"Death numbers on my own head? What is Ki Jangkung even talking about? Don't give me the creeps halfway through the day!" Bagas protested half-shouting, jumping backward away from the local shaman.

Ki Jangkung didn't answer. Instead, he squeezed his eyes shut tight, chanting some nonsensical mumbo-jumbo while wildly swiping a rusted dagger through the air. "Shoo! Shoo! Begone, catastrophe-bringing astral entity! Take your curse away from my credible shophouse! Go consult the nearest psychiatric hospital instead!"

Feeling thoroughly kicked out by the fake shaman who had suddenly lost his mental composure, Bagas chose to spin on his heel and stomp out of the shophouse with a bitter, burning grudge. "Unprofessional shaman! The moment someone asks for genuine help, he assumes I'm looking for online black magic wealth scams. Damn it!" Bagas cursed all the way back down the narrow alley.

His head was spinning in circles as he replayed Ki Jangkung's words. Yet, Bagas's misery for the day was far from over.

The moment he turned the corner into his lane and caught sight of the scene unfolding in front of his house, Bagas's blood ran ice-cold. The atmosphere in front of Barokah Jaya Convenience Store had abruptly curdled into something deeply menacing.

Three bulky men wearing scruffy black leather jackets, dark sunglasses despite the dim afternoon light, and fierce faces with prominent jaws were aggressively surrounding the shop porch. One of them clutched a red plastic folder stuffed with paper billing statements, arguing fiercely with someone behind the rolling door.

Oh great, what illegal loan shark syndicate wandered into our shop this time? Bagas thought in a panic, quickening his pace.

The alpha loan shark—a bulky guy with a thin scratch scar slashing across his left cheek—slammed a small wooden table on the porch with a loud thud. "Stop making excuses, Ma'am! We from the field execution division of PT Pinjol Berkah Ilahi demand accountability! A debtor named Siska Melati is three months delinquent on her online loan installments, and her guarantor's address is registered right here at the coordinates of this shop!" the thug bellowed with a window-rattling roar.

From behind the half-opened rolling door, Mum emerged with absolute calm. The middle-aged woman didn't look intimidated in the slightest, despite standing face-to-face with three muscle-bound thugs whose mugs belonged outside an inter-provincial bus terminal extortion ring.

Instead of cowering, Mum stepped forward, hands planted firmly on her hips, brandishing an old coconut-cleaving machete whose blade was slightly dull but gleamed brightly from a lifetime of aggressive sharpening.

"Hey, you bored little collection boys!" Mum snapped sharply, fixing the trio with a withering look of pure contempt. "Read the sign above my door carefully! This is Barokah Jaya Convenience Store, not a charitable halfway house for credit-default fugitives! Who on earth is this Siska Melati? There are no Siskas here—only Bagas, my son whose primary job description is begging to be pelted with bricks!"

Bagas, who had just arrived, instantly ducked behind a telephone pole across the street, tracking the high-stakes drama with his heart hammering against his ribs.

The alpha loan shark sneered, crossing his thick arms over his chest. "Spare me the innocent act, Ma'am! Our app's algorithm never lies! This address is logged as the official legal domicile of the debtor's guarantor! If today the ten million rupiah debt plus interest isn't paid in full, we're going to have no choice but to impound the contents of this shop—starting with the gas cylinders, the instant noodle racks, and ending with the shrimp cracker jars!"

The two lackeys standing behind him immediately stepped forward, squaring their shoulders in a textbook threatening posture.

Mum didn't flinch by a single millimeter. She snorted loudly, then jabbed the tip of her machete straight toward the alpha thug's face without a shred of hesitation.

"Impound my shop, you said what?! You call yourselves a legal financial institution, yet you're stealing shrimp crackers and old soy sauce bottles?!" Mum shrieked at a pitch so high and piercing it visibly shaved off a layer of the thugs' bravado. "Where on earth did you guys study economics, huh? If you want to collect a debt, use your brains instead of resorting to cheap intimidation tactics! Your loan shark interest rates are strangling the working class, higher than chili prices during a drought!"

