NS1/EW24

We have come to this: the last, but also the first. The beginning, but also the ending.

For years I thought this was the station I loved most. With its triple island platforms and winding tracks, it was easy to ignore the people pushing and rushing past me. Be it from the ground, in the bus to school or being a part of it on one of the trains. How I loved every single part of it.

The year I was turning eighteen, I came here for the first time. Half bangs that covered my right eye and a beanie to hold my hair in place. I was that sad girl, only just separated from someone who came to be the wind. Someone who actually loved me.

I prayed for years to find someone like this. I struggled through 2012, mourning over someone who didn't care, and finally found the light at the end of the tunnel: him. The one who brought me to the North-South Line, and the North-South Line to me.

After school we constantly came here, and it became a routine for me to send him off in 160, on to Johor. Or him to send me off in 197, back to my home in Paya Lebar. You could even catch a glimpse of our ghosts here, him in his ITE uniform and me with my bright blue backpack.

There used to be a Wendy's which we frequented. The way he slurped on his beef chili and always remembered my usual order. That one time when I opened the door a little too hard and it hit a lady standing at the side. Where we held each other's hands across the table, where I couldn't stop staring at him because I was so in love.

But walk a little further to the back, and you'll see a couple arguing. She can't let him go, her arms bound tight around his, but all he does is shove her off. She grabs his bag and runs away with it and he chases her, pulling on her arm.

It gets to the point where you want to step in and do something but you can't, because they're ghosts. The boy wins in the end, and leaves her to die. She sits on the stairwell where everyone passes by her, not paying her any attention. She can't stop crying, wiping her tears on that thin grey cardigan.

She is soon replaced with a girl in a pink butterfly t-shirt, six months older than the previous ghost. She isn't crying this time, but you can see the anxiousness on her face. The anticipation, impatience, nervousness. She finally perks up in your direction; the same boy passes right next to you and walks over to her.

He is in a white polo tee, ITE emblazoned on the chest. The commas appear at the top of his mouth when he smiles, while she grins until the fang pokes out the corner of hers. They hug, and it is a stark contrast to their fight just earlier.

They walk away and you follow, watching the boy shyly grab her hand. I missed you, he says, his voice echoing across and to you. You watch them sit on the two steps at the end of the atrium, where the escalators to the station are, sharing a box of kuey teow.

A train departs, making you look up to it and stare until it's beyond the horizon. By the time you look back down they are gone too, replaced yet again. She is now in a black cardigan and with short hair, while his hair is gone and he looks tanner and more muscular.

She's in tears again, but he isn't shoving her away this time. Instead he looks like he's about to cry too, looking at her in this state. You stand close enough to hear her say I miss her, until another train comes along and smothers their voices.

That train was on its way to the south, just like their relationship was.

He brought me to places all over and I obliged until in the end, I fell for everything else but him. He rendered me unable to love another human being. His leaving opened some doors that took all my soul to close, as well as the closing of the one door that I kept banging on until my hand almost fell off.

And I am so sorry, I have tried. But I will always hold a grudge, one that even I myself find hard to live with. I don't think anyone should ever love someone who, deep in her core, still hates him to his.

The train approaching Platform A will end its service at Jurong East Platform D. It was a warning all along, foreshadowing the ending that came to be. And we ignored it despite hearing it at every station prior.

His footsteps that walked towards me will never erase the ones that walked away. And that is the reason why the station I loved with all my heart came to be the one I hate with all my soul. Why the boy I thought was my saviour came to be the man that ruined everything.

NS2

Remember the aspiring pilot I was talking about, way back in Marina South Pier? We played this game where he would name a random MRT station and I'd tell a memory. The objective was to find one that I didn't have any in. He named this one so confidently, thinking that I hadn't been here before.

He's right, I hadn't, but I still had one thing to say. I told him about way back in 2013, when the wind and I separated at the station prior to this: when he called me immediately after, saying he alighted because he let out a loud fart and everyone was looking at him.

Soon after this memory I fell for the red line. More specifically, the tracks leaving the first North-South station. It felt like a new beginning every single time, whether I'm staring at them from bus 52 to school, or watching the way we intertwine from a train.

My only attachment here is the anticipation for the station before: my favourite of all. Southbound, a new beginning; northbound, back in time. Back home, if you would, even if I have never worked or lived here.

So in 2013 the only memory we had here revolves around farts. We were so young and innocent, laughing about it even long after. In 2016 we passed by whenever we had to go Woodlands, pressed up against each other because of the peak hour crowds. He would have his arms around my waist and mine around his neck.

July 2017 came, and we were back to passing by. It was only our third time meeting again after three months of not seeing each other. He was in an argument with the flower over text and I was there, feeding him answers when he didn't know what to reply.

The both of us were on our way to somewhere in the middle of the green line to fool around in a hotel room. Where we got drinks that tasted like shit, where we ate pizza and smoked on the balcony, where he slept with someone he loved more than anything and I, someone I couldn't anymore.

Bukit Batok. We ignored the announcement, continuing our conversation in 2016; reading the replies on his phone in 2017. Bukit Batok, it went again. Neither of us ever looks up or out the window here, because it's so insignificant. I come to attention only when it goes Next station,...

NS3

We started on a pier. One that wasn't even in anyone's acknowledgement until more than three years ago when it first opened. Maybe even then nobody knew about it, or cared. I was one of those people.

As our train took us back to the other end, we pretty much travelled through time too. From the city with our iconic Marina Bay Sands to a town with forests hiding abandoned war zones. And now here we are, another station and vicinity rich with history.

