The smell of stale oil and yesterday’s dinner clung to the walls of the tiny public housing flat. Pudding stood at the single pane window, her forehead resting against the cool glass, watching the neon sign of a pawnshop across the street flicker on and off. It was like a faulty heartbeat, this neighbourhood, this life. Behind her, in the main room that served as living, dining, and sleeping quarters, her husband, Ah Bo, snored softly on the sofa, a half-finished can of cheap beer balanced precariously on his stomach.
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Pudding. The name was a relic, a silly, sweet moniker given to her by university friends for her round cheeks and a once-famous propensity for dessert. Now, at thirty-four, it felt like a cruel joke. She was Pudding, married to Ah Bo, living in a 300-square-foot box that smelled of defeat.
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Her reflection in the glass was a ghost. She could barely make out the shape of her own face, just the faint outline superimposed over the flickering neon. It was easier that way. The real her, the one with sharp opinions and a laugh that used to startle pigeons, was safely tucked away. That woman was a liability.
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Her mind drifted back, not to a specific time, but to a feeling: the fraught, electric atmosphere of being young and unmarried in a city that judged a woman’s worth by a brutal, unspoken calculus. She remembered the bars, the group dinners, the cautious first dates. The way a man’s eyes would change when he was deciding whether you were worth the investment. The evaluation was silent but deafening. It was in the questions: “Do you like to cook?” really meant “Will you be domestic?” “You’re very independent” was often a criticism, not a compliment.
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And the most critical metric of all, the one that hung over every interaction like a shroud: how easily would you be persuaded? A hand on the small of your back that lingered a second too long was a test. A joke with a risqué edge was a probe. The entire courtship dance was a negotiation, and the currency was intimacy. The girls who were deemed “easy” were talked about with a mixture of disdain and hungry fascination. The ones who held out too long were “prudish,” “frigid,” “wasting a man’s time.” You had to find the impossible middle ground: chaste but not cold, interested but not eager. It was exhausting. It was a game she had never learned to play well, her rebellious streak often flashing at the worst moments, scaring away the bankers, the lawyers, the men with futures.
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Then she met Ah Bo at a community centre computer class she’d been guilted into attending by her mother. He was helping the elderly instructor troubleshoot a projector. He wasn’t like the others. He was a “leftover man” himself—a label for those like him, with little education and a low-status job as a maintenance mechanic for a local bus company. He was shy, his hands were permanently stained with grease no amount of scrubbing could remove, and he looked at her not as a problem to be solved or a prize to be won, but as a person. He didn’t play games. His courtship was achingly sincere: a steamed bun he thought she’d like, a walk in a crowded park, conversations that were halting but real.
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He was a safe harbour after a stormy sea. He asked for nothing but her company. He never evaluated her. He simply seemed grateful for her presence. When he proposed, clumsily, in a cheap hot pot restaurant, steam fogging his glasses, it felt less like a grand romance and more like a ceasefire. A truce with life. She said yes. They qualified for public housing. They moved in. And the performance began.
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A sigh escaped her lips, fogging the glass. She turned from the window and looked at Ah Bo, his mouth slightly agape, his body perfectly at peace. A wave of something immense and complicated washed over her—affection, pity, and a resentment so profound it made her feel sick with guilt.
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Who has ever seen me constantly arguing about right and wrong? she thought, the words forming a familiar, silent mantra in her head. I don't want to argue, and I'm incredibly kind to you.
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She was. She made his favourite braised pork belly every Friday, even though the smell of fatty meat now turned her stomach. She laughed at his simple jokes, the ones she didn’t quite understand. She listened to his stories about faulty engines and difficult passengers with a look of rapt attention plastered on her face.
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If you love to laugh, I don't have my own opinions on major issues.
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Ah Bo loved a woman who was cheerful. So, she was cheerful. When he talked about politics, things he heard from his friends or on the radio, things she knew were factually wrong or painfully simplistic, she just nodded and smiled. “You’re so smart,” she’d say, and he’d beam. She had voted for a different party, believed in different things, dreamed of a different world. But those opinions were sharp, jagged rocks. She had smoothed them all down into harmless, pretty pebbles she could keep in her pocket.
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I can be weak, clumsy, and yet still skilled.
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She’d let a jar of pickles “accidentally” slip from her hands so he could muscle it open. “You’re so strong!” she’d chirp. She’d feign confusion over a map on a day out, allowing him to take the lead, to be the navigator, the protector. It was a skill she’d honed to an art form: the performance of incompetence to make him feel capable. She, who had once single-handedly organized a university-wide symposium, now pretended she couldn’t read a bus schedule.
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I understand that returning to my old rebellious ways would annoy you. I'd rather let my gentle side be seen as much as possible.
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The ghost of her old self sometimes rattled the cage. A sarcastic comment would rise in her throat, and she’d force it down, tasting its bitter sharpness. A desire to spend a Sunday alone with a book instead of accompanying him to his cousin’s noisy, smoky apartment would feel like a primal need. But she’d swallow it, paste on a smile, and go. Rebellion was a luxury she could no longer afford. Gentleness was the currency of this new economy.
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I'd be a good wife to please everyone, suppressing my individuality to give. Everyone has to act. I play my part every day for a pleasant relationship.
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She moved away from the window and started tidying the small room, picking up Ah Bo’s discarded work uniform. The act was automatic. This was her stage. The cramped flat was her theatre. The role: The Contented Wife. It was a role she played for him, for her parents who were just relieved she was “settled,” for his family who thought she was a sweet, simple girl who’d been lucky to land their Ah Bo.
