SOAP OPERA – Chapter 5: The Battle of First Drafts
The morning of the first submission deadline arrived like a storm. Riverside University had never felt so alive—or so dangerous. The campus was a maze of whispered strategies, anxious glances, and frantic typing. Every student was on edge. Every step could mean sabotage, betrayal, or triumph.
Johnson Adeyemi woke before dawn, heart hammering in his chest. He stared at his nearly finished draft, pages sprawled across his desk, pens scattered like fallen soldiers. The words he had written the night before felt different now—heavier, sharper, alive with tension. He could hear the chaos outside his hostel room: laughter, arguments, the frantic pace of students preparing.
He swallowed, picked up his pen, and whispered to himself, "No more hiding. Not this time."
Across campus, Raphael moved like a man in a battle suit. His fingers flew across the keyboard, his eyes sharp, calculating. For the first time, he felt pressure—not from the judges, not from the audience—but from someone he hadn't expected: Johnson. The quiet student whose existence had barely registered in the world of Riverside University writing was suddenly a contender. A threat.
Tania, meanwhile, glided through the corridors like a shadow, notebooks clutched to her chest. She was composed, precise, and ruthless, each sentence she wrote calculated to strike at the heart of the competition. Rumors of her story's brilliance had spread like wildfire, causing other students to sweat bullets, second-guessing every plot twist they had planned.
By mid-morning, the campus had transformed into a battlefield. The Arts Faculty hallways were crowded with students pacing, murmuring, whispering. Some shouted at friends, defending characters and storylines. Others scribbled furiously in notebooks, heads bent low like generals planning attacks.
At the Library Annex, chaos reigned supreme. Jola had commandeered a table with sticky notes, colored pens, and diagrams sprawled across the surface. Timileyin hovered nearby, pointing and arguing about pacing and character arcs.
"Your villain doesn't have motivation!" Jola barked.
"Motivation? Your protagonist is flat! You can't tell me you didn't notice!" Timileyin shot back, slamming a notebook down.
Nearby, Praise and Promise whispered feverishly over a laptop screen. Chidi muttered curses, pacing in circles as if the air itself was against him. Isaac hunched over a blank page, muttering formulas and character timelines like a mathematician solving a life-or-death equation. Mary and Martha whispered in perfect sync, their sentences flowing from one notebook to another, a frightening display of coordination and focus.
Johnson found a small corner, attempting to anchor himself amid the chaos. He opened his notebook and stared at the pages. The words trembled, unsure, but he forced himself to write. Every sentence was a battle; every paragraph, a small victory. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he wrote faster and faster, trying to outrun the panic building in the room.
And then it happened.
A rumor, whispered, loud enough to cut through the frenzy:
"Someone saw parts of Raphael's draft leaked online."
The room froze. Eyes darted. Mouths opened. Whispers ricocheted across the Annex. Suspicion, fear, and panic spread faster than wildfire. Friends glanced at each other with mistrust. Alliances faltered. And Johnson, standing at the edge of the storm, realized that the competition had become more than a contest of writing—it had become a test of who could survive the madness.
Raphael's calm composure faltered for a moment, just a flicker, before he slammed his laptop closed and whispered under his breath, "No one can play with me this way."
Tania, ever silent, moved her chair slightly, eyes narrowing. She had sensed the tension shift, and she didn't need to say a word—her presence alone was a warning. Every other student in the Annex could feel it: the war had escalated beyond pages and words.
By afternoon, first drafts were being submitted. The air was thick with anxiety and suspicion. Professors took stacks of papers, their eyes scanning students like generals assessing troops after a brutal campaign. Students waited, trembling, watching each other with wide, fearful eyes. The first step in the battle had ended, but nobody felt relief.
Johnson collapsed into his chair, exhausted but alive with adrenaline. The words on his page weren't perfect—they never were—but they carried fire, defiance, and determination. Outside the Annex, the campus hummed with whispers: speculation, accusations, praise, and doubt.
In a quiet corner, Raphael muttered, "This is far from over." Tania, glancing over a fence at the crowd, smirked slightly. And somewhere in the distance, Mike's loud voice carried through the chaos: "This campus is about to burn!"
Johnson closed his notebook, inhaled deeply, and whispered to himself:
"Not just to be seen… but to survive."
The first battle had ended, but the war of words had only begun.
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