- Aces Going Places
-
A community group for asexual and aromantic individuals in Singapore. They host regular meetups and support circle sessions.
- Oogachaga
-
A non-profit organisation providing counselling and support services for the LGBTQ+ community in Singapore.
- Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN)
-
An online platform offering resources and forums for asexual individuals worldwide.
Chapter 68: The One Who Felt Like Home
https://freeimage.host/i/Kad9Cle
(AI-generated image of Rose)
Disclaimer: All names, characters, and events in this chapter are fictional, although inspired by the lived experiences and memories of the protagonist. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Settings and timelines have been adapted for narrative purposes.
We met at a calligraphy exhibition at the National Library, not exactly my usual weekend haunt, but a classmate had recommended it, and I had been intrigued by Chinese calligraphy since my secondary school days.
She stood before a hanging scroll of Wang Xizhi’s
Lanting Xu
, head tilted, eyes soft, lips parted ever so slightly. Not reading; feeling.
“Too perfect,” she murmured in Mandarin. “Like it was written by a hand that no longer belonged to a man.”
That caught my attention.
I moved closer. “You speak like someone who knows ink intimately.”
She turned.
Warm face. High cheekbones. Clear, radiant skin. Lips the colour of tea-stained porcelain. Her hair was in a loose twist, strands framing her forehead.
And those eyes… a kind of smouldering elegance. A younger version of Gong Li, yes, not in looks alone, but in the dignified ease of her movement.
Her name was Rose.
From Jiangxi.
⸻
Jiangxi is a province steeped in contradiction.
Mountainous, misty, quiet.
Known for
ru ware porcelain
, revolutionary history, and literary melancholy.
It’s not as glamorous as Shanghai, not as bustling as Guangdong. But it breathes poetry.
“I come from Jingdezhen,” she said. “The town where emperors got their porcelain. We grow up surrounded by beauty we can’t afford.”
She was 27.
Used to manage an antique shop in Beijing.
Moved to Singapore two years ago to work for a cultural foundation.
“I didn’t want to spend my life dusting dead men’s ink,” she said with a soft smile and gentle mandarin. “I wanted to make new stories. Even if they break.”
⸻
That night, we had tea at a small shophouse café in Ann Siang Hill.
She talked about
Zao Wou-Ki
, I talked about eroticism in Tang poetry.
By the time we left, the moon was full and the streets nearly empty.
I walked her to her serviced apartment, a modest place tucked along River Valley Road.
“I have oolong,” she said. “But not the proper cups.”
“I’ll pretend not to care,” I replied.
Inside, the room was tidy. A calligraphy set lay half-unrolled on her desk. The brush still damp.
She poured the tea.
Then sat beside me on the futon.
“You’ve been watching me all night,” she said, voice low. “I wasn’t sure if you were curious… or hungry.”
“Both,” I said. “But mostly respectful.”
She leaned in.
Her kiss was slow. Soft. Slightly trembling.
As if she was letting herself be unwrapped, not conquered.
Her dress slipped down easily. No buttons. No pretence.
Her skin was flawless, cool and pale like jade, except for the flush that bloomed across her chest as I touched her.
We lay side by side.
She moved above me with a deliberate grace, her hips rocking, angelic hair falling forward.
When I kissed her neck, she whispered, “
Don’t go fast
.”
So I didn’t.
I slid inside her like we were made for that moment, with breath shallow, fingers interlaced, and rhythm gentle.
She gasped, then moaned, low and husky. Her back arched, her thighs tightened.
I came only after she did, coaxed by her sighs and the way her mouth brushed my ear.
We stayed in bed until sunrise.
⸻
We met again the next week.
She invited me to an art studio where she volunteered part-time.
We spent the evening alone, tracing brushstrokes on rice paper, then tracing each other.
We made love in the corner studio room, her back against the bookshelf, her legs wrapped around my waist, her soft moans echoing off the walls lined with ink and dust.
This time was faster, wetter, hungrier.
She bit my shoulder when she came.
And then giggled, like a girl startled by her own boldness.
⸻
Rose was one of the rare ones.
Open, affectionate, but unpossessive.
Passionate, but grounded.
She knew her own heart, but let it flutter anyway.
We parted naturally, not coldly.
Her foundation was moving her to Shanghai for a year.
She didn’t ask me to wait.
I didn’t ask her to stay.
But for a while, I carried the memory of her like a pressed blossom between the pages of my life.
