I Had My Own Bills to Pay, So Why Did I Feel Guilty About a Woman Who Couldn’t Feed Her Child?

The woman in apartment 4B kept receiving my food deliveries, and for three months, I was too embarrassed to tell her I knew.

I lived on the fourth floor of an apartment building in Kuala Lumpur, in a part of the city where the lifts took their time, the corridors smelled faintly of fried onions, and somebody was always drilling something that did not need drilling.

My flat was small enough that I could hear the refrigerator click off from my bed. The window faced another building, which meant my view was mostly laundry, air-conditioning units, and the occasional neighbour shaking a bedsheet like it had personally offended them.

I ordered food more often than I cooked. This was partly because I worked long hours as a customer support agent and partly because I had convinced myself that washing one saucepan was somehow more exhausting than spending money I did not have.

My salary arrived on the twenty-eighth of every month. By the fifth, I was already checking my banking app before buying a bottle of water.

The delivery problem started in June.

My name is Daniel, and I was twenty-nine at the time. I had moved to Kuala Lumpur two years earlier after getting a job with a company that handled customer complaints for an online shopping platform. The pay was better than what I could have earned in my hometown, or at least that was what I told my mother whenever she asked whether the move had been worth it.

My shift ended at six in the evening, although six often meant seven-thirty. When I finally reached my apartment, I usually wanted rice, something hot, and silence.

On the first occasion, I ordered nasi goreng kampung from a restaurant I liked near Jalan Sultan Ismail. I paid through the app, added a note asking the rider to leave the food at my door, and went to shower.

When I came out, there was no food.

The delivery app showed a photograph of my meal sitting outside a door. The floor tiles were the same pale grey as mine. The door was the same colour as mine. The only difference was the number beside it.

4B.

I lived in 4D.

I put on my slippers and walked down the corridor. The door to 4B was closed. I stood there for a few seconds, holding my phone like I might need it as evidence in a court case.

Then I knocked.

Nobody answered.

I knocked again, louder this time.

A woman opened the door just enough to show half her face. She looked to be in her early thirties and wore a faded green T-shirt. Behind her, I could see a television playing a drama and a little girl sitting on the floor with a pink plastic bowl.

Yes? the woman asked.

Sorry. I think my food was delivered here by mistake.

She looked down at the bag in her hand. I had not noticed she was holding it.

Oh. Is this yours?

I think so.

She checked the receipt, then looked at me again.

Sorry. I thought my sister had ordered it.

I took the food and told her it was fine.

The little girl waved at me before the door closed.

I ate my nasi goreng sitting on the edge of my bed. It was cold, the fried egg had become rubbery, and the restaurant had forgotten the extra sambal I had paid for. I gave it a bad rating and forgot about the whole thing by morning.

A week later, it happened again.

This time, it was chicken rice.

The delivery photo showed the same door. The same grey tiles. The same number.

I went downstairs, collected the bag from the security desk, and decided not to bother my neighbour. The guard said he had seen a rider leave it there, but he had been helping another resident carry a parcel and had not noticed the apartment number.

I ate the chicken rice without much complaint.

The third time, I was annoyed enough to consider deleting the delivery app. My order was a bowl of curry laksa, which I had been looking forward to since lunch. The photograph appeared at 7:14 p.m.

4B again.

I knocked on the woman’s door.

This time, she opened it immediately.

You again, she said, smiling.

I laughed despite myself.

I promise I am not sending you food on purpose.

She looked at the bag, then back at me.

Maybe your phone likes me.

Her name was Mei Ling. I learned this because the little girl behind her shouted it from the living room, asking whether she could have another biscuit.

Mei Ling handed me the laksa and apologised. She said the delivery riders often confused the apartments because the building had two corridors with nearly identical layouts. I told her I would start including better instructions.

Write the big red fire extinguisher, she suggested. Everyone knows that one.

I thanked her and went home.

For the next few weeks, the deliveries arrived correctly. I added the fire extinguisher to my instructions, along with a photograph of my door. The app still managed to get my location wrong occasionally, but at least I knew where to look.

