The apartment on Victoria Island felt too quiet for someone who was supposed to drop an EP in eight hours. Tunde sat on his balcony with a cup of tea that had gone cold twenty minutes ago, watching the Lagos morning move below him. He was twenty. The youngest of the five. The baby of the group that had become his family Frosh at twenty-two, Faye at twenty-one, Amara at twenty, Kazeem at twenty-four, and then him, the one everyone assumed was older because of how he carried himself.

That was the thing they didn’t understand. Tunde’s calm didn’t come from age. It came from being the kid who never rushed. The one who watched his friends sprint toward things and waited until he could see the path clearly. While Kazeem was freestyling on corners and Frosh was recording in bathrooms and Amara was counting change at her mother’s shop, Tunde was sitting in his parents’ living room with a guitar his father had bought him, learning chords that didn’t have words yet. Waiting for the words to come.

He checked his phone. The others had already texted. Frosh: *"Today’s your day."* Kazeem: *"Track four is going to break them."* Amara: *"I’m posting at midnight whether you like it or not."* Faye: *"Your patience is about to make sense to everyone."*

He didn’t reply. He just stood up, dressed in the brown linen shirt he always wore, and caught a cab to the mainland.

The church hadn’t changed. Same white walls, same blue roof, same gate that squeaked when you pushed it. Redeemed Christian Church of God, Igando branch. Tunde had grown up in these pews. His father was an elder. His mother sang in the choir. And Tunde — Tunde had been the fifteen-year-old who played guitar better than the adults and refused to join the choir because he wanted to write his own songs.

The youth pastor, Brother Emmanuel, was at the entrance handing out pamphlets when Tunde walked in. He did a double-take. "Tunde?"

"Brother Emmanuel."

"I saw you on the internet. With those other young people. The ones who sing for that..." He searched for the name. "JD Records."

"That’s right."

Brother Emmanuel’s expression shifted. Three years ago, this same man had sat Tunde down in his office and told him, gently but firmly, that he should consider becoming a pastor instead of chasing music. That singing was fine for the church, but the world would chew him up. That he was too young, too quiet, too slow for the industry.

"I wrote a song," Tunde said. "Track four on my EP. It’s called *Waiting Room*. I wanted to play it here. Before it comes out."

Brother Emmanuel looked at him for a long moment. Then he stepped aside and let him in.

Tunde’s mother was in the back row, arranging flowers for tomorrow’s service. She saw him and her face lit up — not with surprise, but with the quiet recognition of a mother who had always known her son would come back to where he started.

"Tunde," she said, walking toward him. "You should be resting. Tonight is your night."

"I needed to remember where I learned to wait."

She smiled. She understood him in a way that didn’t require explanation. "Play it," she said. "The piano is free."

Tunde sat at the church piano — the same one he had learned on, the one with the chipped key on the upper octave. He played the opening chords of *Waiting Room*. His original. His words. Not Dayo’s.

He sang about being twenty and feeling like he had been waiting his whole life for permission that nobody was going to give. About watching friends sprint ahead while he prepared in silence. About the youth pastor who told him he was too young. About the nights he sat in this same church wondering if patience was just another word for fear. About deciding that waiting wasn’t the same as standing still.

His mother closed her eyes and prayed silently. Brother Emmanuel stood in the doorway, pamphlets forgotten in his hand.

When Tunde finished, the last piano note echoed off the walls and died. His mother opened her eyes. "You were never too young," she said. "They were just in too much of a hurry."

Brother Emmanuel walked in slowly. "That wasn’t a church song," he said quietly. "But God is in it."

"That’s exactly what I was trying to say," Tunde replied.

He hugged his mother, shook Brother Emmanuel’s hand, and walked out of the church. He didn’t look back.

***

The studio was different tonight. Not louder. Fuller. The five of them had been through something together — four launches, four explosions, four proofs that the machine worked. Now they were gathered for the last one, and the room felt like a family reunion where everyone knew this was the final dinner before things changed forever.

"Tunde," Frosh said, pulling him into a hug. "The closer."

"The anchor," Faye added, handing him a cup of tea.

Kazeem didn’t say anything. He just nodded with a respect that Tunde had earned without asking for it.

Amara was bouncing on her toes, unable to contain her energy even in someone else’s moment. "Track four," she said. "I already know it’s going to be my favorite."

At 10:30 PM, Akin dimmed the lights. They sat in the circle — the five of them, the three producers, Zara, and Tunde’s mother, who had insisted on coming and who sat in the back with her hands folded in her lap like prayer was the only appropriate response to what was about to happen.

Akin hit play.

*On The Low* filled the room. Warm. Quiet. Timeless. Sarah’s voice entered on the bridge — a lower register that complemented Tunde’s lived-in baritone, a conversation between two people who had both known loss. The room went still in a way that was different from the other launches. Not emotional tears. Reverent silence.

