James’ boss, Matt, happened to be his wife Suwen’s ex. Suwen was married to Matt previously but they ended on good terms. Now, Matt has a special and unusual request.
Nobody warns you about the moments that change your life.
It’s usually not the big ones like weddings, funerals, or the day you finally get BTO queue number.
Those come with buildup.
You have time to rehearse your face and expression.
I’m talking about the other kind. The ones that arrive on in the middle of a work week in your boss’s office, while you’re thinking about whether to da bao cai fan or just cook Maggi mee at home.
Matt’s secretary, June, had pinged me on Teams at around five. Matt would like to see you before you leave. No rush.
No rush. Lan par la.
Those 2 words that have never once, in the entire history of corporate communication, meant no rush.
I stared at the message and felt the acid of working class anxiety pool in my stomach.
I mentally flipped through my recent boos boos at work, the proposal I’d submitted two days late, the client call where I’d accidentally said “ya lah” to a Japanese VP, the three times I’d clocked in late at 9.15 instead.
With the middle east war, the economy in shit and all the AI disruption and what not, i kind of have a feeling it’s not going to be good news.
By the time I walked to his corner office, I’d already drafted two versions of my resignation letter in my head.
Matt’s door was open, it’s usually open because the door closer has spoilt and the latch doesn’t really work.
But today, after I stepped in, he closed it behind me.
That was the first sign.
Siao liao lor, you see. Walk in boss office, he close door, its to tell you to be mentally prepared.
The second sign was the whisky.
Matt kept a bottle of Yamazaki in his filing cabinet, tucked behind a row of ISO certification binders that nobody had opened since 2019.
I knew it was there because I’d seen him take it out once, the night we closed the Marina Bay Sands account. That was a celebration.
This didn’t feel like a celebration.
He poured two glasses and set one in front of me without asking if I wanted it.
Matt : Sit, please.
James: Err boss…it’s 6pm…on a Wednesday…
Matt : Just drink la…
I sat.
Matt didn’t sit behind his desk. He pulled the other visitor’s chair around so we were facing each other, no barrier between us, like a doctor about to deliver a diagnosis.
He held his glass with both hands, turning it slowly, the amber liquid catching the last of the evening light through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
He looked tired.
Matt : James. I need to talk to you about something. And I want you to know, before I say anything, that you can walk out of this room at any point. You can tell me to go fuck myself. You can pretend this conversation never happened, and I will never bring it up again. At work or otherwise.
Okay. So not a firing. Nobody prefaces a firing with you can tell me to go fuck myself. Unless it was a really creative HR strategy.
Matt : I also want to say .. and this is important … that whatever I’m about to tell you has nothing to do with your position here. Your job is your job. Your performance reviews, your trajectory, your bonus… none of that changes regardless of what happens in this room. I need you to believe that.
James : Boss…, you’re scaring me a bit leh…
Matt : Yeah. I’m scaring myself.
He took a sip of the Yamazaki, then set the glass down.
Matt : You know my parents are not well.
I nodded. Everyone in the office knew.
Uncle Tan, I’d met him at the company D&D two years ago, he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, stage four.
The kind where the doctor doesn’t talk about treatment options, it’s just timeline.
Auntie Tan had her own list of ailments, the cumulative erosion of a body that had spent seventy years battling various illnesses.
Matt : My father has maybe 18 months. Could be 12, maybe less. My mother… She’s not terminal, but she’s not well. She could go anytime. Could also last years. The body is strange like that.
James : I’m sorry to hear that, Matt. Really.
Matt : Thank you
He paused. Turned the glass again. I watched a bead of condensation trace a line down the crystal and disappear into the pad of his thumb.
At that point, i was starting to get worried, does he want a fucking kidney or liver from me or something?
Matt : James, you know Suwen used to be my wife.
I felt something tighten in my chest. Not alarm, exactly. More like the feeling you get when a lift drops half a floor before catching itself. A lurch.
James : Ye…yes Of course.
Matt : And you know she’s still close with my parents. Closer, maybe, than I am in some ways. My mother, she still calls Suwen every week. They go to the temple together on Vesak Day. When my father was first admitted, Suwen was there before I was. Did she tell you that?
