Chapter Text
Yoo Joonghyuk’s classroom was abuzz with heavy chattering noises and laughter.
Their teacher was no doubt going to arrive soon. His seatmate had not yet come. On his desk lay a pencil and a singular piece of paper with a neatly drawn gaming console, along with a hastily scribbled Sunfish and a Squid with horns and wings, and they seemed like they were on their final lives.
Three boys, presumably from his class, came up to him not too long ago. They attempted to befriend him, to no avail — it was extremely evident that they were only running after his fame. Yoo Joonghyuk detested people like them with burning passion. They made his already irritated mood sour further. He felt his leg bob up and down. He didn’t know why.
Yoo Joonghyuk’s posture tightened when he overheard another man humming nearby. Not long, his muscles eased, and the restless bouncing of his legs stilled the moment he saw the man’s face. Suddenly, the hum sounded sweet and melodic as it reached his ears.
Okay, yeah — maybe sweet and melodic was an exaggeration.
Said man halted at the desk beside Joonghyuk’s. “Well, hello there, Yoo Joonghyuk.” There stood Kim Dokja and his sheepish, lopsided grin — plopping down his chair and grabbing something from his backpack. Yoo Joonghyuk only grumbled in response and looked away from Kim Dokja, who seemed satisfied with the minimal answer he gave, only to snap his head back again as he got a glimpse of Dokja holding something blue and alien in his palms through his peripheral vision.
What in the world is that? A duck? A Swan? A…
“Yah, Joonghyuk-ah?” he overlooked Kim Dokja’s hand beckoning at his face. He blinks a few times, expression with a glint of awe, soon morphing into his signature scowl. Kim Dokja grabs the origami he set aside on his desk and shows it to the male.
“Look, it’s a paper crane! Han Sooyoung taught me how to make this at her house yesterday,” he beamed as he fixed the origami’s wings. He glanced at Joonghyuk, whose brows were scrunched up.
“What, do you want to learn how to make this, too?” Dokja chuckled, carefully setting the crane back in his backpack. Yoo Joonghyuk immediately replied, “No.”
Dokja pouted menacingly, resting his palm on his chin, still staring at Joonghyuk’s eyes with intent. “Too bad, you’re missing out on a lot. Making these is actually quite interesting, y’know?” Kim Dokja and his sudden interest in those so-called cranes were quite an adorable sight. However, Yoo Joonghyuk, under any circumstances, would never admit that. He would rather regress than say that aloud.
He looked back at the front, noticing their teacher’s arrival. The irksome sounds of students scurrying back to their seats invaded his ears, though Yoo Joonghyuk couldn’t care less.
Recently, Kim Dokja started bringing a single paper crane to school every day.
Some were in the shade of Vermilion. Two of them were a deep Napoleon blue color. The one he brought yesterday was yellow. A bunch of them had intricate patterns on the paper, squiggly and colorful and excessively bright. A lot of them were even bigger than the last ones. It’s been two weeks since he brought the first one, and he’s been making new cranes ever since.
It was never-ending.
Usually, Yoo Joonghyuk would’ve remained silent, hardly staring at the crane, and stayed content on listening to Kim Dokja’s chit-chat. Though one day, his curiosity piqued, and Joonghyuk was unable to stop himself from asking him.
“Why do you keep making a new paper crane every day?”
Kim Dokja, who was in the middle of ranting, shut his mouth from the sudden question, going uncannily silent.
Then, he smiled. Not the usual smile, the one that had his eyes crinkle into crescents and made Joonghyuk feel tremendously giddy, the smile Yoo Joonghyuk liked the most. No.
The sparkle in his eyes seemed to dim, and his grin was crooked, strained, and unmistakably fake. It was as if a dark aura started to circle Kim Dokja like the question was not supposed to be asked at all.
Yoo Joonghyuk regrets ever opening his mouth. He started to fret internally.
