My friend Lily asked me to meet her boyfriend Tim because she’s trying to figure out if they should stay together when she moves away for school. I’m always worried when people ask me stuff like this because I have to figure out whether to lie or not. If he sucks and you tell her, you run the risk of her hating you when they inevitably stay together. Or worse, they’ll have a fight and she’ll let your comment slip and then they’ll both hate you.

On the other hand, if he sucks and you say nothing, then when they inevitably break up she’ll be angry at you for not saying anything and you don’t get that awesome I-told-you-so gloat. In this case, I decided to blindly hope that he’d be great. He wasn’t.

Tim was boring. He talked to me for a long time about hedge funds while I nodded and imagined banging my head against a table. He wore a suit even though he was a student. He nursed a single beer. Yet Lily loved him. I took a deep breath and prepared my best “Tim’s a really nice guy” lie. And I was about to say it when something happened.

Mid-hedge fund gush, Tim stopped and pushed me aside with a vicious, stiff arm. Before I could flip out at him I turned to see Tim grabbing another guy by the collar, screaming “DON’T TOUCH MY GIRLFRIEND’S BAG!” with a crazed look in his eyes. Uh-oh.

Lily had put her bag down in the corner and Tim thought that this guy was stealing it. The guy was holding his wallet and exclaiming, “I dropped this. I was just picking it up! I was just picking it up!” Lily went through her bag. There was nothing missing. Uh-oh times two.

The guy got in our face now, yelling about accusing people, how we should muzzle our dog (Tim), and how he was going to call the police. My colleague tried to smooth it over while Tim glared angrily, Lily looked embarrassed, and I sipped my sixth beer. We apologized profusely. The guy left. “Tim is a psychopath,” I thought.

A minute passed. And then Lily—the ditz—noticed something. Her phone was missing. As I was processing this, Tim screamed “FUCKING HELL” and ran out the door. My colleague sprinted after him. I drank my seventh beer.

Five minutes passed. My colleague returned. “What happened to Tim?” we asked. He lost him. Tim was gone.

Ten minutes passed. Where was Tim? He was like Waldo but instead of having red stripes he was English, angry, and in a suit. The first five calls I made went unanswered until his pocket finally picked up. There was a lot of yelling. “He needs backup,” Lily said, so like idiots we ran into the street.

Using the amazing insight that can only be gained via alcohol consumption, we deduced that Tim could only be within a certain radius. But we had no idea where he was so we sprinted down all the roads screaming “TIM! TIM!” I suggested we stop to buy a beer but I was overruled. We looked everywhere. No Tim. “Tim is a ninja,” I thought.

Deflated, we returned to the bar. Tim was there! We asked him what happened. Tim had found the guy and confronted him. He demanded the phone and he refused. Then, one of the guy's friends punched Tim in the face! Another one tossed him the phone and they all ran off. “This can’t be true,” I said.

Tim removed Lily’s cell phone from his jacket pocket and gave it to her. I pulled her aside. “Tim is a superhero,” I said.

Yalun Tu is a columnist for HK Magazine. You can reach him at yalun.tu@gmail.com or @yaluntu on Twitter.