It was around two hours, thirty minutes past midnight when he woke. Whether from hunger or the call of nature, he couldn't say. He stood up and walked outside, standing for a few minutes to observe the starless night sky, while inhaling pleasantly the scent of petrichor—the rain had just ceased, of course. The crickets chirped, their cries echoing in the silence of the night, while a silhouette moved and shifted in the distance. The wind rustled softly in contrast to the turbulence that clouded his mind.

He went back in and sat on the floor for a few minutes, thinking and observing quite absentmindedly, the rats that noiselessly scurried about their business at that ungodly hour.

“Why are you not sleeping?” an awakened voice beside him asked.

“I’m hungry,” he replied without thinking. And his stomach responded with a low growl, as if in accordance with his response.

He couldn’t sit there for much longer as the hunger neared its climax and the ever-conscious mosquitoes were beginning to be wary of his presence.

He stood up from the spot where he sat on the floor. “I’ll soak garri,” he decided. “The stomach that drank garri today would be fed rice and chicken tomorrow—or wasn’t that what they said? Or was it the mouth?” Either way, he chuckled at the absurdity of the thought.

Two hours later, he was still awake. The garri had eased the hunger, but sleep remained distant. As dawn began to break, his thoughts faded, and with a yawn, he finally drifted off, the empty cup, unrinsed, by his side.