For two days Tunu did not see Jabi again.
She told herself that was a good thing. She went to school, signed in at the attendance office, sat through lessons, returned to Mbuyuni, helped Mariam chop onions, and counted coins from the tea stall. Life was beginning to form a new routine around her.
Even so, every time she passed the bus stage, she looked toward the fruit stalls before she could stop herself.
On the third afternoon, Jabi was there.
He sat on a crate behind a phone-accessories shop, holding a small black object in one hand.
Tunu recognized it immediately.
Her old radio.
She checked the time. Mariam expected her home soon. The stage was already on her normal route. A few minutes would not change anything, she told herself.
She walked over.
“You look different,” Jabi said.
“So do you.”
“That uniform makes you look serious.”
“Don't start.”
He smiled and held out the radio. Tunu had once found it broken and managed to make it receive a single station. Later the switch stopped working. Now a replacement switch had been fitted, badly but successfully.
“You repaired it?”
“A phone technician did. I helped him with some boxes.”
“For this?”
“It's only a radio.”
Tunu turned it over in her hands. It was not only a radio to her. It carried memories of months she did not want to explain at school: football commentary, arguments, jokes, shared cups of water, and the satisfaction of making damaged electronics work again.
“You okay?” Jabi asked.
“I'm back in school.”
“That wasn't the question.”
“It's the answer I'm giving.”
Jabi nodded. “Fair.”
Around them, the market continued without paying attention. A fruit seller rearranged oranges. A driver argued about a delivery. Someone rolled a cart through the narrow space between stalls.
Jabi stood to help lift a fallen sack and earned two small coins. Tunu watched. People who knew only rumors had reduced the months she was away to a single dramatic story. Tunu remembered something far less simple: temporary work, uncertain plans, favors exchanged, people trying to get through one day and then the next.
She did not want that life again.
She also did not want to pretend every person from that period belonged to a version of herself that had to be erased.
“I heard you came back,” Jabi said.
“I came back.”
“Not brought back?”
Tunu looked at him. “I came back.”
“Good.”
He told her he might leave Bandari Mtoni the following week. A truck was heading north and there might be loading work at the other end.
“Do you know anyone there?” Tunu asked.
“One contact.”
“And if the work isn't there?”
“I look for something else.”
Tunu wanted to tell him that a plan built only from the next step could become a road you never meant to take. She did not say it. She knew how easily concern could sound like judgment.
Jabi studied her face. “You've learned to ask many questions.”
“I always asked questions.”
“Now you ask them like somebody with forms.”
Tunu almost laughed.
She mentioned Hatua Mpya, the support center connected to Nuru.
Jabi shook his head. “Don't turn me into a project.”
“I'm not.”
“Good.”
Then his voice became more serious. “School is good, Tunu. Going home is good too. Just don't believe a place changes because people say welcome back.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you should watch what people do, not only what they promise.”
Tunu remembered Mariam's rules, Rehema's privacy page, Asha's message, and the blue notebook with her name crossed out.
“I know.”
Jabi looked at the radio. “And don't act like you don't know me just because you're wearing a uniform.”
Tunu froze.
“You heard that?”
“I saw you with your friend the other day. You said no.”
Tunu felt heat rise into her face. “I didn't know what to say.”
“You could have said my name.”
He did not sound furious. That made it worse.
“I have to go,” Tunu said.
“Then go.”
She put the radio into her bag and started toward home.
When she arrived, she was twelve minutes later than usual.
“Where were you?” Mariam called from the kitchen.
“There was a line at the school gate.”
The lie came out so smoothly that Tunu disliked it immediately.
She changed clothes in her corner and wrapped the radio inside an old skirt. Before she could cover it completely, footsteps stopped at the doorway.
Kassim stood there.
His eyes moved from Tunu to the black edge of the radio.
“Where did that come from?”
“It's mine.”
“I didn't ask whose it is.”
“Then don't ask.”
Kassim watched her for a long moment, then walked away.
He said nothing to Mariam that evening.
But when Tunu lay down to sleep, she knew the secret no longer belonged to her alone.
---