In the latter few months of 2020, a contagious disease began to take the world by storm. It was a disease that left human society as we knew it completely and utterly unable to fight against it. A disease that forever reshaped the structure of civilization.

At a first glance, there is no way that this virus could have had such a strong, irreversible impact on the world. After all, it wasn’t even fatal. In fact, ever since the virus’s inception in October 2020, the deaths reported to be a direct cause of the virus worldwide is exactly zero. The absolute worse health effect that the virus had on its victims was a mild cough, which, for some reason, only lasted for seven days in 99.99% percent of cases. This is the very effect that it had on the vast majority of the population—that is, about 89% of the population.

However, the problem lied in how it affected that remaining 11% of the population.

Effects in this small portion of the population were noticed within the first two weeks of the virus’s outbreak. Unsurprisingly, by far the most frequent accounts arose from Eastern Asia. As per the rest of the world, denizens of countries such as China, the Koreas, Japan, and Taiwan were afflicted with the virus, and came down with a mild cough for precisely a week. The men of these countries came out of their sick period in the same way they entered it—with no permanent changes to their physiologies, constitutions, or appearances. However… changes in all of these areas were found in women after they rebounded from their illnesses. And, unsurprisingly, the first to be detected was the change in appearance. While it was difficult at first to discern who exactly this phenomenon was affecting, a consensus was eventually reached among the scientific community and society at large:

For some reason, East Asian females afflicted by the virus were getting taller.

All around the eastern part of the continent, there were reports from husbands detailing that they suddenly had to look up at their wives; records from guardians and caregivers concerned that their daughters were growing too quickly; accounts from teachers that their female students were becoming unruly due to the simple fact that they were now bigger. Communities were at an absolute loss at what to do in face of this phenomenon… but it was manageable—or at least, possible to ignore—for about the first month. This is because it seemed like afflicted females grew at a steady rate of about one inch per week—this uniformity only adding to the strangeness of the virus. This meant that about a month after a woman recovered from the sick period, they were four inches taller than they were before.

Of course, these unnatural growth spurts came to become troubling when they inevitably continued past four inches. Women and girls were beginning outgrowing their clothes. Public structures such as doors and seats were becoming too small for women to fit through or in. And of course, as a result of their increased mass, afflicted women were becoming generally hungrier as it became harder to fill their stomachs. However… these problems were indeed met with solutions. Clothes companies in East Asia began mass producing female garments at an enlarged size, public services were set to be reworked, and food manufacturers altered their practices to begin generating higher quantities of basic goods. But of course, these new actions placed a notable strain on East Asian economies. The process of completely remodeling multiple aspects of society was not a cheap one.

This is when they began to dominate politics. And thus, when they began to dominate society as we know it.

It was the election season of 2021 in Japan, taking place in October as usual. By this time—about nine months after the initial spread of the virus—the average Japanese woman was about 8 feet tall. This year, a marginal amount of women ran for the House of Representatives and House of Councillors, which together comprise the National Diet: the national legislature of Japan. Female voters all around the country, desperate for relief from a too small and insufficient world, were desperate for leaders that would lead them to the light. These female politicians ran on the rhetoric that a woman would be the best option to enact policy and provide for the needs of women suffering alongside her, and that they should all stick together during these perilous, trying times.

However, while most of the female candidates ran on this sympathetic, piteous rhetoric, only one candidate ran on a different policy. Akari Nakazawa, a young woman with no experience in politics prior to that fateful year’s election, promoted the idea that men were now inherently inferior to women, and that they could not provide for the needs of a population that had long since surpassed them. A rather unprofessional candidate, she consistently downplayed, insulted, and ridiculed her male opponents. Of course, this was all verbal, but she routinely invited male opposition to physical altercations and contests, in order to rile up the voter base. None of her opposition ever took her up on these offers… which still did serve to upset insulted male voters, and vindicate female voters. The vast majority of her campaign materials, ranging from posters, pins, and political cartoons made in her support, contained images of women triumphing over smaller men. This propaganda ranged in abstractness and severity; while some contained abstract representations of a female icon simply appearing larger than a male one, some posters and the like featured blatant images of a confidant woman overpowering a man in an arm wrestling match.

