The Living

Cremation made more sense to her. One blaze and it was done a final act of release. Ashes scattered into the river, carried by currents into the veins of the earth. Or fed into the garden soil, returning the body to the cycle of growth. A death that nourished life.

She remembered the last time she had visited a cemetery. Her mother. She had gone alone, not for ritual, not for others but for herself. She had needed that closure. She stood in silence, whispered her words, and left. And she never looked back.

She arrived at the old Sembawang house just as twilight began to settle over the neighbourhood. The air was thick with incense and memory. As she stepped inside, a few relatives were already gathered in the living room. faces lined with fatigue, grief, and the kind of hushed solemnity that accompanies death. One by one, they came forward to greet her. There were soft embraces, murmured condolences, polite expressions of sympathy. She returned their hugs, stiffly but respectfully.

But then she saw her. Her stepmother sat at the edge of the living room, frail, sunken, as if the grief had hollowed her out from the inside. No words were needed. She crossed the room and wrapped her arms tightly around her. This—this—was where her grief anchored itself. They held each other in a long, trembling embrace. Their shoulders shook with a quiet, uncoordinated rhythm. They wept—not loud and wailing, but deep and shaking, like two tectonic plates meeting after years of unspoken pressure.

She remembered the day her father told her he was planning to remarry. He was cautious, almost sheepish, as if expecting her to explode into protest. He tiptoed around the subject, unsure of how she would respond—as though her approval still mattered more than he wanted to admit.

But she didn’t react with anger. Instead, she leaned in. “So, tell me about her,” she said.

He relaxed, visibly. Perhaps even surprised. He told her the marriage had been arranged by his cousins, her aunties too, of course, women folk from the old kampung network, always matchmaking, always meddling with care. They knew the woman from back in the day.

A young widow, they said. Husband died when she was in her mid-forties, leaving her with seven children to raise on her own. No education. No stable income. She survived on odd jobs—ironing clothes in other people’s homes, helping vendors at the hawker centre, doing whatever she could to keep food on the table.

She asked her father if he had met her. “Yes,” he replied. “We’ve already arranged a meeting. I like her. She’s kind. Simple. Steady.” And so she had told him, without hesitation, “If you like her, then I will too.”

She could still remember the way his face softened—how his shoulders eased as if he had been holding tension there for weeks. She had meant it. Deep down, she was actually happy. After her mother passed, she had worried constantly about her father. He was alone too often. She and her younger brother were both working, trying to build their lives, but that meant long hours away.

Their father spent most days by himself—sometimes visiting cousins, sometimes walking around the neighborhood aimlessly. She remembered calling home during breaks. “Have you eaten, Dad?” she’d ask. “Where did you go today?” But the worry never truly left her. Once, a cousin told her they’d seen her father walking along the pedestrian path… and falling. He had tripped, apparently. Just collapsed. Thankfully, a passerby helped him. But the thought of him alone, vulnerable, aging, unsettled her deeply.

So when he told her about the woman, this widow who had endured so much and yet remained standing, she didn’t feel resistance. She felt relief. Because this wasn’t about replacing her mother. It was about someone being there. To share his meals. To remind him to rest. To hold his hand when he forgot where he left his glasses. To sit beside him in the quiet. So yes, she had welcomed the marriage. And over time, she came to see Makcik not just as her father’s companion, but as a woman worthy of her own story.

A woman who had lived through sorrow. Who had served in silence. Who never asked to be accepted, but remained gentle in her place, even when no one gave her full permission to belong. She was small in build, with short curly hair and soft Chinese features that made most people pause when they heard she was Malay. There was something delicate about her, but also an iron quietness beneath the surface. She didn’t speak much, especially not in the early days. She had helped her father arrange the wedding.

It was simple a solemnization ceremony at the Registry of Muslim Marriages, followed by a modest feast at our home. No fanfare. Just the basics. Enough to mark the beginning of a shared life. My sister called in from the U.S. to welcome her to the family. And just like that, she became part of ours.

But the transition wasn’t smooth. She wanted so much to be a mother to us. I understood. She had been mothering her whole life. Seven children of her own, raised singlehandedly after her husband died in her mid-forties. No formal education. She survived by doing whatever she could ironing other people’s clothes, working at hawker stalls, scraping by to make sure no child went hungry.

