Once You Stop Looking

Once You Stop Looking

“Once you stop looking for what you want, you’ll find what you need.”

–

The first year after she left, Haris lived by the glow of other people’s profiles.

He swiped in MRT tunnels and at red lights, in queues at kopitiams and during lunch breaks in the pantry, as if love might be unlocked like a promotion code. His phone became a lantern he carried through the dim warrens of the internet–blue light on skin, heavy eyes, thumb dragging north, heartbeat snagging whenever the app vibrated like a tiny promise.

He met strangers over oat lattes at Tiong Bahru cafés and hawker lunches at Maxwell. He went on walks at Bishan Park, took salsa classes in Bugis, joined a book club near Dhoby Ghaut, and attended a mosque youth circle at Masjid Sultan where everyone shared hadith and hopes. He tried rock-climbing, pottery throwing, even a language exchange where he introduced himself in halting Korean and someone laughed too hard at his accent. He told himself that action was antidote.

But the quieter truth nested somewhere deeper: he was not searching; he was running. From memory. From the night he found out. From the sour heat of betrayal that still pricked his skin in odd moments like a phantom sunburn.

At his HDB corridor in Punggol, the world felt steadier. Opposite his flat lived Yuna Lee and her mother–doors forever open, plants spilling across the railing: rosemary, mint, a lanky basil, succulents like small green moons. He and Yuna had grown up together in these walkways, two kids racing paper boats in monsoon drains, swapping snacks over a shared shoe rack. Somewhere along the way they had learned each other’s rituals: his dawn prayers, her late-night study sessions, his quiet after a loss, her way of knocking gently–three soft taps–whenever she sensed a storm.

“괜찮아?” she would ask, chin tilted, eyes bright. Gwaenchan-a? You okay?

“InsyaAllah,” he would say. God willing. He always added a smile he didn’t quite feel.

Tonight, the app pinged again while they waited for the lift.

“Another date?” she asked. Her voice was neutral. She was careful with him, the way she handled hot tteokbokki–patient, steady, knowing it could burn.

“Yeah,” he said. “Someone who likes cats and Korean dramas.”

Yuna nodded. “I hope she’s kind.” A beat. “Text me when you get home.”

–

His ex had not been unkind. That was the brutal part. She had been radiant and earnest and made lists with bullets shaped like stars. She had held his palm with a certainty that felt like religion. He thought, then, that goodness guaranteed loyalty. He mistook devotion for immunity.

The night he learned the truth, the city had seemed to tilt. He remembered the message, the unfamiliar name, the grainy photo that didn’t need high resolution. He remembered the metallic taste in his mouth and the way sound fell away, as if he had dived under water and could hear only his own pulse. He remembered thinking, stupidly, Maybe I deserved this. Maybe if I were more… And then the flood of more: more attentive, more romantic, more money, more muscle, more present, more everything.

Self-blame became a ritual. He recited it at bed-time. He swallowed it with breakfast. He wore it beneath shirts to work, ironed and invisible.

Yuna was the one who sat with him in that narrow space between grief and sense. No slogans, no demands. She brought him congee when his appetite fled, and orange slices for vitamin C as if heartache were a flu you could treat with citrus.

“네 잘못 아니야,” she told him, when he finally said aloud the terrible thing: It was my fault.

“It’s not your fault,” she repeated in English so he would not miss the nuance. “You can be responsible for your actions, Haris. Not for someone else’s betrayal.”

He shook his head. “If I had been better–”

“Better how?” she asked. “Define it.”

He had no answer. She waited. Silence stretched like a hammock; he lay in it, unstable but held.

–

Dates came and went. Haris took ferries to St John’s Island and posed politely in front of pastel walls in Joo Chiat. He listened to a woman explain cryptocurrency at a bar in Ann Siang Hill; he listened to another share five-year plans as if reciting a spell. Everyone was searching for something precise: a partner who hiked, a partner who did not drink, a partner who cooked, a partner who wanted kids by thirty-two, a partner who shared Excel sheets for groceries.

What he was really searching for had no bullet point. He wanted the feeling he had once held–two palms, one certainty. He wanted the obviousness of being chosen on purpose.

The apps made a marketplace of desire. He studied metrics: response time, reply length, emoji density. He developed game theoretical models for when to ask a second date. He optimized his profile: a picture under the Rain Vortex at Jewel, a shot in baju Melayu at Hari Raya visiting his aunties, a borrowed cat.

