I climbed to the upper deck because the lower one smelled of wet umbrellas and fried chicken from someone’s takeaway bag. The seat I wanted was taken, so I sat one row back, sideways to the window, with a view interrupted by scratches and old sticker ghosts. Dusk on Serangoon Road is a particular orange — not sunset over the sea, but neon mixing with cloud and the wet reflection of tyres on asphalt.
The bus stopped every few hundred metres. Passengers flowed up and down the stairs with the practised impatience of people who have made this trip for years. A student revised from a textbook balanced on her knees. A man watched football highlights without sound. I watched the city slide past in fragments: a clinic sign, a temple gate, a row of shophouses with half their shutters down.
Between two blocks I saw a stair landing through a gap in the buildings — concrete, a metal railing, a pair of shoes outside a door I could not see. It looked like our landing, though it was not. I thought about how many identical landings exist in this city, each with its own smell of paint and garlic, each holding a moment of pause someone else might be having at the same time.
At a long light near the market, the bus idled and the engine vibrated through the floor. A rider tapped his card twice by mistake and laughed at himself. The driver waited without comment. Outside, aunties crossed with bags of fruit. A delivery bike weaved through the gap between lanes. The light changed. The bus exhaled and continued.
I had no hurry. That is rare on a weekday evening and I tried to notice it without turning it into a lesson. I was going home to toast and a half-written note about canal water. The upper deck was warm. The aircon had given up somewhere near Kallang. I rolled the window open a finger-width and felt humid air press back.
Serangoon Road thins out toward the estate side. Familiar blocks replaced unfamiliar shopfronts. I knew which stop was mine by the tree with the broken branch, not by reading the display. I stood early, as locals do, and descended the stairs carefully — the handrail sticky, the corner too tight for two people at once.
The tap of my card was the small sound that ends most days. Green arrow. Ramp down. The walk from the stop to the block takes four minutes if I do not stop at the minimart. I stopped anyway for ice because the fridge near the counter always has the coldest bottles.
In the lift, a child asked his mother why the mirror makes you look taller. She said because it is magic. He accepted this. Floor eight. The corridor was quiet except for a television behind a door and the click of my neighbour’s kettle through the wall — the same sound I wrote about in a five-minute fragment weeks ago.
