Kids Only: How Four Grown Siblings Turned Ma's Birthday Dinner Into a Debt Collection While the Youngest Billed Her Taxi Ride

The Shareholders: Four Adults, One Wallet

Veronica: "Jie" / The Martyr With a Receipt Folder

Veronica is the eldest, the treasurer and the only person in this chat who was never elected and can never resign. She pays for everything first, splits it to the cent, and then adds a heart, which in this family is a letter of demand wearing lipstick. After Ma's birthday dinner, the invoices began:

Three messages, and the heart got smaller every time. Veronica does not want the money, she wants the moral high ground, and she has lived up there so long the air has gone thin. At 11.40pm one Sunday she finally said the quiet part out loud:

She asked a question she already knew the answer to and got the only honest message her brother has ever sent. Veronica is not carrying this family. She is charging it rent and wondering why nobody moves out.

Dominic: "Dom" / The Brother on a Tourist Visa

Dominic lives six MRT stops from his mother and appears in this chat with the frequency of a comet that owes money. He vanishes from March to January, then surfaces the week of reunion dinner like a swallow returning to a warm phone, asking questions a stranger would be ashamed of:

Where. He asked where his own mother lives. Dominic is not a son, he is a guest star on a show that has run for forty years without him, and his share of the birthday dinner proved he thinks he is on a guest star's fee:

Nobody rounds down a bill their sister put on her own card. That is not rounding, that is a haircut, and he gave it to her with the calm of a man who has never been invoiced for being absent.

Shereen: The Ventriloquist Who Speaks for Ma

Shereen claims to be neutral in every argument, which is true in the sense that Switzerland is neutral and also holds everybody's money. Her weapon is Ma, a woman who is not in this chat, cannot be cross-examined and, by an astonishing coincidence, has agreed with Shereen on every decision since January. A typical ruling:

Ma says don't question Ma is the most authoritarian sentence ever typed in a sibling chat, and it came from the one claiming to be neutral. Shereen is not a peacemaker, she is a ventriloquist working her own mother like a hand puppet, and she has never once taken the hand out.

Every verdict she has ever delivered from Ma is the one Shereen wanted, on the day Shereen wanted it, which is a coincidence only in the way a loaded dice is a coincidence. Her siblings stopped believing the quotes years ago and started using them instead, so now the whole family is forging the same signature.

Kelvin: The Grown Man Who Billed Ma's Taxi

Kelvin is thirty-four and still on the family plan in every sense: phone, insurance and emotional support from three siblings who never applied for the job. He uses his sisters as a calendar, his brother as a cautionary tale he has learned nothing from, and a sticker of a bowing cat as his entire financial policy. When the birthday bill came, he produced the most disgusting arithmetic in the archive:

He itemised one taxi ride with his own mother and filed it as a business expense, then called being her son a cost. That is not a youngest child, that is a contractor who was born into the family and has been invoicing it ever since. His answer to every reminder since:

Then he uploaded this chat to get his sisters roasted, the first piece of work he has ever done for this family, and he did it to dodge S$178. Kelvin, that cat is not apologising for you any more. It wants out.

Episode One: The S$864 Birthday Dinner and the S$194 Hole

On 6 September the four of them took Ma to her favourite Cantonese place, ate a roast duck, a steamed fish and a cake shaped like a peach, and Veronica put the lot on her own card because somebody had to be the adult. What followed was a week-long collections exercise conducted entirely in passive aggression:

Overseas in spirit is the most Dominic sentence ever composed: absent, unrepentant and still cheaper than paying. Kelvin asked how much he owed directly underneath a pinned message saying how much he owed, which is like asking where the MRT is while standing inside the train. Then Shereen, who had paid within the hour and had been waiting for this moment like a sniper on a roof, ended it:

Just like that, the woman owed S$194 became the villain for asking. Shereen used an absent mother as a gavel, the two brothers escaped under the noise, and Veronica posted one more heart that was really a gravestone. The S$194 is still outstanding, and so are three consciences.

Episode Two: The Reunion Dinner Orange Incident

Reunion dinner is the one night a year Dominic remembers he has a family, so Veronica handed out duties like a general assigning hills. The briefing:

What kind of ice. A grown man asked what kind of ice, then arrived at 7.40pm with no kind of ice at all. Dominic, somehow, did worse:

Eleven oranges at a reunion dinner is five blessings and a curse, and his solution was to tell his sister to eat the curse. He handed Ma a S$88 angbao, called it symbolic, and wished everyone a safe trip home to three people who live on the same island. Nobody heard from him again until the birthday bill, which he rounded.

The Dishonours List

The Martyr's Invoice: Veronica, who paid for love up front and has been charging interest in hearts ever since.

The Comet That Owes Money: Dominic, seen once a year and always on his way out of a bill.

The Ventriloquist's Licence: Shereen, for putting words in Ma's mouth and quoting them back as law.

The Family Plan Lifetime Achievement: Kelvin, thirty-four, who invoiced his siblings for one taxi with his mother.

Filial Piety, Revoked: all four of you, for turning one birthday dinner into a debt dispute your mother must never be allowed to read.

The Ruling

One sibling paid, one rounded, one ventriloquised and one invoiced, and every one of them did it in their mother's name. Veronica, stop typing no rush, because they have taken you at your word for eight months. Kelvin, you uploaded this to get your sisters roasted, and all it proved is that you are the S$178 hole in the middle of this family.