"Have you seen her new contacts?"
"Wow, where did she even get those?"
Two girls stood talking in front of the classroom on a weekday morning, in Room A3 of Maharaguchi High School. One of them wore a pair of colored contacts, garish enough to be noticed at a glance, the kind girls wore more as fashion than correction.
"Hey. You two."
The voice cut across the hallway from the front of the room, and the students nearby all straightened at once, because that voice belonged to the student council president.
"Contacts like that are against the rules, aren't they?"
"Ah—um, well, it's—"
While the girl stammered, a cluster of boys who'd caught the exchange put their heads together, already whispering about the council president.
"Whoa. She doesn't miss anything."
"No, it's those two — they went way too obvious with it."
"By the way, what's her name again?"
"I think it's... Yabanashi Chihiro? Something like that."
In the principal's office —
"...topped the entrance exam, built a reputation for this school in academics, and on top of that, the best student council president we've had all year. You're the reason this school stands where it does in this city, Chihiro."
The praise came without pause, filling the small office until Chihiro, standing there listening to all of it, couldn't quite stop herself from smiling.
"Thank you very much, Principal. I appreciate you saying so." She said it the way courtesy required.
"You said you needed me for something?"
"Oh — right, I almost forgot."
The principal handed her a thin sheaf of papers. Chihiro peeled the folder open slowly, unhurried.
"This is..."
"There's a regional competition for best-run student council operations. I want to put your name forward to handle the paperwork for it. Can you manage that?"
"..."
She went quiet for a moment, as if running through everything already sitting on the council's plate.
"Yes, I can."
Her answer came out firm, decided.
"Excellent. I'll leave it with you then, Chihiro. I'll need the documents by tomorrow morning."
"Then I'll need your permission to stay in the council room until morning, if that's alright."
"Mm, that's fine. I'll let the night guard know."
"Thank you. If there's nothing else, I'll excuse myself now..." Chihiro turned and started toward the door, ready to begin.
"Wait."
"—?" Chihiro turned back to face the principal.
"I'm expecting great things from you."
"Ah — yes."
When the conversation ended, she left the office and went straight to the student council room.
The council room was thinly staffed even for a council room, which meant Chihiro sat alone with the paperwork for the competition, working through it with a tightness in her shoulders and no time to spare — the report had to be finished and sent by morning. She pulled every relevant detail she could think of and worked it into the pages.
12:15 AM.
When Chihiro prepared to take her lunch to the students council room, already knowing that she would have to spend a good amount of time inside the rooms to finish the assignment, she couldn't complain too much. It's because of these projects and the favor she did for the school that helped with her scholarship a lot, living alone and all.
While contemplating quietly in her head, she catches a glimpse of someone she's been meaning to talk to for quite a while. The mysterious transfer student himself "Ake"
"Ah! Ake-san, can I talk to you for a second?" Chihiro called out to him.
Ake, actually stops and turns toward her with the same creepy resting indifferent face that he was known for around the school.
"Do you need something, Miss President?" Ake asks nonchalantly.
"You happen to live in the same house as Rei-chan right? She hasn't been to school for a few days now, is she okay?" She asked with a voice full of worries.
"She's caught a cold, but she really has gotten much better now. You don't have to worry, she's probably coming back by tomorrow." Ake reassures her, with as much emotion he could muster, it's not really his best suited to being expressive, but he understands Chihiro's feeling a tad bit.
"Well...that's actually good to hear." Chihiro smiles with relief.
"If that's all, I'll be going now." Ake excuses himself and walks off toward the end of the hall, where Chihiro actually saw Kawara Tanda greeting him and the two seem to walk off somewhere.
She didn't expect the loner like Ake to get along with Kawara of all people, due to the stark difference in personality, but in the end, she didn't linger on it.
4:44 PM.
She was still at the desk. Around her, the rest of the students had drained out of the building until none were left. She kept working as the sun sank below the horizon outside. At some point she glanced toward the photograph propped at the corner of her desk — her and Rei, together in the frame.
It's been days since she came to school. She wondered if she was really gonna show up tomorrow.
'It's been days since she came to school. I really miss her.'
The thought circled back on itself — worry for Rei, she attempted to reach her these past few days with phone calls and messages. When that didn't get the response, she'd have gone to check on her in person, except the council work left no room in her schedule. Rei was her closest friend. Whatever hardship came, Rei had always been the one standing beside her through it.
10:12 PM.
As the time went by, Chihiro felt her eyelids growing heavy, the page in front of her losing its edges. Her body was past the point of holding off sleep, no matter how much longer she tried to push through it. In the end, she went under.
[Chihiro]
"—?!"
She startled awake at the sound of someone calling her name. But the place she woke into was wrapped in a red haze that put every nerve in her body on edge.
"Am I dreaming?"
[This way. Follow me!]
The voice came again, unplaceable, as if it wanted her to come along — until she made out a shadow a short distance off, one that kept running from her whenever she got close.
"Wait— ugh!!"
The shock of it stopped her cold: the shadow she'd been chasing this whole time was now collapsed on the ground ahead of her, drained, its body worn down to nothing.
'This is... me. Back then!!'
'Yes. I remember the pain of it exactly. Whoever said knowing more than everyone else made you special, made you someone with a future worth having — that was a lie, every part of it! No matter what I did, no matter how high the honors I brought home, my family was never satisfied. They only ever screamed at me, kept me locked inside the house. If I ever tried to leave, they'd catch me... shut me in... shut me in...'
Twelve years earlier
In an old house beside a river — nothing about it looked wrong from outside, but inside, a married couple was in the middle of a fight.
