Begin As We Mean to Go On

Chapter 20 – Begin As We Mean to Go On

Singapore kept its promise about light. Late afternoon folded itself neatly along the buildings; shadows behaved like adults. Aleem stepped off the bus at Bras Basah with the tote that had downgraded itself from field kit to human kit–handkerchief, two pens that didn’t want attention, his wallet, a folded card in a thin sleeve in case words needed a home. No tape today. No mints. He’d left the metronome on his desk to teach himself that time could be trusted without a device.

He crossed Waterloo Street where incense made a clean sentence out of the air and aunties traded numbers with gods through joss sticks. The tea room he’d named in his head for weeks–quiet where glass learns to be kind–lived on the second floor of a shophouse that had agreed to be polite about its age. A sign at the stair said Shoes quiet. Voices kinder. He approved of being told what to do when what to do was gentle.

Upstairs, the door made the small bell noise he liked because it sounded like a decision, not a performance. Tables were wood that had passed exams. Cups did not try to photograph themselves. A row of plants on the sill practiced standing.

He was early by ten minutes on purpose. He took a seat where the window would do the lighting, not the ceiling. He rehearsed being ordinary.

A hand placed a menu gently on the table. “Welcome,” the server said, eyes doing the work of not reading him like a headline. “Hot or cold?”

“Hot,” he said. “Sencha for now. We might add something later.”

He waited without counting. When the door foxed the bell again, he did not look straight away. He had learned that interest could be kind without being greedy.

Aoi entered without a cap, the way weather enters rooms when it has earned the right. White shirt with sleeves rolled to show that wrists, too, were part of a person. A soft cardigan because Singapore insists on reminding visitors that we love air‑con more than common sense. She closed the door behind her like a sentence reaching its period, then took in the room with the small sweep of attention he’d seen her give to corridors and benches.

Their eyes found each other because eyes are well trained. She lifted a hand, not a wave, just the acknowledgement two people give when their shared noun is finally allowed to be specific.

“Good evening,” she said in English that had put its shoes on. “Thank you for choosing a room with… kindness.”

“Good evening,” he said. “Welcome to where light behaves.”

They bowed the small bows they had earned together and then sat across a table that felt correctly sized for a beginning. The server returned with water and two menus and the relief of someone who could tell these were people who had practiced being easy to serve.

“Tea?” Aoi asked, smiling at the pun the city always tried to make of itself.

“Sencha to start,” he said. “And later we can negotiate dessert like adults.”

She laughed the laugh of a person pleased not to be auditioning for charm. “Adults who eat cake,” she said. “I approve.”

The pot arrived in the sensible ceramic the shop favored. They poured for each other because this is how you teach cups to be civil. Steam wrote small essays they didn’t need to edit.

For a minute they let the tea do the talking. It set the tempo and the temperature. When the first sips had done the quiet work of landing them in the same hour, Aoi placed her palms on the table parallel to the rim of her cup–open, not insisting.

“I’m glad,” she said, “that we can… try this. With no office nearby. But with the rules we like.”

“Yes,” he said. “Public, ordinary, and ours.”

She nodded. “We make… a small agreement?”

“Please.”

Aoi counted with her eyes the way people do when they are setting furniture in a room they own for the first time.

“One,” she said. “No photos. No posts. Not of each other. Not of together. We remember how to keep things as memory, not content.”

“Agreed,” he said. “No content. Only contentment.” He made the smallest face at himself for the wordplay; she allowed it.

“Two,” she continued. “We speak about boundaries out loud, not by guessing. If something is difficult, we say.”

“Agreed,” he said. “No heroics of silence.”

“Three,” she said, the number carrying a weight it deserved. “We do not visit homes unannounced. We do not wait in places hoping. We ask and we schedule. We keep each other’s time… intact.”

“Agreed,” he said, grateful for the exactness. “Time is furniture. We don’t lean on it until it breaks.”

“Four,” she said, smile touching the edge of the word, “we will be boring on purpose.”

He raised his cup. “Our favorite rebellion.”

They drank to the terms the way adults drink to the possibility of not hurting each other by accident.

“Your turn,” she said, palms still open.

He kept his list small so the room could carry it.

“One,” he said. “We keep our work clean. If a project appears, contact stays through office. If a date appears, we keep it separate.”

