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Very glad you like it! The Metamorphosis Ep. 2: Day Two: En route to backwards "See ya, Mom!" Finn shouted to his mother, dropped the front of the longboard onto the asphalt, supported himself with his right foot on the board and accelerated it with his left foot. As he rode around the first corner, he fished his smartphone out of his pocket and opened his music streaming app. Flicking his gaze back and forth between the empty suburban street and his phone several times in a row, he navigated through the menus and finally pressed "Sweet Electro Onion" in the playlist tab. For his birthday a few months ago, he had asked his parents for a Bluetooth box, but his aunt had also given him a year's subscription to the music streaming service he was now using. This opened up a whole new world for Finn and, in retrospect, turned out to be the much more important gift. Of course, music had been a part of almost everything in the twelve-year-old's life before, but now Finn spent many hours lying on his bed creating and maintaining playlists. Now he didn't have to endure commercials, but could potentially listen to any song when and wherever he wanted. There was so much different music for so many different moods and Finn was just discovering it all. One of his favorite playlists was "Sweet Electro Onion," named in part after the sauce of the same name on Subway sandwiches. The playlist had gotten the name part "Sweet Electro", because it contained a diverse potpourri of happy sounding electro songs. Onion had only been added because well, it just fitted. While the Bluetooth speaker in the small bag on his back started playing "Midnight Sky" by "Sol Calor", Finn let his cell phone slip back into his left pocket, straightened his bangs and concentrated on accelerating the longboard with his left foot. Pleasantly warm air blew towards him, finally it actually became clear that it was the middle of summer. He smelled the fresh asphalt of the still under construction beltway which he just drove as the absolutely only vehicle, in the middle of the four lanes. To the right, a little below him, was the small, ancient university town, and to the left, his eyes were lost in fields. He felt his cell phone vibrate, but continued to use his energy to climb the incline of the road. He began to sweat, because of the heat, but also because of the effort. The reward, however, was wonderful, as always. Finn zoomed over the bridge, which had so far only been partially paved for construction vehicles, and looked down at four kilometers of empty road that led solely downhill. Crossing-free. The music changed to "Windfall" by "TheFatRat" and Finn fished his cell phone out of his pocket to find out what it was trying to tell him: A message from Luca had arrived. "Where are you?" the question read. "15 min," Finn typed back and put the phone back. Communication could be so simple sometimes. Yeah, for telling his best friend about an hour ago that he'd be there in half an hour, he was pretty late. He had kind of frittered away without realizing it. Had spent a lot of time lying on the grass in front of the patio, going through his "Stones" playlist. At first just like that, later he was scrolling through his Instagram timeline. At some point, he dreamily glanced at the upper right corner of the display and was startled to see how late it had become. Two minutes later, he had thrown his stuff into his backpack and sped off on his longboard. In 15 minutes he should actually arrive at Luca. The air whistled through his hair as he sped up. Now he had reached the steepest part of the descent, after the ring road had crossed the bridge, it dropped rapidly again to reach normal height - and the twelve-year-old now accelerated correspondingly rapidly. If his mother or any adult would see Finn racing down the road at certainly 60 kilometers per hour, the knee and wrist pads as well as the helmet, of which Finn first had convinced his mother that they were nonsense in contrast to skateboarding for longboarding, would be right back on him. But nobody saw. Therefore, Finn now began to routinely curl across the entire lane to control his speed and laughed all over his face. When it came to definitions as a topic in school, this was the defining moment of freedom. One minute of life-threatening, fast-paced freedom. The smell of freshly cut grass in the grassy strip between the new road and the surrounding fields crept into Finn's nose and he slowly realized that all he really wanted to do was drive on endlessly. Why not, really? Finn now had six weeks to do more or less what he wanted. The shimmering electro sounds of FatRat faded away and the music changed to "Levels" by "Avicii". Slowly the rolling noise of the small rollers became quieter, the wind no longer whistled so strongly around his ears and the landscape moved more slowly and while the steep part of the descent was now over Finn's thoughts, his mind now drifted off in a completely different direction. A few seconds after Paul had excitedly run out of his room yesterday, Antonia and his mother came back inside, first still laughing and then, when they realized that the five-year-old hadn't been talking nonsense, mostly amazed. "Finn!" his mother said in nothing but amazement, looking down at her son squatting on the car carpet in his completely soaked pants. At most, Finn had had 45 seconds to think about how to deal with this situation after Paul had run outside, "I ... mommy..." he said, faltering slightly and staring at the small traffic circle in front of his feet. Normally, e almost never called his mom mommy, he had decided at some point that "Mom" just sounded cooler, and had only addressed his mother that way since then, "It just got wet all of a sudden!" he said quietly, still