Okay, the way I'm looking at it, if you remember when Chihiro and her family first get to the room with the bird bath there's a camera angle where you can see behind them. There's these three dark halls, one of which the Ogino's came out of. So, I'm going on the assumption that (for Chihiro at least) there are three different entrances, and once she leaves that certain one, it disappears forever. All she has to do is find them, though.

The Imperfections We Weave

Chapter 6-Enter Chihiro

"Hey...?" Mizuko sounded upset. "What's the matter?"

"Hmm?" I asked, slowly returning to reality from a daydream. "What do you mean, Mizuko?"

"Chihiro, you're crying... Didn't you notice?" The hyper girl explained.

"Oh!" I brought my hand up to my face and felt the wetness running down my cheeks, then scrubbed it away with my sleeve. "I didn't know."

"Sometimes I worry about you, girl," She added, resuming her jumping around in a sugar-high frenzy, and I smiled at her reassuringly.

Mizuko wasn't anything like her name implied. She wasn't near beautiful; she was pretty in a homely, comfortable way. With shoulder-length, flippy brown hair and bright, brown eyes that always shone, no matter what. She wasn't tall, but she wasn't short; sort of in between. She was 'good enough' for a girl her age. Just right, no more, no less. And she didn't in any way resemble the moon. She had no elegance about her, and she definitely wasn't calm and serene.

No, she didn't resemble the moon.

'At least... not like he did, right?'

"Oh, shut up!" I told myself quietly.

"Chihiro, are you talking to yourself again?" Mizuko asked curiously.

"Yeah.. I guess so, Mizuko," I replied to her with a sigh.

"Wow... Why don't I drive you home so you can get some sleep?" She offered. She had just turned sixteen, and was desperate to show off her new permit.

"I think I'll walk, but, if you want, you can drive beside me," I joked.

"Hey!" She screamed at me while I laughed non-stop. "Not funny, Chihiro!

After a few minutes of laughing I said,"Anyways, I'll call you tomorrow. I'm going, have fun doing... whatever you're doing."

I left the Kazoku family's yard and started down the dirt road. The house I lived in with my mom, the blue one on the end, was only a few houses and a hill away from Mizuko's.

I say 'with my mom' because, when I turned 12, Dad left. He said he found some young girl who didn't nag him like mother did and actually put out. She cried and cried for days, and I begged and begged for Kohaku to come and whisk me away. But, in the end, he never came, and I stayed and comforted my mother. I'm not sure if I could have left her behind in her condition anyways.

I had passed the Hideki's pure white house at the end of the dirt road, then turned around their Azalea bushes and began my long trek up the hill. At least it was good exercise.

Walking home was also an excuse to look at that path through the forest that led to...

"Stop it. You're only going to hurt yourself," I whispered to myself under my breath, then added a sigh.

'And I don't want to hurt anymore.'

Scene

After I left the Spirit World, I put on this mask that hid all the sorrow and wistfulness. I went out and made all the friends I could, so I would never be alone. So I could fill up the emptiness.

I actually think the last five years would have been a lot less painful if I had forgotten all about my pig-turned parents and stayed with Kohaku. But, if I think about it, it was all worth it. If I hadn't saved them, I wouldn't have a wonderful mother like mine to whom I was the world, or a wonderful friend like Mizuko who could always make you laugh and would always be there for you.

But I would have Kohaku.

"Will I ever see you again?"

"Of course."

"Promise?"

"I promise, Chihiro."

Then again, he promised he would find me, and absence always makes the heart grow fonder.

My mind switched to another subject.

Why was I crying? I remember feeling so…sad all of a sudden. Kohaku and I had always been connected after the incident in the Spirit World, and I often felt feelings of anxiety or desperation.

'What if… What if Kohaku's in trouble!'

"Great… Now I'll never get to sleep," I mumbled under my breath, turning over in my bed.

Scene

It was somewhere around ten on a Sunday morning, and Mizuko had already woken me up and demanded that I come to her house.

But this time was different, she sounded panicked, but insisted it was nothing big. She was often alone, seeing as both her parents were usually away on some long business trip, and I always worried about her.

I had already taken a quick shower, dried my long, brown hair and put it up in the purple ponytail holder I had received, and done all those other hygienic things. I wrote a garbled note for my mother, who was at the store, consisting of:

"Mizuko called.

Sounded upset.

Went to house.

Be back later.

-Chihiro"

And taped it up on the refrigerator, then headed out the door.

I jogged to her house, which took me around roughly 7 minutes, and knocked on the red door that was decorated with a wreath at all times of the year.

Right as my balled fist touched the door, it swung open. I had a mind to think she'd been waiting there impatiently the whole time.

"Finally! What took you so long?" Mizuko demanded.

"Well, you said it wasn't that important, so I took my time taking a shower and-," I wasn't even able to finish a sentence before the impatient girl interjected.

"It doesn't matter, just follow me. You're not gonna believe this, Chihiro," She said, grabbing my wrist and dragging me through her huge residence to where ever we were going.

She continued with her story. "Okay, this morning it was all raining and everything, right?"

I nodded in agreement, knowing I wouldn't get a word in edge-wise.

"So the lights went out (and I was all "Whoa! Oh my gosh!"), and I went to check the breaker and stuff. When I was going down the basement stairs, the lights came back on. I turned the corner and found-"

She opened the basement door and led me down the stairs.

"-this," She finished.

My mouth immediately dropped.

"Oh my gosh, Mizuko!"

In the middle of the cement basement floor was a huge hole. It covered about a quarter of the room, but seemed bigger considering it was in the middle.

I inched over to it, afraid I might fall in because of something stupid like tripping over a shoelace.

"It's really deep," She commented.

"It's really deep," I repeated.

A breeze seemed to be coming from the hole. It was warm and comforting in the Kazoku's frigid basement. And it seemed to be pulling at me gently. Crooning at me desperately to join it, where ever it was coming from. Just like that time…

And soon that croon turned into a howl, and the pulling turned into a push.

I don't know how it happened, but I soon felt a falling sensation. I could barely hear Mizuko screaming my name and my own shrieks over the rushing air. But I could hear one thing clearly.

'Kohaku needs you,' Whispered the wind to me.

Scene

That's chapter six, what do you think? Am I writing these way to fast, 'cause I think I am. I get up at around nine every morning and write a chapter in about two hours. Anyways, I need more feedback!

Chibi Amo: Yes, Karu scares me too. Sometimes, at night, he whispers strange things in my ear. But, alas, he and Mizuko are both only two sides of my many-sided personality. And thanks for the 'in character' comment. I've always had trouble telling if someone's doing or saying something OOC.