It felt like compressed weight, dense and flat. He reached forward finally and his fingers touched the zipper. He paused. He closed his eyes for five seconds and said a short prayer under his breath. Then he pulled the zipper open slowly. It moved easily. He opened it wide and looked inside. The sight stopped his breath completely.
He blinked once, then again. He was looking at bundles and bundles of cash, notes stacked on top of each other, wrapped with bands, packed tightly from the bottom of the bag to near the top. There were different notes, some in large denominations, some in smaller ones. The colors were slightly different, which told him there were different currencies inside.
It was an enormous amount of money. More money than he had ever seen in one place in his entire life. Not on television. Not in a bank. Never in front of his eyes like this. He just sat there completely still and could not speak. He didn’t touch the money at first. He just stared at it with his eyes wide and his mouth slightly open. Sweat was running down the side of his face.
Even though he had not moved for several minutes, his hands were flat on the floor beside him like he needed the ground to hold him steady. He could hear his own heartbeat in his ears. He looked at the money, then at the door, then back at the money. He could hear people walking on the road outside, normal sounds, a child laughing somewhere, a woman calling out a name.
But inside that small room, everything was completely frozen. Then he noticed something else inside the bag. Beneath the top layer of money, there were documents folded and placed flat. He reached in carefully, pushed the money to one side, and pulled out the documents. He unfolded them on the floor in front of him.
They were official papers, contract papers. They had headings and paragraphs written in formal language. He read slowly, line by line. He understood that this money was a payment, a very large payment made in cash as part of a contract between two parties. The papers had signatures. They had dates. They had names printed in bold letters and the name of a company with an address.
They had phone numbers and official stamps. He read the documents twice from beginning to end. Then he sat back and breathed slowly. So this was not stolen money. Or at least it didn’t look like it. It was payment for a legitimate contract. Someone had won a contract and been paid. Someone had this bag and had lost it.
Or left it or been forced to leave it. He didn’t know yet, but the bag had an owner. That much was now clear. He folded the documents carefully and placed them on the floor beside him. Then he looked at the money again. He looked at it for a very long time. The room was completely silent. That night, Dami didn’t sleep.
He lay on his mat in the bedroom with his eyes open and the bag hidden under the metal frame of the bed. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the bundles of cash in his mind. He thought about all the things he could do with that money. Pay the rent that was three months overdue. Buy food, buy decent clothes, start a real business, take his parents out of that house.
He thought about all of it in slow detail, but every time the picture formed clearly in his mind, something inside his chest pulled him back. A tight, uncomfortable feeling that would not let the fantasy settle properly. The next morning, he woke up and pulled the bag out from under the bed. He opened it again to confirm it was still real.
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