The man writes to a woman that he enjoyed her recent letter. The letter had richly described the aromas in a kitchen and her description of a hamburger steak had been so enticing that after he read it he had to go to a nearby restaurant and get one himself. The restaurant had offered eight different types of steaks, but he had asked only for a plain one. The waitress had apologetically informed him that they do not serve plain hamburger steaks and he instead chooses the Hawaiian steak and picks off the pineapple. 

The man marvels to the woman how such a simple request could be so difficult. While he tells her he enjoyed her passage about the steak, he found her writing about the National Railway’s automatic ticketing machines to be superficial. Overall, he gives her a score of 70 for her writing and tells her to keep up the improvement. Additionally, he thanks her for sending a box of cookies but tells her he’s not allowed to accept such gifts in the future because of the Society’s rules.

Such correspondence was included in the twenty-two-year-old man’s part-time job at The Pen Society, which he worked in for a year. Each month, he wrote around thirty letters for two-thousand yen each. Most of the twenty-four women he’s working with are older than him — a fact that intimidated him at first. After two months, he had gained confidence and became one of the most popular tutors. He realized that while the women were seeking feedback, they wanted company through correspondence more. 

When he eventually leaves the job, he feels a certain sadness at leaving the students behind and feels he will never have people opening up to him so honestly in this way ever again. He meets up with the thirty-two-year-old woman who wrote to him about the hamburger steak, and she makes the dish specially for him. She has no children but her husband works for the fifth-best-known company in the country. From her apartment window, they eat and watch the electric train run below. She tells him she’s decided to give up on trying to become a good writer and that she’s not able to talk to her husband like she is to him. He thanks her for the hamburger and leaves. 

Ten years later, every time the man passes the woman’s neighborhood, he thinks of her and the hamburger steak she made that night. He wonders if he should have spent the night with her and searches for her window among the many apartment rooms but cannot find it.