The tea had gone lukewarm before I noticed. I had been standing at the balcony too long—cup hanging loose in one hand, as I watched the morning return after the night’s rain. The streets below still held that post-rainfall hush. The air felt scrubbed and faintly cool. Gutters ran silver and rooftops caught the early light as the sun rose again. Behind my apartment, the compound of the boarding school was alive again. 

On the first morning back, cars filed slowly through the gate. Parents stepped out with a mix of determination and tenderness, unloading things from their car trunks. Students in fresh uniforms crossed the field in white so bright it pressed against the eye. Boys dragged metal boxes behind them, the scrape and roll of wheels rising faintly above the morning traffic. One stopped to adjust his school bag, socks perfectly pulled up, sandals catching the low light.

The smell came next.

The smell of a mother’s attention folded into fabric, of ironed pride, of a life packed carefully into a metal box. My body knew the memory before my mind did: a tightening behind the sternum, a sudden stillness in the hands. Across the field, a parent called a name. Nothing particular about it. Just a common name. But the way it carried through the open air—certain and unhurried, the way a name is called when you believe someone will always come—caught somewhere deep inside me, and held.

When I think of my early school days, it feels like moving between worlds. Those days were as vivid as a polaroid shot, carrying a loss and longing that lived alongside the quiet realization of who I was.

I was ten years old when I left home for boarding school. It was my own choice. My mother had told me I could attend any school I wanted, even a private one, but curiosity pulled me toward Nigerian Navy Secondary School, Abeokuta (NNSSABK). I carried a quiet hope that walking through those gates would deepen my connection to my father’s world as a Naval officer. The school carried real weight in our barracks, where half my friends’ older brothers had already gone before me, returning home each holiday a little more certain of themselves. 

My mother packed my metal box with care. She packed provisions and toiletries, folding my fresh white singlets and underwear. The smell of starch clung to them like freshly ironed pride. I carried that box into NNSSABK, with wide eyes and no idea what was waiting for me.

My first day in Junior Secondary School One (JSS 1) didn't arrive with any of that ceremony from my balcony as I had expected. I resumed almost three weeks into the term, on a hot Wednesday afternoon. The sun scorched my freshly shaved head while I waited outside the administrative block for my parents to finish the paperwork that would make me a student. By the time I was released into my first class, the other boys had already found their rhythms—their cliques, their routines, the unspoken map of who answered to whom. I sat through lessons until the lunch bell rang, then doubled back to the administrative building instead of heading to the galley hall.

My parents were still there.

That was where I met Senior Mitchell.

I had known him my whole life under a different name—our families were close, nearly kin, the kind of friendship that outlives the people who started it. But standing there in his crisp uniform, prefect's badge catching the light—he was someone else entirely. Before my mother left, she pulled him aside and, in the careful voice she used for things that mattered, asked him to always look after me. I didn't understand yet what that meant. I only understood that something in my chest loosened.

Mitchell took the assignment seriously. After lunch, he walked me to my hostel and secured me a room, a bunk by the window and he gave me a locker with a lock that actually worked. Then he pulled me along to his next duty, sports, where I watched him direct a line of boys with an ease that surprised me. It was the first time I saw him hold authority over other people and the first time I understood that proximity to that authority could mean safety instead of fear. 

Beyond his reach, though, I recognize how rare that was. In a school built entirely on hierarchy—where every bond between a senior and a junior came stitched with expectation, or threat. The school stood like a fortress. Grey building blocks rose with cold edges. The air smelled of disinfectant and damp earth. The compound was a maze of strict geometry: everything moved in straight lines. Straight backs. Straight faces. Straight beds. Meals came square and measured. Even the silence felt disciplined. There was a rhythm to the place, and I didn't know it yet. I kept missing the beat.

