December 23, 2029 | 11:43 AM
"Remember, Mr. Offor, moral courage often matters more than intellectual understanding. The world needs thinkers, but it also needs people willing to act on their convictions."
Chika halted abruptly ...as he is walking to meet up with his brothers.
His hand trembled slightly,his teeth chattering as if he caught cold, the world he knew blurring as every thing sped past him.
The noise of the campus, the high temperature all vanished.
It was like he entered a new dimension, a place where nothing exist, like hovering in the empty void watching how you lived your life.Mr Okafor's word had finally triggered the memories he dreaded most.
"Philosophy is not merely academic exercise. The true test of moral philosophy occurs in the moment of crisis, when you must choose between your principles and your safety. In that moment, who are you truly?"
The question hung in the air like it was accusing him.
This is what Mr Okafor's speech was all about,this is what he is trying to say.
Chika's throat constricted, even in this state, he can still feel his thumbing heart, every beat resounding through the void.
"No!!,No!!,not now," screamed Chika as he held his head acting like he got possessed.
If this is seen by anyone, he did be probably on chains right now.
His vision tunneled, pulling him backward through eighteen months of guilt and shame and sleepless nights, every moment very clear, like it just happened today, down to a single evening that defined everything that came after.
The memory seized him like a gigantic hand pressing down on him.
No !!Not now. Not again !! He tried his final resistance
But it was already too late. The present dissolved, and he was back there, behind Alvan's Boys Hostel, when the world still made sense to him and he still believed he is a good person.
.....
March 15, 2028 | 9:30 PM
Eighteen Months Earlier
The heat did not reduce even after sunset.
Chika walked beside Emeka through the dimly lit pathways between hostels, his shirt already sticking to his back despite the hour.
Around them, campus life continued its familiar rhythm, generators humming, music spiraling out from open windows, the distant sound of a football match being watched by a crowd of students whose cheers echoed across the darkness.
"Thanks for coming with me, man," Emeka said for the third time. His voice carried an edge Chika hadn't heard before. It sounded anxious, maybe, or he is scared of something.
"It's fine," Chika replied, adjusting his glasses with one finger. The frames had slipped down his nose from sweat.
"What's this about anyway? You were pretty vague."
Emeka's jaw tightened, visible even in the poor lighting. He was an average guy in every way, medium height, medium build,and an extremely normal face. But Chika had lived with him for almost two years now as hostel roommates.
He knew Emeka's behavios. The way he checked his phone compulsively when he is nervous, to seek distractions, the habit of cracking his knuckles when he feels stressed, at the very least he knows his signature behaviors.
And right now, he was doing both, checking his phone with the right hand, cracking his left fingers with the support of his jaw.
"There is nothing much acually, just... meeting someone. Trust me it will be a quick thing." Emeka said... letting out a forced smile.
"Probably I should've gone alone, but you know, safety in numbers and all that." He said trying to relax his tense shoulders.
Something about the explanation didn't sit right, but Chika didn't push. They'd been roommates, although not close friends, their relationship existed in that comfortable space of mutual respect without deep emotional investment, they shared space, borrowed phone chargers, complained about difficult lectures, but rarely discussed anything personal.
Maybe if he had asked more questions. Maybe if he had been a better friend.
Maybe !, maybe !, maybe !.
They took the shortcut through Franco pitch.
Everyone knew Franco pitch transformed after dark. During the day, it was just an open football field where students played matches and couples sat on the bleachers studying together.
But at night, the pitch becomes something else entirely. The campus lights barely reached the field's edges, and the surrounding buildings created pockets of deep shadow where anything could hide.
"We don't usually come this way at night," Chika said quietly, his anxiety rising with each step they took deeper into the darkness. The field stretched empty and vast around them, grass rustling in the slight breeze.
"You are right but we have to take the shorter route." Emeka's voice was tight. He checked his phone again. The screen's blue glow illuminated his face for a moment, highlighting the tension in his features.
"We're already late." He added in his panicking tone.
