“Kyng!”

Her voice rang through the com-link again as she called his name again after not receiving a response the first time, even if he was sleeping, she knew he would be forced to wake up.

“No mom, I haven’t, I’ll be going now…”

He spoke out knowing the receiver would pick up his voice and she would be able to hear him.

“Don’t go to sleep before you do that. And come down to eat as well. Your friends are coming over?”

Sighing lightly, he pushed himself up from the bed as he began taking off his clothes. “Yes they are.”

“What time are they coming over?”

“In about thirty minutes or so…”

“Alright then, go take a shower first, I can smell your sweat and all from over here even…”

Kyng chuckled lightly in response, “Sure”

|||

Dropping back on his bed with a bounce, he wiped the water droplets on his forehead off as he closed his eyes for a bit.

Opening his eyes again, a pretty figure flashed through in his mind seemingly reflecting out of his eyes, like he could see her once again.

He had thought of her in passing more than once, her image appearing in his mind again and again, a person he had only known for less than half a day.

Extremely pretty, quiet and self-conscious but not quite so, that was the impression he had of the new girl on seeing her and subconsciously watching her quite a few times over the period they spent in school. Even he hadn’t expected to pay that much attention he had only just known. In fact, to Dayo’s amusement, the girl had taken notice of Kyng’s staring and had caught him staring a number of times, half of which he wasn’t able to quickly look away, making the situation rather awkward, yet he still kept turning back to stare. He found it rather odd himself.

“You have no chance with this girl bro. Even before you can approach her, she’s probably already labeled you as some random weirdo.    *Sigh* who would have thought that the most handsome Kyng has actually failed to impress a girl…” that was what Dayo had said on their way back from school. Though he spoke like it was a sad thing, he had actually been smiling, about to burst into laughter.

 Shaking his head with a wry smile on his face, he shook the many thoughts out of his head, or at least to the back of his mind, as he stood up and headed to the edge of his room directly opposite the bed, where his desk and computer set-up was.

Rolling the chair out and sliding in comfortably, leaning back on the rather comfy chair, he flipped a switch and quietly watched the whole thing power-up from its sleep mode. He could finally thank the heavens when his mom finally stopped shutting it down whenever she came into his room and cleaned up, which was really her just snooping around for what only she knew she kept searching for. He had tried explaining his reasons for preferring to put it to sleep rather than shutting it down and he wasn’t even sure she had understood him properly.

Opening his browser, he clicked on a pinned tab on his homepage. The tab opened up to Tadeyo, a Website Dayo built and completed over summer last year. As far as performance and efficiency goes, Kyng couldn’t find a single fault and he wouldn’t deny that it was a ten over ten for him. The display and graphics design of the website was what was rather a little plain looking; Which was actually something Kyng wasn’t surprised about since he knew Dayo was more about what you could get from it rather than what the eyes finds more pleasing. At this point though, there wasn’t much to get from the website since he had finished it. The purpose of the website was to just display his ‘Various works and projects’ like he said. Apparently in the future, he could envision the website being a very premium and exclusive website where gaining access to would be at his whim and digression. For now though, the website didn’t seem to be known by any more than a handful of people, so he could only lower his pride and allow any random access to it.

Clicking and opening the Finished projects page, he could see the new application that Dayo had only just finished today being displayed at the right hand corner in a big size, apparently emphasizing on it. From there, he followed the steps and downloaded it to his system in a record amount of time. Exiting the browser, he opened the app with a double click and was greeted with a rather fun looking animated model of the Logo of Ikeja Terra high school. Another page popped up after a few seconds, showing the homepage of the app and all. Immediately intrigued with it all, Kyng found himself browsing through the whole site and checking every feature and function, getting impressed and surprised repeatedly.

Getting engrossed with what he was doing, he had no idea of time passing till he got roused from staring at the laptop, hands on the touchpad, by the voice reaching his room through the com link again.

“Your majesty the Crown king, may we be granted access to ascend the stairs into your palatial chambers?”

After starting for a bit due to the unexpectedness, Kyng immediately realized it was Donald talking through the com link on the other end, trying to be funny again.

