AN : About the way the characters talk, here's my notation system :

" " = Speaking, ' ' = Thinking.

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My name is Haru Oshigaki. I'm 19 years old, and I'm currently in a situation... a bit hard to describe. But to understand it, let me tell you what happened a bit before.

About an hour ago, I was in my apartment. It was located at the 11th floor of a big building (can be called a skyscraper actually). I was trying to understand a math lesson that I could not grasp that talked about complex formulas with integers and exponential function (I'll skip the details for you, but if you're interested, it's called "Laplace transform" [I hope you're not, unless you're out of your mind or a math freak]).

Anyway, while I was stuck on a particular point of the lesson, I suddenly felt the floor shake. At the time I was alone in my apartment, with headphones on. And when I removed them, I heard various screams in the distance. I was exiting my room, and as I opened my door, smoke came in and made me cough a few times. I instantly understood what was going on. I rushed to my front door, but when I tried to open it, as the door handle was metallic, it instantly burned me.

The whole building was on fire. I couldn't exit my room by normal means. I reached for the phone, and called the fire station (AN : do that first if you're in this situation. Don't be like Haru and try to escape first). The phone rang a few times. Because of the smoke and the panic I felt, my throat was dry and my tongue felt like some old parchment. After a while, a woman answered the call.

"Hello? Thi-" (Woman)

"Sorry, my building is on fire, and I'm locked at the 11th floor. I can't get out of my apartment" (Haru)

"Okay, can you please tell me your address please?" (Woman)

"------- in the district of -------- ------" (Haru)

"Okay, I'll do my best to send a team as fast as possible. While you wait, go as far away as possible from the fire, in a closed room. Close as much doors as possible between you and the fire. I suggest you to use all clothes, towels, anything that you can put under the doors separating you from the fire to do not let smoke come in your room. Do you get it?" (Woman)

"Yes. I-I'm doing it." (Haru)

"Anyway calm down, as I said I'm currently contacting the closest team close to you. Keep it cool, and do your best. We'll arrive shortly." (Woman)

"Okay, thank you" (Haru)

After taking as much rags I found, I walked back to my room and closed it. And I waited. After less than five minutes, I heard a big thud coming from the entrance. I guessed it was the front door that broke under the effect of the fire.

My heartbeat rapidly increased. I was wondering how much time the firefighters will take. The smoke in my room was slowly filling up the space. I lied down on the floor, where the smoke was the least thick. I was scared. I never thought fire could be this frightening. I mean, I always play with it when I use matches and I learnt to extinguish the flames with only my fingers. I knew fire could be dangerous, but... I don't know, this is just not something I was prepared for.

The heat was rising slowly. I was already shirtless, and sweat was slowly running down my body. My clouded mind suddenly had a brilliant idea. I opened the window.

'Fresh air. Finally.'

Several sirens were ringing loudly. I could hear agitated voices below.

I cooled down a bit, before staring below me. I could see a lot of people. Some policemen prevented the crowd from entering the building. However, I couldn't see the firefighters.

Reality struck me. I was going to die if nothing changed. But I couldn't do anything. I could only provide myself fresh air, but even with the window opened, and the temperature outside being around 2~3°C as we were in winter, the temperature in the room was unbearable.

In fact I didn't know at the time, but I was only worsening my situation. The fire in my apartment was slowing down, as it lacked oxygen. However, when I opened the window, the fire right outside the door of my room breathed again, and rampaged against its boundaries with even more ferocity than before.

I sat down below the window. I thought that it was the end. I had a few friends, a family, but I never had a girlfriend. Actually I'm glad I never did, since if I die here, that would make less people sad.

My door was slowly breaking. I could already see an opening in which smoke came in as if it was fleeing away from the sharp tongues of the fire behind it. The rags and clothes started burning, and slowly, the fire was making progression.

I tried to reach for the phone to call my parents and have a "last chat" with them. But I realized I forgot it in the living room. However, as my mood was getting even darker, a sliver of hope shined. The firefighters were finally arriving.

'Don't give up.'

My whole body and mind fused and were saying the very same sentence. I pumped myself up.

'I can survive'

As they exited the firetruck I yelled at the window. I saw a woman with a baby in the same situation as mine a few apartments below, far away on my right. I saw the firefighters noticing both of us. A squad ran in the building 30 seconds later after checking with the authorities and gathering a few pieces of information.

The door of my room was more or less broken. The fire was advancing quickly. I didn't have much time left.

The firetruck advanced and stopped below the woman with the baby. Time passed while the ramp was being deployed. Meanwhile, the fire was advancing inexorably towards me. My bed was starting to burn. I was fighting against it as much as I could, but all my efforts were unproductive, as I didn't have an extinguisher, and that using clothes to put it out actually fed the fire with the clothes.

