THE TEACHER (9)
Hierarchy
There were hierarchies within hierarchies.
The fraternities understood this better than most institutions because they had been built upon the oldest principle of human organization; somebody had to stand above somebody else.
From a distance, the groups appeared almost democratic in their brutality. A brother was a brother. They drank together, swore oaths together, sometimes bled together.
Their names changed from campus to campus, their colours altered, their rituals acquired local variations, but beneath the surface there was always an order.
There were those who gave instructions and those who received them. There were those who knew why something had to be done and those who were told only where to be and when to arrive.
At the summit were the men whose lives rarely intersected with the uglier machinery of the organization. They were students from influential families, sons of politicians, industrialists, senior civil servants and men whose telephone calls could make a problem disappear.
Some were brilliant enough to have been recruited by professors who were themselves old brothers, men who recognized early that intelligence was another form of power.
These brothers did not need to be feared. They were already connected. Below them were the enforcers. The muscle. The men whose reputations travelled ahead of them. They carried the names that made younger brothers lower their voices. But like every rule, there were exceptions because blood lust was not determined by class and often the very privileged ones sometimes submitted themselves to the gore of violence.
Beneath the cream of the crop were the urchins.
The Agberos. The Ụmụ Street. The Dey Well Boys. The Isakaba. The Aboros.
They had no impressive aliases and rarely attended the meetings where important decisions were made. They possessed neither influence nor pedigree. Most would never know the names of the men who used them.
But they knew the streets.
They knew their cities in the intimate, granular way that only people who lived close to their edges could know them.
A boy in Yaba knew which mechanic had repaired a particular Toyota. Another in Bariga knew which compound a man had entered after midnight. Someone in Mushin knew which driver had been taking a particular woman home. Someone else in Surulere knew that the same man had stopped sleeping there.
Information moved through the streets like water.
One urchin told another.
Another told another.
Eventually, somewhere higher up the ladder, a phone rang.
That was the value of people like Razor.
Seun had moved away from Abule Ijesha. But he had kept the room he and Tomide had once shared there. The room was barely worth the rent. A fairly large space with a fan that creaked louder than it supplied air, a mattress that had long ago surrendered its original shape and a wardrobe whose door refused to close properly.
It was not the room they needed.
It was the connection.
Razor.
***************************
Abule Ijesha
8:30 a.m.
It was a bright morning, the kind that promised an ordinary day before the heat and bustle of the city took hold.
Residents hurried about their business, weaving through narrow streets, calling to one another, haggling over prices and disappearing into shops and compounds before the sun climbed too high.
Razor stood with a group of friends beside a gutter, watching a water seller negotiate the uneven road with a wooden wheelbarrow loaded with jerrycans.
The man leaned heavily into the handles, shoulders bunched beneath a faded shirt as he wrestled the overloaded cart over a ridge of broken asphalt. Despite the strain, he managed to hold his phone to his ear.
He spoke rapidly in his native tongue, smiling wanly and nodding as though the person on the other end could see him.
“…Né met kút nǐin, bye bye.”
The unfamiliar syllables reached Razor’s ears. He grinned.
“Ehsss, you! Boboyi! Kilo oruko bobo yi gan? Ehsss you!”
The man recognized him, stopped his cart and hurried over. Razor clasped a hand around his shoulder.
“I don forget dat your name. Try remind me abeg.”
The water seller wiped sweat from his face with a frayed shirt sleeve.
“Jeremiah.”
“Jeremiah. I hear you dey speak one kain language. Where you from?”
“I from Plateau.”
“Oh, so the language na Plateau?”
“No, na Ngas. My language na Ngas.”
Razor turned towards his boys beneath the shade of a battered umbrella.
“Omo, ilu yi yanu gan! Ki lo ń jẹ́ Ngas?”
The boys laughed.
The water seller smiled the resigned smile of a man who had already decided that correcting Razor would accomplish nothing.
