It was somewhat nerve-wracking knowing I had promised Yae something I shouldn’t have. She wouldn’t let me forget it. She hopped back to her room with a spring in her step and deposited me on her desk before taking a seat on her bed.

“What should I have you do~?” Yae smiled.

“Go easy on me please,” I asked. “I’m only so big right now.”

“I’ll keep it simple. Don’t worry.”

Don’t worry, she said. 5.1 centimeters was my precise height at that moment. Well, 5.11 according to the Tracer Belt. Yae made sure to check that before she got ready with what she wanted to do. This was going to be an interesting night. I was sure about that.

Honestly, I was used to making the promise to do any one thing for Yae whenever I crossed the line. Yae often made me do something she considered ‘simple’ as punishment for my transgressions. If she was angry, she wasn’t exactly kind with her ‘simple’ requests though. When I pushed her a little too far during our first year of high school, she had me go through the gauntlet of buying the limited only-30-per-day sweets from her favorite cake shop for a week. Another time, she had me replace her on Yuri baby-sitting duty… when Yuri had six other friends over.

What was she going to ask while I was in my current state? Clean her room while being this small? Wander out into the hallway and into either Yuri or Ayame-san’s rooms? I had plenty of ideas what she could make me do. I couldn’t deny that I half-wanted to do those just to experience moving about on my own while small, but I also knew it was very risky.

Yae seemed to have something planned in any case. She continued to happily hum while she finished her after bath routine by applying moisturizing lotion on her skin. I kept staring as she rubbed the lotion on her arms, legs, feet, and neck. When she was done, she turned her attention to me.

For starters, Yae took out item number eight from Sensei’s bag of things. She carefully picked it up with both hands and plopped it on the desk.

“Oh wow. Is this a place all to myself?” I recognized it as a model house, or rather, a model room. It was another Reduced building - a bedroom. It was a bit bigger than Yae’s textbooks, but I knew it was only going to get smaller much like I was. 

“Fufu… This really does look cute, Touya. I can take the roof off too,” Yae took it off before I could even step inside. When I did, I found there to be no locks on the door other than a bolt lock. It was probably because there wasn’t going to be a need for locks when Yae could just pull me out from the roof.

It was a well furnished room. A bed, closet, and desks were all firmly affixed to the walls and floors. There was even a mini fridge and a bathroom. The bathroom thankfully had a roof that was firmly attached so Yae couldn’t take it off. 

What piqued my interest about the residence, though, was that it was definitely had been tampered with. For one, there was an odd note up on the bathroom door. It was a handwritten scribble stuck to it that said ‘Touya-kun’s Throne Room’. It came marked with a flower and a smiley face. I laughed at the message and walked inside. I found spare sheets and towels were provided but stored away so they wouldn’t be sent flying if Yae moved the room. Whatever company designed these buildings for the government knew what they were doing.

“It’s a lot like a hotel room, minus a television,” I saw that there were still electronic light sources so there had to be a generator somewhere. I didn’t pay attention to this with the gym or the dining box, but since this was just a single room, I noticed it now.

“How is it, Touya? Is the Portable Hotel Room good?” Yae was putting the earpiece back on so she wouldn’t have to lean in to hear me. I spotted the microphone affixed by the bedside and ran over to push the button to reply.

“I’d be interested in seeing an entire hotel of these rooms actually,” I spoke into the mic so that my childhood friend could hear. “And it looks like nothing’s out of place after all the moving it’s been through.”

“Okaa-san says Otou-san uses these sometimes when out on business trips. They’re supposed to be designed to be carried around before being used apparently,” Yae informed me.

That made sense. I opened up the mini-fridge to take out a bottled water. I was surprised when I saw another large note saying ‘Enjoy Kirishima-kun’ pop out. It was another handwritten one on a normal sized scrap of paper that had been cut out. Someone had clearly put it there for me, but it was a different handwriting than the note on the bathroom. This one was much neater, as though the writer was a professional calligrapher. I had a sneaking suspicion to who this one belonged to much like the first, but prioritized resting on the soft bed. Compared to the overly spacious sleeping bag, just sitting down on it was heavenly on its own.

