Campus Babe, Episode 3: A Price for Every Gift
By seven o'clock on Sunday morning, the photograph had been shared more than nine hundred times.
Blessing knew the number because she could not stop refreshing the page. She sat cross-legged on the top bunk with her blanket pulled around her shoulders like a shield, watching the count climb. Nine hundred and twelve. Nine hundred and forty. A thousand and six.
"Put the phone down," Tolu said from the bottom bunk.
"I can't."
"You can. You just don't want to."
"Tolu, there are comments from people I've never met. There's a girl in Faculty of Law saying I've 'always had that sponsor energy.' What does that even mean?"
"It means she's jealous and she can't spell."
"It means everybody thinks..." Blessing's voice cracked. She swallowed and started again. "Everybody thinks they know exactly who I am."
Tolu was quiet for a moment. Then she pushed herself up on one elbow, her scarf crooked, her eyes still puffy with sleep. "I told you," she said, softly. "I'm not saying it to hurt you. I'm only saying it because I was right, and I hate that I was right."
"I know."
"You said you were only going to think about it."
"I did think about it. I went to a party. That's all I did. I stood on a terrace and talked to a man."
"And someone took a photograph."
"And someone took a photograph," Blessing repeated. She closed her eyes. "Who even knew I was there? Who was close enough?"
Tolu did not answer right away. When she did, her voice was careful. "Anybody could have been close enough. It was a party. Everyone has a phone."
On the shelf above the desk, the perfume bottle caught the early light. Blessing looked away from it.
At 7:02 a.m., her phone buzzed. A message from Kolade.
I've seen it. Don't panic. We'll talk.
She read it three times. It was a perfectly kind message. It was also written, she noticed, as if he had already decided what she should feel.
She did not reply.
Monday morning was a gauntlet.
Blessing had dressed with care: a plain white shirt, jeans, no jewellery, hair tied back. She had wanted to look like a girl who had nothing to hide. In the mirror it had seemed like a good idea. On the long walk from the hostel to the Faculty of Arts, it felt like walking onto a stage in the wrong costume.
"Blessing! Sponsor wey dey spoil you!"
The shout came from a group of boys outside the cafeteria. They erupted in laughter, one of them miming the clinking of a glass. She kept walking.
"Congrats, babe!" A girl she vaguely knew from Mass Comm ran up, grinning, and squeezed her arm. "Kolade Balogun! Ah ah! You didn't tell us! Is it official? Are you guys official?"
"There's nothing to tell."
"Oh, please. You're glowing."
"I'm not glowing, I'm sweating."
"Abeg, don't be shy. Chief Balogun's son!" The girl lowered her voice, thrilled. "Do you think he'll take you to Dubai?"
Blessing detached herself politely and moved on. Two steps later, a different voice, colder, came from a cluster of girls on the steps of the Faculty of Social Sciences.
"Campus babe. More like campus bait."
"Shhh, she'll hear you!"
"Let her hear."
Blessing did not turn. She lifted her chin a fraction higher and counted her steps until the voices fell behind. Her face was composed. Her heart was a fist.
In the cafeteria queue, a hand touched her shoulder, light and warm.
"Blessing! Oh my God, babe!"
Zainab Bello stood there in a perfectly pressed ankara blazer, her braids pinned up, her phone held loosely in her left hand like an accessory. She looked genuinely distressed. Her eyes were wide. Her mouth was soft with sympathy.
"I'm so sorry about that post. I saw it yesterday and I almost died."
"Thank you."
"You know I don't control what people send in. It's anonymous. I just pass it along. I can't verify everything, you know? It's too much for one person."
"Mm."
"But honestly?" Zainab tilted her head, her voice warm as honey. "I'm sure it's not what it looks like. Right? I mean, you can tell me. Is it a thing? Are you and Kolade a thing? Because I could do a little follow-up, give you a chance to tell your side. Totally on your terms."
There it was, thin as a razor under the sweetness.
"There's no side to tell, Zainab."
"No? Okay." She smiled. "Just let me know if you change your mind. You know I'm always here."
"I know," Blessing said. "That's what worries me."
She left her plate on the counter and walked out without eating.
She found him at eleven, outside the Faculty of Management Sciences.
