Chapter 41: The Girl Blamed by Bad Luck
The morning sun washed over Shiro Meda in a clear, high-altitude light, sharpening every color. The textile market was a river of fabric: bolts of white cotton shemma piled like snowfall, rainbows of woven baskets, walls hung with embroidered dresses in electric greens and crimsons. The air smelled of dust, dye, and hot iron from the pressing stations. Voices layered—vendors calling prices, the whisper-scissors of tailors, the murmur of negotiations.
Bila Emerta sat on a low stool behind a small stall, a half-finished costume draped across her lap. Her fingers moved with a precise, economical grace, pulling a silver thread through the edge of a ceremonial collar. She worked with her head slightly bowed, her shoulders curved inward, as if trying to occupy less space than she already did. A basket of threads sat beside her, organized by color in a spectrum of patience.
A shadow fell across her work. She didn’t look up immediately, assuming it was a customer. “It will be ready tomorrow,” she said softly, her voice barely audible over the market hum.
“Your work is very fine.”
The voice was unfamiliar, calm, and not asking about price. She looked up, her needle pausing. The man standing before her stall looked like a foreign visitor—well-dressed but not flashy, his expression one of polite interest. Yet his eyes held a stillness that felt out of place in the bustling, transactional energy of the market.
“Thank you,” she said, glancing down again, a faint flush on her cheeks. Attention made her nervous.
“Bila Emerta,” Zoruk said. It wasn’t a question.
Her fingers tightened on the needle. She gave a small, wary nod.
“May I?” He gestured to an empty crate beside her stall. She nodded again, a quick, reflexive motion. He sat, folding his hands in his lap, watching the market flow for a moment. “Unlucky people are often blamed for disasters,” he said, as if commenting on the weather. “They are easier to place at the center of a story than the powerful. A convenient source of fault. The fabric snags, and everyone points at the single loose thread.”
Bila kept her eyes on the silver thread. “I am used to it.”
“Are you?” He turned his head to look at her directly. “Or do you just stop fighting the narrative once it starts? The leaked audio from Addis Hearts, for example. You were blamed.”
Her posture went rigid. The needle slipped, pricking her finger. A tiny bead of blood welled up. She didn’t seem to notice. “I did not create that scandal. I did not record anyone. I did not leak anything.”
“I didn’t ask if you created it,” Zoruk replied, his tone unchanged. “I asked when you realized it could not be stopped.”
She was silent for a long time, sucking the tiny puncture on her finger. The market swirled around them—a woman laughing, a child chasing a chicken, the tinny radio music from a spice vendor’s stall.
“I heard part of it before everyone else did,” she finally said, the words leaving her like a confession squeezed from a stone. “It was on the shared drive for the event crew. A mislabeled file. I opened it by mistake.”
“And you listened.”
“It was Yafet,” she whispered. “Talking to Arsemma. His voice was… strained. He was asking if Liyat would say yes during his planned declaration at the museum event. He was listing the steps, the timing of the music, the angle of the cameras. He said it had to be perfect, because his love was perfect. And Arsemma…” Bila’s lips pressed thin. “Arsemma was agreeing, but in that way she has. Like she was directing him. Making his perfect moment her production.”
“You knew about Yafet’s feelings for Liyat,” Zoruk prompted.
“Everyone knew. It was a beautiful, heavy thing he carried everywhere. It took up all the air in the room. And Liyat… she just smiled, trying to hold the weight of it. Trying to be worthy.” Bila picked up a pair of small shears, turning them over in her hands. “And Kofi would just lean in and make a joke, flirt with her right in front of Yafet, just to watch him stiffen. It was a game to him. Emotions were a game.”
“And Kaleb Ayene?”
A different kind of tension entered her shoulders. “Kaleb… would see me watching it all. He’d come over afterwards. He’d say, ‘Don’t worry, Bila, I’ll talk to them.’ Or, ‘That’s not fair to you, I’ll fix it.’” She mimicked his booming, friendly tone poorly, it falling flat in her quiet voice. “He tried to protect me. By telling everyone how hard my life was, how I couldn’t afford to lose the work, how I was too quiet to defend myself. He made me sound like a charity case. Every time he defended me, I felt smaller. More visible in the worst way.”