Sometimes he matched with someone who mirrored a past wound too neatly. If a date delayed texting back, his chest went tight as a fist. If someone forgot a promised call, nausea rose. Read receipts became a barometer; blue ticks could ruin a morning. He understood, distantly, that this was not love but vigilance. Trauma taught the body to guard against the future by punishing the present.

“Name the trigger,” Yuna said one evening on the corridor while the sky made bruises of its clouds. She had a small notebook open. Yuna always had notebooks. “Then name the belief under it.”

“The trigger is… she didn’t reply,” Haris said, embarrassed by the childishness of it.

“And the belief?”

“That I’m not important. That people leave when they get bored. That I’m easy to replace.”

She looked at him with the gentle gravity of old friends. “Can you test that belief?”

“How?”

“Find disconfirming evidence,” she said. “You’re an engineer; build a counterproof. Who stayed?”

He thought about it. His mother’s messages before dawn: Jangan lupa solat Subuh, sayang. Don’t forget to pray. His cousin who always drove across the island when the car died. His manager who covered his shift the day grief swallowed him bottom-first and wouldn’t spit him out. Yuna herself, the constant.

“You stayed,” he said, voice low.

“Of course,” she said, as if it were the easiest arithmetic in the world.

–

On Fridays, he prayed at Masjid Al-Muttaqin near his office, forehead against the soft carpet, the khutbah a steady river over his head. He asked for a heart that did not lurch at shadows. He asked to be grateful for what was present instead of anxious for what was possible.

Sometimes after work he would find Yuna at the waterway near the Punggol container park, closing her exercise ring on her watch. They would walk until the lamps blinked on and the air smelled of distant rain and roadside pandan.

“You don’t have to sprint,” she said once, when he told her about signing up for a speed-dating event he didn’t want. “You can just walk.”

“But what if I miss her?” he asked, the old panic rising. “What if she is also searching, and we pass each other like two trains?”

Yuna smiled. “Trains have schedules. People don’t.” She nudged his shoulder with hers, light. “밥 먹었어?” Bab meogeosseoyo? Have you eaten?

He laughed despite himself. “Not yet.”

They ate nasi lemak and kimchi pancakes from stalls that knew their orders. She teased him for picking out the cucumber, he teased her for crying at spicy sambal. In the soft aftermath of a full meal the world lost its bite. For a while he forgot the push and pull of wanting.

–

He did, once, think Yuna was beautiful. He was sixteen then and had not learned that beauty could be dangerous and ordinary at the same time. He had seen her under the corridor light with rain in her hair and thought of the Korean word for pretty his classmates used in whispers: 예뻐. But the thought passed through him like a train that didn’t stop at this station. He had a best friend and a neighbor, and that felt too sacred to rename.

If Yuna loved him in some steady, half-hidden way across the years, she kept it in the quiet drawer where she stored receipts and peppermint gum. She did not force it open. She turned it in her palm when no one was looking and told herself it was enough to be near.

–

The day the storm hit, he was returning from a date with a woman who corrected his pronunciation of gochujang three times. The sky turned that specific Singapore green, and then the rain arrived like a decision. He was drenched by the time he stumbled into his block. Yuna was already at his gate with towels and a steaming mug.

“You’ll catch a cold,” she said, tucking one towel over his shoulders like a small cape. Her hands were brisk and sure. “Here–ginger tea.”

He hated ginger, usually, but this one burned in a way that made space in his chest.

He sat on the floor by the shoe rack. She sat opposite, knees almost touching. The corridor was a submarine; beyond them the sea of rain roared.

“How was it?” she asked.

“She was… fine,” he said. “Maybe I’m the problem.”

She tilted her head. “Or maybe you’re trying to make a key out of anything that fits the lock.”

He groaned. “Please don’t be wise.”

She laughed softly. “I can be stupid. Watch.” She stuck out her tongue. It made him smile, which had been her point all along.

He stared at their reflections in the metal gate: two people who had known each other long enough to catalogue each other’s injuries. He imagined saying the simple thing lodged behind his teeth: I’m tired. I don’t want to search anymore. But the words were heavy with superstition, as if naming the fatigue would summon worse luck.

“Yuna,” he said instead, “am I unlovable?”

Her face altered at the edges, not with pity, but with heat. “Haris.” She reached across the narrow space between them and took his cold hand. “Listen to me carefully.”

He did.

“You are not a test people fail. You are not a task. You are a person,” she said. “People will love you because of your kindness, your patience, your ridiculous playlists with nasheeds and IU side by side. Because you make porridge when your neighbor is sick and you feed stray cats at the void deck and you know how to hold silence without running away from it.”

