Tanaka stared at the small flash drive on his desk, its metallic surface reflecting the morning light that filtered through the office blinds. It contained three years of his work - presentations, reports, client data - all stored in this fragile piece of plastic and metal.

“You should really back that up to the cloud,” Yamamoto said, leaning against Tanaka’s cubicle wall. His tie was slightly askew, as always.

“I prefer having something tangible,” Tanaka replied, picking up the drive and turning it over in his palm. “Digital things feel too ephemeral.”

“Until you drop it in your coffee,” Yamamoto smirked. “Remember what happened to Suzuki last month?”

Tanaka did remember. Suzuki had lost years of work when his drive failed. He’d spent weeks reconstructing everything from scratch.

“Some things are meant to be fragile,” Tanaka said softly. “It makes us treat them with more care.”

Later that afternoon, Ms. Kobayashi from Marketing stopped by his desk. Her heels clicked sharply against the floor as she approached.

“Tanaka-san, do you have the Q3 presentation ready? The client meeting got moved up to tomorrow morning.”

He reached for the flash drive, but his fingers trembled slightly. The drive slipped, bouncing off his desk and landing with a tiny plastic crack on the floor.

His heart stopped.

Ms. Kobayashi bent down to pick it up before he could move. “Oh dear,” she said, examining the small crack along its edge.

Tanaka took it from her carefully, plugged it into his computer. Nothing happened. He tried again. Still nothing.

“I have a backup,” Ms. Kobayashi said quietly. “Of your presentation. I always save copies of important files.”

Tanaka looked up at her in surprise.

She smiled. “Some things are meant to be shared, not just protected. Come on, I’ll show you how to use the cloud storage system.”

That evening, as Tanaka packed up his desk, he placed the broken drive in his drawer. Next to it, he set a new one - sleek, black, with twice the storage capacity. But this time, he had also saved everything to the cloud, shared with his team.

Yamamoto poked his head in. “Heading to Izakaya? First round’s on me.”

“Sure,” Tanaka said, standing up. “Did you know Ms. Kobayashi had backed up all our presentations?”

“Of course,” Yamamoto laughed. “She backs up everything. Says it’s like keeping memories safe.”

As they walked out into the cool evening air, Tanaka thought about the broken drive in his desk. Some things break so we can learn to build stronger connections, he realized. Not just with machines, but with people too.

The neon signs of the Izakaya flickered ahead, and somewhere in the cloud, his work floated safely, shared and protected by the very connections he had once feared would make it too ephemeral.