Frosh woke to the sound of his sister singing.

She was at the small mirror near the window, brushing her hair, humming a melody that he recognized immediately because it was his own. The bridge from *Essence*. The part where Blake came in. She didn’t sing the words. She just hummed the tune, off-key and happy, the way eleven-year-olds hummed when they didn’t know they were being heard.

He lay on his mattress and listened. The room was already warm. The generator outside the building had kicked in sometime during the night, and the fan above their heads was spinning again, pushing hot air around. His sister caught him watching in the mirror and turned around, grinning.

"Your song was on Beat FM again yesterday," she said. "Three times. I counted."

"Did you tell your friends?"

"They already knew." She went back to brushing her hair. "Tolu asked me if I was really your sister. I said yes. He didn’t believe me until I showed him your picture on my phone. Then he believed me." She paused. "He wants your autograph."

Frosh laughed. It came out rough, unused. "I don’t have autographs. I have a phone number."

"Give me one anyway. For Tolu. He’ll die." she said with an innocent smile on her face that melt Frosh every time.

Frosh got up and dressed in a white shirt and shorts. He checked his phone as he walked out the door. Seven hundred and thirty-two unread messages. He stopped counting after the first hundred last night. Most were congratulations. Some were requests. A few were from people he didn’t know who suddenly wanted to know him.

The walk to Admiralty Way felt different this morning. The same streets. The same vendors. The same bike men shouting for passengers. But the eyes were different. A girl at a buka stand looked up from her rice and stared a second too long. A guy selling phone cases nodded at him like they knew each other. Frosh kept walking, his head down, his hands in his pockets, unsure if he was famous or just paranoid.

The studio was loud when he walked in. Not music-loud. Celebration-loud. Amara was on the couch with her legs crossed, scrolling through her phone, reading numbers aloud. Kazeem was pacing, talking to someone on a call, his voice pitched higher than usual. Faye was in the corner, smiling at something on her screen. Tunde sat in his usual chair, newspaper folded on his lap, looking at everyone over his reading glasses like they were children who had won a prize.

"Eighteen million," Amara said, looking up. "By midnight last night. That’s what Akin said."

Frosh stopped walking. "Eighteen?"

"Eighteen million streams. Across all platforms. In six days." Amara held up her phone like it was evidence in a trial. "And that’s not counting whatever happened while we were sleeping. Akin said the tracking resets at six AM Lagos time. We’re probably at twenty by now."

Frosh felt the number hit his chest like a physical weight. Eighteen million. He had never had eighteen of anything in his life, except maybe problems. Now he had eighteen million streams of music that came from his throat, written by a man he had never met in person, featuring an American star who he barely knew.

Akin walked in from the mixing room. He looked different too. Not tired for once. Bright. Alert. The way people looked when they were winning.

"Twenty-two million," Akin said before anyone asked. "As of forty minutes ago. Nigerian Apple Music, you’re number two second only to David O song with Dayo. Afrobeats chart in the UK, you entered at number six. Spotify Nigeria, number three. And *Essence* is trending on TikTok in four countries. Not just Nigeria. Ghana. Kenya. The UK."

Frosh sat down. His legs felt unreliable.

"The radio play is what did it," Akin continued. "Every major station in Lagos has added *Essence*. Some are playing *Sister* too. Track four. They keep requesting it. Something about that song..." He trailed off, shrugging. "People are tagging their siblings. Posting stories about their families. It’s not just a song anymore. It’s a story from different percpective for people to relate to."

Kazeem hung up his call and turned to Frosh. "My cousin in London heard you on the radio. In London, Frosh. He called me and said ’your friend is on Capital XTRA.’ I didn’t even know what to say. I just held the phone."

Frosh looked at Faye. She was still smiling at her screen, but she looked up when she felt his eyes on her.

"Dayo did this," she said quietly. "He knew. He knew exactly when to drop it. Exactly how to position it. It’s like he looked at the whole world and found the exact moment when everyone was ready to hear you."

Frosh nodded. He thought about the man in Los Angeles who had written his songs, chosen his moments, and was now fighting a scandal about his own family while Frosh’s name climbed charts he hadn’t known existed a week ago. He thought about how strange it was to be the beneficiary of someone else’s genius while that same someone was losing control of their own life.

While his thoughts were flying Shino came inside and just handed him a phone not saying anything.

Frosh answered confused trying to mutter ’who is it’ to Shino. "Hello?"

"Frosh." The voice was deep. Calm. Familiar from a hundred interviews and a thousand songs. "It’s Dayo."

Frosh’s mouth went dry. He stood up without meaning to. The room went quiet. Everyone stopped moving. Amara’s eyes went wide. Kazeem’s mouth hung open. Faye set her phone down slowly.

