I have always hated tall people.

Not because there was anything inherently impressive about being tall. That was what I told myself, anyway.

Height was just an accident of nature. A number on a medical chart. A measurement somebody took with a tape against a wall. It shouldn't have meant anything.

Except everybody acted like it did.

I noticed it everywhere.

A tall guy walked into a room and people made space without thinking about it. A tall guy spoke and somehow sounded authoritative even when he was saying something stupid. A tall guy stood beside a woman and the whole arrangement looked natural, like somebody had followed the instructions correctly.

Then there was me.

Five-four.

Fifty kilograms.

Twenty-five years old and built light enough that people occasionally mistook me for somebody younger until I opened my mouth.

That was when they usually decided they didn't like me.

Fine.

I didn't like them either.

I'd perfected the art of looking like I didn't care. Chin up. Expression bored. Short answers. If somebody annoyed me, I let them know. If somebody tried to talk down to me, I talked over them.

It worked occasionally.

Usually, it didn't.

That afternoon was another example.

I was standing near the campus café when three guys came through the entrance. One of them was enormous compared with me, not freakishly so, just tall enough that the difference was impossible to ignore. He laughed at something his friend said, and two girls nearby immediately turned their heads.

I watched one of them smile.

Of course.

The guy hadn't even done anything.

He just existed at that height.

I looked away before anybody caught me staring.

“What's so funny?”

I hadn't realized I'd spoken aloud.

One of the people beside me glanced over.

“Nothing.”

“Didn't look like nothing.”

He shrugged.

I hated that shrug.

That casual little movement said he didn't consider the conversation worth having.

I gave him a hard look.

He gave me an even harder one back.

For half a second I felt that familiar tightening in my stomach.

Then I looked away.

Whatever.

Not worth it.

That was the problem.

Everything was “not worth it” until I got home.

Home was different.

Home had one person who never looked at me that way.

I pushed through the apartment door in the evening and kicked my shoes aside.

Something crashed in the kitchen.

I stopped.

A moment later came a tiny, horrified voice.

“Oh, no.”

I smiled despite myself.

“Yuna?”

“I'm okay!”

That meant she absolutely wasn't.

I walked into the kitchen.

Yuna was crouched beside the lower cabinet, trying to collect the pieces of a ceramic bowl. She looked almost absurdly small against the kitchen furniture. Four feet tall, with a slight frame, narrow shoulders and tiny hands that made even ordinary household objects look oversized around her.

Her hair was a fluffy mess around her face.

She looked up at me.

“Hi.”

She gave me an apologetic smile.

That smile irritated me.

“What did you break?”

“Nothing important.”

I looked at the floor.

The bowl had been one of the dishes I bought recently.

“You call that nothing?”

Her smile vanished.

“I'll clean it up.”

“You'll clean it up?”

“Yes.”

“With what?”

She looked down.

“I... don't know.”

I laughed once.

“Of course you don't.”

Yuna's fingers tightened around one of the pieces.

“I can fix it.”

“You can't even pick up a bowl without dropping it.”

“I said I'll fix it.”

Her voice was barely audible.

I stepped closer.

She immediately looked smaller.

That feeling was familiar.

Outside, I was constantly measuring myself against people who seemed larger, louder, more confident.

Here, I didn't have to.

Here, somebody looked at me and backed down.

“Give me that.”

She handed me the piece.

I tossed it onto the counter.

“You're always doing this.”

“I know.”

“Always making some stupid mistake and then pretending you can fix it.”

“I wasn't pretending.”

“Then what were you doing?”

She opened her mouth.

Nothing came out.

I waited.

She looked at the floor.

“I'm sorry.”

There it was.

The word I wanted.

Something inside me loosened.

I'd had a miserable day. People had ignored me, talked over me, laughed at things I said, and generally behaved as though I wasn't worth taking seriously.

But here was Yuna apologizing.

To me.

For something stupid.

It felt good.

Far better than it should have.

“You're always sorry.”

“I know.”

“Do you ever actually learn?”

She swallowed.

“I try.”

“Trying isn't enough.”

Her shoulders sank.

I could see her fighting to keep her expression steady.

