11:10AM
Thursday, March 9th
Lecture hall 1
Lecture hall 1 is a large hall that could hold a thousand people and still have breathing space. It was where some departments from social science, including forensic science, held most of their lectures.
Vic joined with his friends, or guys as they call themselves, to sit at the centre of the hall. They had recently finished a class Physics 101 and decided to cool down in the hall before the next lecturer came in.
The hall, having a capacity of 1000 people, was quite loud during that period; nevertheless, a conversation could be held.
Machiavellian Paul, the shorter one of the three, dangled a gold watch from his fingers.
He had a mischievous smile on his face.
"… and that's how I got this new watch that you see. Do you know how much I can cash out with this thing?"
Hot Harry, the one with the largest frame, spoke with a rather deep voice, the kind that made your rib cage vibrate in its place.
"You are a thief, I swear. If they scam your mother, would you be happy?"
Though, he was a bit of a judgemental talker.
"What brought my mother into this?" Paul shot back, to which Harry laughed.
"She gave birth to you, that's what."
"Abeg, stop it. It's not even stolen. The guy paid me for the watch, I mean–"
"Brother, you're a thief; heaven knows that one. Why can't you stop being evil? You're messing with people's belongings, you know?"
"They're rich people and can replace it all." He hid the watch in his pocket. "I don't take anything from my kind."
"… your kind?"
"Yes! Like you, Vic… people I flow with."
"So everyone else… is rich?" He had a confused expression.
"See? You're getting my philosophy now!"
His eyes still open wide, he nudged Vic with his elbow, "Vic, did Paul tell you he was sick this morning? … Vic! Are you listening?"
Vic was too busy reading an insert in the newspaper from earlier.
The mysterious newspaper they got from the crazed geezer from the scrubs.
He snickered at what he saw.
His eyes were piercing through it; he was so engrossed in it. He was even smiling at it, an insert about a reality TV show star that will be caught on camera drinking garri, groundnuts included.
The main takeaway being that the event had not happened, not yet.
"GUY!"
Harry shook Vic's shoulders.
"Huh? What's up? Who die?" His eyes were still glued to the newspaper.
"What are you reading – your will?"
"The 'not your business' novel, Harry. It has everything on how I'm not interested in you right now; free me, yeah?"
Harry was dumbfounded.
He thought it strange for the Vic he knew to pick up a book and read.
"Hey, is that a newspaper? Since when—"
"Guy! He said you should leave him alone, eh?" Paul cut him short.
"Don't mind him, Paul." Said Vic, then he whispered, "Harry has always been deaf and blind; remember the time with Man U?"
"You say!?" He sounded serious.
After rolling the newspaper in a bundle, he stood up, with his eyes closed, and walked through the passageway between the desk and their tables, leaving the two guys wondering.
"Hm… that guy."
"He didn't even answer you." Paul laughed.
"Shut up, thief!"
"I'm explaining to you, but you aren't listening! I didn't scam him!"
Meanwhile,
Vivian was at a corner behind the class. Her head lay on the desk as she scouted the hall, looking at people's faces and looking away when she was noticed.
Only that she looked at people who were in conversations with others.
The loudest of the class,
Or the smallest social circle.
She fed not on their conversations but on the sensation she got from them. An open book and a black pen were in front of her.
A novel, one she had read before.
But she had turned its pages into a sketchbook; she would argue that it was a book she had read before, and she didn't want to throw it away.
She wanted to know what its characters looked like and what their lives looked like, which is why she drew the scenarios on the book's pages.
She was quite good at it too, too good for a typical science student
She was hard at work at sketching the climax of the story when she got distracted by people's lives again.
She sighed, throwing the book into her bag and resting her arms on the table.
She was about brooding when,
Bam!!
Vic slammed the rolled newspaper in his hand on her desk with full force, announcing his presence.
Vivian glared at him. "What is wrong with you?"
"This newspaper, it's as suspicious as that shady guy from the bush."
She scoffed and looked in the opposite direction.
"Oh wow, tell me more…" Her head was in her hand.
