“Hello…” he greeted the children with a cautious smile.

“Hi Appa!” His daughter ran to him, flinging her arms around his neck and kissing his cheek. Her joy, at least, was familiar. “Appa, these are friends!”

“Your friends?” he asked. She shook her head. “No… Amma’s friend’s daughter.”

“Ah.” He turned to his wife, lowering his voice.

“Who is that lady? And whose children are these?” Her answer was casual, too casual.

“Manikam's wife and children”

He stared at her. “Manikam? And who is Manikam? Why are they here?”

She touched his arm gently. “Come,” she whispered. “Let’s talk in the room.”

Once the door closed behind them, she told him about the taxi driver, the women and the children, he exhaled long, slow, bordering on a groan.

“Dear,” he said, trying to keep calm, “you can’t bring strangers into our house like this. It’s dangerous.”

She looked at him, eyes wide and sincere, as though he had missed something obvious.

“Dangerous? Did you see them? The baby is barely a year old. They were all soaked in the rain, squeezed together in that taxi. I couldn’t just leave them like that.”

He ran a hand over his face. “Where’s the husband?”

“I told him to leave them here while he settles the housing issue. I gave him money to pay the rent. Once he gets the key, he’ll come back for his family.”

He stared at her in disbelief. “And what if he doesn’t? What if he takes the money and disappears? Then what are we going to do with them?”

She placed her hand on his arm again, her voice gentle. “He’ll come back for his family. I know he will. And if he doesn’t… we’ll think of something.”

He looked at her. Really looked. Frustration and affection tangled inside him, and as always, the affection won. He felt the last of his anger dissolve like sugar in warm water.

“Alright,” he murmured finally. “Just make sure the children eat. And the mother too. I… I’ll go take my shower.”

He left the room slowly, shaking his head but unable to stop the faint, resigned smile pulling at the corners of his mouth


Growing up in a small family, he wasn’t used to this… avalanche of children. Noise, mess, tiny shoes scattered everywhere it all felt foreign to him. But the children themselves weren’t the real shock. What unsettled him most was the lack of warning. No message, no hint. Just opening the front door each day to a new reality waiting on the other side.

And it wasn’t only children he wasn’t used to he wasn’t used to any of this new life. His idea of volunteering, back in the old days, was the occasional temple duty at the Tai Tak temple in Johor Bahru. He had left all that behind when they moved to Kuala Lumpur, and honestly, he hadn’t wanted to think about it again. That period of his life belonged to another version of himself, one he felt no need to revisit.

So when they settled into their new place in KL and his wife suddenly announced she had discovered a children’s home and was going to volunteer there, he was caught off guard.

“Volunteer?” he had asked back then, unsure whether she meant once, or weekly, or permanently.

“Yes,” she said simply, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. He didn’t know how to respond. Personally, he was just relieved she had something to do a new city could feel lonely, and she had followed him here with no friends, no family, and no familiar routines.

Kuala Lumpur was a fresh start, but also a blank page, and blank pages can feel heavy.

Before the move, they had already agreed that only one of them would work. He had calculated everything long before they packed their bags. Numbers steadied him they made sense in a world that didn’t always behave predictably.

And as an expat, the arrangement was almost too practical to ignore. His salary alone could support them comfortably. The housing allowance was covered. Transport allowance was covered. Utilities, relocation costs all accounted for in the contract.

Even future concerns were neatly tucked away under company benefits. If a child comes along, he had told her, the company covers education fees. International school, everything. It was one of the hidden luxuries of an expat posting certainty.

A predictable framework. A life where he didn’t need her to work, and she didn’t need to worry about juggling schedules or rushing through mornings. Everything essential was already taken care of. So when they decided she would stay home, it felt like a logical, almost elegant solution on paper.

But deep down, he knew even then that his wife was not someone who could simply stay home. She had never been that kind of person. She had been helping her mother in the catering business since she was in primary school waking before dawn, carrying trays, packing orders, running deliveries, learning the rhythm of work and responsibility long before most children her age understood the meaning of it.

Her childhood was steeped in industriousness, in kitchens filled with noise and heat and the smell of spices, in the constant flow of customers and community chatter. And if her mother had given her a business mindset, her father had given her something entirely different, a social conscience.

He had been a grassroots leader, a man woven into the fabric of the local community, always helping someone, always speaking up for people who had no voice. She had grown up watching him organize events, solve problems for neighbours, mediate disputes, and welcome strangers into their home without hesitation. She was raised on service and work, not stillness.

