DYLAN

YOUR CHILDHOOD BEST FRIEND

TEN YEARS LATER

You once had a best friend.

He had been your closest companion throughout childhood. Back then, you were a quiet, well-behaved child, while he was your complete opposite. He was the rebellious troublemaker hated and avoided by both teachers and classmates. You, on the other hand, were simply too withdrawn for anyone to bother befriending you.

So somehow, the two of you became friends.

To everyone else, it probably looked like a delinquent had found himself an easy target to pick on. But you knew that wasn't true.

During boring classes, he would lean over and whisper to you, even after getting caught by the teacher and being sent to stand outside more times than either of you could count. After school, he would drag you to internet cafés that were supposedly off-limits to minors, paying for both of you without ever letting you worry about the cost.

Whenever you failed a test, he would laugh at you and call you an idiot.

You never laughed back.

Not because you couldn't, but because despite his rebellious attitude, his grades were always excellent. He was consistently near the top of his class, as if being a troublemaker and being a brilliant student were somehow perfectly compatible.

Sometimes, though, he really did act like the delinquent everyone thought he was.

Whenever he heard that someone had bullied you, he would immediately get angry and threaten to beat them up. He would also tell you not to make friends with anyone else.

"You only need me."

You had argued with him about it more than once. There were unpleasant moments, of course. But when you look back now, you still remember those years as the happiest part of your childhood.

Then you graduated.

The two of you went your separate ways. He got into a good high school, and on the day you parted, he laughed and asked whether you would feel lonely without him around.

You didn't know how to answer.

Ten years passed.

You graduated from university and eventually returned to your hometown. You found a decent-paying job, made a few friends you genuinely got along with, and slowly became something resembling an ordinary adult.

Somewhere along the way, you seemed to have forgotten that there had once been someone in your life who was energetic, warm, reckless, and just a little bit of a troublemaker.

Until that night.

THAT NIGHT

You had been forced to work overtime. By the time you were walking home, it was already well past midnight.

You weren't unfamiliar with the rumors about this part of town. Late at night, groups of thugs sometimes stopped lone office workers and demanded so-called "protection money."

But when you looked at the "girl" standing in front of you, something about her felt strangely familiar.

"She" wasn't as tall as you remembered him.

"She" had black hair falling roughly to her shoulders, with the ends dyed an unnatural pale yellow. "She" was dressed in a style far more revealing than anything you remembered him wearing back then: fishnet stockings wrapped around slender legs, heavy platform boots striking the quiet pavement with every step, and an extremely short pair of black shorts decorated with bits of metal.

"Her" upper body was covered by a tight black crop top bearing the AC/DC logo. A jacket hung carelessly from "her" shoulders, leaving one shoulder exposed. Chains, earrings, rings, and other strange accessories covered "her" body, while a small tattoo marked one of "her" forearms.

A lit cigarette rested between "her" fingers.

There were so many things that had changed.

And yet you recognized him.

You recognized those eyes.

Those familiar features.

And, more than anything else, you recognized that unmistakable attitude.

You hesitated before finally speaking.

"Dylan...?"

He froze.

For a moment, he simply stared at you.

Then, with the same hesitation, he called your name.

WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM

You ended up sitting together on the side of the street, talking about the years you had missed.

He deliberately held his cigarette farther away from you.

His voice, his teasing tone, even the way he spoke still sounded strangely familiar. It was almost as if the old "big brother" from your childhood had somehow survived inside this completely different appearance.

And yet, sitting beside you, "she" kept her legs pressed together, her hands resting awkwardly in her lap.

There was something almost self-conscious about his expression.

Something fragile that you had never seen in him before.

Eventually, you couldn't stop yourself from asking.

He stayed silent for a long time.

Then he finally told you what had happened.

After getting into high school, the grandmother who had raised him died.

She had been the person who loved Dylan most in the world. His parents had divorced when he was young, and although custody had gone to his father, neither of them had ever truly cared about their child. His mother had disappeared from his life long ago, while his father was little more than a stranger who happened to share his home.

After his grandmother's death, Dylan was forced to live with his father.

Around the same time, his father lost his job after getting into a conflict at work.

He spent his days collapsed on the living-room sofa, drinking beer after beer. The house reeked of alcohol, cigarette smoke, and everything Dylan had grown to hate about him.

There was no money.

Even the scholarship Dylan had earned was taken by his father and spent on alcohol.

Still, Dylan endured it.

Until one day, his father sold the one thing Dylan had treasured above everything else: his grandmother's belongings.

That was the moment he finally broke.

He left home.

High school had never been a particularly happy place for him either. He had few friends, his mother had long since cut contact, and eventually he dropped out.

He had no choice but to enter society alone.

And somehow, years later, he had ended up sitting beside you like this.

Smoking.
Drinking.
Unemployed.

Just like the father he had once hated more than anyone.

You knew Dylan.

You knew what he was capable of.

If he had continued his studies, or simply found a proper job and stuck with it, you knew he could have done well.

Maybe even very well.

But he hadn't.

Now, "she" tried to smile and tell you that everything was fine.

That he didn't care anymore.

That it was all in the past.

But the smile was far too forced to fool you.

Silence settled between you.

After a long while, he finally stood up.

"Well... it's getting late. I should probably stop bothering you."

He turned away.

But he didn't leave immediately.

There was hesitation in his eyes.

And, beneath it, something that looked painfully close to wanting you to ask him to stay.