We won't Make it Past The 13th

CREED 6.24 of Sanctuary City 333 

*Also known as SC333

Once known as the bustling megalopolis of Lagos, Nigeria was racked by environmental disaster. The once vast population is now only survived by the few that are, under the magnanimous leadership of The Pantheon, returning it to its former glory. We have created a short hand pamphlet to help citizens keep track of our lexicon, institutions, and advice. 

The Pantheon reserves the right to elusivity. We have existed, though changing structure and form, from time in millenia. We don’t think of ourselves as a government, but rather as a guide. We want to build the best society possible, and as we all know- community requires sacrifice. 

1.1 The Search is our way of saying- we understand. As you all know, City 333 wasn’t created in a day, what relationship can be? When citizens turn twenty- one years old they have five years from that point to find and commit to Their Person. During this period citizens are strongly encouraged to go on dates and forge connections. 

1.2 The System reminds us all that we are not unsupported. The Pantheon graciously created an optimised algorithm to aid its citizens.

1.3 Harmony Hospitals are a communal space that provide both medical and psychological check ups. Occasionally these check ups will escalate into a treatment plan. We recommend bi-monthly visits to ensure that our citizens are on track for adequate partnership. 

1.4 The Person- The individual with whom one must swear before The Pantheon to spend the rest of their lives with, under threat of execution discharge if they default. 

1.41 The Person- The ways of the world are unknown. There is little certainty about how exactly we ended up where we are now. Homo Sapiens have survived because we evolve towards each other. Whether communes or caves, we are built to return home. Which is all to say, eternity and a billion microscopic transformations have not changed the one fact we know to be true- we need one another and we need love. 

1.5 The End is the official day of execution of all single people in the city that are 25 years old on Valentine’s day. 

1.51 The End is a nebulous, philosophical term. Who are we to put a full stop where the creator might have put a full stop. 

FIRST DATE: SEVEN DAYS TILL ALMOST CERTAIN DEATH 

Anire didn’t mean to burst into laughter when she saw her date round the corner. In her defense, more than a few people threw furtive, amused glances at each other as he walked by them. She decided that when he sat across from her and asked what was funny she would blame it on the general mania in the air. A nervous giggle slipped out of her because what else does one do when they’re one week away from being killed along with millions of other people. He would understand. If this date didn’t go well he’d likely be killed too. As he neared the table Anire took deep, steadying breaths to suppress another giggle. She kept her eyes trained on the silver spikes covering his jeans that matched his large, bedazzled belt. She stood up and stepped into a side hug when he arrived. 

“Hi,” she whispered into his armpit.

 “Hey,” She repeated once they had stepped away from each other. 

“What were you laughing at?’ He asked, pressing purple chrome nails on the table top. 

“Oh I—” She arched her neck downwards, feigning sadness. “It’s just the whole— everything going on. The pressure just gets to me and sometimes I just can’t help but–” She looked up at him. He was fisting a hand through green hair that he had styled into a mohawk. “I can't help but laugh, you know?” 

She heard him sigh then shuffle into the seat across from her. 

“No, I get.” He readjusted his sleeveless leather jacket under which he wore no shirt, “I was just afraid you were laughing at me.” 

Anire felt a flash of guilt stab through her. She cleared her throat and stretched out her hand awkwardly, not knowing what else to do.

“I’m Anire.” 

“I know,” He replied, taking her hand in his and smiling with bemusement. “I’m U.”

“Sorry?”

“U.”

“Come again, please.”

He sighed loudly.

“Or Umi.” He eyed her up and down quickly. “Depends.”

“What does it depend on?”

“If we fall in love or not.”

She recoiled slightly. 

“What does your family call you?” 

“Pelumi.” 

Anire folded her lips to stop another laugh slipping through. 

“Right.” She reached for the menu. “What are you in the mood for? I’ve been craving pasta.”

“Spoken like a true Lagos girl.” He teased. 

“Lagos?” She put on a faux-authoritative voice. “This is the indomitable Sanctuary City 333.” 

“Of course,” He nodded, catching on quickly, “the most esteemed of all the sanctuary cities.” 

She smiled for the first time since the date began. She looked him up and down, studying him with new eyes. He wasn’t ugly, green hair notwithstanding. At least that was something. She’d been on dates with a number of questionable characters. Umi, at least, was pleasant to sit across from and look at. She decided that if he managed to tell two more jokes that made her smile, she would fall in love with him. Or at least she would try. 

“I’m going to get their jerk wings and fries.” He announced after some time spent scanning the menu. 

“That’s a good choice. Ask them to bring a side of their rodo sauce.” 

“Oh you’ve been here before?” 

