All Chapters of Midnight Strokes : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

By Friday morning the rumour wasn’t a rumour anymore it was a full blown story with teeth.It had jumped from student WhatsApp groups to parents’ chats overnight. Chidi’s younger cousin in SS1 overheard it in the tuck shop line on Thursday and repeated it at home over dinner. Chidi’s mum a sharp bank manager who knew half the school parents through church listened with growing horror. By 9 p.m. she was on the phone with two other mothers. By midnight the tale had reached Tobi’s mum, who worked in the Ministry of Education and had the principal’s number saved “just in case.”At 7:12 a.m. on Friday, Principal Mr. Ibrahim’s phone started ringing.By 7:45 a.m. he’d taken four calls two from parents, one from a worried teacher who’d “heard disturbing things” from the cleaning staff.None of the stories had real proof. But the pattern looked bad: locked doors after hours, the same four boys always staying late, strange smells, one boy supposedly spending the night at the teacher’s place (a

The story broke on Saturday morning, less than two days after the board meeting.It started small a blurry screenshot of an anonymous post on a popular Lagos education forum:“Top school in Ikoyi hiding teacher student scandal. Locked doors, after hours sessions, one boy allegedly sleeping over. Parents furious, board covering up. Teacher initials MA, boys K, C, T, Y. WAEC results bought with sex? •LagosEducationScandal”By noon the screenshot was everywhere forwarded on WhatsApp, shared on Twitter (now X), popping up in Instagram stories. A gossip blog picked it up first NaijaGist247 with the headline:“Exclusive: Prominent Lagos Teacher in Alleged Gang Sex Scandal with SS3 Students Parents Demand Arrest”They used stock classroom photos and blurred yearbook style shots of boys in uniforms. No real names, but enough details that anyone at the school could connect the dots. The article quoted “anonymous sources close to the families” talking about “inappropriate physical contact,” “co

The reconvened board meeting took place exactly one week after Chidi’s confession.No parents were invited this time. No police either. Just the governing board in the same heavy wood panelled conference room, windows closed against the thick afternoon heat, ceiling fan spinning slow circles above their heads.Mr. Okafor sat at the head sixty something, retired permanent secretary, face carved from stone. The lawyer-board member was to his right with a fresh stack of documents: police closure summary, the boys’ typed and signed statements, DSP Bello’s recommendation to drop the criminal file, and a thick bundle of media clippings that had kept coming.Adeyemi sat alone at the far end of the table. Black suit, white blouse, hair in a low bun. No jewellery except small studs. No folder today. Nothing left to prove.Mr. Okafor cleared his throat.“We are here to finalise this matter. The police have closed their criminal investigation. They found no evidence of non-consensual acts, coerc

Years passed the way Lagos traffic moves slow, relentless, full of sudden stops and unexpected turns.Adeyemi never remarried. She never went back to full-time teaching either. She built a small, careful life: freelance editing, occasional guest lectures under strict anonymity, a quiet circle of friends who never asked about the headlines from 2026. She kept her hair shorter now, silver threading through the dark like thin moonlight. The red pen still sat on her desk, ink long dried up, but she never threw it away.She lived alone in the Lekki flat, windows open to the salt breeze most evenings. Sometimes she read old student essays late at night not to mark them, just to remember the voices behind the words. She didn’t cry anymore. The ache had settled into something softer, almost familiar, like an old scar you forget until you touch it.One rainy Saturday in 2032 she went to a small independent bookstore in Ikoyi. The place smelled of damp paper and coffee. She was in the back aisl

Another three years slipped past quiet ones, the kind that don’t announce themselves.Adeyemi was forty now, silver more visible in her hair, laugh lines deeper around her eyes. She’d started teaching again not in a school, but online workshops for adults who wanted to read literature the way they once read love letters. Small groups, Zoom screens, late evenings when Lagos was already half-asleep. She liked it. No uniforms. No bells. No locked doors. Just words and people who showed up because they wanted to.One of her regular students was a twenty four year old named Leke.He joined the workshop six months earlier quiet in the chat, always typing thoughtful comments in the private messages instead of speaking on camera. He worked night shifts at a tech startup in Yaba, read everything she assigned twice, and asked questions that made her pause mid sentence.Why does Achebe make silence feel louder than shouting?Do you think Okonkwo ever forgave himself before he died?Ms. Adeyemi,