Krewville burst through the doors of the knitting store, his eyes wide with panic. He rushed to the glitter thread aisle, skidding to a halt. His worst fear had come true—the glitter thread was out of stock.
"No, no, no!" Krewville wailed, clutching his head in despair. "This can't be happening!"
His dramatic outburst echoed through the quiet store, drawing the attention of every shopper and employee. A middle-aged woman holding a basket of yarn sighed loudly, rolling her eyes. A teenage girl browsing the knitting needles muttered something about "knitting drama queens."
Krewville, oblivious to the growing annoyance around him, continued his tirade. "How am I supposed to finish my sparkly unicorn scarf without glitter thread? My entire project is ruined!"
A store clerk, a lanky young man with a name tag that read "Dylan," cautiously approached him. "Uh, sir, maybe you could try a different type of thread? We have some lovely metallic ones."
Krewville turned on him, eyes blazing. "Metallic? METALLIC? Are you out of your mind? The unicorn scarf demands glitter, not some second-rate shiny substitute!"
The other customers were getting visibly irritated now. A burly man in a flannel shirt muttered, "Just my luck to run into the King of Yarn Drama on my day off."
A woman with a baby stroller sighed and whispered to her friend, "People like him make me want to switch to crochet."
Krewville's meltdown showed no signs of abating. He sank to his knees in the middle of the aisle, hands outstretched to the ceiling. "Why, oh why, is the universe so cruel to me? Why must I suffer this indignity?"
It was at this point that the collective patience of the mall’s denizens reached its breaking point. The burly man in the flannel shirt took the lead, stepping forward with a look of determination. "Alright, that's enough."
He raised his hand and delivered a firm, yet not too hard, slap to Krewville's cheek. Krewville looked up, stunned, his dramatic sobs momentarily halted.
Then, to Krewville's utter shock, the teenage girl stepped forward, her hand twitching in anticipation. "I've been wanting to do this ever since you started yelling." She gave him a quick slap, and Krewville's eyes widened further.
The woman with the baby stroller handed her infant to her friend and approached with a smile. "This is for making my baby's first shopping trip a nightmare." Slap!