Life Of Jiji

All Rights Reserved

© 2022 Tena Ifiemi

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vanish - giveon ♪

baptism - ogranya ♪

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"LEFT! RIGHT!
LEFT! RIGHT!
LEFT! RIGHT!"

"My God." Amarachi groaned. "I'm exhausted."

"That makes all of us." I mutter and the rest of us nod.

Since we resumed from the Christmas holiday, its been inter house sports practice back to back and it was becoming more than unfunny. I mean, they should calm down, why are they stressing us so early in the year. I'm still making mistakes in writing the date, having to cross out the year every time after writing the previous year by mistake.

So, as long as I'm concerned (even though January's about to end), the year just began.

I got up and dusted the back of my skirt with my hands before gesturing for Khadijah to check if it was alright.

"Someone should follow me please." I asked the group after Khadi had given a bored nod to my previous silent question.

"Where?" Amarachi asks and I nod towards Mr. Seun, our house coordinator.

"He's asking for the Glucose."

She sighs, "I would follow you, but I'm mad tired. I would probably collapse if I stand up, I swear." She says with a sorry look.

I thin out my lips and nod, I get that she's tired. We all are.

"Let's go." I suddenly hear beside me and I turn, shocked that I missed when Khadi had got up from where she sat and come to stand beside me.

"Thanks." I tell her and wave to the rest of the group before we start to walk towards Mr. Seun.

We are silent on our walk there but immediately we turn back, Khadi begins to talk.

"So, Damian still hasn't resumed."

My reaction to her statement and his name might have been obvious because she smirked and my lips pull down, annoyed.

"So?"

Khadi hisses, "You better not give me that. It's either you think I'm blind or that I'm a fool."

Her words chill me because something tells me she's not only talking about our conversation right now... Especially when she says 'you think I'm blind'.

I sigh. "Khadijah, you're stressing me."

She scoffs, "You're stressing yourself. All these things you're keeping inside you, that's what's stressing you.

"I'm not even asking for your life history. Ordinary 'boy drama' sef, you don't want to talk."

"But you didn't ask for 'boy drama', Khadi." I say calmly trying to ignore her statement no matter how much sense it made.

"Fine then. What's up with you and Damian?"

Against my better judgment, I blush, "He likes me and I like him."

My subconscious raises a brow at me in surprise that I actually spoke. A mirror of the surprise Khadijah also wore. She probably wasn't expecting me to say anything.

She goes quiet for a while before she speaks, "When did you realize that you like him?"

"I really don't know." I confess as my mind goes over every memory I had with us in it. "I'm guessing I always felt something, I just hadn't come to terms with my feelings."

"But he had, right? He doesn't look like the type to stall."

I blush as the memory of that night by the basketball court, "He had." I say simply.

A wide grin suddenly appeared on Khadijah's face, "And how do you feel about it all? Knowing that you both like each other and of course, as he still hasn't resumed, as usual."

With the knowledge that Damian has a lot of things he's dealing with at home, I sigh, "I wish he was here."

I pause and she doesn't interrupt my thoughts, "I know that he always resumes late so maybe its because of how I feel now but..." I blush, too shy to say more.

"So you miss him." Khadi stated, relaying the words I was too nervous to say but were the truth.

"Yeah." I say and look away.

"Wasn't so bad, was it?" She grinned and I just shrugged.

"Maybe one day you'd finally realize that talking to someone isn't so bad after all. It doesn't even have to be me," she raised up her hands. "It could be anybody, just tell somebody, Ejiro."

When I know that she's done talking, I give a shaky laugh before teasing her, "Thanks Miss Psychologist, ma'am." She rolls her eyes seeing that I was going to ignore what she was clearly driving at as we finally make our way back to the rest of the girls.

I had another nightmare last night and although she didn't appear to be awake, I believe she must have seen when I woke up breathing heavily or at least when I went to the bathroom to wash my face and staying awake till morning. I've realized that Khadi is a light sleeper so I'm not surprised. I'm only confused that she seems to be probing on the matter this time around since she appeared to have made a resolution to ignore my nightmares after I refused to talk about it.

