The Man Who Never Spoke Too Loudly

Rain tapped softly against the windowpane like an absentminded apology—neither welcome nor disruptive, just… there. A hesitant drizzle that neither cleared the air nor drenched the earth. Just clung to the edges of everything, refusing to commit.

Another Thursday in Tokyo. Damp and forgettable.

It wasn’t payday. It wasn’t a holiday. It wasn’t even a day with particularly nice weather. Just one more nondescript page in the planner of the unnoticed.

In a quiet corner of Suginami Ward, where narrow streets curled like thoughts too shy to speak aloud, inside a spotless one-room apartment that felt more like a waiting room than a home, a man stirred beneath a muted grey futon.

Kaito Moriyama. Thirty-two. Alive, technically.

He moved like someone borrowed from another world—slow, deliberate, already tired before the day had begun. At exactly 6:00 a.m., he sat up, not because an alarm had rung, but because something inside him had already given up on sleep. His body, shaped by years of quiet repetition, simply knew what came next.

He ran a hand through his dark, unkempt hair, strands slightly curled at the tips from humidity and neglect. His eyes, sunken but gentle, were a deep brown — the kind that once might have held kindness, before it turned into something more transparent. His skin was pale, not the porcelain kind, but the kind worn by people who forgot to stand in the sun. A faint scar traced the corner of his right brow, half-faded, the leftover memory of a childhood he never quite outran.

He wasn’t tall, nor short. Not lean, not stout. His frame — average. So average it seemed to apologize for taking up space. The kind of person the world could erase from a photograph and no one would notice the missing silhouette.

He sat still for a long while.

The morning air inside the apartment was stale with yesterday's silence. The fridge gave a polite hum. The clock on the wall ticked in unobtrusive rhythm. Somewhere outside, a train rumbled past — a long breath inhaled by a sleeping city.

But none of it stirred anything in him. Not dread. Not hope. Not even boredom.

He blinked slowly, as if checking whether he had fully woken up. Then moved to his feet, slipping them into his indoor slippers with quiet familiarity. His toothbrush was white — the kind you get in three-packs from the discount store. His coffee mug, chipped at the rim, was also white, with a faded logo from a company picnic no one remembered inviting him to.

His towel, neatly folded on the rack, still held the scent of lavender detergent. It was perhaps the only thing in the apartment that still clung to something human. The rest of the space was all function, no memory. The walls were bare, unadorned. No photographs. No souvenirs. No letters. No laughter.

Nothing that remembered him.

He opened the closet and pulled out his uniform — a pressed, grey suit with threadbare elbows and a faint coffee stain on the right cuff. A white shirt, stiff at the collar. Black socks, one with a thinning heel. Shoes that had walked many miles on concrete, but never toward anything.

He dressed in silence, then stood before the mirror.

Not to admire. Not to prepare.

Just… to check.

What looked back at him wasn’t a man preparing to face the world.

It was someone making sure he hadn’t disappeared overnight.

He straightened his tie, a muted navy, looped perfectly from rote memory. Adjusted the collar. Checked his breath.

And for a brief moment, his eyes met his own.

Not at himself, really. Just through himself.

As if he were standing behind a pane of glass, watching a stranger go through the motions of being.

"Still here."
"Why?"

No one had ever really answered that.

But the day was waiting, whether or not he was ready.

And Kaito Moriyama — quiet, unnoticed, irreversibly alive — stepped once more into a city that never remembered his name.

At 7:03 a.m., Kaito locked the door behind him with a soft click, the sound somehow louder than usual in the stillness of the concrete hallway. The air smelled faintly of boiled daikon and old tatami mats — a scent that belonged to older buildings like this one, places where lives stacked tightly together but never really touched.

The hallway was narrow, lined with steel mailboxes that overflowed with pamphlets no one ever read. He stepped past them like he always did, never checking his own. There was never anything worth opening.

Down the corridor, he could hear the distant clatter of a morning beginning elsewhere — a child crying two doors down, shrill and tired. Someone's alarm still going off. The hurried shuffle of slippers on tile. The jingle of bicycle keys followed by the mechanical click of a lock releasing. The familiar squeak of sneakers that had outlasted their cushioning.

As he descended the staircase, he passed his landlord — a man in his fifties with nicotine-stained fingers and eyes too tired to bother with greetings. The man looked up briefly, but his gaze slid past Kaito like condensation on glass. No nod. No grunt. Nothing to suggest Kaito had ever lived there at all.

Kaito didn’t take it personally.
He never had.

Outside, the sky hung low and colorless, a blank sheet waiting for something to write on it. The narrow residential street was still wet from the night’s light rain. Damp leaves clung to the pavement like thoughts that hadn’t dried yet. A delivery scooter zoomed by, splashing water onto a nearby gutter. He instinctively stepped aside, letting the scooter pass without so much as a glance.