So although staying home looked logical on the spreadsheet financially sound, convenient for travel, flexible for family life a part of him knew it would never keep her satisfied for long. She wasn’t built for quiet days and empty hours. He just didn’t expect her to inherit both attributes of her parents so completely.

From her mother, she carried energy, initiative, the instinct to act. From her father, she carried compassion, community, and that disarming tendency to open the door to anybody who needed help. Put together, it made her unstoppable.

He should have known from the beginning that volunteering wouldn’t be a small thing for her. He should have known she would pour herself into it with the same intensity she had poured into everything else in her life. But he hadn’t fully understood it then.

He had thought volunteering would be light, manageable, something she did once or twice a week. He never imagined it would spill into their home, reshape their routine, and surround him with children, mothers, and strangers he had never met.

Yet, looking back, it made perfect sense. Her heart had simply gone where it had always been trained to go.


That memory surfaced the day he returned home to ten children from the Home, all between four and seven years old, filling the house with chaos. Shoes scattered everywhere. Tiny voices echoing down the corridor. He had nearly dropped his briefcase. Ten. Under one roof. In KL. In his house.

And she had told him this information the same way she might tell him the weather report.

“Poor things… the older children went to the Commonwealth Games. The younger ones were left behind. I felt sad for them,” she had explained, as though sadness naturally translated into bringing them home.

“How did you even bring them here?” he had asked, incredulous.

“Taxi,” she said, almost proudly. “A bigger taxi.”

He had no idea how she managed it ten children in a single taxi. The logistics alone boggled his mind. But she always found a way.

Her heart made decisions first the rest of the world simply rearranged itself around her.

And then came their daughter’s first birthday. Birthdays were not something either of them grew up celebrating. It felt like a strange ritual especially for a child who wouldn’t even remember it. With no family nearby in KL, the idea of throwing a party felt awkward.

A party for whom? Who would come? He had imagined something quiet. Maybe a cake. Maybe one or two colleagues. But his wife had other plans.

“Let’s celebrate it at the Home,” she declared. “Get a clown. Cater food. Invite the children who share the same birth month.”

He stared at her, speechless. A clown? A catered buffet? A shared birthday party with children he didn’t even know? It sounded overwhelming. In every possible way. But as usual he went along with it.

And, surprisingly, it turned out to be one of the happiest days they’d had in KL. His colleagues came, not with presents, but carrying bags of rice, diapers, milk formula, and children’s clothes. His wife had been firm: “No gifts for our daughter. If you want to give something, donate to the Home instead.”

Everyone seemed relieved by the idea. It made sense. It felt right. The clown arrived in full costume, wobbling in with oversized shoes, honking his squeaky horn, and immediately capturing the children’s attention. Laughter erupted from every corner of the hall real, belly-deep laughter that bounced off the walls like sunlight.

All the children born in the same month as their daughter gathered around one large cake. Their daughter, tiny and wide-eyed, sat among them as though she had always belonged there. Together they blew out the candles. Together they cut the cake. Together they smeared icing on each other’s faces, shrieking with delight.

When the cake cutting was done, someone took a group photo a huge messy, joyful photo of children, volunteers, his colleagues, the clown, and somehow, him too, holding his daughter who was utterly fascinated by the clown’s red nose.

When he saw the photo later, he paused. They looked like a family. Not by blood, not by obligation but by shared joy, shared space, shared humanity. A different kind of family. One his wife had created without asking. One he was slowly, quietly learning how to accept.

Her world was expanding and whether he intended to or not, he found himself expanding with it. But tonight, it felt like too much. A woman he didn’t know, three children he had never seen before, and a husband somewhere out there in the pouring rain trying to reclaim a house they had lost.

He wasn’t even sure the man would come back. People disappeared for far less. The uncertainty settled heavily on him. What if the husband didn’t return? What if they were now responsible for a mother and three children with nowhere to go? What were they supposed to do next? and as she said it confidently "we’ll think of something"

His mind was too exhausted to think about “what if.” He already had enough worries piled up from work: reports, deadlines, meetings, the endless stream of decisions he was paid to make. He didn’t have the mental capacity to take on another crisis, especially one he didn’t even see coming.

All he wanted all he truly, desperately wanted was a good, warm shower. Just ten minutes under hot water to calm his nerves and reset his brain. The situation in the living room could wait. His sanity couldn’t.