The seniors noticed at once. They sensed confusion the way dogs sense fear. In my first week, I learned that “junior” was not just a title. It was a sentence. Orders came sharp and fast. “Come here.” “Run there.” “Carry this.” Each command carried risk. Too slow meant punishment. Too eager meant annoyance. I learned to speak in a careful tone. Not weak. Not bold. Just enough to pass unnoticed.

And yet, a few weeks into JSS 1, in a boys only boarding school, something unexpected happened. I developed my first crush.

Life as a fresher came with a brief, unspoken mercy: for the first week, sometimes two, you were exempt from the worst of it—untested, still finding your bearings. But everyone understood the mercy had an expiration date. Once it ran out, you belonged fully to the hierarchy, the way every junior before you had. Even in that grace period, I could feel the countdown ticking somewhere behind the relief. Break time made the threat concrete. The Mamingo, a small shop that sold snacks and boarding supplies, turned into a battlefield the moment the bell rang. Seniors swarmed it, thick as bees around a hive, dispatching juniors on errands with instructions and no money: the unspoken rule was that a junior used his own money to finish the job. For now, none of that reached me. So I stayed back in class, head on my desk, stealing sleep from exhaustion, half-aware that the reprieve was borrowed time.

One afternoon during break, my head laid on my desk. I was already asleep when chaos hit. Desks slammed. Wood screamed against wood. I lifted my head just in time to see a boy jump onto my desk and shout through the window. Sunlight flashed off his polished brown sandals. His white socks gleamed. His uniform was spotless, almost glowing. He was Adeola.

Senior Adeola. The social prefect.

He was tall, lean, and poised. He carried himself like someone who knew exactly who he was. His face looked composed of warm brown light. I stared too long. My breath caught in my lungs. I didn’t know what I was feeling yet. Only that something inside me shifted. From that day, his image stayed. Not as a fantasy, but as a presence. I wanted more than his attention. I wanted to know him.

I needed a way to be closer. So I turned to Mitchell, the sports prefect, who it turned out, played basketball with Adeola most Saturdays. I begged to tag along to the court, unwilling to miss a single moment. On the court, Adeola moved with ease. Controlled. Fluid. Every step fed my quiet devotion. I watched from the sidelines, clapping too hard, smiling too much.

After the game, Mitchell spoke with him while I followed behind like a shadow. Mitchell introduced me as his cousin. Adeola smiled. His teeth were bright. When he shook my hand, his palm was warm and damp with sweat. The contact sent a tremor through me. My chest thudded like it wanted out of my body. I feared it would speak for me, but I said nothing.

Adeola felt unreal. He was gentle in a place that prized toughness. He didn’t shout. He didn't bully. He never used his seniority as a weapon. His calm was unsettling. It cut through the noise more sharply than cruelty ever could. He spoke softly. He moved with intention. When he smiled, it softened the room. Around him, even the hierarchy seemed to dissipate.

I heard the hostel whispers. I knew what was allowed and what was not. Still, my feelings grew quietly. In glances. In conversations. Sometimes Adeola asked for me to walk beside him during routines. Heat bloomed in my chest. I imagined another world. One without hiding. 

One evening during class prep, he asked me to sit beside him. I didn’t understand why my chest tightened. My words disappeared. I only knew I felt safe. Safe enough to breathe. Safe enough to rest my guard, just a little. I caught myself staring at the line of his jaw. The curve of his lips. I watched him more than my books. When our eyes met, I felt seen in a way that frightened me. My heart changed around him. It did not race with fear, but slowed with wonder. In a school designed to harden boys, Adeola felt like mercy.

In my final weeks of JSS 1 before my promotion to JSS 2, Adeola graduated.

The announcement came without ceremony for me. Just another name read during assembly. Another senior preparing for the world beyond the gates. I told myself it was ordinary. That seniors left every year. That nothing in this school paused for anyone.

I watched him differently in those final weeks. On the basketball court, I memorised the way he moved—controlled, unhurried, certain of his space. I noticed how he wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his wrist. How he laughed, head slightly tilted, never loud. I did not know I was collecting these details. I only knew I was paying attention.

