A Second Glance
-Getting there-
… … … …
A medium sized bird flapped its black wings against the light sea breeze blowing in over the waters, being careful to not fly too low in the sky. The magical river separating the Aburaya from the spirit town on the other side was not as wide if you traveled at least sixty feet above the water, and it did not want its trip to suddenly become much longer than it should be. The spell that made the rocky riverbed into a smooth black river every night had been created by the bird's mistress in order to create another way to bring in money. Ferrying the gods across such a stretch of water did pull in a considerable amount of gold, but it made travel harder if you were go any of other way than the sky. Luckily, Yu-baaba had her ways, and shared her secret of transportation with the yuu-bird, not wanting to waste time on missions in that direction.
Now the chimerical creature, a collaboration of a bird's body and an old woman's head, was heading to check on a border breach. In less than five minutes, it was on the other side and quickly nearing the red tower that served as a border between the human and spirit worlds. It swooped over the large building, saw what it needed, and began its return.
… … … …
Yu-baaba was in a foul mood, and when she was in a foul mood, she made it known. She stomped through the halls of the bathhouse indignantly, checking with a few of the foremen and the head of the cooks on her way towards that cursed dragon's office.
Business was good that day, it seemed. It was already two hours past midnight, and yet customers were still pouring in the doors. Money changed hands rapidly, its destination a massive vault in the upper parts of the Aburaya, where Yu-baaba herself could keep a close eye on it. But, even the tantalizing idea of how much extra gold she was making could not pull her out of the depths of her mood. She was incensed.
"That damn dragon…" she muttered. One of her eyes twitched slightly as she continued her march towards her former apprentice's office. She lit a cigarette to calm herself, not even bothering with one of her usually ornate filters.
"Setting up contracts for part time jobs behind my back…part time! That was never in HIS contract! Why, he shouldn't even be giving out fulltime jobs without my permission…"
She blew a stream of smoke out her nose and paused her quiet rant to tuck a piece of hair back into her gray bun. Standing in the middle of the hall with her fiery eyes, unkempt hair, and smoke wafting from out her nose, she was a vision of rage. Suddenly, her eyes shot towards one of the upper windows of the long hall. The yuu-bird was back from his mission.
It drifted down from the window with more grace than its looks permitted and lighted on Yu-baaba's outstretched arm. She peered into the yuu-birds eyes, and it into hers.
Her deeply etched frown slacked, as she processed what her minion had seen. A smile grew in its place, widening by the second. Yes, she would extract her revenge. She knew just how…
With that thought in mind, she changed directions to head back to her own office. Today could turn out to be a very good day if she played her cards right.
… … … …
"Sen, wake up! C'mon Sen!"
Someone was shaking Chihiro by the shoulders gently, urging her to get up. She groaned and pushed the offending hands away, not ready to move yet. It was summer vacation now; she shouldn't have to get up early anymore. A light breeze tickled over her bare legs, pushing her skirt up a little higher and bringing in a draft. Chihiro tucked her limbs in closer for warmth and reached over for her blanket, mumbling something incoherent and feeling terribly sore. Instead of finding cloth, though, her hand hit dirt. Dirt? Wait…
Sen?
Chihiro blinked her eyes open and pushed herself up against the wall, having fallen over sometime while she was asleep. Instead of seeing the spirit plains and scattered huts, her vision was obscured by a pale, yet elegant face, which at the moment was looking extremely concerned.
She had missed this face so badly when she went back to the human world. It was like losing a sister.
"Rin?" she asked quietly. Chihiro went to wipe away the pebbles that had stuck her face while she had slept on the ground, only to have her wrist caught gently and brought back to her side.
"Oh, Sen…What happened to your face?" Rin's eyes misted over, only to revert to their usual determined gleam a moment later. She backed up a little, still crouching, to let Chihiro sit up all the way. From her sleeve, she pulled out a plain white handkerchief. Chihiro eyed it warily as Rin suddenly took on a motherly air.
"Here, lemme see." She went to wipe the dirt from Chihiro's face, only to be pushed away.
