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winterune · 4 years

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A Voice from the Past

A Spirited Away Fanfiction

Word count: 2497

Rating: T

Summary: It has been five years since Chihiro returned from Yubaba's bathhouse and she has been living a normal life without any memories of what had transpired there. But there is a voice somewhere in the back of her mind, telling her there is something more to the world. And on one afternoon as she is walking home from school, she hears it, a soft familiar whisper calling her name.

A/N: Forgot to post this here because I feel the ending is a bit rushed but well what the heck. Something I've always wanted to see: Chihiro reuniting with Haku later in the human world, though in the end, the story turned out to be a lot different from what I had in mind initially.

Also available on AO3.

~*~*~*~*~

I was told that I had gone missing when I was ten. It was right around when we first moved here. We hadn’t even reached our new home when my father took a wrong turn, and instead of turning back around, he had decided to see where the forest path would take him. Saying it might be a shortcut or something.

Truth be told, I don’t remember much about what happened. We saw a tunnel and went inside it. I can’t remember what we found there. Maybe it was a dead end. What I remember, though, is that when we finally got back, we found our car covered in leaves and twigs and a thick layer of dust—as if we had been gone for a lifetime. In fact, when we finally turned up at our new home, we found it eerily unoccupied with all the dust and cobwebs, our luggage and boxes lay untouched on one corner of the room. I still remember how our neighbor looked at us—her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open, as though she was seeing some ghost brought back to life. Because apparently, that’s what we were to the people around us: ghosts. Magically reappearing after having gone missing for over a year.

They said we were cursed. They said the house was cursed, urging us to move back to our previous home. One particularly superstitious aunt had wondered aloud once, “You weren’t spirited away, were you?”

Their theories were so ridiculous that we had to laugh at them.

It had been five years since then—or, well, six, if you count the missing one year from my life—and I was then a full-fledged high school girl. I was on my way home from school with my friend when I heard it—a soft whisper calling my name.

Chihiro.

I stopped, then turned to look but find nobody there.

“What’s wrong, Chihiro?” Yumi asked.

“Nothing,” I said, with a small shake of my head. “I thought I heard someone calling me.”

“Really?” Yumi scanned the crowd behind us. She was a good-natured girl, who would offer a helping hand every time she saw me in trouble. In fact, she was the first friend I made when I first moved here.

“I think it’s just my imagination,” I said, tugging at Yumi’s arm. “Let’s go.”

“You sure?” she asked.

I nodded, and though she still looked doubtful, Yumi didn’t press the subject.

Yumi had come to learn not to trust my “I’m fine” answers. I always wondered why, because I don’t think I was lying or hiding anything whenever I said it. Sometimes she even came off as over-protective, getting too worked up over little mishaps at school, a small scrap or wound, or even when I was being forgetful. Heck, she’d scold me for daydreaming!

I always felt like Yumi was afraid of something, but I never asked, and she never said anything.

***

After dinner, as I was doing homework quietly in my room, my eyes caught sight of a small blue box. It was the box where I kept my purple hairband. You’d think it was too fancy to keep a small, simple hairband in a decorated box such as that, but to me, that hairband was worth a million of the most expensive jewelry you could find. It was my lucky charm.

My fingers brushed the rim of the box, unclasping the bronze lock, opening the lid. The hairband lay there, glittering under the light. That was when I heard it again—a boyish voice, so soft that one could almost miss it. But my ears had caught it.

Chihiro.

I looked up, but the room was empty except for me. The door behind me was still closed. There was no sign of my parents walking down the hallway. I stood up and gingerly pulled the window curtain aside to peer outside. Nothing but the occasional streetlamps flickering in the dark. Not even a shadow of a person or a cat.

I shrugged it off, sitting back down and dismissing it as yet another trick my ear was playing me. I was getting tired. I should finish my homework quickly and go to bed.

But the voice came again, this time so close to my ear that I could almost feel its breath.

I jumped to my feet, head whipping around, a hand flying up to cover my ear. But there was nothing there and there was no one else in my room.

