Nobody loves you.

This fact had been drilled into Jake's head for years. To him, it was a simple fact of life: no one would ever love him. The reasons? He was never completely sure of them, but the people who taught him this would typically bring up the same few points: he was a burden, he was useless, he was weak, he couldn't do anything right, and he had no future. But all of these tended to stem from a single fact: he was small. Two inches to be exact.

Jake was far from the only person on earth at such a small height: approximately a fifth of the world's population was tiny. There was no real cause for this, at least as far as Jake knew. Being born into this world meant playing the world's worst lottery, where your only prize for winning is a lifetime of pain. Having a tiny child was considered humiliating in most cultures, to the point where it was sometimes seen as karmic punishment hundreds of years ago. However, as time went on, tinies were given some semblance of rights. In fact, a few years before Jake's birth, killing tinies was finally considered murder. For the most part, the world was beginning to care more for its population of tinies.

But not everyone was on board with these recent developments. In fact, the area where Jake lived seemed to be full of people who were firmly against the cultural shift towards better treatment of tinies. This included his teachers, his classmates, and his own family.

Jake's father left the picture around the same time as Jake's birth, probably from the shame of having a tiny son.

Jake's sister, Elizabeth, never really saw her brother as anything more than a fancy toy. Jake wasn't sure how much older she was than him, but he knew she was going to be the one driving him to high school starting in a few days. She'd grown more distant over the last few years, but Jake saw that as a good thing. The last thing he wanted was to be anywhere close to his family members.

Jake's mom, an older woman named Lauren, taught Jake the most important fact of his life: no one loves him. He was a pest to her, she only ever gave a shit about him out of legal obligation: She'd give him just enough crumbs to survive, but made sure he was always hungry. She'd make sure he didn't die when she stepped on him, but only so she wouldn't go to jail. Of course, she made sure that Jake knew that he didn't deserve any of her generous care towards him. She'd torment him whenever she could, stepping on him, using him as her insole, nearly eating him on multiple occasions, giving him excruciatingly difficult and flat-out impossible tasks and tormenting him when he inevitably failed were only a few of the ways she exploited him.

Even being away from his family, Jake found that no one else treated him kindly. He remembers his first day of kindergarten, being excited at the prospect of maybe finding a friend or two, only to be tormented by his classmates all day. Even up to middle school, he was the subject of mockery and bullying. He did make one friend when he was very, very young, another tiny like him... but he didn't last very long. Jake watched as Emily, the tallest girl in his grade and his main tormentor, actually bit his friend's head off. The teacher didn't intervene in time. The child's family attempted to sue the school, but lost. Emily was, however, expelled.

In two days, Jake would be starting High School, and he was terrified.