Then the time came when Adeola was to graduate. He shook my hand one last time. His grip was firm and brief. “Take care,” he said, very simple and casual. As though we weren’t standing at the edge of something. I nodded. My throat tightened around words I did not yet have language for.

Unlike with Adeola, I hadn’t prepared for Mitchell’s leaving. I hadn’t memorised the angle of his wrist, the brief brightness of his smile, the way his last gestures looked on the court. Mitchell was practical where Adeola had been graceful—a school father first, a protector, the one who called me “his cousin” and meant it as a door held open. What I did not understand until he was gone was how much of my movement through the school had depended on that door. Not on tenderness, but on the borrowed fact of being his.

After Adeola and Mitchell left, the school felt harsher in their absence, with its routines more unforgiving and relentless. The corridors felt longer. The hierarchy resumed its full weight. The small shield I had borrowed dissolved. There would be no quiet presence to soften a room. No example of a different kind of masculinity to steady me. If I was going to survive here, I would have to construct my own.

That was the season I began to toughen up.

By JSS 2, my second year at the school, the school's logic had started to make a different kind of sense—the sense of the body learning a terrain. The way you learn a city under curfew: not from a map, but from erring quietly, from watching which corners invited trouble and which brief silences meant safety was still possible. I memorised the paths between blocks. I learned which offices offered sanctuary and which faces to read before speaking. Survival had a geography. I studied it the way I should have been studying my textbooks—with attention, with urgency, with the knowledge that getting it wrong had consequences I could not afford.

Routine became my shelter. I woke before muster broke the morning calm, swept the lawn before the morning galley, and polished corridors until they shone like wet stone. Bathing demanded the same care. The open slabs of concrete offered no privacy—only bodies, noise, and scrutiny. I kept my eyes down and my movements economical. Every gesture mattered: how long I stood beneath the tap, how I turned, how I walked back. Neutral. Unremarkable. Just another boy washing. On Saturdays, I scrubbed latrines while the sharp scent of Izal burned my nose. Two hierarchies ran the school. The officers held the official one with rank, offices, and control over the school. The seniors held the other, just as absolute, though it was written nowhere and enforced everywhere. Standing at attention for both, I learned how closely the two came to mirror each other. To the Naval officers, it looked like diligence. To me, it was camouflage. 

Night followed different rules. The hostel never truly slept—slippers scraped, buckets knocked, whispers travelled bunk to bunk. I learned to rest lightly with one ear tuned to movement. When a voice cut through the dark—“Junior, come here”—stillness became my shield. I folded my net tight, faced the wall, and breathed slowly while torchlight passed over the beds. Inside, my mind was less orderly. Thoughts arrived uninvited. I did not fight them; I disciplined their expression with hymns hummed under my breath and scriptures recited like arithmetic. Silence was not shame. It was a strategy. The world could weaponise differences. I chose concealment.

Still, my strategies did not always hold.

In JSS 3, a senior found me standing near the water tanker after dinner. He said I was “forming big boy.” The phrase drew attention the way blood draws flies. I had only lingered a moment too long. While laughing, maybe. Standing with my weight tilted to one hip. I cannot remember exactly. Only that it was enough. I was dragged to the quadrangle and ordered to kneel. Buckets of water were placed in my outstretched hands. The metal handles bit into my palms. The sun had dipped, but the compound still held its heat. Sweat traced slow lines down my temples. Boys passed in clusters. Some slowed, most did not. Eyes slid away quickly, as if contact might implicate them. No one spoke. My arms burned. My shoulders trembled. The water shifted with every shake, threatening to spill. I fixed my eyes on the ground and kept my spine straight. It was not the weight that frightened me. It was the stillness. The sense of being watched for something more than disobedience. As though they were measuring the way I held myself. 

Exposure has a temperature that crawls.

