Haku's P.O.V.

Chihiro is beautiful, I'm the first person to admit it. Mornings, however…do not seem to be the easiest time of day for her. Every day at 6 am, she gets up and stumbles like a drunkard towards her shower, and then to her bureau to buff her face with powder that seemingly has no use. Today was like every other, save the fact that she bothered to apply black paste to her eyelashes. I didn't understand her sudden vanity, but she looked stunning, even standing there in her towel, half-awake and unaware of my eyes raking over her body.

Ridiculously enough, jealousy stirred inside of me.

Who was she putting on makeup for? There had better not be someone courting her. She checked her appearance in the mirror, and turned to pick out her clothes, grumbling to herself about some person named Kathy's tendencies to pick early-morning appointments.

She turned her back to the window and slipped off her towel, exposing her bare back. I felt something stirring inside me, but this time it was not jealousy. This older human body was strange, and reacted to the mere idea of Chihiro's nudity in a way that made me ashamed of myself.

It had startled me at first, until I realized what was happening. Then I avoided it as much as possible by thinking about idle, random things, like kittens. Kittens, kittens, kittens. Oh how I loved those…smooth….white…round…kittens? Shit.

"Damned hormones, making me think the unsavory thoughts of a perverted, disgusting teenager. I'm supposed to be PROTECTING her, not watching her like some creepy peeping Tom."

Nonetheless, I was overwhelmed with an urge to catapult myself through her window and hump her leg like some dog in heat. Her naked, clean-shaven, fresh out of the showe-I smacked myself. No, Haku. She doesn't even know you're alive.

I waited a few more minutes, counting the leaves on the other side of the tree, until I assumed it safe to turn around. Couldn't have any of that sort of mistake today, oh no.

I immediately noticed that she was wearing green again, for the third day in a row.

A hooded sweatshirt this time, not a sweater, and instead of the earthen green she usually favored, it was the color of some repulsive citrus fruit whose name I couldn't recall. It made me grin, though, to know that she wore green to feel safe. I had read it in one of the numerous journal entries she had tossed out the window to hide from her nosy, overbearing bitch of a mother.

This was odd, nonetheless; she usually favored a color pattern of red shirts on Mondays, black on Tuesdays, blue on Wednesdays, yellow or orange on Thursdays, and purple of Friday, and had never before worn green for three consecutive days.

Hell, she usually only wore it once a month.

I know, it makes me sound creepy and stalkerish. But it came naturally for me, picking up on such patterns as I witnessed her daily life, and this pattern had come as a relief for me. For the longest time she had favored darker colors, almost as if she were attending a funeral each day of the week.

And by watching her so often, I began to realize that Chihiro had two faces; the cheerier, false one that she put on for the public, and the distorted, bitter one that she reserved for her eyes only. The real one, the one that I had created in her.

I dangled my foot and couldn't help but blushing a bit to myself, ashamed.

I would reveal myself that night. I couldn't stand this lunacy any longer. Screw waiting until her seventeenth birthday.

The hours went by slowly, and as Chihiro left for therapy and school, I decided that I needed something to do, something to distract myself with. Walking around the town had become annoying and tiring, and people had begun to talk to me and ask questions. I needed something quick and easy, but still time-consuming. My stomach growled plaintively.

That would work.

My hunger, though a simple motivation, was strong enough for me to notice. It was one of the things I hated the very most about this form; my body wanted food much more than was normal. Over time I had trained myself to ignore all but the most desperate of hunger pangs, and this had made things a bit easier. Nonetheless, I could tell that this one was worth satisfying.

I stumbled down the dirt road towards town. The serenity of the countryside was something I would never get enough of; the hustle and bustle of the town, with its many shops and electronics, its kitschy tourist attractions…it could never compare to the clear blue sky and the green grass growing around me.

This, for some reason, always made me think of Chihiro. Though simpler, her beauty surpassed anything I'd ever seen; the women with their painted faces, like porcelain dolls, the buxom girls walking down the street in their tightly fitting, too-small clothing…it was natural and real.

Surveying my surroundings, I concluded that I had better pick up the pace; I wasn't even halfway to town.

The day went by fairly quickly after I got some food and returned to my tree. I had stocked up on enough canned food alone to last me a month, not to mention all of the fruit. I hadn't even thought about how I was going to store it all, and this taunted me until I found a large hole in the upper part of the tree's trunk. Perhaps not so good for the tree, I thought, but good enough for me.

