“Ah, Yae. Welcome home.”

“I’m home… Um, I brought Touya with me.”

“Touya Onii-chan? Oh! I want to see! Where is he?”

“Yuri, calm down. Yae, is it fine you take him out?”

“Okay. Touya, that’s fine, right?”

It wasn’t like I could reply properly before she did something. After a stomach churning journey to Yae’s house, the motion stopped. I didn’t get motion sickness easily, but the constant swaying and random jerking around caused by Yae’s steps took their toll. I was glad I didn’t vomit. I was still buried in more than a dozen balled up tissues, but I didn’t want to be tossed around in my own throw up.

The light poking through the gaps in the tissues told me Yae had opened up the paper bag I braced myself as a single hand came down and grabbed me. I had certainly gotten smaller over the trip home because Yae’s hand was able to fully hold down both of my arms in her grip. I was pulled out of the bag and into the light. For a moment, my vision blurred due to the sudden change from dark to light. 

I was put down somewhere. Before my vision could refocus, I was blasted by a loud voice that sounded like it came from a megaphone.

“Kyahaha! It’s a doll Onii-chan!”

“Uwah!” I stumbled back and fell on my butt. My eyes snapped open to see a face almost as tall as I was. It took me a moment to recognize who it was. “Y-Yuri?”

“Nishishishi~!” The primary schooler grinned and laughed. She then turned to Yae who was standing right beside her. “Onee-chan, can I play with you and Onii-chan later?”

“I’ll think about it,” Yae answered. I knew she couldn’t refuse her sister however. When she glanced at me, she was essentially alerting me for the future.

“Yay! Onii-chan looks way more fun like this.”

“You can play around after you finish your homework, Yuri,” Yae’s mother firmly declared before bending down at a ninety degree angle just to get closer. Even then, her head was still high above me. “I know I said we were fine with you staying over today, Touya-kun, but this is smaller than I expected. Even smaller than how my co-workers get. Do you need anything?”

“I think I’ll be fine, Ayame-san,” I told her. “Yae knows all the details, and I trust her.”

“Fufu… Did you hear that, Yae? Touya-kun must really trust you if he’s okay with being so small in front of you,” Yae’s mother nudged my childhood friend in the arm. “Don’t take advantage of him now.”

“Okaa-san, not in front of Touya!”

Though Yae had been fairly forward with me all day, being around her family clearly embarrassed her. Standing up, I saw that I was on the empty dining table in the Asano residence. The walls, floor, and ceiling were out of reach while the women of the Asano family stood in front of me. The dining table was up to Yuri’s chest and Yae and Ayame-san’s waists. While Yae started pulling on her mother out of embarrassment, I walk forward to the edge and looked down.

I had gone from 46 cm to 43 during the trip to Yae’s home. The 80 cm drop from the table was more than a little intimidating considering it was a multi-story fall from my perspective, and the heads of the Asano family women were all high above this.

“Are you scared, Onii-chan?” Yuri asked, leaning forward so that her head was directly over top. The 126 cm primary schooler pushed her body against the table so that I couldn’t look down any more. The weight of her body against the edge shook the wooden table. It felt like a powerful earthquake that made my feet unsteady. I was able to keep balance in time to see her give me a satisfied grin.  “Nishishishi~! Did I help?”

“Somewhat,” I answered with a shout.

I was thankful when Yae actually finished talking to her mother. Ayame-san pulled Yuri away and knelt down in front of me. I stepped back as the 173 cm woman’s bosom fell onto the surface I was standing on. The shaking caused by Ayame-san was stronger than Yuri’s and knocked me down.

“Touya-kun,” Ayame-san hadn’t noticed because I got back up while she was changing her posture to kneel down on the floor more easily. “I have told you before that you’re always welcome here, so please make yourself at home as best as you can. You’re pretty much also a part of this family.”

“Thank you, Ayame-san,” I told Yae’s mother, trying to keep my gaze up to her face instead of her chest. I never really looked at Ayame-san too hard, but there was hard to not look at her now. Yae’s father was a lucky man. There were two things that were difficult to ignore when they were right in front of me and larger than exercise balls. “I’ll try not to be a bother.”

“I really doubt you would be in this state, which makes me more worried about what Yae and Yuri could do to you,” Ayame-san wasn’t as trusting of her daughters as I had originally thought. “I’ve read the Reduction program pamphlet, but I really disapprove of their hands-off approach. The training program at my office was a lot more in-depth.”

I thought to get a reference about the program for Sasakura-sensei, but before I could, Yae interrupted and stood between the two of us, giving me a view of her butt as it pressed against the table’s edge.