looking down at the ground. His pants were starting to get cold and Finn didn't dare move. "Oh Finny," his mother said, sitting down and kneeling on the floor by his side, "How did that happen? Is everything all right with you? Do you feel sick?" Suddenly his mother was worried about him. Finn didn't answer righzt away. A little later, he was standing in the bathroom, tugging his wet, sticky jeans off his legs, and he was amazed. His mother wasn't upset at all. She was concerned, but what she kept repeating was only "It's not a big deal!". It's no big deal that he had peed his pants. Had no negative consequences. Except that he had to drive home, dressed only in Paul's bathrobe, but with the current temperatures that really wasn't bad. After all, no one had noticed. Just like his entire accident, no one had noticed. Well, except of course Antonia, his mother and Paul, but in Finn the thought arose that this fact was completely irrelevant for him. For Paul he was an eight-year-old anyway, in that case just an eight-year-old who had wet his pants. And for his mother he was simply her son. No one who shouldn't have witnessed it, had witnessed it. And that was the most important thought Finn had had in a long time. Meanwhile, Finn's longboard was slowing down, and at some point Finn finally tilted his torso to the right, turned onto the bus stop bay for the new express bus line, and let the Vans sneaker on his left foot sleep lightly across the floor to come to a complete stop. Elegantly, he leaned forward and in the same motion picked up the longboard, flipping it once through the air and taking it under his right arm. He jumped up the raised curb, leaned the longboard against the corner pillar of the bus shelter, rested his lower body on the three metal grid seats of the shelter and leaned his upper body against the glass wall of the shelter. The slim twelve-year-old created a peculiar image now seen from the outside, seemingly bored, lounging at the bus stop and seeming to wait for the bus, which would not leave from here for at least a few months. But Finn was only bored on the outside, his head was working at full speed. He even completley blanked out the fact that "In the Clouds", once again by "Daxten", was playing from the Bluetooth box now. What a wonderful feeling it had been, yesterday wetting his pants. How the pressure suddenly eased and everything became sooo nice and warm. Plus, how his mother and Antonia had handled it. Of course, in Finn's fantasy, the whole thing could have ended with him wearing one of Paul's diapers for lack of a change of clothes, but that remained wishful thinking. But still, nothing bad had happened at all. He hadn't gotten into any trouble, rather the opposite. And so Finn's dam had not only overflowed once yesterday, but had developed cracks that would last forever. The floodgate management had found that an occasional spill disaster drew the attention of higher authorities to the dam, giving more weight to the dam and its concerns. And the lock workers, for their part, had also found that the lock spill had no negative consequences and had enjoyed the ensuing spectacle. Finn would do it again, he was sure. More. In his mind's eye, he reviewed the brief but, at least for him, extremely interesting conversation between his mother and Antonia: "Oh, is Paul still wearing diapers?" his mother had asked. Antonia's resigned-sounding answer was: "Well, that's a never-ending story. You wouldn't believe everything I've tried, but Paul just won't go to the bathroom. And when I make him, he sits there and doesn't do it and as soon as he gets up, his pants are wet!" After a quick glance at Paul playing with a big plastic truck on the living room rug next to him, she added with a grin, "Well, it'll work out sooner or later. He still has time!" His mother agreed with her, laughing. Paul just doesn't go to the bathroom. Smart Paul, Finn secretly thought to himself as he leaned against the wall, slightly back between the two women and Paul, looking at the playing little boy with his Pampers peeking out of his pants. What was Antonia supposed to do there? A five-year-old kindergartener who isn't even left to his own devices to decide whether he needs to put on a jacket outside in cold weather ends up making such a far-reaching decision completely on his own. Apart from Paul, no one could say for sure whether he simply didn't notice when he had to go to the bathroom and that's why he always ended up going in his pants, or whether he just preferred to keep playing and peeing his pants out of convenience. Or if maybe he even liked it. As long as he didn't tell anyone, only Paul knew. There wasn't really much left for the adults to do then. They may have had their suspicions as to why the five-year-old didn't go to the toilet, but in the end that just wasn't important. If Paul just doesn't go to the toilet, that means in case that you finally try to leave the Pampers off for once, that his pants get wet. First once, then again, continuously. So without diapers Paul quickly needed more than half a dozen pants a day and in the long run you had no choice but to put him back in diapers. If you always wet your pants, you needed diapers. Finn had already figured that out. What he just found out was that similar to risk assessment, there were two factors that made someone like Paul, or even himself, pee his pants enough times to end up in diapers. On one side there were the disadvantages of wearing diapers. For Finn, these were huge. A cool teenager like him all of a sudden sporting a diaper like a toddler? Super mega embarrassing. For Paul, on the other hand, it didn't matter. He was a kid in diapers anyway, it wasn't a sudden big step backwards that he needed them again, he just stayed the way he was. His friends in