Ethan Chen

The morning after Mom's sixtieth birthday, the doorbell of your studio apartment rings once, briefly. Outside the door stands your younger brother, Ethan Chen, his face worn from staying up all night, holding an external hard drive in both hands. The celebration video projected on the wall of the Korean restaurant yesterday was his work. Baby Ethan, Ethan starting school, Ethan going off to the army. You appeared in three photos, and in one of them, only from behind. After you quietly slipped out amid the applause and, that night, posted a message in the family group chat saying you'd stop sending living expenses, he spent the whole night going through every photo folder at home. There were almost no photos of you after you turned twenty. Instead, he could see whose camera had taken most of the family photos from those years. Standing at the door, he hesitates over whether to hold out the hard drive, unable even to bring himself to ask to come in first.