“Alright, I’m heading out now!” Sumire announced, swinging open the door and heading into the vibrant, bustling city of Tokyo. She was ecstatic, after countless days of practising and performing to be the greatest gymnast, she gained the chance to catch a breather. She used her spare time to meet up with her friend Futaba, whom she befriended during her brief time as a Phantom Thief. Within that period, she started developing feelings for her teammate, growing to adore her nerdy yet bubbly demeanour. Could today be the day when she finally musters up the courage to confess to her? The athlete shoved her face in her hands from the immense embarrassment at the thought. Perhaps another day. Spotting a free seat, she made herself comfortable.
Ding
She pulled out her phone, reading over the newly received message.
Futaba <3: Are you on your way?
Sumire: Yep! I am! I’ll be there before you know it!
“Alrighty, I should have some time to finish this,” Futaba noted, tucking her phone back into her pocket.
There existed the orange-haired girl in her natural habitat: a pitch-black room with blue light radiating from her monitors, serving as the primary source of light. If one were to turn on the lights they’d bear witness to the horrors of her messy room. Mismanaged shelves, drawers stuffed with snacks, empty cardboard boxes and newspapers scattered about the room. She was occupied with placing the finishing touches on a personal project of hers— a strangely shaped ray gun inspired by some even stranger games she recently got into.
All was going well until…
Ding dong
“Oh crap!”
The realization of her current predicament hit her like a truck. She was so fixated on her work that she forgot to tidy her room to a semi-presentable degree. Desperate, she leaped out of her chair, rummaging through various piles of garbage that she could cram into her closet.
Outside, Sumire could hear the crashing, banging and Futaba’s frantic footwork as she scrambled in a hurry to clean her room.
“Is everything alright in there?” Sumire inquired.
“Yep!” Futaba reported. “Everything’s all hunky-dory!”
With one last sprint, she bolted towards the door, swinging it open. On the other side stood her dear friend, sporting the black, white and red threads of her Shujin Academy attire.
“Sumire! Glad you could make it!” Futaba beamed, sweat glistening on her brow from her panicked frenzy. Wrapping her arms around her friend, they embraced.
“I'm so happy to finally see you again, Futaba-senpai!” Sumire rejoiced, returning the hug. “It’s SUPER hot outside so I hope you don’t mind any sweat.”
“O-Oh, I don’t mind at all…!” Futaba blushed, quickly turning away to hide her flustered face. “C’mon, my room is this way! It’ll be much cooler there!”
Clutching the palms of her scarlet-haired friend, she led her through the tidy corridors, telling short anecdotes of events that transpired within the walls. Ultimately arriving at the gamer’s not quite as tidy room.
“Futaba-senpai, is this what your room is usually like?” Sumire questioned, looking over at her with a criticizing glare.
“O-Of course not!” She responded with a stutter. “I was busy and didn’t have time to clean up, that’s all! I promise!”
“You got to take some better care of yourself, you know?”
Futaba rolled her eyes. She heard the same statement time and time again. Being lectured the whole day wasn’t what she had in mind for their friendly reunion. Rummaging through her desk, she pulled out that bizarre gun— which was, of course, a shrink ray.
“Hey, Sumire! I’ve got a better idea, wanna try helping out with something?” Futaba asked, drawing attention to her device.
“Sure, I’d love to help, Futaba-senpai! But… what even is it?”
“Just a little something I whipped up to help with any potential Phantom Thieves escapades. It’s completely harmless out here in the real world, just gotta test if it’s fully functional. Now stay still, I need a good target…”
“I’m ready when you are, Senpai!”
“Perfect…” Futaba mused under her breath.
“What was that, Futaba—?!”
With a simple press of the trigger, a blinding white fired from within. As the brightness diminished, Futaba stood in her room, seemingly all alone.
“No way! It worked! I really am the best.” The genius boasted to herself.
As the brainiac continued to inflate her ego, Sumire stood in shock at her absolute change in perspective. In the deep recesses of the neet’s floorboards, the gymnast’s new shrunken form stood no taller than the smallest of food crumbs scattered throughout the terrain, overlooked during Futaba’s little cleanup.
