The Lift Before Ten

The lift doors open onto a corridor that still smells like last night's rain trapped in the concrete. I am early — not virtuously early, just unable to sleep after a week of humid nights. Downstairs, the kopitiam uncle is already stacking plastic chairs with the sound of mild disagreement. The kopi machine hisses its first proper breath. This is the hour I trust most: after the night cleaners have gone, before the school run clogs the void deck.

I order kopi o kosong and sit where I can see both the lift bank and the uncle's counter. He knows my order without looking up. We have never exchanged names, which suits us both. Around me, the block performs its soft awakening: one auntie sweeping a corridor that is already clean, a delivery rider checking his phone against a list of units, the distant MRT announcement bleeding through the open side gate. None of this is remarkable. That is precisely why I come.

Before ten, the lift behaves differently. Fewer stops, longer pauses between floors, as if the building itself is deciding whether to get out of bed. I watch the indicator light crawl from twelve to one and think about how many times I have stood in that metal box without noticing the numbers. Habit makes ghosts of small rituals. Writing them down feels like paying a debt to attention.

The kopi cools enough to taste — bitter, slightly burnt in the way old machines prefer. I do not read the news on my phone. I do not scroll. I watch uncle wipe a table that no one has used yet, a preventive kindness. A neighbour I recognise by shoes alone joins the queue for toast. We nod. The nod is sufficient.

By quarter past nine, the tempo changes. School uniforms appear. The toast queue lengthens. The uncle's movements sharpen. I leave before the rush, taking the stairs because my knees protest the lift less on the way up. On the third-floor landing, someone has left a pot of curry plant by the window — green, stubborn, surviving on neglect and condensation.

I write this from my desk an hour later, while the kopitiam noise is still faintly audible if I leave the window open. The lift before ten will happen again tomorrow with minor variations: a different rider, a spilled sugar packet, rain instead of humidity. I will not record each instance. But today I noticed, and that is enough for one note.

If you are looking for a lesson, there isn't one. This is a description of an ordinary morning in an ordinary HDB estate, observed by someone who had nothing better to do than pay attention. Sometimes that is the entire point of a page.

On the way back up, I pass the notice board near the lift. Someone has pinned a flyer for tuition classes; someone else has pinned a lost cat. The board is the estate's slow newspaper. I read neither item fully. Both will be replaced by next week.