The smell hit Chika first, damp grass, garbage from overflowing bins behind the nearby hostels,and a feeling of dread, overwhelming him.
His instincts screamed at him to turn around, and suggest taking the longer, better-lit path.
He just ignored them, after all what can happen to two grown men?.
They were halfway across when three figures stepped out of the shadows near the hostel's back entrance.
Thump !!, thump !!,
Chika's stomach dropped, he can swear that his heart can serve as the highest bass booster ever made on earth.
The moonlight caught the figures in fragments, a massive silhouette that had to be over six feet tall, a second figure built like an athlete, and a third, smaller one whose face reflected light in a way that suggested he might be having a scar tissue.
They stood side by side blocking the path with deliberate positioning, spreading out enough that running past them would be impossible.
"Emeka." The big one's voice was deep,and authoritative, carrying the kind of casual menace that came from years of not being challenged. "You're late."
Emeka stopped walking. His breathing hitched once before he steadied it, clenching his fist, trying to project confidence, that Chika could feel him not possessing.
"Danladi. The traffic is bad. We came as fast as we could."
We? Chika's mind latched onto the word. This is planned. Emeka knew this meeting was happening. He'd brought me here for what exactly? as... what? Backup? Witness? Insurance?, set up?
His mind was already calculating the infinite worst out comes. Maybe,his organs will be harvested today.
Danladi moved into slightly better light, and Chika got his first clear look at the man who would haunt him in his nightmares for eighteen months...or more than.
He is ugliness given human form.
Not just physically unattractive, though he is certainly that, with his wide, flat face and features that seemed carved rather than shaped, but ugly in the way that came from within.
His dark skin had the kind of shine that suggested both sweat and sun burns.... His bulk was the kind of mass that came from physical labor and violence, muscles built through action rather than gyms.
But it was his eyes that made Chika want to run. They were small, almost piggish, and they evaluated Emeka the way a butcher might evaluate meat.
The nickname suddenly made perfect, terrible sense. The Butcher...
A name widely known in the school, lectures fear him, he have his way of maneuvering around the security and he is the biggest fear of any student, cultists (gang members) and normal youths alike.
He have been expelled a long time ago,but he refused to leave the campus premises, not that the school will care so far he is not disrupting any academic program.
"We?" Danladi's gaze shifted to Chika, and being under that attention felt like standing in front of an oncoming vehicle, the pressure was just too much. "I said alone, Emeka. You didn't follow the instructions well."
"He's just my roommate." Emeka's voice climbed slightly in pitch. "He don't know anything about our business. I just... I thought it will be safer with two of us. You know how this campus is at night."
The tall companion laughed,it sounded creepy. Up close, Chika could see he was seriously muscular, this kind of physique that normally comes from a religious gym dedication.
His arms were bigger than Chika's thighs. He wore a worn football jersey that barely contained his bulk... looking like cartoon muscle men..a typical V body shape.
The third one remained silent. He is short, maybe five-seven, but his face made Chika's already thumping heart, increase the thumping speed.... propelling faster than most rockets.
The left side was heavily scarred, the skin puckered and discolored in fire damage pattern. He will surely turn to children's nightmares if any of them see him.
His right hand held something that gleamed dully in the poor light, a crude, Nigerian-made pistol, all sharp angles and improvised metalwork that looked more likely to explode than fire properly.
But mosquitoes is meat so it was still a gun.
Chika's mouth went dry...he can feel his legs wobbling already.
"Safer?" Danladi stepped closer to Emeka, invading his personal space with practiced intimidation. "You saying I'm not safe? You don't trust me, Emeka?"
"No! No, that's not what I meant. I just "
Emeka was babbling now, his composure already broken. "You know how it is. The school security doesn't patrol this area properly. Thieves, cultists, all kinds of people. So..I thought "
"You brought a witness." Danladi's voice dropped lower, becoming more dangerous.
"This makes me think you don't trust me. It makes me think maybe you planning to report me to someone. School security, or the police, your parents maybe."
