It was a family dinner. After a long time, everyone was together once again. Yerodin was eating to his heart's content. His mother had put out generous portions of food. Even though he was already full, he continued to eat; he didn't want to be discourteous to his mother. Although he was expecting a bad digestion the next morning.

  His three older brothers had brought their wives. His sister was pregnant with her third child and hoped that this time it would be a boy. She promised that if it was Fante Obataiye's will to give her a male child, she would name him after her grandfather. There was a small commotion at the table.

  All Yerodin said at the table was about work. It was the only topic he mastered well, and he dealt with it in the most prosaic way. To all intents and purposes, everyone believed that he worked in one of the information technology sectors of some government department, and it didn't cross anyone's mind that he was a secret agent.

  However, this didn't deprive him of family responsibilities. Although his face was always friendly, his eyes were sharp, as if he was always on target. This aroused mixed feelings in his interlocutors. Unconsciously, they tried to resolve the issue by giving the most diverse suggestions, without any caution.

  “Son, you're rather skinny. You should get a wife soon and stop working so much overtime.”

  His mother fired at point-blank range. There was unrestrained laughter across the table. The women couldn't contain themselves. The matriarch of the family really didn't mince her words.

  Yerodin smiled. The discomfort of being charged was great, so he maintained his posture of protocol. He had become a master at it.

  “Thanks, mom. I'll think about it.”

  “Your father and I are thinking of arranging a marriage for you. We're going to choose a nice girl.”

  “Yes, mother, that's very suitable.”

  Despite Yerodin's abnegation, and the festive mood that hung over the dinner, the older brother signaled to the medium when dinner was over. They both went to the front of the house and walked down the sidewalk.

  They chatted. It was a warm evening, which made them loosen the collars of their formal clothes and hang their jackets over their shoulders. They stopped under a lamppost. The older brother offered him a cigarette, but Yerodin declined with a wave of his hand.

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  “It's very good for you, smoking is bad for you.”

  Yerodin raised one of his eyebrows in an inquisitive tone, which made his brother choke on a cough.

  “If it's so bad, why do you smoke?”

  “Hahahaha, cof-cof, I don't know, you've always been more rational than me.”

  The man leaned against the lamppost, swallowed his cigarette and exhaled a wave of pale smoke that made Yerodin's eyes water. The young medium stood against the wind to dodge the smoke.

  At that moment, between gulps and coughs, he realized how much his older brother had aged. His temples had the first white hairs. His hair was already showing signs of baldness. Yerodin shivered a little, this was more or less how he would look as he got older.

  “The clan leaders have made you the new Sage of Knowledge.”

  “You know it's not that easy, brother. I'll need to create a new Ofó to apply for the position. It's not in my plans at the moment.”

  “I don't know anything about politics, but I never believed things would be like this.”

  “I don't understand.”

  The man threw the cigarette away and blew the rest of the smoke out of his flared nostrils.

  “You remember when Feruzi told you about the history of all men.”

  “Yes, 'Men are born, grow up, love, fight, grow old and die', wasn't that it?”

  “Exactly, but I've always found that very cruel.”

  “I agree, it's a very ageist view.”

  “It's not just that it's an etapist view, my brother, it's that many people can't follow this script to the letter. Many die before they're born, isn't that ironic? It's as if each individual's personal experience is worthless.”

  “What do you know, my older brother is a philosopher.”

  “Stop, go!”

  The man tapped his younger brother on the shoulder, saying in a mixture of pride and concern:

  “Dad and Mom demand a lot from you. Not just them, the clan, the country, I don't know, the whole world, hahaha. But maybe you're right, there's no such thing as the right direction.”

  “You're scaring me, you know that? What did you do to my older brother? He was kidnapped and they replaced him with a replicant!”

  “Hahahaha, good one! Listen, I'm saying this for your own good. Don't do anything to please others. Do it for yourself, otherwise you'll get old and frustrated like Dad.”

  “Okay.”

  “Now, let's go back. They'll think we've been abducted halfway.”

  The man hugged Yerodin around the shoulders and the two of them walked back to the house. The night had lost its last vestiges of warmth, and a cool breeze began to blow from the north.

  The lamps competed with the stars. The latter lost in distance, but won in majesty. Yerodin thought that being a star shouldn't be as difficult as being a medium. During the day, they hid behind the light of the sun, and at night they shared the night sky with the moon.

  They shone brightly without trying to illuminate something or someone specific. They didn't compete. They were born and died in silence. Even after turning into gaseous planets or barren rocky spheres, their glow wandered to the ends of the universe. It was like the memory that people left behind after they passed away.

  For this reason, Ilu Nla gave so much priority to memory, mnemonic formulas, repetition, rites, myths, etc. The glow of the ancestors would continue to illuminate society. It was like timeless poetry.

  A last look at the sky, like a farewell. Before entering the house, Yerodin heaved a tired sigh. He turned the doorknob and entered. All his problems remained outside the house.