(34) Day 4 Starting Hurdles (5.1 cm > 5.0 cm)
Yae was prepared to give me a run for my money. If I wanted to get my bedroom for the night, I was going to have to meet her expectations. Getting to my goal was not the easiest thing at all, especially since the first hurdle I had to clear was just getting to Yae.
When you are only 5 cm tall, even a small gap is an expansive chasm. Could I just jump the 15 cm gap from Yae’s desk to her bed? No, not unless I wanted to plummet straight to the floor. Could I toss the rope from the climbing set over to the bed? Yes I could, but I couldn’t get it to catch anywhere. Could I climb down from the desk? Yes, but I wouldn’t be able to get up afterwards.
Yae watched my struggle to get over to the bed with interest. I caught her giggling every time one of my attempts to cross over failed.
“Would you like some help?” she asked. “I’m enjoying watching you, but I’ll fall asleep if you take too long. If that happens, you’ll be sleeping out on the desk on your own, Touya. I have other things planned for you, y’know?”
She sure was teasing me. Okazaki had been just as aggressive, but Yae hadn’t been as bad all day. Now she was. Was it because of my current height or was it just because I was now playing Yae’s punishment game? Whatever the case, she seemed to be having fun.
“If you’re offering help, sure I’ll take it, Yae,” I was quick to accept. I didn’t like how Yae was treating my attempts as a sideshow, but I supposed that came with the territory when I was only 5 cm tall. I wanted to stop showing Yae my repeated failures and at least progress a little bit to get to the main event.
Yae complied and brought her hand over to the table. She didn’t pick me up, however. She simply held her hand out to me to hop onto.
“Jump on over,” Yae told me.
I did as I was told. I had gotten used to using Yae as a method of transport, and so had she. I held on tight while Yae pulled her arm back. She didn’t bring me near the end of the bed where the bag was but instead the opposite side.
“Okay. That’s all of the help you’ll be getting from me, Touya. I want to see what you’ll do from here,” Yae told me while still holding me above the bed.
“Okay…? So are you going to let me down?” I asked, noticing she wasn’t lowering her hand any further. “Yae?”
“Fufu~!” I heard Yae giggle. I had a bad feeling immediately when I heard it. I felt a shift as her hand suddenly tilted to a nearly vertical angle.
“Waaaah!” I fell, but as quickly as the ground beneath me had disappeared, I was stopped before hitting the bed. My body felt the pain of a sudden whiplash as it was pulled upwards.
“Scared you, didn’t I?” Yae smiled. She had stopped me mere centimeters (from her perspective) before hitting the bed using the rope that was still strapped to me. She caught it between her fingers. I was dangling in the air like a loose yoyo, swinging back and forth towards and away her left foot.
I scrunched my nose as I slammed into the wall of Yae’s foot. She had applied some lotion right after the bath, so it was smooth, but the remnants of the lotion clung to me. If I wasn’t careful, I’d be stuck to Yae’s foot before she even put me down. “Real funny, Yae.”
Yae laughed and let me rock back and forth into her foot a few more times. I tried catching myself with my hands to stop myself, but Yae’s gentle and subtle motions were still swinging me around at a speed I couldn’t easily stop. Both sides of my body became covered in Yae’s moisturizing lotion before my face actually stuck to the ball of Yae’s foot. The mix of the lotion’s lilac sent along with the saltiness of Yae’s sweat stained my tongue. Despite the sensory suppression, it was still a sharp sensation that made my nose scrunch up and tongue wince.
“Blargh… Gross… I think I’ll need another bath now,” I spat out the lotion and beads of sweat that had entered my mouth. Between the stickiness of the cream to the discord of the smells, I couldn’t call the experience pleasant.
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t help myself. I’ll use the cleaning balm later. Just consider that your second challenge since I already gave you a freebie by bringing you over,” she smiled as she properly lowered me down.
I would have liked to ask her what other challenges she had in mind, but the moment I was placed on Yae’s bed, I spaced out.
“Whoa...” I was more than a little speechless at the sight before my eyes.
