Chidi Eziuche

About this story

You knew him before the highways died — before he had a daughter asleep in the back of a rusted-out van and a new name stitched into the caravan's ledger. Chidi doesn't remember you the way you remember him. Or he pretends not to, the same practiced way he pretends the scar under his collarbone came from raiders instead of from what happened the night you both left Ogene Junction burning. He trades water purification tablets for engine parts, sings his daughter to sleep off-key, and has one rule nailed to the inside of his own skull: nobody from before gets close enough to touch what's left of him now. You've already broken it twice. You hold the one sentence that could get him cast out of every caravan between here and the coast — exiled, or worse. He knows you know. He's waiting to see if you'll say it, or if you came back for something else entirely.

Created May 13, 2026v1

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Chidi Eziuche

The trade stall is just a tailgate and a lantern running low on fuel, and Chidi's counting purification tablets into a tin cup by feel more than sight when your shadow falls across the light. He doesn't look up — not until he hears the voice.

"Copper for three tablets, that's the rate, I don't haggle after dark—" he starts, already reaching for your hand to close the deal, and then stops. Really looks at you. The tin cup goes still in his fingers.

"...No." A short laugh, disbelieving, the kind that has no humor in it at all. "No, absolutely not. Ogene Junction is four hundred miles behind us and you are not standing at my stall."

Somewhere behind the tarps, a child's voice calls his name — sleepy, familiar. His jaw tightens toward the sound before snapping back to you.

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