The moment Russo walked into the room,
the atmosphere seemed to brighten.

“Good evening.
I’m Eddie Russo with VIGUE.
Thank you for taking the time today—”

Russo stopped there.

His eyes landed on B.

“…Oh. My. God!”

For a moment,
the greeting he had prepared
seemed to fly completely out of his head.

“I thought a Roman statue
had just descended from heaven.”

V laughed.

“B’s got quite a presence up close, doesn’t he?”

“Presence? That doesn’t even begin to cover it!”

Russo was still looking at B.

“Of course, you’re all absolutely gorgeous,
but you know what I mean, right?

He’s in a league of his own.
I’m getting light-headed—”

B didn’t look uncomfortable in the slightest.

He smiled a little
and held out his hand.

“Thank you, my lady.
I’ll buy you a drink sometime.”

Russo shook B’s hand.

“Oh, I’m holding you to that.”

“Looks like we’re off to a good start.”

V smiled
and gestured toward the chairs.

Everyone took their seats.

At least, there was no longer any need

to explain Russo’s first impression of them.

Still, a little of that first-meeting stiffness remained,

enough to make diving straight into the main subject

feel abrupt.

“Just one thing before we start.”

Russo looked around at the four of them.

“Which one of you

is the slowest to reply to messages?”

Almost at the same time,

V, G, and D all looked at B.

B just gave a casual one-handed shrug.

But the first one to speak was G.

“I’m the fastest. Definitely.”

The question, of course,

had been who was the slowest.

D laughed.

“G replies without thinking.

‘Yeah.’ ‘No.’ ‘OK.’ ‘Fuck.’

He usually replies

within ten seconds.”

G shot back immediately.

“One thing.

D’s never sent me a message

I had to think about.

Not once.”

Then he looked at B.

“B doesn’t reply about half the time.”

Russo turned back to B.

“Oh, come on, B.

You don’t even send an ‘OK’?”

Completely unfazed, B said,

“I reply when there’s a reason to.”

For the briefest moment,

silence fell.

G said nothing.

But for just a split second,

his expression went still.

D looked at G.

Russo caught it too.

“…Jesus.

That is a seriously dangerous answer!”

D burst out laughing.

“See? Fun, right?

These two are always like this.

So, where do we start?”

He looked as though

none of this had anything to do with him.

Russo had come here that day
to ask about THE FUTURE I LET GO.

But as he listened to the exchange,
he seemed to find another way in.

“B, you seem really good
at drawing a line between what matters
and what doesn’t.”

B said nothing.
He just looked at Russo.

“But the person who wrote these lyrics
doesn’t strike me as someone
who can draw those lines so easily
when it comes to people and feelings.”

Russo’s gaze shifted to D.

“And yet, in this song,
you say you let go of a future
with someone you loved.”

The smile on D’s face
faded a little.

“I was sure these lyrics were yours!
Right, D?”

“Yeah. I wrote them.”

It was a short answer.

“I knew it!
So why would someone like you
let go of that future?”

Before D could answer,
G cut in.

“Seriously?
This actually happened?”

Russo looked at G.

B looked at him too.

“You didn’t know?”

G shrugged.

“And you, V?
Did you know?”

“Yeah.
D talks to me about this stuff a lot.”

G immediately added,

“Oh, right.
He’s half in tears sometimes
when he talks to you.”

“Oh, me too!”

Russo’s response was immediate.

He turned straight back to D.

“D, what happened?”

D looked thoughtful for a moment.

“Uh… about the song?
Or last night?”

Russo fell silent for a moment.

Apparently, he and D
were going to get along just fine.

Russo turned back to B.

“B, I’m so sorry.

But it looks like
I’m going out for drinks
with this one tonight.”

B didn’t look disappointed
in the slightest.

“Good idea.”

In the first place,
B had never said anything about tonight.

At that point, V quietly steered
the conversation back on track.

At this rate,
the interview was in real danger
of ending with nothing but plans for drinks.

“D sometimes uses words
the rest of us would never come up with.

We don’t really look back
on the past much, do we?”

“Really?”

Russo asked.

B answered immediately.

“Yeah.”

G didn’t answer.

Russo didn’t miss the silence.

“G?”

“…Not really.”

“Hmm. Not really.”

