Fifty years later…
I stared down at my love, clothed as though nothing was different, as though she was going to attend a nice dinner. I reached out and touched her pale, cold cheek very lightly, and brushed a lock of silver hair out of her face. I stared down at her cold, dead lips. I knew that she would never laugh again. Time had finally taken its toll. I'd never expected this to happen. I guess, as a spirit, you forget how time can wear on your body. And I'd never had a body to begin with.
Memories flooded my mind of the past sixty years that we'd spent together. Our first fight…Chihiro looked beautiful when she was spitting mad. Our wedding day. There was no thrill better than calling her my wife for the first time. The first time we held our twins, Kyo and Yuki. The pride I'd felt, looking down on my sons, and looking at my wife, sweating and panting, and thinking that she was the most amazing woman in the world. Every memory, good and bad, played in a never-ending tape behind my eyes, and I couldn't decide between crying and laughing. I turned away sharply and walked out the door, going to the edge of the river and kneeling down beside it. I wish I knew where to find Chihiro's spirit. I would slip into those waters and never resurface.
Salt joined fresh water as tears slipped down my cheeks, chaffing them in the cold wind. Ignoring the stinging, I trailed my fingers along the surface, watching the water ripple in my wake. A strange light twinkled in its depths. Not sunlight, and no reflection off a fish. It was as though the light itself existed in the water. I saw eyes, and then a face slowly become visible in the river. I gasped sharply. Chihiro.
She had been restored to her youth. Her lovely brown eyes laughed up at me, and I smiled back, just as I knew she would wish. And then, without hesitation, I fell into the icy river. It might as well have been bliss as I felt the water, Chihiro's aura, surround me. I let it—her—carry me away. As my vision turned black, I heard a voice, clear as day, ring in my mind.
You found me, Haku. You're back in my arms. No one can hurt us now.