Arashi

Rosuto

She wished her father would not be so loud. Chihiro winced as the crowd laughed again to one of Akio's infamously cheesy but funny jokes. She saw him glance at her for approval and she gave him a bright smile. He seemed satisfied enough, looking back towards his friends.

She trained her eyes to look up at him and the rest of her face followed their lead, spreading into a politely interested expression. It was as if her face had stopped being a part of her. It became as mask. The REAL her was busily playing some strange tune on her lute. It wasn't a song. Not in the classical sense.

Chihiro loved improvisation and her mother looked as if she desperately needed reassurance. So she trained her fingers, which had been flying about so gaily before, to play something slow and soothing. A bit of sea, a bit of wind, a bit of whisper and a melody formed into pleasing waves of sound. She was not sure if it was the music or perhaps the sake but gradually Yuko began to relax against the cushioned chair. Chihiro gave her mother an indulgent look before slipping into her own thoughts.

Yuko.

She was still beautiful and she had been even more beautiful in her younger years. Chihiro had seen the photos and the short films taken of the brief family vacations when she was a child. The woman was lithe and graceful with long, brown hair and pretty eyes. Chihiro supposed she cut off her hair around the time they moved into town and remembered privately mourning the loss of the pretty tresses. They were fun to burrow her fingers in. She loved to play with her mother's hair and having quick, fast fingers, she was able to braid them with pretty bands.

Her mother had looked so pretty in braids.

Chihiro's hands began to go too fast and she frowned at herself. It was hard to concentrate on two things at once.

Yuko unlike her husband aged well. The plumpness gave her a healthy, content and somewhat matronly look. Chihiro had told her that, that she was beautiful, only last night when they prepared her make-up. Yuko's eyes had flashed happiness and youthfulness that Chihiro had not expected. She had seen that same look in Yuko's eyes only once more. In a photo that had been misplaced in the wrong album. It was old and monochromatic but still well preserved. It was also the first time she had seen her mother before she was married.

She wore a ceremonial kimono and a very formally arranged obi. In one hand she held a beautiful fan. Behind her was a young man she did not recognize. He wore a hakama and a gi. His expression was stern and serious but his eyes were joyous and playful. So did her mother's. The formality of their poses betrayed the tenderness of their mutual emotion. It was pure love.

She had shown it to her mother and in her childishness she had unintentionally recalled painful memories for her mother. She could hear it in the back of her mind.

A tiny voice telling her mother that she looked pretty and asking her if that was what Daddy looked like when he was young.

Her mother's face.

She was so shocked.

Her hand swung back as if she were going to slap her own child.

And than it came back down.

Her voice was chilled and sad. "That's not your father."

Chihiro's eyes which had begun to close snapped open bringing her to the present. The tune was beginning to harden like the sides of an over-baked cookie. Immediately, she loosened her fingers.

As second-hostess, it was her job to make sure that everyone at the wedding was comfortable but Chihiro's mother had basically left that job to her daughter, a role that Chihiro had taken with a sigh and a pang of regret.

She should not have to do these things for her mother. Yuko was living through her daughter, something that no mother should have to do. Chihiro did not mind helping but had always thought that her mother should have a life of her own, enjoy the real world as opposed to her current state of living in her private world of solitude and days gone by.

In truth she sometimes felt as if her mother were the young girl and she the wise woman. Sometimes, Chihiro would feel a strange pull on her body, as if a heavy burden had been pushed on her slim back. That was when she felt the oldest, the heaviest, and anchored by age to the red, solid Earth.

Over the years it had gotten worse. Yuko would sometimes just freeze in the middle of whatever she was doing, lost in her own thoughts. Her eyes were like the sea. Everywhere. Nowhere. Lost. Indescribable.

That photo of Yuko when she was young; Chihiro had seen the innocence and strength in her mother's posture but now, her fortitude had been stripped from her leaving her naked in fate's way.

And she was her mother's daughter, unable to deny her mother the tiny amount of shelter that she as a daughter could offer.

With a deft eye, Chihiro scanned the room to make sure everything was going smoothly.

The party was going well. The caterers that Chihiro called were as perfect as they claimed. They had been the most expensive company on the island. Akio was flustered and furious of the price they named when he called them. He had hung up angrily muttering about Japanese inflation. Chihiro had sighed and gone down the company to see the chefs personally.

Within fifteen minutes, she got her parents forty percent off. Her father was shocked but pleased. Her mother gave her a wary look and said nothing. Chihiro was not naïve enough to think she did not have charisma. She was rather proud of herself actually. It was her mother that frowned on Chihiro's ability to charm others. But Akio was happy so her mother naturally kept her mouth shut.

And her mother did look beautiful. The gown she wore was neither too old fashioned nor too modern for a woman of her years. She picked it out herself.

