By the time Iyi returned to the city, Lagos had shed its twilight hush and erupted into morning life once more. Horns blared in frantic bursts, hawkers shouted blessings wrapped in bargains, and heat clung to the back of his neck like a familiar ghost. But he was no longer the man who had left a few days before.
The sponge wrapped in ochre cloth pressed gently against his ribs from inside the satchel. Its presence was not burdensome, but constant—like a heartbeat he now shared with something beyond his skin. Something old. Something watching.
He arrived at his room before the market had fully opened. The small apartment above the tailor's shop smelled like dried herbs and soap scraps. Everything was where he left it, but it all felt slightly off—as though the space had shifted in his absence, or perhaps he had.
He dropped his bag gently on the woven mat and went straight to the mirror.
It was a simple mirror. Cracked slightly at one corner, nailed to the peeling blue wall above his washbasin. He had looked into it every morning for months—shaving, praying, sighing. It had reflected him faithfully, if indifferently.
Until now.
He didn't reach for the sponge. Not yet. He simply stood and stared into the glass.
And the mirror stared back.
At first, he saw the expected: his face, older than its years; the slight scar on his jaw from that alley brawl years ago; the quiet exhaustion around his eyes. He was no longer the boy who hungered for fast wealth. That boy had died and returned in many forms—ritual by ritual, sponge by sponge.
But as he stared longer, the image shifted.
Subtly at first.
The light in the room dimmed, though no clouds crossed the sun.
The mirror's surface shimmered slightly, and then—
—Iyi blinked.
But his reflection didn't.
His heart skipped.
The version of him in the mirror stood straighter, his eyes darker, his mouth curled at one corner in the faintest smirk. Not cruel, but knowing. Too knowing.
"You came back," the reflection said.
Iyi froze. Not out of fear. Out of recognition.
"Yes," he said. "I had to."
The mirror-Iyi tilted his head, just slightly. "Still carrying the sponge?"
"I am."
"You think you're healed now? A savior of others?"
"No," Iyi answered honestly. "But I'm willing to try."
The reflection narrowed its eyes. "You left me behind. In the silence. In the scams. In the shame. Do you remember who you were before the river found you?"
"Yes," Iyi whispered. "I remember everything."
"And still, you want to keep going? Without me?"
Iyi stepped closer. "You are part of me. But you are not all of me."
The mirror surface rippled.
Now the images changed.
One after the other.
He saw the blind beggar he had once ignored.
His mother, spooning watery soup into an empty bowl, pride heavy in her silence.
Kareem, eyes glinting with warning.
The stall. The soap. The pain in the woman's back.
And then—
The man in gold-rimmed glasses, holding out the card again.
Everything has a price.
Even peace.
The mirror twisted, like water about to boil.
"You think you can refuse the world and still change it?" the reflection hissed.
"No," Iyi replied, steady. "But I can choose how I live in it."
His fingers drifted to the sponge in his satchel.
The ochre cloth was warm.
He unwrapped it slowly, reverently, and held the sponge in both hands in front of the mirror.
Instantly, the reflection dimmed.
The other Iyi faltered.
"You don't want to carry that," the voice said, weaker now.
"This sponge isn't for cleansing," Iyi said softly. "It's for memory. For truth."
"And truth is pain."
"Sometimes. But truth is also freedom."
He touched the sponge to the mirror.
And the surface rippled—violently, like a pool disturbed by thunder.
The cracked glass hummed, and the reflection shuddered—
—then scattered.
Fragments of himself floated in the mirror: laughing, crying, stealing, praying, running. A dozen versions of Iyi blinked back at him, then merged again—into a single, quiet face.
His own.
No smirk.
No shadow.
Just a man—weathered, watching, but whole.
The mirror settled.
The crack in the glass was still there. But it no longer bothered him.
He breathed deeply.
And for the first time in a long time, his reflection blinked when he did.
The sponge pulsed once in his hands. Then it cooled.
Outside, the city had begun to stir louder—hustle humming through the windows.
He placed the sponge carefully in the bowl beside his bed, beside the burnt coin.
Then he bowed slightly toward the mirror.
"I hear you," he whispered.
And the mirror said nothing.
Because it didn't need to.