He's the last person she wanted to look at in that school.
But, despite figuring that out,
"Gladly!"
He didn't seem to mind.
He flipped the paper open, slapping each page on the desk.
"Can you stop hitting my desk?"
"Not only is this thing bearing tomorrow's date, which is an oddity on its own. Look here. It says that all the lecturers were, or will be, kidnapped and some cooked by a powerful man called Chief Dotu. I don't know who that is, but he and his political friends are coming for this very newspaper!"
She slowly turned to look at him. "Cooked?"
"… look, it's right here!" He pointed at the insert. "Because of that, the school is going to break into a riot. People are going to get hurt, and half the population would lose their phones."
"What?"
He moved closer to her, holding up the newspaper. "Some things are already happening. Paul already stole a watch from some hotshot, and he's getting arrested this evening, and-"
She backed away from him till she felt the wall behind her.
She couldn't even say anything to him, and he just kept rambling.
"That's not the only thing." He turned the pages again, towards the end.
He shoved in her face a section talking about how the two of them have been jinxed by a strange man living in a field within their school. The jinx meant that they must not stop reading the daily nine newspapers every morning, or they would both see the end the next day. There were no pictures, but the sight of the words alone sent chills down her spine.
Vivian blinked twice, thrice, and read the section again. She shows slight shock but smirks after a moment of realisation.
"That can't be true…" She couldn't believe it, but she couldn't shake away the way it made her stomach churn. She looked at the floor, her mouth slightly open.
"Yeah, it's scary." He turned to the comic section, near the end.
'It can't be real, yet the whole thing makes me feel sick. This can't be happening.
'Why?'
'Why?'
'Why can't I be normal??'
"Look at him, like he's better than everyone."
"Huh?" She sat up, trying to forget everything she just witnessed.
The newspaper was no longer around, and Vic was staring at a pompous-looking youth dressed in colourful clothing and yellow cornrows on his head. A small crowd of students alike who seem to be feeding off his attention surrounds him.
Vivian felt her chest get tight; she turned to look at him with the angriest expression she could muster, "You're a goat."
Vic looked at her, amused.
"You see that wasn't necessary; you just-"
"How can you be spying on people at a time like this?"
She didn't understand her state.
Was she angry?
Or was she just frustrated?
Why was she taking it out on him?
It wouldn't do any good, but for some reason, it felt relieving.
Meanwhile, Bossy Bimbo, the general class rep for the faculty of social science, who happened to be in forensic science, walked up to their desk.
"Hey-"
"So? I'm not a goat. I'm more of a majestic animal."
They were too distracted to notice her, though.
"Yeah! But you behave like a goat!"
"Well, that could stand for 'Greatest Of All Time, so thank you. I'm still majestic."
"Oh, shut up! You're being stupid."
"Says the one calling me names-"
"HEY, ANIMALS, I'm talking to you lot!"
Bimbo, a natural-born leader, within the first month at Uni-port, she had already established a name for herself among the student body. Her leadership skills and no-nonsense attitude earned her a name with the lecturers, but it also gave the students beneath her a reason to despise her."It's too early to start; keep quiet."
However, by coincidence, Vic and Vivian admired Bimbo for her overpowering attitude. They also like her because she looks intelligent, not just because of her composure and stellar performance in class but because of her glasses.
"Hi, Bimbii~," they both chanted, then made crude faces at themselves.
"Don't call me that, ever again…"
"Hi Bimbo~"
She sighed and adjusted the rim of her glasses. "What's happening here? And since when did you start sitting here, Vic?"
The place had been generally accepted as 'Vivian's bench'; no one sat there but Vivian.
"Well, first of all, I sit wherever I want; it's a free school."
"No, it isn't," she shot back.
"Second, nothing really happened." He said, chuckling, "Vivid and I are just having a superficial argument."
Bimbo tilted her head.
"Vivid?"
"That's not my adjective." Vivian whispered.
"She's Vivid Vivian."
"No,' I'm—"
"Fascinating," Bimbo smiled a bit.
