The training hall the next morning was colder than Chinwe expected. It was not the temperature alone; something about conference rooms like this always carried a kind of artificial seriousness: rows of tables and chairs, or a projector warming up.

People were already filing in when she stepped inside. Some were talking in small groups. Others were scrolling through their phones with the practiced boredom of professionals who had attended one too many training.

She slipped into a seat near the middle, notebook and pen in hand as if she were determined to behave like the most diligent participant present.

At the front of the room, Tunde was speaking quietly with the main facilitator, a woman focused on her laptop. He looked different in this setting. He seemed less relaxed than the man who had argued passionately about ABU dams and UNILAG lagoons the night before. Here, he stood straighter, his attention moving quickly between the laptop and the facilitator. This was work mode.

Chinwe watched him for a moment before looking down at her phone, suddenly aware that staring might be… noticeable.

Just as the session was about to begin, she remembered the instruction her team lead from the previous cohort had given her.

Make sure they add someone from our team to the Teams meeting so we can join remotely.

She looked up again and caught Tunde walking down the aisle distributing branded notepads and pens.

“Excuse me,” she said, lifting her hand slightly.

He stopped beside her seat.

“Yes?”

“I have someone back at the office who wants to join the session remotely,” she explained. “My colleague from the previous cohort asked me to make sure the facilitator adds them to the Teams call.”

He nodded immediately. “No problem. Get me their email.”

She quickly wrote it down and handed him the paper.

Their fingers brushed briefly. It was nothing serious, but for some reason Chinwe felt it again, that small awareness that had begun the night before.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome,” he replied, before moving to the next row.

For the next two hours, the training unfolded in the predictable rhythm of presentations, slides about leadership frameworks, discussions about communication styles, group discussions that required people who had just met to pretend they were suddenly capable of deep teamwork, and the occasional attempt at humor from the facilitator.

Chinwe tried to focus. She really did.

But every now and then she noticed Tunde moving across the room, adjusting the projector, occasionally leaning over the facilitator’s laptop, even responding to questions.

There were moments she caught herself thinking, okay… he’s actually good at this.

At one point during a group discussion exercise, he walked past her table and paused briefly.

“Everything clear?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.

He leaned slightly closer, resting a hand lightly on the back of her chair as he spoke to the group.

The contact lasted only a second, but Chinwe felt it like a subtle spark. Then she told herself she was imagining things.

During the break, people drifted into the hallway and toward the lunchroom. The low hum of conversation followed them, mixing with the clatter of plates where a buffet had been neatly laid out along a long table.

Chinwe picked up a cup of coffee, the warmth settling into her palms, and slipped into a corner seat. Needing a distraction, she began scrolling absentmindedly through her phone, letting the glow of the screen pull her away from the crowd.

She sensed him before she saw him.

“You’re not hiding from the networking, are you?” Tunde said.
She looked up. “I absolutely am. Networking in the office is just professional gossip.”

Tunde chuckled and shook his head before wandering off to dish some food.

“Be honest,” he said when he returned to her table, lowering his voice slightly as he set his plate down. “On a scale of one to ten, how bored are you?”

She lifted her head slowly. “Four.”

“That low?”

“I am trying to be respectful.”

He chuckled softly. “The framework slides, right?”

“The framework slides,” she confirmed. “They always sound profound until you realize they’re explaining common sense with diagrams.”

He laughed again, this time shaking his head slightly. “You are going to get me into trouble if someone hears you say that.”

“I am helping you stay humble.”

“Assistant facilitators are already humble,” he replied, digging into his food.

She tilted her head. “That’s not what you said last night.”

“Last night,” he said carefully, “I was speaking as an ABU alumnus defending institutional dignity.”

She laughed. “You people really take that rivalry seriously.”

They sat there talking for a while about work, about how exhausting the last quarter had been, about Lagos traffic and ease of life in any other state. Chinwe and Tunde had drifted slightly away from the crowd without realizing it.

The rest of the training day passed quickly and by evening Chinwe felt the familiar heaviness of too much information and a need for sleep.

When dinner time came, she considered skipping it entirely. But hunger eventually convinced her otherwise.

She took the elevator down to the restaurant, intending to quickly pack something and return to her room. As she stepped back toward the elevator entrance, someone appeared beside her.

“Running away again?” Tunde asked.

She laughed. “I’m not running. I just want to take my food upstairs today.”

“Why?”

“I’m tired.”

He studied her face briefly.

Then, without warning, he reached out and placed a palm on her forehead.

“hm. Maybe you just need more sleep.”

“Well… guess who set us up for 8am trainings?”

“You’re welcome.”

They walked into the elevators together, falling into conversation as easily as they had the night before. And as Chinwe listened to him talk, she noticed something strange happening in her mind. Almost without realizing it, she had begun evaluating him.

Not in a serious way but with questions like: Is he kind? Yes. Is he intelligent? Clearly. Tall enough? She glanced sideways. Hmm, maybe. That’s not exactly her usual spec, but close enough.

She shook the thought away immediately. Relax, she told herself. It’s just a training.
But somewhere in the back of her mind, the thought had already taken root.

