It was mid-August, which is the beginning of her first semester at the University.

When the academic week started, things escalated - cold wars prevailed and lasted longer than expected. It turned out that they almost quarreled once a month.

“It is not that I do not want to help. It becomes annoying when I say I cannot help and you asked again.” Not being able to see each other, those quarrels became much fiercer each time round. And, more silent treatment was received in return. She could not understand the underlying reason why and how she managed to tolerate all of his nonsense.

He has an older sister studying at the same university as her, who was in her final year of study. "Why could not put himself in her shoes?", she wondered, after giving in countless times towards his cold treatment.

In his absence, she often felt something amiss. She sugar-coated him, magnified his strengths, and ignored his flaws. Thinking about how he treated her, she was all alone. He messed up her entire world. During those lonely nights, he was in her mind and she often teared to bed and could not stop thinking about those bits and pieces that they had.

When things were well, he will share with her the training he had for the day, such as the Standard Obstacle Course (SOC) and Close Quarter Combat (CQB). He will also talk about his bunkmates, who were all from the polytechnics and graduated with stellar results. She then joked with him that he was in a "high-flyer" section, planning to sign on the course to become an officer. When there are any upcoming matters, such as Vaccination, Individual Physical Proficiency Test (IPPT), and a 3.2km run where he took 13 minutes, he will share his experiences with her.

After a day of his intensive training, she will usually receive this text, “Backache now.” No matter how far apart they were, she will always be there for him and be his shelter of unwavering support at the end of the day.

Before the start of the school semester, she would scroll through Discord and Reddit to take a look at the National Service community channel. Reading through the comments posted by fellow soldiers, she knew how tough training was and the entire experience could be mentally draining at times, to the extent of pushing the recruits beyond their limits.

On her end, the only thing that she could do was to support him through his in-camp days and be there for him when he needed someone to talk to. Not compromising on his quality book-out time, she sent him a sweet short text -"Your family is waiting for you to be back home. We will chat next time!".

He was assigned to be the Guard Duty Personnel and had to perform duties on a weekend before the week of his field camp. With the majority of his platoon mates being able to book out on a Friday and enjoy six days off, he had to come back on the next day and book out on Monday, before booking in again on Wednesday with the rest of his platoon mates.

Initially thought that he received weekend confinement, she clarified with Mason and was relieved that it was their platoon's arrangement to take turns to do guard duty. Using whatever resources that she could read online, she simply chat with him on any topics - ammo dump, shifts, and much more...

From the texts received, he can be restless at times and she decided to send him a heartfelt letter to push him through the trying period.

The snippets of her letter:

"Tough TIMES don't last

but Tough MEN do,

& I believe that you can do it!"