S106 - Kemp, Ethan [DECEASED]

#1

DECEASED

Name: Ethan Harold Kemp
Gender: Male
Age: 17
Grade: Senior
School: John Endecott Memorial Academy
Hobbies and Interests: Chess, YouTube, movies, Student Health Association, arcade games

Appearance: Ethan is 5'5'' tall and weighs 130 pounds. He keeps his naturally ginger hair at medium length, but leaves it unkempt unless on special occasions. His skin is pale, his nose is rounded, his jawline is sharp and his eyes are brown. Ethan's posture tends to lean a little bit forward. His voice is low and slow under normal circumstances, but when he is agitated or nervous, he speaks much faster and slightly higher.

Ethan gets cold easily and therefore always wears long-sleeved and thick clothing, even in summer. His preferred colors are green, blue and yellow. He has no tattoos or jewelry.

On the day of the abduction, he wore a green hoodie with two black arrows pointing to the right on the front over a white and long-sleeved T-shirt, jeans with a green stripe running along the leg and dark orange shoes with thick blue socks.

Biography: Ethan Harold Kemp was born on April 12th, 2004 as the only child of Ute and Edgar Kemp in a hospital in Salem, Massachusetts. While the name Ethan was chosen because the parents liked its sound, the middle-name Harold was also the name of Ute's late grandfather, who raised Ute after her parents passed away early.

While Edgar had a boring, but well-paid office job in Salem, Ute was a stay-at-home mother. However, before settling down with Edgar, she had been a chess grandmaster who had held rank 32 at some point with a yearly income of around 80k dollars. Thanks to her thrifty nature, she still had a small fortune of the money she made back then, giving the family a good financial cushion. While Ute had stopped playing, her name is still known among the chess society.

One day, when Ethan was about three years old, the neighbors of the family, a pair of doctors, asked Ute if she could help babysit their daughter who was of a similar age as Ethan. Seeing no reason against it, Ute agreed. Ethan very fast became friends with the child named Dawn.

Once Ute judged them to be old enough, she started to teach both Dawn and Ethan the way of playing chess. While Dawn took to the game very quickly, Ethan had trouble and appeared to lack the natural talent for the game that his mother and Dawn had. But he powered through and still enjoyed playing, although he had a few other interests that he viewed as similarly important. Knowing that trying to push him into chess might result in him growing to dislike it, Ute lessened her attention and lessons, instead concentrating on Dawn when it came to passing on her knowledge. Despite that, he remained a fan of chess and would challenge others regularly, sometimes even passing on professional techniques his mother had taught him. What makes Ethan favor chess over other boardgames is the complete lack of random factors, meaning that the game boils down to strategy and skill. Thus, any victory in chess feels like a victory he achieved all on his own, giving him more satisfaction than other games.

In elementary school, Ethan found himself a wide but loosely-knit circle of friends, including Dawn. He quickly proved himself to be very perceptive of the feelings of others, sometimes approaching those who were troubled and offering his help. Sometimes he would also get adults involved.

Another interest that grew in this time was Ethan's love for movies. While his parents did well to set boundaries for how much and what he was allowed to see, Ethan saw a lot of movies. However, he proved himself to be a picky watcher, often stopping to watch once he judged the movie to be boring or not good enough.

In the fifth year of elementary, Dawn had an accident that resulted in her staying at the hospital for two weeks. When she came back, she told Ethan stories of a new friend she made there. From this point on, she would visit said friend named Anna, who turned out to be a long-term patient of the hospital, as often as possible. Ethan was surprised that his otherwise reserved friend would seek out someone that much and decided to tag along one day. Anna turned out to have a bright and cheerful personality, but Ethan felt that something was off. After a few visits, he managed to talk to Anna without Dawn around and asked her about any worries she might have. Almost instantly, Anna dropped her charade and revealed her inner troubles about her illness. As she explained, her cheerfulness was just a way to cope with her hopeless situation. However, she didn't want others, especially Dawn, to worry about her. Ethan understood and never spoke with Dawn about this. He would still visit Anna, sometimes even without Dawn, and the two got closer as friends. They often talked about Anna's illness and her worries about not having much time left. This led to Ethan also beginning to think about his future and how he wanted to spend his time, something he would talk with Anna about as well.