Nakazawa’s rhetoric empowered women across the country—even those that couldn’t even vote for her. As opposed to other candidate’s messages, Nakazawa made the growing women feel confident, ensured, and proud of their stronger, and in her words, more “beautiful” statures. After all, she was sure as hell proud, and let the public know it. Of course, these actions and rhetoric of Nakazawa’s did upset voters to a high degree—both men and women alike. However, a controversial candidate made has always made for a popular candidate. Just a week before election day, the 8’10” Nakazawa was undisputedly the most popular candidate, rallying a voter base of a size that was never before seen in Japanese history.

However… she didn’t win a seat in the National Diet. This is because the week before Election Day, Nakazawa was approached by female candidates whose positions in the legislature were already all but won. These candidates implored her to withdraw from the race for the legislature… so they could instead nominate her for prime minister. Nakazawa was immediately compelled, and dropped out of the race just a few days before election day.

On that election day, female representatives took the National Diet by storm, resulting in an overwhelming majority of female members. In an unprecedentedly swift action, these representatives immediately nominated Akari Nakazawa as prime minister—an action which dissenters and the emperor of Japan had no power to decline.

For those who detest the absolute rule that East Asian women have on the world’s politics, the nomination of Nakazawa is often seen as the end of the world as they knew it.

A short time after Nakazawa’s decisive rise to power, what could only be referred to as coups started to spring up in China, Mongolia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau, South Korea, and even North Korea. Women in these countries were desperate for reprieve from the numerous problems that now plagued them, and were looking for political action to grant them this. In their desperation, these women did not wait for their respective election seasons to roll by to take action. Greatly inspired by Nakazawa’s messages of empowerment and pride, masses of women simply took government buildings and public facilities by storm, and instated themselves there—whether it be on the national, state, or local level. In these countries, the processes were rather peaceful and non violent—with the standing governments of these nations not fighting back. Notably, the process of picking leaders amongst the women themselves was rather smooth as well, with many communities already having certain women who they had already planned to be leader.

But, this all raises the question: how could these coups be so peaceful? How could these countries simply lie down and roll over while their governments were usurped—especially so for the more authoritarian nations of North Korea and China? To put it simply… if average society was baffled by the peculiarities of this virus, then the scientific community was absolutely dumbfounded.

An increase in height was not the only effect that the virus had on those it infected. The first recorded instance of this second effect was captured in just the second week of the virus’s outbreak. While fooling around with a drunk group of friends on video, a similarly drunk young woman from Hong Kong accidentally stumbled and fell off of a patio. Clearly not in the right mind, the friend who was recording went to the edge of the patio to to continue filming. The fall was a long one—it wouldn’t have killed her, but it should have done lasting damage. There was simply no logical way that a normal person could just walk that fall off.

And yet, the women who fell simply got back to her feet a few seconds after the fall, brushed herself off, and walked back up the patio like nothing happened.

Indeed, the virus greatly strengthened the physical bodies and constitutions of afflicted individuals. Contrary to the early popular belief, it is not like the outer bodies of infected women simply became “harder,” like a protective shell. Indeed, the skin, hair, nails, and other areas of their bodies still felt as soft, sturdy, or flimsy as they should feel on any other human’s body.  No, rather… it was as if these bodies became “tougher.” A blunt impact, a cut, a puncture—all of these types of injuries had to go much deeper into a woman’s body to do them harm. And even then, when these women did feel some sort of pain, it was as if their pain receptors were greatly diluted. Even though this was the case, all other touch receptors in these women’s bodies remained intact—allowing them to still notice, but not feel the pain of a force that would be harmful to any other human.

While this “pain resistance” was of course immediately caught by the public eye, it was truly researched and put to its limit by scientific and military researchers. In East Asian countries—and other countries that will be mentioned at a later time—trials were ran on volunteered afflicted women. In every country, territory, state, etc., these trails were all the same: they inflicted these women with gradually increasing degrees of pain. Or, at least, things that should have been painful.

In one specific research study, it started out with a prick of a needle. No recorded pain was felt as a result of this. A paper cut. No recorded pain. Shampoo applied to one’s eyes. A honeybee sting. A full-force punch from a grown, peak condition male. The slamming of a hammer upon laid out fingers. A bullet ant sting. A forty foot fall. A blow from a shotgun. A lethal shock.

