XI: The 900th Paper Crane

SeeU recalled the day in the hospital when she folded the 100th paper crane. 900 more, she'd thought. Now, the circumstances were quite the opposite - almost.

A little less than two weeks or so had passed in mourning while SeeU healed from her pneumonia and silently paid her respects to Galaco and Kaito in her mind. Now she had begun again to fold cranes again. It was refreshing, almost as if she was beginning anew. (Her pneumonia had almost faded away, but then a fresh cold brought it on again, which was pretty annoying but at least gave her a cause to continue folding.) SeeU emailed Gumi some, talked to Gumi on the phone some. She had gotten some pictures of the Hamarikyu Gardens off of the Internet. While they didn't look too beautiful to SeeU from that, since it was winter and the first sheets of snow layered themselves on the ground of Tokyo, they did look peaceful, but cold. Temperature-cold, not feeling-cold. She made a mental note to visit SeeWoo in the summer, although her vacation in Japan had been extended considerably, to early January.

Speaking of SeeWoo, the moment Mayu heard that SeeWoo was attending Galaco's funeral ceremony, she detached herself from him. It was no surprise that Mayu had been looking for someone else; SeeWoo could have sworn she was searching for a good partner on Craiglist while working. Still, he was healing quickly. Not that SeeU was complaining, of course. She liked Luka much better than either Mayu or Galaco.

Meanwhile, the 900th paper crane was coming nearer with each fold; so was her goal of a thousand. SeeU's spirits had raised, and then soared considerably.

She could go out on daily walks now, go to restaurants and other outdoor places close to home. It was refreshing. She had forgotten how good it was to stand outside on a snowy winter day, watch everything go by, and sometimes even slip and slide on the ice.

SeeU was in an arts-and-crafts store now with SeeWoo. They had pretty much run out of foldable free-use paper, because after reading some of the letters SeeU and SeeWoo had both admitted that they both didn't want to seem them folded, with all the memories within, so she only folded one of her letters. Now SeeU wandered aimlessly around the place.

"Come on!" SeeWoo waved her over. With all the tinsel and that spicy, sharp perfume in the place, this store was festive. Huge rolls of wrapping paper and suitable gifts dominated most of the shelves now, but still some were dedicated to everyday use, in the back. SeeU took a mental inventory of all the things that there still was. Yarn, picture frames, cards (a huge portion of which were dedicated to holidays such as Christmas), construction paper, watercolor paper, easel boards, oil painting canvases, oil paints, watercolor paints, colored pencils, sketching pencils, origami paper, origami how-to books...the list was still, to say the least, endless. SeeU was dazzled by it all.

SeeWoo stood right next to the origami stuffs section. He held out gold and silver metallic paper, precut into perfect, standard origami squares - about one-and-a-half decimeters all around. "For your nine-hundredth and thousandth paper crane," he said. "And this..." He turned and took some regular precut origami squares, the thin, tissuey type. "We can use that for the one hundred fifty cranes you have to fold to let the gods grant you a wish!" For SeeU had folded fifty more that night.

"Are you sure?" SeeU asked. "The packet of regular origami is expensive...One package - which contains fifty origami squares, if I might add - costs almost 3,000 yen, which is about almost 38,000 won, which is..." She could have gone on longer if SeeWoo stopped her.

"Yes, but we can divide each square into fourths, which would give us two hundred, which is more than enough. They're going to be tiny, though."

"Three thousand yen could sustain us both for a breakfast, lunch, and dinner takeout meal," SeeU said.

"Yes, but I work better with homecooked. Besides, my fridge is stocked. Oh, and we're getting the gold and silver metallic paper, right?"

"There's some right in here." SeeU peered into the package.

"That's awesome. Let's go."

So this was why SeeU sat on the kitchen table now, being well enough to be away from the bed. She still needed to take her breathing therapy every day, but that was coming along well. Luka had taken to coming over to SeeWoo's apartment, though she had a huge house to herself. Between learning cooking lessons from Luka and keeping up with Luka's lively - but often deeply expressed - chatter, SeeU's time for folding cranes waned. She was only on her 890th paper crane a few days later, which was a Saturday.

"It's your birthday tomorrow, I've heard from your brother," Luka said one day, that nearly made SeeU drop her crane.

"I...forgot," she replied.

"By your nature, I would guess you did." Luka smiled. "Come on, finish that crane, and we'll see if we can't do something about your birthday."

SeeU had had very little experience in cooking Luka's style of a cake, but she tried her best anyway. If you cook it yourself, Luka had said, it'd taste so much better, because it's your own sweet accomplishment. Which pretty much meant, Don't mess up, or else it'd taste terrible. Still, SeeU couldn't help but be a little clumsy when handling kitchen tools.

Luka acted like a mother to SeeU, always patient, teaching her each step. She seemed to enjoy doing this, too. When SeeU thought about that when she was manipulating (or trying to) the egg beater to make the whipped cream stiff, something popped out at her. When SeeWoo and Luka were in the same room, there seemed to be an extra spark between them, a happy secret that they were dying to share...but not yet. SeeU was terrible at sighting love, but she knew a good couple when she saw one. And Luka was so different from both Galaco and Mayu. It suddenly came to her that SeeU would love to have Luka as her sister-in-law. And if SeeWoo and Luka got together, SeeU would be an aunt to their lovely babies-...

Immediately she blushed. What am I thinking?

A hand reached out and switched off the eggbeater just when SeeU was about to reprimand herself for meddling again. SeeU suddenly realized that Luka was right next to her.

"SeeU," Luka said, "you almost turned the whipped cream into butter." Although her tone was scolding, Luka was smiling good-naturedly.