“I could get used to a room like this. It’s way more comfy than my own room. This one even has some things reserved just for me. Did you see the notes, Yae?”

“I didn’t, but Sensei said two of your Senpais decorated it for you.”

“Ah… Then I can definitely guess who it was.”

I assumed it was Kamiya-senpai and Yanase-senpai. They were the ones in charge of managing the supplies the government delivered for the program, so only they could have put the messages inside. I knew Kamiya-senpai was fond of making models too, though her Gunpla collection was supposed to be kept a secret. Kamiya-senpai’s note was probably the neatly written one that was in the fridge while Yanase-senpai’s was the only one who called me ‘Touya-kun’ in the committee. 

“Hm… If it’s supposed to be like a hotel room, I wonder how they clean these,” Yae spoke to me from above. She brought her face extremely close to the point where I could only see one eye and part of her nose from where I was in the room. “Little maids?”

“They probably don’t have those. My guess is they won’t until they get them back. There are a bunch of spare sheets and stuff here for a reason,” I told Yae. I found it difficult to cap the bottled water with my shaking hands. There was something about having a literal eye in the sky looking down at you. I’d have been more comfortable if I saw all of Yae’s face honestly.

“Still, it looks like you like it.”

“Anything my size feels best honestly,” was my honest opinion.

My stay inside the room wasn’t going to be for very long unfortunately. “Okay, Touya. Can I have you get out for a moment? Take the mic with you, okay?” Yae asked. Considering she was tapping on the room to push the only thing not fixed to the walls and floor (me) towards the door, she was more demanding than asking. With no real choice, I put the bottled water back into the sealed mini-fridge and took the miniature microphone. Hooking it onto the collar of my shirt, I stepped out.

“Okay? What now?” I looked over at my childhood friend who was sitting in her chair. She still had her earpiece on, so she could hear me.

“Now, there will be no more bedroom for you,” I heard Yae as I saw her hand descend down from above. She easily picked up the room I was just inside with one hand. I couldn’t do anything but watch as Yae put the roof back on and slipped the Portable Hotel Room back inside the paper bag.

“So this is that ‘simple’ thing you want me to do, huh? Go to bed without that?” I frowned. Yae had given me a sample and then pulled the main dish away. “No fair.”

Yae didn’t seem to care that it was unfair. She stuck her tongue out at me playfully. “I’m not that bad, Touya. I’ll give it back, but you’ll have to earn it.”

“Earn it...? Oh...”

I watched as Yae placed the paper bag by the pillow of her bed. She then stood up to her full height, forcing me to crane my neck further back to see her face. She walked over to her bed and rested on top of the blanket. 

“This is what I want to see you do,” Yae told me while lying down on the bed. “I actually wanted to ask you this earlier in the bath, but you freaked me out when I wasn’t ready yet. I would’ve been fine with it if you just asked first, but now we’re going to be doing this on my terms.”

“Your own terms?”

“Yes... Touya, If you really want to get closer to me, now I’ll let you do it.”

So Yae wanted me to get to the hotel room on my own power. Yae was essentially beckoning me to get onto her bed. She was being remarkably forward. Then again, Yae admitted herself that she wouldn’t have minded me getting close to her. Her holding my room out of reach was just my punishment for not getting her consent first. I supposed that was fair. Consent was an important thing to ask for.

“Yae… I don’t know if you can really call this a punishment,” I told her through the microphone.

“You said you’d listen to whatever I ask,” Yae reminded me with a pout. “I’ve been thinking about this all day, Touya: I can physically make you do whatever I want. I won’t though because that’d be rude to you.”

“Right. Thanks for that.” I understood that Yae was being very considerate of me.

“But since now you have to do what I say, I don’t have to force you, right?” she smiled. “You want to make it up to me, don’t you? I want to do something since this is our last night like this.”

Yae sure was being pushy. I understood why in any case. She had been wanting to ask for my consent so we could get into some antics while I was still Reduced. She had just been too hesitant to ask me while we were in the bath. Now that I had gone and racked up a debt to her, she didn’t have to ask because I was now technically consenting in order to pay her back for my mistake.