Razor turned back to him.
“I dey look all of una for dat side like say una be Hausa. Men! We too plenty for dis country.”
He stretched out his hand.
“We too much!”
The water seller understood.
He reached into his pocket and brought out some notes. Razor accepted them with the solemnity of a government official receiving a statutory allocation.
“Oya, Jeremiah dey go. God go bless your hustle.”
A short horn sounded from the road.
Razor turned. A dark Toyota had slowed beside the curb. Seun lowered the window.
“Razor.”
The change in him was immediate. The grin disappeared. His shoulders straightened. He walked to the vehicle.
“Ah, egbon.”
Seun glanced towards the street before looking back at him.
“How far?”
He gave Razor an address. Razor repeated it.
“No approach am now,” Seun said. “Just update your boys for dat side.”
“Ko si wahala, egbon.”
“I wan know im usual waka. You and your boys, give am close marking. Then report.”
Razor nodded.
He understood that the conversation was over. Seun had his account number. His fee would come any minute.
The Toyota pulled away. Razor stood watching until it disappeared. Then he turned back towards the street.
*******************************
Oshogbo
Years earlier
10 p.m.
Three days after the shooting at Moremi Hall, the brothers gathered at a hotel in the capital.
The hotel was one of those places that had perfected the art of looking expensive without becoming memorable. It featured marble floors, polished brass, thick carpets and an air conditioning system that worked too hard in some rooms and not at all in others.
The meeting was held in a private conference room at the back of the hotel. There were no fraternity colours.
No insignia. Nothing that could be photographed and traced.
But the language was theirs.
“Chairman.”
“Blood.”
“Alápa.”
“Wayfarer.”
Words that meant nothing to an outsider and everything to the men in the room.
They were the best looking young men on their campuses, or close enough to it. Their clothes were expensive without being ostentatious. Their watches were discreet. Their shoes were polished. Several had first class grades.
One had been recruited by a lecturer.
Another’s father sat on the board of a major company. Another’s uncle was a senator.
They looked like the future. That was what made the room unsettling.
The last entrant entered, and conversation diminished.
He did not announce himself. He simply walked in and took a seat. Alápa watched him. The Executioner had always possessed the ability to dominate a room without raising his voice. Fear did most of the work for him.
The only surviving son of an ageing, wealthy miner, Alápa had been born to parents already well into their years, after they had lost two infants before him.
Violence, for him, was a pastime rather than a last resort. His propensity for it shocked even the most hardened men.
But this one was different.
He did not appear to need fear.
That difference irritated Alápa.
The campus number one waited until everyone was seated.
“We are here because of Moremi.”
Nobody needed clarification. The shooting had been an insult. Worse, it had been calculated. The rival group had brought men from several campuses so the trail would scatter once the bullets had been fired.
The shooter had been identified. His name was Hashashin, though in the school records he was simply Shayo Ogunlayo.
The man who had driven the car was Runner. Joshua Fabiyi to the laymen.
Both had disappeared.
“Shayo is off campus,” the number two said.
“Where?”
“Unknown.”
“His father?”
“A Customs officer. Senior.”
The room became quieter.
Everybody understood the implication.
The number one leaned back.
“We cannot touch their number one because of this.”
No one disagreed.
“The brother who was shot was not high ranking,” he continued, “so the response must match the offence.”
Alápa leaned forward.
His eyes settled on the last entrant.
“You.”
The young man returned his stare unflinchingly.
“Flipper?”
No answer.
“Green Reaper?”
Still nothing.
Alápa smiled.
“What should I call you?”
The answer came quietly.
“Call me what you want.”
A few brothers exchanged glances.
Alápa laughed softly.
“I like Green.”
He turned towards the others.
“Green has been quiet since he came.”
The campus number one turned towards the last entrant. The invitation was unmistakable.
He sat forward.
“He wasn’t number one.”
He looked around the room, holding each eye before continuing.