⸻
Rose taught me that Chinese women, though I am of the same race, are never the same.
The northern
boldness
.
The southern
elegance
.
The coastal
cunning
.
The inland
melancholy
.
I’ve tasted something different with each one.
And beyond China itself, there are layers of the diaspora:
Singaporean
pragmatism
.
Malaysian
sass
.
Hong Kong
edge
.
Taiwanese
warmth
.
Each carried echoes of the same heritage,
but danced to wildly different music.
And somehow,
I found myself loving all the songs.
⸻
[End of Chapter 68]
Mirror Site:
Author’s note on Chapter 68: The One Who Felt Like Home
This chapter was special to me because it let me bring Jiangxi into the story… a province often overlooked when people talk about China, yet one with a deep cultural soul. Jiangxi is mountainous and mist-wrapped, a place of porcelain kilns, revolutionary history, and quiet resilience. It doesn’t have the dazzle of Shanghai or the pace of Guangdong, but it breathes a kind of understated poetry.
Jiangxi girls, in particular, are said to carry that same duality. They’re warm and approachable, yet with a quiet strength shaped by the mountains and rivers they grew up around. There’s an elegance to them, softer than the boldness of northern women, more contemplative than the spice of Sichuan or Chongqing. They know beauty, often intimately, because Jingdezhen porcelain and calligraphy traditions are part of their daily environment, but they’re also practical, having grown up where beauty is often exported, never owned.
Rose embodied this balance. She wasn’t fiery or confrontational, nor was she coy or distant. She felt like home: graceful, affectionate, grounded, yet unafraid to let her passion show. Writing her into this chapter was a way of capturing that Jiangxi temperament: gentle but steady, tender but resilient.
I hope readers can sense the difference here, and how her presence contrasted with the women who came before. Every province, every city, every culture has shaped a different kind of woman, and this was my way of showing how even within the same heritage, the notes of the song can be so different.
Chapter 69: The One Who Knew Where It Hurt
https://freeimage.host/i/KaUIwwQ
(AI-generated image of Adeline)
Disclaimer: All names, characters, and events in this chapter are fictional, although inspired by the lived experiences and memories of the protagonist. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Settings and timelines have been adapted for narrative purposes.
I was feeling the weight.
Not guilt. Not regret. Just… weariness.
Too many women. Too many nights.
Even desire begins to blur when it becomes routine.
That was when I walked into a small massage shop along Bukit Timah Road.
No neon lights. No seedy whispers. Just a handwritten sign:
Traditional Malay & Chinese Body Therapy – Walk-ins Welcome.
I needed nothing more than a back rub.
I got far more than that.
⸻
She came out from behind a rattan curtain, wiping her hands with a warm towel.
“Afternoon,” she said. “One hour?”
I nodded. “Back and shoulders.”
She looked at me once, properly, then gestured toward the treatment room.
“Take off shirt. Lie down. Face down first.”
Her name was Adeline.
Johorean.
Thirty-five, maybe thirty-six.
She had a round, warm face, a soft jawline, full lips that rarely smiled but never frowned.
Her hair was long, chestnut-dark, tied in a low ponytail that brushed her back when she moved.
Her hands were large, warm, strong, and when they first touched my shoulders, I let out a breath I hadn’t realised I’d been holding all year.
“You’re very tight here,” she said, fingers pressing gently between my shoulder blades.
“Stress? Too much thinking?”
“Too many
women
,” I joked.
She didn’t laugh.
But she said, “Hmm. That one very hard to cure.”
⸻
I went back the next week.
Then the week after that.
We started talking, about food, families, why she crossed the Causeway each morning, why she came back to this quiet, old-fashioned trade after working for a few years in a beauty salon in Kuala Lumpur.
“I don’t want to talk to people for a living,” she said. “I just want to make them feel better. Without noise.”
She lived in Johor Bahru, in Taman Molek, with her mother and two cats.
Divorced young.
No kids.
No bitterness.
One afternoon, after a session that left me floating, I offered to accompany her to the bus stop.
She hesitated, then nodded.
We boarded the 170 bus together.
No aircon, just swinging handles and humid air.
The Causeway crawled.
We talked, shoulder to shoulder, thighs brushing gently with each turn.
“You flirt like it’s breathing,” she said, smirking.
“But I can hold my breath longer than most.”
I wasn’t deterred.
“Maybe you just haven’t met someone worth exhaling for.”
