Notes: According to the '428: Fūsa Sareta Shibuya de' game, which basically acts as a prequel to the events in 'Canaan', Maria has an identical twin sister. She only gets mentioned here in passing, but I felt it best to explain her existence nevertheless.

It doesn't happen automatically, of course. They don't fall into each other, all teeth and tongues and saliva and spit, the chairs and table groaning under their weight as they try to find ways to balance each others' hands against another's face. They don't even fall into bed together. But for a moment, free from gunfire, free from the chaos that seems to surround them, a mote of dust floats by, caught by the sunlight as it forms a prism against Canaan's eye. It reminds Maria of another moment, one caught in her memory if not in her camera, one where Canaan lifted a marble up to her face and smiled. In those seconds she had been blind to the magnificent view the tower had offered. And now Maria gets why.

The photographer in her wants to marvel at the way the sunlight dapples over everything, the way it touches the planes of Canaan's face and alights on her hair in the same way she's seen it glint off snow. She wants to compare the dust mote to the marble, wants to imagine a whole world inside it. But against the rest of Canaan it looks too tiny, despite the charming way it wiggles through the air. It's almost as though it highlights the rest of her.

'Canaan,' she says, not even hearing how gentle, how warm her voice has become, the syrupy tone of it causing something to stir within Canaan's face. 'I want...'

She hesitates for a brief second before reaching out a hand, stretching her arm out in a half-aborted wave. She wants to slide her palm against Canaan's cheek, maybe let her fingers slide down to curl within that strong brown hand. Her touch has always been welcomed before but...

'I want to kiss you.'

Maria has always been both stupidly brave and brilliantly honest. And if she had had any idea how much she could possibly shine to Canaan, simply by speaking such a heartfelt desire, she would never have doubted herself. Even without the synesthesia, to Canaan, she is a wonder.

Then the gunfire comes again in a blitz, flares of juddering motion robbing them both of each other. Maria remains crouched behind the crumbling corner of a wall, some red, thrashed-looking thing as Canaan leaps over bricks and scrapped-up pieces of mortar, her body diving across the grey pieces of an incomplete road. They're in a lonely part of the world, and if not for the antagonistic men with guns, it would be a nice spot, Maria thinks, one that would look artistic to the lens, and a sharp contrast to the heavily populated areas she likes to frequent and note down within the blur of film.

The gunfire stops. But Canaan doesn't come back.

Maria runs. She escapes through a crowded airport after crawling into the bumpy space between a famer's limes and the roaring engine of his blue van, one that purrs under the scrape of her fingernails. She nestles closely to the squeezing buoyancy of the fruit, feeling its rubbery softness against her side as it transports her back into civilisation. But she doesn't know what to do. There was no body, meaning that Canaan's alive (she hopes, she prays), but it also means she's left her. Again. And she never disappears, not completely, not until Maria's safe. That's just how she works. Unless...

Maria halts beside a rack of pink, flowery clothing, the rippled edges of the sleeves reminding her of the culottes she worn once when she had been the target of Hebi, back when she realised that Canaan was capable of leaving her without a goodbye. Canaan has done the same thing here except that maybe, this time, it has been prompted by something other than a belief that staying away somehow makes it harder for Maria's life to be ripped away.

Maria's hand rises up, above her chest and her fingers clutch against her shirt, forming a battered fist over her heart. It already feels as though a part of her has been torn away. She ignores the smothered chuckles from a group of guys to her left and the way their eyes linger on her hand as it stiffens against her boob. Only a stranger will think of it a caress rather than a grimace of physical expression, one formed as her body resists the urge to curl in on itself.

It is then, through tear-struck eyes, that Maria navigates her way on board an airplane, muttering out sullen apologies as her feet graze a little too heavily against the carpeted corridor of space between seats. She bangs against arm rests and spends the flight feeling pity rather than trying to stir up the positivity she has tried so hard throughout her life to believe in. She can't bear to reach out right now, not when it seems that the one person she tried to reach out the most to has so cruelly rejected her.

It is only later, two weeks later, that she receives the first postcard.

They come thick and fast after that, snapshots of beautiful beaches and sweeping cities of glinting steel. Most have people in them, bored washed-out shades of flesh in swimsuits or Hawaiian shorts, their faces blurred out by both motion and distance. The choice surprises Maria. The taste does not seem like Canaan's. It's almost as though she's been scrolling through newspaper comics or looked at Victorian era museums to research the sort of postcards one should send before reaching a flawed – and yet to her, perfectly logical – conclusion.

Maria would prefer a photograph of Canaan, her shoulders exposed to the sun as they help her hold her posture firm and unrelenting against the rest of the world. She could scribble her words on the back, stick everything inside an envelope. Maria would not mind.

But no, Canaan sticks stubbornly to her postcards, writing out her blunt sentences in large, overly looped letters. It's like she's trying to make the words look as flowery as possible and Maria reminds herself that Canaan's first tongue is probably not Japanese, and that she's probably translating from one alphabet to another as best she can.

'Can you teach me to make a giraffe, next time we meet?' asks one and the certainty makes her heart warm. 'I saw another Japanese tourist here but she was nothing like you. Her colour was too red, like fire,' states another and something flickers into wild relief within Maria's elated chest.

She will never see what Canaan sees but it is enough to know that Canaan still sees her, still compares her lack of presence to what's around her. Maria has spent enough time misunderstanding passive aggressive arguments with her parents and weathering her way through quiet, stilted conversations with her sister to know that being missed is an achievement. Even if it's not a very nice one.

But the postcard she re-reads the most is one which shows a fountain surrounded by fresh, green grass, like park scenery without the usual benches. It's stone, water tipping within the curve of its bowl in a weary line of symmetry. It looks old, alien and alone, cracks spiralling over its sides like the jewellery box Maria has owned since she was six, old and half-broken from all the times she's accidently sent it skittering off the side of her dresser. It makes Maria frown when she looks at it because it makes her feel sad, like something in Canaan, something deep and personal rose out of her and made her pick up this postcard from out of all the more cheerful looking ones she could have taken instead.

It simply says one thing on the back.

'Maria, I wanted it longer than you did.'

Which isn't quite an answer. But it is not a rejection either. And it is, in a way, an ice-breaker. So Maria holds onto it and hopes.