This year, the north had seen an especially large amount of rain. Throughout September, Chunlin City was periodically battered by torrential downpours, while drizzles continued without end, putting everyone in a foul mood.
On a night of thunder and lightning, with wind and rain raging, it was only a little after nine, yet there were fewer and fewer vehicles on the roads. The occasional pedestrian hurried home with an umbrella, clutching their clothes tightly and keeping their head down.
Beneath the curtain of rain, inside an abandoned telephone booth in the outskirts, a figure dressed in a black trench coat, with her hat and mask concealing her completely, was saying something to the person on the phone.
She was thin and frail, as though a gust of wind and rain outside the booth could blow her away. Up close, her eyes revealed despair and confusion.
"Can't you make up your mind yet? Do you really want to wait until... Will you be satisfied then?"
"If you don't decide soon... it'll be too late..."
Fat raindrops pounded on the roof of the telephone booth, and the voice in the receiver came through intermittently.
The woman in the trench coat gripped the chipped and mottled receiver tightly, her knuckles turning white.
Just like her face beneath the lightning at that moment, it was pale yet touched with despair, and within that despair, a deep resentment slowly rose.
"Fine."
The single word seemed to contain the resolve to burn her bridges, along with a blazing, overwhelming fury.
A bolt of lightning tore across the sky with a rumble, as if heralding something that was about to happen.
*
At the same time, in a small café somewhere in the city, the young female owner glanced at the rain pouring harder outside the glass