IV: The First Paper Crane

The first thing SeeU did was to stare at her brother. Pneumonia? She hadn't contracted pneumonia since she was five. She tried to recall what her mother did to ease her pneumonic state, but failed.

"SeeU," SeeWoo said, "I've got to get you to the doctor."

"I don't want to go to the doctor." She didn't want a stranger exploring every part of her body.

"SeeU," SeeWoo said again, more gently. "I know him. He's a friend of mine, Gakupo. He'll get you through."

"When did you meet him?"

There was a strained silence on which SeeWoo seemed to burrow through his thoughts, trying to come up with the right snatch of information. SeeU coughed again. The knife of pain pushed itself even more deeply into her chest. There was nothing she wanted but to sleep, but pneumonia simply deprived her of that. SeeU recalled dimly a fluffy bed her mother would have made for her even if she was almost an adult, Tylenol she would have been given. But here, in this alien country, how did she belong? How could she belong? It was the first time she'd ever been in Japan. How could she- ?

"I met him," SeeWoo said finally, breaking SeeU's thoughts, "when I first got sick with a cold. You know how terrible I am at treating myself. So I went to a clinic that one of my friends recommended. Well, then we struck up a friendship, and, you know..."

SeeU's blankets were drenched with sweat. "Do you have some other blankets around?"

"Sure, I always keep spares. But SeeU, Gakupo has a PhD in Medical Science..."

If SeeWoo trusts him, I guess I can go.

But

what the heck

I can't...

"Is pneumonia easy to treat at home?"

"Maybe, if someone like Mother is around. You got your first attack of pneumonic stuff yesterday? Okay, that should be easy to treat. But I'm not like our mom. I guess the best thing to do is to pay Gakupo regular visits."

SeeU sat awkwardly behind a curtain on a bed with a thin mattress. She was stripped of clothing except for her bra and underwear, and felt shaking chills with the cold - not that she wasn't already cold. She looked around for something, anything, to cover her body, but there were no sheets as far as she looked. Besides, she was too timid to stand up and interrupt SeeWoo's and Gakupo's whispered conversation with something like, "Do you know if I can cover myself with sheets?" or "I'm cold."

Instead, SeeU chose to study Gakupo. He was tall, taller than the average man. He had a long ponytail, reminiscent of violets, cascading down his back. From what she could see, Gakupo's nails were painted purple, or maybe they changed color with the light, because she noticed one nail in the shadows that was bluish-indigo. He had sapphire eyes fringed by long purple lashes, and was dressed in a white lab coat with a few pens hanging from the breast pocket and a stethoscope around his neck. There was a Bunsen burner on the counter to the right, with some empty beakers lying around it. SeeU didn't know what it was doing there, but scooted a bit to the left.

Just when she was pondering Gakupo's presence, Gakupo chose that moment to turn around. SeeU was caught off guard staring at him, and suddenly she couldn't tear her eyes from his own. She was making herself dizzy, wondering what happened in his life that made his eyes look rather haunted, intense, but reassuring somehow. There was a long scar running across the side of his face, and SeeU thought about questioning her brother's and his friend's choices.

Only a second later did SeeU realize what she must have looked like to Gakupo, a ditzy blond girl with her mouth half-open.

"I-I'm sorry," SeeU blurted, her voice breathy and high-pitched somehow, from the brief gasps between her words. "I-I got carried away, and I -" She coughed, and suddenly felt Gakupo patting her back.

"How long does pneumonia last?" SeeWoo asked immediately.

"About...two to three weeks. For normal people. But SeeU has a weaker immune system?" Gakupo's voice was deep. Rich, SeeU thought.

"Yes. It takes her a little longer to heal than most people, and her body isn't as good when fending off diseases."

