Captive at the Breakfast Table (3.5 cm) 

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(Side - Taku: Takumi Endou)

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Calm down.

Calm down, he told himself. Try to sort out what went wrong.

“The interface must not have registered my inputs properly. Mayumi-san must have made a lot more errors with the smartphone connection than she realized. Instead of initializing the decompression, the compression must have been applied twice to me…,” Takumi bit his thumb. “I’m 167 cm but this looks like I’m under 4 cm… What scale is this? 1/40th? 1/50th? If I started at 1/6th scale… This is probably 1/48th if my math is right.”

The boy’s mental abilities did not degrade along with his height. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck, however, he determined how big Makoto was from his perspective. She was now a girl over 70 m tall. He felt like a bug in her presence, unnoticeable and vulnerable.

Makoto was certainly treating him like a bug too.

Standing up, Takumi approached the towering transparent wall that surrounded him. He smacked it with his palm. She had brought him to her dining room table and put him under a glass cup. Rather than a cup, though, it felt like a prison cell to Takumi.  He couldn’t leave without any exit, and he couldn’t move the cup either as Makoto had placed a book atop of the inverted cup to weigh it down.

“I can’t believe she did this… What is she thinking?”

He could hazard a guess, at least. Makoto really wanted him to learn a lesson for worrying her and going off on his own. To do that, she was physically preventing him from going anywhere. Since he had gotten himself compressed further down to the 3.5 cm tall, she was making full use of that fact. The only good news was that he was too small to actually run out of air under the inverted cup. The volume of his lungs had no trouble in the enclosed space.

“Neko! Hey! Neko!”

Still, he was not amused at the fact that he was trapped by a single cup. No matter how much he hit the glass, he couldn’t break or budge it. And his voice was clearly too faint to be heard past it. Makoto had left him alone while she went to the kitchen where she had been for the past few minutes.

To his surprise, though completely surrounded by glass, a familiar aroma crept in. He recognized it as miso.

“Is Neko… cooking?” he raised an eyebrow. 

His question was answered when the girl in question came out of the kitchen with a full set meal on a tray. He was surprised by the sight at first, but even more surprised when Makoto dropped the tray onto the table. He could feel the impact even though she had put it down gently.

“Ta~ku~ I’m~ba~ck~!” Makoto greeted as she set him free. Though he was happy when the cup and book were finally removed. The frighteningly uncharacteristic over-excited smile on Makoto’s face unnerved him. He was completely oblivious as to why she was being so spirited, but his body shivered by instinct. “Did you miss me?” 

“I missed the fresh air,” he responded with a sigh. “Even a few minutes felt like forever.”

“Hey, if I left you alone, you’d wander around again. This is your punishment, got it, Taku?” Makoto seemed far too happy to scold him. “You’d be in trouble if you fell off the table, you know.”

He didn’t think he’d be dumb enough to do that, but it was difficult to deny when he already had a history of wandering off. “Fine. I’ll just grin and bear it then.”

“Heh,” Makoto grinned. “It’s so good that you’re quick to understand. Now how about eating too?”

Makoto placed a small dipping sauce plate near Takumi. With her chopsticks, she brought over a small chunk of rice and a fraction of a rolled omelet for him. The shrunken boy was surprised to see that these chunks she had sectioned off from her meal were almost the same size as him.

“Eating…” Takumi was aware he was hungry, but what Makoto had given him did not look like food anymore at his size. When he touched them, it didn’t feel like food either. Each grain of rice, he could hold in his hands like an actual rice ball. No… actually, at 48 times larger than usual, a single grain of rice was larger than any rice ball he had ever had. In length, width, and height, the grains of rice had grown 48 times bigger so if Takumi cubed that number... “Neko, I think I really only need one of these.”

“Is that so?” Makoto answered without looking in his direction. “Just go ahead and take off a piece then. Those are just scraps, though, Taku. Don’t tell me you can’t even handle that much.”

“At this size, there’s no way I can,” frowned the boy. 

“Well, I guess you have a really small stomach now,” she chuckled. “Poor little Taku, can’t even eat a whole grain of rice. You still need food though, Taku. You don’t want to go hungry, do you?”

