Karma is a bitch - by David Lilly-West

Olamide Adeniyi, popularly known as OLAFX, typical Lagos big boy. Forex merchant. Certified crypto trader. He’d just cashed out a million dollars from one of his accounts the week before. As usual, the whole Instagram heard about it. Bundles of naira on snap. Secrets Palace shut down that same night. Olamide made sure Lagos understood: money long. Behind the money, the fame, the designer clothes, the fake online hype, Olamide had one rule and stood heavily by it: never get emotionally attached. To him, girls were disposable. Las las na money them want, and he had lots of it, so he didn’t mind spending a few bands for sexual pleasure. Love was a distraction. Once a man fall for woman, him no dey get sense again. And it was true. His boy Pamilerin emotionally lost himself because of his ex that year. Lavished millions on her every month. Santorini. Maldives. Any vacation spot you know, she’d been there. Only for him to catch her cheating with his driver. That was the day Ola made the rule. But rules don’t stop ghosts. Two nights before Quilox, a girl from the night before — Tomi — texted him at 2am: “You didn’t even ask my last name.” He read it, locked his phone, and went back to counting profit. No guilt. No feeling. That was the point. Except when he looked in the mirror after, for half a second, he didn’t recognize his own eyes. He told himself it was the lighting. And on this particular Friday night, he stepped out to shut down Quilox for the fourth time that week. All black. Diamond chain he’d customized from the popular black jeweler Malivelihood. As usual, he came to enjoy himself, carry a girl or two back to his crib. But somehow, that wasn’t the case this time. This time was different. Because he meets someone who will completely change his perspective on life, changing Ola completely. Ola reached for his phone to record a snap of the bottles of Azul arriving with the usual parade of sparklers. The hypeman was already dropping crazy lines that made him want to spend more. But as he raised the camera to capture the charade, a hand firmly blocked the lens. It wasn’t a bouncer. Or a rival merchant — abi them dey mad to touch OlaFX phone? He looked up, ready to know who had the balls to stop his normal shut down ritual. But Ola went speechless. She wasn’t impressed by the flashiness. The chain didn’t move her. Nothing did. She looked like she saw right through the whole charade. Ola’s jaw was still hanging. Not because a girl touched his phone — girls touched him all the time. It was the way she did it. No smile. No “oh sorry Big Ola”. No angle. Just palm to lens, like she was swatting a fly. The hypeman was still screaming, “OLA-FX! Na you be the crypto landlord! Make them post am for Bloomberg!”Sparklers were spitting. Azul bottles floated past like trophies. But Ola wasn’t looking at any of it. He looked at her. Plain white tee. Old jeans. No makeup, or at least not the kind that took 3 hours and a ring light. Her braids packed up in a loose bun. A small silver cross on her neck caught the Quilox strobe for half a second. She looked like she took a wrong turn on her way to a bookstore and ended up in Sodom. “Who be this?” Somi, one of his boys, leaned over, already vexed on Ola’s behalf. “You no know who you block so? You want make we—” Ola raised one finger. Somi shut up. Somi was Ola from last week. Loud. Hungry. Blind. He turned back to her, forcing the smirk that had melted 200 girls before. The OlaFX smirk™. Designer teeth, diamond chain glinting. “You get mind o. You know how much that snap for cost?” She finally looked up from her phone. Not at his chain. At his eyes.Then she dropped his iPhone on the table. Not slid. Dropped. Case clacked against the Hennessy ice bucket like a judgment. “E for cost your self-respect,” she said. Her voice was low, tired, like she’d explained this to 10 other men tonight. “But looks like you don already spend that one.” The table went dead. Even the hypeman glitched mid-sentence. Somi choked on his cigar. Ola blinked. Nobody — nobody — had talked to him like that since Primary 4 when Mrs. Adebayo seized his Game Boy. “You dey craze?” he said, but it came out softer than he wanted. Almost like a question. “No,” she said, standing up and slipping her phone into her back pocket. “I dey go. My sister dey outside dey wait. She say make