₦airaland Forum

CHAPTER TWO

A Place to Begin

The apartment was smaller than it had looked in the pictures.

DeBayo stood in the doorway, one hand gripping the handle of his suitcase, and considered whether the estate agent had deliberately photographed the place from angles that concealed its shortcomings.

The sitting room could accommodate a sofa, a television, and perhaps one visitor who didn't mind keeping his knees close together. The kitchen was narrow. The bedroom window faced another building, close enough that he could make out the faded curtains hanging behind its glass.

He stepped inside and turned the kitchen tap.

Water splashed against the stainless-steel sink. He nodded to himself.

It would do. For now, that was enough.

He set down his luggage and took out his phone. Before he could even open his messages, it buzzed with a text from his sister.

Have you reached the place?

He took a photograph of the sitting room and sent it to her. Her reply arrived almost immediately.

This is where you brought us to?

He laughed. You haven't even visited.

I don't need to visit. I have eyes.

Then close them.

She sent a laughing emoji followed by a voice note he didn't bother opening. He could already hear the commentary in his head.

His mother called ten minutes later, as promised. Having already confirmed at the airport that he was alive, she moved straight to auditing his accommodation—whether the gate had a security guard, whether the landlord seemed honest, and whether the neighbourhood looked respectable.

DeBayo walked over to the bedroom window and looked down at the street.

A generator rumbled behind the compound wall. Two men were arguing heatedly over a scratched bumper. A woman marched past carrying a bag of groceries, speaking loudly into her phone.

"It seems fine, Ma."

"Seems fine isn't the same as being fine."

"I'll investigate the neighbourhood and submit a formal report."

"DeBayo."

"I'm joking."

"You and your mouth."

He smiled. For all his complaints, he had missed this—the knowledge that somewhere in Kaduna, people were worrying about his curtains and his locks while he worked out how to arrange the rest of his life.

He ended the call and sat on the edge of the mattress.

The room was quiet enough for him to hear the hum of his phone when another notification arrived.

It was the formal onboarding confirmation from Vanguard Industrial & Chemical Holdings. The message confirmed his 8:30 a.m. reporting time on Monday, listed the credentials he needed to bring, and reminded him that his appointment as a Process & Quality Compliance Engineer was subject to routine onboarding procedures.

He opened the attachment, verified the Victoria Island address, and checked the name of the compliance lead he was scheduled to meet. Everything appeared straightforward—except for the unsigned inventory form still sitting in his folder, waiting to see whether Monday morning would begin with an argument.

By evening, the apartment looked marginally less temporary. He queued up a Seyi Vibez project on his phone, set it on the window ledge so the bass carried mildly off the wall, and hung his shirts in the wardrobe—checking the shoulder seams and collar stitching out of an old tailoring habit to see which ones needed pressing before Monday.

While his ThinkPad booted up on the small table via his pocket MiFi, a WhatsApp message popped up from John, his old Kaduna Polytechnic classmate who had survived the HND route while DeBayo was stuck in the ATBU trenches.

Heard the German machine has finally touched Lagos soil. Don't go and lock somebody's factory on your first week o.

DeBayo smirked and typed back: I never even collect ID card yet.

Doesn't matter. We know you.

He ordered dinner from a nearby bukka via a rider and ate while reviewing the regulatory compliance frameworks he had brought back from Mannheim. He could have stayed in Europe. The extension offer had been on his desk, clean and predictable. Choosing Lagos meant choosing friction, noise, and proximity to home—a trade he had made with his eyes open.

After eating, he set the empty container aside and picked up his phone.

The message from the unknown number was still sitting near the top of his log.

You've chosen an interesting time to return.

Running the digits through Truecaller and his messaging apps had yielded nothing. No registered name. No display photograph. No link to Bauchi, Kaduna, or Germany.

He opened the chat window and typed three words.

Who is this?

His thumb hovered over the send icon. Then he deleted the line.

If the sender wanted a conversation, they could start one properly. He wasn't going to reward a stranger for dropping an ominous sentence into his Saturday night.

He placed the phone facedown on the table. On Monday, he would report to Vanguard. Whatever the message meant, he intended to show up on his own terms.

alright will be back tomorrow

CHAPTER ONE

The City Doesn't Wait

The first thing DeBayo noticed was the noise.

