I still wasn't able to wrap my head around what happened when I found my way to the hag's office the following day with the note clutched firmly in my hands and sat impatiently beside the hot cop as I waited for her to finish up her phone call to probably someone high and mighty judging from the efforts she applied in sounding less scratchy.

Hot cop wasn't making my nervousness any better, he hadn't stopped staring at me since I barged in, I would have found it amusing that he'd been always around whenever I decided to pay a visit and even make small talk about it if I wasn't so nervous and confused.

There was one thing I was sure of though. And that was the fact that Tinuke was murdered on purpose because of her connection to me.

Whatever reason as to why it happened, I didn't know.

But I was determined to find out.

".....I'll be expecting your call Honourable Sir.... Thank you very much.... Good day." The hag finished her call and expression turned frosty almost immediately.

"What is it again?"

"I came to-"

"State your reason for coming or get lost." She barked, if her forceful squeal could be called one.

"I was about to do just that, but you interrupted me." I replied with a raised brow.

"Then get on with it! I've already had enough of your shit." My brow shot up higher, but I wasn't going to call her out for using the language she so graciously preached against. I passed her the folded sheet instead.

She looked at me skeptically as she slowly took the sheet from me. She opened it just as carefully after perching her reading glasses on her nose, probably thinking it was a letter bomb.

She glared daggers at me after going through it's content, "so what is this supposed to mean Miss Adeoti? Do you think I have the time for your nonsense?"

"It's not nonsense." I stated blandly.

"Then would you care to elaborate?" I saw a crack in the caked foundation on her face but said nothing to acknowledge it.

"I got it last night, it was neatly folded in two and placed beside my pillow."

"And why would I care about some fucked up equation delivered to you and into how many places it was folded?" She asked in exasperation, flapping the paper wildly, to my astonishment.

I didn't have to answer, hot cop picked up from where she left off, "an equation you say?"

He turned to me when the hag nodded in confusion, "could that by any chance be ...?"

"The same equation written on Tinuke's body? Yes it is, written with the exact same ink." I finished for him and silent reigned after he muttered a 'shit' under his breath.

The hag must've caught up with what we were getting at, for she broke the silence with a gasp.

"Did you see who dropped this?" She said and motioned to the piece of paper that was now far away from where she was like it was a plague.

I shook my head negatively.

"We need to decode the equation, it carries a message." Hot cop said urgently and the hag nodded with empathy before grabbing her intercom receiver.

"Send in Dave Coker immediately." She squealed into the receiver and clamped it down.

"We have to at least solve the equation and get what 'x' means. I've called my brightest math student to come tack-"

"It's seven," I interrupted. "The value of x in the equation is seven." The hag dismissed me with a wave of her wiry hand.

"And what exactly do you know about maths? Do you think this is one plus one?," she snarled before resuming to converse nervously with hot cop as they awaited Dave's arrival.

The cocky bastard arrived with his infamous smile and bowed slightly before the hag. He descended on the equation as soon as he was giving permission to do so. And sure enough, his answer wasn't seven. It was minus seven.

The hag sent me a triumphant look as she patted her brightest math student on the back.

"You forgot to divide both sides by the coefficient of x senior Dave." I pointed out blatantly but the hag had had enough.

"You're arguing with a five-time award winner of the national mathematics competition? You that scored a disgracefully low grade on-"

"She's right ma'am." Dave interrupted with apparent surprise and the hag's eyes became the size of beach balls.

"I must've lost the minus sign along the line, the final answer is seven ma." And Mrs. Lawrence wouldn't stop gaping at me like I'd just fed five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fishes.

"How d-did you g-get the answer?" She stuttered incredulously and I shrugged impatiently.

"The same way he got his. Now can we get to the decoding part?" I turned to hot cop who had thoroughly been silent throughout and found his piercing gaze trained on me.

"How close were you guys?" I knew what he was getting at, so I didn't beat around the bush.

"Someone used her to get to me. I know that already, I just want to find out who and why." He nodded in approval and penned down a few things on his pocket journal.

