Chapter 372: A shocking discovery
Morning in Lagos did not feel calm.
Dayo noticed it before he even opened his eyes.
His phone was vibrating against the bedside table in a constant rhythm. Not occasional notifications. Continuous ones. The kind that ant sothing outside had blowing up which suprise him as he had not done anything to stand out.
He sat up slowly and rubbed his face.
The house was quiet. Early light filtered through the curtains. Sowhere downstairs soone was making tea.
His phone buzzed again.
He picked it up.
ssages everywhere.
ntions. Notifications. News alerts.
For a mont he frowned because sothing felt strange.
He had not released anything.
He unlocked the phone and opened the first ssage Sharon had sent.
A link.
No explanation.
He tapped it.
The video opened.
At first he didn’t understand what he was looking at.
Then the mory clicked.
The roadside. The boy with the sack. The haircut. The restaurant.
The shop.
Dayo leaned back slowly against the headboard as the video played.
The cara angle was distant. Slightly shaky. Whoever fild it had been careful not to get too close.
He watched himself walking beside the boy.
He watched the haircut again.
He watched the mont inside the shop.
Then he watched the boy fall to the floor.
The crying.
The crawling.
The way the boy grabbed his leg.
Dayo let the video finish he couldn’t explain how he felt watching his self on cara and the whole scene again made him happy to have done what he did.
He replayed it once more without speaking.
Then he looked up.
Several mbers of his team were already in the room, watching his reaction.
"Who posted this?" he asked calmly.
Silence for a second.
Sharon spoke first.
"Not us."
Another staff mber shook his head. "Nobody from the team released anything."
Dayo looked back at the screen.
"This cara angle..." he said quietly. "This person was far away."
Sharon nodded. "Yeah. Looks like soone random fild it."
Dayo watched the clip again.
This ti he noticed things he hadn’t paid attention to yesterday. The way the boy hesitated before entering the salon. The way he kept looking back to say thank you.
He sighed lightly.
"So the internet has it now."
Sharon gave a small half-smile. "The internet definitely has it."
She turned her laptop toward him.
The screen showed numbers.
Trending charts.
ntions.
The clip was everywhere.
Entertainnt blogs. Twitter threads. TikTok edits. Instagram reels.
Dayo saw the headlines.
"Viral Video Shows Global Star Helping Lagos Boy."
"JD’s Quiet Act Sparks Online Debate."
"Fans Praise Artist After Emotional Street Mont."
He raised an eyebrow.
"Debate?"
"So people say it’s PR," Sharon said.
Dayo laughed once.
"If it was PR, we’d have posted it ourselves."
"Exactly."
She scrolled further.
Morning talk shows had picked it up.
Clips of the TVC discussion were circulating.
Four won around a table discussing the footage.
So defending the authenticity.
So questioning it.
But most of them agreeing on one thing.
The mont didn’t look staged.
Dayo shook his head slowly.
"I didn’t even know soone was there."
"That’s why it’s blowing up," Sharon said.
She paused, then added sothing else.
"I already looked into the person who posted it."
Dayo looked at her.
"You found them already?"
"Of course."
She tapped another tab.
A YouTube page appeared.
Shina Afolabi.
Music comntary.
Reaction videos.
Subscriber count climbing rapidly.
Dayo leaned forward slightly.
He began scrolling.
One reaction video.
Then another.
Then another.
Old uploads.
So from years ago.
So from tis when the industry had turned cold toward him.
He opened one from four years back.
Shina sitting in a small room, explaining to his viewers why he still believed Dayo’s sound would dominate globally.
Another video appeared.
The title read sothing like: "Why JD disappearing might actually be strategy."
Another.
"People are underestimating this guy."
"JD Will co back I know he will you all just wait and see he will co back stronger than before and he woukd be more dangerous tnan before"
"YOU ALL I TOLD YOU ALL JD IS BACK DAYO IS F*** BACK HAHAH I AM SOOO HAPPY JD THE KING IS BACK."
Dayo stopped scrolling but the smile on his face never left of course he was happy although he had seen reaction of fans but this one hit different because he never left.
He leaned back slowly.
"He stayed," he said quietly.
Sharon nodded.
"Looks like he’s been supporting you for years."
Dayo kept scrolling.
Even during the four-year period when he had gone almost completely silent online, the videos continued.
Shina reacting to old tracks.
