Monday morning. 7:55 AM.
Stan was brushing his teeth when Tobi burst through the bathroom door. Not knocking. Just arriving. Like an emergency that had not been invited.
"Stan," Tobi said.
Stan held up one finger. He was in the middle of brushing. He had a system. Upper left, upper right, lower left, lower right. You do not interrupt the system.
"Stan, I need you to see something."
"After the teeth."
"Now, Stan. It is about the exam."
Stan spat. He rinsed. He dried his mouth with his towel. He walked out.
"Show me," he said.
Tobi held up his phone.
It was a WhatsApp group. The MTH 204 group. Four hundred and seventeen students. Stan was in it but had muted it in September because the energy was too anxious for his taste.
He read the messages.
---
*KingChukwuma: bro did you hear? Stan from Block C submitted his MTH 204 paper after 15 minutes.*
*AdaezePharma: FIFTEEN MINUTES??? That paper was 3 hours???*
*KingChukwuma: guy said "keep the change" to Adebayo and walked out. On his chest.*
*LordOfAccra: I was there I SAW IT. He didn't even look stressed. He was in the front row directly opposite Adebayo and he just got up and gave him the paper like it was a receipt.*
*AdaezePharma: wait did he pass???*
*KingChukwuma: results not out yet but bro answered and walked. In fifteen minutes. Either he is the smartest person on this campus or he is repeating the course.*
*LordOfAccra: it's not repeating. Have you seen that guy? Guys like that don't repeat. They just exist on a different frequency.*
*Chioma_B: He borrowed my pen. He gave it back and said "the ink has been blessed." I used that pen for the rest of the exam. I have never written so well in my life.*
*AdaezePharma: THE INK HAS BEEN BLESSED???*
*FreshPrince_Jos: this man is not human*
*KingChukwuma: Chioma what did you score*
*Chioma_B: I don't want to say but it is the highest I have ever scored in this department*
*AdaezePharma: CHIOMA.*
*Chioma_B: Fine. 91.*
*[Seventeen fire emojis in a row]*
*KingChukwuma: THE PEN WAS BLESSED. STAN BLESSED THE PEN.*
*LordOfAccra: He is a mathematical saint. He sat in the front row to intimidate Adebayo. He answered in fifteen minutes. He blessed a pen. He said "keep the change" to a PhD holder. This man is not playing the same game as us.*
*FreshPrince_Jos: Where does he live? I need to touch his hand before the next exam.*
Stan read all of it without expression.
He scrolled up. There were two hundred and thirty-one messages. All variations of the same story. Building and growing with every new person who entered the conversation, adding detail, adding meaning, adding reverence.
Campus had decided that Stan was a mathematical genius.
Campus was wrong.
Stan had written his name (erased "The Great"), added random x's and a squiggly line with enormous confidence, and then left because he was hungry and bored. He was going to fail the course. He had already accepted this privately and had plans to carry it over to the next semester with the quiet dignity of a man who had made a calculated sacrifice.
He had scored zero marks on nothing. He had blessed nothing. The pen was a regular biscuit pen that Chioma had gotten from a stationery shop near the faculty.
But campus had decided otherwise.
And campus was four hundred and seventeen people who wanted to believe in something.
Stan handed the phone back to Tobi.
"The people," Stan said calmly, walking to pick up his shirt, "have spoken."
Tobi stared at him. "Stan. They think you are a maths genius."
"I know."
"You wrote squiggly lines."
"I am aware."
"You wrote your name and then deleted 'The Great.'"
"Tobi"
"You failed. You definitely failed. Adebayo is going to put your result on that notice board and it will say F and everyone who is currently calling you a mathematical saint will know the truth."
Stan buttoned his polo. He looked in the mirror. He straightened his collar.
"Then," Stan said, "we enjoy the period between now and the notice board."
"That is irresponsible."
"That is timing."
Tobi ate a cracker he had in his pocket. He chewed with the energy of a man who needed something to do with his frustration.