“But he was my brother. My blood.”
His voice remained level.
“And whoever had a hand in his shooting must answer for it.”
A brother who had been quietly observing the exchange nodded. He had always liked the new entrant and had a feeling that he would become the closest of his brothers.
“He is right.”
Alápa looked at Danger, whose other name was Seun. Seun did not retract his support.
The number one broke the tension.
“What do we know?”
The number two opened his file.
“Those guys came from LASU. UNIBEN. Ambrose Alli. Uniport.”
“Names?”
He began reading. The names moved around the table. Some were known.
Some were not.
“First target,” the number one said. “UNIBEN.”
The last entrant rose. His jaw tightened.
“I will go.”
Alápa’s eyes followed him.
“Do you have the mind?”
For a moment, the Executioner and the Green Reaper held one another’s gaze.
Alápa’s power had been built on fear. But something in the young man’s stillness suggested another kind of power.
Not bravado.
Something colder.
His own power.
The mask on the young man’s face shifted almost imperceptibly. A slight furrow appeared between his brows.
“Do you want to check?”
Alápa smiled.
Very slightly.
“Safe journey then.”
*******************************
Park View Estate
Ikoyi
2 p.m.
The mansion was enormous.
Not merely large, but excessive in the manner of buildings designed to communicate wealth before a word was spoken.
The driveway curved through manicured lawns towards a façade of cream stone and dark glass. Inside, marble stretched beneath their feet. A chandelier descended from a ceiling so high that Simi instinctively tilted her head back.
Their client was a young mining magnate with extensive mining fields whose mineral output was contracted almost entirely to Chinese buyers, who paid in hard currency and rarely asked questions about how the concessions had been obtained.
His wealth was largely inherited, and his mansion had the grand, almost theatrical quality of a residence designed to be discussed.
The office wing was separate from the main living quarters. This was where he received visitors on days when he did not go to his office on Victoria Island.
The meeting went smoothly.
Tomide led.
He spoke without notes, moving through the client’s portfolio with the quiet confidence of someone who had spent enough time inside the numbers to understand the business beneath them.
The client listened carefully. At one point he smiled.
“You know your work.”
“That’s what you hired us for.”
The man laughed.
“I like you.”
He turned towards the interns.
“And these beautiful ladies?”
“They’re part of my team.”
“Part of your team?”
He looked amused.
“Ah. You want to put me in trouble with my wife. She will be suspicious if I continue to do business with you people.”
The interns laughed.
The meeting ended with satisfaction on both sides. Then the client made a small gesture. His assistant entered carrying two envelopes and handed one to each intern. Simi’s eyes widened when she felt the thickness.
“Lunch,” the magnate said.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Go and enjoy yourselves.”
The assistant escorted them towards the lobby.
The door closed. Silence settled. The man’s friendliness vanished. He stood. Tomide stood. They clasped hands.
The man’s fingers closed around Tomide’s wrist for a brief second. Their knuckles touched. Palms shifted.
Then the other man released him.
To anyone watching, it was nothing more than an unusual handshake. To them, it was a greeting that belonged to another life.
“It’s been a while.”
The man nodded.
“Green.”
Tomide nodded back.
“Alápa.”
*******************************
Primevistas Advisory
Victoria Island
5 p.m.
Conference Room 1
Sonia had been pretending to work all morning. She had positioned herself deliberately where she could see the entrance to the conference room, though she had no reason to be there.
John had mentioned that Tomide had left the office for a meeting with the interns, and since then she had found herself glancing towards the glass wall far more often than her work required.
She had told herself it was nothing. Still, the thought of Tomide and Simi together had been needling at her for days.
She had thought about their kiss more times than she cared to admit. Not simply the kiss itself, but the feeling that had accompanied it, the relentless attraction that seemed to gather whenever he was near her, demanding some kind of acknowledgment.
She had tried to bury it beneath work, meetings and ordinary distractions.
It refused to stay buried.
