“Hey! Bernadetta! Open up, I know you’re in there!”

Of course she was, when was she not? Felix was aware of Bernadetta’s reclusive tendencies as he stood outside of the students’ dorms on floor one of Garreg Mach Monastery, and pounded loudly on the door in front of him. The boy seemed to be in quite a foul mood, with no attempt to be cordial or polite with his knocks at all. He wished he could grab the door’s knob… but it was completely out of his reach. It would take two Felix’s stacked on top of each other just in order to reach this doorknob—indeed, standing at 20 feet tall, this door was 4 times the height of the young man, placing the doorknob about 5 feet above his head.

The reason for the door’s massive size was obvious—the dorm it led to housed a girl who was of a similar size. Bernadetta von Varley, the room’s denizen, was more than three times the average man’s height. She stood 17’4”, to be exact. This gave her the distinct honor of being the tallest inhabitant of Garreg Mach Monastery, and perhaps all of Fódlan—a reputation that the girl didn’t quite appreciate given her awfully shy personality. Indeed, it is her extreme social anxiety and tendency to run off from others that got her into countless self-inflicted predicaments, including the one that Felix was upset with her for.

…

Earlier that day, Bernadetta had gotten up early—far earlier than the faculty, knights, and even her fellow classmates—to finally get a chance to sketch out the monastery’s training grounds. Only bringing her pen and large sketch pad, the purple-haired girl was looking forward to sketching a moody scene of the grounds using only the dawn’s dim light. She successfully made it to her destination without attracting attention, and had even made a little bit of progress with her sketch… before she realized she wasn’t as alone as she thought she was. Apparently, a particularly hard-working knight had pushed himself too hard the night before, and passed out on the spot due to fatigue. Bernadetta didn’t even notice the knight’s limp body due to the dim illumination… but the sound and force of her large body as she sat down certainly woke him up. The knight had slowly risen up from the ground with a ghastly groan, and given the barely lit sky combined with Bernadetta’s cowardly nature… one can easily guess what happened next.

The purple-haired girl instantly made a beeline back to her room, but completely forgot about her materials due to her hysteria. Her sketch pad and pen remained right in the middle of the training grounds when the rest of the monastery denizens woke up and started using the faculties. And since her materials are proportionally sized for someone of her stature to use… an almost four-foot-long and half-a-foot thick sketch pad obstructed the trainee’s open space, hindering their training and movement. Felix was one of the first arrivals at the training grounds, and had wanted to get a good day’s worth of sword practice in. As such, he took the initiative to return Bernadetta’s belongings to her, in order to remove them from the premises.

…

This brings us back to the present. Indeed, a large contributor to Felix’s lousy attitude at the moment was the tediousness of having to lug a massive sketch pad behind him from the training grounds all of the way to Bernadetta’s dorm. And he had to make another round trip just for the pen! The black-haired boy was panting slightly as he continued harshly knocking, until…

“F-Felix…? W-What do you want?! I-I didn’t even do anything today… how am I already in trouble?!” Bernadetta’s shaky voice sounded from the other side of her door. Even so, Felix could tell that it came far from above him.

“Oh really?” Felix said with snark. “Then who’s sketchbook was lying around in the middle of the training hall? You left your pen, too.”

After Felix finished, there were about five seconds of complete silence on the other side of the door. What followed was an audible and frantic rummaging through personal belongings… until Bernadetta came to the realization that she truly did leave her supplies.

Immediately, the door to her room swung open, and a pair of massive hands swept down to Felix’s level. One hand took up her sketch pad and pen… the other, however, grabbed Felix firmly by his wrist. “Ngh!” The smaller boy let out as the digit grabbed him with almost crushing strength. Bernadetta’s relatively dainty hands were large enough to cover half of Felix’s forearms… and he could almost instantly feel the circulation being cut off from there. He would have tried to squirm his way out of Bernadetta’s clutches, but even more impressive than her strength was her speed—before Felix could even think of escape, he was harshly pulled into Bernadetta’s room. The purple-haired girl practically tossed him into the middle of her room as she forcibly slammed the door shut behind her.

“Damn! What was that for, Bernadetta!” Felix tried not to make his pain too apparent, but he couldn’t help but clutching the arm Bernadetta had forcibly grabbed on to. Besides… the look on the girl’s face was one he knew all too well—she was having one of her episodes. She probably wasn’t aware that she had gripped onto him too hard at all. Felix lay flat on the ground as he recovered from being tossed around, when suddenly he noticed the larger girl walking over towards him.

Sweating profusely, Bernadetta clutched her sketch pad close to her chest as she approached Felix. Lying on the ground, the boy looked more minuscule to Bernadetta than he ever had… but that didn’t make her any less scared. It only took a couple of steps for her to make it to where Felix was lying still. When she finally stopped, she was directly above the boy, with her feet right next to his upper body. As she was in the comfort of her own room, she was wearing a pair of thigh-high socks. Even so, it was clear that just one of her feet was half the size of his entire torso.

Even though he knew that it was far from Bernadetta’s intention… that she stood over him was immensely intimidating. Felix felt a few beads of sweat form on his head, and immediately broke eye contact with the huge girl above her. Unfortunately for him, in diverting his eyes… he caught a glimpse of what was underneath Bernadetta’s skirt. One truly can’t blame him—by standing directly above him, it was practically her who was flashing him.

