My parents, they came here with nothing. Expected me to make something of myself, I guess. That was the whole point. Work hard. Be seen as... successful. Even if it was just on the outside. For them, for the family back home, for the village even. The image was everything. Still is, maybe. I remember my son, teenager then, maybe fifteen, sixteen. Always on his phone, always posting. His friends, they had everything. The latest cars, big houses, fancy holidays. We lived okay, you know, comfortable enough. But not that. Never that. He’d go to the luxury car dealerships. Not to buy, obviously. Just... to look. And take pictures. With the Lamborghinis, the Ferraris. Posing like it was his. Clever angles, I suppose. Filters. He’d make it look like he was behind the wheel, owning it. The captions, oh, the captions. Something about "just picked up the new ride" or "weekend vibes." And his friends, they’d comment. "Sick whip, man!" "Wish I had your life!" Did they know? I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe they just wanted to believe it too. Or maybe they just went along with it. The whole thing, it was a performance. For everyone. Including himself, I guess. I never said anything. What was there to say? Don't pretend? Don't want more than you have? It felt… complicated. Not exactly a lie, not really. More like... an aspiration. A wish. Played out on a screen. He wanted that life. And he found a way to show it, sort of. For a little while. I understood it. The pressure. To be someone. To have something. To show the world that you made it. Even if you only made it... to the showroom. It felt familiar, you know? That need to present one thing, when the reality was something else entirely. It still does, sometimes. That feeling. Like a stone in the gut.