The reinstatement letter came in a stiff envelope, the university's seal embossed in faded gold. Its tone was overly formal — cold comfort to a girl unravelling at the seams.
"We are pleased to inform you that, following further internal deliberation, your academic suspension has been lifted. You are hereby reinstated effective immediately and may resume your examinations."
Elara read the sentence over and over again, the words warping in her mind. Pleased to inform—as if the damage hadn't already been done. As if she hadn't spent the past three months buried in shame, self-doubt, and silence. She hadn't appealed the decision. She hadn't reached out to the administration. She hadn't done anything but someone else had. She stormed into the living room of their Lagos home, the letter in one hand, her voice trembling.
"You called them, didn't you?"
Her father was seated by the window, reading the day's paper, his reading glasses perched perfectly on the bridge of his nose.
He looked up calmly. "I asked them to revisit a mistake."
"That mistake got me suspended," she snapped. "And Professor Enenche—what did you do to him?"
"He resigned. Due to illness."
She stared at him. "Because you made him."
He folded the newspaper slowly. "I don't ruin people, Amina. I hold them accountable."
She didn't believe him. Not entirely. But she said nothing more.
Later that evening, her father handed her a new laptop, a plane ticket back to school, and said: "Use the silence wisely. It won't last."
Elara returned to campus just before the final semester exams. Her classmates looked surprised, some even startled. But no one asked questions. The professor who had once sneered at her was gone, replaced by a timid young woman who barely made eye contact. Everything had changed, everything but her.
She tried to stay invisible. Headphones in, Hoodie up, Notes in hand but the whispers still existed, buried in throat-clears and half-glances. The girl who disappeared. The girl who accused a professor. The girl with a powerful father. It was Axle who cracked through that silence. He greeted her in the library with a crooked smile and two meat pies.
"You looked like you hadn't eaten in days," he said.
"I haven't," she admitted.
They sat together after that, studied late, laughed harder. It wasn't love, but it was warm, safe. So when he invited her to a dorm party the night before her last paper, she didn't hesitate.
"You deserve to breathe," he said.
She followed him into the noise, the music, the haze of alcohol and then… nothing. She woke up on a stairwell floor. Shoes gone, phone cracked, head pounding. Her shirt was damp with something sticky. Her hand was scraped raw. Her heart pounded with a sense of wrongness. When she got to her hostel, the news had already broken:
Axle was dead.
Fallen from the third floor of the boy's dormitory around 4:17 a.m. No one knew how. Some said suicide. Others murmured fight. She vomited before she could read the full post. There were scratches on her arm. Her earring was missing. There was a bruise on her thigh. But she remembered nothing. Only that Axle had pulled her aside during the party. That he looked serious. That they climbed the back stairs together, then static. Her mind was a graveyard of blanks. She panicked, she deleted messages, she burned the dress she wore that night, she tossed her cracked phone and bought a new one. She skipped Axle's memorial service and stayed indoors, curled up in shame, guilt, and fear.
What did I do?
What if I pushed him?
What if he hurt me and I fought back?
Her father never called to ask about the boy. Never mentioned the news. His silence felt too clean. Too deliberate. Weeks later, after one of her final papers, she found a folded paper tucked into her locker.
I know what happened that night.
We need to talk. Before someone else does.
No signature, no phone number, Just clean, sharp handwriting. Elara's blood ran cold. Someone had seen something and worse, Hey thought she didn't know. But the truth was…She didn't.