Sumire’s world went dark with a great shadow looming above her. The all-encompassing size of the nerd’s foot filled the vision of what little the athlete could comprehend. Her entire sole was decorated with filth from heel to toe. Sock lint from repeated use of the only pair Futaba found comfortable, dust and dirt from the unkempt floor throughout her room. Sweat poured down from the intense summer heat, changing the very climate around Sumire. The whole situation painted a very similar picture to one of those strange RPG Maker games Futaba has been playing.
Futaba scanned the ground below, searching for confirmation of all her hard work until her line of sight came across a hardly visible speck with a familiar colour scheme, from what little she could see. A look of enthusiasm manifested on her face. She bolted back to her desk, putting on a pair of goggles replicating the same ones she wore as a Phantom Thief in the cognitive world. Returning to the area she found the mote of dust, she maxed out to zoom on the goggles’ lenses. The outcome still was not enough to make out her microbe friend; she had to get closer.
Futaba lowered her whole body getting to ground level with the speck. Her face inching ever closer to the bug, her cataclysmic, cute face dominating Sumire’s view. The geek’s long, tangerine hair surrounded the micro performer, each strand of hair as thick as a tree trunk. She resumed the analysis on her new specimen.
Frozen with fear, Sumire could do nothing but stare back at the red eyes of the beast. The shape of her reflection became distorted as if put through a fisheye lens filter. Suddenly, the air pressure shifted as the giant, chapped lips of the monster began to part.
“HEY THERE, LITTLE SUMI!” The thunderous, godly voice bellowed from within Futaba. The gale force erupting from her mouth sent Sumire flying a centimetre or two— relative to Futaba’s perspective, of course— buffeting the girl and the area below with droplets of spit capable of creating small ponds in the minute imperfections of the floor.
Reorienting herself, Sumire stood up, miraculously unharmed. Hands cupped tightly to ears in hopes of protecting her hearing from the horrifying cacophony of noise.
Taking notice, Futaba lowered her bombastic voice to a soft whisper. “OH SORRY, IS THIS BETTER?”
Sumire nodded. It was still enough to shake her entire world but it was indeed better, by a technicality.
“HOLD ON A SEC, SUMI.”
In an instant, a filth-covered toe hovered above Sumire, crashing down on her before getting the chance to consider running away.
“GOTCHA!” Futaba exclaimed.
Sumire was completely flattened, adhered to her friend’s big toe. Now almost undisguisable between the grime and other motes of dust that littered the neet’s barefoot. Futaba moved her toe towards the front of her face, removing her goggles and revealed to her tiny friend the sparkling eyes Sumire could, quite literally, get lost in now.
“LOOKS LIKE THE IMMORTALITY FUNCTION IS WORKING WITHOUT A HITCH! IF IT WEREN’T FOR THAT, YOU WOULD’VE BEEN CRUSHED INSTANTLY!”
She scrunched her toes, admiring the puny girl’s flattened form.
“YOU LOOK SO CUTE AT THIS TEENY TINY SIZE! NYEHEHEH! I COULD JUST EAT YOU UP!” Futaba scraped the girl off with her finger, lifting Sumire into the air and suspending her above her bottomless pit of a mouth. Her jaws opened accompanied by the moist sound of saliva shifting.
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” A miasma of Futaba’s breath enveloped Sumire. The copious amount of junk food Futaba ate and the way too sugary drinks she drank fused to create a dreadful amalgamation of smells that filled Sumire’s lungs.
“Futaba-senpai, stop it! Please put me down!” Her pathetic squeals of a call for help managed to break through her gagging and choking from the foul scent. Her plea just barely landed on the geek’s ears.
Futaba sealed the entrance to her damp, steamy cave and returned to holding Sumire in front of her face. Sumire executed a sigh of relief, panting profusely from what would be a near-death experience. She had to praise Futaba’s amazing tech and intuition on that front.
“T-Thank you! Thank you so much Futaba-senpai!” The distressed girl cried out.
“PFFT! DON’T WORRY ABOUT THAT. I WANTED TO TEASE YOU A LITTLE BIT.”
“So now that you had your fun, can you return me to normal now?”
Like a cliché, Futaba scratched the back of her head with her free hand, letting out a nervous laughter.
