Step thirty-eight is where the paint changes colour — not dramatically, just a shade lighter where someone touched up the wall and stopped at the landing instead of continuing down. I know this because I see it every evening on the way up. Step forty is where the handrail gets warm from the day's accumulated heat. Step forty-two is my floor, the door, the key, the small release of arriving.
I take the stairs after work unless I am carrying something heavy or the lift is already open and empty in the way that feels like an invitation. The lift is faster. The stairs give me the count. Forty-two steps, every time, unless I lose focus and have to start again from the ground — which happens maybe once a month, usually when I am replaying an email I should not have sent.
The stairwell smells of cooking from different floors — curry on Tuesday, something steamed on Thursday, the permanent faint scent of detergent from the landing mop bucket that sits outside the refuse chute room. The lights are fluorescent and honest. No one decorates a HDB stairwell. The beauty, if there is any, is in the repetition — the same steps, the same numbers, the same arrival at a door that looks like every other door on the floor except it is mine.
I started counting during a period when my job felt like an endless loop of tasks without edges. The count gave the loop an edge — forty-two and stop. It was not a resolution or a promise to myself. It was just a way to mark the boundary between outside and inside, public Clara and private Clara, the person who answers emails and the person who boils water for tea without checking the phone.
Sometimes I meet a neighbour on the stairs. We squeeze past with the polite half-nod Singapore neighbours give each other. Once an uncle going down asked why I never take the lift. I said the stairs keep me honest. He laughed like I had told a joke and continued down. Maybe it was a joke. Maybe honesty is a strange reason to climb forty-two steps when a lift exists.
On bad days the count feels pointless — forty-two steps toward the same flat, the same evening, the same small table. On good days the count feels like a pulse I can rely on when everything else shifts. Most days are neither good nor bad in any worth-writing sense. They are days, and the stairs receive them equally.
Last month I tested whether the number had changed — maybe I had miscounted years ago and built a ritual on a wrong number. I counted going up, counted going down, counted again with my hand on the rail. Forty-two. The building has not grown an extra step. My legs have not shortened. The count holds.
At the top I pause with my hand on the door frame — not every night, but often enough that it has become part of the ritual's tail. One breath. The corridor lamp buzzes. The tile seam catches my shoe. Then I go inside and the day completes its small arc from ground level to floor twelve, from step one to step forty-two, from morning toast queue to evening tea.
Tonight the count will be the same. The paint at step thirty-eight will still be the lighter shade. The handrail will still be warm. I find comfort in that repetition without needing to call it anything grand. It is just how I come home.