This short story was published on Tuesday, 27 January 2026 and is part of the Kakantiga Ultra or Cantos of the Beyond: a daily new short story or play dreamfishing and celebrating past, present, possible and future Kristang culture. This short story features the anticipated future 40th Kabesa and is set simultaneously in Nova Singapura in November 2550 and in Singapore in 1999, 2002, 2008, 2010 and 2027.
Fourteen.
He is also two.
The calendar says so.
The adults have circled the date in biro and worry.
The child does not know what a calendar is.
He knows temperature.
He knows pressure.
He knows when the air turns wrong.
He is lying on a thin mattress on the floor of a rented room in Singapore, close enough to the port that ships sigh through the walls at night, close enough to poverty that no one pretends this is temporary anymore.
The light is off.
The window is open.
Diesel and salt drift in.
Someone is arguing quietly in the kitchen.
Someone else is crying and pretending not to.
He is alone in the room.
Again.
Not because anyone is cruel.
Because everyone is exhausted.
Something has happened to him.
Not once.
Not briefly.
Not accidentally.
His body has learned this pattern.
His nerves have memorised it.
His skin expects it.
His mind has not yet learned what to call it.
So it becomes gravity.
Weight.
Darkness.
A pulling inward.
He lies very still.
Not sleeping.
Listening.
Waiting for danger to decide whether it is finished.
In his head there is no monster.
No Leviathan.
No dragon.
There is something quieter.
Colder.
A presence that does not threaten.
It simply waits.
Patient.
Accurate.
Death.
Not as ending.
As companion.
As witness.
As something that noticed him when no one else did.
It sits beside him in the dark like a shadow that learned how to breathe.
It does not scare him.
It understands him.
That is worse.
His small fingers curl against his chest.
His heart is slow.
Too slow for a toddler.
Already practising restraint.
Somewhere far ahead, in a century that has learned how to archive suffering without resolving it, another consciousness opens the arvahang.
The Fortieth Kabesa.
Born 2515.
Watching backward.
Carefully.
Reluctantly.
She does not rush in.
She has learned that some wounds bite.
She kneels in probability, not in space, and observes the two-year-old who is learning how to disappear without dying.
She whispers.
Not to him.
To time.
Mark this.
This is where he learned to stop asking.
This is where he learned that love is inconsistent and Death is punctual.
This is where empathy fractured and strategy began.
The child does not hear.
But something registers.
A micro-adjustment.
A tightening.
A decision without language:
I will not need anyone.
Death shifts.
Interested.
It recognises a future collaborator.
The room remains dark.
The arguing fades.
The crying stops.
Morning will come.
It always does.
He will survive.
He always will.
But something essential has already been traded away.
And the Fortieth Kabesa, watching from three centuries ahead, closes her eyes briefly, knowing this is only the first of many small, terrible lessons history will teach him.
*
Fifteen.
He is three.
He lives in a house that smells of disinfectant and policies.
Not because anyone is cruel.
Because everything is managed.
Adults here speak in professional tones even when they are tired.
Especially when they are tired.
He has learned that “inside voice” means do not exist too loudly.
That “be patient” means you are not a priority.
That “we’ll see” means probably no.
He sits at a small table with crayons.
They are arranged in a plastic cup.
Blue.
Red.
Yellow.
Green.
He lines them up.
Straightens them.
Disorder invites attention.
Attention invites review.
Review invites consequences.
A woman walks past and says, “Good boy.”
He does not look up.
Praise is unpredictable.
The television in the corner plays cartoons too loudly.
He does not watch.
He watches reflections in the screen instead.
Who is moving.
Who is tired.
Who is safe.
Who is volatile.
At lunchtime, he is forgotten.
Not dramatically.
Procedurally.
A headcount misaligned.
A tray mislabelled.
A staff change mid-shift.
He sits with empty hands while others eat.
He does not ask.
Asking creates records.
Records are dangerous.
Death sits beside him.
Quiet.
Professional.
It approves of his discretion.
When food finally arrives, it is cold.
He eats it anyway.
Gratitude is cheaper than complaint.
In the afternoon, a volunteer tries to hug him.
Suddenly.
Without warning.
He stiffens.
Does not reciprocate.
Does not pull away.
He becomes furniture.
The woman looks hurt.
Says, “He’s so distant.”
She means: he does not perform attachment on demand.
Somewhere in 2515, the Fortieth Kabesa opens this layer.
She does not step closer.
She circles it.
Mapping dependencies.
Tracking where intervention would fossilise.
Tracking where absence will calcify.
She notices the lunch tray.
The volunteer.
The lined-up crayons.
The way the child has already internalised the answer to what it all means.
Later, he will be praised for independence.
For resilience.
For not being “needy.”
No one will trace it back to plastic chairs in over-fluorescent corridors, and the sense of no one ever really giving a damn.
The Fortieth Kabesa watches the moment seal.
Another small hinge in a life learning to close.
Another lesson filed under: rely on nothing that breathes.
