The taxi pulled up just outside the entrance of St. Hubert Seminary Senior High School. It was an old red Opel with faded seats and a cracked dashboard. Inside were Kingstar, his mother, his chop box, and his trunk all packed tightly like boiled yam in a cooler.
The driver helped them unload, setting the trunk and the chop box gently on the dusty ground.
"Ɛyɛ ha o," the driver muttered, wiping sweat from his forehead. "Good luck, young man."
Kingstar looked up at the grand gates of St. Hubert tall, firm, and painted in white and wine-red. This was the next stage of his life, but already he felt the weight of something greater than just school.
Before he could even ask for help, a prefect with a loud voice shouted from the administration block:
"Form Ones, listen up! If you came with taxi, good. Drop your things. But you carry your chop box on your own head to the classroom. It's a tradition. No help allowed!"
Kingstar glanced at his mother. She gave him that familiar, strong-eyed look.
"Just do it. Don't let them see fear. You're bigger than this."
He bent down, took a deep breath, and lifted the chop box onto his head. The wood was heavier than it looked loaded with gari, clothes, a bucket, and some books. Balancing it, he walked past sneering seniors, snickering Form Twos, and into the corridor leading to Block B.
Behind him, his mother quietly picked up the trunk, struggling but determined to follow.
They reached the classroom where the registration was happening. He placed the chop box down gently, hiding his pain behind a quiet smile.
After registration, they walked back to the taxi rank together. His mother didn't say much. She had other things on her mind.
Earlier that week, his father had been falsely accused at work a logistics supervisor claimed he had misreported delivery records. No one gave him a fair hearing. He was laid off.
That meant from now on, his mother would carry the whole family: fees, food, rent everything.
Kingstar didn't know all the details yet. But he could feel it in his mother's silence. In the tight way she hugged him before she left. In the small brown envelope she slipped into his hand.
"Just focus. No matter what happens, focus," she said.
And then she was gone.
That night, as the dorm bell rang and boys joked about how "St. Hubert boys no dey smile," Kingstar lay on his new bunk bed in Dorm B2 and stared at the ceiling.
"I didn't just carry my chop box today," he whispered.
"I carried my family's future too."
The burden was real but so was his determination.