Chihiro sighed as she looked out of her classroom window. 'Two more hours until lunch. . . but I want to go home so badly. . .' Not that there was anything for her there. After her mother had been diagnosed and died of an unidentifiable disease, her father had become a workaholic. He was hardly ever at home anymore; the last time she'd seen him had been months ago. 'Dad. . .' Chihiro sighed and turned back to the front of the room.

The teacher was still going over the two-week field trip that mostly her entire class was going on. She had already heard about this trip a million times, and it was boring her. Besides, it's not like she was going anyway. Why would she? She had no friends. She didn't fit in at school, no matter how hard she tried. There was always someone there to pick on her, usually Asumi and her friends.

Chihiro, whose seat was in the back corner of her classroom, scratched behind her ear as she desperately tried to stay awake. The desk to the right of Chihiro was empty, whose occupant, having the same curious disease that her mother had contracted, was not at school very often because of the illness.

Chihiro lay her head down on her arms, knowing that the teacher wouldn't be able to see her sleep behind Asumi, who sat in front of her. Asumi was too busy chattering with her friends about the field trip to make fun of Chihiro. Chihiro yawned behind Asumi, her mouth growing too large to be covered by the hand that she had placed to do so.

A wad of paper flew and hit the side of a dazed Chihiro's head. She jerked up, looking in the direction that the paper had come from. A boy her age, with light brown hair and black eyes, grinned at her and nodded to the paper ball. 'Kiro? What could he possibly want?' She leaned down and retrieved the ball from the floor. Opening it, she read, 'STAY AWAKE, BEAUTIFUL'. She glared over at Kiro, who was still grinning cheekily. She scowled at him.

Asumi, remembering that she hadn't yet given Chihiro her daily taunting, swung around in her seat. She noticed the direction in which the girl's gaze was directed and frowned deeply. "What're you looking at," Asumi hissed, "Don't be looking at my man like that." She looked down at the note in Chihiro's hand, then back up at her face. "Give me THAT." She snatched the note out Chihiro's hand. Her eyes quickly skimmed the message. She looked up and sneered at Chihiro disgustedly, "This is OBVIOUSLY MINE." She looked over at Kiro and sent him a sourly over-sweet smile that he had evident trouble returning. Asumi gave Chihiro one last glare before swiveling around in her desk.

Chihiro rolled her eyes and reapplied her attention to the beautiful scenery outside the window. The trees' branches swayed gently in the wind, undaunted by the chirping birds perched on several of their branches. The sun shone down in a way that made everything look so bright and heavenly, that the whole scene reminded her of happiness. The epiphany of happiness.

The bell finally rung, and Chihiro was all too happy to get out of class. She waited as Asumi walked up the aisle deliberately slowly, just to annoy Chihiro. However, when Asumi looked back, she was upset to find that Chihiro wasn't even finished packing her things away yet. She huffily exited the room.

"Chihiro," the teacher called over her shoulder, "just close the door when you leave." He walked out of the door and left Chihiro alone in the room.

Chihiro sat in the back of the classroom, barely able to move. She was usually the first to have her things ready to leave, but today, she was the last left in the room. Hadn't anyone noticed? The woozy, cloudy feeling that was incapacitating her came upon her full force once more. White-ish orange spots began to clot over her vision. She had begun to sweat through her clothes, but then the pain was suddenly gone and she was back to normal.

She slowly packed her things away, wary of being overtaken by the feeling again. She hurried out of the classroom, nearly slamming the door as she went. She couldn't go to lunch and risk that happening again. She had to go home. She wanted to, anyway, and it was all the more reason for her to leave school if she was sick. She wasn't sure she would have made it through the day with her sanity anyway.

She checked out of school in the nurses' office and started to walk to the bus stop on the corner. As she walked by the windows to the cafeteria, something pulled at her to glance inside. She looked up, and seconds later, so did Asumi. Both jumped in surprise, and Chihiro's hand flew to her mouth. After a while, Asumi just scowled, shrugged, and turned back to her friends, laughing again.

