The splintering sound of wood echoed through the speakers as the bad guy crashed into a nearby bookshelf.
"Ooo, that's gonna hurt," Deon commented before shoving a handful of popcorn in his mouth.
It was a Saturday night and right after our gaming session, Akunna and Deon decided to have a movie night.
So here I was perched up on my bed, watching Dwayne Johnson towering over the bad guy on Akunna's laptop, which had been placed on a small table in the middle of the room with Deon's speakers attached to it.
Akunna suddenly jumped off his bed, as if he'd just remembered something and quickly moved to the fridge where a tube of pills sat. He grabbed it and a bottle of water before coming back to his bed.
My curiosity heightened. Ever since I joined him in here, I'd seen Akunna take those pills every day. It was as if he couldn't live without them, and that was what pushed me to ask, "Hey, what are those for?"
Akunna stiffened then turned his back to me. "It's none of your business."
The snarky reply not only surprised me, but caught Deon's attention too. "Really, Akunna?"
He wouldn't even cast a look behind. "Not everyone needs to know."
"He's your roommate," Deon interjected. "If there's anyone who needs to know its him, cuz he's the first person that will come to your aid if something bad happens."
Akunna still wouldn't look back, taking his sweet time tossing a pill into his mouth then gulped down some water. His shoulders slouched forward, contemplating. After a while, he seemed to have grasped the sense in Deon's words because he sat up and finally turned over to us. "Ok fine, I'll tell you." His eyes flickered to me, brimming with so much reluctance that I was about to tell him not to, when he simply said, "I have type two diabetes."
I stared at him. "What?"
"I have diabetes." He lifted the orange tube. "And these pills help keep my blood sugar in check. That's why I take them every day." There was a brief pause. "So... that's it. Now you know."
I scooched closer to the edge of the bed, remorse building up inside me. "Akunna, I'm so s-"
"No, no, don't." Plastering his hands to his ears, my roommate shook his head. "This is exactly why I didn't want to tell you. I don't want you pitying me because I'm sick. I get enough of that from my parents."
"I'm not pitying you."
"Then what's the 'I'm sorry' for, huh?" Akunna's tone rose as he took his hands off his ears. "I'm tired of hearing those words. Anyone finds out that I'm sick, then they start treating me as if I'm fragile, like I'm going to die any moment from now...and I don't want that." He sucked in a breath. "I'm just eighteen. I wanna live my life to the fullest."
The room fell eerily quiet. Deon had paused the movie and was now observing Akunna. "I had no idea you felt that way," he mumbled.
"Yeah well...you can't expect me to talk freely about this." Akunna became silent, biting his lower lip. "But you guys can't let this change stuff between us, ok. I don't want any of you babying me or criticizing what I eat because I'm sick. One good thing about being here is that I get to eat what I want, unlike back at home where I have to tolerate my mum's insipid meal plan."
"Oh c'mon on, I'm sure it's not that bad." Deon leaned against the chair behind him. "All mums are great cooks."
"Well my mum isn't," Akunna scoffed. "If I had to survive on just her cooking, I'd probably be a corpse by now."
Deon laughed, "If she ever heard you say that..."
Their chatter faded into the distance as a soft whistle from my phone stole my attention. I rolled over to where it sat, charging. Pulling the device out, notifications for a few WhatsApp messages greeted me and when I opened the app, the first on the list was a message from Princess.
Heyð
Simple reminder for our training session tomorrow, 6am sharp.
Come along with your speed
Or else I'm gonna crash uð
A smile touched my lips as my fingers hit the keyboard.
Yeah rightð
We'll see about that.
"Oooh, Princess." Deon's hot breath fanned the side of my face and I quickly turned the phone upside down, hiding the chat from him.
The tousled haired blond chuckled before sitting back down on the floor. "Lemme guess, a potential love interest?"
"No!" Alarmed by those two last words, I sat up. "Princess...Princess is not a love interest. She's just a friend helping me out with my breaststroke swimming, that's all."
"Wait," Akunna joined in the conversation, "You're talking about the Princess on the swim team? Ethan's fuck buddy?"
"Fuck buddy?" I repeated with both eyebrows lifted. I shouldn't be surprised though. A girl like Princess with a... behind like hers would definitely not go unnoticed, but what was this about she being Ethan's fuck buddy?
"Well...she's not his fuck buddy per se," Deon started, folding his legs into a cross-legged position. "It's just that she and Ethan have this on and off thing going on between them. I remember during orientation week, they had this huge fight in front of Solace Cafeteria. But two weeks later, there was a video of them kissing passionately at a party."