Then she saw him.
Tomide appeared around the corner with the two interns, one on either side. He was laughing. Not loudly. Genuinely.
Something inside Sonia tightened.
Simi noticed her.
Their eyes met briefly. Simi gave the faintest roll of her eyes before looking away. Sonia missed it. She was too busy watching Tomide.
He separated from the interns a moment later. Simi said something to him. He smiled. Then she tried to keep him.
“I still need your help with the portfolio.”
“I’ll send you an email.”
“But I thought….”
“Check your inbox in a few minutes.”
He walked away, leaving the interns to continue to their office. Sonia looked down at her papers. She had spent the entire morning pretending to work, and now she could not even pretend convincingly.
A few minutes later, Tomide appeared at the conference room door.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
“What are you working on?”
“The solar account.”
“Everything okay?”
“Yes.”
Her voice was too stiff.
He smiled.
She didn’t.
There was something unsettling about the way he looked at her then, as though he could see past her composure she had carefully arranged and straight into the thoughts she was trying to hide.
She looked down.
He turned towards the door.
“Tomide.”
He stopped.
She took a breath.
“Are you dating Simi?”
He looked at her for several seconds.
“No.”
Then he left.
Sonia remained still. She hated how much that one word relieved her.
For a while she stared at the papers without seeing them. She knew what she was about to do.
That was what made it worse.
It was reckless.
Drastic.
The sort of thing she would normally have considered, rejected and wondered what had possessed anyone else to contemplate.
But wanting had been building for days.
Now, with the simple certainty of his answer, the restraint she had been congratulating herself for seemed suddenly thin.
Her phone lay on the table. She picked it up. Stared at the blank screen and then typed. She knew she should stop.
She knew exactly how far beyond prudence she was about to step.
She closed her eyes.
Then sent the message.
**********************************
Keffi Street
Ikoyi, Lagos
7 p.m.
The bell chimed. Sonia froze.
She had been standing before the mirror, making one final adjustment to her hair. The sound sent a strange flutter through her stomach.
She thought back to the message she had sent earlier. She had agonized over it. Tomide’s reply had come almost immediately.
Sure. What time?
She looked at herself one last time.
She had gone to the spa after work. The waxing had been overdue.
The manicure had been overdue. Everything was overdue.
It had absolutely nothing to do with Tomide.
At least that was what she had told herself.
She wore a simple dress that she had changed twice before settling on. Nothing too revealing.
Nothing that looked as though she had tried too hard.
Except she had. She knew she had.
The bell chimed again. She opened the door. Tomide stood there in light cream shirt, quiet expression and the same controlled presence that seemed to follow him everywhere.
His eyes moved over her. Only briefly. But she noticed.
“Hi. You look nice.”
She smiled.
“Thank you.
He stepped inside. The lights were low enough to soften the edges of the room without making it feel dark. They sat and talked about work.
The conversation was deliberately ordinary. Then she brought dinner out.
The rice, stew and porridge had been ordered from a chef whose reputation had become something of a cult on social media.
They talked about the day’s meeting.
“How did it go?” Sonia asked.
Tomide leaned back slightly.
“Better than expected. The projected returns are strong if the expansion stays within the current cost assumptions. The Chinese contracts give him a fairly predictable revenue base, and if the next phase of extraction comes online when projected, the investment could outperform the initial forecast.”
Sonia listened.
Or tried to.
He continued, moving through projected yield, capital expenditure and expected returns.
But somewhere between one figure and the next, she stopped hearing the words.
Her eyes had drifted to his face. Then his mouth. She remembered those lips against hers. The memory arrived without warning. The warmth of him.
The pressure of his mouth. The way that first kiss had changed the air between them.
She blinked.
Tomide was still speaking. Something about the investment horizon. She realized she had stopped listening altogether.
He stopped.
“I don’t think you are paying attention.”
She blinked again.
“Oh. Yeah. Sorry.”
