WELCOME TO JI WAI, THE TEAHOUSE OUT OF TIME Lio gave up a lucrative tech career in a Pacific Northwestern metropolis to become a barista in a quiet Midwestern town, hoping to heal from an ended relationship and a mental breakdown. When she discovers a ginkgo leaf bearing a handwritten SOS, and follows its instructions to wait for more details in her dreams, she learns that its author is Nadiya, a patron at the Café Ex Machina who recently went missing after suffering a mysterious form of blindness. The illness, it turns out, is a trap created by 'the Sublime', a host of legendary beings from all over the world, who have altered Nadiya and made her a servant at Ji Wai, a tea house with a magical but cruel clientele. Or so it seems on the surface. Is Nadiya truly in need of being rescued, or is there something in Lio's own repressed past and secret nature that will give her the purpose she's been missing and a home at last?