It's a while before we finally go for lunch, because as seniors, our houses coordinators needed our help with some stuff like lists and rounding up equipment. The juniors were long gone and the Year 12s weren't even outside since they basically had classes and extra lessons back to back. Speaking of which, elections were coming up soon and soon they'd even be handing over their prefectship positions.

"I know that Amarachi and Mide are just friends but how!?" I heard someone say to my right and turned to the direction she was looking at.

I smile at the sight of them walking together, hand in hand. She had detached her hand from his, bouncing on her feet in excitement as she laughed, most likely in reaction to something he had said. He laughed along with her and had a soft smile on his face when he reached for her again, almost as if the fifteen seconds had made his hand too cold to bear.

"Ehn, they're best friends na." Someone else said and I shook my head.

I forgot that they were still keeping their relationship a secret. Me and Damian are probably the only people who know.

Weirdly, saying 'me and Damian' in my mind gives me a tingling feeling in my stomach and I blush as if someone could see it.

We finally finish up with everything and proceed to the cafeteria for lunch and I'm telling you their choice of menu today wasn't helping my exhaustion and sudden mood swing. I mean, I believe I was fine a while ago but now I just don't feel in the mood for conversation or anything. I'm a bit worried. Yes, Damian never resumes early but this time I'm concerned. Is he okay? Is his mom okay?

"This is a few minutes late but kindly close your mouth. Either that or put some food in it." I snap out of my thoughts and make a face and Khadijah rolls her eyes.

"Don't mind her." Ayo tells me as she shoots Khadijah a 'do you ever shut up?' look.

"Well she shouldn't be thinking about her boyfriend right now." Khadi smirked and faced her food.

"I don't have a boyfriend." I rectify, my words muffled by the food I had just begun to chew.

"Dude, there's food in your mouth!" Khadijah states, her face wrinkled up.

"We should actually eat fast though, I don't want to waste my entire siesta time here." Ayo complains ignoring her.

It was true, if we wanted to get any rest, we had better go to the hostel as soon as possible.

We parted ways at the hallway, when we all went into our respective rooms. Ayo, to her room; my former room and me and Khadijah to ours. The thought made me realize that I hadn't stepped into that room since I left and me and Nini haven't really crossed paths again.

I suddenly felt weird that I had classmates that I don't really talk to, what with the twins and of course, Chisom. Speaking of Chisom, she's been out of my hair for quite some time now and I'm loving the peace that comes along with that fact. I mean, who hates someone for completely no reason anyways?

Sitting at my reading table, I pulled out my math note from my bag and started to do the assignment we were given today. I didn't feel like sleeping and I had a lot of schoolwork to do at prep today so why not do the ones I found easy now.

Mercy came and peered over my shoulder and smirked when she saw what I was doing, "Ejiro wants to win award this term." She teased and I shook my head and lightly push her away.

Khadijah passed by us in nothing but a sports bra and tights, "There's nothing wrong with doing your assignment now, just change out of your uniform first." She quietly advised.

I smile as I can imagine the remaining part of her statement, one she probably tried so hard to not say, 'Take a bath too, I don't condone pig behavior'

I believe that sounds very Khadijah.

I decided to finish the math before going into the shower though and ended up being thankful for it. Immediately I felt hot water hit my skin, I knew I wouldn't be leaving anytime soon. I stood in the shower for what felt like hours and only started washing my body when the water begun to get colder. I hurried then, sponging my body and washing my face as quickly as I could not wanting to ruin my amazing time in the shower with the reality of cold water.

When I got back to my room, siesta was over and my roommates were grudgingly putting on their day wears. I joined in the rush and soon we were walking in a small group to the classroom block.

Mitchell was more busy these days with near future exams being very threatening and it made me happy that he still made out time to ask me how I was doing both generally and with school work. I can't explain the way it makes me feel but I really appreciate it especially since Mitchell never forgets. If I mistakenly tell Mitchell that I'm sad today, he'd ask again another day presuming I didn't want to talk about it then.

"So, I already did my math assignment." I say with a proud smile as I slid my note over to Mitchell.

He assessed it quietly and passed it back to me.

"Everyone knows you're good at maths Ejiro, bring out Literature, let's talk."

