13 students find themselves trapped in an empty school. Some are shrunk and forced to deal with the newly established physical imbalance—others must leverage their remaining height to win.

Ethos, Pathos, Logos

Word Count: 3265

Added: 03/29/2025

Updated: 04/04/2025

It was a Monday. I've checked twice already. Although it would have been nice if it were still somehow Sunday, I had to accept the reality.

It was Monday. I've checked thrice now. So why was the school so empty?

I placed a hand on the front gate, wrapping my palm around the much-too-ornate black metal that adorned it. Immediately, the cold autumn air bit at my skin, making me jerk back.

“Satoshi!”

Hearing my name, I moved towards a pair of students by the entrance—the only two other souls in this grey wasteland. Our drab charcoal uniforms blended into the sky, so the first thing I noticed was the crimson armband of the Class President—Kaede. She stood with her arms crossed, and I could see her unnaturally bright blue eyes piercing through the fog. If I were any more paranoid, I would have looked at my phone to verify that I wasn’t late, but I had grown tired of checking the day and the hour.

“Yo, Satoshi! Come here, dude.”

Next to her was one of the boys from my class—Daiki, I think. We don’t talk much, and it seemed the only reason he called me over was because he wanted a third party in the little argument he was having with the president. That's the last thing I want to be, but I indulged him; for the past 15 minutes, I’ve heard nothing but the sound of my shoes scraping the ground, so I am desperate for human contact.

Daiki leaned on one of the pillars. “Satoshi, did you see anyone on the way here? Anyone at all?”

I shook my head. “The streets were empty.”

“Exactly! So if there is no one here, we should all go home, yeah?” He beamed, aggressively pointing a finger at the president’s chest. “But Madam President here wants us to sit for—what—half an hour until someone shows up?”

Swatting his finger away, Kaede’s lips pressed into a thin line. “I haven't received a notice of dismissal. I cannot allow anyone from class C-3 to leave until we’ve gotten official communication from the staff.” Turning back towards the door, she held it open for the two of us. “I’ve already sent an email to our homeroom teacher.”

“You’re still clinging to that?” Daiki snapped, throwing his arms in the air. “Nobody’s here—nobody!”

“It’s our responsibility as students.” Kaede was unmoved—her gaze now fixed on me. “Don’t you agree?”

I patted down the sides of my trousers, exhaling sharply while trying to come up with a diplomatic solution. “If we head to class and wait there, we can at least say we showed up.”

Kaede nodded. “An acceptable compromise.”

Daiki didn’t seem to think so. He groaned, rubbing his temples. “Not you too…” Looking at the gaping entrance which the president continued holding, he reluctantly headed inside.

I followed right after.

As soon as the doors locked behind us, Kaede sped towards our classroom as if afraid she would miss something. The president moved quickly while never descending into anything that could be considered running (that would be against school rules, after all). This left me and Daiki in the back, dragging our feet.

He folded his arms behind his head. “Come on, man.”

“I don’t want to get into an argument is all."

“So you decided to lick those black boots of hers instead?” Daiki clicked his tongue. “I thought you were after the Emiri chick. You know. The plain one.”

“She's not plain. She's-" I paused, realizing I walked into a trap. Expectedly, Daiki had that knowing grin of his. “So,” I began trying to change the subject. “What do you think caused all this?”

Daiki snorted. “Probably some kind of strike.” His smirk faded just a little. “Remember when the trams went off for like a week after the accident?”

I didn’t respond.

We finally reached the classroom. The room was half-empty, with ten other students scattered anemically between the seats. There were a few people I recognized—Emiri among them. She sat in the back near the door, fidgeting with a strand of her brown hair while scrolling through her phone.

Daiki may have called her plain. I prefer the term economical. Unlike some other girls in the class, she had no frills—no piercings, no makeup, no dye. Her grades were neither high nor low, and she was neither swarmed by friends nor lonely. Emiri was the platonic form of what a high school girl should be. In a way, she reminded me of myself.

One other person I knew was Kaito. He’s into some of the same stuff as me when it comes to obscure manga. We don’t really talk much; our back-and-forth consists of him recommending stuff to me and me returning the favor. To his credit, the man's selection is excellent.

I took a seat by the window, trying to avoid making eye contact with Kaede by the teacher’s podium. Daiki also slumped in his chair, running a hand through his hair. “So we’re all stuck here like a bunch of suckers.”

Kaede opened her mouth but remained silent. With each tick of the clock, it was getting harder to deny it. No new messages. No alerts. The whole class was in limbo—waiting for some invisible trigger to move forward.

The limbo didn't last long.

A strange sound filled the room. It was faint at first, like the hum of electricity coursing through an overvolted battery. Then, the lights flickered, and—with theatrical timing—the doors slammed shut.

“What the hell?” Daiki muttered, jumping out of his seat. He rushed to one of the doors, grabbing its handle.

THUD. THUD. THUD.

Despite being an athletic guy, it wouldn’t budge under his assault.

Kaede stepped forward—her boots clicking against the floor. “Stop being dramatic,” she ordered. “Probably a malfunction with the automatic locks.”

The building was pretty modern, having finished construction just a year ago, but I didn’t know that we had automatic doors—let alone any kind of locking mechanism.

The president pulled out her phone. “I’ll call for assistance.” But before she could dial anything, a sharp static crackle erupted from the intercom. After a few seconds of this auditory torture, something intelligible finally came through.

[“1-2-1-3.”] The voice was distorted and vaguely feminine, as though filtered through a cheap modulator.

[“1-2-1-3.”] It repeated.

With a loud snap, the projector turned on, and a ray of filthy white light cut through the dust.

[13 > 12]

[COMMAND UNIDENTIFIED]

[PLEASE FORMULATE A SOUND ETHICAL ARGUMENT AS TO WHY YOU SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO LIVE]

[VOTE WILL PROCEED IN]

[30 MINUTES]

I shifted in my seat, scanning the other students. Everyone was looking at everyone else for answers: a bystander effect in action. A few of them clung to their phones, expecting somebody to answer from the other side.

