If you sit in the UNEC Love Garden long enough, it will show you everything it hides. By day, it appears as a park full of borrowed joy and laughter; hawkers selling chewing gum, biscuits, pure water, and students going to the library. If you are like me, one who prefers to trek from my hostel to the school gate, you would know that passing through Okukwu Hostel, through the Love Garden is a shortcut that hides you from being seen when you have no money to enter the school shuttle. Nothing shames a UNEC student more than to be seen trekking to the school gate.
The Love Garden is all these in the daytime, but when night comes and darkness descends on the campus, the place strips itself bare and secrets unfold.
Everything happens at Love Garden. You will see some students burying their heads in faded handouts or textbooks that have already survived two generations of exams struggling to study with their Lontor lamps. You will also find others stretched out, debating football matches with the passion of men who will not see the pitch themselves or even score a goal if the ball were placed in front of an empty net. You will also see lovers cuddling, laughing and doing things couples in love do. And then there are the watchers, the ones who do not speak but take notes of everything that happens. I am one of them.
Most first-year students got their first kiss at the Love Garden. It was at this place my breasts were fondled by Ikechukwu in my first year, the same place I later saw him kissing Sandra, my fellowship girl, one night like that. The Love Garden is many things, but faithful it is not.
Which is how I saw Chinaza. I will tell you how I knew her name in the next story.
She did not so much sit as fidget, her phone glowing against her face in intervals—on, off, on again. She laughed too loudly once, then pressed her lips shut, as though even joy needed restraint. Her blouse could not decide if it wished to cover her or expose her, because her hand kept tugging at it, pulling, smoothing, releasing.
Then came the car, a Benz. Black. Tinted. Moving through the dust like a thing that should not be seen yet demands notice. Such cars always arrive with the same silence, the same pretence of blending in. But we know them, we always know.
Chinaza rose when she saw it. She brushed invisible dust from her jeans, as though polishing herself for display. Her steps towards the car were too careful, too deliberate. She adjusted her blouse, checked her reflection quickly on her phone screen, then clutched her purse tighter.
The car slowed to a stop. She didn't jump in immediately. No, these girls never do. She bent slightly, peered through the glass as it slid down. The glow from her phone screen was still on; I could see her checking the number that had called her earlier, cross-matching it with the man's face in the driver's seat. A quick confirm. No mistakes allowed. We have heard stories of girls entering the wrong car.
When she was satisfied, her lips curved into a small smile. She said something short, like "you're the one," then pulled the door handle. Not the back seat, never the back seat as Uber girls do. Always the front, always business. She slipped inside with practiced ease.
The door shut. The Benz turned. The red tail lights bled into the night until they became just another shadow.
Behind me, laughter flared again from some guys opposite where I sat: Ronaldo's career, apparently, is dead. A girl bent over her torchlight, lips moving, memorizing definitions as though whispering into God's ear. UNEC carried on, unaffected, unbothered.
But I had seen.
And if there is one thing Love Garden never lacks, it is witnesses.
Juliet is a Nigerian storyteller uncovering the profound narratives hidden within the ordinary moments of everyday life. She is the creator of the 'Hookup' series on Naughty Narratives.
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