Xx Of Memories and Misery xX
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Things to be seen:
I. The disclaimer is on page one.
Chapter Two: The Memories
Chihiro tried to rub the sleep from her eyes, but she found something was impeding her. A white hand with long, long fingers, clutching at hers tightly. She followed the arm, up to a shoulder. Where a sleeping green head lay.
Haku.
She had a feeling she'd seen him asleep before, but his face hadn't been so serene as it was now. It had been crinkled in pain, stained with blood, his own blood, and he had just saved her.
The blood was my own, that's what he said, she thought, gazing at the sleeping boy. She vaguely remembered a man with six long arms and two stubby legs. Kamaji...
He stirred lightly, his lips parting. Haku was so relaxed, so comfortable...And he was holding her hand. If her short-term memory was correct, he'd been holding her hand for a few hours. Possibly more. She felt a hot blush rise to her face. He'd been holding her hand when she fell asleep...
A loud, irregular snore made her turn her head. There was Granny, asleep in a chair as well, and Kaonashi standing in a corner, leaning against the wall in a way that suggested that he was unconscious as well. Granny snored again, then was silent.
The sleep-ridden atmosphere tempted her back into slumber. Her eyes fluttered closed, and she murmured Kureno's name under her breath.
She didn't wake till next noon.
xXx
The sounds of clinking and the removal of Haku's hand woke her at last. She blinked in the bright light streaming in through the window. Granny bustled in, a pink, ruffled apron tied at her back and throat.
"Time to wake up, dear. You slept for two days straight. And you should know," she leaned in to whisper in her ear," Haku never once left you, my dear..." She straightened up, or rather, tipped back over, and waved her hand with the air of one commanding.
"Get up, dear. There are some clean clothes for you on the chair..." and the she bustled out again.
Chihiro dragged herself upright, and swung her legs out of bed. Her feet hit the cold floor, and her vision fuzzed. She clung to the bedpost while her head cleared and the blood pressure issue sorted itself out.
She toddled over to the chair, pulling a pink fabricyukata and a small obi belt from the pile. Her real-world clothes were dirty, and looking at them as she shucked off all but her underwear, she cringed.
She pulled on the robe, tucked it left-over-right like she was supposed to, then wondered if she, as a dead person, should tuck her kimono right-over-left, like a corpse dressed for burial or cremation.
She decided to leave it as-was, and tied the belt at her waist. She pulled on the zori sandals, also on the chair, and shuffled out into the kitchen, where Zaniba and Kaonashi sat, eating what appeared to be oatmeal, and guzzling tea.
Granny winked at her and said, "Haku had to leave, dear. He supervises my sister for me, makes sure she doesn't get up to any real tricks...And he'd been away almost three days, so he had to return and check that she's not being a brutal pig." She sighed. "Breakfast, dear. And that robe looks lovely on you."
Chihiro took her seat at the table, and began eating the bowl of gloppy brown stuff. She was not a picky eater, in the least.
The oatmeal, as oatmeal it turned out to be, was sweet and nutty, although it was sticky enough to glue her tongue to the roof of her mouth. She gulped a mouthful of tea to loosen the concoction, and continued eating. Haku looks after Yubaba, does he? What has she done to deserve it? she thought idly. Her bowl of glop was now half gone, and her tea had run out. She refilled, then stretched.
Kureno really loved nutty stuff, she remembered. But he was gone now. G-O-N-E. A black human spirit, unlike her, a brightly colored, if a bit listless, girl who'd had a reckless boyfriend who was two years older than her. Who'd died, presumably, in a car crash and now had lost her stubborn, rakish boyfriend after death. To Hell with "till death do us part". It hadn't. What had was an unfortunate sequence of events that happened when she was ten.
She gulped down the last of the sticky porridge and took her bowl to the sink, where Kaonashi was washing the breakfast things.
She was seventeen, for goodness sake. She wasn't supposed to be dead! She was supposed to live out her life til she was old and wrinkly, an old woman who'd lived her full lifetime. But now she wouldn't. Would she even age? How could she be sure? She was a Unique Case. And would she be able to get enough over Kureno to begin looking for love again?
She sighed, and wandered back into her bedroom, planning on making the bed and then washing her clothes. If she could be useful some other way, she would try. Working had always kept her mind off of unpleasant things. She worked when she needed to calm herself.
To her chagrin, the bed was already made, and her clothes, looking clean and new as the day they were bought, were sitting neatly folded on the chair. She stepped back out of the room to see the dishes drying on the rack, and Kaonashi sweeping up.
"Granny!" she called.
A muffled voice echoed back through the open front door. "I'm out here!" Chihiro shuffled out to speak to her.
"Is there anything I can do? Clean? Do laundry?" she demanded of the large woman. "Dear, you can go sit and rest yourself, there isn't much to do today. Or maybe try to remember a bit more..." came the strangled reply. Chihiro ran around her to see that...her mouth was full of clothes pins as she put out the washing.
"Granny, how so you try to remember something?" she demanded. Zeniba turned just a bit to look at her kindly.
"Dear, I once told you, 'nothing that happens is ever forgetten', didn't I? Just think about for a while." With those enigmatic words, she shooed her back into the house.
Chihiro sighed, sliding out of the zori. She padded back into her room, sitting on the bed. For a few moments, she simply sat there, kicking aimlessly, and staring at her feet. Then she pulled her legs up, criss-cross-applesauce, and sat meditatively, with her eyes closed. "Haah..." she sighed.
Behind her eyes, she pictured Haku. I might as well sort things about him out first... she had a feeling not knowing what had happened between them could make her life very difficult in the future. She gathered all her fragments of memory about him. Blood. Flowing air, no, water.