"I wouldn't do that! I swear, Danladi, I wouldn't ", Emeka swore at the mention of the hidden parents threat.
"Where's my money?"
The question cut through Emeka's protestations like a blade. The sudden shift in topic left him visibly disoriented, his mouth opening and closing as he tried to process...the new Intel.
"That's... that's why I'm here, isn't it?"
Emeka's voice gained a desperate edge. "You said you had a job for me. You said I could make fifty thousand naira if I helped with a delivery. That's what we agreed on "
"You agreed with Chief." Danladi's smile was worse than his scowl. "Chief told me you owe him. Eighty-five thousand naira, plus interest. You're three weeks late on payment, making it eight hundred and fifty thousand naira.
Emeka's face went pale. Even in the poor lighting, Chika could see the color drain from his friend's cheeks. "I... I paid.
Two weeks ago, I gave the money to your guy. The one who came to the hostel. The tall one with the scar on his jaws"
"You calling me a liar?"
"No! I'm not, I wouldn't " Emeka's hands came up in a placating gesture. "There's been a misunderstanding. I can show you my bank statement. I withdrew the exact amount. I have the receipt "
"You have nothing." The muscular one spoke for the first time, his voice surprisingly feminine for his size. "Nothing but your life. And even that, you're borrowing it from us."
Chika stood frozen three feet behind Emeka, his entire body screaming at him to run. Every instinct he possessed told him this situation was spiraling beyond control.
"This isn't about money. This was never about money. This is about violence finding an excuse to express itself.
He should do something. Say something. Anything at all."
His mouth remained closed.... though
Emeka's eyes found him over his shoulder, a quick, desperate glance that communicated everything." Help me! Please! Do something. "
Don't let this happen...
Chika looked away.
He told himself he is assessing the situation. Looking for options and is trying to come out with the smartest response.
He knows all this is a lie. He is preparing his excuse for running, he is already calculating which direction to flee, which path would take him back to safety fastest.
"Is any of this your business,ehn four eyes?"
Danladi's attention swung to Chika like a spotlight. The man took two steps towards him, his bulk somehow seeming to grow larger in the darkness.
Up close, Chika can percive his, sweat, alcoholic scent.
The scent of a man who didn't care about social niceties because he'd never been forced to care.
Danladi's presence was suffocating. He stood close enough that Chika could see the pores on his skin, the yellow tint to his eyes, the casual cruelty in his expression.
This isn't a man who would be reasoned with. This isn't someone who cared about right or wrong or consequences.
This is someone who hurt people because he could.
"I asked you a question." His warm and foul breath hitting Chika's face, . "Is this your business?"
Chika's brain supplied him with a thousand responses. "Yes, he's my friend. Leave him alone. We can settle this peacefully. I'm calling security. Touch him and I'll scream for help, you think am scared of you"
What came out was: "No.....not my business..am just passing"
The word fell from his mouth like a stone.
"No?" Danladi's smile widened. "Good answer. Smart boy. You understand how things work,you will definitely be a nice successor"
He turned back to Emeka, dismissing Chika as irrelevant. "See? Your friend understands. This is between you and me. It has nothing to do with him."
"Chika " Emeka's voice cracked. The betrayal in his tone was evident "Chika, please " his face writing his please and fear
"Go." Danladi didn't even look at Chika. "Before I change my mind about smart boys, we will find you later"
Chika's legs moved without any conscious command. One step backward,then another.
His body had made the decision his brain couldn't articulate. Survival first, self-preservation. "It's not my fault. I didn't ask for this. I'm not responsible."
"Chika!" Emeka's shout followed him. "Don't go please"..that was to his after image if he had left one.
Chika ran.
His legs pumped mechanically, carrying him away from the scene with increasing speed.
His breath coming in harsh gasps.
His glasses slipped on his nose from sweat and he pushed them up with trembling fingers. The darkness of Franco pitch seemed to reach for him with grasping hands, but he didn't slow down.
