Sorry about how last chapter got a little weird…posting at midnight probably wasn't a good idea. Thankfully, I have managed to start writing longer chapters! I almost forgot to say that o-jama shimasu is basically "I am intruding" in Japanese, and is said before entering someone else's home. I just thought it fit well in the scene, with Chihiro entering the tunnel like that. Now, on with the show!

…………

A Second Glance

- Sai -

"Is it a dream?" she whispered to no one, her voice sounding louder in the empty tunnel than she thought it would have.

Chihiro walked slowly down the arched hallway, squinting into the darkness. She dragged her fingers against the crumbling wall, trying to feel her way through the darkness and keep herself from tripping.

It had to be a dream. She was asleep at home, she hadn't even gone to school, she told herself. She would wake up and go to school, her mother would go to work as usual, and her father...her father would do whatever he did when he didn't have to go to the construction site.

She shivered. Could you feel cold in a dream? The temperature seemed to drop suddenly, though it had been ninety degrees or so earlier that day. It felt like the warmth was being sucked right out of the air, pulled forwards through the blackness. She blatantly ignored the pain below her knee and in her head, not even wanting to consider that it might be proof she was awake. Again, she shivered. Chihiro went a few more steps, rubbing at her arms for warmth, before stopping. Luckily, she had taken her gym clothes home with her that day instead of forgetting them at school for the summer. She kneeled down to open the white plastic bag and hoped that she had the winter gym uniform in the bag also. She sometimes left it at school till the end of the year, shoving it in the back of her locker.

The bag crinkled loudly as she opened it and paused to look at its contents. Sighing, she stood and squinted ahead of her, her sight having adjusted to the darkness. Just the summer style shorts and tee were in the bag, which would do her no good here or the spirit realm. She left them lying on the ground and continued on.

'It's probably better to not show up in the spirit world smelling like old gym clothes, anyway. I don't want more complaints about the smell of humans than I got last time.' A slight smile tugged at the corners of her lips as she thought of the commotion that had erupted in front of the foreman's desk when Haku had announced her employment at the Aburaya.

Chihiro continued walking, noticing how strangely long the tunnel was this time. Over a half hour's amount of walking was starting to worry her. What if she was stuck in the tunnel and unable to get out, freezing to death in the end? In the feeble light (the source she was not certain of), she was just able to see her breath, the icy air forming little wisps that pulled forwards and away from her. There was no noise other than the sound of her shuffling feet, magnified in the arched passageway.

After a considerable amount of walking, she was finally able to see a silvery light at the end of the tunnel. She gave an inward smile to the thought. The spirit realm was what she had been yearning for, though she had pushed the feeling down for so long that she had forgotten what it was that made her feel so empty.

A room opened up before her, moonlight slating through the stained glass windows. Chihiro's arm fell to her side with no wall left to rest it on. There were a few benches scattered about, and a small fountain off to the right on which the colored moonlight fell.

It was so familiar...

Chihiro swore lightly. It wasn't a dream, for she wouldn't have been able to remember the room so well. She had only been there twice for a brief amount of time. She stopped denying that she was finally where she wanted to be. She was going to the spirit world. This time there would be no clinging to her mother's arm in fear of the unknown. This time, she meant to go. She walked across the room towards the other end of the barrier between worlds.

Her skirt ruffled slightly, the wind and heat still being pulled out the doorway she now stood before. The grasses swayed and danced under the unfamiliar night sky. It was so clear… they probably had no more pollution than the smoke from the fires in the boiler room of the Aburaya. Hesitantly, she reached out into the field, warmth washing over her hand. It was summer there as well as in the human world, she supposed. She exhaled and watched her silvery breath travel towards the door, only to disappear as soon as it left the archway. It was cold in the building, and yet humid and warm outside of it.

'Aw hell, I give up.' She thought, stopped rubbing her arms for warmth, and stepped out into the field. She let the hot and muggy air engulf her and looked over her surroundings, taking in everything she could see with a desperate hunger.