The black Range Rover was parked at the curb in a spot clearly marked Staff Only. Kolade was leaning against the passenger door with his arms folded, talking to two boys in designer sneakers. He saw her coming from forty metres away. Whatever he said to the boys made them scatter without a backward glance.
"Blessing." He straightened, smiling. "I was about to call you. I've been trying since yesterday."
"I know. I saw."
"Then why didn't you pick up?"
"Because I was busy being trending."
His smile softened into something rueful. "Okay. Fair."
"Did you post it?"
She hadn't intended to say it so directly. But the words had been burning her throat for twenty-four hours, and now they were out, bare and ugly between them.
Kolade blinked. "Sorry?"
"The photograph. Crest Confessions. Did you arrange it?"
"Are you serious?"
"You were next to me. You were the only person who knew exactly where we were standing. You were the one who wanted me to come. And now everyone on this campus thinks we're..." She gestured helplessly. "Together. Officially. Which is very convenient for you."
For a moment, the easy mask slipped, and she saw something flash behind his eyes. It wasn't quite anger. It was closer to offence, a sharp, wounded pride.
Then it passed.
"Blessing." He lowered his voice and stepped closer. "Look at me. Do I look like a man who needs Crest Confessions to tell people who he's with?"
She hesitated.
"If I wanted this campus to know you were mine..." He caught himself and smiled. "If I wanted them to know we were together, I would have walked you through the cafeteria at lunchtime holding your hand. I don't hide. I don't do anonymous. That's not my style."
"Someone took that photo."
"Yes."
"Someone was close enough to take it without us noticing."
"Yes. And I'm as angry about that as you are." He said it gently, sincerely. "That terrace was supposed to be private. It's my friend's house. His security should have checked every phone. I've already spoken to Obinna."
"You have?"
"This morning. He's furious. Nobody on his staff is allowed to take photographs of guests, and he's going to find out who was out there." Kolade put a hand lightly on her arm. "Let me help you, Blessing. Let me find out who did this. I know people who know people. A few days, that's all I need."
His thumb moved once against her sleeve. It was a small thing, a comfort, and she let it stay.
It was only later, walking away across the quad, that she realised something. He had not, at any point, said he was sorry that people now thought they were together. He had only said he was sorry she was upset.
She told herself it was a small difference.
The second message came that night.
The hostel had gone quiet. Favour's music was finally off, the corridor lights had dimmed to their usual weak yellow, and Tolu was in the bathroom brushing her teeth. Blessing lay on her side with her phone in front of her face, scrolling through a news feed without reading a word.
The screen lit up.
Unknown number.
She sat up so fast the bunk rattled.
Tell your mother not to sell the gold chain. It was kind of you to ask her. But kindness does not pay school fees, does it?
Blessing stopped breathing.
She read it once. Then again. The words rearranged themselves in her mind and became something monstrous.
The gold chain.
She had said that on the phone in the stairwell, on the first afternoon, in the narrow concrete stairwell where nobody ever went. She had been alone. She had been certain she was alone. No one had been standing beside her. No one could have heard.
Mummy, no. Don't sell the chain.
Her mouth had formed those words in a place she thought was safe. And now, a week later, a stranger was reciting them back to her.
Her hands shook. She looked at the door, which was closed. She looked at the window, which opened onto the back wall of the cafeteria and was just wide enough for a person to stand outside. The curtain was drawn. Beyond it, the fan rattled, the dark pressed in, and something cold crawled up her spine.
Who could possibly know?
Her thumbs flew across the screen.
Who is this?
She sent it. The message sat there, undelivered, a small grey word beneath it that never changed to Read.
She tried calling the number. A flat recorded voice told her the subscriber could not be reached.
"Hey." Tolu emerged from the bathroom with a towel around her neck. "Why are you sitting like that?"
"Like what?"
"Like you've seen a ghost."
Blessing slid the phone under her pillow. She had been about to tell her. The words were right there. Someone's watching me. Someone knows things only my mother and I know.
But she remembered the roof, and the way Tolu had stood so quietly behind her while she took her mother's call. She remembered the post, and the photograph, and the question that had sat unspoken between them all day: Who was close enough?
