Nedu leaned against his bunk one humid evening, his voice low as he shared a story that made the boys around him shake their heads. "You people think your own suffering is bad? Let me tell you about Chike."
Chike was a quiet junior who rarely caused trouble, but his misfortune had nothing to do with his own actions. His older sister, Ada, was a classmate of one of the most feared seniors in the school—Senior Taye. For months, Taye had been trying to befriend Ada, sending messages through mutual classmates, even approaching her directly during inter-house sports. But Ada wanted nothing to do with him. Her polite refusals slowly became firm rejections.
The more she turned him down, the more Taye's pride took a hit. His wounded ego soon turned to bitterness, and that bitterness found an outlet in Chike. Every time Taye saw him, he would invent a reason to punish him—fetching water under the hot sun, cleaning the hostel floors twice in one day, running errands that took hours.
Worse still, Taye recruited his close friends into the harassment. "Anytime you see that boy, deal with him," he ordered. It became a silent command in their circle. Chike could not walk from class to the dining hall without the fear of being cornered. He could be called out for something as small as walking too fast or not greeting loudly enough.
The sister didn't escape unscathed either—sometimes she'd walk toward class and boys from hostel windows would shout insults: "Flat nyash! See her leg like toothpick! Face don burn-burn!" Laughter would ripple through the crowd, her cheeks flushing as she quickened her steps to escape their jeers.
One afternoon, Chike returned from the borehole with a bucket of water he had queued hours to fetch. Before he could take ten steps, one of Taye's friends grabbed the bucket and poured it onto the ground, laughing as Chike stood frozen in shock. "That's for your sister," the boy sneered.
Nedu ended the story with a sigh. "In Old FGC, sometimes the sins you pay for aren't even yours. Chike's only crime was being Ada's brother."