East Asian women subjected to these elements all reported that while they could indeed feel these forces, they felt little to no actual pain. But their own accounts were hardly necessary to tell this. The researchers, professionals, and even the people inflicting the would-be pain could see with their eyes that these women felt no discomfort at all. They observed amazonian women twiddling with their fingers as they were fired at with rifles, yawning as their hands were hammered repeatedly, teens rolling their eyes while strapped to chairs surging with electricity.

That said, the second aspect of the virus that baffled scientists was the age range in which it fully took effect in East Asian. That is, the age range in which these women grew and experienced tougher bodies. Females of any age could simply contract the virus, but it quickly became evident that those between the ages of fifteen and fifty-five were the only ones that were growing. This cutoff was extremely rigid—if a fourteen year old girl contracted the virus and left the one-week sick period, they would not grow as a result of the virus at all. However, as soon as they turned fifteen, they would immediately start growing—whether their fifteenth birthday be a year, month, week, or day after their initial contraction. Inversely, if a fifty-five year old woman was in the midst of growing as a result of the disease and turned fifty-six, their growth would abruptly cease, with no signs of it gradually slowing down in the days prior to their fifty-sixth birthday.

The third and final of the main “peculiarities” of the virus was perhaps the easiest one to explain, but still no less strange. It was very clear that the growth aspect of the virus only presented itself in women on the East Coast of Asia. However… it also affected women of East Asian descent outside of this region. Women of the Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and other diasporas found themselves growing in size alongside their Asian-native counterparts. The countries of the United States, Canada, Brazil, India, Australia, and Russia stood still as their East Asian female population rapidly grew in size.

This phenomenon let researchers know that this growth was not a result of the geographic region of East Asia itself. Rather, it had to be the result of the genetics of East Asian women. Or at least… that’s what the scientific community told themselves. In actuality, even after years of research, they could not discern a single gene that the virus affected. It was still completely unknown how it made the distinction between female or male, and East Asian or any other ethnicity.

To get back to politics… it was some time after Nakazawa’s success in Japan that things began to get ugly in the majority of these aforementioned diasporic nations, with only India following suit with the peaceful coups of its East Asian neighbors.

One could easily blame it on the vastly different cultures of the West compared to the East. For example, one can take a look at the United States. The “might makes right” approach of this country’s government and military, and the far less respectful and honorable livelihoods of women of East Asian descent in this country are clear.

Of course, these two attitudes did not mesh well together when afflicted women of these countries launched their own coups against their national and local governments.

While East Asian governments knew better than to fight back against their nigh-invulnerable insurgents, the more violent natures of Western governments and Western infected women made it difficult for such rationale to shine through. American families watched on in shock as women of East Asian descent stormed government facilities such as the White House—already desperate for reprieve from the problems that plagued them at their larger sizes, but thrusted into action by the rhetoric of Nakazawa. They then watched on in horror as the U.S. army and police force stepped in to defend these facilities… only to be swiftly and humiliatingly defeated by women with their bare hands.

The incident at the White House in particular was part of a campaign that came to be known as “the Liberation of Washington,” in which other major facilities such as the Pentagon were captured. At the White House, the national guard fired upon the by now 9’0” tall women for minutes on end, yelling at him through megaphones and overhead announcers, donned on helicopters, to stop. The insurgents truly didn’t have to fight back—it was clear that the government’s heavy gunfire had absolutely no effect on them. But… maybe they fought back because they found the loud, overlapping voices to be annoying, or because they simply wanted to set a precedent for what was to come. Either way, the East Asian women turned their attention to their assailants, and made sure to deal with them before they formally captured the White House. Physically, even the strongest military general didn’t stand a chance against a woman who he was only chest-high to. Over two hundred personnel were injured—through trampling, being hurled, or just brute kicks and punches… and nine were killed.

After these violent happenings, all important personnel such as the president were evacuated from the White House and surrounding facilities, making it easy for the diasporic East Asian women to estate themselves as the country’s new leaders. Similarly to Japan, America also had an individual who was unanimously agreed upon to lead a shaky, desperate nation. Sophie Young had a similar prideful, self-powering rhetoric as her counterpart Nakazawa—if not more radical and chauvinistic.

During her campaigns, Young brought to the public eye the discrimination she faced as an Asian girl growing up in a predominantly white community. As the only Asian kid in her school and neighborhood, she was subjected to verbal abuse—including but not limited to cruel names, harassment, and outright slurs—exclusion… and even physical violence. She had a scar on the right side of her forehead, underneath her hair, to prove it… it seemed as if the virus did not heal scars that were formed before contracting it. She claims that she gained this scar in high school, from a violent hate crime perpetrated by a group of white male upperclassman—an account that many now-remorseful bystanders back up.

