The rain had fallen without apology the night before—thick, relentless, as if the sky had something it needed to confess. By dawn, the village roads shimmered with puddles, and the air hung heavy with the scent of soaked earth, old leaves, and charcoal smoke.
Iyi's stall was quiet.
No customers yet. Just the sound of him slicing aloe into a basin, the soft slap of the blade against wood, the thick liquid collecting like honey. He worked slowly, methodically. No radio. No phone. Just breath and balm.
And then… a presence.
Not footsteps.
Not a voice.
But a shift in the air. A tightening of the skin around his neck. A memory brushing his shoulder.
He looked up.
A man stood at the edge of the stall.
Clothed in rough cotton, soaked from the knees down. A scarf was wrapped around his neck, faded navy blue, the ends singed at one corner. His beard was greyed, but trimmed. His hands trembled slightly at his sides, fingers stained with soot.
But it was his eyes that stilled the world.
Clear.
Sharp.
And familiar.
Too familiar.
Iyi stood slowly. "You…"
He didn't finish.
He couldn't.
Because this was the man he once passed in the market square—the blind beggar with the milky eyes, the broken bowl, the quiet dignity.
The man he had ignored.
Walked past.
Stepped over.
"You remember," the man said, voice dry as ash but not unkind.
"Yes," Iyi whispered.
"You saw me then."
"I did."
"You left."
"I did."
They stood in the silence that followed — a silence thick with memory, not guilt.
The man stepped forward.
"I was blind for seventeen years," he said. "Not just in the eyes. In the heart. In the tongue. But not in the ears. I heard everything. Footsteps. Lies. Prayers no one meant. Your footsteps…"
He trailed off, his voice catching like thread on thorns.
"I heard them most clearly. The way you paused. That's how I knew you weren't ready to be a thief forever."
Iyi said nothing. He couldn't.
The man reached into the folds of his wrapper and pulled out a small leather pouch. He placed it on the table between them.
"Inside is the soap you once would have stolen," he said. "The one I left out on purpose, long ago."
Iyi blinked. "What do you mean?"
The man smiled faintly. "You were meant to take it. You didn't. So the spirits gave it to you another way."
He turned to leave, then paused.
"I'm no longer begging," he said. "I now give. My eyes were returned the day you refused gold."
He took one step away.
Then another.
And just before vanishing into the mist of the street, he said:
"The first man to see me after I could see again… was you."
That night, Iyi unwrapped the pouch.
Inside was a bar of soap unlike any he had seen.
It was rough.
Unshaped.
It smelled like river sand and torn leaves, like hunger and home. It wasn't beautiful. But it felt… right.
He placed it beside the fourth sponge.
And for the first time in weeks, the sponge glowed.
Just faintly.
But enough to make the air shift.
That night, Iyi dreamed.
Of himself, walking in the dark.
A sponge in one hand.
And in the other…
A pair of eyes that weren't his.
Not blind.
Not seeing.
Just… waiting.