In the end, it was decided that we would try to play as best as we could.
I said ‘try’ because no matter what she decided on, we found my ability to do something that even registered as playing was severely limited. Going against someone 2000 times one’s size was really an unfair matchup after all. The fact of the matter was that there was no way I would ever be able to win against Yuri at my current size.
Much to my dismay, Yuri didn’t seem to mind that at all though. All that was on her mind was that she was going to have fun.
The game she wanted to play was the simplest one - hide and seek. The same game she had been loving all the other previous days I was with the Asano family. It was already impossible when I could still be measured within the scale of centimeters, but victory was definitely hopeless for me now.
“Okay, Onii-chan. I’ll count and you hide. That should be easy right? You’re so small, I won’t even see you unless I get down on the floor.”
Though she said that, her words only made me more worried. It nailed in the point that I had less presence than even an ant. While it was true I would have an advantage because of her inability to see me, that also put me in more danger. Even worse, I saw Yuri take off the earpiece.
“It’d be cheating if I could hear you, right?” she giggled. “I don’t want to be super unfair to you, Onii-chan.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I exasperatedly complained. I knew Yuri could no longer hear my voice because she had taken off the only thing giving me the ability to talk to the normal sized world, Yuri no longer waited for a response from me. My one connection to the giant girl was tossed onto her pink bed.
“I’ll give you a lot of time Onii-chan~! I’ll count to one hundred! That should be enough for you to hide!”
With those words, Yuri put her hands over her eyes and started counting aloud. The game started without giving me any choice in the matter.
“Aww jeez. It can’t be helped,” I reluctantly started running. I had to play along. Refusing to play with Yuri would only make whatever games she wanted to play with me next worse. With my diminutive body less than 30 cm away from her left foot, I had to start moving or else I wouldn’t be able to get to a hiding place.
A 100 count - She was counting a bit faster than one per second, so I had less than two minutes to get somewhere. As I ran with all of my strength and stamina, I tried to think about where I could hide.
Yuri had scattered a bunch of Yae’s Meteor Heart collection onto the floor while showing me, so those were tempting places to hide. In fact, she probably intended to give me places to hide to keep things fair because otherwise, the floor would be empty and barren. From the building sized Meteor Heart figure that had been dropped on its side to the wool rabbit doll of the mascot Kagu to one unused pink cosplay stocking for Meteor Heart herself, there were a variety of choices because of how avid of a fan Yae actually was. She was quite a closet fan girl.
Sadly, I learned as Yuri’s count hit ‘fifty’ that thinking ahead was putting the cart before the horse.
“No way...” I huffed. “You’re telling me... it’s that far away?”
My surroundings felt unchanged no matter how much I pushed myself. Everything Yuri had set up for me to hide around was a distant goal I became well aware that I couldn’t reach in time.
How much distance could I cover in my state? My stride had been reduced to a millimeter at best which meant, at best, I could clear around 2 mm every second. In the less than 100 seconds Yuri gave me, I couldn’t even get 20 cm away from where I started.
“Ninety-nine… One hundred! Okay, my tiny Onii-chan, let’s see if I can find and catch you!”
When she finished counting, I wasn’t even half way there.
Even Yuri couldn’t believe how bad it was when she realized I wasn’t close to where she had wanted me to be. “Eh? Really, Onii-chan? Were you even trying?”
I was. I absolutely was. I went full sprint in the end even. but even then, I couldn’t get anywhere.
“Onii-chan, you’re so lame~” teased the primary school girl. “It’s no fun if you’re that slow.”
Despite knowing full well there was the handicap of me being a millimeter tall, it did sting in my pride to be insulted like that by Yuri. While I wasn’t any star athlete, I never wanted to be put down by Yae’s little sister. Being a millimeter tall was debilitating to the point where I couldn’t even get a single step away from her.
That little fact did not slip past the playful giant girl.
“Well... nishishishishi… the game isn’t over yet!” I heard as a shadow suddenly darkened my surroundings.
Looking up, my sense of reasoning disappeared. The sky was now white while the ground was dark with shadow as the light above me was blocked out. A monolith of meteoric proportions was what looked to be a few meters above my head, ready to crash down at a moment’s notice. This was Yuri’s usually petite, socked foot, prepared to step down onto me. I was washed in a salty odor that drifted off from above me - the sweat collected in her sock was pungent. After all of the trauma of being accidentally crushed all day, the sight and smell of Yuri’s foot in close enough proximity to stomp down on me caused my brain to associate feet with danger.
“Hu-? W-W-W-Wait! Yuri!” I shouted despite the girl not having the earpiece on to hear me. I immediately felt a rush of adrenaline flow through my body, but I had no way of actually using it. My body’s fight-or-flight instinct triggered, but instead of either option, I was stunned like a deer in the headlights. I lost the feeling in my legs because Yuri’s foot was a literal centimeter over the ground and me.
“I can’t win unless I actually catch you, Onii-chan, so you still have a chance,” Yuri’s booming voice echoed all around me like an omnipresent decree.
A chance? Catch?
Just as I thought that, Yuri’s foot moved. She pulled it back just slightly so that I was no longer looking at the middle of her foot. She moved it so that now her socked toes were directly above me. She spread her toes out so that the fabric stretched enough for light to peak through like a curtain. That did not calm me as it gave me a clear sight at the color of her toes inside the sock.
