The rainbow looked fake.
It curved across the gray Irish sky like someone had dragged a color slider across the clouds. Too sharp. Too bright. Too intentional.
Satoshi pulled his rental off the one-lane road, tires crackling on loose gravel. He left the car idling and stepped out, pulling his coat tight as a wind rolled up from the hills. He scanned the horizon. Sheep dotted the fields, unmoving. The air had that damp heaviness before a storm. Yet the rainbow didn’t waver.
He followed the footpath up a knotted hill, boots squelching through mud and moss. The rainbow flickered. A blink later, it vanished.
In its place stood a man no taller than a child, dressed like he’d fallen out of a storybook—green trousers, brass buttons, a tiny gold chain swinging from a pocket. His beard was the color of sunset rust. And he was scrolling a sleek smartphone.
“‘Bout time,” the little man muttered without looking up.
Satoshi halted. “Sorry. Did you… were you expecting someone?”
The man looked up with eyes too clear, too steady. “I was expecting you.”
Satoshi’s muscles locked. Not gradually, not painfully. Just—stopped. Frozen from the neck down. His balance held, but only barely.
“What the hell is this?” he rasped, trying to wrench his feet.
“A failsafe.” The man pocketed the phone and strolled forward, inspecting him like a half-finished statue. “You’re quicker than most, I’ll give you that. Curious types always are.”
“You—what are you?”
The man sighed. “That’s a boring question. You already know.”
Satoshi’s pulse quickened. The height. The clothes. The rainbow.
“You’re a leprechaun.”
“Ding ding. And you’re a ghost who lives in blockchain ledgers and conspiracy forums.” He leaned in. “You’re Satoshi Nakamoto.”
Satoshi scowled. “I’m not—”
“Spare me. Every one of you says that. Doesn’t matter if you invented Bitcoin or just mined your first dogcoin in a college dorm. You’ve got a pot of gold. And I want it.”
“I don’t—”
The leprechaun pulled out his phone again. It had a custom casing shaped like a silver coin, with a swirling Celtic rune embossed across the back.
“Private key,” he said, thumbing open an app labeled RainBank.
Satoshi laughed bitterly. “You want me to Venmo you a pot of gold?”
“No,” the leprechaun said. “I want the key to the first digital treasure humanity ever buried.”
His tone had changed. Less mischief now. More edge. His fingers danced across the screen. Holographic numbers floated in the air for a moment before blinking out.
“You think this is a game? You stole our legacy. You turned magic into math, turned belief into brute force hashing. You made wonder… predictable.”
He paced in tight circles.
“We used to deal in wishes and riddles. Now it’s all liquidity pools and market caps. But I adapted. I learned. I’ve got smart contracts riding fairy rings, oracles nested in folklore databases. You don’t want to know what I did with Uniswap.”
Satoshi’s mind spun. This thing wasn’t just magical—it was technical. It spoke the language of the future with a tongue forged in myth.
“I’m not who you think I am,” he said.
“Doesn’t matter,” the leprechaun snapped. “You’ve got something. Cold wallets. Token access. NFT deeds. You all do. I’m not leaving empty-handed.”
Satoshi inhaled slowly, weighing his options. He had one active wallet on him. A burner. Seven figures, give or take.
But this wasn’t about money. Not really.
“Why do you care?” he said. “You think you’re reclaiming something? This isn’t gold. It’s volatility. FOMO. It’s—”
“It’s ours,” the leprechaun snarled. “You just gave it new packaging.”
He held up the phone. The app flickered, hovering over Satoshi’s face like a fingerprint scanner.
“One last chance. The key, or I melt your memories into the soil and start over with the next Satoshi down the line.”
Satoshi stared at the screen. His heart pounded. He said, quietly:
“You’re clever. But if you really understood crypto, you’d know: anyone who gives up a key doesn’t deserve to hold it.”
The screen on the leprechaun’s phone sizzled. Smoke curled up from the seams. Sparks spat from the rune.
The leprechaun stared at it, horrified.
“You… you cursed the wallet?”
“No,” said Satoshi. “I just left a note for anyone who tried to skim it.”
“What note?”
Satoshi grinned.
“There is no pot of gold.”
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