He wanted to argue. He could produce a hundred counterexamples. But when she looked at him like that–solid, unhurried–the old circuitry misfired. He felt, briefly, like a self was possible outside the architecture of rejection.

“I’m sorry,” he said, throat tight. “For turning you into a confessional booth. For always bringing you my mess.”

“Friends do that,” she said. “I do that to you too.”

“Not like this.”

She squeezed his fingers. “Like exactly this.”

–

The quiet pivot happened in August. It did not announce itself with trumpets; it arrived as a tired Sunday morning when the apps felt like heavy furniture he no longer wanted to carry.

He deleted them all before he could argue with himself. The little icons trembled and vanished, leaving behind a blank space that frightened and relieved him in the same breath.

He cleaned his room. He sorted his shirts. He cooked a pot of chicken soup and sent half of it across the corridor. He went for a run without chasing a metric. He prayed with concentration he hadn’t managed in months. He called his mother and listened fully, not with one ear searching for a ding from his phone.

At dusk, he walked with Yuna to Gardens by the Bay where supertrees stirred in a rising wind. They sat on the grass. Tourist voices rose and fell around them like the tide. The light show began and the treetops pulsed in a slow choreography.

Yuna lay back and watched the canopy burn itself blue. “You look lighter,” she said.

“I threw away the nets,” he said.

She smiled sideways. “Good.”

“Do you think I’m giving up?”

“I think you’re making space,” she said. “When you stop grasping, your hands are free to hold.”

He watched her profile, eyes reflecting small galaxies. A quiet sentence assembled itself within him, word by word, like a shy animal crossing a clearing. Once you stop looking for what you want, you’ll find what you need.

He did not say it aloud. He just breathed.

–

The next weeks were ordinary in a way that felt luxurious. He went to work and came home. He cooked stir-fries and tried Yuna’s mother’s kimchi jjigae, coughing and laughing. He read The Prophet on the LRT and underlined lines that did not make him cringe. He learned to enjoy solitude without translating it to failure.

Without the noise, certain truths grew audible. He noticed how Yuna always kept a spare umbrella by the door, how she rotated her plants toward the morning light. He noticed the constellation of faint scars on her knuckles from a childhood accident he had almost forgotten, and how she still stretched her fingers before carrying anything heavy. He noticed that she never spoke about her father, and didn’t press. He noticed–most of all–the way his day reoriented itself toward her small presence across the corridor, like a sunflower tracking its native star without the drama of naming it.

He texted her less in crisis and more in invitation. Ice-cream downstairs? New bakery opened–test run? Sunset at Coney Island? She always said yes if she could. If she could not, she explained. He did not flinch at the space.

One night after maghrib they sat on the staircase between their floors where the lights clicked off and on with motion, creating an accidental rhythm. The air smelled of detergent and distant fried garlic.

“Tell me something true,” Yuna said.

“I was afraid deleting the apps would mean I had no story to tell,” he said. “Like I’m not part of the game anymore.”

“And now?”

“Now it feels like my life got quiet enough to hear my own voice.”

She nodded. “Tell me something else.”

He let the words come. “I like… this.” He gestured vaguely: the stairwell, the night, her.

Her smile was small and bright as a street lamp seen from far. “나도,” she said. Me too.

They didn’t change a label; they changed their pace. Weeks turned into a slow circuit of ordinary, luminous things. They volunteered at a food-distribution drive in Bedok, packing rice and cooking oil; he watched the way she tucked spare biscuits into bags for families with children. She dragged him to a used‑book fair at Bras Basah; he picked a copy of Our Tiny, Useless Hearts because she laughed at the title. During Ramadan he invited the Lees for iftar; Yuna had already prepared a small list of questions about fasting and intention, and her mother arrived with japchae that disappeared in minutes. On Hari Raya, Haris’s parents insisted the Lees stop by–cookies on platters, small green packets that Yuna tried to refuse and failed.

They learned each other’s timetables like weather. When her practicum at the counseling center ran late, he left a bag of cut fruit at her door with a note: 힘내–hang in there. When he had a deadline, she sent a playlist and a photo of her desk plant captioned: We are both doing our best. Sometimes they simply sat in silence on opposite sides of the corridor, backs against their own gates, phones down, sharing the same breeze.

He noticed new things slowly: the way she tied her hair with a fabric ribbon before washing dishes; how she always offered her seat on the train to pregnant women without making it a performance; the tiny crease between her brows when she read case notes; the careful way she listened–to him, to herself, to the world. He let the noticing gather instead of forcing it into meaning.

