(43) Magnified Shopping District (15.1 m < 15.3 m)

Would you believe that it was actually difficult to find our 15 meter tall classmates in a city? We couldn’t believe it either, but the fact that the skyscrapers and high rise buildings of the inner city were still taller than them meant we couldn’t easily see the girls’ heads poking out from the rooftops.

That did not mean that they weren’t around though.

Stomp!

Honk! Screech!

“Wah! Sorry!”

“Hey, be careful over there. Mind the stoplights! And the roads are marked for a reason, so only left turns here,” I spotted Saegusa-senpai was playing traffic guard and scolded a girl wearing a black vest for causing a car to drift around her foot when she went the wrong way. The driver didn’t seem to mind though, surprisingly. I could hear a rowdy daredevil’s cheer from afar.

Down the road, another health committee representative, Asahina, was directing traffic telling the girls when to go and when not to so they wouldn’t interrupt the cars driving along the road or the pedestrians and salarymen who were crossing.

“Okay. You’re good to go. Make sure to step over the lights, okay? You really don’t want to trip,” the bespectacled girl advised.

“Seriously, this is a pain, do I really gotta?” a twin-tailed girl with glasses groaned.

“Do you want to talk to the policewoman over there about causing a traffic accident?” Asahina pointed at the Magnified adult woman in uniform nearby. I couldn’t help but follow her long legs up the building she was leaning against.

“Whoa, she’s hot. Maybe I wouldn’t mi-”

“... Sumika...”

“... Okay. Okay. I’ll behave.”

We confirmed again that the girls were actually being made to follow some sort of rules while downtown. It really was surreal to think of the girls as beings that needed to follow the traffic laws when they were monster sized, but there did have to be some way to keep order when high school girls were literally 10 times their regular size. The fact that there were Magnified policewomen really caught our attention. We had to remind ourselves to not stare up the long pillars clad in pantyhose and just continue forward past her boots which I recognized had pink Safety Sole material on the bottom.

“It seems tough for them to be stuck lining up in cramped roads,” Fujimoto found calling the spacious streets cramped to be unnatural for his tongue. “Somehow, watching them makes the city feels like a hallway they’re just going through to reach their destination.”

“Where would they be going?” Eguchi pondered. “I guess the beach? I’m not going to lie - I wouldn’t say no to seeing that.”

“I don’t think they have their luggage yet to pull out swimsuits, but if you want to see that, we just have to cut through downtown. And from what the pamphlet says, the traffic rules are only for the areas with skyscrapers. They’re there to better protect the busy buildings and roads,” I directed the guys while reading the map on the tourist pamphlet. “... Ooh. It looks like if we keep heading this way, we’ll get to a crazy place.”

“Crazy place?” Eguchi tilted his head with curiosity. On a pretty boy like him, the act was honestly a bit cute. “Is it the suburban district that camera girl mentioned?”

Not at all. The suburban district was closer to the beach. Where we were passing through was still considered to be downtown - the skyscrapers still all around us being clear proof of that.

“You guys interested in shopping?” I gave them a blatant hint.

“A shopping district?” “A mall?” Eguchi and Fujimoto stated their guesses at the same time. I could see from his expression that Saeki was leaning more towards shopping district as his answer.

The answer was a little of both honestly… Well, even though I made it sound like I was familiar with our destination, I didn’t know what sort of mall took up more than five city blocks. When we went through the pedestrian underpass, all four of us were stunned by where we ended up.

Stomp!

“Hey there, Dai-chan. This is a peculiar way for us to see eye to eye now. What floor are you on?” a schoolgirl in a black blazer waved at who was probably her classmate on an outer walkway that spanned one of the upper floors of a skyscraper. She was one amongst many girls who were wandering down a long stretch of buildings on a wide street that was purposefully empty.

“Excuse me, can I get a drink? Oh, right. I have to use the screen.”

“... Whoa! That was quick. I should’ve taken a video. It just grew in an instant!”

“This system’s super easy, but I can’t get used to it at all.”

