The vinegar stung her eyes, but Sakura didn't blink.
She stood in her tiny kitchenette at 6 AM with vegetables spread across the counter like soldiers awaiting inspection. Her knife moved through the cucumber with a rhythm that felt like breathing, slice, slice, slice, thin rounds soaking in rice vinegar while sesame seeds clung to the green skin.
Sunomono, light and sharp, something to cut through the heaviness of the day.
You belong wherever you choose to belong.
Haruto's words from yesterday echoed in the small space, from the basement, from the moment when everything had shifted between them. She had been replaying them all night, turning them over in her mind like smooth stones, feeling their weight.
She chose to belong here. She chose this tiny apartment, this strange building, this impossible city. She chose the assignees she had barely met and the program she barely understood and the man in the basement who looked at her like she was the answer to a question he hadn't known he was asking.
She chose.
The thought was terrifying and liberating, and she didn't know what to do with it except keep chopping, keep cooking, keep creating something she could share.
The dish came together automatically, her grandmother's recipe. She packed it carefully, wrapped it in her best cloth with green fabric printed with cartoon cats, and checked herself in the mirror three times.
Do I look like I belong?
The reflection staring back wore a borrowed confidence. She grabbed the dish and headed for the elevator.
Floor 23.
The common area was already transforming when she arrived with tables pushed together and chairs gathered in clusters, a mismatched collection of dishes appearing on every surface. Someone had brought curry, someone else had brought sandwiches, and someone had brought what looked suspiciously like convenience store onigiri still in their plastic wrappers.
The smell hit her first, curry and rice and something sweet baking, beneath it the smell of people, of nervous excitement, of the particular energy that happens when strangers decide to become something more.
Yuki waved from across the room, his anxious smile firmly in place, and beside him stood a woman Sakura didn't recognize, tall and serious with eyes that seemed to miss nothing.
"Sakura!" Yuki called out. "Come meet everyone!"
She crossed the room, suddenly nervous, suddenly aware of how many people were here, how many faces she didn't know, how many names she would have to learn. The floor felt different under her feet, less like corporate marble and more like somewhere she might belong.
"Everyone, this is Tanaka Sakura," Yuki said. "She's from Fukuoka. She's the one I told you about, the one who..."
"The one who waved at Suzuki Haruto like he was a normal person."
The woman's voice was flat, but her eyes were warm and crinkling at the corners.
"I'm Sato Mei. That was the most interesting thing that's happened all week."
Sakura felt her face heat, a familiar burn spreading across her cheeks. "I didn't know. I mean, he never said. He's just..."
"Just the sixth son of the family that owns everything?"
Another voice, male and amused. A man appeared beside Mei, shorter than her with a sharp smile and sharper eyes that missed nothing.
"Nakamura Kenji, facilities. I heard you made him lunch."
"Actually, he made me lunch."
The words came out before she could stop them, defensive and proud all at once.
"Bento, from scratch. It was good."
The silence that followed was immediate and absolute.
Kenji's eyebrows climbed toward his hairline while Mei's expression shifted into something that might have been respect. Yuki looked like he was trying very hard not to laugh, his face turning slightly pink with the effort.
"Suzuki Haruto," Kenji said slowly, drawing out each word like he was tasting them. "The man who hasn't spoken to anyone in eight years, the man who lives in the basement with his servers, the man who literally no one has ever seen eat anything... made you lunch?"
"Yes?" Sakura wasn't sure if this was good or bad as her fingers tightened on the wrapped dish she was still holding. "Is that strange?"
Mei and Kenji looked at each other as something passed between them, some communication Sakura couldn't read, years of friendship compressed into a single glance.
"Strange," Mei said finally. "Is not the word I would use."
"What word would you use?"
"I don't know yet. I'll let you know when I figure it out." But she was smiling now, just slightly, and something in Sakura relaxed.
The potluck expanded and filled, becoming something more than the sum of its parts.
More assignees arrived, each carrying dishes and stories and nervous energy. Sakura met Watanabe Miki, the coordinator with the sharp smile and the clipboard, who turned out to be from Osaka and secretly terrified of public speaking. She met Ito Sora, the exhausted-looking man from Kyoto who worked facilities with Kenji and hadn't slept in weeks because his neighbor played the drums at 3 AM, his eyes with dark circles beneath them but lighting up like lanterns when he talked about the temples he missed.
