Chapter 58: What the Days Were Without You
Mornings felt different now.
Not emptier, just… quieter. Like a space that still held warmth, even if the one who made it was elsewhere.
Oriana didn't rush to get up anymore. She let the sun stretch across the bed and touch the edge of the pillow where Anya used to sleep when they had sleepovers. She never moved that pillow. She just smoothed the fabric each morning like a kind of ritual.
Anya had been gone for eight days.
Not long.
Not forever.
But long enough that Oriana had begun counting small things.
How many cups of tea she'd made without Anya.
How many clouds had passed the window without Anya sketching them.
How many times she'd laughed and immediately turned to share it—only to remember.
It wasn't pain.
It was memory being kept warm.
She still went to school.
Still walked the same path.
Still sat by the window.
And people noticed the shift—not a sadness, not really—but a gentleness in her movements, like she was protecting something soft and precious inside her that no one else could touch.
They called her calm.
But it wasn't calmness.
It was missing that had learned how to hold itself carefully.
The journal Anya left behind—her gift for the journey—sat on Oriana's desk, its pages waiting.
Every morning, Oriana opened it and wrote something. Not long entries. Just thoughts, memories, small details Anya might have missed.
Day 9:
You would've laughed today. One of the new students mistook our biology teacher for a student and offered her gum. The whole class tried not to explode. I could hear your voice in my head going, 'She's going to remember this for the rest of her life.' I miss hearing that voice out loud.
Sometimes she pressed leaves between the pages.
Sometimes she taped in receipts from cafes they used to visit.
Once, she sketched a picture of her hand holding nothing.
She left the last page of each entry blank—so Anya could answer if she wanted to.
She didn't expect a reply.
She just wanted to leave a space.
Evenings were hardest.
Not because they were lonely.
But because they were where togetherness used to live.
She missed cooking with Anya.
Missed how Anya danced to bad music while waiting for rice to boil.
Missed the quiet clink of chopsticks, the unspoken understanding of shared bites and shared sighs.
Now Oriana cooked in silence. She ate slowly. Sometimes with the radio on low, just to keep the air from closing in.
But she didn't drown in it.
She moved through it.
She carried Anya into the quiet, like a candle she kept relighting.
Ten days after Anya left, a letter arrived.
A real one.
Handwritten. Folded carefully.
Oriana knew it before she opened the envelope. The way her name was written—loopy, slanted, with the little heart above the "i." Anya's writing.
She read it once at her desk.
Then again on the roof.
Then a third time under the covers, with a flashlight.
It said:
**"Kyoto is different. It's colder than I imagined, and everyone moves like they know exactly where they're going. I'm still learning the trains. I got lost twice, and both times I thought: 'Oriana would've found a shortcut and then made fun of me for an hour.'
There's a bakery near the studio that sells sesame buns you'd love. I eat one every morning now and pretend I'm sharing it with you.
In class, they asked us to paint with a limited color palette. I chose only blues. I didn't realize until later that all the shades reminded me of you.
I miss you.
But I'm happy.
And I want you to be too.
Tell me what the sky looks like there.
Tell me what you're dreaming about these days.
Love,
A."**
Oriana read the letter with her knees pulled to her chest.
Then she folded it and placed it in her sketchbook.
Later that night, she opened her journal and wrote on the next page:
Day 10:
The sky today was pale like the inside of a shell. I think you'd say it looked tired, but kind. I watched the clouds and thought about how far they travel. It made me feel better. Because if they can cross oceans and still make it back, maybe we can too.
Time passed like that.
Some days fast.
Some slow.
And Oriana began to grow in quiet, unexpected ways.
She joined the poetry club again.
She started tutoring a younger student in history. The girl had soft eyes and asked too many questions and reminded Oriana of herself, once.
She painted in silence.
Sketched things not just for Anya, but for herself.
There was a shift happening—not away from love, but into herself.
One afternoon, after a long walk through the market, Oriana stopped by the bookstore. Her favorite one—the one where she and Anya used to sit on the floor between shelves and read titles out loud like they were spells.
She picked up a book on constellations.
The same one Anya had been searching for before she left.
It wasn't for Anya now.
It was for Oriana.
She wanted to learn the stars too—so that when Anya wrote about the ones she saw in Kyoto, Oriana could see them too, in her mind.
At the counter, the woman smiled and said, "For someone special?"
"Yes," Oriana answered. "But also… for me."
That night, she sat on her balcony and looked up.
The stars were soft and scattered, like rice thrown at a blessing.
She found Orion.
Then Cassiopeia.
And she whispered their names like prayers.
In the quiet, she said Anya's name too.
Not to the sky.
To herself.
Just to remember the shape of it on her tongue.
By the time the first month passed, Oriana had learned how to miss without aching.
She wrote every day.
Sent two letters.
Painted a new canvas in muted shades of silver and violet.
She didn't stop loving Anya.
She just let the love change shape—less like a hand holding, more like a thread tied gently between two hearts across the sky.
And that was enough.
Because even in absence, she still felt it—
—in the breeze that lifted her hair,
—in the softness she wore like armor,
—in the moments when her chest ached a little and she smiled anyway.
Oriana hadn't lost anything.
She was just learning how to keep it differently.