Chihiro left Haku on the grassy hills. She ran down to her parents, to the life awaiting her. She didn't look back. The unexplainable days missing from her memories slowly faded in importance, carried away by the concerns of everyday life. Though Chihiro remembered nothing from her journey, the effects of her stay in the spirit world were obvious. She seemed to mature overnight. Her parents were at first greatly concerned by her behavior, wondering if the move had truly been too much for her. She cleaned, she cooked, she did well in school, and she never complained. Eventually they chocked it up to their superior parenting skills and decided that something they said had finally gotten through to her. She had developed some strange quirks, though, such as constantly wearing a shiny purple hair tie (but having no memory of getting it), having a particular fondness for soot, and being completely opposed to eating pork.

Chihiro was, for the most part, oblivious of her own changes. She made many friends in school because of her kind and caring nature, but she always struggled with letting anyone get too close. By day she was at peace, relatively content, but when she slept, they would come: the nightmares. They plagued her almost nightly, always filled with the same hopeless terror. Sometimes she would fade from her classroom, or her house, just disappearing until nothing remained, her cries for help unanswered by those around her. Sometimes she was surrounded by a cloud of paper birds, ready to slice her apart with a million paper cuts. She was drowning, she was falling, she was running from shadowy forms all around her. Always she would wake right before she disappeared, or hit the ground, or took the first cut, always breathless from the terror. Her parents tried to comfort her, but eventually they became used to her cries of distress as she slept. So life continued for Chihiro. She grew, she matured, and she lived, but she somehow felt incomplete.