A/N: Hey people I'm back! So I've recently rewatched both Spirited Away and Your Name for the Christmas Break, and the two broke my heart all over again. Not only that though: after a lot of brooding and crying, I've realized that a lot of Spirited Away's and Your Name's elements are quite similar. I mean come on: a we've-met-before-we-just-dont-remember-it trope? Importance of names? Cords/ hair ties that are pretty symbolic? Spirit world? The list goes on, tbh.
Which is why this baby is born! Spirited Away totally could have a Kimi No Nawa Ending. Just sayin.
Anyway, thank you! Leave a review if y'all want! And an advance happy new year!
It is a rainy day.
On a regular rainy day in the city, life goes on. It seems that people are too focused on the comings -and-goings of their lives that they could barely step on the breaks when the floodgates of the skies disagree with them. Although it is true that things go a little slower on rainy days, there is a constant, consistent effort of going against the flow of nature. A stern defiance of whatever spirit or god that made drops of ice-cold water fall down from heaven.
It's on rainy days like these when humanity's numbness of anything but their lives becomes evident.
And it's on days like these when Chihiro Ogino dreams to go back to the little middle-of-nowhere village that she had called home for a decade.
At least rainy days on her provincial home were breath-taking. Rain in the city, with people hurrying off to wherever they are going, occasionally swearing at the weather gods for the storm that had disrupted their fast-paced routine, made her feel strangely left out.
If she is more introspective about it, like how she broods over little things with a dumpling and a cup of tea on her hands, she would have thought the idea to be ironic. Paradoxical. She had remembered the hatred she felt when her father's car had gone through the village's boundaries. She had never liked middle-of-nowhere places; it made her feel sad. Lonely. It made her miss her home in the city, of the noise and the lights and the people. Of the dozens of footsteps of pedestrians that thundered through the streets that flowed in manic directions. It was a strange, melancholic place, that village, despite how picturesque it looked. It felt like a faded memory, banal sceneries of a mountain side that is left behind by the flow of time.
So it came as no surprise to her - nor to her parents - that when the time came for her to choose a university, she opted to move out almost immediately. What did shock them, however, was when she told them what program she would be taking.
"Folklore Studies?" her mom had said, confused; she hovered by the threshold of her daughter's room, as Chihiro went around, packing things she might need unto her travelling bag. "Honey, are you sure about this?"
"Mhmm," Chihiro had responded distractedly, going through her drawers, in search of something. "It's a great university, mom. Plus I've checked the apartment with dad. I'm going to be fine."
"Well, if you say so." Mrs. Ogino flipped through the brochure, frowning as she did so. "I just didn't think you were serious about the Folklore Studies course. I thought you'd be... picking something more..." Chihiro heard her stop, as though she's casting her mind for something to say. Something that isn't insulting. Chihiro got there first.
"Something more practical?" she supplied gently.
"I never said that," her mom protested. "But perhaps... in that sense... yes." Chihiro wheeled around and saw her mother sitting down on her desk chair, a worried look on her face. "Your father and I just want the best for you."
"Aw, mom." Chihiro went closer and hugged her tight. When they broke apart Mrs. Ogino had tears in her eyes. "I'll be fine, mom," Chihiro assured her. "I promise."
Mrs. Ogino sniffed. "Of course." She smiled at her daughter, patted her rosy cheek, before standing up and leaving the room. Chihiro suspected she was going to cry some more. Her smile slipped almost at once.
Something more practical...
She sighed, sat on the side of her bed. She opened her palm and saw the thing she had been looking for curled up almost innocently on her hand. It still shone and sparkled when brought to the light, despite being worn almost everyday for the past few years. As though the thread was made of the finest silk itself. Chihiro had stared hard at it.
It was her favorite hair tie, in a shade of purple that she had always adored, but for some reason she could never remember when she had gotten it. She had willed herself to do so, to fish it out from her memories, but all she got were flashes of a flower-filled field, and a name so vague she could barely grasp it. It's like recalling a dream, like cupping water to your face - an almost-there epiphany- before it slowly trickled away, escaping from her hands, till it's gone.
Chihiro then groaned, flopping miserably unto her bed.
If truth be told, she'd never expected to take up Folklore Studies, but it seemed the most fitting for her. Staying in that little village made her restless, curious, attached to the mysterious unknown that always seemed to lurk in the woods that surrounded the place. In some mysterious circumstances she is drawn to the myths that thrived in a provincial town like hers. She had read through them almost obsessively, known most of the old wives' tales in the area. There is a certain connection that she is sure she had to an unseen world, a world where shadowy beings and spirits existed, and for the first part of the year when they had moved in, she was sure that she'd figure it out somehow, that she'll finally make sense of the link that she had identified.