She had.
Suwen had come home that night smelling of hospital antiseptic and her eyes were red, and told me she’d held Uncle Tan’s hand while they waited for the oncologist.
She’d said, He kept apologising for being a burden, James. He kept saying sorry.
And then she’d cried into my chest while I stood there hugging her, feeling both proud of her capacity for love and quietly, irrationally jealous of the people who received it.
James : She told me. She cares about them a lot.
Matt : She does. They care about her too. More than you probably know.
Another pause. Longer this time.
The office was empty by then, I could feel the absence of people.
Matt leaned forward. His elbows were on his knees, his hands clasped together. He looked at me the way you look at someone when you’re about to ask them to hold something heavy.
Matt : My parents have a regret. One regret. They’ve told me many times, and they’ve told Suwen.
I waited.
Matt : They never had a grandchild.
The sentence landed in the room and sat there, taking up space.
I understood the math. Matt and Suwen had been married for 3 years. No children. I’d never asked why, and Suwen had never volunteered the reason.
They divorced three years before I met her.
Matt, as far as I knew, hadn’t seriously dated anyone since. He was the kind of man who sublimated everything personal into work. He’s not an asshole, in fact, he’s just a normal, you could say pleasant man.
And now his parents were running out of time to wait for a grandchild.
I felt sorry for them. I did.
But I also felt the first tremor a question forming in the back of my skull. A shape that didn’t make sense yet. I mean, you tell me this for fuck?
James : That’s… I’m sorry, Matt. I really am. But I’m not sure why you’re telling me this.
He looked at me. Held my gaze. And in that moment, I saw it, the thing he’d been circling around for the last ten minutes, the thing the whisky was for.
Matt : My parents asked Suwen if she would help them. If she would consider… having a child. For them.
James : What?
Matt : I know how it sounds.
James : Do you? Because it sounds…
Matt : Insane. I know. Believe me, I fucking know…
I picked up the whisky and drank it all in one gulp. It went down so fast that it burns a line from my throat to my stomach and makes your eyes water.
The Yamazaki was smooth but wasted on me. I can’t appreciate good alcohol.
I could have been drinking Tiger beer for all I cared.
My mind was doing that thing it does when it encounters information it can’t process, it was looping.
Replaying his words, rearranging them, trying to find a configuration that made sense.
‘My parents asked Suwen. Having a child. For them.’
James : Suwen… knows about this?
Matt : They approached her. Weeks ago. I don’t know what she told them. I don’t know what she’s told you.
She hadn’t told me anything. Nothing
And Suwen usually shares everything with me, what her colleague said in the pantry, which auntie cut the MRT queue. This meant only 1 thing, she don’t dare to tell me.
That realisation hit harder than the request itself.
Matt : James, I need to be very clear about something.
He stood up. Walked to the window. Stood with his back to me, looking out at the city.
When he turned around, his face was different.
Stripped of the executive composure, he looked like a son watching his parents die.
Matt : I am not asking you for permission to see Suwen. I’m not asking for anything romantic. My parents, they just want to hold a grandchild before they go. That’s all. They want to know that something of them continues. You understand? It’s not about me. It’s not about Suwen and me. It’s just two old people who are running out of days and want to leave behind something…
I understood.
Filial piety isn’t a concept you explain to a traditional Singaporean.
It’s this invisible gravity that pulls every decision toward the family, toward the debts we owe people who gave us life.
I understood why the Tans asked. I understood why Matt, despite every instinct telling him not to, was sitting here asking me.
What I didn’t understand was what, exactly, he was asking me for?
James : Matt. I need you to say it plainly. What exactly are you asking?
It was then i realised that i have stopped calling Matt, Boss. Because this conversation has gone beyond an employer employee chat.
He came back to his chair. Sat down. Picked up his glass, looked at it, put it down again.
He exhaled a long, slow breath, as if releasing something he’d been holding in his lungs for weeks.
Then he looked me in the eye.
Matt : I hope to… father a child with your wife.
coming soon