Anire wrestled with whether to answer honestly. She was afraid that if she said yes, he would ask how many times, and she would have to reveal that the answer was fifteen. The waitresses had been decent enough to pretend not to recognise her. She knew that she could technically pick wherever she wanted for a date, despite what The Pantheon recommends, but she followed their advice anyway. Plus, she genuinely liked coming to Nadi. If it was a good day and timed right, she could sit outside with whoever she was on a date with and watch the sun set together. Maybe that would make them fall in love. 

A tall waitress walked over to their table with her notebook already flipped open. For a second, she thought the waitress was Allegra, and she shot up so fast in her seat that her knee hit the bottom of the table. Her next instinct was to dip her head under her hand as she felt a wave of shame wash over her. What could Allegra think about her on a date with Umi, she wondered. What would Allegra think about her on a date at all? 

“Are you okay?” Pelumi asked with alarm. 

Anire looked up slowly, realising upon second glance that the woman bounding towards them was not Allegra. 

“I’m fine,” Anire soothed both him and herself. “I just thought I knew her.”

As it turns out, Anire did know the waitress. Her name was Margaret, if she remembered correctly. She smiled brightly as she towered over them, pen at the ready. To Margaret’s credit, she only stared at Umi for three seconds too long and cleared her throat. It was more polite behaviour than the couple two tables away from them who sneaked to take pictures of Pelumi whenever they thought he wasn’t looking. Anire couldn’t help but notice the silver ring that glittered around Margaret’s middle finger. She’d found her person. Anire wondered whether to say congratulations. The ring hadn’t been there as of two weeks ago. Well, she was happy for Margaret. Margaret had brought Anire a number of strong, spicy margaritas over the past two years. Once, she had even offered Anire a tampon in the bathroom when her period started in the middle of a date. Margaret was kind. Anire was happy she wouldn’t be Discharged. Meet The End, Anire corrected herself quickly in her head. She was happy that Margaret wouldn’t meet The End. 

“So,” Anire turned towards Umi once Margaret had written down their orders and was halfway to the kitchen. “How far?”

“With what?”

“I don’t know? Everything?” She shrugged. “I don’t know anything about you.” 

“You only need to know one word to know me.” 

Anire raised a single eyebrow. 

“Fashion.” He announced with a flourish. 

She trailed her eyes up and down his body, taking him in fully. She started from his heeled silver boots to his spike-studded jeans, bedazzled belt, sleeveless leather jacket, thick septum piercing peeking out from under his nose, double eyebrow piercing, and green spiky hair. 

“Fashion.” She repeated.

She hadn’t meant for it to come out sounding like a question. He looked at her like she had spit on his gleaming shoes. 

“Like clothes,” he stressed.

“No, I know what fashion is,” Anire continued, biting down a wave of irritation. “I just don’t know what it is to you. Like I thought you’d expantiate.” 

“It’s actually expatiate.” 

Anire looked around desperately trying to catch the eye of a waiter. Eventually, one spotted her, and he walked over to the table with a small skip in his step. Anire guessed correctly that there would be a metal band around one of his fingers. Like Margaret, he had probably found his person recently as well. He looked high off the discovery and safety that came with it. 

“Please, can I have a Long Island iced tea?” The waiter nodded as he wrote. “And please,” Anire threw a quick glance at Umi, “make it strong.” 

Anire faced her date once again. 

“Sorry, I just wanted to do that before I forgot.” She explained. 

“Oh, do you have ADHD? Me too.” 

“Um, something like that.” She drummed her fingers on her knee. “So. Fashion.”

“Yeah,” Umi’s eyes lit up, and he straightened in his seat, “I’ve been into styling and clothes and stuff since I was little. My dad slapped me and split my lip open when he caught me playing in my mum’s jewellery box.”

“Oh, I’m so sor-”

He waved her away before she could finish her sentence. 

“It’s okay, the Dior was worth it.” He grinned at her, flashing a CD-emblazoned ring. “I know females are typically into fashion too, but you can’t steal my thing. So what’s yours? I mean, what are you about?”

Anire grimaced at his use of the word females, dipping her straw into the long island tea that had just arrived to take a tiny, satisfying sip. She had only ever visited Sanctuary Cities 121, 238, and 493 before, so maybe she was overstating it to say that SC333 had the best anything, but she hadn’t ever been to a place that made cocktails as well.

