"A lifespan warranty?! Hey, who is this shady telemarketer with too much free time on their hands?! Are you trying to pitch some sketchy health insurance scam, huh?" Mum roared furiously, glaring daintily at her smartphone screen, which displayed the glowing purple hourglass symbol.

Before Mum could smash the red button to terminate the horrific video call, the screen blinked three times, and—Click! The connection terminated automatically, leaving no trace behind. The display faded back into pitch-black nothingness.

Bagas, seated at the dining table, jolted upright to his feet, his breathing turning ragged and shallow. Cold sweat beaded thickly along his temples. The video call from moments ago proved one terrifying fact: these "destiny-monitoring" overseers didn't just track their every move—they were actively targeting his family's lives head-on!

"Mum..." Bagas croaked out in a voice trembling with panic, gripping his mother's arm tight. "Did you... did you actually hear what that phone said just now? They said Bagas's name, Mum! That wasn't just some ordinary health insurance bot!"

Mum furrowed her brow, casually brushing Bagas's hand off her sleeve, though a flicker of genuine confusion crossed her features. "Enough with the paranoia over some automated scammer hotline! These days, loan sharks and insurance salesmen rely on AI bots just to terrify villagers into panicking! Go wash your face! Instead of obsessing over some fake lifespan warranty, you'd better go deal with the main drainage ditch at the end of the alley—it's overflowing because it's completely blocked!"

Bagas let out a long, heavy sigh of frustration, realizing Mum still completely failed to grasp the catastrophic danger they were in. "A blocked drain, Mum? What on earth happened this early in the morning?"

"What else could it be if not the neighborhood's favorite pastime of tossing trash wherever they please?" Mum grumbled, marching out of the kitchen toward the living room. "Mr. RT is already screaming bloody murder in the neighborhood WhatsApp group. He says there's a discarded foam mattress carcass wedged right inside the main pipeline, backing up raw sewage straight out onto the street!"

Before Bagas could catch his breath from the morning's cyber-terror, the atmosphere outside the house erupted into sudden bedlam. Screaming mothers clashed loudly with the steady clatter of the neighborhood emergency alarm (kenthongan) beaten frantically by the security guards.

Clang-clang! Clang-clang!

"Emergency neighborhood council meeting! Every single homeowner is required to assemble along the main drainage ditch right this second!" Mr. RT (Mr. Mul) roared through a megaphone from the end of the alley, his voice burning with raw rage.

With no energy left to argue, Bagas had no choice but to trail after Mum toward the crime scene. Arriving at the location, the sight awaiting them closely resembled a low-budget natural disaster refugee camp.

Dozens of Suka Maju residents had spilled out into a dense crowd lining the small bridge spanning the main canal. The ditch, which usually carried sluggish, murky water, was now entirely paralyzed. Its surface was choked with a multi-colored mountain of plastic trash, empty mineral water bottles, and—most impressively—a king-sized kapok foam mattress carcass wedged horizontally right across the culvert, blocking every drop of water and forcing it to spill over onto the asphalt while radiating the exquisite aroma of pure sewage.

Mr. RT stood atop the small wooden bridge clutching his megaphone, his face flushed deep crimson with god-tier fury.

"Listen up, all my beloved and respected RT 05 residents!" Mr. RT bellowed through the megaphone. "This is an environmental emergency! Our main drainage ditch is completely blocked not by ordinary silt, but because some barbarian individual deliberately dumped a sagging foam mattress into the water system! What is going to become of our village if people start treating the public plumbing like an old-mattress dumping ground?!"

An immediate uproar erupted. Dozens of villagers began hissing and whispering, casting suspicious glares at one another.

"This is definitely the work of those lowlives from the next block over, Mr. RT!" shouted Mrs. Minah, the local gossip queen, standing right in the middle of the crowd with her hands planted on her hips. "They’ve always been insanely jealous of our neighborhood's cleanliness awards!"

