Not because of the ramen. The ramen had been fine. Not because of his team, either. They were, as always, a loud, chaotic, and mildly exhausting fact of life.

It was because of the quiet. The specific, hollow quiet that only ever seemed to descend on this particular day. It settled in his chest around noon and had been sitting there, heavy and inconvenient, ever since.

A space that, for years, had occasionally been shared with someone else. Someone who would have dragged him out for cake anyway, who would have drawn a stupid card, who would have understood that he didn’t need a party but somehow made him want one.

He hadn’t thought about that in a while. He made a point not to. Today, the point was getting blurry.

He pushed the front door open, the chatter of his team flooding into the genkan behind him.

And then he stopped. Everything stopped.

Because standing in the hallway of his quiet, empty house, with a small, hesitant smile that was somehow exactly the same and completely new, was you.