Chapter 40: The Girl Who Believed Too Easily
The scent of eucalyptus was sharp and clean, cutting through the thinner air of the Entoto hills. Morning light filtered through the tall trees in Entoto Park, dappling the walking paths where early joggers moved like ghosts in the mist. Liyat Abebe sat on a low stone wall beside the path, a small backpack at her feet, carefully sorting through a folder of children’s drawings. She hummed a little, a soft, tuneless sound, her head bowed. The pictures were bright, chaotic splashes of crayon—families with oversized hands, houses with smiling suns. They made her smile, a genuine, unguarded expression that smoothed the worry from her brow and made her look closer to sixteen than twenty.
A shadow fell across the paper in her lap.
She looked up, blinking. A man stood there, dressed in simple, well-cut clothes, his hands relaxed at his sides. He wasn’t looking at the view. He was looking directly at her.
“Oh!” she said, her voice automatically friendly. “Good morning. Are you lost? The main lookout is just up that way, the path curves…” She pointed helpfully, her smile still in place.
“I’m not lost, Liyat,” Zoruk said. His voice was calm, pleasant. “I was looking for you.”
Her smile faltered, replaced by polite confusion. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “For me? Do I… know you?”
“Not yet. My name is Zoruk. I’m here because you believe people are good too easily.”
A nervous laugh escaped her, light and brittle. “That’s a strange thing to say to someone. Is that a bad thing? I think someone has to believe in people. Otherwise, what’s the point?”
“It’s a question of cost,” he said, and without waiting for an invitation, he sat on the wall a respectful distance away, gazing out at the city below, a hazy sprawl emerging from the morning mist. “You believed in Yafet Zelalem’s love. You believed in Kofi Amare’s flirtation. You believed in Arsemma Negasi’s help. Were they all the same kind of good?”
The names landed in the peaceful clearing like stones. Liyat’s fingers tightened on the drawings, wrinkling a yellow sun. She looked down, arranging her face. “Yafet… Yafet is very kind. And serious. His feelings are… big. He wanted everything to be perfect.”
“And that felt like love to you? The perfection?”
“It felt like he cared a lot,” she said, her voice smaller. “It was a lot of pressure, but I thought that was my fault. That I wasn’t… good enough at receiving it.”
“And Kofi?”
A different, more complicated flicker crossed her face—a faint blush, a hint of a smile she tried to suppress. “Kofi was different. He was fun. He talked to me like I was… a woman, you know? Not a girl. He made me feel pretty. Grown-up. It was exciting.”
“But not serious.”
“I don’t know,” she admitted, folding a corner of the paper. “I hoped he was just being nice. He has that way, you know? He makes everyone feel a little special.”
“And Arsemma?”
“Arsemma always sounded like she knew what everyone needed,” Liyat said, relief in her voice at describing someone else’s certainty. “She had advice for everything. How to talk to Yafet, how to understand Kofi. She said she was helping everything be honest.”
Zoruk turned his head to look at her fully. The morning light caught in his eyes, making them seem very still. “What did you need, Liyat?”
The question seemed to startle her. She opened her mouth, then closed it. She looked at the drawings, at the mist, anywhere but at him. “I… I wanted everyone to be okay. I wanted Yafet to not be so sad and intense. I wanted Kofi to… to maybe actually like me, not just the game. I wanted Arsemma to be right, so everything would fix itself.” She swallowed. “I wanted everyone to stop being angry with each other. And… I wanted them all to still like me.”
“Wanting to be liked is not the same as being safe,” Zoruk said, his tone gentle, almost therapeutic.
“I was safe!” she insisted, but it sounded like a plea. “No one would have hurt me. Yafet would never. Kofi was just playing. And Arsemma was trying to help. I never meant for anyone else to get hurt. Bila…” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I never meant for Bila Emerta to get blamed. Or for Kaleb Ayene to get all loud and make it worse trying to defend people. It all just… happened. Everyone misunderstood each other.”
“Sometimes,” Zoruk replied, his words measured, “people understand each other perfectly. And they still choose what benefits them. Yafet needed a grand gesture to validate his passion. Kofi needed the thrill of provocation, of being the dangerous alternative. Arsemma needed the chaos to prove her own indispensability as the guide. They understood your need to be liked, your fear of disappointing them. They used it.”