July rained. In August, they started a tradition of Saturday dawn walks to Coney Island, talking about nothing important–sandflies, bicycle bells, what makes a good soup. In September she sprained her ankle during a run; he showed up with ice packs and pandan chiffon cake, fussing until she laughed. One evening she taught him to make kimchi pancakes; another, he taught her to fold ketupat using palm leaves his mother sent over. The intimacy wasn’t heat first; it was practice.

On a quiet night near the end of September, they returned to the stairwell. “Tell me something true,” she said again.

“I keep thinking I need a sign,” he admitted. “But the only sign I get is that I’m calmer when I’m with you.”

“That’s a sign,” she said, as if it were the easiest arithmetic in the world.

He told her the whole story of the betrayal only once, from the first uneasy intuition to the aftermath of apologies that did not heal. He did not dramatize; he did not minimize. He allowed the facts to exist without trimming them to defend himself.

When he finished, she took a careful breath. “Haris,” she said, and then paused as if selecting the right instrument for a delicate operation. “When pain happens, our brains can write a bad rule to keep us safe. Like, Never trust anyone who is late to reply. Or, If I don’t work hard enough, everyone leaves. But bad rules break good homes.”

“What’s a better rule?” he asked, half-smiling, because of course she had homework for him.

She looked at him steadily. “I can trust myself to notice healthy love. I can choose someone who shows up. I am not responsible for other people’s betrayals.”

He let the sentence sit inside him. It felt earned, not borrowed.

“Say it,” she urged.

He did, voice low. “I can trust myself to notice healthy love. I can choose someone who shows up. I am not responsible for other people’s betrayals.”

“잘했어,” she said, soft. Well done.

What followed was the long middle that no one writes songs about–the quiet work of becoming steady people. They kept the unlabeled space between them and filled it with small, careful days.

In Ramadan, they wandered Geylang Serai’s bazaar beneath strings of lights like patient constellations. The air was sweet with apam balik and smoky with grilled wings. When the crush of bodies pressed too close and an old fear rose in Haris’s throat–What if she leaves me in this crowd?–Yuna touched his wrist and murmured, “5‑4‑3‑2‑1.” He nodded: five things he could see, four he could touch, three he could hear, two he could smell, one he could taste. “호흡, 천천히,” she added. Breathe, slowly. He did, and the panic receded like a tide that realised it had gone too far.

At Masjid Sultan’s open house, they joined a small group touring the prayer hall, the guide explaining wudu and the direction of the qibla. Yuna asked thoughtful questions about intention and community. After, they shared teh tarik at a corner café. “If, one day, I become Muslim,” she said, choosing English for precision, “I want it to be love, not fear.”

“InsyaAllah,” he said. “Pelan‑pelan. Slowly.”

On a rain-polished Sunday they volunteered at Willing Hearts. Hair tucked, aprons on, they stood shoulder to shoulder chopping cabbage until their wrists ached. “Love is logistics,” Yuna joked, sweeping neat mountains of vegetables into trays. He smiled at the accuracy. Service turned his restlessness into motion; the ache was the good kind.

At work, a late‑night outage left Haris staring at error logs while the office hummed with stale air. He messaged Yuna only once. She arrived an hour later with hot porridge and warm towels, murmuring, “Where in your body is the stress?” He placed a hand on his chest. She pressed gently there, over fabric, and said, “Okay. We will tell your body it’s safe.” He fixed the bug by midnight; she walked him to a taxi as if escorting a patient home from a hospital.

On Mid‑Autumn, they borrowed lanterns from the downstairs neighbour’s children and looped slowly around the block. Snowskin mooncakes sweated under plastic as they sat on the playground’s blue rubber floor and traded myths–Chang’e for Isra and Mi’raj, rabbits on the moon for stars seen through prayer. Yuna liked yuzu; he liked white lotus with double yolk; they both liked how the sweet stuck to their teeth and made speech silly.

In October, Yuna hosted a small Chuseok potluck at the community centre craft room. Haris attempted bulgogi and succeeded at washing the pans. Mrs. Lee arrived with songpyeon and a camera, catching a picture of Haris pressing the dumpling edges together too carefully, like a letter he was afraid to send. “귀여워,” she pronounced. Cute. Haris ducked his head. Later, when the older aunties taught a simple folk dance, Yuna pulled him into the circle. He counted steps, stumbled, laughed–준비, 시작, the auntie clapped–ready, go.

They had arguments too, because real people do. Once, he cancelled on her last minute, caught under a sprint at work; she said, “I understand,” and meant it, but a day later admitted she had felt unimportant. He apologized, not to erase the feeling but to repair the bridge. Another time, she withdrew into silence after a difficult counseling session; when he asked too many soothing questions, she said, “Please–just sit near me and let it be quiet.” He did, learning that comfort is sometimes the absence of solution.