Just ahead, a young couple approached — huddled under a shared umbrella, close in that way that made the world seem small and warm just for them. The woman laughed at something the man said, her voice soft and bright. A sound with sunlight in it. Kaito couldn’t hear the words, not really. He didn’t try.

As they neared, he stepped carefully into a shallow puddle beside the curb to let them pass — shoes soaking without complaint. The cold water seeped in, but he didn’t flinch. The couple brushed past, wrapped in their own gravity, their umbrella tilted just enough to keep their world dry.

They didn’t look at him.
They didn’t thank him.
They didn’t even pause.

He could have been a lamppost, a bus stop sign, a puddle himself.

And in that moment, Kaito understood something he had always known — not in words, but in the quiet, enduring way one learns the rhythm of a lonely life.

He was not invisible.

He was simply… unseen.

The subway was the same as it always was — a narrow corridor of packed silence, a moving museum of tired strangers suspended in their own little glass cases. Bodies pressed close, but hearts miles apart. The air smelled faintly of fabric softener, instant ramen, and umbrella drip. The floor glistened with the sheen of morning rain, the overhead lights turning every drop into a brief, flickering ghost of motion.

Kaito stepped inside with practiced stillness, finding a corner near the door. The train jolted forward with a mechanical sigh, as if resentful of waking up. He didn't reach for the overhead strap. He never did. His balance had learned the rhythm of the city long ago — its sway, its sudden stops, the predictable curve at Shin-Nakano station.

A university student, slouched with earbuds in, drifted sideways and landed gently against his shoulder. She didn’t wake. Her head, dyed a soft pink at the tips, rested there like he was part of the train — a pole, a seat, a fixture. Her breathing was shallow, rhythmic, the kind of exhausted peace only young people could afford on weekday mornings.

Kaito didn’t move.
He didn’t mind.
He simply stood there, briefcase held gently to his chest like a shield, swaying with the living tide that never really noticed him.

His reflection in the smudged subway glass blinked back at him — a man with short, neatly combed black hair, a thin, tired face with soft lines at the corners of his eyes. His skin had the pale tone of someone who hadn’t seen the sun without fluorescent light in years. His eyes were dark brown, quiet, the kind of quiet that came from years of unspoken thoughts. Lips pressed in a line, not out of frustration — but habit. He looked tidy, unremarkable, decent.

Forgettable.

He lowered his gaze. Watched the crowd shift.

“You always disappear, even when you’re here.”

The voice rose from memory like incense smoke — faint, fragrant with old pain.

Haruka.

His sister. Four years younger. Sharper than him. More alive than he ever managed to be. The last time they spoke was at their parents’ funeral — that grey winter day when snow didn’t fall but hovered in the air like unshed tears.

He remembered standing beside her at the crematorium, stiff in his black suit, his hands clasped in front of him while she wept uncontrollably, nose red, eyes swollen. He had offered her a handkerchief. She didn’t take it.

"Why won’t you say something?” she'd whispered to him between sobs, clutching her coat as if it was the only thing holding her together.

But Kaito had just stood there — a statue beside an open flame.

Not because he didn’t feel the loss.

But because the grief was too vast to squeeze through the narrow door of language.
It filled his lungs, his ribs, the very space behind his eyes — but never his throat.
He didn’t know how to cry out.
Didn’t know how to be comforted.
Didn’t even know how to say “I miss them too.”

After the funeral, she stopped answering his calls.

A month later, his messages were marked “read” but never replied to.
By the following year, even his quiet “Happy Birthday” on LINE remained unread — just one more unread thing in a world full of overlooked moments.

He never pushed.
Never knocked on her door.
Never booked a train ticket.
He told himself he didn’t want to intrude.
But maybe… maybe he just didn’t know if he deserved to be heard.

The train came to a screeching stop at Nakano. The girl on his shoulder stirred, blinked once, then adjusted her backpack and stood upright — without a glance or a word. Kaito exhaled soundlessly and stepped off with the crowd.

A gust of wind hit him as he reached the stairs, warm and muggy — the kind that carried the sour smell of early summer garbage and too many salarymen in tight suits. He climbed each step with that same quiet rhythm he always had, emerging into the city that never remembered his name.

By 8:58 a.m., Kaito was at his desk in the Shinjuku branch of Midoriya Logistics, precisely as he always was — early but never noticed, prompt but never praised.

His seat was in the far corner of the fourth floor — tucked behind a structural column and beside the emergency exit that no one used unless there was a drill. It was the kind of spot people grumbled about during seating rotations.

“Too cold in winter.”
“No sunlight.”
“Wi-Fi cuts out sometimes.”

But Kaito never complained.

He had sat there for nearly five years. The peeling wall paint didn’t bother him. The draft in December was manageable with an extra undershirt. And the muted green of the emergency sign cast just enough glow that he didn’t need to turn on the harsh desk lamp. It was his little forgotten corner — out of sight, out of demand.

