Awakening (28 cm)
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(Side - Neko: Makoto Komiya)
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“Uwagh!”
To say Makoto woke up sweating would be an understatement. The young girl woke up with a shout and immediately flung her blanket off her body. Her body was not only hot, it was boiling. She immediately felt her shorts and bed were stained. Her face flushed red with embarrassment. She hadn’t wet the bed since she was six, but she just now had a wet dream. In her honest opinion, that was much worse.
Pant… Pant…
The girl’s heartbeat was quick. She could feel her pound in her chest. Her head felt dizzy. Getting up all of a sudden required a rush of adrenaline. The blood in her body flowed to spread that adrenaline, but in exchange, a lot of the blood in her head had left her.
“Seriously, what the heck?” Makoto rubbed her aching forehead. Her face was numb, as though electricity was running through it. She had been dreaming about something. What it was, she couldn’t quite recall, but whatever it was, her body had been excited by it.
Well, aroused was probably the better term. Makoto looked at the shoebox on the floor at the side of her bed. Its presence reminded her of the previous day. She really had made him a shoebox bed. She really had held him in her hands and crushed him with her body. She really had tricked him into the Compression Chamber.
Her shrinking Takumi hadn’t been a dream.
“Which means…”
Makoto’s red face became a ripe red tomato. She hid her face into her pillow to muffle her screams.
Which meant she really had masturbated to the idea of playing with his tiny body the day before. She put two and two together. Her wet dream had probably been about Takumi. There was no doubt in her mind that was the case. She couldn’t deny that she had enjoyed playing around with Takumi and even while asleep, her body kept that enthusiasm up. It ashamed her to think Takumi was in the same room as her while her sleeping body felt a sweet sensual release. She hoped she hadn’t been talking in her sleep.
“Ugh… This is terrible…,” Makoto raised her head and put her pillow to the side. She used her left hand to pull her bangs out of her eyes. Her bed head was as messy as ever which, coupled with her headache and embarrassment, aggravated her. She really wasn’t good with mornings.
Turning her head back down toward the ground, Makoto glanced at the sheet she had placed by the foot of her bed. She could see her game console on the ‘home base’ she made for Takumi. “Sorry, Taku. That probably scared you, didn’t it? It was just… just a nightma…re…?”
Makoto’s voice drifted off when she realized there was no 28 cm boy on the cloth. Looking around, there was no movement anywhere on the floor. Worried about the accident from the previous night, Makoto slowly lifted her body up and turned her head towards where she was sitting.
“Taku?”
Thankfully, she wasn’t sitting on Takumi, but the fact that she hadn’t seen him worried her. Cautiously stepping out of her bed, Makoto bent down and searched underneath it. Again, the boy was not there. The thought almost caused Makoto to panic. She may not have crushed him, but what dangers could a doll sized person face in her room? She hoped he was just wandering around her room in some place she couldn’t see easily.
Makoto sat down on the floor cross-legged. She looked at her clock, noted that it was ten minutes to 7, and decided to wait. “Taku, I’ll give you five minutes. You better get out here.”
Five minutes should be enough for Takumi to get out of hiding. That was what Makoto thought with a frown on her face. It was also a decent amount of time for her to collect her thoughts.
Her sister would be home in the evening. Knowing Mayumi’s tendency to stay longer than she needed to in Akihabara, the earliest time for her to come home was 6 o’ clock. She had less than 12 hours to change Takumi back and lie her way out of trouble. She could pull it off. She was certain of that.
Really, though. What was she doing? Lying to her friend and crush, shrinking him to the size of a doll, crushing him to relieve stress… It was a guilty pleasure. If Takumi or her big sister ever figured her out, she’d be considered a pervert and a sadist. And even if they didn't, Takumi was going to get back at her for messing around with him. She was certain Takumi was not enjoying being her toy… though she did give him a show when she got out of the shower and forgot to get her clothes…
He probably didn’t even enjoy it. Takumi never really showed much reaction over her body. It bugged her knowing that despite the lecherous gazes from boys who saw her enormous bust, the one person she was interested in showed little to no interest in her body. He was just too into learning from her sister than anything else. When he hung out with Makoto, Takumi kept a respectable distance between them. And with their friend, Misuzu, he still spoke to her respectfully and addressed her as Fujii-san despite her being just as close to him in school as she was. The only time he was ever excited over something was with Mayumi. Did she even have a chance?
Makoto sighed. She was depressing herself just thinking about it. It was unfair. She was always being compared to her genius sister by her parents. She had good grades in her classes, but they just weren’t great like Mayumi’s had been. She was well known in the drama club, but that paled in comparison to the girl who had the reputation of a robotics master when she was in high school. She certainly couldn’t outdo the inventor of a device that could reduce objects and people in size. She loathed the idea of losing her crush to Mayumi’s ‘perfection’ as well, but it was looking like the case.