One word came to mind: youkai—ghosts, spirits, supernatural beings.

One could say that the topic of our spiriting away was like a semi-taboo in our household. It wasn’t something we actively avoid, but it was also something we would rather not talk about. Because it was a confusing event, in which we had gone missing for a year in the real world when in fact it had only felt like half an hour. My parents had laughed it off when the idea was first presented to us. But as I stood there in my room that night, trying to perceive what could not be seen, I had to wonder if maybe what they said had been true. For one thing, when my father had gone out in search for that break in the trees and the path in the forest, he could not find it, no matter how many times he had driven down that road between the two towns.

My heart was beating a mile a minute, but instead of fear, my initial surprise was fading into wonder and curiosity and…was that longing? A familiar yet painful tug in my heart, as though I had been waiting for this very meeting for years. Like a dream I had had many nights ago. A déjà vu.

But the feeling quickly subsided, and I couldn’t remember what the voice had sounded like, nor why it had felt familiar.

***

“Is that new?” Yumi asked me on our way home from school one day.

“What?”

Yumi nodded toward my purple hairband. “I don’t think I’ve seen it before.”

“Oh? This?” I said, carefully untying my hair from the band. I held it over to her. It caught the fading sunlight and it sparkled like millions of purple diamonds. I heard Yumi’s intake of breath.

“It’s so pretty,” she said breathlessly. I let the hairband fall onto her open palms and I could see her eyes visibly widen, sparkling with awe.

I smiled. It had been a spontaneous decision. I hadn’t worn it for so long, wanting to keep it safe and sound. For some reason, when I was getting ready for school that morning, my mind was immediately drawn toward the blue box and the purple hairband within.

“I don’t remember where I got it from,” I said as Yumi inspected it, holding it to the sunlight.

“Was it from before you moved here?”

I thought about it for a moment and realized that I had never wondered when the hairband came into my possession. I had always assumed that it was from before I moved there, but now that I thought about it, that didn’t sound right. I’d never worn this hairband before I moved, but I’d been wearing it when we got to our new home.

“I must have gotten it on our way here,” I mused out loud.

Yumi stiffened. She lowered her hands and quietly looked at me. “You found it when you were missing?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Someone gave it to me,” I corrected her, remembering the old cottage in the woods and the wrinkled hands holding the hairband to me. “They said it’d protect me…”

My voice faltered as I realized it was the first memory I remembered of the time I had gone missing. The memory was so vivid that I could almost smell the heavy incense cloaking the room. There was the hearth, and the spinning wheel, and the colorful little ornaments and trinkets covering every inch of the wooden table at the center. And I wasn’t alone—

“Chihiro.” Yumi’s voice was quiet, but it cut through my reverie as sharp as any knife. I looked at her, somewhat dazed, and found her clenching her fingers around the hairband. When she finally looked at me, her eyebrows were drawn, and her lips were pressed. As if she was in pain.

“Are you leaving?” she asked quietly.

I didn’t understand what she meant, but before I could say anything, there was a strong gust of wind that sent our hairs and clothes flapping. Yumi squealed, and in her bid to keep her skirt down, she accidentally let go of my hairband.

“Ah!” she yelped, realizing too late that the wind had picked my hairband up.

I acted on instinct. I didn’t know what was driving me, just that I knew I couldn’t lose it, no matter what. I’d dive in that river if it were to fall into the water.

I heard Yumi’s call behind me, but it was as though I was in a trance. Everything was pushed to the very back of my mind, and all I could see was the purple band dancing with the wind. I leaped over the low fence of the sidewalk, through the bushes and line of trees, right onto the sloping riverbank. I didn’t watch where I was going. It was a miracle that I hadn’t tripped over my own feet, dashing down the slope at full speed like that. I had reached my hand up—reaching up, but it was always just out of reach.

I don’t know what I was thinking. In my dash, I leaped, and secured the hairband safely in my hand, only to stumble when I reached the ground, losing my footing, then tumbling down to the very edge of the riverbank. I lay on my side, my chest heaving. My legs hurt. My knees were scrapped. My body ached. I think I sprained an ankle.