On a humid evening they wrote letters they would never post. He wrote to his former self: You did your best with what you knew; you can stop begging for what harms you. She wrote to his ex–then scratched it out and wrote to the part of herself that wished she had spoken sooner. They folded the letters and fed them to a small metal pail on the balcony, fire nibbling the edges until language turned to ash. “Good riddance,” Yuna said, brushing grey from her fingers. “안녕, 진짜로.” Goodbye, for real.

They visited his parents more often. His mother taught Yuna how to pinch pineapple tarts without cracking the pastry. His father showed Haris, again, how to descale a fish without muttering at the bones. When Haris disappeared into himself one afternoon after a neighbour’s engagement party set off an old ache, Yuna caught his eye across the living room and, without drama, lifted her water glass–a nonverbal cue they’d invented. They stepped to the corridor for air. “You’re here,” she said simply. “I’m here,” he answered. The world tilted back to level.

At Gardens by the Bay, they watched tourists take photos at the Supergrove while a busker played a mournful violin. “I used to think the only true things were the dramatic things,” Haris said. “Now I think true things are often the small things repeated.”

“Rituals,” Yuna agreed. “Like prayer. Like flossing,” she added, and he laughed in a way that made two teenagers on the next bench glance over and smile because apparently joy is contagious.

Sometimes Haris caught himself constructing the old test: If she is late to reply, does that mean– and then stopped, breathed, named the belief, and chose the better rule. Sometimes Yuna watched him do it and squeezed his hand once, not as a prompt but as applause.

They made a list titled Faith Questions We Want to Explore and stuck it to Yuna’s fridge with a magnet shaped like a persimmon. Items included: Meaning of niyyah (intention), women scholars in Islam, what a masjid feels like at Fajr, halal certification mysteries, zakat as social architecture. They visited the Harmony Centre at An‑Nahdhah; Yuna lingered over a display on Southeast Asian Islamic art, fingers tracing air above carved wood. “It looks like your ketupat folds,” she teased; he bowed as if flattered by the comparison.

On Deepavali, they walked through Little India under arches of light, henna staining Yuna’s wrist as they shared jalebi from a paper tray. “Light over darkness,” Haris said, thinking of the dark rules that used to govern his heart. “Always,” Yuna said, thinking of the switch she had learned to flip for clients who needed it, and sometimes for herself.

Time thickened around them, a slow syrup. The story did not sprint. It walked, it cooked, it changed the sheets, it texted home? and received almost back. When his cousin got engaged, they stood side by side in the photos as if they had done so all their lives, which, in a way, they had. When Mrs. Lee caught a cold, Haris dropped off lemon‑ginger honey and smiled because for once he didn’t mind the ginger. When Yuna had to present a case at supervision, Haris stayed up quizzing her on ethical frameworks and then messaged, 화이팅. You’ve got this.

The realisation did not crash in. It accrued, the way dawn collects until, without trumpet, the sky is day.

What came next was not a surge but a season. October opened like an umbrella. They slipped into a rhythm of small rites that looked, from a distance, like normal life, and from up close, like a map being drawn.

On a humid Friday they caught the Deepavali light‑up in Little India. Serangoon Road wore necklaces of gold and violet; kolam spiraled at doorways like galaxies within reach. They shared thosai and sambar at Komala Vilas; she laughed when he bit into a chilli by mistake and he fanned his tongue with the menu while she fed him sugar from a tiny packet. A busker sang an old Tamil love song; Yuna swayed to the rhythm; Haris found himself staring at how joy rearranged her face.

At the counseling center, Yuna began seeing a teenager who reminded her of Haris–the same startled‑animal look when questions went too near old wounds. She came home heavy with borrowed grief. On the corridor she told Haris only what ethics allowed and then stopped, palms open. “I am learning to leave people’s pain where it belongs,” she said. “To trust that care and control are different things.” He made her ginger honey tea and listened while the steam bridged the space between them.

A week later, his team’s deployment hit a snag right before go‑live. Slack buzzed like a hornet’s nest. His manager texted, We need to talk. His stomach dropped; old wiring fired–I messed up, I’m replaceable, someone’s angry. He paced the living room until the walls crowded in. Then he messaged Yuna a single word: Spinning.

