Class D’s were 75% normal size. Class E’s were 50%. Class F’s were at 33%. While it was tougher to be shorter, these were still sizes that could interact with each other normally and could still live their lives properly, albeit with a handicap.

People who were G class and lower, however, were forced to be dependent on others. Class G’s were 25% of their normal height, but they were still pretty lucky since they were the only dependent class with a percentage based scale change. Class H’s were all exactly 1 foot tall. Class I’s were all 9” tall. Class J’s were all 6” tall. And Class K’s were all 3” tall. At these sizes, the Dependent Classes needed help to do anything, but they were still fairly visible and there were even doll houses that fit the size because they were toy-sized.

We Class L’s were beneath all of them at only 1” tall. Too small to be considered a toy and given similar conditions, we were insects who were only able to survive because we were allowed to.

How was our survival possible?

Despite us Class L’s being worthless and incompetent, government welfare support actually applied to us. We were still considered citizens even if we were miniscule insects. Honestly, the support was more than we could ever hope for.

“Let’s see… The facility job listings are the usual, huh? That ad probably excludes us then. Makes sense. It sounded too good to be true.”

Rumble!

Whaaaaam!

Ping! Pong!

[Attention: Dinner has now been distributed.]

My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a normal sized facility worker coming by and the automated announcement that came after. I heard a stampede of footsteps by the door so I opened it up to see the chaos.

“Alright! Grub!”

“Slow down!”

“No way. I’m first!”

“The newbie rush, huh? I guess they did just bring some new Class L’s in today. Hey! It’s not going anywhere. No need to rush,” I calmly stated as someone who had gotten too accustomed to living here. “There’s a literal mountain sized blob anyways, so there’s plenty for everyone.”

“Yeah, but the good stuff always gets claimed first,” one person stopped to talk to me - someone who had been here for three months. I was pretty sure his name was Greg. “Aren’t you going, Matthew?”

“I’ll catch up later.”

“Ah. Going to wait for the new girl, huh? I knew she was your type from how you looked at her when you met her! Wait, you two were real close from the moment you met. Let me guess: you used to date.”

“Shut up, Greg.”

I sighed as other Class L’s ran off to where an ice-cream-scoopful of food had been delivered to us. It annoyed me that Greg’s guess wasn’t wrong. The only person that had been on my mind for the past week was Liz. After over a year of being jaded and lonely from living the Class L lifestyle, finding her again really got my mind racing.

“You dumbass. It’s been over a year since we’ve talked to each other. That’s basically breaking up, right?” Would you call me hopeless? I just wanted to be with someone I knew again. But I didn’t know if Liz felt the same way.

“I’m just checking up on her since I’m worried. Knowing her, she’ll still be thinking about what happened to Adam earlier. It’ll be bad for her if she doesn’t eat,” I made up plenty of excuses for me to leave and go see her. I left my ‘apartment’ which was nothing more than a small but clean cardboard box to go see Liz. I didn’t need to rush to gather some of the food scraps that were shared to us by the much larger welfare workers.

Looking up at the sky, I saw the giant 400+ foot tall (in my eyes) woman who had given us our food stand up and start walking away. She wasn’t paying attention to us. She was more preoccupied with her smartphone which was as big as a movie screen to us. At the very least, when she left, the shadow that had darkened my ‘apartment’ was gone, allowing the light from the ceiling lights in the facility building to shine down.

While the quality of the food and our living spaces weren’t that high, I was at least thankful to have a roof over my head and something I didn’t have to scavenge to eat. It was much easier to take care of the needs of the lower class when we were also tiny because we didn’t need as much space or food. 

“Knock, Knock! ” I said aloud. I squeezed through the crack in the ‘door’ of the cardboard box opposite of mine. We obviously couldn’t have any locks, but there was at least a heavy stone we could push to block the door to prevent others from entering. Liz did not seem to have pushed her stone to ‘lock’ her door so I was able to come in.

“Huh? Matty?” I saw Liz on her bed in just her underwear. Immediately, she moved to pull the cloth that was her blanket up to cover herself. “Wait, my clothes!”

“Oh, sorry,” I wanted to turn my entire body around to avoid being a rude Peeping Tom, but I had to admit that Liz’s body was very healthy. It might have been because she only recently became L class and thus hadn’t been subjected to our diet and lifestyle for as long. It might have also just been because her bra was one size too small with how her boobs spilled out in it. “I just thought to check in on you so that we could go get our food together.”

“Checking up on me…? I see. Don’t worry. It’s fine to look. It’s nothing you haven’t seen before,” Liz did not get anymore flustered than she already was. In fact, she was fine with letting me turn around and look at her. She treated my intrusion lightly and reached for her glasses. “Sorry, I ended up worrying you with how I acted earlier, didn’t I? It’s my fault.” 

