The Pastor's Daughter and the Yahoo Boy

Port Harcourt was loud today. The kind of loud that wraps around your chest and pulls at your heart like a call you can't ignore. Street preachers shouted into cracked megaphones, vendors barked prices like auctioneers, and somewhere in the mix, someone played Burna Boy so loud the car windows trembled. Anaya stood by the edge of the busy junction at Oil Mill Market, clutching her small brown Bible to her chest like a shield. Her long white skirt swept the dusty street as okadas whizzed past. She didn't flinch.

She was the daughter of Pastor Ejike Obiora a man so revered they called him Fire Mouth behind the pulpit. She was purity personified, the image of obedience, and the poster girl of Rivers State's most fearsome revival church: Christ in Power Tabernacle. And yet, today, her eyes weren't fixed on heaven. They were following a boy. He had just walked past. Black jeans, dreadlocks tied in a bun, and the kind of swagger that spoke before his mouth did. Gold chain glinting. No Bible in hand. No shame in his eyes.

He didn't belong here But neither did the way her stomach flipped, He turned back "Hey," he said, like he'd known her forever, Anaya froze. She'd never been called like that before "Yes?" she whispered, her voice almost drowned by a passing keke. "You dropped this." He held out a paper not hers. It was just a flyer from a club She didn't reach for it. "I didn't drop anything." He smirked. "You did. Your attention." That was the moment it happened. The moment her world cracked open. His name was Khalid. And though he didn't say it yet, his eyes said everything. This was a boy who lived in shadows. Who whispered lies for a living. Who could ruin her with a smile. And Anaya... She had just smiled back.