My not-girlfriend was doing her best to define what was going too far and what wasn’t while we still weren’t officially dating.

“A girl’s thought process is weird… Then again, I think I’m the one who influenced Yae to be like this,” I mumbled to myself. This was my own punishment for making Yae wait and still act like I had been. She was becoming strange trying to accomodate me.

“So are you going to do it or not, Touya? You’ll be following what I tell you to do, right? I want you to climb me. And not just like when we were trying the equipment out. All of me.”

“Alright, I get it,” I started to stretch my body in preparation. “You asked for this, Yae. I’d never give up an opportunity like this anyways.”

Yae was prepared to give me a run for my money. If I wanted to get my bedroom for the night, I was going to have to meet her expectations. Getting to my goal was not the easiest thing at all, especially since the first hurdle I had to clear was just getting to Yae.

When you are only 5 cm tall, even a small gap is an expansive chasm. Could I just jump the 15 cm gap from Yae’s desk to her bed? No, not unless I wanted to plummet straight to the floor. Could I toss the rope from the climbing set over to the bed? Yes I could, but I couldn’t get it to catch anywhere. Could I climb down from the desk? Yes, but I wouldn’t be able to get up afterwards.

Yae watched my struggle to get over to the bed with interest. I caught her giggling every time one of my attempts to cross over failed.

“Would you like some help?” she asked. “I’m enjoying watching you, but I’ll fall asleep if you take too long. If that happens, you’ll be sleeping out on the desk on your own, Touya. I have other things planned for you, y’know?”

She sure was teasing me. Okazaki had been just as aggressive, but Yae hadn’t been as bad all day. Now she was. Was it because of my current height or was it just because I was now playing Yae’s punishment game? Whatever the case, she seemed to be having fun.

“If you’re offering help, sure I’ll take it, Yae,” I was quick to accept. I didn’t like how Yae was treating my attempts as a sideshow, but I supposed that came with the territory when I was only 5 cm tall. I wanted to stop showing Yae my repeated failures and at least progress a little bit to get to the main event.

Yae complied and brought her hand over to the table. She didn’t pick me up, however. She simply held her hand out to me to hop onto.

“Jump on over,” Yae told me.

I did as I was told. I had gotten used to using Yae as a method of transport, and so had she. I held on tight while Yae pulled her arm back. She didn’t bring me near the end of the bed where the bag was but instead the opposite side.

“Okay. That’s all of the help you’ll be getting from me, Touya. I want to see what you’ll do from here,” Yae told me while still holding me above the bed.

“Okay…? So are you going to let me down?” I asked, noticing she wasn’t lowering her hand any further. “Yae?”

“Fufu~!” I heard Yae giggle. I had a bad feeling immediately when I heard it. I felt a shift as her hand suddenly tilted to a nearly vertical angle.

“Waaaah!” I fell, but as quickly as the ground beneath me had disappeared, I was stopped before hitting the bed. My body felt the pain of a sudden whiplash as it was pulled upwards.

“Scared you, didn’t I?” Yae smiled. She had stopped me mere centimeters (from her perspective) before hitting the bed using the rope that was still strapped to me. She caught it between her fingers. I was dangling in the air like a loose yoyo, swinging back and forth towards and away her left foot. 

I scrunched my nose as I slammed into the wall of Yae’s foot. She had applied some lotion right after the bath, so it was smooth, but the remnants of the lotion clung to me. If I wasn’t careful, I’d be stuck to Yae’s foot before she even put me down. “Real funny, Yae.”

Yae laughed and let me rock back and forth into her foot a few more times. I tried catching myself with my hands to stop myself, but Yae’s gentle and subtle motions were still swinging me around at a speed I couldn’t easily stop. Both sides of my body became covered in Yae’s moisturizing lotion before my face actually stuck to the ball of Yae’s foot. The mix of the lotion’s lilac sent along with the saltiness of Yae’s sweat stained my tongue. Despite the sensory suppression, it was still a sharp sensation that made my nose scrunch up and tongue wince.

“Blargh… Gross… I think I’ll need another bath now,” I spat out the lotion and beads of sweat that had entered my mouth. Between the stickiness of the cream to the discord of the smells, I couldn’t call the experience pleasant.

