Seline’s absence was never announced. It arrived quietly, the way dusk settles over the school grounds—first a shadow, then a chill, then the realization that something essential has slipped away.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5wdJnJQiB3
She still showed up for roll call, still answered questions in class, still laughed at the right moments when Shiko nudged her under the table. But there was a thinning, a transparency to her presence. She no longer lingered after prep, no longer joined Kim and the others on their slow walks beneath the jacarandas. She stopped borrowing books, stopped sharing her notes. When she spoke, her voice was softer, as if she was careful not to disturb something fragile inside her.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhIONJ9WXp2
Kim noticed first, but said nothing. She understood the need for silence, for space. The wall had taught all of them that. But even Shiko, who believed every rift could be mended with a joke or a story, found herself hesitating before calling Seline’s name.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4h1sNd5bDH
Sometimes, Seline could be seen near the wall—not close enough to break the new rules, but close enough for the wind to catch her skirt, for her gaze to linger on the cracks where the mortar had crumbled. She would stand there, hands in her pockets, not moving, not searching, just…waiting. For what, no one could say.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡl6aCvOuImY
The others speculated. Some said she was hiding something; others whispered she was simply tired of fighting the current. But Kim, watching from a distance, wondered if Seline was listening for something only she could hear—a message from the past, or a warning about what was coming.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEOBibIZ6qw
The wall, once a place of daring and laughter, had become a line of demarcation. Seline, it seemed, was drifting to the other side—not in body, but in spirit. The cracks in the stone had begun to mirror the cracks in their friendship.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡu0cVJPoSIA
And in the hush that followed, Kim realized: sometimes, the most dangerous secrets are the ones you keep from those who know you best.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3IIjlOCWM7
The prefects’ room was quieter than usual, the air heavy with the memory of last term’s betrayals and the new, watchful regime Naomi now commanded. Sunlight slanted across the battered table where June waited, the old silver badge resting in her palm, its edges dulled by years of anxious fidgeting.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIcBAR1KFON
Naomi entered with her usual composure, her eyes cool and unreadable. She didn’t sit. She simply stood across from June, hands folded, the silence between them thick with history.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDER4KKdX1s
June looked down at the badge. It had once meant belonging—authority, trust, a place in something larger than herself. Now, under Naomi’s rule, it was something else: a token, a bargaining chip, maybe even a confession.
Naomi used to be just another face in the corridor—a shadow trailing after June and the real prefects, always eager, always watching. Now, she stood at the center, the new authority, the “Order” incarnate, dishing out ultimatums as if she hadn’t once begged June for a seat at the table.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAiYTOn0DCE
June rolled the silver badge between her fingers, feeling its familiar weight. Once, it had been a symbol of her own power, her place at the heart of the Order’s machinery. She’d enforced the rules, kept the secrets, made the Order run smooth—until Mercy’s spectacular implosion ruined everything. Now, thanks to that disaster, June was stuck babysitting junior girls like Kim and that insufferable Seline, who fancied herself a journalist just because she could string a few sentences together. All to bring Mercy down. All to prove her loyalty to a new regime she didn’t respect.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡehqwpQIsD3
Now Naomi wanted the badge—wanted June’s submission, her public pledge of loyalty. As if June were just another lackey, grateful for scraps. As if the badge meant more in Naomi’s hand than it ever had in June’s.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDCKiMgvhWt
Fine. June would play along. She would bow her head, hand over the silver, let Naomi bask in her little victory. She would be the good servant, the model of obedience. Let Naomi believe she’d won.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡe7FqIJwMpq
But in the background, June was already making her moves. The Order was never about badges or titles—it was about who controlled the secrets, who pulled the strings. Naomi was just a little girl playing at big girls’ games, making up new rules and thinking that made her safe. She didn’t see the cracks forming, didn’t sense the old power shifting beneath her feet.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGFf4VTBbU4
June would get her Order back. She would take it from the inside, quietly, methodically, the way real power always worked. And when the time came, not even Naomi’s new rules—or Mercy’s ghost—would save her.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNqXNXo5CpJ
Let Naomi have her moment. June would have the last word.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMI4UVvHrfE
She held it out, her voice steady but low. “I want you to have it. Not because I deserve it, but because I know what it means now. I know what it costs.”46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbVuUQo80uG
Naomi’s eyes flickered, just for a moment. She took the badge, weighing it in her palm as if testing its truth. “You know the rules have changed,” she said quietly. “This isn’t the old Order. There are no second chances for sentiment.”46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwPpBcTeJvj
June nodded. “I’m not asking for sentiment. I’m asking for a place.”46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBud104kM1o
For a moment, neither spoke. The badge lay between them, gleaming dully in the late afternoon light—a silent contract, a pledge, a surrender.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8AnVQrPSlg
Naomi finally closed her fingers around it. “Prove you can keep secrets this time,” she said. “And maybe you’ll earn your way back.”46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkMWihJSiRR
June nodded again, relief and uncertainty warring in her chest. The badge was gone, but the game was not over. Not yet.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3uYuDPFlLq
Outside, the wall stood silent, its cracks deepening, its secrets waiting for the next hand to reach through.