"You're not planning on doing anything, are you?! Sitting on your ass all day, useless piece of—"
"You're the wife — feeding this family is your job. You don't get to order me around!"
The argument had the tight, coiled feel of something that happened often. The husband drank and refused to work. The wife worked the register at a convenience store, and every day the money bled out of her — household costs, his liquor.
Every time the two of them tore into each other, there was one small figure who came to watch, clutching a favorite teddy bear the whole time: Chihiro.
The days passed, and the house filled with nothing but the residue of their anger, each of them hurling it at the other. The wife left for work every morning and came home every evening to a husband who had let himself rot, and to a daughter who needed looking after on top of it — until one day, she decided to leave it all behind and slipped out of the house for good...
Chihiro woke not long after and went looking for her mother, calling out through the house. No matter how she searched, no matter how loud she called, her mother never appeared. Tears started down the little girl's face, thick with fear.
"Daddy... hic... where did Mommy go? ...hnn"
Young Chihiro asked her father where her mother had gone. He was pacing, frantic, as if he worried for his wife — except his was an unbridled rage.
"How the hell could she just — !!!"
Her father howled it out before he turned toward her, slowly, and the look in his eyes was enough to tell her, on some animal level, that she wasn't safe.
She started backing away, then turned and ran as fast as her legs would carry her.
Her father closed the distance in seconds and grabbed her by the collar.
"You think you're running off after your mother too, huh?!"
"Daddy!!! ...please don't, please let me go..."
"You're not going anywhere!! You're going to work and bring money home for me to use!!"
"But I... I don't... know how to work"
"Then don't expect to eat!!"
After he'd finished shouting, he dragged her — she fought to plant her feet, grabbed for anything within reach, but none of it held. He threw her into the storage room and slammed the lock into place before he walked out of the house, leaving her shut in.
"Daddy... Please don't do this... I'm scared already... hnn... don't leave me here... uh... Mommy!"
The small girl's clothes were torn where he'd grabbed her, bruises already rising on her skin. She was locked now in a cellar room, cramped and dark, and all she could do was curl up in front of the door, shaking.
The memory played itself out to the end in her mind, and finally it stopped.
The fear in her chest kept spreading. She stood frozen now in a place made of nothing but emptiness.
3:00 AM.
In the waking world, Chihiro lay asleep as a Fear — shaped like some monstrous crow, its body a ruin of wounds and grotesquely oversized — leaned its face into the room where she slept and closed its jaws around her, lifting her out. She was already halfway into its mouth when her unconscious body began to cry, tears sliding down a face that showed no other sign of waking.
THWIP!!!
A small arrow, out of nowhere, buried itself in the Fear's head. It let go of Chihiro's body, and she dropped to the ground hard enough to jolt her back to consciousness, straight into the sight of the monster looming over her. Someone was already calling out to her, but her vision hadn't steadied yet, her mind still thick with the fog of just waking.
"Chi-chan!! Are you hurt?!"
The voice was one she knew, and the particular way it shaped her name — that alone was enough to make her eyes open the rest of the way.
"Rei... chan?"
Awareness kept returning to her. She tried to bring her eyes into focus and found there were others standing there too.
"This one's got some size to it..."
"Copy / Copy that."
The acknowledgment came back in unison, and the fight against the creature opened in earnest.
Ake charged straight at it, one arm already lit with a bright yellow glow of light along its length, throwing a punch toward its body.
The Fear twisted to dodge — Ake broke off the attack before it landed, and in that same instant Fay came in from behind and swung an iron baseball bat, sparking with a current of yellow lightning, into the side of its head.
Ake used the opening to scramble up onto its back and get both hands around one wing, then wrenched it clean off with raw force.
The Fear screamed, a sound raw with pain, and a purple fluid like blood sprayed from the wound on its back. It fixed its eyes on Fay and spat fire at him!
Fay flinched at the attack and threw himself out of the way, and even though he cleared most of it, the fire still caught his leg.
"Fay!!"
Ake shouted his name, alarmed, right as the Fear shook him off its back. It turned and drove straight toward Chihiro, who was still down on the ground, disoriented.
"This is bad — Chihiro, run, now!!"
Ake shouted the warning, but Chihiro looked, in that moment, like someone whose mind had come loose from her body entirely. She watched the Fear bearing down on her, already drawing breath to spit fire again, when Rei ran in and threw herself between them, bow already up, and loosed an arrow that envelope with a strange green glow straight into the creature's charge!
It breathed fire at the exact moment the arrow left the string, but the arrow was moving fast enough to split straight through the flame pouring out of its mouth, driving into its open jaws and out the back of its skull.
The Fear, mid-charge a second earlier, dropped and stopped moving, and its body began, slowly, to dissolve.
"Rei, why you come here?"
Chihiro asked it while Rei pulled her up off the ground, unsteady on her feet.
"What kind of question is that? We're friends!"
"No...no one... really cares. Not even you. Someday you'll leave too, just like everyone else..."
"Hey! Don't forget — we made a promise, didn't we?"
Rei said it like it referred to something between the two of them, something already understood.
"..."
"Even if it kills me, I'll protect you!!"
"Hic... hnn, hh..." Chihiro broke down and pulled Rei into a hug right there. Rei held her, not letting go, until she noticed Ake limping toward them with Fay's arm over his shoulder, favoring the burned leg.
"Rei, did that catch you at all?"
Ake asked, concerned in his voice.
"We're fine. But Chi-chan — she's not doing so well, mentally..."
"Then let's get her to 'that place' first. We'll sort the rest out after."