I laugh nervously, "Never mind, I don't want to distract your own reading." I say eyeing his heavy textbook.

He just chuckled and shook his head turning his attention back to his book but I still took out my literature note because he was definitely going to ask me to identify and explain all the figures of speech in a random poem or something by the end of prep.

My prep room ends up being noisy and unlike his girlfriend, Mitchel isn't one to yell at or punish his juniors so he's stuck to sighing and frowning the whole time. I went to meet Richard at some point to plead with him to control the room but he said that the fact that Mitchel was in the room would make it weird —since Mitchel is his senior.

At the end of it all, Mitchell was very frustrated and ended up not quizzing me on Literature. I frown as I gather my stuff; I really did eat up that whole book for nothing?

The next day was Saturday and all of us in my room woke up late. I almost cried when the porter on duty banged on our door before throwing it open and then proceeding to bang on a wardrobe in the room all the while shouting, 'wake up, wake up!'

As a result of all that plus the fact that I slept really late I ended up with a splitting headache that put me in a bad mood the whole morning.

We were being woken up for jogging and aerobics which was compulsory every Saturday morning which I also didn't see the point of. They should have at least made it optional cause I don't even have calories to burn.

"1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11..." The instructor counted slowly and I willed myself to not give up as I held myself up from the ground with my elbows and toes.

When she finally got to fifteen, we all collapsed on our mats and I tried to regulate my breathing.

"Y'all realize how sore we're going to be for the rest of the day right?" Katherine says.

"That's what they said." Chisom said beside her.

"Who?"

"Virgins." She wiggled her brows and I rolled my eyes while the other girls laughed.

Gross.

"Now we're going to do do jump squats." Our instructor says and everybody groaned.

Jumping didn't sound like a good idea especially since the boys could see us and tell us later about how our boobs were going 'up and down'. Trust me, it's happened before. I'm sure everyone has even been going along with this woman because her body is amazing — Fashion Nova model type of amazing — and then she told us girls that the key to getting to look that way is exercise.

Frankly, I don't believe it. She just has good genes and I should be sitting at the bleachers with a book like Khadi but my grandmother has arthritis and speaking on genes, I always get this nagging feeling that I'm going to get it if I give up.

"Tara nau." One girl whined, stressing the last syllable. "I'm pretty sure I look like Kim Kardashian by now. We're tired."

Chisom snorted, "More like the low-budget counterfeit."

I hiss, this girl is going to make my eyes fall out by how much she makes me roll them.

Girls continue to beg Tara, the instructor to call it a day while someone even ended up suggesting that we play music and gist. She was reluctant at first but I could already see her giving in. I mean she's young and female.

"Okay, fine. Keep it down before your P.E teacher comes here." She says in her learned american accent.

She then told us to sit on our mats folding our legs in the popular yoga style so that she can say she's teaching us yoga if anyone asks. I don't know if that'll work but I doubt Mr Amaga will even notice.

One girl asks her how she has an accent and she replies that she schooled abroad.

"So why are you here, teaching us aerobics?"

"I'm friends with your P.E teacher and since he knows I always excercise on Saturdays he asked if I wouldn't mind coaching you guys."

"You're friends with Samuel?"

"Shouldn't you be calling him, Mr Amaga though?" Tara raised her eyebrows at the girl.

"What did you study abroad?"

"Nursing."

"Wow, that's amazing."

"I want to be a nurse."

Tara laughed, "Yeah, but I'm a Fashion Designer now since that's what I wanted from the start."

"Cool."

"Were your parents angry?"

"Why would they be?" Her jaw ticked slightly and I saw that she was about to get defensive, "Besides I'm making lots of money now, I have my own place, I'm comfortable and I'm even engaged which is their entire goal in life so..." She flipped her hair.

I mean, sassiness well deserved!

"Wow!"

"You're engaged?"

"Can you show us a picture of him?"

"Is that an iPhone twelve?"

"Dude, that's a thirteen!"

Couple of 'aww's and selfies left, it was time for breakfast and time to say bye to Tara.

"I don't believe sha, her yahoo boy boyfriend probably bought her the iPhone 13." Someone said as we walked to the cafeteria and World War Z begun. Everyone defending Tara and bashing the unfortunate speaker.