When Ethan entered middle school, his parents decided to allow him more private time on the family computer, something he before then could use only sparsely. Ethan now had the opportunity to engage more with the scene of movie critics, especially with YouTubers who talked about movies. Around this time, Ethan took a liking to horror movies, at first watching many of them because his parents had told him not to, but eventually genuinely enjoying the thrills and atmosphere of horror movies. He favored suspenseful horror over gore, with Poltergeist being his favorite movie. By this time, his interest in movies started to shift from simply watching movies to analyzing them. What fascinated him about movies was that they were often created by many people with different intentions. He found interest in trying to figure out what the intentions of the creators were and often found himself thinking about how he would have made things different. Then he would go on the internet and discuss his thoughts with others. Ethan would also analyze bad movies to figure out what they made wrong or how they could have been better.

Then came the day when Anna died, just as she had feared the whole time. Despite knowing it would have happened, Ethan was taken aback by her death. In an effort to bring himself up again and move on, he spent the next few weeks less with his usual hobbies and more trying out new stuff. Eventually he ended up in an arcade, where he found the right method to momentarily forget his worries by playing games. For Ethan, they were a good distraction from everything else going on in his life since everything happening in the arcade felt disjointed from the rest of the world. Even after moving on from Anna's death, he would remain a regular at the Arcade at the Willows. Similar to board games, his favorite arcade games are those which are completely skill-based, since any win influenced by random chance or pure luck doesn't feel as rewarding for him. His favorite arcade game was a specific sci-fi-themed pinball machine that sadly broke down and was replaced in 2021. While Ethan tried out several computer games, they weren't as fun as arcade games.

One lesson he learned from Anna was that life's too short to coast it. For that reason, he consciously focused his time on his bigger hobbies and friends, resulting in his circle of friends shrinking. He also became less interested in forging new relationships or engaging in topics he had no interest in, resulting in him becoming much quieter in school. However, he deeply treasures the friends he has, including Dawn. They are both in the Student Health Association, doing volunteer work to improve the health of the student body with several information-campaigns and flyers. Ethan, who was convinced to join by Dawn, is not as enthusiastic as Dawn about this, but takes it seriously.

Apart from that, Ethan joined the Chess Club at JEM, where he is quite famous for being the son of a grandmaster. This resulted in him becoming the president of the club, a position he feels conflicted about since he was talked into it and believes he only got the job because of his mother. Most of his non-Dawn-related friends are either also in the club or other regulars at the arcades. The rest of his classmates mostly know him as a quiet but nice and helpful boy who doesn't stand out much unless the topic is about movies or chess, in which case he knows a lot and is willing to enter longer conversations.

In high school, Ethan finally found the courage to start his own channel on YouTube. His content revolved around reviewing movies. At first, he would rather factually state his opinion about different movies, scared of not being taken seriously. But eventually, he started to loosen up and add some humor into his videos. Most of his early content barely reached more than around a dozen views, but over time, Ethan managed to slowly grow his channel. While he is still far away from success, he has amassed a small audience of around forty subscribers, half of them going to his school.

Ethan's content also grew in quality. By reading all feedback seriously and reflecting about his own actions, he managed to improve his reasoning over time and better articulate his opinions in the videos. Once he finishes his education, he plans to make a career by becoming a professional movie critic. After some deliberation, he decided against studying at a college.

Ethan is on good terms with his parents. The family will sometimes go on small trips during the weekends, which range from visiting a zoo to watching a movie in the cinema. He often plays chess against his mother will a win ratio of about 50:50. His relationship to his father is slightly less deep, but the two go along well.

His friendship with Dawn is still going strong. Both have very similar classes and often hang out even outside of school. Dawn also visits the Kemp house now and then, albeit no longer as often as when she was a child.

Ethan has a calm personality and a positive outlook on life. He believes that it is important to know one's own priorities and to stick to them to make the most out of it.

Advantages: Ethan's classmates have an overall positive picture of him, giving him good chances of finding trustworthy allies. He has some medical knowledge, especially in regards to first aid, thanks to his work in the Student Health Association. Thanks to chess and his videos, he is used to analyze and question his own actions, which might help him keep a clear head.
Disadvantages: Ethan has a strong dislike towards violence and prefers to talk any problems out, which might not always work in a killing game. Furthermore, his habit of self-analyzing could result in him hesitating to commit morally questionable actions, even when necessary to survive. He also cares a lot about those close to him, meaning that the loss of allies and friends will hurt him greatly.

Designated Number: Student No. #106

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Designated Weapon: Wholesale box of Trident gum

Conclusion: We gave you this so when you're shivering and cold you can chew on something and still be hungry. - Jim Greynolds

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