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Sometimes, she still dreams of steam.
Boiling waterfalls gushing from the walls, air thick with fragrant fog, bright red and black and yellow lacquered tokens clinking together. Even fragmented, the dreams feel so real that she can smell the herbal salts, feel the damp hair sticking to the back of her neck and the slippery wooden floor beneath her bare feet, hear the constant chatter of the patrons and employees. Sometimes she’s rushing, tripping over herself in a race to reach something - her parents? - but those dreams are less common. More often, she floats through like a mist, as if she is the spirit and the bathhouse is the real world.
She tastes in these dreams too. Sweet red bean paste, warm rice, plush chewy dumplings as big as her head. Once she even dreams of biting into a roasted newt, salty and crunchy and alien on her tongue in a way she never tasted, and wakes up licking her lips.
Lately, there’s been something new. Green eyes. Jet-black hair. A secret smile. A hand by her side, clasped in her own. A hand outstretched in front of her, reaching towards her, so much realer than a dream should ever be.
Chihiro…
Stretching further.
Chihiro…
Almost there…
Chihiro…!
“... Chihiro! Wake up!”
Chihiro sits bolt upright in her chair, notebook sliding halfway off her desk and her mechanical pencil clattering to the ground, followed by a chorus of familiar giggles.
Blinking sleep from her eyes, Chihiro looks up blearily at her friends as they stand in a semi-circle around her desk. “Did I fall asleep?”
Mai rolls her eyes. “Obviously, or we wouldn’t have had to wake you up. Come on, everybody else has already left, but we can still catch up with the boys if we go now!”
Chihiro nods slowly as she begins to stand from her chair, knees cracking after so long in the same position. “Was Kurosawa-sensei mad?”
“No,” says Junko, crouching to help Chihiro pick up her things. “She said to just let you sleep, that you’ve been looking exhausted all week. She would have woken you up at the end of class, she said, but she had to go off to a meeting right away. We said we’d do it.”
Chihiro winces as Junko hands her an eraser. “I guess I must have looked really tired, if she said that.”
“Right?” grins Mai. “Remember when Suzuki-kun fell asleep during homeroom at the beginning of the year, and she scolded him in front of everyone?”
“I bet she was dreaming about Tanaka-kun,” Mai sighs dreamily, clutching Chihiro’s notebook to her chest as she twirls. “You know, because she loves him.”
Chihiro feels her ears heat up as the rest of her friends giggle. “I don't,” she protests, which only earns her more laughter.
“You do-o-o,” coos Mai again. “You volunteered to take his work to him when he was sick.”
“It’s only because we live close to each other,” Chihiro mumbles, feeling increasingly defensive. “And nobody else wanted to.”
“You can protest all you want, Chihiro, but we know the truth.”
“I don’t–” Chihiro tries to interject, but Mai and Junko keep going.
“Yeah, Chihiro, we’re your friends, you can trust us!”
“My cousin plays soccer with Tanaka-kun, I could ask him to put in a good word for you!”
“She doesn’t like Tanaka-kun.” The final member of their quartet, Saori, thus far silent, speaks up. The other girls all look over to her in surprise, no one more so than Chihiro.
“How would you know?”
Saori shrugs. “I heard her mumbling in her sleep. She was saying ‘Haku’, ‘Haku’, over and over again.” A small smile quirks her lips. “And the boy she keeps drawing in her notebook doesn’t look like Tanaka-kun at all.”
Chihiro’s blush spreads all the way across her cheeks as Mai and Junko shriek in unison.
By the time they’re walking out of the school gates, Tanaka-kun and the other boys have long since left, but not even Mai minds. She’s found a far more interesting pastime: pestering Chihiro about who this Haku could be.
Chihiro does her best to fend off questions. She tries redirecting (“W-what about Kimura-kun, don’t you still like him, Junko? Let’s talk about Kimura-kun!”), pleading ignorance (“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”), and just plain playing dumb (“Huh? What did you say? I didn’t hear you.”) but all to no avail. Even as the pitch of the ground beneath them steepens as they begin their climb, her friends keep peppering her with questions as they all huff and puff their way up the hill.