And she turns the page.
*
Sixteen.
He is four.
He has learned how to lie.
Not with words.
With his face.
With his body.
With absence.
Adults ask, “Are you okay?”
He nods.
Always.
Nodding is cheap.
Truth is expensive.
The house has rules written on the fridge.
Chores.
Consequences.
Smiley-face charts.
He understands the charts.
They are about control, not happiness.
Today he has broken something.
A ceramic cup.
Slipped.
Fell.
Shattered.
It was an accident.
That does not matter.
He stands very still in the kitchen, staring at the pieces.
He does not cry.
Crying is escalation.
He does not run.
Running is confession.
He calculates.
Who is home.
Who is tired.
Who is angry.
Who is pretending not to be.
Footsteps.
Heavy.
Approaching.
He feels Death straighten beside him.
Not threatening.
Advisory.
Pay attention.
An adult appears.
Looks.
Exhales.
“What did you do?”
He opens his mouth.
Closes it.
Then says quietly, “Sorry.”
Not “It fell.”
Not “It was an accident.”
Sorry is preemptive surrender.
The adult rubs their face.
“Go to your room.”
Relief.
Punishment without contact.
Without spectacle.
He walks.
Carefully.
In his room he sits on the bed and waits.
Time passes.
No one comes.
He is not comforted.
He is not corrected.
He is not processed.
He is simply… archived.
Left to manage himself.
Death sits with him.
Companionable.
Reliable.
It approves of containment.
Somewhere in 2515, the Fortieth Kabesa watches through the arvahang.
She notes the stillness.
The speed of his compliance.
The absence of protest.
She whispers into probability.
This is where submission becomes strategy.
This is where accountability is replaced by self-erasure.
This is where he learns that safety is invisibility.
In the kitchen, someone sweeps.
The sound reaches his room.
Evidence being removed.
History simplified.
He stares at the wall.
Imagines himself becoming smaller.
More efficient.
Less noticeable.
It works.
Adults later describe him as “easy.”
“Low maintenance.”
“Mature for his age.”
No one hears the cost.
The Fortieth Kabesa closes this layer gently.
Another year.
Another contraction.
Another step toward a life organised around not being hurt.
And she prepares for what comes next.
*
Seventeen.
He is five.
He has learned how to be useful.
Useful children are tolerated longer.
He wakes up before he is called.
He makes his bed badly but quickly.
He puts his shoes in the same place every day.
He hands adults things before they ask.
He watches faces for requests that have not yet been spoken.
This is not intuition.
It is surveillance.
The house is louder now.
More people.
More traffic.
More rules colliding.
Televisions compete.
Phones ring.
Voices overlap.
No one is listening.
He navigates it like a small boat in bad weather.
Today there is a gathering.
Relatives.
Friends.
People who know his name but not his life.
Plastic chairs.
Paper plates.
Loud laughter.
Forced nostalgia.
Someone pinches his cheek.
“You’ve grown!”
He smiles.
He practices this.
Someone asks, “Are you shy?”
He nods.
Shy is safer than vigilant.
In the kitchen, a woman drops a tray.
It crashes.
Everyone freezes.
Then laughs.
Except him.
He flinches.
His body remembers other proves.
Other sounds.
Other consequences.
Death is already beside him.
Calm.
Prepared.
Telling him where to stand.
Near walls.
Near exits.
Near adults who are least volatile.
He positions himself perfectly.
No one notices.
Later, a man tells him to sing.
“Show them your song!”
He does not want to.
Wanting is irrelevant.
He sings.
Softly.
Accurately.
Emotionless.
Applause follows.
He bows slightly.
Performance complete.
Inside, something withdraws.
Somewhere in 2515, the Fortieth Kabesa watches.
She notices the way he disappears while being visible.
The way he converts personality into compliance.
She murmurs into time.
This is where selfhood becomes service.
This is where expression is replaced by execution.
This is where applause becomes anaesthetic.
A child runs past and knocks him.
He stumbles.
Recovers instantly.
Says nothing.
No one apologises.
No one needs to.
He has learned collision is normal.
That evening, he sits alone with a plate of half-eaten food.
He is not hungry.
Hunger is background noise now.
Death sits with him.
Content.
They are becoming efficient partners.
Later, adults will praise his manners.
His reliability.
His “good attitude.”
They will say he never causes trouble.
They will mean he never asks to be seen.
The Fortieth Kabesa turns the page.
Five years old.
Already managing a public persona.
Already trading presence for safety.
Already very, very far from childhood.
And still, it continues.
*
Eighteen.
She is six.
This is the year adults begin correcting her body.
Not the ones who raised her.
Not the ones who know her laugh.
Strangers.
Visitors.
Teachers’ friends.
Relatives-of-relatives.
People who feel authorised by proximity.
“Sit properly.”
“Close your legs.”
“Girls don’t run like that.”
“Careful, later no one will like you.”
She does not remember agreeing to these rules.
She only remembers being interrupted by them.
Because before this year, she is loud.