"No, Rin. I'm fine, really." It was hard seeing Rin again so suddenly. Just earlier that day, she had been sitting in a classroom, never thinking she would be back in the kami no sekai that same night, if ever at all. Despite the amount of time from when she first saw the statue in front of the entrance to being woken by Rin a few hours before dawn, she still doubted that could be real, that she could be back. She was more than a little shocked by the day's events.
Rin persisted with the cloth, seeing how distraught Chihiro was. "Don't worry, it's clean, I promise. Watch this." She held the kerchief in front of herself, seeming to be concentrating on it very hard. Chihiro looked on, confused, until water started dripping from it in streams.
"Neat, huh?" Rin rung the excess water off the cloth and talked in a comforting voice as she wiped the dirt from Chihiro's cheek.
"You know, I haven't used any magic in years. Decades even. Yu-baaba's got a spell on the Aburaya and its grounds so none of her workers can use magic there, expect for some of the important ones. It's in the contract, too. Actually, I guess I haven't been off the grounds in years either. Probably…since the last matsuri. How 'bout that."
Chihiro sat quietly and looked at the ground while Rin talked, still taking things in. Rin was here. Everything was okay now. Everything would be alright. In spite of that, she was having trouble breathing. She drew in a deep lungful of air and held it, feeling as if her chest was going to explode. Her eyes welled up, and this time she didn't even bother to try and stop them. She threw her arms around Rin just as she burst into tears.
"Oh Rin!" she sobbed into her shoulder, "I missed you so much!"
Rin patted her back, looking uncomfortable. "It's okay, Sen."
They sat like that for a few minutes, Chihiro feeling overwhelmingly relieved to the point of crying, and Rin consoling her. Rin pulled back and sat on her haunches when Chihiro finished.
"You gonna be okay now?" Chihiro nodded, rubbing her good eye. "I won't ask you what happened, but that sure is a whopper of a bruise you got there, kid. I can get something from Kamaji to put on it when we get back, but…" She glanced down to Chihiro's attire, a fleeting look passing over her face as she saw how her skirt had ridden up.
"What?"
"We've gotta get you something else to wear before we get there. Wouldn't want the Yunas to make a scene." She shook her head, looking disappointed. "Really, Sen. That's not what I expected of you."
"What's wrong with my clothes?" Chihiro questioned, feeling genuinely concerned.
"What do you mean, what's wrong? You're barely decent! That skirt is way to short for anyone to be wearing, and here you come waltzing in right in the middle of the night with—"
Chihiro readied herself to interrupt, prepared to defend her school uniform. She kind of liked the sailor style. Instead, a hand came down on Rin's shoulder, silencing her before Chihiro had to say anything. She hadn't noticed up until then, but there was a third person standing out there in the darkness with them. A cloud passed over the moon at that moment, making it hard to Chihiro to see.
"Rin. It will be dawn in less than two hours." A soft voice informed them. The cloud passed, and Chihiro saw that it was Sai. She thought she had left earlier when she fell asleep.
"Ah, thanks." Rin stood quickly, pulling Chihiro up with her by the hand. She glanced down, reassessing Chihiro's skirt now that she was standing.
"Hmph. I guess it's not that bad. We can probably get you on the ferry like that." Despite what she said, she still looked considerably unhappy with Chihiro's attire.
"We're taking the ferry?"
"Of course! How else do you think we would get there before morning?"
Chihiro shrugged and looked out over the river, trying to find the ferry on the vast expanse of water. The prospect of riding the ferry seemed a little frightening to her, it being completely filled with important gods on their way to the bathhouse. Would they allow a human to ride with them? Probably, from how Rin was talking about things, but that didn't mean they would like her.
She looked at Sai from the corner of her eye, trying to figure out the small spirit. She was standing with her weight resting on one leg, stroking the mononoke on her shoulder absently. As Chihiro watched, the tiny white spirit climbed awkwardly up Sai's hair to sit splay legged on the top of her head.
"Oi, Sen. Stop staring." Rin nudged her in the side with her elbow and started walking towards the water. "You should be thanking Sai. She sat with you the whole time while you were asleep, right up until I got here. You never know what kinds of things are prowling around in the middle of the night."