“There’s no need to apologize,” I frowned at her self-deprecation. “You’re still new to being Class L. I’m just trying to help you adjust since I’ve been here for a year and a half now.”

“... You’re as sweet as ever, Matty. Just like when we were kids,” she told me. She started rummaging through the pile of clothes that had been given to her when she got her. Despite us being an inch tall, one of the biggest boons of being taken in by the government facility was that we were given clothes that fit us. It was to make sure the public image of the welfare facilities was positive, and I was thankful for it as well. It was much better than having to wear a tissue scrap as a toga.

Sadly, custom items like properly sized bras and even glasses were not provided. Someone like Liz who wore her glasses only had them because they had shrunken down with her. If she broke those, she wouldn’t be getting a new pair. 

“If you thought I was sweet as a kid, you’re sorely mistaken. I’m a no-good person, Liz,” I groaned at Liz’s praise.

“... The person who’s no-good is me. I’m sorry. If I had known you had become an L Class, I would’ve tried to help you… I looked for you for months, but when I couldn’t find you, I thought you ran off on me and just gave up on searching…” Liz regretted knowing that I had been through this for much longer than she had.

“That’s my fault. It happened so suddenly, I couldn’t contact anybody. And even if I did tell you, I would’ve brought my troubles to you.”

“You’re terrible,” Liz frowned as she put on her pants. Even those weren’t properly sized, but at least the elasticity of the fabric allowed it to cover her legs and butt fully. “I know we didn’t get to the proposal step yet, but we were still dating. If I had known that you’d been re-Classed, we could have…”

“There’s no point in regretting the what-ifs,” I stopped her from continuing that sentence. She grabbed a basic T-shirt to put on next, but before she wore it, she suddenly approached me. Her hand touched my chest.

“I can’t believe you’ve been able to live like this for so long, Matty. You’re so strong,” she spoke melancholically… although she drifted off for a moment when her hand lowered towards my stomach. “Literally too.”

“Strong, huh? I’m just doing my best to survive,” I did not feel that way at all. In fact, I felt that I had given up long ago. I was just going through the motions because I didn’t want to die.

Liz’s hand moved up to my face and caressed my cheek.

“Survive… I don’t know I can,” I could hear Liz’s voice cracking. She was trying her best to not cry again. “Really… I shouldn’t have trusted those guys. I should’ve known they were just using me.”

She was thinking about how she got into this mess. She had already told me the story before when I first ran into her. After being scammed by another business that was working jointly with her for a job, Liz not only lost a large sum of money but also her career. She ended up not only taking the blame for the incident but also shouldering the entire debt until her Class dropped down to L.

“That’s just how society is these days. Everyone’s trying to take advantage of each other to get up to the next class. It’s every man for themselves,“ I told her. “You can’t trust anyone but yourself and you have to be selfish to be able to push forward in this world.”

“Don’t trust anyone? But I can trust you, can’t I, Matty?” I felt something touch my back. Liz’s arm had wrapped around my waist. I had been worried about how she felt about me, it seemed she still had feelings for me.

“You really shouldn’t,” I told her bluntly. “I’m not someone who helps others.”

“You say that, but you’ve already been helping me since I got here. You’re even checking up on me now, aren’t you?” Liz locked eyes with me. “Hey, remember back in elementary school? Whenever I forgot my lunch and you shared your food with me? You’d say things like ‘My mom made too much’ and ‘I don’t like this. You eat it.’ ’You’ve never been honest with yourself, Matty, but you’ve been helping me since back then too.”

“Shut up. I can’t believe Forgetful Lil’ Lizzie can remember something like that,” I looked away from her. I couldn’t believe Liz brought that up. Well, if she decided she wanted to trust me, I hoped that she wouldn’t start blindly trusting everyone else. It was what got her into this mess and a part of why I was worried about her ever since she became a Class L. She could be taken advantage of. And with Class L’s all desperate to get bigger, she was in danger.

Grip!

“Matty, I told you to never call me Lil’ Lizzle again,” Liz’s hands suddenly grabbed onto my shoulders. From her voice, she wasn’t angry and was just embarrassed, but the strength of her hands said the opposite.

From what I knew about Liz, before she was a Class L, she was a 5’2” young woman with a frail figure and a ‘literary girl’ appearance with her glasses and prim and proper manner of dress. She was certainly shorter than my normal height of 6’3” tall. However, as a Class L, things were different.

“Yeah, I guess I’m not over a head taller than you anymore,” I told her, pointing out that I met her eye level. I was able to look her in the eye because we were both exactly 1” tall.