“You don’t have to say it if you’re uncomfortable or…” Kim Dokja cut him off, light instantly returning from his eyes as if nothing had happened.
“No, no! It’s just that… I heard from Sooyoung-ie that if you made a thousand paper cranes, your wish would come true,” he uttered.
Joonghyuk barely hid his grimace. That annoying little gremlin again. Warily, he asked another question. He hoped it wouldn't offend Dokja this time around. “How many have you made already?”
“Only eighteen. I never really have the time to do much these days. The reason’s either because I have a stack of assignments waiting at my desk, or because my asshole of a boss kept tormenting me, like pissing me and the other employees off is his source of income.”
Yoo Joonghyuk seemed to contemplate something, his left brow twitching swiftly. He clicked his tongue and turned to face the boy again.
“Come to my house.”
Kim Dokja stared at him as if he’d grown two heads.
“Pardon?”
Joonghyuk gritted his teeth.
“I said, Come to my house. I’ll help you make more.”
A blush crept up through both of their cheeks. Kim Dokja’s never been invited to anyone’s house before, while Yoo Joonghyuk has never invited someone over to his place. That was a first for them.
Kim Dokja went into deep thought before answering the younger man.
“Er… sure, o-only if you don’t mind the intrusion!”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s mouth curved up into a faint smile.
Since that day, Yoo Joonghyuk started helping Kim Dokja create paper cranes in his home.
If there was a lesson Joonghyuk learned, though, it was that for him, making paper cranes was utterly difficult.
“Joonghyuk-ah, what’s that? The head looks more like a dog than that of a crane.”
“Yoo Joonghyuk, did you make the wings that crooked on purpose?”
“It’s not that hard, look!” Kim Dokja would claim.
It took him at least 9 crumpled papers before he could make a perfect one.
“I did it.” Joonghyuk let out a hefty sigh. Kim Dokja gawked at him.
“Yah, it took you an hour and, like, 49 poor pieces of paper before you were able to make that.” Dokja snorted.
“It was only nine, fool.”
His sister, Yoo Mia, stared at him with dread as if he had just murdered her entire bloodline. “Oppa, I thought you were the most perfect brother in the world!? Why did it take you so much paper to make… This!?”
She grabbed the origami as gently(read: violently) as possible before waving it at his face. Kim Dokja nearly prayed to all of the gods out there to help him think rationally and stop himself from laughing out loud and disturbing the Yoo siblings’ neighbour, who was, apparently, a man even grumpier than Joonghyuk, who already acts like he’s got a stick up his ass.
“No one’s perfect in this world, Mia-yah.”
“You nodded at me yesterday when I told you that you were. Dumbass oppa.”
Yoo Joonghyuk gaped at her.
Kim Dokja may or may not have disturbed the neighbour next door.
It took both of them 2 months and even more hearty meals together with only a maximum of twenty-one origami made every day to finish making a thousand cranes, just because Yoo Mia and Kim Dokja bickered every time he visited.
Not to mention that the three of them got an earful from their neighbour, Kyrgios — not once, not twice, but five times.
And, to Joonghyuk and Kyrgios’ dismay, this day was not an exception to Yoo Mia and Kim Dokja's banters; war broke loose in the Yoo household. Again.
“I’m the same age as your brother, yet you don’t call him Ahjussi. I’m not even that old yet, I’m only nineteen!” Dokja gritted out, groaning loudly as he unintentionally crinkled the wings of the origami he was currently holding.
“Yeah, but you look even older than my teacher. She’s already in her 30s!”
“That doesn’t mean you can call me that! I’ll only accept it if you call your brother ahjussi as well.”
“Nope. Ahjussi is Ahjussi. Oppa is Oppa.”
Yoo Joonghyuk only sighed at the sight, placing 3 plates on the table, announcing. “Dinner’s ready.”
Kim Dokja and Yoo Mia snapped their heads back and practically salivated at the mouthwatering smell of food wafting from the table.
