X: The 800th Paper Crane

The warmth of her brother's apartment greeted SeeU as she walked out into the room, bundled up in a pile of clothes. SeeWoo had taken a day off of work - or school, whatever he was doing over there - to be with SeeU. She had only been there a little while, but she already knew where everything was, and went to her bed, freshly made, and set everything down first before smoothing the bedcovers over again.

"Since yesterday, how many cranes have you folded?" SeeWoo happened to ask her.

"Glad you asked. A hundred fifty." SeeU smiled. "Well, a hundred fifty-one, if you count the one I folded for the mental guy."

"The mental guy?" SeeWoo repeated, his brow creasing. "What mental guy?"

"You know, he was right next to me..."

"I was looking at you the whole time," SeeWoo confessed. "I didn't pay attention to anybody else, except for maybe the nurse, because she made me stand there for so long while she went through all the files and made me sign a contract and everything."

"Oh."

SeeWoo nudged his sister lightly, causing her to fall onto the bed and into a rack of coughs. He clapped her gently on the back while he swiftly whisked off her clothes and, the next thing SeeU knew, she was in the bed with sheets laid warmly over her. SeeWoo leaned over her, a lock of his blonde hair falling over his left eye, his knee pressing gently on SeeU's sheet-covered belly. He was grinning. "So do you have an affection for him?"

"What did you do that for?" SeeU complained evasively, rubbing her lower back, where it had hurt when she flopped onto the bed.

"Aha! So you do like him. You're avoiding to talk about him."

"No, I'm just interested in him."

"Infatuation," SeeWoo teased. He nudged her pointedly again.

SeeU sighed. "Okay. So he has overgrown short blue hair and blue eyes. He just sits there most of the time staring at the ceiling. Happy?"

"Sounds like someone I know."

"Who is not me," SeeU supplied. "I've been sitting around lately, but I don't have blue hair."

"No, I mean really, it sounds like someone I know." SeeWoo frowned. "He was with Luka most of the time, but they broke up and he went with Meiko, but Luka never really faded from his mind, so..."

SeeU must have had an evident look of confusion on her face, because SeeWoo began all over again. "Luka is an independent engineer who works closely with us, and Meiko is some pretty girl from some shop boutique or whatever. Anyway, I...forgot his name. It was...Kaiko? Kaika? Taito? Nigaito?"

"The first two were girls' names," SeeU said helpfully.

"I just noticed. Anyway, he was always a rash driver. Car crash. Concussion. Hospital. I don't know what happened to him..."

"Oh," SeeU said again, and lapsed into silence. After a while, she added, "I used up all the pieces of paper you gave me - that's why I didn't fold more."

"I'd figured so. I have some copy paper in case you're interested." SeeWoo went to rummage in the space behind the bookcase. He resurfaced covered with dust but holding a batch of printing paper and paper that had already been printed on. "I also have the letters you sent to me when I was here and you were in South Korea... In case you want some memories with your spiritually-referenced cranes."

SeeU took the paper from her brother's outstretched hands. "I'd like that, thank you. What did I write anyway?"

"Let's see..." SeeWoo got up and went to a particular nook on the bookcase. It was near the top, stuffed full with old and new paper alike. "I still have the project you made when you were five, if you're interested, when you gave it to me as a keepsake for me to never forget you. It was tacked up on the wall for some time, but then it began to become flimsy and sun-bleached, so I put it away. Anyway, here's one..." He cleared his throat and began to read. "'January 12, 2008. Dear SeeWoo, I know it's only a month but I already miss you. I started to miss you the moment you left. I suck at letters, sorry, even though I'm already fourteen, I just can't get used to writing letters. It's your... eighteenth... birthday, right? Well, silly me. It was on the first of January, how could I possibly forget that?

"'So... even though it's a little early, how's it going? I know that you make friends fairly quickly. Do you have any friends at the university? Are you just taking the "common" courses right now, or have you already gotten to studying architecture? I never realized I talk and ask you a lot of things until you leave, sorry...' And you drew a face right here. It looks like an equal sign, an underscore, another equal sign, and an apostrophe," SeeWoo said.

"Is that it?" SeeU asked, blushing a little now at how young and naive she sounded.

"No. But it's still fairly short. 'You should be still wearing the jade necklace I bought and gave you with my own money for your early-birthday present and the birthdays that come after, because I can't visit until I'm eighteen (or almost eighteen) and when you're twenty-two or twenty-one, it depends on the time. Anyway, it's four years. When that happens, I'll be in eleventh or twelfth grade, but I'd probably be in twelfth grade because Mom said that she'd talk to the teacher for me to skip a grade. I might even be in college, though I'm really not planning to go, because I just don't have an aim in life like you. What do you think I should do? Love, your sister, SeeU.' And then it ends." SeeWoo chuckled. "Do you have an aim in life now?"

"No, but I've been taking a lot of college prep courses. Give me that, I'm going to fold cranes while you read the rest."

"Alright." SeeWoo dug up another one. "'February 13, 2008. Dear SeeWoo, Love is in the air! Tomorrow will be Valentine's Day (in the "western" countries, anyway). Still, we're holding a little mock celebration, and a lot of Kpop songs have hearts and pink and red and cards in mind now. What about you? Do you like anybody special? You know that I don't. Not yet, though. So stop teasing.

"'I got your last letter! It was on January 31st, I believe. But I was so happy! Seriously, though, SeeWoo? You're not taking any courses? I hope you're teasing there now, because I'd hate to think that my big brother - the one I've always looked up to - hangs around with a bunch of bums, drinking and smoking and getting tattoos and piercings. Nuh-uh. As long as your little sister is alive, she will not let you do any of that. If I ever get to visit Japan and I find you with so much as ONE mark inked on you, or ONE earring, I WILL DEMAND A REFUND. Oh dear, that doesn't make sense, does it? Anyway, just answer that question seriously.

