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     Miyu groans and slams her hand down on the alarm clock. She sighs into her pillow, and after a moment, she sits up on the edge of her bed, frowning. She really doesn’t want to go to work today. She stands and slips off her panties and undershirt. Miyu is of average height for a 23-year old Japanese woman. Her hair is chin-length, straight with bangs. She shuffles across her large and sparse bedroom and into the bathroom shower. The house is a mansion, huge, clean, and high tech, built in the western style. It’s also cold and empty, larger than she would ever need. She’s still not totally used to it. The City had given it to her, for her fame and her service. 

     She stares at herself blankly through the glass shower stall until it steams up completely.


***


     Miyu chews her breakfast, slumped in front of the low white table. She brings a small cup of coffee up to her mouth when an electronic chime echoes through her house, someone at the door. Miyu glances at the clock as she stands, groaning in disgust.


***


     The knocking is frantic on the big front doors. She curses as she stomps her foot into her sky-blue pumps. They have four inch heels and black soles, and are polished to a shine.

     “I’m coming, damnit!” she says. The entry room is huge, two stories tall with a shining white floor and a double staircase behind her.

     She straightens out her uniform, a short button-up jacket and even shorter skirt, all the same colour of blue with pinstripes. She pulls tight her sheer stockings and taps her cap. She doesn’t even know what kind of hat it is. It looks like maybe a flight attendant’s, but that doesn’t make any sense. None of her outfit does, not practically. It’s all for show. All for other’s enjoyment.

     She almost reaches for the door, but then grabs a bottle of Paracetamol off a small table instead. She pops two of them and then grimaces as she swallows them dry.

     “It’s time to go!” the voice on the other side of the door says. Miyu wrenches the doors open and storms outside into the morning sun. Toma scrambles after her. “You’re late!” he says. Toma is short and thin, wiry. His hair is unkempt and tufts out randomly. His suit is too large and hangs open.

“I know!” Miyu snaps at him, but she sees that is face only concerned and now possibly hurt. She softens a bit and sighs. “Come on,” she says.

     Toma rushes by her to the moped sitting in the driveway of the mansion. “Are your fingernails good?" he says. “Yes," Miyu replies. “They gave me a manicure yesterday." 

     Toma stuffs his head into a large round helmet and fumbles with the straps. Miyu stands, squinting and frowning in the low sun, trying not to let her ire rise. Hurry up and wait, she thinks. She taps her foot in the loose white gravel. She had to admit, the uniform made her legs look great.

     After a few tries the moped whines to life. Toma, now sweating, hands her a stylish white helmet. She shakes and her head and brushes it away, hopping on the back. “It’s a three minute drive!” she says. She holds on to his sides and they speed away. 

     Three minutes later they arrive in the middle of an abnormally flat dirt field. The white mansion sits in the distance, and beyond the perimeter of electrified fence and warning lights, other houses encircle them. The tall buildings of the city skyline loom in the distance. Miyu steps onto the ground and yawns, and brushing the dust off herself. 

     “Are you ready for today?” Toma says, muffled almost unintelligibly through his helmet. Miyu waves him away, staring at the ground.

     “Have a good day!” he says, and then wobbles away on the moped, picking up speed. Miyu sighs and puts her hands on her hips. She takes a few deep breaths, centering herself. Warning sirens wail in the near distance. Eventually an amplified voice echoes across the field from the observation tower: “Okay! Commence - Growth!”


***


     300-foot tall Miyu strides down the special highway constructed just for her, following the waterfront towards the city. It had been a long weekend, and she was tired, but she had forgotten how good it felt to be full-size again. Ocean wind sweeps lightly against her, and the sky is bright and peppered with cottony clouds. Office towers reflect pure gold light and deep blue on their glass surfaces, the miniature city spreading below her. She inhales through her nose. The brisk smell of the ocean and the morning fumes of the city are not an unpleasant scent, but a familiar one. Perhaps this will be good day after all, she thinks, allowing a hint of a smile to tug at her soft lips.


***


     She should have known better. At her first stop, she had said her customary greeting, crouching down gracefully with one hand in her lap and extending her other palm to the passenger platform. “Good morning! Welcome aboard the Miyu Express!” She had continued on, spouting more greetings and well wishes and then safety regulations and procedures as the group of about twenty people, each less than half of an inch tall, filed onto her waiting hand. She wasn’t allowed to rest her hand against the side of the platform, even though it would have made her hand much more steady. She had practiced breathing and other techniques, but still the minute movements of her hand were too much for regular sized people, and so according to safety procedure, they crawled on their hands and knees to the center of her palm. She likes seeing this for some reason. She had decided it was cute.

     Miyu had waited patiently for an older woman who was having trouble getting onto her hand. “She doesn’t want to jump, and she doesn’t want to lifted down,” the station manager had told her, radioing into her earpiece. She hadn’t replied, or sighed, or did anything but smile politely lest she be reprimanded by the Express executives. She had thought to herself though, people that old shouldn’t be getting on anyway. They make everyone wait. And what if they had a heart attack or something? She didn’t want to have to deal with that. Eventually the old woman had made it onto her palm somehow, sliding onto the soft but firm surface. Miyu returned to her speech and rose slowly, the whole group now in her hand.

     That was all of five minutes ago. Now Miyu sighs inwardly, her mood quickly dropping back to what it had been earlier this morning. Already the old woman is demanding that she speak to her. The Express attendant in her hand, who has a communication and medical setup built into the sleeve of Miyu’s jacket, is young and not very experienced, and somehow allows the old woman to grab the mic.

     “Miss?! Young Miss!?” she woman says.

     “How may I help you?” Miyu says, putting on a smile.

