Falling Into the Sky, thus...

“I won’t be home tonight, nor this weekend.” Ako Yamada's choices led her here, and she wasn't sure when she'd be home—if ever.

From outside her tent, a voice called out to her. Shouted her name—or what might’ve been her name. Gunfire, explosions, and screams of anguish must have deafened her by now.

Rising from the bed roll on the cold, rough gravel, she left the warmth of her tent.

Ruined buildings and emptied houses composed the scenery around her, lined up in rows and columns of like discordant rhythms written on a musical sheet.

Ako quit her droll, soul-sucking corporate job back in Japan, and pursued a career in photography and journalism, like she had always dreamed of. She had small victories here and there, granting her small fortunes and valuable connections, making her way up as a career photographer.

But on her biggest break yet, an international company recognized her efforts and sent her abroad.

That was when her dream had twisted itself into a waking nightmare.

She was to cover the brutal warfront of a besieged nation somewhere in Europe. There, she would cover the suffering of citizens, and the toll endless war took on them.

She wanted to cover beautiful things.

Not this.

Her assistant, raven-haired, slim, and athletic, welcomed her with a tired smile. “Finally. I tried calling your phone, but you were out of reception range.”

“Oh.” She groped her jacket's pocket where she kept her phone. “I haven't had the time to charge it. Sorry.”

“Sheesh. You can't afford to get careless around here.” The assistant, Yui, handed her a power bank. “What if something happened to you and you couldn’t reach us, nor us you?”

Ako connected the power bank and charged her phone, putting both in her knapsack where they'd be safe. “I'll remember that.”

Distant thunder boomed from afar. But it wasn't thunder. Artillery. SAMs taking down another missile probably aimed at another city sector.

“Ako,” Yui said with a nod. “Today’s our last day, right? We're leaving before sundown. It won't be safe here for long. The front is moving up tomorrow.”

“The cranes…” Ako murmured.

“If you're going to say goodbye to everyone, best do it now.”

“I have to apologize,” Ako said, sullen and down. She fondled a folded origami crane in her other coat pocket. “For leaving them on such short notice.”

“Right.” Yui sighed. “Let's hurry it up. Pack your bags. We're going straight to the pickup point after you're done.”

“Mm. Yeah.”

Despite being Ako's assistant, she seemed to take more charge than Ako ever did. Understandable, given that Yui had more experience surviving in foreign lands.

Packing what little Ako brought abroad, she left the encampment with Yui and headed into a neighboring encampment a kilometer deeper south. There, a school had been converted into a makeshift hospital for the old, wounded, and orphaned. The suffering, young and old, came and went as natural as a forest stream.

Heading inside, the walls were covered with posters of illegible (to Ako) writing and graphical instructions on preventing the spread of disease. An unnatural chill seeped through the school's cracked walls, carrying the scent of burning gunpowder and sterile medicine all the same.

When they turned the corner, the walls changed. Columns of colorful paper cranes fell from string hanging from the ceiling, hugging the walls almost like a curtain of pastel.

A child, a girl around the age of 8, approached from the classroom-turned-ward. Though she seemed fine, her left arm carried marks of burning. She smiled at Ako. The girl spoke in a language she did not understand.

“She says hi. And nice to see you again after so long,” Yui said, translating the girl's words.

Ako smiled weakly and knelt down to pat the girl. “Hi, Anya. Is everyone still in?” Then, Yui translated, and continued to do so.

“They moved a lot of them out,” the girl replied, with Yui translating. “But we finished the project before they left!”

“That's good! May I come in?”

“Of course, Akosan!”

The girl, and everyone else, called her Akosan, since that's how they heard Yui calling her—honorifics and all.

The three of them entered the ward, and when they did, Ako saw the hundreds of small, paper cranes decorated the walls from top to bottom. No, more than hundreds—a thousand, maybe.

The ward, once filled with possibly thirty patients, had been reduced to a mere five. A familiar hospital smell still wafted in the room, along with fresh bandages still littering the foots of beds, but no people to go with it.

It was like those people had turned into origami cranes themselves.

“Did everyone… move?”

“The doctors said they were moving everyone else to a better place,” said the child.

“Ah.” Ako’s breath hitched. She shot Yui a glance, and she replied with a knowing nod. So Yui knew. She didn’t need to say it, but Ako knew why she didn’t say anything:

“I knew it would hurt you to know.”

Her heart thumped, and she struggled to hold her tears.

Anastiya, that brave woman fighting leukemia in the middle of the war.

Iriya, her daughter, who had lost their leg saving Ivan, the love of their life.

Ivan, a brave young soldier who dreamt of one day becoming a business man in America after he retires.

Everyone.

They had become paper cranes.