If she… didn’t find a partner, she would miss the freshly squeezed lemons, the Chelsea gin, the Magic Moments vodka. But it was more than that. She would miss sipping it on Nadi’s balcony, looking out towards the rest of the city. She would miss the rest of the city. It had always made her feel understood without words. Where else in the world would Fuji music be blasting at the train station at 10:47 am in the morning, or would ram horns be sticking out of the passenger seat of a battered, unlabelled taxi? The city was as much chaos as it was joy. There was a happiness she hadn’t experienced anywhere else except Mama Ibeji’s canteen on a Friday night. Every time she sat in one of the plastic chairs across the makeshift stage, tearing into a piece of shaki with her eyes squeezed tight so stew wouldn’t fly into them, she thought everywhere else might be a sanctuary, but this is home. 

 She considered the question as she sipped her drink. What was she about? What word defined her? What would she bleed for? It scared her that nothing came to mind. It was the 7th of February, exactly one week till The End, and she knew that her time was up. She’d had five whole years to find love. If it hadn’t happened for her at 21, she doubted it would at 25. She took another long sip from her glass, not stopping till she ran out of air. Maybe she could appeal to The Pantheon, she mused as the alcohol started flooding into her brain. Maybe she could convince them to give her an extension of some kind. An extra year, perhaps. She discarded the idea as quickly as she thought of it. There would need to be some sort of potential for them to grant an exception. But instead of anything promising, all Anire had to show for the half-decade in search of her person was an expert knowledge of all the best restaurants in the city. 

“There’s not much to me.” She answered finally. 

At least she was finally telling the truth. In her first year of searching for her soulmate, she would have said fashion to match his answer. She might even have added an embellished lie about her mum beating her with a belt when she caught her wearing her father’s work shirt. She would have dyed her eyebrows a complementary forest green to his hair colour and bought matching silver boots for cohesiveness in their couple pictures. 

“That can’t be true.” He said softly. 

“And yet.” She gestured down at herself with one hand. 

“What do you do for fun?”

“Date.” She shrugged. “Isn’t that what everybody does?”

“Well, yeah, but—” he scratched the back of his neck, “what kind of dates do you enjoy?”

She didn’t have the heart to tell him that she hadn’t enjoyed a single date in 4 years. But at least 21 was fun. Back then, she was still optimistic about finding her person. She believed the system would work for her. Her dates were exciting at that time. Watching indie plays in church basements, jetski-ing in the blue-brown water of the Atlantic, rosé on the beach at midnight that ended with her drunk and skinny dipping in what was once Landmark beach. But she never quite found out if she liked the outdoors, or the ocean, or the taste of wine. As the years folded quickly into each other and she remained alone, whatever awe she had left for the world dissolved in her. Her mother always used to say that life would kill her imagination. Anire was stubborn, though. She was convinced that she would never settle. If she had to die, she would die full of wonder. Yet there she was, at the end of her life, trying desperately to save it and not even knowing why. 

“Do you think you could love me, Umi?”

The question startled him, and he leaned back in his chair. 

“I don’t… I mean, I’m not sure.” 

“Okay, but do you want to see me naked?” 

He eyed her up and down, and the corners of his mouth lifted. 

“That would be nice.” 

“I have IBS, a bad back, and a crippling fear that I’ll die alone, which makes my nightmares so extreme that my neighbours have complained. Do you still want to see me naked?” She asked sweetly.

“Uh-” he darted his eyes around the restaurant, trying and failing to catch the eyes of a waiter. 

“I’ve also been told I’m really judgmental and a bad cook. How are you feeling about that nakedness now?”

“Look, Ani—”

“That’s the worst of it,” she crossed her fingers in front of both their faces to prove she was telling the truth. “Or at least those are the main things. Depending on how the sex goes, how long approximately do you think it will take you to fall in love with me?” She tapped her finger against an invisible watch on her wrist. “Because we’re on a bit of a time crunch.” 

Umi finally managed to get the attention of Margaret, who bounded over with the same cheery smile as before. 

“Can we get the bill, please?” He asked with a shaky voice. He dared a glance at Anire, who had at that point finished her drink and was sucking idly on ice cubes and air. “And um, can you split it?”

SECOND DATE: THREE DAYS TILL ALMOST CERTAIN DEATH 

Oriaku had a timber in her voice that made Anire’s stomach dance. She was nodding her head before she fully understood Oriaku’s question. When her head stilled, she studied Oriaku again. Anire had once gone on a date to a music studio with a man whose name was either Tega or Teju, where they had three hours to create a song from nothing. As it turned out, Anire was quite good at it. She seamlessly mixed violins, flowing into talking drums, flowing into soprano-sung lyrics. That’s what Oriaku’s face reminded her of. Melody.  

“Taurus, I think,” Oriaku answered as she placed a half-finished cup of orange juice on their patterned red mat. “Or at least that’s what my sister said. She’s the one who knows all that star kini kan. What about you?” 

“Promise you won’t judge?”

“How could I, I have no idea what any of it means.”

“Leo.” 

