There is a character in the book whose name, unfortunately, keeps changing.

She is introduced as Karen Martin, but somewhere in the later chapters, she is referred to as Kathy. This is one of the inconsistencies we have picked up and are currently rectifying.

My sincere apologies for the confusion, particularly to those of you who have already read the 12 chapters and are invested in the story. I know how disorienting it can be when you’re following a character and suddenly their name appears to have changed.

In my defence, I had to keep an actual character list just to keep track of all these fascinating people and their various personalities. There are quite a few of them, and apparently even I needed administrative assistance to keep up with my own imagination.

If that character list ever gets leaked, I’ll be chopped liver.

We’re working through these little inconsistencies and cleaning things up to ensure that the story reads as it was always intended to.

And honestly, I think holding the physical book in your hands is going to be a very fascinating experience. There is something quite surreal about watching a story that existed in your head become a physical object that someone else can hold, read and carry around with them.

I hope you’re as excited about that experience as I am. Because I really, really am.

Thank you for your patience, your readership, and for caring enough about the story.

Love and so much light. ✨

The book has taken me through humiliation, ambition, institutional rejection, race, belonging, public perception and, ultimately, the uncomfortable process of figuring out who I am when I stop trying to be acceptable to everyone else. It is, in many ways, a record of becoming.

I began writing this book thinking I was documenting what happened to Moitiri. I finished it realising that I was documenting what happened inside of her.

There is a version of her that entered institutions believing that if she worked hard enough, performed well enough, remained professional enough and made herself sufficiently legible, she would eventually be safe.

I don't believe that anymore. Something in me has changed. The naivety has gone. So has some of the goodness I once carried so effortlessly. Not because I woke up one morning and decided to become cruel, but because experience has a way of stripping you of illusions.

There are things you cannot unsee once you have encountered them. There are forms of betrayal, humiliation and disappointment that permanently alter the way you understand people. The person I was before all of this believed that goodness would eventually be recognised as goodness. That if I was sincere, hardworking, generous, loyal and honest enough, those qualities would protect me. I no longer believe that. Goodness is not armour. Sometimes goodness simply makes you easier to use.

Sometimes your willingness to understand everyone else's circumstances means nobody bothers to understand yours. Sometimes the benefit of the doubt you extend to others is never extended to you.

And sometimes the moment you stop being useful, the same people who praised your goodness discover reasons to question your character.

The aftermath taught me that there are people who will happily consume your kindness while privately resenting your existence. There are people who will applaud your ambition until it threatens their own sense of importance.

There are institutions that will celebrate you while you are useful to their narrative and abandon you when you become inconvenient. There are people who will call you difficult simply because you stopped being compliant. So yes, something in me has been demolished. The naivety. The excessive trust. The instinct to assume good faith. The belief that doing the right thing would necessarily lead to the right outcome. I don't know that I want all of it back.

Perhaps this is the part of the story where I am supposed to say that I emerged softer, kinder and more compassionate. I didn't. I emerged more discerning. More suspicious. More difficult to impress. More willing to walk away. And, perhaps most importantly, much less interested in being good for the sake of being perceived as good.

There is a part of me that now wants something almost completely contrary to the woman I thought I was supposed to become. I want to be an evil woman. Cruel. Sometimes dishonest. And without conscience. Evil in the way society sometimes describes women who refuse to be convenient. The woman who says no. The woman who does not explain herself. The woman who knows exactly what she wants. The woman who can disappoint you without collapsing into guilt. The woman who can leave. The woman who does not need to be liked. The woman who is ambitious without apologising for it. The woman who does not confuse kindness with obligation.

The woman who can look at an institution, a relationship, family, a movement or an entire social expectation and say: No. This no longer serves me.

Perhaps what I really mean when I say I want to be an evil woman is that I want to become impossible to manipulate through my goodness. I want boundaries where I once had excessive generosity. Discernment where I once had naïveté. Self-preservation where I once had self-sacrifice. And the ability to walk away where I once desperately wanted to be chosen. If that is evil, then perhaps I can live with being evil.

Perhaps this is why the story of Jason Arday has moved something in me.

I have watched the conversation around his rise and demise with a strange mixture of fascination, discomfort and recognition.

Arday became an extraordinary story of Black achievement: a man who overcame adversity and eventually arrived at one of the world's most prestigious academic institutions. He became more than an academic. He became a symbol. And that is precisely where things become complicated.

Institutions do not merely employ people. Sometimes they make people into evidence. Evidence that diversity works. Evidence that the institution has changed. Evidence that someone from somewhere else can make it into the room. Evidence that history has been overcome. But when you become somebody else's evidence, you also become vulnerable to the collapse of the story.

The scrutiny surrounding Arday's career and biography became enormous. Questions were raised about his work and aspects of his biography. The mythology surrounding his rise began to unravel. The same public that had been fascinated by his ascent became fascinated by his downfall. And then he died.

I don't know what was happening inside Jason Arday's mind. I don't know what he believed about himself, about Cambridge, about the people who had celebrated him, or about the people who had turned against him. And I don't think anyone else can honestly claim to know. But I do know what his story has made me think about.

What happens when you become the story What happens when an institution does not simply employ you, but turns you into proof What happens when your success becomes evidence of somebody else's progress? And what happens when that same institution, audience or public narrative eventually decides that you are no longer the person it thought you were? Once you become a symbol, you stop being allowed to be ordinary. You cannot simply succeed. You have to represent something. You cannot simply fail. Your failure becomes evidence of something larger. You cannot simply be complicated. Your contradictions become politically useful to somebody. The people who elevated you may need you to remain exceptional. The people who resent your elevation may need you to become a fraud. And somewhere between those competing narratives is an actual human being. That is the part I find most disturbing.

The same person can be celebrated in their ascent and dehumanised in their downfall. One side needs you to be extraordinary. The other needs you to be fraudulent. Very few people seem interested in allowing you to simply be human. And this is where the story becomes relevant to the central realisation of Not Fit And Proper.

You cannot build your entire identity around being chosen. Because institutions can choose you today and discard you tomorrow.

They can praise you in one room and question your character in another. They can call you exceptional until your exception becomes inconvenient. And when that happens, you are left asking: Who am I if they no longer approve of me? That is why, ultimately, you have to choose yourself.

Not the institution.

Not the movement.

Not the ideology.

Not the audience.

Not the people who love you because you confirm their worldview. Not the people who hate you because you threaten it. Yourself.

Choosing yourself does not mean refusing accountability. It does not mean believing every criticism is persecution. It means refusing to surrender your entire sense of self to other people's judgment.

Because the world is fickle.

Public opinion is fickle.

Institutions are fickle.

Movements are fickle.

Even the people who tell you that they believe in you can eventually decide that you are no longer useful to the story they are telling. You cannot build your entire identity on being chosen by people who reserve the right to unchoose you.

That is the lesson I take from Arday's story, without pretending to know the intimate circumstances of his life or death. And perhaps it is also the lesson I take from my own. I don't want to be somebody's symbol. I don't want to be somebody's diversity success story. I don't want to be somebody's acceptable Black person. I don't want to be somebody's political disappointment either. I want a life that belongs to me.

I am not on anybody's side anymore. I have no interest in making myself palatable to white supremacists. But I also have no interest in making the Black struggle the organising principle of my entire existence. Some of the public discourse I participate in will deliberately make white people uncomfortable. Not because discomfort is the objective, but because I have no interest in treating whiteness as the natural centre of the universe. I will say what I think.

Sometimes seriously. Sometimes provocatively. Sometimes academically. And sometimes, quite frankly, for the banter. I no longer feel compelled to turn every thought into a political manifesto.

I have realised that people are governed by their hunger. Hunger for food. Money. Security. Status. Recognition. Power. Belonging. Survival. And you cannot romanticise collective struggle while ignoring what hunger does to people.

Poverty does not automatically create solidarity. Sometimes it creates competition. Sometimes resentment. Sometimes betrayal. Sometimes people who are struggling to survive simply do not have the luxury of sacrificing themselves for an abstract collective future. That realisation has made me less interested in saving people and more interested in living.

And perhaps that is the final lesson of Not Fit And Proper. You cannot spend your entire life trying to become acceptable to everyone. Eventually, you have to decide who you are when nobody is clapping. Who you are when the institution rejects you. Who you are when the audience turns. Who you are when the people who once chose you no longer do. Who you are when the political community you thought you belonged to no longer recognises you. Who you are when you are no longer useful to anybody else's story. That is where the real self begins. And I think I finally understand that.

There will always be somebody who thinks you are too much.

Too ambitious.

Too angry.

Too Black.

Not Black enough.

Too difficult.

Too opinionated.

Too independent.

Too unwilling to play the game.

There will always be an institution capable of deciding that you are no longer fit. There will always be an audience waiting to interpret your downfall. There will always be people who need you to be either a hero or a villain because the possibility that you are simply a complicated human being is too unsatisfying.

Let them.

I no longer want to live according to the categories other people have constructed for me. I don't want to spend my life proving that I deserve a place at the table. Now I am interested in building my own table. And perhaps that is what becoming an “evil woman” really means to me. It means becoming a woman who does not abandon herself in order to remain good in someone else's eyes. A woman who can be kind without being available for exploitation. Ambitious without apology. Private without explanation. Unforgiving of certain things without becoming cruel. And completely comfortable with walking away. Maybe the question was never whether I was fit and proper. Maybe the question was: Fit and proper for what? For an institution that expects obedience dressed up as professionalism? For a society that can tolerate Black ambition only when it arrives politely? For people who are comfortable with me as long as I remain sufficiently grateful, sufficiently agreeable and sufficiently aware of my place?

For a political community that wants my loyalty simply because we share a skin colour? For a racial hierarchy that expects me to understand that some people were born closer to the centre of the world than others?

If that is the standard, then perhaps I am not fit and proper. And I no longer consider that an indictment. The person I was before all of this wanted to be good. The woman I am becoming wants to be evil.

So, was I fit and proper?

Perhaps not. Perhaps I was never designed to be. And perhaps the greatest thing that happened to me was finally realising that I don't want to be.

Because I would rather be considered improper by the right people than spend the rest of my life becoming proper for the wrong ones. Not fit and proper. Fine.

I can live with that. In fact, after everything, I think I finally prefer it.

The book is finished.

The argument is finished.

And the woman who began this journey is, in some ways, finished too. What remains is someone harder. Wiser. Less naïve. Less interested in being good for applause. More interested in being good to herself. And if that woman frightens people a little?Good.

Perhaps she should. I choose myself.

There is one final reason I wrote Not Fit And Proper as carefully as I did. As a lawyer and a writer, I am deeply interested in the intersection between reputation, freedom of expression, dignity and public discourse. I believe this book has the potential to make a significant contribution to the development of South African defamation law, particularly in confronting the difficult questions that arise when people tell their stories publicly, institutions defend their reputations, and the law is required to draw the line between legitimate expression and unlawful harm. Perhaps some of the questions raised in these pages will eventually find their way into a courtroom, a judgment, or even the development of precedent. If they do, that would be a fitting final chapter to a book that began with me being told I was not fit and proper.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or localities is entirely coincidental.

Out of boredom, or perhaps something closer to curiosity that I didn’t fully interrogate, I found myself opening my phone and typing out a message to Modise Madiba.

My mentor Keitumetse’s uncle. I stared at the screen for a moment before sending it.

“I hope this isn’t too random. Keitumetse gave me your number. I’m sure she’s probably mentioned me before. I’ve been meaning to reach out and properly say hello, so apologies for only doing it now. Work has been a bit consuming lately.”

The reply came quicker than I expected.

“Hi Moitiri. Yes, I remember. No need to apologise. It’s good to hear from you. How have you been?”

I paused for a moment, rereading the conversation, trying to decide how much effort was appropriate to show someone you technically barely knew. Not too eager. Not too cold. There was an art to early conversations, especially when both people were old enough to recognise intention when they saw it.

Eventually, I typed.

“I’ve been good. Just buried in work, honestly. Corporate life has a way of swallowing entire weeks before you even realise what day it is. I’m trying to be more intentional these days, though—about seeing people, leaving the office, remembering there’s an actual world outside of billable hours and Outlook calendars.”

A few seconds passed before I added, So I figured I should stop hiding behind work and properly say hello. If you’re open to it, maybe we could grab coffee sometime? Or something slightly less predictable than coffee.”

The typing bubble appeared almost immediately, disappeared, then appeared again.

“I completely understand,” he replied. “I remember what those early career years feel like. Work starts becoming your entire personality without your permission.”

I laughed softly to myself reading it.

Then another message came through.

“And I’m definitely open to meeting. Although I should confess, I’m not much of a coffee person.”

“Oh?” I typed back. “That feels slightly anti-Johannesburg of you.”

“It’s one of my many flaws,” he replied. “But I do enjoy trying new things, so I’ll allow you to surprise me. What did you have in mind?”

I sat there for a moment, phone resting against my knee, thinking.

Dinner felt too formal. Drinks too predictable. A gallery too performative for a first meeting. Then it came to me.

“Have you ever done pottery?”

There was a pause.

“No,” he replied eventually. “But that sounds dangerously close to manual labour.”

I laughed immediately.

“Please,” I typed back. “You’ll survive.”

“Will there at least be alcohol involved?”

“Potentially.”

“Alright,” he replied. “Now I’m interested.”

And just like that, pottery entered the conversation.

When he arrived at the studio, he looked around slowly, taking in the space like someone trying to place himself correctly in a setting that didn’t yet belong to him.

“This is not what I expected,” he said.

“What did you expect?” I asked.

“Dinner,” he said. “Or somewhere with a menu.”

I smiled. “This is better. It forces people to be present.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You think I need forcing?”

“I think everyone does,” I said.

That made him laugh, properly this time.

We sat opposite each other with clay between our hands. The instructor had stepped away after a brief explanation, leaving us to figure out pressure and balance on our own.

After a while, the conversation softened.

“You’re younger than I expected,” he said.

“I get that a lot,” I replied.

“How young?”

“26”

He nodded slowly. “And you’re already working in corporate law?”

“Yes.”

“That’s intense.”

“It is,” I said. “But it’s structured chaos. That’s the only way I can describe it.”

He smiled at that. “Structured chaos. I like that.”

Then, after a pause, I asked, “Are you married?”

The question came out calmly, but it carried far more weight than most people would have assumed. Because for me, that question was never casual. It was foundational. Necessary. A line drawn long before I had even fully understood relationships for myself.

Married men were where I drew the line. Not because I thought temptation suddenly disappeared once a ring appeared on someone’s finger. If anything, adulthood had taught me the opposite. Marriage did not magically remove desire, loneliness, boredom, ego, or dishonesty. People remained people. Complicated. Weak. Sometimes selfish.

But I had grown up around enough blurred boundaries to know exactly what kind of destruction could come from treating marriage lightly. The women in my maternal family, for all their strength and complexity, had their own complicated histories with love. Histories that were often spoken about openly, almost casually, in ways that unsettled me even as a child.

My grandmother’s sister, for instance, had spent years in an open relationship with another woman’s husband. And not secretly either. The man existed around us so comfortably that, over time, he became folded into the fabric of family life itself.

We called him Bra Soul. He attended family gatherings. Weddings. Funerals. Birthdays. He knew some of our birth dates off by heart. He bought alcohol for the uncles at functions and greeted elders with the easy familiarity of someone who had long stopped feeling like a visitor. And from what I understood, the wife knew. Or at the very least, knew enough.

The entire arrangement had always left a bitter taste in my mouth, even before I was old enough to articulate why. There was something about the normalcy of it that disturbed me more than the affair itself. The way everyone adjusted around the discomfort until it no longer looked like discomfort anymore. I never wanted that kind of love.

Never wanted to sit across from another woman carrying silent humiliation while people pretended not to notice. Marriage, to me, had always felt sacred. Not perfect. Not immune to failure. But sacred in the sense that two people stood before God and entered a covenant with the intention of honouring it. And maybe that belief made me old-fashioned, maybe even naive in certain circles, but I did not care. I genuinely believed that if you did not want to find yourself on the receiving end of God’s lashing, you should stay very far away from married men. There were enough unattached men in the world. I had no desire to build intimacy on top of somebody else’s grief. So when I asked the question, I wasn’t fishing for information. I was establishing safety. His hands slowed slightly against the clay.

“I was,” he said.

A pause.

“I’m currently in the process of finalising a divorce.”

And almost immediately, I felt my body relax in a way I hoped was not too visible. Not because divorce itself was light or uncomplicated, but because it meant I was not about to unknowingly participate in something that violated one of the few moral lines I held onto with absolute certainty.

“I see,” I said softly.

There was a brief silence before he added, “That answer sounded important to you.”

“It was,” I admitted honestly.

He studied me for a second. “You don’t do married men?”

I shook my head immediately. “Never.”

The firmness of my answer seemed to amuse him slightly.

“Very definitive.”

“It needs to be,” I replied. “People play too loosely with things that leave permanent damage behind.” He nodded slowly, like someone who understood exactly what I meant without needing further explanation. And strangely enough, that made me trust him a little more. His hands slowed slightly on the clay.

We worked in silence for a few seconds before I asked, “Do you have children?”

That question landed differently.

“No,” he said. “We tried. IVF, specialists, everything. It just didn’t happen.”

His voice remained controlled, but something underneath it tightened ever so slightly, like someone carefully holding a door shut from the inside.

“My ex-wife couldn’t conceive,” he added quietly.

The air between us shifted—not awkward, not uncomfortable, but heavier somehow. More human.

“I’m sorry,” I said softly.

He nodded once. “It is what it is.”

For a moment, all you could hear was the faint spinning of the pottery wheel and distant chatter from another table somewhere behind us.

Then I said, “I actually respect that you stayed. A lot of people would have handled that differently.”

He looked at me properly then, almost like he hadn’t expected that response.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

I shrugged lightly, though I knew exactly what I meant.

“You’re a successful man,” I said carefully. “Older. Established. A lot of men in your position would’ve convinced themselves they needed to ‘leave a legacy’ no matter the cost. They would’ve stepped outside of the marriage and justified it to themselves morally.”

He let out a quiet breath through his nose, not quite a laugh.

“That happened around me more than you’d think,” he admitted.

“I can imagine.”

“There’s always someone encouraging it too,” he continued. “Friends. Family members. People saying things like, ‘You deserve a child,’ or ‘You can’t let your bloodline end here.’”

“And did you ever consider it?” I asked.

The question sat between us with surprising directness. He leaned back slightly in his chair, his hands still marked with traces of clay.

“Honestly?” he said.

I nodded.

“I thought about a lot of things during that marriage,” he admitted. “When people are grieving something privately for years, their minds go to complicated places.”

He paused.

“But stepping out?” He shook his head slowly. “No. Not seriously.”

“Why not?”

“Because I loved my wife,” he said simply. “And because betrayal doesn’t become less ugly just because you can intellectualise it.”

That answer silenced me for a moment.

“I also knew,” he continued, “that if I crossed that line once, I would never fully respect myself again. And eventually, neither would she. Some things permanently alter the temperature of a marriage.”

I looked down at the clay between my fingers.

“That’s rare,” I admitted quietly.

“No,” he said after a moment. “It’s disciplined.”

The distinction lingered.

“And besides,” he added, a little softer now, “children are not possessions. They’re not proof of masculinity. They’re people. I never wanted to create a child out of ego or panic.”

Something about that landed harder than I expected. Because I had heard men speak about legacy before. About bloodlines. About children as extensions of themselves.

But never like this. Never with restraint.

I studied him for a second longer than necessary, suddenly understanding why Keitumetse had spoken about him with that particular kind of respect reserved for men who had learned how to sit with disappointment without becoming cruel because of it.

“You know,” I said lightly, trying to ease the heaviness of the moment, “you’re making it very difficult for me to maintain my scepticism toward older men.”

That finally made him laugh.

“Keep the scepticism,” he said. “It will save your life.”

