic, the headlights cutting a sharp path through the humid Manila haze. Arlen remains paralyzed, his gaze still fixed on the side mirror as if expecting the torn scraps of his future to somehow float back into the car.
"I... I don't understand," he whispers, his voice sounding small against the hum of the engine. "You wanted me gone. You said... you said I was a smudge on your canvas."
"The canvas is already ruined, Arlen," Milia says, her voice low and steady as she grips the steering wheel. "Trying to scrub it clean just leaves a hole in the fabric. I'm tired of scrubbing."
She navigates the streets with a fierce, quiet focus, ignoring the rhythmic buzzing of her phone in the center console. She doesn't need to look at the screen to know it's Liam—angry, confused, demanding an explanation for why the star of his evening walked out on him for a 'ghost.'
When they reach the penthouse, the basement garage is cavernous and cold. Milia kills the engine and for a moment, neither of them moves. The silence is different now—less like a vacuum and more like a heavy, shared breath.
"Get out," she says, though it's more of a weary suggestion than a command.
They ride the elevator in a mirrored cage of their own reflections. Milia looks at herself—gold, shimmering, perfect—and then at Arlen, who is slumped in his oversized sweater, his hair messy, his face pale. The contrast is violent, yet for the first time, she doesn't feel the need to look away.
Inside the penthouse, the lights are still dimmed from when they left. Milia tosses her clutch onto the marble island, right next to where the roses Liam gave her are already beginning to wilt in the stagnant air. She finally picks up her phone, seeing twenty-seven missed calls and a string of increasingly frantic texts.
She ignores them all and powers the device off.
"Miss Milia?" Arlen stands at the edge of the kitchen, looking lost. "What... what am I supposed to do now? If I'm not a host... and I'm not allowed to be a ghost..."
Milia turns to face him, leaning back against the counter. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out the crumpled bills she took from him—the 'host' money. She walks over and presses the wad of cash back into his hand, closing his fingers over it with her own.
"You're going to be a resident," she says, her eyes searching his hazel ones, lingering on the scar she'd exposed earlier. "You're going to use that money to buy whatever it is you and that cat need. And when it runs out, you're going to ask me. Not because you're begging, but because this is a trial of 'our' life together, not your solitary confinement."
She lets go of his hand, her gaze softening into something weary but resolute.
"Tomorrow, we go back to the clinic together. We bring Dex home. And then," she pauses, her voice dropping to a whisper, "we figure out how to survive the next four months without anyone else catching fire. Now, go to your room."
"Have a good night's sleep Miss Milia. Thank you."
Milia watches him walk away, her silhouette framed by the cold, expensive moonlight of the living room. The "thank you" still bothers her—it's too quiet, too genuine, and it lacks the defensive shell she's spent a month trying to penetrate. It's the voice of a man who has finally stopped fighting his own erasure and started accepting the hand she's forced upon him.
"Whatever," she murmurs, her voice a low, raspy thread that barely carries across the foyer.
She stays standing by the marble island long after his door has clicked shut. The scent of Liam's roses, now cloying and suffocating in the stagnant air, makes her nose wrinkle with a sudden, visceral distaste. She reaches out and shoves the bouquet toward the edge of the counter, almost toppling the expensive vase.
She looks down at her hands. They're still trembling.
She is the most successful artist in the country, a woman who commands the attention of millions, yet she just spent her evening in a host club basement and a 24-hour vet clinic for a man who considers himself a "temporary inconvenience." The script of her life has been completely derailed, and for the first time, she doesn't know the next line.
"You're a mess, Milia," she whispers to the empty kitchen, her eyes burning with a sudden, sharp exhaustion.
She walks toward her master suite, her heels silent on the plush carpet. She passes the guest wing door, pausing for just a heartbeat, her hand hovering near the wood as if she could feel the heat of his fever through the paneling.
"You really are kind, Miss Milia."
The words hum in her mind like a persistent, irritating melody. She isn't kind. She's selfish, arrogant, and prone to cruelty when she feels threatened. But as she lies down in her king-sized bed, staring at the dark ceiling, she realizes she'd rather be the "kindest person he's ever met" than the perfect woman Liam thinks he's celebrating.
She reaches for her phone—the one she powered off to escape Liam's fury—and leaves it dark. She doesn't want to explain herself to the world. She doesn't want to defend her "charity case."
She closes her eyes, and the last thing she sees isn't the gold of her concert stages or the flash of the paparazzi. It's the memory of a torn piece of paper fluttering into the Manila night, and the feeling of Arlen's cold, shaky hand finally closing around the life she refused to let him give away.
"Four months," she breathes into the darkness, the words sounding less like a countdown and more like a promise. "Let's see what else you're hiding, Arlen Adelaide."