But then weeks turned to months, and months turned to years, and suddenly she'd lost sight of that connection. It frustrated her, not knowing that inexplicable intangibility of it. Not knowing what it meant. And then frustration turned to weariness.
Exhaustion.
Chihiro inhaled. She sat up.
And then she put on the hair tie.
The said hair tie now gleams on top of Chihiro's messy hair bun. The rain has constantly pounded on her apartment's window for most of the morning, but now it has stopped. Chihiro puts down the pen she has twirled around on her hand for the past thirty minutes, and glances out of the window. The skies are still heavy, as gray as they are when she had woken up that day. Chihiro puffs out her cheeks, and returns back to the book she had been studying, trying to ignore the sudden bout of homesickness.
A knock on her door makes her look up. She stands up and stretches, before going over to open it. She blinks at her visitor.
"Oh. It's you, Rumi."
Rumi grins.
A few minutes later, two empty bowls of ramen sat beside the still-open mythology text book. Rumi Saito makes herself comfortable on the couch, hand on her chin, as Chihiro brings her a cup of tea from the small industrial kitchen.
"So, you're really not going?" Rumi asks, sounding disappointed, as Chihiro takes a seat on the sofa on the opposite side of her. "Come on, Ogino! Loosen up! There's a cafe nearby. We could go there, if you want."
"It's raining, Rumi," Chihiro points out. Rumi pouts.
"I know that," she huffs. "But I've checked the weather app. It's gonna be all sunshine this afternoon. Please, Chihiro? You've been cooped up inside this apartment for so long. Let's have fun!"
"I'm sorry, but I can't go today," Chihiro says apologetically. "I've got my -"
"-thesis coming up, yeah," Rumi responds dismissively. "The myths of gods on rivers that influenced the culture in your province, I know that." She takes a sip of her tea. Chihiro does the same. Rumi sighs. "I just wanted to welcome you back to the city."
Chihiro chuckles. "Because crashing into my place a couple of times does not count as a welcome party?"
Rumi protests at this yet again, and Chihiro laughs. And so they settle into the ebb of conversation, both catching up with one another, until there really isn't anything left to discuss, so they settle into silence instead.
"Hey... Chihiro?"
Chihiro glances at her friend. Rumi is staring at the textbook, whose pages are open to a section that read The Other World: Cases of Humans being Spirited Away. Rumi contemplates a bit more, before she looks up and says, "are you... running away from something?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean... I just remembered how you told me a weird story in a letter you wrote to me all those years ago." She bites her lips. "You know, when you said you and your parents got lost in some sort of weird tunnel? And how you've been gone for days?"
"Yeah?" Chihiro says slowly, not knowing where this is going.
"Well... I remembered how you've... changed ever since that letter. It's all in writing, of course, but I felt it." She chuckles lightly. "A couple of times, you even signed the letters as Sen! I thought it was just a weird phase... that it's just you getting used to the move... but then..."
Rumi pauses, brooding over her cup.
"You've told me, over and over, how you've wanted to solve that mystery." She blows on the tea and sips on it. "You were so obsessed with it... I guess even until now." She smiles gently at the awestruck Chihiro.
"But what I don't get," Rumi continues, "is how you're avoiding the place. I'm not a believer myself, and I don't know what happened, but I know something did. Something is calling you back, Chihiro. Something... someone is calling your name."
Chihiro shakes her head, and sets down her lukewarm tea cup. "There's something about the village that I cannot get a hand on. Even after all this time, it draws me in, keeps me on my toes. It's like a memory I never had, but then it tells me to look harder. But I have. I have been looking harder. And the harder I look, the farther the answer evades me. I hate feeling that way," she inhales sharply, running her hand through the smooth porcelain. "It made me feel so hopeless. I hate not remembering what I'm supposed to remember, even when I know it's important. It feels like I've wronged someone... forgotten everything we've been through."
Chihiro falls silent as the familiar stab of loneliness fills her again. She tries to stem it, and takes her cold tea and drinks it in one gulp. She sees Rumi nodding quietly, before she stands up.
"You need to get on with your thesis," she says softly. "Call me if you need anything, 'kay?"
"'Kay." Chihiro stands up as well, and embraces her old friend. "Thanks, Rumi."
"Sure thing," Rumi replies. And then she grins cheekily. "Don't get too sucked in, though. We don't want you getting spirited away by a river god, huh?"
To her dismay, Chihiro finds that even after Rumi has left, she could not get back to the studying that she had been doing. Bothered, perhaps, isn't the word. She feels preoccupied, listless, especially after the conversation she had with her best friend. The jaded flame of curiosity that she had quelled a long time ago, when she kept coming back to the forest in search of something not quite there, again burns at the back of her mind, and she wants nothing more than to follow it, even when she's more than sure it will lead to another dead end.
Something... someone is calling your name.
Chihiro groans, getting up and taking her pristine white jacket hung on the racket by the door before letting herself out of her apartment.