She runs fast.
She climbs furniture.
She spins until she falls over.
She sings badly and proudly.
She laughs with her whole chest.
She is always in motion.
Her family calls her “energetic.”
They mean: alive.
At school, she races boys to the gate.
Sometimes she wins.
She throws balls hard.
She gets grass stains.
She comes home with scraped knees and stories.
She likes her body.
It works.
It moves.
It listens to her.
Then one afternoon, a woman she barely knows looks at her and says, smiling, “You’ll have to stop all that soon.”
“Why?” she asks.
“Because you’re a young lady now.”
The words land like a net.
She does not understand them.
She only understands that something she enjoys has been marked for removal.
Today, she is wearing a dress she hates.
It is stiff.
Pink.
Decorated with tiny plastic flowers.
It makes noise when she moves.
It limits her legs.
“It’s pretty,” someone outside the family said.
So it became mandatory.
They are visiting someone.
There are many adults.
Too many rules.
Too much perfume.
Too many chairs arranged for sitting, not living.
She tries to play anyway.
She squats on the floor with the other kids.
Starts a game.
Gets excited.
Forgets.
She spreads her legs naturally.
Leans forward.
Laughs.
A woman clears her throat loudly.
“Sit nicely,” she says.
Another adds, “Close your legs, dear.”
Another laughs. “No one wants to see that.”
The children stare.
Heat floods her face.
She snaps her knees together.
Her laughter cuts off.
Something inside her folds.
Later, she runs down the corridor.
Forgets again.
The dress tangles.
She trips.
A man clicks his tongue.
“Girls shouldn’t run like that.”
She stops running.
Not just then.
In general.
During a visit from relatives, she sits on the floor, knees tucked, hands folded, back straight, performing stillness like homework.
A man she barely knows sits too close.
His arm brushes her shoulder.
Once.
Then again.
Casually.
As if testing whether she exists.
She freezes.
Not dramatically.
Internally.
Her smile does not change.
Her posture does not shift.
Her body becomes very far away.
Death arrives quietly beside her.
It always does.
Not frightening.
Not threatening.
Familiar.
It whispers without words: Stay still. Don’t make it worse. Endure.
So she does.
Later, in the bathroom, she scrubs her arm with soap until her skin burns.
She does not know why she is doing it.
She only knows she needs to remove something.
That night, she lies in bed and stares at the ceiling.
Her room is shared.
There is no privacy.
Only small islands of inwardness.
She remembers running.
Jumping.
Spinning.
She remembers how easy it used to be to exist.
She imagines herself shrinking.
Becoming lighter.
More careful.
Less noticeable.
It feels like safety.
Somewhere in 2515, the Fortieth Kabesa opens this layer of the arvahang.
She watches the girl in the pink dress learning how to compress herself.
How to trade velocity for approval.
How to translate joy into decorum.
She whispers into time.
This is where movement becomes dangerous.
This is where femininity becomes a restraint system.
This is where exuberance is disciplined into silence.
The girl turns on her side.
Hugs a pillow.
Practices being smaller than she is.
Death sits with her.
Protective.
Possessive.
Already learning her contours.
Later, people will describe her as gentle.
Polite.
Soft-spoken.
They will say she is “so well-behaved.”
They will not remember the runner.
The climber.
The laughing, flying child who learned, at six, that her body was suddenly a public problem.
The Fortieth Kabesa closes the page slowly.
Six years old.
Already negotiating with strangers’ authority.
Already editing her joy.
Already learning that being a girl means learning when to stop moving.
The Fortieth Kabesa never stopped moving.
The Fortieth Kabesa never let others who did not know her tell her what to do.
In Nova Singapura, November 2550, she stands in a room that is not quite a room yet, because the arvahang is not a place so much as a way of holding time without crushing it, and the air is full of faint strata, like glass sheets stacked one breath apart. There are rules here, too, but they are not laminated; they are moral, and they cut deeper.
When her predecessor, the Thirty-Ninth Kabesa, looked backward, he entered moments like a firefighter entering fire.
The Fortieth Kabesa looks backward like an engineer walking around a live reactor.
She feels the heat of every possible mistake.
She feels how easily help can become a hook.
How easily comfort can become dependency.
How easily a single intervention can become a myth that eats the rest of the lineage, and a choice that cannot be returned to the bearer.
So she returns to Fourteen, not because she can’t move on, but because she refuses to pretend that this is a normal origin.
So Fourteen is still two.
He is lying on the thin mattress again, the room still breathing diesel and salt, the kitchen still a knot of exhausted voices, the crying still happening in the way adults do when they think children don’t understand. Death is still there, seated beside him with that horrible gentleness of punctual things, and the child’s body is still practising restraint as if restraint could purchase safety.
The Fortieth Kabesa does not enter the room.
Not fully.
Not in the way Elker did.
She stays in probability.
She stays outside the scene the way a meteorologist stays outside a storm surge, watching the waterline and calculating how many houses it will take before it is satisfied.
