The hallway on floor sixty-eight was empty.
It had been empty for three days.
Sakura stood outside apartment 6805, the number burned into her memory as she had walked past it every morning on her way to the elevator and every night when she came home.
Nothing.
No sound, no light slipping under the door, no sign that anyone lived there at all.
Nowhere, usually.
His words from the night of the smoke alarm echoed in her head, and she had replayed the moment a dozen times. The water dripping from his hair, the dark eyes that hadn't blinked, the way he had turned away before she could ask his name.
Who are you?
She shook her head, forcing her feet to move. He was a stranger, a neighbor who had helped her turn off a breaker. That was all.
But the pot was still ruined, her grandmother's favorite aluminum pot blackened at the bottom, sitting in her sink like an accusation.
You are a fire hazard.
She could still hear his voice, flat and matter-of-fact, not mocking but just observing.
Sakura pressed the elevator button, needing lunch because the orientation meetings had run late and the corporate cafeteria on floor three was the only place she knew how to get to without getting lost.
The elevator descended, sixty-eight, fifty, thirty...
It didn't stop at the lobby. It kept going.
Basement 2.
The doors opened, and the air changed instantly. Warmth vanished, replaced by a sterile recycled chill, the smell of ozone and dust, and the silence of the lobby was gone, replaced by a low vibrating hum that she felt in her teeth.
Wrong floor.
She should have pressed the lobby button, should have turned around.
But the corridor ahead was dim, lined with pipes running along the ceiling like exposed veins, and at the far end a single door stood slightly ajar with blue light spilling out onto the concrete.
Curiosity pulled her forward, the same impulse that had made her apply for the program, the same restlessness that had driven her from Fukuoka.
Just a look.
She pushed the door open.
The room was vast with cathedral-high ceilings disappearing into darkness and walls lined with black towers blinking with thousands of tiny red eyes. Servers, rows and rows of them, humming their digital song.
And in the center, a desk.
A man sat with his back to her.
She knew the shape of those shoulders, the dark shirt, the way he sat perfectly still as if he were part of the machinery.
Haruto.
She didn't know his name, but her mind supplied one anyway.
He was typing, his fingers moving across the keyboard with a speed that blurred while the screens before him showed cascades of data she couldn't decipher.
She opened her mouth and closed it.
The hum of the servers filled the silence, loud and oppressive.
He stopped typing.
He didn't turn around immediately.
"Are you lost?"
His voice carried without echoing, calm and controlled.
"Yes," she admitted, her voice sounding too loud in the quiet room. "I was looking for the cafeteria."
He swiveled the chair.
His face was the same as she remembered, sharp lines and dark hair and eyes that didn't blink enough. But here, surrounded by his machines, he looked less like a stranger and more like a guardian.
"The cafeteria is on floor three." He didn't smile. "This is sub-level two."
"Oh." She felt heat rise in her cheeks. "I took the wrong button."
"Most people do. This floor isn't on the directory."
"This is..." She gestured at the rows of blinking towers. "What is this?"
"My workshop." He said it plainly. "I maintain the building's data architecture."
"You're IT?"
"Something like that."
Sakura looked around again, her eyes catching on something tucked behind a rack of servers in the corner.
A sink, a mini-fridge, a two-burner stove.
It looked out of place, like a kitchen island dropped into a freezer.
"You have a kitchen."
The accusation slipped out before she could check it.
He followed her gaze. "It was here when I started. I don't use it."
"Why not?"
He shrugged, one shoulder, minimal. "I don't cook."
"You have a kitchen in your workshop and you don't use it?"
"Is that a problem?"
"Yes!" She laughed, the sound too loud as it bounced off the metal walls. "That's a crime against kitchens everywhere. It's like having a piano and never playing it."
He watched her laugh without joining in, studying her the way he might study a line of code that wasn't compiling, curious and analytical and detached.
"I'm Sakura," she said when the laughter died down. "Tanaka Sakura. I live on sixty-eight. I'm the one who nearly burned down her apartment."
"I know."
She blinked. "How?"
"The smoke alarm triggered a building-wide alert. I saw the log." He paused. "You're a fire hazard."
"I'm a cook." She corrected. "There's a difference."
"Is there?"
She opened her mouth to argue and then closed it, for he wasn't mocking her, he was genuinely asking.
"Come here." She said it before she could think. "I'll show you."
He didn't follow her.
He told himself he was maintaining boundaries, not following her, just inspecting the anomaly.
But he stood up and walked over to the kitchenette she was already inspecting. She had opened the mini-fridge and was staring at the empty shelves with genuine horror.
"There's nothing here."
"I don't use it."
"You said that." She turned to face him, her brightness feeling intrusive in the dim light like turning on a lamp in a cave. "Okay, new plan. I'm going to teach you to cook."
"No."