By the time the studio told us our pieces would be ready later in the week, the tension had softened into something easier. Outside, the light had shifted into late afternoon gold.

“My friends are watching football at Bryanston Country Club,” he said, checking his phone. “I said I might join them. You can come if you’re not in a rush.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Is this an extension of the pottery session?”

He smiled. “Maybe.”

“Spontaneity is dangerous,” I said.

“Or refreshing,” he replied.

We left together.

By the time we left Linden, the late afternoon had begun folding itself into evening, Johannesburg glowing softly beneath that strange golden haze the city sometimes wears before sunset. The roads were still busy, but no longer frantic. Weekend traffic moved differently. Less rage. More leisure. Windows slightly cracked open. Music louder. People in less of a hurry to become someone important.

I climbed into his old Mercedes and immediately understood the kind of man he was.

The car smelled faintly of leather, cologne, and time. Not in a neglected way, but in a way that suggested permanence. The interior carried the quiet dignity of something expensive that had simply aged alongside its owner. Beige leather seats slightly creased at the edges. A dashboard polished enough to show care, but not obsession. No ambient lighting. No flashy screens. No attempt to impress.

It was the kind of car that whispered old money rather than announced it.

“My father was rich,” I muttered jokingly under my breath as I fastened my seatbelt.

He glanced at me, amused. “Sorry?”

“This car,” I said, gesturing around us. “It’s giving ‘my father was rich and taught me how to golf at twelve.’”

That made him laugh properly.

“Young people are terrible,” he said, pulling out onto the road.

“No,” I corrected. “We’re observant.”

The car rolled smoothly through the leafy streets of Linden, past coffee shops spilling onto pavements, couples walking tiny expensive dogs, cyclists dressed like they were training for the Olympics instead of a casual Saturday ride. Jacaranda branches stretched lazily over the roads, their shadows flickering across the windscreen as we drove beneath them.

He drove with one hand resting loosely on the steering wheel, the other occasionally adjusting his phone mounted beside the dashboard because, for reasons I still could not understand. The car did not have CarPlay.

“You seriously just rawdog traffic with Google Maps?” I asked.

He frowned slightly. “Rawdog?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I’ve survived perfectly fine for years.”

“You’re also the type of man who prints boarding passes.”

“That is called being prepared.”

“It’s called being elderly.”

He shook his head, laughing quietly to himself.

At the robot near Cresta, he picked up his phone again to squint at directions.

“Absolutely not,” I said immediately. “Give me that.”

“What?”

“You’re about to kill us trying to zoom into Bryanston.”

“I can see perfectly fine.”

“You’re driving an apartheid-era Mercedes without navigation. Let me help you.”

He handed me the phone with reluctant dignity.

“Download Waze,” I said.

“I already have Google Maps.”

“Yes, and Google Maps is about to route us into somebody’s backyard.”

I downloaded it while he drove, glancing sideways occasionally as if mildly concerned I might somehow hack his banking apps in the process.

“This app feels aggressive,” he said as the route loaded.

“It’s efficient.”

“It’s shouting at me.”

“It’s helping you.”

The city slowly changed around us the further we drove.

Sandton and Bryanston always felt like places where people came not necessarily to live, but to perform success. At a red light, he glanced at me briefly.

“You observe everything, don’t you?”

“I have to,” I replied.

“Why?”

“Because people reveal themselves in small things first.”

That seemed to interest him.

“And what have you concluded about me?”

I looked around the car deliberately.

“You’re disciplined,” I said. “You like structure. You don’t replace things unnecessarily. You probably hate emotional chaos but attract it anyway.”

He blinked once, then laughed under his breath.

“That’s… uncomfortably accurate.”

“I know.”

“And what else?”

I looked ahead through the windscreen as the robot turned green.

“You’re lonely sometimes,” I said quietly. “But you carry it well enough that most people probably don’t notice.”

The silence after that was different. Not awkward. Just honest. That made him quiet for a moment. Then the conversation eased again.

“What about you?” he asked. “Anyone serious?”

I leaned back. “Nothing serious. Just people I’ve met along the way.”

“That sounds like a careful answer,” he said.

“It is,” I admitted.

Bryanston Country Club was already alive when we arrived—football shouting, laughter spilling over tables, glasses catching afternoon light.

His friends greeted him immediately.

“Madiba!” someone called.

“And who’s this?” another added, looking at me.

I smiled. “Moitiri. Pottery survivor.”

Laughter followed, easy and welcoming.

Soon I was pulled into the group—drink in hand, casual introductions, football commentary I pretended to care about, the familiar social rhythm of new spaces. And in between it all, I noticed him watching me occasionally—not staring, just looking in pauses, as if recalculating the simplicity of a decision he thought he had already made.

Later, we stood slightly apart from the group.

“So,” I said, swirling my drink, “what are you actually looking for right now?”

He didn’t answer immediately.

Then he said, “Something stable.”

“I’ve done instability,” he added. “I don’t want it anymore.”

I nodded. “Stable how?”

“A relationship that leads somewhere,” he said. “Marriage. And a child in the near future.”

I held his gaze. “That’s very clear.”

“I don’t want confusion anymore,” he said.

“And you?” he asked.

I exhaled lightly. “I can’t afford instability either. My life is already structured chaos.”

He nodded slowly.

“You’re younger than me,” he said.

“I am.”

“That doesn’t bother you?”

I tilted my head. “I have not made up my mind yet. Im really just here out of pure curiosity. ”

A pause. Then he smiled faintly.

“People assume older men are complicated.”

“I assume everyone is complicated,” I said. “Age just changes the type.”

He chuckled under his breath. “And what type am I?”

I looked at him for a moment longer than necessary.

“Intentional,” I said. “And slightly impatient with time.”

He didn’t argue. He just nodded. And for a brief moment, everything around us—the noise, the laughter, the game—felt slightly further away than it had been before.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or localities is entirely coincidental.

It had been a few weeks since I fetched my car from the dealership, yet every morning I still found myself staring at it for a few extra seconds before getting in, almost as though I needed to reassure myself that it was real. Mine. A physical manifestation of every library session, every academic distinction, every sacrifice, every humiliating taxi ride in the rain, every moment of uncertainty I had dragged myself through just to arrive at this version of my life. A candidate legal practitioner in Sandton. With a car. Even now, the thought carried a kind of surreal glamour to it. The irony, however, was that I could barely drive the thing properly.

My maternal grandmother, Linda Seitshiro, drove an automatic, and somewhere in my naive optimism I had convinced myself that learning manual would not be particularly difficult. The manual cars were cheaper, after all, and at that stage of my life every financial decision felt deeply strategic. Practicality had become second nature to me. So I bought the manual. A decision that very quickly humbled me.

I still remembered the drive from Fourways to Randburg with painful clarity. Or rather, the series of aggressive stalls disguised as a drive. The car jerked violently every few minutes like it, too, was protesting the arrangement.

“Jesus Christ,” Nyeleti muttered from the passenger seat as the car stalled again at a robot.

“Moitiri, these people really gave you this car knowing fully well you cannot drive it?”

“I can drive,” I protested weakly, gripping the steering wheel with the kind of intensity usually reserved for medical emergencies.

Behind us, eight-year-old Onalenna burst into laughter from the back seat.

“No, you can’t,” she announced cheerfully. “The car keeps dying.”

“It’s not dying,” I snapped. “It’s stalling.” Another violent jerk. Then silence. The engine dead again.

Nyeleti leaned her head back dramatically against the seat. “Yoh. We are not making it home alive.”

I glared at her while fumbling to restart the car. “You are deeply unsupportive.”

“No,” she replied calmly, “I’m realistic.”

Onalenna was now laughing so hard she could barely breathe. And despite my embarrassment, I found myself laughing too. Because there was something strangely comforting about that moment. About being in the car with them. Safe within a familiarity that had carried me through most of my life.

Nyeleti, although technically my uncle Tshepo’s baby mother, had long transcended that label in my mind. She had become something far more significant to me over the years. Consistent. Grounding. Maternal in the ways that mattered. My deputy mother. An engineer by profession who worked in finance at a major government institution, she embodied the kind of black excellence that felt both aspirational and intimidating. Two master’s degrees. Intelligent. Disciplined. Beautiful in that understated way highly accomplished women often are. The kind of woman who entered rooms without needing to announce her credentials because her presence already carried them. And throughout my LLB, she had been there for everything. Every milestone. Every breakdown. Every relationship disaster.

Every academic panic spiral. I spoke to her about things I struggled to articulate even to myself. Which is why, during that disastrous drive home, I found myself opening up about something I had been thinking about more frequently lately.

“I think I want to visit my dad’s house,” I said quietly as I changed gears far too aggressively.

Nyeleti glanced at me briefly. “Which house?”

“The yard,” I clarified. “The one where he was buried.”

The atmosphere in the car shifted almost imperceptibly.

My father’s burial had always carried a strange energy around it. An oddness I had never fully interrogated at the time because grief had consumed too much space for curiosity to exist properly. His side of the family had insisted on burying him in the yard of the house.

Not at a cemetery. At home.

At the time, I had accepted it passively, too emotionally exhausted to question tradition or motive or symbolism. But years later, the decision lingered in my mind strangely.

Particularly because my father’s death itself had felt abrupt. Unsettlingly abrupt.

He had spent most of his life working in government as an engineer. Intelligent. Respected. Structured. The kind of man who took pride in achievement. But somewhere along the line, that structure fractured. He had been up for a director-general position at work, a role he desperately wanted, and instead of promoting him internally, they appointed an outsider. That rejection destroyed something in him. Not immediately. Not visibly.

But slowly. Quietly. The kind of wound pride struggles to survive.

Soon after that, he resigned and used his pension money to pursue entrepreneurship. One business idea after another. One failed venture bleeding into the next until eventually everything collapsed under the weight of disappointment. The bankruptcy came first.

Then the depression. And finally, death.

At least that was the version of events I had accepted for years.

Until later, when fragmented conversations and half-whispered family stories began revealing details no one had told me initially. That shortly before his death, he had been taken to a traditional healer. And then soon after that—He died.

The progression unsettled me in ways I could not fully explain. A man whose body had always seemed physically healthy, overtaken not by visible illness, but by something far less tangible. A mind that had become heavy enough to eventually extinguish the body attached to it. Or maybe something else entirely. I did not know. Perhaps I still don’t.

What I remember with haunting clarity, however, was the day I learned that he had departed this earthly realm—that his spirit had crossed quietly beyond the veil, leaving this world behind and entering whatever mystery awaits us on the other side.

I had woken up that morning with an overwhelming feeling that the day carried significance. Like I was forgetting something important. I remember lying in bed mentally scrolling through dates and birthdays, trying to place the feeling. The only person I could think of born on the eighth of July was an old primary school friend I no longer even spoke to. So that couldn’t have been it. And then the call came. My father was dead. Just like that.

No preparation. No gradual decline witnessed in real time. No long hospital visits. No opportunity to emotionally brace myself. One moment he existed somewhere in the background of my life. The next, he didn’t.

What made it even worse was discovering that he had apparently been ill for some time, yet no one thought to tell us, his descendants. My paternal family only reached out when there was nothing left to be done to save him—partly, it seems, because they were unwilling or unable to bear the expenses of burying him.

I still remember Tumelo Nkoane, my half-brother, speaking to me shortly after.

His voice had carried a seriousness that frightened me.

“This thing is strange,” he had said carefully. “If you don’t want to ruin your life, don’t attend the funeral.”

At the time, I had been in my final year of law school. Already emotionally exhausted. Already carrying too much. And yet there was never a universe in which I would have missed my father’s funeral. I was his only daughter. His favouritechild, if we were being honest. Partly because I was the only girl. But also because I was the only child with a helicopter mother, and my father had spent most of my life trying to compensate for that absence in ways both beautiful and damaging. He over-loved me sometimes. Overprotected me. Overindulged me.

As though he believed he could patch grief with generosity. So no, I could never have stayed away. Even if part of me now wondered whether I should have listened.

Still, at that point in my life, I moved through the world with a certain confidence born from Linda Seitshiro’s prayers. My maternal grandmother believed in God with such unwavering certainty that her faith became infrastructure within our family. Protective. Immovable. Absolute. And because of her, I believed, perhaps arrogantly, that whatever darkness existed in this world could never fully reach me. If such things were even real to begin with.

A few weeks after my conversation with Nyeleti, I finally made arrangements to visit my father’s house. The decision had lingered in me for a while before becoming action. One of those thoughts that quietly follows you around until eventually it demands to be addressed.

I told myself the trip was about closure. About reconnecting with a part of myself that had become fragmented after my father’s death. About grounding myself in something tangible before memory softened him into mythology and grief distorted him into something either far kinder or far crueler than who he had actually been.

But if I am being honest, there was also curiosity. And sentiment. And perhaps a desperate need to share something with him, even in death. Because I had just bought my first car.

It was not a Porsche Panamera, the car my father used to speak about with the kind of reverence some men reserve for scripture, but it was mine. Earned through sleepless nights, impossible workloads, and years of surviving circumstances that should have swallowed me whole. And somehow, even now, I could still hear his voice whenever I sat behind the steering wheel. My father loved Toyotas with an almost irrational loyalty. To him, they represented reliability, quality and convenience. A man could disappear into debt, depression, heartbreak, failure, but if he had a good Toyota parked outside, there was still dignity left to salvage.

He used to speak endlessly about one day upgrading to a Porsche Panamera. Not casually either. It was always spoken about like a prophecy waiting to materialise. Like life simply needed to cooperate a little longer before he finally stepped into the version of himself he believed he deserved to become. But life never gave him that moment.

Instead, it gave him failed business ventures, humiliation, silence, and eventually a grief so consuming it hollowed him out from the inside. By the time he died, the dream of the Porsche had died long before him. And maybe that was part of why visiting the house suddenly felt important. I think some part of me wanted him to see that at least one of us had made it out of survival mode alive.

That despite everything, despite the chaos of our family, despite the abandonment, despite the financial instability and the grief and the confusion, I had managed to become something. A candidate legal practitioner at a top law firm with her own car keys dangling from manicured fingers.

I wanted to drive into that yard and say, even if only spiritually:

“Look, Dad. We did it. Well… at least part of it.”

And maybe that is the tragedy of grief. The way it convinces you that love can still be delivered retroactively. That achievement can somehow travel backwards through death and reach the people who are no longer here to witness it.

So yes, I told myself it was closure. A strange, restless need to stand in the spaces he had occupied before he died. To see the yard they insisted on burying him in. To feel whether grief had left residue there. But deep down, it was also a daughter arriving with her first car to a father who had always dreamed bigger than life ever allowed him to live.

I knew one thing for certain, though. I could not do the drive alone. Five hours to North West was too long to be trapped inside your own thoughts, especially when those thoughts carried the weight mine did. So I asked a family friend, Benny Tau, to accompany me.

Benny had the kind of personality that made difficult things feel temporarily lighter. Loud laugh. Quick wit. The type of guy who could turn even emotional discomfort into banter before you fully realised you were spiralling.

When I called him, he answered almost immediately.

“You’re lying,” he said after I told him where I wanted to go.

“I’m serious.”

“To your father’s house?”

“Yes.”

A pause.

“And you want me to come with you?”

“I need emotional support,” I replied dramatically.

“No,” he corrected, laughing. “You need a co-driver because your manual driving still resembles a hostage situation.”

“Please,” I scoffed. “I’ve improved.”

“Mxm. I value my life too much.”

“You’re coming or not?”

Another pause.

Then:

“I’ll pack snacks.”

I smiled.

I also reached out to one of my half-brothers, Kgotso Motumi who also lived in Johannesburg, asking whether he wanted to come along. He agreed almost immediately, which surprised me. We were not particularly close, but grief has a way of creating temporary bridges between people. Or so I thought. Because on the morning we were supposed to leave, he disappeared completely. No call. No text. Nothing.

I stared at our messages for a while before eventually tossing my phone onto the passenger seat.

“Men are genuinely useless,” I muttered.

Benny burst out laughing. “You’re only realising this now?”

Still, I went ahead with the trip.

We left Johannesburg just after sunrise, the roads still carrying that soft early-morning emptiness that makes the city feel briefly innocent. The air was cool, golden light stretching lazily across the highway as we merged onto the N4.

Benny immediately connected his phone to the carplay .

“No sad music,” he announced. “If we’re driving into ancestral confusion, we’re at least doing it with vibes.”

Afrotech soon filled the car, deep bass vibrating through the seats as we sped past long stretches of dry veld and endless road. Somewhere between Rustenburg and confusion, I realised I was driving far too fast.

“You know this car is not a Ferrari?” Benny commented casually while looking out the window.

“I’m overtaking.”

“You’re flying.”

Minutes later, blue lights flashed behind us.

“Ah,” Benny sighed dramatically. “There it is. Your first corruption initiation as a corporate girl.”

I groaned loudly as I pulled over.

The traffic officer approached slowly, sunglasses perched low on his face.

“Do you know how fast you were driving?” he asked.

I blinked innocently. “No, officer.”

Benny turned toward the window. “She’s grieving.”

I whipped my head toward him. “Benny!”

“What?” she said defensively. “Maybe compassion works.”

It did not.

I got my first speeding ticket somewhere outside Rustenburg while Benny laughed so hard he cried.

“You are actually sick,” I told him once we were back on the road.

“No,” he replied calmly. “But you definitely drive like someone avoiding accountability.”

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or localities is entirely coincidental.

On other news, the office had apparently caught fire. Not literally, of course, but from the way it was recounted to me, it may as well have been. The kind of chaos that doesn’t just disrupt a morning but leaves a residue. Something people would be talking about for weeks, retelling with slight embellishments, each version sharpening the edges just a little more. It had happened in the early hours of the morning, that fragile window of time before court where everything feels heightened, where preparation is no longer just preparation, but survival. Bundles being finalised. Authorities being double-checked. Nerves stretched thin under the weight of expectation. And at the centre of it all, Boitumelo and Nompumelelo.

The only two in the office at that hour, trying to hold everything together while the rest of the world was still waking up, blissfully unaware that somewhere in Sandton, a legal disaster was quietly unfolding.

I could picture it too easily.

The fluorescent lights too harsh for that time of morning. Papers spread across desks in uneven stacks. Laptops open, multiple tabs fighting for attention. The low hum of printers working overtime, spitting out pages that no one had time to review properly. The air thick with urgency, with that specific kind of anxiety that comes from knowing there is no more time to fix anything—you can only manage what is already broken.

And then, Karen.

From what I heard, she had completely lost it.

Not the controlled, measured assertiveness she usually carried herself with. Not the polished authority of a director who knew exactly how to command a room.

No. This was something else. Raw. Unfiltered. Almost theatrical in its intensity.

“Ohh my goodness,” I said when I heard. “I would pay serious money to have been there.”

Because apparently, Nadia had been on the receiving end of it. Fully. Publicly. No cushioning. No attempt to soften the blow.

“If we had come up through the ranks at the same time,” Karen had snapped, her tone sharp and unforgiving, “you would have learned very quickly that this level of work is simply not acceptable.”

The room had gone still.

No theatrics. No raised voice beyond what was necessary. But the message landed exactly the same. The kind of line that doesn’t just reprimand. It humiliates.

And she didn’t stop there. She went on. And on.

Dragging Nadia’s competence or lack thereof through the mud with a precision that only someone deeply irritated, deeply disappointed, or perhaps deeply triggered could muster.

“When I was a Candidate Legal Practitioner—” she had started, launching into what I could only imagine was a detailed account of how things should be done, how standards were maintained, how mistakes like this simply did not happen under her watch.

It wasn’t correction. It was dismantling. And Nadia, from what I gathered, had stood there. Taking it. In front of everyone. Candidate legal practitioners. People she had likely positioned herself above in quieter, more controlled settings. Now watching. Witnessing. Measuring.

