Tsabinu.
He stepped out, wearing the same startled look.
What a mess.
The first time we’d all been in the same place, together again, after ten years.
My gaze darted behind Zeraiah and Tsabinu, wary and uneasy.
The four of us stood frozen, like the world moving while we didn’t. Until at last, a short laugh broke the silence.
“Huh…” Zeraiah muttered. “This feels like the old times.”
21
Tshabina
There was a saying: “memories are dead treasures, untouched by time.” Even when I wanted to erase them, and those memories had become thorns binding me tight, I could not wipe them away.
I pressed my lips together, and even when the pain began to bloom, I couldn’t make myself stop. Seeing Zioh’s actions earlier, my mind drifted in every direction.
It felt as though he swung between the cruel Grinch and back to the sweet Santa form when the guilt struck. It forced me to wonder—how? How did he shift like that?
But one thing was clear to me now: Zioh’s mood swings were intense, almost alarming, ever since he had come back from the UK.
Being with him was like reading a book in a foreign language. I’d never been able to understand because he never translated it for me.
Then I remembered.
Where we stand now… it was no longer my problem.
I should have stopped caring long ago. Not because my heart chose to, but because his did.
Meeting them again—the people who once lived in the same air as me. Yet instead of joy, instead of warmth, we stood there, frozen.
I stared at them, waiting for a spark, a flinch, a sign of life to stir in my chest. But there was only a hollow silence. These past weeks or maybe years, too many sharp things were lodged in my heart; now it was besieged and pierced from every direction, the pain no longer strange to me.
I kept thinking, if we were ordinary people, maybe we’d be hugging now, asking after each other’s lives, laughing over the past, over how incredible our memories had been.
But instead, silence.
I looked at Zeraiah. He had changed. Taller, his pale skin now sun-touched like his brother’s, his waist was slim, and his shoulders and back were broader. His wavy dark-blond hair and emerald-green eyes were the only things unchanged.
Proportioned perfectly, balanced like a model sculpted with care.
Yes. He was a model now.
The Zeraiah who had once fought so hard, so determined to join his dad’s company, was gone. I was surprised because compared to his two brothers, he’d been the only one who had fervently wanted to carry on his dad’s legacy.
I noticed Zeraiah hadn’t stopped looking at me. Then his gaze shifted to Tsabinu, then to Zioh. I wanted so much to speak, to greet him. But before I could, a door opened behind Tsabinu.
Uncle Bakti.
All at once, the three men around me went rigid.
Uncle Bakti stopped, eyes widened at the sight of us. Then his face softened, breaking into a warm smile. “Well, what a coincidence,” he drawled. His eyes scanned us one by one.
I glanced at the three men beside me, their eyes locked on Uncle Bakti. Each gaze wasn’t the same, but together they made the air thick.
