Chapter 2: Inscription on the Wall

Chidi's room was small — one window, one bed, a corner for his books — but after months of sleeping on a friend's couch in Yaba, it felt like a palace. He arranged his few belongings carefully: a stack of certificates he hadn't yet found use for, a torchlight, and a small transistor radio that only picked up one station clearly.

By his second morning, his water had finished.

He walked to the well behind the house, bucket in hand, and was reaching for the rope when a voice cut through the morning air like a machete through overripe plantain.

"Ehen! New tenant! Where you dey go with your bucket?"

Baba Olomi emerged from behind the guava tree as though he had been standing there all along, waiting, invisible, like NEPA waiting to strike light exactly when your phone charge finishes.

"Good morning, sir. I just need water to bathe."

"Bathe, abi wash your certificate?" Baba Olomi chuckled at his own joke, though no one else did. "Anyway. You know the price?"

"You mentioned it yesterday, sir. But I don't have change this morning."

"No change?" Baba Olomi's eyebrows rose like a market trader who had just heard someone ask for a discount on Christmas Eve. "My friend, water no dey wait for change o. Water go dry inside bucket if you dey find change."

"I can pay you this evening, sir, when I return from job hunting."

Baba Olomi studied him — the way he studied everyone, calculating risk like a bank manager reviewing a loan application from a man with no collateral.

"Okay," he said finally, raising one finger like a judge delivering a conditional verdict. "But make I tell you — na credit I dey give you, not gift. And credit get interest for this house."

"Interest? On water?"

"Everything wey enter my compound get interest, my friend. Even breathing my air don almost get price, na only kindness dey stop me." He laughed loudly at himself again, slapping his own belly.

Chidi filled his bucket quickly, half expecting Baba Olomi to change his mind mid-pour.

As he turned to leave, he noticed something — a small, cracked inscription carved faintly into the stone rim of the well, half-covered in moss. He crouched slightly, curiosity pulling harder than the weight of the bucket in his hand. The letters were worn, but the writings were visible — 'NOT FOR SALE'

"Wetin you dey find for there?" Baba Olomi's voice sharpened suddenly, losing its earlier playfulness.

Chidi straightened quickly. "Nothing, sir. Just... the well is old."

"Yes it's very old," Baba Olomi said, stepping closer, his tone now carrying an edge Chidi hadn't heard before. "Old pass many things wey person need to know. Make you fetch your water, comot abeg."

Chidi obeyed, but as he walked back toward his room, water sloshing gently with each step, his mind lingered on the worn letters in the stone — and on the flicker of something close to fear he had seen cross Baba Olomi's face, gone as quickly as it appeared.

That night, lying on his thin mattress, Chidi found himself thinking less about job interviews and more about a well older than the man who claimed to own it.

Something about No. 14 Idozi Street, he realized, was not what it seemed.