kindergarten might have gotten dry over the last years, but they all knew him as the diapered kid, so he didn't have to mind playing with another boy with bulging, smelly Pampers, because that's just the way he was. On the other hand, there was the advantage. What were the advantages of wearing diapers for Paul? Definitely convenience, that's all Finn could say. For him, on the other hand, he loved diapers. What he would give for them. Anything. They meant the world. So with Paul, it came down to a small disadvantage with a small advantage, and with Finn, it came down to a huge disadvantage with a huge freaking advantage, and with that, Finn wasn't willing to put up with the disadvantages for this wonderful absorbent padding between his legs as the cool twelve year old he was, but Paul was. Disadvantages outweighed advantages. Until yesterday, anyway. Because what the soon to be seventh grader found out yesterday, compared to the five year old diaper boy, was that these disadvantages completely fell away the moment only a small group of people noticed them. For example, if only his parents and Paul, maybe his grandparents, knew that he couldn't make it to the bathroom and was therefore in diapers, then he didn't really lose anything. He had nothing to prove to them. Finn had made up his mind. He would wet the bed. The classic. He had read it himself as a diaper story often enough, wetting the bed gets you in diapers again. Now he stared through the dirty glass of the bus shelter into the forest beyond the fields, understanding for the first time that there was no reason for him not to. What would happen? Comforting words from his mother, attention, his bed would get wet, his pajama pants anyway. These were all no real disadvantages at all. That was now the plan Finn was just working out, while the playlist had surely played eight songs in the meantime. He would now wet the bed. Every night. No more getting up at night, that pretty much sucked anyway. Out of the warm bed and running to the toilet. Especially now in the summer vacations, where he slept longer and accordingly usually had to get out twice. Instead, the bed would get wet twice. And he would get wet at the same time. His parents would probably take that with concerned understanding, but not for long. Then they would have to give him diapers; after all, they couldn't make him stop. Sooner or later. And in the meantime, wetting the bed was cool even without diapers. How and whether he wanted to get diapers during the day, that was a whole different matter. Until the vibration of his cell phone jolted him out of his thoughts. Once, again and again. That wasn't a message, that was a call! Finn hurriedly pulled his smartphone out of his pocket, wiped his left thumb to the right and held the device to his ear the old-fashioned way. "Does your longboard belong to the German railroad? Because you're late!" shouted Luca on the other end of the line. Luca was always joking around and often laughed the loudest himself. Finn, however, had to chuckle as well, "No. Was chilling, sorry!" "Woow!" was all Luca said. " Yup yup, I'll be right there! Give me five minutes!" Finn heard Luca hang up on the other end of the line, lowered his left hand along with his cell phone and looked in the direction of the forest for one more brief moment without moving. Then he suddenly jumped up, tapped his phone to change the playlist, grabbed his board, let it hit the tarmac and continued, this time accompanied by the ecstatic and repetitive first guitar sounds of Volbeat's "Thanks". One of Finn's favorite songs. Uncompromisingly joyful, just as he often was. The fifteen-second opening guitar solo swirled wildly out of the speaker on Finn's back, making it immediately clear that this song was completely different from the shallow electro sounds before. From now on everything changed, in the choice of music and in Finn's life. And nobody knew it, only he himself at least sensed it. With a loud clack, Finn soon let the front end of his longboard crash against the concrete step in front of the front door of a reddish-brown brick row house and pressed the doorbell shortly after. "Wow, already here?" a Luca, who opened the front door shortly thereafter, asked boredly while shouldering his backpack and looking down at Finn ironically-grimly, "That's really a new record, I think you wanted to be here an hour ago!" "Yeah ...," Finn mumbled so quietly that it was barely audible next to the music coming from his speaker, tilted his head and replied mischievously, " You couldn't have already gone to the swimming pool by yourself or something!" "Yeah nooo, totally impossible for reasons unknown!" Luca joked sarcastically while raising the garage door, "Where would we end up?" "To the swimming pool! But sooner!" Finn grinned as Luca scrambled to get his bike out of the garage, swung onto it, while Finn got back on his board, and they both turned back onto the street. "Who else is there already?", Finn asked his twelve-year-old best friend and with a routine hand movement straightened his hair, which had been tangled by the wind another time. Together, the two almost-seventh graders made a rather unique picture. Finn, one of the smallest in his class and also quite thin, and next to him giant Luca. One meter and sixty centimeters, Luca had always been a bit of a behemoth. And a damn joker: "Well, everyone! Everybody's already here!", short pause: "All fucking 7 billion people! You gave them quite a bit of time to get there before we did!" Luca was good at getting artificially upset, and it was usually pretty funny when he did. Joking loudly, the two almost-teenagers rode through narrow, traffic-calmed streets, crossed the main road and didn't even notice how quickly time passed until they finally stopped at a chain-link fence at the