(62) Day 4 Island Navigation (54.4 m < 55.6 m)

Strange groups being formed during school trips were common when you weren’t allowed to pick. Mixing three separate classes from three separate schools made them even stranger… Is what would have been the case if Sakuragawa students didn’t outnumber the others. We were a public school with a higher student body count than Isuzu and Kogei after all. Sakuragawa students were present in every group.

Well, it didn’t really matter much to me and Yae. We weren’t part of any group because we were expected to go around to each area to help the health committee members for each of the stations around the island.

After all of the girls and boys had been grouped together, we were told to take a short walk north to where one of the other committee members would be waiting. Among those that we know who were following were the sporty Hozuki and the pervert girl from Kogei Academy, Izumi.

“Whoa. I thought we’d be taller than all the trees by now, but I guess this island’s got bigger trees than I thought,” Hozuki remarked, surprised to be staring up at trees even though she was already over 50 meters tall. 

North of the former inn site was a forest that had a path of trees cleared out for the girls to walk through. While Hozuki was right that there were trees still taller than them, most of the trees were, at best, waist high to the 50+ meter tall girls. Rather than walking through a forest, it might have been like they were walking past some bushes.

“Hey, Natsume-kun, was it? You’ve sure got some muscles. Mind if I sketch you later?”

“Heh. So you noticed huh? Sure thing. Hwah!”

“Izumi-san, you’re drooling. And Ryou-kun, don’t flex like that. You’ll fall out of the capsule if you’re not careful,” Yae was trying to be Sumika Izumi’s replacement overseer since her friend hadn’t been grouped with her. I wasn’t sure who was in Hozuki’s Co-Size Harness since she wasn’t bothering to talk to him while rushing ahead of the group, but it was clear that our class’s tough guy, Ryou, had been paired up with the girl from Isuzu because he had climbed to the top and opened the hatch to speak to her. Her ability to see how muscular Ryou, who was only as tall as the girl’s pinky finger, was could only be attributed to the sensory enhancement that the girls were given.

“Sorry about that. Kogei’s guys are pretty lanky since mostly all art course students,” Izumi wiped the drool from her lip and reattached the case holding him to the suspender type holster. I noticed that Ryou’s case didn’t jostle around as much as mine… probably because Izumi was pretty flat compared to Yae. “Actually, wait. I didn’t know you were part of the staff. I thought you were a regular student.”

“Well, Touya’s the health committee member. Not me. But I guess we’re a weird exception. We’re helping out, but we won’t be following the group after this,” my childhood friend explained and put a finger to the container I was in. A fingerprint as large as my head was left on the translucent wall.

“Touya… Kirishima, right? That was your name?” Izumi recalled my name and turned her attention to me. “Actually, I was curious. What did Hazuki give you last night?”

“Huh?” I was caught off guard. I had forgotten that the girl had seen me get the message from Sumire from her friend. “Damn… She remembered…”

“Last night? Touya, you were given something?” Yae hadn’t been around during that time either.

I was glad that I had to press a button to speak to anyone outside. Neither of the two could make out my expression or had heard my reaction, so I had some time to compose myself. I still had to make it quick, though, because I could feel Yae’s grip on the harness container tighten like a vice. The material groaned under her strength. I didn’t want to know if the containers could be crushed by a Magnified girl or not.

“Yeah,” I pressed the button to speak. “She gave me a scrap of paper that was stuck in her bra. I swear, you Kogei students are all weird.”

“Her bra?!” Yae exclaimed. I could tell she was blushing from the surprising location. I hadn’t lied… not that I could ever do that in the first place. “Touya, you pervert. Why did you take it from her?”

“Uh, Asano-chan, I think that girl’s the pervert instead of him,” Hozuki slowed down enough to hear us and butted into the conversation as if she was always there. “Hey, Izumi was your name, right?. Why the heck would your friend do that? Is she a weirdo?”

I was thankful Hozuki had directed her question to Izumi. The conversation had successfully been diverted away from me. “Why? I don’t really know. Hazuki’s… okay, you’re right. We’re all a little weird at Kogei, but Hazuki’s a level beyond most of us. Even I can’t keep up with her sometimes.”

