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"Hey, Kabru, wanna help me with something?"
Kabru turned towards Laios, tilting his head. "Sure. What is it?" It seemed to be one of those days, he thought with certain amusement, when everybody needed his help. Hopefully it wouldn't be as emotionally demanding as the issue he had to deal with earlier. He wasn't sure if it could handle it so soon after his conversation with Marcille that left him completely drained. Judging by Laios' body language and tone, though, he didn't seem particularly distressed. That was a good sign.
"Remember the origami paper Marcille gave me for my birthday?" Kabru gave a nod. Laios subconsciously let out a sigh of relief at not having to remind him. "Yeah, about that. I tried to make something out of it the other day. One time I ordered something from Japan," he mused, tapping his fingers together as he spoke, "and whoever sent it put an origami crane in the package. I alway thought it was really cool. I still have it somewhere." He suddenly paused and looked around the room, eyebrows knitted. He approached the bookshelf and hummed to himself, stroking his chin. Kabru waited patiently for him to find what he was looking for. A small paper crane, pulled seemingly out of nowhere, sat in his palm when he turned towards Kabru, wearing a bright smile. "I thought it'd be cool to try and make my own. It didn't seem that hard, and the paper came with instructions, so I thought it'd be fine," he went on explaining, scratching the back of his head, "but it's not coming out right at all. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I guess it's harder than I thought," he said, pouting, as he put the crane back on the bookshelf.
That's strange, Kabru thought, stroking his bottom lip. He glanced at the models atop Laios' cabinet. He had the patience and skill to put them together in a relatively short time, and he never seemed to tire of it. In theory, origami seemed similar enough that he should be able to master it with minimal practice. Perhaps it was simply a matter of being discouraged by his initial failure? He may have decided that it was simply something he was never going to become good at. That was a reasonable explanation. "Don't give up yet, darling," Kabru said, reaching up to pat Laios' shoulder as he sat down beside him on the edge of the bed, "I'm sure that you just need more practice."
"You think?" Laios looked down at his own hands with a dubious frown. "I dunno. I thought it'd be more like building models, but it's not the same at all. If I mess something up on a model, I can see it, and it's easy to put the pieces where they're supposed to be. With this," he went on, gesturing vaguely as he spoke, "I can't always tell if I messed up just looking at the pictures, and it's too late to fix it anyway, since the paper gets all wrinkly and messed up." He scrunched up his nose. "I figured that maybe my hands are too big to do it right." Kabru instinctively narrowed his eyes at Laios' hands. Admittedly, they were pretty big, with long, thick fingers. Kabru was awfully fond of them, but perhaps they weren't the best tools for something that required so much precision. Still, it wasn't a problem that couldn't be overcome. "So," Laios added, looking away as he twiddled his thumbs bashfully, "I was gonna ask if maybe you wanted to try."
"Me?" Kabru's eyebrows rode up his forehead as he pointed at his own chest. "...Because my hands are smaller?" he added, cocking an eyebrow, puzzled and amused at the same time.
"Yeah! Kind of," Laios said, tapping his fingers together. "I mean, it doesn't hurt to try, right? I have a lot of paper, so you don't have to worry about wasting it if you can't figure it out the first time," he reasoned. Suddenly his face lit up as he put his hand on Kabru's shoulder. "Hey, what if it turns out that you're really good at it? That'd be cool. And if I can watch you do it," he added, putting up his index finger, "maybe I'll figure it out too! Pictures can help you get an idea, but it's always better if you can just watch someone do it, right? And if you're bad at it," he added, sending Kabru a sunny smile, "it's gonna make me feel better about not being able to figure it out!"
Kabru furrowed his brow. Well, it was good to know that Laios wasn't expecting him to succeed. Not that it would matter. Kabru didn't need any help putting pressure on himself. Knowing that Laios was watching his every move, he would still feel like he had to get it perfectly right the first time, a task made significantly more difficult by his complete lack of experience in arts and crafts of any sort. Given a piece of paper and enough time, he could write an elegant letter, a short story, perhaps even a poem. Anything other than that, anything that didn't involve writing something clever in his neat handwriting, was, generally speaking, beyond him. Kabru gulped. "I suppose you're right," he said cautiously, "it wouldn't hurt to try." At least there was something inherently elegant about origami. He liked the idea of it. "I'm going to need a flat surface. We should probably move our workshop to your desk," he suggested, rubbing his foot against Laios' leg.
