The rain was insane.
It was as if a god had overturned the entire Milky Way, sending a curtain of water crashing down on the concrete jungle.
And Stella An felt like an ant in this jungle, about to drown.
She rode a beat-up electric scooter that was on its last legs, the handlebars shaking like a Parkinson's patient in the gale-force winds. The battery indicator, a pathetic sliver of red, had been flashing for ten minutes, ready to die at any moment.
A cold, electronic female voice from her phone's GPS felt like a death sentence.
"You have deviated from the route..."
Stella wiped the rain from her face. It was salty. She couldn't tell if it was sweat or tears. Through her blurred vision, a colossal glass building loomed ahead, a dormant beast in the night, exuding an aura of cold, expensive light.
The Aura Art Center.
This was it.
The final stop for her delivery, the last order of the night. It was for a six-figure art exhibition gala—an urgent delivery of a "sobering herbal remedy."
With a painful groan, her scooter finally gave out, its last spark of electricity extinguished at the foot of the art center's steps.
It was completely dead.
"Ugh," Stella grunted, but she didn't even have the energy for anger.
She took off her soaked helmet, and rain immediately streamed down her bangs and into her eyes, stinging fiercely. Her world was a blurry mess of despair and raindrops.
She was drowning. And the shore was right in front of her.