"Yo Ziz, wake up!" Qilin said chirpily.

Franziska woke up and rubbed her eyes sleepily. And then she stopped rubbing them when her sleep-fogged brain processed the voice, Qilin her cousin and the sister she never had. Franziska hated being called that, it was at first formal with Qilin, always calling her Younger Sister Franziska, and then she said that since they were a lot like sisters she should start calling her Zizter, which was her nickname for Sister Franziska, which in time became even shorter until it became Zis, a combined version of Sis and Franziska. Qilin had once again frowned on that nickname and started calling her Ziz, a mythological bird with golden feathers. Qilin? Qilin! Her anger knew no bounds whenever she was woken up early.

"Wakey wakey, younger Zizter, guess whose first court case it is today?" Qilin asked, her grin was grew as she looked at Franziska to answer the question. For Franziska, it was an interrogation, and since they knew each other for a long time, she knew Qilin was rather inconsistent with her nicknames, always switching to one name to another when she felt like it.

"Mine?"

"Good, I thought you were some demon from hell so I brought setsubun beans at you." Qilin showed the pale white beans to Franziska inches to her face. "I just bought them from the grocery, and the guy said the fresher they are, the harder they are."

"You were going to throw those at me?" Franziska was horrified.

"It was either that or getting whipped to death by your eveel little doppelganger, I chose the former." Qilin used a German accent to stress the word evil.

Franziska frowned and grunted. She was used to her cousin's eccentric behaviour. She threw away her bed covers and looked at the mirror. She gasped. Her hair was in a mess, she really did look like a demon from hell.

"Qilin, what time is it?"

"8 a.m., I woke you up early."

Franziska sighed in relief. One thing good about Qilin was that she had foresight. Qilin grabbed a comb from Franziska's dresser and brushed her hair. Franziska glared at Qilin, and then sighed.

"You're my little sister Qilin, not my older sister; I should be doing that for you."

Qilin laughed softly. "Right, I'm older than you by three years, so yes logically speaking I am your older sister."

Franziska tried not to smile and pretended to be angry. "Are you saying I am illogical?"

"By all means, yes and even if anything happens, you will always be my Xiao Mei Mei."

Although they had a rough start when they first met, Franziska grew to enjoy having conversations with Qilin. Qilin acted like her surrogate mother ever since she set foot in the von Karma household. Yet there were times Qilin would act even younger than Franziska, she could be childish and stubborn, and sometimes calm and practical. Franziska never knew her mother, she had died during childbirth. Xiao Mei Mei, Qilin explained meant Little beautiful younger sister, in Zhengfa. Franziska never knew why she enjoyed being called Xiao Mei Mei.

"There, all done."

Franziska stopped reflecting and looked at the mirror. She gasped.

"Dahling, you look absolutely fahbulous!" Qilin said, as she put her hands on Franziska's shoulders and looked at Franziska's reflection..

Franziska looked at it, it was gorgeous. She didn't even know Qilin had cut it while she was thinking. What shocked her though was how her shoulder-length hair looked better if it had been cut shorter which Qilin did. Franziska was speechless.

"Qilin, you made my hair look perfect."

"Right, anyway let's get breakfast I helped the cook, so I want to try how I made the chicken."

Franziska let it drop, she kept forgetting that Qilin did not care about perfection, which was very un-von Karma like. After all, her papa told her that Aunt Lydia was a failure to the von Karma, a black sheep after escaping the marriage her and Manfred's parents set up, she fell in love with a lowly detective instead to add insult to the injury the von Karmas suffered, she also stayed in an apartment not a huge gigantic mansion a von Karma was fit to live in.

Qilin stared at Franziska impatiently and grabbed her hand.

"Now let's drag your slender butt out of this room and get you breakfast."

Now Qilin, she was strong since she knew kung-fu, she had earned the black belt at the age of four in Zhengfa. She picked up the squirming Franziska and carried her to the kitchen like a sack of potatoes.

"Qilin, this is ridiculous! Put me down this instant!"

"Nope, no can do Ziz, you got to have your strength when you face the lawyer if you let that defendant escape without putting up a fight, I'll go vigilante and start getting my sword and go on a killing spree."

"You wouldn't."

"Guess not, I'm too soft."

