Nerius never knew a father.
In his family, that space was simply empty—an unspoken gap at the table. But he wasn't alone in the house. There was a grandfather who shuffled slowly but laughed loudly, a grandmother who smelled like cold linen, a mother who worked more than she slept, an aunt who always hovered, a little sister who followed him everywhere, and a brother who never quite met his eyes.
They lived together, but Nerius always felt slightly apart—like he was standing in the same room but behind a pane of invisible glass. His brother argued with him over everything and nothing. His sister clung to him. The others cared in their own quiet ways. Still, some part of him drifted, untouched.
Even so, life wasn't unhappy.
There were days filled with noise, meals crammed around a small table, footsteps in every hallway. And beyond his family, he had his own small circle—three penguin friends he jokingly called his brothers.
One was broad-shouldered and proud, walking as if the world was watching.One spoke little, but his presence filled the space like a steady tide.One had sharp eyes and slow words, the kind that made everyone listen.
Compared to them, Nerius seemed ordinary—nothing loud, nothing grand, nothing wise. Just there. Just himself.
But underneath that quiet, there was a pull—a small, steady wanting. He couldn't name it. Couldn't explain it. He only knew he wanted to be… better. Kinder. Someone good. Someone who did the right thing, even when no one noticed.
He carried that hope the way others carried dreams.
Not on his sleeve—just somewhere deep inside.
Back then, surrounded by family and friends, it felt like enough.
He didn't know how quickly that world would slip away.
He didn't know how far he would drift.
He didn't know how quiet life could become.
Not yet.
Not then.
That was before the ice cracked.Before the water opened.Before the long, dark swim.
Before the rope.
Before everything.
As the years moved—softly, unnoticed—Nerius began to change.
He watched his three friends more closely than they ever realized.
The wise one would pause before speaking, letting thoughts settle like snow. Nerius found himself doing the same—thinking longer, looking deeper, holding questions in his mind instead of blurting them out.
The strange, quiet one had a stillness that made others uneasy. He could sit for hours without a word, lost in his own currents. Nerius began to mirror that silence, slipping into long stretches where he simply listened to the world instead of filling it.
And the proud one—broad, steady, unshaken—walked like nothing could move him. There was strength in that posture, in the way he stood his ground. Nerius felt that strength growing in him too, slowly, like a muscle he didn't know he'd been building.
He didn't become any one of them.
He simply became a little of each.
A thoughtful gaze.A quiet presence.A strength that didn't need to be shown.
No one pointed it out.No one said anything changed.
But something had.
Without trying, without noticing, Nerius was becoming someone new—shaped by the pieces of the people he cared about.
Not loud.Not flashy.Not heroic.
Just… different.
A mix of wisdom, strangeness, and strength—held together by something small but steady inside him.
A quiet kind of becoming.
And for a while, that was enough.
Before the breaking.Before the cold.Before the fall into the dark.
Before the rope.
As Nerius grew older, he started to notice things he hadn't seen before.
Money.
It was everywhere—spoken, unspoken, hidden in every choice his family made. Bills stacked on the counter. Whispers after dinner. Long days of work. Short tempers. Tired eyes. Even warmth in the house seemed to rise and fall with how much they had or didn't have.
It felt like the world revolved around it.
And Nerius didn't have any.
He was just a boy. Ordinary. No special talent. No grand future promised. Nothing that made people point and say, "He'll go far."
And he wasn't perfect. Not even close.
He got angry over small things—arguments that didn't matter, reactions he regretted the moment they left his mouth. Sometimes he lashed out. Sometimes he sulked. Sometimes he was the problem and knew it, but couldn't stop himself anyway.
He wasn't kinder than the others.He wasn't wiser.He wasn't better.
Just flawed. Human. Messy.
Stupid, he called himself sometimes.
Weird, others called him.
Different, though no one could explain how.
But underneath all of that—beneath the anger, the awkwardness, the ordinary—there was a hollow space he couldn't name. A quiet emptiness tucked behind the ribs, like a room with no furniture. Like something should be there, but wasn't.
He didn't know what he was missing.
A purpose?A place?A path?A person?
He couldn't tell.
He only knew that even surrounded by family, even with friends beside him, something inside him wasn't full.
Something was waiting.
Something unfinished.
And he carried that emptiness silently, the way someone carries a secret they don't understand.