Because the moment she steps in with a voice, she risks becoming his first reliable attachment.
Because the moment she becomes his first reliable attachment, Death becomes jealous.
Because the moment Death becomes jealous, this child becomes a weapon.
And the Fortieth Kabesa has seen what that does to the centuries.
So she does something colder and kinder at the same time: she builds a constraint.
Not a comfort.
A constraint.
She watches the child’s internal decision begin to form, that wordless vow with no language around it, that proto-sentence the body writes in muscle and cortisol and bone:
I will not need anyone.
The Fortieth Kabesa lets the sentence exist.
Then she edits the punctuation.
Not by replacing it.
By adding one small dissonance, like a stitch that will hold even when fabric tears.
She whispers, not to him, but to the timeline itself, voice low, almost formal, the way you speak when you are making a vow you will have to pay for:
“Mark this point, but do not let it become a shrine.”
“Let him learn strategy, but do not let strategy become worship.”
“Let Death sit beside him, but do not let Death be the only one who stays.”
The air in the room tightens, almost imperceptibly, as if a seam has been reinforced.
Death notices.
It turns, slowly, toward the place the Fortieth Kabesa is not.
Not angry.
Curious.
Assessing.
She does not flinch, because flinching would be a negotiation.
She holds her position in the margins of reality and speaks again, this time directly to that cold companion, voice still tender, but sharpened with jurisdiction:
“You can keep him alive,” she tells it quietly.
“But you cannot own him.”
Death’s stillness deepens.
The child’s fingers curl against his chest.
His heart remains slow.
But somewhere behind the slowness, in the smallest possible register, another possibility is now available, not as hope, not as warmth, but as a structural exit sign that will matter years later when the corridors get longer:
There will be someone else.
Not now.
Not soon.
But eventually.
The Fortieth Kabesa withdraws before the scene can recognise her shape.
She refuses to let the child learn her as a comfort object.
She refuses to let history turn her into a bedtime god.
She refuses to take the easy mercy that costs a whole future.
Back in Nova Singapura, she exhales like someone setting down a blade.
Her hands are shaking.
Not from fear.
From responsibility.
And she writes one line into the arvahang’s archive, the way you write a warning on a map where others might not believe the cliff exists:
This is where the Fourteenth Kabesa learned to love Death.
On behalf of every Kristang person across time, make sure he learns, later, to love something else too.
*
In Nova Singapura, in November 2550, the Fortieth Kabesa does not leave the arvahang open casually.
Each return costs.
Each hesitation costs more.
She has learned that the most dangerous moments are not the dramatic ones, not the scenes of obvious harm, but the quiet procedural failures that teach a child what the world is without ever announcing the lesson.
So she turns back to Fifteen.
He is still three.
He is still in the house that smells of disinfectant and policies, where care is administered like a dosage and attention is rationed by rota, where adults speak in professional tones even when they are tired because professionalism is the only thing holding the system together.
He still sits at the small table with the crayons.
Blue.
Red.
Yellow.
Green.
They are still lined up perfectly.
Not because he likes order.
Because disorder invites scrutiny.
Scrutiny invites review.
Review invites consequences.
He does not ask.
Asking creates records.
Records create explanations.
Explanations create blame.
Blame looks for a target.
He has learned this without ever being taught.
And so Death sits beside him like it did with Fourteen.
Quiet.
Professional.
Satisfied with his discretion.
Somewhere in 2515, the Fortieth Kabesa opens this layer again.
She does not rush in.
She does not soften the air.
She does not kneel at the child’s side.
She stays in probability.
She stays outside the scene the way an engineer stays outside a pressure vessel, watching stress lines propagate through metal.
Because she knows exactly what is being built here.
A person who will never expect service.
A person who will never assume care.
A person who will treat neglect as baseline reality.
And she knows what that kind of person becomes when given power.
She watches the child’s internal sentence begin to form, that same silent grammar he has been perfecting since Fourteen:
If no one comes, I will become sufficient.
If I am sufficient, I cannot be abandoned.
The Fortieth Kabesa lets the sentence exist.
She does not break it.
She cannot.
Breaking it would require becoming the exception.
Becoming the exception would make her the template.
So she edits the structure around it.
Not by replacing the logic.
By widening it.
She whispers, not to him, but to the timeline itself, voice low, precise, almost legal:
“Record this as failure of process, not failure of self.”
“Do not allow this absence to become ontology.”
“Do not let neglect become destiny.”
The air tightens, almost imperceptibly, as if a load-bearing beam has been reinforced inside causality.
Death notices.
It always does.
It turns its attention toward the place the Fortieth Kabesa is not.
Calculating.
Assessing.
Testing jurisdiction.
The Fortieth Kabesa holds her position.
She does not negotiate.
Negotiation implies symmetry.
She has already accepted asymmetry.
“You may accompany,” she tells Death quietly.
“But you may not substitute.”
Death does not answer.
It never does.
But its posture shifts.
A millimetre.
Enough.