Yae in a striped hoodie and shorts was adorable normally, but I was standing at her feet while she sat on her bed, knees raised and held against her chest. Her 160 cm body was 32 times my own 5 cm body. I had been around girls all day while they towered over me like kaiju just standing, but seeing someone lying down was a new experience.
Yae… How do I put it... I had considered her an island earlier while in the bath, but I honestly didn’t see all of her body since most of it was submerged and I was floating above it. Yae’s posture really put her size into perspective when I realized the trip up her legs was going to be a journey in its own right. Yae wasn’t simply statuesque. She was a land mass I was now going to be traveling over to get to my goal. I felt insignificant in comparison. I recalled Shima’s reaction to us boys earlier today. I probably looked like a bug to Yae.
“Fufu~n...” Yae played with her bangs where her hair clip would normally be while she looked down at me on the blanket I was standing on. “You look so cute down there, Touya. If this wasn’t a white sheet, I think I’d lose you.”
Didn’t I know it. Yae did have her phone and I did have the belt, so she could still keep track of me if anything went wrong. It didn’t seem necessary though because my dark clothes contrasted well on the white blanket. I didn’t like the comparison because of how accurate it was but it was like seeing a black ant on white tile.
I was about to start walking when my entire body was moved without my input. The entire bed shifted because Yae changed her resting position. Lying back with her head on her raised pillow, Yae stretched her legs out, nearly hitting me with her foot. The moment her leg stretched out, the blanket and bed bent to the weight of her body. There was a dip in the bed that pulled my 5 cm body closer to her the heel of her left foot. The foot itself was building sized on its own, and I found myself in its shadow while Yae adjusted her posture to better see me.
“Okay, Touya, are you ready?” Yae asked me while allowing her feet to sway left and right. Her right foot swayed towards her left side until it was almost horizontal with the bed. I backed away from her approaching toes. She happily scrunched them when she saw my tiny body by her heel.
“A-As I’ll ever be, I guess,” I answered. I stuttered. Seeing Yae’s feet reminded me of all the previous trouble I had today at girls’ feet. I was thankful for the sense mitigation spray because I could smell Yae’s feet thanks to how close I was. It would probably be unmanageable if I hadn’t had it used on me. I was actually able to answer her through the microphone.
“Good. Then I just have two rules for you, Touya,” Yae told me. “One: All you just have do is get over to the bag by climbing me. And two: If I make you do anything as a challenge, you’ll have to deal with it.”
“Something tells me that it’s a bit too late for that second rule,” I remarked.
“I just wanted to make sure you knew,” Yae was serious about not doing things without my permission. “And just so we’re aware, THAT place is off-limits still.”
To offer me a chance to walk around on her bed and her and then say that, Yae was a bit cruel, but it was understandable considering our ages and my current state. In any case, she was giving me a challenge: to get to her head from her feet.
That didn’t sound like too difficult of a punishment game. I doubted there’d be many other hurdles like the gap to the bed. With Yae’s smile, she signaled the start of the journey. I steeled myself for the trip. Whatever challenges Yae had in mind, I’d clear them...
… Until I realized what the third hurdle was. I couldn’t even start climbing Yae unless she allowed it.
“Um… Yae? It’s hard to start like this,” I told her while staring up at her building sized foot.
Yae was not kind enough to put her feet flat on the bed so I could climb up them. It wouldn’t have been fun if I couldn’t scale her body according to her. In fact, immediately after I said those words, I felt a tugging on the rope that was still tied to me. I looked in the direction of the pulling to see Yae’s hand still on it. She brought it to her big toe and tied the string around it.
“Of course it’s going to be tough, Touya. This is your next challenge,” she told me. “If you want to get to my legs, you’ll have to climb my foot first.”
“...You’re kidding.”
She wasn’t joking. That’s what she wanted me to do. I frowned as I approached the heel of her foot. I was going to have to scale it like the protagonist of a spy movie. I supposed Yae had been curious the entire time I had been Reduced how I’d react when put up against her. This was certainly one last night she wanted me to have.