A faint sliver of hope came when the room was flooded with the cacophony of notification sounds—the whistles, chirps, and dings forming into a strange ode. When they checked what the notification was about, their smiles quickly faded. On all of our devices, a rudimentary app had appeared—no icon, no name. Opening it, I saw a scroll-down wheel full of names. Emiri was there, as was I, Kaede, Daiki, Kaito; in short, all thirteen of us.

I glanced at the whiteboard again. The message was still there, etched in eerie white on the dark surface. Soon enough, [30] turned into [29], and it didn’t take a genius to realize that a countdown had begun.

After pounding on the door like an ape trapped in its enclosure, Daiki pulled away, wiping the sweat from his brow. “Come on! We can’t just ignore it!” His voice rose—the panic creeping in.

This was when Kaede made her move. Straightening her back, she leaned into the microphone as she had done many times before during her class announcements. “We'll go one at a time. Everyone needs to state why they should be left alive. After that, we'll vote.”

The idea terrified me. What would I even say? What was there to say? I couldn’t even tell what my favorite color was, let alone list five interesting facts about myself.

“Just like that?” Daiki objected, shaking his head. “We're doing this—we’re really doing this?”

“We are.” As always, the Prez's will was absolute.

“You know that you were only elected because nobody else wanted to do the paperwork, right?” Turning my head, I could see that Momo had stood up—her pink fingernails tapping against the desk. I suppose most would consider her sexy because of her long blonde pigtails, curvy figure, and those playful, half-lidded eyes. Despite this, that girl was so far above me in the social hierarchy that I sometimes failed to register her as a human as opposed to some ethereal being. “And you want us to just sit here while you play dictator?”

Kaede didn’t flinch. Instead, she used the opportunity to lean into the microphone again. “This is a stressful situation. We need somebody to take charge. As the class president, I feel uniquely qualified to be that person.” That’s Kaede for you—using that jab as part of her campaign. “If you have a better idea, Momo, now’s the time to share it with the class.”

Momo’s lips twisted into a smirk, but she didn’t respond. Instead, she leaned back, throwing her black platform shoes onto the table and flashing her panties. I wasn't sure if she was trying to provoke a reaction, but it was working.

[25]

“Fine, I’ll go first,” Daiki muttered. Walking up to the podium, he tapped the microphone the way people do in movies. “This is a game, right? There are going to be some challenges—physical challenges, I mean. I am on the track team, so I would say having me around would be helpful.” He wasn’t a great orator, but you couldn’t deny that Daiki had a point. “I am also a big guy, yeah? More than willing to take a punch for one of you lot and not even whine about it.”

Next up was Shun Takahashi—one of the top students. Why do I know that? Because he wouldn’t shut up about it. “We vote for the students with the lowest grades. The weakest link goes first.” Expecting to be bombarded with boos, Shun raised his hands like he was warding off invisible punches. “That’s tough, but that’s fair.”

Tough but fair, huh? Deciding it this way would free us of all of the responsibility, so I could see the appeal. Turning over to the grade results plastered on one of the walls, I—fortunately—found my name somewhere near the midline.

“Satoshi.” Kaede’s wolf-like eyes stared straight at me. “Why don't you go next?”

“This is taking too long.” Ignoring Kaede's order, Momo sauntered to the podium—her platforms ticking in rhythm with the clock. “Listen,” she began, almost annoyed that she even had to do this. “I am not going to give you some grand speech about why you shouldn't pick me. We all know that I am not going to get shafted in the first round of this thing—that would just be insulting." Leaning against the podium, she wiggled her hips. “No. I am going to give you an alternative.” Kaede looked like she was about to interject, but Momo held up a hand. “There is somebody that we should remove first. Sayaka. The retard.”

The room went silent. Even Daiki, usually quick to add something, looked taken aback. I used the silence to figure out who Sayaka even was. By the process of elimination, she seemed to be the girl sitting at the back of the class. Her head hung low, so I couldn’t even see her eyes underneath the short messy crimson hair.

“If someone has to die, why should it be us instead of a retard?” Rubbing her fingernail on the microphone, Momo put on a salutary voice. “You know the only reason that she isn't in a special class is because her father didn't want a retard daughter on the record, right?”

I tried to listen in for Sayaka's rebuttal. The only thing that came out was a few gross snorts as she tried to hold back tears. I still couldn’t see her eyes, but a few had dripped onto the surface of her desk, leaving small glistening spots.

Walking away, Momo leaned back on her chair with a self-serving smile like she’d just delivered the punchline to some joke. There was a sick feeling settling in my stomach, and it wasn’t just me. The entire room felt heavier. Every eye seemed to be on either Momo or Sayaka, though I could bring myself to look at neither.

Finally, the votes were tallied. The projector flickered briefly before displaying the cold white numbers. Momo's name sat at the top. Her smirk lingered for a moment longer as if she hadn’t quite processed what just happened. Then, slowly, she turned away from the projector—backlit by its harsh white light. “You're kidding, right?” Her fingers tightened around the edge of her desk. “You'd rather pick me over the ret-”

There was a sound—subtle at first, like a great wheel spinning in the heavens. The air compressed. Hummed. Distorted. A sickly smell of ozone flooded the room as Momo jerked upright like she was trying to escape an invisible grasp. I could see her eyes turning bloodshot as her body shrank. It was slow at first. Then, she collapsed inward all at once. The empty uniform deflated onto the floor—crumpled and wrinkled. Where there was once a human being, there was now only a pathetic little shape trembling atop the folds.

Nobody moved. Nobody spoke.

Except for Sayaka.

Slowly, she pushed herself up from her desk. Her head was still bowed low, but I could see her lips quivering.

Momo crawled (if you can even call it that) out into the open air, stumbling over the elastic strap of her skirt. Her tiny arms pushed away the fabric of the fallen uniform, inching back from everyone.

