Chapter One
Martins had always felt a little older than the calendar claimed.
From as early as five, he knew things—things children weren't supposed to know. He could sense when his mother was worried, even before she said a word. He could tell when his father was silently angry, though his face rarely gave it away. He noticed when neighbours argued, when teachers lied, when the sun seemed more tired than usual. No one taught him how to see these things. He just did.
He was the first child in a house that smelled like palm oil and powdered detergent. They lived in a modest two-bedroom flat, tucked at the back of a quiet street in Benin City. The walls were slightly cracked in the corners, and the ceiling groaned during harmattan, but it was home. His father was a mechanic who fixed more than he earned. His mother was a nurse, constantly rotating between morning and night shifts. His younger siblings, Joy and David, were lively and content. But Martins was... different.
He didn't quite fit into the category of "gifted" as the magazines described it. He wasn't building robots or calculating space trajectories. But he understood things—language, emotions, intentions. He was the kind of boy who could win an essay competition and then forget to wear matching socks. One minute he was explaining colonial politics to his classmates, the next he was chasing after a butterfly with a stick. There was something deeply mature about him, and yet something unmistakably childish too. His teachers often said he was an old soul in a young body. His mother called him a puzzle.
From a young age, Martins learned to observe before he spoke. He would sit at the edge of conversations, soaking in details, storing thoughts like books on invisible shelves. His thoughts never stopped, not even at night. He would lie in bed, arms behind his head, thinking about the meaning of life, the unfairness of the world, the strange silence that came after everyone else had fallen asleep. Sometimes, he envied the simplicity of his siblings. Joy, who sang when washing plates. David, who laughed loudly at cartoons he'd already seen three times. They were normal in a way Martins could never be.
At school, he was well known. Not popular, exactly, but respected. He answered questions no one else dared to ask. He quoted books the others hadn't read. But the same mind that impressed his teachers often made his classmates uneasy. He wasn't the kind of boy you teased or joked with easily. He didn't always get social cues, and when he did, he sometimes overanalyzed them. If someone laughed at him, he'd spend the rest of the day wondering if there was something wrong with the way he walked, talked, or breathed.
Still, Martins was not lonely. Not exactly. He just lived in his head a lot. He kept a notebook under his bed where he wrote things that didn't fit anywhere else—thoughts about the sky, about why adults lied, about whether people could feel each other's pain if they tried hard enough. No one knew about the notebook, not even his mother. It was the only space in the world where his thoughts were safe from judgment.
But all that thinking came at a price. Martins often felt exhausted by his own mind. He thought about everything—his future, his family, whether God really listened when he prayed. The thoughts kept coming, like waves that never rested. It was a beautiful curse. And in that restlessness, something darker crept in.
The first time he saw a pornographic image, he was in JSS3. A classmate had passed him a phone during break time, laughing, daring him to look. Martins stared for only a few seconds, but the image stayed with him far longer. It wasn't the shock or the curiosity that disturbed him. It was the guilt. He returned the phone, said nothing, and went home that day with a knot in his stomach.
He prayed about it that night. Promised himself he would never look again. But he did. Again and again. Quietly. Secretly. Always at night, when the house was asleep and the only sound was the whirring of the ceiling fan. It became his hidden sin, something he couldn't name but couldn't stop. It didn't even bring pleasure after a while. Just shame, and a strange kind of sadness.
Martins hated himself for it. Hated that he couldn't control something so small. He was smart, wasn't he? Smarter than most people his age. Why then couldn't he just stop? Why did his brilliant mind fail him when he needed it most?
He began to hide from himself. Closed the notebook. Avoided mirrors. Smiled more during the day to distract people from the weight he carried at night. His mother didn't notice—she was always rushing between shifts. His father barely asked questions beyond "You don chop?" Joy and David were too young to suspect anything. And so the secret lived, growing quietly, like mold on the wall behind furniture.
Then came the exams.
Martins poured himself into WAEC and JAMB like a man trying to outrun a shadow. He studied in silence, memorized past questions, and filled every second with preparation. He told himself that if he passed—if he truly excelled—maybe he could start over. Maybe excellence could cleanse him.
He did pass. He passed brilliantly.
Nine A's in WAEC. A JAMB score of 318. Enough to light up any mother's face. Enough to silence every doubter.
He applied to the University of Benin to study Law. Waited for the Post-UTME. Passed that too. And then… nothing. Weeks passed. Then months. Friends got admitted. Even those with lower scores. Some whispered about connections. Others hinted at money. Martins had neither. Just his scores and his thoughts.
He was told he was too young. "Underage," the admission office said. "Come back next year." As if age, not brilliance, defined readiness.
So he waited.
And as he waited, his thoughts returned—darker, heavier, more unforgiving. The porn returned too, like a sickness he couldn't fully cure. And in those months between achievement and rejection, Martins began to wonder if the world made sense at all.
How could someone do everything right, and still be denied?
How could someone so smart feel so helpless?
He didn't have the answers yet. He only had questions. And a quiet war inside his chest.
But he was Martins.
And Martins was just beginning.