Finally, she gives in. “Haku was… a boy I used to know,” she hesitantly begins. Junko’s crow of delight turns into an exhaled oof as Mai elbows her in the stomach.
“Before you moved here? I don’t know any Hakus in our town.”
“Um, I’m not really sure where he lives.” It’s not really a lie. Since his contract with Yubaba ended, she doesn’t know where Haku might be. “It was before I started school here. I was in a new, scary place where I didn’t know anybody, and he… he helped me. He made me feel less afraid.” She smiles to herself, a private smile. “And I helped him too.”
The girls all ooh in unison. “Look how she’s smiling!” Mai hoots. “You were right, Saori!” Saori smiles a rare, broad smile that shows off the braces on her top row of teeth.
“I haven’t seen him since then,” Chihiro goes on, doggedly ignoring the heat creeping back across the back of her neck. “But I think about him a lot. He was a very special person to me. That’s why I’ve been dreaming about him.” Her school books have been replaced with stones in her bag, for the weight she feels pressing on her. “I really wish I knew where to find him.”
Her friends fall still, sympathy written across their faces. They all trudge along together up the street, silence stretching along with them.
Then, Mai speaks up, her tone more thoughtful than usual. “I have a friend who goes to Ehime Prefectural Mishima High School. Maybe she knows a Haku.”
Saori nods along. “My aunt is a teacher in Saijō, I can ask her too. What does he look like?”
“We could ask around! What’s his surname? Maybe we can try to find school directories…”
As her friends all talk excitedly about possible strategies to find Haku, who they’ve all seemingly decided is Chihiro’s long-lost soulmate, Chihiro feels an answering smile bloom across her own face.
The rest of the walk home is spent in further conversation along this line. After they all part ways, waving goodbye to each other, Chihiro begins the last leg of her walk home, lost in thought. Afternoon light filters through the trees on either side of the road, spilling out across her path.
The walk home doesn’t require any conscious thought anymore, just muscle memory. She lets her feet carry her home without thinking (vines brush across her cheek), stumbling over loose stones (why are there cobblestones on this paved road?) until she walks right into a hard object about waist-high. She grunts, startled by the impact, and looks down to see a stony face, grinning out from behind a carpet of moss. The dōsojin. The one at–
Chihiro whips her head up and inhales sharply at the sight of the familiar faded façade, chipped red plaster visible underneath crawling kudzu and moss. The tunnel, pitch black and wide like a gaping mouth. The gate. The entrance to the spirit world.
She’s found herself here before, usually under the same circumstances: walking without thinking about her destination, only to find herself standing in front of the tunnel. It happened a lot after they’d first moved, when she would go on walks to see more of her new town. Somehow, no matter where she started or which direction she set off in, she found herself at the gate more often than should have been possible. It had slowly happened less and less, like the dreams, until it had more or less stopped entirely a few years earlier. She’s never had the courage to walk through it. Afraid of finding something, or of not finding it, she doesn’t know.
The afternoon sun shines down on her through the canopy of trees arching over her, light dappled by leaves. Just like when she was ten, a breeze kicks up around her ankles, sending leaves and bits of grass dancing low over the ground into the yawning, grinning mouth of the tunnel.
Chihiro takes a deep, steadying breath, and looks down at her wrist, at the thin, glittering purple tie that sits there. It twinkles up at her. With one hand, she reaches back and pulls her hair back, the way she does when she wants to dedicate all of her focus to something. With the tie secure, she lets the ponytail fall back against her neck, and after a moment, shakes her head to feel the tickle of her hair against her skin.
This time, she isn’t following anybody when she steps inside. And she isn’t afraid.
˗ˏˋ ◌ ◌ ◌ ´ˎ˗
As she exits the train station, blinking into the sun, she sees the rolling green hill before her. Chihiro’s heart clenches, but she pushes herself forward anyway. The stream is dry, and she hops across the rocks with ease; “like a little goat”, her mother used to say, in a tone that suggested disapproval but with her eyes smiling.
