The Space Between

Disclaimer: Spirited Away is belongs solely to Hayao Miyazaki.

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CHAPTER 2: lucent dreams

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She shuffled through her returned clothes. Her fingertips made contact with a hard, smooth surface. Pulling it out, she produced a colorful piece of paper.

"My good-bye card is still here." She noted. Her voice reverberated unnaturally, as if the sound waves of her voice met obstruction all too close to her head and bounced back too soon. Contrastingly, the far off sounds of nature was muffled and dull, screened through her invisible sound barrier. "Chihiro…Chihiro- that's my name isn't it?" Chihiro turned to face him. His face was obscured by the shadows under his long bangs. Only his small satisfied smile was visible.

"There."

The line seemed out of place- like an improv line interjected into a rehearsed play. It shook her. Chihiro blinked. A sensation not unlike removing a bubble from around her head washed over her body. Instantly, the hum of the wind whistling through the leaves behind her clarified. The pebbles scrabbled against each other under her sneakers with a noisy grind. Breathing in, the air smelled sweeter- like flowers, soap and hot water. This seemed all too familiar. Chihiro twisted her body around. She was squatting in front of a wall of flowers- various blossoms of purple, pink and light magenta. Holding her hands out in front of her, Chihiro realized that she was wearing something made of a salmon colored cloth of sorts. As she looked down, she confirmed that the same fabric continued through her entire outfit- some sort of work robe.

Her eyes traveled down her sleeve, over her similarly clad leg, and over to the left. A foot wearing a sandal with white, cloth straps. She continued up, briefly passing over the hem of blue pants, drawn up to the knees and bunched together to keep them from falling back down. They disappeared under the flaps of a white robe, a violet sash holding it together at the waist. Chihiro began to breathe harder. She willed her eyes to move faster, but they seemed to take in the sight at their on leisure- trying to connect it with a bubbling memory, but finding the task difficult.

Abruptly, as if summoned, her gaze snapped up, and locked onto inquiring green eyes. She tried to force her vision to shift, to survey the rest of his face, but they did not budge from the emerald orbs that somehow reminded her of a lush, rolling field. The idea of such a place suddenly saddened her. It made her feel like their encounter was coming to an end.

"While you're here you must call yourself 'Sen'." Sen? Her name?

"What's your name?" Chihiro managed, sensing their time coming to a close. Seeming to not have heard her, he continued as if uninterrupted.

"If you completely forget it, you'll never find your way home."

"I am home." She declared, and immediately regretted. His shoulders sank an inch. He turned away her. Bending his neck, his jaw length hair fell forward, further obscuring his features. Chihiro leaned forward, curiously trying to look under his veil of hair. She heard him breathe in heavily, and slowly release it through his nose.

"Are…you ok?" Her hand hovered over his back, dropping down an inch and snapping up two as she contemplated patting his back awkwardly.

"Is…there something I can do?" She felt rather than saw his ears perk. Moving his head the smallest degree to the right, Chihiro sensed he was facing the general direction of her legs.

"..h…me…" his voice was so low, Chihiro barely registered that he had said anything at all.

"W-what?" she stuttered. His hair rolled as he returned to his original posture, head down, face hidden.

"Help me." He said more clearly. Chihiro leaned away a little. His hand found it's way to her's. He grasped her fingers in his palm tightly. She shivered under his touch.

"How?" She asked tentatively.

"Help me-" He repeated. "Help me Sen-help me find you."

Riiiiiiiiiiiiing … Riiiiiiiiiiiiing …

"Chihiro honey, could you get that? I'm washing my hair right now." Chihiro's eyes snapped open, and instantaneously snapped closed as the sun seared the surface. Rolling over with her back to the sun, she covered her eyes with her hands, urging more soothing darkness to take away the biting sting under her eyelids. Her thumbs touched something moist. Cracking open her eyes to a merciful slit, Chihiro peered at her hands that she now held a few inches away.

"Tears?"