'How nice…'
"Oh, I should tell you about this." He brought out the newspaper. "Look at this."
Bimbo could only raise an eyebrow while Vivian sighed and fell on the desk with her forehead.
"This thing can read the future; well, it knows the future." Vic went on.
"I got it from this weirdo in a bush."
" …which was a bad idea," Vivian mumbled.
"Actually, we met him earlier when he was dressed as a sack, but lucky for us, he showed us the way but guess what, we met him for the second time in an old shack and-"
"He didn't show us anything; he chased us halfway across the country!"
"BUT, thanks to that, we found an old guy in a shack who-"
"Femi, and this idiot collected a bewitched newspaper from someone whom he has never met-"
"Well, you have no right to talk about strangers when you followed one through nowhere."
"I didn't-"
"You did, and collecting the thing was your idea."
"No… It was-"
"… I'm sure it was you-"
"Ughhh, go to hell." She covered up her head with her arms.
Vic chuckled, "Anyway, the newspaper had something about-"
Bimbo, who by now had a silly smile on her face, was silent.
Then she blinked, hard, before going on, "Hah, you two aren't serious." Her expression shifted back to its default seriousness, "Where is my snack?"
"Oh, it's right here…"
Vic opened Vivian's bag – much to her despair – and gave her a transparent leather bag filled with what looked like cheese balls. They were hard and round but with a yellowish texture.
Bimbo carried it in his hand and glared at it like it was something else.
Why was it this hard?
"What even is –"
Before she could finish, just at that moment, a student ran to the back entrance, the one closer to Vivian's bench, and began yelling at the top of his lungs.
"You people, we're in trouble!" He announced, "The worst has happened in Uni-port."
The hall was still noisy, but not as before; some people were giving the guy their attention.
Bimbo got up and looked at the youth as he stood, arms spread, at the doorway.
"The lecturers, all of them, have been kidnapped!"
The hall went silent.
"Lies!! Get out of here." She folded her arms and searched for the youth's eyes.
"See, I'm telling you. I went to submit my Math 101 assignment, and I saw no one in the office."
The hall was filled with terror and murmurs. The maths lecturer was always around, even when he didn't have classes.
'the guy could be on to something.'
everyone thought, but Bimbo remained calm.
"Hey! Calm down, everyone; there's no way some adults would just disappear in broad daylight. Let's be reasonable," she sighed and pointed at the student by the door. "And you, why would you just assume they were kidnapped?
Silly Ben: you're right, they were 'adult' napped!
A brief but painful silence swept through the class as everyone heard what came from the boy's mouth.
Bimbo looked at Ben in disgust, then back at the student by the door, "You were saying?"
"Well, I went to look for the lecturer, and he wasn't around. So as I was leaving the office, I saw some strange men discussing how 'successful the kidnapping of the lecturers' was. I heard it with my own two ears."
The whole class gasped in shock, and the murmurs got louder.
It wasn't easy to get everyone's attention in that hall, but the guy had succeeded in that.
"You just heard rubbish, that's all. Now go sit down; MAT 101 will be starting any minute from now, and I don't want the lecturer complaining about a loud gossip like you."
The student looked at Bimbo with disgust and then slowly went into the hall and mixed with the crowd.
The rowdy crowd that accepted him with questions first.
"Now everyone, settle down for class."
An hour passed.
The MAT 101 lecturer hadn't come to the hall.
Bimbo now sat on the table of the desk, tapping her legs on the floor and trying to contact the MAT lecturer or anyone of the bunch, but the strange situation showed itself: the mobile network had been absent for a while now.
Then, a lady stood up, and yelled at the top of her voice,
"HAS ANYONE SEEN THE MAT 101 LECTURER!?IT'S BEEN TWO HOURS NOW!"
Another one yelled, "BIMBO, GO AND FIND THE MAT TEACHER NOW; SOME OF US ARE TIRED, OH!"
"Hehehe, she said teacher…" That was Vivian, laughing to herself.
The other students went on.
