THE TEACHER (12)
THE OTHER SIDE
Years earlier
Road 20
Staff Quarters
OAU, Ile-Ife
Dusk
The light was already failing when Seyi reached the staff quarters, that quiet enclave of low buildings set apart from the noisy dens of ordinary hostels. He had hoped the walk from the main campus would cool the resentment still burning under his ribs. It had not.
The previous evening’s message from Alápa had arrived like a summons, curt and absolute, costing him the hour he had carefully arranged with his girlfriend outside Moremi Hall.
He could still picture her waiting, phone in hand, the soft dusk settling around the trees. Instead he was here, climbing the short flight of steps to a one bedroom lodge that belonged to students whose parents preferred solid walls and private bathrooms to the shared chaos of the halls.
The door was unlocked. He pushed it open and stepped into a living room sunk in deliberate half light. Heavy curtains drank what little remained of the day. Somewhere in the corners, scent sticks released a thin, insistent note of lavender that tried to mask the warmer, denser air of closed windows and recent occupation.
For several seconds Seyi stood still, waiting for his eyes to accept the gloom. The outlines of a sofa, a low table, the pale rectangle of a doorway gradually emerged.
A low, rhythmic sound, half breath and half groan, drifted from somewhere inside. His body moved before thought could intervene. He crossed the living room on quiet feet and stopped at the bedroom door, which stood slightly ajar. Through the narrow opening the scene presented itself with brutal clarity.
Two naked figures occupied the centre of the bed. Alápa was behind the other man, who was bent forward on hands and knees, spine arched and head thrown back in open mouthed abandon.
In the dim light Alápa’s face was half turned toward the door. Their eyes met. Alápa did not startle, did not slow. He held Seyi’s gaze and continued, the rhythm unbroken, as if the intrusion were merely a part of the evening’s proceedings.
Seyi’s breath left him in a single soundless rush. He turned, and found his way to the outer door again.
Outside, the air felt suddenly cooler, almost sharp. He stood on the small veranda, one hand against the wall, heart slamming so hard he could feel it in his throat.
Dusk had deepened. The first lights were beginning to show in neighbouring windows. He waited without knowing what he was waiting for.
Minutes later the second man emerged. He was fully dressed now, shirt buttoned, bag slung over one shoulder. He passed Seyi without lifting his eyes, his face carefully blank, and disappeared down the path toward the main road.
The door opened again. Alápa stood in the frame, bare chested, low slung jeans riding his hips, the faint sheen of sweat still on his skin. He regarded Seyi for a moment, then stepped aside.
“Junior. Come in.”
Seyi entered. The lavender scent seemed stronger now, almost cloying. Alápa closed the door, walked to the low table, and lit a cigarette. The flame briefly lit the hard planes of his face. He exhaled a thin stream of smoke and looked Seyi up and down.
“Why are you shivering like a little girl?”
He closed the distance with the unhurried patience of a predator until only a few inches remained between them. His eyes moved slowly over Seyi’s face, assessing and unhurried. The cigarette glowed between his fingers. His upper lip suddenly curled in a feral smile.
“What did you see in there, Junior?”
Seyi shook his head, unable to answer. He watched mutely as Alapa inclined his head as if in deep thought.
“What is that wonderful American saying about snitches again…?”
He paused, watchful and calculating. When no answer came, he leaned in, his nicotine breath warm against Seyi’s ear.
“Snitches get stitches.”
The words hung in the scented dark, low and ominous. Seyi found his voice at last, thin but clear.
“I am not going to snitch.”
Alápa studied his profile for a long moment. Seyi shrank deeper into himself, trying to get away from the closeness imposed by proximity. Alapa laughed and stepped back.
“Don’t worry, man. You’re not my type. You’re too much of a sissy.”
He took another drag, eyes still on Seyi. “Now that cousin of yours….” there was another soft laugh. “A totally different matter.”
He turned, noticed a small packet of used condoms on the floor near the bedroom doorway, and kicked it lightly toward Seyi’s feet.
