The Path of Water
By Arlia'Devi
Disclaimer: I do not own Spirited Away in any respect; all rights go to Hayao Miyazaki and associates. I make no money from this.
Updated, edited and modified: 16/10/12
The Path of Water
By Arlia'Devi
III: The strength
"No body can hurt me without my permission"
~ Mohandas Gandhi
Dinner with Rin was enjoyable: the food Haku had taken from the kitchen was lovely and there was plenty of it for the both of them. The spirit woman said she couldn't stay long, only until perhaps nine then she would have to go down and manage the baths. That gave three hours devoted to "Sen-Rin" time as the woman had dubbed it.
"Is he being nice to you?" asked the woman lowly.
"Rather. He's snappy."
"It's the weather," replied Rin.
"Everyone seems to blame that."
"It's very busy around this time – this is the most decent meal I've had in a couple of days. Too busy to eat, we barely sleep and it's time to work again." Rin scoffed. "But at least he's being nice to you – you know he has a soft spot for you, don't you Sen?"
Her brow furrowed. "A soft spot?"
"Haku was such a nasty dragon before you came along," she giggled then. Perhaps she'd had too much sake. "I suppose he'd lost his way after the destruction of his river, but Yubaba took him, manipulated him, made him do horrible things – she put darkness in his heart and he's never really been able to get rid of it." Then she added lowly. "I think in his past life, he wasn't very nice either…" Rin shrugged. "But then you came along with your rosy red cheeks and your human smell and you changed him, Sen. For the better. You gave him back his name and he owes you immensely for that."
"How important are names, anyway?" Chihiro's eyes narrowed.
"Enormously important," replied the spirit girl. "Without a name, we might as well be a shell. All memories, all lives, all communications are tied to names, Sen, that's why they're so important – to take someone's name severs their life, to give a new name creates a new one. That's how Yubaba controlled us."
Chihiro remembered when Haku gave a piece of paper with her name on it; Chihiro had felt empty as Sen, like a new person in the shell of where another had been. Seeing her name evoked the memories of her mother and father, her old town, the new one she'd be moving to, her friends she'd left behind…
"I was wondering," Chihiro said nervously, "do you think Haku would let me stay? Not permanently, I mean, just for a while?"
Rin looked confused. "What would you do here?"
"I tried to ask him before, but I don't think he wanted to listen. I told Chase-,"
"Chase?" Rin frowned. "You were talking to Chase – the little blonde woman?"
"Yes," nodded Chihiro. "Why?"
Rin sucked in a breath through her teeth. "You shouldn't trust Chase, Sen, she's close with Haku – something you say might backfire."
"So are you, I am told," rebutted Chihiro and Rin suddenly found great interest in her knees. "But I am a good judge of character, Rin, thank you very much."
"But I'm your friend," begged Rin, taking hold of Chihiro's hands tightly. "You trust me, and I trust you, Sen – I can't say the same for a woman you only just met. How do you know she won't go behind your back and say things to Haku that only makes him want to take you back more?"
Chihiro rolled her eyes. "Do you really think I'd do something like that?" then she smiled, a wicked glimmer holding in her russet eyes. "I expected Chase to speak with Haku… I told her what to say."
Haku had met Chase in her quarters: smaller and on the bottom story, just above the thick glass that separated the business from the domestic. The young woman didn't say anything, but merely opened the door and let her friend pass through. She offered him a drink, but the dragon refused.
"What did you and Chihiro get up to today?" murmured the dragon, taking a seat on the woman's leather couch.
"Why don't you ask her?" replied the woman levelly, and Haku sent her an aggravated look.
"She won't tell me like you'll tell me," replied Haku with a quirky smile. "Chihiro is wary of me at the moment – I smell that although she tries to hide it, she is a little afraid of me."
"Who wouldn't be?" scoffed Chase. "The way you bark orders left right and centre – Haku, you're not a very likeable person. Besides, you stand between her staying in this world and world and her going back, of course she doesn't like you – she knows you'll enforce."
"Enforce the inevitable."
"She was talking to me today," Chaise poured herself a glass of sake. Haku rolled his eyes. "… I can sense something within her – I don't know what it is… uneasiness, unrest, something like that."