“Okaa-san, please just leave it to me,” Yae frowned. “I won’t do anything Touya-kun doesn’t want.”

“That’s one thing I’m worried about, but more than that, how do I know you aren’t leading him on?”

“I-I wouldn’t do something like that!” 

The argument continued for some time before Ayame-san realized she had to finish making dinner. Yae picked me up and brought me over to the living room. She placed me on the low table and took a seat on a cushion. Reaching into her bag, she returned my belongings and left. I watched from my vantage point as she grabbed various things from around the living room. While that sounded normal, there was now an incredible span between me and everything else, so waiting for Yae was more akin to spectating dangerous wildlife from a safe distance.

“Oof. That’s a bad comparison,” I told myself. Yae could be dangerous to my frail form, but she was the nicest girl I knew.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Despite my confidence in Yae, I flinched when several things fell onto the table. Yae’s shadow fell over me when her head passed over the window.

“So what should we do in the meantime, Touya?” she asked me while still standing over me, giving me a full view of her the blue panties under her skirt. I looked onto the table to see what she had brought: a remote control, a pack of cards, a board game, a game controller, and a tablet computer. 

“You sure grabbed a lot of things. I don’t think we can do them all.”

“Okaa-san will probably make us do our homework later, but we should have some fun before that,” Yae told me as she removed her pink hair clip and stepped away from the table. When Yae let her hair down, it curled flipped up and curled over her hair. I saw her try to brush it aside, but it went back to its original position. “I’m going to go change, so let me know when I get back.”

“Sure thing,” I told her.

It hit me that I was staying over with my childhood friend. It had been a long time since we slept over at each others houses, probably since we both grew more conscious of each other, me especially. It brought back memories but also emphasized how different things were now, both as we got older and as I was now at the size of a doll.

“Well, let’s just see how this goes.” 

“Oh. how about if I pull this thing?”

“Ah, I can cross over now. Nice job, Touya.”

A slow paced co-operative game was just what the doctor ordered to relax. Though the controller was half my height and heavier than me, I was able to sit down in front of it and use it like a giant arcade machine. With me at 42 cm, it was clunky and I couldn’t use both the stick and the buttons at the same time, but it was workable. As a plus side, the television, while looking more than 5 times as far as it usually would, was also much larger from my perspective - like I was using a cinema screen.

Yae led the way in game while I assisted. It made sense since it was her game that she had purchased with her money, but I was disappointed because I couldn’t do much more. I believed I was slowing her down because of how hard it was to manipulate my character. I made it up for it with my puzzle-solving skills however. We were able to clear a few levels together.

“Ah! No fair!”

Stomp! Stomp!

“Huh? Waah!”

I reacted to late before Yuri entered the room and spotted us playing. She ran over to the front of the table I was on and pointed right at Yae. The powerful stomps of her primary schooler body along with the gust of wind caused by her running over caught me off guard, but I nearly fell off the table when the side of Yuri’s foot accidentally bumped into the table leg when she stopped.

“Onee-chan, why do you get to play games today?” Yuri demanded to know. “Okaa-san said no video games on weekdays.”

“Ah, Touya!” Yae called my name to check that I was okay. I was so she answered her sister. “Touya wanted to play before he got too small. This was a special exception.”

“Uuu,” Yuri pouted. “I want to play with Onii-chan too. I just finished my homework, so can I?”

“I guess s… No, Okaa-san will get mad if I say yes,” Yae was about to relent but stopped herself. “How about if we play something else together? Touya was having trouble with the controller anyway.”

“So I was slowing you down!” I knew it.

I was fine with changing to accommodate Yuri. The little kid could be a handful. I didn’t have siblings, but I could tell being the older sister was something Yae had to grow into.

We changed to the board game Yae had brought out. She spread the game board onto the table and both girls sat on opposite sides. I stood on the board itself among the spinner, dice, and cards. I recognized I had fallen to 40 cm tall because the 20 cm spinner was half my height.

I wanted to quote Yae in that it was a surreal experience playing a board game while on the board. The cards were the size of posters and the plastic spinner looked like a game show spinner as well. Each die fit in my hands like a deck of cards would fit Yae’s. They weren’t too heavy, but they did have a noticeable weight in them when I threw them much like the pieces when I carried mine from space to space. I was getting some exercise from the board game.

All the while, Yae and Yuri were looking down on me with curiosity and interest. I must have looked like a moving toy to them going about the board, putting in an effort to pick up the pieces and cards or use the dice and spinner. They sat above me as 7+ m and 5+ m giants, their hands descending on their turn to do what I was doing with ease.

