Author's note: This story contains spoilers for the movie Spirited Away. Not only that, but if you haven't seen the subtitled version, some things might not make sense. I've provided translations for Japanese words or phrases which might be unfamiliar. I wrote this because I was unsatisfied with the ending of the movie. Maybe you're reading it for the same reason. I hope you enjoy it.
Spirited Away
The Sequel
-1-
‘Chihiro, good luck.’
The card was old, edges worn and tattered. Although it had been six years since she had received it on a farewell bouquet, Chihiro still kept the card. Something was special with it, she knew. Memories were pressed into the paper and clung to the faded ink like specks of dust.
Chihiro sighed, stuffing the last of the seasoned rice ball into her mouth and turning the card over. There, in the shakily controlled script of a ten-year-old, was the name. Nigihayami Kohaku Nushi. It was a name from a half-remembered dream, and as Chihiro focused on it, she thought she could see his sparkling jade eyes. She sighed again.
“Oh, Kohaku,” a voice behind her sighed dreamily. Chihiro whirled around and glared at Tomoko as her friend laughed. “You should hear yourself sometime,” Tomoko said. “Mooning over that card, whispering his name when you think no one is watching…” Tomoko shook her head, black hair swirling around her cheekbones, and grabbed for the card.
Chihiro pulled the card out of reach, and Tomoko leaned over her shoulder, eyeing her small bento[1] disapprovingly. “Are you dieting again?” she asked in an accusatory tone.
“Otousan wa debu desu. Okaasan wa debu desu. Dakara watashi mo debu desu,”[2] Chihiro intoned seriously. Tomoko eyed her friend’s thin, almost bony frame.
“You’re not fat!” the other girl screeched, tackling Chihiro. The girls laughed and separated, sitting up. Chihiro stood and brushed at the skirt of her uniform.
“You know I like to eat alone, Tomoko, so why did you come up here?”
“Because, Chihiro, lunch was over half an hour ago. Fushima-sensei asked me where you were. I told him you were sick and he sent me to take you ihome. So let’s go.”
Chihiro closed her bento and adjusted her scarf. “Honto[3]?”
“Yeah.” Tomoko stood up and hooked an arm around Chihiro’s shoulders. “You rode your bike today, right?”
“Yes.”
“So we’re leaving. We both have the rest of the day off.”
“Sounds good. What should we do?”
“We’ll find something.”
The girls headed for the door that led back into the building, and took the stairs down to the ground level of the school. Walking out, they mounted their bikes.
“Say, Tomoko…” Chihiro shifted her weight, placing her feet on the ground. “Do you know of any old theme parks that were around here?”
“Theme parks? I don’t think so. Why?”
“When we first moved here, we took a wrong turn and found this place…” Chihiro bit her lip, looking up at the sky. The spring sun still hung near the center of the sky. “I’ll show you.”
“You moved here six years ago, right?” Tomoko questioned as they rode along the road toward Chihiro’s neighborhood.
“Right.”
“So why are you bringing it up now?”
“I’ve just been thinking about it lately, that’s all.” Chihiro put on the brakes as the road abruptly ended, leaving the girls in trees, the remnants of a dirt road under their tires. Tomoko’s front wheel caught on a rope of kudzu and she nearly fell.
“Where did this road come from?” she grumbled, forcing her bike upright again.
“It grew over not long after we moved here,” Chihiro said, climbing off her bike and walking to the little shrine houses, mostly untouched by the rampant vine, which were on the side of the road. “I noticed no one ever used it… it’s like a driveway to this place we found, and that place was abandoned.”
“But… no one visited the shrines?”
Chihiro shook her head, then used the sparkling band she wore as a bracelet to tie her long brown hair back into a ponytail.
“Well, we won’t get very far on our bikes. Your dad drove on this?”
“The forest didn’t start for a few meters, and even then the road was clear through the trees.” Chihiro thought she saw something in one of the shrines. “Tomoko…”
“Hm?”
It was gone. “Nothing. Let’s walk. It should only take a few minutes to get there.”
“I’ve lived here most of my life and never been down this road…” Tomoko pushed aside a low-hanging branch. “And this has always been a small town. No one would put a theme park here.”
“That’s what I thought.” They walked in silence for a while, until a red wall loomed in front of them.
