Chihiro huffed for the third time in ten minutes, scratching through words on the notebook in her lap. Despite the beauty of the weather on this summer day, she was in a very, very foul mood. She swiped through her texts again, reading messages from her friends that were miles and miles away.
I'm gonna miss you so much. But we'll hang out on holidays, alright?
"Tch. Yeah, whatever," she grumbled. From the passenger's seat, Chihiro's mother turned around.
"Did you say something, sweetheart?" The girl in the back seat huffed one more time, placing her elbow on the base of the car window, and her cheek in her upturned palm.
"It's nothing, Dad. It's not like it matters at this point, anyway," Mr. Ogino's brows furrowed and his lips tightened into a thin line at his daughter's attitude. He understood that she was upset about not being accepted into the university that most of her friends were attending, but her moping and passive-aggressive behavior was beginning to really grind on his nerves.
"Chihiro, be nice to your father. Sometimes things don't work out the way we want them to. I didn't get into my first choice of school either and…"
Chihiro had stopped listening at this point. Ever since she received her acceptance letters and her one rejection letter, she had been getting this lecture over and over. Why wasn't she allowed to be mad? Sure, the university that she selected as the next best thing wasn't bad, but still…Things just weren't going her way. Couldn't they have, like, bribed the admissions office or something? she thought to herself as she stared out the window at the blurring landscape.
Her father, in the very stereotypical male manner, had decided to take a "shortcut" back to their house after traveling to orientation at the university. Now it seemed to be the scenic route, and he stubbornly refused to admit they were lost. In an attempt to squash her feelings toward her parents, her school situation, and even the car ride, she went back to scribbling in her notebook.
Naturally, today was the day she was going to be stuck with terrible writer's block. Chihiro would write a sentence, read it over again and then violently cross it out. Another sentence, another scrutinizing stare, another scratch of the pencil lead, and repeat again. The fact that Chihiro's paper sanctuary was out of reach definitely wasn't helping her outlook at the moment.
"Honey, I trust you, but I really have to ask if you're absolutely sure about this route," Mrs. Ogino's voice briefly snapped Chihiro out of her frustrated internal monologue.
"I may have made a wrong turn a few miles back, but I'm sure that this way will get us back on the main road." Mrs. Ogino sighed at this, and her daughter looked out the window again. What had been suburban housing and paved roads had turned into hills with houses here and there, large-leafed trees, and a pebbled path that could hardly even be called a driveway or an alley. Yup. Definitely lost. Definitely a shitty day. Whoop-de-doo, chimed in Chihiro's inner voice. At this point, she sighed at the realization that she was going to have to admit defeat. The car began to bounce over the uneven terrain, causing the brunette to hit her head on the window and popping her cell phone right off her lap and under her mother's seat. She cursed under her breath, simultaneously rubbing the sore spot on her skull and holding onto the handle of the door.
Mr. Ogino was definitely going too fast for whatever kind of road they were on, and Chihiro heard her mother shriek before the breaks were slammed and they came to an abrupt halt. Peering in between the two front seats of the family car, she saw what they had almost run into: A stone statue with a large carved smile. As her parents bickered about what just happened, she bent herself awkwardly to grab her phone underneath the seat in front of her. She could feel her fingertips brush against the edge of the device. So close…
"Huh? What's that?" The driver's side door opened and Chihiro's father noisily walked over the gravelly path past the stone figure. Mrs. Ogino followed right behind him. Chihiro finally managed to rescue her phone and clutched it to her chest, looking up to see what her parents were doing. A few yards from where the car stopped, there was an entrance in what looked like an old red building.
Aaaaand her parents were headed inside.
"Hey, you can't just leave me here! Jeez, where are you even going?" Despite the fact that she was still upset and honestly didn't want to spend any time with her parents, the cheery smile on the stone statue near her gave her the heebie-jeebies. "No one is that happy all the same," she muttered, giving it side-eye.
"Hurry up," she heard her mother say from the entrance. Chihiro walked over to where their backs were moving into the darkness before turning around one more time. As it turned out, the statue had faces on both sides. She rolled her eyes at it, turning. And then she felt the wind. A breeze stronger than she expected pushed her in the direction of what she now realized was a tunnel.
"Okay, that was sufficiently creepy," Chihiro mumbled to herself as she began to catch up with her mother and father. By the time she was in step with them, they had reached nearly the end of the tunnel where it opened up into a larger space. The next room was dark with columns and benches and only a few smallish windows to let light in. Mr. and Mrs. Ogino were grunting and "mm"-ing about things they saw, but Chihiro was pretty confused about what this place was.
When they finally exited the building, they were in a large field. Chihiro looked up at the place they had just left to see a huge clock on the wall face, and another smaller clock on the higher tower. Her father made a triumphant noise.
"This is exactly what I thought it was!" Chihiro rolled her eyes.
"Care to share?" she said dryly. Her father looked at her as if he was going to chastise her, but then seemed to decide against it.
"Well, back in the nineties, theme parks were pretty darn popular. So a lot of parks were planned and developed, but eventually they went out of style and a whole bunch had to close. This one must be like that… I wonder how long it's been abandoned." Mr. Ogino rubbed his chin, surveying the surrounding area. Out of nowhere, the ground began to rumble just the slightest, and dust drifted from the peeling walls of the clock tower.
"Was that a train?" Mrs. Ogino asked, looking between her daughter and husband. Chihiro shrugged, reaching into her pocket for her phone. Damn. No service, she thought, before clicking the screen off. She looked up and, to her dismay, her parents had continued walking into the park. She groaned in frustration.
"Can we just leave? You said it was abandoned, anyway. I just want to go home and see my friends before I have to leave them forever. Mooooooooooom!"