Sayaka took a step forward.

As if shrinking to just a few inches tall wasn’t bad enough, the woman folded in on herself—falling to her knees and gasping for air. Even at this scale, I could see her tiny chest pounding like that of a scared mouse.

Sayaka took another step.

She didn’t hesitate.

A wet crunch.

I flinched. The noise was something between a cockroach and an eggshell cracking. Sayaka stayed there for a moment—her foot grinding against the floor. When she finally stepped back, there was nothing left of Momo but a vague red smear on the white heel of her shoe. The tiny woman’s viscera folded nicely into the rubber treads of the sole, dropping down in viscous chunks.

Immediately, panic seized the room. Daiki gripped his mouth, looking like he was about to throw up. With a sharp jolt, he threw the doors open, allowing the rest of the class to file out into the hallway and run to the bathrooms. This wasn’t a feat of some supernatural strength, but rather a simple privilege granted to us by whoever organized this thing. We killed a person for them, and they were letting us take a piss. That was their idea of a quid pro quo.

The only one here who seemed impressed by Sayaka's actions was the projector.

[12 = 12]

[VOTE SUCCESSFUL]

[PROCEEDING TO THE NEXT ROUND]

The bathroom I was in was a little out of the way and incredibly small, but that was why I liked it. The other ones tended to be crowded with guys chatting between the stalls. I just couldn’t go like that. Even if there were only six of us left in the entire school, I just couldn’t. Peace. Quiet. That was what I needed.

It wasn’t perfect, though. In the distance, I heard the labored pounding of aluminum on glass. Daiki was probably trying to break a window somewhere, but it wouldn’t work. This building was designed to withstand a nuclear meltdown—and I am not being hyperbolic here, it's an actual safety measure against the city’s power plant.

Ignoring the pounding, I leaned against the sink, gripping its porcelain edge to steady my breath. I hadn’t thought about it before, but this bathroom felt oddly misplaced—hidden away like an afterthought during construction. Maybe it was meant for faculty or disabled students, although we never had the latter. Either way, everything inside was both too dark and too bright at the same time, with the high-ceiling window overlooking nothing but the gray static sky.

I turned on the faucet, letting the water run over my hands. I splashed some on myself—the droplets mingling with my sweat. The cold helped to ground me. It was then that I realized there was someone behind me.

“So,” the figure purred, twirling a lock of black hair, “wanna talk about what I saw earlier?” Turning around, the realization hit me like a second splash.

It was Rika.

Just like Momo, Rika was one of those girls who failed to register in my mind as a human being. With her raven-black hair formed into a halo bun and those milky white eyes, she looked like an angel of death—a very attractive angel of death. She was taller than most girls, making me instinctively straighten my posture whenever she was in the same room as me.

“I am sorry?” I called out to the intruder, knowing deep down that it was her invading my space.

Rika took a step forward, making me recoil as my back slammed against the sink’s edge. “Momo. On the floor.” She reached out with her slender fingers, wrapping them around my cheeks like creeping vines. Her black nails—long, manicured, sharp—dug into my skin. It wasn’t enough to hurt, but enough to remind me that she could. “Even now, your cheeks are warm.”

I felt warm spit building up in my mouth. “That’s not-”

A few loose strands had escaped her bun, framing her porcelain face. “It’s okay. You don’t have to say it.” Pulling one of her hands away, she tapped it against my groin. “You got pretty hard watching that blonde bitch pop like a bug, didn’t you?”

The bathroom felt smaller than before as I swallowed with a dry throat. “I…I really don’t know what you’re talking about. So. Sorry?”

Rika hummed. Then, with agonizing slowness, she leaned in—too close, too much—until I could feel her breath ghosting over my earlobe. “We both know you only rushed here to jerk off while the memory was still fresh.”

I shut my eyes, maybe hoping that Rika would somehow disappear if I couldn’t see her. But with her warmth gliding over my face, I knew she was still right in front of me. “What do you want from me?”

“Another vote is happening soon,” she murmured, rubbing the side of her face against mine. Much to her amusement, I once again pulled away, smacking the back of my head against the mirror. “Boys versus girls. One side shrinks.”

But with Momo gone, it would be a tie—a perfect 50/50.

Rika grinned as if she could read my mind. “And you’re my tiebreaker.”

I took a careful drag of the sterile air which now mixed with her perfume. “What if I refuse?”

“Everyone finds out about your little kink.” She punctuated her sentence by squeezing my cock. I felt a wave of nausea washing over me as she put pressure on my balls, making me realize how fragile they are. “I wonder how that would go over with the rest—with Emiri, for example.”

The image of Rika's head smashing against the mirror played over and over in my mind. I could picture the way its surface would shatter—the way her blood would seep into the silver cracks. But, in the end, I couldn't bring myself to raise a hand against this creature. I just couldn’t. I was paralyzed, and she knew it.

Rika’s grip on me loosened. Then, a side of her face lifted into a cruel smile. “Geez. Stop taking this so seriously, Satoshi.” She let go, reaching for the door. “[It's just a game.]”

50/50

Word Count: 3505

Added: 03/29/2025

Updated: 04/04/2025

“Half of the class will shrink. That half will be decided by gender…and it looks like we have 30 minutes to vote. Alright. So same as before. Well, we had 30. Now it's 15—a little over 15, actually.”

I assume that’s what the projector is saying, but I can’t bring myself to look up. Instead, I listen to Shun parrot everything written on the board. It’s a habit of his, although this is the first time nobody complained about it. Instead, the students who have trickled back into the classroom sit with their arms folded in a quiet moment of mourning—like they’ve witnessed an accident.

But it wasn’t an accident. Sayaka still had blood on her shoe. The red pulp that had once been Momo dried like insect gunk, turning a nasty shade of brown. Each time Sayaka's knee bounced, she flashed gore to those behind her. Nobody mentioned it. Nobody looked at her for too long.