It felt humiliating to have Makoto laughing at him, but she was right. He needed food. No matter how much she had given him, he tried to put all his effort into the one rice grain he could pull out from the pile. He opened his mouth and bit down on it.

“... Grk...” It did not feel like he was eating rice. His taste buds did not recognize it as food. What was the best way to describe it? The texture was coarse and dry, sucking up the water inside his mouth immediately. He expected its taste to be somewhat bland like white rice would be without any side dishes, but it was more akin to chewing cardboard. “Blergh… Urgh...”

Takumi struggled to swallow the bite he took and then keep it down. He was disobeying his body’s instincts by forcing himself to not vomit it out. This was rice. This was food. But at his current size, his stomach and brain did not register it as such.

Takumi resigned himself to simply watching Makoto eat. Takumi was taken aback to see a mouth open wider than he was tall. When he couldn’t even finish a single grain, a pile of rice much larger than what Makoto had given him entered her mouth never to be seen again. A cold sweat ran down his neck as she ate her meal which was many times his size. He imagined himself being caught in Makoto’s chopsticks and eaten up. 

“Nonono… Neko wouldn’t do that…,” he tried to reassure himself. He tried to believe in his friend, but it was becoming difficult when she was so much bigger and more powerful than him.

Makoto noticed the difficulty he was having because it looked like he wanted to vomit. “What’s wrong, Taku? Is normal food not good enough for you?”

“I… I think so… Urp...” he was no longer hungry. His stomach was not happy. “I think I’ll pass on eating, Neko… At least until you change me back… I think my body’s too small to process food like this properly”

“Oh?” Makoto frowned. “Well, that’s pretty bad. I don’t want you to starve.”

“Then will you change me back already?”

“Nope. Not yet,” was Makoto’s immediate reply. She was not going to give him an easy time after the reckless stunt he had pulled that had ended up in failure. It frustrated him to know how helpless he was against Makoto. The normally shorter girl decided when he was going to change him back. He could only hope she would do so before her older sister returned. He did not want to have to explain his mistake to the genius inventor, especially at less than 4 cm tall.

But he further dug his grave after Makoto finished her miso soup. 

“Fuuu~” his friend exhaled with a smirk. “So Mayu-nee’s cooking was so bad you can’t even stomach it, huh?”

“This is Mayumi-san’s cooking? I thought so. You don’t seem like the type to be able to cook,” he stated. He had thought it was strange for Makoto to be cooking. These had to have been leftovers she just heated up. It was a shame he wasn’t regular size to be able to enjoy it then. He didn’t think being Compressed twice would result in food being practically inedible for him.

“Muu...” Makoto huffed, unappreciative of his callous comment. That was when she had a brilliant idea. 

Wham!

“H-Huh?” Takumi was surprised by the two wooden pillars landing just millimeters away from his body. He turned his head and looked up to see Makoto smiling like a Cheshire Cat while she looked down on him. “Neko, what do you think you’r-” 

Slam!

“Whoa!”

The process repeated directly behind him now because Makoto had swiftly moved her chopsticks over his head and put them back down on the table again.

“Were you saying I can’t cook, Taku? That’s not going to earn you any favors here,” she teased. Takumi was well aware she had him right where she wanted him. He stumbled forward and tried to keep going to get away from her chopsticks but again, she brought them down almost right next to him, causing him to lose balance and fall back. When he tried getting up and moving again, Makoto continued to slam her chopsticks down, forcing him to move away to avoid it.

“Playing around with me like this… It’s like a game of cat and mouse…,” he groaned, knowing full well he was less than a mouse in this situation.

He grew exhausted being chased around by Makoto’s chopsticks on the table and ended up with both his hands and feet on the table because he couldn’t manage to stand further. This was what Makoto was waiting for though as before he could catch his breath, the chopsticks flanked the compressed boy from two directions and slammed into him together.

“Grk…! What the- W-Whoaaaaah!”

Takumi couldn’t do anything as he was brought up by Makoto’s chopsticks up into the sky. A chill ran up his spine when he saw, directly in front of him, a pair of pink lips.

“N-Neko?” he trembled.