So, when she entered our home, she tried to slip into that same role. She cooked, she cleaned, she tried to care for us in ways she knew best. But my youngest brother and I didn’t need mothering.We were already adults. Independent. Self-sufficient. There were tensions. My brother, especially, clashed with her. She’d scold him for leaving his socks out, for not letting her iron his shirts.

He didn’t like being fussed over. I had to step in once and explain to her gently, “We’re not ungrateful. It’s just the way we were raised. We’ve always done our own laundry. Cooked our own meals. It’s not rejection. It’s habit.” She nodded, but I could see the sting behind her eyes. She tried the same with me. Once, she took my nursing uniform from the laundry basket, folded it neatly, and placed it with the other clothes.

I pulled her aside later. “I appreciate it, Makcik. But I don’t mix my nursing uniform with other clothes. Hospital protocol,” I said. She didn’t understand. It felt like I was saying her help wasn’t good enough. Eventually, I compromised. I told her, “You can wash it if you want, but just wash it separately, okay?”

And she agreed. Happily. Like I had finally allowed her in. I also spoke to my brother, asking him to be more flexible. “Let her do what she knows,” I said. “This is her way of loving us.” And she did. Quietly. Diligently.

One afternoon, I found myself watching her from the dining table moving back and forth between the laundry and the kitchen, hands never idle. I was struck by something unexpected. Compassion. A deep, aching kind. I wondered about her past. About the weight she had carried. Seven children. No husband. No wealth.

No support. She could have remarried, perhaps. But what man would take on a widow with seven mouths to feed? And yet here she was still giving. Still offering what she had left. Love, through action. It wasn’t perfect. But it was real. Often, I would sit and quietly observe the two of them. There was something sweet almost tender in the way they moved around each other. Like two people who had known sorrow, and had now chosen peace. They were happy. That much was clear. My father, once so gruff and stubborn, had softened.

He smiled more. Laughed more. And he seemed to enjoy perhaps more than he’d admit the way she fussed over him. His meals. His medications. The shirt he wore before stepping out. She’d straighten the collar, smooth the sleeves, offer unsolicited opinions on his socks. He would wave her off with mock annoyance, but his eyes always gave him away. He liked being looked after. And she, for all her years of quiet hardship, finally had someone to pour her care into not out of duty, but love.

They complemented each other in ways I hadn’t expected. He gave her stability. She gave him softness. And somewhere in that quiet companionship, they built a rhythm. A life. I didn’t say much about it back then. But deep inside, I was grateful. Not just that my father had found joy in his final years but that she had, too. That they both had. In the end, for all the talk of legacies, spirits, and ritualsthe real miracle was this: Two ordinary people. Living simply. Loving quietly. And reminding the rest of us that sometimes, that is more than enough. I still remember their first year as husband and wife. They made a trip to the U.S. to visit my sister.

For Makcik, it was a monumental moment. All her life, she had never set foot in an airplane. She’d barely travelled beyond Johor. The thought of flying crossing oceans was both thrilling and terrifying to her. “I don’t think I can do it,” she told me once, hands trembling slightly as she held her passport for the first time. And of course, my father being who he was didn’t make it any easier. Instead of calming her nerves, he leaned into his mischief. He’d show her dramatic photos of plane crashes, or videos of turbulence mid-flight. “Just to prepare you,” he’d say with a grin.

She was already stressed and he knew it. But he couldn’t resist teasing her. We all laughed about it later. Even she did, once they landed safely and got over the jetlag. It became one of those stories. A memory stitched with equal parts fear, joy, and affection. And though it might have seemed like a small thing to others for her, it was huge. A milestone. A late-in-life adventure she never thought she'd take with him by her side. That trip, in many ways, marked a beginning.

A reminder that even after loss, after long years of hardship, new chapters can still be written—sometimes on a plane, with your heart racing and your husband laughing beside you. Inside, a flicker of truth she barely dared acknowledge: she was relieved. Glad, even. Not out of cruelty, but exhaustion. He had been in pain for so long. She had too, in her own way. His presence was a weight complicated, heavy with silences and shadows. Now, both were free. She had once watched them board that plane to America Makcik nervous,

Father amused. Two people starting a chapter they never thought they’d write. That memory felt like yesterday, and yet now everything had changed. Now she was here again, sitting beside the same woman. But this time, there was no journey ahead only the stillness that comes after an ending. She turned to her stepmother quietly.

