"Mum... Rara... There’s actually a huge secret that Big Bro has been half-killing himself to hide from you guys..." Bagas's voice shook violently, hot tears spilling down his cheeks as tension peaked inside the living quarters of Barokah Jaya Convenience Store.

Following the high-voltage cable incident that had nearly claimed Mum's life earlier that morning, Bagas could no longer stall. He slumped miserably on the wooden floor of the living room, looking back and forth between Mum and Rara, who stood frozen in place demanding an explanation.

Mum crossed her arms over her chest, eyeing Bagas with a single raised eyebrow. "What secret now, huh? Don't tell me you're about to confess that you're the one who stole the three-kilogram LPG gas tank from the back storage room all this time?!"

"It's not about the gas tank, Mum!" Bagas cried out in frustration, wiping away his tears with the sleeve of a t-shirt featuring a massive hole under the armpit. "This is way crazier than a gas tank! This is about... about all of our remaining lifespans!"

Rara furrowed her brow, taking a step forward while clutching her pen and accounting ledger like an independent investigator. "Remaining lifespans? What on earth are you talking about, Big Bro? Don't try to direct a K-drama soap opera at the crack of dawn. My vocational school classes start in a few minutes!"

Bagas took a long, shuddering breath, gathering his last shreds of courage to expose the absurd curse that had been tormenting him for weeks. "Listen to me very carefully! Ever since last week... my eyes suddenly started seeing transparent numbers floating over everyone's heads!"

Mum and Rara fell silent for a beat. The atmosphere in the living room grew deathly still before finally—

"Hahahaha!" Mum burst out in a loud laugh, slapping Rara’s thigh. "Did you hear that, Ra? Your brother says his eyes can see transparent numbers! Oh, wow, classic! This is what happens when you eat too much instant noodle mixed with raw, spicy seblak paste at midnight—you start hallucinating on a god-tier level!"

"So true, Mum!" Rara chimed in, joining in with mocking laughter as she scribbled something down in her notebook. "Medically and psychologically speaking, this symptom falls under acute visual delusion caused by a severe lack of fresh air and spending too much time horizontal on the bamboo cot."

"I swear on my life this isn't a delusion, Mum! Rara!" Bagas protested hysterically, nearly grabbing handfuls of his own hair. "I am not lying! Those numbers are remaining lifespans—alias death countdown timers! Yesterday I saw the numbers above the RT Head's head, Mrs. Darmi's head, right down to late Mas Joko's head right before his near-accident! And worst of all... the numbers over the three of our heads right now are glowing in a blazing, bright red!"

Hearing Bagas mention death numbers, Mum's facial expression slowly twisted into a serious mask. She stopped laughing, then glared fiercely at her middle child. "Hey! Watch your mouth! What kind of nerve do you have telling Mum her remaining lifespan is almost up?!"

"I'm not making this up, Mum! Just look in the mirror, right above your head there's—"

"Just exactly what number is supposedly on Mum's head, huh?!" Mum cut in angrily, planting her hands on her hips with a chest heaving with suppressed emotion. "Don't tell me you're deliberately making up a short lifespan for Mum just so you can hurry up and snatch the convenience store inheritance, are you?!"

"I'm not trying to steal the inheritance, Mum! I swear on anything, the number really is super short!" Bagas defended himself in a blind panic.

"Short your left foot!" Mum snapped back, refusing to back down as she marched over to Bagas and aggressively poked him in the forehead. "Mum drinks herbal beras kencur tonic every single dawn, takes brisk morning walks around the village, and has a hobby of haggling over chili prices until the veins in her neck pop! How on earth could Mum's lifespan be short like a gecko that drowned in cooking oil?!"

"How am I supposed to know why the universe's system programmed those numbers, Mum?! Go file a complaint with destiny's customer service department!" Bagas whined in utter despair.

Rara, standing right beside them, stepped forward and tapped her chin with a mathematical professor's swagger. "Hang on a second, Big Bro. Let me audit your sanity and the accuracy of your theory using rational vocational-school math formulas."

Bagas turned hopeful eyes toward his sister. "Yes, exactly! Please explain it to Mum, Ra—universal mathematics is totally outside the laws of logic!"

"Based on the sample data you just provided..." Rara began tapping her pen against her ledger. "...you claim to see lifespan numbers. But according to basic accounting logic, human asset depreciation formulas cannot be manually calculated with the naked eye without a scientific calculator! Did you miscalculate the zeros, or did you misread the minus and plus signs the way Mum does when she counts grocery change?"

"Hey! Don't drag Mum into this!" Mum barked, shooting a lethal glare at Rara. "When have I ever miscalculated change?! I am meticulous, it's just that sometimes the customers are sneaky!"

"See, Mum? Even Rara doesn't believe me!" Bagas groaned in escalating frustration, slamming both hands flat against the floor. "I am talking about reality here, I'm not doing a stand-up comedy set at a hipster cafe!"

"Enough, already! This endless bickering is getting us nowhere!" Mum waved her hand dismissively, shutting down the absurd debate. "Instead of rambling and accusing Mum of having a short lifespan, why don't you go tidy up that stack of instant noodle cartons in the corner of the shop?! You're giving me a headache this early in the morning!"

Bagas stared in stunned disbelief. At a moment when he was risking his sanity and spilling tears to warn his family about a cosmic curse, their immediate response was to debate numerical accuracy as though it were a bookkeeping error in the store ledger!

"Mum... Rara... This is genuinely serious..." Bagas whimpered pitifully, preparing to press his argument further.

Yet, before Bagas's sentence could finish echoing in the room, a strange anomaly abruptly seized the entire house.

Chirp... chirp...

The noisy hum of traffic rolling down the main street outside the alley cut out completely within a single split second. The rattling old electric fan in the corner of the living room, spinning at top speed, suddenly ground to a dead stop without a sound.

And most terrifying of all...

Blesh!

Every single light inside Barokah Jaya Convenience Store, the bedroom lamps, and the streetlights illuminating the entire territory of Suka Maju Village went pitch black simultaneously. The house instantly plunged into a suffocating, absolute darkness.

"Huh?! Why did the power go out?!" Rara gasped in a tiny shriek, her hands sweeping across the table in the dark to hunt for her phone.

"Ugh, PLN is going too far! It's not even the end of the month yet and they're already pulling our meter!" Mum cursed angrily in the dark.

Bagas didn't join in the swearing. The hairs across his entire body stood rigidly on end. His heart hammered against his ribs like a sledgehammer. Because right in the middle of that pitch-black living room, a cold, sharp digital alarm tone—the exact same eerie hourglass chime from the bazaar yesterday—began ringing loudly and simultaneously from every direction, echoing straight through the walls and filling the inside of all three of their heads.

[ EMERGENCY WARNING: Negotiation time has expired. Mass destiny synchronization activated. ]

Bagas froze stiff on the dark floor, while Mum and Rara—who had just been busy debating numerical accuracy moments ago—now stood paralyzed in place, realizing that everything Bagas had just claimed... was an absolute, undeniable reality.