“Hehe…,” the girl’s hot breath blew onto him as she spoke, bathing him in a thick air that smelled like miso soup.

“You sure have a big mouth there Taku. Though I’m sure mine’s bigger.”

Just by speaking, Makoto proved her point, opening her mouth up wider than he was tall. 

“Neko… This is going way too far here…,” he turned pale from the knowledge that he could fit easily within Makoto’s mouth. A piece of rolled omelet was bigger than him, so she could pop him into her mouth without any effort.

To his relief, Makoto pulled him away from her mouth so she could see him more clearly. He was also given a better view of her face. Though she was smiling, her expression did not make him any calmer. Was it just because he was smaller that everything about her was more intimidating? This was the same girl he went through school with everyday, wasn’t she?

“You really are a riot, Taku,” she giggled and began swaying her chopsticks up and down. His stomach churned as he was raised up to Makoto’s eyes and then all the way down to where her mouth was. “You’re supposed to be a smart guy. You should probably watch your words a little better, or else you’ll end up somewhere you really don’t want to be.”

“C-C’mon, Neko,” he stuttered. The adrenaline rushing into his body made it difficult for him to think. His body saw Makoto as a predator and was telling him to flee. He thought he knew Makoto and wanted to believe in her, but his instincts told him to be afraid. “You’re really scaring me here. You’re not really going to eat me, right?” 

“Aaaaa~n!” Ignoring his squeaky voice, Makoto opened her mouth wide. The compressed boy could see her face getting closer to him. He was small enough he could fit inside the moist cavern with room to spare. To be able to see Makoto’s teeth which were bigger than his head and her tongue snaking around inside the darkness of her mouth made Takumi break out in cold sweat.

“No! Stop, please, Neko! I’m not food! Don’t do this!” the boy screamed, desperate to avoid being put into the girl’s mouth. He did not want to be eaten. He did not want to die. He struggled to push apart the chopsticks holding him, but no matter what strength he could muster, he couldn’t pull them apart even a single millimeter.

Takumi’s squeals were music to Makoto’s ears.

“Pfft!”

“Huh?”

“Oh god… That’s… Pfft…”

“N-Neko?”

“Hahahahaha!” From his response, Makoto broke out into a fit of snickers. She lowered him back down to the table and put down her chopsticks so she could cover her mouth to try and stop her uncontrollable laughter. “Eat you? You really thought I’d do that, Taku? Pfft~! You really were scared out of your mind there. This is just… Just… Oh, it’s too good...”

She was laughing - laughing at him. Had the entire thing been a prank? If it was, it was not funny to him. He honestly felt that his life was in danger. It made his blood boil to think that Makoto was doing whatever she wanted with him. 

“Goddamnit! This isn’t funny, Neko! Be serious already! I can’t do anything like this! Don’t just take advantage of this and make fun of me like that!” he shouted angrily.

The fact that his shouts came out as squeaks to Makoto only made her laugh harder. This only made him hopping mad. He wanted to tell Makoto off for fooling around with him when he was so helplessly small, but none of his words had any power behind them.

“So what are you going to do about it?” she asked, trying her best to hold in her laughter to speak.

“I-” Takumi couldn’t finish his sentence. What was he going to do? Makoto’s single question pierced him. What could he even do? He hadn’t even been able to fight against the tips of her chopsticks.

A smirk formed on Makoto’s face when she saw his inability to answer. “It looks like you get it now, Taku. To me, just picking you up wasn’t that big of a deal at all. And neither are you.”

He couldn’t deny that, but it was frustrating to be told that directly to his face. Makoto was enjoying his troubles far too much.

As he thought that, using her chopsticks, Makoto brought another grain of rice down over to him, shoving it onto his chest.

“Now if I were you, I’d keep eating. You’re going to need all the strength you can get, because I’m not through with you yet,” she told him. “Maybe if you put me in a good mood, I’ll change you back early.”

Just what did Makoto mean by that? Takumi wasn’t sure. However, what he was sure of was that the only thing he could do was obey her. 

He frowned and forced himself to eat again. There was no fighting Makoto with how he was now. Until she was satisfied, he was not going to be able to be changed back.