She appeared at his door with that worn notebook and a tiny metronome she used for breathing exercises. “Five‑four‑three‑two‑one,” she said, guiding him through the senses–five things he could see, four he could touch, three he could hear, two he could smell, one he could taste. She set the metronome ticking on the table. “슬로우, pelan‑pelan.” Slowly. The noise in his chest loosened. Later the meeting was just a meeting; the bug, fixable; the catastrophe, imaginary. Still, the body needed proof. She stayed until his shoulders forgot to brace.

Mid‑Autumn arrived with lanterns like captured moons. They walked along the Punggol Waterway among children carrying cartoon rabbits that blinked. He bought her a snow‑skin mooncake with yuzu; she wrinkled her nose at lotus seed paste; they debated the ethics of durian in confined spaces and decided against it. He thought, If I were the declaring type, I would declare here. But he was not yet brave, and the night was patient.

On a rain‑slick morning they attended an open‑house session at the mosque, an interfaith tour Yuna had found on a poster near her school. She wrapped a light shawl over her hair. No one told her she had to; she wanted to try how reverence felt on her skin. The ustazah spoke about mercy as the root of law, about how faith is not a passport stamp but a way of holding your days. Yuna stood in the women’s section and watched the quiet choreography of prayer. Haris glanced over afterward and saw her eyes bright with a surprise that looked like recognition.

Over lunch she said, “If I ever dua… convert–it will be because I want to, not because of you.”

He nodded, relieved. “InsyaAllah. I’ll walk with you, not push.”

In November they attended Chuseok at the Korean Cultural Centre, huddled over songpyeon they clumsily shaped into crescents. Yuna’s mother told stories about Seoul autumns, about tteokguk on Seollal, about the weight of tradition and the grace of choosing what to carry forward. Haris learned to say “맛있어요” properly and earned a proud grin from Mrs. Lee. In return, he taught her “sedap gila,” which she wielded with gleeful inaccuracy.

There were missteps. When Yuna grabbed coffee with a male classmate after supervision, she texted Haris after the fact. The old ache prickled. He watched the belief rise–I am being replaced. Instead of honoring it as prophecy, he messaged what was true. My chest is tight. Can we talk later? Not about him–about me. On the corridor that evening, he named the trigger and the fear beneath it; she listened and drew a gentle line. “I like him as a colleague. I am careful with hearts. Including yours.” The ache subsided, not because she convinced him, but because he saw himself showing up differently than before.

When she forgot a promise to bring his mother’s tupperware back, he snapped, a reflex born of weeks of stress. The silence after was sharp. He apologized without excuses; she accepted without performance. Repair, they learned, was the daily bread of love long before anyone dared to call it love.

December made the island glitter. They watched the Orchard Road light‑up and invented backstories for tourists. At a charity bazaar they ran a booth for a few hours, selling secondhand books to fund mental‑health services; he upsold with terrible puns; she rolled her eyes and matched him with better ones. On Christmas Eve they sipped hot cocoa at a café that pumped fake snow onto the pavement; a carol drifted in and she hummed harmony under her breath. He thought of asking, right then, Will you let me love you? Instead he offered her the last marshmallow and filed the question under Soon.

January was rain and resolution. Yuna started Arabic basics with an online ustazah; her Al‑Fātiḥah came haltingly; Haris never corrected her mid‑recitation, only afterward, only gently. He joined a study circle on prophetic character and came home with notes about patience, generosity, and the ethics of disagreement. They compared homework like schoolkids.

One night, after a long day at the center, Yuna slumped beside his shoe rack and said, “Sometimes counseling feels like holding a mirror and watching people flinch.”

“What do you need when that happens?” he asked.

“A place where I can put the mirror down,” she said.

He nudged a cushion toward her, brought cut fruit, set his phone face down, and gave her that place.

They kept walking at dawn on Saturdays, and once, as the sun slid up like a peeled lychee over Coney Island, Haris realized he had not checked a dating app in months and did not miss the noise even a little. He kept his hands in his pockets to keep from reaching for hers.

By February, the map they had drawn together was detailed enough to navigate with eyes closed: which hawker stall auntie would sneak them extra ikan bilis, which quiet corner of the library caught afternoon light, which Dua Lipa song made her do that small shoulder dance, which of his du’as she loved hearing in a voice she said made even fear sit down. The wanting had ripened, tender and unspectacular, into something that felt less like hunger and more like home.

Still, he waited. Not for a sign from the sky, but for the moment when asking would feel like telling the truth rather than arguing with it.

–

The confession, when it finally came months later, was not a performance but a relief. It was late, and the corridor had cooled. They were rinsing paintbrushes after a silly decision to repaint his bedroom wall moon-white. His playlist hummed from a tiny speaker–the Yalla by Mercy chorus half a prayer, half a groove–while suds gathered like small galaxies in the pail.

