The rain had started as a whisper against the windshield, but by the time Taehyung—Tae, to those who knew her intimately enough to deserve the nickname—pulled her car up the winding driveway of the Jeon estate, it had become a roar. The storm wasn't supposed to hit until midnight, yet here it was, five hours early, thrashing against the glass like something desperate to get inside. She killed the engine and sat for a moment, fingers still wrapped around the steering wheel, watching the water cascade down the driver's side window in sheets that blurred the world into abstract grays and blacks.

She shouldn't be here.