Due to this past of hers, Sophie Young adopted a “strike first” ideology, in which she believed that East Asian women should assert some sort of control over the multitude of more “brutish” demographics, before this overwhelming majority of the population could make their lives hell in return. Of course, this ideology was rooted in supremacist belief.

As a result of this, in the months following President Young’s ascent to power, life became substantially worse for women who weren’t from East Asia or of East Asian descent. It wasn’t that policies, laws, or institutions were put in place to systematically discriminate against those who weren’t East Asian, it was that it was extremely difficult to prosecute and punish East Asian women for harming, assaulting or otherwise negatively impacting the smaller population. It did not help that these enlarged women were replacing individuals in positions such as law enforcement and the judiciary at an alarming rate… meaning that this small group of women had all of the say-so in dealing out punishment for the entire population. Overall, anyone who was not an East Asian female came to be an indisputable second-class citizen.

Of course, the changes that were seen in America could be seen in countries all around the world outside of East Asia. When the aforementioned countries of Canada, Brazil, India, Australia, and Russia were overtaken by their East Asian female population, the rest of their demographics experienced the same second-class citizenship as most of the United States.

However, it was halfway through 2022 that the world truly began to change for those outside of these countries. In July of this year, a conference was held in Pyongyang, in what was now just Korea. This is because just a few months prior to this conference, an extremely short bout of diplomacy had united the North and South divisions of the Korean Peninsula. After all, the divide between the countries had been brought about through the actions of men—a fact that the new female leaders of Korea acknowledged and sought to undo.

This July conference was held in Pyongyang to reflect this brand new, bright future which would be brought about by the new leadership. At this conference, top representatives from Japan, China, Korea, Mongolia, and the newly independent Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau, as well as the United States, Canada, Brazil, India, Australia, and Russia met up to discuss one simple thing: Their land claims on the rest of the world.

Japan, now referred to once more as the Empire of Japan, laid claim to the entirety of Southeast Asia, New Zealand, the rest of Oceania, and any other islands left in the Pacific Ocean, save for Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaii.

China received most of Central and South Asia, save for India and many of its neighbors. This provided China with countries such as Bhutan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and notably, Afghanistan. Additionally, China laid claim to the entire continent of Africa, as this country has been the continent’s largest trading partner for years.

Similarly, due to the fact that the European Union was one of Korea’s most important and essential trade partners, this country laid claim to the entirety of the continent. Everything from Portugal to the West, to Ukraine and Finland to the East, belonged to the tiny peninsula, as well as the islands of the United Kingdom, Ireland, Iceland, and Greenland, which was part of the Kingdom of Denmark.

The United States received the Middle East, from Turkey to Iran, for similar economic reasons. Additionally, it acquired Mexico, all of the Caribbean, and all islands in the Northern Atlantic.

It was Brazil that claimed all of Central America and the rest of South America, along with any islands in the Southern Atlantic.

Healing from the harmful effects of Partition under wise East Asian leadership, India reunified with Pakistan, and also absorbed Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Bangladesh.

In a move that didn’t surprise many at all, Australia obtained its neighbor New Zealand, with which they shared a rich history.

Only the countries of Mongolia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and Russia did not make new claims on land—either content with the land they already had, or not ready or willing to waste resources to colonize other parts of the world.

That is precisely what this was: colonization. East Asian women, who now took up every military position in the colonizing countries, entered their target territories by force and without warning. After seeing the violent display in the United States… the vast majority of countries surrendered peacefully and agreed to come under the rule of whatever country sought to subjugate them. As for those countries that did not surrender peacefully…

Nonetheless, by the time that October 2022 rolled by, there were only thirteen countries on planet Earth: the aforementioned China, Korea, Mongolia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau, as well as the United States, Canada, Brazil, India, Australia, Russia, and the Empire of Japan.

Coincidentally, this was two years after the virus first emerged, and two years after it got its name.

Named after the Japanese word for “bloom,” due to the fact that this was the first country to undergo major upheavals due to the affliction, this virus that caused East Asian women to grow to an average height of 12 feet came to be known as the Saku virus, or as it’s sometimes known, just Saku.