The market announces itself with water and chatter before you see colour.
On weekdays the aisles belong to aunties who know exactly which stall lied about having the last kai lan. I am three aisles in before I remember I came for ginger only. The floor is wet in a way that suggests permanent morning, even at ten-thirty.
Stall lights make everything slightly greener than nature intended. Fish ice crackles softly. A vendor shouts numbers I do not understand — bulk orders, old debts, jokes. I pick ginger by smell because my mother taught me that way and I still distrust my eyes. Plastic bags rustle like dry leaves.
At the vegetable row I misremember a name — Ah Leng instead of Ah Leong — and the uncle correct me without malice. I will fix it on the errata page later. For now I accept the correction like weather. The market is a place where precision matters and forgiveness is automatic if you do not hold up the queue.
I pass the tofu stall, the egg stall, the stall that sells only three things and sells them perfectly. I buy more than I planned because abundance feels rude to ignore. By the exit my hands are heavy and my receipt is damp. The bus home will lie about its arrival; the ginger will still be good.
Outside, the sun punishes briefly. I walk the long way along the connector to avoid carrying bags through a crowd. Three aisles in, three aisles out — the market as a small there-and-back universe.
