Cracks Beneath the Skin
Ayo discovered that scars did not ache all the time. Most days, they stayed quiet, hidden beneath routine, beneath work, beneath the careful distance he kept from people. After Mara's call, he went on with his life as though nothing had shifted, as though something inside him had not fractured. He woke early, dressed neatly, and joined the flow of the city like a man with nothing to hide.
At the office, files waited patiently, just as they always did. He stamped, sorted, and signed, moving papers from one place to another without reading most of the names. It was easier that way. Names carried stories, and stories had a way of demanding honesty. Still, every now and then, he caught his reflection in the dusty glass of a filing cabinet and felt an unfamiliar discomfort, as if he were standing slightly outside his own body, watching himself perform.
By midday, Kunle joked about honesty being rare in government work, and the others laughed. Ayo laughed too, but the sound felt wrong in his mouth. He wondered when truth had become something people mocked rather than protected. He wondered when he had joined them.
That afternoon, his phone buzzed again. Not Mara this time, but his younger sister, Sade. She asked if he had sent the money he promised. He typed yes, paused, then sent it anyway. The money was still sitting in his account. He told himself he would send it later. He told himself the lie was temporary. It did not feel temporary when he put the phone down.
On his way home, rain caught him without warning. He stood under a shop awning, watching water wash dirt along the roadside, thinking about how easily things looked clean from a distance. The thought unsettled him. He felt exposed, as though the rain might strip something away if he stepped into it.
That night, alone in his room, sleep refused to come. His mind replayed small moments he had dismissed for years—faces he had disappointed, promises he had softened with excuses, truths he had buried because they were inconvenient. None of them seemed large enough to matter on their own, yet together they formed a quiet accusation.
For the first time, Ayo considered a dangerous thought: what if the problem was not the people around him, but the version of himself he had built to survive them? The idea lingered, uncomfortable and sharp. He turned onto his side, staring into the darkness, knowing that once a crack appears, it never truly disappears. It only waits.
And somewhere inside him, the scars began to itch.