The morning light crept into Neo-Lagos like a thief too weary to run. Its pale gold washed over the city's crooked roofs, glass towers, and the patchwork of rusted zinc sheets that quilted the skyline. Dawn should have been noisy. Dawn should have arrived with the throb of engines, the sing-song calls of hawkers, the impatient honks of buses, and the laughter of children running barefoot in the dust. But here, as always, it arrived mute.
The silence pressed down on everything like a second sky. Market women lifted baskets onto their heads without a word. Hawkers moved their lips in practiced rhythms—shapes that once carried prices and promises—but nothing came out. Buyers haggled with their fingers, slashing the air, frowning, holding up ten fingers, then five, then three. Coins clinked, but even the smallest clang felt swallowed, like the city itself was ashamed to make a sound.
Children chased one another in the streets, their faces bright with sweat, yet their joy was noiseless. Feet pounded the earth, leaving dusty clouds, but no squeals, no shouts of victory or defeat. The silence stretched across the play like a curse. If you watched long enough, you might almost believe this was how the world had always been.
But Ireti Adeola had never believed that.
She walked beside her mother that morning, balancing a basket of yams against her hip. Her mother's strides were long and firm, her wrapper tightened neatly at the waist. Ireti, though shorter, kept up easily. Her eyes darted everywhere, restless, curious, hungry. She watched lips moving and hands gesturing. She imagined sounds for each.
The man selling peppers—his lips wide and stretched—should have sounded loud, she thought. Like thunder pretending to be a man. The young girl hawking fried bean cakes should have had a thin, ringing voice, quick and sharp. The okada rider waving frantically at a passenger—surely he should have been shouting something brash, impatient, maybe even funny.
But there was nothing. Only lips like fish opening and closing, never making a splash.
Her mother noticed the way Ireti stared too long. She tapped her lightly on the shoulder, a warning in the gesture. When Ireti looked up, her mother's eyes had that stern glint that said: Enough.
They walked a few more steps in silence. Then her mother signed quickly with her hands, sharp and efficient: "Don't look too hard, Ireti. Curiosity makes trouble."
Ireti nodded, though the unease inside her only grew. Trouble already walked beside her like a second shadow.
---
School was no relief.
Her classroom smelled of chalk dust and old cement. Thirty students sat in rigid rows, slates balanced on their laps. The blackboard at the front bore instructions written in white chalk:
"Copy. Solve. Submit."
No one spoke. The teacher stood with her back to them, drawing equations. She didn't turn, didn't explain, didn't use her voice—voices were forbidden. Everything existed on the board or in the scratches of chalk.
Ireti copied the numbers, but her eyes kept drifting. She watched the teacher's shoulders, the way they sometimes tensed, sometimes eased. She watched the chalk tapping rhythmically, like it wanted to be more than chalk. She imagined what her teacher might sound like if she taught aloud. Would it be a soft voice, coaxing? Or sharp and cutting?
She imagined herself asking questions. She imagined answers falling into the air, warm and alive. She imagined the classroom filled with something more than dust and silence.
Her pencil stopped moving.
A shadow fell over her.
She looked up and saw her teacher standing at her side. The woman's eyes were hard, her lips set in a line. She leaned down, her hand brushing Ireti's desk with deliberate weight. Then she whispered no, not whispered, mouthed her words.
"Keep your eyes on the board. Wandering minds disappear."
Ireti's chest tightened. She nodded quickly, forcing her pencil back to work. The teacher lingered one moment longer, then moved on.
But the warning clung to her skin like damp cloth. Disappear. Everyone knew what that meant. The "Curious Ones." The students who asked too much, who stared too long, who tapped the edges of silence like they expected it to crack. They were taken. By who, no one said. But their desks grew empty, and their names were erased from the attendance.
---
The walk home should have been routine, but that day it was different.
First, she saw a man trip and fall near a pothole. His mouth opened wide, too wide, as if he were calling out for help. His hands waved, frantic. But no sound came. People helped him up, dusted his clothes, patted his back, and moved on as though his voiceless cry meant nothing.
Later, she passed a hawker with a tray of bananas. The woman lifted one high, lips moving in dramatic arcs as if shouting a price. Her gestures were exaggerated, too big. She looked like a ghost of a world that should not exist. Why act like you were shouting, Ireti thought, if sound didn't exist at all?
The cracks disturbed her. Her heart wouldn't let them go. If sound never existed, why do people still act like it should?
She reached the corner near her street when she saw two older boys leaning against a wall. Their hands moved quickly in signs, too quick for her to catch every symbol. But she caught enough.
"Another one… disappeared."
"Curious Ones always vanish."
"Silencers took him."
Ireti froze mid-step. She tilted her head, listening without listening. The word sent a shiver down her spine: Silencers. She had heard it before, whispered in the market, mouthed at night when adults thought children were asleep. Some said the Silencers wore masks, some said they blended in as neighbors. No one agreed on who they were, but everyone agreed on what they did. They erased. They erased questions, curiosity, anyone who dared to look for more.
The boys noticed her watching. One of them narrowed his eyes.
"You," he mouthed without sound, pointing at her. "Stop listening."
Her body jolted. She hurried down the street, her heart thumping, though no sound betrayed her fear.
---
At home that evening, her mother prepared beans in silence, her motions steady and practiced. The clatter of spoon against pot was there, but faint, dulled by the heavy quiet that ruled the world. Ireti sat in her room, staring at her desk.
She tapped her fingers lightly. Once. Twice. Again.
The wood absorbed the motion, sending small tremors into her skin. No sound, but vibrations. Something alive beneath the silence. She tapped faster, slower, changing rhythms.
Her thoughts swirled: If silence is normal, why do my fingers search for sound? Why do I keep imagining voices? Why do I dream of things I've never heard?
Her mother's voice floated in her memory: "Don't look too hard. Curiosity makes trouble."
The teacher's warning returned: "Wandering minds disappear."
And the boys' words lingered sharpest of all: "Silencers took him."
She lay back on her bed, staring at the cracked ceiling. The moonlight bled through the window, pale and watchful. The city outside looked calm, but the calm was brittle, like glass that might shatter with one wrong note.
"The world feels heavier," she thought, "when no one questions it."
Her fingers tapped against her chest, keeping time with her heartbeat. Tap. Tap. Tap. No sound, yet a rhythm nonetheless.
She closed her eyes, but sleep did not come.
Neo-Lagos slept around her, trapped in silence, pretending it had always been so. But Ireti Adeola could not pretend. Not anymore.