Ah Beng gangster Tan Kim Hock used to run the
Tiong Bahru night markets with a parang and a
smirk, but after NS broke his leg and the cops
erased his record, he slept in the damp
stairwell of Block 43, Tampines, where the old
women still whispered the walls remembered the
Japanese.
The world had cracked open after the ’45
Collapse — no more electricity grids, no more
British currency, no more trust in any flag.
Power ran on rice and rage. The only thing that
moved faster than hunger was the blackmarket
trade in prewar artefacts: porcelain, silver,
and kueh lapis tins stamped with the Union Jack,
buried by Chinese, Malay, and Indian families
under their kampong shrines before the bombs
fell.
Kim Hock knew the rules: no one touched the
shrine under the old banyan near Block 43’s lift
shaft. It was guarded by the ghosts of three
women — one Chinese, one Malay, one Indian — who
died shielding their children during the Sook
Ching. Touch the shrine, they say, and your
bones turn to salt by dawn.
But the HDB upgrade was coming. They were
flattening the kampong plots. The tins were
going to be dug up, sold to collectors in Kuala
Lumpur, and vanish into private hands. Families
who’d kept them hidden for forty years — the
ones who still left ang ku kueh at midnight —
would lose everything.
He didn’t plan to steal. He planned to move them.
On the night of the full moon, he broke the rule.
Not with a shovel, but with a tin of kueh lapis
he’d baked himself — layered with palm sugar and
pandan, just like his grandmother’s. He placed
it at the shrine’s base, whispered “Ma, I’m
sorry,” and slipped the five hidden tins into
his satchel, each wrapped in a child’s old
school uniform from different races.
The air turned cold. The lift lights flickered.
Three shadows formed — not ghosts, but women in
faded sarongs, kebaya, and qipaos, holding hands.
They didn’t speak. They didn’t scream.
They walked with him to Block 43’s rooftop.
There, beneath the stars, they helped him stack
the tins beside a new shrine — built from broken
HDB tiles and plastic prayer flags from the
nearby mosque. One by one, mothers from the
estate came. A Tamil auntie with a rice sack. A
Malay uncle with a broken leg. A Chinese
grandmother who’d lost her son to the riots.
They brought their own tins. Their own stories.
Their own kueh.
By dawn, the whole block was awake.
The HDB officials came with bulldozers and
paperwork. Found a pile of tins. Found no theft.
Found a new altar, smelling of pandan and
incense, with five names carved into the cement —
one for each race.
The tins stayed.
The shrine stayed.
Kim Hock didn’t run. He joined the night
cleaning crew.
The next week, a child from Block 42 brought him
a kueh lapis — seven layers, perfect.
He ate it slowly.
The ghosts didn’t return.
But the food kept coming.