The only personal connection I ever had with this one was my bosses from the bakery I worked at five years ago, saying they lived here. I never even heard of it, being my pre-MRT-obsession era. And another honourable mention, of an old friend saying we should come here someday and sit somewhere we can look at trains.

It's home to the second and third highest natural points in the country, with the first being Bukit Timah. Imagine living here and not knowing about that, or caring. I wouldn't have, either, if this was where I grew up. I would probably have hated it for the same reason I now resent the town I'm living in. What a pity.

The closest I can get is through pictures taken by other Singaporeans who took the time out to explore. But reading these articles only makes me feel smaller and more trapped, within this octagon made up of the first green line stations.

Maybe someday I'll reach out myself and find some time to connect with herein, Bukit Gombak. As of now you are just my blank slate, despite being abundant with stories from the past decades. It is sad to admit that I still love these distant stations more than the side I grew up in, so you might as well be the first.

NS4/BP1

The train got no driver, was what my mother always used to get me excited about riding the LRT. Of course being a Pasir Ris girl my whole life, we were only closer to the Sengkang line.

She would rush me to the front seat where my younger brother and I could pretend to be the driver. That was my mother, always making sure we had the best experiences. Honestly at the time I wasn't very interested, so my brother had the honour of driving the invisible steering wheel.

Ten years later, I am the one who is staring out the window at the front, watching the tracks go beneath. On the other side of the country this time, on my way to a school where I would stick out like a sore thumb. His friends were so welcoming (I guess it's funny because they were from a hospitality course after all) but it wasn't enough to ease me into a sense of belonging.

The next time I visited this station, his white buttoned and long-sleeved uniform became a short one, and the hair he had to gel up everyday was gone. He got so tanned that I barely recognised him when I fetched him on his first bookout. I could see moles I never knew he had at the top of his head. We laughed, and it became a routine for me to pick him up whenever I had Fridays off.

On the other side of the spectrum, I was nearing a state of depression at the time. The point of vulnerability, battling my own emotions at home while he was here with his own fights beneath the blazing sun. We had our own demons coming to visit at night, the long-haired ghost by his bed and the crying baby by mine.

2016 was the light at the end of the tunnel, when he finally had his POP and I slowly picked myself up. I was with his friends, all of whom weren't making the move to look for him. I started walking in a random direction and that was when he appeared. I'm not kidding, but the people all around us split like the fucking sea did for Moses.

Choa Chu Kang, of white shirts and tanned skin. Of pale faces and dark minds. He practically grew up here, from a tertiary graduation to passing out parade. I was there next to him, seated at the front of our relationship and pretending to drive.

NS5

The name of this station means 'oil pond' in a dialect I've never heard of called Teochew. During the Japanese Occupation the village that once stood here was used to store oil. What is now just HDB flats all around used to bustle with farmers and their ducks and chickens, can you imagine?

They're all gone, replaced with a train station in early February, 1996. Fast forward seventeen years later, with a red and black train slowing down, a girl staring out the window.

We only visited once or twice back in the day, when his school was at the station before this. There was a fight about something so trivial and I stormed off, only stopping at this shelter outside the mall. He appeared smiling, as if already expecting me to stop, as if he knew I would never leave any fight unresolved.

Like nothing happened, he took my hand and brought us to the bank. He had to replace his card, because he lost his wallet for the thousandth time. I still remember the pace of the queue and the teller's face. She told him to key in his new PIN number, which he reached out to do.

It was six months after we got together, after he set these numbers as his phone password too. It meant a lot to him as it did me, because I wouldn't stop counting as each month passed. Our first year together came eventually, as well as another fight over something so unimportant. Enough to break us up two days later.

But we reconciled, and two years later he posted a picture of us on his POP, finally wishing us a 'happy third anniversary'. That swiftly got deleted after the second break-up, and now here we are again, our supposedly fifth anniversary.

It was spent on fights once more, until we both declared that we didn't want to care about anniversaries. No more. The years don't matter anymore.

110113, the numbers keyed in back at Yew Tee, circa June 2013. He changed his phone and lost his wallet again shortly after. Only this time he used another combination and the previous one was never used again. Just the same as how he lost me again and again until this date stopped being ours.

NS7

Another station that is neither my story to tell nor home to make. But if there's one thing I have the rights to say, it's this line that only I can see. Some unseen force that I know is pulling me back.

I'm not sure if anyone else feels this way, but even the inside reminds me of Johor. There is this vibe that reminds me of Larkin somehow, and there's no other station that can do it better than this. It has the same bustling crowds yet it just makes me feel like I'm in another state.

Maybe it's got to do with this being a terminal for the people going across the border. I never had any reason to go along, but the wind was always among them. Everytime I picked him up or waited for him, the queue stretching across the bus stop acted as a line that I shouldn't cross.

There's only one other memory, of the rose pointing out the window, showing me the stationary trains behind the fences. If not, I tend to avoid Kranji; there're all these invisible boundaries around it, like it's part of another world. It's even pulling me back from talking about it.

NS8

Wait, what school are you from?

I'm from Fuchun Sec.

Where on earth is that?

So began the time of my life.

I already decided Woodlands is the heart of the red line for me, with its madness and fragility. But this station now is more than that, and less, all at once. It's like the very blood that keeps running through your veins, so neglected despite its importance.

Most of my story revolves around this station and its surroundings too, both forgiven and ones that I can't let go of. From one last argument last March to when we sat on the brick ledge by the canal, just weeks after he turned sixteen. From listening to me cry about a break-up to being my pillar and the last good thing left.

This one is always hard to write about. I think we are the only ones who changed, while the bench we sat on and rock we lied on will always be there. As if waiting to bear witness again, like a third party witnessing a couple's every moment.