I no tey, because Quilox no be church and I no like loud places.” She started to walk off. Ola’s brain was buffering. Girls didn’t walk off. They asked for Moët. They asked for pictures. They asked for “urgent 2k”. They didn’t lecture him and leave. “Wait.” The word scraped out before he could stop it. His boys stared like he’d just declared he was broke. She paused. Didn’t turn around. “What?” “What’s your name?” He hated how serious he sounded. How un-OlaFX it sounded. A beat. The DJ switched to Asake. The bass hit Ola’s chest like a margin call. “Zainab,” she said to the crowd, not to him. “But my friends dey call me Zee.” Then she was gone, swallowed by the heat and perfume and bad decisions. Ola sat down slow. The Azul parade had circled back, but the sparklers looked stupid now. Childish.He picked up his phone. Notification: Somi had already posted the video. 12k views. Fire emojis. “Big stepper 🐐💎” He watched it. Watched himself grinning, pointing at bottles, chain shining.For the first time, he saw what she saw. A charade. “Bro, you good?” Somi nudged him. “Make we order Ace of Spade abeg. E go clear your head.” That was what Ola would’ve said last week. E go clear your head. Like money was paracetamol for the soul. Ola locked his phone and pushed the Azul away.“No,” he said. “Pack everything. We dey go house.” “House? E still dey 1am o! E remain—” “I say we dey go house.” And just like that, for the first time in 4 years, OLA FX left Quilox before 4am.With no girl. No snap. No shutdown.Just a name — Zee — ringing in his head like a trade alert he didn’t know how to read. Ola got into his penthouse at 3:14 am. The house he built to impress baddies now felt like a mausoleum. The crowd of friends he usually packed in the crib — gone. He told them not to come. He tossed the Malivelihood chain on the marble counter. It clanged. Loud. Too loud. Before, he used to place it for the camera. Now it sounded like shackles. She put her hands on my phone. Ola pulled his shirt off, checked his chest in the mirror. Same tattoos. Same gym body. Same aura that made girls lose home training from London to Dubai. His Rolex caught the light. For the first time, it felt heavy. Like it was weighing his wrist down, not lifting it up. So why did “E for cost your self-respect” sound louder than Asake’s bass? He grabbed his phone. Instagram was still popping:@somiblack: Another night with the GOAT @OlaFX 💸💸 Azul massacre 😮‍💨44k views in 20 minutes. Comments: “Father”, “Teach me FX bro”, “Big stepper”. He watched the clip again. There he was, pointing at sparklers, shouting “we no dey small”, chain catching light. Then the camera shook — her hand. Then his face. Confused. Blank. Human. For the first time in four years, Ola didn’t post his clips from the night. This time he just swiped past the videos. His thumb hovered over her face, frozen in the frame. He was thinking about Zee. He felt untouchable before — no one could say no to him because he had the face, the money, the drip. But what made Zee shun him that way? He opened his phone. Not to check his trade. Not to check his balance.He wanted to text Pamilerin and his guys: try and get Zee’s @, snap or number. Anything about her.But he knew Somi’s mouth. He could already hear it: “Omo, OLAFX dey find woman? She don win be that!” He deleted the message. Even if his pride was shattered at the club today, it wasn’t worth the banter and yabbing he go chop. Instead, he opened TradingView. EURUSD. BTC. Gold. The candles were moving, but he couldn’t read them. The screen blurred into silver cross, loose bun, “Quilox no be church.” He laughed, bitter. “Craze girl.” But he said her name out loud. Just once. “Zee.” The penthouse threw it back at him, empty. He checked his balance: $1,048,332.14. The number he killed himself for. The number that was supposed to make him untouchable. Tonight it felt like Monopoly money. Ola shut the laptop. Walked to the window. Looked down at Lagos. Somewhere down there, a girl who didn’t know his net worth was probably in a Bolt, telling her sister about the loud idiot with the sparklers. And OLA FX, the man who never got attached, was standing in a N300M apartment, feeling like he’d just fumbled the biggest bag of his life. He didn’t even know what the bag was.But for the first time, he wanted to find out.

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