"What about Chioma?" Tobi said. "She is going around telling people her pen was blessed."
"The mind is a powerful thing, Tobi. Chioma believed. She performed. The pen was a vessel for her own potential."
Tobi pointed the cracker at him. "You need to stop. Right now. You need to stop talking."
Stan picked up his keys. "I have class."
"You have a MYTHOLOGY. That is different from class."
The corridor was different that morning.
Stan noticed it in the first three seconds.
Guys who normally gave him a regular nod were giving him the slow nod. The respectful one. The kind you give to someone who has done something you cannot fully explain but fully respect.
Emeka from Room 201, a final year who had never spoken to Stan directly, stopped him near the stairs.
"Oga," Emeka said. "I heard what you did in Adebayo's exam."
"Hmm," Stan said.
"Fifteen minutes. That is not human. That is calculation at a level I cannot reach." Emeka shook his head. "I have been in this school for five years. I have never seen anyone do that to Adebayo."
"Thank you," Stan said. He started walking.
"Wait," Emeka called after him. "My little brother is writing JAMB next year. Can you recommend a reading strategy?"
Stan stopped.
He turned around.
He looked at Emeka.
Here was a fifth-year student, a man who had survived five years of university, asking the man who wrote squiggly lines and left early for academic advice.
"Tell him," Stan said carefully, "to understand the question before he answers it. Most people answer what they think is being asked. Not what is actually being asked."
Emeka absorbed this slowly. His face changed. "That is deep."
"It is what it is," Stan said.
He walked away.
Behind him, Emeka pulled out his phone.
He arrived at the MTH 204 notice board.
Results were up.
A crowd of students was gathered. Some were sighing with relief. Some were standing very still with the expression of people receiving devastating medical news. One guy was on the phone saying "Dad, listen. Dad. Just listen first."
Stan walked to the front. He looked for his name.
He found it.
STANLEY O. — F
Right there. Clean and printed. No ambiguity. No possibility of error. A full, complete, government-certified F.
He looked at it for three seconds.
He walked away from the board.
A first-year student grabbed his arm. "Stan! What did you score?"
Stan did not break his stride. "Results are a reflection of what the system understands. Not of what you know."
The first year stared after him, nodding slowly.
His phone buzzed.
Ada: *F. Impressive. Most people get an F from not studying. You got yours with fifteen minutes of commitment and a motivational speech about ink. That is efficiency.*
Stan: *Are you at the notice board?*
Ada: *I was. I left when the fifth-year asked you about JAMB strategy.*
Stan: *You followed me from the hostel?*
Ada: *I was going to the library. You were walking in the same direction. I don't follow people, Stan. People are just predictable.*
Stan looked at his phone for a moment.
Stan: *Am I predictable?*
Ada: *No. That is the problem.*
He pocketed his phone. He kept walking.
Destiny found him at 10 AM.
Stan was sitting outside the Social Sciences block, eating groundnut he had bought for fifty Naira from a passing hawker. He was eating them one by one, slowly. He had nowhere urgent to be. His only scheduled event of the morning had been checking the notice board and that was complete.
Destiny's footsteps were heavy. Angry footsteps. The kind of walk that has been building since last week.
Stan heard them coming. He did not look up.
"Stan."
"Destiny."
Destiny stood in front of him. His iPhone 14 was in his hand. He looked like a man who had rehearsed a conversation on the way here.
"My result," Destiny said. "Adebayo's exam. Do you know what I scored?"
"I don't keep records of other people's business," Stan said. He ate a groundnut.
"Fifty-one," Destiny said. "Fifty-one out of a hundred. I nearly failed. Do you know why?"
"Groundnut?" Stan offered.
"No I don't want groundnut, Stan!" Destiny's voice cracked slightly. "Because of you! Because you walked out after fifteen minutes! The whole exam hall went into panic. Everyone thought the exam was easy because you finished early. I started rushing. I skipped questions I knew the answers to because I was scared I was moving too slow. I made calculation errors because I was nervous!"