I never liked change, but there is this magic in parallels that only I can see. Like how in early 2014, I was the one who stumbled around crying for the wind, and then in mid-2017 it was him, claiming himself drunk and calling my phone thirteen times. And who was the witness to both? None other than this third party.

After five years it's finally getting old. They're both long gone, while I'm still here like a horse tied to the leg of a chair. It's ironic because they're the ones who grew up here, who cycled down and jumped over canals with each other. They went from two innocent kids to two guys drinking beer at the void deck, talking about this girl who ruined their friendship and everything in between.

I find myself holding back, the way this side of the town keeps me in place. I can tell every story from here but some pieces will always be missing. Also missed, if you would. Now on the very few times I pass I try to dismiss it all, ignoring the silhouettes and open spaces that I once thought I loved.

If I had to choose only one day from here to keep, it'll be the time in 2014 when I made rounds around here with neither of these boys. I watched the sunset from the town garden and waited until two trains crossed each other. I don't need any of the other memories, both sinful and innocent.

It's at Marsiling.

Oh. Which line is it on?

From yet another distant place with a blank slate, to memories that will always be at the back of my mind.

NS9

Every year for Hari Raya, my mother would bring us to visit the relative living here. It's been years since I last visited, but the house with its two storeys and the parking lot will always be familiar to me.

I even know how the mall by the MRT station looked like many years ago, it's all in my brain. I went there once with my mother, when we bought donuts and hid them in my uncle's lorry so the relatives wouldn't think we bought those for them.

The thing is, I don't remember ever being on the highway that I am so in love with today. As a kid I probably had my nose in a book, or simply sat back and closed my eyes, wishing the ride would end quickly.

At sixteen, I was with a boy from school, also one year younger than me. He was a budding photographer, while I was the girl obsessed with taking videos. I told him I liked open, wide spaces and he brought me to this place called a waterfront. That could have been the first time I came here as a teenager and without my mother.

At eighteen I returned, older and sadder. The one who brought me places was no longer my mother, but a boy I met on Twitter. I followed a stranger to some faraway place, how wise huh? It turned out to be the ride of my life.

For the next five years my story not only revolved around this boy, but all over this single line. To me the core of it will always be this town, where surprises and trouble and sin happen.

From a little birdie's first kiss to the beginning of him showing his hurricane side. From sitting in front of me while his best friend shared my seat, to occupying the one next to me, my space and heart. From being nothing more than a distant name to the town that made me fall for the entire red line.

It took me a while to realise its name doesn't only come from its immediate vicinity, but stretching out to the two stations on either side. I'm still not as familiar with it all as I wish I am, but at the same time I know I have no rights to get to know it.

I don't have school or work here, and the relative I always visited with my mother was never that important to me. Plus, the only reason I ever had to come here is now living in the same neighbourhood. He might as well have been the key that locked me in this octagon, the first eight stations of the green line.

It's a marvel even to this day, with the construction sites for a new line. It was always weird watching its residents walk around like nothing special. Woodlands, how I love you so, despite having no right. You aren't my home and never will be. I'll always be stuck in the town that I don't quite love, while you'll be stuck with the residents that don't quite love you.

NS10

Come anytime, we're family now, she said. I've never seen her without a smile. Always so warm and welcome, like the dim lights of a home. A stark contrast to my own mother, honestly, who is fierce and never true.

But admidst all their differences they have one thing in common: they are both your grandmother.

I can only imagine what their initial reactions were when they first knew about you. Nobody knew until your mother allowed your existence to seep through and out into the world. She didn't care what anyone else thought and just loved you for you, even though you weren't supposed to be.

When we first met I kept seeing you every day after school. But I didn't hold you, even after a lot of coaxing from both your grandmothers. How was something so small like a newborn so fucking scary?

You went home to the north, where your mother grew up in. So far from all of us, but we never hesitated to take a taxi down just to see you. It was also where I finally gathered the courage to carry you, finally relented and allowed my mother to place you in my arms.

Soon after I fell in love with you. Maybe I already did, but it was only after I carried you just fine that I dared admit it. We pushed you in a pram all the way to the MRT station, where I exclaimed to your mother, Oh, this is her first train ride! 

But it wasn't. She said it was your second, the first one being the time she took you to the polyclinic two stations before. That's also where you are having school now, in a mosque so close to another state's straits.

When I first knew you, I didn't want to believe it. I saw you and fell in love, then I held you and wanted to give you every good thing that I had. Maybe you won't grow up with me after all, but with your mother in Admiralty. This is my second letter to you, with many more to come.

NS11

I don't know where to start. Or end, for that matter. Marina Bay was a lifetime ago while the first station on the other end feels like a universe away.

Maybe I should have listened to you more. Or maybe I should have led a more risky life so I'd have my own problems to talk about. But it was always about you, you, you. Your perfect life that you were never happy about.

Now you're finally slowing down, but only because you can't stop talking about Yishun. We should have stopped there, we should have left Novena earlier, blah blah blah. It wouldn't have changed anything, but you're so delusional it escapes your head.

You keep yelling and coughing into my face, I'm not sure what's worse. I want to scream back but it was always hard finding my voice so I stand here, taking all your shit in. Waiting for you to shut up and collapse and die.

Watch me, you say. Before I can even think to answer you turn your back and leave, smoothly navigating through the crowd. Everyone looks at you, wondering who this dishevelled guy coughing like there's no tomorrow is. Nobody notices me, even though I'm standing right in front of the open screen doors and blatantly blocking their path.

That's who I always was. Just your sidekick. Everyone goes through me like I am just a hologram, while they look at you like you are a billboard, your face and name up in lights.

I stay rooted long enough for your coughs to fade away and for everyone else to disappear. It gets so quiet my heartbeat feels like an earthquake. Even the NS11 Sembawang sign is so sturdy and still, I find myself wishing it'll break and hit the floor with a loud bang. Anything to kill this silence.

NS12

There was a time when I didn't even know what the red line's name was. I called it North-East, because that was how stupid I was. Then came a time when the hurricane brought me on it and I knew its real name. Perhaps it was about half a year later that I finally knew more stations by heart. That I realised there were actually two missing stations.

At that time I read that its name was rumoured to be Ishak, though there's no trace of that anywhere on the net today. I didn't even realise they'd already started construction. It was only last December when I passed by that I noticed the weird shelters protruding out of nowhere, somewhere between Yishun and the station prior.

Being a station built on an already existing line, it'll probably have separate platforms just like Dover. Another station with train tracks in the middle. I can't imagine how difficult yet intricate it must be during this process. But what do I know? I can just wait and see.

Too bad for me I am nowhere near enough to watch this construction grow. It used to be nothing more than an unnamed plan, just a clean slate left empty between NS13 and NS11. Now it is Canberra, so far from what I expected. So far from me. I may or may not make any memories in this station.

NS13

I've always known bus 39. It passes the back of my house but I only ever took it to my cousin's and then best friend's place, both somewhere in Tampines. I dropped at the same bus stop to get to either because they're just across the street of each other.

I've gone to one end, being a constant loiter spot during secondary school. But the name of the other interchange that it terminates always intrigued me. Never been there, didn't even know which Line it was on. Maybe once or twice, because we had distant relatives living there. Just not enough for me to remember how this place looked, not enough for me to know my way around if I was ever abandoned there.

As luck would have it, being in a polytechnic on the other side of the country opened so many of these doors. Having friends who studied in Nanyang Poly helped, giving me chances to cross stations I would otherwise have no business in. In 2013 alone I came here several times, enough to know where the cinema and bookstore and all the other stores are like the back of my hand.

It is symbolic to me I came here with my then best friend I mentioned, all the way on the other side of her place. At that time I was living in Paya Lebar, so I didn't get to take 39 home with her but the train. A few days later I came again with another best friend, looking for a new pair of shoes for him. We separated on the platform, where both our trains came at the same time.

These two days were more than four years ago, back in the simple days of Year One. Just like old times the girl held my arm and I acted as her bodyguard, being a head taller than her, while the boy kept apologising because his hand wouldn't stop brushing against mine.

But the most life-changing memory that involves the holding of hands was my twenty-second birthday, with the one I called hurricane. I was still sceptical about him, after the hundredth time he left only to come bouncing back.

We watched mother!, a movie that he would never have watched on his own accord. I lived for its symbolism and couldn't stop guessing what it was about. He told me that for once, he was thinking hard about the meaning of a film, because it wasn't direct like his preferable movies always were.

He got me ice-cream from a claw machine, something I hadn't seen before. What an unnecessary waste of three dollars, but the laughter at his many failed attempts was what made it priceless. It was the simplicity of walking around that reminded me how easy it was to fall back into place.

In the past five years Yishun wasn't a stranger anymore. No longer just a name in pixels on the front of bus 39, but a place that against all odds was filled with chances. Sparks between two old best friends, a boy and a girl who would later like each other, and a flame and hurricane who reconciled after half a year.

NS14

If you're lucky, a train might rush right beneath you while you're on the expressway. Against all odds, it might even follow, right next to the bus you are on or car that you're driving. Either way, it's so mundane to you that you don't turn to even look at it for a second.

Maybe that's what makes you so ordinary too. And I feel sad for you, for all these trains in the world that you will never bring yourself down to admire. I will always anticipate the moment highway and tracks intercept, praying I am lucky enough for a train to run below me or at least in the distance.

But the most ordinary people will let a train pass and to me it's the same as letting go of a four-leaved clover. You let it escape like sand running through your fingers, thinking it's nothing special because it will always wound up beneath your shoes time and again.

It's sad when it goes faster than your bus, already disappearing while all that's left are the empty tracks. It reminds me of a boy who took the train at Yio Chu Kang, the both of us thinking I was waiting on the other platform.

I called him, I said wait for me, and rushed to where he was. He must have been somewhere in the middle of the reservoir, while the train far behind him carried me. It's still easy to imagine his face as he stared out the window, with the waters buried somewhere in his eyes. Behind him there I was, trying to remember a time when I wasn't in love with the view.

It brings me to a time five years ago, another boy with his arms on either side of me. We were younger and a thousand times more reckless, and it was my first time seeing this reservoir. I saw for myself that it was the furthest distance between two stations, and perhaps that was when I started falling for the North-South Line.

It was the same boy who ran rounds here, giving me the task of timing him. There was nothing else to do but miss another stadium stations away, where the tracks were in perfect view of whoever sat at the grandstand.

Khatib, where I wished the bus I was on would speed up and not let the train get away. Where the rose almost got away before I said wait for me, I'm coming. Where I helplessly watched the hurricane run around the stadium, constantly turning to see if I was still looking.

NS15

We've talked about this. I've written about it a hundred times and it's getting old. We've long walked away from here, considering how I've never had this in my routine and how you've graduated years ago. But sometimes, I feel pulled back. I know only I still feel this way, despite you being the one who passes by more often.

I don't believe in coincidences anymore. I think things will always happen for a reason. 

You said this on a hill seven stations before, in the dark and stillness of midnight. It makes me think of the many times we've crossed paths, enough for me to have difficulty brushing it off. From you calling me out at Boon Lay to you and your friends and I being the only parties walking that usually crowded path at Paya Lebar.

This station was another, right in the middle of the red, in the middle of the month. Twice, when we both popped out at the same time to walk beneath the sun instead. When I was with someone else but you jumped in like a wrecking ball breaking all the walls down.

But there were one or two intended moments that stick to my head too. Waiting for you before we took the train to town and looked for your shoes, and when we sat there for an hour, waiting for the peak hour to pass.

After school, even though my school was somewhere on the other side of the line. I still remember being in maroon and you in white with red sleeves. My mom bought this shirt for me, you were saying.

Countless trains passed but I hardly took notice of them with you beside me. You sat straight, while I had my legs up and crossed on the bench. I made you laugh more often than you did me, when I failed at a game you'd been acing.

There is also another memory from three years ago, when you were the only friend I trusted with a secret. Anybody wouldn't have known what to do, anyone would have been frantic. Nobody's life would have stayed the same if it happened to them.

Mine certainly didn't, but you made it easier just by being a friend. It was your turn to make me laugh, though your lending me a shoulder to lean on wasn't new. Overlooking your school in the dead of the night was what made me love you like a best friend, and it never really stopped.

Maybe Yio Chu Kang was where I fell and never quite got up again. When you laughed in the middle of all those trains, when you stared at me with your wide eyes on your school roof; I gave you the power to hurt me, and you never hesitated to shoot. Hopefully it's nothing more than a monument now, for you to reminisce polytechnic days and for me to reminisce you.

NS16

Three tracks for three parties, but it was never determined who the middle one belonged to. Possibly me, with the way I first came in between five years ago. Or possibly the hurricane, since the rose owns the tracks going Marina South Pier while the flame, Jurong East. Right?

He sat in the middle during the movie as well, passing my cookies to and fro. The rose bit on one and immediately regretted, with his hate for raisins. After the film we both leaned over and started talking across his lap. Despite being the middleman he must have felt so left out sometimes.

Our friendship always revolved around the most basic things, never anything great. You wouldn't catch us up on the high stools at bars, drinking our time away. Instead we'd sit facing the windows at a Subway, staring at the strangers leaving the hub. We'd go from talking about universes and afterlife to laughing about the stupidest memes.

Unknowingly, we always took turns being in the middle. There was never any friendship I wanted other than the both of them, where I was blessed with two kinds of best friends. The kind I would marry and the kind I would always easily talk about everything with.

But that was our last date as a trio, because barely a week later we all fell apart. One side of the triangle was knocked out, sending our entire formation crumbling down.

This train service will end at Ang Mo Kio. Sometimes the announcement goes, terminating the train at the middle platform. It never crossed my mind that that train service was our friendship.

NS17/CC15

The earliest memory with you, just the two of us, was back in early 2014 when I was figuring out ways to school from my Pasir Ris house. I hopped on the first bus that came along and took it right to the end, without a care for being late.

Before that there was always a third party: a hurricane, because you were the only mid-point from Woodlands and Paya Lebar, where I was staying at the time. We used to sit outside the gantries with our pizza bars, nestled between the other lost souls.

We always separated the moment we tapped in again, me towards the Circle Line and him, the North-South. My grandmother doesn't understand the concept of all these lines, so despite you being only fifteen minutes from her place, she always said Buat apa pergi jauh-jauh?! She doesn't realise that I've heard Change at this station for the Circle Line more often than for the North-South Line, because I am always on the latter.

Somehow, you became the first place I always end up, whenever I didn't know what else to do and where to go. Four years ago you were my routine, during the time I was getting over him. There were other shorter routes but I stubbornly loved going the long way, and that was through you.

A year ago it was the same, running away from him and to you. I found comfort in you, with my diary and a cup of iced chocolate even long after he left again. My grandma was right, you are so far away but I never get sick of that one-hour long ride, even with the same views over and over.

It's a whole other world with you, the moment we pass the park on your outskirts. It almost feels like home, even if I've never stayed here or have any relatives here, even with the crowds changing lines and forming queues for the trains during rush hour. Bishan, where I feel at home despite the sea of strangers.

NS18

If this is happening in the past, we won't be nobodies. We'd have the attention of everyone, alright. Staring and pointing fingers like we are an exhibit. We'd be animals, hopelessly staring out the glass of our cages.

We won't know what to do. Maybe we'd just be kids who somehow fell through the screen doors. Everyone's usual lifeless eyes would open wide, and maybe there'd be a collective gasp. What are those two boys doing in there, they'd panic.

The presence of people on the other side of the glass doors can only mean one thing. That it's happening in the past, in an alternate reality where the world is still fine, that a train is definitely coming. 

No one will be reaching out to us, or even frantic enough to seek authority. We used to complain about the trains being late, the screens stating 4 minutes or even 6. But we'd do anything to slow the next one down this time, a beast made of six carriages. 

I'd gather just enough balls to turn and stare once the headlights find my face. There's a last minute guess to what the last thing I see would be: the tracks, the stunned expressions, or the dusty sign that says NS18 Braddell. It so turned out neither, but the train's wide smile as it robs us of our lives.

NS19

For as long as I've lived, I've only ever seen him work at this place. Decades, it seems. At the edge of the bank he will always stand, in his police uniform and greying hair. A baton pokes out one of his holsters, though I find it hard to imagine him using it. That's funny since a huge part of my life revolves around him beating the shit out of me with a belt or hanger.

This is an old story but I was away from my family for the whole of 2013, so I missed a year with him. Both our egos acted as walls, until heartbreak from a third party finally knocked them down. I returned in early 2014, and it was just too easy falling back once the awkward hugs and tears were over and done with.

