The Promise

Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I do not own Spirited Away or any of the characters

At that I recoiled quickly. He appeared disoriented, but he did call me Sen. I'd never told him that that was what I'd been named there. No-one knew. I had never kept a diary either, where he could have read my hidden thoughts. It was all in my head. Except he knew.

Not knowing what else to say, I answered 'I'm here, don't worry I won't leave you.' A smile passed across his lips and his eyes opened to make eye contact with me. "Haku?" I asked him stupidly. A flicker of a long lost memory emanated from him and he was Haku. I hugged him tightly. Gripping him with everything I had.

"I promised you we'd meet again – I promised" he held me with just as much urgency.

"I knew you'd keep your promise" a nervous but overjoyed giggle escaped me.

"Chihiro..." he couldn't find the words, I sensed that a goodbye of some sort was imminent and a felt the hollow space inside me deepen, it had always been there, but now it threatened to swallow me.

"Chihiro take care."

"Wait! Don't go. Don't leave me Haku!" It was clear that whatever had brought Haku to me was gone now taking him with it – Kai was left rubbing his forehead, clearly confused.

"Are you okay? You fell" I told him whilst assisting his attempts at getting up by putting one of his arms around my shoulders.

"I think so...it just hit me" I took my satchel from him while he brushed down his knees "guess I'm dehydrated." I think we both knew that that's not what it was, but I couldn't explain it, so how could he?

"Let's get you home," I pulled a green leaf out of his hair and he nodded.

Taking a decision that would surely tear me up for days, I agreed with myself not to tell him what had happened. I didn't feel that it was fair to him. Happy though I was that Haku had been with me, even for such a brief moment, I wasn't sure Kai would share that with me. Terrified that it would make everything worse, I kept quiet letting him believe that he'd blacked out. Still it gave me hope that Haku was in there somewhere; he hadn't left me.

Taking a detour Kai and I walked, avoiding any loose paving stones and keeping to a slow pace, we eventually made it to his home – his foster home. He lived with a kind lady, who insisted we call her by her first name, Yuko, she often let me stay for tea and in many ways she almost felt like a second mother to me. Four years ago she took Kai in when he was found on the streets, living off of scraps after his own family had abandoned him, not that he could remember anything. She was lovely however all Kai wanted to do was get away from there, I think this was mostly because they shared the house with seven other foster kids, all a few years younger than Kai. Much to his annoyance, Kai shared a room with two of the other boys, I can't imagine how difficult that must be, sometimes I quite liked being an only child. I knew though that Yuko would take good care of him – she always had.

Naturally, once in his room where we were alone, unbelievably, he told me repeatedly that he was fine.

"Still..." I reasoned. After sitting with him just talking and listening to music for about an hour, I made to leave suggesting that he needed rest.

"Wait," he childishly held the back of my top to prevent me from getting anywhere. He tugged and I stumbled on his lap. Deep blue-grey eyes swept over my face, pausing on my lips, then meeting mine which I knew were filled with concern and love.

"You never need to worry about me" he swept my hair back, tucking it behind my left ear "you know how much I love you though, right?" Kai looked at me like I was the only thing grounding him to the earth.

"I know, I feel the same way about you," lips pressed desperately to mine in a kiss, a hand slid precariously close to the waistband of my jeans...

When the door slammed open with ten times too much force with Masa in the doorway pulling faces.

"Ewwwwwwww, kissing, that's gross!" We had jumped away from each other by this point, half embarrassed and half shocked. What it were like to be nine, I thought to myself, with no worries and the worst thing you could think of was not being able to choose what game to play. When did life get so complicated?

"Way to ruin our moment" Kai mumbled under his breath, then mouthed sorry to me. I found the humour in the situation and I had to fight to suppress a giggle.

"Get some rest, you" I smiled at Kai kissing his cheek gently "and Masa, be good to your brother" his face screwed up tightly "for me, please?" Despite being irritating to Kai, Masa was lovely to me, so I used this to my advantage. He bounced on the balls of his feet beaming up at me.

"Sure Chihiro."

Downstairs Yuko hugged me a little too firmly but I didn't complain.

"You're a good girl Chihiro, exactly what he needs" my cheeks tinged pink, not really understanding where that came from. "He'll remember...just give him time."

What?

Did she know?

I had to go, surely she was talking about something else. All the way home, crossing busy roads and this time over the bumpy path, along the trickling stream and under a canopy of trees; while listening to birds' songs, revelling in the feeling of the breeze whipping past me, the same wind which caused the grass to sway, I wondered what Yuko had meant, if she had meant anything. Coming to the conclusion that it was nothing, I filed this in the part of my memory labelled with all of the weird events on an extremely odd day. A burst of fluttering butterflies invaded my stomach as I relived the moment with Haku.

Author's Note

Thank you for all of you support, reviews and for favouriting/subscribing to this story! It was going to be a short piece, but I few ideas have popped into my head and I've been writing ever since. So I'll keep going as long as there's people interested in it. Hopefully the next chapter will be up by the end of the week and this one will have lots of drama! Reviews please!