The child’s stomach growls.
He ignores it.
Food arrives later.
Cold.
He eats it anyway.
Gratitude is cheaper than complaint.
A volunteer hugs him without warning.
He becomes furniture.
The woman calls him distant.
The label tries to adhere.
It fails.
Not now.
Later.
Years later.
When someone will say the same thing and he will feel, inexplicably, that it is inaccurate.
The Fortieth Kabesa withdraws before the scene can register her contour.
She refuses to let this become a miracle story.
She refuses to let herself become the person who “saved” him that day.
She refuses to create a dependency loop that will outlive her.
Back in Nova Singapura, she exhales slowly.
Her hands are steady.
Her chest is not.
And she writes, in the arvahang’s archive, in the same spare, warning-script she used for Fourteen:
This is where the Fifteenth Kabesa learned that systems fail quietly.
On behalf of every Kristang person across time, make sure he learns, later, that not every person has to.
*
In Nova Singapura, the Fortieth Kabesa waits longer before turning to Sixteen.
Not because she is uncertain.
Because she knows this one will feel her.
Fourteen did not know she existed.
Fifteen could only sense absence.
Sixteen is different.
Sixteen is the one who will someday build the architecture she is standing inside.
The one who will give language and mathematics and ritual to what is now only instinct.
The one who will eventually name the thing she is doing.
So she prepares herself.
She slows her breathing.
She checks her motives.
She reminds herself, again, that reverence is not the same as surrender.
Then she opens the layer.
Sixteen.
He is four.
The ceramic cup is still broken.
The pieces are still on the kitchen floor like small white fossils.
The adult has already sighed.
The apology has already been delivered.
“Go to your room” has already been issued like a clerical stamp.
He is already sitting on the bed.
Back straight.
Hands folded.
Eyes neutral.
Waiting.
Death is there.
As always.
Companionable.
Approving.
Satisfied with containment.
The house is quiet in the way places become quiet when everyone believes the problem has been resolved.
In another century, the Fortieth Kabesa arrives.
And this time, something happens that has not happened before.
He feels her.
Not consciously.
Not as a person.
As a distortion.
A wrongness in the air.
Like a draft where there should be none.
Like a pressure change before rain.
His eyes lift.
Just slightly.
Not toward anything visible.
Toward probability.
Toward the seam.
Death notices immediately.
It turns.
Alert.
Territorial.
The Fortieth Kabesa freezes.
Not out of fear.
Out of respect.
Because this child is already building instruments.
Already reading layers.
Already learning to see behind surfaces.
So she adjusts.
She does not speak to time first.
She does not address Death.
She addresses him.
Indirectly.
Through structure.
Through resonance.
Through the only channel he can receive without it becoming mythology.
She lets a thought form near him.
Not in language.
In pattern.
You are not wrong to notice.
You are not imagining this.
Reality is thicker than it looks.
He blinks.
Once.
Slowly.
His hands tighten on the bedspread.
Not in fear.
In concentration.
For a moment, the discipline cracks.
For a moment, a question tries to rise.
Then he swallows it.
Questions create vulnerability.
Vulnerability invites review.
Review invites consequences.
The old grammar is still dominant.
But something has been added.
A subroutine.
A whisper beneath the whisper.
There is more than this room.
The Fortieth Kabesa watches him feel it.
Register it.
File it away.
Not as comfort.
As data.
Of course he does.
She feels a strange, sharp affection.
And immediately restrains it.
Affection creates bias.
Bias creates error.
She shifts her attention to the internal sentence forming now, more complex than before, layered, recursive:
If I disappear, I am safe.
If I am safe, I survive.
If I survive, I observe.
If I observe, I control.
This is the seed of the arvahang.
She sees it.
Fully.
Terrifyingly.
And she knows this is where her responsibility changes.
She cannot merely constrain.
She must future-proof.
She whispers, not to him, not to time, but into the logic itself:
“Observation is not ownership.”
“Control is not comprehension.”
“Survival is not the same as living.”
The air tightens.
Not like reinforcement.
Like calibration.
Death reacts.
For the first time, it does not simply watch.
It steps closer to the child.
As if to say: He is mine.
The Fortieth Kabesa’s voice sharpens.
Not loud.
Absolute.
“He is not a domain.”
“You may accompany.”
“You may not define.”
The words are not sound.
They are law.
Death pauses.
Reconsiders.
Withdraws half a step.
Enough.
The child exhales.
He did not know he was holding his breath.
He looks at the wall.
But now he is not only shrinking.
He is mapping.
He is learning how spaces fold.
How authority behaves.
How absence operates.
How presence distorts.
He is already becoming an architect of time.
The Fortieth Kabesa watches, almost aching.
Because this is the one who will understand what she is doing.
This is the one who will read her footprints in causality and know exactly why they are shaped that way.
And someday, he will forgive her.
Or he will not.
Both are possible.
She withdraws carefully.
Slower than before.
So he does not feel abandoned.