⸻
The next Sunday, I crossed into Johor.
No plan.
Just instinct.
I took the bus to Larkin Terminal, then grabbed a local cab into town.
From a payphone at Komtar JB, I paged her with a callback number.
She called back twenty minutes later.
“Come to my place,” she said. “I’ll make kopi. You
behave
.”
⸻
Her flat was simple, clean.
Lace curtains. Faded cushion covers.
The smell of pandan and something simmering gently in a pot.
Her mother wasn’t home.
Adeline served me kopi in a glass mug.
We talked.
Laughed.
Then, after a moment of silence, I reached for her hand.
It was warm,
always warm
, and when I pulled her in gently, she didn’t resist.
She just whispered, “No games.”
“Not this time,” I said.
⸻
We made love slowly.
She was voluptuous, yes, but not soft.
There was muscle in her thighs, firmness in her hips, and an attentiveness in her rhythm that made every touch feel… precise.
She undressed without hesitation.
A cotton bra, dark blue.
Matching panties that clung gently to wide, steady hips.
Her belly was soft. Her skin smooth and golden from sun and age.
When she straddled me, she did so with quiet confidence.
I felt her warmth as she slid down: deep, snug, breathtaking.
Her fingers gripped my forearms.
Her breath caught when I moved deeper.
She rode me slowly at first, hips rocking in even waves.
Then faster, her hair falling forward, her voice husky.
When I flipped her over, she lifted one leg instinctively, letting me slide in deeper from above.
She moaned. Loud, full, but never theatrical.
Her hands guided mine to her breasts, her hips, her thighs, like she was showing me a map she’d memorised.
We came together, with her nails digging into my back, my name on her lips, breathless and real.
⸻
Afterwards, she didn’t speak.
She just curled up beside me, one leg hooked over mine, her palm resting over my chest like a paperweight.
We made love again in the early hours, this time slower, sweatier, with a kind of sleepy sweetness that made everything else melt away.
⸻
I never saw her again.
The following Sunday, I paged her.
No reply.
A week later, I returned to the shop.
She wasn’t there.
A younger woman, new, said, “Kak Adeline stop working. Said she had something to settle in Malaysia. She not coming back.”
No drama.
No goodbye.
Just… gone.
But she left behind something unexpected:
A memory that wasn’t about lust.
Or conquest.
Or even healing.
It was about
grace
.
The quiet kind.
The kind that cups your cheek, soothes your back, presses against your chest, and then disappears, leaving only a warm echo.
⸻
Adeline taught me that seduction doesn’t always end in a chase.
Sometimes, it ends with someone knowing exactly what you need,
giving it to you once,
then returning to a world where their love isn’t wasted on men who forget.
She knew where it hurt.
And didn’t ask why.
She just touched,
and let go.
⸻
[End of Chapter 69]
Mirror Site:
Chapter 70: Rivers Beneath Ice
https://freeimage.host/i/KcWyRuR
(AI-generated image of Ruo Lin)
Disclaimer: All names, characters, and events in this chapter are fictional, although inspired by the lived experiences and memories of the protagonist. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Settings and timelines have been adapted for narrative purposes.
I first saw her behind a noodle stall in a temporary pop-up bazaar off Chinatown, the kind held in rundown community centres before they got their upgrades. I was there with a classmate, lured by the promise of free beef noodles. But it wasn’t the broth or the noodles that captured my attention, it was
her
.
She couldn’t have been more than twenty-six. Porcelain skin, high cheekbones, and a pixie cut that framed her face like a halo of mischief. She looked like the singer GEM before fame found her, but much softer, and more enigmatic. Her voice was low and musical, her accent unmistakably Hubei. When I asked where she was from, she said it with pride:
Wǔhàn
. The way she said it, was said like it mattered. Like I should’ve known more.
“Hubei’s the heart of China,” she explained later. Hubei, she told me, was more than just a dot on the Chinese map; it was the cradle of revolution and resilience. From the Wuchang Uprising of 1911 that sparked the end of imperial rule to its legacy as a cradle of ancient Chu culture, Hubei was where poetry, music, and rebellion flowed like the Yangtze itself. The province sat inland, but it was never insular, it was connected by rivers and railways, and its capital Wuhan had long been one of China’s most important commercial and intellectual hubs. Even its name,
Hu
for lake and
Bei
for north, spoke of deep water and northern strength. “We don’t shout,” she said once, with a slight smile. “We endure, and then we change the world.”