Not that he had expected silence.

After eighteen months in Mannheim, where even the train stations seemed to disapprove of unnecessary volume, Lagos felt determined to remind him where he had landed. Trolleys rattled across the terminal floor. Suitcases bumped against people's ankles. Families called out across the crowd, while drivers and transport operators waited beyond the glass doors, watching every emerging passenger with the alertness of men who could not afford to miss a customer.

Somewhere nearby, a child was crying.

A man on his phone was arguing in rapid, clipped Pidgin with someone who couldn't possibly hear him over the surrounding din.

DeBayo stood beside his luggage and watched the commotion with an expression that suggested he had all the time in the world.

He didn't.

His phone had been vibrating almost continuously since the flight from Frankfurt touched down, and the airport's Wi-Fi had decided that connecting to it was a privilege he hadn't earned.

He tried once more.

Nothing.

"Wetin come happen again," he muttered under his breath, a habit picked up from years bouncing between Kaduna's markets and Bauchi's student hostels.

He switched off the Wi-Fi and turned on his local mobile data instead.

Three messages from his sister. Two from his mother. One from his father.

And an email from the human resources department of his new employer—a reply he had been waiting nearly two weeks to receive.

He opened the email first.

Read it.

Then read it again.

His expression remained unchanged, but his thumb stopped moving across the screen.

Two weeks ago, before he had even packed his bags in Germany, an onboarding clerk had sent him a bundle of onboarding forms that included an incorrect transitional sign-off sheet—a declaration confirming he accepted previous inventory logs he had nothing to do with.

DeBayo had replied in two concise sentences, stating that he could not endorse records he hadn't inspected, and asking for clarification.

For nearly two weeks, he had heard nothing. Now, the long-awaited reply sat on his screen: three lines from Human Resources thanking him for his patience, offering no explanation for the delay, and instructing him to bring any unsigned documentation to his Monday morning onboarding session.

It wasn't a crisis. It was simply another reminder that other people could delay decisions that affected his life, ignore a direct question, and expect him to accept the resulting inconvenience with good grace.

He locked the phone.

There were times when DeBayo found the world amusing. There were other times when he found it difficult to understand why people expected a grown man to sign his name to things he hadn't seen.

He had learned not to confuse those two moods.

"Abeg, boss. You need taxi?"

A man had appeared beside him.

DeBayo looked at him.

"Where you dey go? Ikeja? Victoria Island? Lekki?"

"Not yet."

The man glanced at the luggage. "Not yet?"

"I'm still standing here, aren't I?"

The driver laughed, unsure whether he had been insulted.

DeBayo gave him a faint smile. "Wakati," he murmured softly in German, a small linguistic reflex from his fellowship days. Then, in standard English: "Give me a minute."

"No wahala, boss."

The man moved away in search of someone more decisive.

DeBayo watched him go. He had always found it interesting how quickly people formed impressions. A short answer became arrogance. Silence became uncertainty. A refusal became an invitation to negotiate. He wondered what the driver would have thought if he had known how much of DeBayo's life had been spent refusing things other people insisted he should sign.

Then he dismissed the thought. It was a taxi driver, not a disciplinary panel.

His sister's messages were still waiting.

Have you landed?

DeBayo?

You have landed and you cannot type two words?

The last message included an insult in Yoruba that made him laugh under his breath. He typed a reply.

I've landed. I'm beginning to regret coming back already.

Her response arrived almost immediately.

Good. Maybe you'll go back.

He shook his head. Some things, at least, hadn't changed.

His mother called before he could lock the screen.

"Have you landed?"

"Yes, Ma."

"You're sure? You've collected your things?"

"Yes, Ma."

"Have you eaten?"

He glanced toward a nearby food outlet. "Not yet."

"You people will travel for hours and forget to eat. What have you been doing since you landed?"

"Standing here, Ma."

"Standing there doing what?"

He smiled. "Waiting for you to ask me if I've eaten."

She made a sound of disapproval, though he could hear the amusement beneath it. "Koshi. Just make sure you eat something. And call when you reach the apartment."

"I will."

"And don't let anybody rush you."

That made him pause.

His mother continued talking, offering the sort of practical advice she had probably given him a hundred times. He listened, answering where necessary, until the call ended.

