Joel
Joel learnt very quickly that guilt was not loud.
It did not shout or demand attention. It did not announce itself with drama or collapse. It did not look like panic or sound like regret spoken out loud. Instead, it settled into his chest and stayed there—quiet, dense, and persistent, like something that refused to dissolve no matter how many times he swallowed, no matter how often he told himself that it had been an accident.
The futsal court had been cordoned off.
Yellow tape stretched awkwardly across the entrance, bright and almost cheerful in the afternoon light. It fluttered slightly in the breeze, as though it had been put there without much thought. The concrete beneath it looked unchanged—still sun-bleached, still scarred with old skid marks and faded shoe prints. The fixed goalpost stood exactly where it had always been.
Exactly where she had fallen.
Joel stopped walking.
His bag slid slightly off his shoulder, the strap loosening without him noticing. The back of the school felt strangely hollow, as though something important had been removed and the space had not yet learnt how to exist without it. The Saturday heat pressed down relentlessly, but he barely felt it.
He could not look anywhere except at the goalpost.
His body remembered before his mind did.
The tightening of his calf as he had planted his foot.
The smooth, familiar swing of his leg.
The solid, satisfying—terrible—thud of impact.
He could still see the ball leaving his foot. Too clean. Too fast. Too straight.
And then—
Hidayah.
The image rose in his mind with merciless clarity. The way her body had arched back was wrong in a way that his brain had not known how to process at the time. The way her arms had moved as though trying to catch balance that no longer existed.
And the sound.
God, the sound.
Not dramatic. Not cinematic. Just a blunt, final noise as her body hit the concrete.
Joel's fingers curled slowly into fists.
He had replayed it so many times that the memory no longer felt like something that had happened. It felt like something that was still happening. Something ongoing. A loop his mind refused to release him from.
If I had aimed lower.
If I had passed instead.
If I had hesitated for half a second.
If I had been less confident.
If I had been less sure of my own control.
William Tan's voice surfaced in his memory, calm and measured, but heavy with something that had not been there before.
"This was an accident, Joel. But accidents still have consequences."
He had nodded then.
He had said the right things.
He had apologised—to teachers, to officers, to people who were standing upright and breathing and looking at him with complicated expressions.
But he hadn't apologised to her.
He didn't know if he was allowed to.
He didn't know if seeing his face would make things worse.
He didn't know if he deserved to be anywhere near her.
The court stood there, silent and ordinary, and that somehow made everything worse. It looked exactly the same as it always had. As though nothing irreversible had happened on it. As though the world had not shifted by a few terrible degrees.
Joel turned away suddenly, his heart pounding too fast, his throat tight.
He forced himself to walk.
And with every step, the weight in his chest did not get lighter.
Hidayah
Hidayah stood at the threshold of her bedroom, her school bag resting at her feet, her uniform neatly pressed, her shoes lined up with quiet precision by the door.
She hadn't worn it in days.
For a moment, she simply stood there, as if waiting for the room to tell her it was time.
The mirror across from her reflected someone familiar, yet subtly altered. It was still her face, still her eyes—but her posture was different now. More careful. Her shoulders sat a little higher, a little tighter, as if her body had learned a new way to hold itself. Her movements were deliberate, measured in a way they hadn't been before.
The faint bruising beneath her uniform collar was hidden from view, but she could still feel it—an echo beneath her skin, a reminder that healing was not the same as being whole.
Her mother hovered nearby, pretending very hard not to watch.
Azizah had been like this all morning. Busy in unnecessary ways. Rearranging things that didn't need rearranging. Asking questions that had already been answered.
"Take it slow," she said again, for the third time in five minutes, her voice gentle but threaded with worry.
"I will," Hidayah replied, smiling softly. "I promise."
She bent to pick up her bag, then paused, instinctively checking the angle, the weight, the pull against her chest. A few days ago, she wouldn't have thought about it at all. Now, her body insisted on being consulted.
It was manageable.
She nodded to herself, a small, private victory.
She had learned to listen to her body these past few days.
That, she thought, was new.
When the door closed behind her, the familiar sounds of the neighbourhood rushed in—traffic, distant voices, the hum of daily life continuing without ceremony or hesitation. Singapore moved efficiently, unapologetically forward. It always had.
For a brief moment, she stood there, feeling slightly out of step with it.
Then she stepped into it anyway.
On the bus, she took a seat near the window and found herself watching reflections instead of faces. The glass gave her a double world—one layered over another. Buildings slid by in fragments: steel, sky, movement, light. People appeared and disappeared in the reflection like passing thoughts.
Her mind drifted, uninvited, back to the futsal court.
She hadn't dreamt of the impact anymore.
Not of the pain. Not of the fall.
Instead, she dreamt of the moment before.
The way the world had seemed perfectly normal.
The way Joel had looked when he kicked the ball—focused, intent, completely unaware of what was about to happen.
She wondered if he remembered that part too.
Or if his memory began only where hers ended.
She wondered if he blamed himself.
The thought tightened something in her chest—not pain, not quite fear, but something closer to concern.