“I’ll give you a one minute head start, Touya Onii-chan. I’ll catch you if you’re not fast enough!”
I ground my teeth. I could feel the blood flowing in my legs again. She wanted me to get away from her foot? She was going to stomp on me! Hide-and-seek had now morphed into a game of tag. Yuri was not going to let me lose gracefully and with my dignity intact.
“One… two… three...”
“Jeez… Just how much more running do I have to do?” I shouted as I made a break for it, doing just what the girl wanted. I started running again as much as I could to try to get out of the shadow of Yuri’s big toe.
“Thirty-seven... thirty-eight... thirty-nine...”
It was unbelievable how it felt trying to outrun a little girl’s toes. This was not only a surreal experience; it was a trial. I was already exhausted from trying to go full sprint just a minute before so my running speed was much slower. I gasped as I tried to clear the 4 centimeter distance of shadow in what time was left. 4 centimeters was multiplied by 2000 to me, becoming 80 meters to travel. I could usually do a 100 meter dash in around 11 seconds, but with my legs straining from overuse, that wasn’t going to be the case this time. Even if Yuri gave me double the time, I was too physically exhausted to go at full speed.
“Darn it! Come on, I’m so close,” I could actually see where Yuri’s shadow ended. Just two dozen more meters and I was clear.
Rumble. Rumble.
“Fifty-three… fifty-four… fifty-five...”
I could feel and hear Yuri’s slightest movements as she kept her foot hovered above me. Every imperceptible shift she made was like a roar of thunder. I was only relieved the moment I crossed the divide between the darkness made by Yuri’s foot and the light.
“Yes…!” I gasped, slowing down to a stop after I believed I was safe. I turned around and looked up to see Yuri still hovering her socked foot over me, but now I was able to see more of her body. I tried to make sense of her expression from how distant it was, but all I could make out was her mischievous childish grin. “Hah… Hah… Safe. I did it, Yuri.”
She didn’t hear me. Of course she didn’t. Without the earpiece, my words fell on deaf ears. All she did was continue to count until she hit the end.
“Fifty-eight… Fifty-nine… Sixty!”
The moment the count finished, I realized I had made two mistakes. The first was assuming Yuri would end the game because I had escaped her shadow. She never said anything about that. All she told me was that if she caught me, I lost.
The second mistake was assuming just getting out from the shadow of her foot was safe. What would stop a giant girl on the scale of kilometers? She still hadn’t stretched her legs or foot out to their fullest to take an actual step. Her shadow moved with her as her toes went past me, immediately enveloping me in the darkness again as the ball of her foot fell from the sky..
“Y-”
Whaaaaaaaaaaam!
If one were to look at this from a normal scale, the only thing one would see was Yuri slowly and gently putting her foot back down onto the floor without any power or strength, but my insignificant stature transformed that into a level of an overwhelming cataclysm. Without time to even blink, I and my surroundings were engulfed in tons upon tons of white sock.
I was smothered entirely by Yuri. Crushed underneath the ball of her socked foot, I was the victim of what had to be an earth-shattering catastrophe. My body was rattled by a stomp powerful enough that it would cause earthquakes beyond any of us in Japan would be accustomed to. I actually blacked out for a second from my inability to process what had happened. I only snapped back into consciousness because of the oppressiveness of the intense pressure and the scratchy sensation in my mouth.
“...!” I couldn’t speak. My mouth was filled with sweaty cloth. My lungs did not feel like they had any air. In fact, my entire body felt utterly flattened. I was still alive, but I could not feel a thing. I was completely numb to anything other than the oppressive feeling pressing down on me. Was this how being as flat as a sticker felt? No, I wasn’t even on the level of a sticker. I was so small that the threads of Yuri’s sock were now actually visible and thick. If I were to get any smaller, I would be able to fit through them and slip into her sock.
Thought it was only for a few seconds at best, it felt like minutes had passed before Yuri removed her foot. For a second, I felt weightless as I found myself lifted along with it. I saw light again, but I couldn’t turn my head. My body was glued to Yuri’s socked foot from the sweat and pressure.
“Nishishishishi~”, Yuri laughed as she saw my miniscule form on her foot. “Is that you, Onii-chan? It’s hard to tell you apart from all of the dirty on my sock.”
Such a comparison felt demeaning, but Yuri actually did see me. I watched as her skyscraper of a finger approached. Her nail dragged across the white cloth, approaching me. She scraped me off her sock by simply brushing it against me, but it was a heavy impact on par with a truck slamming into me from my perspective. Immediately, my body was flung off like a speck of dirt in the wind.
“Waaaah!” I fell back down to the floor freed but exhausted.
Yuri went back to her bed for just a moment to pick up the earpiece, and she returned immediately after with a heavy crash as she lowered herself so she could see me properly down below.
“You lose Onii-chan! Ehehehe~” she laughed.
Of course I did. That had been decided since the very beginning. Yuri could clearly see my motionless and prone body on the floor, easily mistakable for a grain of sand or dirt.
“Aww… Tired already, Onii-chan? We only played one game,” Yuri giggled.
I knew it would be best to speak or else she’d think I was unconscious. I didn’t have the energy to move my body, but I could use my mouth again. There was only one thing I had to say after I recovered enough strength to speak again.
“Yuri… Never again, okay?” It sounded less like a refusal and more like begging, but that was all I could muster.
A children’s game had never been so draining.