“Trash that,” he said. “Then come back inside. We still have the reason I called you here.”
***************************
Sirani Daranijo Street
Victoria Island
Lagos
6 am
The kitchen held the soft grey light of a Lagos morning and a promise of the El Niño heat forecasted to come in the following months. Tomide stood at the counter in a crisp white shirt and dark trousers, the jacket still hanging from the back of a chair.
Steam rose from the mug in his hand, carrying the dark, almost bitter scent of the coffee he preferred when the day required clarity.
His gaze rested on the upper corner of the freezer door. The small white label remained exactly where he had pressed it days earlier, the name written in deliberate black strokes.
Alapa.
He drank without tasting. The word sat in the quiet like an unanswered summons. Seyi’s voice, or what had passed for it, still moved somewhere behind his thoughts.
Tell him I forgive him.
Had Alapa harmed Seyi directly? Or had he merely stood close enough to the harm that silence became its own violence? The questions turned slowly, offering no edge to grip.
Memory arrived uninvited, forcing him backward through the weeks that had preceded Seyi’s death. Those final days on campus had been marked by a withdrawal so gradual Tomide had almost failed to notice it. Seyi had grown quieter at meals, slower to answer messages, his usual restlessness replaced by something heavier and more inward.
One late Saturday afternoon Tomide had returned from the football field with a few hall mates, the grass still clinging to his boots and the heat of the game still in his blood. He had found Seyi sitting alone on the low wall outside their room, elbows on his knees, staring at nothing in particular.
The usual quick grin was absent. His eyes were fixed and distant. Tomide had dropped his boots in front of their room and tried the old easy teasing.
“What happened? I didn’t see you when I woke up, and you didn’t come to the field today. You went to play with dolls in your girlfriend’s room?”
Seyi had looked up slowly, as though the words had to travel a long way to reach him. The smile he offered was thin, and faded almost at once.
“I didn’t go to Moremi.” His smile slipped a little. “I went to road 20.”
“What was happening there?”
“I had to see Alapa.”
Tomide had watched his cousin for several minutes. His eyes held no revelation, only the vague disinterest of a man who had already withdrawn into himself. He spoke again, this time his voice flat and featureless.
“I am tired of this place, man. I can’t wait for my final paper, so I can say bye-bye to OAU.”
There was no spark in the familiar line. He had simply looked away again, lost once more in whatever occupied him.
Now, standing in the quiet kitchen years later, the same unease returned to Tomide with sharper edges. He set the mug down with deliberate care.
Had Alápa done something to Seyi in those last weeks?
The question settled heavily, refusing to dissolve with the steam from the coffee. He considered reaching out to the old fraternity members, yet even as the thought formed, another voice rose inside him, calm and measured. It was the Teacher.
The whims and caprices of man transcend divides, and often the answer is on the other side.
The words settled inside him, quiet and persistent, and the wheels of his mind began to turn with slow, methodical force. If the answer truly lay on the other side, then he would find it.
He reached for his phone, unlocked it, and scrolled to Seun’s name. The call connected on the second ring.
“Seun,” he said, voice steady. “We need to meet with Razor. It’s about Shayo.”
He listened to the brief silence on the other end, the kind that meant the request had been weighed and accepted.
“Okay. I will arrange it.”
Tomide ended the call, set down the phone and walked into the living room for his car keys.
*****************************
PrimeVistas Advisors
Victoria Island
11 am
The conference room held the soft, regulated chill of central air and the muted gleam from wood polished by the pair of dedicated cleaners the firm employed. Sonia sat at the long table opposite her client, a silver haired man whose onboarding required both precision and quiet reassurance.
She turned the laptop slightly so the screen faced them both and began walking through the projected figures.
“Here you can see the projected returns over the next thirty six months,” she said, her voice even, professional. “We’ve modelled three scenarios based on your risk profile. The conservative allocation remains weighted toward fixed income and blue chip equities, while the moderate path introduces a measured exposure to the growth portfolio we discussed last week.”
She advanced the slide with a light touch, highlighting the soft upward curve of the recommended strategy.