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t help myself. I’ll use the cleaning balm later. Just consider that your second challenge since I already gave you a freebie by bringing you over,” she smiled as she properly lowered me down.

I would have liked to ask her what other challenges she had in mind, but the moment I was placed on Yae’s bed, I spaced out.

“Whoa...” I was more than a little speechless at the sight before my eyes.

Yae in a striped hoodie and shorts was adorable normally, but I was standing at her feet while she sat on her bed, knees raised and held against her chest. Her 160 cm body was 32 times my own 5 cm body. I had been around girls all day while they towered over me like kaiju just standing, but seeing someone lying down was a new experience. 

Yae… How do I put it... I had considered her an island earlier while in the bath, but I honestly didn’t see all of her body since most of it was submerged and I was floating above it. Yae’s posture really put her size into perspective when I realized the trip up her legs was going to be a journey in its own right.  Yae wasn’t simply statuesque. She was a land mass I was now going to be traveling over to get to my goal. I felt insignificant in comparison. I recalled Shima’s reaction to us boys earlier today. I probably looked like a bug to Yae.

“Fufu~n...” Yae played with her bangs where her hair clip would normally be while she looked down at me on the blanket I was standing on. “You look so cute down there, Touya. If this wasn’t a white sheet, I think I’d lose you.”

Didn’t I know it. Yae did have her phone and I did have the belt, so she could still keep track of me if anything went wrong. It didn’t seem necessary though because my dark clothes contrasted well on the white blanket. I didn’t like the comparison because of how accurate it was but it was like seeing a black ant on white tile. 

I was about to start walking when my entire body was moved without my input. The entire bed shifted because Yae changed her resting position. Lying back with her head on her raised pillow, Yae stretched her legs out, nearly hitting me with her foot. The moment her leg stretched out, the blanket and bed bent to the weight of her body. There was a dip in the bed that pulled my 5 cm body closer to her the heel of her left foot. The foot itself was building sized on its own, and I found myself in its shadow while Yae adjusted her posture to better see me.

“Okay, Touya, are you ready?” Yae asked me while allowing her feet to sway left and right. Her right foot swayed towards her left side until it was almost horizontal with the bed. I backed away from her approaching toes. She happily scrunched them when she saw my tiny body by her heel.

“A-As I’ll ever be, I guess,” I answered. I stuttered. Seeing Yae’s feet reminded me of all the previous trouble I had today at girls’ feet. I was thankful for the sense mitigation spray because I could smell Yae’s feet thanks to how close I was. It would probably be unmanageable if I hadn’t had it used on me. I was actually able to answer her through the microphone.

“Good. Then I just have two rules for you, Touya,” Yae told me. “One: All you just have do is get over to the bag by climbing me. And two: If I make you do anything as a challenge, you’ll have to deal with it.”

“Something tells me that it’s a bit too late for that second rule,” I remarked.

“I just wanted to make sure you knew,” Yae was serious about not doing things without my permission. “And just so we’re aware, THAT place is off-limits still.”

To offer me a chance to walk around on her bed and her and then say that, Yae was a bit cruel, but it was understandable considering our ages and my current state. In any case, she was giving me a challenge: to get to her head from her feet.

That didn’t sound like too difficult of a punishment game. I doubted there’d be many other hurdles like the gap to the bed. With Yae’s smile, she signaled the start of the journey. I steeled myself for the trip. Whatever challenges Yae had in mind, I’d clear them...

… Until I realized what the third hurdle was. I couldn’t even start climbing Yae unless she allowed it.

“Um… Yae? It’s hard to start like this,” I told her while staring up at her building sized foot.

Yae was not kind enough to put her feet flat on the bed so I could climb up them. It wouldn’t have been fun if I couldn’t scale her body according to her. In fact, immediately after I said those words, I felt a tugging on the rope that was still tied to me. I looked in the direction of the pulling to see Yae’s hand still on it. She brought it to her big toe and tied the string around it.

“Of course it’s going to be tough, Touya. This is your next challenge,” she told me. “If you want to get to my legs, you’ll have to climb my foot first.”

