I miss the final Green Line train by four minutes — long enough to watch the tail lights disappear into the tunnel, short enough that calling a ride feels wasteful. The bus stop on Eu Tong Sen Street still has the route 14 timetable taped inside the shelter, corners curled from humidity. The next departure reads twelve-twenty-two a.m. I sit on the metal bench and listen to a cleaner hose the pavement outside a closed clinic.
The bus arrives at twelve-twenty-four, which by late-night standards counts as punctual. Four passengers board: a nurse still in scrubs, two men sharing earbuds, me. The driver does not announce stops. The interior smells of vinyl warmed by earlier crowds and the faint sweetness of someone's bubble tea cup wedged behind a seat. We move north through empty junctions where traffic lights cycle for nobody, green holding like an invitation no one accepts.
I alight at Tiong Bahru Road near block thirty-one at twelve-thirty-eight. The estate at this hour is neither asleep nor awake — corridor lights burn in every other window, a television flickers behind a curtain, someone's air-con unit drips onto the planter below with a regular tick I can hear from the kerb. The shophouses along the market are shuttered. Metal grilles reflect street lamps as orange rectangles that wobble when lorries pass far away.
I walk the rest because movement keeps me alert and because the distance is fifteen minutes if I do not rush. Seng Poh Road is quiet except for a cat knocking a bin lid and a distant motorbike on Kim Pong Road. My shoes sound louder than they do by day — rubber on tile, the small scrape when I adjust stride for a raised paving stone I know by now. The neighbourhood reveals its maintenance at night: fresh paint on a lamp post, a crack sealed with tar, a flyer half-peeled from a notice board fluttering though there is no wind I can feel.
At the curved blocks the architecture reads differently under sodium light — curves flatten, shadows pool under balconies, laundry lines hang empty like drawn bowstrings. I pass the café on Eng Watt Street where I wrote the April entry. The chairs are stacked inside and the menu stand faces inward. I remember the ceramic cup rim and how the morning belonged to early arrivals. Tonight belongs to whoever is still moving.
Near my walk-up I see a light on in the third-floor unit opposite — someone pacing behind frosted glass, phone pressed to ear. I do not speculate about the conversation. The observation is the silhouette and the pacing, the way private urgency shows through a window without sound. A gecko chirps from the wall near the meter box. The sound is sharp in the absence of traffic.
I climb the stairs slowly. On the second landing a neighbour has left a bag of durian shells tied double-knotted — tomorrow's complaint waiting to happen, tonight's evidence that people live here continuously, not only during daylight. My key turns with its usual resistance. Inside, I write one line before showering: Bus 14 at twelve-twenty-four, estate orange and ticking.
The city after midnight is not empty — it is specialised. Cleaners, nurses, insomniacs, delivery riders, me on a bench watching a timetable curl. The route home is the same geometry as the daytime walk but the light reassigns importance. What glows matters. What reflects matters. What drips from air-con units marks time.
I reach the door at twelve-fifty-one — the night commute ends when the key turns, not when the bus stops.