The town, or the park, or whatever it is, looks the same as it did all those years ago. Run-down, seemingly abandoned, but no worse for wear than it had been on their first visit. Which would of course be strange, six years passing without any visible signs, if this was an ordinary place. This time, Chihiro thinks she can feel a strange energy humming around her, like the air during a storm just before a lightning strike.
She walks past the food stalls and restaurants, hurrying too fast to be sure if the tantalizing aroma tickling her nose is in reality or a memory. She doesn’t want to know for sure.
When she finds herself standing before the red bridge, she stops and looks up at the bathhouse. It, too, looks the same, standing proud and regal as the gold detailing and green tiled roofs catch the fading sunlight like fire. The pipes aren’t smoking, but the flag, its bold character reading bath, flaps in the wind. An indescribable emotion grips Chihiro’s chest as she stands there, surveying the building that in so many ways has defined her life, both as a child and now as she grows older.
She walks onto the bridge, tentative at first but more surely as she becomes more confident that it won’t magically crumble under her feet. Each step makes the bridge feel smaller, more ordinary, sends her memory of it as a mythical mile-long obstacle further and further away.
Halfway across, she goes to lean against the railing and her chest clenches again as she realizes how much smaller it feels too. She doesn’t need to climb it to see over the top, she can just lean against it. She drops her school bag by her feet and looks out over the expanse below, at the train tracks she once traveled, at the land that was once a sea, and feels both very big and very small at the same time.
“Is this what growing up is?” she wonders aloud.
As the sun dips lower into the sky, Chihiro knows she should start walking back. She has work to do, and if she takes too long to get home her parents will worry. But she doesn’t want to leave just yet. If she stays, maybe she’ll be able to find that last dredge of magic she can feel prickling at the back of her head, grasp it tight enough that she can pull it out for herself and bring it back to keep with her always.
Finally, she knows she can’t wait any longer. She grabs her bag, slinging it over her shoulders, ready to turn and walk off the bridge for what she knows will be the last time.
She isn’t sure what makes her pause. She doesn’t hear anything, doesn’t see anything, doesn’t even feel a vibration in the bridge under her feet. Intuition, maybe. But that prickling feeling grows stronger, and so Chihiro stops, still as a stone, before turning.
Green eyes.
Jet-black hair.
A secret smile.
This has to be a dream, she thinks dizzily. I’m at my desk at school and I’m still dreaming, and any moment now Kurosawa-sensei or Mai or somebody is going to shake me awake–
Not even her most vivid dreams have ever felt this real. Haku is standing before her on the bridge, just as he was on the first day they met. Instead of the cold intensity from that day, his face is lit up like a thousand lanterns, and his smile could outshine the sun.
“Chihiro,” he says, and reaches his hand out to her.
She reaches back towards him, sure that this is where she’ll wake up, as she always does. But instead of nothingness, instead of jolting awake in a cold sweat, her palm meets warm skin, and fingers that grasp hers tightly back.
“Haku,” she whispers, her voice barely more than a thready exhale. “How– Why–”
“It took a long time,” Haku says, still smiling. His cheeks must hurt, she thinks distantly. I wonder if he’s ever smiled like this before. “I’ve been–”
But Chihiro doesn’t hear what he says next, because in that moment she flings herself into his arms – his wonderfully solid, real, real! arms – grabbing hold of him in a hug so tight she’s afraid she’ll break him. “Haku!” she sobs, only half-conscious of the tears flooding down her cheeks.
It only takes a fraction of a moment before Haku wraps his arms around her in kind. “I missed you too, Chihiro,” he says, and his voice wobbles.
“How did you find me?” Chihiro finally asks again, after what might have set the world record for the longest hug of all time. They’re leaning on the bridge railing again, barely a centimeter apart. She isn’t sure if spirits really have body heat like humans do, but she fancies that she can feel the warmth of his shoulder radiating out.
“It’s a long story,” Haku says, tilting his hand back and forth. “But the barrier between the human world and the spirit world is thinner in dreams, so I tried to reach out to you there. I was never sure if you could really see me, but I hoped. And I thought that maybe you might be able to meet me here, where the barrier is even thinner.”