There were no clouds in the sky. Suddenly feeling inspired, Chihiro tried to find some of the constellations Rin had shown her while they would sit together on the balcony after work hours, before the sun came up. It seemed like an impossible task with so many more stars than she was used to in the sky, so she looked back down to where the river bed should have been, disappointed.

A seemingly endless stretch of water had taken its place.

"Night…right, okay," she mumbled. 'I guess I'll have to wait 'til morning, then.'

The field surrounding her looked slightly different than how she remembered it. There were many more shrines and small huts than there had been last time, spaced out amongst the tall grasses. Opposite the river, she could see neon lights and buildings towering from the horizon.

'The town across the river…'

Chihiro had sometimes wondered what was in that town during her stay in the Aburaya. Did Gods live there? Maybe it was another marketplace like the one outside the bathhouse, or maybe something completely different, something she couldn't even imagine.

She looked back in the direction of the Aburaya, feeling more at ease with the situation than she thought could have been possible. Maybe she was in some kind of shock, or in such a state of desperate lack of sleep that she couldn't think straight, she guessed. Whatever it was, she was content. Always feeling anxious and tired had settled down to being normal for her in the human world. It was just how things were. Now suddenly, she felt awake. Colors seemed brighter here, and along with her sight, all of her other senses were heightened.

Still looking around in wonderment, Chihiro's eyes locked onto a humanoid figure that was crouching in the grass nearby. She stiffened, slightly fearful, though the feeling was much less than what she had been feeling earlier that day. She knew how dangerous the spirit world was, but she couldn't bring herself to be too wary of it, now that she was there.

The crouching figure was child-sized, and as she looked closer, she saw that it was a girl. Chihiro stared for a moment, transfixed, before realizing with a jolt that the little girl was looking at her. Her emotions seemed to be flip-flopping all over the place today.

"Umm…" she started, slightly unnerved that she was not alone. The little girl stood, rising to about two heads shorter than Chihiro. She was wearing the orange female uniform of the Aburaya, and her light brown hair was cropped close to her ears. They stood staring at each other for a moment, before the girl spoke.

"You're human." The small girl seemed frightened by the fact and backed up a step, her innocent-looking eyes wide. She glanced down to the small shrine she had been kneeling before quickly, as if worried for its safety, then back up to a very confused Chihiro.

"Don't be scared…I'm not going to hurt you or anything. I just got here, I came through the tunnel."

She gave a placating gesture and pointed to the tower as she said this, hoping the little girl wouldn't run off. 'What a nice way to return, scaring the wits out of some poor little spirit,' she thought sardonically. 'This day is just getting better and better.'

"You work at the Aburaya, don't you?" Chihiro signaled to the smaller girl's attire.

The girl nodded. 'I wonder why she's not at the bathhouse right now... Its night time, they should be working up a storm with Yu-baaba ordering them around.'

As they stood there, a small, circular, white object began to materialize on the spirit's shoulder. Chihiro watched it warily, knowing how spirits would conjure up strange things sometimes. In only three seconds or less, the white object took shape, forming a head with large black eyes, and a small, rounded body. It gave a sort of rattle suddenly, its head shaking from side to side like one of those little bobble toys that people put on the dashboard of their cars. She remembered the plastic baseball player with the oversized head her father kept on the dashboard of the car, and shook the thought from her head. More little white mononoke were appearing by the second.

"You're not supposed to be here" the girl whispered, clutching at the waist high structure she had been paying tribute to, standing with it between them as if it would offer her some type of protection. Chihiro wondered what the girl had to be afraid of; here she was, a completely helpless human against some possibly magic wielding spirit.

"I know. But I can't go back. I really, really don't want to go back, I'm sorry. The water will go down in the morning, right?" She had no qualms about waiting it out. She had waited almost six years for this; she could wait a few more hours. Maybe then she wouldn't be in such a bad state.

