Bolaji

Mar 8

Collapse: The Missing Bars
Drama | Novel
February 24, 2026
Chapter One: The Beginning of the Silence
Before the fame… before the flashing lights… before the sold-out shows…
There was hunger.
Not the type that makes your stomach growl.
The type that makes your dreams feel heavy.
In a small one-room apartment in Surulere, Lagos, seventeen-year-old Tobi Adeyemi used to record songs with a broken microphone wrapped in tape. The ceiling fan didn’t work. The power supply was unstable. But his passion? That one never blinked.
His mum would sit on the edge of the bed and listen.
“Your voice will take you places,” she would say.
He believed her.
His best friend, Kunle, was his first producer. No fancy studio. Just a laptop that overheated every twenty minutes.
They called themselves Street Prophets.
Nobody listened.
Nobody cared.
Promoters ignored them. DJs laughed at their demo. Some relatives said music was for unserious people.
But Tobi kept writing.
Every pain.
Every rejection.
Every tear his mum hid when landlord knocked.
He turned it into bars.
Then one night, everything changed.
A freestyle video Kunle posted blew up.
10,000 views.
50,000 views.
100,000 views.
Suddenly, the same people who ignored him were calling.
Labels started fighting.
Money started entering.
Fame came fast.
Too fast.
But while Tobi was chasing stages and interviews… life was collapsing quietly behind him.
His mum got sick.
He missed hospital visits because of tours.
Kunle stopped replying messages.
There were misunderstandings.
Pride.
Distance.
Success has a way of separating people who once shared garri in the same bowl.
Then came the call.
The one call that changed everything.
By the time Tobi rushed back to Lagos…
He was too late.
And when he finally stood on stage at his first major concert — thousands screaming his name —
He cried.
Not because he made it.
But because the two people who believed in him first…
Were no longer there to see it.
Money could buy chains.
Cars.
Houses.
But it couldn’t buy back time.
And that was when he understood—
Some bars are missing forever.