“So you had the audio. You knew the truth of Yafet’s manufactured moment, Arsemma’s direction, the tensions. And you hesitated.”
“I was hurt,” she admitted, the words cracking slightly. “And confused. And tired. Tired of watching Yafet build this perfect romantic scene for Liyat while I was just part of the scenery, stitching his costumes. Tired of Kofi playing with people. Tired of Arsemma ‘helping’ until everyone was exactly where she wanted them, tangled in her script. Tired of Kaleb’s protection that felt like another form of being erased.” She took a shaky breath. “For a day, I just… left the file there. I told myself I would figure out what to do. Who to tell. But I didn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because for one second,” she said, looking at him now, her dark eyes glistening with unshed tears, “I wanted the truth to hurt them. Just a little. I wanted Yafet’s perfect plan to fray. I wanted Arsemma to lose control of the narrative. I wanted Kofi to face something he couldn’t laugh off. I wanted Kaleb to see that his loud help couldn’t fix a real, messy problem.” The tears didn’t fall. They just pooled, making her vision liquid. “It was a small, mean thought. And then it passed. But by then, someone else had found the file. And it was everywhere. And everything became so much bigger than that one second.”
The confession hung in the air between them, as real and tangible as the bolts of fabric surrounding them. The vendor next door began calling out a price for kuta dresses, his voice a rhythmic chant.
“Lord Olmer Larothus values quiet observers,” Zoruk said after a moment. “He understands that those who watch see the seams of power. But The Dominion Challenge does not protect people who wait for disaster to name them. It will name you anyway, but the name will be ‘victim,’ or ‘liability,’ or ‘pawn.’ Your bad luck may be real, Bila. But your silence is a choice.”
Bila looked down at the beautiful, half-finished costume in her hands. The silver thread shimmered, a path of potential beauty trapped in the stiff fabric. She smoothed a wrinkle with her thumb, her touch gentle.
“I am tired,” she said, so quietly he almost didn’t hear it over the market, “of being the accident in other people’s stories. The thing that went wrong. The loose thread that made the whole garment unravel.”
Zoruk stood. He placed a card on the edge of her worktable, next to the basket of threads. It was simple, with a single, unfamiliar symbol.
“Then stop waiting for the accident,” he said. “Design the garment.”
He walked away, dissolving into the crowd of shoppers and sellers. Bila did not watch him go. She looked at the card, then at her own hands—capable, careful, stained with faint marks from dye and needle-pricks. She picked up her shears again. This time, her grip was firm. The confession was out. The secret shame of her hesitation, her momentary desire to see the beautiful, painful tapestry burn, was no longer a ghost haunting her silence.
It was just a truth. And truth, she was beginning to understand, could be a kind of thread too. You could use it to mend, or to bind, or to cut everything apart and start again.
She returned to her stitching, the silver line growing steadily under her fingers, no longer just following a pattern, but defining one.
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A private gym in Bole, Addis Ababa. March evening, after Zoruk’s meeting with Bila Emerta.
The air in the private gym was thick with the smell of rubber, stale sweat, and lemon disinfectant. Strip lights flickered faintly overhead, reflecting in the vast mirrors that made the room of silent weights and hanging bags feel both infinite and claustrophobic. Distant traffic hum filtered through the high windows, a bass note to the occasional clang of a loose cable Kofi Amare had left swinging.
He was shirtless, a towel draped over his neck, his ebony skin sheened with a cool-down glow. He leaned in the open terrace doorway, the warm evening air swirling the smoke from his cigarette out into the Addis night. He watched Zoruk enter with a lazy, appraising smile. “You picked the right place if you wanted to see the strongest candidate first,” Kofi said, his voice a smooth baritone edged with playful arrogance. He took a drag, the ember flaring. “Saves you the trouble of working through the weak ones.”
Zoruk stopped near a heavy bag, giving it a slight push with his fingertips. It swung silently. “Physical strength is rarely the problem,” he said, his eyes meeting Kofi’s in the mirror. “The issue is usually with men who perform it for an audience.”
Kofi laughed, a rich, unfiltered sound that filled the empty space. He turned, leaning his shoulder against the doorframe, muscles coiling with relaxed grace. “People like me because I don’t pretend to be innocent. I see something I want, I go for it. No hidden speeches, no secret plans.” He shrugged. “It’s refreshing.”