Liyat stared at him. The childish hope in her eyes was being replaced by a slow, chilling clarity. This was more frightening than any accusation. An accusation could be denied. This was a description of a machine she had been inside, feeding with her smiles. “That’s… cruel,” she whispered.
“It’s ordinary,” he corrected softly. “Did you know Yafet was planning that public declaration?”
She looked down at her hands. “I… suspected. He was so nervous, and he kept talking about the event being ‘memorable.’ He bought a new suit.”
“And you said nothing.”
“I smiled!” she said, the memory bringing a flush of shame to her cheeks. “I smiled and told him it would be great. I didn’t want to disappoint him. I didn’t want to ruin his perfect thing.”
“And Kofi? Did you know he enjoyed the jealousy he caused? That part of his attention to you was because it bothered Yafet, and maybe even Arsemma?”
Her lips trembled. “I hoped he was just being nice. I chose to believe that.”
Zoruk nodded, as if she had finally stated a fundamental truth. “Innocence is a choice, Liyat. A sustained, deliberate avoidance of evidence. Lord Olmer Larothus values emotional influence. He understands its power. But innocence without awareness isn’t purity. It’s an open door. It invites in exactly the people who know how to walk through it.”
A breeze stirred the eucalyptus leaves, carrying the sound of distant laughter from further down the path. Liyat slowly gathered the children’s drawings, stacking them neatly, aligning the corners with excessive care. The simple, joyful chaos of the crayon lines seemed to belong to another world.
“What do you want from me?” she asked, not looking up.
“Nothing you aren’t already giving,” Zoruk said, standing. “Just a conversation. A moment of clarity. The Dominion Challenge is built on influences far less gentle than misplaced flirtations and staged declarations. The currency there is desire, fear, ambition, and survival. Your kindness is a strength. But if it remains a blindfold, it will be the thing that gets you consumed.”
He began to walk away, back down the path toward the city haze.
“Wait,” she called out, her voice still soft but no longer naive. “Do you think… I’m a bad person? For wanting them to like me?”
He paused, glancing back. The morning sun was behind him, outlining his form. “No. I think you are a person who hasn’t yet learned that being good and being safe require different skills. One is about the heart. The other is about the eyes.”
He disappeared into the shifting light and shadow of the trees.
Liyat sat on the wall for a long time, the folder of drawings heavy on her lap. The city below was fully visible now, a vast and complicated organism. She still felt warm, and she still wanted to believe in the goodness of people. But for the first time, the warmth was internal, a small, guarded flame, not a sun she let everyone else use for their own light. She traced the crayon outline of a smiling sun on the top drawing. The child’s hand had pressed so hard the paper was indented. It was a beautiful, forceful, simple truth. She wondered what the child would think of the story behind Yafet’s new suit, or Kofi’s charming laugh, or Arsemma’s knowing advice. She carefully closed the folder.
The mist had burned away entirely. The day was clear, and somehow, colder.
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Tomoca Coffee, Addis Ababa. March afternoon, after Zoruk’s meeting with Liyat Abebe.
The rich, dark aroma of roasting beans hit Zoruk the moment he pushed open the door to Tomoca Coffee. The air was thick with it, a comforting, caffeinated warmth that wrapped around the chatter of students, the clatter of cups, the hiss of the espresso machine. Sunlight cut through the front window, illuminating dust motes and the quick, familiar movements of people claiming their tiny cups of strong, black coffee. He spotted Kaleb Ayene immediately at a small corner table, the man’s broad smile visible from across the room, already waving as if they were old friends.
“Zoruk! Over here, brother!” Kaleb’s voice boomed over the din, too loud, too eager. He half-stood, gesturing to the empty chair. “I got us a spot. You want a macchiato? Baklava? My treat, absolutely.”
Zoruk slid into the chair, giving a small, polite smile. “Thank you, but I’m fine.”
“No, no, you have to try it, this is the best coffee in Addis,” Kaleb insisted, already signaling a waiter. “Two macchiatos, please! And maybe some bread.” He turned back, his energy filling the space between them. “So. You found me. I heard you were talking to people. Yafet, then Liyat up on Entoto, yes? If this is about TDC Season 5, let me tell you, I am ready. To help, to compete, to donate, to organize—you need something carried, I will carry it.” He laughed, a hearty, unselfconscious sound that turned a few heads. “Whatever you need.”
“Generosity is a useful quality,” Zoruk began, his voice a calm counterpoint to Kaleb’s boom. “But only when it doesn’t turn other people into proof of your goodness.”