"Just like your mother," Franziska said in a whisper. That was what her papa always said, too soft in the head and delusional. Qilin glanced at her, her eyes was filled with hurt not at her words but at the old wound that had reopened. Franziska was about to apologize when Qilin put her down and for the first time, looked straight at Franziska with a soft smile that reminded Franziska of her Aunt Lydia.

"Yeah, I'm just like mom."

Franziska smiled at the memory. My, how the von Karma black sheep influenced her. She glanced at one of the family videos that contained Qilin starting a food fight using an ingenious mash potato catapult. She felt Qilin smiling at her, true she was not able to be the one who completely changed her, a certain man in blue and her "little" brother had done it, but she had started the change. Inside her heart, she knew Qilin was smiling. Franziska also cleared doubts about Miles, he really did miss her. The videos he had proved it.

Miles crumpled the disfigured paper crane and threw it at the garbage bin. He sighed, he still couldn't do it, even with a book. He grumbled and put his head on the table and started banging it lightly at the wooden surface in frustration. His door burst open.

"Good afternoon Miley!" He knew that annoyingly enthusiastic tone anywhere. Qilin. And she had kicked open the door.

"Couldn't you find anything else to do other than scaring me?" he asked filled with irritation as his heart rate returned to normal.

"Not really, no. I know it's a shame." Without even asking she lay on Miles's bed flat on her belly. Miles gave himself a facepalm. Of all the people his mentor had, it had to be a girl who enjoyed peoples' pain and another one who enjoys making things crazy.

Miles grumbled at his plight and proceeded to hide his stacks of square paper and his book of origami.

"Hey, I didn't know you like to do origami." She shot up from her lying down. She walked to Miles. "Ya need help?"

She grabbed a few pieces of paper and started folding. Miles glared at her in envy, even she could do it, why not him? "Qilin, just go away."

Qilin knew what Miles was doing, distancing himself from everyone so that he wouldn't share the pain being alone in that corner of his mind, and so she stayed and folded it, she knew he was just like her. "I made nine hundred ninety-nine cranes already." She stared at a piece of paper and he saw her eyes were almost watering; he was stunned to see Qilin almost crying. She wiped her tears away with her sleeves and looked at Miles knowing he saw it. "I'm going to make my one-thousandth paper crane, because I could have my wish granted. At least, that's what Japanese folklore said."

As she folded it, she added," I had a mother, a father and a brother, y'know."

"What happened to them?"

"They were killed by robbers, or at least I that's what I'm supposed to think."

Miles knew then and there what her wish would be; it would be like his, to have her family back. "I think, I know what you're going to wish, I lost a dad on Christmas Eve."

Qilin looked at him, her eyes watering all over again. She had finished the crane. She said aloud," I wish Miley would let me teach him how to fold a crane."

Miles was a stunned. She could have wished for something else but she wished for something seemingly trivial. He looked at her grinning face that seemed to wash away the tears she had shed.

"It beats living in the past, Miley." And Miley grasped what her hidden message was, to make new memories out of bad ones. How many times had he had dreams about that Christmas day that had turned his life upside-down, with no one to turn to, until that eccentric girl stepped into their lives with a brave smile and a big heart. He held out two pieces of paper one on each of his hands.

"Qilin, could you teach me how to fold a crane?"

Miles uncharacteristically smiled sincerely and inside a small seed of humanity had been planted, and with Qilin, who watered that seed, made sure it was growing, hoping that someday, she would see him as a fine prosecutor unlike Uncle Manfred. That day never came, and suddenly after Qilin died, that plant inside him withered, at least so he thought, until a man he never expected to meet faced him in court and unlike others, managed to win the battle. Miles smiled as he looked at a photo of him and Franziska frowning and Qilin giving a peace sign, he smiled because finally he became the man Qilin would be proud of and say," He's my brother."

Miles pulled out a square sheet of paper. How long has it been since he made a crane? He folded it delicately and made a crane. It was his one-thousandth crane, he had made them with Qilin left but when she died, he couldn't bring himself to make the last one to make a wish, he wouldn't delude himself, but that night he felt it should be worth a try. As he put the crane near the photo, he said his wish. "I wish Franziska and I could see Qilin again.