Chapter Text
Crane Count: 10
“I need a new bike, so I think I’ll wish for that, Daichi.”
“I was expecting you to wish for something super big and exciting, Suga,” Daichi replies as he messes up yet another crane’s neck. He tosses the defective paper crane to the side where many deceased cranes have been sent by his own two hands. “Like for world peace or a million bucks!”
“Those are cool and all,” Suga responds as he makes yet another, perfectly folded crane and places it next to the other three he’s folded. “But if I had my own bike, I could come over here all the time. Instead of having my parents drive me. I’m glad my grandma was able to drive me though.”
“How long is your grandma going to be here?”
“She leaves next week. I hate when she goes back to Pennsylvania. I can barely spell Pennsylvania,” Suga sighs, forgoing his fifth crane to instead lean back on his hands and look up at Daichi’s bedroom ceiling.
He’s been in this room countless times to play video games or build K’Nex roller coasters because Daichi’s parents didn’t want to buy into the “Lego fad” or something. It’s not like he doesn’t like his own room or his own house. But being in Daichi’s room and being with someone his age, rather than his six-year-old younger brother, is just so much better. And, in the end, that’s all that really matters to ten-year-old Suga.
“You’re lucky you get to see your grandma so often,” Daichi says, still in the middle of folding his first “perfect” crane. If it had been up to him, he wouldn’t have had to toss his first three cranes but Suga wouldn’t have it any other way. They had to be “so perfect that they would put them in a museum” or something like that. “My grandparents all live in Japan and it’s too expensive to see them a lot. I wish I had a grandma as cool as yours.”
“Would that be your wish then, Daichi?” Suga asks, sitting forward to meet Daichi’s eyes. “Once we fold a second thousand cranes, of course. It was my grandma who told us about the story of the one thousand cranes so I get the first wish. It’s only fair..”
When Suga’s grandma and he had arrived at Daichi’s house, Daichi’s parents had insisted that she stay to have tea with all of them before letting Suga and Daichi go and play with each other. Suga’s grandma had noticed a beautiful paper crane sitting atop a succulent in the Sawamura’s windowsill and asked them if they had ever heard of the Japanese myth of the “One Thousand Origami Cranes.”
“Well, you boys,” she had begun, smiling as both Suga and Daichi looked as though they were hanging on to every word she said. “There’s a legend that if someone folds one thousand origami cranes, they will be granted a wish by the gods. Some people wish for happiness or eternal good luck or, as with Sasaki Sadako, to be healed from illness.”
“That sounds so cool, Nana!” Suga had said, leaning forward with an unmistakable sparkle in his eyes. “I want to learn how to fold one!” He turned to Daichi and smiled wide. “We have to do that, Daichi. Don’t you think so?”
“Can you teach us, Mrs. Sugawara?” Daichi asked, reciprocating Suga’s words but not his level of excitement, not outwardly at least.
“Yes, of course. The origami crane is a very simple, but elegant fold. So if you have some origami paper lying around, I can teach you how to make them very easily.”
Daichi then jumped up from the table and shot off to his room, making sure not to alert his three younger siblings of his plans. When he returned, he had about one hundred sheets of colorful origami paper in his hands. Suga wanted to ask why Daichi had so much origami paper when he had never even heard “origami” coming from Daichi’s mouth before but decided against it when his grandma grabbed her first sheet. And in no time at all, Suga and Daichi had become enchanted by Suga’s grandma’s soothing instructions; the way her wrinkled hands folded the paper - gracefully but also with such intent; and how one unassuming piece of orange and black square paper became a crane just like that.
“It’s so pretty!” Suga exclaimed when his grandma handed him her orange and black origami crane, its wings split down the middle with the two opposing colors. “And it didn’t look that hard at all!” He turned to Daichi and with a mischievous smile on his face, he grabbed his hand and led him up from the table. “By the time we leave today, Nana,” Suga said, turning back towards his grandma, the origami paper in one hand and Daichi’s in the other. “We’re going to have a thousand cranes, I just know it.”
“I don’t have a thousand sheets of origami paper…” Daichi whispered into his ear, even though it was loud enough for Suga's elderly grandma to hear.
“And we do have to get home in time for your father’s dinner,” Suga’s grandma added.
“Fine!” Suga relented with a slight pout. “We’ll have at least ten by the time we have to go home, then.” He turned to lead Daichi up the stairs to Daichi’s own bedroom before stopping. “Grandma, do you want to fold with us?”
“Oh, don’t worry about me, dear. I’m going to chat with Daichi’s parents. You two have fun.”
And with that, Suga and Daichi made their way up the stairs, past pictures of Daichi and his three younger sibling’s baby pictures along the stairwell. Suga always seemed to notice the empty fifth frame to the right of Daichi’s youngest sibling. And every time he would see it, he would pester Daichi about when his newest sibling would be born. And what their name would be, followed by offering his own suggestions which would most definitely just be names he ripped off from anime. But even with Daichi’s constant disapproval of the names like Bertholdt and Reiner, Suga couldn’t wait to meet the new addition to the Sawamura family or, more presently, get started on these wish-granting origami cranes.
