The market I visit sits between bus stops and a row of shops that change tenants slowly. I come for vegetables and for the stairs at the side entrance — nine steps up from the street to the floor where the stalls begin. I have counted them more than once because counting is what I do when my hands are empty and my mind wants a number to hold.
Step one is slightly higher than the rest, a trick the building plays on every newcomer. By step three you smell fish cleaned at the back lane. By step five you hear the stall holders calling prices without melodrama — facts spoken aloud. Step seven catches the fan’s full blast. Step nine puts you among the tables: fruit piled in pyramids, greens misted, eggs in cartons stacked with care.
I am not a skilled bargainer. I choose stalls by queue length and by whether the auntie looks me in the eye when she weighs tomatoes. Trust is visual here. Bags are handed over with knots tied quickly, change counted with the same speed.
On a quiet weekday the stairs are nearly empty. I pause on step six to let an uncle pass down with a trolley. He says thank you without stopping his momentum. Courtesy in markets is often motion-compatible. At the top, I buy what I need and what I do not — kangkong because it looks fresh, guava because it smells sweet.
The market roof is high; light filters through panels yellowed by age. Footprints mark damp patches where ice melted from seafood stalls. The floor is never fully dry; shoes learn to adapt. I like the honesty of a place that does not pretend to be a mall.
Nine steps down on the way out feel shorter than nine up, which is a small lesson in gravity and mood. Outside, the street resumes its traffic. I walk toward the MRT with reusable bags cutting slightly into my fingers, a sensation that means provisioning is done.
I could shop closer to home. I come here partly for the stairs, partly for the mix of voices — Mandarin, Malay, English, Tamil in passing phrases — and partly because routine needs one destination that is not the office or the void deck. Markets reward repetition. The ninth step always arrives.
If you count stairs in your neighbourhood, you may find a number that becomes yours without planning. Mine is nine, up from the street to the stalls, on a lane I could draw from memory on the back of a receipt. That is enough geography for one entry.
At the fish stall I watch ice turned with a scoop, gleaming under fluorescent light. The vendor’s apron is stiff with cold water. I buy nothing there today — my kitchen is small and my courage with seafood inconsistent — but I linger because the cold air feels honest on a humid morning.
Downstairs again, a boy practices counting coins for a drink machine. His father waits without impatience. Step one catches the same shoe scrape as mine did earlier. Routine repeats across generations with different heights and the same gravity.
Back on the street I adjust the bag straps and walk toward the bus stop. Tampines will receive me in twenty minutes if the traffic behaves. The market stays behind, stairs ready for the next ascent. Nine steps are not many, but they mark the boundary between pavement hurry and stall-side patience, and I notice which side I am on each time.