Though Chihiro's mother was considered an older woman and expected to dress conservatively, Chihiro did not see why her mother could not look attractive at the same time. The shopping trip was spontaneous and in her opinion all too brief.

She had come home from her Student Council meeting and called out, "Tadaima!" cheerfully. And she heard the sound of things falling. She ran upstairs afraid her mother had fallen down or perhaps injured herself. The source of the noise was in her parent's room. Boxes and gowns of all colors were strewn all over the room and her mother sat in the midst of the chaos with a bemused expression on her face.

"Mama?" she called softly all the sudden very afraid.

She had seen that look before. When she was very young. An old woman, still quite lovely, holding Chihiro's little hands. "Like this", she instructed. "Very gently. Gently." And Chihiro tried to be gentle but her chubby fingers refused to obey and out came this terrible noise, as if something were ripping in two. RRUNG. Not soft at all. Frustrated, she began to plead for the lesson to end. The woman sighed. "You manner will soften with age. Everyone does." And little Chihiro had pushed the woman away. "Louder sounds better! More fun!"

The woman smile indulgently pushing away a stray lock of hair back into her ponytail. "Loud sounds are the lightning and the howling winds but the soft ones are the warm, wet breeze and trickling rains."

"I have never heard any soft biwa songs" Chihiro mused and than she was struck by sudden brilliance. "You play soft songs for me?" Chihiro asked.

And a dazed expression spread over the woman's face. Like she was lost. The woman rose and left the room, legs wobbly and unsure.

The expression had scared her and Chihiro went searching for her mother whose face now reflected the loss and regret.

"Mama?" she repeated softly stepping towards Yuko. And she saw what Yuko was doing. Her jewelry box was open and in Yuko's hands was a small, very delicate but not very expensive looking silver ring.

She had taken her mother by the arm, almost desperate to get her out of that room. "Come now Mama. There's nothing suitable in that closet. We must go buy a new one. Come on."

The ring was pried from her mother's cold fingers and placed back into the box and in a few moments, her mother's purse was her hands and her mother was in the driver's seat.

The ride to the mall was awkward to say the least and so was the trip. They searched through the department stores and nothing looked right.

He mother had suggested wearing a kimono. Traditional and proper but Chihiro insisted on finding a gown hoping to bring her mother into the more modern traditions. And than she felt it. An odd pull coming from one of the smaller shops.

The dresses in front were plain enough, brilliant pastels in tulle skirts and badly boned bodices. They had the air of prom gowns bought by teenage girls, not for a sophisticated woman.

But than they went through the back. A flash of color blinded her and she grabbed it off the rack.

They had found the perfect gown. Blue like the sea. Flowing like a river. It flowed from her shoulders and over her arms. It crept tightly down her torso and into a beautifully full skirt. It covered her skin in a modest cut but brought out her eyes and the paleness of her smooth flesh. She had looked disturbingly young and heartbreaking.

That moment was glorious.

And than her mother looked at the price tag. "Oh Chihiro. Don't get my hopes up. This is way too expensive."

"It's your second wedding, mother!"

"It's going to need new shoes and some proper jewelry."

Chihiro smirked at the memory. Yuko hated Chihiro's "allure" because of her ability to work it even on her mother. Despite her mother's adamant decision to just wear an old kimono, she somehow found herself standing outside the shop three minutes later. The new dress of carefully wrapped in a gift box. Along with matching shoes.

"Your grandmother would have been totally against this." her mother had whispered to her as if her grandmother were still alive and behind them with an eavesdropping ear.

Her grandmother. She was actually quite young when she died but her fingers were soft and she was tender and loving when she was not lost in her own world of loss and confusion. She taught Chihiro everything she knew about music. Chihiro could have been called a master at the biwa when she was eleven and the koto and shamisen followed when she was thirteen. Through the years, she expanded her field by learning the different techniques and instruments of the Middle East, Europe and even China. Takashi-Sensei at school had been so pleased with Chihiro's skills in the gu-zhen that she arranged for Chihiro to perform for the mayor and other government officials at the Town Hall.

The funny thing was that she never heard her Grandmother play a note herself. Even touching the biwa made her Grandmother uncomfortable. When she inquired her mother about the strangeness of it all, her mother had told her that her Grandmother had once been struck by extreme poverty and had to play the biwa in the streets begging for anything a passerby could give her.

Her grandmother's face. Every time she touched the biwa, it was as if she felt a great tremor of pain. In the beginning her grandmother stroked it if only to show Chihiro how to feel and how to hold it. But as Chihiro grew older, her grandmother asked Chihiro to hold the biwa and fetch it from its case. Her grandmother began to teach the lesson with her back facing Chihiro and only listening to the sounds. Eventually, her grandmother stopped looking it all together.

Despite her peculiarities, Chihiro loved her grandmother and knew her grandmother loved her back.