“These numbers assume current market conditions hold within a reasonable band. Any material shift and we recalibrate within the quarter.”
The client nodded, satisfied, his pen moving across a notepad. Sonia continued, calm and attentive, yet her peripheral vision never quite left the glass wall that separated the conference room from the open floor.
Her habitual alertness caused her to notice Simi and John returning from lunch. Heads tilted toward each other and laughing as they crossed the corridor just beyond the glass. John’s posture was looser than usual, his customary reserve softened by the easy smile he wore.
Sonia’s attention never left her client, yet something in her sharpened. The laughter was too bright, the closeness too sudden. She remembered, with unwelcome clarity, how Simi had once watched Tomide with worshipful eyes that followed him across the office with persistent focus that almost bordered on obsession. That same focus now rested on John.
A familiar unease stirred. Sonia suspected that this was not interest of the ordinary kind. Simi’s new warmth toward the quiet IT associate felt calculated and contrived. The realisation arrived with the force of déjà vu.
Not long ago she herself had sat with John in similar quiet moments, guiding conversations toward old campus ties and carefully phrased questions about Tomide. The parallel was exact enough to unsettle her.
She finished the projections, answered the final questions with her customary precision, and walked the client to the elevator. Returning to her desk, the decision had already formed, cool and practical. John needed to be warned. Whatever Simi was seeking, it would not remain harmless for long. She would speak to him before the younger woman’s careful interest found whatever it was looking for.
**************************
IT Office
2pm
John’s office was a narrow rectangle of glass and muted grey. Cables snaked across the floor in untidy loops. Two older towers hummed steadily beneath a desk crowded with open manuals, half empty soft drink cans, and stacks of dust lined files whose edges had yellowed from years of fluorescent light.
The air carried the dry, papery scent of old printouts mixed with the faint metallic tang of overworked electronics.
He sat angled toward the dual monitors, fingers moving with the absorbed precision of someone deep inside a problem that only machines could fully understand. The soft click of keys and the low hum of the cooling fans were the only sounds in the room.
Simi appeared in the doorway without announcement. She waited a beat, watching him, then stepped inside and closed the door with a quiet click.
“You this man,” she said, her voice warm, almost admiring. “You are always doing something.”
John looked up, the concentration on his face dissolving into surprise and then pleasure. He leaned back in his seat as she came around the desk. She stopped close enough that the faint citrus of her perfume reached him.
“This heat is killing o.” She fanned herself with one hand. “I need water.”
The announcement came with a wistful sigh as if her desired refreshment required great effort to procure. She pouted prettily and lightly scraped the line of his jaw with brightly painted nails.
“Will you please help me get a bottle from the lounge?”
John was already on his feet before the words left her mouth.
“It’s fine. No problem. No problem at all.”
The moment the door shut behind him, her expression changed. The soft interest vanished. She moved to his chair, sat, and woke the screen with a single keystroke. The cursor blinked in the search bar. She typed three letters, OAU, and hit enter.
A document appeared near the top of the recent files list. Three pages. She opened it, eyes scanning rapidly, then lifted her phone and took three clean snapshots in quick succession. She closed the window, cleared the search history with two clicks, and returned the chair to its original position just as footsteps approached in the corridor.
When John reentered carrying a cold bottle of water, she was perched on the edge of his desk, legs crossed, scrolling idly on her own phone as though she had never moved.
“Thank you,” she said, taking the bottle. Her fingers brushed his deliberately.
She set the water down without drinking and reached out, smoothing the lapels of his shirt with slow, attentive hands. Her eyes lifted to his and held. The lashes lowered, rose again. She leaned in as if the space between them had become unbearable.
Her mouth came within a breath of his. At the last possible second she turned her head and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek instead, lingering just long enough for him to feel the warmth of it.
“Later,” she whispered against his skin.
Then she straightened, smiled once, and walked out, leaving the door slightly ajar.
John remained standing where she had left him, the bottle of water still cool in his hand, a slow, disbelieving grin spreading across his face. He silently congratulated himself. The prettiest intern in the office was interested in him.