“So you admit you’re weird?” Yae was a little surprised at Izumi’s honesty. Well, the girl proved it immediately when she got a closer look at our school track team’s Hozuki.

“Hm? What’s up?”

“You… Do you mind if I touch those legs? They look so toned.”

“Well, that answers your question, Asano-chan,” laughed our school track team’s ace. “Sure. Go ahead. I’m a runner after all.”

The conversation between Sumika Izumi and Haruka Hozuki continued without Yae, giving her a chance to walk away from the literally touchy-feely topic. 

“Touya… I want to ask you about that later, okay?” my childhood friend told me. I gulped. Despite Hozuki’s interruption, Yae was not going to let that matter go.

“F-Fine,” I mustered up the courage to reply.

As the trek into the forest continued, Yae’s attention was taken by her surroundings. She glanced at the ground more carefully from the bush-like tree tops to half meter deep footprints they were leaving in the dirt.

“Hm…? Hey, Touya. What’s this weird pattern along the ground?”

“Pattern?” I looked down from the dangling container. I experienced a hint of vertigo when I saw just how far down it was from Yae’s chest, but I saw the pattern she had noticed. I was surprised she didn’t recognize it immediately, but at her size, it probably didn’t look like one to her. “Um… Yae. Those are stairs.”

The forest we were walking through was actually on mountainous land, but the girls were so tall that the incline was more of a ramp to them than a hill. The stairway path up part of the humid mountain forest looked more like a pattern on the ground from directly above to giants like Yae. 

“Stairs? Uwah… They look so different from above that it’s surreal. We really are big, huh?”

Rumble!

“Whoa! Yae?” The entire container started to descend like an elevator as Yae unhooked it from her suspenders and lowered it to the ground. She wanted to properly compare the pedestrian staircase with me.

“Oh wow. How many steps would you have to climb, Touya?” She was crouched down on the mountain road, giving me a good view of what was under her skirt.

“Looks like I’d have to climb 2 stories to get to the top step of at least that part,” I answered. If I had to say, I was surprised that Yae didn’t realize that there were stairs along the road. There was a vertical drop at the edge of the giant sized path. It was like Yae and the other girls were walking a sloped sidewalk instead of a mountain path.

“2 stories? That’s too much of a difference, Touya. It didn’t even realize we were going uphill.”

“Hm… I guess the tops of the smaller trees do make it hard for you to see the edge,” I realized as I looked up. They were in the way in the same manner a bush would obscure what was beneath it. “Did you know there’s a river over there?”

“A river?” Yae’s answer told me that she hadn’t seen the river hidden beneath the jungle of treetops. My stomach lurched as Yae brought me back up to her chest level again to hook me to her suspenders so she could go check. Carefully, so she wouldn’t disturb too many trees and boulders with her massive size, approached it.  “Oh wow. This is a river?”

“You sound unimpressed, Yae,” I noticed her tone of voice. I realized why, though, when she walked over to it. The 15 meter width of the section of the river we were able to see was comparable to her shoulder span. She was able to put her feet on opposite shores without stretching or straining herself.

My childhood friend’s attention was directed upriver rather than at me and my voice. “Hm? Is that a canoe?”

“A canoe?” I was surprised and pressed my face against the container to look. Yae was right. There was something going down the river. It wasn’t a canoe though - specifically, it was a kayak.

“Hey, Missy! You’re going to scare the wildlife if you stray off the path!” the man, who seemed to be an islander, shouted up at Yae. “My customers are here for the nature experience - not a schoolgirl’s panties. That’s not my kind of business.”

“Huh? Uwah. S-Sorry!” the girl apologized. She closed up her skirt before the man’s kayak floated down between her legs and then jumped over the trees to get back onto the path. The impact of her feet landing on the ground was enough to leave a half meter footprint in the dirt.

“Haha~! Did I scare ya or something, Missy? Just make sure you stay on the path, alright? The island’s going through enough changes with these government programs. We don’t need some Magnified student making unnecessary messes.”

“Yes, sir!”

“So there’s a kayak tour, huh? And here I thought this island’s main tourist trap came from all of the Alteration technology around here,” I chuckled. I was in awe at how calm and in command that kayaker had been when Yae was so many times his size. He must have been accustomed to giant women.

