A group of teenage boys went on a 30-kilometer bicycle trip to a faraway village to pluck Palu fruits without informing their parents. With no mobile phones and very little money among them, they shared their limited snacks and juice with a hungry classmate they met along the way. After reaching their destination, enjoying a hearty meal provided by a friend's mother, and successfully collecting Palu fruits and syrup, they began their journey back home in the evening.
While riding in a single file along a narrow, winding path, the boys suddenly realized that the classmate who was riding at the very back had gone missing. Terrified that something bad had happened to him just before their O/L exams, the panicked boys retraced their route for kilometers and frantically searched for him. Their anxiety was finally relieved when a local shopkeeper told them that a boy matching his description had stopped for water and left a message saying he had already headed home.
When the boys finally returned at 8 PM, they were greeted by their angry parents who had gathered together, resulting in a collective scolding and beating. Ironically, the boy who went missing had reached home an hour earlier, bathed, and completely escaped his parents' wrath. The story ends with a twist three days later when the narrator gets beaten by his father again. It turns out his father found a forest thorn stuck in the bicycle chain, and to make matters worse, the classmate they had shared their food with had betrayed them by tipping off the parents about their secret trip.