Glancing up at her clock again, the girl saw that three out of the five minutes had passed. Looking around the floor, she saw no traces of Takumi. Had he climbed up somewhere? No… There wouldn’t be anything to climb up. Makoto focused on listening in for the pitter patter of tiny footsteps. Being alone at home on a holiday morning, the house was quiet, so she had to hear something. Unfortunately, she couldn’t. It was hard enough to hear Takumi’s voice at his size.
Makoto was worried. Where was Takumi? He couldn’t possibly have left the room, but she couldn’t carelessly look around out of fear of hurting him by accident. Was he in her closet? Or her book bag? Or her dresser? Those were the few things in the room that she could see where of a height he could interact with at his size.
“Hmm?”
Makoto noticed her lowest dresser drawer wasn’t fully closed. Had Takumi…? No, he couldn’t possibly have gotten into her underwear drawer.
Slowly making her way over to her dresser while on her hands and feet, Makoto inspected the bottom drawer. Her eyes widened when she saw what looked to be a pair of tiny sweat stains on the wood that were in the shape of hand prints.
Makoto’s face reddened for the n-th time that morning. Had Takumi climbed in? He’d have to have spent an insane amount of effort to open the drawer and climb up. Picturing Takumi of all people swimming in her panties, bras, socks, and tights flustered her. She wasn’t sure about whether or not she was angry about him pulling a panty raid in his state. The image her brain created distracted her. He certainly could be muffled under all of her underwear… And while they were clean ones, they were hers… Takumi was surrounded by enormous clothes that had all been worn snugly by her before… Though she hoped he hadn’t found the lingerie she had purchased while with the gyaru friends…
Makoto shook her head repeatedly to try and shake her imagination. She was getting too excited when it wasn’t the time and place for it. She slowly reached for the knob of the dresser drawer, anxious to see Takumi inside. She slowly pulled it open.
Nothing.
All Makoto saw were her undergarments all still neatly folded inside like she left them the previous night. Makoto wasn’t sure if that was a relief or a disappointment. She was leaning more on the side of disappointment; however, as that meant Takumi still hadn’t shown himself.
“Well, I guess he could’ve fallen asleep,” Makoto tried to convince herself but she doubted it. She checked the clock again. The five minutes were up and there was no trace of Takumi. Her stomach churned. Where was he?
Vrrrrrrr!!!
Makoto’s heart sank when a familiar loud noise broke the silence of her home. That was the sound of the Compression Chamber’s dome opening. Had her big sister come home early? Takumi was still compressed and she didn’t even know where he was.
“Shitshitshit,” Makoto panicked and stood up. She was in trouble, busted, dead meat. If Mayumi found Takumi, everything would be revealed, and if she didn’t, there was a chance he could get hurt or crushed without her notice. She had to find Takumi and fast. She ran towards her door to leave the room and grabbed the knob to open the door. She was in such a hurry that she didn’t notice that the door had not been shut fully.
Power walking out into the hallway but slowing her pace down the stairs so as to not arouse too much suspicion, Makoto glanced at the floor of every open area she passed. She had both the missing Takumi and her sister to deal with. She had to get her act ready. Her destination was the guest room where the Compression Chamber was.
Makoto gulped. She pulled open the door to the guest room when she arrived.
She didn’t like what she saw.
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(Side - Taku: Takumi Endou)
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Earlier that morning, Takumi had made a break for it. The open door of Makoto’s room had been his way out, but he couldn’t get to the Compression Chamber without putting in the effort. At 1/6th his regular size, the short distance had grown into a lengthy journey.
“Twelve… Thirteen… Fourteen…”
Fourteen steps. That was how many jumps it took to make it down to the ground floor of the Komiya household. The walk down the hallway had not been difficult, but he didn’t expect the way down one floor of his friend’s home could be so far. Even so, with the goal to get him back to normal, he climbed down the stairs from Makoto’s bedroom and safely made it to the bottom.
“Well, that didn’t take too long, I think,” the doll-sized boy looked high up the staircase that seemed to stretch into the skies to him. He was impressed with his achievement of climbing down what he could effectively call a Stairway to Heaven, though he was conflicted in calling Makoto’s room Heaven.
Takumi continued his path to the guest room where his belongings and Mayumi’s device was. It was indeed early morning, sunrise to be precise. The light of dawn poked through the curtains of the windows of the house, allowing Takumi to wander without being lost in the dark.
It really was an adventure, traveling about the Komiya home at his size. Each step on the staircase had been almost as tall as he was. He had climbed down a man-made mountain and was now venturing down a hallway which had walls taller than those of a cathedral and also had curtain-covered windows that were like enormous panes of stained glass. It unnerved him to be looked down upon by the billboard-sized pictures of the Komiya family that hung high above him, but it was a good reminder that he was still in a familiar place.