By now, Daiki had also stormed into the room. His eyes darted to the screen, then to Kaede, then to me. “What the hell is this?”

“The next round,” Kaede mumbled, marching back to the podium.

Rika raised a hand. There was no teacher here, but the prez mimicked the usual nod of acknowledgment he gave to us. “So one of the sides will shrink, right?” The way her lips are always parted. The way her eyes squint in confusion. She’s good. She’s really good. On a dime, Rika could pull a thin layer of femininity tightly over her monstrous body.

Kaede nodded again, running her fingers along the desk’s polished surface. “It appears so, yes.”

“Oh. Okay.” She suppressed a smile—I just know she did. “We were lucky that the first vote was for only one person. But now…now we have to think.”

“Not really.” Daiki flicked his hands at the blackboard. “No offense, but there’s a reason sports are separated.” His forehead creased as he searched for a softer way to say it, but in the end, nothing came to him. “Guys will handle the physical challenges better, yeah?”

THUD.

Daiki whimpered with his arm tucked in. Chō then pulled her fist away, flicking her knuckles like she’s gotten some dirt on them. “What’s wrong, big guy? Thought you said you could take a punch.”

Chō was always a bit of a tomboy. You could see it in the way she dressed, how she cut her blonde hair purely for utility, and the stuff she was into. Even now, she was wearing our PE uniform with a blazer loosely draped over it like a cape. That said, I’d never dare call Chō a tomboy to her face. She tended to beat up anyone who did. Apparently, the word tomboy sounded ‘fetishy’.

Daiki scowled and rubbed his shoulder. “Real mature.”

Chō cracked her knuckles with a smirk. “Walked right into it.”

“Can we please stay focused?” Kaede ordered, instinctively looking for a gavel. “We don’t know if there even will be any physical challenges.”

Chō pointed a finger gun at Kaede. “Listen to the prez, dude. This isn’t Takeshi’s Castle.”

“So—what—we flip a coin?” Daiki scoffed. “This is stupid. There are six guys and six girls left. Nobody’s going to vote to make themselves tiny. Obviously.”

Obviously…

Chō put on the face of an ancient Greek mathematician while trying to calculate if a six can be larger than another six. Then, Eureka! “What if we keep spamming a tie?”

“Yo! That’s actually a good one!” Daiki pumped his fists. “Yeah, let’s go with that, Chō!”

...

Wait. They’re serious?

I guess that could have worked, but it felt like solving a puzzle by nailing all the pieces together.

“The person—or group—who organized this clearly put a lot of resources into this…project,” Kaede reasoned, walking back to the podium. “I doubt they’d allow us to stall without some kind of safeguard in place.”

“Would make for a boring game,” Rika sang with a side of her face sprawled against the desk. “If we don’t act, they might force something to happen. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I would rather it be us who make the decisions.”

That’s something everyone could agree on.

Shun slouched forward, using his elbows to prop his chin up. “So nobody’s gonna say it?” His eyes searched the room. “Really? Nobody?” With a small shrug, he continued. “Alright then. Ahem. Sayaka is a psycho. There is an actual psycho in this room. She already killed Momo. She is probably going to kill us.”

For a moment, Sayaka didn’t move. Then, she leaned back in her seat, putting one leg on the knee of the other. Shun recoiled from the sight of the bloodied sole facing him, fixing his glasses with a quick tap. “If the girls shrink, she’ll be easier…easier to deal with.”

“I don’t think that’s fair,” Kaede said with her head hanging low. “Someone had to be eliminated. One way or another, Momo was going to be…she had to be eliminated.”

Shun winced, raising his upper lip. “Can’t say killed? Gotta protect the members of your tribe now that it’s convenient, right?”

“As far as I am concerned, Momo was killed—if you really want to use that word—through mob justice.” Kaede sounded exhausted—like a teacher explaining to a kindergartener why their pet fish had to die. “Don’t tell me you didn’t vote for her as well.”

“We are not a mob.” Shun looked like he was about to snap—maniacally fixing his perfectly leveled glasses. “We are Japanese students. We should be better than this.”

Kaede just leaned against the blackboard in response, taking out her phone. “Cast your vote, Shun. 10 minutes left.”

10 minutes…

My hand hovered over the cold glass of my phone as I opened the voting app. The fact that nobody looked at their neighbor’s screen was both reassuring and frightening. It’s like we were following the etiquette of the game—internalizing its unwritten rules. At least there would be no witnesses to my crime.

This time, instead of a simple scroll wheel, the person organizing this wanted to be cute. They displayed a stylized ‘Lovers’ tarot card. It was minimalistic in both its design and color palette, reminding me of the Bauhaus style we discussed while studying the Weimar Republic. A blue man and a red woman stood on opposite sides of my screen, facing each other but separated by a jagged, yellow fracture running down the center. Their bodies were perfect mirrors—same posture, same outstretched hands.

TAP.

The blue man dims.

In the school gym, the men had set up their camps. If I remembered correctly, Kaede had claimed the teacher’s lounge for the girls, dragging a few couches together into makeshift beds. At least we had looted the cafeteria jointly. Everyone had gotten a proper meal consisting of a few stale anpans and as much off-brand cola as we could carry from the shattered vending machine.

The six of us sat in a circle, sprawled across the sports mats. High above, the narrow window showed a sliver of the sky. Instead of the usual light-polluted glowy fuzz, I could see crisp indigo decorated with tiny white points. I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen stars in the city.

Of course, I was stalling. We all were. Shun tapped away at his phone, trying to reconnect to the internet for the twenty-eighth time. Kaito seemed happy enough re-reading the same volume of manga for the third time. He sometimes laughed, but it felt forced—like he was laughing just to break the silence. Meanwhile, Daiki kept bouncing a basketball he had fished out of the supply closet. There was no rhythmic THUMP-THUMP of rubber against the floor. Instead, he occasionally slammed it down like the drip of Chinese water torture.

