The large chain store loomed at the end of Church Lane, a monument of bland efficiency. It was a carbon copy of every other one in the city, a triumph of corporate cloning. Its vast, soulless facade of blue and white panelling seemed to absorb the fading evening light rather than reflect it.
The car park was a chaotic ecosystem of its own, overfull and simmering with low-grade frustration. Battered sedans and hulking SUVs circled like sharks, their drivers' faces pinched with a special kind of annoyance reserved for stolen parking spots and overflowing trolleys. The air was thick with the smell of hot tarmac and exhaust fumes.
Stepping through the automatic doors was like crossing a threshold into a different atmosphere. The air was artificially chilled and carried the faint, synthetic scent of disinfectant and baked bread. The true king here was the light, a relentless, brilliant fluorescent glow that bleached colour from faces and cast no shadow, leaving nowhere to hide. It was a light designed for surveillance and sterility, not for comfort.
And the cameras were everywhere. Not just the obvious domes blinking in the corners, but smaller, subtler lenses tucked between promotional displays and nestled in the shelving units. Their unblinking glass eyes tracked every movement, every hesitation, every reach for a product. A silent, omnipresent army ensuring the sanctity of the goods. The unspoken message thrummed in the air like the store's own hum: Let a hungry family try to steal from the ultra-rich who own this chain. Let them try.
It was the most security I'd seen all weekend, and it wasn't to protect people, but property. The injustice of it was a cold stone in my stomach, a stark reminder of which world truly valued what.
I moved through the store's sprawling aisles like a sleepwalker, a ghost in the machine. My trolley wheel had a faint, maddening squeak that marked my progress through a landscape of manufactured desire. I was a zombie, shambling from one brightly coloured promotion to the next.
Slogans screamed at me from all sides. "BUY ONE GET ONE FREE!" a garish yellow sign promised, as if acquiring twice the amount of processed food was a path to enlightenment. "A LIFE CHOICE!" declared another, positioned above a wall of identical-looking cleaning products. The most galling was a serene, turquoise banner over the health food section: "BE THE PERSON YOU WANT TO BE." The implication was clear: sell your soul for the right brand of oat milk and artisanal crackers, and you, too, can achieve self-actualization. It was all a transaction. Authenticity, health, happiness, all reduced to a barcode. Sell your soul, and you get to eat cornflakes.
Every item I lifted from the shelf and placed in my basket felt heavier than it should, weighed down by a creeping dread. The price tags seemed to mock me, the numbers visibly larger than they were just last week. A loaf of bread, a block of cheese, a packet of mince, each one a smaller portion for a higher cost, a quiet, constant theft of dignity.
All around me, other blank-faced souls performed the same ritual. We were a congregation of the disconnected, our trolleys our only confessionals. Our eyes never met, never dared to linger. It was an unspoken rule, a survival tactic in this fluorescent purgatory. To make eye contact was to risk acknowledging the shared, silent despair, to see our own hollow reflections in a stranger's eyes. So, we kept our gazes fixed on the endless rows of products, navigating the aisles in a lonely, shuffling ballet, forever close, forever alone.
Humanity would break through the cracks of this petty life. When my trolley was full and my spirit could take no more of the fluorescent purgatory, I allowed myself to be swept into the current of the flock, all of us herding towards the promised land of the exits via the purgatory of the cash registers. But the promise was a lie.
A scene of pure, simmering chaos greeted us. A huge backlog of customers had congealed into an immovable mass of frustration and shopping carts. The cause was immediately obvious: every single self-service till stood dark and silent, their screens blank, a wall of dead technology. The store's lifeline had been severed. In their place, only two manned checkouts were open, their lights a pathetic beacon in the storm. The two cashiers, a young man with a haunted look and a woman with deep-set tired eyes, moved with a frantic, mechanical speed, but it was a losing battle.
The crowd, packed tightly in the confined space, was getting hotter and more impatient by the second. A low, angry murmur began to rise, punctuated by sharp sighs and the aggressive rustling of plastic bags. Then the comments started, snide and venomous, spoken just loud enough to be heard.
"See this?" a man in a flat cap muttered to his wife, jerking his head towards the young male cashier fumbling with a barcode. "Youth of today. No idea what a proper day's work is."
"Probably on his phone all night," she sniffed in reply.
A woman behind me, clutching a single bottle of wine, glared at the other cashier. "Come on, love, it's not rocket science," she hissed under her breath. "Useless. Can't they find staff who can actually think?"