After what he thought was ten minutes of walking, Takumi arrived at his destination.
“Thankfully, the door’s open,” Takumi didn’t know what he’d do if that wasn’t the case. Coming down would have been all for naught otherwise. The machine he needed to use and his belongings were inside, and it would be an arduous task to climb back up the stairs to Makoto’s room.
Makoto would probably kill him if she found out he escaped though… Not literally of course. Makoto wasn’t that cruel, and he was pretty durable while compressed. Even so, she had stressed how dangerous it was to leave her room at his size and made him promise not to go out. He never did agree to the promise; however, she wouldn’t be able to argue if he could get himself back to normal size.
Takumi entered the first floor guest bedroom and was greeted by the spectacle of the gigantic dome of the Compression Chamber. He wouldn’t have missed the device even at regular size, but while compressed, it was a monument. He likened the platform to the stage of an idol concert before. He maintained his stance on that. The tangled wires that protruded out of the platform of the machine were like snakes. He believed they could coil around him at any moment if he wasn’t careful. His headphones often tangled without any explanation in his pocket, so he remained cautious as he navigated his way through.
“Hm… I probably should have straightened things out yesterday. This mess was bothering me before, but now it’s a jungle to travel through,” Takumi complained as he climbed over and crawled under the mess of wires. “Things are definitely a lot more difficult at this height. I guess you never know what you have until it’s gone… I know I’m not that tall, but 28 cm is just ridiculous.”
When he finally wriggled through the maze of wiring, Takumi looked up. He was in front of the desk where Mayumi’s computers were set up. Much like Makoto’s desk, there was no way he would be able to scale the building sized structure.
“Well, how exactly do I do this…?” Takumi scratched his head. “The Compression Chamber is connected to the central tower and from what I saw Makoto doing before, I need to use the keyboard. So that means I’d have to somehow hit the power button on the central tower, climb up the desk to get to the computers, key in the necessary parameters, and get the chamber open… Gosh, that’s a lot of work…”
Was it even possible for him to do so? There weren’t things he could use to scale the desk. It was much taller than the dresser drawer he had opened earlier as well. There were wires he could attempt to climb up, but he doubted he had the physical ability to climb them. Could he succeed in doing all of that before Makoto woke up? There was no clock in the guest room, but he knew Makoto would wake up soon and notice him missing.
“There’s got to be an easier way… Hm…?”
Underneath the desk, Takumi spotted a familiar manila object. It was the folder Makoto had shown him with the photographs Mayumi took of her experiments. Beside the folder was the notebook that held her notes. Rushing over, the doll-sized boy flipped open the big book of notes with both hands. For each page he wanted to look at, he had to stand on one side of the notebook to prevent it from closing on him, but he was able to look through the notes and find his solution.
“Let’s see here… Power consumption… Record keeping… Multi-Layer Applications… Aha! Interfaces!”
Though the Compression Chamber was still in its testing phase, Mayumi had actually thought of more than one way to access and activate the machine. Takumi recalled that she had asked him for advice on how to properly wire a physical hardware interface in addition to her computer monitor and keyboard. He hoped that Mayumi had actually followed through in adding those to the machine.
“Here we go. Computer GUI: Success. Smartphone App: Success. Platform Interface: In Progress,” Takumi kept his eyes on the words ‘Platform Interface’ and what was written next to Mayumi’s checklist in red pen. “Power button and chamber dome switch work fine. (/OwO)/ Dials for compression ratio need to be reworked. /(xWx/) Dial will be temporarily replaced with smartphone cable. Plug in smartphone and application will install. Ask Aoi for advice on dials. Check with Takkun ONLY after succeeding. Don’t want to look bad. (>w<)/”
A conflicted expression crossed Takumi’s face. He wanted to laugh at Mayumi’s use of smiley faces and the fact that she didn’t want to look bad in front of him, but he did not want to see that the platform interface was not fully ready. If he wanted to get back to normal, he’d either have to climb or get a smartphone connected to the machine.
Takumi reached into his pocket reflexively, but when he pulled out nothing but pocket lint, he remembered that his smartphone hadn’t been compressed with him. Not having his phone in his immediate possession bothered Takumi, but he was grateful it wasn’t compressed. It was thankfully in his bag and was in the guest room. He looked around the guestroom to find the belongings he had left in the room before he was compressed. His face brightened when he spotted his bag standing upright in the corner of the room.
That smile turned into a frown when he ran up to the truck sized bag.
“Nothing’s that easy, it seems.”
