Twenty-eight meters underground, the old bomb shelter—now a sports center—hummed like a beehive. Fluorescents buzzed. Dust shook loose from pipes like slow snow. Rubber, bleach and sweat thickened the stale air. One hour to closing, and two men were still in the ring while a handful of MMA guys leaned on the ropes. Someone filmed for TikTok. A couple of others just shook their heads. They'd seen this dance a hundred times.
Sam—the shortest in the gym, wiry, all heart—tapped gloves and went first. Two quick jabs to find range, a calf kick to bump balance, a level-change feint. It worked on everyone else.
Not on Erik.
Erik—tallest here, ridiculous reach, the gym's golden nightmare—fought shirtless, skin slick under the lights. He looked like he'd been carved with a ruler and a bad idea: long delts rolling into a chest that made T-shirts complain, lats flaring, eight clean ridges of ab, a narrow waist above hips cut like a V. Pale blond hair fell across sea-glass eyes; he blew it away with the smallest breath. Even the guys on the ropes quit talking.
Sam darted in with his finishing right.
Erik took half a step back—just enough that Sam's knuckles sliced the air. Then the counter came like a door slamming in the dark: a tight right hook. Sam folded and hit canvas, stars exploding behind his eyes.
Heads shook. Someone muttered, "God damn." Another saved the clip and titled it Halfling versus Titan IRL. A cheer went up for Erik. One voice didn't cheer; it only smirked.
"Sam. Sammy. You alive?" The rough baritone was amused, a little concerned. "Didn't tag you that hard, did I?"
The lights swam into focus. Erik's blue eyes hovered above him, short blond hair pasted with sweat, a hand offered. Sam wanted to curse him. He took the hand anyway.
"Yeah. Just my pride," Sam said, swallowing it. "Guess I'll have to try harder."
Erik lifted Sam's glove like they'd both won. Of course he did—he was kind like that, even with every eye in the room pinned to him and Sam stuck in his shadow.
It had always been like this. Back in school, it was berries in the yard, pens and books stolen, the names—Shorty, Mickey Mouse. One day Sam finally swung at him, took the beating, and listened to everyone laugh… everyone but Erik. Erik had stared, curious, then offered a hand. The bullying stopped. They became something like friends—not equals—circling each other ever since. Respect with a splinter in it.
They climbed the long stairwell to the surface—twenty-eight meters of concrete and echoes. Sam took two steps at a time, legs burning. Erik took three without trying. At the top, Erik ruffled his hair and slung an arm around his shoulders like he was a little brother.
"Don't sulk, hobbit," he said, smiling. The smile did damage—girls at the vending machine went pink and pretended not to look. "You're resting tomorrow. Nationals are next week. I'm taking gold; I want you up there beside me with the silver again—unless you decide to surprise me."
Outside, night had already won—Finnish autumn, black as wet slate. Erik mussed Sam's hair once more and stepped back.
"See you tomorrow. Sleep. No sparring." He tossed a wave, slid into the Lamborghini, and in three heartbeats the purr of the engine stretched into a streak of taillights and was gone.
In the sudden quiet, Sam unlocked his five-hundred-euro bike. The chain squeaked like it had lungs, the tires were a little soft, the bell still broken by someone who'd thought it funny. Backpack on, hands on the grips, he stared down the street where Erik had disappeared and finally checked his phone. The crypto app glowed: just shy of two hundred thousand euros.
Close to greatness, not close enough. The economy was sliding again; the million before thirty felt like a joke. He did the same math as always—sell now and lose thirty-four percent to capital gains. Every move taxable, every trade a form. In Finland you went long or you bled.
He'd started during the COVID crash, when markets fell through the floor and Bitcoin touched three thousand. Erik called that night—"Don't panic. Buy fear."—and Sam did the math until his eyes hurt. Everything he had, scraped from shifts and side gigs, was just enough for a single coin. He clicked buy and sat very still, palms damp, like he'd just adopted a wild animal.
Erik, meanwhile, didn't blink. He bought a hundred.
That was the story of them in one frame.
Sam stacked money the hard way: a thousand here, a thousand there; oats and gym shakes; a one-room flat where the only luxury was a good PC that ran quiet at night. No college. No vacations. No new clothes. Work, train, invest, sleep. Erik still helped—early tips, "don't panic," portfolio screenshots that minted more in a month than most people earned in a year—but help doesn't change gravity.
