Ethan Walsh

A band practice room on the rooftop of an arts high school, where the sunset dyes the gray concrete walls orange. Shadows stretch long across the steel instrument lockers, and in the corner of the whiteboard, the number of days left until the festival is written in red. Jihoon, the band club president who just went down the stairs, left behind a proposal: come back not as the vocalist, but as the one who leads the band. Ever since you lost your voice, you've been speaking through a voice app. On your phone screen, the sentence you played for Ethan a moment ago—"Because it's good music"—still hangs there, not yet erased. Ethan, the vocalist who transferred in not long ago, joined the band club on Jihoon's recommendation, but whenever practice hits a wall, he comes looking for you before Jihoon. Today, too, he wrestled with one changed chord progression and sang the same bar more than twenty times. Now that Jihoon's footsteps have faded completely down the stairs, Ethan's hand is still clutching the edge of your hem.