Behind him, he heard Danladi's voice, calm and conversational. "Now..... About that money you claim to have paid..."
Then the first hit landed.
The sound was distinctive, meat and bone colliding with awful force. A wet thud that the wind carried across the open space followed immediately by Emeka's sharp cry of pain.
Chika ran faster.
"I'll get help. I'll call security, I'll bring people back. This is tactical,very smart of me. I'm not abandoning him, I'm getting help."
Another sound of fist kissing raw flesh, another cry, this one with a desperate, animal quality that suggested damage beyond simple the punch.
"The security number. What's the security number? Why can't I remember? My phone. Where's my phone?"
"Please!!" Emeka's voice, although distant now,and barely audible... he can still hear him "Please stop!!" I'll get the money I'll ..."
The sound that cut him off was harder. This one guaranteed a serious injury .
Chika's legs carried him up the slope toward the hostel area. "Safety!, light !, people! finally." He would call from his room..and get help..but first he has to reach his room.
Then he will do the responsible thing, he can do anything except going back.
...
9:52 PM
Chika burst through the entrance of his hostel building, startling two students who were hanging out in the common area.
Their conversation died mid-sentence as they stared at him,his wild-eye, sweating profusely,and breathing like he'd run a marathon.
"How far coast clear for you, bro?" ( Are you okay?) one of them asked.
Chika couldn't answer. He climbed the stairs to his room with mechanical urgency, his hands shaking so badly he could barely get his key into the lock.
Inside, the small space he shared with Emeka felt accusatory. Emeka's side of the room, neat, organized, a framed picture of his family from his village, seemed to stare at him with judgment.
"His phone !! He needed his phone.'
It took him three tries to dial the campus security number, his fingers refusing to cooperate. When the line finally connected, a bored voice answered on the fourth ring.
"UNN Security. What's the matter?"
"There's " Chika's voice came out high and strangled. He forced himself to breathe and calm down "Behind Alvan's hostel. Franco pitch area. Someone's being attacked.
Three men. They're ....you need to send people like right now."
"Slow down. What's your name? What's your student ID number?"
"That doesn't matter! Someone's being hurt right now! You need to head there "
"Sir, I need your information for the report. You should know the campus protocol. Now, your name "
Chika hung up.... like he will say his name and receive a thank you beating by this mad people, it's an old news that the Butcher knows some higher ups in the security department.
His hand still trembled as he dropped the phone onto his bed. The security guard's bureaucratic disinterest made perfect sense everyone knew campus security was ineffective, understaffed, underpaid, and generally uninterested in student problems.
They'd show up eventually, maybe, if they feel like it, after filling out forms and discussing whether it was really their jurisdiction.
By then it would be too late.
" I have done what I should do, "Chika told himself. "I called the security, that's all anyone could ask for"
Although the thought calm him down, he knew he is lying.
He sat on his bed, grabbed his earbuds, and plugged them into his phone with fumbling hands, Music. He needed music. Something loud enough to drown out the sounds still echoing in his memory.
Those impacts, the cries and Emeka's voice calling his name.
He queued up a playlist, American rap, the aggressive and bass-heavy and turned the volume up until his ears hurt.
Then he lay back on his bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to pretend he was somewhere else.
Sometime later he wasn't sure how long,he heard, people shouting, the sound of many footsteps, an ambulance siren wailing in the distance, growing closer.
Chika turned the music up louder...
.....
March 16, 2028 | 7:43 AM
Emeka didn't come back to the room that night.
Chika lay awake until dawn, staring at his roommate's empty bed, listening to every sound in the hallway outside. Footsteps, voices, doors opening and closing.
Each sound made his heart race, he is half-expecting Emeka to walk through the door, and half-expecting someone else, Danladi, maybe, police, or security, to come asking questions.
Morning light crept through their window, exposing their small and simple room. Textbooks on the shelf, clothes hanging from hooks. Emeka's laptop sitting closed on his desk. Everything exactly as it had been yesterday, as if nothing really happened.
