THE MAN WHO BOUGHT YESTERDAY

In Lagos, there was a young guy called Bayo who sold time.

Not watches. Actual time.

His shop was small, between two boutiques in Yaba. On the signboard: *"BAYO'S EXCHANGE - Sell your past, Buy more future."*

People thought he was mad, until one woman walked in crying. She had lost her son 5 years ago and couldn't stop dreaming about the day he died.

Bayo said, "I can buy that day from you."

"How much?"

"Free. But if I buy it, you will never remember it again. Not the pain, not his face on that day."

She agreed. Bayo brought out a brown bottle - like that brown we talked about earlier - and whispered into it. The woman's eyes cleared. She smiled for the first time in years and left.

Bayo kept the bottle on his shelf. It shook with sadness.

Then a rich man came. "I want to buy yesterday. Yesterday I made a bad deal and lost 50 million. I want to buy it back and correct it."

Bayo laughed, "I don't sell yesterdays. I only buy them. If you want more future, you have to drop your past."

"So what do you do with all these yesterdays you buy?"

Bayo opened the back door. Inside were hundreds of brown bottles, each glowing. Inside each bottle, a memory was living.

"I carry them. So others can be free."

That night, Bayo couldn't sleep. The bottles were too noisy. All the painful yesterdays were crying. He realized he had become disabled by other people's disabilities.

He did something crazy.

He took all the bottles to the Third Mainland Bridge at 3am and opened them.

All the memories flew out - some sad, some beautiful - and went back to their owners.

But they went back changed. The woman who lost her son now remembered him smiling, not dying. The rich man remembered not the loss, but the lesson.

Bayo's shop disappeared the next morning. People said he never existed.

But if you pass through Yaba and feel suddenly light, like someone just lifted a heavy memory off you, that's Bayo passing by.

He learned the secret: You cannot be an instrument in God's hand if you keep collecting other people's pain. You have to release it.