Ikemefuna Alternate Ending

Over the next few days, I gradually started to learn more and more about Ikemefuna. Ikemefuna started to talk to me a lot more after he had known me for just a few days. He told me that he was 14 years old, older than me by 2 years. I liked hearing stories about him and his village. He told me about his family. One day I turned to him and asked, “Your village sounds great, but why are you here?” He glanced at me, eyes full of tears and replied, “I am not sure. I was sitting in my home with my family one day when a group of men came and took me here.”
I avoided looking at his eyes because I didn’t want to see him cry. But that didn’t stop him from crying anyway as he wept bitter tears. That night as I lay in my bed I tried to whisper to him, hoping that we would be able to have a conversation. “Ikemefuna,” I whispered, hoping that he was not asleep. I knew that he was still awake because he was whimpering softly in his bed. After I realized that he would not talk to me I turned around and eventually dozed off.
Days after that incident, Ikemefuna seemed to start becoming more and more hostile. He would not eat his food or talk to me as much as he used to. It was just like how he initially came. At first I thought that he was upset because he didn’t want to have to eat yams every day, but then
I ran away from the hut, upset. I went to my mother. she was cooking outside of the huts near the gate. I said to her, “I heard father saying that Ikemefuna will be going home”. She dropped her stirring spoon, and turned away from me. Then I heard her sigh and say, “Poor child.” I didn’t understand why she had called Ikemefuna a poor child when Ikemefuna is going to go back to his family. I didn’t want Ikemefuna to go back to his family even though I knew that he missed them, because I really loved Ikemefuna and I knew I would miss him. So I sat in my mother’s hut all day, pretending I was asleep when really i was crying salty