I began recognising Mei Ling in the lift. She usually carried a shopping bag or held her daughter’s hand. The little girl was called Hana, and she seemed to believe that every adult in the building existed primarily to admire her drawings.

Whenever we met, Hana showed me something. A purple cat. A house with twelve windows. A picture of three people standing beneath a yellow sun.

I always said they were good.

They were not especially good, but I had never been able to look a child in the face and tell her that her drawing needed work.

One evening, I met them at the ground-floor entrance. Mei Ling was trying to balance two grocery bags while Hana argued that she was old enough to carry the eggs herself.

I offered to take one bag upstairs.

You don’t have to, Mei Ling said.

I know.

She let me take it.

Inside were eggs, rice, cooking oil, a packet of Milo, and several vegetables. The oil bottle was heavier than I expected. Mei Ling watched me adjust my grip and laughed.

You look like you’re carrying gold.

At current prices, maybe I am.

She laughed again.

We took the lift together. At the fourth floor, I carried the bag to her door, handed it over, and returned to my apartment feeling strangely pleased with myself.

That was the sort of neighbourly relationship we had. A few jokes. A greeting in the lift. The occasional wrong delivery. Nothing that required either of us to remember the other’s birthday.

Then September arrived, and my finances became a problem I could no longer ignore.

My rent had increased at renewal. Electricity cost more than I expected because I worked from home on some weekends. I had sent money to my mother twice that month, first for a prescription and later because the roof above her kitchen had started leaking.

None of these expenses was unreasonable on its own.

Together, they made my salary feel smaller than it had been the month before.

I started cooking instant noodles and adding whatever vegetables were left in the fridge. I stopped buying coffee on my way to work. I told friends I was busy when they suggested going out, then spent the evening scrolling through videos of people travelling to places I could not afford to visit.

My bank balance became something I checked the way other people checked the weather.

One Thursday, I received a message from the delivery app saying my order had been completed. I had ordered a simple meal of rice and fried chicken because I was too tired to cook.

The photograph showed my food outside 4B.

I stared at the screen for a long time.

I was hungry. I had spent the last twenty minutes thinking about that chicken. I had paid for it, and I did not have enough money left to order another meal without moving money from an account I was trying to keep untouched until payday.

I went to Mei Ling’s apartment.

She opened the door with Hana standing behind her, brushing her teeth. A little foam sat at the corner of the child’s mouth.

Your food came here again, Mei Ling said.

I looked at the bag.

Did you open it?

She frowned.

No. Why?

Nothing. I just wanted to check.

She handed it over.

I took the food and returned to my apartment. The chicken was still warm. I ate it at the kitchen counter, standing up because I had forgotten to buy a chair when I moved in and had been using a plastic stool that hurt my back.

Halfway through the meal, I started feeling ashamed.

Not because I had asked for my food back. It was mine. I had paid for it.

I felt ashamed because, for a few seconds outside her door, I had genuinely suspected that she might have been eating it.

The thought had come so quickly that I had not even stopped to question it. She was my neighbour, a woman I barely knew, and I had built a whole accusation in my head from three photographs and a handful of delivery mistakes.

I finished eating and washed the plastic fork.

The following afternoon, I came home early because my supervisor had cancelled a meeting. The corridor was quiet. Someone on the floor below was playing an old Malay song, and the smell of onions frying drifted through the stairwell.

As I approached my door, I noticed a small parcel outside 4B.

It was a box of children’s shoes.

I knocked because the parcel was close enough to my apartment that I worried the same mistake might happen again.

Mei Ling opened the door. Her face looked tired, and she had a towel over one shoulder.

Is this yours? I asked.

She nodded.

Thank you. The courier left it there yesterday, but I didn’t see the message until this morning.

I handed it to her.

She looked at the parcel, then at me.

Daniel, can I ask you something?

I nodded.

She hesitated.

Do you think I take your food?

The question caught me so badly that I almost laughed. I did not laugh, though. There was something in her face that made the situation feel much more serious than it should have been.

No, I said.

She waited.