“Not as loud as the coast, not as proud as the north. But it’s where things begin. Poets, rebels, rivers… it’s deep water.”
That line stayed with me.
She called herself
Ruo Lin
, but when she introduced herself, it sounded like
rolling
. Fitting, really. She was like a rolling stone that knocked into my carefully stacked life, scattering my balance. I found reasons to keep returning, to that food stall, to that smile, to her.
She teased me constantly, said I was “
too Singaporean
”, too stiff, too worried about how things looked. And I was. I had built myself out of timetables and good-boy habits. She moved through life like it was jazz: unexpected, sultry, with sudden moments of silence that said more than words.
We kissed for the first time under dim yellow streetlights near Clarke Quay, after a long, meandering conversation about nothing and everything. Her lips tasted faintly of vinegar and spice. I walked home that night in a daze, unsure whether I had just fallen in love or into trouble.
⸻
The first time we made love, it was on the mattress in my Tiong Bahru flat. The air was thick, the fan overhead turning lazily. She peeled off her qipao slowly, not seductively but deliberately, like it was a sacred act. Her body was lithe and warm, the subtle lines of muscle on her thighs betraying strength beneath her grace.
She climbed on top of me, never breaking eye contact, and guided me inside her. It was like slipping into a dream I didn’t know I’d been having. She rode me slowly, rhythmically, with a quiet intensity that made my heart race. Her breaths came in whispers, her nails found my shoulders, and her body moved like it was made for music only she could hear.
I wanted to touch every part of her, memorize the taste of her skin, the way she arched her back when I kissed her collarbone. When she came, it was silent, just a trembling shudder and a tightening of her limbs, as if she didn’t want the world to know what we were doing to each other.
We lay in silence afterward. Her head rested on my chest. I stroked her spine, listening to her heartbeat settle.
⸻
The second time, it was a bit more reckless. A Sunday afternoon. She turned up at my door in denim shorts and a tight tank top, her skin gleaming from the heat.
She kissed me the moment the door shut behind her. We barely made it to the kitchen. I lifted her onto the counter. She wrapped her legs around me and tugged at my shirt, biting my lip playfully.
I entered her standing up, our bodies pressed against the cool tiles. She moaned into my shoulder, her voice deeper this time, less restrained. I gripped her waist, losing myself in the rhythm, the sweat, the heat of her. She whispered something in Mandarin as I climaxed… I didn’t hear it clearly, but yet her voice seared into my mind like a brand.
Afterward, she sat cross-legged on the floor, sipping cold barley tea, humming something unfamiliar. I asked if it was a Hubei folk song. She nodded but didn’t explain further. That was her, giving me just enough to stay intrigued, never enough to fully understand.
By the end of the month, she told me she was returning to Wuhan. Her program was over. “I’ll write,” she said.
But she never did.
Still, sometimes when I walk past a beef noodle stall or hear someone speak with that soft Hubei lilt, I think of her. Of rivers that run deep. Of water beneath ice. Of how two people can crash together, burn briefly, and disappear, leaving behind only the scent of memory.
[End of Chapter 70]
Mirror Site:
Author’s note on Chapter 70: Rivers Beneath Ice
This chapter was meaningful to me because it captured the essence of a Hubei woman, and especially someone from Wuhan. That city is much, much more than just a place on the map; it’s a symbol of resilience! Long before COVID-19, Wuhan was already known as the crossroads of rivers, poetry, and revolution. But when the pandemic began there, the world suddenly saw its name in headlines for all the wrong reasons.
What struck me then, and still does, is how the people of Wuhan endured. The lockdown was one of the strictest anywhere, yet the city survived, healed, and carried on. That same quiet strength: of suffering in silence, of holding on until the ice breaks, is what I tried to capture in Ruo Lin.
Writing her felt like writing about Wuhan itself: enigmatic, proud, scarred but not broken. Like rivers beneath ice, the depth is always there, even if the surface looks still. This chapter is both a memory and a small tribute to the spirit of a city that taught the world what resilience means.
Chapter 71: The One Who Asked First
https://freeimage.host/i/Kluzrve
(AI-generated image of June)
Disclaimer: All names, characters, and events in this chapter are fictional, although inspired by the lived experiences and memories of the protagonist. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Settings and timelines have been adapted for narrative purposes.
I almost didn’t include her.
Not because it wasn’t meaningful, but because of how I’d chosen to write this book.