His mouth curved slightly.
“It’s fine. You seem to have a lot on your mind.”
She reached for her glass.
“Yeah.”
She put it down.
The silence between them changed to something fragile and electric. She looked around the apartment.
“Would you like to see the rest of the apartment?”
His eyes remained on hers.
“Sure.”
She stood.
He followed.
The apartment was not large, but it was elegant and carefully arranged. She showed him the study, the guest room and finally the balcony overlooking the lights of Ikoyi.
She kept talking as she walked ahead. She did not see him slowly appraise her figure. Then she stepped backwards and found herself against him.
She turned.
There was very little space between them.
“Oh, erm…sorry.”
His eyes narrowed slightly as he watched her. Then he reached between them and took her hand. Their fingers linked slowly.
She looked down at their joined hands, then back at him.
The silence deepened.
His hand came gently to her waist. For a moment they simply looked at each other.
Then he kissed her.
The first touch was soft. Almost tentative. As though he was giving her one final opportunity to change her mind.
She didn’t.
She leaned into him.
His arms tightened around her, and the kiss deepened, unhurried yet certain. He was restrained in speech, almost sparing with words, but his kiss spoke in a language that left little room for doubt. Tender at first, then warmer, more assured, until the air seemed to disappear between them.
All the tension she had carried for days seemed to dissolve at once. There was no awkwardness now. No uncertainty.
Only the unmistakable recognition of two people who had wanted this long before either had been willing to admit it.
They moved together towards the bedroom, still kissing, his hands steady at her waist as the city lights of Ikoyi glowed beyond the windows, indifferent to the choices being made inside.
The door closed behind them.
In the soft half-light, he undressed her with unhurried care. She answered in kind, pushing the dark shirt from his shoulders, her palms moving over the warm planes of his chest.
When they stood before each other, the air between them felt charged. Almost sacred. He drew her down onto the bed and kissed her again.
This time there was less hesitation. She moved closer, her body instinctively finding his, and his hands settled at her waist and back, holding her with a quiet strength that contrasted with the restraint he carried everywhere else.
Their mouths met again and again.
She kissed him harder, fingers slipping into his hair, while he held her close. The intensity that had been gathering between them for weeks finally had somewhere to go.
For a while there were no words.
Only breath.
Touch.
The quiet sounds of two people discovering what they had spent so long trying not to acknowledge.
When the room finally became still again, Sonia remained close to him, her forehead resting against his shoulder.
She listened to his breathing gradually settle.
For several minutes neither spoke.
She should have been thinking about consequences. She thought about work, about boundaries, and about what would happen when they saw each other again at the office.
Instead, all she could think about was how easily she had crossed the line she had spent days pretending not to see.
And how little she regretted it.
Eventually embarrassment crept in.
She asked if he could turn around.
When he did, Sonia slipped into the bathroom and closed the door.
She stared at herself in the mirror.
Her hair was disordered. Her carefully constructed composure was gone. She looked like a woman who had forgotten, for one night, every rule she had spent years constructing around herself.
“Oh, God.”
She pressed both hands against the sink. They were colleagues.
They were supposed to be sensible. Professional. Controlled. And yet the worst part was how much she had enjoyed losing control.
She closed her eyes.
If there was going to be anything between them now, she could not begin it with a lie.
When she returned, Tomide was still there.
He stood.
“I’ll use the bathroom.”
He disappeared inside. Sonia sat on the edge of the bed and waited.
When he returned, she looked at him.
“I have a confession.”
He slipped into his clothes and sat down beside her.
“Okay.”
“I’ve been looking into your past, checking out your school years…”
His eyes remained on hers.
“Why?”
“Because I thought you were a cultist.”
The silence that followed seemed longer than it was.
She continued.
“I met a woman through Facebook. Your ex.”
His face gave nothing away.
“I asked questions. I wanted to know who you were.”
She looked down.