Stan ate another groundnut. He looked at Destiny the way a man looks at moderate rainfall. Not happy about it. Not angry about it. Just noting that it is occurring.
"Destiny," Stan said.
"What."
"Are you telling me that a grown man, in the middle of his own examination, changed his strategy based on what someone else in the room was doing?"
Destiny opened his mouth. He closed it.
"You had three hours," Stan continued. "You had your own paper. You had your own answers. Your result was in your hands and nobody else's. But you looked at me —a man sitting in the front row doing nothing, then walking out and you let that control your performance."
Stan tilted the groundnut bag and let three more fall into his palm.
"The exam did not fail you, Destiny," Stan said. "You failed you. I was just furniture."
Destiny's jaw was tight. "You are always doing this."
"Doing what."
"This thing. Where you make it sound like everything is my fault."
"I am not making anything sound like anything," Stan said. "I asked a question. You heard the answer."
Destiny pointed at him. His finger was close. "You know what your problem is, Stan? Everything is a game to you. Everything is a move. People are just pieces for you to use."
Stan looked at the finger. He looked at Destiny.
He did not respond immediately.
This was because Destiny had accidentally said something true. Not exactly true. Not in the way Destiny meant it. But true enough that it landed somewhere in Stan's chest and sat down without being invited.
He ate the last three groundnuts.
"Go and study for the carry-over exam," Stan said quietly. "It is in November."
"You have a carry-over too!" Destiny said.
"I know," Stan said. He stood up. He folded the empty groundnut bag into a neat small square. He put it in his pocket because he was not the kind of person who dropped litter. Some standards were non-negotiable. "We will be in the same class, Destiny. It will be a reunion."
He walked away.
Destiny stood there and said something loud behind him. Stan did not catch the specific words. The tone was frustrated. The content was probably accurate. He kept walking.
His phone buzzed.
Ada: *That was handled incorrectly.*
Stan stopped.
He looked at the phone.
Stan: *You were watching.*
Ada: *I was eating rice on the bench twelve meters behind you. I was not watching. You were just loud.*
Stan: *What did I handle incorrectly?*
Ada: *You made him feel small. He came to you with a genuine frustration. Whether he was right or wrong, the frustration was real. You turned it back on him without acknowledging that he was actually in some pain about his result. He studied for that exam. You didn't. He almost failed because of a panic you triggered. That is a real thing that happened.*
Stan stood very still in the middle of the path.
Students walked around him. Someone bumped his shoulder. He didn't move.
Stan: *He was wrong though.*
Ada: *Yes. And he was also hurt. Both can be true.*
Stan looked at the phone for a long time.
He looked back toward where Destiny had been standing. Destiny was gone. Just the empty path and a group of girls walking past with bags.
He put the phone in his pocket.
He kept walking.
The coin in his chest was now officially one hundred Naira.
---
At 11 AM, he received a note.
It was slipped under his room door. White paper. Folded once. Neat handwriting, the kind that came from someone who graded things for a living.
*Mr. Stanley O. Report to my office. Room 14, Faculty of Science building. Today. Before 3 PM. Dr. V. Adebayo.*
Stan read the note.
He sat on his bed.
He read it again.
He held it for a while, turning it over in his hands.
Tobi came in from the corridor. He read the expression on Stan's face and read the note over his shoulder.
"Adebayo wants you," Tobi said.
"I can see that."
"What does he want?"
"Probably to discuss my academic trajectory," Stan said.
"Your academic trajectory is an F."
"Every trajectory has to start somewhere, Tobi."
Tobi sat down. He was not laughing. He was giving this the weight it deserved.
"Stan. Dr. Adebayo is not a bouncer. He is not Femi with a router. He is not Destiny with feelings. He is a man with a PhD and a grade book and the specific power to make your life very difficult for the next semester." He looked at Stan carefully. "Are you scared?"
Stan was quiet.
A normal Stan answer would have been: "Fear is a signal. I read signals." Or something like that.
Instead he said: "A little bit."