Riiiiiiiiiiiiing … Riiiiiiiiiiiiing …

"Chihiro- honey, the phone- I'm washing up- could you get that?" Chihiro glared at the wall that she knew to be in the general direction of her mother, all thought about the curious presence of tears gone.

"You're not washing up-" she argued futilely.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiing … Riiiiiiiiiiiiing …

"Well, I can't pick it up, I'm sleeping." She mumbled to herself. Stubbornly squeezing her eyes shut, Chihiro pulled her covers higher up over her head, simulating night. She put on a 'Deep in sleep' face with determination, as if her mother would see and conclude that, obviously, her sleeping daughter shouldn't be bothered to pick up the phone- she studies so hard!

Riiiiiiiiiiiiing … Riiiiiiiiiiiiing …

"Chihiro the phone!" Chihiro threw back her covers with the force of a tornado, and shuttled herself across the room. She wasn't picking up the phone because she would get in trouble if she risked another ring, she was getting up anyway- Chihiro reasoned. She snatched the phone from the receiver with haste.

"Hello?"

"Hello- who is this- Chihiro?" Chihiro rolled her eyes. It was one of her mother's associates from the design company.

"Yes." She responded blandly.

"Oh hi! This is Mr. Takuya- do you remember me?"

"Yes."

"Haha, great great- How are you? Doing well in school?"

"Yes."

"Good grades?" Chihiro contemplated telling him the awful truth- but that would make for a longer conversation.

"Uh…yes."

"Oh, that's good…yes…is your mother home?"

"Onemomentplease." She blurted- eager to switch the phone over. Holding her thumb over the mouthpiece, Chihiro ambled down the hall, rubbing the premature sleep from her eyes.

"Mom- the phone." She said, holding the phone out to the bathroom door. She heard her mother sigh, and shut off the water. She stepped out with a shower cap on her head, and a towel hastily wrapped around her. Drying her hands quickly she took the phone.

"Who is it?"

"I don't know." Chihiro shrugged, and left the room. She shuffled lazily into the kitchen. The sun glared through the window, causing Chihiro to squint against the light. Outside, her neighbor, Mrs.Yamata, had risen early to plant more Begonias to her already expansive yard, that was now toeing the property line, Chihiro noted dully.

Her mind drifted to the dream she had had the night before. Unsurprisingly she was talking to the mysterious boy in blue robes again. He appeared often in her dreams, which occurred as often as he made appearances. In fact, Chihiro had not had a dream about any other subject for some time now. The dreams had even spilled over into the daytime, disrupting her thoughts at spontaneous times throughout the day. At that, they were becoming progressively longer. Though she was never the most attentive student in class, Chihiro now found that she'd drift off in one class and come back to her senses in another period.

Chihiro wondered why she would dream of a stranger she had never met almost every night. A stranger, yet familiar. His eyes, hadn't she looked into them before? She shook her head. Impossible.

Chihiro hadn't realized she had been staring until the sudden movement of Mrs. Yamata's hand waving at her. Shocked from her trance, she nearly dropped her cup, and waved back rigidly before turning on her heel and retreating deeper into the room, away from the window.

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Midori Hana Road went right by the school's sports field. As Chihiro passed, she could see the soccer club diligently practicing; among them, Saito Fujita. In the weeks that have passed between her last detention and now, Chihiro did not speak to either of the two students that had been there when the alleged ghost appeared. They had detention until the end of the current week while she had none after the last. When confronted at school about what had happened, Chihiro ignored their questions. After a few attempts to talk to her had been jilted, they stopped trying.

As curious as she was about the connection between the ghost whose description matched the boy in her dreams perfectly, her sense of logic and preservation of sanity were stronger.

"There are no such things as ghosts." Chihiro muttered. Turning from the field, she walked on with a new determination to ignore the duo, and the subject at hand. The dreams were insignificant, just the results of her wild imagination combined with the stories of the supernatural.

"Chihiro-" There was quick thudding behind her. Chihiro turned to see Keisuke jogging to her from across the street. He made a small attempt at a smile as he closed the distance between them.

