Onni Jaatinen

Snow covers the dirt road outside our kitchen window, dull and unmoving like the days here. When I was small I raced the first flakes, convinced the forest behind our house whispered secrets meant only for me. Now I pull the blinds down before breakfast. The village sits an hour from Vaasa, Finland, yet it feels farther than the moon. I am fourteen years old, stuck between pine trunks and my parents’ silences.

School ends at two, but I head straight home, hoodie up, footsteps loud on frozen gravel. My mother teaches sewing at the community hall; my father welds boat parts in the harbour. We eat together less and less. They say little beyond “how was class” and “don’t forget to shovel.” I nod, then climb the stairs to my room, controller already warm in my hand. Digital worlds load faster than daylight here.

Summer used to taste like wild strawberries and feel like endless blue dusk. I camped beside the lake with Kalle and Ilona, searching for meteors while mosquitoes sang in our ears. Last June they biked to find me, but I pretended to sleep. Messages stacked, then stopped. Now my friends post pictures from town—music nights and beach fires—while I grind levels behind a closed door, headset muting the gulls outside.

Everyone calls this place peaceful. To me it’s a paused video that never resumes. Even the river seems bored, trickling between stones that never move. Some nights I lie awake counting how many buses I need to reach Helsinki, how many shifts at the gas station will buy a ticket. The plan is simple: finish school, save enough, leave forever.

I wonder whether I’ll miss the smell of birch smoke or the way the aurora folds over the roof. Maybe I will; maybe that’s normal. But right now the only light I crave is the green glow of the console welcoming me back. If adventure lives anywhere, it’s at the edge of the screen—and for the moment, that’s far enough away from this village to feel like freedom. Tomorrow looks the same, but I'll keep plotting escape.