Ello! To all of my lovely reviewers (and to those of you who DIDN'T review) I'd like to thank you all! You guys rock, and can all have cookies! I hope you can all enjoy this chapter, and don' forget to review!

---hands out cookies---

Chihiro looked at Lin, disbelief apparent in her wide, brown eyes Lin stared right back, before she gathered her wits and pulled Chihiro up by the collar of her cotton T-shirt. "Where have you been, Ch-Sen?" Chihiro winced, this wasn't exactly the welcoming she had been expecting from her old friend. But, hadn't Lin always thought her name was Sen? Then why had she almost called her Chihiro?

"I'm sorry, I was assisting the Radish Spirit," Chihiro answered, although it was really the other way around. "I didn't mean to abandon my post. It won't happen again" Chihiro bowed as best as she could with her feet dangling a few centimeters off of the ground.

Lin shook her head sadly, as though she regretted what she was about to say. "No, this has happened too much. Come on, we'll have to take you to Kosuke." Lin put Chihiro back on the ground and grabbed her hand to drag her to the elevator. "I'm sorry, Mr. Radish Spirit, but this lady is in trouble. I can call someone to assist you in a moment." Lin pulled the lever on the elevator and disappeared from view of the large gawking crowd.

"Lin?" Chihiro asked slowly, afraid her friend was really actually mad with her. But Lin just turned around in the roomy elevator and grabbed Chihiro in a tight bear hug.

"Oh Chihiro! I'm so glad you're back! But, I have something to tell you, and I don't think you'll like it. Actually, there are lots of things I have to tell you, and most of them are bad…but there's one that you are really going to be upset about and I--"

"You were going to tell me that Haku's dead, right?" Chihiro interrupted. Lin nodded slowly, small tears forming in her eyes. Chihiro looked warmly at the brunette before engulfing her in a large hug. "Yeah, well, that's just about it. Haku's not dead! He staged his death and then disappeared so that he could go to the Human World to get me. He told me all about Kosuke and how he needed my help! But then the jerk left me and came to the Spirit World without me, and I need to find him so that we can help spring a coup de tat on Kosuke!"

Lin was shocked. "He's not dead? That bakadaijo isn't dead!? That's…great!" Lin's sorrowful tears turned into tears of happiness when Chihiro nodded. Just then the elevator stopped, and Lin pulled Chihiro out onto the floor, letting several other people in in their place.

"Um, Lin, you aren't really taking me to see Kosuke, are you?" Chihiro asked nervously. She had been too busy conversing with Lin to see if the elevator had been going up or down, but it didn't really matter.

"Oh course not," Lin replied. "Do you think I'd do that? No, we're going to Kamaji. Maybe he'll know where to find Haku." Chihiro sighed in relief as she was pulled through several hallways, down a few flights of stairs, and past several curious workers. Did that many people really remember her?

Lin slid back the door to Kamaji's boiler room and pulled herself through before turning to help Chihiro in. Chihiro jumped down from the small sliding slot and closed the slot before she turned to greet Kamaji.

Brown eyes met stunning emerald green eyes.

Chihiro felt the wet tears side down her face, and then she flung herself into Haku's empty arms. Haku wrapped his arms around her in a silent apology. Lin started crying as well, and she joined the embrace. Kamaji watched from his perch up on his pedestal. Chihiro pulled back and slapped Haku across the cheek.

"How dare you leave me like that? Do you know how much I panicked when I got back to the clearing and Akito and Yuri asked me where you were? That's low, Haku, really low! I told you I wanted to come with you to the Spirit World, but you still ignored me! Jeez, did you ever think how much I would worry? Did the possibility of me following you cross your mind? Obviously not, because you're here! You, you, you IDIOT! That must have been the stupidest thing you've ever—"

Haku cut Chihiro off with a passionate kiss. Chihiro started to succumb to the kiss, but she remembered her tirade a moment earlier and pulled away, a bit unwillingly. Haku had a guilty expression on, and a bit of her anger ebbed away into a more forgiving emotion.

"I'm very sorry I didn't want to include you. Chihiro, I just didn't want you to get hurt," Haku said, resting his forehead against hers. "I told you that, but you don't seem to listen to me very well." Haku wiped away one of Chihiro's tears with his thumb, and Chihiro smiled weakly at him.

