I came down before the corridor lights timed off because the coffeeshop below the flats opens in that narrow window when the uncle behind the counter still owns the room. March air clung to the stairwell — not cold, but aware of dawn. I wanted first kopi the way you want the first bus: not because later cups fail, but because the first carries the shape of the day.
The shop sits under the block where Telok Blangah Drive turns toward the interchange. At this hour the floor retains mop water in pale arcs. Plastic stools stack against the wall like unused punctuation. I ordered kopi o kosong without speaking; the uncle poured with a wrist flick that looks casual and is not. Steam rose between us — kettle steam, honest and brief — and he asked whether I had eaten, which is how stallholders say good morning.
I took the table facing the void deck without blocking the path of trolleys. An old man held the papers without turning pages; perhaps he was thinking, perhaps he was waiting for light. I opened my notebook and wrote one line about the first cup, then crossed it out, then wrote it again because crossing out is also a kind of editing.
By the time the cup was half empty, footsteps multiplied on the stairs. Office shirts appeared. A student with headphones drifted to the toast counter. I did not begrudge them their hurry. I had arrived before the queue, which was the entire point: a few minutes belonging to no schedule but my own.
The uncle wiped the counter in slow circles. Radio played old songs at a volume meant for the kitchen, not the dining floor, but sound travels in open halls. I listened without choosing a song. Outside, the first bus groaned away from the stop with its headlights still faint against the sky.
I finished the kopi, returned the cup, thanked him. The walk upstairs was brighter — pink edge on the block facades, laundry beginning to move on poles. Back in the flat I filled the kettle without switching it on immediately, listening to the harbour hum through the window I had left cracked overnight.
The toast station began to rattle — knives on butter, plates stacked, kaya warmed in shallow trays. I watched the choreography without joining it yet. There is a pleasure in being adjacent to work you are not doing, like standing near harbour cranes while someone else handles the controls.
A neighbour from the seventh floor sat two tables away and pretended not to see me while I pretended not to see her. We have performed this mutual blindness for years. It is a kindness that lets both of us eat without small talk before caffeine completes its work.
When I left, the queue had reached the door. The uncle would not remember my order tomorrow unless I miss a week, and then he would ask where I went as though I had travelled overseas. That is the social contract of a coffeeshop below the flats: presence noted, absence remarked upon, return welcomed without fuss.
Nothing I wrote later mattered to anyone but me, and that is the freedom of the hour. The slip exists because the morning did.