Chinatown Complex on a weekday morning is a machine for decisions. Which queue for chee cheong fun, which stall still has bitter gourd worth peeling, whether to climb to the food centre or stay on the ground floor where the air is wetter and the light green from plastic awnings. I come for one stall at the far end of the vegetable row, run by an auntie who remembers that I read labels like they are exam questions.
She does not rush me. Other customers get brisk service — handfuls of kangkong tied with rubber bands, change counted in one motion — but when I stand in front of her crates she goes quieter, almost amused. Today I need something for soup and something for stir-fry, which sounds simple until you stand among forty shades of green and realise you have preferences you cannot defend logically.
I pick up a bunch of chye sim, put it down, pick up another with smaller leaves. The auntie says, without unkindness, that the first one is sweeter if I am boiling it. How she knows my plan I cannot say — maybe my face, maybe the way I hover. I trust her the way you trust people who have handled produce longer than you have lived in a flat. She wraps the chye sim in newspaper and twists the corners like a school lunch.
For stir-fry I debate between kai lan and something I only know by colour — pale stems, dark tips, a name I forget every time and re-learn weekly. An uncle beside me chooses tomatoes with a confidence I envy. His bag is full in under a minute. Mine is still open, waiting. I used to feel foolish for this slowness; now I treat it as part of the errand, like the MRT ride over or the walk through the five-foot way afterward.
The market sound is its own music: knives on boards, water splashing over lettuce, price calls in three languages layered without harmony but with rhythm. Fluorescent tubes flicker in places where the roof leaks light. The floor is never quite dry. Someone pushes a trolley of empty crates past my ankle and apologises without stopping. I step aside, resume choosing.
I settle on the kai lan — stems firm, no yellow flowers yet — and a small knob of ginger root with thin skin, easy to scrape. The auntie adds a red chilli I did not ask for, free, the way she sometimes does when she thinks I have been too timid with heat. I want to tell her my soup is for a friend who does not take chilli, but the gesture is already in the bag and refusing feels worse than re-homing a pepper.
At the scale she weighs, calls a number, I pay with exact coins because the queue behind me has grown and exactness is my apology for time spent. The total is less than a coffee at some places. I carry the bag carefully, handles cutting slightly into my palm, and climb the stairs to the food centre level just to smell what I am not buying — laksa, toasted bread, coffee gone bitter on a hot plate.
Outside, Pagoda Street is already warm. I walk home through the market’s shadow and the brief cool of a sheltered walkway, bag swinging lightly. Dinner is decided, which is a small relief dressed as vegetables. The auntie will be there next week with new crates and the same patience. I will probably hesitate again at the chye sim. Some habits are worth keeping slow.
I put the ginger on the counter near the window. The street below looks ordinary from up here — same as always, which is the point.