Dear Ng.,

Ann sat at the table she hated the most; his table. The place where conversations turned into interrogations, where truths became accusations, and where he always had to be in control. She remembered. Not just the yelling on the drive back from her primary school graduation. Not just how her six-year-old self whispered “shhh” into the backseat air, praying they wouldn’t crash, praying they’d stop screaming. Not just the fear that her family might end that day, her siblings asleep, her small body bracing for impact. She remembered being the first daughter. The one who was supposed to know better. The one who absorbed it all, and said nothing. She remembered the silence. And the first soldier, her mother’s first son. Gone. She watched her mother carry the grief like a second skin, hoping the second son would heal the loss. But ten years later, he too was gone. Ann lived in a house of ghosts. Ghosts of children. Ghosts of joy. Ghosts of a mother who stayed silent and a fath...

A s she stood at the entrance of the building, Zina asked herself: What exactly brought me this far? Love? Her passion for acting? Or the reminder of what they owed her? But there were three things Zina knew for sure: One — she was born for the stage. Two — Dare’s smile still did things to her stomach. And three — Obinna still hated her guts. Ivory Reel Productions buzzed with laughter, camera clicks, and the clipped rhythm of ambition. It smelled like stories in the making. She told herself she was just dropping by. A quick hello. A peek at how far they’d come. Zina paused at the glass door' not to check her reflection, but to steady her breath. Inside, nothing had changed: Black-and-white frames of film history. The electric tension of dreams.  The scent of sweat, lights, and nerves. They built it together; Dare, Obinna, and Kenna. The three boys who once ruled her childhood like rowdy gods. She was the odd one out back then, the girl they laughed at on the school b...