The semester settled in quietly, the way harmattan dust settles on surfaces without asking permission. There was no announcement, no dramatic shift to mark the transition from ceremony into routine. One day we were still talking about matriculation photographs and awkward smiles captured by unfamiliar cameras; the next, we were measuring our lives by lecture periods, assignment deadlines, and the slow crawl of weeks on the academic calendar.
If anyone had asked me then what school life was like, I would have given the simplest answer possible: busy, demanding, manageable.
That was the lie we all believed at first.
Every morning followed the same pattern. Wake up before the sun fully decided whether it wanted to rise. The hostel corridors filled with the sound of doors opening, footsteps echoing, buckets scraping across concrete floors. Boys brushed their teeth in silence, eyes half-closed, minds already rehearsing the day ahead. The smell of cheap toothpaste mixed with soap and damp towels. Someone always hummed absentmindedly. Someone always complained about sleep.
We walked to lectures together sometimes, alone at other times, backpacks hanging from shoulders like burdens we pretended not to feel. The campus paths had lost their festive color. No banners. No chants. Just movement. Students moving because they had to, because the system demanded it, because absence now carried consequences.
Lecturers returned with renewed authority. Their voices were firmer. Their notes thicker. Attendance registers reappeared. The message was clear: whatever freedom Student Week had pretended to offer was over.
And for a while, I welcomed it.
Structure felt safer than chaos.
In class, I sat closer to the front now, not out of ambition but instinct. I wanted to see clearly. To hear properly. To miss nothing. I wrote notes carefully, even when I did not fully understand them, trusting that repetition would eventually turn confusion into clarity. Around me, students whispered, passed jokes, dozed lightly. Some already behaved like veterans of a system they barely understood.
I focused.
At least, I thought I did.
The first wave of assignments arrived quietly, disguised as casual instructions at the end of lectures.
"Submit next week."
"Group work."
"Individual research."
Nothing sounded urgent until everything was urgent at once.
By the third week, sleep became optional.
Some nights, we stayed awake arguing over questions none of us fully understood, books spread across beds, chairs dragged close together, phones lighting our faces as we searched desperately for explanations online. Other nights, the work was lighter, straightforward tasks that demanded time but not thought. Those nights felt like mercy.
And then there were the nights we relied on the older students.
No one talked about it openly, but everyone did it. A phone call here. A quiet knock on a door there. A notebook borrowed and returned carefully. Answers passed down not as charity but as tradition.
"This one is this way," an older student would say casually, pointing at a formula or diagram. "Just follow it."
We followed.
It felt wrong sometimes. Easy always.
Yet no one questioned it. Survival rarely allows room for moral debates.
Through it all, my roommates remained steady.
Sug adapted quickly, complaining loudly but delivering results when it mattered. Amanto worked in silence, methodical, disciplined, the kind of person who didn't panic because he never allowed himself to fall behind. There was no tension between us, no rivalry, no resentment. We shared food, chargers, notes, and occasional laughter that broke the monotony.
School life, in that narrow sense, worked.
But it wasn't everything.
Practical classes were where I felt most alive.
Workshops smelled different from lecture halls. Oil. Metal. Heat. Purpose. The tools felt honest in my hands, unburdened by theory or ambiguity. You either knew what you were doing or you didn't, and the results spoke immediately.
Here, I did not struggle.
Instructors noticed quickly. So did my classmates.
"Please help me a little," one girl said one afternoon, holding her project with both hands like an offering.
Another followed the next day. Then another.
They came with smiles, with gratitude, with questions that sometimes felt rehearsed. I helped without complaint, correcting mistakes, explaining steps, guiding hands without touching more than necessary. I told myself it was just cooperation.
But patterns are hard to ignore.
They didn't stay to learn. They stayed to pass.
Some flirted lightly, others laughed too easily, a few lingered longer than required. I noticed. I did not respond. Not because I was noble, but because my mind was elsewhere, tangled in schedules, deadlines, memories that refused to stay buried.
Eunice remained present in a different way.
We were not in the same department. Our paths crossed mostly during General Studies lectures, large halls filled with students from everywhere, seats taken early, aisles crowded. When I saw her, it was always the same quiet exchange. A nod. A brief smile. Sometimes a whispered comment about the lecturer or the workload.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.
Our conversations stayed light, deliberately so. Timetables. Assignments. Complaints about overcrowded halls. But when our eyes met for longer than words allowed, something unspoken passed between us.
Concern.
Recognition.
A shared memory of something that had gone wrong.
We never named it.
Maybe we were afraid that speaking it aloud would make it real again.
Emma noticed the change in me before I admitted it to myself.
He was still the course rep—efficient, observant, always carrying himself with quiet authority. One evening, as we walked back from a late class, he slowed his steps to match mine.
"Are you okay?" he asked casually.
"Yes," I said.
He hummed softly, unconvinced. "School is never only about books," he added after a moment.
I looked at him then.
"There's another life," he continued. "If you don't see it early, it may surprise you later."
I didn't ask him to explain.
Some warnings work better when left incomplete.
That night, as I lay on my bed listening to the distant sounds of campus life settling into sleep, I realized something uncomfortable.
The timetable we followed so carefully was only the surface.
And beneath it, something else was waiting.