That was right. All Class L’s were one inch tall. We weren’t shrunken down the same percentage when we were made into Class L’s. That meant shorter folks like Liz were actually at a bigger scale than the rest of us. If my 6’3” self had been shrunken down to 1/75 scale, Liz was only shrunken to 1/62 scale. 

“Did the shrinking go wrong? You shouldn’t be my height, right?.”

“There’s a bit of unfairness with how Class L’s are shrunk. You’re not ‘Lil’ anymore,” I sighed.

“Well, I guess that’s one good thing about being in L class then.” Did Liz just make a joke to try to lighten up the mood? “Remember our first date? The fact that you were so much taller than me was so frustrating.”

“Frustrating?” I repeated her words, but it wasn’t because I was confused. I understood why she didn’t like the fact that I had been 13 inches taller than her.

“Yeah. Because I couldn’t ever do this.”

Much to my chagrin, Liz was the one who initiated the kiss. I could feel her hand behind my head firmly pull me towards her. At the same time, the hand she put on my waist was strong enough to turn the distance between us from an arm’s length apart to zero distance apart. My chest pressed against hers which was still only clad in just her one-size-too-small bra.

Because Liz was shrunken to a different scale than me so that we were both 1” tall, to her, it must have looked like I was shrunken down to her level. It was like the Liz I knew before had grown in height and strength. She was always on the weak side, so it wasn’t like she could utterly overpower me with just a slight change in size, but it was still enough for her strength to match mine.

It was a solid two minutes before Liz let go. We were both out of breath.

“Well, someone’s feeling better,” I told her. “I thought you said you gave up on me.”

“I said I gave up on looking, but we didn’t break up. Just because you got re-Classed and disappeared does not mean you can get away from being my boyfriend.”

“Wow. I didn’t know you were so possessive,” I chuckled at her assertiveness. My concerns were blown away right out of the gate. Liz still loved me even after I had vanished from her life.

“Matty, thanks for checking in on me. I’ll try to get used to all of this soon. I just need some time.”

“I understand,” I accepted her answer. “In any case, we should get some food. There may be plenty to go around, but it’s still better to get it before everyone else has made a mess of things. You’ve been having trouble getting used to the food at this size, right? I’ll show you what parts are better to eat than others.”

“I’m not really hungry…,” Liz avoided looking me in the eyes as she answered.

“Yeah, that’s no good,” I held her hand. “You need to keep up your health. Trust me when I say that if you don’t keep a routine, you’re not going to last long as a Class L. ”

My gaze was serious. And I didn’t look away from Liz’s face until she glanced back at me and saw me still staring straight at her.

“Hehe…” I finally managed to get her frown to change for a brief moment. Even though it was full of melancholy, it was somewhat a smile. “You say that you aren’t sweet, but you really are a good person, Matty.”

“If I’m good, what are you, a saint?” I asked her.

I got Liz to giggle with that. Since our heights matched, her strength had increased enough to match if not overpower my grip, so she broke off quickly and moved towards the door.

“Then let’s go. We need to eat if we want to do more shoe shining tomorrow, right?” she spoke to me, a listless expression no longer on her voice. Her voice told me she was pushing herself to make an effort. It seemed that after kissing me, she had cheered up. I hoped that she was as happy as I was in knowing that we had reaffirmed our relationship.

“Yeah,” I nodded, following Liz out the door of her cardboard box ‘apartment’. As I got out into the hallway, though, a thought came to my mind.

‘... Is Liz really going to be able to handle this kind of life?’

Shoe shining, unfortunately, was one of the few jobs we Class L’s could do. It sounded like simple work, but at our size, it was an intensive labor even more so than working at a car wash at normal size. Normal sized shoes were even bigger than buses to us after all. And as she had witnessed that afternoon, even getting paid could be dangerous and injury-inducing. 

There wasn’t too much else that we tiny citizens could offer, though. The welfare facility had a very minimal listing of work we could actually do to contribute to society. The most money we could make was just a couple of cents a day doing something that minorly pleased one of the giants who didn’t actually have to pay us if they chose not to. 

I looked forward to seeing Liz waiting for me at the end of the ‘hallway’ of cardboard box apartments. Maybe it was just my own regrets, but I recalled the happy smiles she made back then. I hadn’t seen a single one of them ever since we reunited at the facility. The only expressions I had seen on her were ones of depression and fear. Even our kiss had been salty with the tears she had been crying.

“...... I don’t want this for her…”

Liz said I was sweet, but that was far from the truth. It was only because it was her that I was going out of my way to do all of this. I had been a Class L for well over a year now and had endured it, but knowing Liz, I was certain that she was not going to bear this lifestyle for very long.

There had to be something I could do for her.

“I need to check that ad…”