Laios' eyes shot wide open. "Oh, yeah! Yeah!" He jumped out of bed and, unexpectedly, ran out of the room – only to carry a second chair inside and place it next to his desk. "There's, uh, not gonna be a lot of room for your legs," he informed apologetically as he adjusted the positions of both chairs, "so be careful not to kick the desk." He stroked his chin thoughtfully, studying everything that was taking up space atop his desk. After some careful consideration, he put everything away on the windowsill and inside the drawer, leaving the surface empty, except for the origami paper he took out of the drawer. Kabru once again found himself impressed at how well-organised Laios was. His room never seemed messy, despite being filled to the brim with all kinds of items.
Kabru got up from the bed and reluctantly approached the desk. Laios stepped aside, allowing him to take a seat. Kabru gasped, struck by a sudden idea. "Could you possibly show me," he asked, turning towards Laios, "at least one of your failed attempts? It may be useful to study it," he explained quickly, "in order to understand what to avoid as I make my own."
"Uhh..." Beads of perspiration covered Laios' forehead as his gaze escaped off to the side, avoiding eye contact. "Uh." He anxiously tapped his fingers together as his eyes shifted around the room. Kabru frowned, surprised and concerned by the reaction. His request didn't warrant this kind of nervousness at all. Unless... was Laios perhaps too embarrassed to show him the failed attempts? "I didn't really get far enough to have anything to show you," Laios said awkwardly, looking down at his hands, "I gave up as soon as I noticed I messed up, and then I threw it out anyway."
"I see." Kabru rubbed his temple. If that was true, he could have just said so from the start. It wasn't as if Kabru was going to judge him. Was there something more to it? Kabru studied Laios' face intently. "That's a shame. I suppose I will have to make my own mistakes, then," he remarked, cracking a smile. "Can you show me the one from before, then? The one you received in a package? It might be just as helpful to have a model reference, so to say."
Without a word, Laios retrieved the crane from the bookshelf and put it down in the middle of the desk. Then, finally, he took a seat beside Kabru, close enough that their legs rubbed against each other. Kabru took a deep breath and cracked his knuckles. No more stalling. Everything he needed was in front of him: the paper, the instructions, and the reference. He started by carefully picking up the latter and examining it closely. It seemed wonderfully simple, but upon closer inspection, it was a complicated mechanism. The tail, head, and wings could all be adjusted without breaking the structure, provided that one was careful enough. This seemed like an important thing to get right.
Kabru put the crane down and picked up the instructions instead. His expression immediately dropped. Supposedly the crane was a pattern suitable for beginners, but the process still consisted of roughly thirty steps, many of them awfully precise. Kabru took a deep breath and counted down from ten in his mind before studying the instructions step by step, gauging the difficulty of each one. It probably wasn't going to be that bad. He couldn't let himself get overwhelmed. It was often the case, he reasoned with himself, that tasks that seemed to be difficult in theory would turn out to be ridiculously easy in practice. As long as he didn't rush, it would be fine. Slow and steady.
Having familiarised himself with the instructions, he put the booklet down and instead examined the paper. It came in a variety of colours. Red, orange, blue, purple... Each of them would presumably give the crane a slightly different meaning, but he didn't have to concern himself with that right now. This was only his first try, after all. It was only a matter of aesthetics. Should he pick blue, the colour Laios associated with him, or red, Laios' favourite? Both of the choices justified themselves, he reckoned, but ultimately he picked the blue paper. Laios was most certainly going to pick red, and on the off chance that they both succeeded, their cranes would look good together.
"Let's see..." According to the instructions, the paper should be put on the desk white-side up. Initially, he thought of it as the underside, but it would be more accurate to think of it as the innards. If he made the crane correctly, none of the white should be visible. There were an awful lot of steps between this piece of paper and the end result, though. "The beginning steps seem easy enough," he mused, stroking his chin as he looked at the instructions once again. They mostly consisted of folding the paper in half, flipping it over, and the like. As long as he could keep his hands from shaking, it shouldn't be much of an issue. "Aren't you going to play along?" he asked, glancing at Laios from the corner of his eye. "Were you just planning to watch this time?"
Laios snapped out of his daze, blinking owlishly. He had been silently watching Kabru read the instructions, and seemed to have spaced out along the way. "Oh, yeah! Right. Honestly, I was just gonna watch you do it," he admitted with disarming honesty, stroking his cheek. "I guess I can try. Maybe it's gonna be easier when you're here." And he picked up a red piece of paper.