Tobi looked at him.
"Okay," Tobi said. He said nothing else. Just that one word. Accepting the information without making a performance of it.
They sat for a moment.
"How do you want to play it?" Tobi asked.
"Honestly," Stan said.
Tobi blinked. "Honestly."
"Yes."
"With Adebayo."
"Yes."
Tobi thought about this. "That is a new strategy."
"I know."
"Does it work?"
"I don't know," Stan said. "I have not tried it recently."
Room 14, Faculty of Science.
2:47 PM.
Stan stood at the door for a moment before knocking. He had worn his white long-sleeve shirt. The good one. The one he wore for serious things. He had not put on sunglasses. He had not practiced lines in the mirror.
He knocked.
"Enter!"
He entered.
The office was small. Books everywhere. A desk buried under paper. A small window with a broken handle, letting in a thin line of afternoon light. A fan on the wall that sounded like it was carrying a personal grievance. Behind the desk, Dr. Adebayo.
Dr. Adebayo in his office looked different from Dr. Adebayo in the exam hall. In the hall, he was a force of nature. A wall. He moved through the room like a weather system.
Here, in the small office, he was a tired man in his fifties with reading glasses on top of his head and a red pen in his hand. He had been grading. He had a cup of something on the desk that had stopped steaming a long time ago.
He looked up at Stan.
"Sit down," he said.
Stan sat.
Dr. Adebayo opened a folder. He found a paper inside it. He put it on the desk, facing Stan.
Stan looked at it.
It was his exam script.
His name at the top. Then below his name: the two lines of calculation he had written. X's and Y's arranged in a pattern that meant absolutely nothing. A squiggly line that he had made look confident by pressing hard with the pen.
Below the calculation, in thick red ink: *What is this supposed to mean?*
And in the top right corner: *F. See me.*
Stan looked at the paper. He looked at Dr. Adebayo.
Dr. Adebayo looked back. He did not look angry. He looked like something more interesting than angry. He looked curious.
"You sat in my front row," Adebayo said.
"Yes sir."
"Most students sit at the back so I cannot watch them. You sat in the front directly opposite my desk."
"Yes sir."
"You borrowed a pen from the girl beside you."
"Yes sir."
"You told her the pen had been blessed."
Stan opened his mouth. "I"
"I heard you," Adebayo said. "My hearing is very good. God gave me good hearing as compensation for the thirty years I have spent listening to students explain why they did not study."
Stan closed his mouth.
"You then wrote" Adebayo looked at the script"what appears to be a collection of random algebraic symbols, a shape that I think is supposed to be an integral sign but looks more like a question mark with ambition, and two letters that spell OX." He looked up. "OX, Stanley. You wrote OX."
Stan said nothing.
"You submitted this paper after fifteen minutes," Adebayo continued. "You said 'keep the change' to me. A lecturer. In my own exam. You said 'keep the change.'" He took off his reading glasses. He rubbed his face with one hand. "And then you walked out of my exam hall and apparently told people on this campus that you had answered all the questions."
"I did not say that," Stan said. "The people decided that."
Adebayo looked at him sharply. "What?"
"I did not tell anyone I answered the questions, sir. I walked out. The students drew their own conclusions. I cannot control what four hundred people decide to believe."
Adebayo stared at him. It was a specific stare. The stare of a man reassessing a situation.
"So you are saying," Adebayo said slowly, "that the legend currently circulating in this faculty about you being a mathematical prodigy who submitted a perfect paper in fifteen minutes... you did not create that."
"No sir."
"It created itself."
"Yes sir."
"Using your exit as raw material."
"Yes sir."
Adebayo put his glasses back on. He looked at the paper again. He looked at the OX.
"Why OX?" he asked.
"I do not know, sir," Stan said. "I was stressed."
"You were stressed."
"Yes sir."
"You did not look stressed."
"I was performing composure, sir."
There was a silence in the room. The fan moved. The thin line of afternoon light moved slightly on the floor.
Then Dr. Adebayo made a sound.
