IX: The 500th - or maybe 600th - Paper Crane

The 500th paper crane would be five hundred times (obviously) of what SeeU had when she began. It was starting to become a repetitive game now. Her life was a repetitive game. It never changed. It only proceeded steadily on, meandering around obstacles, slowing in its turn, climbing up the hill. And SeeU was sick of this.

"How long was it since I did anything useful?" she grumbled, stringing her 480th crane onto the long, thin strands of fiber.

The worry that she was a burden still hung over her. How would she pay the hospital? She had, after all, promised to her brother that she'd cover the expenses. How much did the hospital cost, anyway?

It was the third day in the hospital. At least the next day she'd probably get to be back in her brother's apartment again.

The hospital had dull black-tiled floors that however the nurses mopped it, it just always looked germy and dirty. There were high, thin windows on SeeU's side of the room, and oily-looking (but not really) cheesecloth curtains covered them, hanging down from a metal bar cemented across the top of the room. There was always a thin layer of dust, somehow, on the creamy, grayish tiles on the wall that had probably seen better days and were shell-white back then. SeeU didn't mind this except for the fact that it was lonely. The atmosphere hovered over everybody - or maybe it was just her.

The guy who had the mental problems, who slept right next to her, was sleeping almost every time she looked at him now. He was on a breathing machine, and the nurse had whispered to her that he had this condition called mental deterioration though she wouldn't say the exact illness ("And no, it's not dementia"), and whatever it was and what effects it had on him, it did not sound pretty. Only once was SeeU able to see him with his eyes open, and they looked at each other for a second.

His eyes were blue. Azure blue. They conveyed blankness of the mind to her, that nothing much was going on in the mind now, but they spoke of layers of history - not unlike Gakupo's, but they were different, lighter, of a gentler hue. Happier times. In a rushing moment of nostalgia, SeeU was briefly transported back to her childhood, how she had tripped over the hem of her summer dress in a game of tag and rolled to her back to realize that the boy who was chasing her had landed on top of her and was now gazing at her eyes. They were the same blue. Well, almost the same.

Then the man had closed them and fallen asleep.

Isn't it odd? Terrible things never happen to the people who want or deserve them - they only happen to the completely innocent ones. It's funny, too, how one moment we're happy, and the next, just one thing could revert our moods to death wishes.


"What's the name of that guy?" SeeU asked the nurse later.

"What guy? Now, close your eyes and inhale deeply." She pressed a stethoscope to SeeU's chest, and slid down to her belly, and told SeeU to flip over to examine the back.

"I mean that guy," SeeU said, wincing as the cold metal touched her chest. Hospital treatment proved efficient and she was rapidly getting better - not totally better, but good enough to not feel too weak. "The guy who's next to me."

"Oh. I thought you were through with him already."

"What?"

"Never mind. I thought I told you all that you needed to know about him," the nurse said.

"What's his name?" SeeU asked pointedly.

"Oh." The nurse frowned. "Well, okay. I told you all that I knew and what you needed to know about him."

"So you don't know his name."

"No," the nurse agreed. "But you can go ask the office for his name, his files and charts, that sort of thing, although I doubt the secretary would let you. SeeU, I'm done with your heartbeat-breathing test. They're still a little faster than normal, but your body, for the most part, has gotten used to this fast breathing so you don't feel that anything is different except for some nausea and such. Still, it'll take you about one more week to heal."

That gave SeeU three more weeks - if she healed the next week - to go roam Tokyo and see the sights that Gumi so enthusiastically thrust upon her. And meet a few of her most favorite singers, too. The city was quite beautiful when it was nighttime and you were overlooking a lighted highway - especially during holiday season, which SeeU was in right now - though not as beautiful as the suburbs, where SeeU had been born and bred.

And it was going to be her birthday, too, the next week. The sixteenth of December, the next Sunday.

SeeU wondered what would happen this time, now that it was a birthday that certified she was an adult.


she had always longed

for this to happen; it was

of her greatest wish.


It was written by a blue ballpoint pen on yellow lined paper that was part of a notepad that was the size and color of a regular Post-It. The poem was in SeeU's swirly script. She had decided that this would be the paper for her 500th crane, and it was partly true - she had longed to get to the halfway point, but it was bordering more on her eighteenth birthday than the 500th paper crane.

I should have made a poem like this when I was nine, SeeU thought to herself. That's a halfway mark to a woman, too.

"I'm bored," SeeU said aloud, voicing the obvious. She had long finished the 480th crane and now was on her 499th one, and it certainly wasn't making itself easy to fold for her. For one, it was half-cardboard, and cardboard bent and creased unattractively at the worst spots. Second, her fingers and eyes were getting tired. Third, she just needed a break and somewhere to go. There were daily breaks in which she got out of the bed and walked around a little, walked in and out of the hospital, exercised, but that was about it. SeeU was bored out of her mind.