She hated herself for it. But she said, "Nothing. Just a headache."
"Take paracetamol," Tolu said, and turned off the light.
Blessing lay awake in the dark, listening to the fan and the beating of her own heart, wondering for the first time in her life whether anyone around her could be trusted.
"The clinic needs a deposit before they can run the tests," her mother said on Tuesday afternoon. "Sixty thousand. The doctor said Nedu should come in on Thursday. And the school has sent another reminder."
Blessing sat on the stone bench outside the library, her knees pressed together, the phone pressed hard against her ear. The harmattan wind had started early that year and was throwing dust across the courtyard.
"Mummy, I'll sort it."
"You keep saying that, my daughter. But how? I don't want you to do something that..." Her mother stopped. When she spoke again, her voice was very small. "I don't want you to do something you will regret."
"I won't."
"Promise me."
"I promise."
When the call ended, Blessing stared at the screen for a long time.
Then she opened her messages and typed seven words.
Can we talk? I need help. Please.
The reply came in eleven seconds.
Where are you?
He arrived in six minutes. The Range Rover pulled up at the curb, the door swung open, and Kolade stepped out in a crisp grey shirt, concerned and unhurried. He sat beside her on the bench without a word, close but not touching.
"Tell me," he said.
It came out in pieces. She hadn't planned any of it. The school fees. The clinic. The tests. The seventy thousand, the forty-two thousand, the hundred and twelve thousand total that felt like a number belonging to a different universe. She told him her mother's voice had sounded like it was breaking. She told him Nedu was seventeen and still afraid of injections.
She did not tell him about the message. She did not tell him about the gold chain.
When she finished, she was crying, and she was furious about it. She wiped her face with the back of her hand. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to dump all this on you."
"Don't apologise."
"I hate this. I hate that I'm sitting here asking you."
"You're not asking me." His voice was low and steady. "You're telling me. There's a difference."
"Kolade, I'll pay you back. Every kobo. I swear. It might take me time..."
"Blessing." He took her hand. His fingers were warm and dry. "Stop. Let me do this."
"I can't."
"Why not?"
She had no answer. Behind her eyelids, she could still see her mother's tired face, and the clinic list in her mother's trembling hand, and Nedu on a hospital bed.
"Okay," she whispered.
He didn't gloat. He didn't smile. He simply took out his phone.
"Send me the clinic's account details. And the school's bursary account."
"Why?"
"I'd rather it goes straight there. That way I know it reached the right place." He glanced up, and his expression was so gentle that she felt guilty for the question. "It's not about trust. It's about being sure. Your mother shouldn't have to chase anyone."
She sent them. A minute later, his phone chimed twice. He showed her the screen: two transfers, two confirmations, one hundred and twelve thousand naira in total, gone in less time than it took to blink.
"Done."
Blessing stared at the screen. She felt oddly hollow, like a room from which every piece of furniture had been taken at once.
"Thank you," she said. The words felt too small and too heavy at the same time. "I don't know how to..."
"You don't have to." He stood and brushed dust from his trousers. "Just promise me one thing."
"What?"
"That next time something's wrong, you'll call me first. Not after you've been crying alone on a bench for an hour."
"I promise."
"Good." He smiled, and it was warm and slow. "I'll see you tonight. I'll send a car."
That evening, her mother called, laughing and weeping at once. The clinic had confirmed the payment. The school had cleared Nedu's name. "God has answered me," she kept saying. "Who is this person? Who sent this money?"
Blessing stood in the stairwell with her forehead against the cold wall. "It's from a, a departmental emergency fund, Mummy. A scholarship thing. For students with family problems."
"Ah! God bless that department. God bless them."
"Amen."
She ended the call and stayed very still.
It was the first lie she had ever told her mother.
It would not be the last.
The calls began on Wednesday morning.
She was sitting in the third row of the Media Law lecture hall when her phone began to vibrate against her thigh. She glanced down.
Kolade.
She pressed the side button to silence it. The screen lit again.
Kolade.
Dr. Fadeyi paused mid-sentence and peered over his glasses. Blessing slid the phone beneath her notebook and pretended to write.
Kolade.
Kolade.
When she finally slipped out of the lecture hall, apologising with a cringe, she had four missed calls and three messages.