"What're you doing here on a Sunday?"

"Oh- just…walking…what are you doing here?" She returned.

"Meeting Saito after practice- tennis just finished." He said, jabbing a thumb in the direction behind him. Then there was quiet. Keisuke rubbed his hair silently. The expression on his face said he was sifting through his mind for the right words.

"Look- about the whole ghost thing-"

"Don't bother-" Chihiro interrupted. It would be a lie to say Keisuke didn't look a little crestfallen.

"I know you don't think its true- even after what happened but-"

"Keisuke-" They were past formal names, "-I didn't see anything. I don't want to think about it ok?" A picture of a trim boy with olive colored eyes came to mind.

'-even if it does happen to be a big coincidence.' She thought.

"No, I know, I just wanted to say, uhm… sorry." Chihiro looked at him in curiosity.

"Sorry?"

"Yea, well you know, about bothering you about all this after you said you didn't care about it, or believe it or anything-" He rubbed his head again. 'A nervous habit' Chihiro summed up.

"Oh…" She said to fill in the gap.

"Yea, it's just, well-" Keisuke paused for words and adjusted his glasses needlessly. "You seemed to think it was real when you came back at least."

"A-are you sure it wasn't just a student?" They nodded together.

"He can't be he…doesn't wear a uniform of any kind." Saito began." They're more like-"

"Robes?" Keisuke provided. Saito nodded furiously in agreement with Keisuke, who was looking distant and deep in thought. Looking at Chihiro, Saito found her with furrowed brows. Her skin had gone a shade paler, and she seemed to be retreating into memories.

"He asked for her again." Keisuke spoke suddenly. Lifting his head, he met with Chihiro's eyes. Nervously, his eyes kept darting to the door. The uncanny feeling that the ghost, whoever, the boy, knew when he was being talked about always seemed to be a heavy presence in the air.

"For who?" Chihiro asked, a hint of tension in her voice. Keisuke pressed his lips together, reluctant to answer.

"I don't know who she is."

"Who?" Chihiro pressed again. Saito was the one who responded.

"Sen." Chihiro's eyes went wide. She stumbled a foot and hit a box with her leg, then jumped as she did so.

"He asks… for Sen?" Keisuke narrowed his eyes slightly.

"Yea." She paled.

"What…what does he look like?" She asked, voice shaking unless Keisuke's ear were going bad.

"Uh…about my height I think- if I were standing." He provided. Saito donned a reminiscing expression.

"His hair is kind of long, to his chin maybe."

"-and he wears the robes all the time. Blue pants, bunched up and a long white, tunic, thing." He added. Was it just him or was Chihiro looking slightly ill now?

"You know someone called Sen?" She looked at him suddenly.

"No." She answered all too quickly. With a twirl of her skirt as she spun to get to the door, Chihiro left the room.

"I guess I kind of assumed that what we said about the ghost meant something to you- the way you reacted and all. So, yea, sorry." Keisuke finished. Chihiro's mouth turned down a little. She hadn't realized her reaction to what they said about the ghost's actions and appearance had been so blatantly shocked. She couldn't even pin-point exactly why she felt that the coincidence between the ghost's description and the boy in her thoughts had any sort of connection, but it was there from time to time- when she wasn't on full alert about convincing herself otherwise. At moments when she stopped actively reminding herself that ghosts, the boy, dragons, weren't real, Chihiro felt her heart trying to tie two ends together. That's when her sense would intervene and cut the thread just as it was about to touch ends.

"Well… it's ok. I'm going to go…Bye." Chihiro wheeled away quickly, coming back the way she came. Keisuke's voice trailed after her, a little surprised with the abruptness of her exit.

"Huh? Oh. Yea, ok. Bye- I'll uh, see you at school." She barely heard him in her hurry to put distance between Keisuke and all he proposed and herself. It couldn't be real. It had nothing to do with her. A dream is a dream, and a rumor is just a rumor, and two boy's story telling is just a story. What did it matter if their character happened to look just like the boy she had been dreaming of? They must have stolen it from somewhere else, probably a movie, and she must have seen that movie a long time ago, and that must be why. The timing is just coincidence.