Three doors away, Simi had returned to her desk in the intern bay. She sat, unlocked her phone, and opened the AI interface. She uploaded the three screenshots and typed a short command.
Convert these images into a clean, editable Word document. Preserve all text exactly.
She hit enter and waited, eyes already distant, the faint smile gone.
***********************
Park View Estate,
Ikoyi
7 pm.
The private living room occupied an entire wing of the mansion, sealed from the rest of the house by double doors of dark wood. Beyond them, the staff moved in practised silence, careful not to disturb the quiet that Femi Savage preferred when he retreated from the demands of business and society. Inside, a concealed speaker played low jazz, its mellow notes drifting beneath the occasional clink of ice against crystal.
Femi sat in a wide leather armchair, a glass of whiskey resting between his fingers. He had loosened his tie and unbuttoned the collar of his shirt, the only concessions he had made to the long day.
The double doors opened, and his wife sauntered in. She wore an ivory silk blouse tucked into a pair of high waisted, wide legged trousers in deep chocolate brown. A slim leather belt defined her waist, while pointed toe slingback heels added a few inches to her already elegant frame.
Her thick, textured hair had been swept into a sleek chignon, exposing the graceful line of her neck.
Femi watched her approach, a faint smile touching his mouth. They were friendly in the manner of housemates who rarely crossed paths: cool, tolerant and carefully detached. Their marriage, one of convenience, had been arranged by their families. Before then, they had attended the same exclusive gatherings, and grown up with an understanding of the privileges and obligations that accompanied their surnames.
By the time the families began discussing marriage, the match had seemed like the natural conclusion of an arrangement that had been taking shape for years.
“Mr Savage,” she said, stopping beside his chair. “Have you forgotten that your sons and I are leaving for London next week?”
Femi raised an eyebrow. “Why should I?”
“Oh well.” She smiled and lowered herself onto the arm of the chair. “You have been MIA all week and I assumed you had forgotten.”
He gave her back three fatherly pats and withdrew his hand.
“Don’t worry dear. The company has been informed. Everything is booked.”
She looked at him approvingly.
“Good. I have no intention of explaining to two impatient boys why we are flying commercial this time.”
Femi laughed softly.
“Those sons of yours are spoiled. They should fly Air Peace sometimes. Keep them humble.“
For a moment, she studied him.
“You know, you could always come with us.”
Femi turned his glass slowly between his fingers.
“To London?”
“No, Femi. To the moon.” She gave him a look of exaggerated patience. “Yes, to London. With your wife and children. We are, after all, your family.”
“I am aware.”
“Sometimes I wonder.”
“Or perhaps you are afraid that, left to my own devices, I might chase other women.”
She gave a soft, dismissive laugh.
“Please. I have never had to worry about you chasing women. What you enjoy is disappearing into this man cave of yours with Yomi.” She adjusted the cuffs of her sleeves, her eyes twinkling with humour. “The two of you can spend an entire evening in there, behaving as if the rest of the world does not exist.“
Femi laughed outright. She bent and kissed him lightly on the cheek.
“Good night, darling.”
He watched her leave, the doors closing softly behind her. For a few seconds, he remained where he was, listening to the retreating sound of her heels against the polished floor.
His smile faded as soon as the room settled into silence.
His thoughts returned to Tomide. Their reconnection had come through a brother that had called him about Tomide’s search for wealthy clients. He wondered what Seyi had told Tomide, if anything. The possibility had troubled him for years, but Tomide’s renewed interest had given it a sharper edge.
Femi’s fingers tightened around the glass. Sweat gathered beneath his collar. He set his glass down and leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees.
Alápa, that crude version of him that once moved through the fraternity circles of Ife, lay dormant behind the genteel refinement of Femi Savage. Out in the world where brutality was confined to inflated figures and sanitised corporate terminology, Alápa was a liability that could never survive scrutiny, and he intended to keep it that way.
*************************
Bola Ogunsanya Crescent,
Magodo, Lagos
10:07 p.m.