“...You’re kidding.”

She wasn’t joking. That’s what she wanted me to do. I frowned as I approached the heel of her foot. I was going to have to scale it like the protagonist of a spy movie. I supposed Yae had been curious the entire time I had been Reduced how I’d react when put up against her. This was certainly one last night she wanted me to have.

“Well, it’s tight enough…,” I frowned as I made sure all of my climbing equipment that I was wearing was good to go. There was a machine, a hi-tech ascender, that would help me pull myself up if I lost my grip or was too tired to climb, but I knew Yae wouldn’t enjoy me using it right away. I readied it, but held off on turning it on. “Well, here we go.”

With my hands tightly gripping the rope, I put my foot on the skin colored wall that was the ball of Yae’s foot and began to climb. Rope climbing wasn’t my forte at all, but I was fit enough to at least start.

“So that’s how you’re starting,” I heard Yae. She was observing me with interest. “It doesn’t tickle as much when you climb that way at least.”

For that, we were both grateful. Yae didn’t want to be tickled, and I was afraid of the consequences of having an uncontrollable apartment sized foot swinging around while I was tied to it. I was also glad Yae had tied the rope to her foot. Climbing the rope and using the sole of her foot as a wall felt much simpler than the other option I considered - trying to find a place to grab onto with my hands and climb my way up that way. If I tried gripping onto Yae’s skin, I would certainly tickle her if not pinch her.

Well, considering how solid her skin seemed to be at the heel, I supposed pinching wasn’t in my strength. It was strange how Yae’s foot felt. It wasn’t as springy as I remembered whenever I messed with her and tickled her when we were kids, but that came with the territory of the difference in scales. Just as my thick rope was just a string to Yae, her usually soft skin seemed thicker than the walls of our school building to me.

Ascending wasn’t too tough, but it wasn’t easy either. As the lotion Yae applied on her skin earlier did not make getting good traction easy. I wished Yae applied it more evenly, but perhaps it was hard for her to notice the remaining traces.

In places where it had absorbed into the Yae’s foot, her skin was smooth and slippery. Yae laughed when I couldn’t get any footing and fell back down to the heel of her foot. In places where Yae hadn’t spread it well, I got my feet caught in it and had to kick and struggle to peel it off to keep going. It being primarily in the wrinkles of Yae’s foot, my actions made Yae shift a little, squeezing my leg between the folds of her skin. I lost a few centimeters of distance getting free. Again, Yae was surprised and amused by how easy it was for me to lose my position.

“Touya, if you keep falling, I don’t think you’ll be able to make it,” she warned me.

It wasn’t exactly easy to ascend a foot that was five times my height. Yae had petite feet, but I was even less than petite. Still, I climbed. My nose started to get acclimated to the smell of Yae’s sweat mixed with the lilac scented moisturizer. It still wasn’t pleasant being able to feel the strong scent in the air in addition to smelling it, but it was manageable. I used all of my arm strength to get up on my own up the apartment complex sized foot.

“Gah… Hah… Did it...” I huffed the moment I pulled myself up between Yae’s big toe and second toe. I had made it tougher on myself for not using the climbing set’s tools outside of the rope and gloves, but I felt pride in my fortitude in being able to scale a wall five times my size with my own strength and endurance.

That pride meant very little to Yae who was watching with a cat-like smile while resting her head on her pillow and playing with her phone. She had a clear view of me between her toes while I had a clear idea of the distance between myself and her face. “Good job, Touya. You finally made it. Maybe I should’ve recorded it.”

“Don’t take away from my accomplishment, Yae. And don’t film,” I told her while trying to catch my breath. The fact that the smell of her feet seemed to be concentrated between her toes didn’t help, but I didn’t care. I wanted to take off the rope now that I had passed the third challenge. I wanted to bask in my personal success as a 5 cm man. 

It was sobering to compare Yae’s toes to my own body, though. Yae’s big toe was almost as big as I was. All five of them were boulder sized to me, and they each moved freely and swiftly. I stood up and leaned against Yae’s big toe to rest. The toenail alone was bigger than my head.

“Grk!” My sides were squeezed roughly. I was caught off guard when Yae’s toes suddenly moved.