Sai looked over towards Chihiro and quickly turned away, her face red. Having much shorter legs than Rin, she had to jog to catch up with her. Chihiro walked behind the two spirits at her own pace, still tired from the whole ordeal. As soon as they reached the shore, Rin flopped down onto the sand into a cross-legged position. They were still a ways away from the docks, where a number of gods were disembarking a large double-decker bus which promptly disappeared after the last one got off. Chihiro crouched, not feeling like getting sand all over herself.
"So how did you get here?" Chihiro inquired, not understanding how Sai had contacted Rin. She was just barely back here and already getting confused by the kami no sekai.
Amused, Rin crossed her arms and smirked, happy to explain something Chihiro didn't know.
"Easy. Sai sent one of her little wood sprites. Pretty handy for things like that, aren't they? They can just pop up wherever they please, as long as it's not too far."
Chihiro nodded, feeling a little less uneasy about the quiet girl. Really, she was quite cute with that serious look all the time, and, she had helped Chihiro. Nothing scary there.
The three of them sat in each others company for a while, waiting for the ferry. Light from the distant Aburaya reflected off the water, giving it an eerily festive look. Rin hunched up and rested her chin on her hand, scowling to herself. A wave washed up the shore, making it seem more like an ocean than a river. Chihiro wondered where all the sand came from if it had been a field there earlier that day.
"I'm sure there something I've forgotten…" Rin peered into the dark waters, seeming to see something that Chihiro couldn't.
"The ferry's almost there…but..." Her scowl deepened as she strained her mind to remember. After almost a minute of this, Rin suddenly snapped her head towards Chihiro. Her mouth dropping open slightly and her eyes grew fearfully wide. She burst from her sitting position to stand on her knees, frantically tearing something from her pocket and pushing it towards Chihiro's mouth.
"AH Sen, I remember, quick! C'mon, eat this before you disappear!" Chihiro leaned away from Rin in her outburst, putting her arms up between them. She looked at her hands fearfully while she deflected Rin's attempts to force feed her, worried that she actually was disappearing. They looked solid.
"Calm down! I'm not disappearing, I swear."
"…have you eaten something yet?"
"No."
"Then you're going to disappear!"
"I am not! Look at me." Reason had no effect on Rin, or even the sight of Chihiro's completely solid hands thrust in front of her.
"Yes, you are! C'mon, just take it" Rin whined, giving Chihiro a pitiful look, exaggerated in the feeble light. She held out one of the confetti candies that were usually fed to the susuwatari. It looked lonely all by itself in the center of her palm, barely casting a shadow on her hand. Chihiro looked out across the water and then back over the plains. She felt small in such a vast expanse. She missed the susuwatari and the boiler man Kamaji that ordered them around. She missed Zeniba, Kaonaji, Bou, even Yu-baaba.
She missed Haku so much that her heart could have torn in half, but she could never tell him that, even if he was still there.
She wanted to see him again.
It couldn't hurt to eat it even if she wasn't disappearing, Chihiro reasoned, and it would make Rin feel better. She took the spiky white candy, realizing how hungry she really was.
It was sweet. It reminded her of the little jawbreaker candies she would buy from a corner store from time to time, though it had a kind of spark to it, as if it were electrified.
"Does that really happen?" Sai looked to Rin for an answer.
"What happens?"
"Humans." She gave Chihiro another one of her strange glances. "They disappear when they come here."
"Yeah. I've never seen it happen before, though." Rin sat back onto the sand and sighed. "We've got another five minutes for the ferry."
A wave washed up particularly closer than the others before it, almost skimming Chihiro's feet.
"It's…it's not like we just suddenly pop out of existence." Chihiro spoke softly. "You kind of fade out. The first time I came here, I almost vanished completely."
Sai nodded. Neither of them said anything else until the ferry came.
It appeared in the same fashion that the bus had left in, with a tiny flash and a purplish fog that dissipated quickly into the cool night air. Rin stood and motioned for the other two to do the same, while brushing the sand off of herself in a few quick swipes. They began walking to the dock where the gods were waiting. A worker from the Aburaya stood with them, impatiently tapping his foot.
