"My goodness! Chihiro, are you day dreaming again?" Katharina demanded of her friend. "Du bist verrückt!"
Chihiro sighed privately before turning over to look at her German friend. The girl was a blond, making her stand out instantly from the sea of brunettes at school. Her features were cold and hard, typical of their people, complete with the crystal blue eyes that were like emotionless glass beads. They were both friendless, and so perhaps it was so that they were good friends; Katharina was every bit as warm as her appearance suggested, and was utterly disgusted with the empty headed giggling most girls were prone to in this school. She was not exactly receptive of the advances of the boys in the school, because she had rightly guessed that most of them were merely attracted by her foreign good looks. Her father was a scientist who was assigned to a base here, so she had moved here from Germany the year Chihiro ha been inducted to this community. Needless to say, she did not quite like the people and had preferred to stay away. On the other hand, Chihiro, as her friend had commiserated earlier, was always staring into space with the blank look, which earned her the name of a lunatic when she first moved into this small town.
She had the sneaking suspicion that her friend had just snapped that she was crazy in her native language, but she could not be sure. Even after hanging out with her for so long, she still could not quite grasp what her friend was always muttering in German. However, just to be safe, Chihiro returned the favour; if there was one thing she learned from her stay at the bath house, it was to never let others think she was weak. "優しいリアル!" Rolling her eyes, (Chihiro had always been rather peeved that Katharina just had a way with languages), her friend snorted and told her, "You are really mature. But have you not been listening to what was saying? Or were you dreaming about a bath house again?" Chihiro snapped back in reply, "I should have never told you about it. Stop teasing me about it." Katharina observed her with that cool, calculating look, before stating clearly that she was obsessed with a certain river spirit, and smirking when she elicited the exact response she looked for. Chihiro privately thought that she was much like her father, and analysed everything she saw with a certain precision that would be used on a specimen.
As they walked home together, Katharina kept on ribbing her about it, and she parried well, generating some kind of highly interesting conversation about imaginary friends and a few screws loose.
Even so, she could not deny that she was pondering on her old friends' fate back at the bath house; how was Kamaji? Was Lin scrubbing the big tub again? Was Haku still slaving away, or had his name won him his freedom? How she missed them. She wished that she would see them again, especially her childhood savior, Haku. If only she could. Little did she know, she would get what she wanted like an idiot in an old wives' tale the next day.