She remembered once she had fallen asleep in the bath tub. The water was warm and gently on her skin. The world became a beautiful cosmos of tender voices and mist.

And than it was gone. Chihiro's eyes opened slowly to reveal her grandmother looking down at her with wild eyes. She picked Chihiro up, wrapped her in a towel and proceeded to scold her angrily for taking too long in the water.

Chihiro had been angry and tearful. At that moment, she hated her grandmother.

She did not understand.

Unlike her grandmother, Chihiro loved the water. It was gentle and blue, rocking and comforting. It was exciting and white with foam. It was cold and callous, still and frozen.

Annoyed at herself, Chihiro continued to pluck at the strings.

Every time she thought of water, she would think of rivers and every time she thought of rivers, she would think of HIM. A man-child whose character was like the ocean. A face that was blurred by memory and magic. Her most beloved memory. Or dream. Or hallucination.

A loud roar of laughter was a welcome distraction from her angst. Apparently, one of her Uncles had made a very funny but lewd joke.

Chihiro watched her mother from the corner of her eyes. Her father was now boasting of the stocks he had bought the other day to his office mates. Stocks that Chihiro had advised him to buy. Her father had a selective memory. But she did not mind too much.

She was already Chihiro the Beauty, Chihiro the Scholar, Chihiro the Genius and Chihiro the Talented. There was no need to be Chihiro the Stock Broker after all. She was seventeen now and looking forward to her final year of high school. Chihiro was anticipating college with her eye on Tokyo University, Kyoto or maybe Hokkaido. Or perhaps she could travel abroad as some of her friends have already done. Mika had accepted her invitation to study physics at Princeton. Suki had rejected her acceptance to Kyoto University for Stanford.

Away and across the deep blue sea.

Kohaku was like the sea.

He had told her they would meet again and she had believed him. But as the years flew by one by one and her childhood disintegrated into volumes of photos and memorabilia, she began to lose faith. His voice became an echo and his face a mere shadow. His hands became the wind and his skin as intangible as smoke. Perhaps that was the way with things. When you are a child, you have the ability to wait and wait and wait because you trust that whatever you are waiting so desperately for will come. A parent, a doll, a friend.

But when you grow up, time flies like sand in the wind. Gone in a moment and irretrievable. And you realize that promises can be broken as easily as hearts and emotions are never simple.

Days in the spirit world were years in the real one. She had never considered that perhaps the forest itself was another world. Her time with the Spirits passed quickly despite her role as a common drudge. Never once in her time there did she mull over the variable of time. Nor did she reflect on her new knowledge of the Earth and of nature.

Every river was its own entity and every thing and every person had a name. Every lake and every tree had a life. The moment she stepped out of the spirit world, she had felt so aged. So wise. She had understood everything than. Every blade of grass and pebble were magnified. She saw their significance and the life that depended on them. But the moment the car began to drive away, she began to forget. Forget. Forget.

She retained some of the wisdom she learned as well as the memories of her so called "pure love and courage" but everyday, the symphony of nature she grew accustomed to in those few moments at the bathhouse slowly died out to nothing more than a brief thrumming, only audible on certain days or in certain moods.

He promised her she would see him again. The younger Chihiro was willing and knowing. Again could be tomorrow or the day after that. Again could be a brief moment of intimacy when she was ninety and at her death bed.

She once had a nightmare where he came to her on her weddings day with hurt eyes.

"I asked you to wait for me", he had said, eyes turning from the color of emeralds to that of the tangled sea weed left like garbage on the shore by the unforgiving tides.

And she could say nothing in return. He had drawn back when she tried to touch him.

She awakened in a pillow drenched of salt water which stung her skin and eyes.

She had waited for him like she waited for something to come in the mail. At first, she checked everyday. Than every two days, weeks, months. And than nothing.

And she had begun to understand.

Their car, newly bought, had become ancient so quickly. The metal shell had withered and gnarled like an old woman's skin. Chihiro was not getting any younger.

As a child, it had been her secret wish that he would come to her when she was a woman. She had seen old photographs of her grandmother, Aika, the epitome of a classic beauty. At ten she was looking forwards to having breasts and hips so that she may be as alluring. She had hoped that Kohaku was not going to be a boy forever. She had hoped she could marry him. Do spirits marry?

She had wanted to be perfect so when he came, she would be worthy of him.

In a few years, she had her body and her pretty voice. She had boys vying for attention and affections. She listened to each of them boast, watched each of them as they displayed their virtues and she praised each boy with a smile and a kind word. She had girl friends, some admiring and petting, some clever and formidable, some merely comrades against the eternal Hell of public education. She had everything any girl could ever want.

And she had nothing.

Because what she wanted was someone she was not even sure existed, the bare wisps of a dream and everything else was an asset for her to attain him.