“That surprised me,” Yae brushed her disheveled hair back in place and readjusted her hair clip. “I didn’t think there would be anybody else but us out here.”

“Shouldn’t you be able to see ahead and realize sooner, Yae?” I asked her.

“Not really, Touya,” Yae answered. “There’s a lot of twists and turns around this path. And there’s another mountain up ahead too. This definitely is a big island if it has mountains and forests that I still can’t see the end of…” 

She had a point. We were still at a comparatively lower elevation than our destination. There were supposed to be cliffs and hills coming up soon too.

“Well, I’m pretty sure we’re almost done with our ‘short walk’. Just another minute or two and we should be at our first station,” I informed her. I had to pause when I said ‘short walk’ because while it was only 5 minutes of walking around a mountain forest for 50+ meter tall girls, it’d probably take an hour or two in a vehicle for anybody regular sized. 

“Station? Oh, that’s right. Touya, which station was the one up here?”

I didn’t have to answer Yae. After another minute of walking around the path that started twisting to the left, she and the other girls came to the first destination - an enormous cliff and waterfall that even their 50+ meter tall selves had to look up at. 

… Well, I said enormous, but that was to anyone normal sized. We would’ve been in awe at one of nature’s wonders normally, but to the girls, it was more like a tall wall that could still be climbed over. Sitting on top of a 60 meter high near vertical cliff was one of our upperclassmen who was playfully kicking her feet in the air next to the waterfall. She made it look like one of those indoor waterfall fountains that I had seen at some fancy malls before.

That wasn’t the unexpected part though. My senpai was wearing a black bikini, hot pants, and a black cap that was very uncharacteristic of her. I knew whose session this was, but I didn’t expect her to have that sort of attire on while greeting us.

“Hello, Asano-san. And I see Kirishima-kun’s in there. Good, so I have you two first along with this group.”

Reika Fushimi-senpai pulled her black cap so that its visor was on her left. Senpai never really stood out in the background, but she was certainly doing so now. She hopped off the top of the waterfall and landed on the solid ground to the side of it, leaving two craters of footprints in the earth from the impact. 

“Welcome to the first station of the day. Bridge Builders. I hope you’re all ready to get wet.”

(63) Day 4 Station A - Building Bridges (55.6 m < 56.0 m)

What kind of lessons were to be expected at the stations around Ookojima? According to Ranko-san and the itinerary, we were learning different jobs that involved Magnification. More specifically, the girls were going to be helping with developing the island while we boys guided them from inside the capsules.

“Bridge Builders is pretty self explanatory. We want you girls to construct some bridges along the rivers, cliffs, and this waterfall to make it easier for people to travel across,” our bikini-clad upperclassman explained.

Literally uprooting several trees with her bare hands, Fushimi-senpai revealed a construction site’s worth of lumber, timber, logs, and even added those uprooted trees to the pile as well.

“There’s plenty of materials for you to use. Please pair up with another person and make one bridge each at your designated location. Asano-san, Kirishima-kun, and I will evaluate how well it is after,” Senpai treated the wooden supplies as nothing more than arts and crafts materials. I couldn’t argue with her though. From the girls’ perspective, each log was the equivalent of a popsicle stick to them. 

“We’re building actual bridges?” “Whoa. Cool. I did this in primary school before!” “Wait, is that going to be safe?”

There were many concerns and delighted remarks going around regarding bridge construction, but there were more worries than excited sounds. Was it alright to treat structures that people were going to travel over lightly enough to allow a bunch of schoolgirls to build them like they were in an arts and crafts class? I didn’t like the idea of being a part of the evaluator list, either. Did that mean I was going to have to walk across the bridges myself?

Beep.

“Hm?” Inside the harness capsule, one rectangular area of the translucent wall turned green and text appeared on it. “What the-? Is this whole thing like a computer monitor?”

Touching it, a number of different images started to display inside the capsule I was in. They were all blueprints of different bridges with instructions identical to the ones that came with self-assembly furniture.

Fushimi-senpai’s explanation continued. “The boys have plenty of blueprints to guide you girls. While you are free to ignore them and try building on your own, we don’t suggest that. Do not think that these bridges are going to be simple creations. We want something that a truck could drive over.”

