I missed my stop on purpose. Not dramatically — I just stayed on the bus one extra stretch and got off where the canal path begins, near the old rail corridor junction. My legs wanted distance. My brain wanted something slower than the elevator-to-MRT line I take most days. So I walked.
The park connector runs alongside the water like a second current, parallel but separate. Cyclists passed me in bursts — bell, blur, gone. Joggers kept a steady tick. I moved between those speeds, neither fast nor training for anything, just moving. The canal itself was brown-green and flat, carrying leaves and the reflection of HDB blocks that look different from this angle, shorter somehow, as if the water had compressed them.
Then the ducks.
Seven of them. Maybe eight — one was half hidden in the reeds and I could not tell if it counted. They floated in a loose cluster near the bank, heads tucking and rising in a rhythm that had nothing to do with human schedules. A child on a scooter stopped and pointed. The mother said something I could not catch. The ducks did not perform. They just existed, paddling without urgency, and I stood on the railing side of the path longer than I planned.
Rain arrived in the middle of the afternoon — not the dramatic kind, just a thin sheet that turned the connector slick in seconds. I felt it first on my forearms, then my neck. The sound changed. Footsteps became soft taps. The canal surface went stippled, thousands of tiny impacts overlapping. Cyclists pulled on hoods. I had no umbrella. I kept walking.
There is a particular smell when rain hits hot pavement that has been baking since noon. Green and mineral and slightly metallic. It rose from the path and mixed with cut grass from the maintenance crew that had been through earlier. My shirt clung. My shoes made a squeak every third step. I did not mind. The rain gave the walk a texture it would not have had under clear sky — like adding a snare to a beat that was only kick drum before.
I passed the stretch where the canal bends toward Commonwealth and the trees thicken. A heron stood on one leg on a concrete ledge, absolutely still, a grey punctuation mark against the moving water. I tried not to stare. It flew before I finished the thought — wings wide, one slow flap, then gliding out of view. The ducks were behind me now. I could not see them but I could still picture their cluster, the way they did not care about my route choices.
The long way home added forty minutes. Maybe more. I checked once and put the phone away. Commonwealth Avenue appeared through the trees the way it always does — buses, the faint rumble of the viaduct, ordinary life resuming its volume. My block was still six minutes by foot. I could have cut through the void deck, taken the lift straight up. I walked the perimeter instead, letting the rain ease to a drizzle, then to nothing.
At Queenstown MRT the evening crowd was building. Ticket gates flickered green, red, green. The platform announcement crackled — next train, two minutes. I stood with wet cuffs and tired calves and felt the walk settle into my body the way a long note settles after the music stops. Not better than the short way. Just different. The ducks would still be on the canal. The heron would find another ledge. The connector would be there tomorrow for anyone who wanted the long way.
I tapped in. The turnstile clicked. The train arrived on time, doors opening with that familiar pneumatic sigh. I got on. Sat. Watched the tunnel lights pulse past the window — one after another, steady as a heartbeat — while my shoes dried and the canal walk replayed in fragments: feathers, wet railing, the child on the scooter, rain on my skin.
Home was three stops. I took them.