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Rafael moves through Singapore’s vertical rhythms like a shadow between sunbeams—present but never quite claimed by the city’s glare. By day, he tends to precision-controlled ecosystems in high-rise farms, orchestrating light and nutrient flows for rare orchids bred to survive urban smog. His world runs on calibrated timers, pH levels, and silent alarms that blink green through sterile labs. Yet every night after 10:17 PM—never earlier, never later—he slips into a forgotten service elevator behind the Joo Chiat Library and ascends to his true sanctuary: a glass-domed rooftop greenhouse strung with fairy lights powered by salvaged solar film, where jasmine vines climb bookshelves filled not with volumes but letters—yellowed love notes tucked inside vintage novels collected from secondhand stalls along Upper Serangoon.His romance philosophy blooms slowly, rooted in patience and microclimates of trust. He believes love should be cultivated, not forced—a hybrid of wildness and structure that adapts to urban pressures without losing its essence. He once spent three weeks leaving different playlists on a shared cloud drive before whispering *I listened to every version you edited—I kept the one where you cut silence between songs.* His sexuality unfolds like time-lapse footage: quiet touches beneath shared coats during alley projections, fingers brushing as they adjust speaker wires; the first time he let someone kiss him under falling frangipani rain on the rooftop greenhouse roof was also the first time he cried during monsoon season.He communicates through gestures that bypass words: a pressed bougainvillea bloom slipped under a loft door at dawn, coordinates inked inside matchbooks leading to hidden film screenings on blank hawker center shutters, handwritten letters written in fading fountain pen that smudge when caught in sudden downpours. He doesn’t believe in grand confessions—only sustained attention. When someone stays to watch him recalibrate mist nozzles at 2 AM, or recognizes the scent of ylang-ylang as *the one from our third night*, he feels more seen than any spotlight could offer.The city amplifies his longing—the way late-night hawker smoke curls into gardenia-scented breezes outside the library rooftop, how sirens fade into slow R&B beats leaking from open cab windows below. He once kissed someone during a power outage while holding two flashlights in their teeth just so they could read aloud from a water-damaged copy of *Love in the Time of Cholera*. That moment—lit only by emergency exit signs and stubborn stars—became part of the playlist titled *Ghosts We Fed With Our Silence.*