turn out the lights; wake up in your dreams

[when the feed flickers on, the hand moves away from the screen to reveal something like a haphazard mess. the first thing you notice is a colouring book, child-like in quality. it's flipped to a page of the picture of an Ekans swallowing a Rattata whole -- the snake coloured purple painstakingly with a pencil crayon just a little off-screen.

it's not the only pencil crayon there. rather, if you count and compare all the colours, there are veritably enough pencil crayons scattered in the frame alone for two full boxes worth of them. there's the sound of paper crinkling off-screen, before a hand sets down a paper crane on-screen.]

Mm, eighty-one, I guess.

[a chuckle. Fuji picks up the feed. a flash of brown hair here, dizzying camera motions, and suddenly, the feed settles amongst a whole pile of paper cranes, crowding on-screen, haphazard in their placements. even as he does so, his fingers are already picking at the colouring book again.

he tears out the page with the Ekans and the Rattata, nimble fingers working away already at the first folds.]

I think it's fun, what you're liable to make out of paper. [hum] Wasn't origami originally designed for the sake of carrying love letters? Designed so that the receiver would know if someone had intercepted the message from the way the folds were refolded. -- would you like a love letter in a paper crane?

[a thoughtful pause, here.] Isn't it funny that people believe it's bad luck, to unfold a crane? If it's a love letter for you, you'd have to unfold it anyway.

Their luck for you, I suppose.

[and now, he looks down, rueful. a twist of his fingers, and he pulls out the crane's wings, balancing delicately. a smile, a smile, so secretive that if the state of being cryptic was a rope, Fuji would've hung himself on it long ago.]

I think I'll play the piano with my toes.

[it's then the end-tail of an electric-mouse plops on-screen, the chuuuu that follows as unamused as it ever was. Berlin the Raichu plops himself unceremoniously into Fuji's lap, shaking his head a little. the boy blinks once, twice, chuckles, and reaches over to the feed--

cut.]