There was something almost poetic about that. Because if there was one thing Nadia had built a quiet reputation for, it was that subtle, strategic tendency to throw candidate legal practitioners under the bus when it suited her. The carefully worded emails. The selective visibility. The kind of professional manoeuvring that allowed her to appear competent while quietly shifting blame elsewhere. Sneaky. Calculated.

The kind of person who understood the politics of survival in corporate spaces and played the game accordingly. So to hear that she had been called out like that, publicly, without the usual layers of protection she seemed to operate within. I won’t lie. There was a part of me that felt a sharp, undeniable satisfaction. Not because I particularly enjoyed watching people be torn apart but because, in this instance, it felt like a rare disruption of a pattern that usually went unchecked.

Boitumelo, however, had not shared that sentiment.

“She can’t act like that,” she had said later, clearly still agitated. “Especially not like that. In front of everyone. And she’s always talking about God.”

I could hear the frustration in it. The disbelief.

The expectation that there should be alignment between what people profess and how they behave under pressure. I understood it. But I also didn’t.

“Maybe she was just frustrated,” I offered, though even I wasn’t entirely convinced by it.

Because there was something about the way the whole thing unfolded that suggested this wasn’t just about the mistake. It was about accumulation. About pressure meeting the wrong moment, the wrong person, the wrong set of circumstances and exploding.

Still, I couldn’t shake the image.

Nadia, standing there, stripped of the quiet control she usually maintained. Exposed. Seen. And for once, not on her own terms.

And as much as I understood Boitumelo’s discomfort, her insistence on grace and decorum and consistency, I also understood something else. This place did not always reward grace. Sometimes, it revealed people.

And sometimes, it did so in the most public, uncomfortable, irreversible ways.

I leaned back in my chair, letting the story settle, turning it over in my mind.

Because beyond the drama, beyond the spectacle of it all, there was a quieter lesson sitting underneath it. Control, in this environment, was always temporary.

And the moment you slipped, even slightly, there would always be an audience waiting to see what you looked like without it.

Later that day, they went to court. And they lost. Just like that.

No dramatic collapse. No cinematic unraveling where everything falls apart in one loud, undeniable moment. It was quieter than that. More procedural. More… final. The kind of loss that arrives dressed in legal language and measured tone, delivered by a judge who has already made up their mind long before the words leave their mouth.

But a loss, nonetheless. And somehow, that made the morning feel heavier in retrospect.

Because now, everything that had happened—the frantic preparation, the raised voices, the public dressing-down, the tension that had stretched itself across the office like something waiting to snap—it all led to this. Nothing. Or worse than nothing. Defeat.

I tried to imagine the scene in court. The sterile calm of the courtroom, so different from the chaos of the office just hours before. Counsel standing, measured and composed, arguments presented with precision, as though the morning hadn’t happened. As though nerves hadn’t frayed. As though egos hadn’t collided in ways that left bruises no one would openly acknowledge. And then the judgment. Delivered cleanly. Decisively. Against them.

I wondered what it felt like, sitting there, hearing it unfold in real time. Whether Karen’s earlier anger had softened into something quieter. Whether Nadia kept her composure or if the weight of the morning and the outcome pressed into her in ways she couldn’t entirely conceal. Whether Boitumelo and Nompumelelo sat there, absorbing it all, already calculating what this would mean for perception, for reputation, for the quiet, unspoken hierarchy that governed everything. Because in a place like that, losing was never just about the case. It was about who was seen to have faltered. Who carried the blame. Who would quietly distance themselves. And who would remember.

Back at the office, the energy had apparently shifted again. Not louder this time. Not explosive. Just… subdued. Conversations softer. Movements slower. That particular kind of silence that follows something disappointing but unavoidable. No one says much. But everyone knows.

I sat with that for a while, letting the weight of it settle in my chest in a way I hadn’t expected.

Because earlier, I had found a kind of satisfaction in the chaos. In the public unraveling. In the way the usual order had been disrupted, even if only briefly.

But this—This was different. This was consequence. And it had a way of flattening everything that came before it. The shouting didn’t matter anymore. The humiliation didn’t matter. Even the small, private victories, the parts of the work that had been done well, the sections that had held up under scrutiny felt irrelevant in the face of an outcome that erased nuance. They had lost. And that was the only version of the story that would travel.

I leaned back in my chair, staring at my screen without really seeing it, my mind looping through the day in fragments. The chaos. The confrontation. The courtroom. The loss.

And somewhere within all of that, another quiet understanding began to take shape.

This place did not care how hard you worked. It did not care how early you arrived, how late you stayed, how much of yourself you poured into getting things right. Sometimes, despite all of that, You still lost. And maybe that was the most unsettling part of it all. Not the chaos. Not the politics. Not even the people. But the realisation that effort and outcome were not always aligned. That you could do everything right— And still walk away empty-handed.

I exhaled slowly, the weight of that thought settling deeper than I would have liked.

Because if that was true…Then everything I was building, everything I was working toward, everything I had convinced myself was within my control—Wasn’t as certain as I had been pretending it was. And for the first time in a while, that certainty I carried so confidently…Shifted.Just slightly.But enough.

By the time I finally stepped through the door of my room, the city had settled into its evening rhythm, the distant hum of traffic and the occasional honk weaving into the background like some persistent, indifferent score. I leaned against the door for a moment, letting the weight of the day press down through my shoulders, a heaviness that wasn’t just physical but almost moral, a tension rooted in the delicate, unspoken hierarchies that had been reinforced over the last few weeks on that arbitration matter. The dynamics of the team—the silent alignments, the subtle dismissals, the ego battles I couldn’t quite escape even while ostensibly equal on paper—clung to me, creeping into the quiet of my apartment as though they had decided to follow me home, to settle on my furniture and take root in the corners of the rooms.

I could still hear Mikhail’s quiet smirk, see Nadia’s casual preference for him, and feel the ripple of every whispered judgment, every quiet comparison that had been made about me without my knowledge or consent. Sitting down at the edge of the couch, I ran a hand through my braids, thinking about the matter, the bundles, the emails, the constant performance of competence that now felt like a kind of armor I could never fully remove. And as my mind moved restlessly through the various tensions of the week, it eventually landed on the Boitumelo incident—one of those moments that, at the time, had felt like ordinary office drama, the kind of thing people whispered about briefly before moving on to the next crisis, but which, in hindsight, revealed something far more telling about the kind of environment we were operating in.

It had started, as these things often do, with a mistake. A small one, from what I could gather. A deliverable that needed correction, something that could have easily been addressed with a quiet conversation, a quick call into an office, a redline, a “fix this going forward.” The kind of mistake every candidate legal practitioner makes at some point, especially in the early days of a rotation when you are still learning not only the law, but the personalities attached to it. But that’s not how Nadia handled it.

Instead, she sent an email. Not just to Boitumelo, but with the reporting director copied in as well. Full visibility. Full exposure. No buffer. No grace. Just a carefully worded message disguised as professionalism, but sharp enough in tone to make it clear that this was not merely about correcting the work. It was about establishing hierarchy. About reminding everyone in the chain exactly where they stood. And in a profession where perception travelled faster than truth, that kind of thing mattered. A lot. Because once incompetence, even perceived incompetence, became attached to your name, people rarely waited around for context. They simply adjusted the way they saw you and carried on.

Boitumelo took it well publicly. Or at least she performed taking it well. She replied to the email professionally, corrected the work, and kept moving. But privately, understandably, she was upset. Anyone would have been.

So later that evening, she vented on her WhatsApp status. Nothing reckless. Nothing explicit. Just one of those vague, emotionally charged updates that people post when they want to release frustration without naming names.

Something about people “moving mad” in positions of power. About humiliation disguised as correction. Subtle enough to deny. Specific enough to understand.

And somehow, that status found its way back to Nadia. Ofcourse through Mikhail.

That part unsettled me more than the email itself. Because Boitumelo, out of everyone in the team, had actually been kind to him. She laughed at his jokes, entertained his endless commentary, included him in conversations even when the rest of us grew tired of him. They had what looked like a genuine friendship, or at the very least, a workable alliance.

And yet he still took her private frustration and delivered it neatly back to management, like a child eager to be rewarded for good behaviour. For what? Approval? Positioning Loyalty points? I still couldn’t fully tell.

But I remember sitting there thinking to myself: this is not somebody you can safely exist around. Because ambition is one thing. Most of us were ambitious. You did not survive spaces like that without being hungry for something. But there was something particularly sinister about people who weaponised proximity. The kind of people who listened carefully not to understand you, but to store information for future use. The kind who smiled while quietly calculating the value of your vulnerability. And the more I thought about it, the more I realised that the office was full of people pretending to be friends when what they really were, were witnesses. Observers. Opportunists waiting for the right moment to align themselves with power. It made me quieter after that. More careful. Not paranoid, exactly.

Just aware. Aware that every environment eventually reveals its rules to you, even when nobody says them out loud. And one of the first rules this place had taught me was simple:

Not everyone smiling at you is on your side.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or localities is entirely coincidental.

The morning of the brunch, my room looked like a quiet war zone of fabric, indecision, and versions of myself I wasn’t entirely sure I believed in. Clothes lay draped over the bed, the chair, the edge of my desk. All options that, individually, made sense, but together only amplified the question I couldn’t quite answer: who, exactly, was I supposed to be when I sat across from Keitumetse Madiba? I stood in front of the mirror in my underwear, arms folded, staring at my reflection like it might offer clarity. Professional, but not stiff. Effortless but not careless. Polished, but not trying too hard. The problem with meeting someone you admire is that you don’t just show up as yourself. You show up as the version of yourself you hope they will approve of. And that version is never simple. I picked up a black fitted dress. Classic. Safe. Predictable.

“Too interview,” I muttered, tossing it onto the chair.

Next, a pair of tailored trousers and a silk blouse. Sharp. Intentional.

“Too try-hard.”

I exhaled, turning back to the mirror, tilting my head slightly as if the answer might reveal itself in the angle of my face. Keitumetse Madiba was not a woman you met halfway. She was the kind of woman who forced you to confront yourself fully. Your ambitions, your insecurities, your illusions about how the world worked. The first time I had seen her was on a podcast. I remember it vividly. Not because of the production or the host or even the topic but because of her. She had this freshness about her. Not in the sense of naivety, but in the sense of honesty. Unfiltered. Direct. The kind of person who said exactly what was on her mind and seemed entirely unbothered by how it landed. The conversation that day had centred around a question that sat at the core of so many quiet anxieties in our field: Does the institution you attend determine your chances of making it into big law?

Most people danced around it. Gave politically correct answers. Spoke about “holistic evaluation” and “diversity of thought.” Keitumetse didn’t.

“I wouldn’t advise anyone to do their LLB through UNISA,” she had said, plainly. “Most firms don’t take it as seriously.” The atmosphere had shifted. I watched the comment section erupt in real time, feeling the discomfort ripple through the screen. Because it was one thing to know that reality existed. It was another thing completely to hear it said out loud, without cushioning, without apology. The backlash was immediate and unforgiving.

People were angry and rightfully so. Because what she had said, while arguably reflective of certain hiring patterns in big law, landed harshly against the lived realities of so many South Africans. It ignored, or at least overlooked, the reasons why someone would choose a distance-learning institution in the first place. Financial constraints. The need to work while studying. Family responsibilities. Geographical limitations.

The simple, undeniable fact that not everyone has access to the same starting line.

For many, UNISA wasn’t a choice in the traditional sense. It was the only viable path toward a dream that already required more resilience than most people would ever understand. So to hear someone so bluntly suggest that it might not be “taken seriously” felt, to many, like being told that their effort, their sacrifice, their determination might not be enough. That their path was already compromised. It was a hard thing to hear.

A problematic thing to say. And yet, I liked her for it. Not because I agreed entirely, but because she said the thing most people were too careful to articulate. There was something disarming about that kind of honesty. Something useful. Because you cannot navigate a system effectively if you refuse to acknowledge how it actually operates. And Keitumetse, for better or worse, understood the system. She had lived it.

By the time I finally settled on an outfit: a fitted pair of high-waisted trousers, a crisp white shirt slightly unbuttoned at the collar, and heels that said I belong here without screaming it, I felt less like I had made a decision and more like I had negotiated a compromise between all the versions of myself that had been arguing all morning.

I grabbed my bag, checked myself one last time, and left.

Parkhurst always felt like a different country. Boutique cafés. People who looked like they had never had to take a taxi a day in their lives. The kind of suburb that carried wealth lightly, like it didn’t need to prove anything. The place had a way of making you hyper-aware of yourself without anyone actually saying a word. Modena sat tucked into one of those polished streets, all clean lines and curated minimalism, the kind of place where brunch wasn’t just a meal. It was a statement. And then I saw her. Keitumetse.

Keitumetse had not entered my life as a distant, aspirational figure. By the time we were sitting across from each other that afternoon, there was already something established between us—something quieter, more personal, more rooted than admiration alone.

She had been there during one of the most disorienting periods of my life.

My final year.

A time that was supposed to be defined by momentum, by focus, by the steady build toward everything I had worked for—and instead became marked by loss. My father’s passing had shifted something fundamental in me. Not just grief, but direction. The ground beneath me had moved, and I was expected to keep walking as though it hadn’t.

It was in that space, between deadlines and disbelief, that Keitumetse showed up. But consistently.

She had a way of speaking to me that didn’t feel like empty encouragement or rehearsed mentorship. There was no “you’ll be fine” or “everything happens for a reason.” Instead, there was honesty. Practicality. A kind of grounding that made things feel manageable, even when they weren’t.

She checked in.

She listened.

She gave advice that was less about comfort and more about navigation—how to keep going when stopping wasn’t an option, how to hold grief without letting it swallow your ambition whole, how to remain functional in a world that does not pause for your pain.

And because of that, she had become more than just someone I admired from afar.

There was a relationship there. One built on timing, on vulnerability, on the fact that she had seen me in a version of myself that was not polished, not composed, not performing.

She had seen me in the in-between.

And she had not flinched.

That mattered.

She was already seated, sunlight catching the edges of her silhouette in a way that felt almost cinematic. Effortless. Immaculate. The kind of beauty that didn’t beg for attention but commanded it anyway. This woman was a force.

You could see it in the way she sat. In the way she looked up as I approached, her expression warm but observant, as though she was taking you in fully, cataloguing you in ways you wouldn’t fully understand until later.

“Moititi” she said, standing up to hug me.

“You look beautiful,” I replied instinctively, pulling back slightly just to take her in again.

She smiled. “So do you. You’ve settled into yourself.”It wasn’t a compliment. It was an observation. And somehow, that meant more. The conversation was easy at first. Safe.

I updated her on the rotation, the firm, the personalities, carefully editing certain details while leaving enough in for her to understand the landscape I was navigating.

“And how are you?” she asked at one point, leaning forward slightly. Not the work.

Not the performance. Me. I hesitated, just briefly.

“I think I’m learning quickly,” I said. “Maybe not always what I expected to learn but learning.”

She nodded, as if that confirmed something she already knew.

Keitumetse had always been open about her struggles with mental health, something she had spoken about candidly on her platforms. Bipolar disorder. And there had been something about that. Something deeply personal that had drawn me to her long before we ever met. Because my experience with that illness had been… different. Messier. My mother.

A kind of brilliance that never quite stabilised into something sustainable. A mind that carried so much potential, so much depth but often existed in states that made it difficult to hold onto anything for long. A failed genius, I used to think, though even that felt unfair. Because what does failure even mean in a world that doesn’t accommodate the way your mind works? But then there were the moments that were harder to romanticise. The chaos. The unpredictability. The choices that didn’t make sense to anyone on the outside. The kind of life that left you constantly oscillating between admiration and exhaustion. So to see someone like Keitumetse, polished, successful, controlled and openly living with the same diagnosis felt unreal. A contradiction I couldn’t quite reconcile. And maybe that’s why I listened to her so closely. Because she represented a version of that story that didn’t end in quiet collapse. At some point, the conversation shifted. Naturally. I didn’t even notice when.

“One thing you need to understand about this profession,” she said, stirring her coffee slowly, “is that merit will only take you so far.” I said nothing.

“You have to position yourself,” she continued. “Intentionally.”

There was a pause.

“And sometimes that positioning comes through affiliation.”

I tilted my head slightly. “Affiliation?”

She met my gaze directly. “With power.” It wasn’t vague. It wasn’t subtle. And then she told me. About the senior judge. White. Married. At least twice her age.

She spoke about it without shame. Without hesitation. As though it were simply another strategic decision she had made in the course of her career.

“People talk,” she said lightly. “They always do. But those same people benefit from systems they pretend not to understand.” I blinked, processing.

“And the wife?” I asked before I could stop myself.

Keitumetse shrugged. “White people are simple,” she said, almost dismissively. “Compartmentalisation is a skill they’ve mastered.” I didn’t know whether to laugh or sit in the discomfort of what she was implying.

“Besides,” she added, taking a sip of her drink, “he opened doors. And I walked through them.” There was something almost terrifying about how matter-of-fact she was. No moral conflict. No visible doubt. Just clarity. Then she laughed softly, as though remembering something.

“I also dated Thembisa Ngakagape briefly, before he became… what he is now.”

I raised an eyebrow. “And what is he now?”

She smiled. “Important.” She told me about how he used to bring her books when she travelled. Small gestures. Thoughtful ones. Before the titles, before the reputation, before the weight of his name carried across rooms.

“And now?” I asked.

“Now he’s exactly where he always intended to be.”

There was something almost prophetic in the way she said it.

“And you?” she asked suddenly. “Your love life?”

I laughed. “Non-existent.”

“Mm,” she said, already reaching for her phone. “That won’t do.”

Before I could respond, she had unlocked it.

“There’s someone you should meet,” she said, almost to herself.

“Keitumetse?” I started. Too late.

She turned the phone toward herself, typing quickly.

Modise Madiba. Her Uncle. Older. Recently divorced. Established. I watched, half amused, half horrified. Her fingers moved quickly across the screen.

“Hi stranger. I’m sitting with someone you absolutely need to meet. Sharp. Beautiful. In the profession. Don’t fumble this. I’ll make the introduction.” She hit send. Just like that.

No ceremony. No warning. I stared at her. “You just… did that?”

She smiled, completely unbothered. “You’re welcome.” I leaned back in my chair, exhaling slowly.

“This is insane,” I muttered.

“No,” she said calmly. “This is how things work.” By the time brunch ended, I felt… altered. Not in a dramatic, life-changing way. But in a quieter, more unsettling sense. Something had shifted in how I understood the rules of the game. As we stepped out into the soft Parkhurst afternoon, sunlight stretching lasily across the pavement, I realised that this wasn’t just a catch-up. It was a lesson. And whether I agreed with it or not. I had heard it.

By the time I got home, the city had quieted into that soft, deceptive calm that only ever seems to exist at night. The kind that makes everything feel still, even when your mind is anything but. I didn’t bother turning on the lights. I dropped my bag by the door, kicked off my heels somewhere along the passage, and made my way to my bedroom almost on autopilot. The bed received me without resistance, familiar and indifferent, as I lay flat on my back staring up at the ceiling. And then it all came rushing in.

The conversation. Every word, every pause, every casually dropped revelation that had not felt heavy in the moment but now sat on my chest with an unbearable weight.

I felt unsettled. Deeply unsettled. There was something about what Keitumetse had said about positioning, about proximity, about the quiet, strategic decisions women make in order to survive and, more than that, to rise within the profession that I could not easily digest. I didn’t know that this is how some black women moved within these spaces.

Or perhaps more honestly, I had refused to believe it. Because believing it meant confronting something uncomfortable. Something inconvenient. Something that didn’t align with the version of success I had told myself I wanted. I turned onto my side, pulling the duvet slightly over my shoulder as though that would ground me. Sleeping your way to the top. The phrase came to me uninvited, harsh in its simplicity, almost crude in the way it flattened something that, in reality, was far more layered. Was that what it was? Or was that just the easiest, most dismissive way to interpret it? I found myself arguing with myself in the quiet of my room.