As my arms began to fail, the feeling became strangely familiar. Not the pain itself, but the exposure. The sense of being watched for evidence of something unnamed. Kneeling in the quadrangle, I found myself remembering another evening, another room full of boys, another moment when silence revealed more than words. The memory rose before I could stop it.

One evening after class prep, the hostel was thick with heat. Trunks banged open. The ceiling fan turned lazily, clicking at each rotation. The sky outside the louvre windows bruised into purple. Someone had smuggled groundnuts; the dry crack of shells travelled from bunk to bunk.

Kunle stood at the foot of his bed, folding his uniform with careful precision, pressing each sleeve flat with his palm.

“Why you dey bend your waist like that?” a voice called from the upper bunk.

A few boys laughed. The sound bounced off the zinc roof. Kunle did not look up. He adjusted the collar again. Another boy slid down and landed beside him.

“Talk now,” he said, tapping his chin.

“Leave me,” Kunle answered.

The boy turned to the others, grinning. “Hear the voice.”

“Say it again,” someone urged.

“Leave me,” he repeated, softer.

They stretched the softness until it no longer belonged to him, until it became a performance. Then the word came, thrown from the back like a stone. “Faggot.” It hung in the air for half a second before others picked it up. “Faggot.” “Faggot.” A slipper struck the metal frame of his bed with a sharp clang. Laughter swelled—eager, relieved that it was him and not them. One boy swayed his hips in cruel imitation. Another clapped slowly. Kunle’s hands never left the shirt. The clean lines he had made blurred beneath his grip. His ears reddened, then his neck. He slid the shirt into his locker and closed it gently, as though protecting something breakable. I sat on my bunk, spine rigid, palms pressed flat against my thighs. Every laugh scraped against my skin. For a fleeting second, I felt the room tilt. It would not take much. Not a confession. Not a touch. Just a posture misread. A voice unguarded. A tenderness held one second too long. The room chose its side. Silence chose its side. I did not move, but I began to measure myself. 

The buckets trembled in my hands. Back in the quadrangle, my shoulders shook visibly now. A few boys watched from the corridor shadows, their faces unreadable. I understood then what I had only sensed before: pain fades, but spectacle lingers. When I was finally dismissed, my arms dropped to my sides like borrowed limbs. My pride felt thinner than my shadow stretching across the ground. I walked back to the hostel without haste, head level and steps even. That night, under my mosquito net, I lay awake adjusting invisible things—my voice, my posture, the looseness of my wrists when I walked. I made myself a promise: I would never be caught unguarded again. Never give them a still frame to study.

Discipline became more than drills. I flattened my voice, kept my smile brief and my laughter surface-level. I held my gaze steady even when I wanted to look away and laughed at jokes that never reached my chest. In public, I became a careful outline of myself—solid enough to belong. The effort lived in my jaw, my shoulders, the precise management of where my eyes landed in a room. Some nights, lying on my bunk, I felt the exhaustion like a bruise that isn't sharp, just present, always there when pressed. But steadiness kept me unremarkable, and unremarkable, in that place, was the closest thing to safety.

By SS1 (Senior Secondary School 1), the burden shifted. We became the engine of the school. On Fridays, we cut grasses taller than ourselves. The sun pressed hard. Shirts stuck to our backs. Blisters bloomed on our palms. We cleared gutters. Scrubbed floors. Hauled benches across the compound. Saturdays were for washing hostel floors and the large black tanks behind the dining hall. The work never ended. Complaining only invited punishment. So we moved like machines—steady and silent. Endurance settled into the body—bone-deep. I carried it even when my body begged me to stop.

Yet not every day was survival. Some mornings, light fell softly across the parade ground, turning cracked earth into gold. Some evenings, the breeze moved through the trees, and loosened the school’s grip on the atmosphere. Laughter drifted from the hostel, brief and human. Those moments never lasted long, but perhaps that was why they mattered. They reminded me that life could be more than endurance.

