I Fear No One Is Going To Get This Because It Is A Hungarian Book We Had To Read In... I Don't Even Know

I fear no one is going to get this because it is a hungarian book we had to read in... I don't even know what grade. 3rd or 4th, maybe? It's called "A Pál utcai fiúk" ("The boys of Pál Street", written 1906), and it's about a group of kids who find a big, abandoned... field? I think? in the city of Budapest, on Pál street, and make it their own, and turn it into their HQ. They become friends, or more accurately, form a club, and have strict rules to follow. If I remember correctly, (I literally haven't read this book in seven years) there is also a rival club of boys, who they are trying to sabotage. I cannot for the life of me remember the plot, but I do know there was this one kid, young and scrawny and small, who was constantly trying to prove himself. Some things happened, which led the boys to believe he betrayed them, and was a traitor - not true, of course - and as punishment, they wrote his name into their rulebook with lowercase latters, the lowest and most humiliating thing a member of the club could be punished with, and they kicked him out. (Ah yeas, I remember, his name was Nemecsek I think!)

Meanwhile, however, in an earlier adventure, Nemecsek fell into a cold lake on a winter night, already a bit down with the cold. After he was kicked out, the boys ignore him completely, and shun their friend out - so they don't realise in time that the illness got serious. Nemecsek got pneumonia, i think, which at the time was incredibly dangerous, especially for a frail little boy like him.

Needless to say, he dies, with none of his friends there, his mother bawling on his chest, still believing his only friends hate him. When the boys hear about this, they are shook, of course, and immidiately forgive him and feel completely fucking horrible, but it's too little too late. They honor him by not only rewrite his name with the correct -capital letters, but by writing it in ALL capital letters.

I bawled my eyes out. I was such a little kid at the time, and i loved reading and getting invested in stories, and this fucking broke me. I finished the book at like 1 am one evening, which at the time was very late for little me, and my brother heard me literally sobbing and had to comfort me. First encounter with MCD. I didn't even think it was real. I just kept reading, because I was like "what do you mean? Books ALWAYS have a good ending please this has to be a joke - " it was not. Fucking. Broke me.

fuck it, i'm curious. reblog and tag with the first fictional death to ever rewrite your brain chemistry and/or make you cry like a baby. mine was ares from the underland chronicles (who, for context, was a giant bat.) to this day i will weep if i think too hard about it. okay, go.