"Seth and the other guys on th team said that after the party, Princess wanted money, so Ethan made her swallow his cum for 200cedis," Akunna added with a chuckle.
"That's just a rumour, you know that Akunna." Deon flicked a handful of popcorn in his direction, but it didn't stop Akunna from laughing.
"Anyway, that's the deal between those two." Deon turned back to me. "Princess calls him her boyfriend all the time, but it's like every week they break up and they make up."
"Yep," my roommate sat up, chewing the popcorn Deon threw at him earlier. "That's what happens when you choose to date a playboy."
I sat on my bed, toying with my cuticles. When I met Princess the other day, it never occurred to me that she was someone's girlfriend, let alone Ethan's. She made it seem as if her sole purpose here was to keep her scholarship, graduate and make her father proud. She didn't have the time for anything else, at least that was what I thought.
I pushed myself down, staring up at the ceiling. I guess people aren't always who they appear to be.
¤¤¤¤¤
The following day.
"Ok, let's solve one more," Nadia said, propping up her text book. "An object dropped from a great height will fall s(t) = 16t² meters in t seconds assuming air resistance is neglected. What is the object's velocity after t = 2 seconds?"
Scribbling out the formula in my notebook, I bit my bottom lip with a knawing hope to get this one right. Out of the five problems Nadia had read out, I'd successfully managed to get all of them wrong, despite memorising the formula in the shortest possible time. To say I was frustrated was an understatement.
I pulled out my calculator, punching in the numbers. Beside me, five other people from my class battled with the same problem.
Deladem and Felix, the guys I met at Shola's engineering club, sat next to me mumbling unintelligible words under their breath. From the time our studies started, the two of them have proven to be the smartest amongst us all, even going the extra mile to correct Nadia when she overlooked or forgot part of an equation.
All the problems I failed to answer correctly, Deladem rattled out the answers with ease, whilst Felix backed him up with explanations. As much as these guys were good, I wanted to do everything I could to surpass them.
"Anyone done?" Nadia quizzed and I lifted a hand, eyes not leaving the horrid scrawls on the page before me.
"After 2 seconds, the object is travelling at the rate of 64 meters per second." I lifted my head up.
For a minute, there was no response and the bland expression on Nadia's face had my heart beating until her eyes flicked up from her book and she smiled, "That's correct."
A grin found its way onto my face. "Thank goodness," I sighed.
"Great job, Akwasi." Felix gave me a double pat on the back. "You're finally getting it."
"Yeah, the last question Deladem answered gave me a hint. I just need to be careful with my substitution."
"In that case, if you keep working out some more problems, Friday's quiz should be a piece of cake." Nadia declared before glancing down at her phone. "It's half past five. I think we can call it a day now."
Heaving out a sigh of relief, I began to shovel my books and stationery into my backpack. We'd been at this for the past two hours and I was as tired as a dog. The first thing I planned to do once I got back to the hall was to take a cold shower, fall on my bed and sleep like a log.
After bidding everyone goodbye, Deladem and I exited the summerhut we'd occupied for our studies, moving towards our various halls. Deladem lived in Bossman hall, which was only a fifteen-minute walk away from my hall.
"So, you made the swim team," he grinned, the tribal mark on his cheek expanding. "Congratulations."
"Thanks, man," I smiled in return.
"You know, I also thought of joining the team during the activities fair."
My eyebrows flew up. "You're a swimmer too?"
"Yeah," Deladem replied with a chuckle. "But I changed my mind after watching the tryouts and a couple of the team members."
"Really, why?"
He paused, a thoughtful expression on his face. "Because, in those short moments, I realised swimming in Penfield is all about competition. Who has the fastest time? Who broke who's record? Who won the race? Everything is a challenge, a competition. Don't get me wrong, in sports like swimming, a little competition is good. But sometimes...sometimes it gets overwhelming. It turns people into monsters, makes them do horrible stuff all because they want an ornamented medal and a title."
We came to a stop at a junction, waiting for the traffic light to turn red so we could cross. In the meantime, Deladem's words carved their way into my brain and it soon hit me that they held an element of truth.
Sometimes people get so obsessed with winning material items that they lose touch of why they started swimming in the first place. They gradually become the worst versions of themselves and they don't realise it until the damage has already been done.
I started swimming because I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the relief and freedom water gave me anytime I found myself in it. As I was reminded of those reasons, I locked them in my heart and soul to keep me grounded to what really mattered.