She met Yamamoto Jin from security, quiet and watchful, who stood near the wall and observed everything but said almost nothing.
And Kobayashi Riku from IT support, who brightened so dramatically when Sakura mentioned she knew Haruto that several people turned to look.
"Haruto-sempai?" Riku's voice jumped an octave. "You know Haruto-sempai?"
"I guess? He's... we're... I'm teaching him to cook?"
Riku stared at her for a long moment, his mouth slightly open, then he laughed, genuine and warm and a little disbelieving.
"Haruto-sempai, cooking. I'd pay to see that."
"He's actually not terrible. His rice is perfect now."
"His rice." Riku shook his head, still laughing. "Haruto-sempai who never talks to anyone, who lives in the basement, who I've worked with for two years and have never seen eat anything except protein bars... has perfect rice because of you."
"I wouldn't say because of me. I just showed him how to measure, and he researched it, and..."
"He researched it." Riku's voice was strange now, softer. "He researched rice."
"Yes. He researches everything. It's what he does."
Riku looked at her for a long moment as something in his expression shifted, became almost tender, almost sad, almost hopeful all at once.
"Sakura-san, do you understand what you've done?"
"What do you mean?"
"Haruto-sempai doesn't research things for people. He doesn't do things for people. He doesn't see people." He paused. "But you... he sees you. He's always seen you. And you're the first person who's ever seen him back."
The words hit her somewhere deep, somewhere she had been protecting since the supply closet, since the bento, since he had said no one's ever done that before.
The room around her seemed to fade, the noise of the potluck becoming distant and unimportant.
You're the first person who's ever seen him back.
"Is that bad?" Her voice came out smaller than she intended, vulnerable in a way she hadn't meant to show.
"No." Riku smiled, soft and sad and knowing. "No, Sakura-san. That's the best thing that could have happened to him. I just hope you're ready for what it means."
What it means.
She didn't know what it meant, didn't know what any of this meant. All she knew was that when she thought about Haruto, about his careful stillness and his perfect rice, something in her chest felt warm and terrified and alive.
The afternoon stretched on, filled with food and laughter and the slow miraculous process of strangers becoming something more.
Sakura moved through the crowd like a collector, listening and learning and gathering stories like precious things. Yuki's mother called every night at 8 PM to make sure he had eaten. Mei had left behind a fiancé in Hokkaido who hadn't spoken to her since she had accepted the program. Kenji's father had told him he was wasting his life.
Each story was a thread, and the threads were weaving together into something, a tapestry or a safety net or a family.
This, Sakura thought, watching Miki argue with Kenji about the proper way to make curry. This is what Haruto meant. This is what we're building.
And then the door opened.
He stood in the doorway.
Haruto in the common area on floor 23, surrounded by people, doing something he never did, being somewhere he never was.
The light from the windows caught him from behind, silhouetting his frame and making him look like something from a dream. He was holding something, a dish covered and wrapped and held carefully in his hands like it was precious, like it was the only thing in the world that mattered.
The room went quiet.
Not the casual quiet of conversation pausing, but the real quiet, the kind that happens when everyone in a space simultaneously stops breathing. Conversations stopped mid-sentence, heads turned, eyes widened, and someone dropped a spoon as the clatter echoed like thunder.
Haruto didn't move, didn't speak, didn't acknowledge any of them. His eyes were fixed on one person, only one, only her.
Sakura.
He crossed the room walking through the silence like it wasn't there, like the twenty people staring at him didn't exist. His footsteps were soft on the carpet, almost soundless, but Sakura heard each one like a drumbeat.
He stopped in front of her and held out the dish.
"I made something."
His voice was quiet and steady, completely unconcerned about the audience, about the fact that everyone was watching, about the fact that he was here in a place he had avoided for eight years, holding something he had made with his own hands.
Sakura's hands trembled as she took the dish, the cloth warm beneath her fingers, still holding heat from whatever was inside. She unwrapped it slowly and carefully like opening something sacred.
Her grandmother's recipe.
The one she had written down in the workshop just once, just for fun, just because he had asked what her favorite food was and she had said this, this is home. The one she had described in detail, the way the broth should simmer for hours, the way the noodles should be just tender, the way the aroma should fill a room and make people feel loved.
He had made it. He had followed her recipe. The handwriting on the note tucked beneath the lid was his, neat and precise, but the words were hers and the dish was hers and the thought was his, all his, entirely his.
