The news hit campus like a fresh wave of chaos.
Posters for the competition—those bold, obnoxious flyers with the gold-stamped title SOAP OPERA COMPETITION: WHERE STORIES BECOME LEGENDS—were everywhere. By morning, they covered walls, lecture doors, hostel gates, cafeteria pillars… even the back of the campus toilets. You couldn't walk two steps without seeing one.
And that meant the pressure was real.
Johnson felt it the moment he stepped into the Arts Faculty hallway. Students huddled in clusters, some reading the flyer, some boasting loudly about the story they planned to submit, others already arguing about who would take the top prize.
"Guy, I swear, this year na my turn," someone said behind him.
"As how?" another replied. "You? With that your last entry wey read like secondary school comprehension?"
Laughter burst across the hallway.
Johnson adjusted his backpack and walked quietly. He wasn't the loud type, not the bragging type, not the "look at me, I'm a writer" type. But inside him… ideas thundered. Characters whispered. Entire worlds tried to escape through his fingertips.
He just needed the courage.
---
At the opposite end of the campus, Raphael was having a very different experience.
He stepped into the cafeteria and was immediately greeted like a small celebrity. A group of students waved him over, pulling out chairs, hailing him like a king returning from battle.
"Rapha! Rapha! So you go still join the competition this year?"
"Guy, give us small preview nau!"
"Abeg, when your own drop, everybody go just pack their bags. Make the rest no even bother."
Raphael laughed, but there was pressure behind the smile. He was good—actually, he was great—but people forget that praise can be as heavy as criticism. Everyone expected him to shine. Everyone assumed he would take the crown.
But this year felt different.
This year, there were over 100 students competing.
And from the whispers he'd heard… some of them were hungry. Desperate. Ready to fight with everything they had.
---
Tania watched both worlds from a distance—Johnson's quiet intensity and Raphael's loud confidence. She wasn't a writer herself, but she understood stories. She lived inside them, breathed them, felt them. And something told her that the universe was stirring.
Like the beginning of a storm.
She sat beside Ella and folded her arms. "You people don't understand. This competition will scatter this campus."
Ella laughed. "Ah-ah, calm down now. It's just writing."
"Nothing is 'just' writing," Tania muttered.
"You're sounding like Johnson," Ella teased.
Tania blushed before she could stop herself.
---
Later that afternoon, Promise, Praise, Chidi, and Joshua gathered under the mango tree beside the library—one of those unofficial student hangout spots where secrets spread faster than WiFi.
"I heard they increased the prize money," Promise said.
Praise's eyes widened. "For real?"
"Yes nau. That's why everybody dey rush. Even some people wey never write anything before don buy new jotter."
"Hmm," Chidi shook his head. "Money sweet o. But me I no envy those writers. Headache full their body."
"I heard Johnson is entering," Joshua added.
"Johnson?" Praise looked up. "As in that quiet guy?"
Promise smiled. "Quiet people dey burst brain pass."
---
By evening, the tension had doubled.
Johnson sat on his bunk in the hostel, staring at a blank page. Ideas swirled, but something held his hand still. The pressure. The expectation. The fear of being invisible again—like last year.
Raphael, meanwhile, sat in the library, typing fast, then deleting, then typing again. His confidence wavered for the first time. Not because he doubted his skill… but because he felt something shifting in the air.
Like someone else out there was writing too.
Writing with fire.
Writing with hunger.
Writing with purpose.
Raphael stopped typing and whispered to himself:
"This competition no be play."
And somewhere in the male hostel, Johnson whispered the exact same thing.
Unaware that fate had already begun weaving their stories together.
To be continued…