The Rule He Never Questioned

Chapter 1 — The Rule He Never Questioned

Singapore never truly slept.

Even past midnight, the city hummed in layers—traffic sighing across distant expressways, elevator motors pulsing through concrete ribs, the faint, consistent breath of air-conditioning that made every room feel like it was being held together by invisible hands. Aleem sat alone with his laptop open, the blue-white glow cutting a rectangle of light across his desk, across his forearms, across the quiet that he had learned to live inside.

A terminal window blinked at him, patient and indifferent. A block of code waited for the last line he had been postponing for an hour.

He had always been good at finishing things.

That was the problem.

On the right side of the screen, a notification floated up and faded—another photo in the group chat. Someone’s engagement dinner. Someone’s couple holiday. Someone’s hand holding someone else’s hand, ring catching the light like a small celebration. Aleem glanced at it, gave it nothing, and watched it disappear.

He told himself he did not care.

It was an old habit—pressing the lid down on feelings until they stopped rattling.

His fingers returned to the keyboard, typed a few lines, deleted them, typed again. The work was not difficult. It was clean. Predictable. If there was an error, it could be traced. If there was a failure, it had a root cause.

People did not.

He leaned back, exhaled slowly, and looked past the window.

The skyline outside was a museum of lights—neon and sodium glow, office towers and HDB blocks stacked like certainty. In the distance, the sky was a dark sheet pulled over the world, with no stars visible. Or maybe they were there, but the city did not allow them to be seen.

Aleem’s phone vibrated again.

This time, it was not the group chat.

The name at the top of the thread stopped his breath for half a second.

He did not open it immediately.

He stared at the screen as though the glass itself might hurt him.

When he finally tapped, the message was short—too short for the weight it carried.

It was polite. Gentle, even.

A clean ending.

A sentence that thanked him for being kind, for being understanding, for being a good person.

And then the final line that arrived like a quiet door closing:

She did not think she could give him what he wanted.

There was no accusation. No cruelty. No insult that would have let him raise his chin and walk away with pride.

Just the truth.

Aleem read it once. Twice.

Then he placed the phone face down on the table like a fragile object that might shatter if he kept looking.

He returned to his laptop.

The cursor blinked.

The city hummed.

His hands moved.

He completed the line of code.

When the build succeeded, the green text felt like a joke.

He closed the laptop.

In the sudden dimness, his room felt larger—an echo chamber where everything he had been holding back finally had space to breathe.

He stood, walked to the sink, drank water straight from the tap. The coldness should have helped. It didn’t. He splashed his face, watched the droplets cling to his cheeks, and stared at his reflection as though he were trying to recognize himself.

Late twenties.

A stable job.

Three years into his career as a software engineer at AMD.

Friends who trusted him, colleagues who relied on him.

A life that, on paper, looked like he was doing well.

But inside, he carried a quiet sentence that never left him.

I am never chosen.

He hated that thought.

He hated how it sounded like self-pity.

He hated that it had been true often enough for his mind to treat it like law.

He returned to his bed and sat down.

And that was when the past arrived.

Not slowly.

Not gently.

It arrived the way trauma always did—sharp, immediate, uninvited.

A face.

A laugh.

A name.

Almahirah.

He was eighteen again, standing under the sun outside a campus building, heart full and stupid and bright. She had been the kind of girl who made you feel seen when she wanted to. The kind of warmth that felt like safety.

In those early years, Aleem had trusted her the way some people trusted prayer—without negotiation.

He remembered her voice on the phone late at night.

Her tears.

Her apologies.

The way she made him feel necessary.

And then he remembered what came after.

The months where he waited.

The times she disappeared and returned.

The explanations that never added up.

The truth that finally surfaced—small and humiliating, delivered not with malice but with carelessness.

He had been her backup.

Her second string.

The one she kept close because it was comforting to know he was there.

Someone else had been chosen.

Someone else had been loved openly.

Aleem had been held in reserve.

When he thought about it now, it wasn’t even anger that flooded him.

It was the shame.

The kind that did not scream.

The kind that sank.