It was not a word. It was not a reprimand.
It was a laugh.
A short, unexpected, genuine laugh. The kind that comes out before a man can stop it. It lasted maybe two seconds. Then it stopped. He controlled it. He straightened his face.
But it had happened. Stan had seen it.
"Stanley," Adebayo said.
"Sir."
"You have failed this course."
"I know sir."
"You will write the carryover examination in November."
"Yes sir."
"If you fail the carryover," Adebayo said, "you will repeat the level. Your entire year. Again. With students who are currently in 100 level."
"I understand sir."
"Do you understand Mathematics at all?"
An honest question. Flat and clean. The same kind of question Ada asked. The kind that wanted a real answer not a performance.
Stan thought about it.
"No sir," he said. "I find it genuinely difficult. I understand the logic underneath it. The structure. Why it exists. But the execution, the actual calculation, I lose it there."
Adebayo looked at him. "Then why did you not ask for help? Office hours. Tutorial classes. Study groups."
Stan was quiet.
"Because," Stan said carefully, "I find it very hard to be seen struggling at something. I find it easier to perform indifference than to admit difficulty."
The words came out before he had fully arranged them. They were honest in the messy, unedited way that honest things usually are.
Adebayo took off his glasses again. He set them on the desk. He looked at Stan the way you look at something you did not expect to find where you were searching.
"That," Adebayo said, "is a very self-aware thing to say."
"Thank you sir."
"It is not a compliment." He leaned back in his chair. "It means you know exactly what is stopping you and you are choosing not to remove it. That is more difficult to excuse than simple laziness."
Stan had no response for that. He just sat with it.
"Come to my tutorial session," Adebayo said. "Wednesdays. 4 PM. Room 7. I run a small group for carryover students. Six people. No performance required. Just questions and answers."
Stan looked at him. "Sir, you are offering me tutorial."
"I am offering six carryover students tutorial. You happen to be one of them." He picked up his red pen. "The pen the girl says was blessed. She scored 91."
"Yes sir."
"She was not a strong student before. She has struggled all semester." He made a mark on a paper. "Sometimes people perform well because they believe they will. The belief is the thing. The pen is just a pen."
He looked at Stan.
"You gave her the belief," Adebayo said. "Accidentally or not. She will remember that exam as the moment something shifted for her. That is not nothing, Stanley."
Stan was very still.
"It does not excuse the OX," Adebayo said.
"No sir."
"Wednesday. 4 PM."
"Yes sir."
"Go."
Stan stood. He picked up his bag. He walked to the door.
"Stanley," Adebayo said.
Stan stopped.
"The 'keep the change,'" Adebayo said. His voice was flat. "Never again."
Stan turned around. "Yes sir. I apologize for that sir."
Adebayo waved a hand. He was already looking at another paper.
Stan walked out.
He stood outside the Faculty of Science block.
The afternoon was wide open. The campus was in full Monday motion around him. Bags and noise and the distant sound of someone's speaker playing something with too much bass.
He leaned against the wall.
He had gone into that office with no plan. No strategy. No Override. Just himself, in his good white shirt, with honest words that came out before he could arrange them.
He had walked out with a tutorial slot. An F that was already expected. And something he could not fully name that was sitting in his chest beside the coin.
He pulled out his phone.
He opened Ada's conversation.
He typed: *Adebayo offered me tutorial.*
Ada: *I know. He does it for carryover students who he thinks are worth the effort.*
Stan: *How do you know what Adebayo does with his carryover students?*
Ada: *He tutored my older sister two years ago. She had a carryover in his course. She now practices corporate law and uses the same logical framework he taught her for everything.*
Stan looked at the phone.
Stan: *He said I know what's stopping me and I'm choosing not to remove it.*
Ada: *He's right.*
Stan: *I know.*
Ada: *Are you going to go to the tutorial?*
A pause.
Stan: *Yes.*
Ada: *Good.*
Stan: *Why good?*
Ada: *Because the version of you that walks into Adebayo's tutorial and actually tries is more interesting than the version that writes OX and calls it sophistication.*
Stan read that message three times.
