"You wanna know a secret?"

The coed looked over at her littlest sister with a smirk. "Maybe. It won't be a secret then though," she pointed out conspiratorially.

The eight-year-old grinned. "Can you keep it?"

"You know I can."

"Chinami, you don't have secrets," the nearby ten-year-old groaned, kicking at a patch of wildflowers as her arms tightened into a knot over her chest. "You just want attention."

Chinami, however, thought differently. Wrinkling her nose in the middle child's general direction, she turned back to the young woman sitting beside her. She shifted close and leaned up to whisper in her ear when a shower of grass blades fell over them. Chinami shrieked and jumped up to run after their angsty assailant. "Chiasa!"

"Careful, guys!" the oldest called as the children romped around the field, their home standing tall like a stone guardian on the hill behind them.

"Stop worrying, Chihiro!" Chiasa called back, her voice bouncing back through the glade.

Chihiro smiled a little, absently toying with a purple hair tie on her wrist. "I wish I could," she murmured as she watched her siblings galavant around, shrieking with laughter.

She glanced over her shoulder, back at the house, and saw her dad standing outside the back door, smiling as he watched them in the yard. "Girls! Dinner!" he called across the distance, Chinami and Chiasa perking up and sprinting up the hill. Chihiro followed in their wake and, when she reached the back door, her dad patted her on the back. "It's good to have you home, Chihiro."

She smiled, an east wind stirring her chestnut locks. "It's good to be home."

The day before, Chihiro had taken the first short span of her summer vacation to visit her hometown, a place she hadn't been in just over ten years now. The train ride from university had been a long one fraught with anxiety over whether or not she and Rumi would click like they used to. While the initial reunion and perhaps the first hour had been awkward, as soon as the topic of old names from grade school, their families, and college courses came up in conversation, it was as if they'd never parted ways.

They had taken their old walking trail from the schoolyard toward their houses after horsing around on the playground and receiving both humored and perturbed glances from parents watching their children. As they'd passed familiar houses now either spruced up with new paint or worn down by weather and age, Rumi had finally asked about the question Chihiro always loathed. Mostly because the frequency at which it was asked was entirely too high.

"So," Rumi had started in and, by her tone alone, Chihiro had known what she was in for. It was that half-giggly bubble of a tone teeming with intention and not too much thought apart from the simple want to know. "Any boys catching your eye on campus?"

Chihiro grimaced a little. "Rumi," she scolded softly. "No."

"Oh, come on," her friend had groaned. "Lighten up, I had to ask!"

"I know, everyone does," Chihiro reasoned. "I'm just frustrated, I guess."

"Like… Frustrated?" Rumi giggled.

"No," Chihiro had laughed, kicking leaves at her friend. "I just can't like anyone. I've tried! A few times and… I just keep feeling like I'm forgetting something important."

Rumi frowned a little and started to respond before realizing where they were. "Hey! We almost passed your old house!"

Chihiro jerked as she stopped abruptly, looking over and seeing her childhood home just past them, connecting to the sidewalk. She looked to Rumi, who grinned and took off around the house toward the backyard. "Rumi! Stop, we'll get in trouble!"

"Oh, come on!" Rumi laughed. "I've been past here, these people are never home!"

Chihiro hesitated before shouting, "Hey, wait up!" and hurrying along behind her friend. She joined her friend around the side and grimaced a bit at the apartment complex towering the length of an American football field away. The Kohaku River had run through there once, just past the edge of the property, but it had since been drained for building space at its end. She remembered falling in it once, but not much past that.

"Hurry up then!"

Chihiro snapped out of her reverie before hurrying to catch up with Rumi, who had made her way down to the vague path the dried up river had been reduced to, filled with gravel so no kids injured themselves in the ravine.

When Chihiro was once again at Rumi's side, she went back to their earlier topic. "So, when you say you feel like you're forgetting something… Do you mean you're forgetting someone?"

"I wish I knew. It just feels so muddled, like a dream from years ago that I didn't take time to write down," Chihiro murmured. "I don't think about it too much, but every once in a while, it comes back and it's just as frustrating as the first time."

"Maybe you crushed on someone in grade school and you're not over them," Rumi teased lightly before gasping. "Maybe you're like star-crossed lovers or something! Oh, Chihiro, why didn't you tell me?!"

"Now you're just making stuff up, Rumi!"

"Yeah, I know," Rumi admitted with a laugh. "But I like the idea of that. Besides, maybe there was someone."

"I'd like to think that if I cared that much about someone, I would remember them," Chihiro muttered, tiring of the subject and quickly. They had reached the end of the old river, past the edge of the apartment complex where it dipped into a dry pit. Chihiro looked down at the pit and crouched down to poke at a rock protruding out of the gravel. "Sad old thing, isn't it?"

Rumi nodded. "Really is."

Chihiro sighed and shook her head, reaching down to run her hand over the dirt of the old riverbank.

Rumi thought pensively for a minute before she shrugged. "I don't know about your dilemma. But maybe you just haven't remembered yet. Once you meet someone, you never really forget them."

Something about the words rang familiar bells for Chihiro and she frowned. "What did you—AGH!"

"Chihiro, are you okay?!"

