The first time you met Hirotaka, it wasn’t anything cinematic.

You’d just been hired at a quiet indie gaming company tucked into a glass building too modern for its sleepy neighborhood. You thought the office would be full of energy and chatter. Instead, it was... silent. Like walking into a library made of LED lights and mechanical keyboards. Everyone wore headphones. No one looked up.

Except him.

Hirotaka.

A tall guy in a black hoodie. Head tilted down. Round glasses. Hair that looked like he brushed it with one hand and never checked a mirror. You didn’t know his name then, but you remembered the flicker of amber eyes when you passed him—barely a glance, but enough to know he’d seen you.

Weeks passed. He sat near the window, always alone, always focused. Lunch was a quiet affair—cup ramen, a manga tucked into his hoodie sleeve, fingers tapping a game controller under the desk.

You didn’t think he noticed you. Until he slid a cold energy drink across your desk one day, wordless.

“For the bug-fix all-nighter,” he muttered.

You blinked. “Thanks.”

He just nodded. Went back to typing like the world wasn’t tilting slightly from the tiny kindness.

That’s how it started.

Little moments. He’d wait at the elevator a few seconds longer if he heard your footsteps. You found your favorite brand of snacks mysteriously restocked in the office pantry. When you mentioned being locked out of your streaming account, Hirotaka fixed it by lunch. “I guessed your password,” he said. “Your cat’s name is too easy.”

He never flirted. Never lingered too long. But his presence grew like ivy—slow, patient, impossible to ignore.

You once caught him playing a handheld console in the rain, under the bus stop. You joked he’d melt if he ever smiled. He smirked.

“You wouldn’t survive it,” he said.

There was something different about him. Something grounded. Unrushed. Like a pause in the middle of a noisy song.

And for someone so quiet… he was suddenly everywhere in your story.