If I were to look on the bright side of the conditions for letting Alice stay there was only one thing: it only applied in the apartment. I could still have a normal life outside of the apartment. Things like classes, shopping, hanging out with friends - I could still do whatever I wanted for the most part. As I was at the apartment less often, I was getting a lot more done than I would’ve been able to at home where I’d be more than likely to slack off or go to sleep. 

This was also the only time where I was my proper 6’ tall height.

“Oh, guess we’re back at the same time.” 

One of those days, I opened the door to find Alice at the entrance to the house. It was one of the few times I was able to see the 8 inch difference between us as it should’ve been.

“A-Ah, Remy? W-Welcome back,” Alice reflexively greeted me. I saw her fumbling with putting her key on our key rack. It had been placed at the perfect height for me and Lori but just a bit too high up for her. She almost had it but I noticed that after she had spoken to me, her legs were shaking more than ever. It was a bit disappointing, but I was aware that this never happened when she was with Lori or when I had been shrunken down in front of her.

I was certain that Alice’s mother’s overprotectiveness had made it difficult for her to get used to speaking to guys, even though we were cousins.  I wondered how she was with the classes in the college as a result but I kept silent on the subject and plucked the keys out of my cousin’s hand and hung it up for her.

“There you go,” I said aloud before quickly walking into the living room. I saw her turn her body around and put her arms up reflexively. She wasn’t ready for a fight but nervously backed away like a turtle.

“... A-Ah… yeah,” Alice had backed herself into the wall behind her. “Thank you, Remy…”

If she could say that much, she was at least making an effort to grow out of her shell and step out of her comfort zone. That was something Lori and I were glad of because we wanted to support our adorable cousin. I was going to have to talk to Lori about what we could do to get Alice to improve herself further, but for the moment, I wasn’t going to be able to do anything else…

… After all, I had to step onto the platform to get shrunken down. Even though I didn’t want to, that was the ‘condition’ we had promised to adhere to for Alice’s sake. I made sure all of the things I needed were with me on the platform before I pressed the button.

Wrrrr…

I watched as our apartment living area expanded in all directions. Alice, who had approached when she saw me on the machine, also began to grow before my very eyes. My eye level plummeted down eight inches to hers in the blink of an eye, but it only continued to descend lower.

When I was neck level - I started to crane my own neck up to keep my gaze on Alice’s face, but that soon became difficult as I went below chest level because the little hills that were still impressionable on her thick beige sweater blocked part of it. And her face started to feel even more distant when I shrunk past stomach level and became waist level to Alice. At this point, I was child-sized to my shy cousin, but there was no time to react in any way other than observing it because of how fast the shrinking was.

To me, Alice had become an over 10 foot tall amazonian in an instant, but that jumped to 20 feet in less than half a second as I became knee level to her. She was no longer my little cousin - she was a towering giant and she continued expanding as my size fell below her knees. The platform I was on that had barely fit me before had become a vast clearing and Alice’s body had grown into a 40 foot building.

And even then, the shrunken still hadn’t ended. Only a second had passed and, to get me to 3 inches in height, my body was rapidly reduced the remainder of the way. Twice as big? Three times as big? Four times as big? In the end, I reached my 1:24 scale size, putting Alice at over 120 feet tall in my eyes. Everything around me, from the ceilings and doors to chairs and tables, now towered over me. I now saw everything from below as the apartment, which had been familiar to me after living in it with Lori for over a year, became a gargantuan, alien environment for my shrunken self.

Thud!

“Huh?” I heard a sound. Turning, I saw a reusable water bottle that had fallen over on the carpet. It resembled a fallen old tree from my perspective. I frowned, realizing it was mine. “Oh, shoot. Did that fall out of my bag?”

I trekked to the edge of the shrinking machine’s platform towards where the bottle had fallen. When I climbed off and got closer to it, Alice reached down and picked up the enormous bottle in one hand like a construction crane picking up heavy materials.

“Um… It didn’t shrink with you, Remy,” Alice stated the obvious.

“It’s fine. I still have some water in my room,” I told her. It was unnerving but not dangerous to be down by her feet because her legs had stopped shaking. I hated to admit it, but whenever I was shrunken down, Alice’s nervousness lessened by a huge amount.

“Okay,” she nodded and placed it upright directly next to me. I flinched as the water tower of a water bottle landed right next to me. “I’ll leave it here so you can grab it tomorrow then…”

“That’s fine. Thanks a b-”

Alice didn’t hear me finish my sentence because, after putting the bottle down, she stood up to her full height far out of earshot of my shrunken mumbling. She then turned around and started walking away towards her room. 

“Hah… I guess she has things to do.” I chuckled meekly to myself. With housemates, it was pretty routine to just exchange brief words and then head back to the solitude of our own rooms.

I did want to talk to her a little more, but  that would require a lot more effort on my part now. I couldn’t just keep talking and continue the conversation when Alice could hardly hear me while I was on the floor and couldn't follow her. Each step she took was over twenty of mine, especially because I was knee deep in carpeting, so she was out of my reach and sight before I could even blink. She had been patient enough watching me climb off the platform earlier, honestly.

“Well, I guess I’ll just make the journey to my room then…” I sighed and stretched my arms and legs a little before getting going. Despite being back at the apartment, I was still far from my own room. In fact, it was an even further distance from the living room to the dollhouse in Lori’s room than it was from the bus stop to the apartment. “Hopefully I’ll get there before Lori returns.”

With me now trudging through the carpet, I was painfully aware of the difference between the me outside of the apartment and the me inside. I would’ve liked to picture myself as a regular guy, but to Alice, I must’ve been a bit intimidating to her at regular size. The girl ‘shrank away’ from me when we talked. But when I was the one shrunken, she treated me differently. Although I didn’t like not being on the same level as her and Lori anymore, she was at least a bit more comfortable when she interacted with me…

… perhaps there could be some way Lori and I could use that to our advantage in helping Alice out.