Chapter Nine: Whoops
This chapter is dedicated to Suils Saifir again, because she is awesome, as well as German Mickey and Darkangl28 for being awesome as well. Thanks to FreakyD45663 for reviewing!
Chihiro and Haku were engaged in a long, long staring contest that finally culminated in an uncharacteristically loud statement from the dragon-man.
"Are you insane?!" Haku exclaimed. Chihiro winced and rubbed at her ears. She opened her mouth to reply, but was cut off. "You are! You are insane! Crazy human, overthrow Yubaba…" Haku trailed off into almost feverish muttering while Chihiro watched curiously and wished for popcorn. Hmmm, she thought.
"Haku?" said Chihiro. The man whirled around from where he was pacing and mumbling. "What? Do you want the radish spirits to rebel and form a council, also?" Haku asked sourly. "Or maybe the centipedes?" Chihiro frowned. "Stop whining," she told him. "I just wanted to know if the kitchens can make me popcorn."
Haku stared at her. "I…will go check," he finally said, sounding a bit tired. "You, you mad woman- I will speak to you in the morning." He turned to leave, but Chihiro called after him, "It is morning, Haku." He huffed and tried to hide it. "I will see you at noon, then. Get some sleep…Chihiro," he said grudgingly, as if he didn't want to call her by her name after her proposal.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Chihiro kept looking at the shoji long after Haku had departed. Finally, she stood up and stretched before making her way to the bedroom. "Could have gone better," she remarked to herself as she tried to catch a decent amount of sleep.
Chihiro blinked awake approximately six hours later. She was still tired, but her skin and hair, grimy from a night out on the town (Chihiro snickered at her phrasing), took precedence over sleep. She wandered into the bathroom and drew herself a bath, and found herself wishing for a shower to speed things up. Chihiro looked around hopefully, but apparently her suite's magical abilities did not extend to plumbing. "Damn," she muttered.
"I ain't happy," she sang softly as she climbed in the tub. "I'm feeling glad, I got sunshine in a bag…I'm useless, but not for long, the future is coming on…" Chihiro continued humming under her breath as she lathered up the herb-scented soap in her long hair. She rinsed and began washing her body with a conveniently placed washcloth, and thought of Haku.
Despite her casual acceptance of his disbelief, Chihiro was seriously worried about his reaction. Sure, what she proposed hadn't happened…ever, or at least it was never mentioned in her companion for the last few days, 'Everything You Ever Thought You'd Never Need To Know.'
From what she had learned, the Spirit World itself had never allowed rebellions to succeed…but then Chihiro had also noticed that all of the mentioned coups advocated regimes that would have enslaved or murdered other spirits. Chihiro figured that since Yubaba was already doing half of that, the Spirit World would most likely assist her plot to overthrow the witch.
But did Haku reason the same thing? Chihiro wanted to make sure he understood her rationale, and didn't just dismiss the proposal as a lunatic, human idea. "Oh," Chihiro sighed. "Can't I ever take a bath without getting stressed out?"
"There's too much time to think," she complained to herself as she rinsed off and climbed out of the tub. Chihiro looked over to the towel rack and frowned. She had used the last clean towel yesterday to get ready for her foray into the Spirit World. However, there weren't any clean ones appearing on the rack today, no matter how much she expressed her need for one. Chihiro finally loosed an expletive and glanced at the clock. It was a quarter after eleven; Haku said that he would be there at noon.
With all the time she had spent standing in the bathroom wishing for a towel, Chihiro had already drip-dried most of her skin- only her hair was really damp. Chihiro shrugged; since she was dry anyway, now, she might as well go into her room and get dressed.
Cautiously, she pushed open the bathroom door and peeked into her bedroom. She couldn't see anything relatively threatening, so she walked quickly over to the wardrobe. Chihiro felt infinitely less vulnerable once she had donned underwear, and felt safe enough to spend time actually choosing what to wear, rather than grab the first thing she saw.
Chihiro was just reaching for a pair of jeans (how the wardrobe produced those, she couldn't figure out) when she heard a sound similar to a squeak, but deeper in tone and less irritating on the eardrums.
She spun around quickly to see Haku standing by the slightly open shoji, his eyes wide and a slight flush on his cheeks. Chihiro made a little "eep" noise, her version of a squeak. "Haku!" she yelled as she hid behind the wardrobe door. "Get out!" Haku nodded quickly and fled to the large room, firmly shutting the door behind him.
Chihiro sighed loudly, her heart pounding. He was at least thirty minutes early. "I hope you have a good explanation, Haku," she called sweetly as she pulled on the jeans and a plain green t-shirt. She entered the room and looked around in confusion until she finally spotted Haku already kneeling on the ground by the table, refusing to look at her.
Chihiro snorted and crossed the room to sit across from him. He still didn't look up until she said exasperatedly, "Get a grip. I'm not mad, though I'm curious as to why you're here early and why you came in my room."
Haku finally glanced up at her and seemed to be trying to will the last bits of red from his face. "I wanted to talk to you. I thought about what you…suggested last night, and I thought we might discuss it earlier than planned." Chihiro nodded encouragingly. "Uh huh, and being in my room?" Haku kept a stoic expression and didn't flush again, but Chihiro expected that massive will-power was the only thing stopping it.
"My sincere apologies, Chihiro," Haku told her. "I did not mean to, er, walk in on you. I had called through the screen to see if you were awake, but you did not answer. I assumed you were asleep, and I was going to wake you." Chihiro nodded. "Okay," she said simply. "What did you want to talk about?"
Haku stared at her for a minute, then occupied himself with passing her dishes of food. "I would hope that you could guess what I want to talk about," he said dryly as he handed Chihiro a bowl of rice. She just looked at him with her eyebrows raised expectantly.
"I cannot believe I am about to say this," Haku muttered as he raised his eyes to hers.
"I'll do it."
Chihiro just smiled and took a bite of rice.