For a very brief moment, after they reached her floor, they stood in silence. Then she noticed it. The faint scar just above his wrist, which must have been hidden beneath his watch strap earlier.

“What happened there?” she asked before she could stop herself.

He glanced down. “Oh,” he said lightly. “Old story.”

She tilted her head. “Old story sounds like code for interesting. You know what? I’m not too tired for this old story.”
He smiled, but this time it did not reach his eyes. “It’s just… I used to be very different,” he said, with a gulp, as if overcome by a memory.

“Different how?”

He hesitated. And for the first time since she met him, he seemed unsure.

“Impatient,” he said finally. “I was always in a hurry because I thought if I pushed hard enough, everything would bend.”

She waited. Down the corridor, someone laughed faintly, the sound muffled by the distance.

Tunde leaned lightly against the wall, as if deciding whether the story was worth telling at all.

“I have always been like that,” he said slowly. “Even as a child. If something was taking too long, I pushed. If someone moved too slowly, I got irritated. I guess I always thought if you weren’t moving fast, you were wasting time.”

He rubbed the back of his wrist unconsciously.

“In secondary school, it was worse.”

Chinwe folded her arms, listening.

“I was the senior prefect in my final year,” he continued. “One of those boys who took the position too seriously. You know the type. The type that always try to prove that they deserved the badge.” A faint smile passed across his face, but it carried no warmth.

“There was one time I noticed a junior, a JSS2 boy; he was always late to morning assembly or running in last minute.” He paused briefly before continuing.

“One morning he came late again, and I stopped him at the gate.”
Chinwe noticed his voice had lowered.

“I remember thinking he looked careless. Like he did not respect the rules, so I punished him. I made him kneel in the sun while the assembly continued.”

He exhaled slowly.

“Few minutes into the punishment, the boy fainted.”

The hallway suddenly felt smaller, but Chinwe said nothing.

“I did not know at the time,” Tunde continued, “that he was battling with typhoid and malaria. The housemaster later said the boy had been weak for days but insisted on coming to school because his father was strict about attendance.”

Tunde looked down at his hands.

“They carried him to the clinic that morning.”

He tapped the faint scar again.

“That was when I got this.”

She frowned slightly. “How? What happened?”

“I tried to help lift him onto the stretcher. My hand slipped against the metal frame.”
He shrugged gently.

“It was not a big injury. But I remember sitting outside the clinic afterwards and realizing something for the first time.”

He glanced at her. “That being right does not mean you are kind.”

Chinwe felt something shift in her chest. “And you changed?” she asked.

Tunde gave a small laugh. “No.”

His honesty surprised her.

“I told myself I would be better,” he said. “But life moved on. University came. Then the bank. Operations department in a very busy branch. And operations is not exactly a department that rewards patience nor is there room for error.”

He straightened slightly.

“Plus, in operations everything is urgent and you won’t know when you start measuring people by how quickly they deliver things.”

He shook his head lightly.

“I became very good at it. I was always pushing.”

“And then?” Chinwe asked quietly.

“Then my mother got sick.” his expression softened.
He said those words calmly, but the weight behind them was unmistakable.

“It was three years ago. One night she called me and said she was not feeling well. I told her I would come after work the next day because I had something urgent to finish at work.”
He paused.

“When I got to her house the next evening, she was struggling to breathe.”

Chinwe felt her stomach tighten.

“We rushed her to the hospital,” he continued. “And I remember sitting in that waiting area thinking about something very strange.”

He looked up at her.

“I had spent years rushing through life, but when it mattered most… I had told my own mother to wait until the next day.”
Silence filled the corridor.

“They admitted her that night,” he said quietly. “She recovered eventually, after spending days in the hospital. But something about that moment stayed with me.”
He exhaled slowly.

“That was the first time I really understood that impatience can hurt people in ways you do not notice until later.”
Chinwe watched him carefully now.

“So you left operations.”

He nodded.

“I applied to move to Learning and Development a few months later.”

“Why L&D?”

A small, thoughtful smile appeared on his face.

“Because it forces you to slow down. You cannot teach people if you are rushing them or see them as tasks.” He said.

For a moment Chinwe did not know what to say. The man she had spent the last two days laughing with suddenly felt… deeper, more complicated than she had expected.

She looked at his wrist again.

“That scar is doing a lot of storytelling,” she said softly.

Tunde smiled, this time properly.

“Yes,” he said.

“It is a stubborn reminder.”

They stood there a moment longer before he straightened and pushed away from the wall.

“Well,” he said lightly, the familiar ease returning to his voice, “that was more honesty than participants usually get from assistant facilitators.”

Chinwe smiled.

“Maybe I am getting special access.”

He held her gaze for a brief second. “Maybe you are.”
Then he nodded toward her door.

“You should rest. Tomorrow is the final day.”

She slid her card into the lock and paused before entering.

“Goodnight, Tunde.”

“Goodnight, Chinwe.”

The door closed softly behind her.

Inside the room, she leaned against it for a moment, thinking of how some people are calm not because life has been easy but because they have learned, the hard way, what happens when it isn’t.