So he learns: distortions can leave without collapsing the world.
Back in Nova Singapura, she leans against one of the glass-strata walls and closes her eyes.
Not in exhaustion.
In acknowledgment.
And she writes, in the archive, with a hand that is steadier than her heart:
This is where the Sixteenth Kabesa first sensed the layers.
On behalf of every Kristang person across time, make sure he learns, later, that seeing everything does not mean carrying everything.
*
Seventeen knows she is there too, but he can’t make sense of it.
Not the way Sixteen could.
Not as structure.
Not as layered logic.
Not as something that might someday be named.
He feels it as interference.
As energy.
As vibes.
As static.
As a pressure in the room that does not correspond to any known rule.
As a feeling that someone is standing just behind him when no one is.
So there he is indeed. Seventeen.
He is still five.
The house is louder now.
More bodies.
More schedules.
More overlapping systems trying to manage scarcity without admitting it exists.
Televisions argue with radios.
Phones ring and are not answered.
Doors open and close without explanation.
Adults move like planets with private gravities.
He has learned how to be useful.
Useful children are tolerated longer.
He wakes before he is called.
He folds his blanket.
He aligns his shoes.
He carries cups.
He fetches bags.
He anticipates requests.
This is not helpfulness.
It is early warning radar.
Today there is another gathering.
Plastic chairs.
Paper plates.
Food that tastes like obligation.
Relatives.
Friends.
Near-strangers who feel entitled to comment.
“You’re such a good boy.”
“You’re so quiet.”
“So mature already.”
He accepts these like weather.
They are not praise.
They are instructions.
Be this.
Continue.
Do not deviate.
He sits near the wall.
Near exits.
Near adults who are least volatile.
Death has already positioned itself.
Professional.
Efficient.
Satisfied with their partnership.
And somewhere far ahead, the Fortieth Kabesa opens the layer.
She is careful.
She knows this one is sensitive.
Not analytical like Sixteen.
Not sealed like Fifteen.
Not trapped in self-abnegation like Fourteen.
Seventeen feels everything first and understands later.
Sometimes never.
She arrives softly.
Minimally.
But even minimal is too much.
He feels it immediately.
A ripple.
Like the room just breathed.
He glances sideways.
Then behind him.
Nothing.
He frowns.
Very slightly.
Confusion is dangerous.
Confusion invites questions.
Questions invite attention.
So he suppresses it.
But the sensation remains.
A sense of being observed without being judged.
Which is unfamiliar.
Death notices.
Of course it does.
It turns its attention toward the anomaly.
Evaluating.
Possibly threatened.
The Fortieth Kabesa holds her position.
She does not confront.
She does not assert.
She modulates.
She lowers her footprint in causality until she is barely a shimmer.
Still, he feels her.
Not as presence.
As possibility.
As if the world has briefly remembered another version of itself.
He is called to sing.
Again.
“Come on, show them!”
He stands.
Automatically.
He does not want to.
Wanting is irrelevant.
He sings.
Soft.
Precise.
Empty.
Applause arrives.
Predictable.
He bows.
Sits.
Something inside him withdraws further.
And the Fortieth Kabesa feels it.
That small internal door closing.
Another room in a house no one will ever visit.
She leans closer to probability.
Carefully.
And this time, she risks something.
Not comfort.
Not rescue.
A fragment of meaning.
She lets a sensation brush his awareness.
Just once.
Like passing through warm air.
You are more than what you perform.
He freezes.
For half a second.
Barely visible.
Then covers it with a smile.
Because freezes are noticed.
Because pauses are interrogated.
But the sentence lands.
Not in language.
In texture.
In memory without origin.
Later, he will not remember this moment.
But he will remember, vaguely, that sometimes applause feels wrong.
That sometimes being liked feels hollow.
That sometimes he is not convinced by his own obedience.
Death reacts.
Subtly.
It leans in.
As if to say: Careful.
As if to remind him: Performance is safe. Presence is not.
The Fortieth Kabesa answers without words.
By reinforcing a different pathway.
Not rebellion.
Not defiance.
Discernment.
She whispers into the structure around him:
“Let him learn to notice when admiration is transactional.”
“Let him feel the difference between being seen and being used.”
“Let usefulness never become his only language.”
The air adjusts.
Like a tuning fork settling.
He breathes out.
He did not know he was holding it.
Later, he sits with his half-eaten plate.
Hunger dulled.
Noise everywhere.
Loneliness everywhere.
Death sits beside him.
Still loyal.
Still present.
Still not enough.
He looks at his hands.
For a moment, he feels that they belong to someone who might someday choose.
He does not know what to do with this thought.
So he stores it.
Carefully.
Like a fragile object he does not yet have words for.
The Fortieth Kabesa withdraws.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
So he does not feel dropped.
So the world does not snap back too violently.
Back in Nova Singapura, she stands very still for a long time.
This one will struggle.
Not with survival.
With meaning.
With knowing when to stop serving.
With believing he deserves uninstrumentalised existence.