He booted up the ancient Lenovo laptop issued to him back in 2020. It wheezed and clattered like an old man clearing his throat. The desktop flickered to life. Outlook. Excel. CRM dashboard. Company chat. Each window opened without fanfare, without delay. His fingers knew the keystrokes instinctively, each tab memorized into muscle memory. No one trained him to be this efficient — repetition simply had.

The morning meeting began across the room. Someone clicked the projector on. A slideshow bearing the Midoriya logo flickered onto the chipped whiteboard wall. The team leads gathered in a semi-circle around the manager’s desk, coffee cups in hand, faces composed in that bland, businesslike attentiveness that masked fatigue.

Kaito wasn’t called.

He never was.

His department was technically “support logistics” — responsible for back-end reconciliation, transit delay audits, and customs documentation. The kind of work that mattered when it failed and remained invisible when done right.

Once, two years ago, during an unusually ambitious quarter, Kaito had prepared a detailed client retention analysis. It was a side project — something he built at home over the weekend because the raw data had been bugging him. He’d rehearsed his brief talking points twice in front of his mirror, tying his tie three times that morning, each knot a little tighter.

Midway through his presentation — somewhere between “shipping discrepancies in Q3” and “fluctuation in B2B renewal rates” — he stuttered.

“F…fluh-f-fluctuation…”

Someone — probably Yamamoto from sales — snorted. Just a quick nasal sound, half-laugh, half-dismissal. It wasn’t cruel. Just careless.

But Kaito’s breath caught. His throat closed like a folding fan. His hands began to sweat. He glanced up — eyes met no one — and quietly closed his laptop. The manager had nodded politely. “Let’s take that data into account,” he said, already moving on.

Kaito never volunteered again.

Now, he simply typed. Quiet, efficient, invisible.

“Morning, uh… Morisawa-san?”

Kaito looked up.

It was Jun from procurement — a junior hire, polite enough but often in a rush. He was holding a purchase request with the wrong department code.

“Moriyama,” Kaito corrected softly.

But Jun had already turned away.

Kaito fixed the error, saved the document, and forwarded it to accounts with a note that ended in a small “Thank you.” No one would reply. They rarely did.

Outside the window beside the fire escape, the sky was still overcast — low clouds bruised with the color of dishwater. A crow landed on the railing, stared inside for a moment, then flew off.

He wondered if anyone noticed the crow but him.

He doubted it.

At 12:07 p.m., the office thinned as groups gathered for lunch. Some went to the udon shop across the street. Others ordered takeout from the curry place with the oily smell and long wait. Laughter echoed from the break room as someone shared a meme too loudly.

Kaito climbed the narrow stairwell up to the rooftop — his usual lunch spot. The concrete floor was still damp from the morning rain. Pigeons lingered near the water puddles. The skyline stretched in every direction — jagged and impersonal. Grey buildings stacked like filing cabinets beneath a clouded sky.

He sat on the low ledge, unwrapped his rice ball, cracked open his canned coffee, and peeled his boiled egg.

Same as always.

He didn't bring his phone. He didn’t scroll. He just watched the clouds shift with a kind of patience most people forgot how to carry.

Sometimes he wondered — if he stopped coming to work, how many days would pass before someone realized? Maybe three. Maybe five. The janitor might notice the uncleaned desk first. Or the system admin when his ID stopped logging in.

Then again, maybe no one would.

Another voice drifted up from memory.

“You’re not hard to understand, onii-chan. You’re just hard to reach.”

Haruka again.

Kaito blinked. The wind caught the corner of his shirt. A single rain drop fell — late and out of place.

He finished his coffee, folded the wrapper neatly, and went back downstairs.

The workday wasn’t over.

He thought of Tanaka-san.

His mentor. His friend. The only one who had once truly seen him.

“Being kind is easy for people like you,” Tanaka had said once, the rim of a cheap beer can pressed against his lips, their Friday night gathering tucked into a quiet alley bar that smelled of grilled squid and wet wood. “The hard part is letting yourself be known.”

Kaito hadn’t known what to say then. He still didn’t.

Tanaka had been the kind who remembered birthdays and carried handkerchiefs for other people’s tears. The kind who’d slip small snacks into Kaito’s drawer on hard weeks, always pretending it wasn’t him.

Then — the pandemic. The second winter. Tokyo frozen under blue tape and silent alarms.

Five days from first cough to last breath.

Gone.

Just like that.

Kaito had attended the funeral alone. No plus-one. No shared glances of grief. Just a black suit that no longer fit right, a mask that smelled like stale detergent, and a sealed letter he placed atop the coffin like a whisper no one would ever hear.

He still didn’t know if anyone read it.

Or if they even knew who he was.