“Makcik, how did it happen?” Makcik looked down at her hands, clasped tightly in her lap. Her voice was steady, but her eyes glistened.

“It was around five in the morning,” she began, slowly.

“He said he wanted to go to the toilet. To clean himself.” She paused, and in that breath, the weight of caregiving, of routine, of love expressed through small acts, hung in the air.

“I helped him. Held him up. He was weak, but insistent. Afterward, he sat upright on the bed, like he still had things to do. Still had some dignity to preserve.” She looked away for a moment before continuing. “Then he said, ‘Get me some water.’ So I went. Just to the kitchen. Just a few steps.” Her voice caught slightly. “When I came back with the glass… he was sitting just like before. Upright. But he wasn’t breathing.”

Silence fell again between them, thick and tender. Sometimes the last breath doesn’t come with drama or final speeches. Sometimes, it slips away between ordinary acts like getting a glass of water. Life ends in the middle of living.

Later, when the house had quieted and the clatter of cups and voices faded into soft echoes, I sat down with my step-sisters and my brother in the living room of the Sembawang house. The others were there, yes, but they were part of the outer orbit, still they all need to know. This woman Makcik was the one left behind. The one who would now sleep beside emptiness.

The one who needed strength more than rituals. She had lost her second husband not her first and with that came a different kind of grief. Less expected. Less publicly acknowledged. Maybe even more uncertain. And in her eyes, there must have been questions silent, unspoken. What now? Will I still be part of this family? What will happen to me in this house? Will I be asked to leave?

My youngest brother, too, had noticed it. Earlier after he came back from the cemetery, he pulled me aside and said, “We need to be clear about what’s going to happen next. She might be worried.” I nodded. I looked at them and said, calmly but firmly: “Makcik is not to be moved out of this house. This is her home. She will remain here for as long as she wishes to. And if one day she decides to leave, I want to know where she's going, and who will care for her. I made a promise to our father. I intend to keep it.”

They listened. There were no objections. Only nods. Quiet understanding. Perhaps even relief. Because we all knew what kind of woman she was what she had done, what she had carried. And in this family, where so many lines are blurred and so many wounds exist between generations, this was a moment of clarity. A line drawn, not to divide, but to protect. A vow remembered, not because of obligation but because of love.

She later wandered into the room where her father had once lain. The air was still. Heavy. Time moved differently there. The bed was neatly made, but she could still trace the faint impression where his body had rested. The curve of his spine, the dip where his head had lain, the slight crumple in the pillow that refused to smooth out as if memory itself had weight.

She stood there for a moment, the silence pressing against her chest. Then she stepped forward and sat at the edge of the bed. Her fingers reached for the bedsheet, smoothing it gently. She closed her eyes. And in that quiet, she returned to the time they’re were together. He had been frail. The strength that once made him seem towering had shrunk into brittle bones and sunken skin. But his eyes his eyes still burned with urgency.

She remembered holding his hand that night. It was warm, yet slipping into coldness. She lifted it to her lips and kissed it softly, like a daughter who still hoped for more time but knew better. “What’s holding you back, Dad?” she asked him gently. “You’re in pain. I can see it. Is there something you need to say? Something you need to do?”

His lips parted, dry and trembling. The words came slowly, like they had to fight their way through a body already halfway gone.

“Nobody believes me,” he said. “Even your stepmother thinks I’m just talking nonsense.” She leaned in, her heart thudding. “But I need to pass this to someone,” he whispered, eyes darting toward the cabinet in the corner. “It needs to be passed over.”

“What do you need to pass?” she asked. He looked at her then, not just as a daughter, but as someone who might finally understand. “The keris,” he said. A chill ran through her. “I need to pass the keris over.”

“The keris? And to who?” He hesitated. His breath grew shallower. The room seemed to shrink, wrapping them in the gravity of something unspoken for years.

Now she remembered about the keris, her mind had wandered back to that night in JB. She had driven down with her daughter for the weekend. Her husband was away on a business trip in Belgium, so she took the opportunity to visit her father. That night, she couldn’t sleep. The house was quiet, steeped in shadows. She crept downstairs in search of warm milk. But as she turned the corner into the living room, she saw him, her father sitting alone in the dark on the armchair in the living room. No lights. Just the pale spill of moonlight through the wooden slats, catching the edge of his profile.