If Takumi wanted to get his phone, he’d have to climb up and somehow pull it out. He could scale the wrinkles on the bag up to the top, but lifting the phone out would be impossible with his strength. Takumi needed to think of an easier way.
Looking left and right, Takumi searched the floor of the guestroom. He found a quantum mechanics book on the ground not too far away. The height of the book and the tilt in his bag gave him a great idea. He jogged over to the book and began to push. To his delight, it was easier to push than the dresser drawer because of how smooth the hardcover book was. He slid it up to the bag and then walked some distance behind his sack.
“Haaaaaaargh!”
Takumi ran with all of his energy and performed a jumping tackle onto the top of the bag. Using the principle of torque, he caused the sack to rotate about the point where the bag and book were touching. It fell flat onto the book.
“Got it,” the doll sized boy grinned atop the sack. Science still hadn’t let him down.
With his success in getting his bag down, crawling into his bag and pulling out his phone was an easier task. He used both his hands to swipe to the right on his phone touchscreen. He input his password. Upon the sight of his pictures folder opening up, Takumi’s face turned white as a sheet. He turned around toward the door to make sure nobody was around.
There were several images in Takumi’s photo folder. The one that he was ashamed to admit he had and desperately clambered to take off the phone screen was the sole photograph he often looked at in secret. The now poster sized image was a sneakily taken photo he had taken in his younger days. His own adolescence had gotten the better of him when he went to the water park in the past, but he was too captivated by the snapshot to erase.
Really, he had to be a pervert to keep a photo of the Komiya siblings in their swimsuits to ogle. The sight of Makoto resting by the poolside in a black and green striped bikini while accepting a bowl of shaved ice from her older sister in a frilled white one-piece was something plenty of their schoolmates would fight for. Makoto’s bikini accented her figure well, and Mayumi’s simple one-piece was an elegant sight. If Makoto or Mayumi ever found out, they’d never speak to him again, but how could he throw away such a well taken picture?
Getting back to business, Takumi moved to bring his smartphone to where he could plug it in. With both hands, he dragged it slowly towards the platform of the Compression Chamber. The phone was heavier and larger than the signboards he had lugged around during cultural festival set ups, so he was worried about carrying it on his back. He did not want to be buried under its weight. Just letting it drag across the floor was the safer and admittedly easier option, though he had occasionally let the device drop onto the floor to catch his breath.
After twenty minutes, Takumi finally completed his task and brought the phone to the hardware interface where the switches were. He grabbed the snake like white wire he needed to use and plugged it in.
“Okay. It’s installing,” Takumi wiped the sweat from his forehead and using his shirt sleeve and then rubbed his sweaty palms on his pants. “I can’t believe I made it this far.”
Looking around the room as he waited for technology to pull through for him, Takumi realized that the room had gotten brighter in the time he had been working. His phone told him it was getting close to 7 in the morning. The fact that he taken almost 2 hours combined to get down to the guest room and get the Compression Chamber ready reminded him just how difficult being 1/6th scale was, at least with things that were regular size. His stride was much shorter and even lifting a phone was difficult. Unless he had things closer to his scale to interact with, the difficulty in accomplishing most of his actions hurt his self-esteem as a human being. Being successful, at least, made him proud of his normally trivial task.
“Mayumi-san, you are getting a large report from me when you get back,” Takumi stated as the application that was installed onto his phone opened up.
The smartphone interface was remarkably simple, much to Takumi’s surprise. It made setting things up much more restful. There were only three things he could interact with: Compression, Activation Timer, and Decompression. Compression asked for a number to place under a fraction much like Makoto had chosen for his 1/6th scale. The Activation Timer requested a length of time until the machine activated. Why Mayumi had put that option in, he was not sure but wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Decompression was what Takumi wanted, and he did not even have to think about how to use it. It was just a button that could be pressed on or off. Turning it on would blackout the Compression side of the interface too.
Takumi hit the Decompression button and set the activation timer to five minutes. All he had to do was to bring the dome down and head on in. The switch near the phone connector that said OPEN and CLOSED was obvious enough. He grabbed the switch and flipped it to open.
Vrrrrrrr!!!
The loud noise of the enormous dome opening nearly deafened Takumi. As much as he’d like to marvel at the sight of something the size of a building retracting its roof, the screeching sound of metal hurt his little ears. He covered them and closed his eyes until the sound stopped.
Takumi checked at his giant smartphone again to confirm the settings and climbed his way onto the platform. All he had left to do was to wait until the dome closed and he was going to get back to normal size. After that, he could finally relax. He’d apologize to Makoto later for leaving the room. She couldn’t get too mad about him taking the risk since he had made it safely, right?
The optimistic boy was giving his best friend too much credit.
Before the dome’s walls were ready to rise up again, the door of the guest room swung open, and with it, came Makoto.