"You made my grandmother's recipe." She whispered it, couldn't speak louder, couldn't find her voice past the thing lodged in her throat.
He nodded once. "I wanted you to feel less alone."
I wanted you to feel less alone.
The words broke something open in her chest, something she had been holding closed since she arrived, since she left, since she first stood in the Crystal Tower's shadow and felt herself shrink. Something her mother had tried to reach and her father had tried to protect and her brother had tried to understand, something she hadn't even known she had been holding until this moment, until him, until this.
Less alone.
She wasn't alone. She hadn't been alone since the moment he had appeared in her doorway dripping wet and asking where she was supposed to be. He had been there ever since, watching and waiting and making sure she never had to be alone again.
"Sakura?" His voice was soft and concerned. "Are you okay?"
She realized she was crying, didn't know when she had started, felt the tears on her cheeks warm and unexpected, and didn't care.
"I'm fine. I just... I..." She wiped at her face, embarrassed, and couldn't stop smiling. "You made my grandmother's recipe for me, for this."
"For you," he confirmed. "Always for you."
Behind them, someone coughed, and Ren's voice came through amused and wondering.
"Well, that's something."
The spell broke as the room exhaled and conversations resumed, quieter now with speculation buzzing beneath the surface like electricity. But no one approached them and no one interrupted, for somehow impossibly everyone in that room understood that this moment wasn't theirs.
Haruto was still watching her, still waiting, still being exactly who he was, completely unconcerned about everything except her reaction.
"Sit with me." Sakura's voice came out stronger than she expected. "Eat with me, please."
He hesitated as she saw the instinct to retreat, to return to his basement and his safety and the hum of servers that asked nothing from him. His shoulders tensed just slightly and his eyes flickered toward the door.
"Haruto." His name, soft and sure. "Stay."
He stayed.
They sat in a corner slightly apart from the others, sharing the dish he had made, her grandmother's recipe executed perfectly and seasoned exactly right, made with hands that had never cooked until four days ago. The broth was rich and deep, the noodles tender but firm, the chashu melting on the tongue.
"It's good." Sakura said it around a mouthful, couldn't help herself. "Really good. Better than mine, almost."
"You taught me."
"I showed you rice. This is so much more than rice."
He considered this, his chopsticks pausing mid-air. "I researched and practiced and made it four times before it was right."
Four times.
He had made her grandmother's recipe four times, alone in his basement, tasting and adjusting and trying again just to get it right for her. Four times, failing and learning and persevering, for her.
"Haruto." She set down her chopsticks. "Why?"
He looked at her, and for a moment his careful stillness cracked just slightly, just enough for her to see something underneath, something vulnerable and terrified and hopeful, fragile and new.
"Because you matter." His voice was rough and unfamiliar, like the words were being pulled from somewhere deep. "Because what matters to you matters to me. Because I don't know how to be anything except what I am, and what I am is someone who wants you to be happy."
The words hung between them, heavy and light all at once.
Because you matter. Because what matters to you matters to me.
Sakura felt her heart do something complicated in her chest, a stutter-step rhythm that had nothing to do with medicine and everything to do with him. She felt her eyes sting again and the world tilt slightly, rearranging itself around this impossible fact. That Suzuki Haruto, sixth son of the Suzuki zaibatsu, the man who belonged nowhere, had decided she was worth belonging to.
"Haruto." Just his name, but it sounded like everything.
"Sakura." Her name, given back.
They sat in the corner of the crowded room surrounded by people and noise and the beginnings of something beautiful, and they looked at each other like nothing else existed.
And maybe, for this moment, nothing else did.
Later, after the potluck ended, after people began to drift away, after the dishes were washed and the tables cleared and the common area returned to its ordinary state, Ren appeared beside them.
"So." His voice was light but his eyes were sharp, missing nothing. "Haruto, you're here, you're eating, you're apparently cooking." He glanced at the empty dish, the last traces of broth glistening at the bottom. "That was good, by the way, really good. I'd ask for the recipe, but I suspect it's a family secret."
Haruto looked at him, expression unchanged. "Thank you."
"The Haruto I know doesn't say thank you. The Haruto I know doesn't speak to anyone. The Haruto I know definitely doesn't make food for strangers."
"She's not a stranger." Flat and final, no room for argument.
