Part of the reason ??un didn’t know who was looking at her was practicality. She couldn’t turn to see. Her neck was secured under the firm, sinewy arm of ?àngó, Student Chief Elect of Ifá Academy, Captain Sportsplayer （of all the sports）， Captain Girlplayer （of all the girls）， with a charm as ferocious as his temper and grey eyes that lightened and darkened according to his mood. It was a known fact within the academy and within the county that ??un was the only one who could calm him when he thundered over some perceived disrespect or when someone dared to question his innate authority.
??un was the only person who saw ?àngó’s eyes slide from slate to silver close up. She would walk into the midst of a brewing fight, the crowd parting way for her, and lay a hand across his tense jaw and look up at him. Murderous fire would turn to amorous flame, angry gusts of air into soft billowing breath. She would take his hand and lead him out of his own chaos. All of ?àngó’s girls didn’t matter, because ??un knew she was all of them put together, and more. They were just iterations of her, splintered into lesser forms. There was a smiley girl who lived a few compounds away from ?àngó that he liked to spend time with. ??un didn’t mind this. ??un knew that, when she smiled – rare, but it happened – it was as bright and as intense as the sun at noon. It could intoxicate those around her into such euphoria that, when the high ebbed, they felt like they were plummeting into the depth of all the despairs of the world, compounded. ??un didn’t know what would happen if she laughed. She never did. Then there was the girl that ??un had Constellation Observation class with. ?àngó often visited her after festivities, loosened with palm wine. She was a girl who acted as if she hadn’t drunk since the moment she was born, and whose thirst could only be satiated by ?àngó’s sweat on her tongue. ??un didn’t mind that either. ??un knew that, when they were together, ?àngó drowned in her, died and came back to life in her, and that when their hips rolled together, it was stormy waves; almighty, thrilling, terrifying. She knew she tasted like honey and liquor and that she left him both satiated and insatiable, tipsy, and all at her whim. ??un knew that she was all ?àngó ever wanted and more. She knew it was the More that terrified him. The surplus taunted him. She knew that sometimes having everything you desire can make you question your own worthiness. ?àngó didn’t like the taste of his own insecurities. He never liked to wonder whether he was Enough to match her Too Much, so he had to seek balance with diluted derivations of her. She was fine with all of this until the week before, six days before the Ojude Oba Festival, at her sister Yem?ja’s Earth Journey celebration.
The party was thrown at their compound, and ??un had ventured out into the surrounding forest for a break. She admired her sister, who’d ascended from the school a year ago, but she often found her presence overbearing. When Yem?ja laughed, it sounded like waves crashing against the shore, and often ??un felt like the craggy cliff walls the waves cuffed against and eroded. The two sisters had the same face poured into different forms. ??un felt her sister was a more sophisticated version of her. Yem?ja was taller and lither, whereas ??un was shorter and curvier, defying the prototypical mould for athleticism. Yem?ja was an expert sailor, often leading teams of forty or fifty vessels on voyages of exploration. She had mastered the waters so that she needn’t ever submerge. ??un felt weak for needing to feel the ebbs against her skin. Yem?ja highlighted what ??un lacked, and though ??un loved her sister and her sister loved her back, she couldn’t help but feel lesser around her. People hung on to Yem?ja’s every word and ??un watched them do it, saw them use those words to hoist themselves up spiritually, charmed and bolstered by Yem?ja’s presence. Seeing this, ??un had tried to strike up conversation at that party, in a valiant attempt to emulate her sister’s charisma, but she found that, when she spoke to people, they watched intently as her lips moved, their eyes following how her mouth shaped words, rather than listening. So ??un left the teeming party and went for a walk through the forest, aiming for the river, a place where she felt peace. It was a surprise when, through the thicket by the riverbed, she saw the broad, muscular shoulder of ?àngó, who, a mere thirty minutes earlier, had wrapped a thick arm around ??un’s waist, pulled her to him and whispered that she was his love and that it pained him that he had to socialise when all he wanted was to be with her, but that he needed to collect more ale from the seller with a few of his men. Now that arm was around someone else. Through branches that seemed to cower in embarrassment, ??un saw that ?àngó’s neck was bent as he whispered something into that Someone Else’s ear before kissing it.