-Catgirl-of-Bavaria- : Hey, peoples, So sorry it took so long to get this one up, like I said in my profile, The internet was disconnected from my room, which is where my stories live in my computer. We just got Comcast, and we hooked it up so I could get service up here with some wireless contraptions, but they weren't working, thus, my stories have been trapped in Word for a while. But, my dad fixed whatever problem was plaguing the little devices, and lo and behold! I has hi-speed internets in my room, OMGyay. XD…I last updated on the thirteenth, so that's about…counts on her fingers 3 weeks and 3 days that this story has been neglected! Gyah, gomen nasai, I blame it on technology! bows apologetically
So, anyway, back to my happy little world of fan fiction, I did a little change of pace here, and this chapter is meant to give a little more perspective to Kaonashi/Taro, and how he felt connected to her during her first visit to the Spirit World, and how Zeniba came to understand him and his past and his obvious connection to her. So, this won't exactly be where I left off with Chihiro giving him his name back dodges whatever random objects that are being thrown at her by disgruntled readers that want the story to get a move on Don't worry, I'll update promptly to make up for technology's shortcomings!
And, on a not so different subject, the sequel to this story is getting developed, I think I'm on my 4th or 5th chapter already! Woot! I really like how my ideas are coming along for that one. Fan fiction really is awesome for developing creativity and keeping your imagination well-oiled! Love it! So, without further ado, chapter 20, the long awaited update of my pride and joy of a story! Enjoy and review, my lovelies!
Chapter 20- Behind the Mask
He stood there before one bridge, not quite knowing why. He'd been wondering around for days, not sure at all of how it came to be this way. He'd not met many, and those few who he made himself known to in this little town of shadow spirits had shut the doors to their cafés to him, feigning that they were closed. None wanted to be near him, they all feared him, and they didn't want to know him. He couldn't place why, but not even he knew who he was. And so Kaonashi wondered, hoping he might stumble on something that led him to his past.
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Night had come to this world of spirits, and he was on the bridge again. The bridge led up to that monstrous building that he somehow remembered. Customers were pouring in, but no one seemed to notice him, the dark, shadow of a figure with nothing more than a mask to exhibit his expressions. He played with this mysterious ability of his to become invisible, and stood, at the railing in the center of the bridge, watching as guests to the resort towering above them passed by with not so much as a glance to him, whether he was visible or not.
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The post-dusk twilight progressed beautifully into darkness, and the variety of creatures on the bridge astounded him. He'd never seen such creatures in his life, he was sure. He watched them with fascination, a little smile on his mask, as they would all press past him, ready to get themselves to their baths. After a gaggle of forest imps and some duck spirits, he saw a specimen that intrigued him more than any one of the preceding beings; A human girl, clasping tightly onto another, human-looking boy. Somehow, though he knew, the boy was a young river spirit. Somehow, even, he looked familiar, like the young form of someone he only very vaguely recalled. The girl, however, the girl gave him that same sensation, though a good deal stronger; He remembered a girl who looked amazingly like this one, though older. He had the image in his head, though it was hazy. That girl in his memory was staring at him, looking as if she were about to cry. It was a sad memory, he knew, even only knowing that much. The girl now, she was almost passing him now, her cheeks puffed out in holding her breath, clinging to the river spirit that held a spell of hiding over her, keeping her out of the other spirits' vision. He could still see her though. And now, she could see him, for her large, hazel eyes caught on his mask as she passed. A pang of familiarity stole through him, looking into those eyes, following them until they were out of sight. The creature called Kaonashi was left alone with this one single remnant of a memory, and a strange feeling that left him asking for forgiveness.