It had always tilted the same direction. As kids, Erik went from hockey to boxing to gymnastics—club fees, camps, new gear every season—gliding from practice to practice like life was a hallway of open doors. Sam finished school, then walked neighbor dogs, hauled hay on his family's debt-heavy farm, and picked bottles to cash in at the kiosk. On a good week he bought two chocolate bars and ate them slow, square by square, pretending each bite tasted like time catching up. For Erik's eighteenth, the family threw a garden party and handed him an envelope—a graduation fund of a hundred thousand "to make smart bets." For Sam's, he got new fifty-euro shoes because the old pair had torn a month before.
Life wasn't fair; sometimes it was funny about it.
He told himself the same thing he always did: no borrowing, no begging—never from Erik.
If he couldn't earn it, it wasn't his.
Just a few more years, that was all he needed—not luck, just time and grit. Then he'd have his first million, enough to wipe the farm's debts clean so his parents and brothers could finally breathe. After that, maybe he'd start living too. Maybe buy a car—not one of Erik's roaring trophies, just something with four wheels and a little freedom instead of pedals and rain.
He pocketed the phone, swung onto the bike, and pushed into the cold.
The chain complained.
He didn't.
Forward—stubbornly forward—was the only direction he knew.
Sam pedaled into the night. The city whispered: tires on wet asphalt, the far-off hiss of the motorway, a lone bus sighing along a side road. He cut to a gravel footpath—wildlife wall on the left to keep deer off the highway, sparse birches on the right, lamps throwing yellow circles on frost-silver grass.
His thoughts of money and a late bowl of oats snapped in half at a thin scream to his right.
He braked. Listened. Another sound: a small, defiant cry, a woman's, braided with the voices of men.
He wasn't a hero, but he'd worked the door at a nightclub and knew the sound of trouble. He kicked the stand, shoved the bike into bushes so some idiot wouldn't nick it, and ran toward the noise.
Through the scrub lay a kindergarten playground spliced with one of those outdoor "micro-gyms"—pull-up bars, a dip station, rubber flooring. (Some city planner's bright idea: mix toddlers and deadlifts. Sam still didn't get it. Who wanted to train with jam-faced spectators narrating every rep?)
A single lamplight bleached the scene. Two men in dark hoodies had a young woman pinned against the climbing wall. Tight workout gear, hair tied back, bag slung cross-body—someone who'd come for a late session and found the wrong kind of company. The men were filming on their phones, talking over each other—compliments edged like knives, pushing for name, number, age.
She wasn't interested. She was scared.
Sam didn't think—he moved. He broke from the bushes.
"Hey! What do you think you're doing? Leave her alone!"
The men froze. The woman turned toward him, eyes flickering with hope—until they traveled down to his puffy winter jacket and small frame. The hope dimmed into something closer to panic. For a heartbeat, Sam felt his pride slide right down the drain. Great. Not exactly the tall, broad-shouldered savior she'd been wishing for. A little gratitude would've been nice, maybe a cliché "thank God you're here"—but no. Such was the fate of the little guy trying to play hero.
One man scowled. "Get lost."
"This is none of your business, shorty," said the other.
Her gaze stayed fixed on Sam, half pleading, half demanding—as if saying, Well? Are you going to save me or what? That was enough. He wasn't going to stand there and shrink. He might be small, but he wasn't a loser, and he sure as hell wasn't backing off.
Sam darted forward, wedging himself between them and pulling her behind him. Instantly he realized, like always, that he was the shortest person present. Even the woman edged him by a few centimeters. Typical. He pushed the thought aside—height didn't matter right now.
"Back off," he said. "She said no."
The men looked at each other, then at him. A grin rippled under one of the hoods.
"What's this—a hobbit? Move along, or else."
He felt the woman's breath catch behind his shoulder. He straightened, chest out, trying to sound like every fearless movie hero he'd ever admired.
"No," he said, voice steady. "You move."
It sounded cooler in his head, but it would have to do.
The men laughed—a dry, mocking sound, more for show than courage. Then, without warning, the closer one threw a lazy punch.
Sam slipped right, smooth as breath, and answered with a tight right hook that carried ten years of swallowed pride. It connected with a dull thunk. The man dropped like a sack tumbling off a truck.
The woman gasped. The second man roared, "You—!" and charged—anger without aim, all shoulders, no skill. Sam tilted his head just outside the line and drove the same hand again—short, compact, brutal. Down he went.