By SS2, I could read the air before anything happened. I was fifteen years old. One parade morning felt wrong. The heat hung heavy. We stood in lines of three under the sun. Sweat gathered. An officer stepped forward, gripping a senior by the arm. His voice cracked through the field.

"If this boy has ever touched you inappropriately," he said, "or someone you know, step out."

No one moved at first. Then one boy stepped forward. Then another. The line opened slowly, like a wound. Faces pale. Heads bowed. The quiet that followed filled the entire field. The rumours we had whispered in the hostel were standing now in full daylight, named and exposed.

The senior was dragged away before final exams, wearing a half-ironed uniform. Someone's son. Someone who had eaten in the same dining hall as the rest of us, slept under the same zinc roof, stood in the same formations. Around me, boys shifted. Eyes fixed forward. Each of us held the same thought where no one could see it.

It could have been anyone.

I stood very still. Not from innocence, but from practice.

That evening I went through my routines with unusual precision. Bath. Food. Class activities. Roll call. Lights-out. I moved through each one as though the sequence itself were proof of something. 

I did not stop feeling what I felt. I had never been able to do that. What I did was build a narrower corridor for it. I controlled what showed. Sometimes it revealed itself in small moments. Someone would laugh in a way that reminded me of Adeola, and I would feel my chest tighten before I forced my attention elsewhere. On the basketball court, my eyes still drifted to the place where he used to stand. Sometimes a tall senior would pass in the distance and, for a second, my heart would lift before reason caught up. Each time, I folded the feeling away as quickly as it appeared.

I planned exits before I entered a room. I chose silence before silence could be forced on me. I called it caution. Some days it felt like wisdom. Other days it felt like a slow disappearance. I told myself there was no difference.

The school still had one more year of me, and I was still deciding what it would cost.

SS3 arrived and changed the terms. The move from Junior Secondary to Senior Secondary brought more than harder classes. It came with status, visibility, and responsibility. The boys who had once seemed impossibly powerful were gone, and we had become the most senior students others looked to—and sometimes feared.

Leadership cracked my defenses. Responsibility pressed in. Between classes, prefect duties, and leading the Protestant fellowship, my days blurred into expectation. 

One Friday afternoon, I walked through SS2 classrooms, calling out boys who had skipped fellowship. Part of me enjoyed it more than I liked to admit. Not the authority itself, but the feeling of having survived long enough to be useful. Years earlier, I had moved through these corridors trying not to be noticed. Now I carried responsibilities that mattered. 

The classrooms smelled of dust and marker ink. At the back of one classroom, I saw an SS2 student crouched beneath a desk. Half-hidden. When I called him out, he rose slowly. His eyes were dull with exhaustion.

"What's your name?"

"Dozie," he answered. Soft. Apologetic.

I saw myself in that tiredness. A fatigue no punishment could cure. I said nothing more. I told him to join the others. He nodded and walked into the corridor light. 

The school hostels bore the names of former Chiefs of Naval Staff—Aikhomu, Nyako, Koshoni, Omatshola. Their names sat above the entrances in faded white paint, like relics from a history we only half understood. Each hostel housed four divisions, named with Roman alphabets. It looked orderly. In truth, it rarely was. I lived in Koshoni Hostel, among SS2 and SS3 boys, sharing a narrow cabin with the hostel captain. I led the Juliet Division. Every night after prep, I took roll-calls—calling names into the dark, counting boys the way soldiers are counted after battle, making sure none had vanished.

That evening, as I moved through the SS2 names, my eyes found Dozie.

He stood at the back, half-hidden behind taller bodies. He did not move. He did not speak. He looked like someone trying to disappear without being noticed. For a brief moment, the noise around me thinned. He stood there, balanced between shadow and light. A secret trying not to breathe.

Dozie had a way of disarming me without trying. A quiet gentleness. A warmth that slipped past the vigilance I carried everywhere. Around him, I found myself relaxing in ways I rarely allowed. I never named what I felt. Not then. I only began to look for reasons to be near him, with small chores, invented errands. At first, it was practical. Fetch water. Clean my cabin. Deliver messages between hostels. But somewhere between spilled buckets and shared laughter, the space between us shrank.