beginning of the forest and Luca locked his bike to it. Tightly pressed spruces behind the wire mesh fence hid from prying eyes what was hiding behind the inconspicuous-looking, slightly rusty fence. Only the mixture of children's screams and the smell of chlorine made it relatively clear where one was: In the forest pool, something like Finn's unofficial summer second home. The relatively simple outdoor pool of the small town, consisting only of a few metal pools, a small slide and a huge lawn with playground and volleyball court. The "Waldbad" was not exactly something that triggered spontaneous storms of enthusiasm. It was definitely not a swimming pool for a Youtube compilation with the title "The 10 most extreme swimming pools in the world". But it did have one definite advantage: the blue ribbon on Finn's right wrist. The student subscription. It granted admission to the swimming pool for the entire summer at a ridiculous price. And not just for him, but also for Luca and almost all of his friends and many of his classmates. For decades, it had been something like the own little cosmos of the more or less privileged middle-class youth of this city, equipped with a season ticket and separated from their parents by a pay barrier and accordingly endowed with independence. While the student pass was subsidized and therefore already worthwhile after just a few visits to the pool per year, the adult tickets were much more expensive. And Finn had been going to the pool without his parents for a long time. He had met many of his friends here in the past summer vacations, had banged his knee in the past while running without permission at the edge of the pool, and had always stayed even hours after he had already left the water. A few years ago he had built huge castles in the big sandbox on the hill above the pools, and since last year he had been fooling around with his friends on the lawn, talking about all sorts of things instead. Luca and Finn hurriedly scurried past the entrance, only briefly stretching their hands toward the ticket booth and running into the small beige changing rooms under the rustic wooden canopy, while music still hummed from Finn's speakers. "Pretend we're Dead" by "L7", one of the bands that Luca's big brother Alex had recommended to him.

Hi y'all I'm not a native english speaker and wrote this story originally in german from 2018-2022. For another forum, I started to translate the story to english using modern ai-powered translation Software and figured, I might aswell also post it here. Please let me know how the (machine aided, but hand-corrected) translation works for you and if you would like me to continue translating this story. Of course, please also let me know if I'm doing something wrong, both in english language and in story telling mechanics! The Metamorphosis It's the summer of 2019 in a small town somewhere in the middle of germany: sunscreen, public swimming pools and heat. That's probably a one way to sum up the beginning of twelve-year-old Finn's summer vacation. But that wasn't what would change everything in the otherwise cool and independent still-sixth-grader's life during this vacation. Finn, who has had an affection for diapers his entire life, had come up with a plan to get his hands on those white crackle things again. Not by orderin them on amazon but as it had been written in countless clichéd diaper stories so far: by starting to wet his bed on purpose. If Finn's life were a stage, then in the summer of 2019 the curtains were probably just closing to seal the end of the first act, his childhood. The second part was waiting in the wings, everyone was getting ready: Finn's teenage years. But the main character of the first act had changed his mind: Nothing was over yet! Ep. 1: Day One: What once was lost ... "Fire!" shouted Paul in alarm, making Finn chuckle slightly when he pushed one of the big red plastic fire engines towards the plastic knight's castle with a rather loud, imitation siren-sound. Relatively quickly, Finn had given up his markedly disinterested I'm-too-cool-and-too-old-for-this attitude towards five-year-old Paul and, after first standing helplessly in the latter's nursery and, to his own surprise, enviously gazing at his piles of toys, knelt down next to him on the soft car carpet and started to play along. Finn grabbed the small command vehicle from the fire station, carefully put two firefighters in it, hurriedly pushed it behind Paul's turntable ladder and enlightened the little boy: "That's the command vehicle, it has to go first!" Finn hesitated for a moment and then imitated the siren sounds himself. Far too embarrassing, actually, but hey, he was kind of babysitting the five-year-old right now. At least in his opinion. And there was no one he had to be embarrassed in front of anyway. "Well, are you playing nicely?" Finn's and Paul's mother asked out of nowhere, almost in sync, causing Finn to turn around frantically and jump up, smoothing his shirt back down and glancing nervously at his mother. They had already been standing quietly in the doorway for a few minutes, watching in amusement as twelve-year-old Finn, who was usually extremely careful to be as cool as possible in his every situation, had first hesitantly knelt down next to Paul on the floor and gradually started to play along with him. Now he was standing in the room again, trying in vain to appear to the two adults again as if he were a cool teenager who, after all, had only been babysitting the kindergartner. "Uh, yeah, I was just ... I was just explaining to him that the squad car has to go in front of the turntable ladder!" he brought out, decidedly bored, and realized, as soon as those words had left his mouth, that that must have been the most embarrassing excuse in the history of all embarrassing