A shadow appeared before me then, followed by a hand. I’d thought it was Yumi, but the voice accompanying it was far from Yumi’s gentle voice. It was a boy—a voice I knew so well; a voice that teased my memory and pulled at my heartstrings. And then I saw it: the vast grassy plain and the vast glassy lake, the old witch with her huge red bathhouse, all the monstrous staff and patrons and running around cleaning floors and bringing food and filling baths. And the boy, with the dark green eyes and bob-cut hair.

We’ll meet again. I promise.

I looked up, and there he was, just as I had remembered him.

“Haku?” The name rolled off my tongue as easy as though I had never forgotten him.

He wore a smile as gentle as the river flowing beside me. “Can you stand up, Chihiro?”

***

He was back! I couldn’t believe that he was back, and still in those clothes I had seen him wear in Yubaba’s place. But he seemed taller somehow. His eyes sharper. His chin firmer. Gone was the round face of a twelve-year-old he had donned before.

His touch was warm as he pulled me up to my feet. I remembered that touch. It was the last thing I felt as he told me to return to my parents and never look back.

The tears sprang to my eyes without my consent.

Haku’s smile was kind and soft as he said, “Finally, my voice reaches you.”

It was as though a switch had been flipped, and before I knew what I was doing, I had thrown myself into his arms, and I cried, all the pent-up emotions I never realized I was carrying came pouring out, because I’ve missed him and wanted to see him and it had been so long and he was finally back.

“What took you so long?” I said, pushing back from his chest and glaring up at him. “Have you finished your business with Yubaba? How are the others? Kamaji and Lin and Boh?”

“Slow down,” Haku said with a chuckle. “Everyone’s fine. They’re sending their best regards to you. And my business with Yubaba is done. It took a while, but I’m finally free.” He grinned at that. “I didn’t realize the time in the human world has gone by so fast, though,” he added, regarding my sixteen-year-old self, and that was when it clicked to me. The reason why I had gone missing for a year when in fact it was probably only a few days.

“What are you going to do after this?” I asked.

“I’ll probably look for a new home,” he said. “Maybe the mountains. There’s a lenient god who lets stray spirits live in his home.”

My eyes widened at that. “You’re leaving?”

Haku was staring at me, his lips pursed, but there was an unshakable resolution in his eyes. He gathered me in his arms. “I wanted to see you, Chihiro,” he said softly. “I promised, didn’t I?”

“Then stay,” I said. My fingers were clutching his clothes, my voice was breaking. He was finally back. Why was he leaving again? “There’s a river here. Can’t you live there?”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because you need to live your own life, Chihiro. You have people you love, and people who love you. I can’t take that away—not from you, not from them.”

“But I’ll forget about you again!”

Haku planted his lips on my forehead, and let the kiss linger. “Nothing that happens is ever forgotten, even if you can’t remember it,” he whispered.

Those were Zeniba’s words, ones she told me when I came for her help to break the spell my parents and Haku were under.

I clutched at his chest tighter. “Then, will you promise you’ll come see me again?”

Somewhere far ahead, I heard Yumi’s voice calling my name. And it was like a spell was being lifted—a gentle brush of wind sending the water surface rippling, a final gentle kiss, and the whisper of a gentle voice.

I promise.

Yumi appeared at the top of the slope. She screamed my name when she saw me, hurtling and sliding down the slope with no care of the dirt clinging to her legs and skirt. And she threw herself at me, her arms squeezing me until it hurt, her entire body shaking as sob after sob overtook her. That was when she told me of a cousin she had had, who had gone missing in the woods when she was a child, and never returned.

I didn’t know. I never realized.

As I patted her back, whispering to her soothing words of “I’m here,” and “I’m not going anywhere,” I looked to the sky and saw the shape of a long white reptilian body with mint-green mane hovering just short of out of sight, before flying away into the distance.

~ END ~

#studio ghibli #spirited away #sen to chihiro no kamikakushi #fanfiction #my fanfiction #my story #ghibli fanfic

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