Oriaku grimaced and recoiled. 

“Hello?” Anire cried out, half-indignantly and half-giggling. “Whatever happened to not judging?”

“I’m sorry, it’s just,” Oriaku shook her head like she had tasted something bitter, “my ex was a Leo.” 

“Second time’s the charm?” Anire joked. 

Oriaku picked up her glass and downed the contents. 

“Third, actually.” She corrected. 

“Wow,” Anire nodded slowly, “you must love the sun.”

“I can imagine a long life spent in it.” 

“You mean with me?”

At 21, Anire would never have imagined being so bold, no matter how many gin-infused zobo drinks she had downed. Hell, she probably wouldn’t have asked such a daring question even a few months ago. But as it stood then, she had nothing to lose but time. 

“Why not?” Oriaku shrugged, a flirtatious smile playing along her lips. 

Allegra’s voice, as it did more and more often these days, pierced into her mind. Why so? It asked. Anire, instead of vocalising the question, steered the conversation into tepid waters. 

“So you said you’re a scientist?” 

Oriaku’s smile flattered temporarily, but she recovered and beamed at Anire once again. 

“Yeah, I graduated at 19 and joined the lab I work at when I turned 21.”

“The start of The Search?” Anire frowned with concern. “How did you balance those hours with dating?” 

“I didn’t,” Oriaku was still smiling, but it had turned strained, and it looked like it hurt, “that’s why I’m 25 asking people their star sign.” 

“Oh,” Anire said, knowing better than to apologise. 

“But I have had 1 relationship. It was someone from my lab.”

“The office must have been awkward after the breakup.” 

“It wasn’t at first. But things did become very somehow when I set her work station on fire.” 

Anire burst into laughter and waited for Oriaku to join her. 

“I’m not joking.” Oraiku clarified with a straight face. 

“Oh,” Anire repeated for the second time. 

Anire brainstormed, thinking wildly of ways to pierce the silence. She thought of at least three jokes that had gotten laughs on her most recent dates and was poised to tell them before she took another look at Oriaku’s face. The melody, which had been playing at full volume in Anire’s mind, quietened to a lull. She realised, as she had realised thousands of times before, that the person sitting beside her was not the one. There were several ways to deal with that truth, most of which involved making up an excuse to cut the date short. When she was younger, her go-to used to be either her apartment complex catching fire or one of her siblings sporadically breaking a leg. She thought the former excuse would be entirely too on the nose. The silence continued until it became mildly pleasant. In her mind, Anire quietly confronted the reality that she would die soon. She found that looking at the sunset, inches away from a beautiful albeit unstable woman, made the sting of that fact less potent than it had ever been before. 

“So,” Anire said conversationally, “do you have hobbies outside of arson?

“Gardening,” Oriaku took a sip from her cup, “but I have to admit it doesn’t give me the same thrill.” 

Anire didn’t react. 

“I’m joking,” Oriaku clarified, to which Anire released a shaky smile. 

“I’ve never been on a gardening date.” Anire offered, not knowing what else to say. 

“Do you want me to take you on one?”

“When?”

“No time like the present.” Oriaku drained her glass and tucked it into the woven basket that she’d come with. 

“But—”

Anire’s voice made Oriaku’s hand freeze over the basket. She looked up at Anire with both impatience and curiosity in her eyes. 

“Yeah?”

“To what end?”

The question was an artefact from a conversation with Allegra from months ago. She’d been debating whether to go on a third date with a banker who had an electric car, but bit her bottom lip entirely too hard every time they kissed, no matter how often she asked him to stop. They’d had iterations of the conversation every time Anire wondered about someone new. The Urhobo woman with a big heart but staunch belief that rapture had already happened, and they were the ones left behind. The Michelin-starred chef who begged her to try Kama Sutra with him on their first date. The kindergarten teacher with halitosis. Whenever Anire would ask whether she should see any of them again, Allegra would always ask gently, but firmly To what end?’

The answer never seemed as obvious to Allegra as it did to everyone else in the city. She was the only person Anire had ever met who did not hold her life in high esteem. In the years since she’d joined Anire’s pottery weekend workshop, she had only spoken about three people with any degree of romantic interest. She didn’t join The System, didn’t go on dates, and at least from Anire’s perspective, didn’t care about being loved. 

When Anire was with Allegra, she wanted to be better. She didn’t want to be the kind of person who checked herself into Harmony Hospital. She had gone after a particularly bad date at a roller skating rink. Her date had laughed when a poorly tied shoelace sent Anire crashing to the floor. Anire told herself that she was only at The Hospital for her smarting ankle. Yet when she was there, she tugged at a nurse’s lapel, asking to be taken for a routine check-up. It was a relatively simple process. The Pantheon medical representatives took a blood sample and asked a series of seemingly random questions. The purpose, though they’d never admit it, was to find out whether her degree of brokenness barred her from love. 

