The old HDB block creaks under monsoon rain, its

concrete walls thinning with age. Mei Ling

serves kopi at the corner café, her fingers

stained with coffee and ink from scribbling exam

notes. She fails the GCE O Levels, the result

etched in red on her report card.

The estate’s basement, once a storage room, now

hums with static. Mei Ling finds a dusty ledger

tucked under a loose floorboard. Names are

scrawled in pencil—students who failed, then

vanished. The air smells of burnt incense and

damp wood.

She asks the elderly shopkeeper about the ledger.

He mutters about "spirit mediums" and

warns her

to stop digging. That night, the lights flicker.

A shadow lingers in the mirror, its face

identical to hers.

Mei Ling begins dreaming of a classroom she

never attended. Students sit in rows, their

faces blank, eyes hollow. A teacher writes

equations on the board—equations that shift,

morphing into kanji and Tamil script. The dream

ends when she fails the exam again.

She visits the old temple at Bukit Timah,

seeking answers. The priestess, dressed in a

faded cheongsam, tells her the estate was built

atop a burial ground. Spirit mediums once

protected the area, but their power waned after

the 1960s. Mei Ling is the first to fail in

decades.

The spirits grow restless. A boy from the estate

disappears. His mother claims he was seen

walking toward the old school site. Mei Ling

follows, finding the building overgrown with

vines. Inside, the walls pulse like living flesh.

She writes her name in the ledger. The page

burns, leaving a scar on her palm. The spirits

gather, their voices rising in a cacophony of

languages—Mandarin, Tamil, Malay. The exam paper

floats in midair, rewriting itself with her

mistakes.

The spirits demand a price. Mei Ling offers her

memory of the exam. The paper disintegrates. The

spirits vanish. The estate falls silent.

Mei Ling returns to the café, her mind empty of

the exam. The customers chatter about the latest

hawker stall, unaware of what happened. She

pours a new cup of kopi, the steam curling like

smoke from a forgotten ritual.