'Well,' He thought.
He leaned back against the moth-covered frog and watched her run down the hill. Her parents were calling her from the doorway of the building.
She was running, sliding down the scree. Her parents called to her from the red building, waving their hands.
Wait.
That's not the same building they came through to get here.
He jumped up, tried to run, pumping his legs furiously. But he couldn't break the contract, the leash held.
She had stopped, almost turned around. He gritted his teeth and struggled harder, clawing vainly at thin air, his head echoing with, 'no, no, stop, wait, come back,!'
"Chihiro!"
She ran to her mother's side, and they walked. Further and further away from him. Further. Further. Further. Into the tunnel.
They were out of the tunnel. She turned back one last time and stared at the tunnel entrance, covered with ivy, not plaster. Hadn't she left something behind? She tried to remember, but it was getting harder. Fading. Trying to hold on to the precipice over oblivion. But he saw a rope. His movements amplified, his feet scratching the stone, wearing down his sandals, his arms straining toward the exit, the wrong exit! 'It's the wrong exit!' He screamed at her, and he couldn't tell if he had actually said it or it was just one of the many echoes reverberating painfully in his head.
"Chihiro! Come on!"
The rope was gone. She let go.
He fell.
That was how Lin found him later in the afternoon, slumped against the moth-covered frog.
speaking of Lin, where had she gone?
The foreman hadn't seen her since yesterday, the guests all shook their heads, kamaji grumbled something that suggested dissent. Her friends weren't aware of the fact that she was absent; floating grotesquely in a blackish sphere, they weren't aware of anything around them, as if they were under a spell. Yubaba had been 'away'. But they forgot about her after a few weeks, and everything went back to normal.
Chihiro saw a weasel the other day. She was sitting on the porch, munching on a tuna onigiri and reading a book when it scuttled to her side as if it knew her. She gave it a piece of her food, and it snatched it up happily. Now, it followed her wherever she went, all day until nighttime. Then, it was gone to who knows where.
'Must have gone to the spirit world.' She mused.