Smile | Yanmife Atewogbola
The lecture hall got progressively quieter as Emma walked in. Emma was used to hearing whispers after people noticed her, but silence was never the case. She felt anxious.
The silence was more uncomfortable because it was about 9 PM, there was no lecture happening, and everyone was usually talking but with their books open in front of them. That didn’t seem very honest according to the definition of the word. She thought about how she liked the synonym frank better.
As Emma walked in, she looked around the lecture hall. She was blinking more now. She knows it is because of the sudden silence. Her blinking was interrupted as her gaze landed on her seat.
Emma always sat on the first row, on the extreme right. It had to be the extreme right. The position was the same in every lecture hall on this floor. The seat was always next to a wall, giving her the safety she needed.
Today, however, Dolu was in her seat.
As she walked towards Dolu, she cataloged the familiar sensations: the tightness in her chest, the slight acceleration of her pulse, the almost imperceptible tremor in her right hand. She didn’t have names for these feelings. She simply recognized them as the physical manifestations of her encounter with Dolu Afonja, reliable as gravity.
It had been this way since their first year when Dolu all but made Emma angry.
Their paths should never have crossed meaningfully. Different courses, different student rooms, different worlds. But then came the Paul Kujenra Prize competition in their first year, the prestigious academic competition that Emma had been preparing for since orientation. It was meant to be her reward to herself, her validation.
Instead, Dolu had won it with an unconventional submission that the judges called “revolutionary,” a project he’d apparently conceived just three days before the deadline while Emma had spent months perfecting hers.
She’d never spoken to him about it. In fact, in three years, they’d exchanged perhaps fifty words in total, most of them repetitions of remarks she trained herself to make from observing her classmates. Yet somehow, Dolu had become the measuring stick against which Emma evaluated herself, the constant reminder of how hard work could be trumped by natural brilliance.
Emma Ogbebor, the scholarship student from a small Benin town, had come armed with perfect grades and a reputation for academic brilliance that preceded her. The daughter of struggling parents who had sacrificed everything for her to go to school in Lagos, Emma was her family’s ticket to a good life.
Dolu Afonja had arrived at Crux University trailing rumors and whispers. The youngest son of an ex-governor, he’d spent his childhood traversing continents, collecting languages and experiences, while Emma had been memorizing state capitals. His house, when he was away from school, was probably full of people like her parents: maids, drivers, cooks, cleaners.
Where Emma sought structure, Dolu thrived in chaos. Where she planned, he improvised. His easy charm made him instantly popular, and his international, wealthy background fascinated their peers.
As Emma approached—her seat—she felt the familiar tightness in her chest intensify. The lecture hall seemed to be holding its breath. She stopped directly in front of Dolu, who looked up from his book with a smile that made her angry. The one she’d first seen at the Paul Kujenra Prize ceremony. She took a deep breath.
“You’re in my seat,” Emma said, her voice quiet but firm.
Dolu closed his book, marking his place with a finger. “I didn’t realize seats were assigned. I’m sorry.” He seemed honest.
“Seats aren’t assigned, but I always sit there.” The moment the words left her mouth, she wondered if her attempt to sound like him worked. Trying to change her tone, she added, “I could just sit behind you. The class is quiet.” She stated her observations. The chair behind him was close to the wall and on the far right, but it wasn’t her seat.
Dolu raised his eyebrows at her last statement. “Really? That is why everyone got so quiet? Huh. Do you sit here every night? Is it like an Emma thing?”
“Tuesday through Friday, 8:15 to 11:30 PM.”
He smiled again. “That’s... specific.”
Emma didn’t respond. She didn’t see anything amusing about consistency.
After a moment, Dolu began gathering his materials. “I’ll move. There are plenty of tables.”
“No.” The word surprised her as much as it seemed to surprise him. “Making you get up seems childish anyway, I’ll sit behind you." Her classmate used the word that way during their last debate. She said arguing over the format of an essay is childish.
“It’s okay, Emma. You clearly have a system, and I’ve disrupted it.” He had already half-packed his bag.
“Why are you here?” Emma asked abruptly as she sat behind Dolu. “You’ve never been here this late before.”
Dolu paused, his expression changing in a way Emma couldn’t interpret as he turned his head in her direction. She wasn’t very good at guessing other people’s emotions.
“Maybe I suddenly developed an appreciation for studying in noisy environments,” he said smiling. “Or maybe I just needed somewhere to go.”
A pause followed, one that seemed meaningful, though Emma couldn’t tell why. Emma looked at Dolu, taking in things she normally filtered out: he looked uncharacteristically rough.