For some reason, that annoyed me even more.

“Look at me.”

She did.

Her eyes were already beginning to shine.

I pointed toward the mess.

“Clean it.”

“I will.”

“Now.”

She nodded.

I turned away.

Behind me, I heard the faint scrape of ceramic against the floor.

Then another little clink.

She had dropped another piece.

I spun around.

“What did you just do?”

“I—”

“Seriously?”

“I didn't mean to.”

“Of course you didn't.”

“I'll get it.”

“Don't.”

She froze.

I walked toward her.

She instinctively backed away until the counter stopped her.

That tiny movement gave me a rush of satisfaction.

It shouldn't have.

I knew that somewhere.

I didn't care.

“You know what your problem is?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“You think being cute and helpless means everyone has to put up with you.”

Her face crumpled slightly.

“I don't.”

“Yes, you do.”

“I don't.”

The answer was so quiet that it almost disappeared.

I stepped closer.

“Don't argue with me.”

“I wasn't.”

“You were.”

“No, I—”

My hand came up.

Yuna flinched.

Instantly.

Her entire body recoiled before she could stop herself.

My hand remained suspended for a moment.

I stared at her.

She stared back.

Neither of us moved.

And then I lowered my hand.

I hadn't hit her.

But I had seen the reaction I wanted.

Fear.

Real fear.

The realization made something ugly and satisfying settle inside me.

Finally.

Somebody was intimidated by me.

Yuna looked down.

“I'll clean it.”

Her voice had become almost inaudible.

“Good.”

She crouched again.

I watched her collect the fragments.

Her hands were trembling.

I should have felt ashamed.

Instead, I felt accomplished.

That was the part I wouldn't have admitted to anyone.

I had spent the entire day feeling insignificant.

Now somebody was afraid of me.

It was pathetic.

But it was mine.

I left the kitchen.

A few minutes later, I heard her bedroom door close.

Then silence.

I dropped onto the sofa and turned on the television.

The sound covered everything for a while.

Eventually, though, I heard it.

A tiny, muffled sound from down the hallway.

I turned the volume higher.

Another sound.

She was crying.

I stared at the television.

My first reaction wasn't guilt.

It was annoyance.

Why couldn't she just stop?

I had already told her what she'd done wrong.

I'd already made my point.

What more did she want?

I leaned back.

At least nobody was laughing at me here.

At least nobody was looking down on me.

For tonight, that was enough.

The next morning, Yuna woke before her alarm.

She lay still for several seconds, staring at the ceiling.

Her eyes felt sore.

She had cried herself to sleep.

She didn't want to think about last night.

Thinking about it made her chest tighten.

So she got up.

Her feet touched the floor.

She nearly tripped over the blanket.

“Ah—”

She caught herself against the bed.

She stood there silently for a moment.

Then she sighed.

“Good start.”

She changed, made breakfast, forgot the toast, burned it, threw it away, made another piece, spilled her drink while reaching for it, cleaned that up, then discovered she'd forgotten to pack one of her schoolbooks.

She stared at the empty place in her bag.

“Oh.”

She hurried back toward her room.

Her shoulder caught the doorframe.

“Ow.”

She rubbed it.

Then she laughed quietly at herself.

Nothing unusual.

Just another morning.

By the time she reached school, the familiar knot had returned to her stomach.

She was small enough that people frequently underestimated her.

Sometimes they spoke to her as though she needed everything explained.

Sometimes they moved things out of her reach without asking.

Sometimes they simply looked at her and assumed she was younger than she was.

Yuna hated that.

She hated being treated as incapable.

The frustrating part was that she kept giving people reasons to think she was incapable.

She dropped things.

She forgot things.

She misunderstood instructions.

She tried to fix mistakes and somehow created two more.

And whenever somebody said, “I'll do it for you,” she wanted to protest.

But usually the protest came out as:

“Okay.”

So she walked through the school gates with her bag held tightly against her side, trying to look more confident than she felt.

She didn't know that, back at home, Haru had already forgotten most of the details of their argument.

He remembered only the part that mattered to him.

For once, someone had been afraid of him.

And he mistook that feeling for power.