The insults were a low-hanging poison: "That idiot girl." "Doesn't have a clue." "They just don't want to work."
Every single comment, every ounce of seething resentment, was aimed directly at the two helpless, minimum-wage staff who were quite literally killing themselves to stem the tide. Not a single word of anger was directed at the faceless, multi-billion-pound chain that owned the shop, the entity that had designed this fragile system, understaffed it to the bone, and left its frontline workers to face the fury when it inevitably broke down. We were a pack of animals, snapping at the closest, weakest target, while the real predator watched from a distant, air-conditioned office.
I was about three customers back from the front, close enough to feel the heat of collective frustration, when everything ground to a complete halt. A deathly silence fell over our queue, broken only by the sound of a vicious, middle-aged man leaning over his trolley, scolding the cashier for the inconvenience. "What's the hold-up now? It's not exactly difficult, is it? Just scan the items!"
The woman at the till, her name badge read Michelle, was frozen. Something was wrong with her till. She sat there in her cheap, store-issued uniform, a thin, tight-fitting blue dress that looked more like a punishment than clothing, staring at a frozen screen. Her fingers, which had been a blur moments before, were now poised uselessly over the keyboard. She began hitting buttons frantically, a desperate, staccato rhythm that produced no result but a series of angry error beeps from the machine.
My eyes, along with everyone else's, were locked on her. I saw the worried blush creeping up her neck, staining her cheeks a blotchy, embarrassed red. I saw the way she bit her lip, her shoulders hunching as if trying to make herself smaller against the wave of silent hostility.
And that's when I saw her face. Really saw it for the first time.
It was Meki.
But it was a Meki I had never seen before. This wasn't the fierce, boyish, loud-mouth rebel, full of themselves and brimming with life. The sharp, intelligent glint in their eyes was gone, replaced by a glassy sheen of panic. The confident set of their jaw was slack with fear. This was a shaking, vulnerable, scared girl, trapped in a blue dress and a nightmare, their brilliant mind completely short-circuited by a stupid machine and the cruelty of strangers.
My heart slammed against my ribs. A violent, protective instinct surged through me. I wanted to vault over the conveyor belt, to put my body between them and this angry flock. I wanted to smash the till, to take their hand and lead them out of this fluorescent hell.
But my feet were rooted to the spot. How? How could I help this brilliant human in a world I did not understand? What was the protocol for this? There was no algorithm to hack, no drone to knock from the sky, no dark alley in which to disappear. Here, in the brutal daylight of capitalism, I was as powerless as they were. I could only stand there, a ghost in the queue, watching my fearless friend shatter into a million pieces, completely unable to put them back together.
With a jarring beep, the problem was solved. The screen flickered back to life, and a collective, grudging sigh passed through the queue. The line lurched forward again to the sound of muttered, "About time," and "Finally." The brief pause had only concentrated their irritation.
And then, suddenly, there was no one left between us. I was face to face with Meki, with Michelle.
They looked up, their face a carefully blank mask ready to deliver the store's mandated greeting. "Hi, I'm Michelle, how can I help?"
Our eyes met.
The script shattered. The professional veneer cracked, and for a split second, I saw the raw, unguarded shock within. Their breath hitched.
"Nim-" they started, the name a desperate, aborted syllable. Panic flared in their eyes. They looked around, as if the walls themselves were listening, and their gaze snapped back to me, the mask slamming back into place, but now strained and brittle. "-nice weather," they finished, the words a nonsensical, robotic substitution.
My heart was a frantic drum against my ribs. I leaned forward slightly, my voice dropping to a whisper meant for them alone, a secret passed in plain sight. "Meki."
I got no response. It was as if I'd spoken to a stranger. Their shoulders stiffened, and their hands, which had been trembling moments before, now moved with a frantic, mechanical efficiency. They snatched my items from the basket, scanning them with violent swipes, their focus entirely on the beeping of the machine, on anything but me. The silence between us was screaming.
Finally, the last item beeped. They stared at the till's screen, refusing to meet my gaze.
"Cash or card," they stated, their voice flat and cold as polished steel. Then they paused, and their eyes flicked up to mine, just for an instant, filled with a complex storm of shame, defiance, and a plea for understanding. "Sir." The word landed like a slap. There was a cruel, deliberate emphasis on it, a bitter weaponization of the very gender performance I knew they despised. It was both an accusation and a desperate attempt to rebuild the wall I had just seen crumble.