SPENT BULLETS

Two engineering prodigies’ love and despair unveil through a road trip from San Francisco to Vegas. It opens with a mysterious suicide but ends with one of the character’s choice to go on living: to bear the burdens of their fate and the memory of the beloved, like a spent bullet.

Only WU Yi-hsiang knows what happened on the day Chieh-heng died. In memory of Chieh-heng, Yi-hsiang and his girlfriend, Xiao-hua, drive to Las Vegas, the desert where Chieh-heng mysteriously deceased. A few years back, Yi-hsiang, Chieh-heng, and Xiao-hua founded an IT company in Silicon Valley, making them young and rich. During their trip, Xiao-hua receives a call from investor David, who shares a scandalous rumor about Chieh-heng’s death involving Yi-hsiang. Since middle school, Yi-hsiang and Chieh-heng had competed in various academic matches. Chieh-heng exceled in all of them effortlessly, yet life beyond the victory line is not as fulfilling as he once envisioned. Despite Yi-hsiang’s efforts to help the severely depressed Chieh-heng, Chieh-heng insisted that Yi-hsiang’s disciplining him was his only salvation. Their BDSM relationship started in middles school and endured alongside their career success. Reflecting in the desert, Yi-hsiang realizes what he shared with Chieh-heng was more beautiful and precious than love.