Hey! This story is seriously, like, SO MUCH FUN to write! I'm really bummed that more of you arent reviewing, but hey, I'm not writing this to please anyone but myself!

but even so, if you like it, please review! It'd be very nice, and it motivates me to update sooner than later!

:D

enjoy!

Chapter 4

Amaya stared up at the two for what felt like an eternity before the older woman recovered enough to sputter.

"A human!"

The young man – who looked to be around Amaya's age, maybe a year or two older – snorted, eyes carefully calculating as he looked at the girl. "Thank you for stating the obvious. Are you alright?" He smiled slightly at the befuddled girl, who slowly nodded.

"You insolent brat! You act as if this is something of no importance!" The short women with bulging eyes spat, and the young man sighed in exasperation, and the fire flared in the upright torches, making his chin-length, forest green hair gleam in the light.

Amaya gasped, and quickly pinched herself. This had to be a dream…all of this was exactly like her mom's story; the boy, the witch with eyes the size of dinner plates, the spacious office with the balcony outside…it was all the same.

Nothing disappeared, and all that changed was that now Amaya's arm hurt terribly where she had pinched it. The tall boy pursed his lips, and replied in a curt tone.

"On the contrary, Yubaba, what I was trying to say is that we shouldn't frighten her."

"Bah! You're too soft, Haku!"

"That name has no power over me anymore, so you can stop trying to use your witchcraft in an attempt to put me back under your control."

Amaya sat up straighter, and cleared her throat. "Um, excuse me?"

They both stopped talking, and Amaya cleared her throat nervously once more. "Uh, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I need to find my sister, Ruki. She also fell down the garbage chute, but we were separated."

Yubaba grumbled under her breath. "That explains the stench. The human smell is bad enough, but the trash makes it near impossible to handle!"

The boy glared at her, and gracefully knelt beside Amaya, who was trying not to stare at the enormous head of the stout woman.

"Your sister?"

"Yes! Do you know where that pipe leads?" She pointed up towards the gaping hole that had once been the bottom of the chute.

"It leads to the compartment just beside the boiler room, but–"

Amaya quickly got to her feet, shaking her head furiously to rid her hair of the small jewels and pieces of paper. She was about to run off when the other woman spoke in a low, gravelly voice as she lit her cigarette.

"She is lying, obviously."

Amaya gaped at her incredulously. "No I'm not! Her name is Ruki Scott, and I'm Amaya Scott, and our parents' names are Chihiro and Everett! We were driving to our new house when–"

"Chihiro?" Yubaba and Haku both exclaimed, and Amaya frowned, nodding.

"Yeah, we got lost in the woods, and then something happened to the tire, probably a rock or something, and we couldn't go any farther."

Haku's eyes were calm, but Amaya could see the tense set to his jaw. "Wait, you're saying that Chihiro Ogino was in the car when this happened? How close were you to the entrance?"

"Entrance? Wait, you mean the tunnel?"

"Yes."

"Yeah, but she and my other sister were asleep, so Ruki and I went to find help in the building. We didn't know that it was abandoned!"

"Does your sister have a purple bracelet on, by any chance?"

"Yeah! But," Amaya's eyes narrowed. "how would you know that?"

Haku sighed, and turned to Yubaba, who was watching the interaction with emotionless eyes. "That explains why we could only sense one human; your sister's bracelet blocks the other one from our magic. Chihiro must've given the charm to her daughter...."

Yubaba blew out a thin stream of smoke from her nostrils, and looked away, her eyes calm and yet…furious at the same time.

"I see."

Amaya put her hands on her hips angrily. "Alright, I probably sound like an impatient brat, but can we please stop talking about magic and all that crap and find my sister?"

Yubaba chuckled, and turned to the boy, who was staring at her with calculating green eyes.

"This is where I put my foot down, Haku. I will not allow this girl to run around my prestigious bathhouse without a contract. It will look bad enough having a human here, but an unemployed human will look much, much worse."

Haku growled under his breath, but his face remained calm as he nodded to the witch. "Those were the rules before I returned, Yubaba. Now that I own a good portion of the bathhouse, I think the rules deserve to be bended a bit."

Yubaba, instead of protesting like she had before, now smiled, a cruel smile that made Amaya's skin crawl. It was a smile of victory, a smile of smug glee.

"I agree. You employ the mouthy brat," She nodded to Amaya, whose eyes narrowed at the witch's tone. "and I get the younger girl as my worker. You get half, I get half. That is the only compromise I'll make, dragon, so I would choose your words carefully."

Amaya clutched at the older boy's arm, her eyes frantic. "Don't, she'll–"

"I have no choice. I agree, Yubaba. But on two conditions; the girl you employ shall retain her name, and no harm shall come unto her in your service."

Yubaba sighed, the smile still on her face as she waved her hand toward her shattered desk, which immediately began reassembling itself; shreds of paper joining to become one single sheet, jewels floating back to their respective caskets, the wood jumping up to join with its other half with a groan. A single sheet remained in front of her large fingers, and with a flick of her hand writing appeared on it, with two lines at the bottom.

"If you will, Haku?"

"A magically-sealing contract? Why so meticulous, when it is just one single human worker?"

