Serendipity [BoyxBoy]

Chapter Seven

People were milling about, sweeping the front of their compounds, cleaning gutters and exchanging pleasantries and grievances. Baba Ebenezer, the old man who lived in a house without a fence, griped that his grandchildren were assholes who never came to visit him and called Nosa a 'rude young gangster' when he walked by without greeting. A baby strapped to the back of a very tired looking woman cried while she arranged biscuits into a display at the front of her store. Naked children splashed around the communal tap at the end of the street, tossing handfuls of water at each other while their elder ones fetched jerry cans of water.

Nosa walked with his hands in his pockets and his head down, hoping he looked like just another boy on his way to smoke weed or something dumb like that and not like a kid who had just seen the world for the first time. His anxiety swelled from sleepy serpent coiled in his stomach to yam leaves creeping up his skin and tightening around his throat. Everything was so bright-- so loud. People were surely watching him. Talking about him. They were definitely laughing at how he hung his head low and how his back arched and how the pockets of his shorts bulged as he clenched and unclenched his fists in them. One person had already called him rude for not greeting, the other adults were probably thinking the same thing. They were probably pointing him out as proof that his generation had no manners. Would they tell his parents later?

Nosa increased his pace. Then reduced it, in case he looked like he was running. Then increased it again because he did want to run.

This was why he had no friends and never left his house. Everyone noticed he was weird at some point. They always found out he wasn't normal when they got close enough. His primary school friends left, Agoz did too and so did the last extrovert he hung out with-- the last Irekan before Irekan. He was the common denominator in his string of failed friendships.

He was the problem.

How long would it be before Irekan left too?

Nosa was making a mistake that was only going to end up hurting him. You'd think that he'd learnt his lesson after everything but it turned out he was even more stupid than he thought.

"I should not be doing this," he whispered to himself.

What was anime really? Just fancily drawn cartoons with a penchant for depicting women with really big boobs. He couldn't watch that! At least, not in a house that wasn't his.

Besides, he couldn't be friends with Irekan. Having to lead him around school was one thing and talking to him in church was another, but going to Irekan's house-- carrying himself to the dwelling place of the enemy-- that was dangerous. It was foolish. It was a mistake.

And Nosa was tired of making mistakes.

He heard Irekan's wild laughter before he even saw him.

Irekan was already on the field when Nosa got there, frolicking with a big, black dog. Literally frolicking.

He was holding the hands-- paws-- of his dog up, kicking each of his legs to the side as he skipped around with the dog standing on its hind legs. He looked like a character at the end of a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse episode. The dog had what Nosa assumed to be a grin on its wide face, tongue lolling out the side of it's mouth and eyes squinting and it danced a jig with its master.

Nosa never thought he'd ever have to use the word 'frolicking,' he never thought he'd have to use the word 'jig' either but here he was.

Irekan laughed again, louder and happier than the first one and all the warning lights flickering in Nosa's head shut off. He'd make a thousand more mistakes if it meant listening to that laugh again.

Nosa froze.

What the fuck?

Irekan turned a slow circle with his dog and noticed Nosa frozen at the edge of the field with his brows furrowed in confusion.