"Sorry," SeeU said, blushing harder.

Luka laughed gently. "Something on your mind lately? A boy, perhaps?"

"What-? N-no!" SeeU imagined what would happen if she told Luka what she had just thought about SeeWoo and Luka. Maybe Gumi could have said that (though not without some awkward hesitation), but SeeU was too shy to even start about this subject.

Luka patted her arm. "That's okay, SeeU. I have some plastic paper here," she went on, explaining how SeeU was to cover the whipped cream bowl (which had been prefrozen in the fridge) and keep it cold for a while. "We'll be needing it in a while."

It was SeeU's birthday. The cake tasted great, and she had folded her 899th crane before this. Now all she had to do was fold her 900th, but for some reason she knew that right now was not the time.

After eating the cake, SeeWoo coughed to get SeeU and Luka's attention. "I have an announcement to make."

SeeU clapped to stir the awkward atmosphere that followed. SeeWoo never really needed to make "announcements;" he just blurted out what he had to say - usually. If he had to make an announcement, then it must be really important, though SeeU couldn't possibly guess what. Was it because her pneumonia was lifting?

"I... um... Ugh."

"Are you sure you don't have a cold, SeeWoo?" Luka asked worriedly while thumping him on the back.

"No, I'm fine. Just that my words are sticking in my throat lately... okay. Here goes. Um, Luka, stay right here. I'm going to try to..." He fished for something in his pockets, leaving the two women in the room utterly bewildered. "Ah, okay. Basically..." He clumsily got onto his knee. "No, Luka, don't help me. I mean, do help me - ugh! Whatever! So..."

Was he planning this? SeeU mouthed to Luka, wondering if it was a joke. SeeWoo was never like this. Well, he was, once, when he was asking a girl if she could be his and SeeU's mommy while Mother was gone on a business trip, but...

Luka shrugged in response, looking perplexed. I don't know either, the shrug seemed to say.

SeeWoo took out a small box decorated with a ribbon and held it in front of him. He frowned. "I'm not sure if the rules of doing this are written in stone, but I'll try not to break any of those rules today. So... uh... basically, Luka, will you be my wife?"

There was a completely awkward silence.

He never proposed before, SeeU thought vaguely. SeeWoo's good at everything he practiced.

"I mean, like, we don't, like, have to, like, do any randomstuffsoonand, like, we don't need to" - SeeWoo took a huge breath - "like, haveaweddingsoonbut I'd, like, you know..."

"SeeWoo," Luka said slowly, "but I'm graduated and you're not. A marriage... and kids..."

"I- I didn't say we had to have kids!" He was blushing. "In fact, I didn't say we had to marry soon, just... what about engagement?" And you can always say yes, the atmosphere around SeeU's older brother seemed to hint.

"SeeWoo," SeeU added, "sorry to disappoint, you've only known her as a close friend for... like..."

"I told you about Kaito and everything," SeeWoo supported. "We've known each other for some time, about the same length of time as I knew Gakupo. Three years, maybe."

"Yes, but isn't that a little rash?"

Luka and SeeWoo looked at each other.

"Um..." SeeWoo arched an eyebrow uncertainly. "Is... that... good or bad?"

"I-it's not like I'm interfering or anything!" protested SeeU. "You can do whatever you like! It's just that I thought you only knew Luka for, like, two seconds... But if you've got history with her or anything, then that's okay! N-n-not that kind of history," she added when SeeWoo and Luka exchanged odd glances. "Um... yeah."

"I was thinking, we get engaged," SeeWoo suggested. "You know what? We could be engaged for five years. I'll marry you when I'm like twenty-five. Or -six."

Luka laughed, then hugged him. "What makes you think I'll say no, SeeWoo?"

"I'll leave you guys alone," SeeU said, and left smiling to herself.

When Luka came to SeeU's room, she wore a platinum band on the slim ring finger of her left hand. SeeU had folded her 900th crane, and this she thrust into Luka's hands.

"Here," SeeU suggested. "String it up yourself. It's dedicated to you two, after all."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

Luka took a seat next to SeeU. "We've planned it out. We won't marry until he's finished with his basic architectural courses, and then if he wishes to expand, then he will, I won't protest. I'll be doing my own work. We won't be having any children until he's older and got a steady job. Oh, and we can break our engagement anywhere in between if we don't feel it's working out. As for the marriage, I don't exactly know when we're going to marry, and I don't think normal engagements last more than a year or so, but we're both willing to give it a try."

"That sounds like a plan."

Luka tied the knot under the 900th paper crane. "It is," she answered, and the smile was enough for SeeU to know that her day had just been brightened.

I'm not particularly happy with this chapter. Not that it's badly written or anything; it's the clash of events. Marriage, at SeeWoo's age? Yes, his personality here is suited for rash decisions, but currently I'm still facepalming myself for thinking of such a tactless way of writing up this chapter. I actually thought of rewriting it - which I probably will, and change all the events - but in the meantime, you'll have to be happy with this ugh.

I also need some clarification on some information that I got from the Net that has nothing to do with this story. Did Hangeng... quit... from Super Junior... in 2009? D:

I just realized that I didn't thank the reviewers of chapters 8, 9, and 10. HOW COULD I FORGET?! Here goes...
Thank you to Guest, Troubled Windchimes x3, Katize Luka x3, Stargazing Miracle, Ten-Faced x3, Azn-Rinny, ownitlikeaboss x3, Honeycloud of RiverClan x3, and last but not least, another Guest. :)
Thank you to those who read and/or reviewed this chapter as well~

~Unyielding Wish