It had been so long since Ako’s heart sang like this—even if it was a requiem, a lonely lullaby. The last time was when Haruki… when his dream was alive. Before it died and took her heart with it.

Yui spoke to Ako in their native language, so the others would not understand. “She and the rest of this ward will be moving later, too. So…”

“I know.” Ako gave a nod.

She spoke to the little girl, in a tender tone, and gestured at Yui to translate.

“Good job. I’m proud of everyone. Can I have these cranes? I want to make sure God hears each and every one of these wishes.”

The girl nodded, beaming with pride.

Ako had asked the patients in this ward to make paper cranes, telling them of the legend that these cranes will one day carry their wishes to heaven. Wishes for recovery, health, and eventually—peace. And now, it was her job to bring it to where they can be granted.

In this village, there exists a legend:

There is a certain cliff facing the southern seas, that when wishes are made there, a divine wind will carry them to heaven.

Ako and Yui loaded the cranes into their truck, before loading any of their equipment back in. They planned to deliver their wishes first before finally departing from the warfront later on. Ako thought it would be a short, but necessary ordeal.

They drove south uphill, until they heard the gulls over the cliff. They looked for the lone oak tree overlooking the sea, and when they found it, knew it was the place the village fables spoke of.

Ako carried the first few hundred cranes all conjoined by metal wireframe. There was no way she could carry all one-thousand, even with Yui, and so elected to devote their wishes by batches.

The patients hadn’t written anything on the cranes, but even then, a divine energy radiated from them. Wishes given ethereal form.

If magic was real, then it definitely took the form of prayers.

Ako stared into the endless sea beyond her, the sun reflecting off the waves and sinking to her right. A barge happily tooted its foghorn in the middle of the water, ignorant of Ako’s personal suffering.

She could hear them. Everyone’s suffering—and everyone’s joy.

Just because they were wounded and sick, it didn’t mean their lives were bereft of happiness. They found happiness in little things. Small victories. They found joy in each other.

But where did Ako find hers?

She pursued her passion. Left everything behind. She thought she’d be happy. But instead, life marched on as if it didn’t matter if she chased her dreams or not.

The world never turned for her, after all.

“Yui,” she called in a half-whisper. “Was I wrong to chase my dreams?”

She went beside Ako and gazed at the sea with her. “Why would you say that?”

“I wanted to take pictures of beautiful things. Instead, there's just… misery everywhere here.”

“There will always be misery, even in your greatest dreams,” Yui said in a quiet tone, as if she spoke from experience. “Beauty isn’t an objective thing. It’s up to you to find the beauty in things.”

She gestured at the sea. “I grew up in Sendai, by the coast. When I look at the ocean, I get a little nervous. I get shivers. Even on my best days, I think the sea is pretty unremarkable. But I’m sure not everyone thinks the same.”

Ako turned to Yui, taking in her words, and back at the sea. The sea, unremarkable? She thought otherwise, and yet at the same time, understood why Yui thought so.

Then, Yui continued. “But you know what I think is beautiful? People surviving. People smiling through suffering. I find their strength fascinating, bewitching, even. When people rebuild what was lost,” she said, smiling knowingly at Ako. “I think that’s the prettiest thing ever.”

“Rebuilding what was lost…” Ako studied the frame of paper cranes in her hand.

“Go on,” Yui said. “You should be the one to offer their wishes. You and everyone who finds the sea beautiful.”

Ako stepped forward.

Then a gale rolled in.

The cranes in the truck flew into the sea first, freeing them from the wireframes and scattering into the sky like birds in migration.

Ah. The divine wind.

She prayed in silence, holding the cranes in her hand, so that the wind may sweep their wishes—along with her own.

Please… grant us peace. This world, in all its ugliness, is beautiful. Wherever you go, I ask the world to not let wickedness twist your wishes. Let them be forever pure.

A powerful wind scooped the cranes from her hand, joining her batch with the rest of the. “Ah.” She gasped, chasing the flying cranes up to the edge of the cliff.

Crack.

The ground under Ako collapsed.

She plummeted down the cliff face.

“Ako!” Yui ran after her, but it was too late. She had fallen far—too far to save.

But when she looked down, Ako wasn’t there in the jagged rocks below. No—

She was flying.

Flying with the rest of one-thousand cranes.

Ako reached out to Yui, but she had become lightheaded. It was as if God was taking her up in an unintended rapture.

Yui’s screams became a blur. She wasn’t losing blood, but she was losing consciousness, as if a divine being were robbing her of thought. Looking up, the clouds parted into a circle, welcoming the cranes along with Yui.

The barge below her, too, began to float into the sky, raptured by the same divine force.

Ah. How beautiful.

Her thoughts raced one more time, watching the wartorn landscape disappear before her. Diamond-like lights flashed her blind, then when they faded—

Ako slept.