"Not optional." She was already opening cabinets, checking for dust. "You have a kitchen, so you have to use it. It's the law."
"There's no law."
"There should be." She found a pot, clean and unused, and nodded satisfied. "When's your lunch break?"
"I don't take lunch breaks."
"Today you do."
He should tell her to leave, should explain that his schedule was optimized, that interruptions decreased efficiency.
But she was already moving, pulling ingredients from her own bag. Green onions, a packet of noodles, a small jar of paste she had smuggled from home.
The smell hit him first. Garlic and ginger and something rich and savory that cut through the sterile scent of ozone.
It smelled like...
He didn't have a word for it. His childhood hadn't included smells like this. After his mother died, food was fuel, plated by staff, eaten in silence, cleared away before he finished.
But this smell felt like a memory of something he had never had.
"Here." She handed him a bowl, steam rising between them and fogging his glasses slightly. "Ramen, quick version. Eat."
He looked at the bowl, looked at her, and didn't move.
"Sit," she commanded. "Eat. We'll talk about your kitchen deficiencies after."
He sat.
He ate.
The broth was salty and rich and warm, sliding down his throat and settling in his stomach as a physical weight that grounded him. He hadn't realized how cold he was until the warmth spread through his chest.
She watched him, waiting.
"Good?"
"Yes." The word felt insufficient.
"Good." She took the bowl from his hands before he could offer to wash it, rinsing it in the small sink as the water ran clear over the ceramic. "I'll come back tomorrow, same time. Bring more ingredients."
"You don't have to..."
"I know." She grabbed her bag and headed for the door, pausing at the threshold to look back over her shoulder. "I'm Sakura, by the way, in case you forgot."
"I didn't forget."
Her smile widened, changing the room and making the servers feel less like watchers and more like witnesses. "Good. See you tomorrow, IT guy."
The door closed behind her.
Haruto sat in the sudden silence.
The servers hummed, a constant low-frequency vibration that he usually filtered out. Now, it felt loud.
No one had ever promised to come back before.
No one had ever cooked for him, no one had ever looked at him like he was worth looking at, like he was a person and not a function of the building.
He wasn't sure what to do with the feeling as it sat in his chest, uncomfortable and bright.
He went back to his desk and stared at his monitors, trying to work.
But the kitchenette kept pulling his gaze, the small space where she had stood, the bowl she had used, the smell that lingered in the air refusing to be scrubbed away by the ventilation system.
For the first time in years, Haruto looked at that forgotten corner of his workshop and thought maybe he should actually use this.
He minimized the data stream on his main monitor and opened a new window.
Security Feed, Floor 68, Hallway Cam 4.
He watched her walk down the corridor, pause outside her door, unlock it, and step inside.
He shouldn't be watching, for it was an invasion, a breach of protocol.
But he needed to know she had made it back safely, just once, just to confirm the variable was stable.
She appeared on the screen again, moving through her own apartment. She put her bag down, walked to her window, and looked out.
He zoomed the camera slightly, just enough to see her profile.
She was smiling.
He minimized the window quickly, as if she could see him through the screen.
IT guy.
She had called him IT guy, like he was a function instead of a person.
He hadn't corrected her, hadn't offered an alternative, had just watched her with those unreadable eyes and let her call him nothing.
Nowhere, usually.
The words echoed as he stared at the blank screen. He had said he belonged nowhere, and she had believed him.
There was something about him, something isolated and lonely, that made his words ring true.
His phone buzzed on the desk, an internal message from the building management system.
Assignee Profile Update: Tanaka Sakura. Unit 6804. Status: Active.
He hovered his cursor over the file, knowing he could open it and see everything. Her emergency contact, her background check, her application notes.
He shouldn't.
He clicked the file open.
Scanned the data.
Reason for Application: Seeking growth. Seeking change.
He closed the file.
He leaned back in his chair as the hum of the servers filled the room.
She had said she would come back tomorrow.
He looked at the empty kitchenette.
He stood up, walked to the mini-fridge, and opened it.
Empty.
He grabbed his keycard and headed for the door.
There was a convenience store open twenty-four hours on the corner, and he had been there before at 2 AM for protein bars and water.
Tonight, he would buy something else.
Green onions, eggs, miso paste.
He told himself it was for the lesson, for the arrangement.
But when he imagined her opening the fridge tomorrow and finding it empty, something tight and painful squeezed behind his ribs.
This isn't logic.
He stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the lobby.
He should tell her to stop, explain that whatever she saw in him was a projection, that he wasn't the person she thought he was.
But the image of her walking away, the light leaving her eyes, made the air in the room feel too thin to breathe.
The elevator doors closed.
Haruto stood in the reflection of the polished steel.
Tomorrow.
He didn't know what he was doing, didn't know the rules, didn't know what he was supposed to do.
But he knew one thing.
He would be there.
Waiting.