"It starts to drain into the rocks an hour before dawn." The pale little beings the girl had conjured nodded to what she said, making little clicking and rattling noises as they moved. Chihiro tried to ignore them for now, their strange little faces creeping her out slightly.

She tried to gauge the amount of time she would have to wait until morning, silently wishing for a watch. She didn't even want to think about how that much water could be absorbed into rocks. 'Another one of those weird magic things…'

Her head was still hurting, feeling hot in the places where she had been hit that day. Chihiro ran her fingers through her hair, and stared at her feet.

"Ano…are you sure you are human?" the small spirit asked, now more bold than before. Her large brown eyes were filled with confusion.

Chihiro looked up at the girl quickly. "Of course I am."

"They said you would smell real bad. You don't."

Chihiro decided to take that as a compliment, though a strange one, and kept quiet. She sat down slowly, resting her back against the reddish wall of the tower, and looked back over towards the river. She could see the ferry halfway across the black waters, twinkling happily with yellow lights and red lanterns. By now, Chihiro's cheek was really starting to ache. She reached her hand up to her face to see how bad the damage was, and then decided against it, letting it fall down to her knee to pick whatever couch fibers that were still stuck in it out. She didn't want to let it get infected, though it might be a little late, she observed, from the red tinge of her skin spreading out to an inch and a half away from the scraped area.

"I don't suppose there's another way to get over the river besides the ferry?" The girl shook her head, and went back to staring at Chihiro with an odd look on her face. Other than that, she didn't move for a few minutes. Chihiro found that a little awkward, and tried to spark up a conversation while waiting for morning.

"So, what's your name?"

"…Sai."

A lame attempt. Still, she tried again, not wanting to have to sit in silence until the sun came up and the waters were sucked up into the rocks (or whatever Sai had said they would do). She had never actually seen the waters disappear, assuming that they just evaporated or something, rather than being sucked up into the ground.

"Do you know," she swallowed in between words, hesitant to finish the question she had started. She couldn't ask about Haku, it was too uncertain, too personal. So, she turned towards the skies again, looking for those constellations.

"Do you know if there is a spirit working at the bathhouse by the name of Rin, still? She's sort of tall, and she's got long straight brown hair… kind of bossy personality?"

Sai nodded once, before coming to sit next to Chihiro, her knees pulled up against her chest. "She's still there. I know her."

Chihiro sighed in relief, wondering whether she should be disappointed or elated. Rin had always said she would get her name back and leave the Aburaya someday, but five years later she was still stuck in the bathhouse. It was a lonesome thing to lose your name, and Chihiro knew it firsthand. If not for Haku, she would have gone on believing she was Sen and forgotten who Chihiro ever was.

Haku…She wanted to know so badly how he was, where he was, but couldn't ask. She was far too afraid of the answer, afraid that Haku had moved on and gone somewhere else. Anyway, who was she to impose on him? He was a great and powerful river god, and now that he had his name back, he had control of himself again. He wouldn't need her. She was human.

While Chihiro was going over this in her mind, Sai turned to one of the little white mononoke on her shoulder, and whispered to it behind her hand. It disappeared with a small pop, which went unnoticed.

"So how much longer you think we've got?"

Sai straightened up a little to squint off into the horizon, then sat back. "A little more than five hours."

"Ah." The conversation died out there (not to say that it had been a lively one). Chihiro relaxed, letting her head fall to one side, and drifted off to sleep.

… … … …

A/N - Aha! I've finally got this one out! I would have had it out a week and a half agoif I actually had a computer at my disposal. : (

Sorry for the wait, & reviews make me insanely happy. You don't even know…So, review! XD

AngelLilly67 –Her father isn't particularly abusive, though he does have a bad temper in my story. Things went downhill in her family after they returned from the spirit realm, but her father had never hit her until that point. You'll get to find out about Haku in the next chapter, I promise! (Though I'm not even sure myself, I'm just writing this on the spot / )

Thank you so much for editing, Janelle!