“Wow! I can’t believe no one knows this place is here!” Tomoko ignored the small statue that stood in front of them and ran to the tunnel opening behind it, peering inside. “Did you go in?”
“Yes…” Tomoko looked back at her friend.
“Chihiro, what’s wrong? Your face looks a little sick.”
“This place is… The air is creepy.”
“Let’s check it out. We still have plenty of time before we’re supposed to be home.”
Chihiro sighed. “Alright. I need to see if…”
“If what?”
‘If it was just a dream…’ Chihiro didn’t speak her thoughts, only shaking her head and starting into the tunnel.
It was just as she remembered it. Dark and long, frightening, though not as frightening as it had been when she was ten. From somewhere far away, the whistle of a train sounded. The girl smiled faintly.
“I remember the train…”
“There’s not a train station around here, though.” Tomoko tilted her head, and made a sound of surprise when the tunnel opened up into a large room. “What is this place?”
“I don’t know.” Chihiro pressed a hand to her stomach to calm the fluttering nerves, and kept walking forward, out the door and into the open air.
“No way!” Tomoko caught up with her and gawked at the vast, open expanse. “This is impossible! We should still be in a forest!”
Chihiro leaned against the outside wall of the building, her eyes roaming the statues, the buildings, the path. “Can’t you feel it?”
“Feel what?”
“Magic.”
Tomoko laughed. “Magic? Chihiro, wake up. It’s just… Just…”
“Just what, Tomoko? What is this place? Tell me.”
The other girl looked uneasy. “I don’t know. But it’s not magic.”
“Don’t be so quick to dismiss it. I’m starting to remember…”
“Remember what?”
“Remember what happened here.” Chihiro started walking again, Tomoko beside her. They climbed the hill and Tomoko looked back.
“Chihiro, there’s no forest.” Chihiro turned to look. The red building (she remembered that clock tower so well now) was in a clear spot. The other side of it was in a clear area as well; the forest didn’t start for almost a kilometer past the far end of the building. The nerves twisted in Chihiro’s stomach again.
“I told you there’s magic here,” she whispered.
“There must be.” Tomoko turned again. “A riverbed?” She started toward it, but Chihiro grabbed her arm.
“No! You can’t go over there!”
“Why not?”
“It’s a boundary. You might get stuck over there.” Chihiro realized it sounded like a poor excuse. Tomoko laughed.
“Don’t be silly.” She shook her friend’s hand off and walked across the smooth stones with quick steps, her shoes clicking against them. Once on the stairs on the other side, she returned. “See, Chihiro? I didn’t get stuck.”
“But—“
“Don’t be such a coward! This is exciting. Let’s keep going!”
Chihiro huffed and followed Tomoko as they continued across the river. “It’s bigger at night,” she whispered.
“It’s like a little town! It does seem like a theme park. But why are they all restaurants?”
“Because of what this place is.”
“What is it?”
“A resort…”
“Resort?”
Chihiro wordlessly climbed a flight of stairs and pointed up at the structure looming ahead of them, across a bridge. Tomoko gasped.
“Is that a bath house? It’s huge! And it looks so new! That’s impossible, isn’t it?”
“No.” Chihiro cast a longing look across the bridge, rubbing her fingers against the card in her pocket, then turned and walked down the stairs again.
“Where are you going? I want to see it!”
“No, you don’t. We aren’t allowed there.”
“How do you know?” Tomoko ran to catch up to her.
“He told me.”
“Who did?”
“Kohaku.”
-
They sat on the bank of the riverbed away from the collection of restaurants, facing them. Chihiro was silent and sullen, Tomoko examining the buildings with fascination. “Where are all the people?”
“It opens at night.”
“Tell me about this place. What happened here?”
Chihiro blew strands of hair out of her face without saying anything.
“Tell me about this Kohaku guy, then.”
The brown-haired girl remained silent.
“Chihiro!”
“It’s only open at night,” she finally said, looking up to the sky again. “When it gets dark.”
“That’s still a few hours away.” Tomoko sighed. “Too bad… I wanted to check it out.”
“No you don’t!”
“Chihiro!”
“I’m serious, Tomoko! Bad things happen!”
“Hmph.” Tomoko stood. “Then let’s go, Chihiro. If you don’t want to explore it or tell me about it, there’s no point in us being here.”
“I thought you might know what this place was…”
“But you already know.”
“I know now. I didn’t remember then…” Chihiro stood. “We should go, though.”