“Tch!” Felix blushed a crimson red as he jerked his head to his side, not wanting his fellow student to get the wrong idea. Who knows what could happen if she actually got mad at him, if this was what she was like when she was simply scared? However, in turning his head to the side, Felix’s gaze was partially filled with the upper half of Bernadetta’s immense socked foot. From just the part he could see, the sock appeared to be glistening with sweat. It wasn’t drenched, but it was certainly there. Indeed, Felix gathered that this sweat wasn’t induced by physical activity—rather, it was brought about by her nervousness. The smaller boy upturned his nose a bit at the smell… but that was primarily due to the initial strength of it. Right now, her feet certainly had a sharp smell… but it wasn’t a necessarily bad one, even despite their sweating. This was an entirely unique smell—one that Felix had never experienced before, and one that he wouldn’t be able to describe even if he tried. In fact, the boy found himself unknowingly relaxing his nose… but he was snapped back to the situation at hand due to Bernadetta’s voice.

Still wearing a frightened face, Bernadetta’s hadn’t even noticed Felix’s reaction to her feet or her indecent exposure. Rather, she was primarily concerned with what Felix might have seen within her sketch pad.

Eventually managing to form a coherent thought, she spoke, “F-F-Felix! You d-didn’t look through my sketch pad… d-did you?!” The girl clutched the pad closer to her chest as she asked.

Felix raised an eyebrow at her question, but truthfully, he didn’t know why he was surprised at all. Of course she was so concerned over something as simple as someone possibly seeing her sketches.

“What?! No, of course I didn’t look at your silly drawings. I only brought you your gigantic pad because it was taking up space in the training hall. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

Felix’s arm was feeling pretty much fine now as the slight pain from Bernadetta’s grip subsided. As such, he placed both of his arms on the ground in order to lift himself off of the floor. However, before his body could make it even an inch off of the floor, Bernadetta shifted her feet just slightly inward… so that they were now directly on top of Felix’s arms.

This is when Felix’s eyes widened and beads of sweat formed on his face. He let out an audible yelp as all of Bernadetta’s foot covered his entire forearm. Despite her size… Bernadetta was the most passive girl Felix knew. He never anticipated how unnerving it would be when she put that size to use.

Felix expected the massive girl’s weight to be crushingly painful… but this was far from the truth. Rather, Bernadetta’s feet were still being supported by the ground below them, and they were simply enveloping Felix’s comparatively thin arms. The smaller boy only felt a smothering pressure on his arms as her foot flesh molded around his limbs. In a way, this sensation represented the situation he was in as a whole—he was initially unnerved by Bernadetta using force to immobilize him, but one look at her face told him that she had no intention to harm. This was just her weird way of keeping him here to “talk.”

“Y-You’re lying, aren’t you?!” Bernadetta started ranting down to Felix. “You really saw it, d-didn’t you?! Ohh, it’s over Bernie… you’ll never be able to face the light of day again! You’ll have to—“

“Enough!” Felix interrupted the purple-haired girl, as he instantly recognized that she was now rambling to herself. “I already told you, I didn’t look through your stuff.” The boy spoke bluntly, but with a hint of gentleness and reassurance as well. “Can you let me up now, please?”

Felix adopted this new tone primarily because he could tell Bernadetta was extremely stressed… but also because he was starting to become uncomfortable. That is, uncomfortable with his own thoughts. He had intended on keeping a one-track mind to escape Bernadetta’s room and return to the training hall… but his mind was now drifting elsewhere. That is, to the two massive digits right next to his head. Although it was thin, the layer of sweat that covered Bernadetta’s feet was already beginning to seep into Felix’s sleeves. However, that wasn’t even the most distracting development. The unique and piercing smell that emanated from her feet was even closer to his head now. Unknowingly, as if almost on instinct, the smaller boy started to slowly tilt his head to his side… until Bernadetta’s voice regained his attention once more.

“I-I still don’t believe you… b-but just don’t tell anyone, please!” The purple-haired girl’s face started sweating less profusely as she spoke… she was still clearly having one of her episodes, but it did seem like Felix’s new tone of voice had lessened the severity of it. That is, until, Bernadetta suddenly looked at either side of Felix’s body, widened her eyes in astonishment, and immediately stepped off of the smaller boy.

“I-I’m so sorryyy!” The girl pleaded with Felix. “I-I didn’t even know I was standing on you, promise! You were just so small! Agh, I bet you’re already plotting your revenge, a-aren’t you!”

“Relax… It’s fine.” Felix grimaced a bit at Bernadetta’s casual declaration that he was so small… but the last thing he wanted was to bring it up and make her even more upset. The boy finally picked himself up off of the ground and stood up on his two feet. Standing in front of the tallest denizen of Garreg Mach, however… he couldn’t blame her for her remark. Like this, his chin was only level with the girl’s knee.

“I’ll… be on my way.” Felix walked straight past Bernadetta and made a beeline to her door… at which he awkwardly turned around and said, “Um… the door… please.”

“O-Oh!” In just a few steps, Bernadetta made her way over to her door and twisted the doorknob that Felix was unable to reach, allowing him to make it outside. The purple-haired girl wanted him out of her dorm as soon as possible as well—she quickly picked up on how Felix was starting to hesitate with his words… that had to mean he was mad at her, right?!

“…Thanks.” Felix said awkwardly as he stumbled outside, without looking back up at Bernadetta. He wore a blank expression on his face as he slowly shambled to his dorm on the second floor. Of course, he too realized that he had fumbled with his words, but he wasn’t sure he knew why either. After that experience he had just gone through with his much larger classmate, he just felt weird inside. By all accounts, he had every reason to be upset with Bernadetta after what she had just put him through… but, for some reason, he just wanted to see her again. Perhaps that was the key to discovering what he was truly feeling right now, deep down...

But that would have to come later. Right now, he needed to find a clean shirt to change into.