I realised the answer had come too quickly.

I mean, I did wonder once. A while ago. I shouldn’t have.

She looked down at the box.

I knew you were wondering.

I did not know what to say.

She explained that the first time my food arrived, she had been waiting for a grocery delivery of her own. The bags had looked similar, and she had opened mine before checking the receipt. She had apologised and given it back.

The second time, she had not touched anything. She had taken a photograph of the bag and sent it to the delivery rider through the app, but he never replied.

The third time, she had begun worrying that I might complain to the building manager. She did not want trouble because her landlord was already discussing a rent increase.

I have a child, she said. I don’t want people thinking I am the kind of person who steals food.

I told her I was sorry.

She nodded, but she did not smile.

Then she said something I had not expected.

I was going to tell you before, but I didn’t want you to think I was asking for anything.

I asked what she meant.

She shifted the parcel from one hand to the other.

Sometimes when your food comes here, I wish I could keep it.

I stood still.

She explained that she had been having a difficult few months. Her husband had moved out earlier in the year, and the money he sent for Hana had become irregular. She worked at a small accounting office near Jalan Ampang, and after paying rent, transport, school expenses, and groceries, there was not much left.

She had never taken my food.

She had never even eaten a single piece of my chicken.

Still, when the delivery rider appeared at her door carrying a bag that smelled of hot rice or fried noodles, she sometimes wished that somebody had ordered enough for her, too.

It is a stupid thing to admit, she said. I am not asking you to buy me anything.

I looked at the box of shoes in her hands.

There was a cartoon rabbit printed on the side. Hana had been asking for new shoes because the old ones pinched her toes. I remembered seeing her wear them in the lift, the front edges bent upward from use.

I wanted to say something kind. I wanted to tell Mei Ling that everything would work out, that she would find a better job, that her husband would become responsible, that the rent would not rise.

I knew none of those things.

Instead, I asked whether she had eaten lunch.

She said she had eaten a piece of bread at work.

I went back into my apartment and looked through my fridge. There were two eggs, half a cabbage, some leftover rice, and a container of chicken curry I had cooked the night before.

I warmed the curry, fried the eggs, and packed the food into two containers. Then I stood in my kitchen, wondering whether taking food to her would feel like kindness or pity.

I nearly changed my mind.

In the end, I knocked on her door and told her I had cooked too much.

It was an obvious lie. I had made enough for one person, then stretched it to two.

Mei Ling looked at the containers.

You don’t have to do this, she said.

I know.

She accepted them.

I went home before she could thank me again.

After that, we started sharing food occasionally. Sometimes I brought over extra rice. Sometimes she sent me a plate of noodles she had cooked for Hana. Once, she gave me a container of homemade curry laksa that was so spicy I drank three glasses of water and spent the rest of the evening regretting every decision that had brought me to that kitchen.

I returned the container washed and empty.

She looked inside it.

You finished everything?

It was good.

You were sweating.

That was the flavour.

She laughed hard enough that Hana came running from the bedroom to see what had happened.

For a while, things were easier. Not financially, exactly. My bank balance was still terrible, and I still ate instant noodles when payday was far away. Mei Ling still worried about rent, and some evenings I could hear her on the phone with her husband, speaking so quietly that I could not make out the words.

We were not rescuing each other. We were just making the week slightly less difficult.

Then, in October, my supervisor offered me a chance to move to another department. The new position paid more and required me to work from the office five days a week. It was the kind of career move I had been waiting for, but the office was in another part of the city, and the commute from my apartment would be exhausting.

I accepted the job.

A week later, I found a cheaper apartment closer to the new office. It was smaller, with a window facing a wall, but the rent was low enough that I could start saving money again.

I told Mei Ling while we waited for the lift.

She smiled and congratulated me.

Good. You can finally stop eating instant noodles.

I will still eat them. I have become emotionally attached.

She shook her head.

You are strange.

I was due to move at the end of the month. I packed my clothes into boxes, sold the plastic stool to a student on Facebook Marketplace, and spent two evenings trying to decide whether I needed three different phone chargers.