"That didn't mean you had to go off and leave me without any warning!" Chihiro argued weakly.

"Yes, but then you'd want to go with me, and I didn't want to be the one to tell you no!" Haku shot back. He sounded like such a child in Chihiro's mind.

"So you had her come here all by herself?" Lin asked angrily, butting into the two's conversation. "Look at her, Haku! She's covered in mud and blood! Not to mention she could have gotten caught by Kosuke if I hadn't found her first!"

Haku took a better look at Chihiro and felt his stomach lurch. It was true she had blotches of dry blood on her shins and ringlets around her wrists. Her hair was damp, as though she had taken a super quick shower, and it was tangled a bit in the back, where her ponytail hung over her shoulders. Not to mention the lack of shoes on her tiny feet…

"Look at you, Chihiro, how have you grow!" the raspy voice of Kamaji said. The boiler man seemed to have aged several years in the few months she had been gone. Chihiro stood up and ran to him, grasping him in a tight hug.

"Kamaji! It's so great to see you!" Chihiro said as she squeezed the old man. Kamaji chuckled and patted Chihiro on the back.

"Now that you've seen all of your old friends, would you like to tell us what's going on?" Lin demanded. Her temper was still flaring, but at least it wasn't being directed to Haku.

"I was just explaining to Kamaji how I had a few of the spirits help me stage a fake death so that I could go to the Human World to get Chihiro, thinking she would be able to help us overthrow Kosuke. Unfortunately, once I met up with Chihiro, I realized how much I…" Haku hung his head and took a deep breath to calm himself. The three others waited patiently, but two of the three already knew what he was going to say.

"Come on, Haku, you can say it!" Chihiro, the oblivious one, encouraged. She kneeled on the ground next to him and stared at him intently, giving him her undivided attention.

"Well, I realized how much I loved you, Chihiro," Haku said softly. "I didn't want you to come back here, fearing that Kosuke might make you stay here to work like a slave, or that he might hurt you physically as well as mentally." Haku took Chihiro's hands into his own and kissed Chihiro on the lips lightly to emphasize his point.

Chihiro accepted the kiss and sat still, brain still processing those three words. I love you

"Hey, Haku, what are you and Chihiro planning on doing while you're here? Like, what's you guys' plan?" Lin asked, unphased by the confession Haku had just given. Any other couple might have surprised her, or made her tear up, but Haku and Chihiro were so totally made for each other everyone in the bath house had agreed they would end up together. It was unanimous.

"Well, we don't really have a plan," Haku admitted. "We had a hard thinking of one, so I decided that when I came here alone, I would wing it."

"Dummy," Chihiro murmured. "Like I'd let you go on any dangerous mission alone after what you just said." Chihiro wrapped her arms around Haku and hugged him tightly, burying her face into his shoulder.

"Chihiro," Haku argued stubbornly, "I'm going to tell you this only once, and if you don't listen to me, I don't know what I'll do with you! I want you to stay here with Lin and Kamaji where it's safe, and I'm going to confront Kosuke up in his office. I can always turn into my dragon spirit form to fight him if it comes to it. I know you're encouraging me, but that's all I want you to do. Encourage me, and stay out of trouble."

Haku gave Chihiro one last kiss, this time on the cheek, and then he stood up to climb through the sliding door. "Be careful you guys, and take care of her," he said, addressing Kamaji and Len. Both gave silent nods, and then Haku was through the sliding door, making his way up to the top suite.

Chihiro was still sitting when Haku left. Everything was happening to fast to her, and it was making her dizzy. She barely heard the words her sweetheart said to Lin and Kamaji. The sense of dread that she had had while walking to the clearing earlier was making its reappearance. Something bad was going to happen, and Chihiro felt that she was a hopeless case against it.

Maybe…maybe, her intuition would be wrong just this one time.

----just…maybe---

Okay, sorry if this is short or whatever, but I had to type it up on my mom's laptop, and a bunch of her keys are broken and stuff, so I have to take extra time to hit them extra hard and crap so I don't have to go back and fix tons and tons of mistakes. Oh, also, I usually use wordpad, but she didn't have it on her comp, so I'm using Microsoft, and it is so much different!

Plz review! I would definitely wuvvle you if you did!