THE ROAD THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING
The needle trembled at ninety. His hands trembled
with it. He twisted the throttle. Ninety-five. The engine
screamed beneath him as the bike pushed harder against
the cold night air. His fingers tightened around the
clutch. One gear. Then another. A hundred. The road
ahead was almost empty.
Only the streetlights accompanied him. Most of them
glowed steadily, illuminating patches of the deserted
road. But one kept blinking. On. Off. On. Off. As if even
the light was struggling to stay awake. The air was cold,
yet he could feel warmth running down his cheeks. A drop
fell onto the fuel tank.
Then another. Tears. He didn't wipe them. He didn't
slow down. The needle crossed a hundred. The night
remained strangely peaceful. Too peaceful. As though the
storm wasn't here yet. As though it was waiting for him
just around the corner. He wasn't wearing a helmet. His
eyes remained fixed on the road, but his mind was
somewhere else entirely.
Another tear slipped from his cheek and landed on the
tank. The bike crossed the hundred mark again. And then
he saw it. A white Brezza. Coming from the opposite lane.
Not fast. Not dangerously. Just a car moving peacefully
through an ordinary night. For a fraction of a second,
their headlights met.
Everything happened at once. The horn. The
headlights. The screech of tyres. The violent twist of
metal. And then— CRASH. His body was thrown from the
motorcycle. For a moment, he was weightless. The world
seemed to slow down. The road. The streetlights. The
broken pieces of the bike.
The car. Everything moved beneath him as if he were
watching it from somewhere far away. And then
something strange happened. His eyes began to smile.
The tears stopped. There was no fear. No regret. No pain.
Only a faint smile slowly appearing on his face. Because
suddenly, he heard her.
Her laughter. That laughter. The one he could
recognize even in a crowd of a thousand voices. Her face
flashed before his eyes. Then another memory. And
another. Her smile. Her eyes. The way she spoke. The
little things she did without realizing how deeply they had
stayed inside him.
One memory after another began flooding through his
mind. And somehow, in the middle of all that chaos, he
felt peaceful. His lips moved. A voice escaped them. A
voice carrying years of love, pain, longing, and everything
he had never been able to say.
“ Taraaaaaaaaa…”