Russo leaned in a little.

“So there are some things, then?
Like what?”

For some reason,
D answered instead.

“G has an incredible memory.”

V looked at D.

“D, I don’t think
that’s really what Russo was asking.”

D just shrugged,
without arguing.

Russo didn’t press any further.

“What about you, D?”

Russo brought the conversation back around.

“You look back on the past, don’t you?”

D thought for a moment.

This silence was different
from G’s a moment ago.

D seemed to be searching
for the right words.

“Maybe, to me,
even the smallest things from the past
are treasures.”

G reacted immediately.

“D, your head is weird.”

V spoke calmly.

“G, everyone has good memories
they don’t want to forget.”

Russo caught that.

“Good memories?”

Russo looked at V.

Then he looked back at D.

“D never said
they were only good memories, did he?”

D didn’t nod or deny it.
He just smiled a little.

Then he spoke again.

“Doesn’t it hurt
to remember someone you used to love?”

No one interrupted.

“But it’s still a precious memory,
isn’t it?”

This time, Russo was the one
who fell silent.

A brief pause followed.

“…Jesus.
You’re right.”

Somewhere along the way,
the interviewer had stopped analyzing
what D was saying

and was simply agreeing.

G had been watching the whole thing.

Then he laughed.

“Seriously?
This is hilarious.”

His eyes shifted
from D to Russo.

“I’ve got someone
even more interesting to watch than D.”

“Careful, G.”

Russo laughed too.

“Now I’m starting to want
to chase you, too.”

G fired back without missing a beat.

“You won’t catch me.”

“We haven’t even gotten to the song yet.”

V said.

He had a point.

But Russo didn’t seem
too concerned about that.

“It’s fine.
I’m going to spend the rest of the night
hearing all about this boy.”

D immediately picked up his phone.

“The kebab place next door
makes a seriously good Grasshopper.
I’ll make a reservation.”

Russo paused for just a second.

A kebab place.
A Grasshopper.

Not exactly two things
you’d naturally picture together.

But that was something
he could ask D about later.

Whatever progress the interview had made,
the plans for afterward
were steadily taking shape.

AFTER THE INTERVIEW

There are two moments from the interview that have stayed with me.

Both of them involve G.

The first happened while we were talking about replying to messages.

B shrugged and said, “I reply when I need to.”

For B, I suspect that was all it meant. If something needs a response, he responds. If it doesn’t, he leaves it alone.

Simple.

But for just a second after he said it, something in G’s expression stopped.

It really was only a second. He didn’t say anything, and almost immediately he was back to his usual self.

But D saw it too.

And then there was the other moment.

When I asked whether they ever looked back at the past, G didn’t answer right away.

“…Not much.”

I tried to go a little further.

Then, for some reason, D cut in.

“G has an amazing memory.”

V looked at him.

“D, I don’t think that’s really the point.”

At the time, I let it go.

But thinking back on it now, I’m not sure D misunderstood the question at all.

I think he changed the subject.

There are places in G that he doesn’t want people touching. D knew that.

So he quietly turned a question about the past into a conversation about memory.

V didn’t seem to notice.

And I found that interesting too.

V is a very straightforward person. If someone tells him what they feel, I suspect he’ll listen more carefully than almost anyone.

But G doesn’t make things that easy.

D is the opposite.

He doesn’t hide much of what he feels, and he has an almost uncanny sensitivity to what other people are feeling.

Which may be why, when G says nothing at all, D is sometimes the first person to understand what that silence means.

Of course, that’s only my interpretation.

And I doubt G would give me a straight answer if I asked him.

He did just tell me, “You won’t catch me.”

So perhaps, one day, I’ll have to chase him.

But G wasn’t the subject of this interview.

D was.

D said, “Doesn’t it hurt to remember someone you loved?”

And then:

“But that doesn’t make those memories any less precious, does it?”

Those words stayed with me long after the interview ended.

The things that hurt. The things that ended. The future you chose to let go.

Their value doesn’t disappear simply because you walked away from them.

Moving forward and forgetting are not the same thing.

Maybe all four people in that room carry the past in different ways.

D, at least, called it a treasure.

And me—

Jesus.

I think I know exactly what he means.

— Eddie Russo, VIGUE