"Hello, earth to Sen!"

Sen quickly snapped out of her daydream about the river as she felt her friend shaking her shoulder, "Huh? What?"

The short, bubbly girl in front of her bounced up and down with excitement, "Didn't you hear what the professor said? Exams are postponed a whole week!"

"That's great! I could really use the extra time," relief flooded Sen's whole body. With all the strange river dreams she'd been having, she was almost always too exhausted to study. Not that she really minded all that much, considering how much she hated her major.

"Do you maybe want to go out tonight? There's a new bar down the street from my apartment that everyone's talking about."

Sen hesitated, feeling something nagging at the back of her mind. Immediately feeling silly for thinking such a thing, she shook it off as lack of sleep. Still, she couldn't bring herself to go out with her friend, "No, I don't think so Aya. I really should make an effort to get caught up on my homework tonight."

Aya frowned, tousling her short black hair in what Sen recognized as annoyance, "You never want to go out. It's like you're not interested in having a social life or something."

Sen said nothing because it was true; she had no desire to have a social life with anyone she knew. Ever since she was 10 year old, she had much desired the company of books or just herself as opposed to that of other people. It was strange because she had not always been that way. Before she was 10, Sen enjoyed having a lot of friends and being social with the other children. But after her 10th birthday, her father's company promoted him and gave him a pay raise, which naturally meant that her family would be moving to a nicer home closer to his job. The actual move was just a big blank memory for her; she could not remember a single thing even though she remembered events before it. Her parents chalked her amnesia up to being stressed and unhappy about the move, but Sen always felt like there was something more buried in the depths of her mind. As if her lack of memories were not weird enough, Sen had awoken the day after her family moved with the purple hair-band she now held so dear in her hair with no memory of where she got it.

Not only did she wake up with a new, unbreakable hair-band, but suddenly her name didn't seem to fit her anymore, either.

Bzzzzzz. Bzzzzzz. Bzzzzzz.

"Sorry Aya, that's my phone buzzing," Sen reached into her bag for her phone and saw that it was her parents calling. "I gotta take this. I'll see you on Monday."

Aya was still clearly disappointed but she simply waved and left.

"Hey dad," she answered the phone. "You have good timing, I'm just leaving class."

"And how was class today, Chihiro?" Her father replied, undoubtedly smiling as he always was.

"Ugh, dad please don't call me that. You know I don't like it."

She could hear him sigh on the other end, "Sorry, sorry. How was class today, Sen?"

"Oh, it was fine," she said. "Same old, same old. Math doesn't really change that much."

He chuckled, "No I suppose it doesn't. Oh, your mother says hello. She's making dinner."

"Be sure to tell her I love her."

"I will."

There was a long moment of awkwardness, but it was normal for them now. That was another new development since her family moved when she was 10; she no longer felt like she connected with them on any level. Quite frankly, she didn't feel like she connected with anyone.

"Hey dad, I have a quick question before I have to go. It's just something I've been wondering," she was pulling out her car keys now and she didn't like to talk on her phone while driving.

"Sure, Chihi—I mean, Sen. What is it?"

She paused for a brief moment, "Did anything ever happen to me when I was little… with water?"

"What do you mean?"

Sen bit her lip in embarrassment, realizing how silly this all must sound to someone else, "I've just been having a lot of dreams lately about water. A river, I think. It's nothing bad or scary… I actually seem to enjoy being there. I was just wondering about my experiences with water when I was little because you know I don't really like water now except for this dream."

Now her father was the one to pause, "I think I remember we took a trip to a river and you fell in. About gave your mother and I a heart attack! We couldn't find you for what seemed like forever but then we turned around and you were just sitting on the bank of the river, soaked to the bone. You weren't upset or scared though, you were smiling. You said the river helped you come back," he chuckled for a moment. "Oh, to have the imagination of a child again."

Once again, something was tugging at the edges of her mind. Why couldn't she remember this? And if she had been happy even after falling in the river, why did she dislike water now? "Do you remember the name of the river, dad? I think I want to go see it."

"Hmmm… I know it started with a K. It was something like Kamako, or Kohama… Ah, let me ask your mother."

There was a brief moment of muttering in the background before she heard her mother come on the line, "Hi, sweetheart. You know, that river we went to is covered by apartments now about an hour from your apartment. Are you sure you want to drive that far? I'm not even sure there is any water left there."

Sen thought for a moment, tugging her ponytail anxiously. Something was compelling her to know more about this river, and if her experience as a kid with this river made her hate water yet yearn for it at the same time, she wanted to know why. "Yeah mom, I think I want to just go there. Even if the river isn't there anymore, I think it would help me get over this weird aversion I have to water. Do you know the name of it?"

She could hear her mother flipping through something quickly, "Ah, here we go. I found a picture of you from that trip. Let's see here… oh, that's right! It was called the Kohaku river."

At that very moment, Sen's whole body went rigid and she heard the voice of the river from her dream whisper in her ear:

"I've missed you."