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She was the first to ever look at him, and it haunted him. Though, it wasn't necessarily a haunting to be feared, or to try to resist. He felt intrigued by it, the most wanted he'd felt since he came to be in this odd world. He'd remained on the bridge all night, somehow not feeling hunger, not feeling tired. Now it was daytime, when the rest of the spirit world was fast asleep. And he stood there, alone on the bridge, having not moved since he saw that familiar little girl. He utilized his ability to become unseen as he noticed the young river boy crouching through a small gate. The young spirit proceeded across the bridge, not taking notice of the spirit already there, or at least not acknowledging him. The masked spirit sat alone with his thoughts for a moment, trying to remember past that one image of that girl, that near-crying girl that looked hauntingly like the younger one he'd just seen last night. The hidden gate squeaked again, and he saw the girl, outfitted in a work uniform of salmon creep through. He released himself of invisibility as she came to the end of the bridge. She paused to stare at him, before running past with a mid-run bow. He smiled and faded back into camouflage, covered just in time for her to turn back to look for him. She looked puzzled for a moment, but was then joined by her river spirit friend, and he was left alone with his thoughts again. Those thoughts provided the same question; who was she, and why, in his memory, was the older version of herself on the verge of tears? Another, more daunting thought, had he done something to make her cry? Was that the reason for this feeling of regret?
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Rain poured on his shadow of a body as he stood motionless in the garden, peering through glass shoji doors into the bath house. No one seemed to notice him, still, but he could care less anymore. There was only one he wanted to notice him, which was that girl, Sen, as he came to hear her name as. He watched as the girl of his query came into view, an oversized bucket of water sloshing in her hands as she carefully used her full body to support it without spilling as she walked. Setting the thing down with care, she slid the door open, and tipped the thing over, sent its contents of soiled wash water into the garden. She caught him in her sights, that mysterious masked spirit. He said nothing as she asked him if he was getting wet; not really out of ignoring her, but rather out of inability to speak as she did. Someone called to her inside, and she sent him a smile. She informed him that she was going to leave the door open for him, and hurried away to her work. He glided to the open side door, and disappeared into the bath house, in search of something he could do to atone for whatever wrong he'd committed to her.
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That foreman, he was hassling her, refusing to give her the wooden bath token that she needed, and Kaonashi wouldn't have that. He took his chance, when the frog picked up the phone on his podium, and rematerialized behind him. Sen saw him, and he bowed, wishing to tell her that he was helping her out here. She returned the bow, much to the foreman's confusion. Kaonashi disappeared before the frog had a chance to spot him, and lifted, with an invisible hand, a token that looked decorated enough to serve her purposes, and tossed it to the youth. She threw herself into a deep bow, with a cry of gratitude, and sped off before the foreman had a chance to object any further. Kaonashi, unseen to anyone, smiled. That had a good effect, he was pleased to see. He wondered how much more of an effect he could get if he brought her more…
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He'd grabbed them when the foreman had run off somewhere in the direction of the front door. Several bath tokens, he'd offered her, only wishing to please her. He didn't know what he'd done to her before he came to this world, but he didn't want to just let himself go unpunished, either. He wanted to make it up to her. But maybe he was going about it wrong, for she'd objected. She'd done so kindly, but he still felt rejection, as he let the several swiped bath tokens in his hands slip with a great clatter to the floor once he'd disappeared. He had to go watch from the sidelines again, to see what it was this girl of his mysterious past truly wanted.
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They were all going crazy now, all the staff of the bath house. Jubilation was everywhere in the bath house, in the midst of that terribly rich River God. They were scrambling over each other, with cries of 'Gold!' and 'Give me some!' He knew what gold was, but he couldn't really understand why they were that crazy over a shiny piece of rock. Then again, maybe that girl, Sen, would like some gold too, especially now that the old witch of the place, Yubaba was claiming it all for herself, taking it away from all the workers who actually earned it with their work. Sen deserved the biggest share, considering it was her who had discovered the plight of the supposed stink spirit. He sat in wonder in a bathing stall just across from the one containing the ruckus of the staff members, and stared at his black hand, and looked, pleased, at a shiny amber rock as it emerged from his palm. He smiled and disappeared into his surroundings.
