Ching, ching, ching!
"Welcome to Happy Doughnut!"
"Which box set would you like, Sir?"
"Would you like to dine-in or take-away?"
"If you buy the Special Mocha Latte right now you will get 50% discount on two pieces of doughnuts."
"The total price will be $7.50."
"Thank you very much, please come again."
Ching, ching, ching!
The bells of the front door at the Happy Doughnut kept ringing as customers walked in and walked out at the last hour of business for the night.
A lot of students usually came to the Happy Doughnut to either study or just hanged out with their friends. At this moment, about an hour to midnight they had started to pack up and ready to leave at any moment now.
Surprisingly, even at this late hour, there were quite a lot of people who had come into the Happy Doughnut.
Some of them were familiar night shift workers who had entered to buy snacks for them to munch on — to keep themselves awake during their nightly works.
There were also people who had come in to buy late night snacks after watching movies at a nearby cinema — a few blocks from the Happy Doughnut.
However, there might be quite a few of them who were simply hungry and had dropped by at the nearest shop which was still open for business this late.
Just then, as the hands of the clock on the wall pointed toward 11.30, one of the Happy Doughnut workers — a blond young woman — standing in front of a counter started to stretch out her arms in exhaustion. "Enghh… Last 30 minutes. Then we are done for the day!" she shouted cheerfully.
"Shhh… There are still customers around, Lynn," Lynn's friend — a dark-haired young woman — another Happy Doughnuts worker standing in front of the next counter warned her in a low voice.
"All right, all right. I'm shushing up now, Mia," Lynn whispered back nonchalantly. It was obvious that she wasn't planning to pay heed to her friend's warning.
Mia just simply sighed when she saw her friend's — Lynn's — behavior.
At that moment, heavy rain started to pour down.
When Lynn saw the weather outside, she stepped closer towards Mia and shook hard her friend's shoulders, while complaining, "Ughh… It's raining, Mia. It's raining!"
"Stop it!" Mia slapped Lynn's hands away, feeling totally annoyed. "I know that it's raining. I can see it clearly through the front door."
"Boohoo... So serious all the time. Loosen up a bit, Mia." Lynn puckered up her mouth at Mia.
"I'll say that you're the one who's too loose, Lynn." Mia raised her brow in a mocking gesture as she jokingly commented on Lynn's easy-going behavior.
Lynn simply stuck out her tongue at Mia's jest.
"You're being too moody right now, Mia." Even though Mia had always been a stickler for rules, Lynn had noticed that her friend's temperament had indeed changed from her usual calm self.
"It can't be that you're the type of person whose mood can be affected easily by the weather, is it?" joked Lynn.
Mia flicked on Lynn's forehead when she heard her words.
"Ouch! How could you!" Lynn showed Mia a pained expression as if she had done something truly treacherous.
"That's enough playing. The last customer is about to leave. We can get ready to clean up here," said Mia refusing to spoil Lynn any longer.
As the last customer left, Mia and Lynn began to clean up the counter area.
After reporting to the manager, they headed toward the female changing room to change out of their respective uniforms. Once they finished packing up all their stuff, they left the Happy Doughnut together with each holding an umbrella in her hand.
Mia and Lynn separated at the nearest bus stop, as Lynn had to take a bus there. Unlike Lynn, Mia only lived a walking distance away from the Happy Doughnut. After they waved each other goodbye, Mia then continued her walk home.
Walking through the pouring rain, Lynn's words echoed through Mia's mind, 'It can't be that you're the type of person whose mood can be affected easily by the weather, is it?'
Honestly, it wasn't that the weather can actually affect her mood — it was the rain.
Mia really hates it — the rain.
As far as she could remember, in her entire life — since the day that Mia learned to recognize things — she had always been scared of the rain.
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People would usually be scared of the rain because of the thunder or lightning that accompanied that particular weather sometimes.
But for Mia, she was scared of the rain itself.
No one knows why.
Not her friends.
Not her family.
Not even her.
All she knew was that the rain gave her the chills. Chills that people usually have when something really terrifying was about to happen to them.
This fact puzzled even her own family.
As far as they knew, Mia had never been involved in any kind of accidents during the rainy days.
Even Mia herself gave a firm confirmation on that fact.
And yet, she really hates it — the rain.
As her mind was occupied by these thoughts, she didn't even realize when she had reached the crosswalk to the Forest Apartment — the apartment where she lived.
Even at this late hour and even more so in this weather, there were still quite a few people standing along with her by the crosswalk.
Currently, it was her semester break, so she decided to work there to earn some extra cash and filled her free time.
Her family home was two hours flight away in City Z.