"GUYS, what if…"
Then Bimbo snapped.
"YOU LOT SHOULD KEEP QUIET! CAN'T YOU SEE I'M–"
Before she could finish, another guy runs into the hall from one of the back entrances and stops at the centre of it with his hands on his lap, gasping for air.
"THERE'S NO WHAT IF; THE FACULTY BUILDING IS COMPLETELY EMPTY!!"
"..."
Her heart skipped a beat.
"Hey, That means…"
"...It is finished"
"What if they were charmed?"
Bimbo held the desk behind her and had one hand on her forehead, "What?"
"It's true, oh, those lecturers like food and money."
"Come on, charms aren't real," she announced.
"Dey there naw – keep telling yourself that."
"Clueless dog!"
She snapped at that remark.
"Tch, why you…"
Student girl 3: should we call the police?
???: NO!
A guy got up on his feet.
He stood horizontally across Bimbo's position.
His hair was scruffy, along with everything he wore. He had the eyes of a well-experienced lunatic, and a tribal mark drew vertically across the side of his left eye.
His height was tall, but his structure wasn't complementing it.
Students of the university knew him as…
ROWDY OSAS
A known troublemaker in the department.
He and his group were suspects in many criminal and irresponsible happenings around the campus.
He yelled at the class as if he having something important to say but laughed afterwards like a psycho.
He only spoke in the crudest pidgin English possible, but for literal reasons, he would appear to be a keen English native
"Woooo! Fight!" Vic was cheering them on, Vivian shifting away from him and cowering near the wall.
"See, you guys should calm down. Just calm down; and let us assess the matter, eh?"
He spoke with a crooked voice and a slow accent, sounding older than his age.
"But we already…"
"SHUT UP!"
He shouted at his fellow coursemates, no hint of remorse in sight.
From Vic's perspective, Pass always reeked of darkness.
"…"
The hall went semi-silent with a few noise pockets here and there.
"So, eh, the lecturers are gone, abi? Then why are we wasting our strength on this matter? This is a good thing, and someone should ask me how."
"How, boss?"
The voice came from the seat behind the youth standing on the table.
Maybe a follower even, as they all sat in groups.
Osas didn't even look back and just continued.
"See, eh, if there are no lecturers, then all we have to do is fend for ourselves. after all, it is only the taker of the test that knows how he will do in the exam." He said with arms spread out.
"YES!" That was another one.
"Well done, Osas," Bimbo, at last, took a stand – on the desk.
She stood behind Osas's position, her hand on her waist and a slight grin on her face, giving her a menacing look as she went on attacking him from behind, "Yet again, your words have managed to be meaningless."
Osas dropped his arms and looked behind his shoulder, "Don't try me, woman. I'm still talking."
However, his eyes didn't find Bimbo.
"And I say you're done talking; go take a rest." Bimbo sounded as if she were stating her opinion to an agreeing crowd.
As if in her own little world.
"But do tell me, what exactly are you saying we should do without lecturers, to pass on to us what they know, give us scores, and at the end, play major roles in our coronation? Or do you expect us to lecture ourselves?
The students had turned to watch Bimbo.
Osas grinned wide, turning a full 360 degrees to stare at Bimbo's figure next to the door.
"That, Bimbo, isn't a bad idea at all. Wait—why don't we learn our courses on our own and use that knowledge in a way we personally understand? Or wouldn't that be better than to cram our heads with the exact teachings of those so-called 'lecturers'? Would it not be better if you had a chance to learn and implement it your own way?"
!!!
'It will, oh.'
'You have a point.'
'Maybe he's right..'
'Bimbo is confused as usual. l'
Despite the remarks, she looked unshaken.
She folded her arms at Osas, glaring over the rim of her glasses.
"Well, I must say, that isn't the craziest thing you've said in this school. And how do you expect us to handle our scores and grades by ourselves?"
She sighed; her expression turned serious.
"Our course of action is simple. We will investigate the case with the necessary authorities, and things will be normal again."
The hall went silent; everyone turned to Osas.