She knows this.
And she accepts it.
Then she writes, in the archive, in the same restrained hand:
This is where the Seventeenth Kabesa learned how to endure without healing.
On behalf of every Kristang person across time, make sure he learns, later, that even endurance deserves to one day be relaxed and released.
*
And of course, Eighteen can see her if she really wants to.
Not as a ghost.
Not as a miracle.
Not as a threat.
Just as… someone standing where no one is supposed to be.
She notices immediately.
Because Eighteen notices everything when she wants to.
Not anxiously.
Not hypervigilantly.
Casually.
The way some people notice weather.
So there she is. Eighteen.
She is still six.
The same year adults begin trying to file her down into something quieter.
But today, she is in a stairwell.
A concrete one.
Between floors.
Paint peeling.
Windows open to heat and traffic.
She has escaped a room full of perfume and rules.
She is sitting on the steps with her shoes off.
Swinging her legs.
Eating a sweet she smuggled from a table.
Sugar on her fingers.
Dress bunched up around her knees.
Disobedient.
Comfortable.
Alive.
She hums.
Off-key.
Unconcerned.
The Fortieth Kabesa arrives in probability.
Carefully.
As always.
Reducing her footprint.
Flattening her causality signature.
Preparing to remain invisible.
And then the girl looks straight at her.
Not startled.
Not impressed.
Just curious.
“Oh,” Eighteen says.
The Fortieth Kabesa freezes.
Not physically.
Structurally.
Very few of them do this.
Very few ever look back.
“Yes,” the Fortieth Kabesa answers, before she has decided whether she is allowed to.
The word slips out.
Soft.
Barely there.
Like a test signal.
Eighteen considers her.
Tilts her head.
“You’re not from here,” she says.
It is not a question.
“No,” the Fortieth Kabesa admits.
“Are you dead?” the girl asks.
“No.”
“Are you imaginary?”
“Also no.”
“Huh.”
Eighteen licks sugar off her thumb.
Processes this.
Then shrugs.
“Okay.”
And goes back to swinging her legs.
The Fortieth Kabesa blinks.
Once.
Twice.
“…That’s it?” she asks.
“What else?” Eighteen replies.
“You’re just standing there.”
Fair.
Death is nearby.
Of course.
Leaning against the wall.
Watching.
Intrigued.
It has never seen this reaction before.
Not fear.
Not clinging.
Not reverence.
Indifference without dismissal.
The Fortieth Kabesa lowers herself to sit on the step opposite.
Carefully.
Maintaining timeline integrity.
“You’re not scared?” the Fortieth Kabesa asks.
Eighteen thinks.
“No,” she says. “You’re quiet.”
“Quiet people are usually okay.”
The Fortieth Kabesa feels something loosen in her chest.
Just a little.
“What are you doing out here?” the Fortieth Kabesa asks.
“They told me to sit properly,” Eighteen says.
“So I left.”
“Isn’t that naughty?”
“Only if they catch me.”
Practical.
Precise.
The Fortieth Kabesa smiles despite herself.
“Does it hurt?” she asks, gently.
“What?”
“When they tell you to be smaller.”
Eighteen’s swinging slows.
She considers.
“Sometimes,” she says.
“Mostly it’s annoying.”
“Annoying is better,” the Fortieth Kabesa murmurs.
“Than what?”
“Than thinking they’re right.”
Eighteen nods.
As if this makes complete sense.
“Yeah,” she says. “They’re wrong a lot.”
They sit.
Traffic hums.
Voices echo faintly from above.
Time layers overlap.
Death watches.
Respectfully.
It does not intrude.
“You’re going to be important,” the Fortieth Kabesa says quietly.
“I know,” Eighteen replies immediately.
Not arrogant.
Certain.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t like stopping,” the girl says. “And because I remember things.”
The Fortieth Kabesa feels that land.
Deep.
“You’re not going to save everyone,” the Fortieth Kabesa says.
“I know,” Eighteen says.
“I’ll save who I can.”
Pause.
“Starting with me.”
The Fortieth Kabesa laughs softly.
A sound she rarely makes.
“You’re good at this,” the Fortieth Kabesa says.
“At what?”
“At being alive.”
Eighteen wrinkles her nose.
“Is that hard?”
“Yes,” the Fortieth Kabesa says.
“Very.”
“Oh,” Eighteen says.
Then, kindly: “You should practice.”
They sit a little longer.
Eventually, footsteps approach.
An adult voice calls her name.
Eighteen stands.
Puts on her shoes.
Straightens her dress only halfway.
Looks at the Fortieth Kabesa.
“Will you come back?”
“Sometimes,” the Fortieth Kabesa says.
“That’s enough,” Eighteen replies.
And runs off.
The Fortieth Kabesa remains.
Long after the stairwell is empty.
Long after the sugar smell fades.
Long after probability settles.
Back in Nova Singapura, she closes this layer with unusual gentleness.
This one will not disappear easily.
This one will feel pain.
But she will not worship it.