“Well, it’s good you found this space,” Emma said before she put her headphones on to drown out the noise that started five minutes and forty-two seconds ago.
They worked in silence for fifty-three minutes. The arrangement was not as disruptive as Emma had feared. Dolu was quiet, focused, and efficient, much like herself. He didn’t try to talk to her. She liked that. Occasionally, she found herself watching him work—he tapped his pen three times before starting a new problem, and he mouthed words silently as he read. It was different.
The silence broke when Dolu picked up his phone. He glanced at it, his face suddenly draining of color. After that, he stood up and walked toward the exit.
Emma remained at the table, telling herself he wasn’t in trouble. It was good for her that he left because she could move to her seat.
But something about the abrupt shift in Dolu’s demeanor left her fearful. After fifteen minutes of failing to concentrate, she packed her materials with uncharacteristic haste and followed the path he had taken. For years, every time she failed to say something in some situations that happened at home, her mum would talk to her loudly. She would say “Emma, did you not see my reaction? Can’t you ask if I’m okay? Do you want me to die?” She doesn’t want Dolu to die.
She found him outside sitting on the stairs beside the entrance of the lecture hall, his face illuminated by the white glow of his phone screen. He wasn’t crying, but his breathing had the irregular pattern of someone who had recently stopped crying or was working hard not to start.
“Are you okay?” Emma asked, keeping her distance.
Dolu looked up, clearly startled by her presence. “No.” He slipped his phone into his pocket. “I’m fine.”
Emma had no protocol for this situation.
“You left suddenly,” she said, stating the obvious when nothing else came to mind.
“Yes.”
“Because of the message you got?”
“Yes.”
“Is someone hurt?”
“No. Not physically, anyway.” He looked away. “It’s complicated.”
Emma shifted in discomfort, she would like to leave but she is strangely scared to do so. “I am better with clearly defined situations, I’m not good with complicated.”
That drew a small, unexpected laugh from Dolu. “No, I don’t imagine you are.” He patted the floor beside him. “But you can sit if you want.”
Emma hesitated but still carefully sat down, leaving precise space between them.
“My father sent me a message,” Dolu said after a moment, his voice controlled. “He’s cutting me off financially.”
His words hung in the night air, stark and unexpected.
“Your father is a former governor,” Emma said, the statement more an observation than a question. “Surely financial support isn’t an issue.”
Dolu laughed even louder this time. “Money isn’t always about survival. Sometimes it’s about control.”
Emma understood control. Her parents never let her make major decisions alone, they thought she was incapable of considering all necessary factors.
“What will you do?” she asked, surprising herself with her own question.
“I’ll find a way,” Dolu said, and for the first time, Emma saw something in him as he talked. It made her emotional because she saw it in herself too. She didn’t know what it was. “The Paul Kujenra Prize,” he added suddenly. “I will most likely join the competition for our year.”
Emma was still confused about something. Her mum always told her her curiosity was presumptuous, but she really wanted to know something. “Why is he cutting you off? Are you a bad son?”
“He’s getting remarried. The wedding is next month.” Dolu responded.
Emma processed this information, searching for the appropriate response. Congratulations seemed wrong, given his reaction.
“You’re upset,” she observed instead.
“Brilliant deduction,” Dolu replied, but without real bite. “It’s not the remarriage itself. It’s—” he trailed off, then seemed to recalibrate. He continued, dragging out his words. “My mother died three years ago. Cancer. And my father, he’s been seeing this woman for two years already. Which means—”
“Less than eleven months,” Emma calculated automatically. “He began seeing her less than eleven months after your mother’s death.”
“Eight, to be precise. But yes.” Dolu’s fingers found the silver pendant on his neck. She would love to have one too. It would make this conversation less sad. “That’s not the worst part. The wedding is scheduled for April 18th.”
The date didn’t register as significant to Emma.
“It’s the anniversary of my mother’s death,” Dolu clarified, his voice subtly breaking on the last word. “He says it’s about ‘reclaiming the day with joy’ instead of sadness. But it feels like he… like he’s erasing her. I spoke rudely to him and… and his fiancée, it wasn’t my first time, but I guess he has had enough.”
Emma sat in silence, processing this information.
“That sounds bad, erasing someone,” she finally said, the understatement all she could manage.
Dolu gave a small, choked laugh. “Yes. Bad just about covers it.”
They sat in further silence for several minutes. Emma observed the campus around them—the yellow streams of illumination from street lights, the distant sounds of students returning to their hostels, the pattern of the stars in the sky. She suddenly thought about the literature on dwarf stars, but the thought of the current conversation disturbed her.
