I: First Signs

The sunset this evening was smeared with the perfect amounts of gray, beige, yellow, and orange, as if its colours had been poured into a blender and whipped to perfection and then splashed across the heavens. The sun, a fiery red ball of hope, slowly sank as the colors of the sky darkened. Lights in the city were slowly flickering on, and soon the towering skyscrapers' silhouettes blocked out all but a few pale golden rays of the sun. The low hum of traffic resumed, and cars raced, one after another, on the highway.

SeeU never liked it when it was dark. Having been almost tricked away by a stranger when she was five, she never trusted the city, either, with its great amount of thieves and overcrowded population. The hustle and bustle of the people always seemed too hurried for her, too bewildering. She preferred it tranquil and easy to understand like the town in southern South Korea where she'd grown up in. Even though it was only six o'clock in the evening, it was November, and already SeeU could make out the first traces of the stars in the sky as the taxi she rode in whizzed by. The city of Daegu was huge, and although not as huge and important as Seoul, it was big enough to make her feel small and lost. She could only hope that the driver knew where he was going.

She was headed to the Daegu International Airport. She'd take a trip to China first as a sort of bridge trip, and boarding Air China she'd get Tokyo-Haneda airport, which was in Japan, her destination. She'd gone on the computer to painstakingly trace its exact whereabouts, and yet this old man who was handling his taxi so boldly claimed to know where it was.

SeeU's brother had been studying the arts in Japan for...oh, four years, to say the least. He sent home hundreds of letters and photographs, but even that was not enough. SeeU wanted to see this country for herself, see her brother again. They had planned to meet at the Haneda Airport, but SeeU could easily get lost and was not sure if she could get where SeeWoo would be.

SeeU did some quick mathematical problems in her head. From Daegu to Beijing would approximately take eight hours. From Beijing to Tokyo would take about three hours and thirty minutes. It'd about to almost twelve hours, and seeing as it was six p.m. right now, and it'd take almost another hour to get to the airport, but yet another thirty minutes to spare once she got there, she'd probably arrive in Tokyo, Japan at around seven in the morning if she didn't choose to explore Beijing, China - wait, no. She would have three hours in Beijing until the flight to Tokyo, so she'd get there at ten.

She glanced down at her flight schedule. She'd printed out a flight schedule for Air China, too, from the Internet. Once she landed in China, SeeU would have three hours' time before she had to get to the airport for the flight to Japan. But then, who goes about exploring in the midnight?

SeeU sighed and leaned against the taxi seat. It was cushiony and smelled of freshly polished leather. There was a little Kindle-like device on the back of the passenger seat, which she could use to play games on. But not now. All this thinking was starting to wear her out, and SeeU was in desperate need of a long nap. How she could sleep on this bumpy highway was beyond her, with the roar of traffic next to her ear as the driver scrolled down the windows to let out some of the smoke in the car - he had been smoking - but just as the driver swerved sharply SeeU found her eyelids drooping.

SeeU was awakened unceremoniously at a sudden stop. Her eyes flew open as she jerked forward, and as her nose came within inches of smashing into the passenger seat in front of her, SeeU thanked the heavens for her seat belt.

A wave of carsickness crashed over SeeU, but she gulped it down. She'd have to find somewhere else to puke. Why was she feeling so nauseous, though? She'd been on longer car rides. It must be the skimpy sleep she'd gotten last night, as she stayed up late, kept up by the excitement that she would be visiting SeeWoo in Japan. She blamed her own eagerness. It would wait, after all. She would have five weeks to spend time with him, about a month.

"Ma'am, this is your stop," the driver said, rather ungraciously. He scratched at the stubble on his chin and held out his hand.

SeeU meekly slid some change in his hand, along with a tip. Then she stepped out of the taxi with her suitcase, into the cold night air, and walked to the imposing building in front of her. She reopened the map of Daegu International Airport for what seemed like the thousandth time, and traced along the path she'd marked with sparkly gold ink. She'd only drawn that path a fortnight before, but she'd already worn it so that most of the sparkle in the ink had rubbed off. SeeU gulped again, but this time from excitement and fear. She looked up, again, at the airport.

