Chapter 7: Things I See Without You
—from Oriana's perspective—
Kyoto was beautiful.
It was every photograph she had ever seen, every dream she'd quietly folded into the pages of old notebooks. Soft fog curled through narrow alleys. Paper lanterns glowed like floating hearts in the evening air. The trains whispered and the wind always felt like it knew something she didn't.
And yet—
The first morning, Oriana opened her eyes to the new ceiling, and she didn't feel wonder.
She felt the shape of absence.
Not sharp. Not jagged. But wide, like a river she would now have to learn how to cross.
She reached for the edge of the bed instinctively.
But it was only her hand.
Only her breath.
Only the letter Anya had tucked in her backpack, sealed in pink paper and marked with a single word: "Open when you can't sleep."
Oriana didn't open it yet.
Instead, she sat by the window and watched the street below—quiet cyclists, early shopkeepers rolling open metal shutters, a child in a red coat chasing falling leaves.
And she whispered, "She would've drawn this."
The program was demanding.
Eight hours of light. Three of critiques. A daily photo log. Field work every weekend. Professors with gentle eyes but sharp words. Other students from Italy, Australia, even Johannesburg. Talented people. Loud, laughing, worldly.
Oriana felt quiet again.
Not small. Just… still.
She didn't try to be the brightest voice. She listened. She watched. She took notes.
But at night, she found herself narrating her days as if writing them for someone else.
Today the light hit the shrine wall like a gold coin melting down the stone. I tried to capture it, but the lens shook. I thought of your hands.
A girl on the subway was wearing the same jasmine perfume you always tried on and never bought. I almost followed her off the train just to keep smelling it a little longer.
I saw a boy sketching by the canal. He looked lonely. I almost gave him your name.
Each note went into a journal she didn't name.
Just pages filled with things Anya might one day read.
Things she was too afraid to say out loud yet, in case distance swallowed them before they could arrive.
The first letter arrived on the sixth day.
She found it curled in her mailbox like a soft voice:
I saw the moon and it looked like something you'd forget to photograph because you'd be too busy watching it with your eyes instead.
Oriana clutched the paper to her chest.
She didn't cry.
She just smiled so wide it hurt her cheeks.
Anya had written her two pages. One inked line was slightly smudged—probably from Anya's thumb—and that smudge was more intimate than any kiss.
Your absence is shaped like morning tea without your questions. I keep waiting for you to say, "What do you think that bird is thinking?"
Come back with a thousand moments. But don't come back empty.
Oriana read the letter three times that night.
She slept with it under her pillow.
Weeks passed like falling leaves.
Red, yellow, rust, gold.
Autumn in Kyoto was more beautiful than Oriana had imagined. She learned the names of trees from locals who spoke slowly so she could follow: momiji, ginkgo, sakura's ghost.
She photographed alleys, bridges, silent temples, the hands of old women folding dumplings, children pulling each other through crowded parks.
But her best photos—
She never submitted those.
They were the quiet ones. The in-between frames. A pair of shoes abandoned beside a river. A single book left open on a cafe chair. A girl brushing her hair in a window, unaware of the world.
This is how I see you, Oriana wrote in her second letter to Anya. Even when you're not here. In things that forget they're being seen.
She included one photograph.
A bench under a maple tree, where two people had once sat but no longer did. Only the imprint of their warmth remained in the cushions.
Anya replied:
I pinned your photo above my bed. Sometimes I stare at it and try to sit inside it. Try to imagine you taking the picture. What you were feeling. If you missed me then.
You must've. Because I miss you now.
Some nights were harder.
Nights when the class was long, or the critique felt too pointed. Nights when the train ran late or when the silence in her room grew too loud.
On those nights, Oriana opened the pink envelope.
Anya's letter inside was simple. No metaphors. No flourishes.
Just:
You don't need to be the best.
You don't need to shine all the time.
You don't need to prove anything to anyone—not even me.
You're enough. You're always enough.
I'll still be here when you're tired.
I'll still be here when you need to be quiet.
I love you in the soft way. The forever way.
Oriana read it in the dark.
And for the first time since arriving, she let the tears come.
Not because she was lonely.
But because she'd never been loved like that before.
So gently.
So patiently.
So completely.
One evening, after submitting her first full portfolio, Oriana took a walk.
She wandered the Philosopher's Path, a stone walkway beside a canal lined with trees that clung to their last gold leaves. The air was crisp. The world was hushed.
She passed a boy sketching. An old woman reading. A mother teaching her daughter to whistle with an acorn cap.
She passed stories she would never know.
And in that quiet, she whispered, "I'm going home."
Not because the program was over.
Not because she missed Anya too much.
But because she had seen enough of the world now to know one thing:
The person she wanted to tell it all to was waiting back home.
And some stories only make sense when told beside the one who understands your silences.
Oriana's final letter came two days before her return flight.
Anya would read it after seeing her again, not before. That was the plan.
But in it, Oriana wrote:
I thought the world would make me feel bigger. That maybe I'd come back wiser, braver, more whole. But all the world really did… was teach me how to love you more truthfully.
You're not my destination.
You're my direction.
And I'll follow that feeling wherever it takes me.
Even home. Especially home.
On the plane, Oriana pressed her forehead to the window.
Clouds drifted like slow music.
And in her pocket was a photograph of a girl she'd never taken—a memory instead.
Anya laughing, hair in her face, asking Oriana if fish dream when they sleep.
Oriana smiled.
And whispered:
"I'm bringing you everything."