The lunch rush slowed to a trickle.

Chiamaka wiped the counter again, though it was already clean. The rhythm of work had always steadied her, the repetition of stirring, serving, wiping. She checked the pot, tilting the lid to peer inside. Not much left. Just enough for the late stragglers who came around two o'clock, when hunger finally overpowered their desire to save money.

She reached under the counter, her fingers finding the folded paper where she'd hidden it beneath the stack of old newspapers. The edges were already soft from her touching it throughout the morning. She traced the government seal without looking at it, then pulled her hand back as if the paper had burned her.

Across the road, a woman balanced on a plastic chair, pulling down Christmas tinsel from the eaves of her shop. The silver strands had dulled to gray after weeks of harmattan dust. One section caught on a nail. She tugged harder, her wrapper slipping down her shoulder.

Chiamaka watched without seeing.

Her mind had already drifted somewhere else, back to three mornings ago, when the air still carried that peculiar quiet of the days between Christmas and New Year, when Lagos held its breath before the city roared back to life.

---

"You're still here."

The voice had come without warning.

Chiamaka had looked up from packing her pots to find her aunt standing in the doorway of their shared room, wrapper tied high and tight the way she did when preparing for confrontation. Arms crossed. Mouth set in that familiar line of disappointment.

"January has started," her aunt said, her voice carrying the weight of an argument they'd had many times before. "People have moved. Ngozi's daughter is in her own place now. Amaka's son sent money for rent. Even that girl who used to sell akara, the one with the scar she has left her mother's house."

Chiamaka had said nothing. What was there to say? The same words, always circling back to the same place.

"At your age," her aunt continued, stepping into the room now, filling the small space with her presence, "you should not still be setting up food on the road like a girl fresh from the village. Twenty-eight years old, Chiamaka. Twenty-eight. Your mates are planning weddings. Having second children. Building something."

The words had landed like stones in still water, sending ripples Chiamaka refused to acknowledge.

"You hear me?" her aunt's voice had risen slightly, frustration creeping in. "You should have left this house by now. You should have a husband. Children. Respect."

Chiamaka had continued folding her apron, creasing it along the same lines she always did. "I'm saving," she'd said quietly.

"Saving for what? The money you make from rice?" Her aunt had laughed, sharp, bitter. "You think that will build you a life?"

---

"Food."

The voice pulled her back.

Chiamaka blinked, the memory dissolving like smoke. She looked up.

A man stood in front of the stall, work helmet tucked under one arm. Dust covered his boots, the red-brown dust of construction sites that never quite washed out. His shirt was faded blue, the kind that had been washed so many times the color had retreated to the seams. He didn't smile. He didn't check his phone or glance around impatiently like most customers. He simply stood there with the stillness of someone who had learned to wait.

"Yes?" she said, reaching automatically for a plate.

"Rice," he said. His voice was quiet, deliberate. Then, after a pause, "Please."

She served him, her movements practiced and efficient. He watched not the food, but her hands. The way she measured portions without thinking. The way her fingers never fumbled with the serving spoon.

She pushed the plate toward him. Instead of sitting on the bench, he stepped aside and leaned against the low concrete wall near the stall, eating while standing. His posture was casual, but his eyes kept drifting back to her stall, to the peeling paint on her sign, to the way she organized her space.

He didn't talk. Didn't ask questions or make small conversation the way most customers did.

Chiamaka wiped the counter, the silence between them somehow louder than the noise of the street. She pretended to rearrange her pots, though everything was already in place. Waited.

He finished and brought the plate back, setting it down gently rather than clattering it onto the counter like others did.

"Thank you," he said.

"You're welcome."

He hesitated, shifting his helmet from one hand to the other. "You sell every day?"

"Yes. Morning and afternoon. Sometimes into the evening."

He nodded slowly, as if filing away the information. "The food is good."

"Thank you."

"Better than the woman near the junction."

Despite herself, Chiamaka felt the corner of her mouth lift slightly. "She uses too much Maggi."

"Exactly." The word came with the hint of a smile, brief, but genuine.

He turned to leave, then paused. "I work at the site. The one they're building past the market." He gestured vaguely east. "I'll come back."

It wasn't a question. Just a statement of fact.

"Okay," she said.

He walked away toward the site, his boots leaving faint prints in the dust.

Chiamaka stood there longer than she needed to, watching until he disappeared around the corner where the vulcanizer had his workshop. The radio from the provision shop was playing Ice Prince now, something about wanting more from life. The woman across the road had finally freed all the tinsel and was stuffing it into a black bag.

Then Chiamaka reached under the counter again and pulled out the folded paper. This time she opened it, smoothing it flat against the wood. Her eyes skimmed the words without really reading them, compliance, fourteen days, enforcement before folding it back into its creases.

She tucked it away and began cleaning the empty pots, her hands moving through familiar motions while her mind calculated numbers she'd calculated a hundred times before: rent, food, transport, the small amount that went into the account she kept hidden from her aunt.

The numbers never added up to enough.

They never had.