When the Lights Remember You Later

Chapter 30 – When the Lights Remember You Later

Evening decided to be theatre. The first thunderline walked across the sky over Geylang like someone dragging a chair. Windows answered with their metal voices; laundry made the soft applause of shirts reconsidering wind. Aleem checked the sockets with the absent competence of a man raised by aunties who treat storms as exams: kettle charged the flask, phones at polite capacity, torchlight where torchlight belongs. On the fridge, his mother’s note in neat teacher script: Auntie Lila’s mahjong – likely overnight. Flask filled. Candles in second drawer. Wipe stove. A single smiley, rationed like good vanilla.

A: Lobby. Umbrella apologetic but committed, the text read.

Aleem: I’m at the gate–blue mat, two plants acting like they pay rent, he replied, stepping into the corridor where rain rehearsed a memory of childhood power cuts. He held the grill open and, for a second, the corridor smelled exactly like 1999–wet concrete, mothballs, fried shallots from a neighbor deciding that rain means soup.

Aoi came around the corner the way professionals approach stages: choosing the room before it can choose them. Long sleeves, trousers that forgave kneeling to rescue a dropped spoon; hair tied back as if knives might be present. The navy umbrella made space for both of them without arguing about hierarchy. When she reached him, she did the small tilt that says thank you for the doorway.

“Good evening,” she said, vowels warmed by weather.

“Good evening,” he answered. “We’re hosting thunder. We will be boring on purpose.”

“Our house dialect,” she said, smiling.

They did the choreography of shoes, towels, and the tea tray that had passed down three kitchens without losing its manners. He poured hot water from the flask into a pot that had learned the shape of their hands. The auntie‑faced herbal tea from JB waited with the patience of a sachet that trusts relationships to ripen. He cut the packet and let the water darken to the color of advice.

“Rules?” she asked, a ritual even a storm cannot cancel.

“No photos. Phones for time if needed. We sit near the window but not too near. If the storm needs quiet, we give it the floor. Proceed by invitation.”

“And we keep no clothed in gratitude,” she added, the new sentence already part of their furniture.

“Filed,” he said.

They took the sofa like citizens, not protagonists. The rain escalated its argument with the city and then took a breath like a good storyteller. Lightning stitched briefly in the distance. A lorry in the carpark made the valiant attempt to reverse into a space that didn’t really exist. Evening decided to smell like wet frangipani and bravery.

“May I–” Aoi began, palm half‑raised, when the flat exhaled the sound every Singaporean recognizes: a hush too complete, the hum of appliances snipped like a thread. The ceiling fan shut its eyes. The radio flickered and moderated itself into silence. The corridor picked up, in exchange, the soft tok tok of neighbors opening doors to discuss electricity like a community project.

“Blackout,” he said, voice already in the key people use for infants and thunder.

“Blackout,” she echoed, unafraid. “We have candles?”

“Second drawer,” he said, quoting the note, and fetched two stout tea‑lights and a jar that once held kaya and now specialized in moonlight. He lit them with the matchbox his mother kept for scent sticks and the occasional power outage. The flame remembered its job. The room changed shape the way faces do when they remember a joke.

Aoi watched the first candle take, then the second. “May I turn off all other should‑be lights?” she asked, amusement in the grammar.

“You may,” he said. She padded to the kitchen, switched off things already off like someone closing the eyes of a sleeping house out of courtesy, and returned with the kettle’s lid tilted to let steam out while steam existed. The tea had turned the color of old wood. Candlelight made its own syllabus on the wall.

“This is the right kind of cliché,” she observed, sitting again. “We behave as if cameras were invented to ruin it, so we do not invite them.”

“Archive clause respects us,” he agreed. “Hands can be nouns later. Tonight we let nouns be nouns.”

Outside, a neighbor tested the switch and said “aiyah” in a way that comforted everybody. The emergency lights along the corridor invented a new definition of green. Somewhere downstairs, a child asked if thunder eats clouds. Rain answered by negotiating the rate at which it wished to speak.

They drank the herbal experiment. It tasted like friendly roots and the kind of bitterness reserved for good medicine and disappointing novels.

“Approved,” she said, after the second sip. “It tells the stomach to unclench without writing a memoir.”

“House dialect,” he said. “We keep it in the pantry grammar.”