Until now, I’ve only written about the women I’ve slept with. Those I’d undressed, held close, left behind… or who had left me. Not the ones I kissed and never touched. Not the ones who only held my hand in silence and disappeared into memory without ache.
But June was different.
And so she belongs here, not as a footnote, but as a turning point.
We met at a public lecture on ethics in genetic engineering, of all places, a topic I barely understood but pretended to, just to feel current. She was seated two rows behind me, scribbling notes in a lined Muji notebook, pausing now and then to draw tiny, perfect trees in the margins.
After the session, I made a comment about how the speaker dodged the hard questions. She smiled and said, “You’re not wrong. But it’s easier to theorise morality than to live it.”
That was our beginning.
We started texting. Then coffee. Then long walks through Singapore’s then-quieter corners, like Labrador Park, the old KTM tracks, the canal behind Dawson.
She was soft-spoken, deliberate. Not shy, just curated. She dressed plainly. Always carried a book. And when she laughed, it came from her chest, not her throat.
I was used to signals, like the tilt of a chin, the lingering glance, the way some women stepped closer without saying why.
But June was unreadable.
I wasn’t sure if she liked me, until one night, outside my flat, she reached for my hand and squeezed it gently.
“Can I come up?” she asked.
We sat on my couch. Drank cold barley from the fridge. Talked about nothing.
Then, as I leaned in to kiss her, she met me halfway, lips soft, eyes closed, body still.
When I placed my hand on her waist, she stopped me, not roughly, just firmly.
“I need to tell you something.”
She looked down, then back at me.
“I’m asexual. I don’t feel… what most people feel. But I like you. I want to be close. Just… maybe not the way you’re used to.”
I nodded. Said I understood. I didn’t. Not fully. But I wanted to.
She asked if we could just lie down, but fully clothed, side by side.
I wrapped my arm around her. She tucked her head into my chest. We didn’t move for almost an hour.
There was no sex. No moans, no unzipping, no urgent hands. But I felt something deeper than lust, something closer to trust.
The next time we met, we held hands throughout a film and she fell asleep on my shoulder. She kissed me once at the MRT station and said, “This is all I can offer right now. Is it enough for you?”
And for a moment, I thought maybe it was.
But we both knew my world, which was built on touch, motion, exploration… wasn’t hers.
We drifted apart a few weeks later. No anger. No awkwardness. Just two people walking parallel, no longer in step.
And yet, I still think of her.
Not because I wanted more. But because she showed me how to want less, without feeling like I’d lost something.
She was the first to ever ask, “What do you want to feel?” Not “What do you want to do?”
And I realised that for all the women I had known, loved, touched, and tasted… I had never really learned to name my own longing.
June didn’t undress for me. But she undid something. A knot I hadn’t noticed until it loosened.
She reminded me that intimacy isn’t always carnal. That some connections live in the space between bodies, not in the act of closing it.
So yes, this chapter doesn’t end in bed. It ends in stillness. And sometimes, that’s the most honest kind.
⸻
A Note for Readers in Singapore
If you identify as asexual or are exploring your place on the asexual or aromantic spectrum, know that you’re not alone.
Singapore has supportive communities where you can find understanding and companionship:
•
•
•
These spaces offer a chance to connect, share experiences, and find support in a society that may not always understand.
⸻
[End of Chapter 71]
Mirror Site:
Chapter 72: Skybound Hearts
https://freeimage.host/i/K0HNFDP
(AI-generated image of Elena)
Disclaimer: All names, characters, and events in this chapter are fictional, although inspired by the lived experiences and memories of the protagonist. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Settings and timelines have been adapted for narrative purposes.
She was the kind of woman you weren’t supposed to fall for… not if you valued sleep, sanity, or stability.
Tall. Slim. Almost androgynously elegant, with sharp cheekbones, narrow hips, and almond eyes that carried more fatigue than flirtation. Her breasts were small, barely noticeable beneath her tailored kebaya. But her presence?
Unmistakable
.
I met her at a Shell station near Changi, close to midnight. I was topping up my dad’s old Nissan Sunny after a late study session. She stood in the fluorescent haze of the store window, sipping a bottled green tea and thumbing through a copy of
Her World
. The soft glint of a Singapore Airlines crew tag hung from her tote bag, a subtle flex that carried both prestige and pain.
Our eyes met briefly, not with flirtation, but recognition. Two people existing in the margins of ordinary hours.
