I got there twenty minutes early, heart punching my ribs like it wanted out. The Library Café at University of Malawi smells like old paper, roasted coffee, and secrets nobody dares say out loud. I picked the corner table under the cracked skylight, the one where the light falls red after 3:45 p.m., like someone spilled wine on the ceiling.
Thocco walked in at exactly 4:02. No rush. No apology. Just power wrapped in a short black skirt and a white crop top that said "Objection Sustained" in red ink across her chest. Same color as the
number she once wrote on my script. She slid into the chair opposite me, dropped her law textbook with a thud, and stared.
"You're sweating," she said, lips curling. "Cute."
I wiped my forehead. "Malawian heat."
"Liar. It's 24 degrees." She leaned forward, elbows on the table, cleavage doing things to my concentration.
"You've been thinking about me since last night. Don't lie to a law student. We smell fear." I laughed, too loud until the barista glanced over.
She opened her book, flipped to a blank page, and slid a red pen across the table.
"Write your sins," she said.
"One per line. Then we'll decide if you deserve coffee."
I stared at the pen like it was a loaded gun. She watched me, unblinking. "Clock's ticking, lightweight." I wrote three words.
"I want you"
She read them upside down, smiled slowly, and turned the page.
"Good boy. Now watch." she whispered quite smoothly.
She took the pen, wrote something underneath my confession, then folded the page once, twice, and slipped it into her bra, right between her breasts.
"Insurance," she whispered. "If you bore me, I read it aloud to the whole café." My mouth went dry.
She stood up, grabbed my hand. "Come."
"Where?"
"Somewhere quieter. The Crimson Veil doesn't meet in daylight."
I followed her past the café, past the law section, past the security guard who pretended not to see us. Down the back stairs. Into the basement archives nobody uses anymore. The air was thick with dust and old secrets. She locked the door behind us. The red emergency light painted her skin like fresh blood. She pushed me against a shelf of 1980s law reports and kissed me so hard, I tasted copper. Her hand slid under my shirt, nails dragging fire across my chest.
"You introduced Tadala to Nola Kates," she breathed against my neck. "Now it's my turn."
She pulled out her phone, opened a password-protected folder, and showed me the cover of World's Sex Novel Chapter 9.
"You're in the Society now," she said. "Level Two."
I tried to speak. She covered my mouth with two fingers.
"Rule number one: no talking until you make me cum so hard, until I forget the Constitution."
She dropped to her knees, unzipped me with her teeth, and the basement disappeared.
All I could hear was her moaning my name against my skin, and the sound of a revolution starting between her lips. When we finally walked out forty-seven minutes later, her lipstick was gone, my shirt was inside out, and the folded red-ink page was burning a hole in her bra. She kissed my cheek in front of the security guard like nothing happened.
"Same time tomorrow," she said. "Bring gin. And a tie. I'm in the mood to break rules."
I watched her walk away, skirt swaying like a verdict.
"Tadala had learned how to cum, Thocco just taught me how to sin", I was caught up in dead thoughts.