Ren's eyebrows rose as he looked at Sakura, then back at Haruto, then at Sakura again. Something clicked behind his eyes, some understanding settling into place.
"I see." His voice was different now, gentler. "I see."
"See what?" Sakura asked, confused by the sudden shift.
"Nothing." Ren smiled, warm and real and maybe a little sad. "Just nothing. Welcome to the family, Sakura-chan. You're going to need it."
He walked away, disappearing into the dwindling crowd, leaving Sakura even more confused than before.
"What did he mean?"
Haruto was quiet for a moment, his eyes following Ren's retreating form. "He meant that things are complicated. That being connected to me comes with complications. That people will watch you now, talk about you, wonder about you. That some of them will use you to get to me, and some of them will judge you for knowing me, and some of them will never understand why you bother."
"Is that bad?"
"It might be, for you. I don't want to make your life harder."
She looked at him, at his careful face and his eyes and his perfect rice, and she made a choice. Not a decision she had weighed and measured, but something deeper, something that felt like the most natural thing in the world.
"Haruto, look at me."
He looked.
"You don't make my life harder. You make it brighter and realer and more." She reached for his hand, found it, held it. His fingers were warm and slightly rough from keyboard work, and they curled around hers like they belonged there. "Whatever complications come, we'll face them together. That's the deal, right?"
"The deal." He said it like a promise, like a vow, like something sacred.
"Always the deal."
They sat there, hands touching, the empty dish between them, the room emptying around them.
And Tanaka Sakura, for the first time in her life, felt like she was exactly where she was supposed to be.
She walked him to the elevator afterward through corridors that felt different now, less intimidating and more like home. The fluorescent lights seemed warmer, the marble floors seemed softer, and the whole building seemed to have exhaled and relaxed and become something she could live in.
"Tomorrow?" she asked.
"Tomorrow." He paused, considering something. "I'll bring ingredients. You can teach me something new."
"Deal." She smiled. "Sleep well, Haruto."
"You too, Sakura."
The elevator doors began to close, and for a moment she saw something in his face, something unguarded and real, something that made her heart ache in the best way.
"Haruto." She said it quickly before the doors could close completely.
He looked up as the doors paused, sensing her movement.
"Thank you for today, for the dish, for staying, for being you."
The doors closed on his face, but not before she saw it. The almost-smile, the one he couldn't quite hide, the one that was just for her.
She stood in the empty hallway with her heart full to bursting. She thought about what Riku had said.
You're the first person who's ever seen him back.
She saw him. She saw all of him, the loneliness and the careful stillness and the desperate hope underneath. She saw the boy who had lost his mother too young, who had grown up surrounded by people who wanted things from him, who had retreated to a basement because it was the only place he could be himself. She saw the man who had learned to cook just to make her feel less alone, who had made her grandmother's recipe four times to get it right, who had walked into a room full of people for the first time in eight years just to give her a dish.
She saw him, and she wanted more than anything to keep seeing him, to keep being seen by him, to keep building whatever this was together.
Something we're building together.
Yes. That. Always that.
She walked to her apartment, unlocked her door, and stepped inside her tiny white kitchenette. She looked at her colorful cooking supplies, her grandmother's knife, the jar of tare she had brought from home.
Home.
Funny how that word kept changing. First Fukuoka, then the shop, then this tiny apartment, then the basement, then the common area on floor 23, then him.
Home, maybe, was wherever these people were. Wherever he was.
The thought should have terrified her. Instead, it felt like the most natural thing in the world.
She picked up her phone and typed a message.
Thank you for today, for the dish, for staying, for being you. - S
Three dots appeared immediately, and then:
Thank you for seeing me. - H
She stared at the screen, heart pounding, smiling so hard her cheeks hurt.
Always, she typed. I'll always see you.
His response came faster this time.
And I'll always see you. That's the deal.
That's the deal.
She set down the phone and looked around her tiny apartment, thinking about tomorrow and the day after and all the days stretching ahead.
She didn't know about the board meeting scheduled for next week. She didn't know about the efficiency measures being drafted in secret. She didn't know that Ren's warning was more than just social complications.
She only knew that for the first time in her life, she couldn't wait to see what came next.
Even if what came next was a fight.
Her phone buzzed again, a new notification from an unknown sender.
Enjoy the food. It won't last. - Unknown
Sakura stared at the screen as the warmth in her chest turned to ice.
Someone was watching, and they weren't happy about it.