Her name was Elena. She’d been flying for six years, since she was twenty-three. “
Second batch to train at STC after the Hong Kah shift
,” she said, referring to the old SIA Training Centre that relocated to Upper Changi in the mid-90s. Her stories came out piece by piece… mock emergency landings in the hydraulic cabin simulators… fire drills in full uniform… and endless grooming inspections that taught her how to smile through turbulence, delays, and heartbreak.
“I love the sky,” she said. “But it’s a terrible place to live.”
We exchanged numbers. Hers was written in careful penmanship on a petrol receipt. A week later, my Nokia 3210 lit up close to midnight.
“Just landed. Awake?”
⸻
The first time we made love was at my Tiong Bahru flat.
She showed up just past 1 a.m., still wearing the remnants of her flight: jeans, tank top, and exhaustion. Her hair was slightly flattened from the headset, and her eyes shimmered from fatigue, not makeup.
We kissed in the soft glow of my desk lamp. No rush, just the slow unraveling of two bodies that had waited long enough. She undressed like she was stepping out of a memory, not for performance, but for release.
Her frame was slender, her breasts small and firm under my touch. She climbed onto me, sliding down with quiet precision, her hands bracing against my chest. We moved in silence, only the sound of her breath and the rhythmic creak of my old mattress filling the humid air.
She came with a deep sigh, collapsing against me like the world had finally gone still. I held her close as she fell asleep, the whirr of the fan mixing with her steady breath.
⸻
The second time was somewhere far more dangerous, in the pressurised hush of a commercial aircraft.
She’d arranged a return from Bangkok on a red-eye with a half-empty cabin. She was working economy, and when the lights dimmed and passengers dozed, she appeared at my row like a shadow.
“Twenty minutes,” she whispered. “Follow my lead.”
We disappeared into the lavatory, our hearts pounding, and pulses racing. In that tight space, we became pure instinct. She climbed onto me, her skirt hitched, my pants half undone. We moved with silent intensity, each thrust careful but desperate. The aircraft hummed. Her moans were muffled into my shoulder.
She kissed me as I finished inside her, eyes half-closed, hair messy. I held her for a while, with her head gently nuzzling my shoulder. When we emerged separately, we didn’t exchange a word. But she passed me a biscuit with a plastic cup of juice like any other stewardess would, with precision and poise. Only her fingers lingered just a little too long.
⸻
The third time was in the crew lounge at Changi, tucked behind a gate most civilians never notice.
The room was spartan: old couches, harsh lighting, the scent of too many overnight bags and medicated oil. She didn’t speak as she pulled me into her lap. No prelude, no hesitation.
She was already wet.
She rode me slowly, hips rolling with practiced grace. I held her waist, her breath hot against my ear as she whispered fragmented stories: a passenger who cried for six hours, an engine fault in Delhi, an emergency landing in Guam. Each thrust released another memory.
We came together, sinking into the couch like it was the only place left that made sense. We lay there until her phone buzzed again.
“You should go,” I said.
“I know,” she replied. “I just… wanted to feel like a person again.”
⸻
The last time was at my flat again, sometime in November.
She looked worn, not just tired, but threadbare. Her skin was paler, her eyes duller. Six sectors in ten days. Singapore to Frankfurt. Frankfurt to Dubai. A 12-hour layover and back again. “Sometimes I forget where I am,” she admitted.
We made love slowly, holding each other as if it were the last act in a fading play. I kissed her forehead as she moved against me, her hips faltering with exhaustion. When she came, it was quiet. Just a tear that escaped the corner of her eye.
Afterward, we lay side by side, our fingers interlaced.
“I like you,” she said softly. “You’re one of the few who doesn’t ask me when I’m quitting.”
I kissed her palm.
“I like you too. Even if I never know when you’ll disappear again.”
She left just before sunrise. No drama. Just a suitcase, a kiss, and the echo of her footsteps down the corridor.
⸻
Sometimes, I still catch the sound of jet engines in the distance and wonder if she’s up there, pinning her hair, adjusting her scarf, rehearsing the safety demo with a voice she no longer believes in. Cabin crew live in a liminal world, part dream, part duty. Always in motion. Never quite landing.
And for a while, I loved a woman who lived in the sky.
But you can’t build a home in the clouds.
[End of Chapter 72]
Mirror Site:
Quote:
Originally Posted by
raxip
but… you are Mr Cloud.
Also… Nokia 3210!
