The glass tower didn't reflect the sky, it swallowed it.
Sakura stood at the base of the Shin Zaibatsu headquarters, the Crystal Tower, and felt the air leave her lungs. Forty stories of steel and mirrored surface pierced the low-hanging clouds, throwing the gray Tokyo morning back down onto the street. It reflected her too, a tiny distorted figure in a coat that suddenly felt too thin, clutching a bag that suddenly felt too heavy.
Just one year, she reminded herself. Just to see.
But the building didn't care about her year, didn't care about her ramen shop or her grandmother's knife or the warmth of Fukuoka steam. It stood silent and impenetrable.
She pushed through the revolving doors.
The lobby hit her like a wall of cold air, marble floors so polished she could see the tremor in her own hands. A reception desk longer than her entire apartment back home was staffed by women in suits so sharp they looked like they could cut skin, their smiles not reaching their eyes.
"Name?"
The receptionist didn't look up, her fingers flying across a keyboard with clicks that echoed like gunshots in the silence.
"Tanaka Sakura, assignee program. I'm here for..."
"Floor twenty-three, orientation at nine, elevators to the left."
A plastic badge slid across the marble. Sakura reached for it, but the receptionist had already turned away, dismissed and invisible.
Welcome to Tokyo, she thought. Where you're already gone.
The elevator was too fast.
The numbers climbed, five, ten, fifteen, pressing against her ears. Sakura watched her reflection in the brushed steel doors and saw a stranger. The cheerful daughter of Neko Ramen was gone, and in her place stood a girl in borrowed shoes trying not to panic.
You belong wherever you choose to belong.
Her father's voice from three nights ago felt like a lie now. Here, belonging wasn't a choice. It was a clearance level.
The doors opened on twenty-three.
The noise hit her first, a wall of sound made of ringing phones, overlapping conversations, and the low hum of printers. People moved through the corridor like water, flowing around obstacles without breaking stride. A woman in a power suit balanced four coffee cups on a tray without spilling a drop, and a man argued into a headset about quarterly projections while signing a document without looking down.
Sakura stood frozen in the doorway, her feet rooted to the floor.
"First day?"
The voice came from beside her, and she jumped.
A young man stood there holding a clipboard, looking as terrified as she felt with his tie slightly askew and his knuckles white where he gripped the paper.
"Is it that obvious?" Sakura asked, her voice sounding thin.
"Only to everyone else." He offered a shaky smile, the first real thing she had seen all morning. "Nakamura Yuki from Nagoya. I think I'm going to be sick."
Sakura laughed, a short nervous sound that broke the tension. "Tanaka Sakura from Fukuoka. I think I'm going to run away."
Yuki's smile widened. "Don't. My mother packed enough food in my bento to survive a siege. If I leave, it goes to waste."
"Then I'll stay, for the food."
"Deal."
They found the orientation room together, and by the time HR finished explaining benefits packages and non-disclosure agreements, Sakura had learned two things. The company owned half the skyline, and she was expected to be grateful for the privilege of serving it.
When the session ended, the crowd dispersed instantly. Sakura checked her housing assignment sheet, Residential Wing, Floor sixty-eight, and stepped into the elevator bank. The cars here were different, smaller and quieter. She swiped her keycard, the light blinked green, and the ascent was so smooth she didn't feel the movement, only the pressure building in her ears.
When the doors opened, the silence was absolute.
No phones, no printers, no people.
The carpet was a muted gray, the lights dimmed to a soft amber, and it felt less like a hallway and more like a waiting room for somewhere else. Sakura checked the number on her keycard again, 6804, and found the door opening with a soft chime.
The apartment was a box with white walls, white floors, and white cabinets. A bed folded into the wall, a kitchenette no larger than a closet, and it smelled of cleaning agents and absence.
Sakura dropped her bag in the center of the room, the sound echoing.
Home, she whispered, the word tasting like dust.
She couldn't stay in the white, for it felt like being inside a cloud that had forgotten how to rain. She opened her bag and began to unpack the things that mattered. Her grandmother's knife wrapped in oilcloth, a small wooden cutting board worn smooth by decades of use, and a jar of the shop's special tare smuggled in her luggage against every regulation she had just signed.