Long before the ice.Long before the darkness.
The missing part was already there.
The tragedy didn't arrive loudly.
It didn't warn him.It didn't give him time to understand.
One moment, life was the same—crowded house, tired voices, the familiar noise of ordinary days. And then something came. Something shaped like a bear… or wearing the shape of one. Massive. Wrong. A blur of white and motion. A roar, or maybe just wind. He couldn't tell.
He didn't know what it wanted.He only knew he had to run.
Or leave.Or escape.
Everything happened too quickly to choose.
The ground gave way beneath him. Ice cracking, water opening, the world tilting. He stumbled backward, reaching for something—anything—but found only cold air. Then the fall. The shock of freezing water swallowing his breath, stealing his thoughts.
He couldn't breathe.He couldn't see.He couldn't think.
Down, down, down—pulled by the weight of fear, or fate, or something he couldn't fight. The water was so dark it felt thick, like a second night pressing against his skin. He kicked wildly, blindly, lungs burning, chest tightening.
Sometimes he reached the surface.Sometimes he sank again.Time twisted.Distances stretched.
The river carried him—if it was a river at all. It felt more like drifting through time than water. Moments slipped away. Hours or seconds passed; he couldn't tell which. It was all cold, all dark, all movement without direction.
And then—stone.
His hand brushed something solid.His head broke the surface.He gasped, dragging in the sharp air.
He pulled himself out, collapsing onto rough ground, coughing hard enough to shake his bones. When he finally lifted his gaze, he saw only shadows stretching into more shadows—endless tunnels, dripping walls, ceiling so high it disappeared.
A cave.A world beneath the world.
Silent.Empty.Unmapped.
He didn't know where he was.He didn't know how far he'd fallen.
He only knew one thing:
Home was gone.Everything familiar was behind him.And ahead… nothing but darkness.
The beginning of his long loneliness started there, in that cave carved by time, water, and tragedy.
After a long time alone, when the cave had become the shape of his days, something fell.
Not a stone. Not water. A white rope, thin as a thought, drifting down through the dark like a blade of light. It struck the frozen ground with a soft slap and lay there, bright and impossible against the black.
Nerius froze. He had not expected anything to break the slow sameness of the place. He stared at the rope as if it might dissolve if he blinked.
Curiosity pulled at him—gentle, sudden. He reached out. The rope felt neither cold nor warm; it hummed quietly under his fingertips, alive in a way that made the hairs along his neck stand up.
Slowly, as if waking from a long sleep, he looked up.
Far above, where the cave swallowed sight, a circle of light opened like a pupil. Beyond it hung a slice of world he had almost forgotten—the sharp white of something like snow, a wind that moved the rope, and at the rim, a shape.
Not a face. Not a full figure. Only a boot, dusted in white, set on the edge as if testing the stone. A sleeve. A hand—gloved, firm—curling around the rope.
For the first time in a very long while, something from above met his eyes.
He wanted to climb.He wanted to wait.He only wanted to know.
The cave held its breath with him.
The figure leaning over the edge wasn't a bear.
It wasn't a shadow.
It was a bunny.
Small, bright, ears tipped with snow, eyes wide and alive in a way nothing in the cave had been for a very long time. Cute—soft—almost glowing against the darkness. But different from him. Different in every way. Light where he was heavy. Quick where he was still. Warm where he was cold.
The bunny looked down at him, breath misting in the air, and spoke—clear, simple:
"Grab the rope."
He didn't question it.
His hands tightened around the white strand, fingers locking, claws scraping. He pulled himself up, body trembling from disuse, from fear, from something he couldn't name. The rope burned against his palms, but he held on.
The bunny braced its feet, leaned back, and pulled.
Nerius rose.
Slow at first—one hand over the other, breath shaking, muscles screaming. Then faster. The rope was steady. The pull was strong. He climbed, gripping tighter, closer, higher.
As he moved, he kept catching glimpses of the bunny—ears bouncing with effort, cheeks puffed, eyes focused. Not laughing. Not judging. Just helping.
He didn't know the bunny.Didn't know why it was there.Didn't know what waited above.
But with every pull, every breath, every inch upward, something strange happened—he felt less like a ghost and more like a person again. Like the cave was loosening its hold.
And the bunny kept pulling.
And Nerius kept climbing.