“Senpai. What happens if our bridge fails?” Hozuki raised her hand to ask.

“Of course it’s someone from Sakuragawa who asked…,” giggled Fushimi-senpai. She plucked her own bikini’s string without feeling embarrassed. “How about a punishment game for girls who end up doing poorly? We’ll have you wear a much more revealing swimsuit than this one to the next station. We were given several slingshot swimsuits from the Ookojima Port malls for this.”

“Eh? No way!” “Wait, is there even one in my size?” “T-That’s a bit too racy even for me.”

“Uwah… Even I’ll pass on that one,” I heard the pervert girl Izumi refuse as well.

“The boys won’t get any punishments?” Hozuki was unnerved by the idea of being made to wear a swimsuit that definitely wasn’t her style, but she was still willing to ask her question.

“Oh, they will. Pictures of their reactions from inside the capsules would be taken and be on the list of photos available at the end of this trip. And then we’ll give them some time under the waterfall to cleanse themselves," Senpai answered. I, and probably all of the other guys stuck in the capsules, shuddered. Even if we weren’t the ones who failed, getting caught ogling at any girl in the super revealing sling bikini was a social death.

“I’m pretty sure being under a 50 meter waterfall would hurt,” I had heard of waterfall meditation, but I was sure it couldn’t be done beneath such a huge torrent of water even though it looked like a narrow leak compared to the giant girls.

With the punishment weighing on everyone’s mind, the construction began with all of the girls and boys readily complying and cooperating with one another. 

And despite being made evaluators, Fushimi-senpai didn’t want Yae to lose out on her experience, so she climbed onto the top of the waterfall as if she was pulling herself up a wall and then extended her hand down to my childhood friend.

“Asano-san, your area will be up here with me. It should be pretty easy to make one up here, right?”

“I’m making one too?” Yae asked, accepting Fushimi-senpai’s hand. It concerned me when the boulder she stepped on cracked under her weight, but she kicked off of it and climbed to the top of the rocky and wet cliff in one shot. That didn’t stop her from getting blasted with a stream of river water, sadly. “Blegh! Wah! My face!”

“A bit of water shouldn’t be anything to complain about, Asano-san. Go ahead and put Kirishima-kun down over here. He needs to see the site so he can decide how you should build,” giggled Senpai. 

“Down there? Okay?” Senpai said that Yae didn’t have to worry about a ‘bit” of water, but when Yae lowered the capsule into the river, I realized that it was deeper and wider than the river we had walked by on the way. Yae’s strength shoved the capsule firmly into the ground, displacing earth and rock. A quarter of the capsule was submerged underground and a third of it was underwater as well.

“… I’m glad this thing’s pretty durable,” I remarked. I could hear the current beating against the container. If she hadn’t firmly put the capsule in place, I wondered if I would have been swept away with the current. I’d fall down the waterfall if that happened.

It looked like I was staring through the glass at an aquarium. The only difference though was that the water behind the glass was rushing towards me. Well, that wasn’t true. The other difference was that instead of seeing fish in the water, I saw the ball of my childhood friend’s barefoot as it entered with a powerful splash. She had taken off her shoes and socks to avoid getting wet while standing in the water. 

“Oh, this part of the river is wider. It looks more like a creek than the trickle of water we were following up here,” I heard Yae say as she wriggled her toes in the water. Boulders were knocked away by her toes and waves splashed into the capsule whenever her foot shifted. The 56 meter tall girl’s ankle was close to 3 meters high which towered over me and the 1 meter deep water level. 

Turning my head, I saw Yae lean over to the opposite shore. She dropped her shoes and stockings down on the dry land, but one shoe bounced, knocking over two trees. Her stockings, as well, ended up covering enough land for several dozen camping groups to set up tents on.

“Fufu~! It may look like that to us, but this is a 30 meter wide section of the river,” Senpai informed her. She had her own collection of wooden materials nearby. Getting down on all fours in the water, she swept her arm across the ground and easily knocked over several trees to reveal a clearing where they were.

“W-Whoa…” I admittedly was less focused on the destruction to my left and more focused on staring up at Senpai’s butt in her shorts. It not only blocked half of the sunlight but it also stood higher than the treetops themselves. “Senpai… Is it alright to be tearing down all of those trees?”

