The air had been holding its breath for a week. That was the first sign for Mei. Not the darkening sky, nor the frantic zig-zag of the swallows near the kopitiam signboard. It was the stillness. The humidity clung to her skin like a second lung, thick and warm, smelling of wet earth and the sweet, cloying fragrance of the tung tree blossoms that had fallen on the asphalt.

This was the musim hujan . The monsoon season.

The world, washed clean, was waking up again.

Mei stepped onto her balcony. The air was new. The suffocating heat had been scrubbed away, leaving behind a cool, clean emptiness. The potholes in the road had become shallow ponds, reflecting the bruised purple of the post-storm sky. Frogs began their croaking chorus from the monsoon drain.

She padded to the kitchen and lit the gas stove. She placed a small, dented pot on the flame and filled it with milk, a stick of cinnamon, and a fistful of ginger. As the rain hammered a war drum on her zinc roof, she stirred teh halia . The sharp, medicinal scent of ginger cut through the wet-dog smell of the storm. She poured the steaming liquid into a chipped mug, the heat biting her palms through the ceramic.

She saw the roti man on his motorcycle, finally making his late-afternoon rounds, his muffled speaker crackling to life: “Roti… roti canai…”