“I thought you had been involved in something terrible at Ife.”
He remained silent.
“I could never be with a man with blood on his hands,” she said quietly.
Then she looked at him.
“I am glad I was wrong.”
Tomide smiled.
It was a small smile.
Almost private.
He took her hand.
“I’m glad too.”
They said nothing after that.
********************************
Sinari Daranijo Street
Victoria Island, Lagos
3 a.m.
It was Creator’s time.
That narrow seam between three and five, when the night had spent the last of its darkness but the day had not yet found its voice.
An hour belonging to neither world.
An unmarked passage between what had been and what was still becoming.
In that thin interval, the veil was said to loosen. Things without bodies could draw near to those that carried them, and what had long remained hidden might, for a single breath, show its face.
Lagos lay beneath it, unnaturally hushed. The city never truly slept, yet at this hour even its restlessness seemed to withdraw underground, as though the streets themselves had decided to listen.
Somewhere beyond the apartment block, a generator murmured, a low mechanical heartbeat. A motorcycle roared along an empty road. Its headlights washed the ceiling in a brief, pale arc before disappearing.
Then silence returned.
Deep.
Almost sentient.
Hours had passed since Tomide returned from Sonia’s apartment.
He had carried the evening home with him: the warmth of her skin, the words they had spoken, and the heavier silence of those they had left unsaid.
He had tried to put the memory aside.
Eventually exhaustion accomplished what willpower could not.
Now he stirred.
He was dreaming.
At first there was no place. Only darkness. Not the darkness of a closed room, but something older and absolute, a vastness without distance, without floor or ceiling, where nothing had yet taken form.
Then the Teacher appeared.
He was suspended above Tomide. Not falling. Not floating. Simply present.
As though the air itself had decided to hold him. His robes hung perfectly still.
His face was turned downward. His eyes fixed upon Tomide with an intensity that stripped him bare beneath his own skin.
The Teacher was not looking at him. He was looking into him. Tomide tried to move and discovered he could not.
He tried to speak, but no voice came.
Then the Teacher opened his mouth.
The voice that emerged was Tomide’s own.
When you see your likeness, you rejoice. Now you will see your images which came into being before you, and which neither die nor become manifest. How much will you bear?
The words did not travel towards him.
They entered him. They settled in the marrow. The Teacher gazed deeper still.
That which neither dies nor is born is you, and you, and he, and all men. How much you will bear!
Tomide woke as though struck.
He drew a sharp breath and lay motionless, heart hammering against his ribs. The darkness contracted to its proper dimensions.
His apartment. The familiar bed beneath him. The ceiling above.
The soft breath of the air conditioner.
He stared into the dark. Without warning, his mind carried him backward.
University of Benin.
The trip to Upper Sakponba.
The first man.
He remembered the precise moment when vengeance ceased to be an idea and became an irreversible act. That was the night Tomide first understood that certain lines are crossed only once.
Afterwards, no amount of washing can restore the man who stood on the other side. He had believed then that the worst part would be the doing.
He had been wrong.
It was the remembering.
The memory moved through him now with the terrible clarity of something that had never truly left.
The Teacher’s question returned.
How much will you bear?
Tomide closed his eyes.
He saw Seyi.
Not the dead Seyi of memory. The boy before everything fractured. His cousin laughing.
Alive.
Still untouched by the violence that would rearrange all their lives.
Tomide opened his eyes.
For years he had carried what happened on Upper Sakponba. He had carried the first man. He had carried every man after him. He had carried the silence.
He had carried Seyi.
And now other burdens waited.
The last two.
His jaw tightened.
For the first time, the question no longer evoked feeling in him. It sounded almost like recognition.
Tomide drew a slow, deliberate breath.
“I have borne.”
He paused.
The darkness seemed to lean closer, listening.
“I will bear.”
Outside the window, somewhere beyond the last darkness of night, the first bird began to sing.
And morning came.
© Umari Ayim.
2026