Well… asides from the box sticking out from beneath Yuri’s bed decorated with Magical Meteor Heart stickers. I was aware my childhood friend still had the memorabilia from that anime somewhere and when I spotted it, I just had to ask. Yuri told me her sister had pushed them over to her room to hide them while I was staying over. Yuri brought them over just to embarrass her big sister.

“You sold your sister out so easily,” I chuckled while standing on the low table in the middle of Yuri’s room while she sat on a pink cushion looming over me”

Yuri adjusted the earpiece so she could hear my voice properly. “Nishishishi~ Onee-chan bought some more last month too! See?”

Sifting through the box, Yuri held out the main heroine’s magic staff and a stuffed doll of the mascot. She wasn’t kidding I could see the building sized items held up in the sky high above me. Considering their condition, those were new. I had heard a reboot of the anime was going to released in the summer, but I didn’t think Yae would jump right back into the fan bandwagon so soon.

“Well, I guess we did watch that show together when we were kids. I’ll have to invite her to my house when it starts airing then,” I considered.

“Teehee~!” Yuri giggled, leaning her head closer to the table. I nearly lost balance from the gust of wind she caused. “Touya Onii-chan, you and Onee-chan are super close. Can I come watch too?”

“Er… I don’t see why not. Sure.”

“Yay! I can’t wait!”

Thud!

“W-Whoa! Oof...”

“Whoops. Sorry, Onii-chan! Teehee~!” When Yuri bumped into the table accidentally, I was knocked down by the shifting of the ground. It was unfortunate, but no matter what the giant little sister did, I was going to be affected by it. Whenever she moved her legs, the table shook. Whenever she moved her arms or head, my world would darken or brighten with how her massive figure blocked the light. And whenever she breathed in my direction, I had to put my hands up to guard my face against the gust. 

While it seemed like I was calm enough to be able to converse with Yuri normally. I was a little more than nervous. Though she was talking to me, Yuri had grabbed a couple of things from her collection of toys. It was clear she wanted to play. She was only just breaking the ice with me to warm me up.

Foooo!

“Waaaah!”

And I was right. Without any warning, Yuri decided it would be funny to get right up close to the table and blow with all of her might. The sheer power of this primary schooler’s breath was greater than any typhoon level wind. I flew. I didn’t just get knocked off my feet. I found myself literally airborne, spiraling through the sky before landing at the very edge of the table. I landed back onto the table hard.

“Ouch...”

Yuri seemed to find my panic funny. She hovered her skyscraper of a finger above my head, ominously keeping it over me. “Nishishishi~ Onii-chan, do you want to be my pet? You’re really fun like this.”

Pet… I knew Yuri was joking, but such a suggestion did not make me happy. I had to admit, I was surprised that nobody had called me that all week. I honestly expected Yae to be the one to call me that, but she must have been holding back a lot. And her mother’s watchful eye probably made sure she wouldn’t think that at all. 

“No…,” I answered as I slowly picked myself back up. “You know that’d get you in trouble with Ayame-san anyways, Yuri.”

My words made the titanic girl huff. “Muuu… You wouldn’t tell, would you?”

“I don’t know. I do have loose lips after all.”

Trying to hold something over Yuri was something I could do normally, but it was made clear that I shouldn’t have tried teasing her when she was more than a kilometer tall.

Slam!

“Ooof!” I was knocked to the ground again when Yuri put something on the table. When I looked up, I found myself seeing the bottom of a boot - white and red boot. They weren’t Yuri’s. They belonged to a figurine that Yuri pulled out of Yae’s box of goods.

“Maybe Meteor Heart will have to teach tiny bad guys like Onii-chan a lesson for wanting to get me in trouble,” Yuri playfully threatened, holding the figure’s left leg with one hand while its right leg was above me. This was probably what the defeated villains in that anime experienced considering this was a show that originally aired when Reduction and Magnification were booming in society. Still, the fact that I was the size of an ant to a magical girl figurine meant this was more than a little intimidating to me. This was just how being less than a millimeter tall was though. I was a speck to a primary school girl and a bug to a doll.

“H-Hey, now. Yae’s going to be mad if you damage that,” I tried to reason with Yuri. “I won’t tell Ayame-san, okay? Let’s just not try crushing me. I’ve had more than enough of that today.”

“Huh? So is that what Onee-chan did?” Yuri paused, surprised by my outburst. She put the Meteor Heart figure away and curiously asked.

I was thankful to no longer having something hovered directly over me. Thankful enough to answer Yae’s little sister properly too. “Yeah… My kouhai left me on a chair when Yae came in. She… accidentally sat down on me… And then when I fell off, I ended up getting stepped on by her too...”