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He heard light footsteps in the darkness, and he decided somehow to avert his attention from Sen, if only for a moment, just to test his abilities.Though he was feeling a little odd; he suddenly wanted food, he wanted attention. He saw the little green frog enter the big tub cubicle, scrounging for gold, and he couldn't tell why, but Sen dropped from his mind only to be replaced with want, with greed. He crawled, unseen into the great tub as the frog outside continued scratching in between floorboards for even a slight speck of gold. Kaonashi put his skills to work, and sent one rock of gold to bounce off the tub and down to the frog's sight. He lept at it, and caught sight of the mask peering down at him. Kaonashi silenced his scolding cries with more bits of gold seeping through his hands. He couldn't place this sensation coming over him, it was foreign, and not like him. The girl Sen was becoming farther from his mind with this new, strange thing rising inside him. It finally consumed him, this odd feeling, when the frog got too close, lured by the gold in Kaonashi's hand. When the greedy little creature grabbed at the counterfeit gold, he was taken over; the frog became the first, unsuspecting victim of Kaonashi's oncoming craze.
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She was running through the crowd, and happened in front of him and the foolish host who was dancing and singing about tips. She didn't look like she had a clue as to what was going on, and even looked panicked. Kaonashi caught her in his sights, and he suddenly remembered her, and his mission to help her. He was brought back to this through the haze of his sudden and unexplainable greed, and tossed the host out of his way, leaning down to see her, to give her the offering that he'd originally planned on giving her. Holding his hands in front of his swollen body, he conjured the greatest pile of gold he'd created yet, and offering that was only fit for her and her alone. She looked astounded at his sudden creation of the gold, but shook her head. Again, she didn't want his offering? Again, she was rejecting him? She pardoned herself, polite and kind to him as ever, and ran away through the crowd. The gold clattered loudly to the polished wooden floor, and the staff around him tossed their manners to the winds and started throwing themselves at his feet, trying to scavenge whatever gold they could. Kaonashi, however, didn't notice for the moment, and stared forlornly after the human girl. What was he doing wrong? He just wanted to make whatever he'd done up to her, apologize for bringing sadness to her eyes. His host apologized to him for Sen's supposed rudeness, and Kaonashi felt himself plunge back into this craze created by a friction of souls, feeling his anger and resentment mounting against whatever will he had left. One thing still remained of himself, though; he wanted Sen.
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It was Yubaba, the witch spirit and the owner of the bath house, she was trying to get him to calm out of his fit. But this woman, she seemed only to fuel his hatred, he just didn't know why. This was the soul that disagreed with his, that was driving him insane, and he was sure of this. He felt more lost in himself than ever, the more he looked at the hideous spirit in front of him, the more he raged. He didn't want this woman near him, he wanted Sen, and he was making it quite avidly known through the voices of the workers inside of his stomach…if he was sure he had one. Finally, at long last, they'd found Sen, she was there, about to come in to see him. Finally, Yubaba left him in that room, and was replaced with Sen. She sat there, on the floor, still faced before Kaonashi. He made her an offering of food, took another try at giving her gold, but still she resisted. Finally, he gave in, and asked her straight out what she wanted, near begging, just wanting some hint. She responded, saying she wanted to leave. He sank into more confusion, that feeling of insanity coming up again, but she was still there, this time asking him about himself, asking if he had a family, telling him that he should return to them. Kaonashi cowered, knowing there was no such thing in his life, he told her, he told her he was lonely, and he just wanted to do something for her!
Then she gave him that morsel of medicine from the River God, and things just went even crazier from there.
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He couldn't place exactly why he was chasing her; but one theory, his own, Kaonashi's theory, was to stay with her, both to soothe his own loneliness and to find out what the girl truly wanted, so he could offer it. The other part of him, the Kaonashi driven by insanity caused by being in the bath house, that haven of the spirit Yubaba, that Kaonashi was actually trying to get back at Sen for that foul tasting medicine. He couldn't even tell if it was helping; he knew that he was leaving a mess behind him, he was wasting away and wretching like nothing else, but was that necessarily a good thing? He focused on Sen, heeding her instruction to follow her, barreling down the corridors through seas of scattering workers. He even recalled having passed Yubaba, giving her an unpleasant greeting in his wake. He would have laughed, had he the time; he totally believed she deserved it, for what being around her was doing to him. Sen, she would sometimes glance back to him, to ensure he was on her tail. The true Kaonashi admired how brave she was, how compassionate she was, to do that. Nonetheless, the confused creature followed her, followed her down stairs, through hallways wide and narrow, until finally, two of his victims were returned to the bathhouse, and he saw day light ahead of him. The farther he pursued her, the more of that insane, monster of a Kaonashi he left behind.
