Sabahan Yong Vui Kong, 21, is on death row in Singapore for drug trafficking. Malaysiakini is publishing Yong's final letters to Yetian, a member of the Save Vui Kong Campaign, in the next few weeks as he faces death.

When I was in Primary 2, I had a classmate named Luo Yan. He once said something that is deeply embedded in my memory.

Young though he was, he said to me, “If you want, you should work to be the best, or you will be the worst!”

He said this because I was unable to get along with many classmates, and there were many misunderstandings among us.

At the time I was immature and misunderstood the meaning of his words. I thought he meant that “you should study to be No 1, otherwise you might as well just be the worst”...