“Well, it’s tight enough…,” I frowned as I made sure all of my climbing equipment that I was wearing was good to go. There was a machine, a hi-tech ascender, that would help me pull myself up if I lost my grip or was too tired to climb, but I knew Yae wouldn’t enjoy me using it right away. I readied it, but held off on turning it on. “Well, here we go.”
With my hands tightly gripping the rope, I put my foot on the skin colored wall that was the ball of Yae’s foot and began to climb. Rope climbing wasn’t my forte at all, but I was fit enough to at least start.
“So that’s how you’re starting,” I heard Yae. She was observing me with interest. “It doesn’t tickle as much when you climb that way at least.”
For that, we were both grateful. Yae didn’t want to be tickled, and I was afraid of the consequences of having an uncontrollable apartment sized foot swinging around while I was tied to it. I was also glad Yae had tied the rope to her foot. Climbing the rope and using the sole of her foot as a wall felt much simpler than the other option I considered - trying to find a place to grab onto with my hands and climb my way up that way. If I tried gripping onto Yae’s skin, I would certainly tickle her if not pinch her.
Well, considering how solid her skin seemed to be at the heel, I supposed pinching wasn’t in my strength. It was strange how Yae’s foot felt. It wasn’t as springy as I remembered whenever I messed with her and tickled her when we were kids, but that came with the territory of the difference in scales. Just as my thick rope was just a string to Yae, her usually soft skin seemed thicker than the walls of our school building to me.
Ascending wasn’t too tough, but it wasn’t easy either. As the lotion Yae applied on her skin earlier did not make getting good traction easy. I wished Yae applied it more evenly, but perhaps it was hard for her to notice the remaining traces.
In places where it had absorbed into the Yae’s foot, her skin was smooth and slippery. Yae laughed when I couldn’t get any footing and fell back down to the heel of her foot. In places where Yae hadn’t spread it well, I got my feet caught in it and had to kick and struggle to peel it off to keep going. It being primarily in the wrinkles of Yae’s foot, my actions made Yae shift a little, squeezing my leg between the folds of her skin. I lost a few centimeters of distance getting free. Again, Yae was surprised and amused by how easy it was for me to lose my position.
“Touya, if you keep falling, I don’t think you’ll be able to make it,” she warned me.
It wasn’t exactly easy to ascend a foot that was five times my height. Yae had petite feet, but I was even less than petite. Still, I climbed. My nose started to get acclimated to the smell of Yae’s sweat mixed with the lilac scented moisturizer. It still wasn’t pleasant being able to feel the strong scent in the air in addition to smelling it, but it was manageable. I used all of my arm strength to get up on my own up the apartment complex sized foot.
“Gah… Hah… Did it...” I huffed the moment I pulled myself up between Yae’s big toe and second toe. I had made it tougher on myself for not using the climbing set’s tools outside of the rope and gloves, but I felt pride in my fortitude in being able to scale a wall five times my size with my own strength and endurance.
That pride meant very little to Yae who was watching with a cat-like smile while resting her head on her pillow and playing with her phone. She had a clear view of me between her toes while I had a clear idea of the distance between myself and her face. “Good job, Touya. You finally made it. Maybe I should’ve recorded it.”
“Don’t take away from my accomplishment, Yae. And don’t film,” I told her while trying to catch my breath. The fact that the smell of her feet seemed to be concentrated between her toes didn’t help, but I didn’t care. I wanted to take off the rope now that I had passed the third challenge. I wanted to bask in my personal success as a 5 cm man.
It was sobering to compare Yae’s toes to my own body, though. Yae’s big toe was almost as big as I was. All five of them were boulder sized to me, and they each moved freely and swiftly. I stood up and leaned against Yae’s big toe to rest. The toenail alone was bigger than my head.
“Grk!” My sides were squeezed roughly. I was caught off guard when Yae’s toes suddenly moved.