Yup, 1999 was the time of the Nokia 3210. Brings back memories doesn’t it?
Chapter 73: Ink and Illusion
https://freeimage.host/i/K0iPUMB
(AI-generated image of Hannah)
Disclaimer: All names, characters, and events in this chapter are fictional, although inspired by the lived experiences and memories of the protagonist. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Settings and timelines have been adapted for narrative purposes.
She came into my life the way a summer thunderstorm does: sudden, loud, and impossible to ignore.
I was at Europa Ridley’s, the one at Bukit Timah, a popular haunt for grad students and bored professionals on Fridays. It was 1999, and the air inside was thick with cigarette smoke, cheap perfume, and the promise of bad decisions. I was standing near the pool table, nursing a gin tonic, trying to unwind after a brutal week of rewrites, when I saw her.
Short. Tiny. Radiating confidence.
Her hair was bleached blonde, straightened into a sharp bob with streaks of pastel pink. Her frame was petite, almost fragile, but she carried herself like she owned the room. When she turned sideways, it was impossible not to notice… her
silicone-enhanced chest
strained against a tight black halter top. A gold belly ring glinted above her low-slung jeans. And just beneath, barely visible when she moved: her ink. A large tattoo of a phoenix wrapped around her right thigh, flames licking up toward her hip. Another trailed along her tummy: Sanskrit text, though I never asked what it meant.
She caught me staring. And instead of looking away, she grinned wide, unabashed, like she knew exactly what she was doing.
Her name, she said with a giggle, was Hannah. Not her real name, I suspected. But it suited her.
“Massage therapist,” she offered casually. “Used to dance. Still party.” Then she reached for my drink, took a sip without asking, and winked. “You’re not like the usual guys here.”
“I’m doing my postgrad,” I replied.
“Ah. So, you’re the clever kind. Maybe I need a study session.”
That night, we danced. She was so magnetic: twirling, laughing, grinding against me just enough to make me crave more. Every so often, she’d lean in to whisper something outrageous in my ear, her breath hot against my neck. When the lights came on, she didn’t ask if I had a ride, she just said, “Take me home.”
⸻
At my Tiong Bahru flat, she made herself comfortable instantly, kicked off her heels, flopped onto my mattress, and then peeled off her halter top in one smooth motion. No hesitation.
Her breasts were round, firm, artificial perfection. She caught me staring again and smirked. “Don’t be shy. They cost enough.”
She kissed like she lived, boldly, with no hesitation. Her tongue teased, explored, demanded. I undressed her slowly, kissing my way down her tattooed belly, fingers tracing the phoenix flames rising along her thigh.
She gasped when I entered her womanhood, tight and slick, legs wrapping around my waist, her tiny body arching to meet mine. Her moans were high-pitched, musical. She rode me afterward, straddling me with surprising strength, her blonde hair bouncing as she moved.
When she came, it was loud, unrestrained, just like a girl who had nothing to prove to anyone anymore.
We slept twisted together, skin against ink.
⸻
The second time happened two weeks later. She messaged me while I was at a library cubicle, buried in drafts. The message simply said:
“
Bored. Need another study session.
”
We met at her place, which was a rented room in a walk-up near Joo Chiat, cluttered with plush toys, incense, and makeup palettes. The walls were pink. The air smelled of rose oil and cigarette ash.
She opened the door wearing only a silk robe and a grin.
We didn’t talk much. She dragged me to the bed, pulled off my shirt, and kissed down my chest. I slid my fingers through her hair as she went lower, her tongue circling, teasing, torturing. She knew how to pleasure like it was an art, alternating pace, pressure, pausing just before I lost control.
I turned her over and took her from behind, her tattooed thighs parting easily as she moaned into the pillows. She begged for more, her voice muffled but urgent.
I gripped her hips and gave her everything: fast, hard, merciless… until we both collapsed, drenched in sweat and satisfaction.
She lit a cigarette afterward, naked under the sheets, humming along to
911’s
“Bodyshakin’
” playing from her cassette deck.
“You’re not like the others,” she said between drags.
“You say that to everyone?”
“Only the ones I won’t call again.”
She smiled. I smiled back. We never did it again.
⸻
She vanished a few weeks later. Disconnected number. No one at Europa knew her real name.
But sometimes, when I pass a girl in a tight halter, or smell rose oil on someone’s wrist, I think of her.
Of Hannah, or whoever she was, with her silicone curves, bold tattoos, and the kind of smile that made you forget what you were supposed to be doing with your life.
