Some songs don’t just play.
They arrive.
Tonight, my wife and I were on the bus home after our church CG session. It was one of those ordinary Singapore evenings — tired bodies, full hearts, public transport humming along its familiar route.
Then came the familiar irritation:
a commuter at the back of the bus blasting videos from his phone, no earbuds, no mercy. The soundtrack none of us asked for.
Without a word, my wife and I did the same thing — we reached for our earbuds. A small, modern act of self-defence.
I opened Spotify.
Can This Love Be Translated? OST.
Track on repeat: “Promise” by Wonstein.
And then something strange — almost sacred — happened.
I felt goosebumps creeping up my arms. Not because of the song alone, but because of a quiet realisation. I turned to my wife.
She was listening to the same song.
No coordination.
No discussion.
Just two people, side by side, choosing the same music in the same moment.
Same melody.
Same emotional frequency.
It felt like one of those moments you don’t announce, because naming it might break it. A reminder that intimacy isn’t always about grand gestures — sometimes it’s about shared silence, shared faith, shared playlists.
The irony wasn’t lost on me.
A drama about translation, about whether love can truly be understood — and here we were, understanding each other without words.
Wonstein’s voice carried something gentle and unresolved, like a prayer still forming. The bus rolled on. The noise at the back faded into irrelevance. For those few minutes, the world narrowed into something smaller and kinder.
Music has always done that for me.
It sits between memory and meaning.
Between what we feel and what we can say.
Tonight, it reminded me that some promises don’t need to be spoken.
They’re simply heard — at the same time — through two pairs of earbuds on a bus ride home.