The Courier's Code

Tola's POV It was just past midnight when my laptop chimed. I was half-asleep, fighting the weight of my eyelids, the glow of the screen already blurring into fog. Another junk mail, I thought. Maybe another “miracle loan” or “act now to win an iPhone.” My finger hovered lazily over Delete before I even bothered reading. But then I saw the subject line. Try this for the perfect jollof. I almost laughed. Everybody in West Africa already knew how to cook jollof. Or at least thought they did. Whole wars had been fought over Ghana versus Nigeria, firewood versus gas, long-grain versus basmati. My own mother had three versions depending on which auntie was visiting. Nobody needed a midnight recipe in their inbox. Still, something about the wording tugged at me. My sleepiness thinned out like mist in the sun. I clicked. At first glance, it was nothing—a forwarded recipe from an address I didn’t recognize. Harmless. Except my eyes caught on the strange way certain ingredients were bolded. Onions. Cloves. Paprika. Groundnut oil. My breath stalled. These weren’t random. They were the same items I’d been seeing for weeks now, scattered through Storyteller’s photographs like breadcrumbs. I leaned forward, my pulse quickening in that quiet, insistent way that made it hard to breathe evenly. I tried the obvious first. Take the first letters. O – C – P – G. Nothing. Just noise. I sat back in my chair, pressing my knuckles against my mouth. The voice came unbidden, like it always did when I hit a wall. The world hides its messages, Toluwani. If you want to survive it, you must learn to find them. My father’s words, deep and stubborn, threading through the years. Fine. Not letters then. I pulled a scrap of paper closer and wrote them down again, this time converting each letter into its position in the alphabet. Another old reflex. O = 15. C = 3. P = 16. G = 7. 15 – 3 – 16 – 7. Still gibberish. I exhaled sharply and rubbed my temple. Too obvious. Too straight. If Storyteller had wanted me to see it instantly, he wouldn’t have wrapped it in a recipe. I read the list again, slower this time, letting my eyes move past the bolded words to the instructions below. My father used to tell me that the trick wasn’t just seeing the pieces—it was seeing how they moved. And then it clicked. The order. The steps. “Heat groundnut oil.” First. “Add onions.” Next. “Stir in paprika.” Then. “Drop in cloves.” Last. My pen scratched quickly across the page as I rearranged the sequence: 7 – 15 – 16 – 3. I tapped the desk, my heart ratcheting up a notch. A time? 7:15? That made sense. But 16. 3. What was that? Coordinates? A date? I frowned and scrolled back to the sender’s address. spices@ajalamarket.com My chest tightened. Ajala Market. It was specific, familiar. I knew that place. Everyone did. A maze of stalls that swallowed you whole if you weren’t careful. So… 16, 3. Could it be aisle and stall number? I whispered it aloud, tasting the shape of the answer. “7:15 p.m. – Aisle 16 – Stall 3.” The hair on my arms lifted. I pushed back from the desk, the chair squealing across the tiles, and stood up just to pace. My apartment suddenly felt too small, the walls pressing closer with every breath. This could be a trap. A scam. A joke. But I knew better. It was a breadcrumb, another piece in a pattern I had been circling since the first time I’d stepped into Storyteller’s orbit. He was weaving something, and now I had a thread in my hands. Still, my mind threw up the warnings. Midnight emails were never harmless. Ajala Market wasn’t the kind of place you wandered into blindly, especially not at night. And who still passed secret messages like this in 2025? I sat back down, pressing my palms flat on the desk to ground myself. My eyes wandered back to the bolded list. Onions. Cloves. Paprika. Groundnut oil. Ordinary things. Everyday things. But strung together like this, they carried weight. I imagined my father’s smile if he were here. He’d tell me to follow it. To trust the puzzle. He always believed the code itself was a compass. But my mother’s voice rose just as loud, telling me I had no business chasing strangers into crowded markets at night. I closed my eyes, listening to both voices tugging at me, the way my heart was already tilting toward one side. I knew the answer before I even admitted it. I wasn’t going to delete it. I wasn’t going to walk away. The market was only twenty minutes by bus—if traffic was kind. Tomorrow at 7:15, I’d be there. Aisle 16. Stall 3. I opened my eyes again. The laptop screen glowed faintly in the dark, the email waiting, patient, like it knew my decision already. I whispered to no one in particular, “Alright. I’m coming.”