•••

"Has anyone plotted the physics graph?" Tolani asked the room and I turned back to my novel, having initially sat up to hear what Tolani had to say.

"Can't relate." I tell her and she rolled her eyes.

"Don't you have CRS assignment to do or something?" She shot back.

"Been there, done that."

Hissing, she walked out of the room, probably going to try her luck in another room.

"Hmm, since when did Ejiro start pissing people off?"

"My protégée. I didn't know you've been taking notes." Khadijah winked and I frown, concerned.

"I'm sure Tolani knows that I was joking." I voice out getting to my feet.

"Don't tell me you're about to go explain yourself." Mercy groaned as I put on my slippers.

"Ejiro—" Khadijah begun the same time I heard my name through the speakers.

"You have a call." The porters voice boomed, following it up. Forgetting what I had been planning to do, I rush to the common room.

I greet Ms Ayoola who doesn't even look at me as she hands me the phone.

"Hi Mummy." I greet, walking away from the hostel mistress with the phone to my ear.

"Hi Jiji."

"Damian!" I exclaim before pressing my palm to my mouth. I turned to Ms Ayoola to find her already frowning at me. I mouth 'sorry' before hurrying off.

"I'm pretty sure Ayoola doesn't expect you to be shouting out your dad's first name." He laughs.

"You told her you're my dad?"

"I mean, I couldn't tell her that the guy who you confessed your undying love to would like to speak to you."

"Shut up." I managed to say while my cheeks burned, immediately backed up by, "Damian, when are you resuming?"

"Nah, I refuse to believe that you miss me that much."

"Oh, that's true, I don't." I say, finally picking up my pride from were ever I might've dropped it.

Damian's low chuckle let's loose a whole community of butterflies in my stomach, "Sarcasm is not your colour, dear Jiji."

"Sarcasm is not a color Damian. Nursery school failed you."

Damian burst into a genuine laughter that made me smile like an idiot, "Good one, good one."

"How've you been." I asked after a short silence when the laughter died down.

"Good. What about you? Have you killed your literature teacher yet?"

"More like 'has she killed me yet?'."

"What did we say about getting the teacher before they get us?"

"You were serious?" I laugh, unable to control it. By now I've migrated to the general laundry room which was fortunately empty.

"Why not?"

I contemplated asking or not asking for like 30 seconds before I finally spit it out, "How is your mom?"

"She's okay." He says.

I don't miss the hesitation before he says 'okay' but I decide to ignore it, "That's good to hear."

"I miss you."

My chest does a slight squeeze at his words, "Well you're the one who doesn't like returning early."

"I don't choose..." There's a harsh sigh before, "Never mind."

I immediately pick up on the change in his tone and bite my lip, scared that I may have offended him somehow.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean..." I trail off, not knowing exactly what I was apologizing for. "Everybody says school is boring without you and that they wish you'd resume soon."

"Just say you miss me, Ejiro. Its not a big deal really." He laughed into the phone and I sigh at the sound of his laughter.

It's all good then.

"I'll tell you when you come back."

When I go back to my room to fawn over the call I just got off from, I'm met with loud voices and chattering. I push open the door to meet twice the normal population of the room. I cringe, I don't like when there are more people than normal in my space; I get uncomfortable. I mean, I was gone for just two seconds.

Khadijah catches my eye and gives me what looks like an apologetic look and gestured to my bed which was still neat and untouched. I exhaled in relief, I would've gone mad if they had messed it up. I most likely wouldn't have thrown a tantrum out loud, but the ones I throw in my head are much more severe.

I make my way to my bed and bury myself under the duvet in an attempt to block out the noise and disturbance but that only lasted a few seconds before someone yanked off my duvet from my top half.

I was ready to protest when Mercy said, "How can you be sleeping when Ayo is somewhere making out with Kene right now?"

"What?"

"As in, Ayo and Kene are back together."

My eyes widen in realization and surprise, "What!?"

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Long as$ wait, I know and I know I'm sorry doesn't cut it, but I'm sorry.

Anyway, here's an update to satiate you guys for now.