IN LOVE WITH A MUSIC STAR

*Chapter 1: Amina’s Life in the Village*

The first thing Amina heard every morning was not an alarm, but the rooster at Baba Tunde’s compound three houses down. It had a voice like it was personally offended by the sun’s delay. She would lie in bed for a few minutes longer, listening to it, and to the softer sounds that followed—the rustle of palm fronds against her zinc roof, her neighbor Mama Ngozi calling her goats back from the road, the distant hum of the motorbike that passed at 6:15 sharp, carrying students to the secondary school in town.

Her room smelled of old wood, dried hibiscus from the sachets she hung on the window, and the faint trace of jollof from last night’s dinner. The walls were painted a faded mint green, chipped at the corners where the rainy season had tried to claim them back. On one wall hung a poster of Fela Kuti, yellowed at the edges, and beneath it, a small shelf of books with cracked spines. _Things Fall Apart. The Joys of Motherhood. A tattered copy of Songbook for Beginners._ Music had always been her quiet rebellion.

Amina was twenty-four, and to most people in Epe Village, that meant she was running out of time to “settle down.” Her aunt, Auntie Folake, said it at least twice a week, usually while pounding yam in the kitchen. “A girl with your face and your voice should be married by now, Amina. Not hiding in that little room with your piano like it’s going to marry you back.”

The “piano” was a secondhand keyboard Auntie Folake had bought her three years ago from a trader in town, after Amina had spent six months teaching herself on the church organ. It was missing two keys, and the sustain pedal stuck if you pressed it too hard, but it was hers. In that room, with the door closed and a kerosene lamp flickering, Amina was not the quiet girl who helped Auntie sell akara at the market every Saturday. She was someone else. Someone whose voice didn’t shake when she hit the high notes. Someone who wrote songs about things she couldn’t say out loud.

Her days had a rhythm, predictable and gentle. Mornings at the market, helping Auntie. Afternoons at the community center, where she taught music to a group of children who ranged from seven to fifteen and had more energy than discipline. They called her “Miss Amina” with a mix of affection and mischief. Little Chinedu, who had a voice too big for his body, always asked her to teach him “the song from the radio.” Amina would smile and say, “We’re learning scales today, Chinedu. The radio can wait.”

Evenings were for the village. The air cooled, people sat outside on plastic chairs, and stories moved from compound to compound like smoke. Amina would sit on her low stool by the gate, mending clothes or writing in a notebook with a pen that was almost out of ink. Sometimes Old Papa Yusuf would walk by and stop to listen if she was humming. He never said much, just nodded and said, “That one has the voice of someone who has seen both rain and sunshine.” Then he’d shuffle off, and Amina would feel both seen and exposed.

Epe Village wasn’t on any map that mattered. It had one tarred road that ended at the town market, a borehole that worked three days a week, and a church that doubled as the town hall when there was a meeting. News traveled slowly here, unless it came on a phone with 4G. The closest thing they had to a celebrity was Kemi, who had gone to Lagos two years ago to work as a sales girl and now posted pictures in wigs and makeup that made the younger girls sigh and say, “One day.”

Amina didn’t dream of Lagos. Not really. Lagos felt loud and fast and hungry, a place that chewed people up and spat them out if they weren’t careful. She liked the way the harmattan dust settled softly on everything in December, making the world look muted and calm. She liked that everyone knew her name, and that if she forgot salt at the market, someone would call out, “Amina! Take mine, you’ll pay me back with a song!”

But there was a restlessness under the calm. It showed up at night, when the village slept and she couldn’t. She would sit at her keyboard, playing the same four chords over and over, trying to shape the feeling into a melody. The feeling didn’t have a name. It was like standing on the edge of something—like the village was safe, but small. Like her voice was meant for more than the community center and the church choir.

She had never told anyone this. Not Auntie Folake, who would say it was pride talking. Not her friend Bisi, who was already engaged and talked about wedding lace more than anything else. Not even Chinedu, who believed she could sing anything if she wanted to.

The only person who knew was her notebook. Pages filled with lyrics, crossed out lines, melodies sketched in a shorthand only she understood. One song, “Quiet Light,” kept coming back to her. It was about a girl who glowed in the dark but was afraid to let anyone see.

That evening, the village was unusually quiet. The power had been out since morning, and without the hum of the small generator at the clinic, the night felt deeper. Amina sat outside, her notebook on her lap, the moon bright enough to read by. She was humming, barely audible, when she heard the sound of a car engine struggling on the dirt road.

Cars rarely came this far into the village at night. The road was bad, and most people who had cars preferred not to ruin them on potholes. She stood up, curious despite herself.

Headlights cut through the darkness, and the car sputtered to a stop near the old iroko tree at the village entrance. The engine died, and for a moment, there was only silence. Then a door opened, and a voice muttered, “This is ridiculous.”

It was a man’s voice. Deep, frustrated, and not from around here.

Amina hesitated. Village rules were clear—you didn’t approach strangers at night. But curiosity, and the fact that the car was blocking the path to Mama Ngozi’s goats, made her step forward.

“Good evening,” she called out, keeping her voice steady. “You’re stuck?”

The man turned, and for a second, the moonlight caught his face. She didn’t recognize him, but there was something familiar about him, like a song she’d heard once and couldn’t place. He was tall, wearing a hoodie and a cap pulled low, and he looked tired in a way that had nothing to do with the bad road.

He stared at her for a moment, then sighed. “Yeah. Stuck. And lost. And probably about to be eaten by mosquitoes.”

Amina couldn’t help it—she laughed. It was soft, but it sounded loud in the quiet night.

“You’re not in Lagos anymore,” she said.

His eyebrows lifted slightly. “You know Lagos?”

“I’ve seen it on TV,” she said. She walked closer, stopping a few feet away. “I’m Amina. I live down that path. Do you need help?”

He hesitated, then ran a hand through his hair. “I’m trying to get to… nowhere, actually. I just needed to drive. Away.”

Amina looked at the car, then at him. He didn’t look dangerous. He looked lost. And there was something in his eyes that reminded her of her own restlessness at night.

“The iroko tree is the only thing that knows this road,” she said. “Follow me. There’s a place you can turn around, and my aunt makes the best akara in the village. It’s cold now, but I can heat it up.”

He looked surprised. “You’d invite a stranger into your home?”

“In Epe, strangers become neighbors by morning,” she said with a small smile. “Unless you’re a thief. Are you a thief?”

“No,” he said, almost laughing. “Definitely not a thief.”

“Good. Then come on. Before the mosquitoes write their names on you.”

As they walked, the man didn’t say his name. Amina didn’t ask. There was something about the way he kept his head down, the way he seemed to shrink when a dog barked nearby, that told her he wasn’t here to be found.

In the village, people didn’t ask too many questions. They offered water, they offered food, they offered silence if that was what you needed.

Amina led him past her gate, past the compound where Chinedu lived, past the church where she sang every Sunday. Her life was small, but it was full. Full of children who sang off-key, of Auntie Folake’s loud laughter, of nights when the stars were so close it felt like you could reach out and touch them.

She didn’t know it yet, but the man walking behind her would change the rhythm of all of it.

For now, she just unlocked her gate and said, “Welcome to Epe Village. Don’t mind the rooster. He’s dramatic.”

Inside, the keyboard waited in the dark, and on her shelf, the notebook lay open to a page that read: _Sometimes the song finds you before you find the singer._

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***