Online Romance - Season - [Episode 1 - 15]

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I woke up that morning, and as was my usual ritual since the commencement of the ASUU strike, logged into facebook. I saw many notifications and carefully scanned through them. Some were comments made by some of my online friends on a photo I had uploaded about two years back. I was surprised that a photo already two years old online would garner up to five comments in a single night when it had only three for the two years it had been online. I smiled, acknowledged and responded to some of them before going to check the other notifications. Most were group and page updates. As I checked through them, I made a mental note to leave some of the groups. I hate receiving useless updates and most of the updates I saw that morning were just that. I refreshed the page to clear off the notifications I had attended to and discovered that the only ones remaining were two friend requests. The surname of the first, Paul, was familiar; it was a family in which I had two friends. Though, I didn’t know the particular person behind the name, I deduced it must belong to a sibling of my friends, Yemisi and Tayo Igbokwe. The second request was from an unfamiliar name, Tricia Ogbemudia. Her profile photo was a portrait sketch.
I decided to check that first and clicked on the name. I knew where I was going to – her photos. I liked the name and hoped to like the photos too. As the page loaded, I searched my brains, trying to recollect if I had had any previous encounter with a person bearing that name. I couldn’t remember any and my curiosity was heightened. The new page opened, showing her profile photo and some details about her: she was a 300 level student of History in the famous University of Ibadan and had previously attended a polytechnic which I hadn’t heard of before. She was from my state and was a year younger than I was. Not too bad, I thought, but needed further details. Her profile picture was a sketched female portrait. Could that be her? I thought. The sketch was beautiful, but it could be of anybody. I saw that her photo count exceeded a hundred and I clicked on the “photos” icon to see them. The first photo that loaded was one of her in a sky blue, long-sleeved shirt with a black tie to match. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail and her smiling, parted lips showed a very perfect set of dentition.
‘Waoh!’ I sighed in excitement. ‘She is so beautiful!’
I clicked back so I could mentally compare both photos. They were of the same person. Though the hairstyles were different, every other feature matched. I was about to reload the photos folder when I heard a knock on my door.
‘Yes, who’s that?’ I shouted, making sure my voice reflected my displeasure.
‘Daddy says you should come out for Morning Devotion,’ sounded the voice of my little sister, five years old Eseosa. I had wasted the effort on making my voice hard; Eseosa was never considerate of such.
‘I’m coming,’ I replied, jumping off the bed and putting on a singlet.