THUNK.

The basketball fell with more force than before, bouncing off at an awkward angle. Now that his hands were free, Daiki cracked his knuckles. “Alright.” He then spread his fingers apart, flexing them like he was getting ready for a fistfight. “Who the hell voted for us to shrink?”

Shun didn’t even look up from his phone. Kaito kept his eyes locked on the paper, pretending he was somewhere else. I just shifted uncomfortably, digging my finger into the mattress’s exposed yellow foam.

“Y’know.” Daiki leaned in like he was telling a campfire story. “When we got trapped in here, I checked the lockers. Looked for supplies, yeah?”

Kaito finally perked up.

“Found some pens. Food. Batteries. Some ballsy bastard even brought half a pack and this into school.” With raised eyebrows, Daiki produced a cheap red plastic lighter, its ancient barcode scratched and browned with age. “Because I was thinking to myself: in a situation like this, anything could help—anything.”

Nudging his finger, we finally heard the sharp hiss of the spark wheel. The orange flame lit Daiki’s face as he swung the lighter back and forth, tilting his head like he was having a conversation instead of a monologue. “Guess what I found in your locker, Kaito.”

Kaito said nothing, maybe waiting for his lawyer to show up.

“A whole stack of manga. Typical hentai stuff.” Daiki’s fingertip dug into the spark wheel as his grip tightened, leaving a red mark. “So I say: alright, alright. Nothing wrong with a guy having some reading material.” The flame went out. “But then, I flipped through one.” He grinned like a hyena. “It was ‘Ahh, I am so small! Ahh, don’t step on me, mistress!’”

Kaito’s mouth moved, but nothing came out—like a fish gasping for water.

Daiki stood, tossing the lighter from hand to hand. “Admit it. You voted for us to shrink.”

Kaito stood too, the manga slipping from his grip and hitting the floor between them. “That’s not-”

“Then who?!”

“I don’t know—I don’t!”

Daiki’s nostrils flared like a venting industrial furnace. “In twelve hours, we’re all going to be tiny because of you. You know what?” He reached for the basketball that had rolled to my side and gripped it tight. “I should…I should just kill you, yeah?” Daiki sputtered like he was telling the punchline of a really funny joke.

If you compared the ratio of people who told others they were going to kill them to actual murder victims, the odds were in favor of it being an empty threat. Nonetheless, Kaito stumbled back, raising his hands.

“Daiki.” Shun lowered his phone and lifted his chin. “I am just as upset as you are—trust me, I am. But that seems a little violent. Might be against the rules.”

Not illegal.

Not wrong.

Against the rules.

Daiki flicked the basketball into the air, letting it roll into the gym’s shadows as he pulled out the scavenged pack of cigarettes from his pocket. “Whatever.”

The changing room’s lights detected movement and turned on with a sharp CLICK as I once again found myself washed in bleached fluorescent blues. The school’s showers had always had a liminal feeling to them, so the game’s atmosphere hadn’t had a chance to worsen anything here.

The water soon drizzled over my face, but I didn’t feel any cleaner. Instead, it became continuous with my skin—like the air on a summer morning. Despite this, I went on with my ritual, slathering the cheap soap over my naked body.

CLICK. The hallway lit up as another figure entered the men’s changing room. I quickly flung the soap off my face, but there was enough left to burn my eyes as I gazed upon Rika’s blurry figure. Before I could even turn the shower off, she began frolicking toward me. I looked down, seeing the heel of her black flats darkened by the thin layer of water.

She slowly lifted her head. Rika’s face was completely red, and I could feel the heat radiating off of it as she pressed her cheek against mine. There was a weird comfort I found every time we touched—one that felt nostalgic, for some reason. “You’re such a good boy.”

I couldn’t bring myself to respond. Instead, I stood there, frozen under the weight of her body perched against mine. She wasn’t even hugging me, just leaning on me like I was an extension of the wall. Every time she shifted—every time she so much as twitched—the tip of my cock was tickled by the soft folds of her skirt.

“Hey,” Rika continued, squeezing my jaw between her thumb and index finger. “Look at me when I am talking to you. Okay?” She yanked my face from side to side, turning it into an amusing fidget toy. “Now say: ‘Thank you, mistress.’”

I tried to speak, but my throat tightened. Tomorrow, I will be tiny. This was my last chance to raise a hand against this creature. I could do us all a favor by bashing her head with the shower handle.

“Thank you, mistress.”

Rika squealed in excitement. Then, her tongue drilled past my lips, and I detected the faintest taste of something citrusy and sweet. Both of our mouths soon became joined and clogged with saliva, forcing us to exhale sharply through our noses. I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to feel about this, but something—a survival instinct, perhaps—told me that I was being assaulted. This wasn’t what a kiss was supposed to be. This wasn’t what I wanted a kiss to be.

But I let it happen.

When Rika pulled away, there was a strand of bubbly spit connected our lips. Rika stared at it for a while as if trying to capture the moment before wiping the spit away.

“Whatever happens, you’ll live. I’ll protect you. We’ll both live. Okay?”

“Why?”

Rika squinted her eyes as if to check whether I was having a stroke.

“Why?” I should have kept quiet. “Why me?” I should have walked out of there.

“Why?” Rika looked down at her uniform drenched by my shower water. “It’s simple.” My entire body tensed as she leaned in for another round. Instead, Rika just placed a little peck on my cheek. “Because you do as you’re told.”

The next morning, I felt the type of relief you get after finally being called into the doctor’s office. I wasn’t thrilled. I wasn’t excited. After half an hour of waiting, I just wanted to get it over with.

I had only been half-dressed, but the classroom felt colder than the day before. By the time the guys filtered in, the girls were already at their desks, sitting like a jury finalizing their sentence. Sayaka was with them. She might have been a black sheep, but she was still part of their herd.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” Rika purred, chin resting on her palm as we stepped inside. Since our clothes wouldn’t shrink with us, we had ditched the blazers and come in wearing only our white shirts. She seemed to find that amusing—as did many others of her tribe. Emiri probably thought I looked so stupid…

“We’ve decided,” Kaede addressed us as the liaison, “that each of us will take the phone of one guy. That way, nobody has an unfair voting advantage.”

