“You like it?”
He shrugged and set his cup down.
“It’s a job. It pays the bills.”
There was no bitterness in his voice. Just honest truth.
Ifyoma leaned forward. “What did you want to do before this?”
He paused, then sighed, staring at the rainy street.
“I graduated top of my class. Business administration. Full honors. Scholarships.” He paused again. “I thought I’d get a good job, help my sister through school, maybe even start my own business. But the world doesn’t run on dreams. It runs on who you know, and I didn’t know anybody.”
Ifyoma’s chest tightened. She looked at him—really looked at him—and he added quietly, “I’m not ashamed. I take pride in what I do. It might not be what I dreamed of, but it’s honest work, and it’s mine.”
Ifyoma paused, feeling emotions she had not let herself feel before.
“That’s amazing,” she said softly.
Tunday let out a small laugh.
“Most people don’t think so.”
“Well, I’m not most people,” she replied with a playful half smile.
Then he laughed too—a low, warm sound.
And for the first time in a long while, Ifyoma felt something inside her shift.
A crack in her grief.
Hope, maybe.
She thought perhaps the world still held goodness, hidden in unexpected places, like a tired young man in a simple uniform who was quietly stealing pieces of her heart one kind moment at a time.
The rain outside kept blurring the street, making everything glisten.
Ifyoma looked at her phone.
Dead. No charge.
She had left so quickly that morning—no charger, no plan, no way home.
She felt stranded.
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