CHAPTER ONE

It would have been a different case all together if they had tried to speak less, or maybe just a little bit lower in volume, but they didn’t .

Maybe, it would have made it a bit more tasking to eavesdrop if they had considered that someone would probably be listening. Maybe they just didn’t care if anyone heard them, they seemed like they were happy enough and without a single care in the world as to who or what heard them converse. Yet Kira knew that that wasn’t the case. Even as loud and as care free as they seemed, when ever she had to make a sudden movement, either caused by the car jerking to a halt, in response to its contact with a  poorly maintained part of the road or the need by some part of her body for a bit of attentive stretches, they would instantly stop talking, wait for a few seconds, only to resume after some moments as if to say they were just making sure the coast is clear for them to continue their discussion.

Kira couldn’t even see the two girls behind her in the bus, but she could tell that they were going to have very interestingly comical stories about their life. Something much more exciting to offer than the story of her life, and that only seemed to depress her even more.

Maybe it was something about the way the girls spoke, all animated and excited about the prospect of being in love and declaring it to whoever cared enough to listen but not to the one it was solely meant for. She didn’t know what it was about them, but she just wished she could be friends with them.  Knowing herself, that was highly unlikely.

 But then she tried at least to compensate herself with the thoughts that if she couldn’t be in love, or be friends with this enthusiastic pair, she could at least enjoy the tales they were ever so kind enough to share, even if it was only for a little while and even if it would be considered inappropriate to some extent. Again she consoled herself that if one was going to talk about their private life on a public bus, then they sure as hell better be expecting someone if not everyone on the bus to be a part of their unlikely audience.

“Have you told him yet?” One of the girls asked the other quietly, giggling once or twice like a giddy teenage girl.

She seemed way too excited for someone that was just listening to her friend tell a story, but Kira simply thought it was yet another type of beauty in having this type of friendship, which she again thought was the liberty she has never enjoyed.

“No” the other replied, she was the main storyteller but she sounded rather subdued and way too serious for someone who had just been proposed to days ago. She had sounded happy earlier, but now with the monotone reply and the lack of enthusiasm in her voice, Kira wasn’t so sure anymore.

She didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but she was honestly enjoying the distraction they were offering.

On any other day she would have found the conversation that was happening way too close to her ears annoying, but today she simply didn’t have it in her to do anything else.

It wasn’t like today was the worst day of her life or anything of that sort, if anything, the day was only just starting, and the bright sun sizzling the mixture of essential oils she had applied to her skin some minutes ago before leaving her tiny flat this morning only seemed to promise that the day would go by just like any other day.

For her it was just one of those days that one would say they simply woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Which isn’t such a bad thing when you think about it, and you are not her. Since for her it would just mean that she didn’t have enough of the fire to blast anyone who would step on her toes as she would have had on any other normal day.

She wasn’t necessarily an aggressive young woman, but she had learnt the hard way that she was the only person that was going to care enough to fight the battles for herself. With that knowledge, the timid little girl who stammered and cried whenever she was angry grew up to become the hot headed Kira who has learnt so well to mask her stammers with slow replies and calculated responses, that way, it could never be used as a weapon against her.

“Why didn’t you tell him? He said it after he gave you the ring right? That would have been the perfect time to say it back, what is your problem Chioma? You will mess this good thing up with your silly pride now”  The lady scolded her friend, losing all the laughter that had initially laced her voice. Almost instantly all the excitement that had made her almost bounce up and down the bus seat was  gone and Kira thought with a slight smile on her face, that if she decided to turn around at that very moment, she would catch the lady staring daggers at her recently engaged friend.

“Is it that you don’t love him? I know you do Chioma, so what is going on ?”

she probes her friend again. This time her voice sounded more sympathetic than angry. Almost like she knew about an inside story that only the two of them shared.

“You know I do love him, but I don’t know...I-I-I I really don’t know what is wrong with me. I guess you could say I’m scared” the other friend replies quietly, Kira could tell from the strain in her voice that she was trying hard to keep the emotions from breaking lose.

This wasn’t a good place for her to fall apart, Kira thought. It was going to be  better for everyone for her to get a grip on those wayward emotions.

It was funny to Kira how the little matter of love seemed to rattle men and women so much. It seemed like in this day and age, or maybe since time immemorial that no matter how much you loved yourself and how much you think you have accomplished in life, you would still end up feeling incomplete until some one else you want loves you just as much as you love them.

It never quite made sense to her how out of a billion people you just had to find one person to love you the way you want. It wasn’t just about finding one person, the chances had to be that they will like you just as must as you liked them.

For Kira it wasn’t just crazy mathematics, but it was also stupid maths. She had the theory that humans didn’t have to love you back when you love them. She felt it was just the one sided love that was required. They just want to know that they are loved, and then when they are certain enough that tthe love they are getting is solid enough to get even the smallest of guarantees, they will settle into the haven that the other’s love has provided for them and from there, every thing would try to make sense to the one blindly in love, and to the other blindly loved .

The fifty-fifty love that people believed to be the ultimate goal was just nonsense make believe stories to her and that was all they were ever going to be. Yet this was an opinion that she kept to herself. She wasn’t going to go about canceling out people’s compelling need to believe in happy endings. She didn’t have time for such frivolities. Some other things were more pressing in her life right now and they had something and everything to do with the voices in her head.

Even now in public as she sat in a bus trying to keep herself distracted from her thoughts with the tales of a love story going on behind her, she could hear one of the voices singing .

It was the tiniest of the voices and it seemed like it belonged to a little boy, and ooh he liked to sing.

He wasn’t the only one of the voices that liked to sing, but it was as if he was constantly trying to proof to Kira that his voice could hit more keys than everyone else. He had some how even managed to get kira to adapt enough to almost liking his soothing tones.