Writers 
Chapter 1: The Shop on Balogun Street ๐งต
Baba Sunday had been a tailor for forty-two years, running a small shop wedged between a phone repair kiosk and a provisions store on Balogun Street. His hands, though old, still moved with the precision of a much younger man. โ๏ธ
Everyone in the market knew one strange thing about him: he always measured his customers twice. Not once. Twice. Even for a simple pair of trousers. ๐
"Baba, why the wahala of measuring two times?" customers would tease.
He would only smile and say, "The first measurement tells me your size. The second tells me your story." ๐งถ
Chapter 2: The Customer Who Never Aged ๐ค
For as long as anyone could remember, a certain woman came to Baba Sunday's shop every five years, always in October, always asking for the same thing: a plain black dress, size 10, no adjustments. ๐ค
The strange part wasn't the request โ it was that she never seemed to age. Market women who'd known Baba Sunday for decades swore she looked exactly the same each visit, down to the small mole above her lip. ๐
Baba Sunday never commented on it. He simply took her measurements, twice as always, and made the dress in silence. ๐คซ
Chapter 3: The Question He Finally Asked ๐ฃ๏ธ
This October, when she arrived again, Baba Sunday โ now much older, his hands slightly less steady โ finally spoke as he took her second measurement.
"Madam, forgive an old man's curiosity. I have made this same dress for you, what, seven times now? Yet you have not aged a single day. Who are you measuring this dress for, truly?" ๐ค
The woman was quiet for a long moment, staring at her own reflection in his cracked wall mirror. ๐ช
"It's not for me," she finally said. "It's for my daughter. Every five years, on the day she died, I bring her dress here to be remade โ fresh, unworn, waiting. I wear it myself for one hour, then I bury it beside her." โฐ๏ธ๐ค
Chapter 4: The Grave Behind the Church ๐ณ
Baba Sunday's hands stopped moving entirely.
"She died thirty-five years ago," the woman continued, voice steady despite the years of grief behind it. "A day before her tenth birthday. I promised her a black church dress for a program she never got to attend. I couldn't give it to her then. So I give it to her now, every five years, so she knows I never forgot." ๐๐
Baba Sunday realized, with a chill, that he had been unknowingly sewing an offering โ not a garment โ every five years for three decades. ๐งต๐
Chapter 5: The Measurement That Never Changed ๐
That night, unable to sleep, Baba Sunday pulled out his old measurement book โ a cracked leather journal where he'd recorded every customer's sizes since 1984. He flipped to her very first entry. ๐
Size 10. Bust, waist, hip โ exact numbers, written in his own younger handwriting.
Every single entry since, across thirty-five years, was identical. Not a single centimeter had changed. A child frozen at the exact size she was the day she died, remeasured every five years by a mother unwilling to let time move forward for either of them. ๐ข๐
Chapter 6: The Last Dress ๐ค
The following October, the woman didn't come. Baba Sunday waited by his shop door for three straight days, worry gnawing at his old bones. On the fourth day, a young man arrived instead โ her nephew โ carrying a folded black dress. ๐งฅ
"My aunty passed peacefully last month," he explained. "In her will, she asked that this last dress be buried with her instead of her daughter. She said, and I quote, 'Tell Baba Sunday I'm going to measure her myself now, wherever she is.'" ๐๏ธ
Baba Sunday sat down slowly on his old stool, tears finally falling after decades of quiet, unspoken labor. ๐ญ
Chapter 7: The Empty Shop ๐งต
Baba Sunday retired not long after, closing the shop that had stood on Balogun Street for over four decades. But before locking the door for the last time, he placed one final entry in his measurement book โ not a customer's name, but a simple note:
"Some measurements aren't for clothes. They're for love that refuses to stop fitting, even after death." ๐๐ค
He left the black dress pattern pinned to the wall, untouched, for the next tailor who would rent the shop โ a quiet inheritance nobody but he would ever fully understand. โ๏ธโจ
Grief doesn't always look like tears. Sometimes it looks like measuring the same size, faithfully, for thirty-five years. ๐๐งต
The End.
Caption for posting: "For 35 years, she brought her dead daughter's exact measurements to the same tailor. What she was really doing will break your heart. ๐ข๐งต Tag someone who still carries grief quietly."
