Studio Ghibli Oneshots

Help Out Of Nowhere (Howl x Reader) [Howl's Moving Castle]

Hello everyone, finally after a long time I'm back with another update! Sorry for the delay! I'll try to update more often now as summer vacation has arrived, so more oneshots are on the way! o((*^▽^*))o

Hope you'll enjoy reading (ﾉ'ヮ')ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

Howl x Reader - Help Out Of Nowhere

"Hey! (Y/N!)"

You walked down the pavement among the huge crowd. Quietly, you sneaked through the loads of people as you tried to stay unnoticed. You breathed in deeply and glanced behind you, to see if the person shouting your name kept on following you. It seemed as if they lost sight of you when you escaped into the crowd, so it would take time until they'd at least find a trace of you. You let out a relived sigh.

"That sure was too close..." you mumbled to yourself as you continued to leap through the crowd. You were certain that they'd be more persistent on finding you, but it seems as you underestimated them. After all, Madame Suliman must have more people to look up than just you. Even if knowing that you were a wizard, there was plenty of other's the country had to offer! To think that Madame Suliman wants something to do with a beginner surprised you, mostly because of what you've heard of her made you want to meet her less. So that's why you refrained from having a meeting with her, when suddenly a few of her workers was ordered to take you to her, which you led you to the present now.

You used the small gap formed in between two alleyways to escape from the crowd. There's no possibility of Madame Suliman's workers checking these alleys of the town, so you wouldn't need to risk being noticed of them. Smiling happily, you skipped down the alleyway towards your home, a little further ahead.

Obviously enough, you didn't bother looking behind you to see if someone actually kept following you. It was in fact someone following you, whom kept trace of you, and used the same trick of not being noticed just as you. You continued to pace slowly out of the alleyway until you reached the end of it, and took a turn for one of the larger roads with a bit more people.

It wasn't before you arrived at another huge crowd that you glanced behind you. However your follower was quick to hide among the crowd, which made you less suspicious. Though, as the end of the road arrived, just a few from the huge crowd remained. By then it would have been easy to spot the one following you, but it turned out that something else took your attention instead. Something that'd help you out of the situation you were in.

Around the corner of next road, you collided with someone. You stumbled backwards and scratched your head in surprise.

"Excuse me." You heard a voice say, while you quickly looked up at the person. A quite tall man with blonde hair and light blue eyes stood in front of you, giving you a reassuring smile. He looked somewhat similar to you but you were clueless of where you've seen him before.

At the time you were brought back from your thoughts, you were quite surprised to see the kind expression he was showing you and shook your head. "I'm sorry, it seems like we collided with each other, hopefully you aren't hurt?" you asked him politely.

The man shrugged and kept smiling. "No need to worry, I was just about to ask that myself!"

You were silently giving him a look, curious of why he seemed so familiar. "Have I perhaps met you before?" you asked unsurely and doubtfully.

He blinked his eyes and tilted his head. "Have we? It might be possible, I've met a lot of people through the years. Say, what might your name be?"

You were uncertain if you should've given him any information about you at all, in case of him working together with Madame Suliman, but since you got a very friendly and kind impression of him you dismissed the thought. What odds could there be?

"My name's (Y/N), pleasure to meet you." You said with a small smile.

He nodded quickly. "What a pretty name, I'm Howl." He said and bowed slightly. You nodded back at him, thinking about the name over and over within your mind but still didn't find any connections with him and the name. Of course, that name sounded all too familiar as well, but it didn't get you any clues of where it was from.

You shook your head and smiled at him, showing your appreciation of his compliment. "How strange, I've heard of your name, and I think I've met you before, but I have no memory of it."

Most likely, there was nothing to be worried about, but you still felt insecure. You checked your surroundings once again and sighed. Howl seemed to notice and batted an eye around himself as well. "Is something wrong (Y/N)?" he asked.

Would it matter if you told him or not? What could possibly happen? Well, here goes nothing. "Are you aware of Madame Suliman and who she is?" you began, carefully glancing at him.

"I know that all too well, she's one of the mightiest wizards there is." he answered to which you nodded quickly. "She is, and for some reason she wants me as her apprentice, though I don't feel so certain of wanting to become one. That's the reason why I'm followed by her workers like this. I'm just a beginner, so I'm quite puzzled at why she'd take an interest in me. I'm terribly sorry if I happened to drag you into my little trouble here..." you ended your explanation and sighed.

When you were done explaining, you could see a clearly visible surprise in Howl's eyes. He stared into your eyes and opened his mouth to speak. "Is that so? Now that you say it..." his cut of his own sentence when he took notice of two rushing figures coming closer towards you two from the distance. In barely no time at all, he took a hold of your wrist and began rush towards the end of the road, until of course a dead end had to prevent you two from getting out of sight from the two following. As they came closer to the two of you, Howl leaned his head down to you with a reassuring smile, "just keep calm and hold onto me."

With those words, you left the ground underneath you and closed in on the sky above. Howl kept you close to him, as the ground became far too distant. You might be a beginner of a wizard, but this was something you hadn't experienced before. Howl and you were basically flying! After a while up in the air, you began to walk together with him.

"They won't be able to reach us up here." You happily chirped to yourself. "And this also proves that you are a wizard, doesn't it?"

Howl chuckled and nodded. "It does, doesn't it? I also might have found out the reason why we are familiar with each other. We might have heard of each other from her, or spotted each other in the crowd along the way."

"So you are just a beginner as well?" you asked him with a visibly surprised voice.

He shook his head slowly. "No, in fact I'm a quite talented and experienced wizard among many. That might be another reason why you've heard of me. I know that I have a few rumors spread around the countries about me. Howl Jenkins Pendragon, I'm one of Madame Suliman's earlier apprentices. Also, I think you dropped something when we had that little accident before."

You raised an eyebrow at him curiously, as he took out something from his pocket. He handed it to you at first unsurely, but then giving you a happy smile. You looked at him, and then down at the thing within your hand, and then returning a gaze at him again. "A flower? I've dropped a flower?"

He nodded. "Well it seems like you did."

You tilted your head clueless for a second with what he meant, because when did you drop a flower? Before you could answer him, gravity interrupted the two of you and left you two down on the ground.

"Well it seems like it ends here, and I think I need to hurry back home. Maybe we'll meet some other time (Y/N)!" Howl exclaimed as he began to dash away towards another road ahead. You glanced at him until he was out of your sight, before you realized how the flower no longer was in your hand but slowly dangling down from above you in the sky.

Now that you think about it, you might know why he was familiar to you.

"Howl Jenkins Pendragon huh.... Wait, wasn't he the one famous for his moving castle...?"