Tomide watched the house from the passenger seat of Seun’s SUV.
It was an unremarkable property on a quiet residential street, its high perimeter wall topped with coils of razor wire. A security light illuminated the gate, casting a pale yellow glow across the pavement.
“Are you sure this is his routine?” Tomide asked.
Seun kept his eyes on the gate.
“Razor’s boys say he takes the trash out around ten. Sometimes he leaves it until the following morning before work. They have been watching the place for two days. Tonight, we might get lucky.”
Tomide glanced at him.
“And Razor?”
“Already in position.”
Across the road, Razor stood beside a parked car, dressed in dark trousers and a plain shirt. He appeared to be another man finishing his evening, his attention seemingly fixed on his phone. Nothing about him suggested that he was waiting for someone.
The gate slid open. A silver sedan entered the compound, its headlights briefly sweeping across the street before the gates closed behind it. They watched the gate and waited. Several minutes later, Shayo emerged through the pedestrian entrance carrying a black refuse bag.
He wore a faded T shirt, loose shorts and rubber slippers. He looked older than Tomide thought he would be, his shoulders slightly rounded, his hair thinning at the temples.
Just as Shayo crossed towards the collection point at the edge of the pavement, Razor moved. He caught Shayo before he could turn fully, and forced him towards the SUV. Shayo struggled for a moment, his startled protest dying when Razor tightened his grip and pushed him through the rear door, leaving Tomide alone with their captive.
The door slammed shut. Shayo twisted towards the man beside him, breathing hard, ready to protest.
“Hashashin,” Tomide said.
The name stopped Shayo cold. His mouth hung open and he flopped lower in his seat.
“No, man, no,” he whispered.
Tomide said nothing.
“No. That was a long time ago.” Shayo shook his head, speaking faster now. “That was another life. I was young. I was stupid. I don’t have anything to do with those people anymore.”
“Do you remember Moremi Hall?”
Shayo’s face crumpled.
He lowered his eyes and pressed his hands together between his knees. The bravado, such as it was, disappeared. In its place sat a frightened man who seemed suddenly aware of how little the years had changed the consequences of his past.
“Jesus, man! I have a family now. This can’t be happening.”
Tomide felt something tighten beneath his ribs. He had thought of this man for years. He had imagined his face, his voice, the look in his eyes when he finally stood before the man who pulled the trigger of the gun that killed his cousin. He had expected anger, perhaps even a savage satisfaction at seeing him afraid, like he had felt with the others.
Instead, he felt strangely still.
Shayo lifted his head. His eyes were already wet.
“Have you come to kill me?”
Tomide held his gaze.
Shayo swallowed.
“If that is why you brought me here, then do what you have come to do. Please.” His voice broke. “Just take me somewhere else. Don’t do it in front of my house. My wife and my daughter are inside.”
He looked towards the window, beyond which the streetlights reflected faintly against the glass.
“They shouldn’t have to see my body.”
The words hung between them.
Tomide looked away for the first time. Through the windscreen, he could see Razor standing near the bonnet, keeping watch over the quiet street. Seun sat motionless behind the steering wheel.
“I am not here to kill you tonight,” Tomide said, his voice low and controlled. “But you will tell me everything about that day.”
Shayo nodded faintly, still staring at his hands.
“I want to know why Seyi was marked for death.”
Shayo drew a shaky breath.
“We were told we were going for Alápa. They said he had killed some of our people.” He swallowed, then named them quietly. “Skippo, Zeus and Muscle.” He rubbed his palms against his shorts. “We were going to avenge them.”
Tomide watched him in silence.
“But Seyi wasn’t Alápa,” Shayo continued, his voice faltering. “I found out afterwards that Alápa was still alive. We hit the wrong guy.”
Tomide felt something cold move through him.
“Who set him up?”
Shayo shook his head helplessly.
“I don’t know, man. We were just following orders.”
Tomide stared at him, the years of unanswered questions gathering into one terrible possibility.
Alápa was alive. Seyi had been framed.
But by whom?
© Umari Ayim.
2026