Chiamaka pushed the door shut with her foot, the hinges groaning in protest.

Her aunt was already watching her from the worn sofa, legs crossed, reading glasses perched low on her nose. She didn't look up from the stack of exercise books balanced on her lap, but Chiamaka knew she'd been counting every minute past six thirty catalogued as evidence.

"You're late." Her aunt looked at the clock anyway, making a show of it. The wall clock with the faded MTN logo had been running five minutes fast for years. "Every day it's the same thing."

Chiamaka set her bag down carefully on the plastic mat by the door. The television murmured about the new year a too-bright presenter in ankara print gesturing enthusiastically about fresh starts and national progress. Empty words that meant nothing when your hands still smelled like palm oil and Maggi cubes no matter how many times you washed them.

The flat was small. Two bedrooms, a sitting room that doubled as her aunt's marking station, a kitchen barely wide enough for one person to turn around. The air held that particular smell of fabric softener, Comfort, the purple one mixed with the chalky scent of textbooks and the faint staleness of a space that never quite got enough ventilation. Nothing special. Nothing warm. Just the functional home of a woman who'd spent thirty years teaching primary school children and had long ago stopped expecting joy from life.

Her aunt went back to her scripts, red pen moving in sharp, decisive strokes. Tick. Cross. Circle. The rhythm of judgment.

"I guess nothing out of the ordinary happened today?" The question landed casually, but Chiamaka recognized the trap. Her aunt never asked questions she didn't already have opinions about.

"No, ma."

Her aunt clicked her tongue, that sharp -tsk-of disappointment that needed no translation. "That stall will not carry you far, you know. You're just managing. Surviving is not the same as living."

Chiamaka moved to the kitchen to wash her hands at the sink. The tap sputtered brown water first, it always did in the evenings then steadied to a thin, clear stream. She scrubbed her palms with the bar of Key soap until her skin felt raw. She couldn't dare inform her aunt about the notice. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

"January has started," her aunt continued from the sitting room, her voice carrying that lecture-hall projection she'd perfected over decades. "People are moving forward. Even that Ngozi's daughter you remember her? The one who was selling provisions at the junction? She's getting married next month. A good man. Works for the bank. They've paid her bride price already."

Chiamaka dried her hands slowly on the threadbare towel hanging by the window, watching darkness settle over the compound outside.

"You can't still be the same," her aunt pressed on. "Coming in late. Leaving early for that roadside business. No plan. No husband. No future."

"I have a plan," Chiamaka said quietly.

Her aunt laughed once sharp and mirthless. "You always have a plan. Your mother used to say the same thing."

The words hung in the air between them, deliberate as a slap.

Chiamaka leaned against the counter, her fingers gripping the edge. The paper from Mr. Maduka surfaced in her mind, the figures, the impossible requirements, the ticking clock of fourteen days. She could borrow small, add the rest later from what she saved. Maybe if she served more customers, stayed open longer, cut costs somewhere...

But even as she calculated, she knew the numbers wouldn't work. They never did.

Her aunt's pen stopped moving. The silence stretched.

"Are you even listening to me?"

"Yes, ma."

"Then you hear what I'm saying." Her aunt set down her pen with deliberate care, removed her glasses. "You think food on the road is a future? You think at twenty-eight, with no husband, no children, nothing to show for yourself except a rented stall and borrowed pots, you're building something?"

Chiamaka kept her eyes on the compound outside. A neighbor's generator coughed to life.

Her aunt stood and began clearing the table, stacking exercise books with the practiced efficiency of someone who'd been doing the same movements for thirty years. "When I was your age, I was not guessing about my life. I knew what I wanted. I got my teaching certificate, I married a good man may his soul rest and I built something respectable. I wasn't stubborn like..."

She stopped herself, but they both knew where the sentence was heading.

Like your mother.

The unspoken words pressed down harder than the ones actually said.

"At least," her aunt continued, her voice quieter now but no less cutting, "I understood what matters for a woman. Security. Respect. A man's name to carry. These things you're chasing independence, your own business, all this modern thinking where will it lead you? Who will take care of you when you're old? When you're sick?"

The power blinked once, twice. The television cut out mid-sentence, plunging the flat into the semi-darkness of early evening. Only the neighbor's generator hummed on, a reminder that some people could afford continuity while others lived in constant interruption.

Her aunt moved to light a candle. The match scraped, flared. Shadows jumped on the walls.

"You know what your problem is?" Her aunt's face looked different in the candlelight older, harder. "You're just like your mother. My own sister. Adaeze had everything beauty, intelligence, suitors with good prospects. But no. She had to marry that man. That one with big dreams and empty pockets. I warned her. I told her clearly: if you want to pursue anything in life, do it in your husband's house. Find a man who can provide, then build your small business from there. But she was stubborn. 'I love him,' she said." Her aunt's voice turned bitter with the memory. "'He respects my ambition,' she said."

Chiamaka's chest tightened. She'd heard this story before, but never stated so plainly. Never with such unveiled contempt.

"And where did that love take her?" Her aunt's voice rose. "To a one-room apartment in Ajegunle. To sleepless nights worrying about school fees. To stress that ate her from the inside until..." She stopped, pressed her lips together. "Your mother would be turning in her grave watching you make the same mistakes. Choosing pride over practicality. Dreams over sense."

The candle flame wavered.

"She died because she was too stubborn to rest," her aunt said finally. "Too busy trying to prove she could manage everything, a husband with no steady income, a daughter to raise, that small tailoring business that never quite worked. The sickness took her because she'd already worn herself down to nothing."

Chiamaka felt something break loose inside her chest anger, grief, the old familiar ache of losing her mother too young to understand what she'd lost.

"That's not fair," she whispered.

"Fair?" Her aunt turned to face her fully. "What's not fair is watching you walk the same path. What's not fair is you using my house as a hotel while you play at being a businesswoman. I've given you shelter for five years, Chiamaka. Five years of waiting for you to come to your senses."

"I contribute," Chiamaka said, her voice stronger now.

"Small money for food is not contribution. Is not respect. Is not gratitude."

The words landed like stones.

Chiamaka walked to her room and shut the door, not slamming it, that would invite more confrontation but closing it firmly enough to mark a boundary.

She lay on the narrow bed, still in her work clothes, too exhausted to change. The ceiling fan creaked overhead, struggling against dust and age. Through the thin wall, she could hear her aunt moving around, the familiar sounds of a woman preparing for another ordinary evening.

For the first time, Chiamaka allowed herself to think clearly beyond the immediate worry about Mr. Maduka's notice. Beyond the numbers that wouldn't add up. Beyond the daily grind of waking at four thirty to prepare food, selling until evening, coming home to this.

She had to act very fast. Her emotional safety at home wasn't guaranteed anymore. The patience in her aunt's voice had worn thin over five years, and Chiamaka recognized the edge of finality in tonight's words. Soon maybe in weeks, maybe months there would be an ultimatum. Get married or get out. Find a man or find another place.

And the future of her stall? That was even less certain. Fourteen days to comply with regulations she couldn't afford. Fourteen days before Mr. Maduka came back with his polished shoes and careful smile and suggestions that made her skin crawl.

The only solution, the only real one was to move away from both. Leave her aunt's flat. Leave the stall if she had to. Start over somewhere cheaper, somewhere the authorities didn't come around with folded papers and deadlines.

But with what money? With what plan?

She had fourteen days to figure out her stall.

And maybe less than that to figure out her life.