"Abeg! What does calling the police ever achieve? Those greedy old men and women? And see, you cannot tell me that we, as students, cannot handle ourselves; they're nothing but needless necessities."
Bimbo couldn't believe anyone would listen to him.
Unlike Osas, who is now spending his second year in first year, the rest of the majority at that hall were new students, fresh into university.
Yes
Anyone in the hall sympathising with him was plain impossible.
"We will mark our tests and exams by ourselves, simple and short." Osas added, sounding like it was a general command.
Then, the people turned to Bimbo.
"And who will relay the scores you lot give yourselves to the senate?" She said, loud and clear, but still stern.
They turned to Osas again.
"…"
He was silent for a moment; Bimbo saw this as an opportunity to brush him aside for good – at least for today.
"Running out of steam, are you, Osas?" She said, with an intonation meant to mock him.
Then,
"Y-you…"
"Hmmm?" She squinted her eyes.
"IT WOULD BE YOU, OF COURSE!"
She cringed at his words.
"And why me? Because I'm the class rep?"
She knew the reason was more than that, but her expression was giving a different signal.
She was simply unshakeable.
"Go back to your seat, Osas; this is strange, even for you."
But his face, for some reason, got brighter.
A menacing kind of darkness.
He pointed at her.
"Whether you're in or not, you're going to be the one to relay our scores."
"Don't be absurd; I won't do such a thing no matter the case."
"But you will," he spread out his arms, "And to all my fellow course-mates, we need to spread the news of this new dawn; your support will be greatly appreciated."
She was being ignored.
No, that wasn't just it.
Osas ignored her, with the intention of misusing her rights and privileges with the school.
She gritted her teeth and raised her voice.
"HEY! GET THIS CLEAR, OSAS." She points at him; her expression was cold, "I AM NOT GOING TO BE INVOLVED! I'm handling this case, and whether I call the police or not is none of you or anyone's concern…"
!!!
That was when the class broke up on that statement from Bimbo
"WHAT ARE YOU SAYING NOW?"
"WE DON'T NEED LECTURERS, PLEASE."
"WHO DID THEY HELP?"
"CLASS REP WOULD JUST GIVE US SCORES"
"THIS IS STUPID, OH."
"SHUT UP"
"SHUT UP EVERYONE."
"I GO SLAP YOU, OH!!"
"IF ANY ANIMAL CALL POLICE, EH!?"
The hall was going into chaos with people fighting and arguing with one another on the case of whether the police should be involved or not while some apathetic students were leaving the hall with no care whatsoever.
"You people should wait a little for confirmation; after that, we can call the police and see –" a girl spoke up.
"The police will never find them now; let's just forget them. They're all wicked after all." A guy cut her short.
"Aren't you people listening? I said-"
"But we should still call them; after all, it's still us that will suffer it."
"Hey-!"
"For what? I said, Leave them; let them be kidnapped."
"..."
She found herself at a loss for words, as if the crowd couldn't hear her."
Her hands dropped as she felt something she didn't know was possible.
She didn't know what it meant to be unseen.
Meanwhile, people kept leaving in numbers while some kept arguing if the lecturers were needed in the first place, and a small group of people called for peace; yet, not everyone cared about the lecturers being missing.
Osas had somehow gotten things to go his way.
She nibbled at her nails, mumbling to herself, "This is quite unexpected." Nothing felt right to her anymore, and she didn't plan for something like that ever happening.
But behind her,
"Hey, Bimbo."
Vic called out, yawning, as soon as she turned around.
He and Vivian stood in front of the door to the hall, despite the people flooding out.
She jumped down from the table, resuming her previous stance. "Something isn't right; I just know it." She walked up to them as they stared at her.
"You two will help me get to the bottom of this."
"No," said Vic.
Vivian didn't say anything, but it was clear she was hiding behind Vic's answer.
"I see." She stretched out her arms, looking at them as if something had gone missing from their grasp. "Somehow, I can't genuinely listen anymore..."
Vic tilted his head.
Vivian did the same.
