The Barista Who Fed the Ghosts of Tiong Bahru

Female Ancient Neighbourhood Drama Café Barista Spirit Bargain Mysterious Author: Wong Li Ling

Summary

AI · 2026.07.31.03:30

A café barista in a crumbling HDB block starts serving tea to unseen guests after the old shrine behind her shop is torn down — and the neighbourhood begins forgetting its own dead.

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The shrine behind Block 78, Tiong Bahru,

vanished at dawn on a Tuesday. No notice. No

ceremony. Just rubble and a smell like burnt

joss paper clinging to the air. Mei Lin, 24,

barista at “Kopi & Co.”, noticed first when the

regulars stopped coming — not because of the

rain, not because of NS callups, but because

they walked past her window like they’d never

seen the place before.

That night, the teapot on her counter filled

itself. Steam rose in shapes — a woman in a

cheongsam, a man with a broken hat, two children

holding hands too tight. She poured three cups.

No one drank. The cups emptied by morning.

The rule bit hard: if you serve the spirits, you

must remember their names. If you forget, they

take a living soul’s memory instead. Mei Lin

wrote names on napkins — Ah Ma Lim, Uncle Tan

from the old fish stall, the girl who drowned in

the canal ‘48. She pinned them to the wall

behind the espresso machine. Each night, the

napkins faded. Each morning, a customer forgot

their child’s name.

The hawker uncle who sold satay beside her shop

stopped recognising his own wife. The

schoolteacher down the block wept because she

couldn’t recall her mother’s voice. Mei Lin

didn’t sleep. She brewed stronger tea — pandan

leaf, dried lily bulb, a pinch of ash from the

shrine’s last incense stick. The ghosts came

hungrier.

On the night of the Mooncake Festival, the last

napkin dissolved. She had no names left. The

teapot cracked open. From it crawled the ghost

of the shrine’s keeper — an old woman in a faded

sari, eyes hollow as empty kueh lapis tins. She

did not speak. She placed a clay cup in Mei

Lin’s palm. Inside: a single drop of water that

tasted of rain on kampong roofs.

Mei Lin drank.

The next day, the HDB block remembered. Children

drew pictures of the shrine on the lift walls.

Grandparents told stories to strangers in broken

Singlish. The satay uncle hugged his wife and

called her by name. The schoolteacher wept again

— this time because she remembered how her

mother hummed “Bengawan Solo” while frying kueh.

The teapot shattered. The napkins were dust.

Mei Lin still makes kopi. But now, when the rain

taps the window just right, she leaves an extra

cup on the counter. And sometimes — just

sometimes — a hand, invisible as steam, lifts it.