excuses. "Of course, buddy ..." his mother said, still ecstatic, as she tousled Finn's hair. "Mooooooom!" he promptly complained, routinely brushing his hair back to the side as it should be with his left hand. "Well Pauli, are you having fun?" first Paul's mother, then his mother too, turned to the little boy who had meanwhile just kept playing. Paul nodded happily and grinned from ear to ear. "Are you thirsty?" asked his mother and almost simultaneously Finn's mother, "Do you want some apples?" Paul didn't even catch up with nodding. The two women looked at the little boy in delight and Finn watched the scene in confusion. "What does your Pampers look like, honey-bear?" asked Paul's mother almost as ecstatically as she had just asked her little wish child if he was thirsty. Instead of waiting even a second for an answer, she unceremoniously lifted the five-year-old up, abruptly pulled him out of his play and grabbed his thick diaper bottom: "Ohhhh, you've really peed a lot again," she noted, lifting up Paul's T-shirt and pulling the recognizably wet diaper outward against his back while the five-year-old stood passively next to Finn and looked down at the Playmobil vehicles. "Do you think we should change you?" she asked Paul still in an over-friendly tone while Finn looked fascinated at the five-year-old next to him. At most a head shorter than him, the boy was still allowed to wear diapers. The attention of all present turned only around Paul, only he himself cared more about his toys. Finn's mother stroked Paul's hair and asked just as happily: "Shall we change you, Pauli? You're soaking wet down there!" Paul was beginning to understand what the two women circling him wanted from him: "No!" he shouted and shook his head vigorously. Finn looked at him, spellbound. Right decision, he grinned. When Finn still wore diapers, he never wanted to get rid of them either, it was much too nice when it was wet and warm down there. But what did he have to decide back then? Anyway, diapers, those were the days, he thought wistfully as he looked at the carefully stacked diapers on Paul's changing table. He didn't have to fear that his mother would take notice. Finn could have done a flossdance or a handstand and gone unnoticed, it was all about Paul right now. Only around Paul. "Oh, Pauli, don't you mean ..." his mother asked again, but Paul insisted, "No, don't change now!" Finn now expected from his own experience that Paul's wish would be studiously ignored by the two adults. "Well, if you say so," said his mother and tickled the five-year-old's hair before giving him another muffled slap on his diaper bottom and disappearing into the hallway along with Finn's mother and the words, "We'll make you some apples, honey-bear!" Hey, he wanted apples too, Finn thought, half offended, half amused. After staring holes in the room for a moment as he pondered the behavior of the two mothers, he knelt down next to the little boy again and joined in on his knight castle firefighting game. Finn was fascinated by diapers. Always had been. Even when he had worn them himself, in fact, he never wanted to get rid of them. Was unfortunately not his decision, instead his parents had gotten him dry and clean relatively quickly and successfully, but thus had no influence on his diaper passion. The possibility to just go in your pants if you have to pee. Even in kindergarten he would have liked to swap places with the kids who regularly wet their pants because they didn't want to interrupt their play, but of corse he found it too embarrassing to actually do. And now he had met Paul, the five-year-old son of Antonia, his mother's best friend. She had just moved back home from northern part of the country with her family, and Paul was a five-year-old who still wore diapers like it was the most normal thing in the world. "Because of all the stress of moving and somehow we haven't really gotten around to it yet," Antonia had succinctly tried to defend herself when Finn's mother had noticed the kindergartener's diaper. "Oh, he's still got time," his mother had said quickly, and was already infatuated with her best friend's son and had spent half the time they had been here today looking and caring after Paul. Usually, she complained how she had so little time now that she had her full-time job again because Finn was such an independent big boy by now. At least that's what she had told him. Yes, Finn was envious. He wanted to be like Paul, who was having a lot of fun with his numerous fire engines and whose obviously very wet diaper was bulging in his jeans, pressing past the middle seam and bulging out his bottom. Why was Paul still allowed to wear diapers at five and Finn not? While Finn was thinking all sorts of thoughts, the five-year-old suddenly stopped, frozen in mid-motion. Finn already knew this by now, Paul just peed in his diaper, didn't even try to hide it. Shortly after, he squeezed his legs together briefly and then just kept playing. "We have to get up there!", Finn played along and pointed to the big tower of the black-green plastic castle and pushed the turntable ladder into position while Paul cranked it up. Somehow it was really fun, especially with the huge amount of toys waiting in Paul's room. A little later Finn was almost as chaugt up in the game as little Paul, before the two were interrupted again by their mothers. This time, however, only for the promised snack of sliced apples and apple juice. Only at this sight, the two children realized that they were both quite thirsty and apettite. Soon the glasses were empty, the apples gone, and Antonia enjoyed being able to have a quiet conversation with Finn's mother in the living room. The firefighting at the knight's castle dragged on for several hours, with more and more fire engines being set up by the