Thabo did not mention the book again. Nandi no longer fled when he entered a room. They spoke about work, deadlines, clients, and whether the cafeteria had made the chicken deliberately dry.
But normal had become a performance they were both unexpectedly good at.
At home, the book returned to the cupboard.
Her boyfriend, Kabelo never asked whether she had read it.
Their argument dissolved without being resolved. He bought her flowers the following week. She thanked him. They went out for dinner on Saturday and spoke about rent, work, and his cousin’s wedding.
He held her hand across the table.
She tried not to think about the book.
The house also seemed to lose interest in the matter and no longer enticed her to read any further.
***
A month later, Nandi found Thabo’s blog.
She had not asked him for the link.
His name and the title of the book were enough.
The page was simple. White background. Black text. A photograph of an empty street beneath the heading.
There were dozens of stories.
Some were about love.
Others were about houses, marriages, strangers, loneliness and people who waited too long to say what they wanted.
She read one during her lunch break.
Then another in the bathroom.
That night, while Kabelo watched television beside her, she opened the blog on her phone beneath the blanket.
A new story had been posted.
Its title was The Woman Who Would Not Read the Book.
Nandi stopped breathing.
She clicked on it.
The story was about a woman who was given a book by a man at work. Her husband forbade her to read it. She hid it in a cupboard.
Nandi sat upright.
“What?” Kabelo asked.
“Nothing.”
She kept reading.
With each line, the house tightened its grip around her, leaning in hungrily at the promise of new amusement.
The dialogue was not exact.
But it was close enough.
In the story, the woman eventually opened the book after an argument. She began to see the writer differently. She avoided him. He confronted her in a kitchenette.
Her hands grew cold.
“What are you reading?” Kabelo asked.
“An article.”
He returned his attention to the television.
Nandi scrolled faster.
Shadows cast by the television seemed to leap across the walls in accusation.
The story’s final paragraph had not happened.
Not yet.
The woman in the story went to work the following morning and found the writer waiting beside her desk.
He asked her whether she believed stories could predict the future.
She said no.
Then he placed a second book in front of her.
On its first page, he had written:
This time, you decide whether to open it.
Nandi reached the end.
Below the story was the date.
It had been posted three minutes earlier.
She looked toward the bedroom door.
Her copy of Thabo’s book was still inside the cupboard—breathing beneath the blankets..
Kabelo laughed at something on the television.
The house creaked as something loosened within the roof.
Nandi returned to the top of the page and read the story again.
***
The next morning, she waited until Thabo was alone beside the printer.
He was feeding paper into the tray when she approached.
“Can I speak to you?”
He looked up.
“Of course.”
“In private.”
His expression changed slightly.
They went into one of the small meeting rooms near reception. The glass walls made privacy mostly theoretical. Thabo closed the door anyway.
Nandi remained standing.
“Did you write about me?”
He did not pretend not to understand.
“The blog?”
“Yes.”
He placed both hands in his pockets.
“It was inspired by something you told me.”
“Something I told you?”
“And the book.”
“You wrote our conversation.”
“I changed it.”
“You barely changed anything.”
“I changed the names.”
“That’s not changing it.”
Thabo looked toward the glass wall.
People moved past outside without looking in.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Nandi folded her arms.
“You should be.”
“I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“Why would you think that?”
“You said the book made you feel things.”
“So?”
“So it gave me an idea.”
“I am not an idea.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
He looked at her.
The room seemed to pull itself tighter around them, eager for chaos.
“I should have asked,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
Nandi waited for herself to feel satisfied.
She didn’t.
“Are you going to take it down?”
“If you want me to.”
“I shouldn’t have to tell you.”
“No.”
He nodded.
“I’ll remove it.”
She moved toward the door, then stopped.
“How was the story going to end?”
Thabo smiled before he could hide it.
Nandi immediately regretted asking.
Behind her, he said, “You could decide how it ends now.”
Nandi turned.
He was smiling openly.
Not cruelly.
Not innocently either.
Her cheeks warmed.
Thabo laughed softly.
“You’re unbelievable.”
“You asked.”
She shoved his shoulder as she passed him.
Not hard.
“Don’t use pieces of my life again.”
“All right.”
“I mean it.”
“I said all right.”
She opened the door.
She left before he could see her smile.
By lunchtime, the story was gone.
She checked once.
Then again before going home.
The page returned an error.
For the rest of the week, she and Thabo behaved normally.
The building seemed disappointed.
It stopped interfering. The kitchenette returned to its ordinary size. The printer behaved. The passage allowed them to pass each other without obstruction.
Nandi told herself the matter was finished.
At home, her boyfriend Kabelo remained unaware of it.
He apologised for coming home late. He bought dinner. They watched a film together on Friday night, his arm around her shoulders, and for a while she believed she had been foolish.
Thabo had written a story.
That was all.
People wrote about things that happened to them.
People borrowed conversations.
Writers were thieves with better punctuation.
There was nothing unusual about it.
She stopped visiting the blog.
For nine days.
On the tenth night, Kabelo fell asleep while watching football.
Nandi lay beside him, staring at the television without seeing it.
Her phone was beneath her pillow.
She did not know why she had placed it there.
At half past eleven, she opened the blog.
A new story had been posted.
Lives Between Walls 
What do you think about this?