Maybe it's time to answer back.
At least her friend is right in one aspect: the rain is gone, replaced by weak rays of sunshine busting through ill-faced storm clouds. Chihiro Ogino walks, without any permanent destination in mind, and watches dully by the sidewalk as she sees the cars honking and passing by. Most pedestrians are still hurrying, avoiding the puddles of rain, now putting away raincoats and umbrellas, and whispering words of relief at the brightened sky. If only Chihiro could do the same.
Her musings carry her feet to the subway station. She vaguely shrugs away the complaint of her conscience of wandering aimlessly on the busy city streets when she had a thesis to do and study for, and buys herself a ticket for the next train.
For where? She does not know.
She is the last to get on the train, pressed on the automatic double doors as it speeds away. It's crowded, as usual. When she was ten, Chihiro used to imagine she once rode a train that treads on water, and that it was never this full, but it obviously isn't the case: it took her a lot of effort not to fall over by the sheer number of bodies that are crammed on a single compartment alone.
Chihiro leans her head unto the walled glass, gazing at the other trains that passed by the interconnected railways. A train parallel to hers, although travelling to the opposite side, catches her eye. She sees another body pressed unto the automatic doors, and had to suppress a scoff; for some reason he is wearing a white hakama, and a blue kimono. She notices that he looks in his early twenties, has a traditional bob cut, and, after getting over the shock of his out-of-place get-up, is quite easy to look at in the eyes. She would have scrutinized a little more when his head turns her way.
Chihiro is prepared to look away, to pretend she just hasn't gazed on a complete stranger with a weird outfit, but she couldn't. She can only gasp as she takes in his deep green eyes, his dark green hair, and the look of shock and recognition in his face when he sees her as well.
Once you've met someone, you never really forget them...
And then, in a blink of an eye, the boy is gone, carried away by a different railway route of the train he was in. Chihiro stares in disbelief, not knowing what to do.
It just takes a while for your memories to return...
She runs.
She gets off at the next stop, startling people on their phones, parting the jostling crowd of the station as she quickens her pace. She feels feverish, fuelled by a burning desire to see the boy, to know him, to understand why she feels the link... that after so many years it's finally back. The link is back. It dangles in front of her, just out of reach, out of sight, and she chases after it, unto the bustling streets, barely saying sorry to the grumbling people she bumps into. She pounds unto the sidewalks of the city, through its traffic, trying to find what station the boy must've gotten off.
After so many years of searching, she's not going to let him go again.
And then she stops at two sets of stone steps that leads to the High Street. Her footsteps falter, and her eyes widen. Her heart beats faster.
He was right there. Right there, on top of the stairs, his breathing heavy, as though he's run through most of Tokyo himself. Staring at her, tight-lipped, eyes gleaming.
Looking for her.
And then, as fast as the link came, it is gone, buffeted by the wind. As Chihiro gasps for air, just inches away ftom a person she does not even know, doubt seizes her. It seemed so easier to follow her gut, to follow the feeling of recognition, to dash through moving cars and trucks so intently just to prove her intuition before it ultimately fades away. This is different: it actually lead her to something. Someone. And now face to face with the said someone, she does not know what to think. What to say. And it scares her.
Because what if, after all this time, she's wrong?
She grits her teeth and gulps, ascending the stairs carefully. The boy moves as well, descending the flight of stairs on the other side, looking like he's steeling himself to do something; she sees that his fists were clenched. They've reached the middle, but Chihiro does not say a word, even when every fiber of her being tells her to speak up. Regrets begin to pound on her ears, but she does not turn. She does not look back.
"Will we meet again sometime?"
"Sure we will."
"Promise?"
"Promise...Now go, and don't look back..."
She looks back.
"E-excuse me!"
She yells what she wants to say, before she loses the nerve to do so.
The boy stops. Turns slowly. Their eyes meet. Chihiro's heart flutters uncontrollably.
"Haven't we... Have I..." She takes a deep breath and forces out, "we've met before, haven't we?"
The boy's face breaks into the most beautiful and familiar smile she has ever seen. Chihiro sees a look of relief pass through his face. He closes his eyes, and when he opens them she sees them sparkling brightly in the sunlight.
"I felt that, too," he says quietly. He takes a step upward, closer to her. "It feels like I've been looking for you for a very long time."
A sense of contentment engulfs Chihiro's trembling body, and she laughs as tears begin to fall on her cheeks. She takes a step downward, and then she asks the long unanswered question that will finally make sense to her, and is pleasantly surprised when he says the same thing:
"Can I ask you... your name?"
Little note: Haku's forgotten most of his memories with Chihiro as well. It kinda gets explained on the next chapter hehe. I've always loved Haku + Chihiro's dynamic. They cute like that :'))
Thanks for reading! Shoot me a comment if you want! Happy holidays!