A World Without Hope

Nozomi lives in the far future, in a city so high in the sky, no one has ever touched foot on the ground. One day, she finds out about the legend of a thousand cranes in her great-grandfather's diary, and her world changes forever. Japanese legend says that if someone folds a thousand paper cranes, than their one wish can come true. But Nozomi, like everyone else on Earth, does not know what a wish is...

Art by Simone Ford

---

Background Information:

This short story was inspired by the Japanese legend that anyone who folds one thousand cranes will be able to grant one wish. In Japanese culture, the crane is also a holy creature that lives one thousand years, which is why one thousand origami cranes must be folded, all in the span of a year. I discovered this myth through the true story of Sadako Sasaki, a Japanese girl who was two years old when she survived the bombing of Hiroshima in World War II. Sadly, at the age of 12 she was hospitalized with leukemia caused by exposure to radiation, and began folding one thousand origami cranes in hope of getting better. She passed on October 25th, 1955, surrounded by over one thousand origami cranes. Inspired by her resilience, her classmates decided to raise money to build a monument in honor of Sadako and all the children lost during the atomic bombing.

---

One thousand cranes.

Nozomi’s quick fingers traced their wings, the birds’ flight trapped in the engraving of the wooden chest before her. They were beautiful, each one painted liquid gold, their shine still bright even after decades of ill-care, the dark cedar of the box seemingly untouched by time. It rested on a rice straw carpet in the center of the dark cave, illuminated gently by Nozomi’s lantern, floating above the crouched fifteen-year-old girl’s shoulder like a warm friend.

Behind her lay rubble, the rock and metal remnants of the door she had blasted through with homemade explosives. Nozomi’s usual slick black hair was twisting out of her braid in wisps and blood trickled down her cheek, a scratch from a rock that had grazed her face during the blast. Besides her lied the golden lock of the chest, which she had carefully lockpicked moments before amid the blare of the alarms. The minute the door had exploded, sirens had begun sounding, not in the cave, for not one spark of electricity seemed to work down there, but high up in the clouds, in Nova Empereal, the sky city, home to Emperor Averyx.

The Zir would soon be coming, the Emperor’s very own platoon of deadly soldiers, trained from birth in the art of war, infamously nicknamed the Death Reapers. Already, she could see the blinking lights of their tanks, flying down to catch her, the first person in 80 years to have seen the inside of this cave. As if sensing them, the cold, grey walls of rock pressed closer, stifling the air and shrouding Nozomi in their dark shadows.

I shouldn’t be here, Nozomi thought. She should be back home, on the grey rooftop of her apartment in Nova Empereal, looking out into the blue skies, dotted with other tall, rod-thin buildings and passing white clouds. The people would have begun to wake up; flying cars zipping through the air, pedestrians with measured steps walking on the bridges that connect building to building. But from down here, Nozomi could only see the foundations of those apartments, so high that like most citizens of Nova Empereal, she had never once set foot on the Earth’s soiled, green ground. Until today.

It had taken Nozomi hours to carefully climb down the grey buildings, using cracks in their surfaces as footholds, pipes as handholds. All in the dark hours of the night, so nobody would be able to see her hooded, lanky figure. It had been fine at first. But as she descended further and further, her hands sore from gripping metal, the twinkling lights of the city had faded one by one, until Nozomi had found herself alone, surrounded only by darkness. Not even the light of the stars had helped, for fog had enveloped the sky earlier that day.

And now, sitting before her, was what Nozomi had come for. The wooden chest. It was exactly like the one described in her great-grandfather's journal. If what Isamu, for her great-grandfather had refused to be called anything but his name, had said was true then the wooden chest should be filled with one thousand origami cranes.

One thousand cranes to set the world free.

Nozomi’s great-grandfather had died a few weeks ago. Ever since then the small two-room apartment had been covered in silence and roving dust bunnies. All he had left behind was a dog-eared, leather-bound journal. Isamu had given it to her on his deathbed, begging her to read it in between great bouts of hacking cough, lungs shriveled by time.