"I can feel it too," muttered Haku. "She's unsettled."
Chase hummed for a moment and sipped on her sake, gazing up into a glimmering tapestry of mountains and fog, and drummed her nails softly onto the tiny dark oak hallway table. "Chihiro wants to ask something of you…"
Haku's ears perked up. "Heh?"
"She's a very smart young woman, you know…," Chase took a sip of her sake, finishing the cup. "She said she studied at a thing called University. She wants to study us – our world. She wants to stay, not forever, but for a while."
"Chihiro told you those things so that you would ask them me," growled Haku.
"I know she did, but Haku," the blonde's brow puckered. "She really is intelligent. Why not allow her to stay? Perhaps we could learn about as much as the humans as she will about us. You know the levels of humans passing through the border has become increasingly high."
Haku growled lowly but said nothing, a tight scowl settling over his face.
"The girl will pull her weight, Haku – she's strong."
"I know." But the dragon didn't seem to budge. Chase needed to try something different. "You should have heard the way she spoke to Yubaba; complete disregard for her own safety! If I wasn't here, Yubaba would have already served her up for dinner already for the things she said to her."
"There's work here for her – you have many books on spirit history. They're great tomes and they'd probably take her a while to read," Chase shrugged. "Besides, Haku, wouldn't you want to spend more time with the girl who saved you? You haven't seen her in ten years – perhaps you owe her a favour."
"Hm," a long finger rubbed at his nude chin, evidently Haku was in deep thought.
"Can't deny…"
"And what is she supposed to do with the information?" he asked. "Write a document on spirit world in the human world? People would think she's crazy."
"Maybe you should discuss this with her," Chase offered, finishing her tea before packing up the dishes. "Talk with her about it. Try to be reasonable."
Haku sighed. He was tired. "Perhaps," he muttered though it wasn't too convincing.
And with that, Haku left the woman's chambers and went to do the bathhouse rounds.
Rin left at half-eight at night, the frog foreman knocking on Haku's door to call the woman down to work. This left Chihiro alone in Haku's quarters and playing idly with her toenails for around half an hour. For the University dance she'd painted them black and was busily picking off the polish with her fingernails.
What happened at the dance was far from Chihiro's mind, although Haku always seemed to bring it up, as if speaking about it would create closure – a sense of settlement. When, a night or two ago, Haku had finally bailed Chihiro up in a corner, demanding they speak about that night passed she'd just broken down. Although Chihiro tried the hardest to push it down, the feelings associated just seemed to keep bubbling up, and she'd fallen in a messy heap and Haku had been there to catch her. Once again, it seemed he wasn't the big bad dragon everyone said he was. Or was it just this 'soft spot'?
Tears stained his assumed very expensive forest-green tunic. He just held her, until her sobbing ceased and Chihiro fell asleep in his arms, breathing shallowly and evenly. Haku had then carried her very carefully to bed: it was very early in the morning, still dark – his little human should have been asleep already. She slept until midday.
Since, Haku had not spoken to her since the brief conversation by his desk. He was a busy man, forever entangled in business running the bathhouse. In some respects, Chihiro was glad to see little of the man which, quite honestly, made her very nervous and self-conscious, but at the same time was eager to see if any of the boy she used to know still exists in the man's body. If anything from the previous night when he'd held her until she fell asleep, Chihiro could assume that there was – buried somewhere deep under the hard lizard exterior of the bathhouse boss.
Chihiro had slept until around half-eight in the morning, at which point her eyes fluttered open and she watched the dragon walk not-so-elegantly into the bedroom and flop down on the bed beside her, not so much acknowledging her presence on the bed beside him. Haku sighed and shuffled to rest his head on the pillow.
"Mhirio…" he muttered, half his mouth muffled by the fluff of his pillow. "Sleep."
Chihiro shifted uncomfortably. She could feel the dragon's heat through the blankets she'd snuggled under and Haku's hand moved to rub his eye.
