At 17, Mei Lin’s mother died leaving a debt to
the ghost of a Japanese conscript who died in
Bukit Timah’s abandoned air raid shelter — not
in cash, but in memory. The spirit, known in
hawker circles as Pak Cik Tua with no face, only
appears to those who owe the state. It doesn’t
take money. It takes what you forgot.
Mei Lin never enlisted. Her brother did. He came
back quiet, eyes hollow like burnt kaya. She
never spoke of it. But the ghost found her
anyway — standing outside the HDB block where
their old kampong once stood, now a void where
jackfruit trees used to drop fruit on Sunday
mornings.
Every full moon, the ghost appears at the void
deck. Not to scare. To count. It holds a rusted
NS booklet, pages blank except for her name.
Each night, someone else who dodged conscription
vanishes from their flat — no trace, no note.
Just a cold spot where their phone used to glow
with TikTok reels of hawker food challenges and
NS memes.
Mei Lin learns the rule: if you skip NS, the
ghost takes your first memory of home. A boy who
fled to Malaysia forgets his mother’s sambal
sting on his tongue. A girl who faked asthma
forgets the smell of her grandfather’s betel nut
spit on the verandah. The ghost doesn’t kill. It
erases. Quietly. Like HDB paint peeling off
walls nobody repainted.
Mei Lin starts collecting. Not for money. For
the ghost’s silence. She tracks dodgers — the
influencer wannabe who livestreamed his “mental
health break” from Phuket, the uncle who bribed
a doctor for a fake medical exemption. She
leaves notes in their mailboxes: Pak Cik Tua is
waiting. Bring your first memory. They come. One
by one. Kneel. Whisper. The ghost nods. Their
eyes go glassy. The next day, they’re different —
kinder, but empty. Like they never knew what
kaya toast tasted like before.
The ghost doesn’t want payment. It wants balance.
The state took their bodies. It takes their
roots to make them whole.
One night, Mei Lin stands before it. She brings
her own memory: the last time her mother hummed
Leng Leng Leng while frying fish heads at the
hawker stall, smoke curling into the monsoon
wind. She doesn’t speak. Just offers it.
The ghost takes it. No sound. No light.
The next morning, Mei Lin wakes up and forgets
her mother’s face.
She still collects debts.
But now, when the influencer wannabe texts her
from Bali — Bro, you seen the new NS ghost trend?
— she doesn’t reply.
She just walks to the void deck.
And waits.
The ghost isn’t gone.
It’s just learning how to be human.
