(Naledi — POV)
Home is two rooms and a small kitchen where the kettle always seems a half-step from empty. Miriam hums along to the radio while she irons a shirt that's already been ironed once; the iron smells faintly of starch and prayer. Tumi slumps at the table with his geometry book open and a face that says the theorems are personally responsible for his suffering.
Naledi sets the kettle and folds laundry with the mechanized calm of someone who has learned to make small economies out of time. Her phone buzzes against the counter—her uncle again, likely asking for transport money. She lets it ring. The ledger in her head keeps its tally: bus fare, flour, electricity, Tumi's exam fee the school insists must be cleared. April feels larger than a month and smaller than a solution.
"Finished?" Miriam asks without looking up.
"Almost." Naledi tucks the last pair of socks into a neat stack. "Five minutes."
Miriam's eyes soften. "You eat before you go. You work too much."
Naledi doesn't answer. She pulls on her jacket and steps into a morning that smells like dust and old rain. At the corner, taxi drivers trade gossip like currency. She walks with the kind of purpose that makes people step aside. Work steadies her. Work makes the numbers behave.
She's halfway through turning the printshop key when the door swings open.
Sipho stumbles in like a man who has outrun one disaster and is late for another. He's breathless, jacket dusted with the grit of markets, his mouth a hard line she recognizes—the look of someone holding back a collapse.
"Sipho?" Her voice flattens into business instinctively.
He drops onto the stool, elbows on knees, eyes bright with strain. "The meeting happened," he says. "Early. I had nothing to show."
She stills. That single sentence rearranges the room.
"The demo bag—TechBridge units—was stolen this morning. I chased. We chased. Without the prototypes, it was just words." He exhales, sharp. "Rhetoric wasn't enough."
Naledi feels the old, familiar ledger—other people's obligations—press a weight beneath her ribs. She thinks of Tumi's school, of Miriam's careful silences, of the rent that now has permission to wait until April. She wants to measure this moment in numbers and step away.
Instead, she asks the only question that matters.
"And now?"
"If I can get the bag back, I can salvage it," he says. "The investor didn't say no. He said prove it. But I don't have time." He looks up then, really looks at her. "I need help."
She wants to say no. She wants to fold the shop back into safe, predictable exchanges—ink for cash, paper for certainty. Pride warns her to stay in her lane.
Then she looks at his hands, still streaked with dust from the market. They aren't the hands of a man who gives up. They're the hands of someone who builds things out of bad ground.
Her mother's voice surfaces, uninvited: Sometimes the bridge is a person. Sometimes the toll is risk.
"How much?" Naledi asks.
Relief flickers across his face, brief and controlled. He pulls out a wad of notes—too small for the day he's having. "Double," he says. "And if this works, I'll put you on retainer. I'll clear this week's rent for you."
It isn't romance. It's a promise of stability, exchanged for skill. It lands exactly where it should.
"All right," she says. "Fifteen minutes. Sit."
He talks fast, collapsing months into sentences: the bookstore that came back after a multinational courier failed them, the schools that pay on time because reliability matters more than branding, the fragile TechBridge units that prove he can be trusted with more than envelopes.
Naledi cuts mercilessly. She trims sentiment, sharpens verbs, forces every claim to anchor to action. She turns a delayed delivery into proof of accountability, a recovered parcel into evidence of systems. She writes three opening lines that start with a customer problem and end with what Khumalo Logistics did to solve it.
The shop settles into work—the copier's hum, the smell of ink, the quiet clarity that comes when competence is allowed to do its job.
Halfway through, Lindiwe drifts in, loud in the way that announces observation.
"Well," Lindiwe says, eyebrows lifting. "Looks cozy. The printshop's new business partner?"
Sipho stiffens. Naledi doesn't look up.
"We're working," Naledi says.
"Mmm." Lindiwe smiles like someone storing a detail. "Just saying. Johannesburg notices things."
The clock ticks louder. Naledi finishes the final line and slides the page across the counter.
"Open with this," she says. "Then numbers. Then shut up."
Sipho reads. Something in his face realigns, like a man remembering his spine. "You're good," he says quietly.
"I know."
He folds the paper carefully, like it might tear if rushed. "If this works—"
"Go," she says. "You're late already."
He stands, then hesitates. "They said the bag might've gone through the Old Market. A vendor named Mandla might've seen it."
Naledi nods once. She files the name away.
At the door, Rashid appears, precise and unwelcome.
"Sipho," Rashid says. "Five days."
Sipho doesn't argue. He doesn't plead.
Rashid's eyes flick to Naledi. "And you are?"
"Naledi Khumalo. I edited his pitch."
Rashid smiles without warmth. "Make sure he pays."
He leaves like a closing bracket.
Sipho's voice drops. "If I lose this, he takes the van. Maybe more."
"You don't have room to lose," Naledi says.
He nods, leaves the folded flyer—the one from days ago—on the counter between them. "Keep it."
The bell chimes as he goes.
The shop fills. Students complain about margins. A pastor wants bulletins. Naledi works on autopilot, but her mind circles one name.
Mandla.
When the lunch lull comes, she steps outside, pulls out her phone, and makes calls. Information. Market office. A stall number.
Mandla answers on the third ring.
"Yes," he says cautiously. "I saw a bag. Khumalo stickers. TechBridge boxes."
Naledi closes her eyes once. "I'm coming," she says. "Don't move it."
She locks the shop, tucks the flyer into her apron, and pulls her jacket tight against the wind. The city does not care about her calculations. It moves regardless.
Naledi walks toward the market with a purpose tempered by caution.
Tomorrow's problems are already here.