Chapter 26 - One by One

Chapter 26: One by One

It wasn’t sudden.

Just gradual.

Like how seasons shift in Singapore—not through dramatic winds or falling leaves, but in the quiet realisation that you’ve stopped sweating through your shirt on the way to work.

ABIX stopped meeting as four.

Not because they stopped caring.

But because life, in its steady, unapologetic way, began to fill in the empty spaces.

Work got busy. Schedules misaligned. Saturday mornings became overtime. Sunday evenings became rest days.

They never chose to meet less.

It just happened.

Aleem & Ivan – Teh Peng & Trains

Their meetups were always the same. A nearby kopitiam. Two cups of teh peng. Work clothes loosened at the collar.

Ivan talked about signal failures and department bottlenecks. Aleem listened, occasionally adding something dry, something sharp.

They didn’t need small talk.

One time, Aleem mentioned—almost offhand—that he had started seeing someone.

Ivan didn’t blink.

“Good?”

Aleem nodded. “Yeah. It’s different. She’s… grounding.”

“Not surprised,” Ivan said. “You always ran on logic. You needed someone who lives in feeling.”

Aleem paused. Smiled faintly. “You say that like it’s a fact.”

“It is. I’m the analyst, remember?”

They clinked glasses in quiet understanding.

Isabelle & Crystal – Walks and Waffles

They liked meeting after Isabelle’s classes ended. Always in sneakers. Always under the sun.

Their walks had no destination. Sometimes they got waffles. Sometimes they sat under void decks, just watching aunties do tai chi.

Isabelle would talk about her students—how one kept spelling “alkene” as “alkeneh.” Crystal would laugh, then talk about her never-ending email threads and how “empathy is not scalable.”

They’d talk until the sky dimmed.

Once, in the hush between sentences, Isabelle said softly, “Do you think we’re still… us?”

Crystal looked up. “You mean ABIX?”

She nodded.

“We’re more us now,” Crystal said. “Just in pieces. But the pieces still fit.”

And Isabelle believed her.

Not Disappearing. Just Changing.

There were no more late-night study calls. No more group badminton. No more wild JB plans.

But there were one-on-one coffees. Voice notes. A random sticker from Crystal during office hours. A job listing Aleem forwarded to Isabelle “just in case.”

They had moved past the stage of needing to talk every day.

They had entered the stage of knowing the other was still there—even when they didn’t.

That was a different kind of closeness.

Less noisy.

But just as real.

A Quiet Moment Together Again

One rare evening, all four found themselves free.

They met at a void deck near Aleem’s place. No planning. Just a blanket on concrete, 7-Eleven snacks, and a Bluetooth speaker.

No one brought up the fact that this hadn’t happened in months.

Instead, they sat in a quiet semi-circle.

The moon hung low.

Someone played a song from the ABIX playlist.

And for those few hours, nothing else mattered.

Not work.

Not the partners waiting at home.

Not the people they were slowly growing into.

Just four friends.

Still here.

Still holding.