Where are you?
I'm calling you.
Why are you not picking up?
She dialled him back in the corridor, her pulse quick. He answered before the first ring finished.
"Blessing."
"I'm so sorry, I was in class."
"I called four times."
"I know, I saw. It's a lecture, Kolade, I can't just..."
"I only wanted to know if you'd eaten." His voice was calm, pleasant, the same voice from the bench. "That's all. I worry."
"That's very sweet."
"But when I call, I'd like you to answer. I don't think that's too much to ask, is it?"
She opened her mouth. Closed it.
"It's not," she said.
"Thank you." Warmth flooded back into his tone. "I've booked a table for tonight. Seven o'clock, a little place in Bodija. Wear the red dress again."
"Tonight? I told Tolu I'd watch a movie with her."
"You can watch a movie with Tolu any evening. You can't have dinner with me any evening. I'd really like to see you."
There was a pause.
"Okay," Blessing said.
That night, Tolu sat alone on the bottom bunk with a pot of noodles and a laptop playing the movie they had planned to watch together. She didn't say anything when Blessing came in to change. She only watched, her fork hovering, as Blessing stepped into the red dress and slid her feet into heels.
"Is this what it is now?" Tolu asked quietly.
"It's just dinner."
"Mm."
"Tolu, he helped my family. I can't just disappear on him."
"I'm not saying disappear." Tolu pushed a noodle around the pot. "I'm saying you used to say 'I'll call you back' to people. Now you say 'I have to go.'"
Blessing stopped with one earring in her hand.
She wanted to answer. She wanted to explain that it wasn't like that, that it was simply a season, a debt of gratitude, a phase. But her phone buzzed on the desk.
I'm outside.
She put the earring in.
By Thursday, she had counted fourteen messages from Kolade before noon. Good morning. Don't forget lunch. Why didn't you reply? Seen at 9:14. I noticed. None of them were unkind. Every single one was a small hand on her sleeve, light, polite, and closing.
Standing alone in the hostel corridor, staring at her own phone, she understood something with a clarity that made her stomach drop.
The money had not been a gift.
It had been a door. And she had walked through it, and now she could hear it swing shut behind her.
The library was the only place on campus where nobody was allowed to talk to her.
She went there on Thursday evening, after the last lecture, and chose a corner table on the second floor, behind a shelf of outdated engineering journals. She opened a textbook and stared at the same page for a very long time. The words swam. Her phone lay face-down beside her, buzzing every few minutes against the wood like a trapped insect.
"You've been on page two hundred and twelve for forty minutes."
She flinched.
Daniel Adebayo stood at the end of the aisle, a stack of books in his arms and his glasses sliding down his nose. He wasn't smiling. He wasn't frowning either. He simply looked at her, with the unhurried attention of a man reading a line of code.
"I'm sorry?"
"The page. You haven't turned it." He nodded at her textbook. "Forty minutes. I sit two tables over."
"You were watching me?"
"I was studying. You happened to be in my line of sight." He shifted the books to his other arm. "Also, your hands are shaking."
Blessing looked down. They were. She pressed them flat against the table.
"I'm fine."
"People who are fine don't hold their phone like it might explode."
"Do you ever mind your own business?"
"Frequently. Just not tonight." He hesitated, and for the first time, something in his face softened. It was very slight, a small crack in the careful wall. "Look. I'm not going to pretend I know what's going on. I saw the post, like everyone. It isn't any of my concern. But you're sitting here looking like someone who's carrying something heavy by herself, and I thought..."
"You thought what?"
"I thought you might want to talk about it."
The words hung between them in the quiet. A chair scraped somewhere on the floor below. The library hummed.
For one dangerous second, she wanted to say yes. She wanted to tell him everything: the messages, the gold chain, the transfers, the fourteen texts, the lie she had told her mother. She wanted to rest her head on the table and let somebody else hold the weight.
Instead, she felt her spine straighten, the familiar armour sliding into place.
"I don't need your concern, Daniel."
"It isn't concern. It's an offer."
"I don't need your offer either."
"Okay."
"I'm not some project for you to fix. I don't need a stranger from the Computer Science department deciding I'm sad and coming over to save me."
