The air in Block 43, Tiong Bahru still smells of

old kopi and wet concrete when Mei Lin slips

past the rusted gate at midnight, her school bag

heavy with a stolen exam paper taped inside a

hollowedout Yong Tau Foo container. She’s

sixteen, kiasu, and her mother’s coughing fits

grow louder every night — tuition fees gone, NS

bond looming, no room left for failure. The HDB

ghost stories say the old lady on the 7th floor

used to tutor kids for free, but died midlesson

in ’58, still holding a red pen. No one dares

enter Unit 704 since. But Mei Lin doesn’t

believe in ghosts. She believes in distinctions.

She finds the answer key tucked beneath the

cracked floorboard where the woman’s bed once

stood — ink still wet, Chinese characters

glowing faintly under her torchlight. The moment

she touches it, the ceiling fan starts spinning

backward. The walls exhale the scent of pandan

and camphor. A voiceless pressure presses

against her temples. Not a whisper. Not a name.

Just the weight of a thousand unspoken prayers

from children who took the same paper, passed,

and forgot.

The next morning, Mei Lin scores 97 in Pure

Chemistry. Her mother weeps. Her teacher calls

her a miracle. But that night, she forgets her

father’s face. Not the shape. Not the voice. The

feeling. The memory of him carrying her on his

shoulders at the old Kampong Kembangan festival,

the lanterns blinking like fireflies above the

paddy fields — gone. Like a file deleted from a

phone she never backed up.

She returns to Unit 704. The floorboard is

sealed. The fan still spins wrong. On the wall,

a new line of red ink forms: Next paper. Next

memory. She understands now. The ghost doesn’t

grade answers. She eats the past that made the

child want to learn. The world doesn’t work on

merit here — it works on what you’re willing to

lose to be seen.

She burns the answer key in the sink. Lets the

ashes swirl with the grey water.

The next week, she sits for her Biology paper

alone. No cheat sheet. No ghost. Just her hands

shaking, the smell of her mother’s herbal tea

drifting from the kitchen below, and the quiet

certainty that she’ll fail — but she’ll remember

the way her brother used to sing Rasa Sayang

offkey in the void between HDB blocks, and how

her auntie once slipped her a warm kueh lapis

after the mosque prayer, just because she looked

tired.

The results come. She gets a C. Her mother hugs

her tighter than ever.

The fan in Unit 704 still spins backward.

But the red ink on the wall? It’s gone.