That afternoon, the sun sat low, painting the river bronze. Amina knelt on her usual stone, scrubbing children’s uniforms until her wrists ached. The cold water numbed her fingers, but her mind stayed hot with questions. Someone who should have come back. The words clung to her like wet cloth. Her mother had spoken of a promise, yet she never said the man’s name.
Footsteps approached—slow, steady, not the careless stomp of village boys. Amina kept washing, pretending not to notice.
“Amina,” a deep voice called.
She froze, then lifted her head. It was him—tall, quiet, simple clothes—yet something powerful hid in the way he carried himself. His eyes looked older than his face, heavy with regret.
“You came back,” Amina said, and it sounded like blame.
He nodded. “You said you don’t like secrets, so I came plainly.”
Amina stood, wiping her hands on her wrapper. “Why are you here, sir?”
He glanced toward the path where two women pretended not to listen. “Can we talk somewhere private?”
She walked a short distance to a cluster of reeds and he followed, keeping space between them.
“My name is Obina,” he said.
Amina’s jaw tightened. “Obina who?”
He exhaled. “Obina Adawale.”
Amina’s stomach tightened. She had heard that name in rumors—chief this, billionaire that—stories villagers repeated as if wealth were a spirit. She searched his face and saw the truth. He was not a random traveler.
“So you’re the man people talk about,” she said.
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