-Catgirl-of-Bavaria-: Hello! Welcome to my first fanfiction both of Spirited Away and on Hajimemashite and Konnichiwa! I really hope you enjoy it, and I hope I'm doing Hayao Miyazaki-sensei's wonderful story justice! bows to Miyazaki-sensei
:Disclaimer: All characters and settings are belonging to the anime genius, Hayao Miyazaki-sensei (with exception of only a couple of characters of my own creation), and the events in this story are only of my imagination. Enjoy.
Chapter 1 –Seeking Dragons
Chihiro woke in her bedroom in a drowsy stupor, listening to the alarm clock that annoyed her from its perch on the shelf above her headboard. She flung her arm up repetitively, attempting to land her hand on the "off" button, until the fourth and finally successful try. She drug herself up into a yawn in her nest of bedcovers, her long brown hair cascading down her back and onto her pillow and catching rays of sunlight that came in through her window.
The girl wrapped her arms around her knees and stared towards the end of her bed. She had had the dream again.
It was a fascinating dream, full of unusual creatures in an unusual place. She had many friends in this place, and she had been to this place many times in her dreams, but only once in actuality, if she was even sure that occurrence really happened…
She remembered the whole ordeal in her mind. The long tunnel, the open field, the seemingly abandoned town. The place completely changed after nightfall. That's when all of the unusual creatures, the spirits, came out. She remembered her initial fear when everything changed, when she began to disappear. Then she remembered that boy. The boy with brown, angularly cut hair…She could vaguely remember his face. It had been so long since she had seen him…
With every dream of this place through the years, no matter how much she didn't want it to happen, that boys face became more and more distant and forgotten. She hated that feeling, the feeling of forgetting the dragon that meant so much to her.
She tightened her hold on her knees and stared intently at the end of her bed, urging her memory to bring the dragon back…
"Chihiro! Your friend Shizuka-san is here!" Chihiro was snapped back to reality by her mother calling her from downstairs. She quickly got out of her bed and pulled off her pajamas and switched into some day clothes.
"I'm coming!" She called, pulling on a light blue t-shirt and a dark blue cotton skirt.
The girl was now 16 years old, and had been living her new house for six years. It was six years since she had come to this place, and six years since her father led them into that spirit world that she dreamed about so much. Her parents remembered nothing, but the teenage Chihiro remembered almost everything.
She hadn't changed much, except now she was taller, had longer hair, and had a still slender, but more developed figure. Her voice was a gently matured version of her ten year old self.
Sitting on the bed to tie her shoes, she caught glimpse of her window that viewed the area behind her house. Finishing the last knot, she walked over to the sill, and looked out on the landscape. She looked towards the sea of trees that was almost directly behind the house, and looked for that strange world. She looked for the bath house, or even for the vast field that spread before the bath house during the daytime. She looked for a silvery white dragon, slithering through the clouds.
But Chihiro only saw trees. Trees, civilization and a plain sky. It must have been the millionth time that she had looked out the window, looking for a hint of that world, hoping against logic that she'd see that stunning silver white scaled dragon with piercing green eyes slither through the sky above her window. She had been hoping for a while now that the wind would deliver his name on a passing breeze, or that the clouds would trigger a memory that would bring back his name to her, but this time, as she spent a solid and concentrated minute staring out the window, she found that she was again unsuccessful.
"Knock knock," Chihiro heard a voice from the doorway of her room and whirled around at the window. At the door stood her friend Shizuka, a girl of the same age with gleaming black hair that folded on her shoulders and eyes that were large and expressive. She was wearing a white sleeveless shirt and a tan denim skirt that perfectly accentuated her feminine figure.
"Oh, Shizuka…Hey," Chihiro said, pulling the drapes to cover the window.
"You day dreaming again? Sheesh, no wonder the teacher's always mad at you!" Shizuka laughed as she came into the room and leaned on the wall next to the closet.
"Yeah, I guess just can't help it sometimes," Chihiro said, grabbing a glimmering purple hair-tie off of her desk. She tied it into her hair towards the end of her long locks.
"So you want to go hang out in town?" Shizuka suggested.
"Yeah, sure, let's go." Chihiro agreed and grabbed her small handbag, eager to get her mind on other things before she dwelled on the spirit world for the whole day. The two girls headed down the stairs and out the door with a quick goodbye to Chihiro's mother.
Upon walking out the door, Chihiro promised herself that she'd continue the search for the missing dragon when she returned home.