She paused, then walked over and sat across from him. “Are you alright?” she asked gently. He didn’t move at first. Then, softly, “Yes. Restless… but I’m alright.” She took a sip of her warm milk, let the silence stretch for a moment, then said, “Dad, can I ask you something?” He nodded. She hesitated. “Aunty and some of the old kampung folks used to tell this story about our old kampung house. Said that one day, the whole family went out, and when you all came back, there was a man inside the house walking in circles, looking for a door or a window but couldn’t find one. And only when you arrived home, you were able to catch him and hand him over to the police.”

He chuckled. “Ah… that story.”

“So… it’s true?”

He smiled in the dark. “Yes. It’s true. Its so funny. Imagine when we came back, I saw this man walking in circle in our house. Round and round. He couldnt find the door or the window”

She blinked. “People thought it was your mother's doing, but it was me,” he said simply. “I placed a protective cloak over the house. Anyone who entered with bad intention would be trapped unable to find their way out. Only I could release them.”

She stared at him. “A protective cloak? How did you do it”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s an art. You need to learn it, of course.”

She didn’t know what to say. Her rational mind bristled, trying to make sense of it. A cloak? A spell? Some sort of symbolic charm? But this wasn’t second-hand gossip anymore. This was her father calmly claiming he had done it. And she had already heard the same story from Aunty. Even kampung neighbours had sworn it was true but they think its mother. Now she knows is her father.

Her scientific, logical self didn’t know what to do with this information. There were no boxes to file it under. And yet it didn’t feel like a lie. It felt like a puzzle piece she had been holding for years, now clicking into place. She sat in silence beside him that night, unsure whether she had stepped into fantasy or just seen a side of reality most people simply never look at.

“Da, there’s something else I need to ask you.” He looked up at me, eyes already tired but alert.

“I once spoke to this Indian man from Kerala. We met through the yahoo chat lines. We got close over time. We talked about all sorts of things life, family, dreams. One day, out of nowhere, he told me, ‘Your family owns a keris."

My father froze. His eyes narrowed slightly. “How does this man know?” he asked quietly. “Who is he?” I shrugged.

“I don’t know. Just a guy I used to chat with. But he seemed to know a lot about things I never even told him. I didn’t think much of it back then, but now do we? Do we really have a keris?”

He was silent for a long moment. Then he nodded, slowly. “Go to my room,” he said. “There’s something I want you to see.” He gave precise instructions. A drawer in the old teak cabinet. A package wrapped in batik cloth, folded tightly and placed under layers of red cloth.

My heart pounded as I followed his directions. When I found it, the cloth felt heavy in my hands, as if time itself had been stitched into its folds. I brought it back to him. He unwrapped it carefully, gently, as though unveiling something sacred. Inside was a keris. It looked ancient. Its wooden sheath was carved with patterns I didn’t recognize, and the hilt had an almost serpentine elegance to it.

“This,” he said, holding it reverently, “is the keris of Datuk Panglima Hitam.”

My breath caught. “Who?”

“Datuk Panglima Hitam. We are from his lineage,” he continued. “The fourth wife’s line. You and I are his direct descendants.” Then, in one slow motion, he drew the keris from its sheath. And in that instant, I saw it. For a split second, my father’s body shimmered glowed, almost like a brief flicker of energy had passed through him.

The room felt charged. He held the keris upright, kissed the tip of the blade, and carefully returned it to its sheath. I said nothing. I couldn’t. I sat in stunned silence, staring at the batik cloth, trying to register what I had just witnessed.

My rational mind flailed helplessly, trying to label it, explain it, contain it. But nothing made sense. And yet it was real. Then, softly, he began to speak. “It was during the racial riots,” he said. “We were students of Haji Sulong, he was also the guru silat of the kampung. One of the famous Silat guru that time. One night, he gathered four of us. Said we had a mission. We were to travel to Malacca… to a cave.”

“A cave?” I whispered.

“Yes,” he nodded. “Deep in the hills. We made that journey under the cover of night. When we reached, there stood an elderly man waiting. We were told to sit in a straight line, facing him. He poured water over our heads… and gave each of us a keris.” He looked me in the eye.