She hadn't told anyone this. Not her parents. Not her friends. Not even Ms Poh when she had visited.
But she hoped he was okay.
Not because what had happened didn't matter.
Not because it hadn't hurt.
But because she knew what it was like to carry a moment that refused to leave you.
The bus slowed. The doors hissed open.
Hidayah straightened slightly, adjusted her grip on her bag, and prepared to step back into a world that looked exactly the same—and felt completely different.
Joel
The SJAB club room smelt faintly of sweat and air-conditioning—familiar, grounding, almost comforting.
That, somehow, made it worse.
Joel sat at the far end of the room, elbows braced on his knees, hands clasped so tightly together that his fingers ached. He hadn't realised he was doing it until the ache became impossible to ignore. Around him, chairs scraped softly against the floor. Bags were dropped, unzipped, and rummaged through. Someone laughed quietly at something someone else had said.
Normal sounds.
Ordinary, unremarkable, perfectly intact.
He felt completely separate from all of it, as though a pane of glass had been lowered between him and the rest of the room. He could see everything. Hear everything. But none of it reached him in the same way anymore.
William Tan stood near the whiteboard, going through upcoming duties with Mr Anbar. Their voices were calm, efficient, and professional. They spoke in the language of schedules and responsibilities and logistics, in the tone of people whose world was still functioning in predictable sequences.
Joel barely processed a single word.
His gaze drifted instead to an empty seat near the middle of the room.
There was no reason for it to matter.
She had never sat there. She had never been part of this room, this school, or this part of his life at all.
And yet his mind filled the space anyway.
He swallowed and looked away.
He told himself, not for the first time, that she wouldn't be here. That she couldn't be here. That it was stupid to even register the door when it opened, or to feel that brief, irrational tightening in his chest every time someone walked in.
But when the door opened suddenly and someone stepped inside, his heart still jumped—sharp and involuntary—before dropping back into its familiar, heavier place.
Not her.
Of course not.
The disappointment came first.
Then the shame.
It spread through him slowly, hot and sour in his chest.
What are you hoping for? he demanded silently. Forgiveness? Absolution? Some impossible moment where the world pretends nothing happened?
He looked down at his hands, at the way his fingers were still clenched together like he was holding on to something he could neither fix nor release.
He hadn't earned any of that.
He hadn't even earned the right to wish for it.
Around him, the meeting went on. Names were called. Duties were assigned. Pens scratched against paper. Time moved forward with casual, almost careless confidence.
And Joel stayed where he was, trapped in the space between what had happened and what could never be undone, carrying the weight of someone who wasn't even supposed to be here—but never left his head.
Hidayah
School felt louder than she remembered.
Not in sound, but in presence.
Every corridor carried weight. Every corner held routine. The chatter of students, the shuffle of shoes on tile, the faint hum of lockers sliding open and closed—it all seemed sharper somehow, as if the building itself were alive, breathing, aware.
She walked slowly, deliberately, letting her eyes pass over familiar faces. Students glanced at her—not inquisitively, not maliciously, just enough. News traveled fast. Injuries, even from another school, had a way of finding their way into whispered conversations.
She nodded politely when greeted. Offered small, careful smiles. Deflected questions with practiced grace.
"Yes, I'm fine."
"No, it wasn't serious."
"Yes, I'll be back soon."
Each answer felt true enough. Or at least true in the sense that it satisfied others and, in a way, herself.
Her steps were measured, each one a quiet conversation with her body. The ache in her chest, the subtle tenderness beneath her collarbone, reminded her she was alive, fragile, and whole in a new sense. She noticed how she adjusted her backpack slightly, how she shifted her weight from one foot to the other, how she breathed deliberately to keep the rhythm steady.
Her mind drifted, as it often did these days, to the events that had unmoored her so completely—the futsal court, the collision, Joel's eyes, the flash of impact. She did not linger on the pain. She did not replay the scene in full. Instead, she remembered the moment before: the calm before disruption, the normalcy that had preceded chaos. She recalled Joel's focus, the inevitability of the ball's flight, the unpredictability of what came next.
A tight knot of concern settled in her chest—not fear, not guilt, but an ache of care. She wondered how he was. Did he carry this moment as she did? Had it changed him, too?
Her fingers tightened around the straps of her bag, her knuckles blanching. She had not told anyone this. Not her parents. Not her friends. And she did not plan to.
But she hoped he was okay.
Her feet carried her down the corridor, past classrooms humming with life, past the small library with its quiet corners, past the cafeteria where students laughed over lunch. Singapore moved efficiently, relentlessly forward. And she moved with it—tentatively, carefully, but moving.
She paused for a moment at the window overlooking the school grounds. The sunlight slanted across the courtyard, fragmented by the railings, and she breathed in deeply, letting the warmth settle in her chest. The pain that had once seemed consuming now existed as a soft echo. Her body reminded her gently that she was whole. That she could continue.
She exhaled slowly, releasing tension she hadn't noticed she was holding.
