Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Adachi finds this note stuffed in an outer pocket of his backpack one morning, about a week before his 29th birthday. The handwriting is neat and clear, but there’s no signature. It definitely hadn’t been there when he’d left this morning, but he has no idea when it appeared. The best he can think is someone took advantage of the crowded elevator this morning, but that means it could have been anyone. He flips the paper over, looking for clues, but the back is blank. This person was smart - if they’d used company stationary at least he’d know which of the offices they belonged to, but they’d clearly thought of that too. 

“Adachi!” Urabe says, clapping a hand on his shoulder. Adachi jumps and instinctively crumples the paper in his hand.

“Good morning,” he says, ducking his head in greeting.

“Chief has asked me for a summary of the last three months’ sales, you’re not doing anything right?”

“Oh, uh-” Adachi thinks of the coding he’d been looking forward to being done with today and resigns himself to debugging next week instead, “No.”

“Great,” he says, dropping a large binder on Adachi’s desk. Adachi just sighs. He looks down at the piece of paper, now irreversibly wrinkled. He sighs again. There’s no way this note was meant for him. It’s too bad, really. He wouldn’t have minded having a friend at work. 

Still, that was no reason to deny a friend to somebody else. During his morning break, he writes a brief I think you’ve got the wrong person on a post-it, refolds the original note as best he can, and tucks both under the coffee pot in the break room. 

And that should be that. He spends the rest of the morning compiling data into an excel spreadsheet and tries not to feel sorry for himself.

It should be that. But when he returns from lunch and opens his laptop, there’s a new note tucked inside.

Adachi looks around the office, quickly. Most everyone is still at lunch, but there’s a handful of people around - Watanabe and Tanaka from his own department are working on a project together, and have been since early that morning, and the star of the sales department Kurosawa is on the phone, presumably with a client. Oh and his new subordinate, what was his name, Rokka-something? He was still working on the paperwork involved with joining the company. None of those people seem like good candidates, although he supposes that the new kid might just not have figured out yet that he is, quite literally, the least cool person in the company. It’s possible that it was someone from another office, but then how would they have known which laptop was specifically his?

On the other hand, no matter who the note writer is, it would be nice to have a friend at work. Tsuge doesn’t really get it - he’s locked up at home writing all the time, and it’s an admirable job, but Adachi can tell that sometimes when he’s complaining about work Tsuge has stopped listening because it doesn’t make sense to him. And writing notes might be the perfect way to make a new friend - low pressure, and he can edit what he wants to say, which is so much better than talking to anyone in person.

Whatever decision he makes, it doesn’t need to be made right now. He pockets the note carefully, and returns to work, and if there’s a small smile creeping across his face, well, nobody will notice, right?

That night, he pulls out the sheet of paper, unfolds it on the table, and spends a significant portion of the evening contemplating what it would mean to respond to this note. He’d get a new friend, he hopes. Worst case scenario it’s a practical joke that Urabe is trying to pull on him, although he doesn’t really think Urabe is quite that mean. Short of that, though, there’s no harm, right? Nobody else ever has to find out, so they won’t ask him what he’s doing writing notes to somebody he doesn’t know.

He traces a finger over the neat lines of characters. He doesn’t specifically recognize the handwriting, so even if it is Urabe, he went to a lot of trouble to get someone else to write it for him. Surely he wouldn’t do that, and especially not in the middle of the work day to reply to his original post-it. 

What it comes down to, though, is that a part of Adachi really wants this. The idea of a mysterious penpal who he can become friends with while being able to filter his real personality through a pen seems so intriguing.

Decision made, Adachi gets a sheet of paper and one of his nice pens. He hasn’t had much use for all this stationary over the years, but he’s glad now that he kept it. 

It takes Adachi the better part of an hour to think through the exact phrasing he wants to use, and then he waffles over asking who the writer is, because if they’d wanted him to know they would have said in the first place, but maybe now that he’s agreed to write back they’ll feel better telling him who they are. 

Or maybe they’ll be embarrassed that they want to be friends with him and never admit it. It’s a toss-up really. 

He folds up the note before he can change his mind, and sticks it in the pocket of the suit he’s planning on wearing tomorrow. He’ll just have to wait and see.

He tosses and turns all night, and by the next morning he’s half convinced that he made up the letter writer from yesterday. Why would anyone at work actually care about him, the pencil-pusher nobody who spends his whole day entering numbers into spreadsheets and running code that doesn’t work? If he were Kurosawa, he could see them being shy about approaching him. But why-

These thoughts carry him all the way to the morning train. Finally, he decides that there’s no use worrying over it any more - though it takes several tries to push it out of his head, and he still fiddles with the note in his coat pocket the whole way. He hates when he makes a decision he can’t act on right away, because it’s always like this, this incessant stream of worries in his head. Once he gets off the train the adrenaline tingles start, until it feels like both his feet have fallen asleep, as well as his arms all the way up to his elbows. He gently smacks his face, trying to get some feeling back into his hands and keep himself focused away from the impulse to run.

Finally the elevator reaches the tenth floor and he forces himself to head the opposite direction from the office - luckily he was late enough that nobody else got off the elevator with him. The break room is empty somehow, so he quickly slips his note under the coffee maker, which he discovers is much more difficult to do while it’s hot and brewing, and then hurries back towards the office before anyone catches him. The elevator dings as he walks past and he speeds up even more. He doesn’t even look to see who gets off the elevator.

Adachi spends the morning distracted and on edge. What if it wasn’t good enough? What if they realize I’m not worth being friends with? What if? What if? When he goes for his morning break he can’t take it anymore, and attempts to discreetly retrieve the note he wrote, but it’s already gone. Since he can’t get it back, he instead paces by the window, staring out over Tokyo and wishing he hadn’t been so impulsive. 

By the time lunch rolls around, he’s made himself so nervous that he has to force himself to eat the Onigiri he brought from his favorite food truck. They taste like dust in his mouth and he has to force down the urge to throw up.

He’s so preoccupied that on his way back to the office he runs directly into Kurosawa, apparently on his way out. 

“Are you ok?” he asks, reaching for Adachi’s shoulder but pulling back just before he touches him.

“Mm,” Adachi confirms with a nod, and just steps around him to head back to his desk. 

There, tucked underneath his laptop, is a corner of paper.

Adachi frowns and flips the paper over, but there’s nothing else. Slowly he pulls open the drawer, half expecting there to be a live bug or some other kind of prank. Instead, there’s a white paper bag, folded over itself neatly. Inside is a single, fresh croissant, wrapped in a napkin.