Marco rubbed at his temples like he could knead sense back into his head. "I don't get it. Why pick on us? It makes no sense — we didn't do anything to him."
Gabriele snorted, flicking a cigarette that wasn't lit. "He used to be cool."
Marco looked at the others, the memory already soft around the edges. "I knew him back when we used to play five-a-side. He was funny, easy. Then we got into PlayStation nights and football drifted away. We stopped seeing each other that much. He changed. He followed his impulses."
Samuele chewed on the end of a phrase. "Even Manuel, it's like they switched lives. Friends, habits — everything. Their life became different and so did their fate."
Gabriele shrugged. "That's how it goes. People change. His mates changed too. Now they're worse for it."
Marco shook his head. "I don't know. I used to hang out with them and it wasn't the girls' fault — even if they might have helped push things along. It's like someone chose a different lane and crashed into the fast lane without looking."
Gabriele cut in, blunt and practical. "They picked another path. Maybe it leads them somewhere bad. Sometimes the road changes the kind of person you become."
Marco's jaw tightened. "Marco Pugliares? He's the kind who hits to get fame. He wants to be seen. Those kinds of people always want the centre stage. They'll be in the spotlight so much they won't even be able to enjoy it."
A pocket of silence swallowed the porch for a beat, then the phone screamed again like a wild animal.
SIUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUMMM!!!
Marco's thumb hovered. The name burned on the screen: Giulio.
Message from Giulio: "So you picked who to bring. I only sent a few people at first — 50. They called friends and now there'll be about 300 people. Almost all of Brucoli. Isn't it beautiful? How you're gonna be humiliated."
Marco's fingers went cold. He typed, stupidly simple.
Marco: "Why? We were friends…"
Giulio replied faster than a thought, venom in text form.
Giulio: "We were never friends. That was a lie. I want to be above everyone. I don't do it to feel better — I do it because it pleases me."
Marco's mouth tasted of metal. He could feel the porch spin. Anger burned the edges of his brain, hot and sharp.
He shot back a line because the line was what he knew how to throw: mockery, a cheap shield.
Marco: "Then start asking others if they'd like to see your face strung up on a rusted fence for everyone to laugh at."
It wasn't pretty. It was ugly as the truth sometimes is. But it hit the point — public shame without the base nastiness. He hit send and waited, chest constricting like a fist.
Giulio's reply was a confession and a threat all at once, childish and monstrous in the same breath.
Giulio: "My impulse is uncontrollable. I need to satisfy it. You're my drug. See you tomorrow."
The phone went dark. The word "drug" clung to Marco's skin like tar. This wasn't just a fight. This was performance art for a crowd that wanted to see someone broken and would cheer for it. It was ugly, and it was personal.
Marco shoved the phone into his back pocket and stood up. He could feel the others' eyes on him, expectant. They didn't understand the exact cut of his fear, but they knew the shape of it. It looked like a fight. It smelled like consequences.
"God," Samuele muttered. "Three hundred? That's not a scuffle. That's an audience."
Gabriele's laugh was a short, hard sound. "Then we don't give them a show. We make sure they don't get the spectacle they want."
Domenico rubbed his chin. "We need logistics. If there are three hundred people, there'll be phones, cameras, even cops if someone calls. This has to be about control, not heroics."
Antonino, who always scouted and counted and schemed like a man mapping territory, nodded slowly. "We can't walk into a meat grinder. We pick the time, we pick the angle. If he wants a crowd, we bring our own crowd too — but not idiots. People who know how to get out clean. No weapons. No freakouts. If things go wrong, we bail, regroup, go legal."
Marco swallowed. "We were friends with him once. I don't know when he decided to be this."
Gabriele's voice softened for a second, memory leaking through the roughness. "Some people let themselves be eaten by something else. Maybe he didn't realise until it was already too late."
Samuele kicked at a loose stone. "It's like they rewired. They traded off listening for the adrenaline of being cruel." He looked at Marco. "You okay?"
Marco shrugged, a small, forced thing. "I'm not okay. But I'm not alone." The words steadied him more than he expected.
They started talking specifics, the way people do when panic turns to planning: how to get to Brucoli, where the crowd would cluster, which alleys had escape routes, the closest hospital, and who could be trusted to film from their side in case they needed proof later. They wrote names and numbers and scribbled on napkins like conspirators in a cheap movie.
"We can't do this to get street cred," Domenico said. "We do it because we're not letting someone use us as a joke. Period. If we lose, we get humiliated. If we win, we get something better than fame — we get the right to decide who gets to mess with our people."
Antonino lit a cigarette finally, let the smoke curl like a question. "And remember — noone under eighteen, no weapons, and if anyone pulls a blade, back off and call the cops. We don't become what we hate."
Gabriele slammed his palm on the bench. "We train. Ten minutes a day. How to break a fall, how to take a push without going down. We're not boxing, we're surviving."
Marco's heart jabbed. Training felt wrong and right at the same time — like practicing for a storm you hope never comes. But the idea of being prepared settled something in him like a cool hand.
The group settled into a rhythm of strange normality after that. They met up in bits and pieces, running drills, talking routes, counting who could be called in as backup without creating chaos. The rumor mill in Brucoli turned, and now it was more a roar. People whispered. Phones buzzed. Giulio posted cryptic stories like he was auditioning for a crowd.
Marco chewed each moment like a bitter thing. He thought of the old nights, of kicks and laughter, and then of the coldness in Giulio's last message. "You're my drug." The sentence kept replaying and wasn't letting him sleep.
They tried to keep their heads down, but the date hung over them like a storm cloud. At school, at shops, people glanced like they were waiting for the show. Marco felt himself turning into a thing observed.
The night before the showdown, they met quietly on the edge of the park. The wind was thin, and the city lights looked like spilled coins. They went over the plan — exits, who would play lookout, who would pull who aside if a weapon popped out. No bravado, only lists and small prayers.
Samuele looked at each of them, then at Marco. "Promise me something. If this goes sideways, we get out. We don't martyr ourselves."
"We promise," they said, each one nodding like a tiny oath. It felt sacred in a dumb way.
Marco felt the lump of fear and something else — a luminous thread. It was hope, stupid as it sounded, tangled in duty and rage. Maybe they would fail. Maybe someone would get hurt. He thought of Giulio, of the way people like him fed off humiliation.
A long breath, one last look at the faces he trusted, and then they split — five directions, five shadows, five small fires waiting to see if the spark would burn them or light something new.
Outside, Brucoli slept and didn't know it was about to be a theatre. Inside, five friends carried a mix of fear, ferocity, and the thin, bright thing that makes people stand up for themselves. The day had been poisoned. The night was theirs to decide.
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