Love Indeed

The Storm Breaks

The second semester begins like the slow unfolding of a secret. At first everything seems normal—lectures resuming, students crowding hallways with the weight of renewed routines, the sun burning as brightly as it did the semester before. We still sit together in class, still walk down to the hostel gates, still laugh at the way our lecturers mispronounce certain words. To anyone watching from the outside, nothing has changed. But from inside, I can feel it. Something is different. Something is shifting.

Favour is quieter now. She smiles when she has to, laughs when the rest of us laugh, and still leans on Mine’s shoulder the way she used to, but her eyes betray her. They are sharp sometimes, lingering on Mine too long, as though she’s studying her for flaws no one else can see. I notice how she begins to lean more toward the boys—especially John—whispering to him during lectures, dragging him into private jokes that exclude the rest of us. At first, I brush it off. That’s just Favour being Favour, I tell myself. She likes to be noticed. She likes attention. But then I start hearing things—little slips of conversation, small suggestions that Mine is “bossy” or that she always wants things her way.

It doesn’t make sense to me. Mine is anything but controlling. She has this lighthearted confidence, yes, but it is the kind that draws people in rather than pushing them away. She is fun, spontaneous, the kind of person who convinces you to go out even when you’d rather stay in, and then makes the night unforgettable. That isn’t controlling—it’s magnetic. But when whispers are repeated enough, they begin to sound like truth.

John begins to change.

He was once inclined toward me, always playful in a way that suggested there was something more beneath the surface, though nothing ever crossed that line. He would wait for me after lectures, tease me when I carried too many books, and sometimes walk me back to my hostel. But slowly, almost without me realizing, he shifts his energy away. He begins sitting closer to Favour and Ben, laughing with them during breaks, leaving the hall without looking back at me or Mine. When he speaks to Mine, it’s curt, dismissive, as though every word costs him something.

At first, I think it’s just stress—exams are coming closer, everyone has pressure on their necks. But then, one afternoon, I overhear something that makes my stomach knot.

We are sitting under the big almond tree near our faculty building. Mine and I are bent over our notes, revising, when John stands a little way off with Ben. Their voices are low, but the breeze carries them just enough.

“Bro, I told you,” Ben says, his tone sharp, almost excited. “She just wants to use you. Look at the way she talks to you. Doesn’t that look like someone who thinks she’s better than you?”

John mutters something I can’t catch, and Ben presses on.

“Favour said it too. She’s only sticking around because she knows you’ll always run after her. Don’t let yourself be controlled like that. You’re a man. Act like it.”

I look at Mine, but she doesn’t seem to have heard. She’s still writing, her pen scratching softly on the page. My heart twists inside me. I don’t know whether to tell her or keep it to myself. I don’t want to start a fire, but I can feel the smoke already curling through the branches above us.

From then on, John is different. He no longer waits for me. He no longer joins us for lunch after class. He finds new people, a new set of friends who laugh too loudly and swagger around campus like they own the place. When he passes us, he nods stiffly, almost reluctantly. It feels like betrayal, but worse because he doesn’t admit it—he just lets the silence grow.

Mine notices, of course. She isn’t blind. But instead of stepping back from me, she steps closer. She begins to spend even more time with me, walking me to class, sitting beside me every chance she gets. She tells me things she doesn’t share with the others, confides in me when she feels low. And I let her, because the truth is, I need her too.

But Favour notices this closeness, and though she has “made peace” with Mine—at least on the surface—I can tell it eats at her. They have a talk one afternoon, just the two of them. I don’t know the details, but later Mine tells me they sorted things out. Her voice is careful when she says it, like she knows I’ll ask questions. “It’s fine now,” she says with a smile. “We talked. It’s okay.”

But I can feel it isn’t.

Something about the way Favour looks at us when we laugh together, the way her smile seems tighter than before, tells me the friendship is not restored. It’s a patch on a broken wall, and no matter how smooth the plaster looks, the cracks beneath remain.

Portiphar is the quiet one, fading further into silence as all this unfolds. He doesn’t interfere, doesn’t take sides, just sits with us when he feels like it and disappears when he doesn’t. Ben, on the other hand, grows closer to Favour, echoing her whispers, fueling her words, standing firmly in her corner. And John—John drifts, caught in their current, slipping further from Mine and me until it’s clear he has chosen his side.

By the end of the semester, the circle we once had is gone. We still pass each other in the hallways, still exchange polite greetings, but the bond, the unity, the loud laughter that once carried us—it is dead.

And that is when Sophia enters my life.