Faster now—rope clenched, heart pounding, darkness shrinking beneath him—toward the light, toward the unknown, toward the bunny who had appeared like a miracle in white.
As he climbed, hand over hand, he felt the rope tremble—not from his weight, but from the bunny's arms shaking. She was pulling with everything she had. Her small feet slid against the edge, ears drooping with effort.
She was getting tired.
Nerius slowed.
Not because he had to—because she needed him to.
His movements grew gentler, steadier. He paused now and then, letting her rest, letting her breathe. The climb stopped feeling like an escape and started feeling like… something shared.
Neither of them spoke.
They didn't need to.
The rope swayed softly between them, carrying silence up and down like a message. Her breaths were quick and light. His were deep and uneven. Two rhythms, somehow fitting together.
For the first time in what felt like forever, the darkness didn't feel endless.
There was someone above him.
Someone real.
Someone pulling.
And in those pauses—those quiet, tired moments—Nerius felt something he had almost forgotten the shape of:
Hope.
He didn't know her name.Didn't know her story.Didn't know why she had reached down for him.
But he knew this:
He loved the fact that she existed.
Loved that she stayed.Loved that she didn't let go.
Not love like a confession—just a warmth in his chest, small and trembling, like a fire learning how to burn again.
Clinging to the rope, looking up at her silhouette framed in white, he realized something simple and enormous:
He didn't feel alone.
Not anymore.
At first, climbing felt simple—upward, together.
But the higher they went, the more the rope strained, the more her small arms shook, the more her breaths came sharp and panicked. The bunny's light footsteps slipped on the edge. Her ears twitched with fear. Her shoulders trembled.
Nerius didn't see it.
He was too focused on escaping the dark below, too terrified of slipping back into that endless, frozen silence. His mind clung to one thought:
I DONT WANT TO LIVE IN A HOLE ANYMORE
So he climbed harder. Pulled faster. Held tighter.
And the bunny—unable to match his strength—began to crumble under the weight.
Finally, her voice broke through the quiet, thin and shaking:
"I don't… I don't want to hold on anymore."
She wasn't angry.She wasn't cold.Just scared.
Her paws slipped. Her knees buckled. The rope burned her palms.
Nerius heard the words—but not the meaning.
Panic swallowed everything. His hands locked around the rope, claws digging deep. He stopped climbing, stopped moving, stopped thinking.
He just held on.
Held on like the rope was life itself. Held on like letting go meant drowning again in all that darkness. Held on so tightly he forgot there was someone else on the other end, hurting.
He didn't look up.
He didn't see her tears.
He didn't see her terror.
He only knew fear—raw, selfish, blinding. The fear of falling. The fear of the cave. The fear of being alone.
So he clung to the rope—frozen, shaking—while the bunny above struggled, overwhelmed, exhausted, her small voice fading against the pull of gravity and panic.
He thought holding on meant survival.
He never realized that sometimes holding too tightly can become its own kind of fall.
THE FALL
When her strength finally ran out, the bunny's paws slipped from the rope.
Not angrily.Not dramatically.Just gently—like someone exhaling after holding their breath too long.
She let go.
She needed to rest.She needed to breathe.She needed to survive her own fear.
And the moment her grip disappeared, the rope snapped slack—and Nerius felt the world tilt beneath him.
There was no warning.No final word.No steady hand.
Just the sudden weight of gravity pulling him down, back into the open mouth of darkness he thought he'd escaped.
He fell.
Down past the cold walls.Down past the thin circle of light.Down past everything warm and possible.
The cave caught him the way emptiness always does—quietly, without care. The ground, the silence, the same choking stillness he'd tried so desperately to leave. A world without color. A world without movement. A world where nothingness seeped into the bones.
He lay there, breath shaking, eyes open to the black he knew too well.
He had been wrong.
The rope wasn't just an escape.It was hope.
And sometimes—hope is the most painful thing to hold onto.
Because hope can lift you higher than you ever expected… just to drop you farther than you knew you could fall.
Before she disappeared from sight, the bunny's voice echoed down—soft, trembling:
"Don't wait for me."
But Nerius did.
He would.
Because that moment—those small shared breaths, those pauses on the rope, that fragile connection—was the first time someone had seen him when everyone else looked past him.
She saw him.Even when he didn't see himself.
And for him… that was enough to wait.