And then, with steady, deliberate steps, Hidayah walked on. Forward, cautiously, aware of her fragility but unbroken, carrying the memory of what had happened not in the space around her, but inside her.
Joel
That evening, Joel sat alone on his bed with the lights off, the city's glow bleeding in through the narrow gap between the curtains and painting pale lines across the wall.
The room felt too big in the dark.
Not empty—just hollow, like it had been waiting for a sound that never came.
He held his phone loosely in one hand, turning it over and back again, the screen lighting up and going dark in a slow, unconscious rhythm. The glass reflected a faint, distorted version of his face. He looked tired. Older. Or maybe just… heavier.
He hadn't planned to open his contacts.
It had happened the way most dangerous things did—without ceremony, without intention.
Suvit's name was there.
He stared at it for a long time, his thumb resting uselessly near the edge of the screen.
He didn't know Suvit well. They'd met during joint duty once, exchanged a few polite words, nothing more. But Suvit was Hidayah's senior. Someone in her world. Someone who could reach her.
If he went through Suvit, it would become real.
Official.
It would mean he was no longer just carrying this alone, sealed inside his own head like something radioactive.
He tapped the name.
The message screen opened.
He stared at the empty text field.
Closed it.
Opened it again.
His mind tried, and failed, to assemble words that didn't sound wrong.
Can you tell her I'm sorry? sounded like he was hiding behind someone else.
How is she? sounded like he was asking for reassurance he didn't deserve.
I didn't mean to— No. That one felt like a defence, not an apology.
He imagined Suvit reading whatever he sent. Imagined the pause. The careful phrasing of a reply. Imagined his own name appearing on Hidayah's phone, like an unwanted echo of something she probably wanted to forget.
Maybe she didn't want to hear from him.
Maybe she shouldn't have to.
His thumb hovered over the keyboard, unmoving.
The phone felt heavier in his hand, as if it were no longer a device but a decision.
Around him, the flat was quiet. Somewhere in another room, a television murmured. A car passed outside, tyres hissing faintly against the road. The world continued, unimpressed by his paralysis.
He thought about the court. The sound. The way her body had fallen.
He swallowed and looked away.
What right do I have to intrude on her recovery?
What right do I have to ask for anything at all?
Slowly, deliberately, he locked the phone and placed it face down on the bed, as though even seeing the screen had begun to hurt.
He lay back and stared at the ceiling, at a faint crack in the paint he'd never noticed before, tracing it with his eyes like it might lead somewhere else.
It didn't.
Some distances, he realised, were not measured in steps.
They were measured in how many times you almost spoke—and chose not to.
And sometimes, silence was not peace.
Sometimes, silence was the heaviest thing of all.
Hidayah
That night, after Isyak, Hidayah sat by her window. The school bag was unpacked, her uniform folded neatly on the chair beside her, as if even the smallest order in her world could restore a measure of control. The room smelled faintly of jasmine from the diffuser in the corner, warm and soft against the lingering ache beneath her collarbone.
Her gaze drifted outward. The city sprawled below her in fractured grids of light—streetlamps, headlights, the occasional neon sign that pulsed and hummed. The hum of distant traffic, the faint chatter from apartments across the way, all felt both ordinary and somehow heavy tonight.
She thought of the court again. Not the one she walked past at school—she never saw it—but the one that had existed so sharply in memory: the sun-baked concrete, the thud of the ball, the sudden impossibility of control. She did not flinch at the thought. She simply let it rest there, a quiet marker in the edges of her mind.
Then she thought of Joel.
Not with anger.
Not with resentment.
But with a quiet, unresolved awareness—like a sentence left unfinished, a note suspended on a stave, waiting to resolve itself.
Their paths had crossed violently, briefly. It had been enough to change something in each of them, though neither yet understood how deep the change might run.
Now they moved parallel once more, close enough to feel the pull, far enough apart not to touch. She could almost feel the weight of his guilt, like a shadow mirrored against her own lingering fragility.
Hidayah rested her forehead against the cool glass. The city lights blurred beneath her eyelashes, scattered into tiny constellations by the moisture she hadn't realised had pooled there. She wondered if he could feel the same echo—the subtle tremor in his chest, the way memory refused to let go.
If we meet again, she thought—not as a wish, not as a plan, but as a simple possibility—I hope we are kinder to ourselves.
She let the words linger, unspoken, letting them settle around her like a soft exhale.
Somewhere, not far away, another heartbeat carried the same memory. Another mind revisited the collision, the moment that had unraveled the ordinary. And neither of them knew yet how long that echo would last.
She turned her gaze back inside her room, at the neatly folded uniform, the small desk lamp casting a gentle pool of light. There was still pain in her chest, yes, but also a fragile clarity: the world continued, the city moved on, and she would move with it. Slowly, cautiously, but with awareness now.
The night deepened. The distant city sounds softened. And Hidayah let herself rest, her fingers brushing the edge of the window sill, the memory of the day pressed against her like a quiet reminder—not of loss, but of survival.
And in that quiet, for the first time in days, she allowed herself a small, steady exhale, letting the weight of what had happened settle without collapsing her.