A personal blog · Singapore · Choa Chu Kang

What Kept Circling After the Sirens Faded

26 May · about 8.55pm · written by Aisha

I had taken the bus up from Jurong West that evening because a friend near Choa Chu Kang had lent me a book I kept forgetting to return. Nothing urgent — just one of those small errands that float to the surface when the week loosens. I stepped off somewhere along Avenue 2 and walked the last stretch on foot, the way I often do when I want my head to unspool before I reach someone's void deck.

Block 248 Choa Chu Kang Avenue 2 was ahead of me, ordinary in that particular HDB way: laundry poles at angles, a faint smell of dinner from somewhere three floors up, the corridor lights coming on in sequence as if the block itself were waking for second shift. I was close enough to hear life inside — a television, a child practising scales on a keyboard — and far enough that the scene stayed general, the way you remember a neighbourhood without owning any single window in it.

Then a sound cut across the usual current — not thunder, not construction, something sharper that made heads turn on the pavement without anyone quite knowing where to look. I stopped near the letterbox cluster. A man adjusted his earphones. An auntie slowed her pushcart. For a few seconds the block seemed to hold its breath, and I felt my own thoughts snag on the moment the way fabric catches on a nail.

Sirens followed, distant at first, then layering until the air felt thick with them. Blue-red light washed the edges of the carpark canopy and slid along the facade in slow pulses. I did not walk toward the sound. I did not know anyone who lived in that stack specifically, and I was not going to invent a reason to stare. From where I stood I saw nothing that would explain the noise — no chase, no crowd, no scene I could name. I want to say that plainly because the temptation afterward is to fill gaps with shapes your memory never actually received.

I know something serious happened nearby — a crime, I think — and I still do not know what it was.

What I had instead was a current of half-formed questions: Had someone called for help? Had a neighbour heard the same burst I did? Would the block talk about it tomorrow in the lift, or would everyone let it pass like weather? My mind kept returning to the same eddy, the way a radio drifts between stations and keeps catching the same fragment of song.

I stayed perhaps ten minutes, maybe less — time went slippery. People came out onto their corridors and went back in. A bus sighed at the stop. The sirens thinned, though I cannot tell you whether they stopped or simply moved beyond my hearing. The ordinary sounds returned in layers: the keyboard again, a phone ringing behind a door, someone laughing too loudly as if to prove the evening could still be normal.

I thought about calling my friend to say I would be late, then decided against it. What would I say? That the air near Block 248 felt altered? That I had heard urgency without seeing its source? It seemed unfair to pull someone else's evening into a story I could not finish.

When I finally walked on, the pavement felt the same under my sandals, but my attention lagged half a step behind me, still orbiting that patch of Avenue 2. I am not a witness in any useful sense. I was nearby, attentive, and still mostly ignorant — and that ignorance does not feel like peace or drama, just an open question left bobbing on the surface.

Back on the bus toward Jurong West, I watched the window reflection more than the road. Every time we passed a block with the same geometry, my chest tightened for no reason I could verify. I have written other entries about kopitiams and lake walks and small kindnesses on familiar routes. This one refuses to settle into that register. It stays unfinished, which may be the truest thing I can offer about that night.

I do not know what occurred near Block 248 Choa Chu Kang Avenue 2 at about 8.55pm on 26 May. I know the sirens, the held breath, the way a whole row of flats can go quiet together — and I know the ripples are still moving somewhere I cannot see.