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Coming into the daylight was almost like being reborn to him, he almost felt the other, crazy, Yubaba-intolerant Kaonashi disappear from him, to be left in the bath house. He strolled out onto a broad pipe, watching Sen on the water, drifting slowly away in that little paddle boat. She turned as she shed her salmon work shirt, and called to him to follow. Gladly, he obeyed.
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This seemed right, now, to all of them. He sat at the spinning wheel, not even comprehending how he knew how to spin the thread in his fingers. Not only did he finally feel accepted by Sen, but by her new friends as well. Boh and Yu-bird, in their small forms, running the wheel in a way that almost made him wish he could laugh. Zeniba fed them all instructions on how to do the knitting, and they all knew they were creating something special, for Chihiro, the girl in the corner, battling through her own haze of memories for clues of the boy called Haku. Kaonashi had an idea of what she truly wanted now. And he was beginning to accept, as he twined the threads together between his fingers into a dazzling purple band, that he couldn't offer her true desire; and it felt vaguely familiar to him. This boy called Haku; he was quite obviously what she wanted, and he couldn't offer it. But Zeniba had in fact offered this alternative, this hairband in the making. He'd put his own work into it, and it would offer his help and protection to her. That would surely be enough.
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Kaonashi swept the floor of the great room, the bristles of the broom just grazing the slight layer of dust on the floor. He drifted, with his little pile of swept debris, towards the door he knew was Zeniba's study, when he heard the sound of the front door opening on its hinges with a light creak. He looked towards that door and saw a face that had become familiar over the last few months, one framed with growing forest hair. Jade eyes met with his mask face, and Kaonashi bowed with a light smile.
"Evening, Kaonashi," Haku said, his slight exhaustion hidden by his voice and a put on smile.
"Ah," Kaonashi responded mistily, nodding in reply. He could tell already that his separation was beginning to weigh on the dragon's heart. It had been almost two years since he'd seen Chihiro off, and up until now, he'd managed to avert the heart ache that the split would bring to him with venturing around The Realm and helping out at the bath house. Even now, only a few months since he'd arrived and then agreed to take Zeniba's attic as his residence, he'd done a fair job in hiding and even suppressing his growing depression. Somehow, through the heartbreak, the spirit's posture still remained straight as a board; his head was always held high. But it seemed that something in his eyes had died, the day Chihiro had left. Even Kaonashi could see this, through all the hiding the forlorn dragon did these days.
But living with a witch meant that there were almost no completely private or hidden feelings. And so, even Zeniba had been off for a while, spending a good amount of time in her study.
As he watched the dragon pull himself up the stairs behind the back wall of the kitchen that led to his attic room, Kaonashi turned his attention back to his cleaning job. He decided it was time to move to Zeniba's study, and knocked lightly on the door.
"Come in, dear," Zeniba responded kindly from within. Kaonashi pulled himself in, his broom at the ready in the room that was carefully lit with a few oil lamps.
Kaonashi stared around for a second, finding the room ample with books, of various conditions, and papers everywhere. It didn't appear to have any sort of set organization, though the piles of books, sometimes stacked from the floor to a height above even Kaonashi, somehow managed to keep from toppling.
"Ah?" Kaonashi asked her what she was up to.
"Spell searching, Kaonashi, dear." Zeniba replied, with the flip of a page in her current reading. "I'm looking for some way to help our friend up there." She gave him a little smile, pointing her painted finger up to the ceiling, indicating their other room mate.
"Ah…Ah?" Kaonashi paused his brushing of the wooden floors and came closer to her, asking if anything useful was coming through.
"Actually, I'm looking at one spell, though it's risky." Zeniba scanned her current page, utilizing an admirable talent for reading while talking. "I may have to keep on it, study it more before it would be any use to us. We want both Chihiro and Haku alive and well if we wish to reunite them." She added with a sort of dark humor.
