“Their Uncles Threw Them Out After Their Parents Díed… 15 Years Later, THIS HAPPENED.”

Charles was 15 when he watched his uncle’s eyes turn cold as winter steel.

“Your father didn’t leave a will,” Uncle Edward spat, his voice like bróken glass, while two security guards loomed behind them, arms folded. Favor clutched her school bag like a lifeline. Olivia, barely 11, stood barefoot, her sandals forgotten in the chaós. She whispered through tears, “Charles… where will we sleep tonight?”

He didn’t have an answer.

Behind them, the man who had just destrôyed their childhood adjusted his gold-embroidered agbada with two fingers and smiled. “Many children find their way,” he said, waving them off like garbage. Then he turned back to the house, their house. As the gates shut, metal met metal with a cruel finality.

No goodbye. No explanation. Just silence. The kind that wraps around your bones.

Outside, Lagos didn’t care. Hawkers yelled prices. Buses hissed and groaned. Beggars dragged plastic bowls between bumpers. Nobody noticed three children standing on the curb with nowhere to go. No one stopped. No one asked.

Charles picked up the two bags the guards had thrown at them and took his sisters by the hand. He didn’t cry. Not yet. He couldn’t afford to. The street would smell his weakness. It was already watching.

They walked for hours, past posters of movies they’d never watch again, past buildings taller than their dreams now felt. Olivia tripped once, scraping her knee, but didn’t make a sound. Favor wrapped a napkin around it. They didn’t have money for food, so they drank water from a leaking tap behind a mechanic’s shop and slept on flattened cardboard behind a kiosk. It rained that night. Not soft rain. Angry, sharp rain.

Charles stayed awake the whole time, listening to every dog bark, every passing voice. Each one felt like a threat. He kept one hand on Olivia’s back, the other holding a rock he didn’t know how to use.

By the third night, Favor was coughing. Olivia was quieter than usual, and that terrified him. She used to talk nonstop. Now, she just stared.

He tried the church. The security man chased them away with a stick. He tried a mall, pretending to window shop with his sisters until the manager shouted at them to leave. That night, they found an uncompleted building. Just walls. No doors. No roof. But no one chased them out. So they stayed.

Their uniforms became their blankets. Their bags became pillows. The wind had teeth. The cold bit deep. But the hunger? The hunger was worse.

Days passed like punishment. Favor stopped talking altogether. Olivia’s cough grew deeper. Sometimes bloody. Charles begged at pharmacies with notes strangers helped him write. “Please, she’s just a girl.” No one listened. One pharmacist told him, “Go call your mother.” Charles whispered, “She’s dead.” The man replied, “Then go call your God.”

So he did. That night, sitting on a cement floor with Olivia burning up and Favor curled beside her, Charles stared up at the cracked ceiling and whispered, “God… if you’re real… please, help me. I can’t do this anymore.”

He didn’t sleep.

The next morning, he joined boys selling sachet water in traffic. He had borrowed 1,000 naira from a woman selling meat pie nearby. She told him he could pay back in two days. He nodded even though he didn’t believe he could. That morning, under the scorching Lagos sun, he chased down cars screaming, “Pure water! Cold water!”

Most ignored him. One driver slapped his hand. But someone bought. Then another. And another.

By evening, he made 1,300 naira.

He ran to a pharmacy and begged for cheap cough medicine. Crushed the tablets, stirred them into water, and fed Olivia in tiny sips.

She threw up the first time. But kept the second dose down.

That night, Charles sat on the floor with her head on his lap and Favor’s feet on his thigh. He didn’t move. He didn’t speak. The stars watched. The wind watched. Even God, if he existed, watched.

Then came Mr. Matthew.

The family’s former chef. He looked thinner. Eyes sunken. Shirt hanging off his frame. He saw them and froze.

“Jesus,” he whispered. “Charles…”

Charles stood but didn’t speak.

Mr. Matthew took three steps forward and fell to his knees. “I heard what they did. I’ve been looking for you. I… I couldn’t live with myself.”

Charles didn’t know what to say.

“I don’t have much,” Matthew said, “but you can come stay. Just a flat. Two rooms. You’ll sleep on a mat. But it’s better than here.”

That was all Charles needed.

They moved in that same night.

The flat was deep in Ajegunle. Crowded, noisy, alive. They shared a toilet with three other families. But there was a roof. There was warmth. Mr. Matthew’s wife wasn’t the hugging type, but she warmed their bathing water and fried yam when she could.

Charles kept selling water.

Favor joined him on good days, staying back with Olivia on bad ones. They took turns. They took hits. They learned to dodge, to haggle, to smile when it hurt. Every naira counted. Every rejection scarred.

Weeks became months.

And Charles? Charles became someone else.

Not a boy. Not anymore. Hunger killed the boy. Pain grew something else in its place—something tougher, quieter, hungrier for meaning.

One evening, three years later, Charles stood behind a small wooden stall, wiping sweat from his face. His own stall. His name, hand-painted in blue: “CharLive Waters & Drinks.” On the table, sachet water stacked in rows. Crates of Pepsi, Lacasera, bitter lemon.

Favor helped count sales in a black notebook.

They had moved out of Matthew’s place. Now they lived in a one-room apartment. Still small. But theirs.

Favor and Olivia were back in school. A public one. Nothing fancy. But they had uniforms again. Bell schedules. Homework. Arguments about who used the bathroom too long. It felt normal.

Every morning before school, they hugged Charles. “Thank you.”

He never said anything. Just waved them off.

But at night, when the city grew quiet, when the generator hums faded, he’d stare at the ceiling and whisper again.

“Daddy… I’m trying.”

He said it every night. Like a promise. Like a vow.

And the street? The street had stopped beating him. Now, it nodded when he walked by.

And then, karma began to wake up.

This story didn’t end here.. Kindly follow MrCute Media African Folktales for the Next Episode.. You can’t afford to miss what is coming Next… 
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