“It was you!” Chihiro shouts in excitement. “I knew those dreams felt too real to be dreams!” And–” she stops for a moment as some pieces fall into place, before jerking away to look at him, accusatory. “You’re tall!” And he is. Still slender, still with that familiar sharp, ethereal face and striking green eyes, but he’s taller now, maybe a head or so than Chihiro herself (who often bemoans how limited her own growth spurt had been). He’s a little broader, too, and his hair is longer, reaching down to just above his shoulders. In short, he looks more or less as different as Chihiro would have expected had they been ordinary, human childhood friends who met again after years.
Haku bursts out into a big, hearty laugh that warms Chihiro through her core. “You’re not exactly short yourself anymore,” he responds, reaching out a hand to tap her on the shoulder. “It always surprises me to see how much humans grow in such a short time. Well, a short time for spirits, at least,” he corrects himself.
Chihiro’s face scrunches up in confusion. “But you’re taller too. Do spirits grow? Is it because you’re not under Yubaba’s spell anymore?”
Haku chuckles again and shakes his head. “No, we don’t grow in the same way humans do. We do change with age, but it’s more complicated. And this form is…” He pauses, searching for words. “It’s me, but it isn’t all me. My dragon form is my truer self, if you want to think of it that way. I can’t change the way I look as a dragon. But this form, I can change, even if it takes a lot of effort.” For a moment, Haku seems to flicker back to the way he was when they first met, but when Chihiro blinks, he’s back to being “new” Haku again. He grimaces. “Once you’ve changed, it’s uncomfortable to change back like that,” he explains. “But I wanted to show you.”
“Wow,” Chihiro says, eyes wide. “I wish I could just think really hard and grow taller.” Haku laughs at this too. It’s strange, seeing him so buoyant, but Chihiro decides that she likes this new Haku. Likes making him laugh.
“I think you’re the perfect height, Chihiro,” Haku says, his eyes full of sincerity, and Chihiro has to turn away as she blushes again. For some strange reason, she can’t quite look at him.
“That’s right!” she jerks back around as she realizes, “I haven’t asked about anybody else yet! How are Lin and Kamaji and Boh? And No-Face, and Granny– Zeniba, I mean? And the soot sprites, and the girls in Lin’s dorm, and– and everybody? And you, of course!”
Haku leans back on his elbow, his expression turning fond. “Things are going well at the bathhouse. Kamaji is more or less the same as he ever was, which is just how he likes it. But I think he might be a little more open now than he used to be.” He grins. “The soot sprites are happy too. Or at least I assume they are; it’s hard to tell with soot.
“I don’t see Boh often – not that I ever did before – but I hear about him. He and Yubaba got into a huge fight about him wanting to go out on adventures, not long after you left. From what I heard, her apartments were destroyed afterwards. But he got his way, like he always does. He and that little bird are always off to somewhere new. He even visits Zeniba, which Yubaba hates.”
“Sounds like Boh liked that taste of independence,” Chihiro says happily.
Haku’s smile turns sly. “Don’t tell him, but I think Zeniba sends her own helpers with him a lot of the time. Even if she and Yubaba don’t get along, she likes her nephew.” Chihiro giggles.
A more serious expression crosses Haku’s face. “Nobody’s seen No-Face since he destroyed the bathhouse.”
A bittersweet mix of relief and disappointment flows through Chihiro. “I know the bathhouse was bad for him, but…” she trails off, scuffing her shoe against a nail. Despite all of the destruction he caused, part of her still wishes he could have found a home there, or somewhere.
“Don’t look too glum.” She looks back up at him. “The last time I saw Yubaba’s little bird, it had a band around its ankle.” Haku reaches out to playfully flick her ponytail. “Just like the tie in your hair.”
Chihiro is filled with warmth once again, and finds herself leaning into Haku’s hand without thinking. Then she realizes what she’s doing and jerks her head away, just as Haku pulls his hand back. She isn’t sure, but she thinks Haku is blushing too.
“Uh–” It’s strange to see Haku fumbling with his words; it makes her feel paradoxically more secure, rather than less. “Oh, you’ll never believe this: Lin is the new foreman now!”