Well, it wasn’t an ordinary street, or rather, neighborhood. This WAS the mall. The city was certainly built oddly. What I had thought would be a multi-story mall was definitely multi-story, but it was vastly different from any shopping mall I ever went to - more like a shopping mall district.

“Surreal…” Eguchi and Fujimoto joined me in simultaneously describing the sight before our eyes.

There were multiple blocks of tall skyscrapers and buildings close enough to one another to form large walls that were actually twice the height of the 15+ meter girls and stretched into the distance. I could tell these buildings were shopping centers filled with multiple stores for anyone normal size, but each shopping center building was like in a single storefront to the girls who were wandering the spacious streets.

“Hey, did that huge cup just pop up out of nowhere?” Eguchi was not sure what to think when he saw a plastic cup of tapioca that was taller than he was. Where had it come from?

The answer, of course, was that it came from the mall. From what we could see, every building had a large advertising screen on it along with an outcropping platform on the girls’ level. They could press on it like it was a touch-screen tablet. The screen wasn’t for advertising clearly; it was used for the Magnified girls to put in their orders for the mall staff to then grow to their size.

“I can’t believe it either, but it looks like they’re just Magnifying things for the girls without a second thought,” I was just as surprised as he was. I never thought I’d see Alteration technology so widespread to the point where even malls had it. “Ookojima really is built differently than everywhere else. This technology is all over the place here.”

Thud!

“Whoah!”

We really should’ve been paying more attention to our surroundings rather than being stunned looking up. Once again, we strayed too far from the buildings and ended up a meter away from a loafer which landed to my left.

“Huh? Whoah, sorry there!” I may have shouted a bit too loudly because I was heard enough to receive an apology from above. Its voice was familiar. “Wait, that uniform… Oh, Kiri-shii?”

Of the people in class who called me by that name, the gyarus were the main ones. I should have been paying more attention to the girls buying the bubble tea instead of the technology growing it. I would’ve realized earlier that we had run into our school’s gyaru group.

“Oh, Shiina-chan, Nomiya-chan,” Eguchi recognized the two girls looking down at us by their car sized loafers.

“Oh wow, the whole gang’s here,” Shiina was surprised but welcoming as she sipped on her drink. “Can you believe this place guys? I didn’t expect to be able to be able to shop while like this.”

“You boys want to be our gofer?” To prove her friend’s point, Nomiya lifted up a shopping bag the size of a house. She then started to lower it over us. All four of us braced for the impact of it landing on us, not wanting to get crushed without a fight.

“H-Hey, Nomiya-san! That’s not possible! Hey!” Fujimoto was the loudest out of all of us. Even if it was mostly empty, the bag itself would still be able to slam us into the ground due to being Magnified. We were all equally thankfully when she stopped short of actually putting it on us.

“She’s just playing around,” Shiina laughed at our collective nervousness. “But we actually do need a boy to be our gofer. Minamin, show them that cool thing about the bag.”

Cool thing?

“You’ll love this Kiri-shii,” Nomiya made a smug face. I wasn’t sure what she was doing when I saw her fiddling with the bag, but I was astonished when, in a fraction of a second, it just disappeared in front of my eyes.

“H-Huh?”

Nomiya knelt down and brought her hand toward us. Punched between her fingers was the very same shopping bag – normal sized.

“They can make these sorts of things now?” I was astonished enough to take the bag without question. While Ookojima could be seen as a testing bay for the technologies, the advances in Alteration technology were way more than I had expected.

“You want to join us for a meal, boys? A couple of us are chilling out,” Shiina invited. We were going to accept anyways, but Shiina and Nomiya weren’t going to wait for a response. Although Nomiya had normalized the size of one bag, Shiina still had another which she put down onto the ground so that the opening was facing us. “Hop on in!”

There was no hopping in. Nomiya’s foot slid across the ground and slammed into us – shoving us in before we could even agree. Eguchi and the others bowled over me and we ended up piled on top of each other.

“Being bagged, huh?” I recalled experiencing this once before during Reduction Week. There weren’t any tissues to cushion us in this sadly, so when Shiina lifted the bag up vertically, we all tumbled to the pull of gravity and were slammed into numerous knick-knacks and cosmetics. “Grk! Ngk!”