“Onii-chan, you’re so slow,” Yuri laughed as her hand picked up my piece and moved it for me, bringing it 11 spaces away. I started to walk over to where it was when Yae took her turn and rolled. I heard the thud as the brick sized dice fell from above to my right.

“Five spaces. Let’s see what the card says,” Yae reached past me and over my head to the pile of cards to read it. “Ah. Move a player of your choice back five spaces. Touya, you’re the furthest ahead so that’s going to be you.”

And Yae reached over to move my piece 5 spaces back, changing my destination again. I looked up at her to see her stick her tongue out at me. Though she said it was because I was in first, she clearly wanted to mess with me.

The game continued until Ayame-san called us over for dinner. Yae cleaned up the board game by taking me off the table and pushing everything into the box. I was able to tell from comparing myself to Yae’s chest high bare thigh as she sat that I was around 38 cm tall, meaning I had lost 2 cm while we were playing.

Being brought to the dinner table, I found Ayame-san had placed a chopstick’s worth of everything she had made onto a small dipping sauce tray. This was my plate. Yae placed me on the table beside where she was sitting and moved the plate over to me.

It sure was something to be standing next to a bowl that was up to my stomach. The rice Ayame-san piled on for Yae was up to my chest. If I didn’t know anything about the Reduction, I would have immediately considered the ceramic bowl a Culture Festival prop.

I considered calling Yae a big eater to poke fun at her, but decided it was in poor taste, especially when I realized Yae was eating more than my own weight in food considering my current stature.

The clamboring of the Asano family as they ate became my background noise. Yuri told her mother about all of the fun things that happened at school while Ayame-san inquired with Yae for more details about Reduction. I ate the few grains of rice, the small fragment of chicken, and the chunk of fried eggplant as best as I could. Finishing it was my self-imposed challenge as my pride wouldn’t handle not finishing so little food.

Especially after Yuri said, “Onii-chan, is that going to be enough for you?”

I was glad Ayame-san considered my reduced stomach size.

When dinner was over, Ayame-san made the two sisters do the dishes. I was left on the table where she sat with me. She had with her the Reduction Week pamphlet from the school.

“So… Yae’s getting used to this program, isn’t she?” Ayame-san spoke with certainty. “I bet she’s been getting more touchy-feely with you.”

“Was it that obvious?” I asked. Yae had been careful not to act like she had been in school today now that her parents around, but Ayame-san had noticed anyways.

“I know how the experience goes. And I also know my daughter, Touya-kun,” Ayame-san shoved her finger into my stomach. It felt like being hit by a log.  “I’d be careful if I were you. She might just take advantage of the situation. In fact, I’m sure she will. It’s a natural response to us women as you get smaller.”

“I should be happy about that, but that’s also a little worrying,” I answered, wanting to fight back but the repeated thrusts of Ayame-san’s finger kept shoving me back. Ayame-san sure enjoyed poking fun at the two of us, and it was literal with me.

“You can also consider this as just another lesson in your Reduction Week,” the attacks ceased after I fell onto the table. “Think of it as punishment for making my baby girl wait. At the very least, I don’t believe she’ll do anything extreme, so maybe you should just enjoy things while it lasts. I know she certainly will.”

Enjoy, huh? Ayame-san spoke as though she had experience in the matter, which she probably did as adults like her had also gone through Reduction training in the workplace. I got back up slowly after it was clear that she had finished with her serious chat.

That didn’t mean she was done talking with me, however.

“That aside, I noticed there isn’t anything in this pamphlet about a bath,” Ayame-san changed the subject. “Touya-kun, you aren’t going to be going over the next few days without bathing, are you?”

The motherly scolding face was a lot more persuasive when it took up my field of view.

“Well, I do have clothes in my bag that shrunk with me, but it’s not like I can draw a bath myself. It’s only two more days after this so it shouldn’t be a problem,” I said.

“Are all men like this? Takeshi says the same thing every time he’s in a bathless hotel when on business,” frowned Ayame-san.

“Wah!”

I jerked back as Ayame-san’s hand dropped to my level and her index finger jutted out at me. She didn’t poke me this time, but having her finger directly in front of my face caused me to flinch.

“Your parents may be away, but I refuse to let you ignore your hygiene while you’re in my house, young man,” she told me. “I’ll prepare a warm cup of water. You can have a water bath in private when Yae’s taking her bath. Is that fine?”

“I don’t get to refuse do I?” I asked.

She answered simply by smiling and reaching her hand towards me.