The alpha thug blinked rapidly, slightly blindsided by Mum's razor-sharp verbal counter-attack. "W-whoa, hold on a second, Ma'am! We're just executing corporate operational tasks!"

"Operational tasks your left foot!" Mum interrupted mercilessly, unleashing her ultimate, devastating negotiation technique. She marched straight toward the alpha loan shark, forcing the bulky man to reflexively take a step back in sheer terror as the machete blade caught the dim afternoon light. "Listen to me, you sweaty leather-jacket boys! If you actually want that ten million rupiah back, how on earth is anyone supposed to pay it in cash right now? You think money falls from the sky around here?"

"Then... then what do you suggest, Ma'am?" the alpha thug stammered, his voice suddenly pitching downward, entirely stripping away his tough-guy aura.

"Here is how we're going to play it so it's fair for both sides," Mum proposed in a voice that suddenly softened, shifting into the warm, honeyed tone of a neighborhood lottery chairwoman pitching Tupperware. She slid her machete back into its wooden hip scabbard. "We'll slash that ten-million-rupiah principal down to just five hundred thousand rupiah, payable in installments over fifty years, interest-free. Now, the monthly installments can be settled via a barter system: ten sacks of red sticky rice traded for empty mineral water jugs. Sound like a fair deal to you?"

The three debt collectors froze solid. They stared at one another with vacant, shell-shocked expressions, realizing that the laws of underworld accounting had just been utterly obliterated by Mum.

"That's not how this works, Ma'am... We're debt collectors, not inter-provincial barter merchants..." one of the lackeys whined in a pathetic voice resembling a toddler denied an ice cream cone.

Mum immediately glared at them, launching her ultimate weapon: the emotionally charged, motherly guilt-trip lecture.

"That's why you young men shouldn't spend your days wandering around shaking people down for money! Don't you remember your own mothers back in your hometowns, huh?! You came to the city looking for an honest living, and instead you wound up as digital thugs terrorizing moms at a local grocery store! When you stand before the angels in the afterlife and they ask you what you did, are you going to say, 'I spent my days collecting bad debts wearing a borrowed leather jacket, Oh Allah'—is that what you'll tell them?!" Mum ranted passionately, jabbing her index finger back and forth against the alpha thug's chest.

At the mention of mothers back in your hometown, the mental defenses of the three bulky thugs completely crumbled. The alpha loan shark abruptly smeared the corner of his eye with the sleeve of his leather jacket, while his two lackeys began sniffling softly, breaking down into full-blown, heavy-sobbing waterworks.

"Ma'am... why'd you have to say it like that..." the alpha thug sobbed brokenly, tears streaming straight over his sunglasses. "It... it makes me miss my mum back in the village who used to cook vegetable lodeh every single dawn..."

"There! Now you've seen the light!" Mum snapped fiercely, yet with underlying warmth. "Now get out of here, away from my shop! Take your garbage paperwork far away! If I ever see you dare come back here to chase the wrong address again, I'm putting a curse on your entire bloodline so you go sterile for ten generations!"

Without another thought, the three previously terrifying thugs spun around and bolted in sheer terror, running wildly while hugging one another and sobbing hysterically as they fled the Barokah Jaya yard.

Bagas, who had watched the entire cinematic spectacle from behind the telephone pole, could only nod in deep admiration while clapping softly. The real boss of Suka Maju is definitely my mum, Bagas thought in awe.

Yet, amid his astonishment, Bagas’s eyes inadvertently caught the alpha loan shark, who was sprinting the fastest at the front of the pack. A sudden wave of intense curiosity compelled Bagas to look toward the bulky man's forehead.

Bagas locked his focus, piercing the distance. His heart plummeted straight down into his shoes.

Floating above the alpha loan shark’s head, instead of the usual translucent lifespan numbers of a normal neighbor, the digits had morphed into a specialized digital countdown symbol flashing sharply in a blazing purple hue. The symbol emitted faint, laser-thin lines of light that connected in a straight path... matching the exact encryption pattern of the mysterious text message Bagas had received on his phone last night.

Bagas stood completely paralyzed, his entire body turning ice-cold. Those thugs... were clearly not ordinary debt collectors after all.