And so there I sat, dozing and pondering, until nightfall came.

Then, at last, I heard Chihiro's rusty, metal Godzilla pull into the driveway (I had been fairly certain that it was called a car, until I heard her talking to her friend Mei about it). She seemed sad about something, and she slammed her bedroom door on the way in, locking it, and later unlocking it.

She sat down on her bed, opening a notebook.

Oh, she was going to write. I had never much cared for reading, but Chihiro's notes were a whole different animal. The raw emotion captured in them made my very core ache.

How could I have caused this?

My mind always started spinning when I thought about what role I had played in her life so far. I had caught her crying over the loss of my world so many times, and I wondered if I shouldn't just leave her alone after all I'd done. Time was something that didn't really factor into my life; I had lived in so many differing worlds that it all became muddled after awhile. Dreaming was something I scarcely did anymore; when I had first come to this world, my dreams had been uncontrollable and invaded my sleep every night. Now I could easily stifle them.

But sometimes, my most beloved memory from a dream unfolded as I sat in my makeshift home, bursting into my reality. Reliving it made my waiting a little more bearable.

It was summer, and the warm breeze disturbed the leaves

Chihiro's window was open, and music was drifting freely from it. A song that I had heard in the town, perhaps. It was strange and familiar all at once. What it was saying seemed to speak to me more than anything. I hummed along and listened harder, closing my eyes.

So you stole my world
Send it in a letter

Now I'm just a phony

Remembering the girl

Leaves me down and lonely

Make yourself feel better

But it's not so bad

You're only the best I ever ha-

The music stopped abruptly. Upon opening my eyes, I found that two dark blue ones were staring back at me giddily.

I gasped aloud and fell, with a loud thunk, out of my tree.

Sitting up, I rubbed my sore back and shot a scorching look at the cause of this most painful accident. My heart swelled.

Chihiro just giggled.

"Haku, I knew you would come back!,"

She swung down easily from her window, landing beside me on the ground, reaching over to wrap her arms around me and cover my face with kisses. Her hands roamed my back and neck, almost as if she was checking to make sure I was completely, really there. I rolled her over so that she was under me, pinned to the ground, and then began to-

SHIT, what was that screaming? My reverie was ended as easily as it had begun. Chihiro? Something's wrong.

I landed with a muffled thump on the lawn, immediately looking up into Chihiro's room. Just minutes ago, she had been writing in her therapy journal. But something had changed-the air had become thick with anticipation; I could sense Chihiro's anxiety, feel it in my bones.

Something was there, something not-human. It was something that I couldn't quite name, something that I knew, but at the same time couldn't quite grasp. Like smoke or steam, it eluded me as I crept closer toward Chihiro's seemingly open window.

A dark figure leaned over her, almost caressing her cheek, whispering to her. The change in Chihiro's emotions were almost palpable. Bipolar; complete terror and revulsion to radiant joy.

But that wasn't all; there was a connection between the two, something that I envied very much, not unlike the connection I once shared with her. I had only seen it once before, in an old couple walking down the street together.

The couple, arm in arm, had come to a crosswalk.

The elderly woman's vision clearly lacked clarity, and her wrinkled face contorted and scrunched with the effort of reading a sign to her right, and refused herself any help from her partner. She obviously struggled, and the task was laborious to her. After a few minutes, the man with her whispered something in her ear and she laughed as buoyantly as anyone half her age. They were quite clearly bonded by a love that surpassed any understanding of mine. It left ripples in the air surrounding them, as if their happiness was too large to be contained by two bodies alone.

Tensing my arms, I readied myself for the leap that would, if my aim was correct, put me right between Chihiro and the looming beast pressing into her trembling, delicate body. My heart raced as I felt the blackness consume her. Silent tremors rocked through me as I fought the urge to scream. I couldn't stand it, I couldn't bear to watch this, this thing pass its shadowy hands over her, cupping her face as if it were her greatest lover or dearest friend. I turned my head, hoping I could control myself until the moment safest for both Chihiro and myself.

What happened next was the final straw to break the camel's back.

Chihiro's doll-like face went slack, her limbs limp, as the shadow-apparently satisfied in some way-receded into the night. I leapt toward the window, barely catching the ledge with my feet. It shattered loudly, and I knew I had only a few seconds until her parents came up.

Chihiro was pale, paler than usual, and her breathing was shallow. She thrashed and convulsed on the bed, but something told me that this would pass. After swiftly repairing the broken window, I bent down to softly kiss her forehead before I left.