Mary followed at a distance, her steps measured, her gaze sharp. She was not following out of suspicion alone. For Mary, every encounter was a test: of loyalty, of discipline, of the new order she had been summoned to impose. She watched the girls—June, with her restless ambition barely masked by obedience; Naomi, with her quiet authority and the unmistakable air of someone who had learned to play the long game.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpsXFvYmzeh
Each was driven by a different hunger. June, by the need to reclaim what she had lost, to prove that she could bend even the new rules to her will. Naomi, by the thrill of command, the satisfaction of having outlasted her rivals and inherited the machinery of the Order. And Mary, by the weight of responsibility—by the knowledge that her success or failure would be measured not in headlines, but in the quiet compliance of girls like these.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVkM4rrvdVA
As June approached Naomi, badge in hand, Mary paused just out of sight, listening. She understood that discipline was not enforced in assemblies or written in handbooks. It was negotiated in moments like this—quiet, tense, and invisible to most. She watched as June extended the badge, as Naomi accepted it with a nod that was both command and acceptance.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpGr8PkGV4U
Mary turned away, satisfied for now. She knew the real struggle was only beginning. For all her speeches about order and obedience, she understood: the wall was not the only thing that divided this school. There were other boundaries—of loyalty, of ambition, of secrets still hidden in the cracks. And she would have to navigate them all, just as these girls did, each driven by her own motive, each playing a part in a story the wall itself was still learning to tell.
**********46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7L8zXkAqd1
Jabari’s authority came with privileges, but also with obligations that bored him. Jabari didn’t like being summoned by the principal’s secretary, but he hid it well. He expected another speech about discipline or a request to mediate a prefect squabble. Instead, she handed him a typed memo, stamped and signed by the principal himself. The request was simple—routine, on the surface:46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoZPx80AMSd
“The Board wants a list of all past student presidents for the centenary. You’re the only one who can get it right, Jabari.”46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYqunPcSBDG
He nodded, accepting the task with the calm of someone who knew how to keep school and Order business separate. The archives were his domain, after all. No one would question the Head of Students reviewing old registers.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ70Kfs878zB
But Jabari’s real work was in the margins. He knew the Order’s true history—at least, the parts he was trusted with. The official records were a fiction, a public face. The Order’s story was hidden in the gaps: missing names, erased notes, years where the wall’s shadow fell thickest.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8RwrLUaUbr
The archives were cold and windowless, dust motes swirling in the shaft of light from the corridor. Jabari moved his team with purpose, scanning the old registers, the prefects’ ledgers, the council minutes. They made notes, cross-checked years, filled in the blanks where they could. But it was the absences that drew his eye—the years when a name should have appeared, but didn’t. The gaps that no one ever explained.