“No, that’s not my wish,” Daichi says, tilting his head away before placing his first Suga-approved crane in front of him. Its black and orange wings look just right next to Suga’s already completed five. “I love my grandparents even if they live far away. They always send me money on Christmas and for my birthday and the best snacks from Japan.”
“Like the matcha and wasabi Kit Kats!” Suga exclaims before he picks up another piece of origami paper and places it in Daichi’s ill-prepared hand. “If your wish isn’t to have a grandma nearby like mine, what is it?”
“Wait, are we even supposed to tell each other what we would wish for? Isn’t that like against the rules?”
“It’s not against the rules yet, Daichi,” Suga adds before squinting his eyes at him. “You just don’t want to tell me.” He places his hand on his chest and takes in a dramatic breath. “Even after I told you what I would wish for! And here I thought we were supposed to be best friends!”
“We are!” Daichi says with a gasp. He slaps the sides of his cheeks to hide something Suga can’t quite place. He shakes his head from side to side like a wet dog before continuing. “I just know that you’re not supposed to tell people what you wished for on your birthday and I feel like this would be the same thing?”
“Maybe once we finish all one thousand cranes or two thousand cranes, we can make a wish and not tell each other what we wished for. But right now,” Suga continues after he had successfully non-verbally cued Daichi to continue folding his now third crane. “We’re just thinking about the wishes we would want. So, once you finish your fifth one, we’ll have ten and that’s how old we are. And ten is… Something to a thousand... ” He begins counting on his fingers which just seems to confuse him even more. “Well, after we have ten cranes, we’ll only have nine hundred and ninety to go and then times that by two and-”
“You can stop doing whatever kind of math you were doing. I’m finished,” Daichi says, holding three cranes in his hands. “Do they live to your standards, Mr. Sugawara?”
“We'll see, Mr. Sawamura. As you know, if we are to get our wishes granted like my Nana says, they have to be perfect. Ala a *chef’s kiss*.”
Both of them giggle before Suga takes the cranes from Daichi. Suga adjusts his imaginary monocle and takes a closer inspection of the paper wish granters. And if he sees anything wrong with them, he doesn’t say so. Instead, he places them across from his own five and Daichi’s other two on Daichi’s volleyball area rug so there are two rows of orange and black origami cranes facing each other. Close enough to touch.
“So… what are you going to wish for?” Suga asks again once the cranes have been pushed to the side and they begin lightly passing Daichi’s volleyball to each other. “I told you about my bike so it’s only fair.”
“I still think it would jinx it or something,” Daichi replies, not fully meeting Suga’s eyes when he answered.
“You do realize how unfair that is, right?”
“It’s not like I asked you to tell me what you were going to wish for.”
“But- but,” Suga stutters before scrunching his eyebrows. “You’re just mean, Daichi.”
“Hey, I just want to make sure my wish comes true!”
“So you don’t think I’ll get a new bike?”
“That’s now what I meant…” Daichi mutters, looking down at his volleyball-less hands. “Are you mad at me?”
“Nooooo, I’m not mad at you. If you really don’t want to tell me, it’s fine,” Suga says, before lightly lobbing the ball at Daichi’s head. It bounces off with a thud and bounces on the ground, stopping right before touching the cranes. “That was a close one!”
“It really was…” Daichi replies, his voice still not as light as it had been before.
“Hey, your wish must be super epic if you won’t even tell me, your best friend in the entire world!” Suga exclaims before scooting over to Daichi and draping his arm around his neck. “But you have to promise to tell me once we do hit a thousand cranes. Deal?” He reaches out his pinky towards Daichi with a smile.
“Deal.” Daichi wraps his pinky around Suga’s and returns his smile. “Do you want to keep folding?”
“Yeah! I bet we can hit at least twenty if we start right-”
“Daichi, come down to help set the table!” Daichi’s mom calls from the kitchen. “And Suga, your grandma is outside waiting for you.”
“Dang it,” Suga sighs before getting up from Daichi’s floor. “I guess we can keep folding another time. I’ll take them to my house though for safekeeping.”
“Yeah, I don’t want my brothers and sisters to get a hold of them,” Daichi agrees before handing Suga nine of the ten cranes. “I’ll keep one though. For good luck.”
“I don’t remember that from my grandma’s story though…”
“I just like it, I guess,” Daichi replies, holding one of the cranes that Suga had made.
“Okay, okay. I’ll just make sure to keep track of all the cranes in my notebook when I get home then.” Suga gives Daichi a thumbs up before the two of them walk out of his bedroom. When he gets to the door, he puts his shoes back on and gives Daichi a tight squeeze. “I’ll see if my grandma can bring me over again before she leaves.”
“Okay! We’re going to make one thousand before you know it!”
“Can’t wait! See you later, Daichi!”
Suga practically skips over to his grandma’s car, nine of the cranes in his hands. With each of them and their near-perfect wings, he is able to imagine more and more potential wishes. Wishes that he’ll discuss with his grandma on the way home, with his parents and little brother at the dinner table, and with Daichi the next time he goes to visit. And now he can’t wait to come back, not just because Daichi is his best friend in the world, but because, when he looks up at Daichi’s bedroom window from the car, he feels his heart begin to fill with this new kind of warmth.
A warmth that is one thousand percent from the hope of coming up with wishes and maybe even finding out what Daichi’s wish is going to be.