Chihiro continued to leave the school, even though she was beginning to feel like her normal self. 'I'll still go home, just in case,' she thought, shifting her book-bag onto her alternate shoulder as she waited at a bus-stop. She scratched at an itch in her left side, delicately keeping her balance with her bag. She looked over at the old man sitting on the bus-stop's bench. He was really creeping her out. He looked so old that he could have been her great grandfather, yet he wasn't bent at all. Even his wrinkles had mini-folds of their own, still his bright sapphire eyes shone out like glowing quartz in a cave. He slowly started to turn his head to look at Chihiro, and she nervously jerked her gaze back in front of her.

Chihiro could feel the old man's stare. Her hair had gradually begun to stand on end from the strange feeling that it gave her: like ice down her shirt. Chihiro saw a big, bright white bus thundering down the street, and watched as it quickly approached. When it screeched to a stop in front of the stop, the breeze from the momentum of the bus sweetly ruffled Chihiro's hair, whipping it softly around her face. She flinched in surprise as she could have almost sworn that she had heard a faint whisper in that soft wind. She shook her head to get rid of the glazed look in her eyes, and looked over at the doors to the bus just in time to see the old man disappear through them. Slowly, as though deliberately waiting, the doors screeched closed with a final snap when it closed.

Chihiro sighed with relief as she watched the bus move smoothly away, leaving the normal exhaust stench in its wake. The feeling of the old man's gaze lingered, and she shivered, tugging her bag into a more secure position on her shoulder. She glanced over at where the old man had been, and shivered again. Noticing the absence of his 'creepy' aura in the area, she trudged smilingly over to the bench and plopped down. She exhaled loudly, all of her previous tension going out with her breath. 'What was with that old man?. . . and that wind, what was that I heard?' Just thinking about the soft voice she'd heard in the wind gave her a pleasant feeling of homesickness.

Suddenly, she felt the homesickness turn to longing. Longing to go. . . somewhere. She couldn't quite grasp the information as she was bombarded with images. 'A place, from a dream. . . a long time ago. . .' She turned her head as she heard another bus coming down the lane. She looked down at her silver watch, 'That's my bus.' As she walked onto the bus and the driver took her money she chose a seat closest to the front as possible. She lay her head against the cool glass window and sighed lightly, relaxing as she drifted to sleep.

Some time later, the bus apparently had to travel down a bumpy road, because she awoke as her head banged on the window from the turbulence. "Umph. . ." she muttered, bringing a hand up to hold the back of her head. She straightened and peered over the top of the rubber covered seat. All she saw was darkness and bright, blurred lights as the bus sped down the lane. 'Now that I think about it, I don't think he's going the speed limit.' As if on cue, the bus slowed to a more normal pace.

"Miss," the gruff voice of the bus driver sounded a little dazed, if not confused, "I believe this is your stop." She looked up at him, surprised, then out of the front window. She was even more shocked to realize that it was her stop. How had he known? "Er, thank you sir. . ." she trailed off as she began gathering her things.

The bus hummed under her feet as she gathered her bag and purse. She hopped down the bus steps. "Goodbye, Chihiro," the driver said softly. She turned around swiftly to ask how he knew her name, but the doors had already closed and he was no longer looking in her direction.

'How did he know my name?' She jumped as she remembered something, and glanced down at her front. In a clear pocket over her right breast, her school I.D. winked up at her. She felt like slapping her forehead, but laughed at herself instead, and began walking up the path to her house. She paused as she passed the large field of shrines, and a soft, fragrant wind blew past her. She breathed in deeply. The wind smelled of spring, and slightly of an ocean.

'There aren't any beaches around here. . .' Chihiro mused, not putting much thought into the anomaly. Suddenly she felt that soft pull on her again. It pulled at something deep inside of her, buried; pulled like a string around her heart. She shook herself out of a daze and smiled lightly. She was having a crazy day.

She unlocked the front door, and walked into her house. Not that this was ever home. 'Just a house,' she thought sadly.