"'Wait, so your friend is named-' Bingo!" SeeWoo suddenly yelled, not bothering to finish reading the sentence. SeeU, by this time, was just finishing her third crane (her count of cranes already finished amounted up to 752 paper cranes) and she jumped in surprise.

"What, SeeWoo?"

"The car driver dude! He's Kaito! Kaito Shion!"

"Oh," SeeU said mildly, stringing up the third crane. 753. "I totally knew that."

"..."

"..."

"Seriously?" SeeWoo sighed. "Okay, back to the letter. 'Wait, so your friend is named Kaito? Well, it reminds me of the Kaito guy in Mermaid Melody, you know, the spiky-orange-haired guy who is a surfer? That Kaito is a jerk. He doesn't deserve Lucia, and Lucia should totally dump him, except she's just so naive and I get SO PISSED OFF at both of them sometimes. Sometimes it's just Lucia that I'm frustrated at, sometimes it's Kaito, and sometimes it's both of them at once. Does this Kaito have orange hair, and is he a jerk? Sorry, I guess you don't know what Mermaid Melody is about. I'll explain to you next time.

"'I'm writing a lot today! I'm starting to get the hang of writing letters~ Not that we don't write to pen-pals all the way across the ocean every day, of course. That and writing to you. Well, only I do. My pen-pal is... I can't remember his name. It's Al or something. That's it. Albert Eberhardt*, except he just wants to be called Big Al. He lives in California but he's from New York City. Well, he's German, but he says that his great-great-grandparents immigrated to America or something. And then he was talking about the Statue of Liberty. I'll tell you more about him in the next letter as well. Love, SeeU.'"

SeeU finished her 760th paper crane and strung it up. "I said that? I don't remember..."

"You don't remember a lot of things." SeeWoo sat down next to SeeU, dumping a whole pile of paper on her lap. "There, those are the letters. It makes me nostalgic just reading them -"

The phone rang shrilly in the kitchen.

SeeWoo frowned. "I'll be right back," he said.

He came back after a half-hour bout of shocked yelling and whispers, his face ashen, when SeeU was just finishing her 798th crane.

"You were right," SeeWoo said, kneeling next to SeeU.

SeeU wasn't the most sensitive person in the world, but she knew when something was wrong. "What happened?"

"The guy next to you. He was Kaito."

"So...?"

"Kaito... died," SeeWoo said hoarsely. "Galaco as well."

She was numb.

Numb. Her body stopped its pneumonic shaking. The birds stopped calling. The cars stopped roaring. If but a moment, that happened. SeeWoo just looked quietly at her, then to the outside, blinking back his tears.

Kaito and Galaco died on the same day.

That could not be possible. They could die on the same day, sure, fine, but they could not be dead. How could...?

As it turned out, Kaito had passed away simply, quietly, without as much as an eye-blinking. Galaco had a much more dramatic death - to the consequence of the pain of love and suicide. Still, they were deaths just the same. The deaths of people who SeeU had gradually developed a slight attachment for. Ripping away that attachment hurt.

SeeU had never known someone who had died before. Her four grandparents, sure; but she was so young when all of them died, she didn't remember any of them, except for her maternal grandfather, and he had been far from kindly to her. Would it be bad to say, but at his funeral, she was wickedly glad she didn't have to hear his old man's protests and objections. It felt evil. She was ridiculously glad the entire day.

SeeU felt the burn of tears first when her nose felt the tingling, and then her eyes burned. She sunk her teeth into her bottom lip. I won't cry. No, I'm not going to cry! Think about SpongeBob Squarepants dancing the hula with Patrick! But how wrong it was, to be glad at another's passing. How terrible, how sinful. She hated that feeling of vulnerability.

Her tears came rushing forth, and it was took all of SeeU's control to not let them overflow. Her (receding) pneumonia wasn't helping. Soon she was violently gulping and gasping, and coughing. A tear dripped down her nose onto the bedsheets, and that was when the thread broke and a river fell. Soon, though, the tears faded to just sniffles and hiccups, but SeeU was still shaking. Death, she found, scared her. She didn't want to be scared. But scared she was. Why was it that she hardly knew both Kaito and Galaco, but was crying for them? Wishing for them to be happy and not get into such situations after they were reborn?

Why?

"Why did they die?" SeeU whispered, looking down at her hands. "Why did they have to? Why couldn't they just... live?"

SeeWoo gave a start, as if he'd just remembered that she was there. "SeeU... I... don't know," he said sadly. Instead of laughing and saying it was a strange, childish question as most would say, he just agreed, reached over and hugged her. They rocked back and forth for some time, and it was almost like transporting back to her childhood. She had just scraped a knee, twisted her ankle, and sprained her wrist. SeeWoo was the only one there, and he took band-aids and stuck them haphazardly onto her wounds, then comforted her, rubbed her back, whispered it was okay over and over, and comforted her again until Mother came home and took a good look at her injuries.

SeeU folded the 799th and 800th crane just for them, dedicated to them. Even though Kaito and Galaco probably didn't have any connections to each other, she placed them together anyway, along with the thirteenth crane.

* - TROLOL my name for Big Al. His "real" name, because "Big Al" sounds like a nickname. Do you spot LASC in the workings here? ;)

So... that's it. I have to incorporate death in my stories.

Though just saying that, I feel like writing some snippets for one of my stories in plotbunny stage. It's MikuLuka. I don't know.

As for the liekzomgseewoosbdayizonda1st ?! thing, I made that up. Because I made (implied) SeeWoo older than SeeU, it'd be sort of odd for her to share the same birthday as him, so I altered it slightly.

Thank you for reading/reviewing!

~Unyielding Wish