She had begun to think she knew what kind of person Aderemi was.
Quiet.
Thoughtful.
Perhaps a little too serious.
It was an assumption she had built from small things.
The way he spoke.
The way he listened.
The bracelet around his wrist that his grandmother had made.
Even the calmness with which he had helped her that first day.
He seemed like the sort of person who would have an answer for everything and a story for every old thing.
She was wrong.
She discovered this on an ordinary afternoon when she saw him standing with a group of friends.
She almost walked past.
Then one of them said something.
Aderemi burst out laughing.
Not the quiet smile she had become familiar with.
A full, careless laugh.
Head tilted back.
Shoulders shaking.
Completely unbothered.
She stopped.
She had never seen him like that.
One of his friends noticed her first.
“Aderemi, your admirer is here.”
Her eyes widened.
Aderemi turned.
Their eyes met.
There was a pause.
Then he smiled.
“Don't mind him.”
She walked closer, trying very hard not to look embarrassed.
“I wasn't”
“You were definitely staring.”
“I was not.”
“You were.”
She folded her arms.
“You're very confident.”
“I've been told.”
She laughed despite herself.
And there it was again.
That smile.
Only this time, it felt different.
Less distant.
More familiar.
“You're not what I thought you were,” she said before she could stop herself.
He raised an eyebrow.
“And what did you think I was?”
She hesitated.
She couldn't exactly tell him that she had spent weeks quietly constructing an entire personality for him from across a room.
So she settled for:
“Quiet.”
He laughed.
“I am quiet.”
She looked at his friends.
Then back at him.
“Are you sure?”
He smiled.
“Depends on who I'm with.”
Something about that answer stayed with her.
Not because it was particularly profound.
But because she suddenly realised how much of him she had invented.
She had seen a few pieces and arranged them into a whole person
She had mistaken gentleness for seriousness.
Calmness for quietness.
A bracelet for a personality.
A few moments for a complete story.
And perhaps that was the danger of first impressions.
They were made from fragments.
But fragments were never the whole.
Things were not always the way they seemed on the surface.
A quiet person could be loud with the people they loved.
A gentle person could be mischievous.
A familiar thing could hold a story you had never imagined.
And Africa was no different.
She had begun to understand that what existed on the surface was never the whole of her.
There was the Africa people saw from afar, the things that could be easily photographed, admired, packaged and described.
But there was another Africa beneath that first impression.
An Africa that could not be reduced to a handful of familiar images.
An Africa that was changing while remembering.
Growing while carrying what came before.
Holding tradition in one hand and possibility in the other.
She could be deeply rooted and still reach forward.
Perhaps that was what she had misunderstood about Aderemi too.
She had mistaken the things he carried for the things that contained him.
His grandmother's bracelet did not make him old-fashioned.
His gentleness did not make him predictable.
His quiet moments did not mean he had no loud ones.
He was not one thing.
Neither was Africa.
She looked at him again.
He was watching her.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“That doesn't look like nothing.”
She smiled.
“I was just thinking.”
“Dangerous.”
She laughed.
“You're actually annoying.”
“That's better.”
“Better?”
“Yeah. Now you know me a little.”
She looked at him.
Maybe he was right.
Because perhaps knowing someone wasn't about collecting enough facts to create a perfect picture of them.
Perhaps it was about allowing the picture to change.
Every time they revealed something new.
Every time they surprised you.
Every time you realised you had been wrong.
And strangely, she liked that.
She liked that there were things about him she hadn't predicted.
Things that couldn't be gathered from a distance.
Things she would have to stay long enough to discover.
She had once wanted another glimpse of him.
Now, she was beginning to realise that glimpses were dangerous things.
They made you believe you had seen enough.
But Aderemi was proving otherwise.
There was always another side.
Another laugh.
Another contradiction.
Another little piece of him waiting to be noticed.
And perhaps Africa had always been asking for the same patience.
Not to be admired from a distance.
Not to be reduced to the few things that looked familiar.
But to be encountered in her fullness.
To be allowed to surprise you.
To be seen changing.
Growing.
Becoming.
She smiled at him.
“So,” she said, “what else am I wrong about?”
His smile widened.
“A lot.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Of course.”
And as they walked together, she realised something had shifted.
She wasn't falling for the person she had imagined anymore.
She was beginning to fall for the person who kept proving her imagination wrong.
Perhaps that was the beginning of truly knowing him, not when she discovered something new, but when she stopped assuming she already knew everything.
And perhaps that was the beginning of truly knowing Africa too.
The surface was only an introduction. It was never the whole story.
She had thought she was getting to know him. She did not realise he was slowly teaching her how much there was to unlearn.
Part IV of VI
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