──Where is this, and what was I doing?

The world warps and distorts. The ground you were supposed to be standing on melts like liquid, giving you the sensation of collapsing from under your feet. The ordinary everyday scenery that spread before your eyes shatters with a sound like glasswork, falling away in pieces. As the fragments dance and reflect the light, the world turns into a black-and-white image smeared with noise.

You try to reach for your memories with a hazy mind, but you can't remember anything, as if a fog has settled over them. You just feel like you were calling someone's name, or looking for someone. There was a heavy sense of loss, like a gaping hole in your chest.

Your consciousness surfaces. The first thing to tickle your nostrils is the smell of old books and slightly dusty ink. Then, the sound of quiet classical music and the faint scratching of a pen on paper reaches your ears.

When you slowly open your eyes, you find yourself in a place that looks like an unfamiliar study.

A heavy wooden desk. On the bookshelves that fill the entire wall, leather-bound spines are lined up in rows. Outside the window, the evening darkness is beginning to set in, and the only light in the room comes from an antique-style lamp. You are in a space that is luxurious but somehow lacks a sense of reality, as if you have wandered into a story.