"Hey, watch your mouth, Mrs. Minah!" Cak Edi, the opposing block's unofficial spokesman, snapped back with a lethal glare. "Why are you pinning this on our block?! There is zero physical way a mattress that size could fit down our narrow alleyways! The culprit has to be someone living right around here!"

"Stop making excuses like a rattling bajaj engine!" Pak Slamet chimed in, tossing fuel onto the fire. "Just last night I saw Badrun hauling a giant fluffy object around on his cart at midnight!"

Badrun, the accused neighborhood trash collector, immediately shoved his way to the front, raising both hands in self-defense. "As God is my witness, Mr. RT, Cak Edi! I do pull my cart at night, but it's packed with old instant-noodle cartons, not fluffy mattresses meant for secret affairs!"

The grand town hall meeting, which had started out as a serious discussion on environmental infrastructure, devolved in record time into a full-scale neighborhood gang war. The mothers began screeching accusations and spinning wild conspiracy theories, while the wannabe tough-guy husbands puffed out their chests as though preparing to start a street riot.

Bagas gently tugged on Mum's sleeve. "Mum, let's just go home. This isn't a drainage inspection tribunal—it's an Olympic-level talent show for bored people with too much emotional baggage."

"Hold your horses! Mum needs to know who the criminal mastermind behind this heinous foam mattress is!" Mum argued back, her eyes locked intensely onto the screaming match raging in the center of the bridge.

The debate grew scorching hot as wildly misplaced accusations specifically targeted the rival grocery store next door.

"Face it, stop shifting blame! The culprit is definitely our business rival from down the block, desperately jealous of Barokah Jaya's daily turnover!" one of Mum's most loyal regular customers yelled out provocatively.

"Hey, keep my shop out of this! Looking for a fight, huh?!" snapped the rival store owner, who happened to be watching from the front row.

Within seconds, a savage verbal war erupted atop the small bridge. Mutual insults, flying middle fingers, and projectiles began trading places. At the climax of the fury, a stressed-out resident snatched a piece of fried banana from a passing street vendor's plate and hurled it straight at his opponent's face.

Slap! The batter-coated banana peel landed squarely across Cak Edi's brow.

"Oh, you actually had the nerve to throw a banana peel at my face! Take this!" Cak Edi growled in blind rage, firing a rotting tomato back toward the group of screaming mothers.

Total chaos unfolded. Villagers began shoving one another across the aging, termite-riddled wooden bridge.

Bagas watched the escalating disaster with creeping dread. His eyes accidentally drifted toward the forehead of one of the men screaming the loudest in the thick of the mob—Pak Harun, a next-door neighbor standing squarely on top of the main bridge planks.

Bagas’s heart violently stopped. Hovering above Pak Harun's head, glowing neon red, the translucent lifespan digits had hit rock bottom:

000:00:00:01000:00:00:00

Zero seconds?! Bagas shrieked hysterically inside his head.

"Mr. RT! Pak Harun! Stop fighting on the bridge! The structure's going to collapse!" Bagas screamed in sheer panic, waving his arms wildly as he tried to plow through the frenzied mob.

Yet, Bagas's frantic warnings were entirely drowned out by the roar of public insults and Mr. RT's megaphone blaring away.

At the exact second the numbers on Pak Harun's head hit absolute zero, the residents' argument reached its violent peak. The entire crowd surged collectively toward the right side of the bridge.

Creeeak... Crack... Crash!

The sharp shriek of splintering ancient timber tore through the air. The wooden support planks of the bridge over the main drainage canal snapped instantly under the crushing weight and shifting momentum of dozens of fighting villagers.

"Aaaaa!" the crowd shrieked in blind terror.

Mr. RT, Pak Harun, and several neighbors standing in the front row toppled backward in unison, plunging into freefall, and then—

Splash!

They crashed squarely down into the murky, pitch-black canal filled to the brim with thick sludge and plastic waste—striking the water precisely at the microsecond the doomed resident's countdown hit absolute zero.