“The man told me this is the keris of Datuk Panglima Hitam and hand it over to me” He placed his hand on the cloth-wrapped blade. “My duty is to honour it. To preserve the legacy of the keris.”

I sat there, completely still. It was as if I’d just been told a ghost story. Except this wasn’t a myth passed down from someone else. This was my father. This was our family. “That’s the problem,” he murmured softly “The one who’s supposed to take it hasn't appeared. I’ve been waiting. And as long as I don’t pass it over I cannot leave.”

She remembered the way his eyes stared past her then as if already seeing another realm. Not afraid. Just tired. Held back by something unfinished. Now, in the dim stillness of the room, she sat alone with those words echoing in her chest. The keris. The inheritance unclaimed. The weight of a legacy waiting in silence.

She stared at him. Seriously? “You can’t die unless you pass the keris?” whispered her thoughts. He looked at her with eyes clouded by pain and something older something ancient. She watched his chest rise and fall, labored, like each breath was being wrestled from another realm.

As she sat there, the weight of the keris conversation settling around her like incense smoke, her mind drifted unexpectedly to another time, another bed, another final conversation. It was during her years as a hospice nurse. A young Catholic girl, barely nineteen, her body wasting away from cancer but her eyes still full of pleading light, had once asked her: “My pastor told me, God chose me because there’s a job for me to do up there. What do you think?” The question had stopped her cold. What did she think?

As an atheist, these questions always came with a sharp edge. Not because she found them offensive far from it but because they were so tender, so raw, that any reply risked wounding. What was she supposed to say? She had seen many people die. Some with grace. Others with fury. But this girl this frightened girl wasn’t looking for theology. She was looking for peace.

So she swallowed her thoughts and said softly, “Maybe your pastor has a point.” The girl had looked at her, wide-eyed. “Would you like to join me?” She had smiled then, holding back tears. “I really wish I could. But my job here on Earth isn’t done yet. Maybe when it is, I’ll see you up there. And if you’re really up there, maybe once in a while… you could look out for me down here. It’s nice to know I’ve got friends watching over me.”

Now, sitting beside her father’s empty bed, she thought about that moment again. You don’t expect an atheist to say those things. But in that moment, she hadn’t been an atheist. She had been a human being sitting beside another human being, trying to offer something to hold on to as the light faded. Perhaps that was her position then, too. Her father’s last words about the keris, the ritual, the unseen signs it all sounded ridiculous to her rational mind. But to him, it was real.

As real as the pain he carried. As real as the need to pass something on before he let go. So maybe, just for that moment, she had to believe too. Not because she had found religion. But because love sometimes requires us to step outside ourselves, to meet someone where they are, and walk with them part of the way. Even if it’s just for a while. She clenched her jaw.

Watching him like this was unbearable. Every wince, every tremor, tore through her. She had always seen him as stubborn, complicated, even infuriating at times—but seeing him like this, shackled to something beyond the physical, ignited a need to do something. Anything. Then, an idea struck.

“Dad…” she said gently, “pass it to me. I will keep it until the right person comes.” He turned his head toward her, slowly, deliberately. His gaze sharpened, studying her face as if trying to read something buried deep within her spirit.

“Do you know what comes with this?” he asked. “Tell me.” He exhaled, ragged but steady enough to carry the weight of old disappointment. “Your brother Noah wants it,” he said. “But I refuse to give it to him. He’s full of arrogance. Temperamental. Easily triggered. And a person who holds the keris must never give in to anger. It’s not just symbolic, it’s real. If he holds it with that fire in him, it won’t just harm him. It will hurt those around him.” She listened in silence.

He wasn't just speaking as a father. He was speaking as a guardian of something sacred. “Johan wants it too,” her father continued. “But I fear he’ll sell it. He doesn’t understand what it is. To him, it’s just a relic—valuable, yes, but only in the way an antique is valuable. He doesn’t see the burden. Or the responsibility.”

She nodded, remembering the conversation they had come weeks before. He was worried and restless, his voice was strained, low, almost whispered. “Can you go to JB with your Makcik?” he’d asked. “Johan been sniffing around. He’s looking for the keris. I’ve hidden it somewhere he won’t think to check. But now that he’s staying in the JB house, I worry. If he finds it…” He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to.

