1982. Tan Beng Hock, 68, retired from the Public

Works Department, still wakes at 5am to sweep

the verandah of his Tampines HDB flat — same as

when his wife Lian Fang was alive. The air

smells of burnt kueh lapis and damp concrete.

His pension barely covers the rent, but he never

complains. Not since the day the landlord, Mr.

Tan Keng Seng, slapped a red notice on their

door: “ARREARS. PAY OR VACATE.”

Beng Hock never knew Lian Fang worked nights. He

thought she was sleeping. But in the third month

after her stroke, he found her slippers by the

stairwell, still warm. And in the kitchen, six

trays of kueh lapis — each wrapped in banana

leaf, each marked with a tiny red dot. He ate

one. It tasted like her last breath.

The next week, the red notice vanished. A new

one appeared: “RENT PAID IN FULL. THANK YOU.” No

signature. No receipt. He checked the ledger.

The cash was deposited — not by him, not by the

bank. By someone who never had a bank account.

He followed the trail. Every full moon, the old

water tank on Level 7 hummed. He climbed. Found

her. Not a spirit. A woman in a faded sari,

selling kueh to the night cleaners, the NS men

on late patrol, the widows who still lit joss

sticks under the void deck. She was the ghost of

the old kampong — the one who sold rice cakes to

the Japanese soldiers during the Occupation, and

later, to the British officers who ignored her

children’s school fees.

She wasn’t haunting the building. She was paying

for it.

Every kueh she sold, she gave half to the

landlord’s wife — a quiet Malay woman who lost

her son in NS, who never said a word but kept

the kueh in the fridge, and slipped extra rice

into Beng Hock’s lunchbox when he forgot his own.

The landlord came with the bailiff on the eve of

Deepavali. Beng Hock stood at the stairwell,

holding six trays of kueh — one for each year

his wife paid in silence. He didn’t speak. Just

laid them on the concrete.

The landlord stared. Then, quietly, he took one.

Bit into it. Cried.

That night, the red notice was ripped down. Not

by law. By memory.

The next morning, Beng Hock found a new envelope

under his door. Inside: a receipt stamped “RENT

SETTLED — IN FULL.” And beside it, a single kueh

lapis, wrapped in banana leaf, tied with a red

thread.

He ate it.

It still tasted like her.

And for the first time in ten years, he slept

without dreaming of money.