Kaleb’s smile froze, then twitched. The waiter set down two small cups of coffee. Kaleb pushed one toward Zoruk, the gesture suddenly awkward. “I… what does that mean? Proof? I just like to help. It’s how I am.”
“It’s how you are seen,” Zoruk corrected gently, ignoring the coffee. He let the sounds of the café swirl around them for a moment. “Take Bila Emerta. During the Addis Hearts leak scandal. You defended her publicly, correct?”
“Of course I did!” Kaleb leaned forward, his expression shifting to one of righteous concern. “They were blaming her! That quiet girl, always so careful. It was unfair. Everyone was so caught up in Yafet’s romantic drama and Kofi’s careless flirting with Liyat, and Arsemma interfering in everyone’s business like she owned the truth. Someone had to speak up for Bila.”
“And how did you speak up for her?” Zoruk asked, his gaze steady.
“I told them the truth!” Kaleb’s voice rose again, drawing another glance. He lowered it to a forceful whisper. “I explained her situation. Her family struggles, her bad luck, how she’s always trying to stay out of the way. I said she was probably just panicked, that she depended on that work, that she wouldn’t have leaked anything on purpose. I made them see she was a victim, not some plotter.”
Zoruk took a slow breath, as if tasting the coffee-scented air. “You defended her by explaining her poverty, her dependence, her panic. In front of everyone who already saw her as small. You made her weakness her shield.”
Kaleb stared. The friendly confidence in his eyes flickered, replaced by confusion, then a defensive heat. “I was trying to protect her! I was on her side. No one else was.”
“Were you?” Zoruk’s question was soft, almost curious. “Or were you demonstrating that you were the one on her side? That you, Kaleb Ayene, were the good man in the room? You listed her vulnerabilities like evidence in her defense, but you presented them to the jury. You didn’t ask her what she needed. You announced what she was.”
“That’s not…” Kaleb’s words faltered. He looked down at his coffee, then back up, his brow furrowed. “She never lets anyone help her properly. She’s too proud, or too scared. Someone had to step in.”
“Help that humiliates is often just control with a softer voice,” Zoruk said.
Kaleb opened his mouth, a joke clearly on his tongue—a deflection, a loud denial. But no sound came out. The joke died. His shoulders slumped a fraction. “I never meant to make her feel… owned,” he said, the word foreign and ugly in his mouth.
“But you did. Your defense made her smaller. It framed her as a charity case, not a person with agency. It gave the others a reason to pity her, or worse, to dismiss her as a non-threat. A casualty.” Zoruk leaned forward slightly. “Tell me, Kaleb. If you had to choose between being loyal and allowing someone to keep their dignity, which would you pick? If proving you are a good person required exposing someone else’s private shame, would you do it?”
“No,” Kaleb said, too quickly. The word echoed between them. He swallowed, his eyes darting around the busy café as if looking for a friendly face, finding none. He looked back at Zoruk, his expression raw. “I… I might. If I thought it would save them from something worse. Yes. I think I might.”
The admission hung in the air, deflating him. The generous, loud, tactless man seemed to shrink into his chair. The noise of the café—the laughter, the gossip, the clinking cups—felt suddenly far away.
“Lord Olmer Larothus values generosity,” Zoruk said finally, his tone not unkind. “He understands its strategic power. Community is built on it. But The Dominion Challenge will expose whether your kindness can function without an audience. Whether it can survive without the applause, the recognition, the tangible proof that you, Kaleb Ayene, are the dependable one.”
Zoruk stood, placing a few bills on the table for the untouched coffee. He looked down at Kaleb, who was still staring at the wood grain of the tabletop. “The desire to help is not the flaw. The need to be seen helping is.”
He walked out, leaving Kaleb sitting amidst the lively, aromatic chaos of the coffee shop. Kaleb didn’t call after him. He slowly wrapped his large hands around his tiny coffee cup, but didn’t lift it. His face, usually so open and ready, was closed in thought, a new and uncomfortable weight settling behind his eyes. He was still warm. He was still eager to help. But the foundation of that eagerness, the simple certainty that his goodness was an unquestionable force for good, had developed a hairline fracture. He wondered, with a sickening lurch, if Bila had felt this same crack forming every time his loud, clumsy protection had landed on her like a hand that meant to lift but only pressed down.