*Gbona* followed. Warm Afro-fusion, a groove that sounded like Sunday afternoon.

*Real Life* came third. Youth struggles made honest — student debt, family pressure, the gap between what you dreamed and what you could afford.

Then *Waiting Room*.

The beat was almost nonexistent — just a guitar and a heartbeat drum. Tunde’s voice entered, and this time it was his writing. His words. About being the youngest who felt the oldest. About the church piano. About Brother Emmanuel saying he was too young. About his mother praying while he waited. About deciding that patience wasn’t fear — it was faith wearing a different face.

The room changed. Frosh was staring at the floor, his jaw tight. Faye had her eyes closed. Kazeem nodded slowly, recognizing something in the lyrics about waiting that mirrored his own mother’s prayers. Amara wasn’t bouncing. She was completely still, listening with a seriousness she usually reserved for her own music. And Tunde’s mother she was crying silently in the back, her hands clasped together, her lips moving in prayer.

*Run My Race* closed the EP. Gratitude. Determination. The sound of finally being allowed to move after years of waiting.

When it ended, nobody clapped. Nobody spoke. The silence was heavier than applause. Then Tunde’s mother whispered "Amen" from the back, and everyone laughed.

"Track four," Kazeem said quietly. "Play it again."

Akin played *Waiting Room* again. This time, the others sang along not the words, because they didn’t know them yet, but the feeling. The patience. The faith.

At 11:45 PM, they posted. Tunde’s fingers moved slowly over his phone not because he was hesitant, but because he never rushed. His caption: *LOW. Out now. Track four is mine. I wrote it on the church piano where I learned to wait. Listen. Then be still.*

Midnight hit. The EP went live.

The first hour was the quietest of all five launches. Eighty thousand streams. Tunde watched the counter and felt nothing not anxiety, not disappointment, just the same patience that had carried him through twenty-one years. His audience wasn’t on TikTok. They were in their cars, their kitchens, their prayers. They found music differently.

Around hour four, the shift began.

Akin called out. "Tunde. Look."

The graph was different from the others. Not a sharp spike. A steady, determined climb. Dayo had activated the 5th and final Global Spotlight Card at 4 AM Lagos time, but nobody in the room knew this. Nobody saw the interface glow in a locked office in Los Angeles for the last time this cycle. They just saw the numbers build slowly, solidly, like a foundation being laid one brick at a time.

By morning, *On The Low* was on "Sunday morning soul" playlists. By noon, *Waiting Room* was trending on Twitter Nigeria young people posting about patience, about being told they were too young, about waiting for their moment. By evening, the EP had cleared five million.

Tunde went back to the church the next day. His mother had told the congregation. The youth group was singing *Run My Race* during service. They didn’t know he wrote it. They just knew it sounded like gratitude.

Tunde sat in the back. Brother Emmanuel saw him, walked over, and sat beside him. They listened to the young voices fill the room with a song about determination and patience.

"I was wrong," Brother Emmanuel said quietly. "About you being too young. About you needing to wait."

"I did need to wait," Tunde said. "I just didn’t need to stop."

His mother found them in the back. She sat on Tunde’s other side, took his hand, and listened to his voice fill the church where he had learned to wait.

His phone rang. he looked at the strange but familiar number

He answered. "Hello?"

"Track four," Dayo said. Same voice. Same calm. Same weight. "That’s why they stayed. You wrote that. Not me. Remember that."

Tunde got emotional almost istantly He said, "I waited twenty years for this microphone. I wasn’t going to waste it on someone else’s story."

"Very well you have been gifted a chance make sure you use it well good luck Tunde."

Click. The line was dead.

Tunde looked at his mother. She was smiling. Brother Emmanuel was nodding. The young people were still singing *Run My Race* in the front, their voices bright and eager and in too much of a hurry. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

Tunde sat back and listened to them. He had been where they were. He had sprinted in his mind while his fingers learned patience on a piano. And now his voice was filling this room, and the room he had left, and rooms he would never see, telling everyone who had ever been told to wait that patience wasn’t standing still.

It was just preparing to run your race.

By the end of week one, *LOW* had cleared sixteen million streams. Not Frosh’s thirty-one. Not Faye’s twenty-four. But different. Solid. The highest replay rate of all five EPs — people returning to it, keeping it, making it part of their Sundays and their late nights and their prayers.

Tunde walked home from the church through Lagos heat that didn’t bother him. He was twenty-one. The youngest. The one who had waited while everyone else ran. And now, finally, the race had started — not because someone gave him permission, but because he had been ready all along.

(A/N: Shameless author asking for Golden Ticket 🎟 it doubles during this period so if I get up to ten one extra Chapter )