So she went. It was a quiet weekday afternoon. Makcik had agreed to go along, knowing what was at stake. The journey was uneventful, but her thoughts churned the entire way. By the time they reached the old family house in Johor Bahru, the sky had begun to cloud over, casting long, grey shadows across the porch. Johan was there, lounging on the front step with a cigarette in hand.

He didn’t suspect anything just gave them a half-hearted greeting and went back to his smoking and deep in thoughts. Once inside, Makcik took the lead. She struck up a loud, animated conversation with Johan in the living room, something about the neighbor’s cat and old gossip from the kampung days distractions, spoken with purpose. Meanwhile, she slipped quietly down the hallway toward her father’s room. It had been years since she’d last entered that space.

The familiar scent of old wood, medicated oils, and something else metallic, perhaps still lingered. She moved carefully, each footstep deliberate. She knelt by the side of the old wooden wardrobe, then reached behind it. Her fingers searched until they found the small notch, hidden behind a loose wooden panel. She pried it open gently, just as he had once shown her in secret, long ago. There it was. Wrapped in faded batik cloth, bound tight with an old red thread: the keris. She held it for a moment. It felt heavier than it should’ve, like it carried stories that hadn’t yet been spoken. Then, with quiet reverence, she slipped it into her bag, nestled beneath a folded sweater she had brought for cover. No one saw her. No one knew.

By the time she returned to the living room, Johan was laughing at one of Makcik’s stories. She joined them casually, said nothing. They had coffee. They left soon after. But as they drove back toward Singapore, she kept glancing at the bag on her lap. It sat there like a heartbeat. Silent. Alive. And in that moment, she understood what her father meant. It wasn’t just an object. It was a threshold. He looked at her again, slower this time, eyes scanning for hesitation. His voice broke the chain of memory

“And you?” he asked. “Why do you want it?”

“I don’t,” she said plainly. “I’m not a spiritual person, Dad. You know that. I don’t seek this. But if it must be kept, if it must be protected until the right one comes then let me hold it. I give you my word. I will honour it. I will abide by its condition.”

He studied her for a long time, longer than she had ever seen him study anyone. Then finally, he gave a small, almost imperceptible nod. “Alright,” he said, his voice low but certain. “Three Fridays from now. We meet at the JB house. I will do a ritual for you. And officially hand over the keris.”

She sat beside him longer, her hand resting on his, watching the light from the window fade into long shadows. The quiet settled between them again. But this time, it was a different silence heavier, but less painful.

Then, as if something tugged gently at the edge of her thoughts, she asked: “How will I know who I’m supposed to pass it to?”

He smiled faintly, a crease of mischief and mystery forming at the corners of his lips. “Oh… you’ll know. You will see the sign.”

“What sign?” There was a pause. His breath had grown shallow, his energy waning. But a memory surfaced, floating gently between them.

“Remember that day when you were young? You fell from a tree.” She tilted her head, searching through childhood haze. “Oh yes… I remember. I climbed that big guava tree at Grandma’s kampung. Quite high, too. Then I slipped. I don’t remember falling. I just remember your face, looking down at me, pale with panic, asking if I was alright.”

“You stood up,” he said. “You brushed off the leaves and dirt and said you were fine. But I checked your whole body. No bruises. No fractures. Not even a scratch. I was stunned.”

She looked at him now, her heart slowing. “Was that… the sign?” He looked at her, more deeply now.

“That wasn’t the first time, was it?” She paused. Then slowly, she shook her head. “No… not the first.”

“There were others?”

“Yes. Several. But I never told anyone. Who would believe me?” He waited. “There was one time,” she continued, her voice dropping into a near whisper. “I had just gotten my PSLE results. I passed I was overjoyed. So happy I couldn’t think straight. I ran across the road without looking. Didn’t even check for cars. It was a slope… I remember the sunlight, the sound of the result slip flapping in my hand.” Her eyes glazed, tracing memory like a film reel. “

And then I saw it. A car. Coming fast. Too fast. I froze. Stood right in its path.” She swallowed. “But it stopped. Inches away. Right in front of me. The driver was stunned. I remember him stepping out of the car, just staring at me. Like I was the miracle.”

“And you?”

