Prologue: The Gift Brought by Rain
On that day, rain fell steadily.
In the morning, there was a light drizzle.
By noon, rain poured.
By night thunder and lightning urged the winds to blow faster.
By midnight, the rain stopped. But rain continued to flow.
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"...The government has not released any official statement in regards to the devastating storm currently ripping through the entire American Continents. All satellite communications have also appeared to cease. What may be the cause of such a mysterious occurrence? Here in our studio, we have meteorologist Joshua Jones to explain..."
The television continued to loudly blare throughout the house, drowning out heavy pitter patter of rain outside. Every corner of the house was not left untouched by the annoying newscaster repeating whatever they just said a few minutes ago. This was all that they could and would cover, as well as the only connection the Li family had to the outside world. All sorts of wireless signals were cut, and only cable television remained.
Daniel sat in his bed, playing with his phone. He had many games that did not require a connection downloaded on his phone, although he never actually played them until now. He was a fairly stereotypical High School privileged Asian kid in America. He played the Asian games (League of Legends and Hearthstone), played the Asian sports (tennis and swimming), did the Asian clubs (math science olympiad), and had amazing grades compared to his non-Asian peers. Exactly what you would believe to be the epitome of a stereotypical Asian high schooler.
Knock, knock.
"Yes? What do you want?" Daniel replied.
"Come help Grace with her homework, she doesn't understand anything and I don't have a good time with English," A middle-aged woman's voice commanded with a slight mixture of Chinese and English. "And stop playing games. You will only get dumber."
"Okay, I'll help her, can you please just close the door and leave me alone, I'll be down in a minute."
"I want you down right now to help her. You have to make sure she doesn't do so bad and that she understands now."
"Just give me a second alone, please?"
"Come down now!"
"One second!"
"Now!"
"Please!"
"NOW!"
BOOM!
The loud crack of thunder interrupted their shouting fight. The mother and son stared at each other until finally, Daniel broke the silence by sighing.
"I'll be down in a second, just let my headache relax."
"Do you know why you're getting so many headaches recently? It's because of you playing too many games and not enough sleep." Daniels mom answered as she wanted away with her arms crossed.
"...Geomagnetic storm. What bothers many experts are that if it was so powerful to wipe out all of the satellites, why has it still not reached the..."
Suddenly the lights turned off.
BOOM!
Another flash of lightning followed by the loud crack of thunder rattled the neighborhood. This time, the lightning probably struck something important and the entire neighborhood lost power.
The wind swooshed rain around with a rush and a roar.
howls and barks of neighborhood dogs were barely audible through the heavy rainfall.
"We should all just go to sleep now. It's late and the power has been cut. Maybe your headache will be better tomorrow as well." She said in a mixture of Chinese and English, "Don't play any more games."
Daniel groaned in response. The headache seemed to be getting more and more unbearable. Even if his mom didn't tell him, he would've just gone to sleep anyways.
...12:34 a.m. the next day...
The whistling winds and howling thunder all but disappeared past the time of midnight.
"AAAGGGHHH!!!" Daniel woke up to a throbbing headache. It was like thousands of needles were stuck directly into his brain. He clutched his head with both hands and rolled around. He rolled off his bed, hit his desk, knocked his laptop off of it, On the dresser next to his bed, his charging phone fell off and Daniel rolled all over it. Papers flew and books were knocked over.
The shrill scream was entirely bare for the entire neighborhood to hear. The scream was the loudest Daniel had ever been. He had always been a reserved kid, but that day, the entire neighborhood heard his outburst of screams.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING!" Daniel's mother came charging into his room with an angry expression on her face. She opened the door...
Just in time to see the floor collapse beneath Daniel. For the first time in her life, Wang Xui Ying felt what it was like to be so scared that the world seemed to be frozen. She could see the look of fear in Daniel's eyes as he slowly moved farther and farther away from her, all the way down to the first floor of the house.