They sat close without declaring it. Candle smell threaded the room with wax and discipline. He could see the candles reflected in the window as if there were a second apartment across the void deck copying their night.

“May I… ask the question that is also a plan?” she said, palm up between them, not touching the air that belonged to both.

“Please.”

She placed her hand gently against his, flat–no lacework. Two taps; one hold. Here. Stay. Her thumb traced the slow circle they had named question. Then she lifted her other hand and, without crossing the room her body occupied, tapped her own cheekbone twice–the signal their archive had invented. “Request,” she said softly. “If now is a good now.”

He felt the bench inside his chest take its place like furniture that has been waiting for the right wall. He set his free hand on his thigh, stable, then lifted two fingers to her cheekbone in mirror, not touching yet. “Yes,” he answered in the grammar they were making. “We proceed by invitation.”

Her eyes asked a final adult question–still yes?–and he nodded once, the smallest hinge. She leaned in as if the candle had issued a stage direction, not quickly, not hesitating either, and put her mouth to his in a kiss that understood rooms: warm, not greedy; present, not proof. It lasted exactly the length of two in, hold, three out. In the corner of his mind, he made a small note that their breath had chosen to agree in that count without rehearsal.

They parted a few centimeters, which is the distance gratitude prefers. The rain continued without voting. A neighbor laughed in the corridor like a punctuation mark.

“Okay?” she asked, the strongest word in their language.

“Okay,” he said, and meant more than okay, and also not rushing. He lifted his hand and touched the angle of her jaw in the way he had once wiped chili from her cheek–enough to honor, not enough to demand. “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” she returned, because gratitude is a duet.

They rested in the good silence–the one that feels like a librarian turned the page for you. Candle shadows moved their furniture across the wall. The flat critiqued thunder by vibrating politely.

“May I ask for… another?” he said, two fingers hovering a respectful inch from her cheekbone, making sure the question wore its uniform.

“You may,” she said, and leaned again, letting this version be slightly braver, the way the second performance in a run always learns from opening night. His hand learned the back of her neck with the literacy of someone who reads slowly on purpose. Her hand found his shoulder and stayed there like a permission slip.

When they paused, she laughed once, a small sound, not because it was funny but because relief sometimes chooses laughter and nobody should scold it. “We are usable,” she said.

“Correct,” he replied. “We wrote instructions.”

The blackout made time behave nicely. Tea refilled itself in the way pots do when adults who like each other refuse to be dramatic about being helpful. He sliced two pieces of kueh lapis from the Tupperware labeled layers / bravery with a butter knife that had spoken Malay in another kitchen. They ate with fingers because the lights were off and because fingers are occasionally the most dignified cutlery.

“May I add an amendment to the Archive Clause?” she asked, wiping a crumb from her lip with deliberate slowness that seemed to make the candle proud.

“Please.”

“Kiss requests are captioned and reversible, we wrote. Tonight I propose: After is care.”

“Yes,” he said, as if voting, which he was. “After is tea and checking and… wiping the stove.”

She grinned at the last one. “Your mother understands romance.”

“She does,” he said. “She wants floors to be safe for future decisions.”

“Correct,” Aoi said gravely, and they toasted with teacups to the patron saint of clean kitchens.

Thunder chose a new script for a while–less opera, more percussion; flickers showed the emergency lights testing self‑esteem along the corridor. From somewhere downstairs came the municipal smell of a generator waking up like an uncle from a sofa nap.

Aoi turned her face toward the window and then back to him. “I used to think blackouts were… dangerous,” she admitted. “Not because of light, but because of what happens when people think rules go dark too.”

He let the thought sit on the table. “In this house,” he said, “rules glow in the dark.”

She nodded, the kind of nod that gets stored. “Yes. Archive, museum, cupboard, stove. Bench.” She hesitated a beat. “May I sit… closer?”

“You may,” he said. She inched, not slid, and their shoulders confessed familiarity. He set his palm open on the cushion between them where it could be taken or ignored. She took it.

They kissed again–not to notch a count, but because the mood asked politely. He learned the geometry of her mouth the way you learn a commute that you intend to use for years: turns, pauses, signals. When he incurred the temptation to think in metaphors, he sent himself back to body: heat, breath, the honest weight of a hand. It was enough.

When they parted, she rested her forehead against his cheekbone–an echo of the earlier signal–and exhaled a sentence without vowels. He understood it anyway: thank you for not being a storm.