“Urgh… my stomach…,” I heard Fujimoto complain. He was holding onto a container of lipstick as long as his leg, only thicker. I could see Saeki had safely avoiding getting pinned down by a compact unlike Eguchi. We were in for a wild ride because Shiina’s arm swung her bag as she walked.

At the very least, our destination wasn’t too far away from the girls’ perspectives. We were released three blocks down from where we met Shiina and Nomiya. The girls dumped us out shortly after.

“Alright. Out you go, guys.”

“Guh… You can be as rough as acts Tokiwa sometimes, Shiina,” I grumbled at Shiina while rubbing my aching back.

“… As rough as who?” a sharp chill ran up my spine when a voice behind me. I didn’t expect her to be around, but Tokiwa was actually seated opposite of Shiina. I turned to see the girl in question eating a yellow colored, pineapple-flavored ice pop the size of a pillar.

It was unnerving to see Tokiwa biting the top of a human sized ice pop off because the part that stayed in her mouth was the size of my own head. “O-Oh. I didn’t think I’d see you here Tokiwa… actually, where is here?”

I realized we were now chest level with the girls who were seated a distance away from us as if we were on a table… or rather, something that could act as a table for the 15+ m high girls.

“This is the roof of a building, isn’t it?” Eguchi realized before I did.

“You’re right on the money, Eguchi-kun,” the fourth member at the ‘table’ Yoshikawa, spoke up.

“Yoshikawa-san? Didn’t think we’d find you here. This sure is a mixed group,” Fujimoto was surprised. He had found who he wanted to find.

“Were you looking for me, Fujimoto-kun?” Yoshikawa giggled. “Well, I’m glad to see you. Are you surprised at where you are? This doesn’t look 100 percent like a table, so I guess it was easy to figure out.”

The fencing surrounding us should have made it obvious. It did protect us from falling off, but the fact that they were treating a rooftop as a table raised more concerns and questions than answered them.

 “It sounds dangerous. Is this allowed?” I asked as I went to take a look at our surroundings.

“Yeah, it is. These buildings were designed for seating apparently. I don’t know how it works, but the only thing they warned us was to watch our feet. There’s a road under the table.”

“Now it sounds really dangerous. Tokiwa, you haven’t caused any traffic accidents, have you?”

“H-Hey! Even I know I shouldn’t out here!” Tokiwa took offense. She was oddly more defensive than offensive than usual, but gave us her reason shortly after with a pained expression. “… K-Kamiya-senpai already gave me a warning…”

After Tokiwa clutched her forehead, she pushed her bangs out of the way enough for me to spot a mark on it. I understood immediately that my committee chief’s chop had left an impression on her.

“A-ah… I see.” Not wanting to pursue the topic any further, I went to the edge of the rooftop. Peering past the fence, I saw that Tokiwa was seated on a smaller building with her legs stretched out so that they would be on the other side of the road they had mentioned. A two story building was acting as a footrest. I was concerned for anybody in the buildings. Who would want to work in a place where giant girls were allowed to sit?

… Apparently Daimon Industries was one of the companies fine with it is what one of the logos I could recognize told me. It wasn’t the only corporation either.

I was starting to learn just how crazy Ookojima was. The entire district was intentionally built so that the buildings could act as chairs and tables.

Wham!

“Whoa!” I feel on my butt as Nomiya plopped her plastic cup onto the rooftop. It was less of a cup and more of a water tower tank from my perspective. I couldn’t stand up, though, as Nomiya had purposefully done this and quickly put her face where I had been.

“This place sure is something, huh, Kiri-shii,” Nomiya had leaned her body forward so that her face was right next to me. A cat like smile was on her face as her hot breath beat down on my face and torso. “There’s so much crazy stuff around that everyone’s exploring.”

“I-Is that so?” the sweet smell of bubble tea was too strong for me. I tried not to choke. “Er… you’re a bit too close, don’t you think?”