She was embarrassed that she answered all the questions honestly. She told them that, despite having gone on 113 dates at that point, she was completely undeterred from finding her person. She still adored The Pantheon and the beauty of the system they created and upheld. She was as committed as everyone else to getting her own irremovable silver or gold ring and wearing it until the day she died, side by side with her lover. She told them that yes, there were cracks in her mind. The kind that one might obtain from dozens of rejections, five times when the word ‘no’ hadn’t stopped wandering hands, and seeing her joy whittle down to nothing after another evening telling someone she was the youngest sibling of four over exploitatively priced cocktails. But they were manageable. They had to be. She was not afraid of death as much as she was afraid that it would prove something about her. That despite living a quarter of a century, a stable income, a face that had been called beautiful over candlelit dinners, hours spent practising sex positions with a pillow, a drawer full of expensive perfumes, an investment in top of the shelf kayamata, twenty three sessions with a Pantheon approved matchmaker, a slew of hobbies, manageable mental health issues (depending on the time of the month), and wanting it really really really really really really badly— she was simply incapable of being loved. 

“You don’t think I’m your person.” Oriaku presented it as a fact rather than a question.

“You might be. We could—”

Oriaku huffed a bitter laugh.

“What? Fake it?” 

“It might not be so bad,” Anire whispered. 

“Even if we passed whatever mysterious test they put us through, you’d still have to spend the rest of your life stuck with me.” She eyed her up and down. “Or die if you tried to cheat.” 

“As per?”

“Because of your stupid government, not me,” Oraiku explained with an eye roll.  

Anire’s heart caught around the word stupid being followed immediately by the word government. She looked around in what she hoped was a subtle move to make sure they hadn’t been overheard. When she was satisfied that no one was around to report them, she turned back towards her date. They fell into a silence that gnawed at Anire’s stomach unpleasantly. Growing uncomfortable with the quiet, she blurted the first thing that came into her mind, hoping to put a dent in it. 

“What do you grow?”

“Hm?” Oriaku hummed.

“In the garden.” Anire clarified.

“Oh, um, cherry tomatoes, roses, and hibiscus.”

In a move inexplicable to them both, Anire reached over and covered Oriaku’s fingers with hers. She was surprised that Oriaku did not shrug her away, instead she leaned down and placed a kiss on the side of her palm. 

“It must be so beautiful.” Anire felt a tear springing to her eyes. “I wish it were mine. All I have is a struggling aloe vera plant in a pot.”

Oriaku squeezed their interlocked hands together and looked at her with eyes that held both wistfulness and sadness. 

“That’s not nothing.” 

24 HOURS TILL ALMOST CERTAIN DEATH 

Whenever despair knocked on her doorstep, nothing chased it away quicker than a bright room and dirty hands. Anire sat in her pottery studio with clumps of red clay lodged under her fingernails. Her gentle humming to Fatboy Slim playing in the background became fervent scream-singing as the chorus of Demons came on. She only stopped when she heard tinkering laughter floating through the door.

“Hello?” She called out feebly, embarrassed to have been caught.

“You can’t sing for shit.” Allegra was still giggling as she stepped through the door. 

Anire rolled her eyes but immediately relaxed. 

“You didn’t see the closed sign?”

Allegra grabbed an apron hanging from a hook and settled opposite her. 

“I did, but then I heard your singing, and I couldn’t walk by without stopping to make fun of you.”

She grabbed a mould of clay and began to roll it under her hands. 

“That’s what you want to spend your last day doing?” Anire asked. “Hanging out in a pottery studio and being a bully?”

“Yes. I want to die as I lived,” Allegra paused, adding thoughtfully. “And I wanted to see you.” 

Anire ignored the twisted shape she knew her heart must have turned in her chest. She had been on the phone with her family just hours before. Everyone seemed to be in a different stage of grief. Her father wept silently, which she had never seen him do, while her eldest brother ran through the names of all the single men left on his basketball team. Her older sister spent half an hour berating her for not accepting when the founder of a tech start-up for an app that sent hourly reminders to discourage people from masturbating, asked Anire to be his person. They could have had it all, her sister mused. The app raised $650,000 in its first funding round.

Her mum was the only person who was, all things considered, normal. She asked Anire about her pottery and what she would have for dinner. To which Anire answered that she had donated her clay pots to charity shops, had finalised the sale of the studio, and was going to have sweetened palm wine with her couscous and lamb meal to celebrate. Anire had warned them all not to visit. She’d repeated the same instruction to friends, colleagues, neighbours, and students. Allegra was the only one to disobey. 

