Leo. That was Jake’s name. His brother had never called him anything else.

He typed one last command:

The video ended. The file vanished. The storage meter dropped back to 300GB free.

rm: cannot remove 'hello_leo.mov': No such file or directory

His finger hovered over the enter key. A rare prickle of hesitation. He hit it anyway.

He didn’t open it. He didn’t have to. He already knew what it would do: un-delete everything he’d ever tried to forget. Every argument he’d erased from his texts. Every photo of his brother in the hospital. Every goodbye he’d refused to say.

He tried to play it instead. QuickTime opened, stuttered on a black screen, and crashed.