Greetings!

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Upon seeing this prompt, I couldn't help but smile, remembering an experience my roommate and I had during a certain exam period.
It was our second semester exam in the final year, and we were to write one of the most difficult courses, which was seen as the major exam because the other courses weren't as challenging for us. The course itself wasn't actually difficult, but the lecturer handled it so poorly that after the exam, we could only pass by paying a bribe. However, my friend and I weren't into such sorting; we believed in earning our marks through hard work and, besides, we weren't financially buoyant.

The night before the exam, we had a lot to read and assimilate, and the night seemed very short because we were bound to doze off at some point, even though we planned to stay up all night. In order to outsmart sleep, my friend Kenneth suggested we drink caffeinated beverages to help us stay awake. I countered his suggestion, as caffeine didn't always work for me, and instead, I suggested putting our legs in a bowl of cold water while we read.

"That method is for children," Kenneth countered and explained the process of using caffeine effectively. "We are going to mix coffee, Fearless energy drink, and kola nut."

"Haaaa! Those three together? Do you want us to stay awake for a full month after taking it?" I questioned, and we both burst into laughter.

Kola nut has almost the same quantity of caffeine with coffee beans, Fearless drink is a highly caffeinated energy drink that keeps be body active and for Nescafé, that's coffee itself. So it was going to be a mixture of caffeine, caffeine and caffeine. Lol😂

That evening, we went to a local shop on our street and bought two sachets of Nescafé, two bottles of Fearless energy drink, and three seeds of a green type of kola nut.

When night came, we made warm water, mixed it with the Nescafé powdered coffee into two different cups, shared the cola nuts into one and a half each, took our bottles of Fearless drink, and began to sip the coffee and energy drink together while chewing the cola nut. We got fixed at our different tables to 'dismantle' the voluminous book on the table.

We started this journey exactly at 7:15 pm, and everything was normal until around 11:00 pm when Kenneth started going to the bathroom to urinate every 10 minutes. I felt pressed too, but I wasn't ready to go yet. However, when Kenneth kept visiting the toilet, I got up and went too. After I was done, I stayed at the toilet door, watching Kenneth as he seriously focused on his book, turning the rechargeable lantern on his desk low and high with his right hand. I felt he was tired from the long hours of non-stop reading, and the turning of the lantern was his way of relieving his full head, so I asked, "Are you not tired like me?"

"Hahahahah! I thought it was only me feeling this way," Kenneth laughed, left his seat, and jumped on his bed. It seemed he had been waiting for me to bring up some conversation to distract his ever-active brain and sharp eyes.

My head was electrified like it was daytime, and my eyes were burning sharply. At that moment, I wished I could just get some sleep, even a dose off, but the mixture we took was heavily working, and it felt like there was an engine room somewhere being controlled by someone refusing to let our bodies weaken into sleep.

So I gave in to the conversation I initiated...instead of reading, we left our books and started talking about girls in our class, laughing out loud despite it being midnight. We joked from 11:30 pm until 2:00 am.
At that time, our real senses returned, prompting us to go back to reading, or we would end up staying awake all night doing absolutely nothing.

We resumed reading at 2:00 am, continued sipping the drinks, and chewing the kola nut gradually as we read. But this time, we weren't as serious. Occasionally, we cracked jokes from our reading tables and laughed out loud like people intoxicated with alcohol. It was our way of relieving the brain.

Around 5:50 am, dizziness finally set in because we had finished the drinks long ago, and we didn't fight it. We set an alarm to wake up at 7:00 am to prepare for school (exam)

Thanks for reading.
_{This is my entry to #spillthebeans prompt}

| All photos are mine |