Chō agreed, stretching her muscular arms. “Can’t have you shrimps holding onto them. It would be like dragging a plasma TV around—one of the big ones. You’re gonna get squuuished.”

I couldn’t blame them for being so casual about this. The most primal emotion when seeing another human suffer—one that predated ethics—was the resounding ‘thank god that’s not me.’

“You. You’ve decided.” Shun clasped his hands together. “Isn’t that nice?”

The president tapped her screen. “The countdown says you have a few minutes before shrinking. It might be a good idea to sit down.”

“Great.” Shun slumped to the floor. “We can all hold hands and sing while we’re at it.”

At that moment, Daiki finally sauntered in, leaning on the desk near the window. He seemed calmer than before, although a more apt term would have been defeated—like a terminally ill patient waiting to get his diagnosis. There was no physicality about him anymore, for what good had that done? He had kicked. He had punched. It hadn’t worked. Nothing would.

Now that we were all in the room, the doors locked with the same metallic whirl as the day before, and a low hum filled the air—like the sound of an old movie projector.

“It’s starting,” Rika whispered, popping a lemon-flavored candy into her mouth like a piece of popcorn.

I felt it in my teeth before I heard it properly: this strange vibration that made my head spin. I had seen Momo shrink before, but being on the other side of the process was something else. It felt like going up an incredibly stuffy elevator, with an invisible force wrapping around my body and compressing me toward my core. I stumbled over the desk, dropping to my knees to make the impact less jarring. The pain spread from my heart to my limbs—a clenching tightness that made me want to fold in on myself.

When the pain cleared, it was hard to recognize the world around me as real anymore. As a kid, I had read this book—it was about optical illusions or something like that. One page that stuck with me showed pictures of everyday objects taken from weird angles, asking the reader to guess what they were. Right now, I am assuming that the plateau above me was the desk, while the riverbanks below were the laminate attempting to imitate wood.

And then, there were the titans. The six girls stood around us in a circle. Their distant faces were backlit by the room’s light, making them impossible to make out. Instead, I relied on their shoes to tell who was who: the heels of Kaede’s boots, with their arches resembling an avant-garde acrylic aqueduct; the plain brown loafers of Emiri, decorated in a bumpy leather pattern; and the black flats of Rika. Behind me were two pairs of sneakers—one scuffed with dirt, the other with blood—as well as the shoes of a sixth girl I didn’t quite recognize.

I turned to my fellow men but found them scattered around like sheep grazing on a field of laminate. Even though we had only stood meters apart before, now we were so far that I could only see them as fuzzy, flesh-colored shapes. I wondered what we looked like to the girls.

Daiki produced a sharp whistle, trying to make us cluster up like a coach letting the class know it was time to leave the field. We eventually did, and I could see Shun—deprived of his glasses—squinting painfully like there was something in his eye.

“Guess that settles it,” Sayaka boomed, her voice brimming with satisfaction. Her gaze locked on Shun. I didn’t know how she recognized him at this scale, but she took a step forward nonetheless. Watching a giantess in motion at this size was surreal. Her movements seemed sluggish, almost as if I were watching them in slow motion, yet Sayaka could cover kilometers in mere seconds.

“Hey—hey!” Kaede tried to grip Sayaka’s wrist, but her forward momentum carried the load of her foot.

THUD. If Shun had any last words, I couldn’t hear them. The impact of the shoe produced a wave of force, popping my ears from the sudden change in pressure. Instead of rubber-scented wind, there was something wet and metallic decorating the backs of my hands, which I had used to shield my face. When I flipped them over, I found Shun’s blood—carried by the red mist—splattered on all of us.

Kaito began desperately wiping the foul ichor from his face, taking sharp, shallow breaths as tears swelled in his eyes. Daiki looked like he was trying to stop himself from throwing up, slowly descending—collapsing—to the floor. I sat down too, trying to fit in like an uninvited funeral guest.

Kaede exhaled sharply, letting go of Sayaka’s wrist. “Sayaka…”

“Dude!” Chō looked annoyed, raising a side of her face and snarling like a dog. “What the fuck?! The computer didn’t tell us to do that!”

“He was an insect.” Sayaka lifted her foot, pointing at the mess. “We have to get used to this. Right? This is how you play this game. Right?”

The projector didn’t seem to think so.

[UNLAWFUL TERMINATION]

[APPLYING PENALTY]

I had seen somebody shrink as a normally-sized person before, so it was only fitting that I would eventually experience it as a tiny. Instead of disappearing, it looked like Sayaka was falling on top of us, and for a moment, we all worried that her massive form would crush us. Only for a moment, though, since she soon diminished right alongside us. And instead of a goddess, she was now a mortal.

The president would prove it.

Kaede reached into her pocket, pulling out a neatly folded white handkerchief. Without hesitation, she knelt, giving us a prime view of the panties that shared the same color, and dropped the handkerchief over Sayaka. The tiny girl thrashed—muffled shrieks of terror escaping from the fabric.

Squinting, the president lowered her arm like the right hand of God, spreading out her slender fingers to ensure she wouldn’t miss the tiny woman. Without fail, the thrashing stopped, and there was now just a bulging shape under the cloth, like a cadaver in the morgue.

But the grip didn’t falter. Kaede stood up, turned to the waste bin in the corner of the room, and dropped Sayaka inside.

“That’s that.” She wiped her hands on the whole ordeal as a hollow THUNK echoed through the classroom.

It seemed like Shun was right. Randomly killing people really was against the rules.

Mob Justice

Word Count: 3876

Added: 03/29/2025

Updated: 04/04/2025

“Watching them move around like that is pretty weird, isn’t it?”