“You make the room kind,” he said into her hair, which smelled like shampoo that had never auditioned for fame.

The corridor ran a test: lights blinked once, twice–no; then yes. The fan stirred like someone remembering a name, then fell still again. From three floors up came the sound of aunties discussing circuit breakers in four languages with one shared agenda. A cat announced that it had won an argument with a lizard and demanded recognition.

“May I teach you a very unromantic skill?” he asked, reaching for the small fuse box near the door.

“Please,” she said, eyes bright at the prospect of practical magic.

He explained the rows, the main switch, the little toggles that needed to be in the same mood to make anything happen. “We don’t touch,” he said, “until SP Group says so. But if a trip happens for a house reason, this is the prayer book.”

She looked as if someone had given her a map of a city she already liked. “I love pragmatic theology,” she said. “We will not worship the switch, but we will respect it.”

“Filed,” he said. “House dialect.”

At some hour that doesn’t need a number, the power returned with the shy confidence of a person late to a party but carrying cake. The fridge hummed back into employment; the fan stretched its wings and spoke its old rain. The emergency lights in the corridor released themselves from responsibility with the relief of civil servants after a long meeting.

They did not rush to switch on every light. Candlelight had not finished its lecture. They let it wrap up on its own schedule. He pinched the wicks closed with wetted fingers like a person who has done this in several houses. Smoke wrote its cursive for a second and then took the window’s hint.

“Before I go,” she said, voice sufficiently awake to count as intact, “may I check something personal?”

“Please.”

“If any of this”–she flicked two fingers gently between them–“ever asks for more room than we have, promise me we will say later and mean it.”

“Yes,” he said. “We keep maybe holy and no clothed in gratitude.”

She nodded, relief the size of an almond. “Thank you. Archive keeps us honest.”

“My paper museum likes company,” he said. “It will require a new square.”

“Two,” she corrected, smiling. “Kisses are requests. And after is care.”

He saluted the additions with the seriousness of a man who intends to file them immediately.

At the door, shoes had dried into good citizens. The corridor’s usual fluorescent mood had returned; rain was now weather rather than plot. She lifted her palm–flat–two taps; one hold; three light taps.

“Here,” she said. “Stay. Air.”

He returned them, then raised two fingers to his own cheekbone in the motion that had brought the evening to its correct punctuation. “Thank you for now,” he said. “We will remember it as small and right, not proof.”

“Small and right,” she echoed, and tilted forward once more for a kiss brief enough to be a courtesy, generous enough to be a promise.

They bowed–earned, finite, correct. She left with an umbrella that no longer needed to apologize to wind.

He washed the two cups because a sink left messy is a policy violation. The fan resumed its repertoire. He opened the locker door’s paper museum, the squares looking back like colleagues who had stayed late voluntarily.

Respect. Distance. Gratitude.
Approval, always.
Public first, always.
Rest is allowed.
Feed people first.
Don’t be the wind.
Hold the room steady.
Small is brave.
Credit small; safety large.
We will be boring on purpose.
Be the bench.
Proceed by invitation.
Listen with hands.
Signals are kindness.
Check in, don’t guess.
Choose together.
Soup can be policy.
Umbrella is a duet.
Archive, not feed.
Bookmark, not rush.

He cut three new squares from the corner of a calendar that had given up on pretending months are the point and had decided to become a source of labels for a life.

Kisses are requests.
After is care.
Rules glow in the dark.

He slid them under Proceed by invitation and above Be the bench, then pressed the tape with his thumb the way you press a seal into wax. The stack settled–a small thrum only paper knows how to make.

His phone chimed once.

A: Home. Lights remembered us later. Thank you for keeping no* dressed and now small. Herbal tea passed exam.*

Aleem: Home. Paper museum updated. Candles returned to drawer with honors. Thank you for the question and the grammar. Two in, hold, three out.

A: Two, hold, three. Good night.

He lay on his side facing the wall that had memorized his breath. The fan practiced rain. Outside, the block collected itself after drama like a teacher straightening chairs. Somewhere a cat forgave a lizard. Somewhere an auntie wrote Circuit breaker ok in a family chat with three stickers and the satisfaction of a problem solved.

Inside, a room that had learned its rules kept them without needing an audience. He counted–not magic, structure–and let small and right be big enough.

Respect. Distance. Gratitude.