“Yuna,” he said, and his voice surprised him with its steadiness. “I think… I’ve been looking everywhere but here.”

She set down her brush. Water dripped from its bristles in soft ticks. “Here?”

He nodded. “I don’t want to sprint anymore.” He swallowed. “When I stop looking for what I want, I keep finding you.”

A silence, tender and taut.

She stepped closer until the citrus-clean smell of her shampoo threaded the air. “I have been here,” she said simply. “I didn’t say anything because you were mending, and because the drawer in my heart labeled Haris felt too sacred to open.” A quick, tremulous breath. “But I like you. I have liked you for a very long time.”

He laughed, then, not because it was funny but because relief often arrives wearing laughter. “Say it again,” he said, stupidly.

“I like you,” she said, cheeks coloring like a sunrise you could miss if you weren’t paying attention.

Something settled in him. Not fireworks–more like a ship finding its harbor by instinct, no fanfare, just arrival.

“Bismillah,” he whispered, a half-prayer of gratitude.

She reached for his hand. He met her midway.

–

After

They did not rush. That was their private vow. They moved with the sobriety of people who had seen love crash and knew it deserved skill.

On their first weekend as a couple, they took a slow walk at East Coast Park and split a plate of satay while the air smelled of sea and charcoal. He kissed her forehead before they parted at the lift, and she touched her hair as if it had been blessed. They texted goodnight without anxiety. Sleep came like rain.

There were 21+ moments–grown, consenting, careful–woven through ordinary days. On a staycation for her birthday at a small hotel near the river, the room held the cool hush of fresh linen and rain on glass. They spoke as much as they touched. He told her where certain scars lived in his body and which hurts lingered in his muscles. She told him she loved the notch on his wrist where a childhood bracelet used to sit. He said sayang into the curve of her shoulder and meant it like a promise. She whispered “사랑해” against his throat and he answered “Aku cinta kamu,” the old Malay phrase warm with new meaning.

They were reverent with each other’s boundaries. Clothes became less of an armor and more of a ribbon to be untied slowly, with laughter. He learned the geometry of her–how her breath stuttered when his hand traced the line of her hip, how she liked the lights dim but not off, how the sound of the rain made everything feel held. She memorized the ways his body signaled yes and no, the firm nod of agreement in his neck, the shy tilt of his head when he wanted more. They kissed like translators: patient, precise, honoring each other’s languages.

No explicit choreography–just the intimacy of two adults finding a grammar that made sense to them. Their closeness felt like standing before prayer: a hush, a centering, a gratitude that hummed through the bones.

After, they lay side by side and counted the city’s sounds through the open window: a distant horn, a burst of laughter, the soft clatter of plates from a late restaurant below. He pressed his forehead to hers and thought: here. Not a finish line. A homecoming.

A week later, Haris asked, “May I speak to your parents?”

Yuna inhaled, startled, and then nodded. “내일 저녁?” Tomorrow evening?

They met in the Lees’ living room, plants at every window, the smell of barley tea warm in the air. Yuna’s mother, Mrs. Lee, set down a plate of sliced pears and studied Haris with affectionate suspicion.

“Mrs. Lee,” Haris began, palms open on his knees, “I’m here because–I’m dating your daughter. I wanted to tell you myself.”

Mrs. Lee’s face broke into mischief. “About time,” she said, in crisp English. “I was wondering how long I’m supposed to wait.” She turned to her daughter. “Yuna-ah, remember when you told me, middle school, ‘Umma, Haris is kind to everyone but with me he is… softer’?”

“Umma!” Yuna yelped, turning red like a tomato. “왜 지금 말해?” Why now?

Mrs. Lee laughed and waved a hand. “I keep secrets only until they are no longer useful.” She reached for Haris’s hand and patted it. “I know my daughter always liked you. She has learned a lot about Islam from you and from her own reading. If she is willing to convert one day to be with you, I accept. But only because she wants to–아무도 강요하면 안 돼. No one should force her.”

Haris’s voice was steady. “Thank you, Auntie. That matters to me too. I would never want faith to be a condition instead of a conviction. If she embraces Islam, it must be her heart’s decision. We can take it slowly–kelas, conversations with the ustazah, meeting my family more.”

The next evening, they visited Haris’s parents in Tampines. His mother pressed Yuna into a hug before she could bow. His father clapped Haris on the shoulder with quiet pride.

