It had been eight years since Chihiro moved to the countryside and today was her high school graduation ceremony. It had also been eight years since she felt as if an important chunk of her memory had disappeared which she had never been able to recall even till this day.
As Chihiro held her high school diploma in her hands, she decided to forget about retrieving the lost memories - that she wasn't even sure existed - and move on.
"Chihiro! I'm going to miss you so much after we graduate! Why do you have to move to the city? You should just stay! The countryside's good! We have...we have trees, rivers and me!" Cali cried and clung onto Chihiro. Chihiro chuckled softly and petted her petite friend's head.
"Cali, we can still keep in touch. We have a strong friendship, don't we?" Chihiro tried to assure her, but Cali continued reciting her list of 'the evils of the city'.
"Ogino-san!" a familiar voice called out and Chihiro turned around.
"Ah, Takahiro-kun, what's the matter?" Chihiro asked. Takahiro-kun looked a little flustered when she did and immediately looked away, then he mumbled a bit under his breath but it was too soft for Chihiro to catch what he said.
"Huh? Sorry, Takahiro-kun, but I can't really hear you-"
"E...Email! Um, please. Uh, give me your email address! I mean please give me your email address!" he fumbled.
"Oh, ok. Hold on for a moment." Chihiro wrote her address on the piece of paper he handed her and passed it back.
"Um...thank you! See you!" he quickly uttered and ran away to his usual group of friends who surrounded him immediately.
"Looks like he finally did it huh, took him long enough." Cali commented with a bored look on her face. "So what are you doing after this Chihiro? Wanna stop by somewhere to celebrate the demise of our youth?"
Chihiro laughed at Cali's melodrama.
"Sorry, but I'll be heading to my usual spot after this so I won't be able to join you today. How about tomorrow?"
"Ok! But Chihiro...you know they'll be covering up that old tunnel soon, right?"
"I know. I just need to try once more before I give up. For real this time."
But, deep down, Chihiro knew that no matter how hard she tried, she would never stop trying to recall her lost memories. Even though for the past eight years she had not been able to recall anything, and more often than not she wanted to give up on searching for such ambiguous memories, she couldn't stop trying,
And yet, the only key to her memories - the tunnel to an abandoned amusement park - was about to be destroyed. Slowly, but surely, Chihiro was losing hope.
Author's note: Hello! Thank you for reading this story, and I would appreciate any reviews as I would like to improve on my writing, especially since this would be my first fan fiction tryout. I would probably try to edit my writing after every few chapters to correct grammar mistakes or sentence structures and such too (:
