Fan on the Second Speed
The kitchen fan was on the second speed, which is the speed my mother always used and which I use now without thinking. Evening had settled — past seven, before eight — and the flat was in that post-dinner pause where the plates are washed but the day has not officially ended. I sat at the table with a cup of tea I had let go cold and a notebook open to a page I had started three days earlier and abandoned because work ate the hours between lunch and sleep.
From the kitchen window I can see the corridor light of the opposite block and, if I lean left, a corner of the carpark where the cats gather near the rubbish chute. Tonight there was one cat, grey, sitting on a motorcycle seat cover that probably belongs to someone on the fifth floor. The fan turned above me with a rhythm I know by heart: three seconds of steady air, a faint click, three seconds again. Second speed is enough to move the air without blowing papers off the table. First speed is for when nobody is cooking. Third speed is for when someone fries something and the smoke alarm gets nervous.
I had not cooked dinner. I heated leftover rice and egg from the fridge and ate standing at the counter, which is a habit I pretend is temporary and is not. The table was clear except for the notebook, the mug, and a pen that had run out of ink halfway through a sentence on Monday. I found another pen in the drawer — always another pen — and wrote the date in the margin because blank pages intimidate me less when they have anchors.
What did I write? Nothing dramatic. The colour of the sky at 7:22 — a dull orange behind the HDB roofs. The sound of someone's television through the wall, too muffled to identify the programme. The cat leaving the motorcycle and crossing toward the stairwell. My own shoulders dropping when I realised I had no more emails to answer until morning. Weekday evenings in Simei are often like this: small, repeatable, easy to dismiss if you are looking for plot. I am not looking for plot anymore. I am looking for accuracy.
My neighbour's door opened and closed. Footsteps in the corridor. The lift dinged two floors down. Ordinary sounds stacked on ordinary sounds until the flat felt less lonely without requiring conversation. I drank the cold tea anyway because wasting tea feels wrong in a household that still hears my mother's voice about finishing what you pour. The notebook gained four sentences, then five. I crossed out one adjective — "golden" for the sky — because it was not golden, it was tired orange, and tired is the word that fit.
By eight I moved to the desk in the other room because the kitchen light attracts moths through the window gap and I am tired of brushing them away. The fan stayed on in the kitchen; I could hear it through the wall, still on second speed, still turning. I copied the sentences from the notebook into the ledger on my laptop — not posting, just filing — because the habit of transfer matters to me. Paper first, screen second. The kitchen table is where things begin. The desk is where they wait.
Before sleep I returned to the kitchen for water and turned the fan to first speed, then off. The cat was gone from the carpark. The corridor light on the opposite block switched off at midnight as it does every night, timer set by someone I will never meet. I closed the notebook on the table and left it there, open to the page with the date, ready for tomorrow evening when the fan will go on again and I will sit in the same chair and add whatever the day left behind.