She placed them on the white counter, the dark wood and amber liquid looking like wounds against the sterile surface. Better, not home, but evidence that she existed.
Her stomach growled, for she hadn't eaten since the train.
Sakura moved to the kitchenette with its two burners, mini-fridge, and single pot. She filled it with water from the tap and set it on the flame. Simple, boil water, add noodles, eat.
She turned to unpack her rice cooker, just for a moment, just to see where it would fit.
When she turned back, the water was gone.
Steam curled from the bottom of the pot, the smell of burnt metal filling the small space. She hadn't added the noodles, hadn't watched the flame.
The smoke detector didn't beep, it screamed.
A high-pitched rhythmic shriek that vibrated in her teeth. Sakura grabbed the pot, panic spiking in her chest, and ran to the sink where she turned on the tap and dumped water onto the hot metal.
The hiss was explosive, steam billowing into her face as the alarm grew louder, pulsing with the flashing red light on the ceiling.
Stupid, careless. You have been here four hours and you are already burning it down.
She fumbled with the pot, trying to move it, trying to think. The heat radiated off the burner, her eyes watered, and then a knock came.
Not on her door, but on the wall beside it.
Sakura froze. The alarm was deafening. Who could hear a knock over this?
The door to the apartment next door, 6805, opened.
He stood in the doorway.
Water dripped from his hair onto his shoulders as he wore dark pants and a light shirt, no jacket, no shoes. He looked like he had been in the shower when the noise started, or perhaps he lived in a state of perpetual readiness.
He didn't yell, didn't ask if she was okay. He simply looked at the smoke, then at her, then at the pot in her hands.
His eyes were dark and unreadable, not cold but empty of expectation.
"The ventilation system links the floor," he said, his voice low and cutting through the alarm without effort. "If one goes, they all go."
Sakura coughed, waving the steam away. "I forgot the water."
He stepped into the hallway, not coming closer but just standing there, assessing the damage. "Floor sixty-eight is residential. Orientation is on twenty-three."
"I know where I'm supposed to be," her voice came out sharper than she intended, embarrassment making her defensive. "I live here."
He blinked once, slowly.
"Right." He glanced at the number on her door. "You're the new assignee."
"Tanaka Sakura."
"Haruto."
He didn't offer a last name, didn't offer a hand, just watched her struggle with the smoking pot.
"Turn off the breaker," he said. "Under the sink, left side."
Sakura dropped to her knees and yanked the cabinet open, finding a mess of pipes and a row of switches. She flipped the left one.
The alarm died.
The silence rushed back in, heavier than the noise.
Sakura sat back on her heels clutching the ruined pot, her hands shaking as she looked up. Haruto was still standing there, hadn't moved.
"You should ventilate," he said. "Open the window. The smell will linger."
"Okay," her voice was small. "Thank you."
He nodded, a minimal movement, and turned back to his door.
"Wait," Sakura said, not knowing why but knowing she couldn't let him disappear into the white silence again. "You live here too?"
Haruto paused, his hand resting on the doorframe as he didn't look back.
"Sometimes."
"Where else do you live?"
He was quiet for a long moment, the hallway light flickering and casting a shadow across his face.
"Nowhere, usually."
He stepped inside his apartment and closed the door, the click of the latch the loudest thing in the world.
Sakura stayed on the floor for a minute longer, the cold linoleum seeping through her jeans as she looked at the pot in her lap, blackened and ruined.
She looked at his door, 6805.
Nowhere, usually.
She stood up, walked to the window, and cranked it open. The city air rushed in with exhaust and rain and life, smelling nothing like cleaning agents.
She placed the pot in the sink, unpacked the rice cooker, and set her grandmother's knife on the cutting board.
Tokyo hadn't swallowed her whole. It had just spit her out into a white box on the sixty-eighth floor.
But next door, someone lived nowhere, and he had turned off the alarm.
Sakura touched the handle of the knife, steel and solid and real.
"Okay," she said to the empty room. "Okay."
She began to chop green onions, the rhythm familiar. Chop, slice, scrape.
The sound echoed off the white walls, filling the silence, marking the space as hers.
But as she worked, one question kept circling in her mind, louder than the alarm had been.
Who turns off a building-wide alarm from their own apartment?
She looked at the door next door.
And why did he know the breaker location before she even opened the cabinet?