Gakupo scrutinized SeeU for a moment, and then he opened a cabinet up on the wall, taking out a fluffy blanket and draping it over her. It was cold, and kind of dusty, but SeeU held it close to her body and slowly she felt a bit better. Gakupo sort of pushed the blanket aside and pressed the cold, funnel shaped metal part of his stethoscope to SeeU's back for a few moments. "Breathe deeply," he instructed, but there was some trouble for SeeU doing that.

"Do you have time enough for an X-ray and a blood test?" Gakupo asked finally.

"Today?" SeeWoo asked.

"No, I mean tomorrow. I have more patients today."

"SeeU, do you want to go?"

"This isn't a matter of do-you-want-to-go," Gakupo said. "If her immune system is not competent, and she's had pneumonia since yesterday evening, it can get serious."

SeeWoo hesitated. "What time are you ready?"

"Any time. I'm free."

"Then what about ９ in the morning?"

"Go ahead."

"SeeU," SeeWoo said. "I thought you might want to look at this..." He showed her a slip of paper on which, SeeU guessed, was the handwriting of Gakupo. He had apparently scribbled it down really quickly, because it was messy and took SeeU a while to figure out.

-Drink lots of fluids
-Get some acetaminophen
-Don't try to stop your cough unless it's hard for you to handle

"Aren't coughs always hard for me to handle?" SeeU asked.

"I know, but I think he means that if it's not life-threatening, you should cough."

"Why is that?"

"I don't know," shrugged SeeWoo. "Medical science. Ask him." Then he brightened. "Oh, he said something about coughing is a way of getting rid of a disease. It has something to do with your lungs."

"Oh," SeeU said. She was tired again, and the mattress sitting on the bedroom floor was tempting. "I'm going to -"

"SeeU, wait." SeeWoo went to his computer and plugged something in on his search engine. Soon the same website about the legends popped up. At the bottom of the page, where all the legends were listed, SeeWoo clicked on a certain one and carried the laptop over to SeeU. "Look. The legend is about if someone folds a thousand paper cranes, they please the gods and they get one wish."

"And how do they know that's true?" SeeU asked.

SeeWoo sighed. "I'm not saying it's true. I'm just...you know, to keep yourself occupied. If I remember correctly, back when you were sick, you always complained of nothing to do."

"I don't think the gods will be pleased with your answer," SeeU said cynically, contradicting what she just said.

"I've got some colored wrapping paper," SeeWoo said, ignoring SeeU's sardonic comment. "You can fold and rip them into squares. Do you want me to teach you how to make one?"

SeeU looked at the paper spread out on her lap. There were rolls of crimson paper, patterned with metallic, shiny gold. Green paper with little Santas dancing across it. There were pieces of gray paper that featured an ink painting on each. There were even old calendars, beaten and old. She could see the words in weathered ink, First Day of the Week, The Eleventh Month's 24th Day, 2008 on one of them.

"Well?" SeeWoo asked.

"Teach me how," SeeU said finally.

The first paper SeeU folded a crane from was a cutout from a huge calendar. "It didn't belong to me; it belonged to the dude who owned this apartment before me," SeeWoo explained. "He just left it with me because he said he didn't need it."

SeeU watched SeeWoo closely with each step. She had never really folded something like a paper crane before, and every step was new to her. The first few steps were easy, but she got stuck on a part where you had to make the piece of paper kite-shaped, and keep it flattened out and not rip it. "How do you do this?" SeeU asked, frustrated.

"Oh, you just push this part" - SeeWoo demonstrated - "down, and then you press it, and you have the shape."

The finished product was not exactly what SeeU would call pretty. It was lopsided, and the wingtips had been folded unevenly. Still, she set it beside her. It looked as if it was landing from the sky, onto the water, into a well-anticipated and -paced glide.

Her first paper crane.

Sorry for the late update! I didn't know for a while what to put. Well of course SeeU would be kind of wary of Gakkun after she saw the scar running down Gakupo's face, but Gakupo isn't a bad guy here...Maybe I'll write the reason of the scar. Later.

Thank you for reading/reviewing!

~Unyielding Wish