That betrayal had not only broken his heart—it had cracked his sense of worth. It taught him the terrible lesson that affection could be real and still not be enough to make you someone’s first choice.

And because Aleem’s mind was logical, because his instinct was always to build rules from patterns, he turned that experience into something he could carry.

A conclusion.

A shield.

A prejudice that did not feel like prejudice when it was wearing the mask of self-protection.

Malay Muslim girls… they will turn out the same way as her.

He did not say it out loud. He had never said it out loud.

But it lived in him.

It sat behind his ribs like a warning.

It made him suspicious of sincerity.

It made him flinch whenever someone looked too interested, too soft, too familiar.

It made him avoid the very thing he was.

And when his friends teased him about staying single, he smiled.

He let them believe it was choice.

He let them believe he was simply focused on career.

He let them believe he was waiting for the right person.

The truth was quieter.

He was waiting to stop being afraid.

The phone buzzed again.

This time it was a call.

“Aleem,” a voice said immediately when he answered, warm and plain like it always was. “You are awake, right?”

Malek.

Aleem leaned back against the headboard and exhaled. “It is past midnight. If you have lost your mind, please lose it quietly.”

Malek laughed, unbothered. “I knew you were awake. You always pretend you are asleep, but your soul is too loud to sleep.”

“My soul does not pay rent,” Aleem said, and surprised himself by hearing the faint edge of humour in his own voice.

Malek ignored the line like a practiced friend. “Did you eat?”

“I ate.”

“You ate what?”

Aleem hesitated.

Malek sighed dramatically. “You are a grown man with an engineering degree and you cannot feed yourself properly.”

Aleem could picture him pacing in his room, phone pressed to his ear, face full of expression like he was on stage.

“Malek,” Aleem said, tone warning.

Malek softened, the way he always did when he got close to the truth. “I am coming over.”

“It is late.”

“I am already on the way,” Malek replied, which meant he wasn’t.

Aleem closed his eyes briefly. “You are impossible.”

“That is why you keep me,” Malek said.

Twenty minutes later, Malek arrived with a plastic bag of food and the kind of energy that made the room feel less heavy. He dropped the bag on the table as though he was delivering a mission.

“Eat,” he declared.

Aleem stared at the containers. “You realise I have a fridge.”

“And I realise your fridge has sadness and maybe one bottle of water,” Malek replied.

Aleem could not argue.

They ate quietly at first—Malek talking about small things, work gossip, someone from their circle getting married, a funny thing that happened on the train.

Aleem nodded, responded when needed, let the conversation carry him like a river he did not have to swim against.

But Malek’s eyes kept returning to him.

Not judging.

Not interrogating.

Just… watching.

Finally, Malek set down his spoon.

“Aleem,” he said.

The shift in his tone made the air change.

Aleem did not look up immediately. “What?”

“You are not okay,” Malek said gently, “and you are very good at pretending you are.”

For a moment, Aleem felt the instinctive irritation rise—the old reflex to deflect, to joke, to dismiss.

But he was tired.

Tired of holding himself together like a careful stack.

He looked at Malek.

Malek’s face was serious now, softened by concern.

Aleem swallowed. “It is nothing.”

Malek’s expression did not change. “You have been saying that for years.”

Silence.

Outside, a distant car alarm chirped once and stopped.

Aleem stared at the food in front of him, no appetite left.

“The girl?” Malek asked.

Aleem did not answer.

But he didn’t need to.

Malek nodded slowly, as if confirming something he already suspected. “You liked her.”

Aleem let out a small breath that almost became a laugh but died halfway. “It was one-sided. It is always one-sided.”

Malek held his gaze. “You are speaking as if you are cursed.”

Aleem’s fingers tightened around his cup. “It feels like it.”

Malek was quiet for a moment. Then he said, carefully, “Maybe you are just choosing the same pain with different faces.”

The words hit in a place Aleem didn’t want to admit existed.

Malek continued. “You know what I think?”

Aleem lifted his eyebrows. “Here we go.”

“I think you have been running for a long time,” Malek said. “You tell people you are focused on work, and you are. But you are also hiding.”