“I ran,” she said. “As fast as I could.” Her father exhaled, slowly. Not surprised. Only affirmed. Her father’s face changed. Not alarmed.Not disbelieving. Just quiet. Knowing. He leaned closer and spoke low, as if telling her something sacred.

“Don’t tell anyone about this. Not ever. People won’t understand. And they’ll try to fix what doesn’t need fixing.” She looked at him, unsure.

“But why me?” He didn’t answer that. Only added,

“You’ll find that you rarely get injured. And when you do, you heal faster than most. Pay attention. Your body remembers things even your mind has forgotten.” She sat back, the silence between them growing thick again.

But different now. Not fear. Not confusion. Just something ancient settling into its place. His eyes drifted to the ceiling, as if listening to something far beyond the walls of the room. Then, in a whisper: “When the right time comes, and you see it with your own eyes… you’ll know. That is the person.”

She wanted to ask more. But his breathing slowed again, and the moment receded into stillness. Some truths are not taught. They are remembered when the time is right. “Pass it to me, Dad,” she said, gently cutting through the quiet haze of their thoughts.

“Let me carry your burden for you. Go in peace.” He turned to look at her, his eyes clouded but steady seeing her not just as a daughter now, but as a vessel. As a bridge. “Okay,” he whispered. “I will do what is necessary. Three Fridays from now, we meet at the JB house. I need to perform a ritual for you to transfer the obligations.”

He paused, his voice growing more solemn. “And I need to inform the guardians that you are the one inheriting the keris. Once they know, they will protect you, just as they have protected me and our family.”

He exhaled, the words taking effort. “Once everything is transferred… I will go. You must be prepared, okay?” She nodded slowly, her throat tightening. “And promise me,” he added, his voice softening, “you will take care of Makcik. As if she were your own mother. She’s a good woman and she has suffered more than you know.”

“I promise,” she whispered, her voice shaking. “As long as I live, I will make sure she’s cared for.” A faint smile crossed his lips.

“You are not alone,” he said. “Even if you feel like you are. They may not appear in ways you expect but when the time comes, the guardians will make themselves known. Your path will unfold one encounter at a time.”

I looked at him, uncertain. “These guardians, Dad how do they look? I mean how would I even know if I saw one?” He smiled faintly, eyes twinkling with a strange certainty. “They are dressed in black. Like the old silat warriors. Long-haired men and women alike. Silent, watchful. They will always be there, near you. You won’t see them all the time, but they will be there. Watching. Protecting.”

I gave a long exhale. “Ohhh…” A part of me wanted to laugh not to mock him, but because the image felt so out of place. Me? With bodyguards? I could understand it for celebrities, royalty, politicians, people who stirred the world. But me? A nobody. An ordinary woman. Why would I need protecting? The idea was almost amusing. But I said nothing. He was serious.

Dead serious. And I didn’t want to break that moment of trust his trust in me. So I nodded, tucked it into a corner of my heart, and kept it safe. He paused, catching his breath. She felt his hand tighten slightly in hers not in resistance, but in release. Like a letting go. “If anything remains unfinished,” he continued, “you will feel it. Listen closely to your dreams. Pay attention to the signs. The keris will guide you but only if you remain clear, and centered.”

She could no longer speak. Her tears flowed silently, tracing down her cheeks like rain on glass. There were no more words needed. She never thought this will be their last conversation. The room was quiet again.

She remained seated for a while, letting the moment settle into her bones. All around her were echoes of their past arguments, laughter, stories half-finished. And here, in this very room, something sacred had just passed between them.

Gently, she stood and walked to his bed. She slipped her hand under the mattress, just above where his head had rested. There, tucked carefully beneath layers of time, she found it the batik-wrapped package. She lifted it slowly, cradling it in both hands. It was warm not with heat, but with history. With breath. With weight.

She placed it gently in her bag, covering it with a scarf. So far, only Makcik knew the keris had been brought back to Sembawang. No one else. And no one should not yet. Not until she was ready. Not until she understood what it truly meant to carry it.

For now, it was hers. She had taken it not with pride, but with quiet responsibility. And yet… as she sat alone later that night, the weight of the moment settled deeper into her chest. A flicker of memory surfaced something she hadn’t thought of in years. She had once offered a keris to her guru.

Now, one had returned to her—this time through blood. She never expected it. But it had been waiting.

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