“Is that Omurice?” he beamed. Yoo Joonghyuk replied with a sliver of fondness in his eyes barely seen. “Hn. Eat up, Mia-yah, Dokja-yah.”
Dokja’s ears flushed red at the way his name sounded as it left Joonghyuk’s lips. He’d only started calling him like that 2 days ago — perhaps by accident — but now it seemed like it had its permanent place in Yoo Joonghyuk’s mouth.
It made him feel giddy.
Yet, it shouldn’t.
Nobody saw the way his smile faltered, the carefully built facade giving way to a faint crack.
He and Yoo Mia sat down at the dining table, Kim Dokja grabbing the pitcher to fill their glasses with water.
Yoo Joonghyuk sat down, holding a bottle of Ketchup. “Let’s eat. Do you want ketchup on your egg?”
Mia shouted a big “Yes!” while Kim Dokja only grimaced at the sight.
“No, thank you.”
Yoo Joonghyuk raised his brows. “You don’t like Ketchup?”
“I don’t like anything with tomatoes in it.”
The male could only shake his head in disappointment as he put ketchup on his sister’s plate. “Picky.”
Kim Dokja shot back with an offended gasp. “Hey, the only food I hate is tomatoes, bastard!”
“I consider you one for not eating your vegetables.”
“Hey, I-Isn’t that thing a fruit or something!?”
Before the taller could retort, Mia glared daggers at them. “Can we please eat? I can hear my stomach grumbling already,” she pleaded, desperately holding her apparently growling stomach.
Joonghyuk sighed for the nth time that day. “..Fine, let’s eat.”
The two’s eyes lit up at the words. They both thanked him for the meal and scarfed the food down like starved Hyenas.
“Watcha making tomorrow, oppa?” Mia asked him after swallowing egg from her mouth. Yoo Joonghyuk snickered and glanced in Dokja's direction before looking back at Yoo Mia.
“I’m making Tomato soup for dinner tomorrow.”
Kim Dokja’s eyes flared up. “Bastard!”
“Deal with it.” Joonghyuk retorted, a smug grin etched on his face.
As Yoo Joonghyuk drank his glass of water, he mentally noted not to add Tomatoes to Kim Dokja’s meals — save for the times that he’s pissed at the male.
At the dead of night, Yoo Joonghyuk and Kim Dokja sat on the floor filled with Paper cranes. Kim Dokja held the thousandth one in his palm.
The small lamp and the random glow-in-the-dark’s dim light in his ceiling Yoo Mia insisted on putting inside Yoo Joonghyuk’s room served as the only light source. Its luminescence emitted a faint yellow hue around them.
“So,” started Kim Dokja, “Are you ready to make a wish?” he grinned. Yoo Joonhyuk murmured.
“This is ridiculous.”
Dokja’s smile grew even wider, eyes with a hint of amusement.
“Yet you’re still here, sitting with me, after helping me make these. Aren’t you?” he stared at the crane, head dropping down to stare at the crane resting idly on his palms. Yoo Joonghyuk could see how long his lashes were.
“Plus,” he looked at Joonghyuk again. “Even if you find cranes as ridiculous, it would still be a waste not to make a wish after creating all of these, with all the effort we put into them. Right?” he chuckled.
Dokja’s tone was lively. Joyful. Though Yoo Joonghyuk could see a crack — revealing melancholy and the burning ache of longing buried deep within his eyes.
Yoo Joonghyuk still thought he looked ethereal, even at this ungodly hour.
“Kim Dokja…” his call barely came in as a whisper. Kim Dokja scooted closer to him, looking at Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes. “Well…? Are you ready to make a wish?”
His eyes hold the stars. They’re beautiful.
‘This is dumb,’ Yoo Joonghyuk thought.
He still nodded. He didn’t understand why.
Kim Dokja closed his eyes, supposedly making a wish. Yoo Joonghyuk proceeded to stare at Kim Dokja, lost in thought.
Joonghyuk smiled.
‘My wish is for you to be happy.’