Aleem’s jaw tightened.

“From what?” Malek asked softly.

Aleem wanted to say everything.

He wanted to say Almahirah.

He wanted to say the humiliation.

He wanted to say the way he could still remember being eighteen and thinking love was something that happened to good people.

Instead, he said, “I am tired.”

Malek nodded. “Then stop carrying it alone.”

Aleem looked away.

Malek leaned forward. “I am going for Umrah next month.”

Aleem’s eyes flicked back. “You told me.”

“I am telling you again,” Malek said. “Because I want you to come.”

Aleem’s first instinct was immediate refusal. “I cannot. Work is—”

“Work will survive,” Malek cut in, not harshly, but firmly. “You are acting like your heart is a side project.”

Aleem exhaled sharply through his nose. “Malek—”

“If you keep saying later,” Malek said, voice low now, “you will carry this into every later.”

Those words landed with the weight of truth.

Aleem’s throat tightened.

He didn’t want to admit how badly he wanted to leave.

Not to escape responsibility.

But to escape the version of himself that kept reliving the same endings.

Malek’s voice softened. “Come with me. Not to forget. Not to run from your pain. But to put it somewhere it can’t keep poisoning you.”

Aleem stared at him.

He remembered the Kaabah from photos, from documentaries, from the stories elders told. He remembered the idea of ihram, of stripping yourself down to intention.

He had not been stripping anything away.

He had been layering.

Defences.

Rules.

Avoidance.

And now he was tired beneath it all.

Malek waited.

Aleem finally asked, voice quieter, “Why are you pushing so hard?”

Malek’s eyes softened. “Because I know you,” he said. “And because I do not want your pain to become your personality.”

That sentence broke something open.

Not in a dramatic way.

Just enough for air to enter.

Aleem looked down at his hands.

He thought of the unread message from the girl today.

He thought of Almahirah years ago.

He thought of the rule he built to stay safe.

And he realized, with a clarity that made his chest ache:

The rule had protected him.

But it had also kept him alone.

“I will think about it,” Aleem said.

Malek raised an eyebrow. “No. You will decide.”

Aleem let out a small, helpless laugh. “You are relentless.”

Malek grinned. “Alhamdulillah.”

Later, after Malek left, Aleem stood in the quiet again.

He did not open his laptop.

He did not scroll.

He walked to the small corner where his prayer mat lay folded, unfolded it carefully, and stood.

The room felt still, as if waiting.

He lifted his hands.

Allahu Akbar.

He began.

And for the first time in a long time, his chest felt heavy in a way that didn’t feel like sadness alone.

It felt like truth.

When he went into sujud, forehead against the mat, he did not ask for a person.

He did not ask for love.

He did not ask for an answer that would soothe his ego.

He asked for something simpler.

Something deeper.

Peace.

Ya Allah… let my heart be clean again. Let me stop fearing what happened. Let me stop turning one wound into a whole life.

When he finished, he remained seated, palms open, breath slow.

He did not feel a miracle.

But he felt a quiet shift—like a door inside him loosening.

He picked up his phone.

His thumb hovered for a second.

Then he texted Malek.

I will go.

The reply came almost instantly.

Finally. I was about to drag you myself.

Aleem stared at the screen, and something in his chest warmed—not joy, exactly, but relief.

He placed the phone down.

He went to his wardrobe.

He began to pack.

Simple clothes.

A small toiletry bag.

His passport.

A copy of the umrah guide that Malek had sent earlier.

He moved quietly, like someone afraid the decision might disappear if he made too much noise.

When he was done, he stood by the window again.

The sky was still dark, still starless above the city.

But it looked wider than it had an hour ago.

Aleem whispered, almost unwillingly, “MashaAllah.”

Not as a performance.

Not as a line.

As a small confession.

This was not about Almahirah.

This was not about the girl who had ended things today.

This was about him.

And for the first time in years, he was doing something different.

He turned away from the window.

And in the quiet of his room, with a packed bag waiting by the door, Aleem made a promise to himself that sounded like both caution and hope:

He would not repeat the same mistake twice.