It had once sprung into her mind she go see him, back in the Spirit World but she had realized than that if she went back, there was always a high risk of being caught and self-sold into servitude. Again. And need to be rescued and comforted. Again. She would NOT be a burden upon him. He had been so good to her. She would not throw his efforts away because of teenage anxiety. No. Better to wait here. He said they would find each other. When a person is lost, it is always better to stay where you are until you are found.

She was lost. Like her mother. Like Aika. She just chose not to reject her life as they did.

Most nights she dreamed of him. When she woke up, she cried because she was alone and the Spirit World was clearer than ever. She could feel it now in her bones. The ghost of the damned wrote strange words on her window pane out of the frostiness of their fingers. Air borne spirits gossiped to one another above her head.

And she could hear a thousand voices in the pipes. Water spirits accidentally caught in the reservoir who complained loudly and grumpily, disgusted with their own filth and looking forward to being cleansed.

She threw her pillow over her head to block the endless chatter until it slowly faded like a dream and she would barely remember any of it at all.

But there was one song she remembered hearing once in the midst of the night.

"Children of magic and children of time, Connected by veins of magic entwined, From the ruins of Troy,

And the island of Crete, From Arabian deserts, To sycamore trees, I call from the depths of Caribbean Seas, A whisper, a murmur in the autumnal breeze. I cry out your name from far Tripoli, Your fate is the door way and faith is the key, I hold out my arms in the old land of Mu, A goddess, a calling, is christening you.

She sits on her throne like a Goddess of old, She is just and a beauty, she is kind, she is cold. From her hands comes the music that can soothe and can heal, From the lute comes the power that she alone wields. On her brow is the weight of her wisdom and guilt, Her heart is a flower that already wilts.

Children of logic and Children of truth, When only your reasons can pacify you, Who trusts only their eyes? And intangible light, And doubts in those things, That go bump in the night? My word if the law, what's black and what's white, When only the rules can determine what's right, My breathe comes in numbers spilled into your mind, For through magic or reason, you will become mine.

She kneels in her home like a Goddess of old, She ages and strengthens by hour, I'm told, Her songs lull her children from twilight to day, And keeps the nightmares and monsters away, On her brow is the weight of her daily decay, Willing that illness and death stays at bay.

Two paths set before her and only one life, Both stricken with death and hardship and strife, Two worlds are waiting and hidden in shade, One world shall win her and the other will fade."

The voices that chanted that came in a chorus. Some of the tones were silvery and soft and some were deep and cold. But she did recognize one voice in particular. The strongest. The surest. It was hers.

:: One shall win her and the other shall fade. ::

She wasn't naïve enough to think that it was a dream or a brief moment of poetic genius. It was a message, a forewarning. It meant something.

She had taken the premonition apart and studied it. Perhaps the two worlds would war in which one wins and the other dies? No. Impossible. Both worlds were intertwined like veins and arteries to a heart. It was wrong to call the Physical World the "Real World" because even if the Spirit World was nothing but a dream, it was real in her mind and if it truly did exist than

Perhaps it meant that the Physical World was just that. Physical. Things would not last. The rivers would become streams and than creeks and than nothing but valleys beds of fossils and stones. The mountains would become hills and than sand while ones spirit was eternal. In one world, a body would age and in another it would not.

But slowly it became apparent to her the true meaning. That in her mind, she would have to choose. That if she so chose, the Spirit World would become more real to her than the Physical. Or is she pleases, the Spirit World would die in her and she would be as they said in the poem. Logical. Calculating.

Or she would lose herself in eternal dreams

Chihiro stopped her playing for a moment to take a sip of water. Unlike her parents, she did not drink.

:: As long as the dreams were of Kohaku. ::

Again, Chihiro shook her head.

Where in the name of the Seven Lucky Gods did that come from?

:: I asked you to wait for me. ::

And she was going to. Wait. Forever. This world was like the sea and Kohaku was a river. It might take another day and it might take a thousand years but all rivers lead to the ocean and when they did, she would be there to receive him.

Cries for another song reached her ears just as a smile began to spread over her face and her eyes narrowed a bit in annoyance. But no one noticed. Obligingly, she went back onto the small stage and began to play.

And than she saw her. A woman sitting beside her mother.

She wore a plain but very beautiful kimono with painted cranes in soft hues and her waist was clasped by a beautiful obi woven with silver threads.

But it was the woman's eyes that caught her attention. She looked young and yet so old. Her face. It was so pale. She was smiling at Chihiro and Chihiro felt a strange tingling feeling. As if she was being judged.

The woman stood steadily, her eyes never leaving Chihiro's. Her mother was rising in shock and alarm.

And Chihiro saw this panic rising in her mind but she already knew what was going to happen.

The woman was coming for her and her mother was helpless as she always had been. No one would save her.

No mortal can prevent the oncoming of a storm.