Prologue
A girl was wondering around the grounds of what she thought was an abandoned theme park, unhappy with her parents for eating at the restaurant earlier when no one was there to except payment, the girl had left to look around by herself... She ran to the bridge once she saw the steam coming from a huge building on the other side...
" Wow!" The girl exclaimed, " It's a bath house..."
Just then, the hair on the back of her neck stood on end, and she turned and came face to face with a strange boy who had piercing green eyes, so bright, they nearly glowed...
" What are you doing here?!" The boy hissed worriedly, " You shouldn't be here! Get out of here! Now!"
" Wha... What?!" The girl exclaimed nervously.
" It's almost night! You have to leave before it gets dark!" The boy paused and looked around, " They're lighting the lamps... You have to get across the river now! Hurry! I'll distract them!"
Dark shadows lurked around the strange buildings as the little girl ran terrified through the dark streets, dark creatures made from shadows grasping with terrible sharp claws at her as she cried...
" Mommy! Daddy!" The girl cried in fear, " where are you?!"
She raced through the dark streets until she came to the restaurant shed left her parents at when she went to explore earlier, her parents were in fact still eating, just as they were before she left...
" Mom! Dad! Come on!" The girl cried frantically, " We have to leave now! Something bad is going on!"
The girl started to say something else to get her parents attention, when an ugly blackish green arm shot out and began beating her father with a fly swatter... But to the girls horror, what fell away was not her father, but a grotesquely overweight pig...
The girl ran screaming as fast as she could and hid in a bush along the river...
" It has to just be a nightmare..." The girl cried in dismay, " Go away... Go away... Please please disappear!"
About that time, a large boat pulled into the harbor and let a ramp down so all sorts of strange creatures could make their way to the land... The girl cried out in fright once and when she realized she was turning see through and ran up the hill until she got back to the bathhouse and hid in the shadows...
" Chahiro!" Chahiro's mother called, " Time for school!"
Chahiro bolted awake from her recurring nightmare and glanced at the clock, groaning when it read 6:30 am... Thank the Gods it was just a nightmare... Chahiro hurriedly showered and brushed her teeth, before putting on a pretty pink leather halter top and black leather pants with her favorite pearly pink sandals to match. Then, she began brushing her long, chestnut brown hair... Her eyes, which used to be a light brown, had darkened to a beautiful deep burgundy brown with gold flecks in them... Her new friends, Kari and Micah, often begged her to let them in on her secret on how she'd changed her eye color, but she told them the truth every time... That it just happened and she didn't know why... Her hair came a good ten inches below her hips, giving her the appearance of someone much older than fifteen...
She had become quite popular in school, despite maintaining her shy and quiet demeanor, but despite so many wanting to befriend her, there were others who wanted to make her want to be invisible... Naira, a snobby rich exchange student from the states, was always quite hateful with Chahiro... She was constantly picking a fight with her and following her around, trying her best to frighten Chahiro when she wasn't watching... Once, shortly after Chahiro had moved to that city with her mother and father, Naira had began bullying her terribly... it was strange though, the summer that she and her parents decided to move all that time ago, she was ten years old, but she couldn't remember having her eleventh birthday or anything later that year... And things were very strange when they'd finally gotten to their new house...
When they got to their new house, it was quite unsettling what they saw... The police had dug several large holes all through the yard, as if searching for something... The house, itself, looked as if it hadn't been cleaned in over a year, the door and hinges were stained a nasty dingy yellow and the knob and hinges were horribly rusted... Chahiro's father had been furious and demanded that the police explain what was going on... When the police informed them that his sister had reported them missing a little over a year ago, and that she herself had come to the city and begged for the police to keep searching for them, everyone grew silent...
Akio's sister, Hiera, had shown up at that moment and screamed in relief as she grabbed her older brother and hugged him frantically, tears flowing from her eyes...
" Oh! Akio! I never thought I'd ever see any of you again!" Hiera cried.
Akio, at a loss for words, gently patted her back in an attempt to calm his little sister as he listened to the police explain the details of the police report... Apparently, they had been missing for over a year...
Four years have passed since that day, and Chahiro and her family still have not been able to recall where they went or what exactly had happened...