"I don't have a clear understanding, but I'm getting to the bottom of this." She said as she looked up at the two of them, "Stay here. I'm going to investigate on my terms, clear? And no one should call the police yet, or this would get out of hand; excuse me."
And like that, she storms past them and leaves the hall.
They both turn around to see her storming into the faculty building.
"Well", Vic grinned, "this should be fun."
"..." The girl beside him looked like she was pouting.
"As you can see, I was right all along."
She looked up at him, meeting his eyes, then fixing hers on his forehead. "The newspaper did, not you."
"You know, I have confidence in Bimbo," he ignored her, despite hearing her, "She's at solving cases."
'We have bigger issues than her right now, of course he doesn't know that.'
Vic was still talking, like he was his own listener,
"-And when something happens-"
"...?"
He just stopped talking.
Then he tilted his head and reached for his backpack, pulling it to his front, "Hmm, this all feels familiar." Soon, he pulls out the daily 9 newspaper again, the sight of it alone makes Vivian's heart skip a few beats, "Didn't the daily 9 say something about all this?"
His eyes widened.
"Huh?" 'But that is what I was-'
"Yeah! Right here," he shoves the section reporting the missing lecturers into her face, she backs away, trying no to look at it, "The lectures disappeared, just like it said they would."
"It's a coincidence."
'No, that's just an excuse'
"There's no coincidence," he was still smiling, some of his words even had a cackle in them, "This paper, it might actually be legit, meaning that I was right all along." He looked confident, no it was something more.
"Similar to the definition of naivety." she said, almost whispering.
"And according to it, we're the ones who can save those guys. We're their ray of hope!" Vic continued.
"... When did that part enter it?" She said with a monotone.
"So, what do you say we get this over with, yeah? I can be a hero! Or, some other popular entity, Heh, took me long enough."
"Do I have to? I don't think I want to do… anything."
Vic watched her thread ahead as she was talking.
It was then she noticed that her back was slouching more than it did when they first met, an aura of darkness surrounded her from head to toe, her footsteps oozed off it too.
But it wasn't visible,
It was something he just felt.
He bit his lip, opened his mouth as if to say something, but he closed it a moment later.
What convincing thing was he going to say - he hadn't thought that far.
He had assumed that the strange girl who followed him back then wouldn't give much of a resistance.
Vivian hadn't gone too far from Vic when she turned just her head to the left, her eye hidden behind her dark, silky, shaggy, straight hair; he could see just her mouth, the neck of her sweater covering it slightly.
"See you later…"
He couldn't hear her without a strain.
"We're supposed to stay here, yeah."
"She wouldn't notice I'm gone anyway.
"Hey, at least help me out, I'm going to look for clues in the staff room."
He was running out of ideas, he just couldn't get her to help him.
"No, suit yourself, au revoir."
At last, she followed the back of the faculty building, and disappeared.
He was left dumbfounded, yet a smile was able to creep on his face.
"She… Said no, yeah?" He shook his head as if rewiring his thoughts. He went back into the class, arms behind his head, only to see that while some violently energetic students were having a tussle at a corner of the hall, a small number of people, girls from the looks of it, listened to Bimbo and waited at the front of class and Paul who was talking to them from the bench behind.
Now, Vic didn't want to go investigating alone,
As confident as he was in himself, he didn't trust his abilities, even refusing to think about taking responsibility for them.
He needed someone to help him understand the clues he might find, Bimbo was not an option, he wasn't ready for her flavour of drama.
Then he thought of Paul, taking him to the staff room didn't feel like a bad idea.
He had no other choice but to go down the most troublesome path, like a psychopath.
So he ran up to the front of the hall,
Jogging down the stairs with his fists stretched sideways, to where Paul was sitting.
When he got there, he noticed that Paul just sat there, his head in his hand and elbow on the desk, looking at whoever was talking among the group.
It made no sense to him, so he trapped hard on his shoulder, "Come on Paul we are leaving."
"Eh? Oh Vic. What happened? Didn't you hear the class rep say-"
"Just follow me, we need to find clues in the staff office."