She comes quietly at first, almost unnoticed. A new face, a new energy, someone who seems friendly and open. Mine is the one who introduces her, and for a while it feels like Sophia is just another girl in our orbit, harmless, ordinary. But even in those first moments, there is something about her I can’t place—something that will matter more than I know.

Mine and I stand together in the ruins of what used to be a circle, clutching tighter to each other because everyone else has drifted away. Favour and Ben have John. Portiphar has silence. We have each other. And now, Sophia has entered the picture, a quiet shadow that will later stretch long across my path.

But for now, as the semester closes and we step cautiously into 200 Level, I can feel it in my chest: the storm has broken, and nothing will ever be the same.

The days drag into weeks, and the space between us all grows wider. It’s the little things at first—the way John starts avoiding eye contact when I wave at him in class, the way Favour suddenly finds reasons not to sit near Mine, the way Ben whispers something that makes them both laugh when we walk past. These small cuts build up, until finally the wound is open for everyone to see.

One afternoon after lectures, I linger outside the faculty building, waiting for Mine. The heat is unbearable, and sweat clings to the back of my neck. I hear voices around the corner and pause. Favour’s laugh—loud, sharp, unmistakable—carries through the air.

“She’s always acting like she’s better than us,” she says. Her voice has that syrupy sweetness people use when they want their venom to sound harmless.

John chuckles. “Yeah, I’ve noticed. Like she owns everyone.”

“She does that to you too, doesn’t she?” Ben presses, his tone sly. “Always telling you what to do, how to behave. Like you’re a puppy.”

John hesitates, then laughs. “Maybe. But not anymore.”

They don’t notice me standing a few feet away, my heart pounding so hard I’m certain it will give me away. I grip the strap of my bag tightly and bite down on the inside of my cheek to stop the sting of tears. They’re talking about Mine, I know it. But it feels like they’re talking about me too, because she’s mine. She’s my friend.

When Mine comes out, I force a smile and say nothing. She doesn’t need to hear their poison. She already senses it.

As the semester deepens, Mine becomes my anchor. We spend hours together, sometimes talking, sometimes just sitting in silence, both of us too drained to fill the air with words. She tells me one evening as we sit on her bed, our legs crossed under us, “I tried with Favour, you know. I really did. We talked, and I thought we fixed it. But… it’s not the same.”

I nod. “I know.”

She studies my face, her eyes searching. “You don’t think it’s my fault, do you?”

I shake my head immediately. “No. It’s not you. It’s them.”

Mine exhales slowly and lies back on the bed. “I hate losing people. But at the same time, I don’t feel like I’ve lost anything important. Does that sound bad?”

I laugh softly and lie beside her. “It sounds honest.”

We stare at the ceiling together, and for the first time, I realize that maybe this is what friendship really is—not how many people surround you, but the one person who stays when everyone else walks away.

Meanwhile, John is drifting further, slipping through our fingers like water. We see him occasionally, laughing with his new friends, his arm slung casually over a chair, his voice louder than before. He has changed. Or maybe he was always like this, and we just never noticed. Sometimes he greets us, a quick nod and half-smile, but mostly he acts as though we’re strangers.

One evening, Mine and I decide to walk across campus after dinner. The sky is painted in streaks of purple and gold, the air finally cooling after the relentless heat of the day. As we pass the basketball court, we see John with his new friends. He catches our eyes briefly, then looks away as if we’re invisible.

Mine slows her steps. “Did you see that?”

I swallow hard. “Yeah.”

Her voice is quiet, but the hurt in it is sharp. “I don’t even know him anymore.”

Neither do I.

Favour, on the other hand, is thriving. She is almost always with Ben, their laughter echoing in the hallways, their whispers filling the gaps between lectures. She still greets us warmly when we cross paths, her smile wide and practiced, but I’ve learned to see through it. Her friendliness is a mask, and beneath it is something jagged, something bitter.

It’s in the middle of this collapse that Sophia steps into our lives.

She is introduced casually one afternoon in the library. Mine waves me over to a table where a girl sits with her nose buried in a thick textbook. “This is Sophia,” she says. “She’s in our department too, but we’ve just never had the same classes.”

Sophia looks up, and her smile is immediate, disarming. She is soft-spoken, polite, with an energy that feels calm compared to the storm we’ve been living in. I like her instantly, though I don’t say it out loud.

Sophia joins us sometimes after that, sitting with us during breaks, walking with us part of the way back to the hostels. She isn’t always around, but when she is, I notice the way she observes quietly, as though she’s studying the dynamics between us.