"Yes," Frosh managed. "I mean — hello. Sir. Hello."

Dayo laughed. It was a soft sound, genuine, not performative. "Don’t call me sir. I’m not that old. I’m just at most a few year older than you."

Frosh didn’t know what to say. He gripped the phone tighter.

"I listened to RISE," Dayo said. "All five tracks. In order. Then I listened to track four three more times."

"*Sister*," Frosh said.

"Track four is why they stayed." Dayo’s voice shifted, became something more direct. "Anyone can make a catchy song, Frosh. Anyone can get a feature from a big name and ride the wave. But track four is you. Your words. Your story. Your sister sleeping on a floor while you sang in a bathroom. That’s the song people are saving to their playlists. That’s the song they’re sending to their brothers. That’s the song that makes them feel like someone sees them. And that song is why, twenty-two million streams from now, people will still know your name."

Frosh felt his throat close. He blinked hard. The room was a blur. He could hear Amara breathing next to him, could feel Kazeem’s hand on his shoulder.

"I just wanted to tell you that," Dayo said. "Keep singing. Keep writing. Track four is proof you don’t need me to tell your story. But I’m here when you need me for the next one."

"Thank you," Frosh whispered. It was all he could get out. The words felt small and insufficient against the weight of what Dayo had just given him.

"Thank yourself," Dayo said. "You wrote it. I just made sure the world was listening."

The line went dead.

Frosh stood there, phone in his hand, staring at nothing. The room was completely silent. Then Amara moved first. She pulled out her own phone and started recording.

"Say that again," she said. "What he said. For the video."

Frosh blinked. "What?"

"Frosh, everyone already knows you’re Dayo’s artist. The blogs said it. The tabloids said it. We’re not hiding anymore. So let us post this. Let people hear that Dayo called you personally. That he listened to your EP. That he told you track four is why they stayed." Amara was already framing the shot. "This is promotion. Real promotion. Being linked to Dayo right now — while the whole world is watching him — that’s not a problem. That’s the spotlight."

Frosh looked at the others. Kazeem nodded. Faye nodded. Even Tunde, who never approved of anything modern, tipped his head.

"Go ahead," Frosh said quietly.

Amara hit record. She turned the camera on Frosh, still standing in the middle of the studio, phone in his hand, eyes red.

"Dayo just called," Frosh said to the camera. His voice was still rough, still catching. "He listened to RISE. All of it. And he said..." Frosh stopped. Swallowed. "He said track four is why they stayed. Track four is the song I wrote myself. About my sister. About sleeping on floors. About waiting for someone to hear." He looked directly into the lens. "So if you’re listening to RISE, don’t skip track four. That’s the one that’s real."

He stopped. Amara lowered the phone. She edited the clip in thirty seconds — trimmed the beginning, added the EP cover art, tagged Frosh’s account and JD Records. She posted it.

Within an hour, the clip had half a million views.

Within two hours, Nigerian blogs had screenshotted it, transcribed it, and turned it into headlines.

Within three hours, Frosh’s stream count had jumped another four million.

He didn’t know about the Global Spotlight Card that Dayo had activated at noon on the day of release, a pulse of algorithmic force that no one in the studio could see or name. He didn’t know that for twenty-four hours, every platform had treated RISE like a global event regardless of follower count. He just knew that twenty-two million had become twenty-six, and that a man he had never met had called him on the phone and told him that his own words mattered.

Frosh walked home that evening. His sister was at the kitchen table doing homework, her small radio playing Beat FM. *Essence* came on while she was writing. She looked up, saw him in the doorway, and grinned.

"That’s you," she said, pointing at the speaker. "That’s my brother."

Frosh sat down across from her. He took out his phone and pulled up the numbers. Twenty-six million. He turned the screen toward her.

She squinted at it. "What does that mean?"

"It means people heard you," Frosh said. "Even if they didn’t know it was you. They heard the song about the jollof. And the floor. And the waiting. They heard it twenty-six million times."

She looked at the number, then at him. "Is that a lot?"

"It’s more than I ever thought I’d have."

She nodded, satisfied, and went back to her homework. The radio played the bridge from *Essence*, Blake’s voice mixing with Frosh’s, and she hummed along without looking up.

Frosh sat at the table and watched her write. Outside, the Lagos evening was loud with generators and traffic and life. Somewhere across the ocean, Dayo was managing a scandal about his own family, protecting his own daughter, fighting a war Frosh would never fully understand.

But tonight, in this small kitchen with peeling paint and a radio playing his voice, none of that mattered. Tonight, Frosh had twenty-six million streams and a sister who hummed his melody while she did her homework.

Tonight, he had risen from a nobody to someone worth been called a star.

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