[One-shot ] The Upside-Down Hourglass

"I am a time traveler sent back from my own ruined future—all to delete the final system error." At 2:00 AM, forty-five stories above Tokyo, Noboru stares at the city lights below. To him, the cold, glowing metropolis looks like a giant, heartless motherboard. For twenty years, he ran an aggressive "Logic of Addition." He crushed others, shaved away his own conscience, and climbed the ladder of success, chasing an endless thirst. Now, he has everything: a luxury penthouse, a garage filled with elite cars, and a hollow circle of sycophants. But his wife’s gaze has turned to permafrost, his children are mere digital records on a smartphone screen, and his nervous system is completely fried. Success was nothing but a castle of sand, collapsing from the inside out. Then, his consciousness slips into a monochrome void. There, in a desolate garden, he meets a withered, dying old man—the absolute worst version of his own future. The old man grabs Noboru’s arm with terrifying force, weeping tears of pure, burning regret: "I would trade every single thing in this world just to hold 'today.' Turn the glass over, Noboru! Break this wretched loop at your own cost!" Waking up back in his bed, the phantom pain still burning on his skin, Noboru realizes the terrifying truth. He wasn't just having a nightmare. He has been forcefully sent back to the past by his dying future self to debug his existence. Throwing his smartphone into the trash and refusing to even touch his silk tie, Noboru laces up a pair of worn-out sneakers and steps out into the biting dawn. The sand has been forcefully flipped. The sludge of the past is falling away, and a violent, blinding sunrise is about to rewrite the blank upper half of his life. "Let's start over. Right now."