IV - Cranes
A ten-year old Shiki leant curiously towards his friend. "What are you doing, Rima?"
The girl in question glanced briefly towards him, before looking back at the small, square-shaped sheet of paper in front of her. She expertly made a clean, neat fold, splitting the square into two halves.
"Origami," she replied shortly, her blue eyes still intent on the paper.
The boy blinked. "Why?"
Rima sighed and finally put down her project. "You know that story, don't you? The one where if you folded a thousand paper cranes, you'll be granted a wish?"
"Oh, that." This time it was him that looked away first, losing interest. "That's stupid. It's not as if it's true."
Well, that's what he'd said, anyway. Shiki sighed, and shifted his position on the couch opposite the bed in which Rima was asleep in.
Normally, he wouldn't have been so agitated. But normally wasn't when his friend had been asleep for a day and a half and counting, because his father had used his body to hurt her that badly.
How did things get this complicated? He asked himself silently. Glancing over at his friend and modelling partner, he added, Wake up, Rima.
Shiki sighed once more before getting up. Well, he thought to himself again, I suppose it doesn't hurt to give it a try…
The first cranes he folded barely resembled birds at all. They had lopsided wings, or lopsided heads, or uneven folds, or all three. They were a far cry from what he remembered Rima making when they were younger.
But he persisted.
And, there were results. After the tenth-or-so ones, he got the hang of it, and the ones after that looked a lot cleaner, though still imperfect. Shiki smiled briefly to himself, and continued.
He got something close to three hours of sleep that day, instead focusing almost all of his attention on the cranes. He had 102 of the small white birds the first night.
The vampire got faster the more he made, totalling 316 the next night.
Then 581. Then 702. Rima showed no signs of returning to the waking world, but now her friend had something to do while she slept the wound off. Because of that, though, he slowed his pace. Maybe it was to stall the disappointment of her not waking up when the thousandth one was completed, because it was just a legend.
He only had 756 the night after. Then 802. 863, 911. 957…
999.
Shiki was reluctant to pick up the last sheet of paper. When he finished this one, it would be one thousand. When he did, he found himself staring at it with the same intensity as he remembered Rima had, and creasing more precisely, so that everything matched perfectly like it should have.
As he folded in the head of the crane, something cracked. It was a harsh sound, but it wouldn't have fazed him, had it not come from the direction of Rima's temporary room.
He hadn't time to register disappointment for the story not to have come true, only registering the fact that if anything else happened to Rima, she couldn't wake up anymore, as he dashed to the room. The boy had just enough time to shove the last origami bird into a pocket.
It had fallen out as soon the pair left the crumbling building that was their 'school'.
Shiki hadn't noticed, because Rima was indeed finally awake. But he wasn't naïve enough to believe that it had anything to do with the origami. The other vampire in question leant down and picked the white bird up, examining it.
She knew immediately what he'd been doing.
"So, Shiki. Who said that this was stupid?"
Rima waved the paper craft in her friend's face, before dashing off, daring him to catch her.
How does she have that much energy? he asked himself, before tiredly chasing after.
Disclaimer: Disclaimer applied.
A/N: And another. This is something of a prequel and continuation of chapter 43, I guess: a rusting idea that's been in my head for ages. There's probably a million mistakes in here because I wrote this sleep deprived, I'm sorry about that. =[
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