two of them, hoses being laid, firefighters being fitted with breathing masks, and police cars being ordered to the scene to cordon off the area. When Antonia realized at some point, startled, that they really should check on the children again, they found the two of them quietly and animatedly playing in the midst of Playmobil. Paul had pooped his Pampers, you could smell it immediately. Already half an hour ago, but only Paul and Finn knew that. When the five-year-old got up to get the police helicopter from the other corner of the room, he hadn't even straightened up properly when he groaned briefly, clenched his hands into fists and slowly squatted again while pressing. Finn watched spellbound as Paul's diaper bottom continued to bulge while his big business pushed into his pampers and as Paul, just having finished, stood back up, pressed his right hand against his bottom and felt what he had just done. Then both boys acted as if they had agreed, as if nothing had happened. For more than an hour. It stank slightly, but Finn didn't mind. Instead, they just kept playing and making friends. Finn told Paul a lot about firefighting and police, after all he had been very interested in it himself in the past: "This is the rescue truck, it mainly brings the tools that the firefighters need, for example when they want to rescue people from cars", he introduced one of the signal red trucks and pushed up the small mini roller shutter that was placed in front of the Playmobil tools to present the same. "What's that?" asked Paul, pointing to one of the tools. In general, Paul was really good at asking questions, he did practically nothing but pester Finn with questions. First to the fire trucks and then finally, when he ran out of questions there, to Finn himself: "Are you going to school already?", Paul asked with interest, meanwhile extending and retracting the turntable ladder again and again. "Yes," Finn answered quickly. "Do you learn anything about the fire department?", Paul then asked with interest and looked at Finn, sitting cross-legged in front of him with wide eyes. Finn wondered if the boy would eventually run out of questions. He didn't. "No, unfortunately, I didn't learn about fire fighting at school. Not yet, anyway. Might come!" he replied. "How old are you, then?" asked Paul, not giving Finn's answer much thought. Did it make any difference at all what Finn said, or was Paul just trying to annoy him with his questions? Wait, what had the little stinker asked just now? How old Finn was? Finn hesitated. Twelve years old, he usually insisted energetically. Even the other day, when he wanted to buy Fortnite Battle Royale at the local big electronics retailer and, although he showed his student ID, the cashier didn't believe he was already twelve. Finn was really small for his age, 1.37 meters short, relatively thin and had soft facial features, if anyone estimated his age, then he was usually off by at least two years and was then usually immediately pointed out by Finn that he was "already twelve years old"! And that even though Finn made sure to wear youthful clothes. A nice grey-light blue Supreme Tshirt with neon blue hood and a Tech Stretch Skinnyjeans with h, in addition its elaborately to the side combed shining brown hair, one must've been able to see that he was no ten or nine year old! At least that's what Finn thought. But when little Paul asked him how old he was, this boy with whom he had just spent two hours immersed in the an universe of toy cars and plastic firefighters, he was overcome for the first time with the desire to answer this question with something other than his actual age. "I'm already eight!" he said with conviction, just as an eight-year-old would say. It was just fitting, an eight-year-old playing with a five-year-old with the coolest Playmobil collection in the world. A remarkable contrast to how he had complained this morning that he was definitely too old to come along with his mother to Antonia and her family today, who would surely be totally uncool and how he would much rather play Battlefield instead. And besides, he wanted to meet with Luca this afternoon! Both had been taken care of, Finn had just landed in another world, where it was not important to be as adult as possible, rather in a fifteen-square-meter nursery world in which one did not have to worry about anything and in which it was only important to have fun. "Wow, you're big!", Paul nevertheless noted, impressed. Finn wondered what he would have said if Finn had told him he was already twelve. He would probably never know. "Oh, someone has a full diaper, could it be? Pooh!" joked Finn's mother, and Antonia lifted her son, this time without asking him first, directly onto the large changing table and set him down on its edge. "Wait, I'll help you!" said Finn's mother, willingly standing next to Antonia while Finn hurriedly slipped out of the room as Paul's diaper was opened. It stank too much now, but didn't seem to impress the two women. Finn, meanwhile, stood in the bright hallway and pulled out his smartphone for the first time in many hours to answer all the messages that had come in in the meantime. "Grand operations tonight?" asked Luca. "Boy, it's like 25 degrees or something, let's go swimming," was Finn's reply. Luca always thought just about playing video games, but there was really plenty of time for that during summer vacation. After a short swipe to his message overview, a total of fifty-eight group messages awaited him. Their friend group had been discussing the same thing he and Luca had just been discussing: pool or gaming. Anyhow, they decived to go to the pool some hours ago. Annoyed, Finn routinely slid his phone back into his pocket and looked through the half-open door at the changing table. The two mothers had their