My name is Adaora, a third-year Management student in UNEC. I am a fair-skinned Igbo girl from Nsukka, the town that plays host to the first indigenous university in Nigeria. By day, I'm the serious type, the type you see always carrying textbooks, looking like they have their life figured out. But inside, I carry a secret that would shock most of my course mates and any person reading this: I like girls. Girls are the most beautiful creatures on this planet.
Living in Manuwa hostel at UNEC makes that secret both harder and easier. Harder because I'm surrounded by hundreds of girls every single day; and easier because no one suspects that I like women. I'm just another girl living in a female hostel.
Hostel life in Manuwa Hall is different from anything outsiders imagine. No boys are allowed inside, not even brothers or boyfriends. It's an all-girls affair, and the rules create a kind of private world. Once the gates are closed and the noise of the day dies down, the walls of hostel hold stories no one tells outside.
The heat is another matter. Enugu sun doesn't play and when EEDC decides to punish us, the hostel becomes an oven. That's when the clothes come off. My roommates and neighbors strip to their underwear without shame. Some walk around in only panties, others just wrap towels or other skimpy wears loosely around themselves. In our room, it's normal to see someone flop onto the bed in minimal clothing.
That's when my secret becomes both a blessing and a curse.
I try to act casual, eyes buried in my phone or glued to a novel, but sometimes I catch myself stealing glances. The hostel gives me front-row seats to the full gallery of womanhood: small bosoms like ripe mangoes, big ones that spill over bras, firm ones that stand, soft ones that fall. I see them all and I feel things I can never admit.
There's one girl in particular, her name is Chisom. Tall, dark and with the kind of laughter that makes the whole corridor turn. When she comes back from lectures, she's quick to fling off her top, fanning herself with her handouts. Sometimes she wears very little. I tell myself not to look, but my eyes betray me every single time.
Nobody here suspects a thing. They joke, they gossip, they complain about lecturers and boys while I sit there pretending I'm one of them. Pretending my heart isn't racing when someone bends too close, or when Chisom tosses me her towel and says, "Help me hold this."
In Manuwa hostel, everything is supposed to be innocent. But for me, every day is a test of control. Every laugh, every careless undressing, every flash of skin feels like a secret temptation. And the hardest part? Smiling, chatting, living normally while knowing I can't tell a soul who I really am or that I like women.
This is the first episode in the Manuwa Hall Secrets series.
Juliet is a Nigerian writer and storyteller drawn to the unseen narratives of everyday life. Her stories explore the profound moments hidden in ordinary relationships and personal journeys.
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