"Dad?" She yelled, checking to see if her father was home; it couldn't hurt. No response. So, he was still at work; it wasn't like she had really been expecting him to be home anyway.

She ran upstairs to do her homework. Halfway through, her stomach growled. After it emitted a few more grunts a few minutes later, she couldn't take it anymore.

She headed downstairs to get something to eat. She grabbed her snack and was about to head back upstairs, when the singing of birds caught her attention. She turned to look out of the sunshine filled window.

'Today is too pretty of a day to be feeling sick. . .' she smirked as the thought flitted through her mind. With the sun overhead, she didn't feel like staying in the house, but it was safest. Afterall, what if she collapsed in the woods? She wasn't feeling all THAT well; she'd felt better. Still, it was such a nice day outside, and she had adopted an odd, uneasy feeling since she'd come home, and it only kept increasing. 'A feeling of being trapped. . .' She stared blankly at the door from the last step.

Surely it couldn't hurt much?

She grabbed her favorite green windbreaker, so she wouldn't be cold. Even though she was still in her school uniform, she didn't stop to change into something more comfortable. She checked her ponytail, brushing it and rewrapping her favorite ponytail holder around it. She grabbed her wallet and keys, shoving both into the large pockets of her jacket.

She exited the house, locking the door behind her, after she'd left a note on the counter for her father. She'd vaguely wondered beforehand if he'd even see it, but she'd left it anyway.

She climbed down the path from her house, the small shrines catching her eye again. The images began to come at her again, and she shook her head to rid her of the thoughts. It wasn't that she was upset by the thoughts, quite the opposite. But they shared with her a dream-world that could never be, and left her wanting more. She mentally shook her head at herself. She couldn't have more of something that wasn't even real. They always came upon her like memories, but that was impossible, because she couldn't be remembering something that didn't exist. 'The dreams are beautiful, but I don't want to desire something that I could never have,' she thought, walking up the rising stone path.

The path that she was walking became rougher. The wild trees of the forest surrounding it crowded in on the road and their branches hung down in her face. The stones of the path jutted up, revealing bright wild grasses and flowers beneath them.

She started to have doubts: 'Maybe I should go back.' However, she kept walking.

Chihiro almost walked right past a statue with a haunting smile upon its face. She stopped for a second or two to stare at it. She decided that she wouldn't have minded much if she HAD walked right past it. It gave her the creeps, and a shiver passed through her body. 'Kind of like that old man,' she said, comparing the sensations.

Chihiro continued to ascend the route absentmindedly. She finally came to a clearing, which shocked her out of her deep thinking. The forest separated to both sides, and there was a round clearing, paved with stone. The patch of stone was an introduction to the door of a tunnel that led the way into darkness. There was a stone figure in front of the doorway, identical to the one that she'd passed earlier. 'If it was possible, I would've rather not have seen either one,' she mused.

Against her better judgment, she walked through the doorway. She was surprised to see that right after she walked in, she could see the other end of the tunnel, blinding with bright light. She walked through the tunnel as quickly as possible, coming out into a dome shaped room. With its benches and high windows, it looked like either a church or a train station.

'No, it's a train station,' something in the back of her mind told her reflexively. 'How would I know?' she asked herself, but continued walking until she was out into the sunshine. She leaned on the building to regain some of the energy she'd used up walking all the way out there. She didn't even want to think about the walk back. As she pushed off the wall, she noticed that it didn't feel much like an outside wall, but more like- "Plaster?"

With that one word, all of her memories of Spirit World came back. She tried to suppress them, but they were rebelling, tired of being restrained. She feel to the ground and with the last of her conscious mind, thought determinedly, 'I'm coming. . .Haku, Kamaji, Lin, Granny, Bou, No Face. I'm coming.' The last image before her eyes was that of a young boy with dark hair, pale skin, and entrancingly clear, bright green eyes, "Good. I'll be waiting."

So, what did you think? Was it okay? This is my first Spirited Away fic, and my first fanfic in a long time, so please, bear with me, and R&R!

LD-chan