Too crowded shopping malls and too cold cinemas start something that the word ‘cliché’ would do no justice to.. She sits beside you, watching pale faced vampires lurch across bloodstained snow, pretty eyes that you’ve never really noticed before unblinking in the non light. Something quite likeable to fear of the unknown contorts itself into an uncomfortable lump in your throat, makes you fold your hands tightly across each other until your knuckles hurt and the movie has nothing to do with it.

They order pizza and the both of you are more than content to sit at the edge of the table, drifting in and out of conversation with the four others before backtracking to the much more interesting topic of androgynous Korean boys. She’s animated while on this subject and you provoke her a little about a particular favorite just enough to make her lean over the table and smack you playfully in objection. The rest wisely leave you both alone.

Indian music, punctuated by gunshot drumbeats, makes the glass windows of shops you pass by quiver. She lets you drag her by the wrist to take a closer look at the Deepavali festivities doing on below while the others poke around in a nearby oddities shop. She has tiny, delicate wrists that you wouldn’t normally associate with a nationals-finalist squash player and you tell her so the next day in school. Of course she grins and smacks you on the shoulder for good measure.

On the last day of school, she teaches you how to fold paper cranes. Anyone who interrupts backs off with a bruised shoulder and you can’t help but laugh at her half-annoyed, half-bemused expression. They learn to leave you both alone soon enough and you don’t really mind. An hour before the bell rings for the last time in one and a half months, you stand with her at the window, throwing the paper cranes you made out onto the metal rood of the canteen below. Bewildered seven year olds watch the colored pieces of folded paper fall with wide eyes but she ignores them.

For the first time, she agrees to a photo and someone snaps the both of you together in the school field, hands curved and meeting halfway above your head to form a crooked Korean-boyband popularized heart. “Deformed,” she scoffs and after the third try, it is deduced that Malaysian schoolgirls were never meant to make perfect hearts. But that doesn’t stop you both from making a half-promise to try again on Wednesday, despite it going to be in view of 25 members of the class in Pizza Hut.

1000 cranes, you say. I’ll do a 1000 black ones.  I’ll do 1000 too and I. Want. Donghae. You? She emphasizes the last three words with a poke at you in the arm, referring to one particularly pretty boyband member and the Japanese equivalent to seeing a star fall. Your car comes and you’re glad you don’t have to lie to her about what you want to wish for when you’re done with the 1000 cranes because all you really want is her.