Work Text:
It started with one.
A simple paper crane, light blue in color (which was coincidentally his favorite), was placed on the middle shelf of his school locker.
It was strange. Emil didn’t know how to make origami, so he obviously hadn’t made it randomly one day and forgotten about it.
Even stranger, no one he talked to knew how to make origami, eliminating the possibility that it had been given as a gift from a friend.
More origami appeared every day for the following weeks after the first one appeared. Sometimes it was a crane, other times it was a rabbit, a fox, or even various types of flowers.
Even though it was unusual for him, he enjoyed receiving handmade gifts almost every day. When he had about 15 of them already, he decided to bring in a small basket from home to keep them in.
A few months passed, and he still had no lead as to who was giving him gifts every day.
He sighed, glancing at his collection of origami before shutting his locker and walking to his last class of the day.
The halls were still crowded, even though only two minutes were left of passing period. Making another turn in the hallway, Emil stepped forward into the art room, which also doubled as the architecture classroom.
Emil sat down in his usual spot at one of the edges of the classroom. Here, it was nice and quiet. He could focus on projects in a quiet ambience, helping him relax after a full day of classes.
He set his bag on the floor next to him, then stood up from his stool to go grab his project from the storage closet.
The smell of wood greeted him as soon as he opened the door to the closet. A few of his classmates were also there, grabbing their projects as well.
Emil walked over to the edge of the closet, heaving his project out of the box it was kept in. It was a bit heavy, weighing at least a few pounds, so it was a bit of a struggle to carry around.
He thanked one of the classmates who had been in the closet with him for holding the door open for him as he briskly walked out and back to his seat in the corner.
The blueprints were laid out across the table, being held down by various pieces of stationery that had been taken out of his bag. The wooden model of a house had been placed to the side of the blueprints. That way, Emil could easily look and work between the two.
The end of the semester project for the architecture class was to create a model of your home and present it to the class. They had about three months to complete this, giving students plenty of time to perfect and finalize their models.
About one and a half months had passed since the class had started on the project. Emil had already finished his blueprints, his foundation for his model, and even some of the painting. Even though he had not started on his slideshow for his presentation, he was in pretty good shape for the semester project.
Nothing unusual usually happened in this class. It was ambient, the only sounds being the quiet conversation of others around him.
He began to take out the acrylic paint that he kept with the project, squirting more paint onto his palette. He was about to paint when something light colored caught his eye.
Emil paused and looked up from his quiet, isolated space in the back. There, at the other end of the classroom, he could spot a boy quietly folding a square piece of bright orange paper.
For the next few moments, Emil intently watched the boy fold the piece of paper. Finally, the paper had been shaped into what looked to be a koi fish.
He took note of this immediately. This was the first person he had seen making origami at school.
He shifted to look down at his project as soon as the other boy looked up from his creation, pretending to be completely focused on painting the inner walls of his model house.
After a few moments, he looked back up to take a closer look at the boy’s appearance. The boy was now focused on his own class project, his paper creation having been put away.
Brushing off the fact that the piece of origami had disappeared, he began studying the other boy’s appearance before he looked creepy for staring for too long.
The boy had dark brunette hair and amber eyes that complemented each other. He had a sort of abstruse aura to him, like his silence made him untouchable.
It confused him. Why would someone like this be even slightly interested in him? It didn’t make any sense whatsoever.
He sighed and looked back down at his house. He knew in his gut that it was him, but it’d be awkward if he approached him and it turned out it actually wasn’t him at all.
He had to catch him in the act. Emil decided he would wait around the corner by his locker to see if the boy would put the koi fish in his locker. If he did, Emil decided that he would approach him tomorrow with his own piece of handmade origami, as a sort of peace offering, also as a way to silently say, “I know it’s been you.”
As soon as the bell rang, signaling that school was over for the day, Emil packed up quickly and almost rushed to get by his locker. He waited for almost five minutes before he saw him approaching his locker.
Just as he expected, the boy took the same origami koi fish out of his pocket and promptly placed it inside his locker, shutting it gently before walking away.
Emil carefully walked over to his locker a moment later, taking out the folded koi and putting it in his pocket.
It was decided. Emil was going to make a piece of origami and was going to give it to him.
…
Later that night, Emil finally finished a simple origami crane, just like the first one that was gifted to him. He had written his number on the paper before folding it. It wasn’t perfect of course, but it was still going to be at least a bit meaningful.
…
The next day at school, Emil spotted the boy sitting under a tree at lunch. Emil quickly cornered him and handed him the crane, then walked away briskly, as if he had just gone the wrong way and turned around.
He smiled jubilantly as he received a text a moment later.