The knock on his door at 7:43 made him flinch hard enough to hurt his neck.
"Chika? You there?" A voice he vaguely recognized. It's one of Emeka's engineering classmates. "Open up, man. It's about Emeka."
Chika opened the door with dread solidifying in his stomach.
The guy standing there, tall, dark-skinned, wearing an engineering department shirt looked exhausted and worried. "Have you heard?"
"Heard what?"
"Emeka's in the hospital, Medical emergency section. Some guys jumped him last night behind Alvan's hostel.They beat him really bad." The engineering student's voice held genuine concern.
"His family's been called. I know you are you're his roommate, so I came to tell you. I thought you'd want to know."
"Is he..." Chika's throat closed around the question, his face scrunched up in tension.
"Yes he's alive. But he is in a very bad condition. Reports said he might lose his eye. His jaw is broken,two ribs were fractured and the worse, internal bleeding."
The student shook his head. "Who does that to someone? Over what? This campus thugs are getting worse every year."
"Over eighty-five thousand naira that he probably paid already," Chika thought." Over nothing except cruelty finding a place to vent."
Speaking out loud, he asked: "Which hospital?"
"University Medical Center. Room 207 in the emergency wing." The engineering student hesitated, then added: "You were his roommate for two years, right? Are you guys close?"
"Were we?" Chika wondered. "Was I even a good enough friend to call us close?"
"Yeah," he lied. "We are close."
...
March 16 - June 15, 2028
Chika never visited the hospital.
He keeps telling himself different excuses each day. He had exams to study for. The hospital was far from campus. Emeka's family was there and they deserved privacy. Seeing him would be too painful.The doctors said no visitors except immediate family. He wouldn't know what to say.
The truth was simpler and more shameful: he couldn't face what his cowardice had cost.
Paul and Abuchi visited Emeka...his case was already wide spread across the campus, many students visited too.
They brought him fruit and magazines and sat with him when his family couldn't make the long trip from his village.
They never asked Chika why he didn't come. Maybe they understood, they thought he was dealing with guilt in his own way. Maybe they were just good enough friends not to push.
Chika heard updates secondhand. Emeka's jaw was wired shut he has been be eating through a straw for months. His left eye was gone, the socket was too damaged to be saved. Two ribs were cracked, and one had punctured his spleen badly enough that surgery was required. The internal injuries were severe, but the doctors thought he'd recover.
The Nigerian healthcare system thought differently...
On June 15, 2028, two weeks after being discharged from the hospital, Emeka died at home in his village.The internal bleeding they'd missed.
A slow hemorrhage that killed him in his sleep, in his childhood bed, surrounded by family who'd sacrificed everything to send him to university.
The medical report would later cite inadequate post-operative monitoring, insufficient diagnostic equipment, and the generally poor state of rural Nigerian healthcare.
The family couldn't afford the follow-up scans in private hospitals. The public hospital didn't have functioning equipment.
Emeka Okonkwo died because he lived in a country where being poor meant being disposable.
And because Chika Offor ran when it mattered most.
....
June 16, 2028 | 3:17 PM
Emeka's mother came to campus to collect his belongings.
Chika was in the room when she arrived, having spent the morning packing Emeka's things into cardboard boxes with a numb, mechanical efficiency. His clothes, his textbooks,his laptop, the framed photo of his family that now included a dead son.
Mrs. Okonkwo is a small woman, no more than five feet tall, wearing traditional wrapper and headtie. Her eyes were swollen from crying, but she held herself with dignity that made Chika feel smaller than his five-foot-eight frame.
"You're Chika?" she asked quietly. "Emeka's roommate?"
"Yes, ma'am." The words came out barely above a whisper.
She looked at him for a long moment, and Chika had to force himself not to look away.
Whatever she saw in his face made her expression soften from grief into something that might have been pity or understanding.
"My son spoke of you," she said. "In the hospital. When he could still talk, before they wired his jaw. He said I should find you. That I should tell you something."