His colleagues orders bottles of cookies from my mother every Chinese New Year, so we grew to have this annual thing where she, my little brother and I would lug bags over. If not, I doubt we'd come anywhere near here as a family.

You can gauge from that how loose my tie with this station is. Yet somehow I will always remember my way around because it's that familiar. From the bookstore above the bus interchange to the lift standing out at the side of the atrium, nothing much has changed. The bright canary walls remain and the entire vicinity still thrives.

But we changed. I went from a bespectacled fifteen-year-old girl who kept looking down to an adult standing tall and straight. He went from handing my mother a fifty-dollar note to buy my little brother and I dinner, to having his money rejected for his lunch to be on me. 

We went from just a teenager and her strict old man to a daughter and father. Now I talk about the book I'm writing when I always tried so hard to keep my passion for writing from him. Now he talks about our family's problems, when he used to lie all the time to keep up his steel facade. 

Despite being one of the first stations to be completed, this is one I very seldom pass by. But just like a father I missed a year with, its winding ways and atmosphere will always feel like home even if we don't always lean against each other. I guess Toa Payoh is just like my father; the oldest station still standing and my oldest man still thriving.

NS20

This wasn't a part of my routine at any point of my life yet it unknowingly grew on me. (Or, I grew on it.)

I wanted to tell just one story about this station and then I remembered another, until ultimately I realised there's an abundance of tales. Some of which aren't mine, some of which may or may not be true, some of which aren't even in my lifetime or the universe I am living in.

There's a mix of everything here, from a history of Jewish cemeteries to devotion sessions at nearby Catholic churches. Its very name was derived from the latter; Novem, the Latin word for nine, symbolising the prayers said for nine consecutive days.

Ghost stories, involving coffins and phantom trains. Some even claim seeing headless apparitions especially during the last hour of service, because who in their right mind would haunt in broad daylight and peak hours, right?

But you know me. I'm a very personal soul, so the stories that hang heaviest are my own ghosts. Unresting pasts, unexplained dreams, unfulfilled promises.

I know a boy who had to make this place home, along with its crowds and shoving commuters. He didn't want to become one of them with their lifeless eyes and impatience. So he stopped taking the train, escaping getting swept with the floods.

I know another boy who had to make this place home, the smell of the hospital and the heights of the twin towers. Their collision was at its peak, and the thought of his ex best friend being just next door irked him. So he stopped working there, and is now about to soar even higher than the towers of New Phoenix Park.

I know two other boys who had to make this place home, living on the remnants of the dead. Their masks were their only protection, music and each other their only company. It took them a month to realise the stillness of the world outside the station's walls. So they kicked a door open and jumped down, their torchlights accentuating the train tracks.

Even with stories that aren't mine to tell, it's evident that Novena is home. A shelter, a safehouse, even when these boys didn't want it by choice. They managed to leave, but its platforms and crowds continue to thrive.

NS21/DT11

Thirty years ago you were structured, years before I was born. At only twelve meters deep, you are the shallowest of all underground stations. I never noticed even through any telltale sign, like short escalators and ceilings that don't rise.

The last time I saw you, the posters for an insurance company plastered your walls all over; everywhere I looked. Enough for me to associate you with that white outline against a red background. But I don't have the right to say that, as if I see you everyday, because it was only that once. I'm pretty sure the posters have changed ten times since then. Or have they?

People have commented on your flaws, like having to tap out to change lines. Your red and blue aren't connected, making the people who use you exit and enter through two different doors. But I love you all the same, letting myself go with the flow of all these strangers. 

They don't notice the illustration on your wall, an intertwine of past and future. Singapore in the year 2200, inspired by both your history and what will come next and next and next. 

Mention you and most people will think of your circus. You used to be one, until they scrapped it off your name. But what irony, because you keep ending. Your walls, your depth, your posters. Don't you? You used to be Newton Circus, but now you're just Newton. Maybe the art on your wall that keeps getting ignored will come true someday.

NS22

So it's a date, then.

No, wait, not a date. Just a meeting.

He said both sentences in less than ten seconds, as if reflecting the indecisiveness of his feelings for me. At one point a hurricane, at another nothing more than a sudden released breath.

This was late 2014, when I was only just discovering the world with me in it. When I finally figured out that he was the wind and sky and birds. 

I almost didn't recognise him because he looked so much lighter, in his face and weight. It was about five months since we last met and talked. Maybe I was lighter too, so I was able to look at him in a different perspective. It was so much easier to forgive back then.

He had on a light blue t-shirt and I was in grey, no cardigan. I'd described it as going back home to Pasir Ris after a year: the familiar outline mixed with something new. I didn't follow my instinct to run as fast as I could when he said You just can't easily forget someone you were with for so long.

The main objective of meeting was to follow him collect his pay, but that was exactly what we did not do. Instead we had Pezzo and took a weird elevator with only two buttons: the fourth and fifty-fifth storeys. Why is it so dark?! he exclaimed, but I could barely hear him with the air pressure kicking in. 

We both hadn't been there before, and I remember wishing there were other things we were both experiencing for the first time together. But there weren't. 

There were poems about clouds and wherever you looked there were just sky and skyscrapers. If only it wasn't an air-conditioned place but open, with natural wind. It would have made it perfect, with the hurricane running shy beside me. 

He only held my hand when we walked through the bookstore and never once did we kiss. And that alone made the entire day flawless for me. I wish it'd stayed that way.

Orchard, where we messed up our first few dates very early 2013. Where we fell back together almost two years later to mess up everything else. 