"Do you think it's somehow connected to the death of Ms. Nonso?" I paused for a while to think thoroughly about it before nodding. It was the only practical conclusion I could come up with so far, the deaths were too similar to be a coincidence.

"Who do you think would do this?" He enquired again and I sighed in frustration

"A murderer, maybe a serial killer? Isn't it your job to find out who it is? Didn't you hear the hag here? I'm very very very dumb. Stop asking me questions like I'm a guru. I don't know anything!" I screamed and made to do the only thing I knew how to do when things got heated.

Only that the cocky bastard's chest was on standby to stop me this time, his hand automatically shot out to steady me from falling. I snapped out his hold like he was a plague as soon as I found my balance.

"Keep your damn hands to yourself and get the fuck out of my way!" I all but yelled when I was a safe distance away but he didn't budge. He looked at me with knotted brows instead.

"You have to stop running away like a coward. You have to face your fears head on." He stated calmly, infuriating me even more.

"I don't want you to see the other side of me Dave, just get lost!"

"I've seen every side there is to see." Came his calm reply that almost knocked me off my feet by the element of truth within.

He just had to be the one that was near enough to calm me down after discovering Tinuke's body. Ugh!

"You have no idea what you're talking about, I have no fears." I didn't understand the need to just disappear from there and never come back, nobody had ever faced me head on with something that close to the truth, no one had ever had the nerve to.

Until the bastard started getting interested in me.

"If you have no fears then prove it, help crack this case. You have nothing to lose." Yet again, he was right, I'd already lost Tinuke and the least I could do was to help find who was behind it all and get him punished.

I found myself seated near the hot cop once again. Mrs. Lawrence was smiling sheepishly and the man beside me was trying to mask his own smile.

"Someone who knows the nooks and crannies of the school did it, it's either a janitor or a teacher." I said suddenly and the smiles on their faces froze.

Good.

"That's a smart one, let's narrow down the search a little more. Who do you suspect....."

♣

I was beginning to come to terms with the void my Tiny left behind, even if it'd just been a little over twenty four hours. I'd come to terms that I would never see her pretty smile ever again, that I would never witness her doe, innocent eyes go misty when things doesn't go the way she wanted it to.
I wouldn't ever feel her tiny hands play with my long brown dreadlocks as I read her a bedtime story.
I wouldn't ever see the cute pout she did whenever she attempted to use the puppy-dog charm me.
I wouldn't ever hear her squeal whenever I playfully threw her over my shoulder and dump her on the bed whenever she was past bedtime, neither would I ever see her brows almost kissing each other in concentration whenever we played chess -which she was surprisingly good at.

I was beginning to come to terms with those facts. Not.

Sigh.

I was currently at an empty table at the corner of the school's cafeteria picking at my food and staring at the blank page that was supposed to have my homework. Silently watching the bubbly air around me. The seniors at their different designated tables chatted at nothing and everything in particular. An idiotic conversation about if Bob Risky would ever end up married filtered to my ears and I shook my head in pity.

Fortunately, the red headed bimbo that had a crush on him/her didn't have any idea that she ran the risk of being discovered dead in a bathroom stall by the next morning or she wouldn't be shamelessly flirting with Dave who paid her no mind and ate his plate of beans porridge indifferently.

I would have found it very amusing and probably filmed it and uploaded it to my vlog under normal circumstances. Those were the experiences I relished and was eager to share with my young best friend. But everything was staid now, everything had lost its humour and was just a blur.

I'll come to terms with it all. I promise.

"You should eat your meal. It'll get cold." A serious voice from the opposite bench of my table jolted me out of my reverie.

"Teachers sitting with students during dinner is one of the prohibited stuffs around here." I said without looking up from the mess I'd made of my dinner and homework.

"We both know I'm not really a teacher." He said, somewhat amused and I smiled ruefully.

"Not everyone knows that and the least thing I want is the attention I'm getting right now. Leave." He gave a light chuckle but made no move to obey my command.