     “You need to slow down! I can’t sit still, I keep sliding about! What if I slide right off your hand? What about that?”

     Miyu would actually be happy at this moment if that were to happen. She pictured it for a second. Perhaps if she could single the old lady out, and spread her fingers a fraction of an inch...

     But before she allows a sly smile to make it across her face, she instead repeats company regulations endlessly. She quickly becomes sick of the sound of her own voice, not to mention the woman’s squawking in her ear. 

     Miyu was hoping to enjoy the walks along and through the city today. Sometimes she didn’t mind at all repeating the Places of Interest information and other tourist-y slop. Sometimes she enjoyed being completely responsible for the excited little specks ooh-ing and awe-ing and crawling about in her hand, snapping pictures. But not today.

     Today was going to be a long day.


***


     Miyu wishes that she had brought along some Paracetamol. But that was against company policy to carry enlarged personal products on the Express. Her face is strained, squinting against the sun and the heat and a headache pounding inside her skull and the voices in her ear.

     She had finally come to the end of the first tour. She had to wait once more in that uncomfortable position while the old woman struggled her way off her hand. It had taken Miyu all she had to not simply pinch the old woman up between her fingers and flick her onto the station platform.

     The second trip of the day did not go much better. On the scenic-countryside route she held in her hand a group of snooty photographers from Tokyo. The attendant in her hand was constantly relaying their complaints and concerns. They said it was too hard set up their tripods with all the wind. When she had cupped her hand slightly for them, they complained that now it was too hard to see over the edge of her palm. They wanted to get closer to edge, but that was against safety regulations. Then they wanted to linger at all the stops of interest, all of them wanting to get the perfect shot. She had to carry on schedule though, and they whined bitterly the whole way.


***


     One of the passengers on her next route through the city gets motion sick and vomits on her hand. She didn’t notice of course, until the attendant informs her. The passenger now wants to be let off immediately. This is also against regulations, of course. She wishes, as she often did, that she was allowed to wear gloves for this job. She closes her eyes and inhales deeply, calming herself.

     “Miyu! You shouldn’t close your eyes when you are walking. It upsets the passengers,” the attendant says. Miyu’s eyes snap open, glaring at him intensely before she gathers herself and puts on her faux smile. She exhales in a huff.


***


     This was getting ridiculous. She was supposed to be on break, but instead they had ordered her on to the next station so that they could prepare for some rich big shots who wanted to have a personal party on her hand during the tour. She half-heartedly tries not to look furious as she heads down the highway along the waterfront, her empty hands clenched into fists.

     The highway is a massive construction of concrete and metal, a giant white sidewalk just for her, lined by guide-lights and high walls (only a few inches in height to her) marked with hazard signs and electrified fence at the top. This keeps out most of the daredevils, graffiti artists, and, she was told, the suicide attempts. 

     She had never quite managed to understand that last one. She supposes it makes sense, from a base male perspective... if they were to die, then surely there were worse ways than by a woman such as herself. She feels a shiver down in her spine thinking of this, and she doesn’t know where it comes from. Probably because it was disturbing, the thought that people wanted to die by her... but disturbing isn’t quite the right word. She doesn’t know what the word is. 

     A thought unbidden appears in her mind, an image of a hopelessly sad man bursting beneath her massive shoe. She shivers again. There was that feeling, that she can’t quite place. She shakes her head and pushes the thought away. She remembers instead the last group of people that finds their way onto the track - the perverts.

     She clenches her fists and her jaw. The thought of the horny, greasy little freaks so desperate to get a look up her skirt infuriates her, and the fact that they should be so brazen as to break all the rules and regulations and take up the time and effort of Express workers to be removed from the highway while she would stand waiting in heels for it all to pass, is almost as bad as the fact that she’s forced to wear a skirt in the first place. She tries not to hunch her shoulders and stomp the rest of the way.

     Then she notices a tiny black speck up ahead on the road. ...Could it be? It has to be. If she had not been thinking of interlopers in the first place, she probably wouldn’t have noticed him so early. Sure enough, the radio soon squawks in her ear. “Warning, there is a trespasser on the highway ahead. Stop immediately.”

     For some reason she isn’t sure of, Miyu doesn’t stop. She doesn’t even slow down.

     The radio says again, “Stop immediately! Miyu, respond!”

     Miyu reaches up to her ear and presses her finger to it. “Hello?” she says. “Are you saying something?” She struggles to keep a smirk from spreading across her face. Now she knows what she’s doing. Something she’s never done before. Something she should have done a long time ago.

     “Miyu! Stop!

     “I think I’m getting static,” she says, tapping her ear. She doesn’t look down, but surreptitiously times her steps using her peripheral vision. Her heart beats in her chest. In another step she’ll feel the pervert crunch under her foot like an ant.

     “Miyu there’s a little boy on the track!

     She freezes instantly, her foot raised resting on her heel. She turns it aside to see the tiny speck that was beneath her shoe. She pulls her foot back and brings a hand up to her forehead, sighing. Her face is a distressed mixture of shame, relief, frustration, and exhaustion. 

     It had been close. Only a few inches more and the boy would have been a smear on her shoe. She felt like screaming and groaning at the same time. Instead she takes a deep breath. She crouches down, like she has always done. She knows she’s supposed to just wait for the rescue crews to arrive. She can hear the sirens and see the tiny little lights on the cars approaching. But instead she rests her hand beside the tiny figure, and with her other hand, gently picks up the boy with her fingers and deposits him in her palm. She stands and brings him up to her face. She makes out that the boy is crying, and has wet his pants. For the second time that day she wishes she could be wearing gloves.

     “Good afternoon!” she says. “Welcome aboard the Miyu Express!”

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