Chika's chest constricted..."he told his mother?...this is it an finished. "Ma'am, I.. "
"He said: 'Tell Chika it's not his fault. Tell him to live for both of us now. Tell him to be better than I was.'" Mrs. Okonkwo's voice remained steady despite tears running down her cheeks. "Those were his words. He wanted you to know."
The forgiveness hit Chika like a physical blow. His knees almost buckled. Emeka had used his energy, his breath, his limited time speaking before the jaw surgery, to absolve the person who abandoned him...
"I don't..." Chika's voice cracked. "I don't understand. Why would he....after I abandoned him...why?
"My son was kind. Even when the world was cruel to him." Mrs. Okonkwo pulled a folded piece of paper from her purse. "I wrote his words down. I thought you might want them."
She pressed the note into Chika's hand. The paper was thin, the kind torn from a student notebook, and her handwriting was careful, each word formed with deliberate spacing:
Chika,
Emeka's last wish was that I tell you: it's not your fault. He said you did the right thing. He said to live for both of you, and be better than he was.
I don't know what happened that night. But I know my son loved you like a brother. Don't dishonor his memory by wasting your life on guilt.
May God keep you.
Mrs. Adaeze Okonkwo
Chika stared at the note until his vision blurred. His hands shook so badly the paper rustled, his throat closed completely, strangling any words that might have formed he took his time forming.
Mrs. Okonkwo touched his shoulder once, gently. "He forgave you for whatever you think you did wrong. You should forgive yourself."
Then she gathered the boxes of her dead son's belongings and left, carrying eighteen years of life reduced to cardboard and memories.
Chika stood alone in the empty half of the room that used to be Emeka's and cried for the first time since the incident. He cried for his friend, for his cowardice, for the forgiveness he didn't deserve. He cried until his chest hurt and his throat was raw and no more tears would come.
Then he carefully folded Mrs. Okonkwo's note, placed it in his wallet behind his student ID, and carried it every day for the next eighteen months.
The forgiveness never made the guilt better.
If anything, it made everything worse.
....
December 23, 2029 | 11:44 AM
Present Day
Chika !
Chika gasped, his body jerking as if he'd been falling. He had been standing under the sun .Students flowing around him like water around a stone, heading to their next classes or lunch or wherever normal people went when they weren't trapped in memories of their worst moments.
You are zoning out again, said Paul his face flashing with concern. "Are you alright? You went very still."
How long? How long had he been standing there, frozen in the middle of the hallway while eighteen months of guilt crashed over him in what felt like hours but must have been only seconds?
"I'm " Chika's voice came out rough. He cleared his throat. "I'm fine, Paul got the hang of it. Chika has always been like that, so he didn't press further.
He and Abuchi have long seen when Chika walked out of the building, then froze like with his face alternating between guilt and pain. He have to leave his cool spot to go check up on him.
"Whatever burden you're carrying, don't carry it alone. That's what brothers are for." encouraged Paul. That was all. Nothing more, Chika knows what to do already, or maybe only him thought that way.
They made their way towards where Abuchi is waiting for them.
Chika's hand brushed his wallet, feeling the outline of Mrs. Okonkwo's note , It's not your fault. Live for both of you. Be better than he was. Eighteen months he carried it, and still it felt like a burden he hadn't earned.
He moved toward the dusty ground, legs unsteady. Abuchi is waiting , Paul is here the only ones who'd seen him break after Emeka's death.
They never knew the whole truth , how he'd run,and left Emeka behind, and still heard the sounds of that beating in his dreams. Maybe they deserved to know. Maybe they deserved to see the coward he really was.
He checked his watch: 11:44. Thirty-seven seconds until everything ended. But Chika didn't know that, only that Professor Okafor's words had reopened a wound he thinks he have escaped from but never healed.
As he stepped into the harsh December sunlight, guilt clinging to him like the heat, the question appeared in his mind again:
When it matters, who will you be? And deep down, Chika already knew the answer, he is not good enough.