He looked up at the afternoon sky. Blue. Wide. The kind of sky that did not care about exam results or fictional cousins or what campus thought of you.
Stan: *You know about the OX?*
Ada: *The script is on his desk. I was in his office this morning for a different reason. I read upside down out of habit. Occupational hazard of law school.*
Stan: *Ada.*
Ada: *What.*
Stan: *Are you studying me?*
A longer pause this time. Longer than her usual eleven seconds.
Ada: *I am studying everything. You are just one of the more complicated files.*
Stan: *What does the file say so far?*
Ada: *Gifted. Wasted on performance. Capable of more than he shows. Occasionally honest when he is too tired to be impressive.*
Stan read it.
He read it again.
Stan: *That is the most precise thing anyone has said about me.*
Ada: *I know. That is why I said it.*
Stan: *Does the file have a conclusion?*
Ada: *Files don't have conclusions until they are closed.*
Stan: *Who closes it?*
Ada: *You do. Obviously.*
Stan put the phone in his pocket.
He pushed off the wall. He started walking toward the hostel.
The sun was going down slowly, turning the campus a color between orange and gold. The buildings caught the light and held it.
He passed the bench where he and Amaka had eaten rice from the cooler last week.
He passed the junction where he had once described a suya stand as an indigenous charcoal experience.
He passed the gate where he had first seen Amaka by the fruit seller and peeled an orange with dangerous focus.
All of it was the same campus. All of it was also somehow different from this afternoon, in this particular orange light, after an exam he failed and an office he survived and a conversation he could not finish reading without stopping to think.
Tobi was in the room when he arrived.
He was eating bread and Blue Band margarine on the plastic chair. He had a Fanta balanced on the window ledge. He looked up.
"How was Adebayo?" he asked.
"Fine," Stan said.
"Did he yell?"
"No."
"Did he threaten you?"
"No. He offered me tutorial."
Tobi stopped chewing. "Tutorial?"
"Wednesday. 4 PM. Room 7."
Tobi chewed slowly. Thinking. Reassembling his understanding of the situation.
"Are you going?" Tobi asked.
"Yes," Stan said.
Tobi absorbed this. He looked at his bread. He looked at Stan.
"Who are you," Tobi said quietly, "and what have you done with Stan?"
Stan took off his good white shirt. He hung it carefully on the rail. He changed into a plain black t-shirt. He sat on his bed.
"Tobi," he said.
"What."
"Destiny. His fifty-one."
Tobi looked up. "What about it."
"He came to me this morning angry about it."
"I heard. The whole corridor heard."
"I handled it badly."
Tobi was very still. "You are saying you handled something badly."
"I made him feel small. He was already in pain about the result. I turned it back on him instead of acknowledging it." Stan looked at the floor. "Ada said so. And she was right."
Tobi put down his bread. Gently. With the care of a man putting down something fragile.
"Stan," Tobi said. "You have said 'I don't know' twice in two days. You have gone to Adebayo's office and come back looking like a person. You have admitted handling something badly." He paused. "Are you sick?"
"I am not sick."
"Are you sure?"
"I am sure, Tobi."
"Should I check you for fever?"
"Tobi"
"Because the Stan I know does not say he handled things badly. The Stan I know turns everything into a mission report and writes 'Mission Status: Legendary' in his head and goes to sleep." He was staring at Stan with genuine concern. "This Stan is sitting on his bed looking like he is doing sums in his head."
"I am thinking," Stan said.
"About what?"
"About the difference," Stan said slowly, "between being interesting and being good."
Tobi blinked.
"Ada said that," Stan said. "She said interesting and good are different things."
"And?"
"And I have spent two years being very, very interesting." Stan lay back on his bed. "I do not know what I have spent on being good."
The room was quiet.
Outside, the campus was moving into evening. Generators starting. The smell of cooking coming from somewhere. Voices winding down from daytime noise into the lower register of night.
