Greetings!
Benjamin was a good friend of mine that would always tell me all he wants to do and not only that, all that he's passing through. We loved each other so much that people knew us to be best of friends, in fact, we are not the only ones in a relationship, through our relationship, we have been able to drag our families into becoming friends.
Before our friendship got so deep, one of our teachers called and asked both of us saying,
“Are both of you from the same parents?”
When we heard this, we both looked at each other's faces and nod in unison signalling a yes to what Mr. Adigun had asked us.
It took him enough time to know that we are not from the same and due to Mr. Adigun’s nature, he never got angry nor chastised us for lying to him.
Aside from us being the best of friends, Benjamin was a jovial person who would not let anyone around him have a dull moment. If anyone is not happy, let him sit around Benjamin and his or her sorrow is gone and gone for good.
Benjamin the comedy boy as people who are close and used to him normally called him would always attract the attention of people and for this reason, no one has ever thought of him having any issue of his own.
I could remember a girl, whose name is Sarah at one of our gathering telling Benjamin openly that,
“You this guy, you are so funny, I'm very sure you have nothing to think about.”
When Benjamin heard this lady saying this, he burst into laughter and because everything about him is always a joke, we all that was sorted around him also could not control our laughter.
However, when we got to the senior secondary school 3 class, I noticed something in Benjamin and what I noticed was that he was not as jovial as he used to be, but instead of me being his best friend to have a deep thought about what has changed about him, I was busy with my preparation for my SSCE examination.
Another friend of ours who was not so closed to Benjamin but close to me on a particular afternoon came to me and asked me saying,
“Sam, what has changed about your friend?” Immediately he asked me this question and I replied to him saying, “Segun, nothing is wrong with my friend, he's only preparing for his SSCE examination like any of us.”
This is what I told Segun that made him relaxed his mind as he would always believe in anything I say about Benjamin.
We all started the exam and everything was actually going on as expected as we had all prepared for the task before the task eventually came to us.
On the last day of our paper, there's this news flying around the school that one of the students who would be writing his final paper had committed suicide and that he left a note behind that he had to kill himself because his heart was broken by his lover.
When we all heard this, we were shocked, but even at that, we were yet to know nor identify who the person in question could be as it was too early to name any student as a victim of a broken love.
We all waited and counted ourselves as we were arriving one by one. It's when one of us arrived that we knew that something must have been wrong somewhere. A classmate of mine came to me and asked me to tell our school principal to call Benjamin's parents as we have not seen him.
It's on getting to the principal's office that I was told that Benjamin was dead. When I heard this, I couldn't believe my ears. The principal said he would have told us before our last paper, but that he believed that the news had gone viral and that for us to have a settled mind to write our paper, he had to tell us. This was his statement when he came to address us.
We all went in to write our exams. Although we had read well for the exam, we could really comprehend the questions.
After the exam, we all decided to visit Benjamin house and it was on our way to his house that our classmates who had earlier came to me started blaming and pointing accusing fingers at me saying,
“Sam, but we saw the signal that you couldn't see, see what has now happened to Benjamin now.”
When I heard this, I felt so sorry for Benjamin and was also disappointed in myself for not having noticed the signal of withdrawal as portrayed by Benjamin. Had I known he was passing through hell in the hand of his unknown lover, maybe I would have saved his life. The question I was now asking myself is that,
“What kind of a friend are you Sam?”
Thanks for reading.
Picture sourced from metaAi.
