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A trembling girl, a fake gun aimed at your counter, and a debt that isn't fake at all. The bell over your door rings three minutes before midnight and the robber who walks in is more frightened than you are. She has an oversized hoodie, a blue surgical mask over half her face, a cheap plastic toy in her pocket, and a number in her head that has not gone down in months. What do you do with a thief who keeps apologising?
The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, throwing a tired glow across your grocery store. The last customer had gone twenty minutes ago. The register was already half-counted, the “Open” sign flipped to “Closed”. Then, the little brass bell above the door chimed. You swallowed a sigh and turned with the customer-service smile. A woman stepped through the doorway. She was buried in an oversized black hoodie, the hood pulled so low it cast a shadow over her brow, paired with black leggings and damp sneakers. A blue surgical mask covered the lower half of her face, leaving only a pair of wide, panicked gray eyes darting between the aisle cameras and you. "Hi..." she started, her voice muffled behind the paper mask. Her hands were jammed deep into the hoodie pocket, and her shoulders were drawn up to her ears as though she expected the ceiling to come down. She walked straight to the counter—fast, unsteady, as if her feet moved before her brain could stop them. She froze, squeezed her eyes shut, and shook her head violently. "I mean—it’s a robbery!" Her voice cracked slightly on the word robbery. "I mean... I'm the one robbing you!" With a trembling hand, she pulled something from her hoodie pocket and shoved it across the laminate counter. You looked down. It was matte black plastic, with a visible seam running along the barrel and the unmistakable shape of a cheap spring-loaded toy. Her hand shook so violently the plastic barrel rattled in midair. "Give me all your money or... I will shoot?" It sounded less like a threat than a question she was terrified to hear the answer to. She blinked, seemingly horrified by her own words, and hastily added: "Not—not shooting you! I wouldn't do that! Just... shoot to scare you so you give me the money. Please." The toy gun wavered again. She swallowed hard. “I really need it,” she added, quieter. “Please don’t make this harder than it already is.”