Author's Note: Hey, all! Hope you've enjoyed the story thus far. Don't think I'll be keeping up with that rapid-fire method of updating after this entry, so don't get your hopes up for an update tomorrow. But you can expect one soon—I'm too involved now to just let it go.

It's also just occurred to me that I haven't written a disclaimer for this thing yet, so here it is: I own nothing that is owned by Hayao Miyazaki. How's that?

See you at the next update, and please review!

—Koru

Chapter Four

"Chihiro? Chihiro? Chihiro!"

"Eh? What?"

I turned to face Tome, who was seated next to me in the classroom.

"Are you okay, Chihiro? You're spacing out again!" she whispered urgently as the teacher turned to write something on the board.

"I'm okay," I said. "Just tired."

"The dream again?"

I blinked at the question, then nodded.

"Tell me about it later, okay?"

I nodded again, then rested my chin in my hand and tried to pay attention to what the teacher was telling us.

"A boy?" Nakashi repeated.

"Yeah," I said. "I think he was important."

"To you or to the dream?"

I looked at Tome. She emphasized her question by giving me an expectant look.

"I don't know," I admitted. "I can't remember. All I know is that I've had the dream before."

"When?" Nakashi asked.

"About a year ago," I told her. "When we first moved here. It was a lot longer then, though."

"Longer?" Tome repeated.

"Yeah," I said. "There were more people in it—like a witch and a mouse and pigs and a dragon…."

I ticked them off on my fingers, pausing in-between to try to recall what they had looked like. I did a pretty good job of it up until I reached the dragon. At first there was a flash of gleaming aquamarine scales moving fluidly like water, but then its wild golden eyes darkened and instead of a dragon's face, I saw a boy's. It was the face of the boy in the dream I'd been having—I was sure of it.

"A dragon?" Nakashi asked, pulling me away from the thought. "Amazing! You really do have the greatest dreams, Chihiro."

"Yeah…."

After dinner that night, I quickly took care of the dishes and ran upstairs. It didn't take me too long to remove the false lid from beneath the real lid of the box—I couldn't remember why I had put it back there; it wasn't as if I was trying to hide it from anyone, but it felt to her like I should keep it secret—and soon the hair tie was back in my hand.

I considered the shining band very closely. I knew that somehow it held the answers that my dreams didn't seem to be able to give me, but it just wouldn't cooperate. I screwed up my face in an attempt to will the answer out of the thing, but this did me no good either. A groan of exasperation split the silence of my room before I flopped onto my bed and threw my arm across my face, the tie still clutched in my fist.

"Why do I keep having these weird dreams?" I asked the inside of my arm.

I lifted my arm up and released the tie from my grip, catching it in between my fingers and twirling it in front of my face, catching sparkles in the light from my lamp.

"And why do I know that you have something to do with it?"

After a while, my arm got tired, and I lay on my side, hand still propped on my pillow and flipping the tie between my fingers. The different colors in the light it reflected from my bedside lamp were almost hypnotizing. It didn't help at all that my dreams had kept me from getting a decent night's sleep in the past few days.

I was asleep before my hand fell back onto my pillow.

I could see my hand again. The tie wasn't in it anymore, but I could still feel it in between my fingers.

I couldn't control my neck; my eyes were directed explicitly at my hand. I watched as it slowly started becoming transparent, up until I could see out the other side of my elbow.

"Stop!" I told it, frightened. As if on command, it did, and my arm faded back into existence.

Suddenly, I saw my hand turn over and clutch a rag. I sped over the wooden floor, cleaning with other hands at my sides. Some of the other hands were funny colors; like pale purple or orange. They were all going much faster than me, and my face joined my hands on the floor when I tripped trying to speed up.

Then I could feel water around me.

I saw bubbles of my own air float up through the water and tasted soap in my mouth as I tried to scream. My hand was still in front of me, and I felt it brush up against something solid. In my surprise, I gasped and found that I could breathe under water.

No longer in a panic, I watched as my hand extended into the gloom of the water to grab whatever I had felt. I felt a string in my hand and was trying to wrap it around the strange thorn-like protrusion. It was a slippery plastic or rubber, and I couldn't get the rope to hold. A second hand suddenly joined mine and wrapped it for me.

I wasn't in water anymore. I was back on the short stone steps, a wide, grassy field at my back. I couldn't see it, but I knew it was there. My hand was now in someone else's hand. A boy's. That boy's.

He was saying something to me. I couldn't understand. I tried so hard, but I couldn't.

When I woke up, I was crying.

My hand unconsciously clenched over the tie that was still between my fingers. I had felt it there the whole time.

Sniffing as I sat up in bed, I wiped my tears away and took a few breaths to steady myself before getting up.

"Weird dream," I mumbled as I went to the window and opened the blinds. There were some clouds hanging over the town, but no rain. It looked cold.

"Better take my umbrella to school today," I decided, already letting the dream slip away. My mind made the decision that I really didn't want to remember something I didn't understand but that made me so sad.