The spaciousness of the water factory had deflated, air sunken, and the once beaming sunlight dimmed from the shadow of a passing gray cloud — like a mist of doom approaching hastily to rest on David. And so, at that moment, while the recollection of Sindara's death sufficed as an efficient cause for David to feel deserving of the physical pain he felt, it seemed as though he were the only one in the room.

There was no way anyone could be in this same space as he at this moment. There was no way any innocent soul could survive in this choking, deflated hole that had sucked out air from an area that was meant for him alone — as a means of punishment.

And so when he heard angry words from a few inches away, David was extremely shocked — astonished to see that someone – people were still here, standing in this airless space, and seemed quite comfortable.

Then, everything that seemed to swirl in a slow-motion in David's eyes halted. The vision of Sindara dancing in a ballerina costume vanished into speckles of silver ashes. The bright light from the morning sun peeped in through the windowpane again. The gray cloud had passed away, or perhaps, it was never there.

Air brushed past in abundance, and like a spring with numerous channels, parts of the air found its way into David's nostrils again. Then, David looked around him. Every single person in the room was either angry or baffled. And surprisingly, the angry expressions on the faces of the majority scared David. Was it because everyone in the room strangely looked so taller than he was?

Then he remembered what had happened a few days ago at the living room — when his father, Kelvin, had looked at him with an expression even worse. And he was also on the ground, with his father towering over him. Now, he was in that same position — defeated and incapable as always. Only that now, he was sitting on a wet floor of busted pure water sachets.

The voices he'd ceased to hear now came in a cacophony of rebuke:

'What's wrong with this boy?!'

'Apa l'omo de yii. Baseje ni!'

'S'oju e fo ni ? Ab'ori e daru?'

They were all insults and verbal expressions of rage proceeding from the mouths of workers who'd worked so hard to produce hundreds of pure water sachet bags. No one cared about the injury he'd sustained from the accident or bothered to know if he was okay. He'd just ruined their numerous hours of work, and the pain they expressed was beyond the frustration they felt from watching their efforts go to waste. It was more about the consequences of the occurrence.

David realized this when everyone in the room shuddered under the thunderous sound of a deep baritone voice. A voice that drowned out their ongoing protests. It was then that it dawned on him that he'd not only put himself in trouble, but he'd implicated everyone else.

In a few seconds, the owner of the voice appeared — the bald man from yesterday with tribal marks on his chin — the owner of the water factory. The man, who was wearing another phony lace attire, took seemingly gigantic steps towards David — like a lion strutting towards the area where the carcass of his prey lay.

David couldn't have been more wrong to have thought that the workers in the room seemed really tall because "tall" wouldn't be the right word to describe this behemoth of a man who was approaching him with an alarming speed. A speed as dangerous as a monsoon that promised an unforgettable doom.

David made a few movements backward by shifting his buttocks, but the man had cornered him before he could even try to get on his feet. There was nowhere for David to run. The man stopped moving and stooped low, on an eye-to-eye level with David, and grabbed the collar of his shirt with a fist.

In a swift second, David felt his limp body rise from the ground, with his feet hanging loosely in mid-air. The strength of his boss was incomprehensible. It didn't quite suit him. David felt grossly disappointed in himself to bring out this side of his boss so quickly. He'd known from the start that his boss was not a nice man. Still, for him to be this furious connoted only one thing: that David was a colossal failure. And it reflected in his boss's raging words:

"Are you insane? Iwo omo oloriburuku yii? Why did you make me employ you if, on your first day of work, you are already wasting bags of pure water sachets?"

"I deserve to be punished, sir," David stated as he struggled to look at anything but the ferocious glare of his master.

"Of course you do, stupid child! And so does everyone else in this room right now!" he turned and glared at every worker present in the room.

The man freed his hand from the collar of David's shirt, and immediately, David fell to the ground. The man stooped low and raised a large, callused hand like a formless shadow capable of consuming David whole. The man was ready to slap David when a hand — that of another person circled his — just before it descended on David's cheek.

"Sir, please do not hit him. It was a mistake he made," said a feminine voice.

And surprisingly, that voice stopped the boss. The man turned to the lady who had just prevented him from meting out punishment to his insolent subordinate. Although the lines of his forehead were still creased in anger, he was willing to reach a compromise with this young lady.

When David raised his head to look at this young lady who'd just effortlessly performed magic, he was surprised to see a petite girl with an angular face that sold out the probability of her age. She had to be his sister's agemate. The boyishness of her hips and the angular thinness of her face made her look almost androgynous.