On one hand, there was a part of me that resisted it entirely. That felt almost offended by the idea that access, opportunity, and advancement could be negotiated in such an intimate, personal currency. That wanted to believe that competence, hard work, and sheer brilliance should be enough. That needed the system to make sense in a way that felt fair. Predictable. Earned. But then there was the other part. The quieter, more observant part. The one that had already started noticing how the profession actually worked. Who got proximity. Who got mentorship. Who got chosen. And how often those choices had very little to do with who was the most technically capable person in the room. It made me uncomfortable.

Because it forced me to ask a question I didn’t yet dare to answer:

What are you willing to do to succeed? And more importantly, What are you not willing to do?

I exhaled slowly, closing my eyes for a moment, but the thoughts refused to settle.

Instead, they shifted. Softened. Moved somewhere more personal. Sandile Zuma.

The name alone carried a different kind of weight. A different kind of ache.

The absolute love of my life. Or at least… the version of love I had come to believe in.

He had been everything, once. Stability. Ambition. Certainty.

When I was still in university, still figuring out who I was and where I was going, he had already been established. A director at a major insurance company, moving through corporate spaces with the kind of confidence I was only beginning to understand.

And being with him had made me feel… secure. Not in a superficial, material way but in a way that felt like my future had already taken shape. Like I had chosen well. Like I was aligned with the kind of life I had always imagined for myself. I had pictured him in everything. My first job. Moments like this. Milestones that felt too big to carry alone.

I had assumed so naturally, so unquestioningly, that he would be there.

That we would get there together.And now…I was here. Alone. Navigating a world that felt far more complex, far less romantic, than anything I had once envisioned. And in a way I hadn’t fully acknowledged until this moment, this journey this new chapter of my life, was not just about becoming a lawyer. It was also about letting go. Of what I thought my life would look like. Of who I thought would be standing next to me in it. Of the quiet certainty I had once held onto so tightly. I felt it then. Not sharply. Not dramatically. But slowly. A second wave of grief. Remourning. Not just the relationship itself, but the future that had been attached to it. The imagined version of my life where things had worked out differently. Where love had stayed. Where certainty had held. Where I didn’t have to sit in the dark, questioning not only the profession I was entering, but the person I was becoming within it. I turned onto my back again, staring at the ceiling, the room still dim, the silence now louder than before. Because the truth was, I wasn’t just unsettled by Keitumetse’s world. I was unsettled by what it was asking me to confront within myself. And for the first time, I realisedthat becoming who I needed to be in this profession might require more than just intelligence, discipline, or ambition. It might require a kind of reckoning. With the world, systems and with myself. And I wasn’t entirely sure I was ready for that.

I lay i my bed longer than I intended to, suspended in that quiet, uncomfortable awareness that something had shifted, even if I could not yet name it fully. Because once you see something, truly see it, you cannot return to the innocence of not knowing.

And that was the part that unsettled me the most.

Not what Keitumetse had said, not even what it implied, but what it had revealed. The existence of a world operating parallel to the one I had convinced myself I was entering. A world governed by its own rules. Its own currency. Its own unspoken agreements. A world where merit was only part of the equation. Where proximity could outweigh performance.

Where relationships, carefully cultivated, sometimes controversially so, could move you further and faster than hard work ever could. And the most jarring part of it all was not that it existed. It was that it worked.

I shifted under the covers, pulling them tighter around me, as though I could contain the discomfort, soften the edges of the thoughts pressing in on me. Because if it worked… then what did that mean for people like me? People who had been raised to believe that discipline was enough. That excellence would speak for itself. That if you kept your head down, did the work, respected the process, you would, eventually, be recognised.

Rewarded. Elevated. I let out a small, almost humourless laugh. How naive. The profession, I was beginning to realise, was not just about law. It was about power.

And power had never been distributed fairly. Not in this country. Not in these spaces.

Not in these boardrooms and glass offices that looked out over cities built on histories no one in those rooms ever really spoke about. I thought about the women I had seen so far.

The ones who seemed to move effortlessly. The ones who were always in the right rooms, at the right tables, having the right conversations. And I wondered. How much of that was strategy? How much of it was sacrifice? And how much of it was simply survival dressed up as ambition? My chest tightened slightly at the thought. Because I could already feel the pressure. Subtle, but present. The pressure to adapt. To understand. To not be the one left behind because I had chosen to hold onto ideals that the system itself did not honour.

And yet, There was a part of me that resisted. Stubbornly. Almost instinctively.

Because if success required a version of myself that I did not recognise then what exactly was I working toward? I turned my head slightly, my gaze falling on my phone resting on the bedside table.

Sandile. Again. His absence felt louder now. Not just because I missed him, but because, in moments like this, I realisedhow much of my understanding of life, of relationships, of success had been shaped within the safety of that connection. With him, things had felt… linear. Predictable. There had been a path. A narrative. A sense that if we stayed the course, everything would align. But life had not followed that script. And now, I was here, alone in a quiet room, confronting truths I had not prepared for, navigating a world that did not operate on the principles I had been taught to trust. I swallowed, the emotion sitting just beneath the surface, not quite spilling over but present enough to feel. Because this was not just about the profession. It was about identity. About who I was willing to become in order to survive in it. About the quiet negotiations you make with yourself when reality does not match expectation. About the lines you draw and the ones you slowly, almost imperceptibly, begin to blur. I closed my eyes. And for a moment, I allowed myself to sit in it. The uncertainty. The discomfort. The grief. The questions that did not yet have answers. Because maybe that was part of it too. Not having it all figured out. Not knowing exactly where you stood. Not being certain about the version of yourself that would emerge on the other side of all of this. And maybe, just maybe, that was the real beginning. Not the induction. Not the rotation. Not the first day in the office. But this moment. This quiet, unsettling awareness that the world I had stepped into was far more complex than I had imagined. And that I would have to decide, sooner rather than later. Who I was going to be in it. The thought lingered, heavy but clarifying in a way I could not ignore. Tomorrow would come. The office would still be there. But tonight. Tonight, I sat in the in-between. No longer naive. Not yet hardened. Just aware. And that, I was beginning to understand, was its own kind of turning point.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or localities is entirely coincidental.

There was a kind of tension that did not announce itself loudly or dramatically, but instead settled into the air with a quiet insistence, like something inevitable that everyone could feel but no one was quite prepared to name. You could sense it in the corridors, in the way conversations became slightly more clipped, in the way footsteps carried a bit more urgency, in the way people lingered less and moved with a sharper sense of purpose, as though time itself had suddenly become more expensive. And in our office, that tension seemed to sit squarely, almost unfairly, on Nompumelelo’s shoulders. She was catching massive strays.

It had started earlier in the week when she had been pulled into a particularly large and complex matter involving a multinational holding company that was dually listed in both Germany and South Africa, the kind of client that came with layers of regulatory intricacy, cross-jurisdictional considerations, and, perhaps most importantly, a level of scrutiny that left absolutely no room for mediocrity or oversight.

From the moment she mentioned it, I could tell that she was not having a great time.

Not in an obvious, performative way that invited sympathy or concern, but in that quiet, tightly contained way that only becomes visible if you are paying attention. Her shoulders slightly tense, her responses shorter than usual, her eyes fixed on her screen for just a second too long, as though looking away might cause everything to unravel.

“I might need help with a research task,” she said one afternoon, her voice neutral, her gaze still fixed on her laptop.

“I can assist,” I replied almost immediately, perhaps too quickly, but eager in the way I had learned one needed to be in an environment where visibility mattered just as much as competence. Mikhail, who had been half-listening from our door with the kind of passive attentiveness he seemed to have perfected, inserted himself into the moment.

“Yeah, same,” he said. “Loop me in.”

Of course. We were both brought onto the matter, both positioned as supporting candidate legal practitioners under Tiara, who, as the associate leading the matter, carried herself with that same sharp, no-nonsense energy that had already earned her a reputation long before any of us had worked closely with her.

The work that followed was relentless in a way that felt almost disproportionate to the time we had been given. It demanded everything, from case law that needed to be meticulously analysed, comparative frameworks that required careful construction, statutory provisions that had to be interpreted with precision and then applied with even greater care. It was the kind of work that stretched late into the night, that blurred the boundaries between days, that left you questioning whether you were still thinking clearly or simply pushing through exhaustion because stopping was not an option. And yet, we delivered. Or at the very least, I knew that I did.

By the time I sent through my portion of the research, I was the last to submit, which meant that I had the advantage of seeing how the rest of the document had been structured, how the arguments had been framed, and where my contribution needed to sit in order to make the entire piece feel cohesive and deliberate rather than fragmented. There was no room for error. No space for oversight.

So when, a few days later, Edward’s feedback email landed in Nompumelelo’s inbox, I did not initially think anything of it beyond the usual anticipation that comes with having your work scrutinised at that level. Until Nompumelelo showed it to me.

He was tearing into the research, not ruthlessly, but with enough precision to make it clear where the weaknesses lay, pointing out gaps in reasoning, questioning certain interpretations, highlighting areas that required more depth, more clarity, more intellectual rigour. It was standard. Expected. Almost routine. But then something became apparent.

The sections he was critiquing… were not mine. Not a single one.

And for a brief, fleeting moment, I allowed myself to feel it—that quiet, internal satisfaction that comes from knowing that your work has held up under pressure.

“They sent the research draft without you,” she said, her tone almost too casual for the weight of what she was actually saying.

I looked up slowly. “What do you mean?”

She hesitated, just slightly, as though weighing how much to say. “The final draft that went to Edward. You weren’t on the email chain.”

There was a pause. A stillness.

“Who was?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer before she spoke it.

“Mikhail.” Of course.

I leaned back in my chair, slowly, deliberately, as the realisation settled into place with a kind of clarity that was both sharp and deeply irritating. Both of us had worked on the matter. Both of us had contributed. And yet, somehow, only one of us had been made visible in the final submission. And it was not me. I let out a small, humourless laugh, more to myself than to her. “Interesting.”

She didn’t respond, and she didn’t need to, because the implication sat heavily between us, fully understood without needing to be spoken out loud. I could feel the irritation rising now, no longer subtle, no longer distant, but immediate and difficult to ignore. This was not an oversight. It could not have been. I had been the last person to submit my work, which meant there was no plausible version of events where my contribution had simply been forgotten or accidentally excluded. This had been a decision.

And suddenly, all the quiet observations I had been making over the past few weeks, the alliances, the familiarity, the subtle ways in which certain people seemed to move in alignment with one another, came rushing back with an uncomfortable coherence.

“I need to speak to her,” I said, the words leaving my mouth before I had fully decided whether I believed them. But even as I said it, I could feel the hesitation underneath it. Because confrontation, in a space like this, was never just about being right. It was about timing. Positioning. Consequence. And I was not yet sure I understood the full cost of any of those things.

Still, I stood up.

“Where are you going?” Nompumelelo asked.

“To Morule,” I replied.

She nodded, as though that made perfect sense.

And it did.

His office was on the third floor, slightly removed from the main flow of activity, where the noise of the team softened into something more controlled, more deliberate. The door was half open, as it often was, creating that careful balance between approachability and quiet authority. It felt accessible, but never entirely informal.

I paused just outside, steadying myself for a second, before knocking lightly.

“Come in,” he said.

I stepped inside, closing the door behind me, and took a seat across from him without waiting to be asked.

“Got a minute?” I said, though it was clear from my expression that this was not going to be a quick conversation.

He looked up at me, studied my face for a brief moment, and then leaned back slightly. “Looks like more than a minute, but go ahead.”

I explained everything.

The task, the hours, the submission, the omission.

By the time I finished, the irritation that had initially been sharp had settled into something more controlled, but no less present.

“I want to confront her,” I said.

He did not respond immediately, which in itself felt like a response.

Then, finally, he shook his head.

“No.”

I frowned. “No?”

“No,” he repeated, more firmly this time. “You don’t pick that fight.”

I leaned forward slightly, disbelief creeping into my tone. “Why not? It’s not right.”

“I didn’t say it was right,” he replied calmly. “I’m saying it’s not worth it.”

There was a pause.

“So I must just let it go?” I asked, the frustration still sitting just beneath the surface.

He held my gaze. “Not every battle is worth fighting, especially not this early. You’re still learning the terrain. You don’t start wars before you understand the map.”

I sat back, exhaling slowly, the logic of what he was saying landing even if I did not like it.

“This place,” he continued, “runs on more than just merit. You might be right, but confronting her won’t necessarily give you the outcome you’re expecting. It might just mark you.”

The word hung there.

Mark you.

I knew exactly what he meant.

“So what do I do?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said simply. “You keep working. You make your contributions undeniable. You let your work speak in rooms you’re not even in.”

I shook my head slightly, a small, reluctant smile forming. “That sounds very noble.”

“It’s not noble,” he said. “It’s strategic.”

Silence settled between us for a moment, the tension shifting into something more reflective.

And then, almost without thinking, I said it.

“Aston.”

Morule’s expression changed, just slightly.

“What about him?” he asked.

I shrugged, attempting nonchalance. “What’s his story?”

He smirked. “Why?”

“Curiosity,” I replied.

“That’s not curiosity,” he said.

I laughed softly, giving in. “Okay, fine. I think I fancy him.”

There it was.

Out in the open.

Morule leaned back, clearly amused. “You and half the firm.”

“Please,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Be serious.”

“I am serious,” he replied. “He’s easy to like.”

That, I already knew.

“So?” I pressed. “Is he… involved?”

“Not that I know of,” Morule said. “He keeps his personal life very contained.”

I nodded slowly, processing that.

“I’m not stupid, though,” I added.

“Meaning?” he asked.

“I’m not here to chase romance,” I said. “Not in this place. Not when everything else already feels like a negotiation.”

He studied me for a moment. “But you like him.”

“I do,” I admitted. “I’m just smart enough to know what that could complicate.”

He nodded, approving. “Good. Keep it that way.”

I laughed. “Wow. No encouragement at all?”

“None,” he said plainly. “You have bigger things to focus on.”

I stood up then, the earlier frustration not gone, but… recalibrated.

“Thanks,” I said.

“For what?” he asked.

“For telling me what I didn’t want to hear.”

He smiled. “That’s usually the job.”

As I stepped back into the corridor, I could feel it again, that constant balancing act this place demanded. Between speaking and staying silent. Between reacting and observing.

Between wanting and knowing better. And somewhere within all of that, I was beginning to understand. Not everything that unsettles you needs to be confronted.

Some things, you simply take note of. And move accordingly.

That thought stayed with me long after I left Morule’s office, long after the conversations had dissolved into polite goodbyes and the corridors had emptied of their usual performance. It followed me all the way home, settling into the quiet of my room, lingering in the spaces between my thoughts as I finally allowed myself, for once, to exhale.

Because for all the tension, for all the politics, for all the subtle, exhausting negotiations that seemed to define my days, There was also this. Today, I got my first big girl pay check.

Not hypothetically. Not eventually. Not in the distant, abstract way that had carried me through years of studying, sacrificing, and convincing myself that it would all be worth it.

But actually.

Tangibly.

My first real salary sitting in my account like proof. Like evidence that something had shifted, that I had crossed over into a version of my life that once felt aspirational, almost out of reach.

I sat there for a while, just letting that reality land.

Because it mattered.

More than the office dynamics. More than the quiet exclusions. More than the constant, underlying need to prove myself in spaces that were not always designed with me in mind.

It mattered that I was here.

That I was earning.

That I was building something, even if the foundation still felt uncertain in places.

Next week, I would be collecting my car. My car. The thought alone felt indulgent, almost surreal. No more taxis. No more negotiating movement around inconvenience and unpredictability. Just me, a set of keys, and a life that at least from the outside, looks exactly like the one I had always imagined for myself. A girl with a demanding job. A steady income.

And a car to match the aesthetic.

I smiled to myself, already imagining it. The early morning drives. The control. The independence. The aesthetic of it all. A girl with a demanding job, a structured life, and a car that reflected the image she had been so carefully, so deliberately constructing.

Some people would say it was a reckless decision. Buying a car while still on contract. Betting on a future that hadn’t yet been formally secured. Too dependent on an outcome that hadn’t yet been secured.

But failure, in my mind, was not a viable outcome. Not something I entertained long enough to give it shape or language. I had not come this far to hover at the edge of possibility. I would work. I would outperform. I would position myself in ways that made me difficult to ignore, even harder to replace. Retention was not a hope. It was an expectation. And if anything, the car was not recklessness. It was commitment. A quiet, personal declaration that I intended to stay. That I intended to build something here. That I trusted myself enough to invest in a future that had not yet formally been handed to me.

Besides, the logic made sense in its own way. Money that would have been spent on Ubers, on convenience, on temporary solutions, would now go toward something that belonged to me. I wasn’t just moving. I was advancing.

I leaned back against the couch, letting the weight of it all settle, not the heaviness of earlier, but something fuller, more layered. The tension of the office still existed. The politics, the personalities, the quiet exclusions and strategic silences. They were all still there, waiting for me to return to them tomorrow. But so was this version of me.

The one who had made it this far. The one who was learning, adapting, recalibrating in real time. The one who understood that survival in this space required more than intelligence. It required restraint, awareness, and the ability to choose your battles with precision.

And tonight, for once, I allowed myself to sit in something simpler.

Pride. Just quiet, steady, and entirely my own. Something that settled deep in my chest and stayed there without asking for permission. It was mine. Entirely mine. Earned in silence, in exhaustion, in all the moments no one had witnessed but me.

For a brief moment, the noise fell away. The emails. The politics. The careful calculations of when to speak and when to remain still. All of it softened into the background, like a distant hum I no longer needed to respond to.

I lay there, staring at the ceiling, letting the stillness stretch just a little longer than usual, allowing myself to feel the weight of how far I had come. Not just physically—from lecture halls and uncertainty into glass offices and corporate corridors, but internally. The version of me who had once questioned whether she even belonged in spaces like this felt… distant. Not gone, but quieter now. Managed.

And yet, even in that quiet pride, there was movement.

Because this life, this version of myself I was building never allowed for stillness to last too long. There was always something ahead. Another room to enter. Another conversation to navigate. Another version of myself to refine. Tomorrow, that would take the shape of Keitumetse.

The thought of brunch with her sat differently in my mind. It wasn’t just a social plan, not really. It carried weight. Expectation. The kind of conversation that didn’t just pass time but shifted perspective. With her, things were never just surface-level. She had a way of seeing through you, of naming things you hadn’t yet found the language for, of forcing you to confront parts of yourself you might have preferred to keep comfortably blurred.

I turned onto my side, pulling the covers slightly closer, already anticipating the conversation. What would I tell her? About the team. About Mikhail. About Nadia.

About the quiet exclusions that no one ever acknowledged but everyone felt.

And then, inevitably—about myself. About who I was becoming in response to all of it.

A small smile pulled at the corner of my mouth. Because beneath all the uncertainty, beneath the strategy and the restraint, there was also something else growing. Something sharper. More aware. Less willing to move through spaces blindly. Tomorrow wouldn’t just be brunch. It would be a reckoning of sorts. A mirror. A recalibration. I closed my eyes slowly, letting that thought settle. Tomorrow was another day.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or localities is entirely coincidental.

After that afternoon with the smoking incident with Nakedi, after that email from Nadia, I had made a conscious decision to overcompensate. To stay later, to respond faster, to make my presence undeniable in ways that could not be questioned or misinterpreted. But perception, I was learning, had very little to do with effort. And everything to do with narrative Mikhail’s narrative was clean. Mine… was still being written by other people.

Having completed the bundle, I left it in Mikhail’s office—partly out of practicality, and partly because he had already positioned himself as the one to “review” it., having done one before. When his teams came through. “Quick chat”, I already knew what it was about. I walked into his office and found him seated behind his desk, the bundle open in front of him, flipping through it slowly, deliberately, as though he were conducting some kind of quiet audit.