“It's more gross than anything. We should pick them up.”

“So.”

“So?”

“Go get them.”

“Ugh, no? They're naked.”

“Grow up. You’ve never seen a naked guy before?”

“I don’t want my finger to brush past their gross cocks.”

“But we can’t just leave them on the floor.”

“I don't know. You've seen how easily they popped, right?”

“So you're worried you'll break them?”

“I don't know. Maybe?”

“Fair enough. Once broke my sister's seashell by accident. One of those tiny ones. She wouldn't stop crying about it for hours.”

The rest of the men and I looked up at the giantesses. It wasn’t out of any perversion or an opportunity to sneak a peek at their panties. Nobody except me was in the mood for that after what happened.

No. It was human nature for one's eyes to wander ever upwards. Toward the tallest mountain. The tallest building. The tallest man. Was this caused by our fascination with the heavens? Or simply a mechanism to find the vantage point for spotting danger? I couldn’t tell.

The only thing that I knew was that we would find neither in the giantesses.

I watched a few of the girls balancing precariously on the sides of their heels, absentmindedly exposing their grimy soles. Their skirts swayed as they shifted from leg to leg. It was like staring up at a skyline of black fabric—one that could collapse at any moment. And if their skirts were the sky, then the panties hugging their pale thighs must have been the technicolor clouds.

There is something beautiful about watching the female figure from this point of view. The first thing every person sees upon entering the world is not the heavens, but the face of a woman looming above them. This must’ve been why men had always carved statues of women towering above them. Even before civilization, primitive humans must have looked up. To their mothers. Their sisters. Their goddesses. Maybe this is the natural order of things.

SNAP.

There it was again. The familiar hum of the projector, which we’ve all learned to twitch at the sound of, like Pavlov's dogs. Instead of white numbers, however, the screen was bathed in a grainy glow, a circle, and a cross. Together, they formed a symbol—one used to represent the female sex. But that wasn’t all. At the top of the circle, there was a distinct crescent shape. It must’ve been something from alchemy or astrology or whatever else. I couldn’t tell. For me, it looked like the symbol had horns.

The next part was a lot clearer for us to understand. Instructions. They were simple, clean, and bold—like the ones in the manuals you would get for assembling furniture.

[DO NOT REMOVE THE REDUCED INDIVIDUALS FROM ROOM C-3]

[DO NOT CONSUME THEM]

[DO NOT DAMAGE THEM UNNECESSARILY]

[ALL MALICE WILL BE RECORDED UNDER THE HIGHEST PENALTY]

“Consume?”

As if to answer my question, one of the unused lockers on the other end of the classroom buzzed. Since this was a modern school, it was locked with a 4-digit PIN instead of a key. I never considered it anything more than a convenience. I once lost one of those tiny keys in my old school and had to pay ¥2000 to get a new one made.

Since Chō was the closest, she reached for the handle. It slid down with ease, meaning that someone had opened it remotely.

“Bara-bara!” she whistled, reaching for something heavy inside. Then, she slowly turned around to the rest of the room like Santa Claus taking out gifts on Christmas Eve. What Chō held in her hands was a small cage. It reminded me of one you would get for a hamster, made from a much too shiny metal and bedded with paper pulp.

But it wasn’t the idea of putting us all in a cage that excited Chō. She was a simple woman. Instead, she was whistling because the cage was filled to the brim with food. You had plastic-wrapped sandwiches and salads standing side by side with cups of instant ramen and chips. After feeding on stale bread like ducks the day before, it was a welcome sight.

“Do you think this is for us?” Rika asked, helping Chō carry the bounty over to the table.

It was an innocent question—sure—but only on the surface. ‘For us’ means not us humans or us classmates, but rather us women. Was this food for them? Maybe the guys should eat the paper pulp. Maybe that’s what they deserved for shrinking. That’s what you were thinking, wasn’t it?

Chō only responded by cracking one of the chip bags open and shoving a few in her mouth. Her crumbs rained down on us like salty snowflakes.

Kaede looked at the podium again, but that felt excessive. It was already excessive when there were 13 of us here. Now that this number dropped down to 10, it was even more so, especially since only half of those 10 were human-sized anymore. “We should try making it last.”

Rika reached down into the cage through the open door, grabbing an egg sandwich for herself. “I think it should be alright if we all had our fill, Kaede.” Opening it, she took the tiniest of bites of the pale bread. “There is plenty in here.”

Kaede nodded. “For now.”

“Come on, prez!” Chō pressed the bag of chips against her chest, with Kaede looking repulsed—like a vampire that had garlic shoved in its face. “Eat up. Don’t tell me that you aren’t hungry.”

Watching the girls eat makes it so that the burning acrid pit in my stomach is even more noticeable. I hadn’t eaten anything before the shrinking process, almost like I was preparing for surgery. When I was young, I had a friend who would scare me by saying that the pain you feel while hungry is your stomach eating itself. This is exactly what I feel like now.

Emiri helped the rest of the girls empty the cage, filling one desk with the treats while placing the cage on the other. “Do you want some soda with that?” she asked, offering a can to Chō.

“Don’t know that brand.” Chō grabbed one of the cans, squinting at the writing on it. “Hope it’s nothing too sweet. That stuff from the vending machine tastes like diabetic piss.” Then, she noticed the percentages. “Beer. Nice.”

Kaede’s ears perked up like those of a hunting dog that heard its master’s whistle. “Absolutely not.”

I was with Kaede on this. Being around giant women is bad enough. Pouring alcohol onto that fire can’t end well. Of course, I am pretty sure she’s only thinking about the rules that prohibit drinking on school grounds.

Chō swirled the can in her hand like a wine taster would a glass. “Thought you could use a drink after you offed Sayaka.”

The president didn’t even pretend to indulge her. She just snatched this can—alongside every other one—and handed them over in a bundle to…a girl for safekeeping.

That’s right. A girl. That girl.