"Oh, Chihiro. You need to stop whining. It's an adventure," her mother said over her shoulder.
"Well, it'd be a better adventure if I could still use my phone," Chihiro grumbled. Today was just not going to be her day, was it? As they walked through the large green field, they passed by a dilapidated hut and scrambled across a dried up river (Mr. Ogino guessed that it was a manufactured river, which was possibly why there was no water flowing.) The further they walked, the larger the upcoming section of stalls and building seemed to get - and Chihiro didn't even mean that in terms of perspective. To her, it just felt like more and more things were popping up in her sight. Her father whistled low.
"Woooow, this was a big one. It must have been pretty devastating to the people who created it when it had to be shut down." Chihiro had to agree with him on that. Walking up a set of stone steps, The Ogino family took a good look around. Food stalls were everywhere, with larger buildings a little further up ahead. And, very oddly, Chihiro swore she could actually smell something cooking.
Apparently her parents could, too. Soon Mr. Ogino was sniffing like a hound dog, trying to find the source of the delicious aroma. With a whoop, he signaled his wife and daughter over to a stall with platters of steaming, gorgeous food just sitting out. He stuck his head under the overhang of the stall and called out to see if anyone was there. Without even waiting for a reply, he began to serve himself from the piles of food on the counter.
"Honey, come grab some of this!"
"Oh, it smells amazing!" said Ms. Ogino, inhaling as she sat down at the counter. Chihiro looked at them incredulously.
"Are you serious right now? You just said this place was closed, and now you're just chowing down? Where are the people who work here?"
"Don't worry about it, Chihiro. Your ol' dad has cash and credit cards. We'll just leave money for them when we're done, if they aren't back by then. It's fine!" Chihiro shook her head, ponytail waggling.
"Nope, I have no desire to be in any part of this. Gonna walk away now, bye!" As she turned on her heel and began to leave, she was acutely aware of her parents yelling at her. Something about her attitude lately? She ignored them. She wasn't about to say it, but this actually wasn't to spite them. She really, truly had a weird feeling about the place.
Despite the shape it was in, she had to admit that the park was actually pretty cool. Scanning the landscape and the buildings, she tried to picture what it might have looked like 20 years ago. Her absentminded wandering and wondering came to a stop when her feet stopped hitting pavement and began to knock against wood. She was on a bridge.
Right before her eyes was a huge, gorgeous bathhouse that seemed to be in much better condition than everything else. There was even steam coming from it! Maybe it's not closed? she thought to herself, tilting her head and gazing upward where the steam evaporated into the blue sky. Chihiro began to hear the same rumble from earlier, though this time she turned and actually saw a train moving across the water. Wait, what?
She rubbed her eyes, blinked a few times, looked up again…and practically jumped out of her skin.
"Ohmygod!" she yelped, falling rather ungracefully right onto her ass. Some guy had basically snuck up on her. How did I not hear him?
The person in front of her was staring her down with a look she couldn't quite place. "Uh, hello. I, um, we got lost and-"
"You shouldn't be here," the young man said, eyes narrowing. The sky was beginning to get dark, and his head whipped around right as the lamps around them started to come on. Chihiro's eyes went wide.
"W-wait, what? Shit, I'm sorry if we trespassed and-"
"You need to get out, it's starting. Leave!" He roughly pulled her off the ground and sent her in the direction she had come from. "Get across the river." Stumbling and nearly failing to keep up with how quickly he was dragging her along, she finally got enough breath to speak again.
"Look, I get it. I need to leave. But I have to find my parents first." The man's determined and steely expression turned into one of surprise before returning to its former state.
"It might be too late," he said quietly, his eerily green eyes boring into hers. A shiver ran down Chihiro's spine. Too late? Not wanting to know what that meant, she went into a full sprint trying to find the stall where she had left her parents. Just because she was frustrated with them didn't mean she wanted them to get arrested…or something. She skid around a corner, seeing her parents from a distance.
"Mom, Dad, we've gotta go! I think we're gonna get in trouble and I don't really want to get arrested before I even go to college!" There was no reply. Rather, her mother and father were still eating loudly, messily. "How is the 18-year-old being the responsible right now while you two are being…"
That was when she finally caught up to them. "…pigs." Where her parents had been now sat two large pigs - actual, literal hogs. She could only stand there, frozen, wondering what the hell was going on. First the weird park in the middle of nowhere, then the train, then Mr. Serious, and now this? A hand caught her elbow and dragged her along again, but this time she was furious and prepared to retaliate. Chihiro pulled her arm out of the mystery man's grasp and started to yell at him, "What the fuck is this? Am I being Punk'd, because this is the opposite of funny!" along with many other sentences exclaimed out of confusion, rage, and just a touch of fear.
The young man turned around, grabbed her by the shoulders and gritted out, "You. Need. To leave. I am trying to help you."
Chihiro growled back, "Fine. Help me. But I swear to god I'm gonna sue you and whoever else is here after this is over."
"Go back over the river. You absolutely need to make it across before it's too late. I'll buy you some time." Chihiro was off running in an instant, but she swore in the split second before she was hurtling down the aisles of stalls, she saw the guy blow petals or something weird out of nowhere. Better not tell this story when I start school, she thought to herself, as she sprinted along the path. Because people will either think I'm crazy or that I do allllll the drugs.
Chihiro truly thought she was going in the right direction, but suddenly the streets seemed foreign and when she reached the stone steps she had walked up not 2 hours before, the river was full. More than full. It had somehow transformed itself into a lake - maybe even a sea. The water was seeping into her sneakers when the gravity of the situation finally hit her.
What have I done?