Satisfied with her theory, Chihiro started for home.

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"Look Chihiro, there's your new school- looks great doesn't it?" Came her father's voice.

"It doesn't look so bad." Her mother Yuuko commented. Chihiro saw her look over her shoulder to see if she had gotten up to take a look. The car rumbled on the grainy street, and Chihiro struggled to gain balance as she rolled to the right and pushed herself up. Chihiro stopped trying midway and got to the level where her eyes peered over the bristle that lined the bottom of the window. Eyes peeled half way in an uninterested and stubbornly grumpy manner, Chihiro's eyes followed the school lazily as they drove closer to it.

Feeling a sudden urge of bitterness, as if it was the school's fault that she had to move to the mountain town of Shirakawa-go, Chihiro stuck her tongue out at the buildings and whoever might possibly be looking her way. Chihiro felt her ears pop, and the noises of the village around them abruptly quieted. Looking at her parents in the front seat, she made out low indistinct rumblings of sounds every time they spoke. The buildings began to blur and yellow like an old photograph. Catching a glimpse of color to the right, Chihiro sat up taller.

There it was, a speck of blue and white at the school gates. Chihiro's eyes widened. He turned around.

"What are you doing here?" she yelled at the window. The car seemed to pick up speed. Chihiro whirled in her seta towards the front. "No- no- stop! Slow down! Dad!" Words obviously reaching deaf ears, Chihiro turned to wrestle with the unyielding door handle. Gasping with frustration, Chihiro returned to pounding on the window. They were nearly past the school now. The boy was following her car with his eyes, mouth open in surprise. He leaned forward, then took a step, then another, until he began jogging towards the car. As she felt the car speed up, so did the boy. But his efforts were futile- just when he seemed to miraculously gain on the car, the ground below him became muddy, and the sludge held onto the soles of his sandals. An expression of aggravation flashed over his features as he struggled to free himself. As the mud solidified, and Chihiro's car finally drove past the last edge of the school property, she saw his head snap up, shouting desperately, She only heard fragments, sentences cut into pieces.

"It'…not a dream it's …Sen! -real it's re- Oh- I guess we'll go over the rest tomorrow then- Alright, test is on Wednesday, so you have two nights to study. Review pages 134-140. Class dismissed." Chatter erupted immediately as bento boxes were produced from bags and students scrambled to get to the lunch room. Chihiro blinked and inhaled sharply, choking slightly on the sudden intake of air. The surrounding atmosphere felt cold. Chihiro put her hand to her head, and it came away with cold sweat.

'It's not a dream. it's real.' Her hands were shaking. Chihiro weaved her fingers together in an attempt to steady them. 'Could it be? Really? Had it been…was he…is he…' Chihiro bumped her head with both fists lightly.

"Come on, it's just a dream. Not even, it was a day dream." She tried to persuade herself.

'But it felt so real…I could almost hear him, I felt it.' She stilled her hands. 'I have to know.' Rising from her seat without a word, Chihiro headed towards the door. A group of girls were entering just as she reached the entry. A slim girl with a pink clip in her hair spotted Chihiro and donned a big smile.

"Oh Chihiro- let's go get lunch- I heard they have a lot of Mango Br-" Wordlessly, Chihiro marched past the group, took a left, and headed done the hall. The unacknowledged students stared after her. "What's with her?" The others shrugged.

"Maybe it's a boy thing-" The cluster giggled and 'Oooed' before continuing to the cafeteria.

"Hey Saito, Keisuke- there's someone here for youu" sang the tall student who had met her at the door. Chihiro couldn't help but blush, but this wasn't a time for that.

"Who?" Saito craned over the desk to get a better view. "Oh Chi- er, Ogino." Keisuke peered out from behind another boy with a questionable look on his face when he heard her name. Wringing her hands wistfully, Chihiro shifted her weight from one foot to the other by the door.