“Yes,” she said, relief making the yes warm. “Work is a public bench. Love is… a chair in a kitchen.”

“Two,” he said, borrowing her rhythm, “we name the pace and keep it at the speed that lets us notice each other.”

She tilted her head. “Slow enough to hear breath.”

“Exactly.”

“Three,” he said, and this one reached the hinge, “we keep each other human. If the world tries to make us symbol, we say no.”

She didn’t speak right away. She picked up her cup, set it down, and let the silence mean something good. “Thank you,” she said. “I want to be a person with bad jokes and… laundry.”

“We can be those,” he said, and meant it with an affection that did not need italics.

The server came with small dishes of pickles and the promise of something sweet later. They ordered without dramatising choice: a sesame chiffon to split, a plate of fruit because restraint is also delicious.

They let conversation switch trains. Childhoods, but only the parts that didn’t demand violins. She spoke about a school gym that always smelled like varnish and summer; he told her about Kallang waves and how the uncle at his running route saluted the sun every morning as if it held his pension. She said her grandmother kept a drawer of handkerchiefs folded like origami; he said his mother ironed pillowcases to calm her brain. They traded these domestic trophies like stamps that had earned their postmarks.

“Tekong?” she asked gently, because the way he said slow enough to hear breath had carried a ghost.

“Tekong,” he said. “Night watch. A heartbreak that taught me the difference between being dramatic and being in pain.” He outlined the story the way you outline a coastline from a safe distance–the shape of it, not the storms. “Kai saved me from myself with karaoke and bad jokes. The group–Aurora9–gave me something to watch that didn’t make me worse.”

Aoi listened with the attention of someone who has learned that not interrupting is a gift. “Thank you,” she said when he finished. “For letting me know the edges.”

“Your turn,” he said, not as demand but as permission she could decline.

She nodded. “There was a year,” she said, “when quiet was… not chosen. It was the only thing I could carry. After, I learned to choose it. The work helped. The room helped. People who understood that ‘rest is allowed’ helped.” She looked at him the way people look at the place in a room where the bench belongs. “Your sentence helped.”

They let the bench of the table hold that for a minute. The chiffon arrived and let them practice sharing, which is a muscle and a religion.

“Favorite hawker food,” he said, letting the conversation step down a rung so their hearts could breathe. “No prestige answers.”

“Carrot cake–black,” she said without hesitation, then looked pleased with herself for choosing the right Singaporean thing. “And kaya toast at wrong times.”

“Correct,” he said. “And onigiri for buses.”

“Salmon,” she said. “Or umeboshi when feeling brave.”

“Umeboshi is courage,” he agreed. “We can inventory courage at 7‑Eleven later.”

A small hand gesture across the table, a question shaped like fingers: may I? He turned his palm up on the table, a public place. She set her hand on his knuckles for a count of three, then lifted it, the way you test a switch and find that the lights behave.

“Is this okay?” she asked anyway, because asking when you already did the thing is how you teach trust to rewind without resentment.

“It is,” he said, not performing the word.

They spoke about the days to come without trying to trap them into shape. Walks at Botanics when the city is still negotiating with heat. The museum on a weekday morning to look at a room where light takes its time. A hawker stall at Amoy where the queue teaches patience. He suggested the library on a Thursday lunch where he could leave a handout for strangers and she could sit with a book and not read it. She suggested the wet market where fish stare into the future with the dignity of philosophers, and he could pretend to like bitter gourd.

“Rules,” she said, laughing. “We text in the morning only if we have time. We do not write long paragraphs at midnight and then expect poems back.”

“Agreed,” he said. “We allow sleep to be a person in the room.”

They exchanged numbers by writing them on the folded card he had brought, not because phones were complicated but because hands needed to learn the shape of the decision. She wrote neatly and small, the way she dances. He wrote like a man who has filled many forms and wanted to respect the boxes.

“Do we tell anyone?” she asked, not worried, just adult.

“My mother will know before I speak,” he said. “I will speak anyway.”

“My manager will know because she knows everything,” she said, amused. “I will tell her something true: I had tea with a friend. We made agreements.”

They paid as citizens, not as story. They stacked cups into the tray because they are those people. The server, who had been kind without being nosy, said, “Come again,” in a tone that meant you did no harm here.