He'd never seen a girl that looked so young and yet so old, so masculine yet so feminine. Who was she? And from where did she come? It was evident that she was older than him and even more apparent that she was younger than the boss. So how was she able to stop him?

David couldn't find the answer in her looks, so he sought a clue in her dressing. But this lady was dressed quite shabbily in clothes that a factory worker would wear. There was no iota of authority in her appearance.

"A mistake that would cost me a few thousands of naira! And you tell me not to hit him!" the boss flared.

"Yes, sir. Please don't punish him or anyone else here," the girl pleaded. "I will make up for the mess."

"Oh, you will, won't you?" the man answered in a suggestive tone. His anger had receded completely now with an assurance of a cryptic message that was understandable to him and the girl only.

The girl nodded affirmatively.

And as though bewitched by a spell, the man took a few steps backward and then retreated to leave the room with a smirk on his face.

David didn't realize that his mouth had been wide open till he heard the irritating buzz of a fly.

***

"Here," Celine offered David a white pill and a glass of water. "It will help reduce the pain you feel from your injury."

Celine had taken David away from the water factory into the quarters, a small bungalow constructed behind the main building. The space smelled old and musty, and the small living room was sparsely filled. There was too much space in between the furniture. The quarters looked unlived in.

On the floor, a cockroach had laid its black eggs, and on the joist, before the ceiling, was a squashed dead spider, its body fluids staining the joist in a deeper red. David's bleeding forehead had ceased gushing out more blood because Celine had forcefully applied iodine solution on the affected area.

"No, thank you," David replied with his best imitation of a cold tone.

He hoped he had sounded mean enough. Frankly, David felt a surge of irritation towards Celine for saving him from his boss, Mr. Akinwale, and bringing him to a space like this — the cockroach, the dead spider, the musty feel of the room. The burning sensation of the iodine substance against his forehead. It all made him want to barf.

David had genuinely wanted to be punished by Mr. Akinwale. Hence, Celine's meddling was a false sympathetic act that he knew he would be indebted to later on. He didn't want to be thankful to her. David didn't want to have anything to do with Celine. He was scared — scared of her and what she might demand from him in return for saving him. A request he was sure would be unable to grant.

But Celine didn't seem offended by his rejection. Instead, she was amused. "Why not? Your head is bleeding badly! Do you want to be free from Mr. Akinwale to suffer another pain?"

"You should have just left him to punish me. I didn't ask you to save me. I wanted him to punish me, and since you got in the way, at least allow me to feel thankful for the pain, I'm feeling right now. I'm sick of people like you that make me feel as though I'm worthy of receiving help or attention."

"I've been working for Mr. Akinwale for a long time now, and I know how brutal his punishments are. Even if you love being punished, I don't think you will be able to bear the gruesome things he would have done to you."

David scoffed. What physical punishment could be greater than having to bear the grunt of the fact that you are a murderer for the rest of your life?

"So am I supposed to thank you?"

"You are being unnecessarily hard on yourself. Today is your first day of work, and no one expects you to get everything right."

"But I expect perfection from myself and this...this job is my last chance to get everything right. Because I've been getting it all wrong my whole life!" Tears gathered around David's eyes. "Which is why I deserve the worst forms of punishment if I ever do anything wrong. Because I've already committed unforgivable sins."

"You're young. What's the worst thing you could have possibly done?" Celine asked flatly.

The absent-mindedness of Celine's statement irked David. There was a kind of flaccidity in her speech that showed that she wasn't interested in knowing about David's greatest sin. David didn't wish for her to care either, but her choice of words was audacious. Irritatingly so. How could she say that he was being unnecessarily hard on himself when she had no inkling about his life?

"Youngsters make silly and naive decisions sometimes, but it doesn't necessarily make the consequences of those decisions your fault because you didn't know much as at the time you acted the way you did," Celine added.

Then she cleared her throat before proceeding.

"When I was eight years old, I lost my baby sister. She fell from the staircase while I temporarily left her in the care of my friend so I could do my homework quickly. I thought that since I had my friend around in the house, my sister would be in good hands while I was upstairs focusing on my school work.

But somehow, my baby sister died, and my friend lost her eyesight due to the accident. When my parents got back home and learned the tragic news, I was blamed instantly. My parents had left my baby sister in my care — not my friend's, so how could I have been careless enough to let her stumble to her death?