Tobi picked up his bread again. He ate slowly. He was thinking, in the Tobi way, which was careful and quiet and without announcement.
"Can I say something?" Tobi said.
"Yes."
"I have watched you run three girls at once. I have watched you trick a bouncer and a router owner and a lecturer. I have watched you stand in a rainstorm and eat suya with fifty Naira dignity and defeat a Corolla with vocabulary." He took a bite of bread. "And I have never, not once, worried that you would be okay. Because you always figure it out."
"Yes," Stan said.
"But," Tobi continued, "I have sometimes wondered if the person doing the figuring out was having a good time. Or just a successful time."
Stan looked at the ceiling.
"Those are different things too," he said.
"Yes," Tobi said. "They are."
The fan clicked.
Tobi's Fanta was sweating a ring onto the window ledge.
"She is a different kind of trouble, this Ada," Tobi said.
"Yes."
"She is not going to fall for the orange trick."
"No."
"Or the suya philosophy."
"No."
"Or the fictional cousin."
"Definitely not."
"What is she going to fall for?" Tobi asked.
Stan was quiet for a moment.
"I don't know yet," he said.
Tobi ate the last of his bread.
"Hmm," he said.
Stan closed his eyes.
The night settled around the room. Comfortable and known. The way rooms feel when nothing is happening and that is exactly right.
His phone buzzed twice.
Amaka: *Good night Stan. I made rice again. No burning this time. Progress 🙏🏾*
Simi: *I keep thinking about what you said at the party about the best moments living in memory. You are so right. Goodnight Stan-quaman 🌊*
Stan read them both.
He typed back to Amaka: *Progress is just patience with results. Goodnight.*
He typed back to Simi: *The ocean remembers everything. Sleep well.*
He put the phone on his chest.
He looked at Ada's conversation. He did not type anything.
He just left it open.
Like an honest question he was not yet ready to answer.
Upstairs, Tobi turned off the light.
Darkness. Fan clicking. The usual sounds of the corridor settling.
"Stan," Tobi said from the top bunk.
"What."
"Wednesday tutorial."
"What about it."
"I am coming with you."
Stan opened one eye. "You passed the exam, Tobi."
"I know. But you are going to a room full of people who are struggling and trying to be honest about it. You might need moral support. And also" a pause "Adebayo's tutorials are apparently very good. My course mate who attended last year said his logical thinking changed completely."
Stan closed his eye again.
"You just want free tutorial from a PhD holder," Stan said.
"Yes," Tobi said simply. "And I am not ashamed of that. It is called resource optimization."
Stan almost smiled.
"Come then," Stan said. "4 PM. Wednesday."
"Good."
Silence.
"Stan," Tobi said.
"What now, Tobi."
"The fictional cousin."
Stan sighed. "What about her."
"What did she smell today? You said you were scheduling her recovery."
"I haven't decided yet. Something meaningful."
"How about egusi soup? Very cultural. Very emotional. The kind of smell that connects a person to home."
Stan was quiet for a moment.
"That," Stan said, "is genuinely good."
"I have my moments," Tobi said.
"Tell no one."
"Tell no one," Tobi confirmed.
The room settled into the breathing rhythm of almost-sleep. Two young men in a small room with bunk beds and a clicking fan and more going on inside their heads than the room had any idea of.
Stan stared at the dark ceiling.
He thought about OX.
He thought about Adebayo's laugh. The two-second, controlled, genuine one.
He thought about Ada: *Capable of more than he shows.*
He thought about Destiny's pointing finger and the thing behind it that he had not acknowledged.
He thought about Amaka's rice with no burning. Progress. Patience with results.
He thought about Simi in the yellow dress asking if it was real or performance.
He closed his eyes.
He did not write a mission status in his head tonight.
For the first time in the series, there was no status to report.
Just a twenty-year-old boy on a bottom bunk, in a university in Nigeria, quietly becoming aware that the most complicated person he had ever encountered was not Ada.
It was himself.