The Warm Tea After Overtime
2026-07-25Alone again, the last one left.
Outside the window, the office building's lights switched off one by one, as if someone were quietly flipping the switch floor by floor. Gyuba-chan sat at his desk, his screen the only light still on in the whole floor — a cold white glow, falling on his slightly puffy eyelids. Beside him, a notebook lay open, filled edge to edge with today's to-do list. Only a few items were crossed off; the ones left unfinished kept multiplying. Nothing urgent, really — he just wasn't in the mood today, his hands couldn't keep pace with the list in his head, and the longer it dragged on, the less he felt he had the right to leave first.
The air conditioner hummed its faint white noise, the break room fridge buzzed once in a while, and beyond that, the floor was quiet enough to hear his own breathing. He'd been staring at the same line on the screen for a long time now — his eyes moved across it, but nothing registered. Third read-through, and he still hadn't taken it in.
When the footsteps first appeared, he barely noticed them — so light they nearly blended into the hum of the air conditioner. Then came a faint, metallic little sound, a jingle — like a small bell someone wore, swaying once with every step.
The sound stopped beside his desk.
Gyuba-chan looked up without thinking, and saw Hinata-chan holding her warm brown thermos. Her ears stood slightly upright, and on her face was a soft, squinting smile he'd never really looked at closely before — though it seemed like it had always been there. She said nothing. She simply bent down and set a steaming cup at the corner of his desk, a thin wisp of vapor still rising off the surface, looking especially warm against the cold white glow of the screen.
She set the cup down, straightened up, and turned to leave. The bell gave another soft jingle.
Only then did Gyuba-chan seem to come back to himself, and he spoke without quite meaning to, his voice rough with the particular hoarseness of a long night: "Hinata-san..."
She stopped, and turned back.
"Aren't you tired too?" he said. "How do you still have room to look after everyone else?"
It wasn't really a question — more like a tired, unguarded thought spoken aloud, the kind of thing that only comes out late at night.
Hinata-chan blinked, surprised for a moment, her eyes widening slightly before settling back into their usual squint. The smile spread first from the corners of her eyes, then reached her mouth — as if frowning were a motion she'd simply never learned.
She thought about it for a moment before answering, her voice quiet but steady: "Because... if I don't ask, maybe no one will."
Having said that, as if worried the moment had grown too heavy, she quickly slipped back into her usual light manner and turned to walk on. The jingle of the bell faded step by step, her footsteps dissolving into the white noise of the air conditioner until they were gone entirely.
Gyuba-chan looked down at the cup, the warmth from its sides seeping slowly into his palms. He took a sip. It was warm — not hot, just the right temperature to drink, as if she'd timed it on purpose before bringing it over.
The office fell quiet again. The screen's light was the same cold white as before, and outside the window, Tokyo was just as dark as ever.
But somehow, it didn't feel quite as cold as it had a moment ago.
