A Glimpse Of Life That Just Happens.

Beep. Slide.

Click.

Beep. Slide.

"Your total is 467.58 Bits. Cash or credit?"

Tap, tap. Ka-ching!

"Did you bring your own bag? It costs 15 bucks for a new one."

"Here's your change, Sir."

"Are you a registered member? Please tell me your phone number so I can add points to your account."

Tap, tap, tap.

"Pardon? Three? Oh, Four, three."

Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Click.

"Thank you for shopping. Please come again."

"Next customer, please."

Ting, ling, ting~

A tune came from the speakers as the background music playing stopped.

"Staff announcement: Please check-....."

Ping ling ~

It was closing time. The last few customers lined up at the check-out counters.

The transparent shutters were half rolled down and the lights at the back of the enormous department store were turned off effectively scaring some of the children so they behaved themselves and didn't plead with their parents to add an extra candy or a mint showcased at the cashier counters.

Their wild, childish imaginations made them anxiously hurry their parents, worried that the evil salesmen would lock them in for the night if they didn't leave faster.

Eleven o'clock.

Adam closed the cashier machine he was assigned to operate. Unplugging his phone from the port beneath the counter, he checked for any messages as he headed over to the frozen food section.

Picking up a pre-made chicken curry and rice lunchbox sold for half-off, he checked the expiry and found that it would expire the next day. After purchasing it, he left, greeting a few of his co-workers on the way.

The automatic doors slid open and the warm air hit his face instantly suffocating him a little with how polluted it was.

The tall street lights illuminated his path. Glowing, yellow roads, bright traffic lights and gleaming window panes of luxurious cars went unnoticed by him whose attention was taken away by the pale blue light emitted by his phone.

Reaching his building, he fished out a plastic wrapper from his pocket and tossed it in a big municipality bin by the footpath. Ignoring the stray cat meowing at him, he continued on his way to apartment no. 5.

Standing in front of the cheap, wooden plywood door, he knocked but no one answered. He waited like that for ten minutes then stopped.

The tenants were not home and he didn't have the keys.

"They don't even bother to give me a heads-up, huh?"

His face was hurting from smiling all day at customers. Now, he still needed to smile at the generous family who let him share a small space in the apartment for a fee. It wasn't exorbitant, but it still burned a considerable hole in his pockets.

It wasn't the first time they decided to go on a spontaneous outing- either to a restaurant or a relative's house.

He was hungry but who knew when the tenants would come home? Sometimes they came back as late as 3 am on the weekends.

Dejected, he sat on the stairway beside the ground floor apartment and unpacked his cold dinner.

The plastic spoon that came with it had some trouble trying to break apart the stiff chicken pieces and the curry was thicker than jelly. The rice was hard and needed to be defrosted but he ate it as it was.

He surfed the internet after connecting to the Wi-Fi router that was still on inside the house, crunching away the frosty dinner as he waited for the family to return from their outing.

..................

This chapter was inspired from some experiences I had when I was younger in a Carre four (?) (Carrie four?).

I remember being super scared of the salesmen (I liked the saleswomen, though, especially the Filipino aunties as they were very nice to me) because they would jokingly make fun of me or scare me when my parents asked them to. Dad would say that the UNCLE would lock us up if we didn't get out of the mall before the shutters were fully pulled down (I had nightmares about that) just so we would stand in line with them and not roam about.

Honestly, I used to get scared of any sort of 'Uncle'. There was the shopkeeper uncle, the security guard uncles ( who I really were in awe of because they were so friendly), salesman uncle, policeman uncle (I still don't like them) and scariest of all, the uncle in a mascot costume. Once, my kindergarten invited someone to come over in a costume of a bull(?) for some reason and the whole class was terrified as soon as he entered.

Those were some happy childhood days. Sigh. I miss them. I want to go back to those days where it was very easy to get chocolates from these 'Aunties' and 'Uncles'.