His affection.
* * * *
University, when it finally arrived, did so with its own baggage; demands masked by politeness, bills disguised as opportunity.
There were fees gaps, rent shortfalls. Books that cost more than my pride could afford.
And Mister Kirui—insisting, quietly, repeatedly, that aboy without a father was doomed to fail in the end—gladly helped out.
Each time he did it, something tightened quietly between us. Feelings deepened. Attitudes shifted. Gratitude—expertly aided by a hope renewed—slowly birthed a bromance that, inevitably, blossomed. Grew, ballooned into something else entirely.
* * * *
The first time we shared his king-sized bed, nothing dramatic happened. No speech. No force. No moment you could point to and saythere—that’s exactly where it all went to shit.
We were tired, drunk. It was late. His icy wife Chebet—doubly blessed with deputyship and in-compound residence at the not-so-far-flung Belgut Girls’ High School—was not home. And the black leather couch I used to sleep on whenever I visited was out, borrowed by a group of local thespians for a weekend-long Christmas Comedy Marathon they were so generously hosting in aid of Majengo slum families at the local Catholic Church, St. Mark’s.
I didn’t feel trapped, lying beside him in the dark like that. No. I felt privileged, special. Lucky to have been chosen.
More money followed right after, of course. It flowed freely from his Equity account to mine, from his MPesa to mine or my arthritis-plagued mother’s; like water from a faucet just repaired. And then sometimes it didn’t. But by then, it didn’t really matter—we were one.
* * * *
I thrived academically.
See, Economics wasn’t just theory to me—it was autobiography. Scarcity. Incentives. Power. Trade-offs. It movedme, kept me deeply engrossed.
I topped classes, even the Sociology ones and the common ones. I tutored my peers part-time, built a reputation in and around Kericho University as a studious student with a packed schedule and zero friends.
First Class was no longer a goal—it was an expectation. Unspoken, yet obvious.
My continued success in class did not loosen the arrangement. No. It deepened it. The better I did, the more invisible my dependence became—and, apparently, the more dangerous that invisibility got.
* * * *
Mwalimu Chebet Kirui noticed me; I didn’t notice her. I didn’t encourage her. She flirted. Softly. Then openly. Then impatiently. And I refused, politely. Then clearly.
I did not tell her husband about it, not at first. But when she pestered me so much, I did.
He warned me in this unusually stern voice; told me in no uncertain times to stay the hell away fromthat crazy woman. To block, with immediate effect, all of her numbers on my phone—Safaricom as well as Airtel—and never to show up at their house without him.
* * * *
That Saturday night in November when it finally happened was ordinary—until it wasn’t. Stocktaking. Storying. Laughing. Drinking.
Torrents of rain—then a deafening noise.
Metal banging. Voices loud, angry. Phones lit, already recording. Loud voices, male and female, already certain of what it was that went on behind those walls…
The two uniformed police officers, one female and the other male, stood there while Aron and I dressed up: the former barking instructions at the animated crowd, the latter grinning sheepishly.
Missus Kirui—never once the charlatan—stood back, quiet, composed. Not hysterical. Certain. That certainty frightened me more than the wild crowd, or even the uniformed police.
I realized something then: the story had been birthed—written inside her head—long before the scene itself had come into existence.
* * * *
The unsurprisingly packed Bureti Police Station cell that I was pushed into minutes later smelled of disinfectant and panic. To find myself amidst thugs, drunks, louts—the very same accursed lot that I’d secretly despised and actively avoided my entire life was depressing. Degrading.