I blamed myself too and was glad that my parents didn't try to make me feel less guilty just because I was an eight-year-old kid. My mother was willing to drag me to the police station, and my father was ready to support my mother's decision.

Eventually, I ran away since the police wouldn't give me the punishment on the grounds of my status as a child. There was no way I could go back home — to a place where I'd caused my little sister to die. How could I have forgotten how steep those stairways were? Why didn't I keep my sister by my side while I did my homework? These unanswered questions drove me crazy and restricted me from going back home.

So I sought a job, and I landed here. Working with Mr. Akinwale has been torturous. I don't know why I chose to remain here. But I guess it's my punishment for being alive."

"You still feel guilty," David said.

"Yes, but at least, I know now that it wasn't my fault that my sister died. I was just eight — a kid myself. I chose to work and suffer under Mr. Akinwale for eight years as a way of punishing myself for the pain I caused my parents, but now that I'm older, my sentiments have changed. I resent my parents for many things — for thinking of me as a murderer, for not taking responsibility for their carelessness. How could they have fully trusted their baby with an eight-year-old?

I hated my parents for not believing me. At first, I was okay with the way they reacted and worked hard every day with hopes of redeeming my sins. Still, I hoped for the day my parents would forgive me. I longed for the moment when they would look for me and accept me back upon finding me. I made myself accessible to be seen, but they never searched for me. I wondered how long my punishment was going to last.

Then, I realized that it wasn't my fault that my sister had died. How could my parents not have seen that as time rolled by? I didn't want to believe that their anger blinded them for that long. How could they not look for me for eight sorrowful years?"

"If you are still working here because you feel guilty, then it means that you still believe you are at fault for the death of your sister."

"You're right. But at least, choosing to remain here even after realizing it wasn't my fault made me work with a new motive. Before, I worked and suffered because I saw it as a way of paying back for the pain I caused my parents, but now, I work and suffer because I'm thankful to be alive while my sister is gone.

I feel indebted to her, which is why the guilt I feel remains. I don't believe I deserve to enjoy life after what happened to my baby sister. But I don't feel guilty towards my parents anymore. It's sort of easier to get over the guilt you feel towards a living person than towards a dead person or yourself. Because the question of "what could have been" is a lot more tormenting when you can never find the answer since it pertains to someone you will never see again.

So, I guess my healing will come when I've realized that my dead sister is incapable of feeling any emotions for the mistake I made. Dead people feel nothing. Right now, my baby sister is still alive to me as I see her in my dreams. That's because I still feel slightly guilty towards myself."

For a long moment, suspended in space, David said nothing. He only brooded in silence.  David was astonished to learn that this was Celine's story. He knew he was supposed to feel sorry for her. He even knew he ought to find some solace in the seeming sameness of their past, but more than anything, he couldn't resist the urge to compare her story to his.

As similar as Celine's story seemed to his, they were very different. Celine was eight years old when she made that mistake, but David had committed an atrocity as a fourteen-year-old. Someone of that age should be able to tell good from evil and right from wrong averagely.

David's act had not been a mistake. He knew what it meant to be disobedient. He'd disobeyed his mum, knowing how she would feel about it, and still went ahead to defy her order. Celine, on the other hand, didn't understand the repercussion of being careless with her baby sister, but David knew what it meant to walk into the den of his mother's enemy.

Unlike Celine's sentiments, did David deserve to expect forgiveness from his parents? Did he deserve to be freed from the guilt he felt towards himself, his family (the living persons), and Sindara (the dead person)?

David knew the answers to his questions as soon as he asked them. Hence, Celine's storytelling was somewhat pointless to the situation at hand, especially because it didn't make him feel less of a criminal. He still wished Mr. Akinwale would punish him. Yet, he took the medicine and the glass of water from her.

David chose to accept Celine — even though her story was not precisely relatable to his, and there was no way he could feel better or less guilty from her innocent tale. And so when Celine, with a wry smile, told David that she hoped he would also heal from the guilt of whatever sin he'd committed, David remained silent, but his silence wasn't malicious.

It was a silence that had been built upon a camaraderie of circumstance. Although their stories were different, their reasons for working at their young age were the same. Hence, David found a strangely familiar comfort in Celine's presence. He was glad that she was different and better from the kind of person he'd initially thought she was.

David was suddenly sure that Celine would always be close to understanding him, and he, her. The sympathy they would feel towards each other would always be genuine — not transactional or rooted in the grounds of falsehood.