“I was informed that it would be fine to uproot any trees growing too close to the river so that the next group coming to the station could take care of it,” Fushimi-senpai answered as she picked up the wood. “The more I pull, the easier it will be for them because they won’t be doing the same job as us.”

“They won’t?” Yae repeated. “What will they be doing then?”

“Oh, you’ll see later, Asano-san.” Senpai did not want to spoil the surprise. She handed an armful of lumber to Yae and then bent down next to my capsule. “Kirishima-kun, which design do you want to do?”

For a second, I was mesmerized as Senpai’s breasts bounced above my head. Fushimi-senpai normally didn’t stand out, but she certainly was now in more ways than one. She was just as big as Yae if I was correct. I could feel their weight as they swayed in her bikini. If she bent down any lower, they would brush right up against the capsule and likely knock it over.

“Huh? Oh, right. Um… Let’s do this one. It needs a bunch of supports, but that looks like the safest.”

“I can’t see the blueprint, Kirishima-kun. You’re going to have to guide me.”

“What? Oh… Um… Oh boy. This is going to be hard,” I realized. I could see where both the girls and the guys were going to have a hard time now.

It indeed was difficult. There was no glue or tape magnified to connect the logs together nor were there any nails or to fasten them. As a result, the girls had to figure out how to use the wood and only the wood as best as they could.

“Hey, the current’s going to sweep it away if you leave that there!”

“What? As if that’d happen, Natsume. It’ll be-”

Crash!

“... fine… Never mind. Crap. I better go grab those before they clog up the river.”

“Told you.”

“You…! Don’t get cocky just because we were told to listen to you. Open that hatch and start drowning in this water!”

“Hey, don’t hit me just because Natsume-san is pissing you off. We should’ve just gone with my idea, Hozuki-san. Here, I’ve found some vines and threaded them through a needle. Maybe this’ll work for tying the logs up to make those triangle shapes I talked about.”

“Wait, you want us to tie the wood up directly under the waterfall? We’ll be soaked.”

“We’re already wet enough. I’d take off my clothes if the boys weren’t literally attached to us. Besides, Needlework sounds like a good idea. I’m not as good at it as the fashion department, but I did learn a thing or two from them. It’ll look better this way too.”

“Uh… I think you just snapped that vine.”

“Huh? Ah! What the heck? I thought I was holding it delicately too.”

Hozuki and Izumi were directly below us. It seemed Ryou and the Isuzu High School boy were trying their best to lead them, but the two girls weren’t listening. Hozuki was gung ho about doing things her way and Izumi was an art school student who had her own ideas so they were definitely a poor combination.

At the very least, the girls’ giant size meant that the waterfall was only a minor annoyance to them - like a showerhead with very weak water pressure. Any normal person working on their bridge would have been swept away to the bottom of the falls from the force of the falling water.

Snap!

“Oops,” Even Senpai was having trouble, though, as her grip was too strong at times. Logs and lumber snapped like twigs between her fingers. “We’re going to run out of logs at this rate. Let me debranch a few of the trees I uprooted so that the others have enough too.”

“That sure is a surreal sight, Senpai,” I told her as she plucked the branches off of a tree. They snapped so easily between her fingers, but I heard heavy thuds as those branches hit the ground.

Rumble!

“Touya, I need to move you, okay? The logs are going to go here.”

“Wah! Urgk!”

Yae pulled my capsule out of the riverbed and stuck it back down five meters away. In its place, she stuck a log into the ground like a stake. She and Senpai were creating a pseudo-dam-like foundation with the number of logs they were burying in the riverbed. They buried them tilted so that they made a triangular design, and also left enough space between logs so that water could flow through. The girls then started horizontally piling lumber on top to make a flat bridge to walk over.

“There. Is it looking like you imagined, Touya?” Yae looked pretty proud of what she had built.

“Yeah. I’m glad that you’re good at understanding my explanations, Yae. It looks like the others are having trouble.”

“That’s the point of this exercise, Kirishima-kun. While we girls are big, we certainly aren’t well equipped for delicate and accurate work. I think these girls are starting to understand that as they follow orders”, Senpai chuckled, informing me and more importantly Yae of the actual purpose of this station. “Oh, I’d like to make an archway with some logs. It’s not on the blueprint, but it would look more welcoming that way. Is that fine, Kirishima-kun.”

