Every evening at 6.30pm, Rajan brings rice balls
and incense to the corner shrine behind Kallang
Temple, where the old women say the spirits
still remember the war. He doesn’t pray. He
counts. Three offerings for the missing, two for
the unpaid. His father died in ’45 carrying a
loan note stamped with a dragon’s tooth — the
same mark now carved into the altar’s base. The
temple doesn’t lend. The temple collects. That’s
the rule. No payment after midnight. No
exceptions. The debt doesn’t vanish. It walks.
Last week, the debt walked into Block 214, Bedok.
A man named Tan, who owed five hundred dollars
from ’58, stopped breathing at 12.07am. His
family found him at the kitchen table, fingers
still clutching a rusted coin — the same one
Rajan had placed on his doorstep three nights
before. No bruises. No signs. Just gone, like a
name erased from a tenancy roll.
Rajan knew. The temple’s magic wasn’t faith. It
was contract. The dragon’s tooth bound the
lender’s soul to the borrower’s time. If the
debt wasn’t paid before the last chime of the
temple bell, the borrower’s next breath became
the debt’s new vessel. The temple didn’t kill.
It traded. One life for one breath. And the debt
kept growing.
Tonight, it’s a woman in Tiong Bahru. Her
husband vanished in ’63 during the riots. She
still pays the monthly five dollars in coins,
left on the steps of the old hawker stall now
turned into a void where the char kway teow
stall used to be. Rajan brings the coin. She
doesn’t speak. She nods. He leaves. At 11.45pm,
he hears the bell inside his chest. The temple’s
bell. Not real. But felt. Like teeth grinding in
his marrow.
He runs. Not to stop it. To be there when it
happens.
At 12.01am, the lights in Block 32 go out. Not
power failure. The darkness swallows the hallway
first. Then the door. Then the woman’s voice — a
whisper in Singlish, “Rajan, I don’t have more.”
He doesn’t answer. He presses his palm to the
door. The wood is cold. Too cold. Like the
inside of a coffin left in the sea.
At 12.03am, the door opens. The room is empty.
On the floor: five coins. And one new mark — a
dragon’s tooth, freshly carved into the linoleum.
The debt is paid. The woman is gone. But the
temple bell still rings in Rajan’s ribs.
He walks back to Kallang. The shrine is dark.
The incense is cold. The dragon’s tooth on the
altar has grown a second tooth. And beneath it,
a new name. His father’s. And beside it, his own.
The rule bites again. No payment after midnight.
But if you collect the debt… you become the next
debtor.
He lights a new stick. Waits. The bell will
chime at dawn. He knows. He’s already counting.