“Aww, are you blushing, Kiri-shii?” laughed the tan gyaru. “It’s cute seeing how small you are compared to my cup.”

“You mind doing that to Saeki instead?” I tried to push the trouble to the nearby silent type.

“……” I received a glare in return but then Saeki smirked when Saeki Nomiya, still focusing on me, took out her phone.

“You can’t throw Saekin under the bridge, Kiri-shii. Besides, you make better reactions than him,” Nomiya snapped a flash-free photo of me.

”Asano’s going be on your butt, Nomiya,” The one to save me from further teasing was actually Tokiwa. The gyaru backed up out of instinct. When Tokiwa’s ice pop appeared directly above my head, stopping right before it touched Nomiya. I could feel the air get pushed away as the column sized chunk of ice swept over me. A small chunk fell off right and landed right between my legs. Just a small crumb was the equivalent of a fallen ice cream one. “She is right though. There’s too much stuff to do and see. We decided to take a break here after going through the whole mall district, but the other girls split up to even more places.”

“I’m glad we stayed in the city at least. The sports club girls like Hozuki-san and Shima-san went north out of the city to get more room to stretch,” Yoshikawa was just as exhausted as Tokiwa apparently. “I don’t think we could’ve kept up with them.”

Straightening her back and neck after having quickly avoided Tokiwa’s popsicle, Nomiya gave up on teasing me and added to the conversation.“ We couldn’t keep up with Shinonon either. She and Kaedecchi wanted to see the cool landmarks so they went really far away.”

“Yamaguchi, I can see, but I didn’t take Watanabe as a history nerd,” Tokiwa admitted. I honestly would have agreed if I hadn’t found out earlier in the year that Watanabe acted a lot less like a stereotypical gyaru than expected. I still wasn’t over the fact that she scored six places higher than me during our midterm exams…

Still, from the conversation, it seemed the girls were as scattered around the area as us guys were – even more so actually. The fact that they covered more ground than us to be able to leave the city by just walking meant they could be in areas we wouldn’t be able to get to. This explained why it was hard to find them all.

“So Kaede and Airi aren’t anywhere close by,” Eguchi noted the locations of two of harem members. “Shiina-chan, do you know where Asano-chan headed? Touya-kun’s still looking for her.”

“Yaecchi?” Shiina uttered her nickname for Yae. “I think she got dragged to the beachside by some of the senpais.”

The beach? I raised my eyebrow. That was going to be our next destination anyways since it was originally along the way. I automatically pictured by childhood friend in a swimsuit. The fact that she didn’t have any luggage at her size though probably meant she didn’t have one though.

“Ah, if you were thinking of swimsuits, Kiri-shii, I’m sorry to say this, but Kamiya-senpai dragged her along to supervise punishing Shizu-chan,” Shiina caught me red-handed.

“Yukimura?” I now understood why our senpais were with her then. They needed someone who could deal with that oddball girl. I glanced at Eguchi. “I almost don’t want to go see Yae anymore.”

Eguchi did not feel offended in the slightest at my remark. “I know how you feel, Touya-kun, but we’re still going, aren’t we?”

There was no way I wouldn’t go to Yae. That decision of mine was known by everyone present without me even needing to say it. That included the girls too. Much to my dismay, that meant we were in for a party shuffle.

“Alright! Ahahaha~ Taking some boys to the beach! They may be taken, but that’s totally what I’m talking about!” Shiina cheered, catching Fujimoto and the others off guard.

“We’ll take you there, Kiri-shii,” Nomiya nodded. “It’ll be faster that way for you. And we were planning on going for a swim anyways. That’s why we bought swimsuits.”

I couldn’t say I didn’t see that coming. If we were on an island, going to the seaside was a definite must.

“I can’t swim well, but that’s fine with me. The ocean breeze feels nice.” “You’re not getting me in a swimsuit, you two… But I guess I’ll go too.”

Although the gyarus seemed to decide things on their own, there was no disagreement. Even Tokiwa wasn’t reluctant.

It was going to be a pain getting back into one of the giant shopping bags, but our next destination was definitely going to be the beach.