She wasn’t love. She was
escape
.
And for two glorious nights, I ran with her.
[End of Chapter 73]
Mirror Site:
Chapter 74: Shandong Nights (Brief Trip from Master’s in Singapore)
https://freeimage.host/i/K1jc0aS
(AI-generated image of Shu Qin)
Disclaimer: All names, characters, and events in this chapter are fictional, although inspired by the lived experiences and memories of the protagonist. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Settings and timelines have been adapted for narrative purposes.
It was my first time in China, the real China, not a Hong Kong stopover or the Guangzhou tarmac.
I’d signed up for a short academic field study tied to regional transport corridors and economic cooperation zones. It sounded vague, but there was a site visit and seminar in Jinan, and I was eager for fresh air and something different.
That’s where I met Shu Qin.
She wasn’t a scholar. She worked the logistics crew, with clipboards, coordination, and telling off older men with that Shandong
da nü zi
fire that made me grin.
“我从曲阜来的。”
“I’m from Qufu,” she told me, “just don’t expect me to quote Confucius.”
She was twenty-five, fresh-faced but solid.
Buxom, round-featured, her ponytail swinging confidently, chest straining her red cardigan just enough to turn heads. Her laugh was bright, her accent thick: Northern vowels, quick consonants, and a teasing lilt.
She caught me ogling a jianbing at breakfast.
“你想吃，还是想娶它？”
“You wanna eat it or marry it?” she asked.
“如果我能两个都做，就最好了。”
“If I could do both, that’d be perfect.”
She gave me a funny look. Then took the last one.
⸻
That evening, I found her outside the hotel, smoking a slim menthol cigarette.
“你们新加坡人讲话好文绉绉的。”
“You Singaporeans speak like you’re writing essays.”
“你们山东人讲话太直接了。”
“You Shandong girls speak like you’re throwing bricks.”
She laughed.
We walked along the canal. She told me about home, of millet fields, of white steamed buns the size of fists, and the aunties who’d rather die than marry a short man.
“我奶奶说，一个男人如果喝不了一瓶白酒，就别让他碰你。”
“My grandma says, if a man can’t finish a bottle of baijiu, he’s not worth touching.”
“我不经常喝酒。”
“I don’t drink often.”
“那你就得在别的方面 impress 我。”
“Then you better impress me some other way.”
I grinned, Casanova style.
⸻
In her hotel room, she stripped without flourish. Her skin was soft and pale like steamed tofu, her bra barely holding in her 满满的一对… full and high.
“不要讲话。”
“No talking.”
Her mouth was hot, fast, greedy.
She devoured me like she meant to empty me and start over.
I gasped as her fingers gripped me and her tongue circled me slowly, deliberately, with her eyes watching my face like a cat watches a bird.
“你不是装 gentleman 吧？”
“You’re not just pretending to be a gentleman, are you?”
She guided me between her legs and whispered:
“戴套。”
“Put it on.”
I did.
She rolled over onto her hands and knees, looked back, smirked.
“传统不等于保守。”
“Traditional doesn’t mean boring.”
I entered slowly, deeply.
She was tight, wet, moaning already… panting out words between thrusts.
“哎呀… 慢一点… 深一点… 就是那里… 不要停…”
“Aiya… slower… deeper… right there… don’t stop…”
Her voice bounced off the walls in that little grey room.
I pounded harder, gripping her waist, watching her push back with each stroke.
Her cheeks flushed, hair matted, breathing ragged.
She pulled me down and whispered against my cheek:
“你喜欢山东吗？”
“You like Shandong now?”
“太喜欢了。”
“I love it.”
We climaxed nearly together, with her walls tightening violently, me growling into her neck, burying myself in the rhythm of her.
⸻
We met two more nights.
Every time was electric, greedy, unforgettable.
On the last morning, she handed me a jar of 花生糖, delicious peanut candy from home.
“甜的，又硬的。像我。”
“Sweet. And tough. Like me.”
She kissed me once, hard.
Then she left.
⸻
Shu Qin wasn’t a lover I wanted to keep.
But she was one I would never forget.
She embodied the strength and sensuality of the North… her voice, her scent, her unapologetic lust burned into my memory like a red stamp on rice paper.
And as I left Jinan that week, I looked out the window of the train and thought:
If this is Shandong…
What would Hunan be like?
I would soon find out.
[End of Chapter 74]
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