05/03/2026
🖤💀THE PRICE OF A NEW BODY💀🖤
{ The Girl Who Had Everything Except The Right Curves}
By Erica Sochima.M.
•CHAPTER 2•
★★★
That should have been her first warning.
Her friend Temi had mentioned the name once, in passing, the way people mention things they want you to hear but do not want to be held responsible for telling you. They had been sitting in a small restaurant in Surulere eating jollof rice and Temi had leaned across the table and lowered her voice like she was sharing classified information.
"There is a man called Odogwu," Temi had said.
"He gives loans. Fast ones. No collateral. No long process. The money enters your account the same day."
"What is the catch?" Amara had asked because she was not a foolish woman.
Temi had looked down at her food. "Just pay him back on time. That is the only catch. Just make sure you pay him back on time."
She had not asked what happened if you did not pay him back on time and Temi had not offered to explain. They had changed the subject and finished their food and Amara had filed the name away in the back of her mind.
Odogwu.
She pulled it out of storage three weeks after her night in front of the mirror.
She had done her research quietly. The clinic she chose was in Lekki. Clean and professional looking with a website that had real before and after pictures and a doctor whose credentials she verified three times. The procedure she wanted would cost one million eight hundred thousand naira. She had two hundred thousand in her savings account.
She needed one million six hundred thousand naira.
She got Odogwu's number through Temi who sent it without asking any questions which meant Temi already knew why she was asking.
She called him on a Tuesday afternoon sitting in her parked car outside a supermarket because she did not want anyone in the house to hear the conversation.
He picked up on the second ring.
His voice was smooth. Too smooth. Like a surface that had been polished specifically so that nothing would stick to it.
"Amara Obiora," he said, even though she had not told him her name yet.
She paused for just one second. "Yes. I got your number from a friend."
"I know," he said.
"How much do you need?"
She told him.
He did not react to the number the way she expected. No pause. No sharp intake of breath. No "that is a lot of money." He simply said "and when do you need it?"
"As soon as possible," she said.
"Come to my office tomorrow," he said and gave her an address in Victoria Island. "Come alone. Bring your BVN and one means of identification. That is all."
The office was not what she imagined.
She had pictured something rough. A back room somewhere. A man behind a desk with too many phones and a face that looked like trouble. But the address led her to a quiet building with a reception area and a woman at the front desk who offered her water when she arrived and spoke to her politely.
Odogwu himself was fifty something. Neat. Well dressed in a simple senator outfit. He had a calm face and small eyes that moved slowly but missed nothing. He gestured for her to sit across from him and folded his hands on the desk and looked at her the way a doctor looks at a patient. Assessing. Calculating.
"One point six million," he said.
"Yes," Amara said.
"Repayment period is ninety days," he said. "The interest is thirty percent."
Amara kept her face still. She had expected worse. "Okay."
"If you exceed the ninety days," he said, and his voice did not change its smoothness at all, "the interest doubles every thirty days after that."
"I will not exceed it," she said.
He looked at her for a moment. "People always say that."
"I mean it," she said.
He studied her a moment longer then nodded and reached for a document on his desk. He slid it across to her. "Read everything before you sign."
She read it. It was three pages long and written in clear simple English which surprised her. She had expected something deliberately confusing. But it was plain and direct and said exactly what he had told her verbally. Ninety days. Thirty percent interest. Doubling after that.
At the bottom there was a line she read twice.
In the event of default beyond one hundred and eighty days, the lender reserves the right to pursue recovery by any means deemed appropriate.
She looked up at him.
"Any means," she said.
"Any means," he confirmed. His small eyes were steady on her face.
She looked back down at the document.
She thought about Chisom in her champagne a*o oke. She thought about the mirror in her bedroom. She thought about her father's land sitting in Oguta while her uncle Donatus walked around it like it already belonged to him.
She signed.
The money entered her account before she got back to her car.
The clinic in Lekki was everything the website promised.
The doctor was a small quiet man called Dr. Fashola who explained everything to her in detail before touching anything. The procedure. The recovery. The dos and don'ts. He spoke to her like she was intelligent which she appreciated. He did not make her feel vain or foolish for being there.
She spent one week in recovery in a small private hospital room that smelled like antiseptic and fresh linen. Temi visited twice and brought her food she was not supposed to eat yet. Her mother called every day and Amara told her she was at a friend's place resting after a minor illness.
The lies came easily. That should have been her second warning.
When she finally stood in front of a full length mirror in the clinic on the day of her discharge, she was quiet for a long time.
The doctor stood a respectful distance behind her.
The woman looking back at her from the mirror was still Amara. Same face. Same sharp eyes.
Same clear skin. But from the waist down she was completely transformed. Full and high and dramatic in a way that changed the entire proportion of her body. The kind of shape that rearranged rooms when it walked into them.
"Are you happy with the result?" Dr. Fashola asked quietly.
Amara looked at herself for another long moment.
"Yes," she said.
She went home and spent two weeks being careful. No sitting directly on hard surfaces. No strenuous movement. She followed every instruction on the sheet Dr. Fashola had given her with the same discipline she had applied to passing her university exams.
And then she was healed.
And then she stepped outside.
The first day she walked to the small shop at the end of her street to buy something simple, a sachet of water and some biscuits, she counted four men who stopped what they were doing to look at her. One of them walked into a gate post. Another called after her in a voice that cracked slightly in the middle of the sentence like a teenage boy.
She walked home slowly. Deliberately. Feeling every single second of it.
That evening she booked a bus to Oguta.
It was time to go to the village.
It was time to deal with her father's land.
And it was time to meet Igwe Paschal Eze-Ugo again.
She had ninety days before Odogwu's loan came due.
She intended to use every single one of them wisely.