“It should be fine,” I agreed, but I wanted to make a point. “But can we do something about the holes you made pulling up all the trees? I’m worried anything you poke in near the bridge will destroy its foundation since you’ve unearthed so much.”

“Oh right. I guess I was having too much fun,” Fushimi-senpai half-apologized and half-laughed off my request.

“Fun? I mean, building this was a little fun. It was like we were in primary school again,” Yae only partially agreed with Fushimi-senpai. “But my back hurts a little, Fushimi-senpai. We were bending down too much trying not to get wet.”

It was true. This entire time, Yae had been trying to avoid falling over and getting anything other than her feet wet. It must have hurt having to lean forward and bent down all of the time - the classic complaint of anyone tall.

It was also a bit hard for her to watch her step because the trees and lumber were at a height that could trip her up (although I was pretty sure that with her mass, she’d just bowl them over instead of getting stopped by them). She was at least luckier than Hozuki and Izumi though who were at the base of the waterfall.

“You shouldn’t be afraid to get wet, Asano-san,” Senpai spoke carefreely because she was in a swimsuit. “Wouldn’t Kirishima-kun be happy to see you in a wet uniform?”

“I mean, he would…”

“Hey!” I wanted to object, but my honesty got the better of me. “You’re not wrong, but do you have to say it like that, Senpai?”

“I mean, teasing my underclassman about his love life is my job as your upperclassman, right?” Fushimi-senpai giggled after she finished stabbing the wooden logs into the ground to make an arch like she had wanted. She actually couldn’t pierce the ‘delicate’ log into the ground at first, so she used her finger to poke a literal hole in the ground through the dirt and stone. It was a lot stronger than the log and made enough room for one-third of the log to enter.

I also realized that the hole Senpai’s finger had made was thicker than the log. She had to push in some dirt and stone from the surrounding area to fill it back up. 

“Senpai… I told you not to break the foundation anymore…”

“And I won’t be listening to you, Kirishima-kun,” giggled Fushimi-senpai. “Since Asano-san’s been so cooperative, I’d like for you to also experience leading a Magnified girl who won’t follow directions. Asano-san, you’re far too obedient when it comes to Kirishima-kun.”

“Obedient?” Yae repeated, surprised at our upperclassman’s remark. “I don’t think that I am.”

“From what I’ve seen, you follow everything Kirishima-kun says,” Senpai put her hand on her hip. “You’re the type who’d go into a panic if Kirishima-kun disappeared on you, right?”

“Touya wouldn’t do that!”

“Uh, Yae, I think you’re supposed to deny that you’d do that instead of denying whether or not I would,” I wasn’t comfortable with Senpai’s question, especially because I had actually snuck away from our room the night before.

“He’s right. Kirishima-kun, you’ll definitely want to be more careful. Asano-san’s personality does have some worrisome parts…”

“Worrisome? Senpai, that’s mean!”

I frowned. I couldn’t deny her knowing how Yae could get when she was jealous. I knew that Senpai was advising me to be wary. She glanced down at my capsule and gave me a look that told me she knew everything. Kamiya-senpai had put the committee on alert for Sumire after we encountered her in the bath. Fushimi-senpai wasn’t just concerned over Sumire though. She was concerned about Yae’s actions as well. I never knew that my upperclassman was so sharp. I appreciated it, but I didn’t like the fact that our past was out in the open for her to see and realize all of this.

I was thankful that Senpai decided to end the conversation then and there. She did so with a surprising and loud splash.

Whaaaam!

“Huh? Senpai?” Yae and I saw Fushimi-senpai sit down at the edge of the waterfall. Her butt literally stopped the flow of water from coming down. The water from the river splashed onto her hotpants and her bikini bottom and then split off to the left and right.

Down below, Hozuki and Izumi along with Ryou and the Isuzu schoolboy were surprised that the water that had been constantly flowing down onto their heads had been parted. My upperclassman had split a river and waterfall with just her butt.

“Everyone. You have ten minutes left. We’ll be seeing how successful your bridges are soon.”