The cold florescent lights above his desk hummed faintly — a sound that went unnoticed until silence fell around it.

By 7:18 p.m., the office was nearly empty. Only the janitor remained, mopping slowly through the break room, radio tuned to some distant enka station crooning about rainy nights and lost love.

Kaito stayed.

The emails kept coming.

Inventory variance noted.
Attached: spreadsheet.
Please advise.

He responded.

Cross-checked with previous quarter. See revised tab. Discrepancies likely due to mislabeling during batch import. Will review again post-confirmation.

No one replied.

By 8:43 p.m., the glow of his screen was the only thing left awake.

His tea was cold.

He didn’t mind.

The vending machine downstairs had long since run out of the matcha cookies he liked. But he hadn’t gone down to check. Not tonight. Not with the air so still and the ceiling breathing its slow, electric sighs.

Then—
A pinch.
Subtle. Barely there. Just beneath the breastbone.
Like a question mark curling itself softly inside his ribs.

He blinked.
Paused.
Pressed his palm lightly against his chest, fingers splayed as though checking if something inside him had shifted.

Nothing.

He shrugged it off, as he always did — the same way he had with every missed lunch, every ignored pulse of fatigue, every headache passed off as screens and stress.

He typed three more lines.

“Final inventory reconciled. Please advise if—”

Another pinch.
This one sharper. Not painful exactly, but unsettling — like the warning tap of an incoming storm, or a child tugging at your sleeve in a dream.
A tension.
A weight.

Then came the pressure.
Firm.
Unfamiliar.
As if a slow, unseen hand had begun pressing into his chest — not violently, but steadily, inexorably.
Not cruel.
Not punishing.
Just… inevitable.

His fingers hovered above the keyboard.
Paused.
Not because he wanted to — but because he couldn’t move them.
As though the signal had gone missing somewhere between thought and action.
As though his body had decided something he hadn’t yet understood.

His heart—
Fluttered.
Stumbled.
Then skipped a beat in the way an old metronome does, slightly off-rhythm, slightly too late.

He drew in a breath.

Shallow.

It caught in his throat, then echoed oddly within him.
The way wind howls through an empty hallway.

His eyes flicked to the monitor.
The screen still glowing.
The cursor blinking patiently at the end of a sentence he would never finish.

The edges of his vision began to blur.
Colors faded, slowly and strangely — like the world was being erased gently, softly, by an unseen hand.

The pale greys of the desktop icons turned to ash.
The blue folder labels melted into dull monochrome.

His fingers tried once more to move.
To press Enter.
To do something.

But they didn’t.

The pain surged — not sharp now, but vast. Like a rising tide made of heat and silence.

He tried to stand.
His legs didn’t respond.
He felt himself tipping — not falling, not crashing — just… giving in.

His chair wheeled back an inch with a faint creak.
Then stopped.

His body slumped forward, folding into the desk as though it were a pillow he'd been needing for years.
His cheek touched the keyboard — a cold kiss from something mechanical, impersonal.
His glasses slipped slightly, resting crooked across the bridge of his nose.

One hand dangled off the side of the chair — fingers curled slightly inward, not in fear, but in search.
As though reaching for something that wasn’t there anymore.

His shoulders, always tense from hours of leaning forward, finally loosened.
His spine bowed in quiet surrender.

From a distance, it looked like he had simply fallen asleep at his post.
A loyal worker on his final shift.
A ghost still fulfilling deadlines no one would ever read.

The janitor had already left.
His mop bucket had rolled into the storage closet, door shut.

The air was still.

The clock ticked on.

The vending machine in the hallway made a low hum, unaware of the stillness just beyond the door.

And the office —
That strange, soulless place of screens and silence —
was quiet once more.

At 9:00 p.m. sharp, the lights switched off automatically — as they always did when no motion was detected for fifteen minutes.

The screen stayed on. His unsent email still open.

Final inventory reconciled. Please advise if discrepancies remain.

It was never sent.

Not that anyone would have replied.

He was found the next morning.

By an intern.

She screamed.

The sound echoed through the fourth floor — louder than any sound Kaito had ever made in that space.

The manager arrived ten minutes later. He stood at the doorway, hand over his mouth, muttering something about “shock” and “grief counseling schedules.”

Someone from HR came with a laminated folder. There were whispers about hypertension. A "freak incident."

Downstairs, a delivery man asked if the dead man had been the IT guy.

“No, I think he handled supply chain or something,” someone else replied, sipping coffee too early in the day.

His desk was cleaned out by Friday. A replacement was seated by Monday.

By then, the team had moved on to the next quarter's goals. There was a new shipment delay in Osaka. A backlog in Nagoya. The cycle rolled on.

And yet—
In the corner of that quiet office, beside the emergency exit no one used,
the air still felt a little heavy.

As though someone had just left
and forgotten something behind.