“Yes… yes… yes…” he murmured, nodding to himself as he turned each page. I stood there, watching. Waiting. He took his time. Too much time.

“So…” I said eventually, unable to ignore the absurdity of the moment, “You called me into your office to tell me I did a good job?” He looked up, slightly startled, as though he hadn’t expected me to interrupt the performance.

“Well,” he said, leaning back in his chair, “There are a few things we can improve going forward.” We. I almost laughed. But I didn’t.

“Of course,” I said instead, my tone measured, controlled. Because this was no longer about the bundle. This was about positioning. And I was beginning to understand the rules of the game.

Later that afternoon, I decided to step out for lunch. Not because I was particularly hungry, but because I needed air, something that did not smell like paper and pressure and quiet competition. The elevator lobby was unusually quiet when I arrived, the glass reflecting a version of me that looked composed on the outside but felt anything but. And then the doors opened. And there he was.

Aston Marembe. My “work husband”. Effortless in a way that felt almost unfair, standing there like he had stepped out of a different version of the firm. One where things were lighter, easier, less calculated. He looked up, and for a moment, our eyes met. And then he smiled.

“Hey,” he said, stepping aside slightly to let me in. “You heading up?”

“Yeah,” I replied, stepping into the elevator, suddenly aware of everything. My posture, my tone, the way I was standing.

“Lunch?” he asked, leaning casually against the side panel.

“Trying to,” I said, smiling faintly. “Unless something urgent decides to ruin my plans in the next five minutes.”

He laughed softly. “That sounds about right.”

There was a brief pause, the elevator doors sliding shut, the soft hum of descent filling the space between us.

“How’s your rotation going?” he asked, glancing at me.

I exhaled lightly. “It’s… a lot.”

“That bad?” he teased.

“Let’s just say,” I said, tilting my head slightly, “I’m learning more about people than I am about law at this point.” He smiled at that, a knowing kind of smile.

“That’s the real training contract,” he said.

I looked at him, studying his face for a second longer than necessary.

“And you?” I asked. “Surviving?”

“Barely,” he said, grinning. “But I make it look good.”

I laughed, shaking my head slightly. “You really do.”

The elevator slowed, the doors opening into the lobby, but neither of us moved immediately.

“Walk with me?” he said, casually, like it was nothing. But it wasn’t nothing.

“Sure,” I replied, trying and failing to sound as indifferent as he did.

As we stepped out together, side by side, I felt something shift, however briefly.

A moment of lightness. Of possibility. Of something that existed outside of bundles and emails and carefully constructed narratives. And as we walked, I realised that not everything in this place had to feel like a battle. Some things, if you allowed them to be, could feel… easy.

We fell into conversation without effort. Small things at first. The morning. The team. A passing comment about how intense the week had already been, and it was only Tuesday. He had a way of speaking that made everything feel slightly less heavy, like the pressure of the place could be momentarily negotiated down into something manageable.

By the time we reached the cafeteria, it was already filling up. Clusters of people gathered around tables, laughter breaking through the otherwise controlled environment, ties loosened, blazers draped over chairs. For a moment, it almost didn’t feel like the same place.

We grabbed our food and joined a table already occupied by a few others from the team.

Morule was there, of course, mid-story, mid-performance, holding court like he always did. Boitumelo sat beside him, nodding along, her warmth unchanged despite everything. Olerato scrolled through her phone between bites, occasionally interjecting with something sharp and observant. The conversation moved quickly. Office gossip, who was doing well, who wasn’t, who had already been quietly written off, and who, somehow, had managed to position themselves just right.

I slid into the seat, suddenly aware again of the unspoken choreography of these spaces. Where you sat. It all meant something, even when it pretended not to.

“Look who finally decided to join us,” Morule said, a half-smile playing on his lips, his tone hovering somewhere between teasing and something else I couldn’t quite name.

I smiled politely. “Some of us were working.”

A light chuckle moved around the table, but I could feel it, the subtle shift, the quiet measuring. Banter, yes. But also positioning.

Aston, still beside me, leaned back slightly in his chair, entirely unbothered. “Relax,” he said lightly, glancing between us. “We’re all just trying to survive.”

That broke the tension just enough. Food was passed around, conversations split and reformed. Someone mentioned a partner who had apparently torn into an associate that morning.

Boitumelo leaned toward me slightly. “Apparently someone in corporate cried in the bathroom yesterday,” she whispered, not unkindly, just… observant.

I raised an eyebrow. “Already?”

She shrugged. “It’s that time.”

Across the table, Morule was already onto something else, recounting a version of an event that I suspected had grown more elaborate in the telling. People laughed. Some genuinely. Others because that, too, was part of the rhythm. I found myself drifting in and out of it. Present, but slightly removed. Watching. Learning.

Because lunch, I was realising, was never just lunch. It was a continuation of the work. A softer space, maybe, but still governed by the same undercurrents. Alliances forming, impressions being made, narratives quietly taking shape.

And yet, not all of it felt heavy.

Aston nudged my tray slightly when I almost knocked over my drink, his hand brushing mine for the briefest moment. “Careful,” he said, a small smile tugging at his mouth.

“Thanks,” I replied, more aware than I cared to admit.

There it was again.

That lightness.

Brief, almost fleeting, but real.

For a moment, the noise around us softened. The politics, the posturing, the constant awareness of where you stood, it all faded just enough to make room for something simpler.

Something human.

I leaned back in my chair, letting the conversation carry on around me, no longer feeling the need to insert myself into every moment, to prove, to perform, to be seen in a particular way. Because maybe, just maybe, there was space for both. For ambition and ease. For strategy and sincerity. For navigating the complexity of it all without losing yourself entirely in the process. As lunch began to wind down, chairs scraping lightly against the floor, people gathering their things and slipping back into their roles, I sat there for a second longer. Taking it in. The noise. The people. The quiet, invisible currents that shaped everything. And the small, unexpected moments that made it all feel just a little more bearable. As I stood up to leave, falling back into step with the rhythm of the day, I realised something. Not everything in this place had to feel like a battle. Some moments, if you allowed them to be, could feel easy. And for now, that was enough.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or localities is entirely coincidental.

A few weeks into the rotation, the edges of everything had begun to soften just enough for me to move through the space without feeling like I was constantly being watched, measured, and quietly assessed. Although the awareness never quite left me, it simply learned how to sit more subtly in my body, like a background hum I could no longer switch off. By then, I knew the rhythm of the floor. I knew which associates preferred emails and which ones liked you to physically walk into their offices. I knew which coffee machine produced something remotely drinkable and which one existed purely for aesthetic purposes. I knew how to read tone in a single-line response. I knew when “Noted” meant “Thank you” and when it meant “This is wrong, but I don’t have the energy to correct you right now.” On the surface, I was settling in. But underneath that fragile sense of adjustment, something else was taking shape, something far less comfortable, far more difficult to ignore.

The arbitration matter involving the two major cellular network companies was intensifying, tightening around us with each passing day, its deadlines becoming less like distant markers and more like something pressing directly against my chest, demanding urgency, demanding precision, demanding presence at all times. And then there was Mikhail.

One afternoon, I was at the smoking area with Nakedi, the late sun casting long shadows across the concrete, the city humming below us in that familiar Sandton rhythm cars, conversations, the distant echo of construction that never really stopped. I exhaled slowly, watching the smoke dissolve into the air.

“I’m tired,” I said.

Nakedi laughed lightly. “Of the work or the people?”

“Both.”

Before he could respond, I caught sight of Mikhail in the distance, walking past, his eyes flicking toward us briefly before moving on. I didn’t think much of it. I should have.

Because less than an hour later, an email came through from Nadia.

Subject: URGENT – Bundle Preparation Progress

Both Mikhail and I were cc’d. So was the partner.

My stomach dropped before I even opened it.

“Hi team, I’ve noticed that progress on the bundle has been slower than anticipated. Given the timelines, it is critical that we all remain fully committed and available during working hours to ensure that deadlines are met. Please prioritise this matter accordingly.

Kind regards, Nadia”

Working hours. Available. The implication was clear. I felt the heat rise in my chest.

She hadn’t said my name. She didn’t need to. I knew exactly where it was coming from.

I didn’t respond. Instead, I worked. I worked until three am that night, the office quieting around me, the fluorescent lights humming overhead, my screen the only real source of movement in an otherwise still space. Page after page. Indexing. Cross-referencing. Correcting pagination errors that seemed to multiply the longer I stared at them. By the time I was done, my eyes burned and my back ached. But I wasn’t finished. I drafted one final email.

“Hi Nadia,

Please see attached updated bundle. I have incorporated the outstanding documents and ensured pagination is in order. I will be leaving the office shortly (03:03) but remain available should anything further be required. Kind regards, Moitiri”

03:03. Let it sit there. Let it speak.

Working with Mikhail had become an exercise in restraint. Not because the work itself was beyond me. I was more than capable, but because the environment around the work had begun to shift in ways that were subtle enough to be deniable, yet consistent enough to be undeniable. Mikhail had something I did not have. Not intelligence, at least not in the way it was being perceived but positioning.

He moved through the team with an ease that felt almost rehearsed, slipping into conversations, into relationships, into spaces that I had to consciously enter. He shared a religious affiliation with the core members on the matter, and that alone created a kind of invisible bridge between them. A familiarity, a shorthand, a sense of belonging that I was not part of. They spoke the same language, even when they weren’t speaking. And I began to notice something I had always suspected but had never experienced this intimately: the quiet, unspoken cohesion among Indian colleagues in corporate spaces. They moved together. Not loudly, not in ways that could be easily called out, but in subtle, almost instinctive alignment. Shared context, cultural familiarity, an ease that translated into trust, and trust that translated into opportunity. It wasn’t overt. It rarely is.

But it was effective. Emails looped in the same people. Conversations continued outside rooms you weren’t in. Decisions seemed to land in ways that felt pre-aligned.

And then, almost involuntarily, I found myself comparing it to the experience of being Black in the same space. Because where there seemed to be cohesion on one end, there often felt like fragmentation on the other. Black professionals, myself included, moved differently. More guarded. More individualised. Sometimes so focused on survival, on proving worth, on not being the one who slips, that collaboration became secondary to self-preservation. And in that space, subtle competition would creep in. Silence where there could have been support. Distance where there could have been alignment. Not always. But enough for it to be noticeable. Enough for it to matter. And the contrast stayed with me.

Because it wasn’t just about race—it was about positioning, about history, about how different groups had learned to navigate the same system in fundamentally different ways.

Some moved as a unit. Others moved as individuals, trying not to fall.

And the difference between the two was starting to feel like the difference between being carried… and carrying everything alone. What made it even more complex, more frustrating, was that Indian folks occupied a space in between. Not white, but not Black either. And in that in-between, there was often a deliberate distancing from the discomforts associated with marginalisation. A leaning toward proximity to power rather than solidarity with it. So when bias came from that space, it felt sharper. Because it came from people who understood, at least in theory, what it meant to be excluded. Yet still participated in systems that excluded others.

Nadia embodied that tension in a way that became increasingly difficult to ignore.

Her management of the matter appeared neutral on paper, but in practice, it leaned consistently, predictably, toward Mikhail.

“Mikhail, this is excellent work.”

“Mikhail, can you take the lead here?”

“Mikhail, let’s quickly align on strategy.”

And then, almost as an afterthought, “Moitiri, you can assist.” Assist. The word settled in my chest like something heavy, something misplaced. Because I was not assisting him.

We were in the same year. We had been brought onto the matter at the same time. We were, in every formal sense, equals. But that was not how it was playing out.

And then, as if to formalise the imbalance that had already begun to take root, Karen released the matter allocation list.

It came through as a standard internal document, structured, clinical, definitive. A list of which candidate attorneys had been assigned to which matters within the team. The kind of document that, in theory, clarified roles and responsibilities. I opened it without much thought. And then I saw it. The cellular arbitration matter.

Assigned to: Moitiri Seitshiro

Not Mikhail. Me. I stared at it for a moment longer than necessary, letting the reality of it settle. Technically, this was my matter. I understood, of course, that we had both been roped into it before the list had been finalised. I understood that these things happened, that work often preceded structure in environments like this. But still. A small, quiet part of me had expected something. Acknowledgment. A simple, “Thanks for assisting Mikhail on this.”

A recognition of roles, however informal they had become. But by then, Mikhail had already embedded himself into the matter in ways that went beyond formal allocation. He had built relationships, with Nadia, with the partner, with the broader team. He had made himself indispensable in a way that made the list almost irrelevant.

And he knew it. I could tell in the way he began to move.

In the way he would casually drop into my office, leaning against the doorframe as though the space belonged to him too, his tone light but his words carefully placed.

“You know,” he said one afternoon, almost conversationally, “Aditja mentioned he prefers working with me on this matter. Something about how I approach things.”

He shrugged slightly, as though it meant nothing.

But it meant everything.

I looked up at him, holding his gaze for just a second longer than necessary.

“Is that so?” I said, my voice even.

“Yeah,” he replied, smiling faintly. “But I mean, we’re both on it, so it’s fine.”

Fine. Of course it was fine. Everything was always fine.

I watched him walk out of my office, his confidence trailing behind him like something earned, something justified. And for a brief, uncharitable moment, I found myself thinking. No wonder. Early twenties, and already his hairline was retreating as though it, too, was under pressure. Stress manifests itself in different ways, I suppose.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or localities is entirely coincidental.

There is something about the first weeks in a new team that refuses to let you rest properly; your body may lie still, but your mind lingers somewhere between anticipation and quiet dread, rehearsing introductions, calculating impressions, and imagining outcomes that have not yet had the chance to unfold.

By the time I stepped into the office, coffee was no longer a simple indulgence but a necessary ritual, something to steady the nerves and sharpen the edges of a mind that felt slightly out of sync with itself.

The cafeteria carried the familiar scent of burnt espresso and something else, ambition, perhaps, or the faint residue of too many early mornings spent trying to prove something. Candidate legal practitioners stood in small clusters, already performing alertness, already dressed in curated versions of themselves that suggested competence, ease, belonging.

I ordered a cappuccino and watched the foam settle slowly, as if it might offer some form of clarity or grounding, even though I knew it wouldn’t.

Nompumelelo appeared beside me, quieter than usual, her presence softer, more contained.

“Ready?” I asked, turning slightly toward her.

She exhaled, a small, controlled release of breath. “As I’ll ever be.”

There was nothing else to say after that. Because we both understood what this meant.

The directors. The real introduction. The part of the job that required something more than politeness and basic competence.

We began at the far end of the corridor, where the offices felt slightly more distant, slightly more removed, as though hierarchy itself had been built into the architecture.

Karen was first. Her office carried a presence before she even spoke, something sharp and deliberate that settled into the space with authority. It was composed, controlled in a way that suggested not just discipline but expectation. We knocked.

“Come in,” she called, her voice firm, direct, leaving little room for hesitation.

She looked up briefly, and in that moment, I felt assessed in a way that was both efficient and complete, as though she had already formed an impression before I had finished introducing myself.

“Hi, we’re the new candidates in the team,” I began, keeping my tone measured. “We just wanted to introduce ourselves and see if there’s anything we can assist with.”

There was a pause, not long, but long enough to be felt.

“Oh,” she said, leaning back slightly, her tone shifting into something more structured, more practiced. “Right. Yes. Welcome.”

The conversation that followed was polite, almost procedural, consisting of the expected questions about our academic backgrounds, our impressions of the firm, our areas of interest. And yet, something about it felt distant. Not cold, necessarily, but detached.

Like she was engaging because it was required, not because it was meaningful.

There was a particular way she spoke to us, measured, controlled, slightly firm—that made it clear she was not someone who entertained softness when it came to juniors.

A woman of order. Of principle. Perhaps even of faith.

But also a woman who expected you to meet her where she stood, not the other way around.

“We’ll let you know if anything comes up,” she said eventually, bringing the interaction to a close with quiet finality.

We thanked her and turned to leave.

And just as we stepped out, she added, almost casually, “That’s quite a walk from your office.”

I paused for a fraction of a second, catching the comment for what it was. It was not just an observation, but something layered, something that hinted at more than distance.

Nompumelelo said nothing.

But I heard it.

Aditya Patel’s office felt like a shift in atmosphere. Quieter. Softer. He looked up as we entered, offering a small, genuine smile that did not feel rehearsed or calculated. We introduced ourselves, and he listened. I mean, really listened, in a way that felt rare in spaces like these. There was a calmness about him, an absence of unnecessary energy, as though he had no interest in performing anything beyond what was required.

“I’ll definitely loop you in if anything comes up,” he said, his voice even, almost understated. And for reasons I couldn’t quite explain, I believed him.

William Straut was impossible to ignore. Tall, bald, physically imposing in a way that felt almost cinematic, like he had stepped out of an entirely different world and chosen, for reasons unknown, to practise law instead. We knocked, and his voice carried through the door, low, controlled. “Come in.”

He stood when we entered, which immediately shifted the tone of the interaction.

“New candidates?” he asked, his gaze steady.

“Yes,” I said, smiling slightly. “We’re just introducing ourselves.”

He shook our hands, firm and deliberate, the kind of handshake that communicated awareness without over familiarity.

“Good,” he said. “Always good to know who’s around.”

He was polite, even approachable, but there was a clear boundary. An unspoken understanding that this was as far as the interaction would go. And strangely, that clarity felt reassuring.

Then we met Samantha McCarthy. And everything about her was intentional. From the precision of her makeup to the structure of her outfit, from the way she sat to the way she held eye contact, there was not a single element of her presence that felt accidental. She didn’t just occupy her role. She embodied it.

“Welcome,” she said, smiling in a way that felt warm but assured. “You’re going to learn a lot in this team.” Her tone carried certainty, not suggestion. She asked about our interests, our expectations, what we hoped to gain from the rotation, and as she listened, I found myself leaning in slightly, wanting, not just to be heard, but to be recognised. To be seen by her. She mentioned her husband in passing, who happened to be an advocate at the Sandton Bar, and it felt entirely aligned with everything else about her life. Structured. Elevated. Intentional. As we left, I leaned toward Nompumeleloand whispered, “I love her.” She laughed softly, but I meant it. Entirely.

Edward Smith’s office, the team leader was the opposite of everything we had just seen. Messy. Not in a careless way, but in a way that suggested too much work and not enough time to impose order onto it. Files stacked unevenly, papers overlapping, a desk that seemed to have surrendered to the weight of its own responsibilities. And yet, he himself was warm. Genuinely warm.

“Come in, come in,” he said, smiling before we had even fully entered.

We introduced ourselves, and he nodded, enthusiastic in a way that felt almost grounding after the intensity of the other introductions. “Yes, yes, good to have you both,” he said. “I’ll try make sure you get exposure.” Try. The honesty of that word lingered.

Across from his office sat his secretary, Minet Prinsloo, who looked up briefly, her gaze sharp, observant, missing nothing. She said very little, but it was immediately clear that she saw everything.

Back in our office, I had barely settled into my chair when the email came through.

Nadia.

Urgent assistance required.

Both Mikhail and I cc’d.

Of course.

By the time I stepped out of the office, he was already there. Waiting.

We walked in together, and Nadia looked between us before deciding, almost casually, to keep both of us on the matter. And just like that, the tone shifted. Because Mikhail did not do things halfway. And neither did I.

The matter itself was substantial, a contractual dispute between two major cellular network companies, already escalating toward arbitration, the kind of work that required precision, stamina, and attention to detail.

“In every matter, there’s a CA, an associate, and a reporting partner,” she explained. “Aditja is the reporting partner on this one.”

I nodded, already aware that this was no longer theoretical. This was the work.