"You don't seem to me like a girl that gives a fuck about what someone thinks about you." He speculated with his eyes burning holes into my forehead.

I finally raised my head up to meet his stare. His serious but handsome face was chiseled for nothing short of fashion magazines, his five o'clock shadow prominent and his dark circles speaking volumes. I looked away immediately I felt his penetrating gaze threaten to reach deep into my soul, into the insanity I was trying so hard to put in check. I couldn't afford that he saw that. Not when I could avoid it.

"I don't care." I finally answered before I started packing up my stuffs into my backpack, an action that didn't escape the eagle's eyes of the hot cop. I wondered if that was part of the training, the x-ray stare, that is.

"How old are you?" The sudden question almost startled me out of my skin, I paused my actions and once again locked gazes with him.

"And you're asking this because?" I questioned with a raised brow.

He was actually flustered when he replied, "just curiosity, you don't have to answer, it's ju-"

"Seventeen. Clocked seventeen three months ago, so no, I can't actually be the biological mother to ......Tinuke." He brows rose a fraction as I zipped up my backpack but didn't make a move to leave.

"You're a wise woman." He stated thoughtfully and I snickered.

"Don't be fooled, I'm nowhere near wise. You can ask everyone that knows me." I shrugged on my backpack but remained seated.

"That's because you make everyone think you're not. You're very much wiser than you let on." I was on my feet already, I wasn't going to standby and blush over some bullshit speculation of some young hot dude. I needed to be alone and away from all the madness in the cafeteria. I needed a blunt.

"I won't argue with you sir. But I won't advise you to live under an illusion that couldn't be farther from the truth. Goodnight."

I walked away and failed to listen to his offer to walk me to my hostel, neither did I notice the sneers and insults hauled at me by the senior girls that'd taken a liking to the hot cop and felt betrayed that he 'chose' me over them. I knew I would be getting an earful for the rest of the term, but that was the least of my problems.

The night breeze made the tendrils of my dreadlocks whip backwards as I stepped out of the warmth the cafe had to offer. I stared at the full, bright moon in wonder about how she was able to still be so bright after witnessing the gruesome atrocities of humanity times without number, it was going to be food for thought later. But at the moment, I needed to get to my dorm room as soon as possible.

Alas, Dave was trailing behind me whilst staring at his phone, an action he'd done earlier that morning when I went on my way to classes.

He was following from a safe distance, at about ten metres away, but that didn't rub off the fact that he was following me. I didn't like it one bit.

"Why are you following me?" I snapped when I walked up to him.

He looked up from his phone for a while and gave an indulgent smile in reply.

"Have I not told you to stay the fuck away from me?" It was a yell this time and it made him sigh and pocket his phone.

"Look," he began, "Mrs. Lawrence said-"

"I don't care what Mrs. Lawrence said okay? Just stay the hell away from me!" I took to my heels after that and thankfully, he was too stunned by my outburst to follow.

By the time I got to the entrance of the hall I was residing in, I was almost sick with worry.

I didn't know what it was with the guy seeing the worst sides of me, why he affected me in more ways than one and why I was scared shitless of his sudden interest towards me. Something didn't feel right, but I couldn't place a finger on what that something was as much as I tried.

So much for being 'wiser that I let on'.

Sigh.

So here it is guys, another chapter long before schedule😇.
It's like Ella is forcing me to write her story while Mokunfayo (from Melanin diaries) wants to go on a holiday.
My heart is still beating abnormally as I type the authors note and I hope yours did too.😂
I couldn't wait till Friday to post this so here it goes.
And I know it's too early to ask but I'll still ask; who do you suspect?😏
Comment your thoughts down here and don't forget to vote and indicate if you sight a typo.
I need help in the bok cover too, though I feel it's the perfect cover because an image of a girl is immersed in all the blood on a closer look, I get the vibe that it scares people away😳, what do you think?

It's after one over here so good morning from this end.
Thank yiu for giving the book a chance.
Ily.
xx.
✌illusionistic.