Anire dipped her left thumb into the sphere that she had created. She started remoulding it when she realised she had accidentally dug her finger to the bottom of the clay ball. 

“If you want to stay, I have ground rules.” 

“I’m already wearing the apron.” Allegra gestured down at herself. 

“Not that.” Anire’s hands slowed. “You can’t say the word sorry.” 

“I wasn’t going to.” 

Anire looked at her with a quirked eyebrow. 

“Yes, you were.”

“Okay,” Allegra stopped her rolling. “Yes I was.” She abandoned the clay and looked at Anire with tears pooling in her eyes. The sight alarmed Anire so much that she left her own clay too and rushed to her side. She threw an arm around Allegra’s shoulder, effectively staining her white shirt with red dirt. 

“Shit, sorry.” 

“I thought we weren’t allowed to say that.” 

“You aren’t. I never claimed to be above hypocrisy.”  

They smiled at each other briefly. Allegra sat down, and when Anire moved to settle back into her chair, Allegra pulled her onto her lap instead. At first, Anire balanced awkwardly on her thighs, barely breathing and refusing to make eye contact. 

“You smell nice.” 

Anire rolled her eyes.

“Allegra, please.” 

She could feel their heart rates syncing up as their chests rose and fell in tandem. It lulled her into a calm only Allegra could inspire. 

“Look at me,” Allegra whispered. Anire stared straight ahead, pretending she hadn’t heard anything. “Please,” she said even quieter. Something about her voice made Anire obey. She’d never heard it sound quite so fragile. 

She turned towards Allegra slowly. She knew she would pay for it; looking at Allegra was never consequence-free for Anire’s body. But she did it anyway. Because if she had to die, Allegra’s face was the last thing she wanted to remember, and she wanted to remember everything. So she took her time studying it. Anire had never been able to do it from this distance before. Allegra’s face was like those paintings that held worlds within worlds. If you went over it with a microscope or zoomed in, you’d see that through a house window, there was a coffee table, and on the coffee table, there was a mug, and in the mug, there was an ocean, and so on and so forth. One of the few regrets Anire had in her life was that she would not get to see what the ocean had become. 

“Can I tell you something?”

“No.” 

It was the first time since knowing her that Anire had ever refused Allegra. She didn’t mean to be cruel, but she sensed that whatever Allegra was going to say would end with a word she absolutely did not want to hear. Plus, she had promised herself before she turned twenty-one that if she ended up alone at the end of The Search, there would be no last-minute grand confessions. It’s why she barred all her loved ones from saying goodbye in person. She had even made them swear that they would not visit her grave with flowers or gifts. She wanted to die both empty and alone. She figured it was the least she deserved after a lifetime spent carrying the all-consuming weight of wanting to be loved. 

“You would refuse a dying woman?” Allegra gasped, holding a hand dramatically to her chest. 

“I would,” Anire replied with a strained smile. 

“You don’t know what I’m going to say.” 

“Maybe,” Anire shrugged, “but I know what you’re not going to say.” 

Anire held her breath without meaning to. The next words from Allegra’s mouth could save her life, save both of their lives. After half a minute, she exhaled, releasing the last dredges of her hope with the breath. 

“You know I can’t,” Allegra said, her voice barely above a murmur. 

“No,” Anire rose to her feet. “I know you can’t.” 

The two of them had met almost three years prior. It was outside a Halloween house party, each trying to find a taxi to take them back home. Allegra was wearing a white slip dress, and a sign hung from her neck, emblazoned with the word "Freudian." Anire was dressed as a pillow princess, a pink cushion gripped in her left hand and a tiara balanced atop her braids. The two of them sat on the concrete, complementing each other’s costumes and lamenting the city's broken public transport system. They met up again a week later. It was Allegra’s third date and Anire’s fifty-fourth. It was one of those rare dates that Anire hadn’t found through The System. 

They had chosen Nadi as the date location because neither of them had ever been, but they kept hearing good things about it. It was closed on Sundays, but Anire had called in a favour to the manager, who had made a begrudging exception once she offered an eye-watering cheque. Allegra was wearing a blue dress that brushed the floor with every step she took. Anire remembered thinking, as she ate, that it felt as if a piece of the sky were sitting across from her. She was sober the entire date, another rarity. She ordered club soda and a non-alcoholic Chapman, and Allegra ordered the same. The date started by noon on the dot, but by the time the sun was setting, they were still sitting in the same spot, laughing obnoxiously at a joke Anire had told. She was telling her absolute best jokes that day. When she ran out of source material, she started stealing jokes she’d heard around the office or from old secondary school friends. She would have done anything to see Allegra’s face split in half and hear laughter that sounded like bells clanging coming out of her mouth. 