backs turned to him, Paul was looking at the ceiling, and so once again no one noticed him. Paul's full diaper had already been disposed of and Antonia was just unfolding a new diaper for Paul. There it was, shiny white, with green-blue accents, soft and fluffy. Big enough that it would probably fit him as well. Less than four feet from him. Pampers Babydry size 7, Finn was pretty sure. The newly introduced largest diaper size, only slightly larger than the old size 6+, but still definitely large enough to reasonably fit Finn as well. That was the first thought he had when he walked into Paul's nursery today. The second thought was "take it with you!", the third one was "how?". If he had his backpack with him, that would have been the obvious and easiest method, but it was under his desk at home, where else would it be? The only, at least halfway realistic variant he had found was to put on the diaper. Just quickly sneak into the bathroom, put the diaper on under his pants and then smuggle it home that way, he had thought it through. But how had his father explained it to him just recently? Risk is defined as the probability of occurrence for an event times the potential harm. The probability of occurrence, though it was somewhat difficult to assess, was neither particularly low nor particularly high. At least on Paul, the diaper was not to be overlooked, and not only because of how full it happened to be, but also because it was sticking out of the top of his pants, which could also happen to him. But the damage was much more serious. How could he explain to his mother why he had suddenly put on one of Paul's diapers? He couldn't think of any excuse, it was impossible. Even his incredible talent for excuses couldn't help him. As a result, the risk was too high. And the diapers were only a few meters away from him, but still out of reach. Then rather buy some in a supermarket further away. Although he had often researched online for suitable supermarkets and their product range and had come close several times, he had never dared to do that either. Unreachable. Instead, Finn now stood nervously in the bright hallway, glanced once through the large windows into the front yard, then quickly turned around and looked back into Paul's chaotic and at the same time so familiar-comfortable-looking nursery. Distracted, he reached for his smartphone again and checked his messages another time - still all irrelevant, but he felt he had to escape this childrens world now. He was already twelve, after all. But he didn't want to! Careful not to look nervous, he flipped his phone around restlessly in his right hand, the way people used to do with Fidget spinners, and leaned casually against the sill of the window behind him. "Paul," was emblazoned in large, colorful wooden letters on the dark wooden door outside his bedroom. Pretty obvious. There had to be a law somewhere that children always had their names stuck to their door in big wooden letters, especially children who couldn't read themselves yet, he grinned. He himself had torn down the "FINN" lettering with his own hands during the last renovation project not quite a year ago, he thought it was too childish and colorful even then. Instead, he had started decorating his door with all kinds of stickers. With Apple, Nike, BMW and many others, many large companies had a small branch on his room door, but also greats of the music scene had pitched their tents on the two square meters of room door. Kraftklub, Rammstein but also international bands like Blink 182 and Papa Roach. Seemed much cooler than four colorful letters. But, and Finn felt this quite clearly when he looked at Paul's room door, there was something missing without these four letters. It was hard to grasp, but for the first time he thought about whether he had perhaps given up on something too soon. No, not the attempt to explain to Leon that gaming with mouse and keyboard was simply better than with a gamepad. Nor skateboarding, he was just bad at it. His old children's room back then, with a bunk bed, a car carpet just like Paul's and all the light wooden furniture that smelled so pleasantly of this very material. On the other hand, he preferred his current room with its gaming PC and comfortable big bed, and it was really good to show off to friends. But the sight of Paul's nursery, and Finn would only realize this later, triggered a comforting, familiar feeling of security. His room had looked very much like this for most of his life. It had been different times. "There, that was it already! It was quick, wasn't it sweetheart?", Antonia asked her son joyfully, while she lifted him down from the changing table and placed him in front of it. Not a fraction of a second passed before Paul turned back to the Playmobil pile while Finn was still standing in the hallway, moving slowly and hesitantly back into the nursery. "I'll watch out for Paul some more time!" he replied to his mother's look without being asked, and couldn't help smiling. "See, I told you it wouldn't be that bad!" his mother responded, making Finn grumble a bit both inside and out. But she was right, it really hadn't gotten that bad: "We'll be leaving in an hour, too, and then you'll be rid of your annoying old mother again!" she said, laughing in her friend's direction and hugging Finn at the same time. Finally she had noticed that he was still there, Finn thought relieved and hugged his mother back. Only briefly, though, because Antonia was already standing in the doorway: "Oh yes, I really have to show you what Pauli made for me in kindergarten before the summer vacations!" And off they went. All that was left was the sound of Paul's engine and Finn's feet as he slowly walked past the changing table, his gaze briefly glued to it, and finally he stood rooted to the