The auntie said, "Five dollar, you choose," — and meant it.
I went to Chong Pang market on a Tuesday because my usual wet market auntie was closed for a family thing and I refused to buy shrink-wrapped vegetables from the supermarket. Sembawang is not my daily orbit — Yishun is — but the bus ride is short and the market has stalls I trust for fruit when guests are coming.
Her corner is easy to spot even before you read the sign: oranges stacked in a pyramid that would collapse if physics were less cooperative, apples in a row so even they look staged, a red awning that throws warm light back onto the fruit so everything reads one shade brighter than reality. I stopped not because I needed oranges specifically but because the stall looked like a page already composed — colour, geometry, the kind of brightness you do not plan in a neighbourhood market.
Markets are loud in useful ways. Trolleys, bargaining, the wet slap of fish on ice three rows over. This stall was loud visually instead. Green crates, orange peel dimples catching light, price cards written in thick marker with the strokes of someone who has written the same numbers for years. The auntie moved between customers without hurry — weigh, bag, tie, point to the next pile if someone hesitated.
I chose three oranges and a bunch of bananas because guests eat fruit when they do not know what else to do with their hands. She added a small apple I did not ask for — "Sweet today" — and waved off my protest. Not free, exactly; folded into the five dollars like a courtesy you accept because arguing would ruin the composition.
While she worked I watched her hands — quick, dry, nails short, a bandage on one thumb she did not favour. Stacking is care. The pyramid she rebuilt after each sale was not vanity; it was invitation. People stopped because order signals freshness, and freshness here is a daily performance, not a label on a box.
I thought about Brightfolio — about why I write bright pages at all. Not everything in the neighbourhood is cheerful. Some days are sirens and unfinished folio entries. But a stall like this is honestly bright without pretending the world is only that. Oranges are orange. The awning is red. The auntie says five dollar and trusts you to choose. That is enough truth for one entry.
I carried the bag back toward the bus stop, fruit knocking gently against my leg. A man asked where I bought; I pointed with my chin — the only direction worth giving. He walked faster. The stall probably looked the same to him. To me it was a page I did not want to smudge before writing it down on the ride home.
Guests liked the oranges. They did not mention the pyramid. I did not need them to. The page is mine — kept, dated, filed under Chong Pang on a Tuesday when I needed colour and got it without filter or metaphor stretched past breaking.
I will go back when the auntie is there and the awning is up. Same five-dollar trust, probably. A different stack, same brightness.