“Eh? But… you’re not flat or anything,” Yuri was confused at how I was still alive. “Onii-chan, aren’t you like, super weak now?”

“You’re saying that now after I’ve been pushed down by your finger a bunch of times and blown away by you…?” 

“A-Ah… Teehee. Sorry~!”

“Reduction makes me a bit tougher - at least enough to survive.”

“Really?” A longing expression formed on the primary schooler’s face as she crossed her arms. “Ooh... I want to have Reduction Week in my school too. I wanna teach the boys in my class a lesson for being jerks. I won’t get in trouble if they’re not hurt, right?”

“Hey, give them a few years,” I didn’t think having Reduction Week in primary school would be a good idea. While it would get us boys a better understanding of how society worked earlier, leaving a bunch of prepubescent girls in charge of them was unsafe in my eyes.

Simply talking to the primary school girl was a successful way in passing the time while Yae was being lectured by her mother. Unfortunately, Yuri’s attention span would never be enough for me to just chat with her the entire time. She was clearing looking at me with pleading eyes, wanting to play with me but unsure about what would be doable for my size. Yuri was a good girl in that she did as her mom wanted and asked for my permission first. 

“... So, Onii-chan... ” Yuri squirmed in her seat. “Do you think we can play a little?”

I sighed. Though I could actually refuse her because I had the ability to tell her mother if she did something bad, I did not want to lose any brownie points as her big brother figure. “Fine. Just don’t hurt me, okay?”

“Nishishishi~ I promise,” she nodded. However, she also added. “You said you’re pretty tough anyways, Onii-chan.”

I probably shouldn’t have told her that. The moment I gave her my permission, a Cheshire Cat-like smile appeared on her face. Yuri’s finger descended on me, ready to pick me up and take me wherever she wanted.

What was Yuri’s idea of playing around? The fact that I couldn’t do much at all really limited me, but the gigantic girl who could pick me off her table with her finger did not mind at all. In fact, she was quite happy that I was now so puny.

“Nishishishishishi~! Okay. Before Onee-chan gets back, let’s have fun,” grinned Yuri as she held her finger in front of her face. I hung on as tightly as I could against the wind force of her breath while on her nail.

“J-Just what do you have in mind, Yuri?” I hesitantly asked. The over a kilometer drop to the ground did not help calm me down.

Yuri did not answer it. She simply huffed out of her nose like she was holding back a snicker. To my dismay, Yuri started lowering me down but not back down to the table. She brought me all the way down to the floor. 

This was not a place anyone a millimeter tall in height wanted to be.  “Don’t tell me...”

Stomp.

My world shook as Yuri moved back and put her hands on her hips. Though it was so far away, I could see a smile spanned across her face as she declared, “I want to win a bunch of times against you, Onii-chan!”

Win? More like dominate. Just looking forward, Yuri’s socked feet were an imposing cliffside to me. The toes hidden behind the white fabric were the size of buildings to me. My legs trembled immediately from fixing my eyes on them. It was probably my trauma from getting stepped on so many times already, but I balked knowing just what was waiting for me now that Yuri had put me down on the ground.

“Y-You sure like unfair games, huh, Yuri?” I stuttered, knowing full well that Yuri was intending to toy with me. 

I said ‘try’ because no matter what she decided on, we found my ability to do something that even registered as playing was severely limited. Going against someone 2000 times one’s size was really an unfair matchup after all. The fact of the matter was that there was no way I would ever be able to win against Yuri at my current size.

Much to my dismay, Yuri didn’t seem to mind that at all though. All that was on her mind was that she was going to have fun.

The game she wanted to play was the simplest one - hide and seek. The same game she had been loving all the other previous days I was with the Asano family. It was already impossible when I could still be measured within the scale of centimeters, but victory was definitely hopeless for me now.

“Okay, Onii-chan. I’ll count and you hide. That should be easy right? You’re so small, I won’t even see you unless I get down on the floor.”

Though she said that, her words only made me more worried. It nailed in the point that I had less presence than even an ant. While it was true I would have an advantage because of her inability to see me, that also put me in more danger. Even worse, I saw Yuri take off the earpiece. 

“It’d be cheating if I could hear you, right?” she giggled. “I don’t want to be super unfair to you, Onii-chan.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I exasperatedly complained. I knew Yuri could no longer hear my voice because she had taken off the only thing giving me the ability to talk to the normal sized world, Yuri no longer waited for a response from me. My one connection to the giant girl was tossed onto her pink bed.

“I’ll give you a lot of time Onii-chan~! I’ll count to one hundred! That should be enough for you to hide!”