Breaking down lyrics.
Defending him in comnt sections.
Dayo smiled.
Not a big smile.
A quiet one.
"You know..." he said softly, "people like this are the reason artists survive."
Even he couldn’t survive without fans.
Sharon folded her arms.
"So what do you want to do?"
Dayo looked at the screen again.
Shina laughing in one of his reaction videos.
Talking excitedly about production choices.
Completely unaware that one day the artist he was analyzing would be watching the video.
Dayo closed the laptop gently.
"I want to et him."
Sharon blinked.
"You an personally?"
"Yes."
She studied him for a second With a smile on his face.
"You’re serious."
"If soone believed in you for years," Dayo said calmly, "you don’t ignore them."
"I have to et him because he deserves this et he stood by
even without
knowing he deserves more and I would give him."
Sharon nodded slowly.
"I already sent him a ssage."
Dayo raised an eyebrow.
"You’re fast."
"That’s my job to know what you would do."
She turned the screen again.
The DM was open.
A simple ssage.
I want to see you.
Dayo nodded once with a smile
"Good you always know my mind."
Sharon switched the screen again.
"This is the other thing you need to see."
Streaming dashboards appeared.
Numbers rising.
Yesterday’s numbers sat on the side.
Combined streams for both songs had been around 20.8 million.
Now the graphs were climbing sharply.
"The video changed everything," she said.
Dayo watched silently.
"In Nigeria especially."
The Shade track had exploded.
People were using it in edits of the viral clip.
Wedding dance videos.
TikTok reactions.
The cultural connection was strong.
Roo & Juliet was moving differently.
Outside Nigeria the growth was faster.
International listeners discovering it through the viral mont.
Sharon refreshed the dashboard.
"Shade just crossed twenty-six million."
Another refresh.
"Roo & Juliet just passed twenty-nine."
One of the team mbers whistled softly.
"That’s fast."
Sharon nodded.
"Combined we’re already pushing past fifty-five million streams."
Dayo didn’t react dramatically.
He just watched the numbers update again.
Then he said quietly,
"All this because of a small mont."
Sharon shook her head.
"Not a small mont."
She looked at the screen again.
"It reminded people who you are that we are human after all."
Dayo stood up and walked toward the window.
Lagos morning was already awake outside.
Cars moving.
People shouting.
Life continuing normally.
Yet sowhere inside that noise the internet was still burning with a video he didn’t even know existed yesterday.
Behind him Sharon closed the laptop.
"eting with Shina?" she asked.
"Tonight."
"Alright."
anwhile across the city, Shina was staring at his phone like it might explode.
The notifications had not slowed.
His subscriber count had doubled.
ssages from blogs.
Requests for interviews.
People asking how he found the footage.
He was trying to respond politely without sounding overwheld.
Then his phone buzzed again.
Instagram.
Direct ssage.
He opened it casually at first.
Then froze.
The verified badge.
The na.
Dayo.
The ssage was short.
I want to see you.
Shina stared at the screen.
Read it again.
Then whispered slowly to himself.
"No way."
Shina did not breathe for a few seconds.
The ssage stayed on the screen.
I want to see you.
He blinked once. Then again. The words did not change.
His thumb hovered over the phone like touching it might make the ssage disappear. For a mont he honestly wondered if soone had edited the screenshot and sent it to him as a prank.
Then he checked the profile again.
Blue verification badge.
Millions of followers.
The sa profile picture he had seen on streaming platforms and award shows.
It was real.
Shina jumped to his feet so suddenly the plastic chair beside the bed fell over.
"Jesus!"
He paced the small lodge room, running one hand over his head.
"Jesus... Jesus..."
His heart was racing so hard it almost felt painful.
He opened the ssage again just to be sure.
Still there.
Still real.
"I want to see you."
He let out a laugh that sounded half like panic.
"No way."
He paced again, faster now, then suddenly grabbed the edge of the bed and bounced on it like a child who had just received impossible news.
"JD ssaged !"
He said it out loud, as if the walls needed confirmation.
For years he had been talking about this man to a cara. Defending him in comnt sections. Predicting his coback during the years everyone else had moved on.
And now the sa man had sent him a ssage.
Shina grabbed his phone again and stared at the ssage.
His fingers started typing.
Then he deleted it.
Typed again.
Deleted again.
"What do I even say?"
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