We started talking. Really talking.

He teased my seriousness.

“Senior Jeffrey, try dey smile small.”

“Your straight face dey fear person,” he’d say, grinning.

I teased him back. Told him he never stayed on topic. Soon, the sound of our voices replaced the scrape of chores. The errands stopped being urgent. They became excuses. Before long, we were just two boys sharing time in a place that punished gentleness. Our friendship grew quietly, in the gaps no one watched.

One night, after lights-out, I saw a prefect punishing Dozie. He had missed a school activity. Tears ran down his face under the moonlight. I stepped in without thinking. I begged the prefect to let him go. When it was over, I sat beside Dozie. I whispered, “Sorry, you hear?” He nodded and wiped his face with his sleeve. That was all.

From then on, separation felt wrong. Even though I was a class ahead of him, we found reasons to cross paths. I looked for him even when there was no task to justify it. He waited for me too. By the corridor. Near the mamingo. Sometimes I would find a bucket of water outside my cabin before I remembered asking for one. Other days, a freshly washed uniform would appear ironed and folded neatly on my bed. These were ordinary exchanges in a boarding school. I hardly thought about them then. We shared everything the school demanded of us. Drills. Siesta. Galley lines. Night prep. We moved like rivers converging into a single current.  We laughed in low voices. Careful not to draw eyes. When he smiled, the hostel noise softened until only our breathing remained. I felt lighter with him. He seemed steadier with me. Without saying it, we became a refuge for each other.

One afternoon, after lectures, a classmate confronted me.

“You stole Dozie from me,” he snapped. “Since you started using him, he no longer has time for me.”

I ignored him. But his words followed me into the hostel, echoing in the corridors. It would have been easier to let it end than to keep defending my relationship with Dozie, which wasn’t anyone’s place to question. I decided to end it.

I called Dozie from the laundry and made him stand between us.

“Who would you rather wash for?” I asked. “Okeke or me?”

He didn’t hesitate. He chose me. And that settled it. My prefect’s badge outweighed anything Okeke could claim as an ordinary SS3 boy, and without realizing it, somewhere in me had gotten used to having that power. The boy I once was—powerless, overlooked—felt like a distant memory. That alone meant the hierarchy I once looked up at now counted me among its ranks.

Dozie’s loyalty showed in small, steady ways. My uniforms stayed crisp. My sandals shone. My bath water came before I asked. Sometimes my food arrived unprompted. On heavy duty days, he copied my notes in neat, careful handwriting. He spoke devotion without words. Even when I scolded him, his eyes held no anger. Only patience. In return, I shielded him. From seniors. From Naval officers. From sudden tempers. I was his cover. Together, we moved through the school bound by an unspoken pact.

By the third term, things shifted.

Dozie was transferred to live in Omatshola hostel—metres away from Koshoni hostel. The distance unsettled me. A dull restlessness followed me through my days. Final exams were close. University preparation swallowed my time. Duty pulled us apart. Still, we refused to loosen our grip. We met when we could. Brief visits. Stolen minutes. What we shared stayed steady. By then, I had grown into feelings that were harder to dismiss. What had once been a vague ache of admiration now arrived with greater clarity and greater risk. I found myself carrying Dozie through my days in ways that friendship alone did not quite explain.

One night stays with me. Looking back now, I understand why. At the time, it felt like an ordinary evening. It was only later that I realised how much of my life had gathered inside it.

We talked long after prep. The compound had quieted into its familiar hush. When it was time to leave, the thought of walking back alone must have shown on my face. Dozie tilted his head and said, almost casually, “I’ll walk you to your hostel.”

The paths were quiet. Moonlight washed the buildings in silver. Crickets stitched the silence together. For once, we did not lower our voices or scan the corners. The ease of it made my chest feel fragile.