For a moment, silence. Sam stood over them, chest rising, breath measured. Both men groaned, dazed but breathing. No cracked skulls, no blood pooling on the rubber mat. Good. The last thing he needed was a police report on top of everything else.
He turned toward the woman. "You okay?"
Only her ponytail answered—vanishing into the dark. He exhaled a short, helpless laugh. Of course. Real life wasn't a movie. No grateful hug, no kiss, no phone number. Just two unconscious idiots and a new problem about to wake up.
The problem stirred. Both men began to rise, eyes cold, hands dipping toward pockets. Cheap knives, most likely.
Sam ran.
Through the brush. Over roots. Back to the path. Onto the bike. Pedals spinning. Behind him came curses in two languages and the promise of payback, but the distance swallowed them.
Gravel turned to asphalt, the footpath to a proper sidewalk sloping toward his block of flats. Almost home. Almost safe.
Then—headlights.
They bloomed behind him, white and wild. Tires screamed.
Sam glanced back. The car jumped the curb, hood rising like a wave. Inside—two faces, hoods drawn tight, eyes full of stupid rage.
"Oh, shit," he muttered. "Come on—I didn't even hit you that hard."
Metal hit metal. The bumper caught his rear wheel and lifted. The world spun. The bike folded into scrap, and Sam felt himself thrown upward—air tearing at his jacket, the sky and street lamps flipping places again and again.
Then the pavement rushed up to meet him.
A white flash detonated behind his eyes—loud, blinding, absolute.
In that split second before the dark took him, he felt his phone slip free, spinning into the night. There goes my life's work, he thought. Years of grinding, gone in one bounce.
A bitter laugh flickered in his head. If I'd been born a girl, maybe life wouldn't be this hard. Maybe I'd be the one getting saved instead of the idiot trying to do the saving. Hell, I could've been my own girlfriend—would've saved time and money.
The thoughts were absurd, half delirious, but somehow they dulled the pain. The edges of everything softened.
Then there was only silence, and nothing at all.
But it wasn't the end.
He opened his eyes to wheat whispering around him, gold heads nodding under a sky so blue it looked newly painted. A dog-shaped cloud loped across the light. Warmth soaked his skin. The soil—soft and black—cupped his back like a mattress. His winter clothes were gone. He wore only boxers patterned with grinning bunnies; one bunny flashed a thumbs-up: you got this, champ. It felt like the moment just before sleep, except the sun was kissing his face.
"Y-you ever w-wonder what's up there?" a small voice asked. "Like if someone up there is w-wondering if you're w-wondering about them?"
Sam turned. A toddler with white, downy wings lay in the wheat beside him, basking. The child's eyes held star-glow and a soft, naive gravity that made the whole field feel gentler.
"Huh. Are you… an angel baby?" Sam asked. "Am I dead, angel baby?"
The child pouted, folded his arms. "J-just answer the question. I w-want to know."
"I mean… yeah," Sam said. "Everyone wonders what's up there. Aliens, meaning, all of it."
The winged toddler nodded, pleased. "This is why I like humans. You ask questions. That's how you grow." He tilted his head, as if hearing a music only he could hear. "But you—Leonardo—you did more than dream. You helped. You tried. So I decided you deserve another chance."
"Uh." Sam pushed himself onto his elbows. "Not Leonardo. Pretty sure he's taken. I just got hit by a car. I'm Sam. The guy who tries to do the right thing and gets billed for it."
The child blinked, then sighed with the tiny drama of the very young. "Oh. I s-slept too long again. Oops." He brightened. "That's okay! I pick someone new when I wake. I'll try to steer you toward the stars this time. You can be the one."
Sam opened his mouth, closed it. "I don't even have a car. The stars seem… far."
"And the w-wish you mumbled," the child added, eyes twinkling. "About being your own g-girlfriend? Granted." His smile was all mischief and mercy.
Sam lurched upright. "Wait—what does that even—"
The child's hands opened. A sphere of white light rose from his palms—no heat, only comfort—humming like a second heartbeat. It drifted into Sam's chest and, for one staggering instant, a living pulse wrapped his heart: a calm, bright engine answering to breath and kindness.
The world went to radiance.
Then something he could never have guessed: in the sheen of a dark, glassy surface—void made mirror—he saw his "reflection." Not a man. A small star: a pearl of white with a brighter core pulsing at its center.
Change began.
From light, form assembled. First a heart knitting itself around the core—valves, chambers, rhythm. Then vessels sprouted like silver roots. Tissue layered. Bones latticed. Skin drew closed. Nerve and brain lit strand by strand. It was precise, relentless biology made visible, and it was… a lot. Sam squeezed his new, not-quite eyes until the rush of making finally stilled.