46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0mY19G8Ub1
Jabari and his team moved quietly through the old records room, the air thick with dust and the scent of old paper. They were supposed to be compiling a list for the principal, but the work had turned into a hunt for anomalies—missing names, odd codes, the kinds of things only Order eyes would notice.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmeZwDncL6K
It was Otieno, the quietest of them, who found the gap behind the cabinet. He reached in and pulled out a slim, battered notebook, its cover blank except for a faded blue thread wound around the spine.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQst3V0bRoT
Jabari flipped it open. Most pages were blank, but near the center, a single slip of yellowed paper fluttered out. The handwriting was small, careful, and old-fashioned:46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbakMAn94Wy
“Under the third stone from the left, by the old bell,46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡi3Ig7vAP7n
Names are written that never rang.”46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqxKNoIlVF0
No signature. Just a faint, penciled winged sandal in the corner.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡD1E6EhPJ2W
The team exchanged glances—no one spoke. They all understood: this was not meant for teachers or prefects, not even for most students. It was a breadcrumb, left by someone who knew the game, for someone who would know how to follow.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6btNSdJbXN
Jabari tucked the note back into the notebook and slid it into his bag. The official list would be neat, complete, and unremarkable. The real search would begin after dark.
**********46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡj5MzqzFKVk
Shiko wasn’t looking for secrets, just a distraction from the endless lists and warnings that now defined school life.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9ILIJJ3NuS
She had volunteered to help Miss Otieno sort the oldest files—anything to escape the surveillance-laced silence of the dorms. The archives smelled of mothballs, rust, and old chalk dust. A fan turned lazily overhead. No one else had volunteered.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXHTReqioRF
She was sorting through a battered box marked “Facilities—Historic”, scanning dull maintenance logs and ancient asset lists, when her fingers brushed something stiff and oversized. It wasn’t filed—just crumpled and tucked between folders like it had been forgotten decades ago.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOUjeT4Ppzh
She tugged it free: a folded sheet, brittle at the corners, the ink faded to a watery brown. She held her breath and spread it carefully across the table.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3sLu29AitY
No dividing line.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡecDZEAxrRG
That was the first thing she noticed. No bold stroke separating Kisumu Girls from Kisumu Boys. Just one sprawling compound—shared gardens, merged fields, one chapel, one bell.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcIHo2X4QRX
And there—drawn in a thin, wavering blue—was a single curved line: a water channel. She traced it with her fingertip.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXxIdoqof2c
It began near the old well, cut under the current wall, and ended by the overgrown banana grove at the lake’s edge.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4LCqg6FIs2
A link. Hidden in plain sight.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvErnFWdsVz
A forgotten artery that ran beneath everything that had been built to separate.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPtRSadRGGr
Her breath caught. She leaned closer.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNKoAltcOwL
In the margin, someone had scrawled in tidy, slanted hand:46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgNvhQRaXPv
“Access via maintenance hatch — old bell tower.”46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSL3XBfeIpw
Shiko looked up. No one was watching. No one would believe her—not yet.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgaZ3VSiJFu
She didn’t dare steal the map. So she bent low and studied it, tracing every angle until it etched itself into memory.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWW8lhnu9Jg
She folded the map, slipped it back where she found it, and pressed her palms flat on the desk to steady herself.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxTYECuW0Qz
The wall wasn't sealed. It had never been.
**********46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKxWCqCZK2z
“I saw them,” Kim said softly, fingers resting on the edge of the map. “Last term. Two boys. They crossed onto our side. I watched them scale the wall and vanish.”46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdlw6p1TA1u
Shiko stiffened. “You’re sure?”46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjAxY6bHrYU
Kim nodded. “And there were girls. Not prefects. I thought they were—” She swallowed. “But they weren’t. They moved different. Like they belonged to the dark.”46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGzS84UA4YY
Shiko blinked slowly. “They weren’t watching the boys.”46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7YuihBRC30
“They were watching you.”46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡShh9F9OCVm
Silence thickened between them.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwKHASqzHV2
“Shiko…” Kim’s voice cracked. “What if this tunnel isn’t a secret that was lost? What if it was never supposed to be found?”46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdlwJNdFXTh
Shiko looked at her. “Then we’ve just disrupted something bigger than both schools.”
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