When we reached Koshoni, the hostel stood still. Lights-out had sealed the doors. Nets hung like pale cocoons behind the windows. We lingered by the steps, neither of us ready to part.

In the pale glow, his face gentled. I noticed the calm strength in his shoulders. The quiet patience in his eyes. The way he never flinched when I looked at him too long. Something gathered inside me—tender, insistent. The question rose before I could measure it.

“Can I hug you?” 

The words hung between us.

Immediately, heat climbed my neck. I thought of Kunle. Of the word that had ricocheted across metal bunks. I thought of the parade ground. Of lines opening like wounds. I thought of how quickly a body could become evidence. For a second, I imagined him stepping back. Laughing. Pretending not to understand. He didn’t. He studied my face as if the question were ordinary. Then he smiled, open, and unafraid.

“Of course, Senior Jeffrey,” he said softly. “You’re my guy na.”

Somewhere behind us, a door squeaked. A faint scrape of wood. We both stilled until the sound faded. He did not move away. He spread his arms, and I moved into them. His hold was solid and warm, against the night air his heartbeat was steady and reassuring, like a small, sure rudder. My body responded to the offer with a sincere and unguarded shiver. The world had narrowed to breath, warmth, and the unspoken approval of being held. For the first time at that school, I was not performing, not calculating, not bracing. I was breathing.

Later, under my mosquito net, I replayed it all—retracing the path to that night. The first meeting, the small acts of care, the countless reasons we found to remain in each other's orbit. His warmth. His laughter. The quiet innocence of it. And the danger of what could be. My heart rested on something deeper than infatuation. With Dozie, I had more than friendship. He anchored me. And yet, an ache stirred. I would be leaving. The thought fluttered like a torn page in the wind.

Then came my graduation and passing-out parade.

I marched across the field beneath a sun that showed no mercy. The drums rolled. Boots struck earth in practiced rhythm. Applause rose and fell like a distant tide. I kept my shoulders squared, my gaze forward. Discipline one last time. When it ended, the formation dissolved into families and noise. I found Dozie at the edge of the field.

He stood slightly apart from the others, as if unsure whether he was allowed closer. Sweat traced his temples. His smile was proud, but his eyes held something else—something held back.

For a moment, we did not speak.

I reached for his hand before I could reconsider.

His fingers tightened around mine—quick, firm—and then loosened, as though even that might draw attention.

“University isn’t goodbye,” I said.

The words sounded thin in the open air.

He nodded. “We’ll talk.”

His voice was steady. Mine wasn’t.

“After you finish next year,” I added. “We’ll meet again.”

He looked at me then—fully. No joking. No teasing.

“Jeff—Jeff, you’ll always be my guy,” he professed.

The phrase landed differently now. Not casual. Not light. A vow disguised as banter.

I wanted to say more. Something honest. Something that didn’t hide behind humor or rehearsed reassurances.

Instead, I squeezed his hand once.

“I’ll miss you,” I said. The admission cost more than I expected.

He swallowed, then nodded. “I know.”

Around us, engines started. Trunks slammed. Parents called out names. The world was already rearranging itself.

When I finally stepped away, he did not move. He stayed there, rooted, watching as I walked toward the waiting car. I did not look back, I knew if I did, I might not leave. As the car pulled away, the school receded—the parade ground, the rusted roofs, the lone flagpole shrinking against the evening sky. I pressed my forehead to the window and watched it blur.

Behind me, the hostel whispers did not fade. They travelled with me—rumours, laughter, the weight of unspoken things. Somewhere in that widening distance, a word stirred. I did not know it yet. But it knew me.

The memory loosened its grip, and the balcony returned. Standing with a cup of tea gone cold in my hand, I watched boys cross a familiar field carrying metal boxes and futures they cannot yet imagine. Some of them will leave with memories they will gladly keep. Others will carry things they will not have words for until much later. I know because I was one of them.

‍