Haku slept until midday, and Chihiro loitered around his quarters. He could smell her as she walked around, the smell of the water from the shower intermixing with her skin, her voice as she hummed in the library where Chihiro read books she couldn't understand. In the library? Was she studying. Haku deigned to think she was reading up about the spirit cultures. At midday, Haku offered Chihiro lunch – milk-rice pudding, which was lovely and savoury and he watched her eat crossed legged and red-eyed from his bed.
"It's nice," she muttered earnestly.
"You need your strength back," he muttered and adjusted his grey shirt, which fell in a long 'v' down his chest, revealing a lot of milky chest. "And get dressed properly – I'm taking you back today."
Chihiro frowned and the spoon rattled in the empty china. "I'm not going back."
"You are," moaned the dragon. "I'm not in the mood to be arguing with you, Chihiro."
The woman frowned. "You won't even listen to what I have to say about the matter, Haku."
"Don't care."
"Please," she never thought she'd be one to beg, but this was Haku, and this was the spirit world. "I want to stay here, for six months. I won't ask any more of you. I want to know about the spirit world – I was reading in the library and it seems so interesting, I-,"
"And what do you plan to do with the knowledge you've accumulated, Chihiro?" he asked. "When you do go back to the spirit world?"
"Nothing," she said.
"Nothing?" he was sceptical. "You'd study here for 6 months for it to amount to nothing?"
"Well, not nothing," she tried to clarify. "I'm just so curious; I want to know how your world works compared to ours. You must have such a rich history, I want to know. It might be good fodder for children's books or something. It's only 6 months. I'm not asking much, Haku."
"We have so much history you could not possibly know in a human's lifespan."
Chihiro shook her head. "Please consider it. I could tell you about the human world, in return, I read some articles that were grossly inaccurate – what could be more accurate than the words from the horse's mouth? I promise not to be a burden."
Haku sighed and rubbed his temples. "What you ask is more than what I can bestow."
Chihiro sighed.
"This world is dangerous," he sighed. "I understand your motives. I have heard you're quite the scholar, Chihiro, but I cannot allow it. It's for your own safety, I hope you understand."
And with that, the dragon got up and left the apartment, leaving Chihiro with shoulders slumped, sighing heavily.
Haku hadn't seen Chihiro for the remainder of the day, and well into the evening. Apparently, she had had dinner with Kamaji, said Rin. The first time he'd sent her back she was willing to go, and was more or less, worried she'd never see him again. Now, Chihiro was a lot older, she knew what she wanted, but by god, the stubbornness hadn't left her.
Haku busied himself with bathhouse business, ordering stock and dealing with management. At one point, he greeted customers on entering and chatted with a pair of water sprites from across the plain. He smelt Chihiro briefly, then saw a glimpse of Rin but other than that, he did not retire until eleven, and that was briefly if only to see that Chihiro was sleeping well.
The dragon ran into Chase, the blonde imp, on his way up to his quarters. She smiled briefly and asked if he had reconsidered letting Chihiro stay to which he grunted and side-stepped the woman. It was coming into the early hours of the night by the time he'd stepped through the door of his quarters, the woman would be asleep. Hopefully she didn't take up all the bed.
He sighed and closed the door – the apartment smelt of her, but not in a stench-like kind of way. Chihiro, once the human smell had largely dissipated from eating spirit foods, had kind of a floral sweet smell, like sitting out in the hydrangea garden on a balmy afternoon. A small smile played on his lips.
"Chihiro?" he called, his voice turning lighter and flowing more than he'd anticipated it to be. Haku awaited Chihiro's response, hoping it would be as gentle and as melodious as he'd given her, perhaps an indication she wasn't willing to argue tonight. Arguing was tedious on his strained grip on consciousness tonight.
"Chihiro?" The apartment was silent.
"Chihiro!?"
This chapter is rather small, I'll admit, but I would like to thank the great people who have reviewed as of late. There names are here, in the Hall of Fame of sorts:
trolapixie147, I Do Not Stumble For Thy , KittyCat809 , jikarashino-haruko, and Savvyzzzz
Thanks, and I do hope you enjoy this chapter. Another update is coming in less than a week to accommodate for the shortness of this chapter. If you did, be sure to tell me when you hit review!
Until next time
~ Arlia'Devi
