Chihiro has grown up.
Her mother is the first one to point that out. She is too old for the t-shirts and shorts. The hair, her mother says, makes her look like she is sixty instead of sixteen. And isn't the hair-band getting too old now?
Her mother nags when her initial entreaties for her daughter to become more feminine fall on deaf ears. Her father offers to take them shopping. He has a pretty daughter, he says, just like his wife. But won't dresses and make-up make her prettier?
Chihiro ignores them until she can't any more. Her mother scolds and her father reasons till they arrive at a suitable compromise. She will submit to the indignity of her mother choosing her wardrobe but the dowdy hairstyle – and the hair-band – stays.
Chihiro has grown up.
She is starting to forget.
It starts simply enough when she forgets the greedy little frog's name. Try as she might she just cannot recollect what he is called. She spends many a useless afternoon trying to guess but she can never recall the correct answer. She chalks it up to the vagaries of time and gives up. He was a silly little froggy anyway.
One day she can't remember Rin's face. She spends hours trying to sketch it out of wisps of memories but she never gets it right. Art has never been her best subject.
The problem only escalates from there on. She forgets the feeling of playing with the Susuwatari, the warmth of Zeniba's smile, the kindness of the old river spirit.
Then one fine frantic morning she makes a wild-eyed dash for the old amusement park looking for a way back when she can't remember Kohaku's laugh any more.
Chihiro has grown up.
She gets lots of bouquets now.
She still is the mysterious new girl even four years after moving in. Her shoe-box has at least one love-letter every week. Boys trip over their own two feet in order to win her affections, earning her the dislike of every other girl in school. She has few friends, none that she can trust and her parents often bemoan the loss of the bright young friendly girl she used to be.
Come White Day, her box is stuffed full of the chocolates she had revealed a inadvertently preference for even though she never graces anybody with the honour of receiving her chocolates on Valentines.
She distributes them among the neighbourhood scamps when they flock to their Chihiro-nee-san for more stories of wild adventures with witches, spirits and dragons.
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