“Because they’re not mine.”
She was quiet.
For a long moment, she studied him the way people in business meetings used to study a proposal when the first page told them the numbers were interesting but not enough yet.
“How long?” she asked.
“How long what?”
“On the streets.”
Tobenna looked away.
“Fourteen months.”
She absorbed that without comment.
“What is your name?”
“Tobenna Toby.”
“Zara,” she said.
She extended her hand.
Formal.
Direct.
Even sitting against a tree on a deserted road with a wound in her side.
He shook it carefully.
“We need to get you to a hospital,” he said. “There’s a village about seven kilometers back.”
Zara looked at the bags.
“We can’t leave those.”
“I know.”
He emptied his plastic bag without ceremony.
His clothes.
The small Bible.
The notebook.
The pencil.
He packed the split bag’s contents into his plastic bag, every note, every bundle, moving methodically. He checked the road, counted the bags, tied what needed tying, and arranged the load so he could manage it.
Everything accounted for.
Nothing left visible.
Zara watched him without speaking.
When he was finished, he lifted the bags one by one, adjusting the weight.
She was still watching.
“You pack like a logistics man,” she said.
He almost smiled.
“I was one.”
Then he helped her to her feet, and they started walking.
Seven kilometers is a particular distance.
Long enough for polite silence to die.
Long enough for pain to loosen truth.
Long enough for two strangers to run out of surface and begin saying things that matter.
Zara asked about his business.
Tobenna told her.
Not with self-pity.
That had burned out of him months ago.
He told her the story the way he analyzed it at night when sleep would not come. Two motorcycles. One van. Three vans. Clients. Loans. The third van too early. The clients lost. The debt. The collapse.
He did not try to make himself look innocent.
That impressed her more than he knew.
“What would you do differently?” Zara asked, breathing carefully through each step.
“Lock in the clients first,” he said. “Written contracts, not promises. Then use the contracts as collateral for financing instead of using projected revenue to justify the loan. Expand after the route is stable, not while the route is still proving itself.”
Zara nodded slowly.
“That is the correct order.”
He looked at her sideways.
She was wounded, exhausted, and still thinking like someone who evaluated systems for a living.
He did not ask what she did.