Ever since she was little, she had always aspired to become an archaeologist. So, she made a decision to apply for the Rowena University in City B — where the best education in archaeology was being provided.
The day that she received the letter of acceptance was probably one of the best moment in her entire life. It should be known that being the most popular department to be applied to in Rowena University, the Department of Archaeology entry requirements were really strict. One should be really proud of oneself, to be accepted into the department.
Now, it has been 4 years since she arrived in City B in pursuit of her dream to be an archaeologist. Next year will be her final year as an archaeologist student at Rowena University.
Though she won't be in her final year until about a month later, she had more or less managed to secure a job position at the Helion Academy of Archaeology. This academy was where the country's most astounding and reputable archaeologist experts were gathered.
This year, Mia had spent the free time that she had during her fourth year, as a student research assistant for Professor Pang at the Helion Academy. A professor that she knew closely in the university had recommended her for the position, which Professor Pang had then accepted.
During the period where she worked under Professor Pang, he had come to admire her overall attitude and passion for working with history. Thus, he had gladly extended her a position in his department which he managed in the Helion Academy. Mia had then gratefully accepted the offer.
However, before she could be formally integrated into the working force at the Helion Academy, she must first successfully graduated from the Rowena University and obtained the Degree in Archaeology. After that, there were some written tests and internship evaluations that she will need to pass to enter the academy.
For someone like Mia who had been personally accepted by one of the heads of the departments in the academy, these tests and evaluations will be more of a formality that she need to partake in. This was to ensure that the academy had indeed accepted a qualified person to be part of their working staff. Of course, she was still expected to pass them. However, unlike other applicants, once she had passed, her name will go straight to the 'Accepted Applicants' list — skipping through the eliminations part.
Just then, the pedestrian red light finally turned green, and Mia along with the other pedestrians started to cross the crosswalk.
Suddenly, Mia abruptly stopped walking as she was attacked with a strong and pounding headache.
The umbrella that she had held in her hand fell off her grip as Mia fell down to the ground, kneeling in the middle of the crosswalk. She clutched her throbbing head with her both her hands as she groaned in pain.
No longer being protected from the heavy rain under the cover of an umbrella, she immediately became wet.
In front and beside her, the other pedestrians simply continued walking — completely ignoring her current condition. It was as if they didn't see her on the ground — dripping wet and enduring a terrible pain.
Suddenly, little by little those pedestrians started to fade away.
At first, Mia thought that her vision had simply gone blurry because of the rain pouring down on her. Otherwise, it could be because the intense pain had started to rip off her sense of reality.
However, soon after the disappearance of the pedestrians, all around her other things started to fade away as well.
Until, in the end, only the road underneath her and the dark sky above where the rain continued to pour down from, were left.
Despite being surprised and frightened by what was happening around her, the severe headache that she had stopped her from focusing in anything other than the pain.
As the headache continued, Mia felt that she will soon lose her consciousness.
As she fought to stay awake, the rain that was pouring heavily just now, stopped.
It wasn't that the rain had ended, but stopped.
All around her, droplets of rain can be seen floating in mid-air. It was as if a pause button had been pressed down on them.
Before Mia could react even more to the situation, a wide golden circle had suddenly appeared beneath her. The circle surrounded her, who was still kneeling on the ground in immense pain.
The circle resembled the interior of a clock — complete with all the clock gears in golden. Then, surrounding the gears was what looked like a clock face. Only that, instead of the twelve numbers representing the time, there were twelve unrecognizable symbols in their place.
The circle then lighted up basking Mia within with a shining golden light.
In that instant, she felt a strong force pulling her downwards into the golden circle.
Soon, her body was slowly sucked into the golden circle under her, immediately startled Mia to take action.
With one hand still clutching her painful head, Mia tried to rise from the ground with the help of the other hand. However, as if she was glued to the ground, she couldn't bring herself up to more than a crouch. Furthermore, it was as if she was inside a quicksand — the more she struggled, the deeper she sank.
Afterward, the pulling force became stronger with every second passed, sinking her further into the golden circle.
At one point the pulling force became too strong and combined that with the severe headache which she already suffered by, Mia's consciousness soon blacked-out into nothingness as she was completely pulled under with one forceful tug.
The golden circle soon disappeared afterward from the ground.
With its disappearance, everything went back to normal at the crosswalk to the Forest Apartment — the raindrops that had paused in mid-air had started to move again, everything that had faded away just now came back and the pedestrians kept on crossing the crosswalk.
It was as if none of the strange phenomenon that night had happened.
None of them had seen the golden circle appeared, neither did they noticed when it had disappeared bringing along with it a dark-haired young woman.