“We have always regarded you as our daughter‑in‑law,” his mother said, eyes twinkling. “Tapi Haris ni, lambat sikit. Mencari‑cari, padahal depan mata sudah ada.”

Haris groaned; everyone laughed. Over ayam masak merah and japchae (a diplomatic menu), they spoke frankly: about nikah, about culture, about what would be asked of Yuna if she chose shahadah. Yuna listened, asked clear questions, took notes on her phone. “I want to learn,” she said. “Pelan‑pelan, slowly. If I do this, it will be because I believe.”

On the way home, Haris reached for her hand. “No rush,” he said. “I’m with you.”

Weeks later, outside a café near City Hall, they ran into his ex. The encounter arrived like an unexpected gust. She looked from Haris to Yuna’s hand looped through his arm and her expression tightened.

“So,” the ex said lightly, voice stiff at the edges, “you move fast. Using her to get back at me?”

Haris opened his mouth and closed it; old heat flashed and died. Before he could answer, Yuna stepped forward.

“Absolutely not,” she said, tone even. “He doesn’t use people.” The ex rolled her eyes.

Yuna’s palm cracked against the air and then the ex’s cheek–sharp, shocking, a line drawn. “그만해,” Yuna said, breath steady. “야, 눈이 멀었냐? 진짜 어이없네. 꺼져.” Enough. Are you blind? This is ridiculous. Get lost.

The ex stared, stunned, a hand to her face, and then retreated with a muttered curse. Yuna turned, gathered Haris into her arms right there on the pavement.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered into his shoulder. “I won’t let her rewrite your story.” She pulled back, eyes bright. “She has been missing out for years. I grew up with him. I know his goodness. Girl… you are blind.”

Haris exhaled a laugh he hadn’t known he was holding. “Thank you,” he said. “For defending me. For choosing me.”

“항상,” she said. Always.

–

Love did not cure his triggers. Healing is not a switch. There were days when a delayed message tugged too hard at an old wire; a shadow in his chest said See? See? He named it, the way Yuna had taught him, and chose a better rule. He went for a walk. He drank water. He texted her honestly instead of rehearsing catastrophe.

“힘들어?” she would ask. Is it hard?

“A bit,” he would say. “I’m working on it.”

“I’m with you,” she’d reply. “천천히.” Slowly.

He learned to be her therapist too, in the way friends become better at loving when love becomes a verb. When she started a new counseling placement and came home knotted with other people’s stories, he made her tea and a playlist of soft songs and asked where in her body the tension lived. He learned that kindness is not a trait but a practice. He learned that romance is half orchestrated and half observed–remembering the hot pack for her cramps, leaving a note in her book at page 143 where she always paused, switching sides on the escalator because she liked the left.

They built rituals: Thursday suppers at the hawker stall under the block; Sunday morning runs followed by kaya toast; monthly dates with no phones until dessert; prayers said side by side when the world frayed. They talked about future apartments and whether plants would survive on a west-facing balcony. They practiced names they might give a cat.

One evening, months later, they returned to Gardens by the Bay. The light show began its slow thunder. He took her hand, and in the wash of cobalt and emerald he told her the line that had followed him quietly since the day he deleted his apps.

“Once you stop looking for what you want,” he said, feeling the precision of each word, “you’ll find what you need.”

Yuna leaned her head against his shoulder. “맞아,” she said. That’s right.

They watched the supertrees breathe. The city pulsed around them. Their hands did not need to hold tight to mean forever. They just held, as if to say: we are here. We are finally here.

–

If someone had asked Haris, in the early days, what he wanted, he would have produced a list that looked like a CV–traits and timelines, a budget for affection. If someone asked him now, his answer was simpler and stranger.

He wanted to be the place Yuna returned to after hard days, the person who knew where the spare umbrella lived and how to laugh her back into her body. He wanted to be chosen not because he fulfilled a criterion, but because he was himself, and because she was herself, and because together they made something worth tending.

He no longer mistook searching for devotion. He no longer punished the present for what the past had taught him. He trusted the ordinary moments to do their slow, miraculous work: dinner steam on a rainy night, a hand on a wrist while crossing a road, two toothbrushes in a cup.

He learned, at last, that love rarely arrives when you stage the perfect audition. It comes, instead, when you put down the script, open the door you have been walking past all your life, and say, simply: I’m home.

Yuna smiled when he said this aloud. She kissed the notch of his wrist and said, “Welcome.”

And in the hush that followed, something old finally let go. Something new took root, quiet and certain as a prayer answered, not with spectacle, but with the everyday mercy of two people choosing the same direction, again and again, one patient step at a time.