I wanted water. I was now feeling burnt all over my body. I could easily affirm that the temperature around me exceeded 45~50°C. I was drenched in sweat, and I had to make several round trip between the fire and my window to try to hold as long as possible.

However, the fire in my room already filled 3/4 of it's surface. It was to the extent that even the ceiling was burning down.

Also, the noises were unbearable. Between the sirens, the cries and shouts of the people below, the noises emitted by the fire, and the several noises produced by miscellaneous things breaking apart here and there in the building.

It was hell.

I was looking at where the firefighters were in their progression. I was sure the ones inside wouldn't be able to reach me, since there were also people stuck below me, like the woman. Speaking of which, she was currently passing the window, and attempting to get a steady position on the pod of the firetruck with the help of a firefighter. Her baby was taken care of by another one who was climbing down the ladder that linked the vehicle to the pod.

In less than a minute, my room would be completely filled with flames. I screamed for help once again, and announced that I had to exit now. I climbed on the frame of my window, while trying my best to do not look below. I turned my head, and I was met with the sight of my room being completely devoured by the hellish flames. That was my final moments. Everything in my life led me to this very instant. In less than a few minutes, my fate would be decided.

The firefighters seemed to quicken their pace (even though they were already going as fast as they could from my perspective), but just before they moved their vehicle, a man jumped out of a window aligned with the ladder. He grabbed a rung with both his hands, and was able to secure himself. He seemed badly burnt, but he was still able to do such stunts. As a firefighter started to climb back up to help him, I knew I had no more time. In fact, I could even feel my own hands slowly burning. As my mind was being clouded progressively by this terrible pain I was doing my best to slide myself on a ridge, and grabbed a thin line dug in the building's walls slightly above my head. I started heading towards the firetruck very slowly. The wind was blowing hard, making my progression hard, but also just staying balanced there was already a challenge. Also, my position was very uncomfortable, and it put a big strain on my arm muscles.

As I looked below, the sense of height suddenly struck an unreasonable fear within me. I was terrorized. But even so, every single cells of my body were resonating to a single will :

'I. MUST. SURVIVE.'

However, just as I was thinking that, the time seemed to slow down. I felt a gust of wind engulfing itself between me and the wall, pushing me away from the building. I lost my foothold, and I slowly shifted away. I screamed. I was gaining speed really fast. As my body rotated, I was able to see below me. I was able to distinguish every single details of the faces of the people below. Some were crying, others were clearly angry, but most of them seemed to be passersby who just watched what was happening. And a portion of them were looking at me, looking panicked, with their arms raised towards me for a few among them. As I was arriving at the same level as the man who exited the building last and who was still on the ladder, I saw him looking at me with his eyes wide opened. I felt distress within him.

So, I smiled to him. And the next moment, when I was at roughly 1 meter above the ground, I saw him, and the firefighter next to him opening their eyes even wider, probably because of my expression. The time slowed even more for me. I wasn't scared anymore. But I was still sad that my life ended like this. After all, I studied hard to get a nice future, abandoning my gaming sessions and my activities just to work harder. I hated it, but I always reassured myself by repeating in my mind "I'll be able to play finally when my job will be secured". I kinda hated my life, which was only filled with boredom. Before I hated it for other reasons, but at least, there was action. Now, I had almost nothing able to amuse me, as every days looked like the one before, and I already knew how my next day would look like (or at least until today). However, I couldn't see any ways to exit this cage, and I locked myself up until the day I'll finally find something worthy of attention.

All of that for a job that was almost given to me, I just needed to end my studies to finally enter a certain company that scouted me. And that would mean the return of my leisure, calm life of before I started hard working, so this perspective really gave me hopes.

It happened because I already visited the company at 2 occasions before, one was for trainee ship, and the second was for a seasonal work I did there last summer. As I left good impressions behind to my higher-ups at the time, they told me to contact them when I finish my studies to work with them under a higher graded role.

Anyway, the ground was now a few centimeters below me. I was heading head first. The result was probably going to be bad. I hope my parents will not be too sad, after all they were kind to me in general. I ju-

And I hit the ground, leaving only a dismantled corpse behind.

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AN : Hello everyone! Well, I don't think anyone will read these few lines, but hey, I'll still write them just in case. So, first off, thank you for reading until here ^^. I'm sorry if I won't post often, but my studies are taking most of my time. If I could, I'd write all day, and that's an actual dream I have and that I'd like to realize through patreon, but I just can't do that now. So for the moment, I'll try to publish one chapter per week. This should be steady till January the first 2020, and at that time I'll do a new schedule update depending on how things are going.

I'd LOVE to know what you think of the story (whether it's good or bad, and I especially appreciate constructed bad reviews!) and until next chapter, it was a pleasure to meet ^^.