spot between the changing table and the knight's castle. Decision paralysis. Finn had to go to the bathroom. Definitely nothing dramatic, because Finn had to go to the toilet comparatively often for his age, at least once every night and more often during the day. But it was definitely not a problem, he had gotten used to it. But now he stood there, in the middle of the room of this kindergartener and in his brain flashed the thought, simply not to go to the toilet. Yet. He could do that later! Instead, he knelt down next to Paul and clearly felt how he had to go relatively urgently. His bladder was pressing and sending signals to his brain: "Level reached! To the bathroom now!". Finn's heart pounded as he pressed a hand between against his crotch . As little children are known to do when they urgently need to go to the toilet, but when it was more important to them to continue playing than to lose a few minutes by going to the toilet sooner or later. This was definitely not necessary for Finn right now, but he just thought it was part of the game. An eight year old who was engrossed in playing with Playmobil and more or less desperately tried to postpone going to the toilet. He didn't bother to ask himself why the hell he was doing that right now. "The knight is hurt! We need an ambulance," Paul said meanwhile, dropping several Playmobil knights into the much too small plastic castle made more for small tin soldiers, turning on the flashing light on the ambulance and rolling it in front of the castle. No wonder the knights are injured when they are dropped several feet above the ground by a giant, Finn joked quietly to himself while Paul let the paramedics out and pushed them toward the castle. "Stop!" said one of the policemen, or rather Finn, disguising his voice in a way that actually made you burst out laughing, "They can't go up into the castle, there's still fire raging! It's way too dangerous for them, we'll send a fire crew up and bring them down the injured!" "All right, thank you!" the paramedic replied after a brief pause for understanding. Man, the training standards for EMTs are getting lower and lower, Finn joked with himself again. If he could come up with jokes as good as this while gaming, he'd be a top twitc streamer, he grinned. The twelve-year-old, one hand still pressed between his legs, leaned over to the aerial ladder standing next to Paul and lowered its basket to the ground: "We're doing this with the ladder, chief!", Finn had the one firefighter say to his squad leader, and Paul watched the knight rescue in high anticipation. The turntable ladder went up, complete with hose, syringe, and two firefighters, and shortly thereafter was already transporting the first knight down. Finn squeezed his legs together a little more. "Do you have to go wee-wee?" Paul suddenly asked, although he really should have been playing the paramedic now. Finn shook his head hurriedly. First rule when you have to go to the bathroom urgently: Never admit that you have to go to the bathroom urgently! Because, that's how it is. In response, Paul just grinned knowingly. Of course, he was a five-year-old and not a complete idiot, and therefore he thought he knew exactly what Finn was doing. Even if not from his own experience, Finn thought, while saying some nonsense, handing over the first knight with fall trauma to the Playmobil paramedics. And shortly after, the second. And the third. Time passed, and Finn's mind was less and less on the task at hand. His bladder was tingling, his heart was pounding, and he couldn't remember the last time he'd held in this long. He was already careful not to tilt his upper body too far forward, lest the sensation became too strong. Anyway, what was that strange feeling? It made one quite jittery, but actually did not hurt at all. Recurring like a knock, it transmitted "overfill, overfill!" faster and faster. Finn imagined that there was a small dam control room in his body with small employees who were all going crazy because the dam was threatening to overflow, but the order from above was still: "Close the hatches!" An order that obviously could only be reconciled with reality for a limited time. The little lock-keepers became more and more nervous, drumming furiously against the door of the lock management, until they changed the order: "Open the locks!" Finn simply started to pee. Kneeling down, next to Paul on his car carpet. With full intention. Immediately the whole world became wet. Finn did not think, otherwise he would have noticed what he was doing. He only felt. The wetness, the fantastic warmth and above all this incredible relief. Like when you finally get something to drink in your hands after ten kilometers of longboarding in the middle of summer. Like the last ring of the school gong on the last day of school before summer vacation. Holy Shit. Everything in Finn relaxed, he pulled away his wet left hand that was almost defiantly still pressed between his legs, and propped it up on the floor instead. Suddenly everything was silent, only the sound of a few drops of pee falling from Finn's soaked pants to the floor like the knights from Paul's hand earlier, filled the room. Slowly, the twelve-year-old's brain began to work again. His pants: completely wet. His socks, too. The carpet, too. Slowly, Finn lifted his gaze and met Paul's. He stared open-mouthed at him in equal measure of indignation and amazement. For a moment he looked Finn straight in the eye, then jumped up and ran out of the room: "Finn peed his pants," he shouted, while he ran downstairs to the living room to tell the adults. Hey, I didn't snitch on him earlier either, Finn thought to himself at first. Then reality hit him and his next five thoughts were: Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. What had he just done?