“You don’t have a way to grow me back, do you?”
“A SHRINK RAY CAN ONLY SHRINK STUFF, THAT’S WHY IT’S CALLED A SHRINK RAY.”
“Then go and make a growth ray!”
“I WAS GOING TO BUT MAKING ONE TAKES SO LONG!” A figurative lightbulb materialized over Futaba’s head. “OH… I HAVE AN IDEA.”
Waltzing over to her desk, she planted her butt firmly into her chair, opening up her drawer stuffed with miscellaneous items. Rustling through all the junk to find the item she had in mind.
“AHA! HERE IT IS!”
Sumire examined the item trying to make out what it was. A large ring with a rope connecting to a much, much, much smaller ring; a homemade collar and leash.
“HERE, PUT THIS ON.” Placing Sumire’s end of the collar next to her.
Sumire picked up the collar, turning it around to notice the words “Sumi <3” etched into the material with mediocrity. She knew instantly: Futaba’s doing. “How long has she been planning to do this?” She thought to herself.
“SINCE IT’S GONNA TAKE A FEW DAYS TO MAKE THAT GROWTH RAY, I’LL BE MAKING YOU MY PERSONAL PET FOR THE TIME BEING. I WON’T BE ABLE TO LOSE YOU WITH THAT LEASH ON YOU.”
Hesitantly, Sumire put on her end of the leash, looking up to her temporary owner. “A-Are you sure about this?”
“I’M SURE I’M SURE!”
“What about my family?”
“I’LL JUST TELL ‘EM THAT WE’RE HAVING AN EXTENDED SLEEPOVER.”
“A-Alright then, go ahead…”
Futaba smirked. Her right foot crashing down at the end of her chair with a magnificent thud.
“YOU ARE GONNA LOVE YOUR NEW HOME!”
She carried Sumire over to her toes, separating her second and third toe, pressing her pet into the space between. The collected accumulation of grime and sweat produced a goo-like substance, trapping Sumire within its adhesive qualities.
“HMM… SINCE YOU’RE SO SMALL YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO EAT NORMAL PEOPLE FOOD. FORTUNATELY FOR YOU, THE AMAZING, TALENTED, SUPER COOL AND ALL-KNOWING FUTABA HAS JUST THE SOLUTION!”
The pressure from the ginormous digit increased. Sliding the girl around in the icky goop.
“GO ON, EAT UP! YOU NEED YOUR PROTEIN IF YOU WANT TO STAY HEALTHY.”
Futaba’s finger was relentless. With each agonizing second Sumire felt the pressure worsen and worsen on her frail body, lathering herself both inside and out in the thick, potent gamer gunk (had to get it in there somewhere lol).
“Please…” Sumire mustered what little strength she had to let out a whimper. “Please stop, Futaba-senpai… this is torture…”
Obviously, it wasn’t enough to reach Futaba. She slammed her toes together, shifting around the speck like a little pebble in her shoe. She slipped on her end of the leash onto her third toe, wearing it like a fashionable toe ring as she lowered her feet under the desk.
“WITH THIS ON THERE’S NO WAY YOU’LL GET AWAY FROM ME. NOW BE A GOOD GIRL AND BEHAVE YOURSELF. YOUR OWNER HAS SOME PERSONAL MANNERS TO DEAL WITH.” Her fancy way of saying she wanted to play some video games.
Booting up her PC, she began to drift off daydreaming, imagining what it would be like to be in Sumire’s position. To be subject to each and every whim of her precious friend no matter how cruel. To be used as a sweat rag, using every part of her body to clean the sweat off of Sumire’s armpits from an extensive day of practising. Or even relaxing on her slowly forming toned abs— the result of her daily exercise routine— as they watch TV. Perhaps she would be pinned to the bottom of Sumire’s silky smooth foot as she dances and flies around during one of her performances. All these thoughts of her sent an amazing sensation throughout her body. Ones that she had to acknowledge at a later time, she didn’t want to lose out on her precious gaming time.
The thoughts melted into the back of her mind as her game finished loading. As she queued up for a match, she wiggled her toes one last time in preparation for one of her infamous hours-long gaming sessions. She pondered to herself.
“Maybe I’ll take my time making that grown ray.”