Later, at the bar, the energy shifted again. It always did. The same people, the same faces from boardrooms and corridors, now loosened by dim lighting, alcohol, and the quiet permission to be less guarded. The air was warmer here, thick with overlapping conversations, bursts of laughter, and the clinking of glasses that tried almost successfully to mask the exhaustion everyone carried. I stood for a moment near the entrance, letting my eyes adjust, scanning the room in that deliberate way I was beginning to recognise in myself. You didn’t just arrive in these spaces, you assessed them. Who was here. Who was with whom. Who mattered in this context. That’s when I spotted Aston.

He was standing by the bar, mid-conversation with Morule, an associate from his team. The two of them leaned in slightly toward each other, their exchange easy, familiar, almost insulated from the noise around them. There was something about their dynamic that felt deeper than colleagues. Not inappropriate, not overt—but grounded. Like there was history there. Or at the very least, trust. I made a mental note, almost instinctively: I need to become his friend. Not in a calculated, transactional way, at least that’s what I told myself but in the way you recognise someone who might make this place more navigable. Someone who understood the terrain. Someone who could help you read the room before the room read you. He caught my eye before I could overthink it. A small smile. An acknowledgment.

And just like that, the distance closed.

“Escaping the bundles?” he asked as I approached, his tone light, but his eyes observant.

“Temporarily,” I replied, leaning slightly against the bar. “I needed a reminder that life exists outside of indexed files and pagination.”

Morule laughed, extending a hand. “Morule.”

“Moitiri,” I said, shaking it. Up close, the ease between them made even more sense. Morule carried himself with a grounded confidence. Nothing forced, nothing performative. The kind of presence that didn’t need to compete for attention because it wasn’t trying to.

“First few weeks treating you well?” he asked.

I paused, just slightly. “Define ‘well.’”

That earned a knowing look from both of them.

Aston shook his head, amused. “She’s already figured it out.”

“Figured what out?” I asked, though I already suspected the answer.

Morule took a sip of his drink before responding. “That this place is… layered.”

Layered. That was one way to put it. The conversation drifted, as it always seemed to, into politics. It was almost inevitable in a room full of young professionals trying to make sense of power, both within and beyond the firm.

Morule mentioned his university days, how deeply involved he had been in student politics, organising, the whole thing. There was a pride in the way he spoke about it, but also a distance, like he had outgrown parts of it.

“Still a staunch supporter?” Aston asked, half-teasing.

Morule smirked. “You never really stop believing in something. You just adjust your expectations.”

I found myself leaning in slightly. “That sounds like disillusionment dressed up as maturity.”

He laughed. “Or survival.” Aston glanced at me then, something sharper in his expression. “The politics of the stomach matter more,” he said. It landed. Not loudly. Not dramatically. But with weight. Because it was true.

In a way that cut through ideology, through principle, through all the things we liked to believe guided our decisions. At the end of the day, people moved in ways that secured them. Stability. Access. Power. I held his gaze for a second longer than necessary, then smiled lightly. “That’s… bleak.”

“It’s honest,” he replied. And just like that, the moment softened again, slipping back into something easier. The kind of conversation that moved effortlessly between seriousness and flirtation, never settling too heavily in one place. We talked about nothing and everything. Work, of course. People. Small observations about the firm that felt harmless but weren’t entirely. There was a rhythm to it, one I found myself relaxing into despite everything I knew about these spaces. Because Aston had that effect. Effortless.

Familiar. Dangerous, in its own quiet way. But even as I laughed, as I allowed myself to enjoy the moment, I couldn’t ignore the undercurrent running beneath it all. Snippets of conversation drifted toward me from behind, half-caught but fully understood.

“I don’t know how long I’m staying here.” “It’s not what I thought it would be.” A pause.

A sip. “Same.” I didn’t turn around. I didn’t engage. But I listened. Not to the specifics, the names, the details but to the tone. There was something there. A shared uncertainty.

A quiet disillusionment that people were careful not to name too loudly, as though saying it outright might make it real. And maybe it already was. By the time I stepped away from the bar, offering quick goodbyes, promising to “catch up soon” in the way people always did, I felt it again. That heaviness. Subtle, but present. Like the room itself knew something no one was fully articulating. Outside, the Sandton night greeted me with its usual indifference. Lights stretched endlessly across glass buildings, the city polished to perfection, humming with the illusion of certainty and success. I paused for a moment before heading home, taking it in. The beauty of it. The ambition of it. The quiet tension beneath it all. And as I stood there, one thought settled in my mind with an uncomfortable kind of clarity. People were here. Showing up, performing and playing the game. But not all of them were staying.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or localities is entirely coincidental.

Monday arrived with none of the gentleness I would have preferred. No easing in, no quiet adjustment, just a name, printed neatly outside an office door, announcing my arrival into a new rotation as though I had always belonged there. I paused for a second before stepping in. There it was. My name. Official. Fixed. Temporary, but still significant enough to feel like a small claim to space. The team, I quickly realised, was massive. One of the largest, most billing-heavy teams in the entire Dispute Resolution department. The kind of team where time quite literally translated into money, and where presence alone did not guarantee visibility. There simply wasn’t enough space to accommodate all of us in one area, which is how Nompumelelo Mkhize, my office mate and I ended up on the opposite side of the team, exiled, almost, but not quite. Our office sat directly facing the glass corridor that led to the lifts. A high-traffic strip of constant movement. People passing by. Glances exchanged. A place where you were always, whether you liked it or not, slightly on display.

But the office itself? A mess. It looked like it had been used to store old files for years. The shelves were dusty with forgotten boxes and a lingering smell of neglect. Maintenance had clearly been alerted to our arrival, but not with any urgency that suggested we were a priority.

So before anything else, before introductions, before settling in, before pretending to be the polished professionals we were expected to be, we had to clean.

There was something strangely grounding about it. Making space for ourselves and quite literally clearing out the old. It felt less like an inconvenience and more like an initiation.

Once the chaos had been somewhat contained, I turned my attention to my side of the office. I have always been particular about my space. Obsessed, even. There is something about curating an environment that feels like yours, especially in a place that constantly reminds you that it isn’t.

I was already planning a trip to Pep Home. A few carefully selected pieces, affordable, but with the illusion of luxury. That was my thing. Finding items that looked far more expensive than they were. Crafting a sense of class on a budget. It was a skill, really. One I took quiet pride in. If I was going to spend hours in that office, it was going to reflect me. At least a little.

From our brief “get to know each other” exchange, Nompumelelo revealed herself in fragments. She was short, reserved, and came from Mamelodi, just outside Pretoria. She had completed her undergraduate degree at UNISA.

UNISA as an institution carried with it a particular kind of reputation. Not necessarily fair, but persistent. It was often dismissed as too remote, not traditional enough, not ranked among the country’s top universities. People spoke about it in ways that suggested lesser rigour and prestige. As though distance learning somehow diluted intellect.

But I had learned, even before entering this space, that intelligence does not always arrive wrapped in prestige. Sometimes it comes quietly. Unannounced. Underrated.

Nompumelelo herself was… difficult to read. Hot and cold in a way that could give you emotional whiplash. One moment present, the next withdrawn. It clashed slightly with my own personality which was rather jolly, expressive, unapologetically visible. I filled spaces. She receded from them.

Still, we were office mates. Which meant, at the very least, we needed to find a rhythm.

“Let’s go introduce ourselves,” I said, more out of instinct than enthusiasm.

Nompumelelo hesitated, then nodded.

There was something about that first walk down the corridor that felt ceremonial. Like crossing an invisible threshold. You arrive at a firm, thinking the hard part is getting in. No one tells you that staying, belonging, is its own quiet negotiation.

We stepped out of our office and into the hallway, the hum of printers and low conversations trailing behind glass doors.

We started with Solene Marais, the associate closest to us.

She had the kind of energy I could only describe as chaotic. She was someone who wasn’t entirely sure how she had ended up here but had decided to commit anyway. Warm, disarming, with a sense of humour that hovered dangerously close to problematic. She wore a thick, emerald-green engagement ring that caught the light in a way that felt almost theatrical. It looked like it carried a story. It wasn’t the kind of piece that whispered old money or quiet luxury. It had a boldness to it, a kind of unapologetic shine that made it look like something you might win at a theme park, oversized and slightly improbable. Not quite my style, I leaned more toward the material side of things but still, there was something oddly charming about that. It felt less like a calculated display of wealth and more like a token of a moment, a memory, a story that mattered more than the price tag ever could.

Next was Nadia Cassim. Her door had a Taylor Swift picture pinned to it. That alone told me everything I needed to know. Taylor Swift fans came with a particular intensity. A loyalty that bordered on identity. A need to narrativise everything. To make meaning out of the mundane. I had seen Nadia around before. She carried herself with what I can only describe as manufactured confidence. The kind that felt rehearsed. Like she was trying to convince you and maybe herself that she belonged exactly where she was. Her outfits were decent, but occasionally missed the mark. You could almost see the vision in her head and then the slightly altered version that showed up in reality. She smiled, introduced herself, and moved on. Efficient. Polished. Contained.

Rowan Parker was next. Short. Very short. Glasses perched permanently on his face. He moved like a cowboy. Slow, deliberate, slightly bowed, like he had all the time in the world and no intention of rushing for anyone. And yet, his presence filled the room in a way that had nothing to do with height. He didn’t demand attention. He didn’t need to. He struck me as someone who came to work, did his job exceptionally well, and left. No theatrics. No unnecessary engagement. I respected that immediately.

Katlego Stone followed. Lateral hire. Associate. She was dressed in a sharply tailored navy suit, the kind that sat perfectly on the body without trying too hard. Everything about her was controlled. Measured. From the way she spoke to the way she held eye contact just a second longer than necessary. A Black woman married to a white man, something that, in our context, always carried an unspoken narrative. People projected things onto that dynamic. Assumptions. Judgments disguised as curiosity. I hadn’t quite placed her yet. But I knew she was watching. Calculating.

Then there was Josephine Smith. Lateral Hire. Senior Associate. Tall. Striking. Nigerian. The kind of beauty that felt editorial. As if she had stepped out of a Vogue spread and accidentally found herself in a law firm. But more than that, she knew it. And the thing about Josephine was, she was right. Her confidence wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. It sat on her like a second skin. I liked her immediately.

Tiara Mohammed came next. Her reputation had arrived long before she did.

“Be careful,” people had said. Feisty. Intimidating. Sharp. She wore a fitted black dress, her wedding ring catching the light with every subtle movement of her hand. She had that unmistakable energy: don’t speak to me unless you have something of value to say. And even then, think twice. There were whispers that she and Josephine were not on speaking terms.

And knowing what I had heard about Tiara, I could already imagine how that dynamic had unfolded. If there had been conflict, she was probably the battery in the acrimony. The ignition point. Which was almost ironic, given the height difference. Josephine didn’t strike me as someone who started fires. But she definitely looked like someone who could finish them.

Further down the corridor, the energy shifted. Less polished. More lived-in.

This was where the legal secretaries sat.

The first was Thandi Mokoena. She looked up as we approached, her glasses sliding slightly down her nose, fingers still poised over her keyboard. There was a calmness about her. The kind that comes from knowing more than you say.

“New candidates?” she asked, already smiling before we answered. Her desk was immaculate. Files stacked with precision, labelled in a way that suggested she ran more of the team than anyone would openly admit.

“Welcome,” she said. “You’ll need me more than you think.”

It wasn’t a threat. It was a fact.

Next to her was Zanele Dlamini. Warmer. Louder. The kind of presence that filled the room before she even spoke.

“Oh, you poor things,” she said, laughing as we introduced ourselves. “This team will humble you.”

There was something comforting about her honesty. No performance. No pretense. Just truth, wrapped in humour. I made a mental note immediately: stay on their good side.

Because in a place like this, the real power didn’t always sit behind glass offices.

Sometimes, it sat behind a desk with a keyboard and a filing system you didn’t understand. At the far end of the corridor were the second-year candidate legal practitioners.

Olerato Mokete seemed pleasant enough. Polished. Curated. She spoke English in that refined, almost detached way often associated with whiteness in professional spaces. Not a flaw. Just noticeable. You could tell she came from money. From comfort. It showed in the way she carried herself-like she had never had to question whether she belonged in a room.

Daniel Kaluyaa sat slouched in his chair. Short. Solid presence. A quiet kind of intensity that sat just beneath the surface. He looked like he didn’t want to be there. At all. The kind of disengagement that made you wonder whether he had already checked out mentally, just waiting for the clock to run out.

Britney Jacobs was older than the rest of us, and it showed. Not just in age, but in attitude.

There was a faint mean-girl energy about her. A resistance to being treated like a candidate legal practitioner, as though the title didn’t quite align with how she saw herself. I got the sense she was the type to ask you to do printing for her. And expect it.

Boitumelo Madiba, on the other hand, was easy. Warm. Likeable. The kind of person you instinctively felt you could be friends with beyond the office. I found myself hoping that would be the case.

And then, of course, there was Mikhail Ali. Infamous. Finding out we were in the same team grated on me more than I cared to admit. Some personalities just don’t align. And with Mikhail, I felt that misalignment almost immediately.

The directors’ offices lined the glass perimeter. Floor-to-ceiling windows. Impeccable views of the city stretching endlessly beyond. Untouchable spaces.

A visual reminder of hierarchy. Of where we were. And where we were not.

By the time we finished our rounds, the weight of it all had settled in.

The personalities. The politics. The unspoken rules.

Nompumelelo and I exchanged a look as we made our way back to our office.

“We’ll do the directors tomorrow,” I said.

She nodded, almost relieved. Because that would require something more than politeness. That would require courage. And for now, we would have to gather just enough of it to return. Tomorrow was another day.

As I sat down at my desk, I couldn’t help but take quiet inventory of what I had just seen.

The team was predominantly White and Indian. The only Black people in positions of seniority were lateral hires. It made me quitely wonder quietly but persistently. What happened to the Black candidate legal practitioners who started in this team. Where did they go and more importantly, why?

Because people don’t just disappear. Not from spaces like these. Not without a trail. Sometimes the trail is loud. Resignations, dramatic exits, whispered scandals. But more often, it’s subtle. Quiet. Sanitised. I began to imagine the different ways it could happen. There was the one who burned out. The one who came in bright, sharp, eager to prove themselves. The one who said yes to everything. Stayed late. Came in early. Overdelivered. Overcompensated. Trying to outrun something invisible. Until one day, the body simply refused. Deadlines started slipping. Concentration fractured. Confidence eroded. And suddenly, the same people who once praised your “work ethic” began to question your “consistency.” Performance review. Concern. Exit. Neat. Clinical. Respectable.

Then there was the one who was never quite seen. Not in a way that mattered. They were there, physically present but always just outside the centre of things. Work would trickle down to them, never quite the kind that builds a reputation. No champion. No real mentorship. No one advocating for them in rooms they weren’t in. They would do the work. Well, even. But not visibly. Not strategically. And in a place where perception often outweighs reality, that distinction becomes fatal. Eventually, they leave. Not because they couldn’t do the job. But because the job never fully allowed them to exist within it.

Then there was the one who adapted too well. Who learned quickly that survival required performance. Accent softened. Personality muted. Opinions filtered. Laughter measured.

They became palatable. Digestible. Safe. And for a while, it worked. Doors opened. Opportunities came. But at a cost. Because somewhere along the line, the line between adaptation and erasure blurred. And one day, you wake up and realise you no longer recognise the person doing the succeeding. So you leave. Not because you failed. But because you disappeared.

There was the one who pushed back. Who asked questions. Challenged assumptions. Refused to shrink. The one who noticed patterns and said them out loud. And in doing so, became difficult. Not in skill. Not in competence. But in presence. And in environments like these, being labelled “difficult” is often a slow professional death. Work dries up. Support thins out. Conversations shift in tone. Until eventually, the message becomes clear without ever being said: You don’t fit. So you leave. Or you’re managed out.

And then there was the one who simply opted out. Who looked around, took stock early, and made a decision. This is not where I build my life. Maybe they went to the Bar. Maybe they pivoted into corporate. Maybe they left law entirely. Not because they couldn’t survive it. But because they refused to be shaped by it.

And then, of course, there were the stories no one tells properly. The ones that get reduced to a sentence. “She wasn’t coping.” “He just wasn’t the right fit.” “It didn’t work out.” Clean language for messy realities. Because it is easier to individualise failure than to interrogate systems. Easier to say they couldn’t make it than to ask whether the environment ever intended for them to.

I sat there, staring at my desk, feeling something settle uncomfortably in my chest.

Because suddenly, this rotation felt like more than just a learning experience. It felt like a test. Not just of skill. But of endurance. Of identity. Of how much of yourself you were willing to negotiate in exchange for staying.

And the question lingered, heavier now, Not just where did they go? But which version of that story was waiting for me?

There’s a particular kind of panic that only long-distance road trips can produce. It creeps in quietly, somewhere between “I’m fine” and “I should’ve stopped back there.” Then suddenly, it’s urgent. The next town is 80 kilometres away. Your bladder has entered a state of protest. And the open road, once romantic, now feels like a trap. So you pull over.

What follows is a moment so human, so undignified, and yet so universally understood, that it deserves its own unspoken code of conduct.

First question: which direction do you face?

Instinct says: away from the road. Dignity demands it. But reality complicates things. Because turning your back fully means risking exposure of the very thing you were trying to protect in the first place. Face the road, and now you’re making eye contact with strangers at 120 km/h, which is arguably worse.

So you learn quickly: survival on the roadside is about angles, not absolutes. You become strategic. You open a car door—not just as a door, but as a shield. You scan for bushes that suddenly feel like luxury infrastructure. You position your body in that awkward, in-between stance: not quite facing, not quite turning away. A compromise between modesty and necessity.

And somewhere in the middle of all this, you find yourself wishing, just briefly that you had a penis instead. That you could simply turn away, unzip, and be done in seconds. No choreography. No calculations. No negotiations with gravity, fabric, and dignity all at once. Just efficiency. Freedom, even. But alas, this is not your reality. You are committed to the art form. It’s humbling.

And if you think the road is the peak of this humility, try going hiking. Nature, in all its beauty, has a way of reminding you that it does not care about your comfort. At some point, miles away from civilisation, your body will make another demand—less negotiable this time. No bathrooms. No neatly stocked cubicles. Just you, the earth, and a growing sense of urgency. And then comes the quiet horror: No toilet paper. Suddenly, you’re assessing leaves like a scholar, reconsidering life choices, and yes—even contemplating a rock with a level of seriousness that would alarm your former self.

There’s something about these moments that strips away all pretense. You could be anyone, an accountant, a student, someone with deadlines and dreams but right then, you are just a person negotiating with your body in the most primal way. And oddly, it connects us.

Because somewhere, on some stretch of highway or hidden hiking trail, someone else has done the exact same thing. Same calculation. Same internal debate. Same silent prayer that no one appears at the wrong moment. It’s a shared, unspoken experience of being human in its most basic form.

So no, there isn’t a perfect direction to face. There’s only the quiet art of doing your best with what you have. Your car door, your surroundings, your sense of timing and leaving with your dignity mostly intact. Mostly.

But tell me: What direction would you face?

There’s something almost theatrical about a Woolworths bag. Not the crinkly plastic ones we used to forget in our car boots. I’m talking about that bag. The thick, reusable, almost designer-adjacent tote that signals more than just groceries. It announces arrival. Or at the very least, aspiration.

The foundation of that aspiration goes all the way back to 1931, when Max Sonnenberg opened the very first Woolworths store on Plein Street in Cape Town. Sonnenberg, a businessman and politician, had a clear vision: provide high-quality goods at competitive prices. Simple enough in theory. But in practice, that vision would evolve into something far more layered. A brand that didn’t just sell products, but sold a feeling.

Over time, Woolworths positioned itself as the polished older sibling in a chaotic family of grocery stores. Clean aisles, curated produce, and prices that make you pause just long enough to remind you: this is not just food, this is a lifestyle. Luxury, but make it edible. And expensive. Let’s not pretend otherwise.