Kabru laughed, moving the instructions towards the middle of the desk so that they could both see them. "Teamwork is key!" he hummed, carefully folding his paper in half. "While we're each making our own cranes separately, we are a team. If either of us encounters an issue, we can solve it together. That's reassuring." He continued to fold the paper, frantically glancing at the instructions every few seconds. So far, it seemed, so good. Laios' observations about the paper proved correct. It was quite thin, which made it easy to fold. Convenient, provided that one didn't make any mistakes. Kabru bit his bottom lip and folded the paper again, and again... "How are you doing, honey?" he asked, not wanting to look away from his paper even for a second in case it led to a fatal mistake.
"Okay so far," Laios said reluctantly, frowning. "This is the part where it gets hard, though."
It really was that early into the process, huh? Trying to remain calm, Kabru took a deep breath. "If you're nervous about it, you can watch me do it first. I'm going to do it slowly and carefully," he assured gently, feeling a growing pit in his stomach. The pressure may well have killed him. Now, he thought, looking at the instructions, what made this part so difficult? He had to fold the paper so as to create a flap in the middle, and then fold it again a bunch more times until it vaguely resembled the shape of a petal, it seemed. That could easily get confusing, he suspected, if one wasn't paying enough attention. From there, it was easy to get overwhelmed.
Feeling Laios' gaze on his hands, he continued to meticulously fold the paper, careful not to accidentally tear it or fold it unevenly. He held his breath until the very moment he achieved the petal shape. Only then did he release it in a relieved sigh. This was the first big hurdle, and he conquered it. Only a few more to go. He glanced over at Laios' paper, unable to stifle his curiosity. It certainly didn't look bad. Kabru folded his paper slowly, and Laios was ever-so-slightly slower, following his every move with extra caution. Not bad. Not bad at all.
"I will say," Kabru mused, a proud smile dancing on his lips, "that we are doing far better than I expected. Let's keep it up," he added enthusiastically, nudging Laios' side. The next few steps would be more of the same. Folding, folding, continuously folding, to create another petal shape. Kabru was believed to find that the process of folding paper wasn't difficult to master at all. The act itself had become strangely relaxing as he got used to it. The same instructions that seemed overwhelming before, now brought him relief. All he needed to do was to fold the paper into the correct shape. This was true all along, but it didn't seem achievable until now.
Kabru took a quick break to wipe his hands on a tissue. There were only a few steps left before the cranes would be ready. Provided nothing would go awfully wrong at the last minute, they would have succeeded on their first try. Kabru smiled to himself as he stretched his arms above his head, letting out a soft gasp. He wasn't expecting things to go quite this well. He was embarrassed to remember his own reluctance to take on the task. Ultimately, it proved exactly as easy as it seemed on paper (hah!). Perhaps it was because Laios made it seem downright impossible. Kabru was grateful for the opportunity to prove to him that this was yet another skill he could master.
"The crane," Kabru mused, carefully folding the paper flaps that would become the bird's neck and tail, "is perhaps the most popular origami model. I assume it's appreciated for its relative simplicity, making it accessible to beginners." Kabru smirked. It felt good to be able to say that with at least some semblance of authority. "Of course, the cultural relevance and associated symbolism are more important, though. In Japanese mythology, cranes are mythical creatures that live for a thousand years," he went on. "They represent longevity, good fortune, and happiness."
"Wow." Laios glanced over at the near-finished crane in Kabru's hands. He was half a step behind, taking his time. He seemed to be exceptionally gentle in his movements, as if he was afraid to twist the crane's neck by accident. "You know so many cool things, Kabru," he said in awe.
Kabru's lips curled into a smile. "I've always liked learning. Even as a child, I wanted to know everything," he admitted, laughing softly. "I was reading books far above my reading level. In hindsight, I'm not sure how much of what I read, I understood at the time. I can still pull from that knowledge, though." He gently folded the crane's neck to create a head. "It is said that if one folds a thousand paper cranes," he hummed, "they will be granted a wish."
"Really? That's a lot of cranes," Laios murmured to himself, squinting as he carefully molded the crane's head into shape. "Do you think we could pull it off?"
"A thousand paper cranes?" Kabru laughed. "Well, it would take quite a lot of time. It's been twenty minutes, and we only have one crane for each of us." He stroked his chin. "I suppose we can work together towards that goal, starting our counter at two so far. It would take only half the time. We would only get one wish between the two of us, though."
"That's okay. You can take it," Laios said, deep in thought. He quietly put his crane next to Kabru's. Neither of them were perfect, but they looked nice together. Kabru leaned on Laios' shoulder, gaze fixed upon the cranes. "So," Laios said, twiddling his thumbs in his lap, "only nine-hundred ninety-eight left, huh?"
The corners of Kabru's mouth twitched and curled into a smile. "Yes, I suppose so."