Chihiro’s jaw drops. “Lin?!”
Haku barks out another laugh. “I wouldn’t have believed it myself if I hadn’t seen it all play out. After the incident with No-Face, Yubaba knocked the old foreman down to the lowest rank she could think of for failing to see his true identity and giving him free reign. I know,” he hastily adds, seeing Chihiro’s face darken with anger, “she’s really the one responsible, but that’s the reason she gave. Saving face, you know. I think he’s scrubbing dishes now.”
“But why Lin?” Chihiro interjects, aware that she’s being rude but so baffled that she can’t contain herself. “She’s the last person who would ever want that job!”
Haku shrugs. “Wrong place, wrong time, I suppose. At least from Lin’s perspective.” He leans in closer. “I think Kamaji put in a good word for her, actually. He really believes in her.” Chihiro nods slowly, thinking back on their interactions. “She complains about the work, and about how nobody listens to her, but I think she’s happy, even if she could never admit it. She cares about all of the people who work here, including the little people who used to get stepped all over.”
“So things are…?”
Haku nods. “Better. Lin looks out for the staff, and Yubaba… well, she’s not exactly what I’d call ‘soft’, but she’s a little less prickly than she used to be. A little.”
“And you?” Chihiro doesn’t know what answer she wants to hear. That Haku’s life has been perfect without her? That she saved him from a life of drudgery?
Haku looks pensive. He stares out over the bridge for a long moment, during which time Chihiro finds herself studying the lines of his face, the way the golden light from the setting sun plays across his high cheekbones. Finally, he speaks, his voice soft and thoughtful.
“It’s strange. I spent so long just being Haku, Yubaba’s servant. It took me some time to get used to the idea of being the spirit of the Kohaku River again.” A shadow passes over his face. “Especially without my river.”
He turns his head to look at her. In the light, his eyes are transformed from jade to a brilliant, almost translucent pale green, like a pond so clear you can see through to the bottom. Chihiro can hardly bring herself to breathe, let alone speak. “But I managed. I took a long time learning to be myself again, without anyone else to tell me what to do. I went back to the place where my river used to be, to say goodbye. Nowadays, I spend a lot of my time looking for other lost spirits. Others who don’t remember their own names, who can’t find their homes. I try to help them the best I can.” His eyes blaze. “You taught me that, Chihiro.”
Chihiro’s heart is in her throat, pounding so hard that she’s sure Haku can hear it. He steps closer to her, until they’re practically pressed up against each other. “You showed me who I really was.”
Somehow, Chihiro manages to speak. “You were always you, Haku,” she gets out. “Even when you forgot. I just… helped you remember.”
Haku’s eyes fly open wide. There’s an electric charge between them that could snap into brilliance at any moment. Haku leans closer, opens his mouth as if to speak, but then his gaze focuses on something behind her.
“It’s getting dark,” he says, and pulls back. Chihiro is flooded with a mix of relief and disappointment again. “We’ll need to get you back through the gate before night falls. They’ll be lighting the lamps soon.” The sorrow on his face is the same sorrow she feels on her own. “Here, take my hand.”
Chihiro takes his hand again, and they turn together to start their walk back. As Haku takes a step forward, Chihiro lets her grip go slack, hand sliding out of his, and stands still. Haku turns back to her, a look of confusion across his face. “Chihiro?”
She feels a smile spreading across her face as she bounds over to the railing again, climbs up onto it. “What if… what if I didn’t have to go home just yet?”
The confusion falls from Haku’s face, replaced by an answering smile. A secret smile, just for her. Footsteps bound up behind her, and a white streak flashes past her as Haku leaps over the edge of the railing. Chihiro waits for a moment before biting her lip, bending her knees, and leaping off the side in turn.
She’s airborne and falling for barely a moment, sky and land rushing past in a blur, before she lands with her face in soft, downy fur. She doesn’t even need to think before gripping the horns in front of her, tightening her thighs around familiar scaled sides, as she and Haku fly off towards the setting sun, towards an adventure she can’t even begin to imagine.
fin