“Did Liyat Abebe find it refreshing?” Zoruk asked, his tone unchanged. “When you went for her during Addis Hearts? Did she understand the lack of pretense, or did she just see a handsome man giving her the attention Yafet Zelalem made feel like a religious obligation?”
Kofi’s smile sharpened, his dark eyes glinting. He flicked ash outside. “Liyat is sweet. But everyone treats her like she’s made of glass. Yafet with his perfect love symphony, Arsemma with her constant guidance. I just talked to her like a person. Made her laugh. Made her feel… alive for a minute. Is that a crime?”
“Vulnerable people often mistake careless attention for care,” Zoruk replied. “They inventory every glance, every compliment, and build a shelter out of it. You knew that.”
“I didn’t force her to build anything.” Kofi’s defensiveness surfaced, quick and hot beneath the chill. He pushed off the doorframe and stubbed his cigarette out on the concrete sill. “Yafet was the one trying to turn a crush into a public ceremony. Arsemma was the one pushing everyone around like pieces on her wedding planner’s board. I was just… existing in the room. My existence bothered them. That’s their problem.”
Zoruk watched him pace toward a weight rack, his movements fluid, a predator in a cage of his own making. “So you flirted with Liyat because you wanted her? Or because you enjoyed irritating Yafet and punishing Arsemma for thinking she could fix men like you?”
Kofi stopped, his back to Zoruk. The distant sound of a car horn blared. He turned slowly, the amused mask still on but tighter at the edges. “Arsemma has this look,” he said, the word ‘look’ dripping with old history. “Like she can see the broken parts in you and has the glue. She tried that with me, once upon a time. Maybe I wanted to remind her that some pieces aren’t meant to fit back together.”
“And the collateral damage?” Zoruk prompted. “Bila Emerta, who heard the private tensions you helped amplify and hesitated with a leaked audio file? Kaleb Ayene, whose ham-fisted defense of her only made her humiliation more public? Your carelessness gave everyone else a catalyst. A reason to react, to overreact, to break.”
“I didn’t leak anything!” Kofi’s voice rose, echoing off the mirrors. He ran a hand over his dreadlocks, the first real crack in the calm. “I didn’t tell Bila to snoop through files. I didn’t tell Kaleb to play the shouting hero. I just flirted with a pretty girl who was smiling back. You can’t load all that other drama on me.”
Zoruk took a single step forward, the movement minimal but shifting the energy in the room. “A man doesn’t need to light the match himself if he enjoys throwing them into dry grass where children are playing. He can watch the blaze from a distance and call it entertainment. He can tell himself he’s not responsible for the wind.”
Kofi went very still. The anger was there now, a live wire beneath his skin, making the tattoo on his shoulder seem to twitch. He stared at Zoruk, the charming seducer gone, replaced by something more raw and assessed. “What does your Lord Olmer Larothus want?” he finally asked, his voice lower. “Saints? Because you won’t find one here.”
“No,” Zoruk said, a faint, almost imperceptible smile touching his lips. “He wants people who can survive immense pressure. But survival requires recognizing the weight of your own actions. It requires stopping the fantasy that every wound you cause is just the weakness of the person you cut.”
The gym’s neon sign outside buzzed, casting a blue pulse across Kofi’s face. He looked away, out into the night, his jaw working. He reached for his towel, wiping his neck though the sweat had dried. The arrogant, careless posture returned, but it was a conscious reassembly now, a costume donned with slight haste. The bad-boy smile reappeared, but it didn’t reach his eyes, which held a new, unsettled calculation.
“So,” Kofi said, the easy charm back in his voice though it rang slightly hollow. “Do I get an invitation, or was this just a free therapy session?”
Zoruk didn’t answer the question. He simply turned and walked toward the exit, his footsteps silent on the rubberized floor. “The invitation was never in doubt, Kofi. The only question is what you choose to build when you realize your matches can start fires that burn you, too.”
The door clicked shut behind him.
Kofi stood alone in the center of the empty gym, surrounded by his own reflection in a dozen mirrors. He lit another cigarette, his hands steady, but his eyes kept flicking to the swinging heavy bag, as if it were a pendulum counting off the seconds of a lesson he was just beginning to learn. The smile stayed on his face, a familiar armor, but it no longer felt like a perfect fit.