"A magically-sealing contract?" Amaya nearly squeaked – she remembered this from the story – but the boy ignored her as he listened to Yubaba's reply.

"I just want to make sure there are no misunderstandings. Don't worry, both of your conditions are stated very clearly in this. All you have to do is sign your full name. I will do the same, and it is done."

Amaya turned to Haku, but the boy was already moving forward. His almond shaped eyes scanned the contract carefully, lips pursed in suspicion. After a moment, he stared at the line, and thin, flowing cursive began to bleed into the page on the line to the left.

Spirit of the Kohaku River

Yubaba signed her name with a flourish, and the contract glowed bright blue for a moment before fading back to normal once more. Amaya stared at it with an awful feeling in her gut, the horrible sense of foreboding sorrow.

Haku nodded to the witch, who waved them out with a dismissive flick of her hand, and led the way out of the spacious office. Amaya struggled to keep up with the boy, as his legs were much longer than hers and took larger strides.

"Hey, uh, Haku?"

Haku's eyes flickered towards hers. "Yes?"

"How did you know that my mother gave Ruki that bracelet?"

Haku sighed, staring straight ahead once more, his jaw taut. "Your mother…I assume that she didn't tell you what happened here? Why would she…I doubt anyone would believe her…"

"She did tell us the story of this place, but…"

Haku smiled slightly, a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "She failed to ever reveal the true identity of the girl who was transported here?"

"Yeah…I didn't really think about it," Amaya said quietly, as they traveled down long staircases, which were packed with servants and steaming customers. Haku nodded to a few of the staff, and stopped to murmur some instructions to a tall women with long brown hair and impatient brown eyes that sparked and flared at Haku's stern tone.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever Haku! It's not my fault those stupid chickens had to eat all of the rice, but–"

"You'll handle it." Haku said, finishing her sentence and moving along before she had time to argue. Amaya and she caught eyes for a moment, and Lin scowled before turning on her heels and marching off.

"If I told you that your mother knows more about the spirit world than you think she does, that she was the girl who wandered into our world thirty-nine years ago, would you believe me?"

"No, I…" Amaya yelled angrily, but then something made her stop.

It had been a few years ago, in the summer. Chihiro was sitting on the porch, and Sakura and Ruki were playing in the garden while Amaya sat and made little daisy necklaces.

"Mommy, where'd you get that bracelet?"

Chihiro stared down at the purple bracelet, setting down her mending for a moment to slip it off and hand it to her oldest daughter. Amaya ooed and awed at the sparkling threads.

"A woman gave it to me, a wonderful person that I wish you could have met someday." Chihiro slipped the bracelet back on her wrist, and Amaya continued working on her daisy chain.

"Why don't we ever visit her then?"

"She's…somewhere that we can't go."

Amaya's eyes widened. "Oh. You mean, where my hamster Jerry is? The cloud place with lots of light?"

Chihiro laughed, and knelt down to kiss her daughter on the forehead. "No…not exactly."

Her brown eyes stared out towards the forest, and a sigh escaped her lips. A wistful, almost sorrowful sigh that made Amaya look out towards the forest as well.

"What are you looking for, Mommy?"

"Oh, it's nothing Amaya. It's just…something someone told me a long time ago. I doubt I'll ever see that person again, but I can't help but wish…"

"Wish what, Mommy?"

Chihiro didn't answer, instead brightening up and gushing over Amaya's finished necklace, and Amaya's young and ignorant mind was quickly distracted from the mysterious subject that made her mother so sad.


Amaya felt her hands clenching into fists at the memory, and she bit her lip.

"Yes…I think I would believe that. But why didn't she tell us then?"

Haku helped Amaya across a gap between the stairs and the floor, and she blushed at the feeling of his hands on her waist, but he didn't notice, speaking quietly as they continued on their way.

"Would you believe it, before you saw this place with your own eyes?" Amaya looked around at the bizarre creatures that moved around them, the magic in the air that made her skin tingle, and the handsome boy with those green eyes, the boy she knew could turn into a mythical dragon on command. She shook her head, and Haku went on.

"She probably wanted to get past it, to not let her adventure here affect her entire life in the human world. She wouldn't want to scare her family, she wouldn't want them to think she was making up what she had seen."

"That's why she made it into a bedtime story…so she could talk about it without us thinking she was crazy…" Amaya whispered, and Haku nodded.

Amaya stared at the back of the boy's head as he led her through the bathhouse, and blinked rapidly as tears welled in her eyes. All those times her mother had told her the story…she was really talking about her adventure to the spirit world, to this bathhouse where she had to save her parents. Everything was real, and if that was true…then…

"Did you love my mother?"

Haku stopped, and it was so sudden that Amaya bumped into his back. He didn't turn around, but Amaya saw his fingers clenching into fists.

"No…I did not love her. I will always be grateful for the restoration of my name, which she made possible, but love? No…there was no true love. Friendship? Perhaps, but not love."

Haku began walking again, and Amaya quickly followed.

Why did she get the feeling that Haku wasn't being honest with her? Was it the tense set to his shoulders, the curt tone of his voice?

Amaya snorted to herself, and shook her head to clear it.

What a ridiculous thought.