For a few seconds, he remained where he was. His mother had a habit of worrying about the smallest things while carrying burdens she rarely discussed in detail. He knew that much now. He wanted to reach a point where her first question would no longer be whether he had eaten, where he was sleeping, or whether he had enough money for the journey.

He collected his luggage and moved toward the exit.

The doors opened, and Lagos met him with heat, exhaust, and a wall of competing voices. Drivers called out destinations. Cars edged toward the pickup area. A horn sounded long enough to suggest that its owner believed the entire city had personally offended him.

A driver approached him, offering a destination and a price.

DeBayo listened. The price was ridiculous.

"That's your price?"

"Traffic, oga. Lagos traffic."

"I haven't even told you where I'm going."

The man paused. DeBayo stared at him. For a moment, neither spoke.

Then the driver laughed. "Oga, you get mind."

"Apparently."

They settled on a more reasonable arrangement. DeBayo loaded his luggage and got into the back seat.

As they pulled away from the airport, he watched the city through the window.

He was twenty-eight. It had taken him six years in Bauchi to finish an engineering degree that should have taken four—two years swallowed by an industrial-training dispute he still preferred not to revisit—followed by eighteen months of fellowship training in Germany that could have kept him in Europe permanently.

He had come home anyway. Not because Nigeria was easier, and not because he had forgotten what institutions could do when a person refused to cooperate. He had returned because he wanted a life that belonged to him—enough money and enough standing that he could refuse a bad instruction without wondering how he would survive the week.

His phone vibrated against his palm.

An unknown number. No saved contact. No profile picture.

The message contained only one sentence.

You've chosen an interesting time to return.

DeBayo read it. Then he looked out of the window again.

Lagos moved around him, impatient and indifferent. A yellow bus cut across the lane ahead. The driver cursed. Two men argued beside a roadside stall, while a hawker carried a tray of bottled water through traffic with the concentration of someone for whom fear had become an unnecessary expense.

DeBayo looked back at his screen and read the sentence once more.

It could have been a prank. A wrong number. Someone from his fellowship cohort or an old acquaintance who had heard about his Lagos appointment and decided to be clever.

His instinct, however, had begun to trouble him.

He knew fear could disguise itself as intuition, and that suspicion could turn an innocent coincidence into something sinister. Yet he also knew that ignorance had its own price—and that by the time a man had enough proof to justify his caution, the window to act had usually closed.

He took a screenshot.

Saved the number.

Then he slipped the phone into his pocket.

The driver glanced at him through the rear-view mirror. "First time in Lagos, oga?"

"No."

"You know Lagos well?"

"Well enough."

The driver nodded and returned his attention to the road.

DeBayo watched the traffic. He didn't know who had sent the message, and he had no intention of allowing a stranger's riddle to dictate the mood of his first day back. Whatever was waiting for him could wait a little longer.

He had only just arrived.

And Lagos, as he was about to discover, was not the only thing that had been waiting.

THE PRICE OF SILENCE — A Nigerian Psychological Thriller *

Hello, everyone.

I'm currently working on a new novel. NB: This is my first Novel up here

The story follows DeBayo, a quiet and observant young Nigerian whose life takes an unexpected turn after an incident during his university years.
Years later, having worked hard to rebuild his future, he returns to Nigeria to begin a new chapter of his life.

But as he will come to learn the past doesn't always stay where you leave it.

This story explores ambition, betrayal, personal independence, and the consequences of choices people make when they believe they have everything under control. It also draws heavily on Nigerian settings and everyday experiences.

I'm sharing the opening here because I'd like to hear from readers who enjoy a good read and are willing to offer honest, constructive feedback.

All form of criticism is allowed. Dont hold back

I'd particularly appreciate your thoughts.

I'm still developing the manuscript, so thoughtful criticism is welcome.

Thank you for reading.

And welcome 🤗 to the CHAOS

Thanks for the update

Nice piece......kip it coming

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ASAP101

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will surely follow go this till the end

Finally Joi the party. Ride on boss.

Thanks for the update boss

this is getting more interesting btw thanks for the mention

following boss

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Haha, thanks for the update

Awaiting more updates jejely

]seems you were lucky

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Feels good to know this isn't the end.
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Tominix:
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Wow
Waiting patiently for the continuation