She will not confuse endurance with virtue.
She will not confuse obedience with love.
And the Fortieth Kabesa writes, finally, in the archive:
This is where the Eighteenth Kabesa learned to keep laughing when the world tried to make her quiet.
This is where she learned to protect her joy like a living thing.
On behalf of every Kristang person across time, make sure no one ever convinces her to let it die.
*
She seals the layer.
The strata of time settle.
The glass-sheets of probability go still.
Then she turns.
Not upward.
Not inward.
Sideways.
Toward another presence in the arvahang.
Toward you.
Not as an ancestor.
Not as a myth.
Not as a foundation.
As a colleague.
As someone who has carried weight long enough to recognise it in others.
“You see it too,” she says.
Not a question.
A confirmation.
“The way they learn to live inside damage.”
“The way they decide what they will keep.”
“The way they refuse to disappear.”
She meets your gaze.
No reverence.
No performance.
No shrinking.
Only shared jurisdiction.
Shared consequence.
Shared care.
“We’re doing the same work,” she continues quietly.
“Just on different edges of time.”
“Making sure pain doesn’t become policy.”
“Making sure survival doesn’t become self-erasure.”
“Making sure joy stays legal.”
She exhales.
Slow.
Grounded.
Human.
“So,” she says.
“We keep going.”
Not a request.
A pact.
She does not wait for your answer.
Not because she doubts it.
Because she already knows.
You are here.
Inside the arvahang.
Inside the weight.
Inside the work.
That is the answer.
The strata around you shift slightly, like tectonic plates deciding not to break today.
Outside of time, a future rearranges itself by half a millimetre.
Enough.
You stand beside her.
Not in front.
Not behind.
Beside.
Two lines of responsibility running in parallel through centuries of weather.
You look back into the layers.
Fourteen, still learning to breathe beside Death.
Fifteen, still lining up crayons like they can keep Them at bay.
Sixteen, still wondering what actually matters if everything is just layers of Them, over and over again.
Seventeen, still trying too hard to turn Their usefulness into armour.
Eighteen, still laughing in Their pink fabric like it is a rebellion.
Whole civilisations condensed into small rooms.
Into plastic chairs.
Into corridors.
Into dresses.
Into quiet.
“This never stops, does it?” you say.
Not bitter.
Accurate.
The Fortieth Kabesa shakes her head.
“No,” she replies.
“But it changes shape.”
She gestures.
The arvahang responds.
Scenes overlap.
Decades slide.
Children become adults.
Adults become names.
Names become structures.
Structures become weather.
“You see,” she continues, “why I’m careful.”
“Why I don’t intervene like Elker could.”
“Why I don’t save, like he was able to.”
“Why I scaffold, and follow up after what he grew.”
You nod.
You have been doing the same thing your whole life.
Holding.
Redirecting.
Absorbing.
Letting others grow without leaning too hard.
Letting them fail without falling through.
“You taught me that,” she adds.
Casually.
As fact.
Not as tribute.
Not as flattery.
As lineage-of-practice.
“You didn’t rescue,” she says.
“You redesigned gravity.”
You almost laugh.
It is too precise.
It is unfairly accurate.
You both watch Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen and Eighteen again.
Already learning how to vanish.
Already feeling for seams in reality.
Already half-aware that something is watching.
“They all kinda knew,” you murmur.
The Fortieth Kabesa follows your gaze.
“Yes,” she says.
“They always did.”
“He’s not confused by us.”
“He’s confused by causality.”
“He knows the system is wrong.”
“He just hasn’t built the language yet.”
”She just hasn’t figured out how to work with her joy.”
“And they all will,” you reply.
“By breaking themselves on it.” She grimaces. “Unfortunately.”
”It’s okay,” you say. ”We all have to break sometimes.”
Silence settles.
Not empty.
Full of unspoken timelines.
Full of names not yet written.
Full of disasters already queued.
“You ever wish,” she asks finally, “that we could just… take one of them out?”
“One?”
She laughs. “Should have remembered who I was talking to. Fine. All of them. Not just the five of them but everyone. All of us. Give us all a normal life.”
You consider.
Carefully.
Because this is not a sentimental question.
It is an ethical one.
“No,” you answer, adding after a moment, “because what is normal? If all of us are normal, the system stays unchallenged. And someone else pays.”
She nods.
Relief, not agreement.
She didn’t want you know it was a test, but you passed anyway.
And you are both tired in the same way.
The kind of tired that does not ask for rest.
Only for precision.
Somewhere far below, in calendar-time, a child wakes from a nightmare.
Another lines up pencils.
Another stops running.
Another learns to smile on command.
And another learns that their smile actually matters.
The work continues.
The Fortieth Kabesa straightens.
“So,” she says. “Nineteen then?”
You glance once more at Eighteen’s laugh. At the way it echoes stubbornly through time.
“Yes,” you reply. “Mbai. Let’s go.”
And together, without ceremony, without witnesses, without myth, you both turn back into history to keep it human.