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If necessary, we should fulfill our roles. We should be friendly. It's only natural, like walking a charity walk.
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She folded the shirt with sharp, precise movements. Isn’t that what all relationships were? A mutual agreement to perform? To play the parts that kept the machinery of daily life running smoothly? He played his part too: the Provider (even if his provisions were meagre), the Handyman, the Husband. They were friendly, a good team. They rarely fought. The peace was palpable. And it felt, to Pudding, like a form of emotional charity. A long, endless walk where you smiled until your face ached for a cause you only vaguely believed in.
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Don't ask me what I would do if I'd been single.
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This thought was a dark door she never opened. Behind it lay phantom lives. The life where she’d held out for the lawyer, lived in a high-rise with a view of the sea, and argued about politics over expensive wine. The life where she’d stayed single, pursued her own career fiercely, and answered to no one. The life where she’d said no to Ah Bo. Those lives were beautiful, terrifying ghosts. They had to remain behind the door. To look at them would be to acknowledge the magnitude of the sacrifice, and that acknowledgment would shatter her.
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I hope you believe that you single-handedly hold up my sky.
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She looked at his sleeping face, so trusting. He did believe it. He believed he had saved her from spinsterhood, given her a home, a purpose. He believed his love was the sun in her universe. And in a way, it was. His needs, his expectations, his simple world were the parameters of her existence. They were the walls of her sky.
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Does speaking of the truth lead to death, even where a lie shouldn’t suffice? It is a heartfelt lie afterall.
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She never said, “I am dying inside.” She never said, “This is not enough.” She never said, “I miss myself.” Those words were landmines that would obliterate his happiness and their fragile peace. So, she lied. Every day. With her smile, her nod, her cheerful “Yes, dear.” They were the most heartfelt lies she’d ever told, because they were told to protect him. Her silence was a vast, loving deception.
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I truly wish you happiness as sweet as honey.
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And this was the most confusing part. She did. She genuinely loved Ah Bo. It wasn’t the passionate, dramatic love of stories, but a deep, aching tenderness. He was a good man. Kind, hardworking, faithful. He deserved happiness. He deserved a wife who adored this life. Her greatest sorrow was that she could not be that woman for him, not truly. So she acted the part, hoping the performance would be enough to grant him the sweetness he deserved.
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I'm so smooth that we can work side by side. I'm grateful for the opportunity to act together.
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She finished tidying and sat in the worn armchair opposite him. She watched his chest rise and fall. They were a good team. They budgeted meticulously. They hosted family dinners in the cramped flat. They planned a yearly trip to the mainland that was always slightly disappointing but undertaken with earnest hope. They worked side-by-side, building this life, this pleasant fiction. And she was, in a twisted way, grateful. Grateful for the script. It was easier than the terrifying uncertainty of writing her own story.
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I truly wish you happiness as sweet as honey.
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The mantra ended where it always did. A plea, a wish, a prayer sent out into the stuffy air of the flat.
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The bathroom was her sanctuary. It was the only room with a lock.
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That night, after Ah Bo had stumbled to bed, she ran a bath. The water was painfully hot, the way she liked it, scented with a few precious drops of jasmine oil she kept hidden—a vestige of her old tastes, too extravagant for their budget. She sank into the water, letting it swallow her whole, the heat a scalching punishment and a comfort.
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Steam rose, fogging the mirror, obscuring the tired face of the wife. Here, in the water, she could unbecome.
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I wish, naked in the bathtub, I could be myself again, my real self, she thought, the words a quiet sob in her mind. Hiding myself because I couldn't bear to hurt others. It's a beautiful human mistake.
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Tears finally came, hot and silent, mixing with the bathwater. There was no one to perform for here. This was the raw, unedited footage of her life. The grief for the woman she had been. The fear that she was gone for good. The immense, weary love for the sleeping man in the next room, a love that felt like a life sentence.
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I ask myself, there are so many sides to my own story.
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And there were. The sharp university student. The reluctant dater. The pragmatic fiancée. The Contented Wife. Which one was real? Were they all? Was the performance just another facet of her, the one that chose kindness over honesty, peace over selfhood?
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Now, as a wife, I want love and kindness.
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It was a simple, desperate want. She wanted to feel the love she worked so hard to project. She wanted the kindness she showed to him to be returned not in kind, but in understanding—an understanding she knew he was incapable of. He could not see the performance because he had never met the real actress. He only knew the character she had created for him.
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I know exactly what to say.
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The water grew cold. The tears stopped. The moment of raw honesty was over. She stood up, water sluicing off her body, and reached for a thin, frayed towel. She caught a glimpse of herself in the clearing mirror: just a woman, thirty-four, in a small bathroom, her eyes slightly red.
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She dried off, put on her worn nightgown, and unlocked the door. The air in the bedroom was thick with Ah Bo’s slumber. She slipped into bed beside him. He stirred, rolled over, and flung a heavy arm across her waist, mumbling her name. “Pudding.”
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It was a statement of fact. A possession. A comfort.
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She lay there in the dark, his weight anchoring her to the bed, to this life. The performance was over for the day. Outside, the neon pulse of the pawnshop sign bled through the thin curtains, painting the room in a rhythm of red and dark.
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She knew exactly what to say.
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She whispered it into the darkness, a line from the script, a heartfelt lie, a true wish.
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“I’m here, Ah Bo. I’m happy.”
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and then Add to home screen.