Chihiro wasn't sure. In fact, she wasn't even sure what had happened. She'd barely brushed the dirt with her fingertips and a sharp pain had lanced up her arm, spiraling through her veins like a burst of heat. She'd jerked her hand back, akin to the reaction she'd had from touching a stove burner when she was six. Reflex. "I…," she faltered. "I'm fine. Must've hit a rock."

"Now I'm having a heart attack," Rumi groaned. "Come on, let's get out of here."

Chihiro nodded once, taking one more glance at the old riverbank before following Rumi away. As Rumi rambled on about a boy she liked in her film class, Chihiro flexed her hand and looked to see if she'd been cut or scraped or…something. The sensation lingered, but it was just a memory now.

Just a memory.

She frowned and rubbed her fingers against her thumb, the sensation slick. My fingers are wet… But how? That river has been dried up for years.

Blaming rain or some other such coincidence, Chihiro forgot about the sting and the moisture and the strange way Rumi's words haunted her mind, diverting to other more interesting things of the moment like the ice cream shop Rumi had suggested just then. "Don't worry so much, Chihiro, sweets help."

Chihiro had wished that people would stop telling her not to worry so much. It just made her worry more. However, her friend was right about one thing. Sweets always helped.

After dinner, Chiasa and Chinami insisted on romping through the backyard again, this time with a kickball. Chihiro wasn't sure whether sticking close or keeping a distance kept her safer, but chanced both in effort to keep an eye on them with the glow of the porch light illuminating just so far over the yard.

Chinami gave the ball a mighty kick before her eyes widened and she turned to Chihiro. "Chihi—oof!" A kick from Chiasa had clocked Chinami with the ball squarely in the face, knocking her off her feet as Chiasa laughed hysterically nearby. Chihiro had to try her best not to laugh. "You all right, Nami?"

The girl sniffled, a pink gridded imprint of the ball on her left cheek. "Yeah…"

Chiasa unhelpfully fell over in the grass nearby, still breathless from laughing.

Chihiro smiled and shook her head, walking over to Chinami and sitting down in the grass. "You sure?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Chinami said with a nod. "I remembered the secret I was going to tell you."

"Oh?" Chihiro said with a dash of interest that was mostly for Chinami's benefit.

Chinami nodded seriously. "I found a cave."

"A cave?" Chihiro repeated, tilting her head. "What kind of cave?"

"Not a rock cave, it looks like a door," Chinami insisted. "And there's a weird statue in front of it."

Why is this familiar? "What kind of weird statue?"

Chinami frowned and struggled for the right words before her face lit up. "Come on! I'll show you!"

"Maybe in the morning—hey! Chinami!" The little girl had scrambled up and bolted to the edge of the yard toward the path that connected to the road around the side of the house. Chihiro leapt to her feet and ran after her. "Get back here!"

"Come on, Sen!" Chinami shouted and she already sounded too far away.

Chihiro sprinted harder, not understanding how it was this hard for her to keep up with an eight-year-old. "Wait!"

The little girl's laughter ghosted through the dark, winding through the trees back to Chihiro's ears, making goosebumps form on her arms that she didn't notice because she was trying too hard to not trip. Chihiro pursed her lips and pulled out her phone, turning on the flashlight function and igniting the area in front of her, long shadows extending from the trunks of trees all around her like a web. "Chinami!"

Chihiro ran harder when she didn't hear a response, glancing over her shoulder when she suddenly hit something about half her size and hard. The wind was knocked out of her and she grimaced, feeling like she'd run into a boulder. Chihiro shot the flashlight beam at whatever she was slumped over, finding that it was a stout statue.

When its face lit up under the beam of her phone, she shrieked and scrambled off it, crab-walking away a few paces. She got a hold of herself and stood up, brushing the dirt off her shorts and then shining the beam forward again at the grinning face. Creepy… "Chinami, where are you?!" she called into the night.

No reply.

Chihiro shrieked again when her phone suddenly rang in her hand and she turned off the light and answered it. "Hello?"

"Chihiro, where are you?" her mother asked.

"Chinami ran off and I—"

"Chinami's home," her mom said impatiently.

"…Oh," she murmured with a frown, glancing around. "I see."

"Look, if you wanted to go out, that's fine, just be straight with me, okay? You're old enough now to…" Chihiro started tuning out the speech that was ensuing, having heard it all before because it was a rare time that her mom took her word for things. Chihiro looked around and it was only after she'd turned in a full circle that she saw a doorway of sorts in a wall behind her. A wall… "Are you listening to me, Chihiro?"

"N-No. I mean, yes!" Chihiro scrambled before sighing. "Sorry. I'll be home in a while. I really did think Chinami ran off though."

Her mom sighed. "All right. Be safe."

"I will," Chihiro murmured before ending the call, turning the flashlight beam back on and shining it into the doorway. A long hall panned out before her and she worried her lower lip.

Why is this familiar? she asked herself again.

Of their own accord it seemed, her feet began to move forward, taking her down the tunnel. Chihiro swallowed hard and her wrist felt heavy with only her purple hair tie spanning it, but she felt like she knew, ultimately, where she was going.

She was beginning to question the credibility of her instincts.

Chihiro reached the end of the tunnel at last and could feel her eyes widen.

A… A marketplace?