Even though it was nighttime, cars were still parked along the entrance. Slowly SeeU walked inside. The lighting was strange: dim and glaring at the same time. The walls, polished floor, glass windows, staircases, escalators, elevators...they were all illuminated a pale, liquidy golden yellow. (A/N: I'd never been inside there before, and I didn't find any useful images of its inside, but I'm drawing on my own experiences of airports to write what it might have looked inside.) It would have been a warm welcome to anyone who was familiar with the Daegu National Airport and traveling, but for someone like SeeU, it was all ghastly and unfamiliar. She didn't walk like she normally did: she crept, looking around. A woman's voice announced the flights and their numbers, whether they were ready to fly or whether they were just unpacking or warning that they were about to take off. SeeU reached into her suitcase and quickly, with fumbling fingers, brought out a book. Hiding behind it in an attempt to look like she was reading, SeeU glanced around. The airport didn't seem as threatening as it was before, but still...

It was cold. SeeU wished she brought along a coat, but all of her coats were packed neatly in her suitcase, and she didn't want to go through the process of unzipping it and taking one out.

Soon, though, she got used to the unfamiliar airport, and reopened her map. SeeU glanced around for any guidance, and seeing as all the people rushed past her, she simply found out where she was herself and traced the path again. Showing her passport to the security guards, telling them that all the luggage she needed and had was in her hands, going through the security scanner, and the rest of it...it all passed by in a blur. It wasn't too long of a walk until she got to the rows of seats in the airport, where SeeU would wait until the airplane was ready to fly.

SeeU chose a seat next a friendly-looking girl who was maybe a few years older than her, with bluish-brown hair in two long ponytails on either side of her head and wide emerald eyes. She was engrossed in a book written in Chinese, but when SeeU sat down she looked up.

"Luo Tianyi," she said, extending a hand with a smile.

SeeU considered it for a moment before shaking it. "I'm SeeU." She wondered why Tianyi was giving out her name to a stranger that she didn't even know.

"You're headed for China, too?" Tianyi asked. This girl knew how to create conversation. A straightforward one.

"Actually, Japan," SeeU said. "I'm going to see my brother. It's just that Daegu City was the closest place nearby that had an airport, but the airlines don't include Japan, so I have to go to China first if I want to get to Japan."

"I went to here to finish my education in the career of music," Tianyi explained brightly. "I liked Kpop. But I'm done, so now I'm going back to China."

Kind of like SeeU's brother, except he went to Japan to study the architecture.

"Well, I..." Before SeeU had time enough to wedge in another word or two, another wave of sickness came over her. She definitely needed somewhere to, simply put, go. Did she just notice the cramps in her stomach, her trembling legs? And yet...SeeU glanced up at the board and all the words scrolling across it. There were only fifteen minutes until they boarded the plane.

"Are you okay?" Luo Tianyi placed a gentle hand on SeeU's clammy shoulder. A headache flared in SeeU's temples.

SeeU shook her head, then quickly changed her head's rhythmic movement to a nod. The headache surged forward. Beads of sweat gathered on her forehead. What was going on? She couldn't become sick right now, when there was only twelve hours until she'd see her brother!

"SeeU, you're really sick."

"I know that," SeeU snapped involuntarily. She tended to have an easily upset temper when she was sick.

"You may begin boarding Flight-1017," the woman's voice said over the loudspeakers.

SeeU stumbled to her feet. Luo Tianyi began to help her, but SeeU shook her head and pushed her away, fumbling as she refolded her map and stuck it in her pocket. She swayed unsteadily as she made her way through the narrow walkway, into the airplane.

It was then that the first puzzle piece of her illness had set itself on the puzzle board.

Okay, that was seriously random. I don't know where it came from, but it suddenly came into my mind that I should make a story on paper cranes. So I did, and took a week to write this one. The "Flight-1017" thing just popped into my head. Again, since I've never been there, I don't really know what they name their flights, but I thought about the flight names of the airplanes I knew about, and came up with that.

Thank you for reading/reviewing!

~Unyielding Wish