NS23

Late 2013: his school, in the middle of the red line. She came from hers on the green and they took the train to town together.

This was when feelings were none, be it for each other or for trains. Just two friends who happened to have a lot to talk and argue about. Two people who almost tore friendships and relationships apart.

It began to rain when they reached their destination, just about to cross the junction by the H&M building.

I have an umbrella!, he exclaimed, digging through his backpack while the drizzle fell on them. It took a while before he finally came up with an umbrella cover, announcing that he didn't bring the umbrella itself.

She still remembers the look on his face when he stretched the cover over his head, that fang poking out at the corner of his lips. They ended up running the moment the traffic turned green for them, raindrops soaking her pink cardigan and his moss t-shirt.

What was it they were looking for? Shoes. He needed a new pair of shoes, even though he had no money, saying he would come back if he saw something he really liked. They made their rounds along town, him taking every pair into consideration.

Late 2017: his vocation, in the middle of the red line. She came from home on the green, and they took the train to town together.

This was when feelings were gone, after spending weeks at their peak. Just two friends who almost. Two people who tore friendships and relationships apart.

It didn't rain when they reached their destination; in fact, they realised they alighted at the wrong station and ended up walking to the next.

Again, they were looking for shoes but not for him this time. He wanted to get her a belated birthday present, never forgetting the ones she bought him four years before. They made their rounds once again, her turn being picky with every pair of shoes.

You know if you get someone shoes as a gift, that person will walk out of your life, she was telling him, because she was abundant in superstitions like these. Since then they kept trying to run but to no avail.

Somerset, where they spent hours scouring for the perfect pair of shoes, only to get one somewhere else. She paid for his when feelings were none while he paid for hers when feelings were gone. And while his long broke, hers are still new, the gloss brighter than the futures they dared imagine.

Next station: NS22

NS24/NE6/CC1

You stand out because you are the only station with three lines. But maybe not everyone favours this number, since a third party will always symbolise treachery.

The rose and I were supposed to fetch the wind from Outram Park but we were late, having spent the day at the abandoned tracks and the bridge overlooking everything that usually swallowed us. We rushed to Dhoby Ghaut instead, where he was waiting and already starting to sulk. We were running late but he was thirsty, so he stopped me for a Boost. 

Remember how the smallest things stick and the most insignificant mean a lot to me? Somehow I knocked over my smoothie and it flipped on the counter. The way he reacted still burns in my mind, and it almost reminded me of when he caught me whenever I fell.

He asked if he could try mine, and took a sip right out my straw. In front of his best friend, he wouldn't dare, pretending to be grossed out at the thought of sharing something with me. It's funny, the way he kept trying to hide.

I remember the conversations we had walking to Cathay, where his best friend was waiting. She says you're pretty and you deserve better, he casually said. 

I picked the movie adaptation of a book I was just telling him about: The Girl With All The Gifts. Thinking about it now, it wasn't really his kind of movie and it was his birthday but he let me pick. Sometimes he degrades me with mean words but once in a while I catch a glimpse of his own willing kindness. 

His twentieth birthday will somehow always be my favourite memory of him. Not anything from before, when feelings were none; not anything from after, when feelings were peaked. It was the underlying compassion and all that we'd gone through with or without each other.

Where he hid his face by my shoulder when somebody on the screen was about to get killed. Where I hooked my arm through his as we walked; where I slid around on my sneakers and he asked how old are you already. Where I went on about what really happened in the book that the film didn't include and he had all his attention on me. 

We separated at the station, where he went home on his red line. His best friend was going back to his aunt's place at Eunos, so the two of us went on the Circle Line together. 

Dhoby Ghaut, the only station with three lines. Where I realised that I was the girl with all the gifts she could ask for: an other half and a best friend who meant everything.

Next station: NS23

NS25/EW13

I have no idea what his name is. But he has daughters, and was asking me what Teacher's Day gifts he could get for their teachers.

He had a fist on my stomach and I felt a little embarrassed at the way it vibrated at his touch. It was my first time but it wasn't even painful, just a little ticklish. What is the meaning behind this, he was asking, and I started wishing I spoke as easily as I wrote. 

But even if I told him everything he wouldn't understand my grief; he had two breathing versions of what I lost. While he was etching into my skin the date that she left, I wondered if he had tattoos symbolising his own daughters. If he did, they were probably their initials or birth dates, which was still a whole existence more than mine.

I came back a year later but he wasn't there. Another young lad tattooed my semi-colon, and he took a picture of it to post on their Facebook page. But it didn't mean anything because he kept silent the whole time, never asking me what this tattoo meant to me. 

Last April I returned, with a brilliant idea and a poly friend's rough sketch. My first tattooist was there, and we spent some time coming up with the final draft. I told him I wanted a triangle made of flames and roses and feathers, symbolising the friendship between the two most significant boys of my life and I.

The feathers were the hardest to render, until he eventually suggested making it a whole one instead. It fed me another brilliant symbol: that my hurricane was always made of just one chunk, unlike my rose and I who were made of different bits and pieces. My tattooist made some changes in the drawing on his computer until there it was: our love triangle, laid out before me.

This last tattoo was the most painful for me, physically and probably emotionally. I know it's painful babe, just tahan, he kept reassuring. It only reminded me of the voices at the hospital, telling me it would be alright when I was nearly screaming. I tried my hardest not to flinch even a little after that.

Again, he asked me what it meant and I told him the significance of each side. But I never got to elaborate; once again, I wished I spoke as well as I wrote.

I boarded the train at City Hall again three hours after I entered, with an aching shoulder and a broken heart. It wasn't even the start of this tattoo come to life.