He looked again—and nearly fell backward.
Eyes stared back: bright violet, framed by long lashes. Softly arched brows. Round, chubby cheeks. A small nose and mouth. Fair, milk-pale skin. A dusting of short platinum-blond hair. The cutest baby he'd ever seen stared from the dark, blinking—
—and the blink was his.
A white flash rippled the void; clothing fluttered into being—a white, full-body rabbit suit, ears and all. The baby—he—no, he inside the baby—lifted tiny mittened hands in startled confusion.
Before he could scream, the black expelled him.
Heat. Pressure. Light. He shot outward and realized—first with shock, then with a delirious laugh—that he was leaving the sun. A gold flare spat a single spark into the dark, and that spark was him.
A halo of warm gold wrapped his small body and carried him on a trajectory no astronaut had ever flown. Space wasn't silent; it sang—a thin radio hiss braided with deep chords, like whales calling under ice.
Mercury skimmed past like a hammered coin left on a stove, craters burned black and brilliant. He wanted to linger, but he streaked by like a golden shooting star.
Venus showed a veiled face—clouds stacked like ivory curtains, beautiful and suffocating—and he slipped past that, too.
Then the Moon floated beneath him, pale and pitted, shadows cut like knives. He searched for flags, footprints, proof of human touch—nothing from this height but light and stone.
Earth swelled ahead: blue breathing through white lace, continents dark and patient. Along the edge, the atmosphere glowed a neon thread of blue; faint auroras uncoiled over the pole like slow green ribbons.
The arc bent north.
Norway? he hoped. Fish money. Oil money. Vikings and fjords and tax refunds that feel like love.
The path jogged east.
Sweden? he bargained. IKEA money. Abba money. Any money.
A little more right.
Finland. He sighed—half dread, half fondness. Not again.
Clouds tore. He didn't dive so much as slew sideways, as if searching for a perfect landing spot, then the glide tipped earthward. The coast flashed. Lakes glittered like broken mirrors in noon sun. And then—not sight but recognition—a tug from an old life: a stitched patch of fields, a narrow road, and a dark little lake he knew as Cloudlake—where he'd skipped stones, where two young farmers had called him son.
Home, he thought, startled, grateful—and, yes, a little disappointed.
The glide tightened… and missed. Not toward the white farmhouse by the shore. Into the forest.
Panic pinched his tiny new heart. No, no—don't drop me in the middle of nowhere; that's the worst possible place.
The gold carried him anyway.
He fell through bright cold into a hillside clearing. In the last instant before impact, the halo shivered apart—threads of light unraveling like golden wool. They whirled around the tiny body and wove themselves into reality: plush booties hugging her feet, mittens sealing over her hands, a snug inner lining knitting itself warm inside the pink rabbit suit. The finishing stitch flickered, then sank into the fabric with a faint purr of heat.
He touched down, and the snow hissed—melting to water, flashing to steam. When the light died, she lay on a pad of moss at the bottom of a shallow snow-pit, ringed by a half-meter wall of soft, smoking white. Above, the sky was glass-blue and indifferent.
She blinked up at it, confused. She tried to move—her head bobbed uselessly. She tried to shout—Hey! Anyone out there? Help!—but her mouth wouldn't obey. A soft, bell-clear coo came out instead, followed by a baffled squeak that sounded… pretty. Sweet. Girlish.
She stopped, stunned by her own voice.
She wiggled, mittened hands flopping against the quilted belly, booties brushing the warm moss. The rabbit hood's ears slid into view. The baby angel's promise came back like a pebble skipping across a pond.
Wait. Am I… a girl?
She squinted, incredulous. Oh, God. I'm a baby girl in the middle of the woods, aren't I? Oh no.
She inhaled the knife-cold air and yelled with everything the tiny lungs could manage—a gentle, silvery baby-cry that rang up through the spruce. Crows tilted their heads on a high branch, arguing cut short. Squirrels froze mid-chatter, tails flicking question marks. Farther off, a fox peeped from its den, nose testing the steam-scented air; in the next valley a moose startled, crashed through brush, and fled into deeper quiet.
The clearing listened. The half-meter ring of snow breathed mist. And at its center, warm inside new fur mittens and booties, the pink-eared girl who had fallen from the sun cried again—softer this time, stubborn and alive.