Evening climbed the buildings outside. Waterloo Street gave its usual performance of lottery dreams and aunties in sensible shoes. They walked down the stairs one after the other because staircases are narrow, then aligned on the sidewalk like people in a duet that doesn’t need to announce itself.

“Where shall we walk?” he asked, offering choices to the map between them.

“Past the temple,” she said, “and the bookstores that smell like recursion.”

“Bras Basah,” he said. “My aunties will be proud.”

They crossed with the crowd when the light suggested. At the Kwan Im Temple they let their pace respect the smoke and the hands and the faces that belonged to other stories. No photos. No commentary. Only walking, which is a way to say I see this with you without making it yours.

At Bras Basah Complex he waved at the paper shop auntie who had taught him card stock for handouts and she waved back as if he were a polite nephew. He bought a pencil because pencils are talismans for people who want to keep making small decisions. Aoi ran a finger along the spine of a used book with the tenderness of someone who likes that paper remembers hands.

“Bench,” she said, pointing toward a narrow one near the window that had opinions. They sat. They watched the rain pretend it might start and then decide dignity was better.

“This,” she said, not reaching for his hand this time, not needing to, “feels like a room I want to keep building.”

“Me too,” he said. “We can be the bench for each other.”

She turned the phrase in her mouth like a seed before planting. “Be the bench,” she repeated, and nodded as if the sentence had earned a square of paper.

They walked toward City Hall without trying to be cinematic. The evening bus sighed its relief at serving another day. A boy skateboarded badly in the open space and a girl told him to stop and then laughed when he didn’t. The city looked like it knew how to hold people being ordinary.

At the curb where their directions parted, they rehearsed leaving without making leaving dramatic.

“Next week,” she said. “Botanics. Early enough that the gardeners are bosses.”

“I’ll bring water and respect,” he said. “And a map that’s not a map.”

“Text the day before,” she said. “So sleep can plan.”

“Text the day before,” he echoed. “So shoes can prepare.”

They bowed–the earned kind, not deep, not brief, correct. Then she leaned in the smallest amount the world would allow and placed her hand over his on the strap of his tote, a touch measured in seconds and vowels.

“Thank you for… rooms,” she said, the sentence that had learned to be shorthand for everything.

“Thank you for sitting with pride,” he said.

She walked toward the MRT with the posture of someone who knows where trains will be. He turned toward the bus stop where commuters conduct the quiet orchestra of getting home. He did not look back because looking back turns rooms into theater and they were done with being watched.

On the bus, he sat by the window where light made a friend of his face. He did not check his phone because the new we did not need rehearsal by pixels. He watched the city do its end‑of‑day wash–hawker stalls packing down, teenagers negotiating for ten more minutes of outside, a cat threading its way between chair legs–and felt his chest perform the counts that had become his method for not turning hope into wind.

At home, his mother looked up from chopping vegetables and measured him with the tape no shop sells. “You ate cake,” she said.

“I shared,” he said. “Which is character development.”

She smiled without teeth, the fondness she saves for good news that doesn’t need a drum. “You like her,” she said.

“I like her,” he said, and didn’t have to explain which her. “We made agreements.”

“Good,” she said. “Don’t be the wind. Be the bench.”

“I know,” he said. “I wrote it down.”

He did. After washing his hands and straightening the fan to the setting that knows how to imitate rain, he opened the locker door and took out the small stack that made a museum of his intentions.

Respect. Distance. Gratitude.
Approval, always.
Don’t be the wind.
Rest is allowed.
Hold the room steady.
Small is brave.
Credit small; safety large.
We will be boring on purpose.
Be the bench.

He cut a new square from the corner of a calendar that had already loaned many corners to his future and wrote: Proceed by invitation. He slid it above Be the bench, under We will be boring on purpose. The stack thudded in his chest in the way that means agreement.

His phone, facedown, stayed facedown. The decision felt like a chair pulled out and waiting for someone to sit when they were ready.

He lay on his side facing the wall that had memorized his breath. Two in, hold, three out. He slept like a man who had taught a room where to put the quiet and had finally been invited to sit in it.

Respect. Distance. Gratitude.

Tomorrow would arrange itself. Tonight had learned how to begin.