"Ever heard of a Soul Conversion spell, Kaonashi?" Zeniba asked her companion lightly, in conversation.
This simple question, however, brought a sort of recognition to Kaonashi's eyes, almost like the feeling he first had when seeing Chihiro; though, this was a little more detailed.
He saw a man, dark haired, bright eyed, and he was discussing that spell, that soul conversion spell. Kaonashi himself seemed quite interested, and he kept thinking about one thing; Chihiro.
He kept thinking about her, during his last moments, and that image was there, the one of what looked like a teen age Chihiro, on the verge of panic and tears. Now something else was added to the scene, though; blood. And a lot of it.
Kaonashi somehow knew it wasn't Chihiro's blood he was seeing…It was his. He felt a deep sadness wash over him, something tragic had resulted in that vision. That had to have been his end, at least of his time in the human world. Though he still wondered why it was he felt so indebted to Chihiro for. He was beginning to think, even more, that he somehow was connected to her before everything ended for his human self.
Then Kaonashi forced his mind back to that man. He had been asking that man for information, on this Soul Conversion spell that Zeniba was speaking about. He suddenly knew, without asking Zeniba or consulting the book over her shoulder, that this particular spell consisted of granting the subject a new entity, and that mistakes in the spell were very risky. A spell unsuccessfully performed would cause the subject's soul to be lost. This must have been what the man had told him!
"Ah, Ah!" Kaonashi exclaimed, saying that he had indeed heard of the spell.
"Oh, really, Kao?" Zeniba looked up at him, her eyes wide as plates. "I thought I'd sensed a strong magic about you. Do you think, Kaonashi, that," Zeniba suddenly narrowed her eyes thoughtfully looking him up and down, as if she could read his magical history just by doing so. "You had the spell performed on you?"
Kaonashi thought, then nodded slowly. His returning memory, scanty as it was, was indeed pointing to that option.
Zeniba's wide, wrinkled mouth turned into a grin, and she turned to her book again, flipping fast with an arcane flick of her finger, through the pages, retreating back to a certain page that she'd marked with a loose strip of paper. The pages settled on this one page, and she picked up the dusty book. Kaonashi watched her eyes scan the page over the top of her book, in silence.
"Aha!" Zeniba exclaimed in a hiss. Her owl eyes turned back up to her companion, who had started slightly with her sudden burst of energy. "Kaonashi, that's it; you're a lost soul!" Kaonashi stared, his painted eyes widening a bit at her.
"It's obvious that you're an unusual spirit, and this says that the spell is dangerous and hasn't been performed all too much at all, so, a being that's had this spell on them, successful or not, is not going to be common by any means…" Zeniba observed, her finger grazing her wrinkled skin in thought. "
Kaonashi went on to explain what he'd suddenly remembered, having seen the man, the girl who looked as if she were an older version of Chihiro, and possibly having seen the last few moments he knew as being human.
Zeniba was thoughtful the whole time, pondering the aspects of these observations. Kaonashi was certainly tied to Chihiro, in some way, but how, was unclear to her. She doubted she would know, though, how they were related, at least, judging by what Kaonashi had said about his memory of her being as a young adult form. If that was the case, perhaps Chihiro and Kaonashi's previous being had not met in the Human world yet; she did not rule out the possibility of time having some effect on the spell, as a powerful spirit, she knew a great many things were possible in the laws of magic.
It was extremely obvious to the witch now, that great things could come of this spell; great wonderful things, but also great, terrible things. She'd set her mind and magic to focusing on this spell's every detail, honing her skills along the way, and offer it to Haku as a relief from his grief. She'd memorize every precaution, every instruction, for now she knew, she had living proof of the consequences, should she fail Haku.
And Kaonashi was bent on helping her figure the spell out. For, it remained a fact, that Chihiro's dearest wish was for Haku the river spirit, and he never did give up hope of pleasing his human friend.
Hopefully, in the end, fate and the spell would give them a better chance than it had for him.
-Catgirl-of-Bavaria-: By the way, happy Christmas, and happy 2007, people! See you guys next year!