A day student, Jing the teen shuttles between home and school daily. At dawn she heads for school. Breakfast, lunch and supper are served at the canteen, so the girl does not have to come back for meals. It is not until 11 pm that she arrives home from school. After a quick bite and a shower, she still spends some time sorting out her assignments before hitting the sack.

The tower block of which her flat is a unit is situated just alongside an alley, which was lined with tall leafy trees as far back as Jing’s memory goes.

In the first two years of high school, she noticed through the foliage a light flickering even deep into the night. Sometimes when she got up for the toilet, she found the dancing light still on. In the community across the lane from her tower block dwells a schoolmate, who was said to be one of the high achievers in the grade. Though she had never seen the boy in the flesh before, she idolised him. Since the light kept burning beyond midnight, she reckoned that it must be the boy who was studying into the wee small hours of the early morning.

“No wonder he is a top student,” Jing sighed.

The trees in front of the building were felled some weeks ago, yet the light that Jing saw is still there. It glimmers less with the leaves gone. This term she is doing her last year of high school. Parental expectations exert great pressure on the teen though the adults try to make things easier for her. Thinking that the boy burns the midnight oil, night in night out, though he is academically better, Jing decides she will follow suit. After she gets home from school around 11 pm, she sits down at the desk and pores over her test papers.

The other day on the school bus, she brought up the matter while chatting with a girl passenger, who is a student at the same school. The girl kept giggling after Jing told her about the flickering light. According to her, the light, which is actually from a streetlamp, is on throughout the night, from dusk till dawn. She laughed also for Jing’s lack of common sense.

Initially, Jing did not believe the schoolmate. That evening, no sooner had she set foot indoors than she went over to the window next to the alley. The girl drew the blinds, opened the window and checked on the flicker.

“Lord,” Jing exclaimed. “It is really a streetlamp.” Instantly she blushed in shame.