"Aw shit. Sen…ah…Chihiro?" Rin whispered to her.
It startled Chihiro to hear Rin use her real name. They stopped about thirty feet from the dock, Rin glancing around nervously from the bathhouse worker to the glowing ferry. The lantern's light from the bus stop did not reach them, leaving the three unseen by anyone else.
"I need you to do something for me, okay? I'm not really on good terms with the guy on duty right now and he probably won't let you get on, so…alright. Can you pretend to be unconscious for me?" Rin looked over to the group of gods and frowned. There were only a few left, while the rest had already gotten on the boat.
"I don't want him asking any weird questions or anything. It'll be fine when we get to the bathhouse, don't worry. I just need you to do this for now."
"I can do it." Chihiro was quickly regaining the resolve she had during her first stay in the spirit world. She determined to make it in the ethereal plane if she couldn't in the human world.
'The human world. That all it is to me now, isn't it? That's all it's been since I moved. There's nothing even there for me…except Eri and my parents, and they – '
She shook her head from the thoughts of her parents. That wasn't going to get her anywhere.
"What do I do?"
"Alright kid. Stay put for a sec." Rin leaned down and picked Chihiro up, draping her over her shoulder like a rag doll. Sai backed up a little when Chihiro yelped in protest; Rin's arm was wrapped around her legs in order to keep her in place and had pressed against her raw knee. Chihiro felt bad for scaring the little spirit so much, but maybe it was just in her nature to be so skittish. She shifted a little to try and make Rin's shoulder press into her stomach less, ending up in a worse position.
"Don't move so much Sen, you're supposed to be knocked out."
Rin walked smoothly under Chihiro's weight. She was obviously a lot stronger than her looks permitted, but so were most spirits. Things like that still made Chihiro slightly uneasy inside, like giant talking babies and seeing things appear out of thin air. But, she felt more calm than ever, being there. She pinched her eyes shut and heard Rin call for the Aburaya worker to hold the gangplank for her. They sped up for a moment, and then our heroine felt herself come to a stop. She tried her absolute best to look unconscious, which wasn't hard to do, seeing how exhausted she was feeling.
"Whadda ya got there?" The frog seemed mildly irritated already. Sai stood behind Rin, not liking the looks of him.
"A human. Don't worry, I knocked it out already. It's not going to wake up for a good while. Lemme on, I've got stuff to do." Rin said briskly, trying to push her way past the bath worker while smoothing down Chihiro's skirt discreetly. She didn't want him to see anything he wasn't supposed to.
"What do you mean a human? That thing doesn't smell human at all. What are you hiding, Rin?"
"Nothing. And if you know what's good for you, you're not going to butt into Yu-baaba's business."
"Yu-baaba sent you for THAT? What for?" He started to inspect Chihiro, poking and prodding her all over, finally turning her face towards him for a better look. Chihiro resisted the incredible urge to jerk away with how he handled her bruised cheek.
"Stop that!" Rin turned to give him a swift kick in the side of the leg.
"Ow! C'mon Rin, you've got to have seen the face she's got on her! Disgusting, if you ask me."
"Oh just let us through. You're making the gods wait."
"Fine, whatever you want," He grumbled, and reopened the ferry gate for them. He moved to the front of the boat to start the engines and let Rin take Chihiro and Sai down to one of the lower rooms in the ferry. She closed the door behind her, making sure to lock it, and then set Chihiro down on her feet.
"And here we are, fully intact and on the ferry!" She let out a great sigh and sat down on a pile of canvas bags next to Sai. Chihiro stood still for a moment and rested her hand on the wall, trying to get her bearings.
"Why don't you take a nap until we get there, kid? You look a mess."
Chihiro nodded and sat next to her. She leaned her head on Rin's shoulder, and for the third time that night, fell asleep.
… … … …
A/N- I'm sooo sorry about the wait! For half the time, I didn't even have a working computer, so I guess it wasn't that bad. Still no Haku so far, but we have Rin and Yu-baaba! I'll get him in the next chapter, I promise!
Thank you to all of my reviewers! I wouldn't be writing without you.