I suppose it’s not really a big deal in the grand scheme... most of my secrets are tucked away, brittle things like old receipts in a forgotten wallet. But this one keeps snagging on the edges of my thoughts, a persistent little burr. It happened a while ago, maybe a month or two. My younger brother, he’s always been... well, a bit of a tumbleweed, never quite finding a place to root. Not like me. I worked hard, you see. Scrimped and saved and clawed my way through dental school. Every dime I earned cleaning teeth in that downtown office, every hour I spent hunched over textbooks, felt like chiseling a tiny bit of my future out of granite. I remember the smell of antiseptic and cheap coffee, the ache in my shoulders after a long day. It built something, brick by painstaking brick. Then he called. His voice was small, like a bird caught in a storm. Overdue rent, electricity about to be cut off. He needed a few thousand. Just a loan, he said. He’d pay me back. And I knew, deep down, the way you know the tide is turning just by the feel of the air, that he wouldn't. Not because he wouldn't want to, but because he never could. I had the money. It was sitting there, a cushion I’d spent decades stuffing with careful choices and sacrifices. A security blanket against the kind of cold, hungry fear I grew up with, the kind that makes your stomach clench into a knot even when it's full. Denying him felt like tearing a piece out of myself, a physical ache behind my ribs. The silence on the phone after I said no, that was the real weight. It wasn't accusatory, just... hollow. Now, sometimes, when I'm walking through the park and I see a father teaching his son to ride a bike, or an old couple holding hands, a wave of something washes over me. Not regret, not exactly. More like the way a phantom limb still aches sometimes, a memory of something that used to be there, or perhaps something that never quite fully formed. This city, with its bright lights and fast cars, it feels like a different world from the one I came from. And I wonder, did I build this life with too many walls? Did I become too much like the precise instruments I use every day, sharp and clean and unyielding? Sometimes I catch my reflection in the polished glass of my office window, and the lines around my eyes seem deeper, etched not just by time, but by all the unspoken things.