Daehyun’s room is colorful, Youngjae discovers. Hanging from the ceiling are strings upon strings of cranes—Youngjae’s cranes. They’re everywhere; on the bookcase, over the desk, around the window, at least fifty strings above Daehyun’s bed. It’s horribly ironic, really, Youngjae thinks, that of all the people in the entire university with whom he could have been paired up for the project, he ends up with Daehyun. Daehyun, to whom he had spilled his everything in commas, periods, letters hidden underneath layers of paper. Flimsy paper, flimsy words. And yet it seems that Daehyun has kept every last one of them. Why?

“Wow,” Youngjae says as Daehyun invites him into the room. Daehyun, too, seems to be trying to join in with the rainbow in his room. “Pink?” Youngjae questions, fighting to hide the amusement from his voice.

Daehyun colors to a shade that rivals the new dye in his hair and shies away. “I just wanted to try something a little different,” he explains, picking at a lock of hair hanging over his eyes and squinting at it. “It’s hard to get used to. I’ll probably go back to brown once my roots start showing.” His voice is clearer than it had been a few days ago. Youngjae remembers the way he’d looked so small with the covers pulled up to his chin, too weak to take his own medication as sickness ravaged his body. Yongguk—bless him—had been reluctant to leave Daehyun so sick and alone and had tracked Youngjae down to get him to help. Now, Daehyun looks a thousand times better, Youngjae observes, although his cheeks still lack the rosy tint of health.  

“I like it,” Youngjae says. He’s not sure what prompts him to reveal this tidbit of information, but Daehyun perks up almost immediately, grinning with a fervor that leaves Youngjae breathless.

Daehyun clears his throat and pulls out a desk chair as an invitation to sit. “So, about the project. I’m sorry for asking out of the blue like that. If you—if you don’t actually want to work together or were already planning something, it’s fine. You don’t have to do the project if you don’t want to,” he stammers.

“Of course I want to do the project. I wouldn’t have said yes if I didn’t,” Youngjae reassures.

Daehyun looks—almost surprised, Youngjae thinks. As if he had expected that Youngjae would go back on his word and abandon Daehyun altogether.

“Oh.” Daehyun swipes his tongue over his already dry lips, at a loss. “Okay then. That’s—good. Really good. Do you have a preference for a song?”

Youngjae shakes his head. “Anything you want is fine. Do you already have something in mind?”

“I—yes,” Daehyun admits, abashed. His shoulders hunch forward a smidge, teeth sinking into the inside of his bottom lip. “It’s not a song I think many people are familiar with. It’s. Different,” he stutters. “It’s a risk.”

“Show me,” Youngjae urges.

The song Daehyun shows him is lovely—stunning, in a soft way. It’s deceptively easy. A risk, just as Daehyun had said, for their grade. Youngjae thinks he’s willing to take it.

“I like it,” Youngjae says quietly, definitively.

“Yeah?” Daehyun asks, slow, wide grin stretching across his lips.

“Yeah.”

.

Youngjae folds the corners of the paper in. First horizontally, then vertically, diagonally. A kite next, and then the edges in, unfold, turn, refold, unfold, and each crease holds a memory of his parents.

Youngjae has many wishes. He wants to graduate from college successfully, with top grades. He’d like to find a well-paying job—performing rather than teaching. He would prefer to move away from his grandmother’s house promptly. He wants more friends. Achievements and goals—all material things.

But it’s also been nine years since he had last seen his parents. Either Youngjae has been abandoned, or his parents have long since passed away. Which option hurts more? The rest of his family has given up hope, all too quickly, it seems to him. No two grown adults simply disappear without a trace unless they don’t want to be found or, a pause from his aunt, his mother’s sister. She never finishes the sentence, but Youngjae can fill in the blank. Or dead.

So, Youngjae really only has one wish. He wants to know what has happened to his parents.

Corners to the top, fold the edges in again, turn, fold, fold, turn, fold, crease. Youngjae sets the finished crane in front of himself and thinks of a boy with pink hair and eyes that smile.

No, Youngjae has two wishes.

But a thousand paper cranes only grant one.

.

Daehyun’s mother calls.

“Will you come home this time?” she asks. Winter break is in less than a week.

“Probably not.” It’s the same reply, every time. He doesn’t even think before he says it. An automatic conversation, held between sentences in his textbook and breaks in his mother’s television shows. Except this time, even as he repeats the same script, he can’t stop the bubbling of longing. He keeps his sentences short, hopes that his mother can’t hear how much he wants to come home.

“Tell me if you are, okay? I’d need to get the apartment cleaned up a little.”

“It’s alright. It doesn’t have to be clean. I’m not a stranger.”

“But, if I’m to see my boy for the first time in half a year, I’d want him to see that I’m doing just fine and that the apartment is fine, too,” Daehyun’s mother argues.

“Don’t worry about it, mom. If I come home, I come home, and the way the apartment looks won’t matter. But, you are doing fine, right?”

“Just fine, just fine. You work hard yourself,” his mother trills.

“I will.”

They don’t talk much. Their conversations are stinted and rushed. Ask the questions (how are you how are your friends how are your classes and how are you feeling how is work how are the finances) and accept the answers (Everything’s okay and everything’s fine.) Never mind that the questions never ask what or why or who. Never mind that the answers are always lies. They’ve grown apart and Daehyun isn’t sure how to fix it.

“You look just like him,” his mother says once, when Daehyun is still in high school. They’re eating dinner at a table too big for two, with the news on the TV in the living room turned up to fill the silence his father has left behind. “You look just like your father did.”

Daehyun stabs a piece of broccoli with his fork and doesn’t say anything in response. He wonders if it’s a good thing, his likeness to his father. Later, when he looks in the mirror, instead of his own reflection he sees a taller figure, sparse beard, kind eyes: a patchwork of Daehyun’s memories of his father.

Daehyun leaves for Seoul a year later and thinks it better for both him and his mother. She doesn’t have to be reminded of her deceased husband so often if she doesn’t see Daehyun. Daehyun, in turn, doesn’t have to think about family at all. He leaves behind the photo album he has of pictures of his father.

Daehyun doesn’t come home for the breaks. He only visits for a week or two during the summer, and then goes back to campus for his summer classes. But this time, the homesickness hits him like the sudden weight of a ton of bricks and Daehyun doesn’t even manage to end the call with his mother before he lets out a sob. He misses the crispness of the air on the beach, the salt-laced winds and the sunsets and the quiet clusters of woods. Daehyun scrambles for the off button, but for once his mother asks him a question he hasn’t heard in years. What’s wrong?

Daehyun looks on the other side of the room, where he sees Yongguk’s clothing drawers pulled out and an open suitcase half under the bed.

His mother says, “Come home.”

a/n: my brother was in the hospital today, they found out he has kidney stones, and I was so stressed about it (still am, actually) that I wrote three whole chapters for this in an hour. (y'all are probably going to get a fourth update tomorrow) i'm still sick and it really , but thank you for the very many get well wishes. Please do direct those at my brother instead now. <3

I hope you are all having a better christmas eve than I am! Lots of love~ c:
-Jess