“Aha! Caught you,” Yae jokingly said with me between her toes. She pressed them together with very little force, but I was firmly held tight between them. What amounted to a fraction of Yae’s strength was enough to firmly keep hold of me. I tried to push Yae’s toes apart, but they had a pincer-like grip on me. I couldn’t fight it as Yae swayed her foot left and right, lifting me off my feet and taking me along for the ride. My head and torso were affixed in place, pressed against the slimy feeling lotion coated toes.

“Y-Yae, this is… a bit too much...” I struggled to speak. I smacked my hands against her toes, trying to tap out like a pro wrestling fighter, but Yae either ignored it or didn’t feel it. Actually, I was sure she was just ignoring me because she could hear me. She just kept squeezing me with her toes. 

“Fufu~n. Sorry, Touya. I just couldn’t resist. When you’re right there, I just had to do this,” Yae explained her reasoning. It made me recall Sasakura-sensei’s mention that this was certain desires came naturally to the girls when I was smaller. I then remembered what happened with Yukimura. I shuddered to think what would’ve happened if she actually got us. Yae was at least being gentle. I doubted Yukimura would, especially with Eguchi.

In any case, Yae was satisfied enough to let me go. That meant it was time for me to continue the trip to get my hotel room. I was ready to keep going and climb down the other side of her foot and take the next (literal) leg of the punishment game.

That is, if it weren’t for a sudden mistake on Yae’s part.

“Okay, let’s continue, Touya. Sorry for holding you up.”

“Uh, Yae, can you not curl you foot too mu- Waaaaaaaaaaah!”

“... Eh? … Uwah! Touya!”

Once again, I fell. This time, from the top of Yae’s foot all the way down. Yae had been messing around too much and just let go without thinking about how her foot was leaning too far forward. Instead of just being able to rest between her toes when she let go, I slipped between them and fell the entire distance I had climbed.

Pomf!

Thankfully, the blanket was enough of a cushion to break my fall safely. Yae’s airy white sheets caught me and slowed my fall with little fanfare. The fact that I hadn’t yet untied the rope also saved me as it slowed me down somewhat and allowed me to and on my back.

“Oof. Gah, that was clo- Oh,” I managed a brief breath of relief before noticing a darkening and enlarging shadow above me.

Slam!

“Mmmph!” I couldn’t breathe let alone open my mouth the moment Yae’s foot fell. The entire wall I had climbed tipped over like a collapsing building. I ended up slammed into Yae’s sheets and bed by the ball of her foot. Yae had been shaken by hearing and seeing me fall so she leaned back, causing her feet to land flat onto the bed. I was pressed down by the titanic weight of Yae’s foot as she panicked out of concern. 

“Touya? Are you alright? Touya? Where did you...” I heard Yae’s muffled voice call my name through the wall of meat pinning me down. I supposed I still wasn’t done with experiencing her feet even after reaching the goal. It suddenly grew hot beneath Yae’s foot from the pressure of Yae’s weight pushing down on me and the friction of her sole rubbing against me and the blanket. If I had been complaining about the lotion and smell before, I had done so too soon. My body seemed to slip and cling beneath Yae’s sole. While the blanket had some give to it thanks to all of the air between it and the bed, this was actually a bad thing as any space between it and Yae’s foot was room for me to be squeezed and pulled in different directions due to the pressure. My left arm and right leg were stuck but my left leg and right arm were being dragged and pulled.

This all happened in the few moments it took for Yae to realize where I was. When she took her foot off, I found I was actually still stuck to it thanks to the clinginess of the lotion. I wanted to tell Yae not to use beauty products after a bath, but I had no real energy to do so. I just tilted my head to the side so I was no longer face first into Yae’s foot.

“Uwah. Sorry, Touya,” I heard her apologize.

“Was that the fourth challenge?” I mumbled, trying to use humor to cope with what I had just had to deal with.

Yae was definitely feeling bad. “Let’s… go with that…”

I sighed and let Yae take me off her foot like a sticker. I didn’t feel flattened, but the sound of me being peeled off certainly made to think I had been. This was certainly going to be an eventful night.