"I wasn't deciding anything."
"Then why are you here?"
Daniel looked at her for a long moment. Then he said, simply, "Because you looked alone."
It was the worst thing he could have said.
Her throat tightened. She turned her face away, pretending to study the shelf. "Please leave."
He didn't argue. He nodded once, set one of his books down on the corner of her table, and stepped back.
"It's a good book," he said. "If you ever want to read something that isn't on your syllabus. I'll be at the table by the window. I'm usually here until ten."
He walked away.
Blessing waited until his footsteps had faded before she looked at the cover. It was a worn paperback of short stories by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the spine cracked and softened by many hands. Tucked inside the front cover was a slip of paper, in a neat, upright hand:
You don't have to explain anything. The offer doesn't expire. D.
She read it twice.
Then she folded the paper very small and put it in her pocket, and did not ask herself why.
Kolade's car was waiting outside the hostel on Friday evening.
She hadn't invited him. She had only mentioned, in passing, that she might be in her room studying. But there he was, parked beneath the flickering streetlight, the window rolled down and the engine humming. When she appeared at the hostel gate, he stepped out and opened the passenger door as though they had planned it for weeks.
"I thought you'd like some air," he said.
"I was going to study."
"You can study tomorrow." He smiled. "Get in. Just ten minutes."
She got in.
He drove slowly past the football field, past the dark outline of the library, past the glowing windows of the Faculty of Law. The air conditioning was soft. The leather seat held her like an embrace. Kolade didn't speak for a while, and the silence felt, for once, almost peaceful.
"I'm having a few friends over tomorrow night," he said at last.
"A party?"
"Not exactly. Something smaller." He kept his eyes on the road. "A private gathering. At a house outside campus. A few people who matter, in business and politics and the university council. People who could be useful to someone like you, with your ambitions."
"My ambitions?"
"You want to work in media. Documentaries. Television." He glanced at her briefly. "I know a few people who own production companies. I'd like you to meet them. It's the kind of room that opens doors."
Blessing felt the old pull, the same hunger that had carried her across that terrace. It was seductive, and she knew it, and she knew exactly what it cost.
"My father might drop by," Kolade added lightly. "He doesn't usually, but he's been asking about you."
"About me?"
"He saw the photograph. He's curious." A smile flickered across his face. "Don't look so frightened. He's a harmless old man. He'll shake your hand, ask where your parents are from, and go and talk about money with somebody else."
Chief Balogun. The name sat in her chest like a stone.
"I don't know, Kolade."
"What don't you know?"
"I have a lot of coursework this weekend, and I haven't been sleeping, and I don't..." She stopped. "I don't really want to go to another party."
"It isn't a party."
"Then what is it?"
"An evening." The car slowed. He pulled over beneath a tree, switched off the engine, and turned to face her fully. The streetlight lay in pale bars across his face. "Blessing. Look at me."
She did.
"I'm not asking for much. I'm asking for one night. A few hours. You'll wear something beautiful, you'll smile at some people, you'll eat nice food, and you'll come home." His voice stayed gentle, steady, patient as water. "And I'd consider it a personal favour."
"A favour?"
"Yes."
She did not answer.
Kolade waited. Then, very softly, in the same warm tone, he said, "I paid that clinic on Tuesday. I paid your brother's school. I didn't ask for anything. I haven't asked for anything until now. I think this is a very small request for what has been a very big kindness. Don't you?"
The words landed one by one, quiet and precise.
Nothing in his face was cruel. Nothing in his tone was a threat. That was what made it so terrible. He sat there with his hand resting on the steering wheel, patient and warm, like a man who had simply reminded her of an appointment she'd forgotten.
Blessing looked down at her hands. In her pocket, the small folded note pressed against her thigh. You don't have to explain anything.
Outside, the harmattan wind rattled the tree above them.
"Saturday night," Kolade said. "Eight o'clock. I'll send the car."
He started the engine.
She had not said yes. She had not said no.
And as the Range Rover pulled back onto the road, the glow of the dashboard lit her face, and she realised with a slow, sinking certainty that no one was going to wait for her to decide.
END OF EPISODE 3
Next: Episode 4, "The Night Everything Changed."