Because in South Africa, Woolworths is not merely a grocery store - it’s a class marker.

You see it in the way people speak about it.

“I only buy my meat from Woolies.”

“My mom swears by Woolworths fruit.”

“We don’t do bulk at Woolworths, just essentials.”

Essentials that somehow cost double.

But nothing encapsulates this quiet performance of class quite like the bag itself. The Woolworths reusable bag travels. It moves across spaces in ways the brand itself sometimes doesn’t. You’ll see it in suburbs, obviously. Draped over the arm of someone walking out of a Pilates class or placed neatly in the boot of a German car. But then you’ll also see it elsewhere. Places where it almost feels… out of context. Taxi ranks. Busy intersections. Rural bus stops.

I once saw a woman at a taxi rank clutching a Woolworths bag like it was her passport out of struggle. Not casually holding it, clutching it. As if it carried more than groceries. As if it carried dignity. Or proof. Because it does, doesn’t it?

Compare that to a Shoprite bag. Functional. Honest. Democratic. It does the job without trying to say anything about you. It feeds families without asking questions. But it doesn’t elevate you. The Woolworths bag does.

It’s the kind of thing people probably ask their cousin who lives “that side” to bring when they visit the village once a year. “Please bring me one of those strong Woolies bags.”

Not for groceries. For status storage.

And those visits, the suburban kids going back to the village, are a whole phenomenon on their own. Necessary, even. They arrive with softened accents and curated confidence, twanging their way through conversations. Suddenly English is doing the most. Suddenly “guys” replaces “Bathong.”

They meet cousins who live a different reality. Cousins who didn’t finish school. Cousins who became mothers before they became anything else. And in that meeting, there’s an unspoken tension — of paths diverged, of opportunities unevenly distributed. The Woolworths bag sits quietly in the corner during all of this. A silent witness. A prop.

A symbol of what is possible, and what is not easily accessible. And then, at some point, the bag became something else entirely.

Some time last year the notorious Cat Matlala referred to it as the “money bag”. For him, it probably wasn’t just a throwaway comment. It was an unmasking. A naming of what many already understood but hadn’t articulated. That the Woolworths bag had evolved into a soft symbol of affluence and proximity to money.

Not long after, Woolworths quietly shifted its iconic black reusable bags to white. A subtle rebrand. A visual cleanse. Coincidence? Maybe.

But in a country where symbolism carries weight, the timing felt… intentional. As if to distance the brand from the language that had begun to attach itself to the bag. To reset the narrative. To keep the aesthetic, but lose the implication. Because Woolworths doesn’t just sell products, it manages perception.

Even in broader conversations about money, influence, and who really gets to access wealth, the brand often escapes direct scrutiny. It remains aspirational. Untouched. Carefully removed from the grit that defines the very economy it profits from. It stays clean. And maybe that’s the real genius of it all.

Imagine a collaboration between Rich Mnisi and Woolworths where the iconic bag is no longer quiet or neutral, but loud with story. Drenched in bold prints, textured with memory, and unapologetically rooted in luxury. A bag that moves from Parkhurst to the village without shrinking itself, carried by a gogo, a soft-life influencer, and a taxi commuter with the same authority. Not just a grocery bag anymore, but a cultural artefact. One that collapses the distance between aspiration and reality, and forces Woolworths to confront the very class lines it has long mastered navigating.

So the real question is:

When you carry a Woolworths bag… are you carrying groceries, or are you carrying a version of yourself you want the world to believe in?

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or localities is entirely coincidental.

From a very young age, I have lived with an unsettling intimacy with the idea of an early death. It has never announced itself loudly. There were no grand gestures, no desperate prayers whispered into pillows at night. Instead, it arrived gently, like a thought you don’t remember inviting in but cannot make leave. It sat beside me through milestones and disappointments alike, patient and observant, as though it had time, because it knew it did. I do not romanticise this closeness. I don’t believe suffering is noble or that pain sharpens you into something worth admiring. If anything, it dulls the edges.

It makes you tired long before your body is ready to be. Still, the idea of leaving early has always felt familiar, like a room I have visited in my mind so often that I know where the furniture sits even in the dark. Before I go, whenever that may be, there is one non-negotiable act I insist upon. I must tell my own story. At the very least, I deserve authorship over my own ending.

The alternative is unbearable. Silence has consequences. It creates space, and people are far too eager to fill empty space with their own voices, their own interpretations, their own convenient lies. I have learned that when you do not speak, others mistake your restraint for permission. They assume authority over narratives they never earned, lives they never lived, battles they never fought. I am learning this the hard way. Imagine my frustration when I heard that a former colleague from my days at the law library had gone on to host a seminar dissecting everything that had supposedly gone wrong with my career. My life, reduced to bullet points. My failures, packaged as instruction. It was paraded as guidance, advice offered to eager law students who mistook confidence for credibility. What stung most was not the audacity of it, but the familiarity. This was someone who had watched me from close enough to feel entitled, yet never close enough to understand. The character in question was of dubious integrity, particularly where female colleagues were concerned.

There are stories there: sharp, unfinished ones but they are not mine to tell. To dwell on them would be to step into malice, and I have no desire to become what already repulses me. Even so, restraint does not erase irony. George Herbert, whoever they really were, may have been onto something when he warned against throwing stones while living in glass houses. Some people mistake transparency for invisibility. They believe their reflections cannot be seen.

I am not sure where this story should begin. That feels important to admit. Chronology suggests starting at the beginning, but life is rarely honest in straight lines. Endings often explain beginnings better than beginnings ever could. And I am not even sure this story deserves to be told in the traditional sense. When you fail at the one thing that sets your soul on fire, something inside you fractures quietly. It is not the loud, cinematic failure people expect. It is subtle. Invasive. It changes the way you introduce yourself. The way you answer simple questions. The way you imagine your future, if you allow yourself to imagine one at all.

Failure like that does not simply disappoint you. It disorients you. It convinces you that the compass you trusted was faulty all along. That perhaps you misunderstood your calling. Or worse, that you were arrogant enough to believe you had one. To be quite frank, this book is written from a place of profound defeat. Not the kind that begs for sympathy, but the kind that settles into your bones and refuses to move. The kind that makes rest feel undeserved and ambition feel embarrassing. It is the sort of defeat that teaches you to speak more quietly, to expect less, to apologisefor wanting too much. It makes you suspicious of joy, wary of hope, unconvinced that effort guarantees anything other than exhaustion.

There was a time when I believed words would save me. I believed that if I could just articulate myself clearly enough, truth would rise to the surface and claim me. I believed in merit. In timing. In the idea that passion, paired with discipline, was enough. That belief has not survived intact. What remains is something thinner, more cautious, less trusting.

If I were to ask my ten-year-old self what book she dreamed of writing one day, she would answer without hesitation. She would speak with certainty, with the kind of confidence that only ignorance allows. She would imagine brilliance and legacy, sentences that mattered, words that stayed. She would not have anticipated this version of the story. She would never have guessed that the book would arrive weary and fractured, written from a place of survival rather than triumph. She would not have imagined that it would read less like a celebration and more like an admission. Certainly, she would never have imagined that it might resemble a suicide note—not because it longs for death, but because it is written by someone who has spent a lifetime negotiating with it.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or localities is entirely coincidental.

Induction ended the way it began. Loud, performative, and deeply exhausting. By Friday, I was finished. Three weeks of seminars, handshakes, and corporate jargon had stripped the novelty out of everything. What I didn’t fully appreciate at the time was that this would be the last moment of real, shared proximity with most of the candidates in my cohort. After this, our interactions would become fragmented, reduced to passing greetings in corridors or the occasional tired exchange in evening classes after work, where we gathered not out of camaraderie but necessity. All of us preparing, in varying states of exhaustion, for the four board exams that stood between us and admission as attorneys of the High Court. Nakedi and I, now firmly attached at the hip, decided to opt out of the usual bar ritual. We had a far more interesting way of wrapping things up.

“So,” Nakedi said as we walked back from the final session, a mischievous gleam in his eyes, “you down to finish induction properly?”

I knew exactly what he meant. A recognition that the only sane way to finish off these past weeks in the high-pressure world of top-tier law was to unwind in ways many would never approve of.

The evening started innocuously enough at Sandton City. Nakedi and I wandered through the brightly lit corridors, the air thick with the mingling scents of perfume testers, fresh coffee, and warm pretzels. The mall was alive with the usual weekend crowd: couples, office workers still clinging to their suits, and kids tugging at their parents’ hands, all moving to the soft hum of background music.

We made a beeline for Woolworths, intent on securing snacks for our night in. Nakedi, ever the meticulous planner, studied the aisles with a sort of reverent attention, as if picking the right chocolate or crisps could somehow dictate the course of the evening. I followed, half distracted by the gleaming displays, half by the anticipation of the ritual ahead.

“Alright, we need munchies that’ll survive a session of, you know… enhanced snacking,” Nakedi said, holding up a pack of salted cashews like it was a rare artefact.

I rolled my eyes. “You mean snacks for when we’re too stoned to open a packet?”

Nakedi smirked. “Exactly. Practicality meets indulgence.”

I piled a few chocolate bars into the basket, eyeing them like precious loot, while he deliberated between chips and popcorn. As we walked to the exit, I noticed a small shop tucked just around the corner - a cannabis dispensary, discreet but impossible to miss with its subtle green neon leaf.

We stopped.

“Edibles?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

Nakedi’s grin was telling. “Could make the night… more interesting.”

I chewed my lip. “Cookies? Gummies? What’s your vibe?”

“Cookies,” he decided after a brief pause.

“Classic. Easy to manage. You don’t want to be juggling gummy bears and drinks.”

Nakedi exchanged a few quiet words with the shop assistant, and soon we had a small, innocuous looking tin of cookies tucked into my bag. We left the mall with our snacks and edibles, the mundane retail experience now tinged with the thrill of impending mischief.

As soon as the door closed behind us, Nakedi lit up a joint, and the familiar burn of smoke hitting my lungs reminded me that some dependencies were easier to acknowledge than others.

The apartment itself was peak Sandton efficiency. A two-bedroom that tried very hard to look like more than it was. Open-plan kitchen bleeding into a compact lounge, glossy finishes doing the heavy lifting. Neutral tones everywhere: beige couch, glass coffee table, a rug that looked expensive until you looked closely. Floor-to-ceiling windows framed a view of the city that almost justified the rent. At night, Sandton sparkled in that artificial, aspirational way, like everything was within reach if you could just hold on long enough.

Nakedi and his flatmate Kabelo Motaung had secured what everyone agreed was a good deal. It was just under R9,000 each for a fully furnished unit. In our world, that detail mattered. Furniture, after all, could be interpreted as too much of a commitment. Buying a couch, a bed, and a dining table, it all suggested permanence. Stability. The quiet assumption that you would make it to the end of your articles, that you would be retained, that you would stay.

But nothing about this phase of our lives was guaranteed.

A furnished apartment meant flexibility. It meant that if things went south and you didn’t get retained, if the firm decided you weren’t worth the investment, you could easily make that quiet, shame-filled walk back home with nothing more than your clothes and a bruised sense of self. No moving trucks. No drawn-out goodbyes. Just a suitcase and the silent understanding that it hadn’t worked out.

So we sat there, in a space that looked like success but was built for exit, passing the joint between us like we had all the time in the world. Nicotine was one, cannabis another. A guilty, quiet indulgence that had seen both of us through the highs and lows of legal life, even before we had formally begun. The session continued quietly enough. The two of us sank into the well-worn couch, music low in the background, munching on Woolworths crisps and chocolate. The smoke curled lazily toward the ceiling, forming transient shapes that mirrored the slow descent of our stress levels.

A few hours in, Kabelo walked through the door. He had been one of the students we had done vacation work with at our firm, but unlike the rest of us, he hadn’t received an offer. Not long after, he managed to secure articles at another top firm. So it wasn’t all doom and gloom for him. If anything, Kabelo had a way of landing on his feet.

He was a small-town boy, raised by a single mother, and there was something quietly impressive about the way he had navigated his way into these spaces. Vacation work at top firms, strong academic performance, and now articles. He had clawed his way in with a kind of determination that didn’t announce itself, but was always there if you looked closely.

I had initially assumed he was gay. There was something about the way he carried himself. The slightly theatrical gestures, the cadence of his laughter that had, in my mind, neatly placed him into a category I didn’t question. And then I found out he had a girlfriend.

I was shook. The kind of shook that forces you to interrogate your entire internal framework for reading people. Your so-called “gaydar,” as people like to call it. Suddenly, it felt less like intuition and more like assumption dressed up as insight. Even when she visited, I struggled to reconcile it. A part of me stubbornly held on to the idea that maybe the relationship was performative. That it existed to fit a certain mould, to present a version of normalcy that made things easier to navigate. I remember asking Nakedi once, half-joking, half-serious, whether he had ever overheard them having sex. The question lingered longer than it should have. Nakedi didn’t answer. Or maybe he chose not to.

Kabelo dropped his bag with a dramatic thud, flopped onto the couch, and let out a long sigh. “Long day at the firm,” he muttered, eyes half-closed.

“Same here,” Nakedi replied, leaning back. “Still bitter about me leaving the door unlocked last night?”

Kabelo shrugged. “A little, but there are more interesting things to focus on. Sandton’s office gossip is brutal.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Do tell.”

Kabelo laughed, rolling his eyes.“Apparently, people are already picking favourites and predicting who’ll get retained. Someone in my team got caught sending a draft memo to the wrong client, and there were instant whispers across the entire floor. And now there’s talk about a director supposedly dating a candidate legal practitioner at another firm, which… could be true, could just be office legend. Who knows?”

Nakedi chuckled. “So basically, this job isn’t just about learning the ropes, it’s also about surviving politics and gossip.”

Kabelo nodded. “Exactly. And let’s not even talk about race and class dynamics. It’s subtle, but you feel it. If you didn’t go to the right school, or if your parents didn’t have connections, people look at you differently. Makes life feel like a minefield sometimes.”

I leaned back, smirking. “Welcome to law firm life, where doing your work right is only half the battle.”

I, already comfortably high, decided to be generous in my oblivion.

“Here,” I said, offering Kabelo one of the cookies. “Try this.”

I didn’t even think to warn him that they had cannabis in them. My mind was fuzzy, wrapped in a warm haze that made all things seem less consequential.

A few minutes later, Kabelo’s composure crumbled. His eyes went wide, his breathing accelerated, and he clutched his chest.

“What… what’s in this cookie?” he stammered, his voice rising.

Before either of us could respond, he dropped to his knees on the floor, panic taking over completely. “What did you guys put in this?” he demanded, his voice now trembling, somewhere between fear and accusation.

And then he started praying. Not quietly, not under his breath, but fully, audibly, slipping into tongues as if this moment required divine intervention. It was surreal. One second, we were three candidate legal practitioners unwinding after a chaotic week, the next we were in the middle of what felt like a full-blown spiritual emergency.

Panic surged through me. My internal monologue screamed: We’re done. Over. Fired before even starting. Barred from practice. Parents, mentors, future… everything. Gone.

“No! Take me to the hospital! Now!” he shouted, scrambling to his feet.

Still shaking, he fumbled for his phone and called his girlfriend, his voice urgent, frantic. “Something’s wrong… I need you… I think they gave me something,” he said, pacing, the panic refusing to settle. The room, which moments before had felt relaxed and controlled, had completely slipped out of our hands.

Nakedi, ever the calm participant in chaos, didn’t flinch. “We’ll get you there,” he said, already pulling up Uber on his phone.

We bundled Kabelo into the car. His panic was theatrical, but contagious. I glanced out the window as we drove through Sandton, the familiar high-rise towers gleaming in the late evening light, neon reflections dancing off wet asphalt from a sudden drizzle. Street vendors shouted over the hum of traffic. The city felt both alive and indifferent to the small disaster unfolding in the back seat of our Uber.

At Mediclinic, the waiting room was a fluorescent-lit purgatory. The antiseptic smell mixed with the metallic tang of blood tests and the faint whiff of despair that always seemed to cling to hospitals. Kabelo clutched his stomach, muttering prayers under his breath. Nakedi and I sat tensely, pretending to scroll through our phones, sharing silent looks that said, This is the end.

Finally, a nurse called Kabelo’s name. Minutes stretched into eternity, the tick of the wall clock synchronised with my rising anxiety. When Kabelo emerged, cheeks flushed, hair slightly dishevelled, he gave a shaky laugh. “You guys can go home now. I’m fine.”

Relief washed over us, almost physical in its intensity. But I knew the story had already begun to take on a life of its own. In the small, insular world of candidate legal practitioners in Sandton, this incident would spread like wildfire: She spiked Kabelo’s cookies. Somehow, in the retelling, I would emerge as the villain, and Nakedi would be conveniently relegated to bystander status. And that, somehow, fit perfectly with his pattern. Always part of the mess, but somehow keeping his hands clean.

Little did I know, as I sat there in that sterile waiting room, heart still racing from a crisis that now seemed almost absurd, that this reckless, foolish night, would not be the thing that ended my career in its infancy.

The ending would not come contained within the private walls of an apartment. It would not announce itself with panic and hospital visits and the kind of drama that at least offers you the dignity of a clear beginning and end.

No.

What would come was quieter. Slower. Far more insidious.

The kind of unravelling that doesn’t look like destruction at first. The kind that disguises itself as normalcy, as trust, as something familiar enough to let your guard down. It would not begin in a room filled with laughter and smoke. It would begin in my apartment. With the wrong side of the family. With the kind of closeness you’re taught to question, but in your naivety, you don’t. Little did I know that the beginning of the end would come from inviting the wrong person into spaces that were never meant to hold them. Into my home, into my life, and eventually, into my workplace. Into the very environment I was trying so desperately to survive, to succeed in, to belong to. And once that boundary would be crossed, something would begin shifting. Not all at once. Not in a way that could be easily named. But enough. Enough to unsettle. Enough to fracture. Enough to begin pulling at threads I didn’t even know existed.

What would follow would not be a single moment of collapse, but a series of quiet disintegrations. Of things no longer making sense. Of reality feeling just slightly out of alignment, like something had been nudged off its axis and refused to return.

Little did I know that it would end with me beginning to question things I had never thought to question before. My thoughts. My perceptions. My sanity.

Would it be mental?

Would it be spiritual?

Would it be a character flaw?

Or would it be something else entirely? Something that existed in that uncomfortable, unspoken space between the two, where logic fails, and belief becomes the only language left?

I had always thought life operated within clear boundaries. Cause and effect. Right and wrong. Rational and irrational. Black and white. But what I was about to encounter would dismantle that illusion completely. Because life, I would come to learn, is not always black and white. Sometimes it is murky. Distorted. Unexplainable. And deeply isolating in the way it forces you to confront truths you were never prepared to hold. There are things, as a Black person, you grow up around. Beliefs that sit quietly in the background of your life. Spoken of in hushed tones, carried in stories, embedded in warnings. Things that are meant to protect you. To ground you. To give shape to what cannot easily be explained.

For the longest time, I had learned to live alongside them without ever fully stepping into them. Close enough to understand their presence, but distant enough to believe they belonged to another way of seeing the world. But what happens when your way of viewing the world begins to feel insufficient? When it fails to hold the weight of what you are experiencing? When you find yourself standing in the middle of something that does not respond to prayer the way you were taught it should?

What happens then?

That was the question that would come to haunt me.

Because the ending, when it finally came, would not just take my career. It would take certainty. It would take innocence. It would take that quiet, untested belief that life, if lived correctly, if navigated carefully, would reward you with stability, with success, with a sense of control. And in its place, it would leave me with something far heavier. A story I never intended to tell. A story I would later write, not out of ambition, not out of creativity, but out of necessity. Out of a desperate need to make sense of something that refused to be understood. A book that, in a different version of reality, one where God intervenes cleanly, predictably, mercifully, should have never needed to exist at all. But it did. Because I would live it. And by the time I understood what was happening, it was already too late to stop it.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or localities is entirely coincidental.