Suddenly the nurse's voice was above her. "Um, SeeU? Another visitor."

Oh, please, no, not another girl involved in SeeWoo's love triangle to make it be called a love square. SeeU raised her eyes up, prepared for the worst, but of all of the people who should be there -

SeeWoo?

"Why are you here?" she blurted, drawing a hand across her tired eyes. Then SeeU realized how rude that sounded. "Sorry. I just..."

"It's okay." SeeWoo had a duffle bag slung over his shoulder. There were faint dark circles under his eyes, as if he tried to apply mascara and failed horribly at it, but when SeeU looked more closely, it was from sleepless nights. "I brought you something..."

"An early birthday present?"

"No. You'll see about your birthday present on your birthday. It's a gift for you to get better."

"Isn't that great."

"One day, I will teach you to be optimistic," SeeWoo said, his lips twitching into a smile. "But not now. Come take a look yourself." He sat the bag right next to SeeU, and he unclasped the look. SeeU peered inside, not sure of what to expect, when she realized that it was a jumble of folded paper.

Paper cranes, to be exact.

"How - ?"

"I hope I counted right," SeeWoo said worriedly. "I was folding cranes all while you were in the hospital. I think it's a hundred paper cranes, a tenth of a thousand. Here." And he dumped the entire contents of the bag on SeeU's lap. Cranes of all shapes and sizes and colors fell all over SeeU's lap. SeeWoo immediately began to count them again, and that was a relief, for SeeWoo couldn't see his sister's face, which didn't know what emotion to twist itself into. There were so many feelings SeeU felt at the moment - mainly love and shock and happiness and not knowing just how exactly she'd repay her brother - that were impossible to cram into one facial expression, so she just kept her expression when she first saw the cranes: amazement.

"Oh," SeeWoo added. "I almost forgot. I covered the hospital expenses."

SeeU's jaw dropped, but she quickly slammed it shut. In that moment, she finally found her tongue. "What?" she cried. Mostly she felt a bit relieved that she wouldn't have to scrounge for money and be in debt to her brother, but she also felt useless. When could she finally do something without relying on her brother?

"It's okay, SeeU," SeeWoo said. "It just didn't feel right for me to sit around and watch you be sick while trying to pay the hospital for their deeds. So I just...broke your rule..."

SeeU sighed and settled in her cushion.

"You're not mad, are you?" A fleck of worry rose into SeeWoo's eyes. SeeU shook her head.

"I can't be mad at a brother like you."

"That's good," SeeWoo said, smiling again. "I guess I have to go now. Take care of the cranes. Oh, and don't worry so much while you have pneumonia. You'll live longer that way."

SeeU was speechless. But she reached out to hug her brother.

By brother standards, he was the best that the best could be.

After he left, she carefully strung up his cranes on a separate string, and then finished her 500th paper crane and her fifth string. Only four more strings were empty now.


HAI HAIIII~

Missed me? 8D

I-I'M SO SORRY! D; But it's... not my fault... that I wasn't allowed to access the Internet in the Osaka-Kansai airport in Japan and that in China Google Docs just kept loading and never appeared. Well, maybe it was that I didn't do extra research, but I'm serious, I'm so sorry! D; It makes me nostalgic already to think about my time in China and Japan, that I want to cry D;
Oh, and the Internet in China/Japan wouldn't allow me to access YouTube either. D: I was practically dying by the time we were to leave because I couldn't listen to the new releases by the utaites.

So while I was in China and Japan, I was sprouting a lot of ideas for stories (and writing down what happened in China and Japan). I'll go summarise it later in the Quizilla journal; now is too emotional a time (agh, I cry too easily). I'll put away the log and my ideas for now in my desk, and when I feel like it, I'm going to take it out and read it. Now I'm going to try to figure out how to make snowflakes in my science project. -_-

Thank you for reading/reviewing (as always)!

EDIT: Dear Guest- Well, China didn't fully block Google Docs or YouTube. I don't know about Twitter or Facebook, because I don't often go on those sites, but I could access YouTube through my phone and it ran at a decent pace (though I never tried it with the computer). With Google Docs, I could only access the files that friends shared with me, not my own. But China did block a whole bunch of Google's products. As for Japan, the only part of it I'd been to is the Osaka-Kansai airport, and the WiFi there was like an epic fail of itself so I couldn't go on anything that required WiFi there. Unless I was to switch my phone to 3G mode, but that's expensive.

~Unyielding Wish