“Shut up and wait where you are, I’m coming down now” Kyng said with an amused tone as he pushed the chair back and stood up, heading towards the door of his room.

“Your wish is my command, your majesty…” the voice came again after receiving the reply, but Kyng was too lazy to bother replying again so all that could be heard from the com link at the other end was the sound of the door closing.

Walking out from his room and going down the stairs from the second floor of the house, Kyng found himself taking a glance like usually did at the pictures that lined the white, black and grey striped walls going all the way down from the beginning of the stairs till the bottom of the stairs. He could see framed pictures of himself as well as that of his brother, his sister, his mom, his dad, all of them being pictures showing the different times and years past since they were born, showing the good as well as the embarrassing ones. There were even pictures of other family members like his uncles, aunts, cousins and grandparents, all of them taken during the many birthdays, weddings, holiday travels and many other celebrations. There were even a few pictures where Dayo and Donald could be seen, one during their junior secondary school graduation celebration while another was taking on one of his birthdays, with the rest of the family huddling around the trio.

The short journey down the stair was felt rather eventful looking at the pictures as he went down, the memory in every picture briefly flashing through his mind, one after another as he went down.

Soon, he got to the ground floor and stepped off the stairs, turning towards a direction as he headed towards the kitchen where he knew both his friends and his mom would be, waiting for him.

When he got to the kitchen, he saw Dayo and Donald both sitting on a bar stool while his mom, the diligent and hardworking woman she was, stood wiping her hands on a napkin, the sparkling kitchen as her backdrop being the evidence of what she had been doing. When he walked in, his mom and Dayo had been having a conversation while Donald sat to the side, half of him paying attention to the conversation while the other half was focused on something he was doing on the laptop in front of him. He walked in to hear them switching to another topic of conversation.

“So how’s your aunt doing Dayo? Is the baby okay?”

“My aunt’s very fine and the same for the baby, though he’s started teething so he’s become even more of a headache than he already was before…”

Kyng’s mom chuckled lightly as she reprimanded Dayo for his words, “Don’t say things like that. You can’t expect a baby to be unlike a baby, only in rare cases perhaps. Besides, I’m very sure you were a similar handful when you could barely sit properly by yourself as a baby.”

Dayo chuckled a little as well as Donald cut into the conversation, raising his head from looking at his laptop’s screen. “He actually still can’t sit properly ma, always bending forward like a hunchback whenever he’s focused on his laptop.”

The trio burst into laughter at that as Kyng extended an arm towards a bar stool at the side and pulled it towards the counter where Dayo and Donald sat, making his presence known.

“So you can finally come out to eat.” His mom said after casting him a side glance.

“Sorry, I got a bit carried away with something on my system.” Kyng replied. But before his mom could say anything in reply, a loud voice entered the kitchen and cut in as a new figure came into the kitchen as well, a young girl looking like a thirteen or fourteen-year-old

“I’m back from school and I’m hungry!”

She stomped in, still in school uniform and with her hair held back in a short ponytail, paying no mind to Kyng and the other two boys in the kitchen as she focused on the person she knew would give her the food she currently needed.

Kyng looked at the girl with a little smile on his face as he said “Quinn, you can at least say a greeting first before you ignore the rest of us you know?”

The girl paused on hearing that, finally deciding to spare Kyng a glance as she replied, “Announcing my return from school is my form of greeting Kyng.”

He laughed a bit and shook his head in response while Donald was the one who spoke up instead with a teasing smile on his face, “The way she calls your name every time I hear it is so saucy Kyng, way beyond her age. Can’t you be like a cute little sister and act adorable for once even if you can never be one?”

The young girl as if triggered seemed about to erupt on hearing what Donald said, only for her to cut short by her mom with a rap on her head. “Alright sweetie, that’s enough. Go upstairs to your room and freshen up, I’ll bring your food up there as well, but only after you’ve freshened up.”

Quinn was reluctant but she couldn’t argue any more. Pouting to show her displeasure, she mumbled something inaudible under her breath before turning around to leave the kitchen.