When

Sexual content. Strong Language. Death. Gore.

The fire roared, a ravenous beast tearing through the structural heart of... I wasn't even sure where I was, its deep, animalistic hunger vibrated throughout my very core. It danced across the ceiling and spilled down walls in an erratic, flickering waltz, a devil's lick of crimson and gold that consumed everything it touched with malicious precision.
Around me, the air was a choir of terror, people shrieked in frantic, piercing bursts, their voices swallowed by the insatiable crackle of the blaze. The heat was no longer just a symptom of the environment, it was a horrifying weight, an excruciating, suffocating pressure that pressed against my lungs. When the flames lashed out, they struck my exposed skin with the blistering, absolute violence of an open furnace door, searing the salt from my sweat and turning the atmosphere to ash.
Visibility had surrendered to the chaos. My eyes stung and watered, rendered useless by the swirling, opaque curtains of charcoal smoke that choked the corridors. The world had dissolved into a nightmare of silhouettes, ghostly, jerking shapes that flitted through the haze, collapsing and scrambling in a desperate bid for survival.
Amidst the rhythmic roar of the inferno, a sharp, metallic pop-pop-pop cut through the noise. Was that gunfire? Or merely the structure groaning as its iron bones snapped under the stress of the heat? My mind couldn't reconcile the sensory paradox, the world was pitch-black with soot, yet blindingly, searingly bright with the white-hot intensity of the ruin. Every breath I drew was a toxic draught, heavy with the cloying, unmistakable stench of death, a thick, sickening miasma of charred wood, scorched fabric, and something far more organic that hung in the air, ensuring that even if I escaped the fire, the horror of this night would remain etched into my senses forever.

My name is Sota. At thirty-one, my life is built on the preservation of the discarded. I own a cramped, flickering sanctuary of a retro store, a labyrinthine shop overflowing with the ghosts of the analogue age, dust-caked VHS tapes, magnetic ribbons of cassette tapes, and the metallic weight of Walkman's that still hum with the static of long-forgotten mix tapes. It is a place where time moves slower, where I can hide from the relentless forward march of the world. And then there is Mio. She is the steady heartbeat beneath the chaos of my life. We have been tethered together since the beginning, since we were children, inseparable shadows in the sunlight of our youth. She knows every serrated edge of my history and every dark corner of my mind. She knows my secrets, every whispered fear and every quiet shame. But more importantly, she knows the secret. My biggest one. The one that keeps me awake at night, staring at the ceiling, wondering if the horror I just witnessed in my sleep is finally coming to claim us both. If you absolutely must know, and I am trusting you with my life when I say this, so please, do not breathe a word of this to another soul, I possess a gift that is both a blessing and a relentless curse: I see the future. Most people call them premonitions, but that word feels far too delicate for the weight of what I experience. It is more like an intrusive, flickering cinema playing behind my eyes, showing me fragments of time yet to come.

Sota and Mio are thrust into a race against time to prevent an impending disaster when Sota's brother, Aoi, arrives at their doorstep unexpectedly. Relying on Sota's prophetic premonitions to guide their actions, they must work together to navigate the crisis and avert the looming catastrophe.