They’d ended the day by strolling to a vintage store and making an impulsive purchase of two typewriters. Allegra’s was lilac coloured while Anire chose teal. They sat in silence on the floor of Anire’s pottery studio, having challenged each other to write a love letter in thirty minutes. Allegra turned out to be the competitive type. She typed with unbroken focus for the full half hour, not even glancing up at Anire once. For her part, Anire couldn’t write more than five words. They said more than any love letter ever could, to her anyway. 

Will you be my person? 

“It would have been you,” Allegra announced, her voice shaking slightly around the final word. 

Anire outstretched a hand, helping Allegra stand. She took a step forward, closing the already infinitesimal distance between their bodies. For a moment, she debated kissing Allegra. She’d never tried to before, not because she hadn’t thought about it, but because she was afraid. She knew that if she ever kissed Allegra, she might never want to do anything else. She would quit The System, abandon The Search, and burn every member of The Pantheon to the ground if she had to. It would be so simple if Allegra were her person, but she wasn’t; she was so much more. Allegra was a revolution. Not in the sense of buildings burned and governments overthrown. Revolution as a circle. A cycle. A story made whole. Wherever Anire walked, no matter how far she thought she had strayed, she knew she would always return to where she started. And she would end, as she began, with Allegra. She folded her lips into her mouth and pressed their foreheads together. 

“But it wasn’t.”

FEBRUARY 14

Anire debated between a red lip and her staple black liner and brown gloss. She decided to go with the latter. She wanted to die looking like herself, she decided. It was the same reason she chose to spray her white jasmine perfume instead of the musky burnt orange scent she’d bought the week prior. She wasn’t sure why she’d gotten it. Probably because it was a smell she knew her mum would like. A parting gift. Though she’d already given away plenty of those. Everything sat neatly labelled in boxes around her now-empty apartment.

She couldn’t be bothered to properly clean her bathroom, which caused her heart to twinge with guilt as she thought about her sister rolling her eyes as she poured bleach down the toilet. To distract herself from the thought, and any thought at all, she began to rearrange the boxes. Her gaze kept wandering to the door, hoping that someone would burst through it, making a desperate plea for her at the dying hour. She imagined that they’d kneel on her welcome mat with a bouquet behind them that was too big to fit through the door. She’d dash across the apartment to join them, wrapping them in her arms and shouting ‘yes’ in an ear-splitting scream. Maybe it would be the banker. Anire had always suspected that he had a passionately romantic side. Her breathing fell out of rhythm when she remembered he turned 25 last year. He was long dead. 

Her ankle almost twisted on her first step out of her apartment. She straightened quickly, swivelling her head around to see if anyone had caught her. She locked eyes with her neighbour, Soibifa, whose features were warped in concern.

“You’re headed to The End?” She asked, raising her voice slightly so she could be heard over passing traffic. 

“We all are someday,” Anire responded. 

“You look tired, dear. Come in quickly, let me make you a cup of coffee.” 

“I’ll run late.” 

“And so? Wetin them go do? Kill you?” 

Anire considered the question, laughed quietly, and followed Soibifa into her house. She’d always admired her neighbour’s commitment to incoherence in her interior design. She settled onto a bright yellow couch, crossing her legs as Soibifa waltzed around the kitchen. Within a few minutes, she reappeared with two green mugs, handing one over to Anire with a slightly shaky hand. She settled across from her and raised her glass in a salute. Anire raised hers back then pressed it to her lips. The coffee tasted unbearably bitter, but she smiled and released a small ‘mmm’ of enjoyment anyway.

“Two things,” Soibifa announced suddenly, tearing through the silence. “Actually, three.”

Anire straightened up.

“Let’s hear it.”

“First thing. I’m taking your aloe vera plant. I’ve watered it for years anyway.”

“Okay,” Anire chuckled, “it’s yours.”

“Second thing,” Soibifa’s face dropped, and her voice turned decidedly serious. “You’re unlucky, not unlovable.”

The words were as bitter as the coffee and left the same lump in Anire’s throat.

“Yes I am.” She shrugged. “I tried for years, if there was someone for me, The System…”

“Fuck that,” Soibifa growled. She looked around the room with furtive, fearful eyes, then leaned into Anire with her voice barely a whisper. “I’m going to say something that I can only repeat because I know you’re dying soon.”

“Oh, I am? It skipped my mind.” 

Soibifa ignored her and continued speaking. 

“Ojomu is a dullard.” 

Half Anire’s coffee spilt into her lap with shock. She didn’t even bother standing to clean herself up. 

“Excuse me?”