With those words, Yuri put her hands over her eyes and started counting aloud. The game started without giving me any choice in the matter.

“Aww jeez. It can’t be helped,” I reluctantly started running. I had to play along. Refusing to play with Yuri would only make whatever games she wanted to play with me next worse. With my diminutive body less than 30 cm away from her left foot, I had to start moving or else I wouldn’t be able to get to a hiding place.

A 100 count - She was counting a bit faster than one per second, so I had less than two minutes to get somewhere. As I ran with all of my strength and stamina, I tried to think about where I could hide. 

Yuri had scattered a bunch of Yae’s Meteor Heart collection onto the floor while showing me, so those were tempting places to hide. In fact, she probably intended to give me places to hide to keep things fair because otherwise, the floor would be empty and barren. From the building sized Meteor Heart figure that had been dropped on its side to the wool rabbit doll of the mascot Kagu to one unused pink cosplay stocking for Meteor Heart herself, there were a variety of choices because of how avid of a fan Yae actually was. She was quite a closet fan girl.

Sadly, I learned as Yuri’s count hit ‘fifty’ that thinking ahead was putting the cart before the horse.

“No way...” I huffed. “You’re telling me... it’s that far away?”

My surroundings felt unchanged no matter how much I pushed myself. Everything Yuri had set up for me to hide around was a distant goal I became well aware that I couldn’t reach in time.

How much distance could I cover in my state? My stride had been reduced to a millimeter at best which meant, at best, I could clear around 2 mm every second. In the less than 100 seconds Yuri gave me, I couldn’t even get 20 cm away from where I started. 

“Ninety-nine… One hundred! Okay, my tiny Onii-chan, let’s see if I can find and catch you!” 

When she finished counting, I wasn’t even half way there.

Even Yuri couldn’t believe how bad it was when she realized I wasn’t close to where she had wanted me to be. “Eh? Really, Onii-chan? Were you even trying?”

I was. I absolutely was. I went full sprint in the end even. but even then, I couldn’t get anywhere. 

“Onii-chan, you’re so lame~” teased the primary school girl. “It’s no fun if you’re that slow.”

Despite knowing full well there was the handicap of me being a millimeter tall, it did sting in my pride to be insulted like that by Yuri. While I wasn’t any star athlete, I never wanted to be put down by Yae’s little sister. Being a millimeter tall was debilitating to the point where I couldn’t even get a single step away from her.

That little fact did not slip past the playful giant girl. 

“Well... nishishishishi… the game isn’t over yet!” I heard as a shadow suddenly darkened my surroundings.

Looking up, my sense of reasoning disappeared. The sky was now white while the ground was dark with shadow as the light above me was blocked out. A monolith of meteoric proportions was what looked to be a few meters above my head, ready to crash down at a moment’s notice. This was Yuri’s usually petite, socked foot, prepared to step down onto me. I was washed in a salty odor that drifted off from above me - the sweat collected in her sock was pungent. After all of the trauma of being accidentally crushed all day, the sight and smell of Yuri’s foot in close enough proximity to stomp down on me caused my brain to associate feet with danger.

“Hu-? W-W-W-Wait! Yuri!” I shouted despite the girl not having the earpiece on to hear me. I immediately felt a rush of adrenaline flow through my body, but I had no way of actually using it. My body’s fight-or-flight instinct triggered, but instead of either option, I was stunned like a deer in the headlights. I lost the feeling in my legs because Yuri’s foot was a literal centimeter over the ground and me.

“I can’t win unless I actually catch you, Onii-chan, so you still have a chance,” Yuri’s booming voice echoed all around me like an omnipresent decree. 

A chance? Catch?

Just as I thought that, Yuri’s foot moved. She pulled it back just slightly so that I was no longer looking at the middle of her foot. She moved it so that now her socked toes were directly above me. She spread her toes out so that the fabric stretched enough for light to peak through like a curtain. That did not calm me as it gave me a clear sight at the color of her toes inside the sock.

“I’ll give you a one minute head start, Touya Onii-chan. I’ll catch you if you’re not fast enough!”

I ground my teeth. I could feel the blood flowing in my legs again. She wanted me to get away from her foot? She was going to stomp on me! Hide-and-seek had now morphed into a game of tag. Yuri was not going to let me lose gracefully and with my dignity intact.

“One… two… three...”

“Jeez… Just how much more running do I have to do?” I shouted as I made a break for it, doing just what the girl wanted. I started running again as much as I could to try to get out of the shadow of Yuri’s big toe.

“Thirty-seven... thirty-eight... thirty-nine...”

