Prague was fine in the summer. It wasn't such a restless city like Tokyo, not as lively as New York, and didn't have the unbearable ache of Los Angeles, which burned in July. Prague was all cathedrals and cobblestone roads, and slow moving people who seemed content to be stuck in time as they were, without any preoccupation, or suggestion, of their own decay. There was a spiritual stillness in that, to the people and the roads and the old looming buildings; as though the whole city were a Buddha, or a stone in a brook, quietly sitting and pondering itself as the water went, and especially so in the summer, when it could still be cool mid-July, and people would walk about in cardigans and politely nod.
It was not a dying city, not like Paris. There was no derangement syndrome here; no romanticized expectations that could never come to be. There weren't any guillotines in museums, or many cafes where great painters had once sipped coffee and brooded over nothing. There was a weight of history, and art, and history in art, just as well as anywhere, but didn't seem at all smothering. There was a compounding loneliness.
There was no sense of dread about it, or sorrow that was hard earned; only aesthetic brooding. It simply was. Apartments were barren, girls smoked long pipes and cigarettes, and sometimes you could hear someone sobbing through the walls in a neighboring building or room. Prague was another place to run to; to try to slip into seamlessly, out of want for a new color or a more fitting theme: a city, a life, a point in time to wear like a sleeve, but gain nothing from really.
Gain nothing from.
Kanna Kobayashi, like a city, was both hollow and full of things. That is, empty in an emphatic sense, and full with things that Saikawa didn't understand. Riko Saikawa and Kanna were both twenty-six years old now and had known one another since childhood. Though, known, to Saikawa, even now, seemed like an overstatement when it came to her oldest friend. Kanna was cool and brooding now, like a lot of young hip girls in Prague. Her once youthful wariness had blossomed over the years into the detached glow of a young and worldly woman.
She would stand and stare at the window on some nights, into the streetlamps that still burned with oil, and the cobblestone and decay, smoking a slow cigarette and seeming, as she stood and appeared so coolly and detached, to finally embody a theme, and to finally wear a city like a sleeve and simply be. Of all the cities they'd tried to be, this one fit Kanna most.
Saikawa would watch her from the dark of the bedroom, in the apartment that they shared, and feel every bit in love with Kanna as she had when they were schoolgirls. She would admire Kanna from a distance, even now, even as they'd lived together for years, even as they moved together from city to city all around the world. And, she couldn't help feeling that she understood Kanna less and less the more she got to know her. Kanna was as full of mystery and brooding as any city itself.
They shared a bed in their apartment. They'd lived together for years now. They kissed and touched each other at night. They held hands on lonely, rainy nights, and took all the comfort they could from each other's bodies, when it was necessary, or just to quell something in either of them respectively.
They were never seen apart, nearly. For any other set of people under the same circumstances, it would be obvious what they were to one another and spoken in explicit terms. Though, never once had Kanna called Saikawa a partner, a girlfriend, or anything more than even a casual acquaintance. Saikawa didn't understand it and didn't question it. That was how Kanna was. That was how Kanna had always been, and now, as a detached and worldly woman, she was even more so like herself.
The two were lovers, certainly. Whether it was an experimental fling of two lost young women, or something more meaningful remained to be known. It wasn't a secret love affair either. They would kiss in public, albeit rarely. Kanna would casually put an arm around Saikawa. Everyone who knew them knew they were lovers and thought of them as being together. In private, there was plenty of sex as well. Though, sex with Kanna was passionless and utilitarian.
Kanna was completely silent during sex; she didn't moan, she didn't blush, and she worked on Saikawa like a machine with a pre-ordained task to complete. (Though, she always completed her task, and Saikawa could not complain in that regard). After sex, Saikawa would often say, "I love you", and Kanna, deadpan and joyless as she'd ever been would respond, without fail, "That's wicked," and then light a cigarette.
Kanna was extremely tall, and Saikawa wondered if they looked awkward together; if there was perhaps some superficial reason like that, which made Kanna stay forever at a distance. They'd been about the same height as girls, then with each year, Kanna grew and grew, all the way to 6'1, while Saikawa barely reached five foot before stopping growing altogether.
Was it because they were both women that Kanna couldn't fully commit, or was it because Saikawa looked like a child out with her mother when the two walked side by side? Sometimes it felt right, as well. Kanna could be standing at the window, brooding with her cigarette, and, without warning or change in expression, go to Saikawa, scoop her up and carry her like a new bride to the bedroom for a passionless, utilitarian hour or two of love-making.
When Kanna felt like being domineering, Saikawa folded. Whether it was pinning her against the wall for a hard, emotionless kiss, or taking and using her body when and as it was needed. Any bit of attention from Kanna was savory, even if it was all entirely passionless.
Perhaps because trying to obtain Kanna's love was like running on a wheel. Ever since that day when they were young girls and Kanna pinned Saikawa to the floor and expressed a desire to be "closer". Everything felt like progress, every bit of affection or conversation, and then immediately slipped away upon the wheel, and it all kept spinning, for years and years, with no tangible end in sight.
Saikawa could see herself marrying Kanna. She could hardly imagine Kanna feeling the same, or feeling anything at all.