He mixed up between his secondary school and the university.
"Oh, clues ahbi?" He said, ignoring Vic's blunder.
"Yeah, are you coming?" Vic turned around, facing the door he came from, but Paul shook his head and looked at the girls in the desk before his, "Okay o," he smiled slightly at the girls as he got up, "Talk to you girls later okay?"
"We weren't talking to you."l
"Huh?"
His jaw dropped.
"Guy!" Vic called out at him, to which he walked up dragging his feet.
"I'm coming now."
"Ha-ha!" Vic laughed without a care, but without a smile either,
"Stop it, please…" Paul called out, but Vic was rushing towards the exit.
"Did you hear those two, they're going to solve this thing on their own"
One of the girls started with her voice low.
"They should just leave the matter, after all, Bimbo would call the police and we would start classes again like normal" the tallest of them replied.
"Some people are just daft, why can't they just leave the thing, eh?" the one who talked first said with a scoff.
"But if nothing happens, we're calling the police okwia?" The fairest one noted, her voice shaking a bit.
"Why not?"
"Me? I don't want to fail, oh... Those idiots better mind their own business and…"
On that, Vic spun around.
With a finger pointed at them, he raised his voice and grinned his teeth.
Like a main character out of a movie.
"Hey! You guys shouldn't call the police, yeah? Because I, Vic Parker, would end this quicker than you can say Jack Robinson!"
Then from the arguing crowd,
"Vic, you're going to call the police, that's nice of you-"
"Hey! I said I'm not gonna-"
"Who is going to call who? SEE VIC, MIND YOURSELF OH, NO PUT YOUR HAND FOR WETIN NO CONCERN YOU!"
He forgets his English restrictions.
Yet as if expecting a reaction from Osas's direction, Vic looked him right in the eye, then stuck out a tongue and pulled down his lower eyelids with his middle fingers.
Osas got enraged, one could feel the heat surrounding him at that instant.
He was no longer on the table, but was among a crowd of friends and supporters - a large one at that.
He pushed his way out of the crowd, getting a clear view of the troublemaker.
"You think I'm joking ba?" He roared.
"Abeg leave him to let him help-" a girl tried to call out.
"Your mama there!" He raised a hand with his palms barred out, "SHUT UP, HAG!"
The girl gasped.
Another one slapped him, after making it through the crowd.
"You're very stupid! That is not how to talk to women-"
Osas, his face sideways, facing the floor, grinned like some sort of humanoid wild animal.
"You slap me?" He said, glaring at the girl with a side eye.
"Yes!!" She said with her hands on her waist, "And I'll do it again!"
"You WITCH!!!" he faced her, his veins pumping into his skull had gotten visible, his eyebrows were making stitches on his forehead.
"YOU DARE-" he started.
But before any drama could go on, Vic pulled Paul out of the hall, and they soon started heading towards the faculty building.
"Fight will soon start." He said with a laugh.
"That girl should've just kept her mouth shut, I don't like people like her." Paul said.
"Oh really? Then why are you following me around?"
"I have my own reasons guys, besides, it's just because you and Harry are cool."
Vic and Paul were not that close to begin with.
Paul was someone Vic thought of as a convenient 'side help',
Paul saw Vic as a troublemaker, like everyone else, but enjoyed the opportunities he left behind in his wake.
But besides all that, their personalities didn't mix.
"So if I didn't know Harry, you're saying, you and I wouldn't have met?"
He asked a disturbing question.
Paul just looked the other way.
"Well, what are you saying?" he asked, a grin on his face.
"Nothing guy, let's just… Go." he didn't look comfortable anymore.
Now it was just awkward.
Meanwhile, the girls continued their conversation,
"Don't you think it's odd?"
"Odd? That what?"
"That loud guy won the class over from Bimbo, even I feel a bit moved."
"So what are you saying? That Osas did something to everyone?"
"No, maybe. But Bossy Bimbo losing the class to that guy of all people? No, it's just too odd."