Emma wanted to tell Dolu to have a conversation with his dad.
Deciding not to say it, she spoke about the competition. “The interdisciplinary challenge requires collaboration between different academic departments. Your biological research. My engineering design.”
A smile began to form on Dolu’s face but unlike the smile she was accustomed to seeing, it was something more frank. Something that suggested he was happy with her for the first time.
“Are you proposing we work together?” he asked.
Emma, who had never in her academic career voluntarily collaborated with anyone, felt something shift inside her. A recognition. A possibility.
“Yes,” she said simply. “I am. Let’s meet here by 9 AM tomorrow.”
“Now that is something to look forward to, us collaborating.”
Since she saw him smiling, Emma decided to ask, “How do you feel?” He smiles a lot.
Dolu looked up. “What?”
“Your father. The wedding. You are upset.”
His expression softened slightly. “I am. It takes time, I can’t rush myself to feel better.”
“You can’t rush yourself to feel better,” Emma repeated.
“No,” Dolu replied.
Emma considered this unfamiliar concept. “My mother says I’m emotionally stunted,” she said suddenly. “She says it’s why my father left.”
The words stayed between them, raw and unfiltered. Emma hadn’t intended to speak them aloud and wasn’t entirely sure why she had. Perhaps she wanted to share something too so Dolu wouldn’t feel alone.
Dolu’s expression changed to something she couldn’t read again. “When did she tell you that?”
“When I was twelve.” She kept her voice carefully neutral. “After I received a perfect score on my mathematics exam, but failed to express sufficient enthusiasm about her new boyfriend.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say to a child,” Dolu said quietly.
Emma shrugged. “It’s factually accurate. I don’t process emotions normally. I don’t understand the rules,” she said. “Everyone else seems to have received an instruction manual I’m missing and it’s frustrating to try to be like them, like you.”
Dolu nodded slowly, as if her answer confirmed something he’d suspected. “The rules aren’t as universal as you might think. We’re all just improvising, Emma.”
“You’re not.” The words came out disapproving. “You always know exactly what to say, you maintain constant eye contact while doing so and you know how to make people like you.”
“You think people like me?”
“They talk about you a lot.”
“Except you.”
The simple statement took on the form of an observation that Emma had no ready response for.
“I don’t dislike you,” she said eventually, the words feeling inadequate.
Dolu’s smile held an emotion she couldn’t identify. “High praise indeed.”
“We need to head to our hostels now.”
As they made to stand up, Dolu paused. “My father is bringing his fiancée to my uncle’s birthday celebration this weekend. I want to go for my uncle, but I don’t want to face them alone.”
Emma waited for him to continue, to explain why he was sharing this information.
“Would you come with me?” he asked finally. “As… support.”
The request was so unexpected that Emma blinked a couple times. Finally she said, “Why me?”
“Because you won’t try to fix it. You won’t offer empty platitudes or tell me to be happy for my father.” He met her eyes directly. She looked away, but he continued. “And because I think we might become friends, Emma. Even if you don’t realize it yet.”
Friends. The word felt too foreign.
“When is it?” she heard herself ask.
“Saturday. 2 to 5 PM.”
She mentally reviewed her schedule. “2 to 4 PM,” she counter-offered.
Dolu smiled really wide. “2 to 4 it is.”
As they walked home, their paths diverged at the T-junction that separated the building complexes—Emma toward the girls’ hostels, and Dolu toward his apartment off-campus.
“Goodnight, Emma,” he said.
“Goodnight,” she replied. After a moment’s hesitation, she added, “does your face hurt when you smile?”
Dolu’s laughter echoed in the empty courtyard. “No, Emma. It doesn’t.” He finally said.
“Okay. I hope you sleep adequately.”
“I hope you sleep adequately, too.”
It wasn’t until she stood in front of her hostel that Emma noticed the tightness in her cheeks and the unfamiliar tension at the corners of her mouth. She reached up to touch her face—it was warm. She was smiling. A small, unfamiliar movement of facial muscles that persisted despite her attempts to return to neutral.
Yanmife Atewogbola is a Software Engineer and a writer. When she’s not immersed in coding, she’s imagining compelling characters and complex shores that reflect everyday reality. A co-author of Ife, a collection of short love stories, Yanmife is also a child of God who finds joy in reading, music, and having conversations. With a passion for social justice and women’s rights, she is driven to create narratives that matter.
Cover Photo by Devonyu