If Chihiro was honest with herself, her adventure into the spirit world, when she was ten years old, was probably the worst thing that could possibly happen to her. Granted, it taught her not to be so selfish and understand why her parents were making her move and taught her the power of love. But the therapists had said, a few years later, that being preoccupied with the imaginary occupants of a make believe world was detrimental to the mental health of the thirteen year old girl. Chihiro became an outsider throughout school, and that had lasted her up through to University. Despite what everyone said, Chihiro knew the bathhouse, and those she had met there, had truly existed and as long as her parents didn't think she was crazy - (they didn't, really. They just thought that ages thirteen through nineteen were a little bit too old to be talking excessively about imaginary friends)- as long as her parents didn't think she was crazy, then Chihiro would be fine.
And then her parents died.
Late night; rainy, late night in a car. Those ingredients whipped up the recipe for the end of Chihiro's world. Losing her parents had been one thing. Not being able to say goodbye was an entirely different thing. Being at University in America on foreign exchange made it incredibly difficult to attend the funeral of her parents and the thought that she hadn't even been there was enough to drive Chihiro the kind of crazy that everyone already thought she was. So at least there was that.
There was a plus side to her adventure. Her ability to weave stories and draw the things she had seen had made her a very marketable talent for the American art school she was currently attending. They ignored the fact that the drawings and stories were the product of the delusional Japanese girl in favor for the amount of talent that the (crazy) Japanese girl possessed. But no amount of talent would get Chihiro to feel right again.
Twiddling the pencil around in her fingers, she stared down at the latest sketch she had completed; a sketch of Haku's dragon form. Since her parent's passing she'd been thinking a lot more about her time in the spirit world. What would have happened if she'd looked back? Almost ten years and that question was still nagging in the back of her head. Would she have been trapped forever? Would her parents have been turned back into pigs? She sighed; really no point in wondering was there? What had happened had happened and there was really only one way to go back. Her gaze shifted up and over to the pill bottle on her desk. The anti-depressants, that the school counselor had prescribed her in the aftermath of her parents' deaths, were sitting atop a plane ticket. This ticket would get her back to Japan, back home. She pulled the cover back over her sketch pad and placed that, the pencil, and the anti-depressants in her backpack, swinging it up and over her shoulder once it had been zipped. A quick look around the room confirmed that everything she could had been fit into her suitcase, the rest shipped back home the day before. A quick tug released her jacket off of the back of the seat. Sweeping the plane ticket off of the desk, she grabbed her suitcase, and headed for the door. Without another check, she left her dorm and headed towards the street where a taxi would pick her up and take her to the airport.
With her head against the window of the taxi, she watched the city wiz by and turn into open fields as the taxi approached the airport. A feeling of relief filled her chest, soon she would be home. But almost as quickly as relief had filled her, it was gone and replaced with a feeling of dread, where was home now that her parents were gone? The house that she had been living in before leaving had been sold, someone else was now living where home had been. So where did Chihiro belong now? Those thoughts had been enough to get the taxi to the airport and Chihiro lost herself in the bustle of the busy airport.
A little over two hours later, Chihiro found herself on the plane. Looking out the window she began to think of home again, but when that distressed her too much she preoccupied with waiting for the free drink service to arrive. After that she busied herself with making sure she was suitably comfortable for the incredibly long nap she was prepared to take. Maybe if she slept long enough she'd wake up in Japan. Once she was there she'd be able to keep herself busy getting through the airport and to her grandparents' home in the city. With her pillow squished against the closed blind and a blanket pulled up to her shoulders, Chihiro fell to sleep; her dreams filled with white dragons and cobbled together bathhouses filled with spirits and workers rushing about.