It’s mid-afternoon in NEPA Q-Mart, where the heat settles heavy between the tin roofs and the chatter, and the flies move slower than the vendors. Near the produce section—where the smell of overripe mangoes and damp cardboard lingers—a young man sleeps. He’s maybe nineteen. Slim. Shirt untucked.
Slumped on an old wooden beach chair. Behind him: a wall of bananas. Tall stacks—green ones at the bottom, ripening to sunburst yellow at the top. A few have spots. A few are falling. But he doesn’t stir.
This is not laziness. This is market sleep. The kind you take when you’ve been up since 3 a.m. helping Manang Lita unload sacks from the delivery truck, carrying boxes of lakatan, saba, and latundan from stall to stall, sweating through your only clean shirt.
Now it’s quiet. For a moment. A lull between customers. Between calling out prices and slicing tape with a rusted cutter. The radio plays softly in the background. A sari-sari store girl fans herself with a piece of cardboard. No one bothers the boy. He’s known. He’s earned this pause.
And when he wakes—maybe in five minutes, maybe when a customer yells—he’ll stretch, yawn,
pluck a bruised banana from the top, and start again.