“Are you a dullard too? Which one is excuse me?” 

“I can see you sef want to die,” she whisper-hissed. 

“He is.” Soibifa doubled down. “The entire panther kini kan is just an elevated men’s club.” 

“Jesus wept.” Anire dropped her head into her hands. 

“After years, their president finally found a babe to manage him, and he now made it everyone’s problem. Why do you think you have to spend the rest of your life with only one person?” 

Anire’s head spun with each new word. 

“Did his babe help him make the law?” 

“A woman making a law? Where do you think this is, Sanctuary city 953?” 

“But wait,” Anire shook her head with confusion, “how do you even know any of this?”

When Soibifa opened her mouth to answer, Anire put a hand in front of her face to stop her. 

“Actually, don’t answer that,” She finally lifted her head from her hands. “It doesn’t make a difference.” She said sternly. Her words were as much of a bid to convince herself as they were to convince Soibifa. 

“It does.” Soibifa looked at her sadly. “Did you hear what you just said to me? Anire, I’ve lived here for 4 years so I know the only thing you don’t treat well is that aloe vera plant and yourself.” She grabbed Anire’s hands and squeezed both of them tight. “You know, book, you’re a fine girl, and your jollof rice is takeaway.” Soibifa kissed her fingers in a dramatic gesture. 

Anire softened at the words and allowed herself to smile slightly.

“When you say it like that, I sound like a wonderful partner.” 

“You are a wonderful person.” Soibifa released her fingers and leaned away as tears began to crowd her eyes. “Or at least you’re a good neighbour.” She glanced at a spot on the wall just above Anire’s head. “I didn’t want you to… leave here without knowing that.” 

Anire did not answer for a long time, fighting back tears of her own.

“What’s the third thing?” She asked after what felt like a lifetime of silence had passed between them. 

When Soibifa looked up at her, her eyes were as bright as her smile. It would have been impossible to guess that she was crying mere moments ago. 

“That your babe with red hair said I should give this to you.” Soibifa handed her a blue envelope. 

Anire did not think it was possible to sit up any higher, but at the mention of Allegra, her body involuntarily rearranged itself.  She froze for a moment, unable to reach forward. Soibifa sensed this and dropped the envelope on the table. They sat in the terse silence for almost five minutes, neither of them moving except to take small sips of coffee. 

“What’s the third thing?” Anire asked finally. 

“You were a good neighbour.” Soibifa drained the last of her cup. “Coffee won’t be the same without you.”

INSIDE THE UN-OPENED BLUE ENVELOPE

Dear Anire, 

I’m going to use something you told me you hate- numbers. Please bear with me. I’m 23 years old, which means I’ve lived 8,401 days. Theoretically, I’ve seen the same number of sunsets. But there are too many variables for that to be true. Like the fact that memory doesn’t kick in for most people until they are 4.7 years old. Then, I have to take into account the days that I was indoors and missed it completely. Or I was sleeping. Or I simply did not notice. How terrible of me not to notice. There’s no defence for it, but let me at least try to offer an explanation. I’m a cynic. An unrepentant one at that. Many have said that it’s my worst trait, and I have to agree. For a long time, I was afraid that nothing would move me. That nothing could. The seaside, eclipses, rolling hills. Everything simply passes through me. But today, you pointed at the sky, and I saw it. Really saw it, I mean. Days spent indoors and pessimism notwithstanding, I must still have seen at least a thousand sunsets. I’ve never experienced anything like what I saw today before. Which is a convoluted way to say I’ve never experienced anything like you before. I don’t believe in god. I don’t know who to repent to. But every time you made me laugh, I wanted to beg for salvation. I think my prayers were answered when you laughed too, and you pointed at the sky, and something I’ve only ever known to be blue or orange turned technicolour in front of me. 

I’m rarely ever tempted by passion, and I'm even less compelled by bravery. I don’t know if what I’m about to write is motivated by both or just pure stupidity. I’m cynical, irreligious, and a political anarchist. Again, a convoluted way to say I don’t believe in anything— including The Pantheon. But for today, I indulged them. I understood, probably for the first time in my life, why they say everyone should find someone. I don’t plan to be so easily governed, though. When I turn 25 and February 14th comes around, I’m determined to die alone. I could explain the long moral and ideological reasons why, but I’ll spare you. The only thing I will say, though, is that love must be chosen freely. If the times were different, and the world was ideal, I’d like to think we could do what they used to do in the old days. I don’t know if you’ve heard of weddings? It used to be a whole ceremony. The point was that people are asked to choose someone to spend the rest of their lives with, and not under threat of death. If I ever got the chance to do something like that, I would make sure it was under a pink and orange and violet sky. And… I would make sure it was with you.