Next station: NS24/NE6/CC1

NS26/EW14

Once upon a time I hated birthdays with a vengeance, almost for no reason at all. Those people are just black voids to me now, blank and meaningless. But there was one girl I still think of from time to time: I lost her several times, but thinking back, she was the one there for me nearly every birthday.

She was an artist, making art on canvases and the foam on coffee cups. Maybe she still is; I haven't heard from her in two years, being one of those girls who left in their train without me. She probably still thinks I was just being disloyal, which is fine with me. It was my fault for never telling her anything. 

Just like how a tiny rose watched the hurricane grow, she was there from my immature thirteen-year-old self to the pre-depression in 2015. It was just too bad that she never stayed longer, that I never held her back with me the way I always did. 

She got me iced chocolate on my nineteenth birthday, took a picture of me in my tight red dress. We were surrounded by strangers, office workers making their way down the escalators, where they tapped in and continued wasting their life away in the peak hour crowds.

We didn't take a picture together, but I remember what she was wearing. A flannel from Uniqlo; a few days later I got the same shirt, after she picked out the one in red for me. But come to think of it, why didn't I stay longer with her?

She held my arm as we swayed through the crowds, the way she did in secondary school. Her mother always called me her bodyguard because I was one head taller than her. We separated at the platform, as she made her way home while I went to Serangoon to meet my mother.

Raffles Place remained her workplace for the next... I can't even say because I'm not sure. We stopped talking. I guess it just became the last time and place she ever held my hand. 

Next station: NS25/EW13

NS27/CE2

Five years ago there were seven against the world.

Girls, a mix of artist and dancer and academic. One of them stood out for all the wrong reasons, with the accidents she spilled, be it the muffin she spat out from laughing too hard or the horrors she faced alone the year before.

None of them wanted to know. But they were playing a game where they passed a corn cob around in their circle, pretending it was a microphone and taking turns to update each other about their lives. She just had to tell them the one thing that made them squirm on the insides. She told them about Black.

They didn't want to know. You could see it clear on their faces, but the one girl who confessed didn't notice. She just wanted to let them know the biggest change in her life. Not school, or her boyfriend of eleven months, but the boy who was using her when she was down.

That girl regrets it now, looking at that very scene more than four years later. How could she be so blind? No wonder they aren't here anymore; they all took the same train and left, telling each other that she missed it on purpose and will not be thought of anymore.

Eight months ago there were four.

They weren't against the world, with no floods to make them huddle the way fire ants do. They weren't against each other either, despite the differences in their kinds of depth. One girl still stood out though, with the long scar down her left arm.

But their peace was made yet threatened with rounds of Uno, the grease from their pizzas making the corners of the cards oily. Just the day before they already spent twelve hours together, facing the same threats: unreasonable customers and mountains of stocks. The day afterward they did the same, keeping their picnic secret from the others who slaved away in their absences.

They took pictures against the sunset, with arms around each other's shoulders and waists.

Since then, two of these girls have resigned, finding other full-time jobs outside their safe little bubble.

The girl who stood out wanted to love those girls forever, but despite taking the same train, they still alighted at different stations. That was when she realised they will separate the same way she did with the six girls from years before. Who knew that their own differences came to be the flood that she thought missed them?

Six months ago there were two.

A boy and a girl, pasts so different and futures both bleak.

They stood beside each other for four years but never touched. The world could only end if they ever did. He meant everything to her but was about to wonder for the rest of her life if she ever did to him.

He carried her in the rain that afternoon, lifting her up so swiftly and walking with her in his arms. Nobody could stop them but themselves, and it was the hardest lesson she would ever learn: that the weakest thing like a vine came to be the tightest boundary to pull them apart.

For these two, the flood hit them hard and she tried to hold them both above the water until she realised he wasn't even affected by it. She Let him go, and he swam so smoothly because he never needed her.

Marina Bay. Where the seven girls danced in the darkness; where the four girls hugged in the setting sun; where the boy and the girl loved in the rain.

Next station: NS26/EW14

NS28

May; he was an aspiring pilot. I mean, he still is, but he's too far gone for me to refer to him as someone still here. I met him four years ago after a break-up; he was my friend's friend's friend. Well, it was technically the peak of my social life so I had a lot of that thing called 'friend'.

He isn't important, and neither is my story with him. But he still gets the credit for bringing me somewhere I haven't been.

The station itself was so devoid of movement that even the security guard was falling asleep. I told the aspiring pilot I had to pee, and I still remember the way he said: Are you kidding me? I also remember wearing my blue jeans, dark t-shirt tucked haphazardly into them and the navy sneakers the hurricane bought me a year before.

We went up the stairs to the pier, the sun taking its time descending. He said it was too bad for me, considering how the sky was purple and pink when he came alone a few months before.

The wind never once stopped disturbing us, ruffling his short hair and my locks. My hair was still long and I remember the way some strands flew into his mouth when the wind picked up. There was nothing special about him to me, just an air of mystery that I didn't want to solve.

Eventually he sat me down and told his life story, since he already knew bits of mine. Family, academia, rebellion. For three hours I didn't get to talk and just listened to him instead. What a rare occurrence, huh?

But he taught me something that still hangs somewhere in my head, like a neglected sticky note that will always be there, waiting for you to notice it and remember it again: that I was meant to float.

I know it sounds silly. But he was a pilot, dreaming of living in the clouds someday. It wasn't strange coming from him, and was the reason I refused to make up with my hurricane so quickly after he returned. He showed me that staying in one place won't do; keep moving, keep typing, keep floating. Don't make anywhere or anyone home.

That was the first and last time I ever went to Marina South Pier.

Next station: NS27/CE2