Her eyes snapped open. "Water...mizu...." It took an active effort to close her eyes again. She reached back into her memory, and grasped a fragment of a boy on a bridge. Next, she did something that she couldn't explain, looking back on it later. She tugged.
And it flooded into her mind, filling her senses. But the scene that surrounded her wasn't that of the boy, but instead that day in the car, driving to a tiny town where they were moving because of her father's work. She saw everything through the smaller Chihiro's eyes, felt everything she felt, but maintained a separate consciousness. This is the day I stumbled into the Spirit World... she realized. Not that she actually remembered it, but that was the time she and her parents had gotten lost, the time everyone said she had been there.
"Look, there's your new school, Chihiro-chan," her father said.
She felt herself turn to look at the primary school that had been a fun, happy place for her, but little her didn't know that, and stuck out her tongue. She'd liked it better in Osaka.
"I'll have to go to the next town to shop..."
"We'll all get used to it..."
Now she she was springing forward. I was so sad, back then, she thought. "Kaa-san! Kaa-san! My flowers are dying!"
"I told you not to smother them, dear. We'll put them in some water when we get to our new home..."
Chihiro noticed, not for the first time, that her parents cared very little about her at the time. They were always wrapped up in work and their separate social lives, and for them, "parenting" meant juggling Chihiro and the more important things in their lives. A bitter anger at them and a deep sense of loneliness blossomed in her chest. Second fiddle was always a harder part to play.
"Kaa-san, what are those houses?"
"They're shrines. Some people pray to them...."
"Honey, slow down! You're going to get us killed!"
"I won't hit anything!"
"What's that!?"
A screech of tires. A mossy jizō statue. Wind...
"The building's pulling us in..." And then grass....on the other side. The Spirit World....
"It's an old theme park. They built a bunch of them in the 90's, then they all went down with the economy."
"Something smells good!"
"Stop it, you guys!"
"I'm going to look around."
A huge...clock? No, it was a signpost, with a giant character on it; Yu. She turned right, and was met by the sight of a huge bathhouse. A very old-style, extremely elaborate bathhouse. And a big, red bridge. She could hear a train.
Her legs carried her out onto the bridge, where she peered over the edge. A train passed, many feet below. She ran to the other side, but there was nothing. Strange.
Then she heard footsteps and looked up into the face of an extremely handsome boy. His slanted green eyes bored into her for a second before realization dawned on his face, and he gasped. "Human! You shouldn't be here, you have to go, now!" He pushed her away angrily, then muttered, "They're lighting the lamps...I'll create a distraction! Go!"
She ran down a few steps before stopping and rubbing her eyes. "What's his problem?" she wondered, and continued running.
Now, all around her, the shops were opening. Ghostly figures drifted. She darted down an alley, back towards her parents. Instead, she was met by two opulent pigs in her parents' clothes. A scream tore from her throat as a shiver passed through her body. "Kaa-san! Tou-san! KAA-SAAAAN!"
Chihiro's reverie broke. Her parents had been pigs. Pigs. She shuddered. The sight had been so disgusting and terrifying...A tear slipped from the corner of her eye.
She slipped off the bed, and walked over to the window. It was dark now, drizzling, and probably cold. Still, she continued through the kitchen and out the door.
She pressed herself against the wall, then slid down it, to bury her face in her hands.
She had begun to remember, but now she didn't know if she wanted to see what else had happened. The remnants of her first encounter still flashed, and she blushed when she realized that out of all the guys she'd ever seen, he was among the best looking, even at twelve. He seemed so angry with her...
Sobs tore through her body as she huddled. Rain was coming down fairly heavily, now, and a rumble of thunder could be heard in the distance. Miserable in the cold and wet, she let go completely when her consciousness started to drift. She was lightly asleep in moments. A fork of lightening, followed by a crack of thunder, opened one eyelid a fraction of an inch, before it drifted closed again. Next time it opened was because she she could sense a presence by her right leg. She caught sight of the leg of a pair of hakama before her eye closed again.
"Chihiro? You need to wake up now..." a calm male voice.
She scrunched up her nose. "Mmmrfl...Kureno....?" Then she sneezed violently.
The voice returned. "No. Haku. And you need to get inside right now." No response. He sighed. "Haah...fine. Don't say I didn't warn you..." He reached down and swung her up into his arms, against his chest. It was only then that he noticed how cold she was. Icy. Like a corpse.
But she was still breathing, and so he carried her inside, cradling her tiny frame. Zeniba looked up as he opened the door. She nodded her understanding.
"Back so soon, Haku?"
He looked down into the face of the sleeping girl in his arms. "Yes. I'm afraid we have some trouble on our hands."
xXx
Parting Comments: Has anyone else noticed that Chihiro spends a lot of time asleep? It's, like, my transition. Need a change of scene/time? Knock her out, hey presto!
Other than that, I expect a few of you out there are wondering what's up with her rather inconsistent memory. In Chapter 1, she regains what seems like a lot of her memories, then a page later has forgotten them. This is because....Well, actually, I have no excuse. I forgot that she'd remembered. I typed out her grand remembrance, then went and took a shower, went to ballet class, ate dinner, and started where I left off...At this point, I think she re-forgot in her sleep...So, um, please don't kill me?
Remember, no one's perfect.
Something interesting I realized:
Yubaba= hen-granny
Really. "Yu" is the character for hen, and "Baba" is an affectionate form of Grandmother, or Granny. I find this amusing. You might not.
As for footnotes...well, I don't think as much needed explaining in this as in my last chapter. If you have questions, review or feel free to PM me. As always, I love feedback and, yes, reviews will be rewarded with Skittles or a chocolate chip granola bar, your choice. The Granola is healthier, but the Skittles taste better.
Hugs and Kisses
Eden