On my last night, someone knocked on my door.

It was Mei Ling, holding a container wrapped in a supermarket bag.

For the road, she said.

Inside was fried rice with egg, spring onions, and small pieces of chicken. She had added a little sambal in a separate container because she remembered that I liked it.

I thanked her and asked whether she wanted to come in.

She glanced at the boxes.

No. You have enough work.

We stood in the corridor for a moment.

Then she said she had something to tell me.

The first time my food was delivered to her apartment, she had been having one of the worst days of her life. Hana had been sick, her husband had failed to send money again, and she had spent the afternoon trying to borrow enough to cover an overdue bill.

When my food arrived, she had opened the bag before checking the receipt because she thought it was the grocery delivery she had ordered earlier.

For a few seconds, she had stood in her kitchen holding a meal that was not hers, wondering what it would feel like to eat without calculating the cost of every bite.

She had returned it because she knew it belonged to someone else.

I was angry at myself for even wanting to keep it, she said. Then I was angry because I had become someone who had to think so hard about a meal.

I held the container against my chest.

She looked toward the lift.

When you started bringing food, I didn’t know whether to feel grateful or embarrassed. Sometimes I thought you were helping me because you felt sorry for me.

I wanted to deny it.

The truth was that pity had been part of it, at least at first. So had guilt. I had felt bad for suspecting her, and giving her food had been a way to feel better about myself.

The kindness had not begun as purely as I wanted to believe.

I told her the truth.

At first, I think I was trying to make myself feel less guilty.

She looked at me for a moment.

At least you know yourself.

Neither of us said anything for a while.

Then Hana called her from inside the apartment, asking where her school socks were. Mei Ling closed her eyes briefly, as if the question had arrived at the worst possible time.

They are in the drawer, she shouted back.

Which drawer?

The drawer where your socks always are!

A pause followed.

There are two drawers!

Mei Ling looked at me and started laughing. I laughed, too, and for a moment we were just two tired neighbours standing outside their apartments while a child searched for socks.

I moved the next morning.

The new job was harder than I expected. I spent more money on transport than I had planned, and my first salary arrived late because the payroll department had entered my bank details incorrectly. I ate instant noodles for four nights in a row and began to miss the old apartment, even the drilling.

I still had Mei Ling’s number. Occasionally, she sent me photographs of Hana’s drawings or complained about something the building management had done. I sent her pictures of meals I cooked badly and once asked for her laksa recipe.

She sent me a voice note explaining it. The recording was eleven minutes long, and half of it concerned the correct way to buy coconut milk.

We spoke less as the months passed.

In January, she messaged me to say she had found a new job with better hours. I congratulated her. She sent a smiling emoji and a photograph of Hana wearing her new school shoes.

I kept the photograph longer than I needed to.

Sometimes I still think about that first meal I suspected she had stolen. I remember standing outside her door, hungry and tired, ready to believe something ugly about a person I barely knew.

I also remember the food she brought me on my last night, packed carefully so it would not spill during the move.

I never found out whether she had told anyone else about those months, or whether she remembered them the way I did. We never had a serious conversation about what we owed each other, and neither of us tried to turn a few shared meals into a grand story about friendship.

Last week, I ordered chicken rice after work. The delivery rider called because he could not find my apartment, and I spent five minutes explaining the entrance to a building I had lived in for almost a year.

When the food finally arrived, I checked the photograph twice before opening the door.

The bag was outside the correct apartment.

I ate at my kitchen counter, standing up because I still had not bought a proper chair.

For a moment, I wondered whether the person in the apartment across the corridor had eaten anything that day. I did not know their name. I did not know whether they were struggling, whether they were happy, or whether they had enough money to get through the month.

I only knew there was enough rice left in my cooker for two.

I packed some into a container, added half my chicken, and stood outside their door longer than necessary before knocking.

When it opened, I held out the food.

I made too much, I said.

It was a familiar lie, and this time, I did not feel the need to correct it.

Sometimes, the kindest thing you can give someone is the chance to accept help without having to explain why they need it.