“Of course.” Tomoko started toward the clock tower again. Chihiro looked back across the river.
“You’re not here anymore, right?” she whispered softly. “You said you were going back to your world, but where is that?”
“Chihiro, stop talking to yourself and come on!”
The girl ran after her friend, and they returned to the forest path. Walking to their bikes, they didn’t speak.
“I’ll see you at school tomorrow,” Tomoko said, leaving her friend at the blue-roofed house.
“Yeah…” Chihiro watched as Tomoko rode away, then parked her bike and went inside.
In the six years since they had moved into the house with the blue roof, Chihiro’s mother had gained enough weight to resemble the pig she had once been. She was watching television now, her eyes almost hidden in her round face, her heavy body settling toward the floor to maker her seem to have a cone shape.
Chihiro stepped out of her shoes an moved silently past the living room door, careful not to attract her mother’s attention.
Chihiro was disgusted by her parents, and was anxiously waiting for the end of the school year. She wanted to leave, to go somewhere else for high school so that she didn’t have to stay with them any longer.
As she climbed the stairs to her bedroom, Chihiro felt a small jab of disappointment. Haku—Kohaku—had gone to his own world, wherever that was. The feeling of separation was much stronger now than it had been when she was a child; but then, when she was a child, the relief of having her parents back had been enough to help her leave him behind.
She sat on her bed, sighing and looking out the window. She felt restless, and didn’t really know why. Shifting, she stood again, moving closer to the window. Sunlight glinted off a silver ribbon on the outskirts of town.
Chihiro pulled away from the window and changed out of her school uniform and into a pair of shorts and her favorite plain green shirt. Two years old, the shirt was faded in spots. She went downstairs and stepped into her tennis shoes, more comfortable than her school shoes, and as worn as the shirt. Tapping them against the floor, she opened the front door.
“Chihiro?”
The girl froze as she heard her mother’s voice behind her. “Yes, mother?”
“Where are you going? Don’t you have homework?”
Chihiro stifled a sigh. She had homework, but not much, especially since she’d left school early. “I already did it!” she lied.
“Alright,” her mother sighed. “Be back for dinner.”
‘I won’t,’ the girl thought, ‘and you won’t mind. More for you and dad to eat, then.’ Chihiro said nothing, leaving the house and closing the door after her.
She rode her bike to the edge of the town, and headed toward the growing silver ribbon. A dirt path wound through the grass, and she followed it until it ended near the bank of the river. She put her bike down, lying in the soft, lush grass at the edge of the narrow river. Sighing and relaxing, she dropped a hand into the clear, cool water, letting the gentle current move her fingers.
Chihiro let the peaceful atmosphere soothe her, and her thoughts wandered
with the current. The
Her eyes were on the surface of the water, in places a silver mirror, when she saw his reflection. Green hair long enough to fall past his shoulders was pulled into a ponytail, and he was dressed in a t-shirt and pants not unlike what she had seen some of the boys in her neighborhood wear. Chihiro looked up and met his eyes, the jade as deep as the ocean. His lips curved in a smile, that smile that softened his entire face.
“Kohaku!” she gasped, starting to get up. He put a finger to his lips, and as she stood, his form rippled and disappeared. “No! Don’t go…” The ledge of the bank gave way beneath her sneaker, and she lost her balance.
Her feet hit the water first. Near the edge it was shallow, but the rocks on the bottom were slick, and the rubber soles couldn’t grab them. Her feet slid further. Her head bounced off the soft bank as she fell toward the deeper water. Stunned, she couldn’t get her arms to work, couldn’t figure out how to stop her decent. The cold water closed over her head.
Her eyes, instinctively closed as she submerged, opened again. The sunlight streamed in through the surface of the water, refracting and brightening, and she turned her head down, twisting her body to try and gain control as the current, though gentle, steadily pulled her along. Her throat burned from the water she’d inhaled, her lungs burned as they used up the little air she’d managed to get. The water was deeper than she’d thought, and the current was pulling her down, thwarting her attempts to swim up.
Chihiro’s vision blurred, darkening at the edges. Disoriented, with little to determine which was she should turn, she wound up traveling sideways down the river. When she reached a rocky spot, a stone slammed into her ribs, forcing the air from her lungs. Gasping in pain, all she got was water. The darkness closed abruptly in on her.