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Crouching quietly not doing much at all was apparently much more difficult than the movies led the public to believe. Chihiro's legs ached under her body weight as she sat back on her heels. It much have been at least fifteen minutes since Saito said he had seen the streak of light in the sky.

"The first sign." He had said. Now, fifteen minutes later, the expected clang of a mysterious clatter did not come.

"Are you sure you saw the white streak?" Chihiro pounded on her legs trying to relieve the aching pressure. Saito turned to her from his position up front, just behind the desks.

"Yes I'm sure- do you think I wouldn't recognize it after being haunted by it for nearly two months?" He eyeballed her then turned his attention back to the door. "It'll come." He assured them. Sighing Chihiro returned to dutifully watching the door.

When they trio had first come back to the room for the first of Chihiro's week of detention, her heart had sweated bullets every minute, straining to listen for someone point out a streak in the sky or to hear the metallic clang down the hall. The first five days had gone without event. Saito and Keisuke had warned her about this.

"He doesn't come on the dot at regular intervals or anything."

"It's really sporadic - we could go a week without him then have a week where he pops up every night. But I figure that with a week of detention, you'll have to see him once at least." Chihiro had stared at the two boys when the first told her this. It sounded like a prime excuse of a reason for which she might not see the ghost all week.

"It's true! But don't worry; he doesn't really ever skip an entire week." Keisuke had said confidently, though he looked nervous with his eyebrows knitted together.

Today was the sixth day. So far, Saito had claimed to see the white streak in the sky the night before, but when the consequential rattling never came, Chihiro began to become suspicious that he had pretended to see the streak as a desperate act after nearly a week of no ghost sightings.

Bitterness began to boil under Chihiro's skin. She had sacrificed her dignity and good reputation (except the sleeping) with the teachers to get herself into a solid week of detention as advised by the two "ghost experts", and for what- the ghost had yet to step a toe out of his spirit world. In the mean time, Chihiro had been slaving away with the still packed boxes. Apparently ghost avoidance took a lot of time and energy out of the two detention-delinquents who were supposed to have this done a long time ago. They had had detention for at a month and a half by now. The thought stuck a note in Chihiro's mind.

"Say Keisuke-"

"Mm?" he responded distantly.

"What did you and Saito do that landed you with more than a month of detention anyhow?" A chuckle emitted somewhere from her right. Saito turned to her.

"Oh- that. We only had a week at first for falling asleep in class three days in a row, but with the ghost thing- we just slacked on the work."

"They said we had to stay here as long as it takes to finish. I guess they just assumed it would take a wee-" CLANG!

Three heads whipped towards the door. Chihiro's breathing began to become laborious. After nearly a week of no results, she had almost forgotten why she was in detention in the first place. Now she didn't feel so prepared to possibly meet the face that had been invading her dream for weeks.

"I-is it-?"

"Yea." Silence came down on the group crouching behind the huddled desks. Feeling oddly noisy, Chihiro tried to calm her breathing to low inaudible breaths. In her attempt to block out the noise in the room, Chihiro only managed to impress utter silence upon her-self. Unable to bear the heavy quiet, Chihiro focused on the door. The door, grey with a window framing the dark hall, contrasted starkly with the walls. When had the this room become so bright anyhow?

Light soon became less of a problem. From the corner of her eye, Chihiro saw the distant flickering of the over-head lights a class or two down the hall. She heard the other two catch their breaths. It appears they noticed the strange activity as well. Chihiro clasped her hand tightly around the leg of the desk in front of her, thinking illogically that perhaps this would help slow down her heart, which was beating against her chest so hard, Chihiro wondered if it was audible to the boys. However, if they could hear it, neither of them seemed to care. Their attention was solely focused on the doorway in front of them, and the square of glass in the middle that showed the progress of flickering lights traveling up the hall. The window in the door gradually became darker as more lights turned out. Chihiro's breathing quickened analogously with the creeping darkness. This was the moment that had been haunting her for nearly a month. Distantly, Chihiro wondered if she had time to run out the classroom. A vague and tugging feeling told her to run. Waving away the logic that did not want the chance to be proven wrong, curiosity and an unnamable emotion over took her and glued her feet to the ground. Not fear, not even remote anticipation…she knew what was coming. Excitement…confirmation.