The rotation list dropped without ceremony, but it landed like a verdict. For weeks, we had fed on speculation. Corridor whispers, side glances, quiet bets disguised as casual conversation. By the time it arrived, the tension had ripened into something almost unbearable. And then, just like that, it was over. Most of the cohort was not happy with their placements. There were murmurs, quiet at first, then louder, about how many of the Black candidates had been placed in Dispute Resolution teams. The sentiment was clear: it wasn’t seen as a “transferable” skill. But that wasn’t really the point. Beneath it sat a quieter truth, one no one said outright. The truth was that not everyone intended to stay in law. Some had always seen this as a stepping stone. Corporate was the real prize. Corporate meant options. Mobility. Escape. Disputes, on the other hand, felt like a cul-de-sac.

As for me, I had been placed in the very team I had done vacation work with, and I couldn’t have been happier. But the feeling went beyond happiness. It was something quieter, more private. A sense of being seen.

In a place like this, nothing ever felt accidental. Every outcome carried the weight of unseen deliberation. Conversations had been had. Opinions formed. Decisions made long before they reached you in neat, impersonal lists. So I couldn’t help but wonder, was this coincidence, or was it selection? I chose to believe it was the latter. That during those four days, in ways both obvious and imperceptible, I had made myself known. Not loudly. Not desperately. But enough. Enough to linger in someone’s mind. Enough to be recalled when names were being matched to spaces.

I remembered the research task I had been given during vacation work. The research was assigned casually, but received by me as anything but. I had been juggling it alongside my third year at university, staying up the entire night to make sure my deliverable was exceptional. Not just good. Not just acceptable. Exceptional. There was something about being in that environment, even temporarily, that sharpened my instincts. You understood, without being told, that everything counted. Karen Martin, a blonde, fiery director with a presence that commanded attention without effort had reviewed my work. Her feedback stayed with me in a way few things ever had. She said it was rare to see a vacation student produce work that could actually be used. Used. Not corrected. Not tolerated. Used.

It was a small word, but it carried weight. It meant I had crossed some invisible threshold from merely being an observer to contributor. From student to something closer to peer, even if only briefly.

She had gone even further. Conducted a mock interview with me in preparation for the real one. The questions she asked were almost identical to the ones that came up later. At the time, it felt like generosity. In hindsight, it felt like investment. She became, in that moment, something more than just a director. She became proof that someone like me could not only enter these spaces, but be recognised within them. She also became my hero. And she would remain so for a very long time.

So when I saw my name on that list, placed back into that team, I didn’t see coincidence. I saw continuity.

It felt like being invited back into a room I had briefly visited and not as a guest this time, but as someone expected to stay.

And that distinction mattered.

Because in an environment built on scrutiny, performance, and silent judgment, being chosen was more than placement.

It was permission.

Zef Hadid had landed in Financial Services. Nakedi Gumede, who would later become a constant in my life, was placed in Regulatory Law. We had been explicitly told not to reach out to our teams until our rotations began. But, of course, rules like that were more suggestion than command. Before long, people had already begun introducing themselves, offering to take on work. I wasn’t surprised to see Zef among them. There was something about him, not loud, not obvious, but precise. He moved like someone who understood the game before the rules were explained. The kind of person who wouldn’t hesitate to throw you under the bus, not out of malice, but efficiency. Exactly the kind of mold corporate environments reward.

One other notable character in the group was Mikhail Ali. Word was that his father owned several McDonald’s franchises, and he wore that background visibly. He arrived each day in a different high-end designer outfit, polished to the tee. Flashy. Deliberate. Impossible to ignore.

People didn’t seem particularly fond of him, though it was never entirely clear why. Maybe it was the money. Maybe it was how unapologetically he wore it. Or perhaps it was both. I never quite understood the instinctive dislike for people like him. From where I stood, having wealth, especially the kind built by your parents, was not something to be ashamed of. If anything, it was evidence of hard work, of sacrifice, of a generation that had laboured to ensure the next would not have to struggle in the same ways. There was something almost admirable about walking into a room with the quiet assurance that you belonged there, not because you had fought your way in, but because you had always been taught that you deserved to be. Confidence, after all, is not always earned in the moment-it is often inherited, absorbed over years of being affirmed, of being told, explicitly or otherwise, that you are entitled to occupy space. And perhaps that was what unsettled people the most. Not the money itself, but the ease it seemed to produce. The lack of hesitation. The absence of apology. Where some of us entered rooms calculating every step, measuring every word, adjusting tone and posture in real time, he simply arrived. No visible negotiation with the space. No second-guessing. Just presence.And maybe that was the real divide—not wealth itself, but the relationship to belonging. For some of us, belonging was something to be earned, constantly reinforced, never fully secure. For him, it seemed assumed. Inherited. Settled long before he ever stepped into the room.

I could see how that might grate on people. How it could be read as arrogance rather than conditioning, as entitlement rather than ease. But I also wondered whether some of that resentment was less about him and more about what he represented. A life many had not had, a version of confidence that felt out of reach, or at the very least, hard-won rather than given. Still, I couldn’t fault him for it. If anything, I found myself studying it, trying to understand how that kind of certainty was carried so effortlessly.

But there was another ingredient to the mix, Mikhail was a massive gossip, annoyingly so, in ways I cannot fully explain. He seemed to know everything about everyone. Who was dating whom, who had said what in the corridor, whose weekend plans were questionable, whose parents were doing what. Sometimes it felt like you couldn’t walk from one end of the office to the other without him knowing and commenting on it. And as we would soon painfully discover, Mikhail did not even mind sharing some of your “private” tea with your direct line managers. What you thought were whispered confidences or casual remarks suddenly became points of discussion in meetings or casual catch-ups. It was as if he carried a mental Rolodex of everyone’s life, ready to deploy at the slightest provocation or sometimes, seemingly, for no reason at all. Yet Mikhail navigated it all with a polished confidence, like he had rehearsed every comment and calculated every reaction. For those of us around him, it was exhausting, irritating, and strangely captivating. He was the kind of person who made you wonder if the office gossip machine had a human face, and that face just happened to be Mikhail Ali.

Every morning, we made it a point to arrive early, securing tables close to charging ports and tucked toward the back of the training room. On one particular morning, I found the perfect spot, dropped my things, and stepped out to grab a muffin and coffee.

When I returned, my things had been moved. Not dramatically, just enough to say, you were here, but not anymore.

Omphemetse Sehume and Naledi Mulaudzi had settled into the space I had very intentionally chosen. My charger hung awkwardly off the edge, my notebook pushed aside like an afterthought.

I stood there for a moment, taking it in.

Not anger - not quite. But something close to principle.

I placed my coffee down slowly. Deliberately. Then, just as calmly, I began moving Naledi’s belongings aside. Not aggressively. Not carelessly. Just enough to restore order. My order.

And, as fate would have it, that was the exact moment they walked in.

Naledi froze, her eyes darting between me and her displaced bag.

“Excuse me?”

I didn’t look up immediately. I adjusted my notebook, aligned my pen, took a sip of coffee.

“This was my seat,” I said.

“We moved your things,” she replied, her tone controlled but sharp. “We’re sitting here now.”

Of course you are.

I finally met her gaze. Beautiful. Composed. The kind of person who had never had to negotiate for space.

“Yes,” I said. “I can see that.”

“But I was already sitting here.”

A pause.

“That’s actually quite rude Moitiri,” she said. “You can’t just move people’s things like that.”

I almost smiled.

“I could say the same thing.”

She shook her head, dismissive. “No, this is bullying.”

Bullying.

The word lingered, heavier than it deserved to be.

I let it sit.

If this was bullying, then it was the most polite version I had ever encountered.

I picked up my coffee, exhaled slowly, and decided the conversation had reached its intellectual limit.

“I need a smoke break.”

“Nakedi, are you available to head outside to chop?” I asked.

“Of course,” he said. “We’re all going to die anyway.”

We stepped out together.

The smoking area was already half full, a quiet congregation of people pretending they weren’t avoiding the floors upstairs. Someone passed a lighter around like it was communal property. Conversations overlapped, none of them particularly meaningful, all of them necessary. Nakedi lit his cigarette with practiced ease.

“You know, if I die early, I want people to say it was mysterious. Not this.”

I laughed. “You want intrigue attached to your death?”

“Absolutely. I want whispers. Not health warnings.”

“That’s ambitious for someone who just said we’re all going to die anyway.”

“Exactly. Might as well curate the narrative.”

A guy from Financial services joined us mid-sentence, already agitated. “…if they don’t start giving me real work, I’m escalating.”

“To who?” I asked.

He paused. “Someone.”

Nakedi smirked. “You’re going to escalate your boredom?”

“It’s not boredom, it’s underutilisation.”

“That’s just boredom with ambition,” I said.

He didn’t laugh.

Around us, conversations blurred - gym routines, deal talk, forced networking. Everyone performing competence.

“This place is funny,” I said.

Nakedi nodded. “Everyone’s trying so hard not to look like they’re trying.”

“And failing.”

“Spectacularly.”

We stood there a while, observing, participating, pretending we were above it while being entirely within it.

“Time to go back?” I asked.

He sighed. “Unfortunately. Capitalism is calling.”

“Answer it quickly,” I said. “We’re being watched.”

He crushed his cigarette under his shoe. “Performance resumes.”

The induction was drawing to a close, and with it, the performance. The carefully curated questions, the polished curiosity, the constant awareness of being watched, all of it was beginning to fade. Or perhaps it was about to evolve into something far more subtle, and far more dangerous.

Taira Kera, however, seemed determined to stretch the performance to its limits. She had a habit of asking unnecessary questions just as we were about to break, and the group was growing visibly tired of her endless need to be heard.

Then came the introduction of the Candidate Attorney representative position. Almost immediately, a few candidates began quietly campaigning, asking for nominations. Julius Matlanthe was one of them. We had gone to varsity together, and I recognised his style - calculated, political.

On one occasion, during a session on sexual harassment, he asked what a male colleague should do if confronted with a female colleague who dressed in a “sexually suggestive” manner. The question landed poorly. It left a bitter taste in the room. There was something deeply unsettling about the implication that a woman’s dress could be responsible for a man’s behavior.

I didn’t know who would get the position, but I knew one thing for certain. I didn’t want it. A few people had approached me, suggesting I run. I declined. Some roles come with visibility. Others come with unnecessary exposure. This one felt like both.

Part of the reason people had even suggested me, I later realised, was because I was also very much part of the performance. I asked questions, often more than necessary, in the name of also sounding engaged, smart, and competent. I participated in discussions, weighed in on ideas, and made sure I was seen. This was a calculated display of attentiveness and diligence. In short, I had bought into the performance, and in some ways, so had everyone else. They saw the effort, the energy, the eager engagement, and for the purposes of office politics, that visibility alone made me appear a natural candidate.

Good luck to Julius if he got it. It was a bold move, especially for a black candidate navigating an environment that was, in many ways, still uncharted territory. A place where optics, perception, and quiet hierarchies mattered just as much as skill. I, meanwhile, chose to remain on the sidelines, content to observe, perform subtly, and keep the focus on surviving, rather than leading, in a space where every misstep could be amplified.

By the end of the day, the conference room had begun to feel like a stage we had all overstayed on. As I stepped out, shoulders slightly tense from hours of sitting upright and performing attentiveness, I bumped into a fellow candidate legal practitioner I had noticed earlier.

She carried herself with an easy confidence, both measured and deliberate. Beautiful, too, in a way that didn’t ask for attention but received it anyway. There was something about her that suggested distance, or perhaps selectivity. I had picked up, in passing, that she wasn’t from South Africa, and that she tended to associate more with the white candidates than the rest of us. I couldn’t help wondering whether that distance was entirely by choice. Black South Africans, I knew, could be quite something when it came to other African nationals. The subtle exclusions, not always loud, but deeply felt. If her distance was shaped by past experiences of xenophobic treatment, I wouldn’t exactly blame her.

“Hi,” I said, catching her before she could move past me. “You’re Rufaro, right?”

She paused, then nodded. “Most people just call me Ruffy.”

Ruffy. I turned it over in my mind, feeling its lightness, its convenience. It sounded less like a name and more like something made palatable. It felt easy, unchallenging and forgettable. It had the kind of casual familiarity that felt misplaced, almost like a name better suited to a pet than a person.

“I’ve always wondered,” I continued, “what does Rufaro mean?”

She smiled, slightly. “It’s Shona. It means… contentment.”

Contentment. The word lingered between us, heavier than her shortened name.

“That’s beautiful,” I said. “Why don’t you go by Rufaro, then? It has so much meaning.”

She hesitated, just for a second. “I don’t know,” she replied, with a small shrug.

Maybe she didn’t. Or maybe she did, and the explanation was far less simple than either of us cared to unpack in a hallway conversation.

“I prefer Ruffy,” she added, almost as an afterthought.

I looked at her a little more intently now. “I think it’s important,” I said, “to insist on your full name. Anything less takes something away from its meaning. It’s blessing and its power. From you.”

She smiled politely, but I could see it didn’t quite land. Or perhaps it landed too heavily.

“Maybe,” she said.

We stood there briefly, suspended between two different ways of navigating the same space-mine, rooted in holding onto meaning; hers, perhaps, in making things easier, smoother, more survivable.

“Anyway,” she said lightly, already stepping away, “see you tomorrow.”

“See you,” I replied.

As I watched her walk off, effortless, composed, I wondered which of us had it right. Or whether there was even room to be right at all.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or localities is entirely coincidental.

The 8th of January 2024 felt like holding my breath for a prolonged period of time underwater and finally reaching the shore. Gasping, exhilarated, finally free. It was the first day at the job of my wildest dreams. I had secured a cozy commune in Randburg for R5,200, finally managed to get my license, splurged on a few quality clothes from Shein, and still had enough to cover groceries and transport for the month, thanks to the R20,000 advancement the firm provides to those who need it. My landlord was a warm Afrikaans lady, and her husband, a lawyer, carried himself with quiet dignity. The commune was just three minutes from the Gautrain bus pick-up, close enough to make independence feel tangible. I remember Ubering to work that morning, my chest tight with excitement and pride.

This job felt like emerging from darkness into light. A medical school dropout, who had clawed her way through another degree, is now stepping into one of Africa’s top law firms. I had spent my life trying not to follow in my mother’s footsteps, so this felt like the generational curse had been broken. When I left medicine, my grandmother whispered of witchcraft. But I knew, with unshakable certainty, that path was never mine. I was of sound mind, charting a new course into uncharted waters, yet confident I would thrive.

The office was alive with energy that morning. I had been told I was slightly more animated than everyone else in the room, but I didn’t care. I wore my excitement like armour, visible and unapologetic. Every step to this point had been hard-won, and I was not about to apologise for my place in this room.

As expected, LinkedIn posts went up: “I am excited to announce that I have started as a Candidate Legal Practitioner at Weyland & Whitfield.” Messages of congratulations poured in, reposts multiplying like wildfire. And yet, behind the celebration lay a subtle but undeniable classism. Where you did your articles carried immense weight. It dictated how you introduced yourself, how others perceived your value, and how polished you were deemed within the profession.

I was now among the “better blacks,” polished enough to move in the corridors of influence. It was a badge of honour, and pretending otherwise would have been disingenuous. My twang had passed the assimilation test, and for the first time, I felt not just accomplished, but recognised, validated, and, most importantly, free.

The next few weeks unfolded like a trial by fire. The induction programme was intense. It included a crash course in the business of law, social media etiquette, and navigating conversations with directors from every imaginable background. Questions were currency. Most of us asked them, not because we needed answers, but because performance was everything. A way to stand out, to appear smarter, sharper, more polished than the rest of the group.

From the very first day, it felt like the performance of our lives. Some directors even described it as a two-year-long interview. Every move we made, every word we uttered, would be scrutinised. How we dressed, the jokes we cracked, the friends we kept. All of it whispered the story of our potential within the institution. And during induction, the questions we asked were just as revealing as any suit or handshake.

Candidate legal practitioners got creative. Some questions were brilliant, others spectacularly awkward. I remember a rugby boy from one of the most expensive schools in KwaZulu-Natal , puffed up with confidence, using the word “pulsating” entirely out of context. The room erupted in quiet laughter; for a moment, he became the group’s joke. Brief, merciless, and entirely in the name of sounding intelligent.

It was a delicate dance, part learning, part audition, part social theatre. And we were all desperate to make it through without tripping over our own ambition.

During one of these sessions, I noticed a particular director who immediately reminded me of a long-lost university crush. The way he walked, his accent and the arrogance. It was uncanny. The said long-lost university crush was now an Associate at another top-tier firm. I couldn’t resist; I recorded a snippet of his talk and sent it to him:

“Hi, Raymond, you wouldn’t believe it. I’ve stumbled into your long-lost brother. He sounds exactly like you.”

He laughed. It became our own little private joke. But little did I know, the resemblance would awaken feelings for the director that I had no intention of acting on. I was sharp enough to know that office romance for a woman was a minefield. That didn’t stop my mind from wandering, daydreaming and imagining just how dangerously attractive I found him. He wasn’t exactly the most attractive, but there was something about him that made you imagine dropping all your morals, and giving him babies who would look exactly like you.

In my first year, Raymond Sekhukhune was in his final year of law school. I remember spotting him at one of those inter residence music competitions. He was medium-built, the kind of man who was at once unremarkable and impossible to ignore and feeling an almost criminal lust at first sight. I later learned he had a girlfriend. Did that stop me? Not a chance. In my mind, she wasn’t a mountain; she was a molehill, and I was a climber with my eye on the peak.

Moot court came, and with it, the chance to maneuver closer. When we had to select tutors, I announced to my cohort: Raymond Sekhukhune would be ours. I even drafted a suggestory email, slipping in my WhatsApp number: bold, strategic, unapologetic. I knew exactly what I wanted and wasn’t afraid to go after it. And if someone got annoyed along the way, that was their problem. I was navigating desire and ambition with equal precision, and the thrill of it and knowing I could do both without apology was intoxicating.

Fridays meant open bars on the rooftop, overlooking one of the most expensive malls on the continent. It was the perfect opportunity to socialise and interact with colleagues. Initially, attendance was huge. I suppose everyone wanted to see the new cohort of candidates, making bets on who would survive the long haul and who would get “chopped.”

I have a vivid recollection of Aston Marembe, the long lost crush doppelganger, striding onto the rooftop with two other directors, Mashad Mohammed and Bradley Lincoln. They leaned casually against the wall, surveying the room. The number of candidate legal practitioners who flocked toward them was like tossing maize into an open yard and watching the chickens leap. I watched from a distance, laughing at the spectacle.

A few hours in, I noticed Aston by himself and seized the opportunity to strike up a conversation. We spoke about everything except law and the chemistry was undeniable. We talked about the most extravagant things he owned at home, including, I think, a private movie theatre, and even yapped about Mary Jane. Our banter continued throughout the evening, a playful, overly familiar exchange between a candidate legal practitioner and a director, noticeable only to those paying close attention.

Just as we were laughing our asses off, Simphiwe Matatiele approached, showering Aston with praise, listing articles he had published, and practically grovelling in admiration. I have a habit of letting intrusive thoughts run wild, so I told him, “That was a brilliant elevator pitch.” In hindsight, it must have been mortifying for him, and perhaps I should not have said it. Whether it sparked the tense relationship that would later develop between Simphiwe and me, I cannot say, but from that day on, he seemed to hate my guts as if his life depended on it.

I wrapped up my conversation with Aston by asking if he could find out where I had been placed, since whispers about the rotation list were starting to circulate. He responded with a subtle, “Don’t worry, I’ll find out for you,” and I couldn’t help but daydream, reminiscing about the ring he might buy me five years down the line.