It was unbelievable how it felt trying to outrun a little girl’s toes. This was not only a surreal experience; it was a trial. I was already exhausted from trying to go full sprint just a minute before so my running speed was much slower. I gasped as I tried to clear the 4 centimeter distance of shadow in what time was left. 4 centimeters was multiplied by 2000 to me, becoming 80 meters to travel. I could usually do a 100 meter dash in around 11 seconds, but with my legs straining from overuse, that wasn’t going to be the case this time. Even if Yuri gave me double the time, I was too physically exhausted to go at full speed.

“Darn it! Come on, I’m so close,” I could actually see where Yuri’s shadow ended. Just two dozen more meters and I was clear.

Rumble. Rumble.

“Fifty-three… fifty-four… fifty-five...”

I could feel and hear Yuri’s slightest movements as she kept her foot hovered above me. Every imperceptible shift she made was like a roar of thunder. I was only relieved the moment I crossed the divide between the darkness made by Yuri’s foot and the light.

“Yes…!” I gasped, slowing down to a stop after I believed I was safe. I turned around and looked up to see Yuri still hovering her socked foot over me, but now I was able to see more of her body. I tried to make sense of her expression from how distant it was, but all I could make out was her mischievous childish grin. “Hah… Hah… Safe. I did it, Yuri.”

She didn’t hear me. Of course she didn’t. Without the earpiece, my words fell on deaf ears. All she did was continue to count until she hit the end.

“Fifty-eight… Fifty-nine… Sixty!”

The moment the count finished, I realized I had made two mistakes. The first was assuming Yuri would end the game because I had escaped her shadow. She never said anything about that. All she told me was that if she caught me, I lost.

The second mistake was assuming just getting out from the shadow of her foot was safe. What would stop a giant girl on the scale of kilometers? She still hadn’t stretched her legs or foot out to their fullest to take an actual step. Her shadow moved with her as her toes went past me, immediately enveloping me in the darkness again as the ball of her foot fell from the sky..

“Y-”

Whaaaaaaaaaaam!

If one were to look at this from a normal scale, the only thing one would see was Yuri slowly and gently putting her foot back down onto the floor without any power or strength, but my insignificant stature transformed that into a level of an overwhelming cataclysm. Without time to even blink, I and my surroundings were engulfed in tons upon tons of white sock.

I was smothered entirely by Yuri. Crushed underneath the ball of her socked foot, I was the victim of what had to be an earth-shattering catastrophe. My body was rattled by a stomp powerful enough that it would cause earthquakes beyond any of us in Japan would be accustomed to. I actually blacked out for a second from my inability to process what had happened. I only snapped back into consciousness because of the oppressiveness of the intense pressure and the scratchy sensation in my mouth.

“...!” I couldn’t speak. My mouth was filled with sweaty cloth. My lungs did not feel like they had any air. In fact, my entire body felt utterly flattened. I was still alive, but I could not feel a thing. I was completely numb to anything other than the oppressive feeling pressing down on me. Was this how being as flat as a sticker felt? No, I wasn’t even on the level of a sticker. I was so small that the threads of Yuri’s sock were now actually visible and thick. If I were to get any smaller, I would be able to fit through them and slip into her sock.

Thought it was only for a few seconds at best, it felt like minutes had passed before Yuri removed her foot. For a second, I felt weightless as I found myself lifted along with it. I saw light again, but I couldn’t turn my head. My body was glued to Yuri’s socked foot from the sweat and pressure.

“Nishishishishi~”, Yuri laughed as she saw my miniscule form on her foot. “Is that you, Onii-chan? It’s hard to tell you apart from all of the dirty on my sock.”

Such a comparison felt demeaning, but Yuri actually did see me. I watched as her skyscraper of a finger approached. Her nail dragged across the white cloth, approaching me. She scraped me off her sock by simply brushing it against me, but it was a heavy impact on par with a truck slamming into me from my perspective. Immediately, my body was flung off like a speck of dirt in the wind.

“Waaaah!” I fell back down to the floor freed but exhausted.

Yuri went back to her bed for just a moment to pick up the earpiece, and she returned immediately after with a heavy crash as she lowered herself so she could see me properly down below.

“You lose Onii-chan! Ehehehe~” she laughed.

Of course I did. That had been decided since the very beginning. Yuri could clearly see my motionless and prone body on the floor, easily mistakable for a grain of sand or dirt.

“Aww… Tired already, Onii-chan? We only played one game,” Yuri giggled.

I knew it would be best to speak or else she’d think I was unconscious. I didn’t have the energy to move my body, but I could use my mouth again. There was only one thing I had to say after I recovered enough strength to speak again.

“Yuri… Never again, okay?” It sounded less like a refusal and more like begging, but that was all I could muster.

A children’s game had never been so draining.