CHAPTER V

-the way back-

Chihiro descended the stairway hastily, almost running. She found herself in the streets again, making way through crowds of people as she took the way home. She didn't pay much attention...her mind was too busy to do so. She thought of Kohaku alone in his room. A rare smile formed on her lips. She knew there was something there, in the depths of her mind. A memory, perhaps? Something yelled in her head that she knew the way to find out.

Upon reaching home she immediately rushed to her room, on the second floor. She knew what to look for. There was a scene playing over and over on the back of her eyes; her mother was cleaning up the room, throwing away useless things. What Chihiro clearly remembered was the terror she felt as soon as she saw a box inside the garbage bag. A normal, brown paper box. The box she never let her mother throw away, even if the latter insisted that it was junk.

That box...However, the last time she had seen it was years ago. She frantically started searching the room, under every surface and inside every space. She emptied out all the drawers and cabinets but it was nowhere to be found. She looked around all the mess and sighed in dismay. It was a cool night but she felt as if hot, iron hands were curling around her neck. She sat next to the window and tried to think...It can't be, the box should have been around there...But why did she want to find it so badly, in the first place?

She went downstairs and sat on one of the chairs in the kitchen.

"Mom..."

"Yes?" she answered, while washing some dishes in the sink.

"Do you remember when we moved here, six years ago?" muttered Chihiro.

"Of course, why would I forget?"

"Well...did anything, uh, strange happen then?"

"Um...now that you mention it, not really...Oh, when we reached the house, the moving van wasn't here. And then they said that we hadn't contacted them for weeks, but I say that they were just stupid. We called them right when we got into town..."

We had been missing for weeks...

Chihiro traced back on that day, when after hours of driving they had finally gotten close to the town. She could clearly remember her dismay for moving away. She recalled taking another route at some point...a red tunnel? Some images popped out of nowhere. There was a wide meadow covered with smooth, green grass as far as you could some points the scenery was interrupted by old, semi run-down buildings or rocks. Chihiro was certain that she had seen those images with her own eyes. And then, something else clicked in her mind...

She went up the stairs leading to the attic. There was no electricity in there, so she had to bring some candles. In time, they had changed that space into a storeroom. Old unwanted things were piled up everywhere, nobody had bothered to throw them away. Chihiro started looking around for the box, but eventually she had to push away other objects. After half an hour of looking, she finally got her hands on a dusty rectangular box, hidden behind an old electrical heater. She pulled the box to the centre of the room.

Panting, a victorious grin lit her face. She wiped the dust off the surface and opened the upper part of the paper box. She couldn't see well in the dim light, but there weren't many objects inside. She took out a pair of yellow small shoes, some broken toys and a shirt. She felt the bottom of the box for any small objects she might have missed. When she touched something, she lifted it up to examine it under the light of the candles.

It was something that seemed to be a hair tie, made by purple shimmering thread. It felt like silk on the touch. She wondered where she had gotten it. But somehow, she already knew the answer. The thread was weaved by three good friends. The hair band was made by a witch, whose name was Zeniba. Chihiro could clearly bring Zeniba's figure in her mind. And then, she knelt down as her memories had started to rush in...

So this is it. The purple hair band is the connection.

Chihiro felt a small pinch in the chest as she realized the reason behind the emptiness she had been experiencing. That gap between her childish and adolescence years had started getting full with all those things that were missing. The Bath House, the Spirits, the Gods and...Haku. Finally, she recalled the name of the person she had tried to reach on that autumn day.

My writing is getting worse and worse...Ugh, I'm almost done with that nightmare of a school year and I have a summer before the real deal. Depressing.