A Scary Encounter • 'It Was Terrifying'

A story my mother heard from her friend. I'm a respectable? aunt. And my mother had me quite late in life. So, with that in mind... My mother apparently worked in textiles (spinning yarn, weaving, making fabric?) continuously after graduating school. This must have been around the mid-Showa era. One of her friends worked the night shift (in the pleasure quarters), and she told my mother this story. 'It was terrifying.' Apparently, a customer of this friend's night job entrusted a box to her. Then, he left his seat and went somewhere. Curious, the friend quietly opened the box, and... I thought to myself, 'How did she manage to stay alive?' But what my mother's friend saw was... It was a black pistol🔫 inside the box, she said. After he returned, he pretended not to know or see anything, but she recounted that it was truly terrifying.