Aika - No More Careful Pieces

I didn’t plan to tell them everything. Well, initially that is.

I thought I’d give them pieces. I wanted to spare my parents from the gruesome details, of what happened to their only daughter. Only safe pieces. The kind you hand over carefully, hoping they won’t cut too deep. I thought I could manage it the way I’d managed everything else in my life.

I walked into the living room, luggage and Bingo at hand, and saw my parents sitting side by side. They were waiting.

‘Aika. My love. Are you ready to talk to us now?’

So I couldn’t avoid this anymore…

I placed my things on the side and got comfortable on the sofa. Bingo was tucked against my chest and purred his heart out like he could sense the tension. He kneaded on whatever he could reach and tried to his best to calm me. I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding him that tightly until Mama stood and gently took him from my arms.

‘Aika, you’re smothering your cat,’ she said softly. ‘Bless his cotton-socks he’s just letting you do it.’

Papa didn’t say anything at first. He just looked at me the way he used to before a long shoot, to check if the lighting was right, if the framing was where it’s supposed to be.

‘We’ve been waiting,’ Mama said with a firm voice. ‘For you to tell us. In your own time.’

At first, I planned to laugh it aside, then she held my hand. That was it. The dam broke. I told them everything.

From the beginning. Not the version I’d polished for interviews or buried under professionalism. The real beginning. The girl who trained until her feet bled because she thought obedience was loyalty. The contracts I signed too young.

The tours. The expectations. The way my name stopped being mine and became something other people rearranged for headlines.

I told them about the scandal I didn’t cause. About the other idol’s boyfriend who lied. About the way fingers pointed faster than facts. About how quickly I became expendable once I stopped being convenient.

I told them about the men. About the promises dressed up as opportunities. About the threats disguised as concern. About the month that took pieces of me I still didn’t know how to name.

I didn’t spare them. I was done protecting everyone else at my own expense.

Mama cried quietly, one hand pressed over her mouth, tears slipping down without sound. She never looked away from me. Not once. Papa didn’t cry at all. He sat very still.

When I finished, the room went silent. Then Papa stood.

He asked very calmly, ‘Did anyone put this in writing?’

I wiped my own tears off. ‘What?’

Bingo had made his way back to my lap. He was already walking around like he lived here for a while.

‘The promises,’ he said. ‘The threats. The pressure. Did anyone ever text you? Email you? Leave a trail?’

Mama wiped her tears and straightened.

‘Your father isn’t asking as a parent,’ she said. ‘He’s asking as someone who knows how power hides.’

Oh… They weren’t horrified into helplessness. They were furious into clarity.

Papa crossed the room and opened the old storage cabinet near the wall. He pulled out a battered hard drive case I hadn’t seen in years and checked the label.

‘Good. I never wiped these.’ he muttered.

‘What are they?’ I asked with a small voice.

‘Raw footage. Unedited. Timestamped. Location-stamped. People forget that technicians see everything.’ He said through gritted teeth.

Mama was already on her phone. She had stopped crying already. She spoke sweetly to me but I could see her being slowly eaten by the spirit of rage. She texted furiously.

“Are you available”

“I need quiet advice”

“This involves coercion and contracts”

Replies came back almost immediately.

Papa sat at the table and began writing names on a legal pad. Not just the ones I mentioned. Everyone he remembered working around the same circles.

‘Patterns matter. Abusers don’t improvise. They repeat.’ He said calmly.

He was so calm I was afraid he was plotting to do something in his own time to certain people on top of the current plan we are making.

Mama returned to the room with her own notes.

‘Three former aides. One policy analyst. One journalist who owes me a favor,’ she said. ‘And two women who left quietly for “personal reasons”.’

She looked at me with all seriousness. ‘You are not the first girl this happened to.’

Those words didn’t scare me, nor comfort me. They enraged me.

I looked at both of my parents and declared. ‘We must help them too.’

The next days blurred into motion.

Papa cross-checked my contracts against travel logs, filming schedules, sponsorship meetings. He found gaps. “Temporary assignments” that existed nowhere on paper. Clauses added after signatures.

Mama handled people.

She didn’t accuse. She reminded.

Of dinners attended. Of committees funded. Of how silence could look like complicity when examined closely.

Messages started arriving.

Emails at first. Written by women who sounded like they were afraid of taking up space even now.

Calls came next.

One woman cried so hard she couldn’t speak for ten minutes.

Another said flatly, ‘I thought I was the only one who stayed alive.’

Papa printed everything. “Temporary. Cooperate. For your future”

Mama sat beside me one night and said quietly, ‘This is why they isolate you. Alone stories are rumors. Together, they’re evidence.’

‘Aren’t you scared of protecting me? Mama?’

‘Of them? No.’

We hugged. I’ve no more words left. My parents had been restless and sleepless with reaching out to old pals and using both of their standing in the media industry and politics, all for my justice.

‘For you? Always. But fear doesn’t get to make decisions in this house.’

I feared for his health, but this stress somehow made my father more animated. I just hope he doesn’t go punching people behind my back.

When we drafted the statement, I insisted on one thing above all else.

Caleb…

‘He didn’t do anything wrong. I want Caleb to be able to keep his image and role in the church.’ I explained.

Whatever that means for us, I don’t know… If only I wasn’t a media figure… I would’ve taken my time with Caleb… I am sure he would’ve loved to walk through the ups and downs of our choice, together…

Papa agreed immediately.

‘We clear his name, and then get into my past. We gather and call onto other girls, even boys, who had been victimised like me.’ I said with conviction.

Mama nodded. ‘We don’t just defend the innocent. We expose the mechanism that tried to crush them. You.’

I braced myself for the worst. Even before the broadcast, a lot of women already stepped forward. Agencies scrambled for info or for clearing their name. Men issued apologies that named nothing and no one.

And somewhere, far away from the fire they helped light, powerful people realized something far worse than exposure had begun.

They were no longer in control of the story.