“Aha! Caught you,” Yae jokingly said with me between her toes. She pressed them together with very little force, but I was firmly held tight between them. What amounted to a fraction of Yae’s strength was enough to firmly keep hold of me. I tried to push Yae’s toes apart, but they had a pincer-like grip on me. I couldn’t fight it as Yae swayed her foot left and right, lifting me off my feet and taking me along for the ride. My head and torso were affixed in place, pressed against the slimy feeling lotion coated toes.
“Y-Yae, this is… a bit too much...” I struggled to speak. I smacked my hands against her toes, trying to tap out like a pro wrestling fighter, but Yae either ignored it or didn’t feel it. Actually, I was sure she was just ignoring me because she could hear me. She just kept squeezing me with her toes.
“Fufu~n. Sorry, Touya. I just couldn’t resist. When you’re right there, I just had to do this,” Yae explained her reasoning. It made me recall Sasakura-sensei’s mention that this was certain desires came naturally to the girls when I was smaller. I then remembered what happened with Yukimura. I shuddered to think what would’ve happened if she actually got us. Yae was at least being gentle. I doubted Yukimura would, especially with Eguchi.
In any case, Yae was satisfied enough to let me go. That meant it was time for me to continue the trip to get my hotel room. I was ready to keep going and climb down the other side of her foot and take the next (literal) leg of the punishment game.
That is, if it weren’t for a sudden mistake on Yae’s part.
“Okay, let’s continue, Touya. Sorry for holding you up.”
“Uh, Yae, can you not curl you foot too mu- Waaaaaaaaaaah!”
“... Eh? … Uwah! Touya!”
Once again, I fell. This time, from the top of Yae’s foot all the way down. Yae had been messing around too much and just let go without thinking about how her foot was leaning too far forward. Instead of just being able to rest between her toes when she let go, I slipped between them and fell the entire distance I had climbed.
Pomf!
Thankfully, the blanket was enough of a cushion to break my fall safely. Yae’s airy white sheets caught me and slowed my fall with little fanfare. The fact that I hadn’t yet untied the rope also saved me as it slowed me down somewhat and allowed me to and on my back.
“Oof. Gah, that was clo- Oh,” I managed a brief breath of relief before noticing a darkening and enlarging shadow above me.
Slam!
“Mmmph!” I couldn’t breathe let alone open my mouth the moment Yae’s foot fell. The entire wall I had climbed tipped over like a collapsing building. I ended up slammed into Yae’s sheets and bed by the ball of her foot. Yae had been shaken by hearing and seeing me fall so she leaned back, causing her feet to land flat onto the bed. I was pressed down by the titanic weight of Yae’s foot as she panicked out of concern.
“Touya? Are you alright? Touya? Where did you...” I heard Yae’s muffled voice call my name through the wall of meat pinning me down. I supposed I still wasn’t done with experiencing her feet even after reaching the goal. It suddenly grew hot beneath Yae’s foot from the pressure of Yae’s weight pushing down on me and the friction of her sole rubbing against me and the blanket. If I had been complaining about the lotion and smell before, I had done so too soon. My body seemed to slip and cling beneath Yae’s sole. While the blanket had some give to it thanks to all of the air between it and the bed, this was actually a bad thing as any space between it and Yae’s foot was room for me to be squeezed and pulled in different directions due to the pressure. My left arm and right leg were stuck but my left leg and right arm were being dragged and pulled.
This all happened in the few moments it took for Yae to realize where I was. When she took her foot off, I found I was actually still stuck to it thanks to the clinginess of the lotion. I wanted to tell Yae not to use beauty products after a bath, but I had no real energy to do so. I just tilted my head to the side so I was no longer face first into Yae’s foot.
“Uwah. Sorry, Touya,” I heard her apologize.
“Was that the fourth challenge?” I mumbled, trying to use humor to cope with what I had just had to deal with.
Yae was definitely feeling bad. “Let’s… go with that…”
I sighed and let Yae take me off her foot like a sticker. I didn’t feel flattened, but the sound of me being peeled off certainly made to think I had been. This was certainly going to be an eventful night.