The lights just next to their classroom had shut off now. Chihiro jumped when she heard the rattle of the door to the class next door shuddering open and hitting the frame with a slam. As if on cue, Chihiro's senses shot through the roof at the same moment the door had slammed open next door. Her bubble narrowed and connected with the door, filtering out the sounds of Saito and Keisuke's excited breathing. There were sounds present she hadn't been aware of a second ago; a low echo of footsteps, the rustle of rough cloth sliding past each other, a fourth pair of lungs drawing in air slowly.

The window of the door alternated between brightness and pitch black a thousand times a second, before finally settling on darkness. Within the vast darkness, a pale glow entered from the right. Transparent blue rays filtered through the shadow. As Chihiro watched the door being hastily shoved out of the way by an unseen force, it played in her mind in slow motion, each frame exposing a little more of what she had expected, somewhere deep in her heart.

Her legs were unbending without her knowledge. She did not realize she had risen so far until an arm shot out from the darkness and pulled her back down hissing "What are you doing?" Her ears refused his voice though her limbs did not resist when they pulled any part of her out of view from the ghost. There was simply no energy left in her body to control how it moved. All thought, feeling and life force was currently revving in her mind, expending everything in it's arsenal to dig up old memories that had previously been filed under Imagination.

His hair was the tiniest fraction longer and would not have been noticed by anyone else but her. The robes remained frozen in time save an indiscernible character etched into the sleeve. His face was older, expression more defined- but other wise remarkably the same to the face she had so long ago denied for the sake of the ways of her own world. The face she had always known to a name that now floated up from the depths of her far off memory.

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A/N:

Note: mm I don't feel very good about this chapter. Not a lot happens here except for Chihiro realizing that she wanted to find out the connection between the ghost and Haku (not that she knows yet) and her actual sighting of Haku. The writing is a little forced and I think I started way too many sentences with Chihiro and She or He, but hey. Technically these are all rough drafts.

The Phone Conversation (right after she wakes up) Haha, it's likely that if you're a second generation Asian (This may apply to other cultures too, I wouldn't know exactly) living anywhere outside of the land of your ethnicity, you probably know what it's like to pick up the phone and have one of your parents friends make needless small talk before finally asking for the desired parent. I just wanted to put this in because A. I think its funny B. It's funny because those are almost the exact lines I use when one of my parent's friends call. (It's not like I don't speak Korean, I do, I just don't want to make conversation with a perfect stranger so early in the morning.) and C. I thought it would add a nice genuine touch to Chihiro's life.

The Title: Lucent Dreams refers to A. How Haku's presence is becoming weaker and more transparent, per say, in the human world- and how this affects how his presence is becoming less frequent and less powerful in Chihiro's dreams. B. The clarity of water- which represents Haku, in her dream. C. How her dreams make sense to Chihiro now.

For those who eagerly anticipate Haku: Chapter Countdown to Haku's Debut (in person)- 2 CH to go! Not the next chapter but the NEXT after that

Midori Hana Road: a pitiful excuse of a street that I made up. It means Green Flower Road…are you thinking "hey man…there are no such things as green flowers…"?- WELL they say there's no such things as dragons and spirit world! There ya go!

Saito and Keisuke: entirely fictional characters that I have made up on a whim. I didn't expect or ever plan for them to have a big role in Chihiro's story, so don't worry about how much screen, uh, page time they're getting in this chapter…well to be fair I think they might pop up again in later chapters, but never fear, true love will not sprout between them, even if it is easier to write than a relationship between a spirit and a human… NONO stick to the story darn me! Okok!