The body never forgets the origin of its ache. It will never forget how desperation, like a wild animal, ate through your cerebrum, sheathed your face with shame, and clung onto you like second skin. You were just in your first year in University. You were naive but almost omniscient. The oxymoron of your existence. How carefully you hid your dirty linen under the warmth of your smiles. You were experienced, and you knew it. You shielded it from the rest of us. From me, and also from Nonso & Gloria. We called ourselves “besties.” The four musketeers, unstoppable even by an unstoppable force.

The genesis of this ache was you trying to edit your scale of preference. You needed clothes, and bags, and shoes, and what not. All of these came before you wished to have a great GPA. I still remember us, discussing our pains and brokenness in large chunks. While students slept, after spending the day contemplating their resumption date, the Whatsapp group chat did not have the luxury of sleep. It stayed awake, while we laughed and complained about everything.

“Omo guy, I dey find money like mad!!! I need plenti plenti clothes this semester; I no fit dey repit like dat!” You cried, while we laughed uncontrollably behind our screens, amazed by your significant quest for billions, even as a student. Your typo or the little relatability of its content, I do not know which made us laugh more. But, we both knew you typed with deliberate urgency, as if purgatory awaits a sluggish messenger. We finally agreed to the importance of your needs. We were all the same, students seeking things they were incapable of having. Except that something unholy burned inside you without anyone else’s knowledge.

We spent a good slice of our semester break lusting over the things we couldn’t afford. Of course, with hopeful lenses. You were just not patient enough. You, Kemi, were the most impatient human I had ever crossed paths with. You walked like the sun sat below your feet. You spoke as if the world was given only a day of the week to speak.

You first fed me a slice of your impatience the night before our GST exams. We had planned to read outside the hostel because we did not trust our eyes enough to keep us awake if we read in the hostel. We were going to one of the ETF blocks to study. I knew you were definitely going to see someone familiar and abandon your books anyways. We made sure our bellies would not lack so we fried yam. The yams were sliced to your taste – crisp, slightly thinner than you, and salty. We planned to eat it with the leftover stew Nonso bought from the school’s market. We initially fried the yams with our contraband hot plate before the lights went out. Our yam soaked in oil.

It was 10:00pm and backing down was not an option. We had to read. It was our first exam in the university. None of us knew what to expect, except the answer guide our departmental president had been broadcasting to all 100 level students. You and Nonso begged me to help you fetch your medicated photochromic glasses from our room. You both went outside to wait for me, without my knowledge. I fetched your glasses in my hand like an egg. I strutted back to where you both stood earlier & your absence hit me. Instinctively, I thought about the nearest place that might hold your wild laughter. I went outside.

“See how you’re walking” kissed my ear.
I breathed like a dog on a mini hunt.
“I told you we shouldn’t come here, we would have just waited because I knew she would go back there.” Nonso said to you while your ignorance haunted your eyes.

As for me, the words lingered in my head longer than I expected. How easily you withered my efforts for you. I sparked back. It was aura for aura. You gave me the silent treatment for four and a half hours.

That Tuesday, the air felt different, hotter than usual. It was two weeks to resumption. I felt feverish. It was the second day of my period. It was Midweek service too and I wore my sky-blue sweater because of how the sky contradicted itself earlier. Now, the sun was hot, the church was hot with tongues too. I was irritated. Even when Pastor J whom I had grown fond of, held my hands during the praise session prompting me to dance, all I could see was how much of a “V” his hairline was. My face didn’t hide my thoughts.

The service ended earlier than usual, I was lighter. If it were God’s loving kindness or how I had not felt blood coming out of me for an hour that made me lighter, I did not know but I felt it.

Nonso’s message came first, before yours:
“Omoo…check on Kemi sha.”
One clear difference between you and Nonso was the punctuation. More reason why I gravitated more towards her. She was graceful, slower than you. Nonso is so intellectually sound & me, I am a hopeless sapiosexual. Unlike you, Kemi, who has a failed yahoo career. Don’t get me wrong, I loved you too. You’re a smart babe as well. But you were carefree & unwilling to grow in your intelligence, so it faded gradually like all my talking stages.

I didn’t reply Nonso, I galloped to your DM. My phone chimed, it was your message.

“Wassup”

I replied, with your kind of urgency. Panic lodged in my bones. Nonso always warned me about this unhealthy habit of overthinking but I could care less now. Something was wrong.

Your message came in batches:
“My nude don cast”
“I was desperate”
“So I went to Ik’s house”
“For money”
You dropped a voice note. Two minutes. Its length failed to erase the vagueness of the plot. I didn’t understand. I made no attempt to understand. I knew you would never tell the real, full story anyways. All I was sure of was that IK was a 400 level student. This indirectly meant, that all 400 level students were aware.

I was more disappointed than surprised. For someone who came from a home blessed with overly religious folks, entertaining a friend with a sex scandal was a grave sin. I felt disappointed in myself. In you. In your impatience. The fluidity of our conversations reduced intensely. You noticed, or not. I’m not sure. Another thing I was sure of, was that you were in trouble and for someone who always listens to what people have to say, your mental health was at a serious risk.
The weight of your imperfections rested on my flail shoulders. My brain, skilled in multitasking, opened different tabs at once.
“What will my coursemates say?”
“Am I doing the right thing by being friends with you?”

You did not tell your mother even after the matter crept into the security unit. She would later find out after pretending to borrow your phone for a call. Your mother, you said, was always nosy. She would tell her Market Women Association, and your father would hear it from the a friend whose wife had a mouth that ran like a leaky faucet.

Second semester would resume and your bed space would be empty. Our roommates would ask me where you went and I’d say I don’t know. The only memory left of you would be my fake Hermès slippers which you loved to wear. The group chat would die from silence.

Author’s Biography

Fortune Eleojo Simeon is a sucker for novels and good poetry. She is a member of Hill-Top Creative Arts Foundation, a vibrant community of artists. She won the Benny Wanjohi Prize for Poetry 2025 and was shortlisted for the Akachi Chukwuemeka Prize for Literature. She emerged as the first runner-up for the inaugural edition of the BCD-UTULU prize for Literature. Her works have appeared in various national and international anthologies. They can also be found in Roughcut Press, Poetry
Column NND, Eunoia magazine, Cón-scìò, Eboquills, IHRAF, WRR and elsewhere.