Rich People Problems-Kwan 2017 (WWT)

eath and thought, if I’m about to die, this is what I want to play. Debussy’s ‘Clair de
Lune.’
“I played my heart out, and when I finished, I looked up from the piano and saw that
there were tears in his eyes. It turns out that before the war, he had been in the
diplomatic corps in Paris. Debussy was his favorite. He let me go, and twice a week for
the next year, he made me come over to his house and play the piano for him.”
Ah Ling shook her head incredulously at the story. “You were very lucky to get away
like that. How did you and your friends get in to the Botanic Gardens in the first place?”
Su Yi gave her a sphinxlike smile, as if she was trying to decide whether or not to let
her in on something. And then she shared her secret.
—
Emerging from the memory of Su Yi’s story, an idea began to form in Ah Ling’s mind. She
looked up at Vikram and said, “There is a secret about this house that even you don’t
know. Something from the war times.”
Vikram looked at her in surprise.
Ah Ling continued, “Now, don’t you have connections in the Khoo household?”
“Sure, I know their head of security very well.”
“This is what I need you to do…”
···
Nick and Colin were spending the afternoon hanging out at Red Point Record Warehouse
on Playfair Road, where they had spent countless hours listening to obscure records back
when they were teenagers. As Nick flipped through the meticulously organized bins, he
called out to Colin, “Did you know that the Cocteau Twins collaborated with Faye Wong?”
“No way!”
“Take a look at this,” Nick said, handing him a record. While Colin read the liner notes
to a rare EP recorded by the Hong Kong diva titled The Amusement Park, his phone
buzzed with a text message. He glanced at the screen and read a message from Aloysius
Pang—the head of his family’s security team—summoning him to his father’s house to
pick up a package ASAP. Colin wondered what this was all about, as it was highly
uncharacteristic of Aloysius to summon him like this.
“Hey Nick, I need to run over to my dad’s place to pick up something that’s apparently
quite urgent. Do you want to stay here or come with?”
“I’ll come along. If I stay any longer I’ll just end up buying the whole store,” Nick
replied.
The two of them sped over to Colin’s father’s house on Leedon Road, a stately Georgian
mansion that looked like it had been transported straight out of Bel Air, California.
“Jeez, it’s been years since I’ve been here,” Nick remarked as they entered the house
through the front door. A grandfather clock ticked loudly in the circular foyer, and all the