“They teach you at school of the past, of the evil of our ancestors. How we took, burned and pillaged. But not all was bad, Nozomi. There was good. I didn’t know, you have to understand!” He almost shouted the last part, his eyes red and distressed. “Now we are like robots. We are cold. We are empty. I... I took it away. They asked me to. I was foolish. A man drunk on his own success, I listened. I took it away.”

“Took what away?” Nozomi asked, remembering the doctor had said that in the last moments he would change, his mind blurred between reality and illusion. She had shoved down the sickly dread at the sight of the usual wise, soft Isamu now consumed by a fraying mind, her once loving great-grandfather gone.

“My- my journal! Read it, please, Nozomi! In the last drawer, you must read it. I explained everything. Please, Nozomi, remember what I used to tell you when you were small. Remember hope.”

His last words to her. The moment they had left his mouth, Nozomi had been thrown back into her childhood, memories she had forgotten now clear as day. When she had been small, a toddler maybe, Isamu had whispered stories to her. Stories about girls who were poor, who became princesses. Stories of how people used to play music and dance, and he had shaken his arms at her, his body contorting strangely as he laughed. Stories of a little girl named hope.

Nozomi rolled the word in her mouth. Hope. A feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen1. A new word written in the journal, but a familiar one. When Isamu had uttered it, for the first time in a long time, Nozomi’s chest had felt lighter, warmth blooming from her heart to her fingertips. Hope.

Isamu had written in his book, how 80 years ago, he had been contacted by a company led by Emperor Averyx’s father, for a secret task. They were on the verge of something big, they had said, and they needed him to help. They told Isamu how a group of the world’s best and brightest had finally found the answer to world peace. To the end of all suffering.

He had immediately agreed, and after extensive research found the last puzzle of the solution. One thousand cranes. One wish to end all wishes. A wish, Nozomi learned, was the feeling of strong desire for something to happen.

For that is what the company had found, that at the core of all problems, of all humanity’s evils, were wishes. Because wishes brought hope, and hope is what drove humans to make bad and foolish decisions, drove them to believe in the impossible, become obsessed with attaining the impossible. Wishes were a small price to pay for the death of hope. And so, Isamu had folded one thousand origami cranes and made his one wish.

Because of him, the world had been saved. Nozomi, like her mother, had grown up in a world with no pain, no hunger, no war. It was all she knew. But if Isamu was right, then the empty stares and measured steps of people were not the truth. Nozomi knew a world where at birth, everyone was given a role that dictated what they’ll study and who they’ll marry. A world where everyone honored Emperor Averyx for saving humanity, a world where no one complained and no one fought. Everyone was too engrossed in their lives, with getting out of bed and going to work, following the rigid iron rules of the ones who know better. Nozomi thought it was normal to struggle getting up every day, to find the right motivation to walk to school, her pace, her hair, her clothes the same as the thousands around her.

Yet that word. Hope. Nozomi had lived her life with an ache in her heart, a gaping hole she had never been able to fully ignore. And apparently hope and wishes and desires and joy and dreams and so much more; they had all been taken away by her great-grandfather, locked away in the very chest before her.

Inside were one thousand origami cranes. Nozomi wasn’t sure why she was doing this. To finally know if Isamu was saying the truth? To learn why the word, hope, made her eyes burn brighter? Something in the very bones of her body pushed her to do this.

The lights were getting closer, along with the heavy boots and rattle of the rifles of the Zir. They were here. She had no time.

With a breath Nozomi stilled her trembling hands and reached for the latch. She opened the chest.

Out flew one thousand paper cranes, their wings cutting her face, drops of blood forming on her face. They each glowed with the whispers of promise, and Nozomi did not care if the light made her eyes water; her gaze stayed fixed on their patterned, paper wings and golden beaks crooning melody. For the first time she understood what it meant to be alive. The cranes circled over her head, and fire seemed to burn from the tips of her fingers to the end of her toes.

As the cranes flew by, up into the skies, the people stopped for the first time, clutching their chests as they felt flames light up their hearts. One thought echoed through all their minds, from the oldest administrator to the young girl sitting in a cave by herself, surrounded by soldiers with guns slipping through their hands in shock.

I wish.