SEVENTEEN

That night, I took his girl and buried our youth.

At seventeen, during that fateful scooter-key matchmaking mixer, I secretly prayed that Ya would pick my keys—longing for fate to finally whisper ‘I love you’ on my behalf. But A-Tu, my best friend, always had a way with girls. That day, she climbed onto the back of his Vespa, and I could only feel my heart sinking into an endless abyss.
Driven by obsession, I pursued her relentlessly, stops at nothing until I took her first night—a ruthless declaration of my desire to my best friend. That was the year we parted ways in the raging storm of growing up. The most brutal rite of passage of youth is watching your closest friend walk toward a completely different horizon.
In the scorching summer of 1988, we walked shoulder-to-shoulder across the crossroads of youth. Three teenagers, a shattered brotherhood. Some friends are only meant to accompany you for a single chapter of your life. As best friends turned into strangers, we bid farewell to each other with a youth that cut to the bone.