I know Emiri and Rika and Kaede and Chō, but I genuinely have no idea who the fifth girl is. Judging by the red armband, she must also be from the student council.

She’s actually very pretty—falling into my ethereal beings category—so I am not sure why I don’t remember the second-tallest person in the room right after Rika. Her hair also had a nice black-blonde gradient to it, with a braided ponytail. The only part of her that was boring was her face. It formed a straight line, lacking the intensity of her superior and making it look like someone forgot to animate it.

But then again, she didn’t try to make herself stand out in the early stages of the game. That girl just kinda stood by the side of Kaede like a bodyguard. Even now, that’s what she’s doing—cans in hands and all.

“Let's at least get these little guys off the floor,” Emiri suggested, squatting above us. “I really don't want to squish them by accident.”

Even without touching me, I could feel the warmth radiating from her slender fingers. It was like standing too close to a sunbaked wall. And then there was the smell—not anything artificial, but the scent of skin and sweat.

I closed my eyes and prepared myself for the inevitable pressure of her fingers wrapping around me…but that sensation never came. Opening them up again, I found Emiri hesitating. Her huge hand hovered as if there was some invisible force stopping her from touching me.

That face. I've seen it before. I remember finding a nice-looking beetle once as a kid. It was red and shiny. When I showed it off to Emiri, she made the exact same face as she’s making right now. I can't blame her. I don’t think Emiri is trying to be rude. I don’t think she even knows that it’s me down here.

Emiri inhaled deeply, steeling herself before reaching down again. Then, just before her fingertips could make contact, she pulled away again. “Maybe we should…use something to pick them up?”

“Come on, Emi.” Unlike Emiri’s warm hesitation, Rika's touch was absolute. “You do it like this.” Her fingers pressed around my torso a little too tightly, securing their grip while putting pressure on my lungs. She lifted me with the same ease you would a stray marble—my stomach lurching as if I were on a rollercoaster. “See?”

But that wasn’t the only cause for the nausea that washed over me. Her single finger clamped down on my balls, making it hard to breathe. What made it worse was the bouncing of her hand. It wasn’t anything you wouldn’t see during a normal gait, but my tiny cock rubbed against the ridges of Rika’s fingerprints.

Human extremities are sensitive, so I am sure that she could feel me poking her; from within the tiny gap between her fingers, I could even see her grinning. Rika flicked her wrist as a reward for getting turned on by her hands. Thinking about it as a handjob was less pathetic than realizing that I am getting off by rubbing my dick against the folds of a girl’s fingertip.

“Just like that.” Rika’s fingers finally uncurled, letting me drop into the bed of paper pulp.

Standing up, the world outside of the cage was filtered through its bars. I walked up to them, resting my hand against the metal like prisoners do in cartoons.

Chō was the next to move. She plucked one of the shrunken guys between her fingers, pinching him as he kicked and thrashed.

“This one's kinda feisty,” she grinned. “Pretty funny, right?”

Without hesitation, Chō tilted her hand, letting him tumble through the cage door; by now, I could tell that it was Daiki. He landed hard, groaning as he curled up beside me.

Emiri, still hesitant, tried to scoop one of the guys up with both hands as if handling a bird that had fallen out of a nest. When she finally placed him down, she pulled her hands away like she was afraid of contamination.

And this was how Kaito joined us in the cage. I heard Daiki laughing slightly as he stumbled over to the paper like a puppy in tall snow.

One by one, the others followed.

Kaede looked up from her phone for the last time. Since she had last glanced at the board, only 12 minutes had passed out of the total 240—i.e., how long the projector wanted us to wait for the next round. There were no instructions. Only the timer.

Standing up, Kaede shot a glance over to the cage before bending down to take her black boots off, placing them in line with the rest of the ones the girls had left in the class. With one hand on the door handle, she tugged on her thighs, fixing the drenched black fabric around her foot.

Maybe she thought that keeping an eye on the girls was more important than having them watch the trapped boys. Maybe she was bored (or hungry or both). Either way, Kaede left the classroom to join the rest of her kin in the teacher’s lounge.

This left the five of us here.

We were all naked, but nobody tried to cover themselves anymore. We were teammates sharing a changing room, or soldiers sharing barracks. I thought that we were more like cattle in the same pen, but I held my tongue.

I took a look around the cage.

Daiki took a corner for himself.

As did Kaito.

Across from them was Renji. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t scared. He just looked...thoughtful. The way his head tilted slightly. The way his fingers tapped rhythmically against his knee. I didn’t like it. From what I knew about Renji, he was probably praying to…something.

I didn’t have to look far to see the last member of our group. Sitting cross-legged near the middle of the cage—looking as composed as ever—was Tomoya. “Well,” he sighed, resting his arms on his knees. “That was an experience.”

THUNK.

It all happened so quickly. The cage rattled as Daiki’s body collided with Kaito’s. The two of them tumbled across the paper pulp flooring like wild animals over a meadow. Kaito yelped, trying to shove Daiki off him. But Daiki was stronger, and a fist connected with Kaito’s ribs.

“Hey—hey!” Tomoya stood up, showing his palms. “Come on, man. Allow it.”

“This is all Kaede’s fault. She was the one who herded us into this classroom,” Daiki said while continuing to pummel Kaito’s bruising body. “You remember Satoshi, don’t you? You remember. She insisted we go in. She knew.”

I reached down to pat my trousers again, but only found bare skin there. “I suppose…” Did Kaede herd us inside on purpose? She was insistent, but it seemed like something a normal Kaede would do.

Kaito struggled—his face contorting with pain. “Please! Please, stop!”

Daiki slammed Kaito’s head against the paper pulp floor. He then yanked him up by the arm, dragging the man toward the door of the cage.

Tomoya searched the room. “Listen. We’re all very hungry and stressed out. None of us is thinking clearly.”

Kaito struggled again. His body was weak, but the adrenaline flooding his brain gave him strength. Like an animal caught in a snare trap, he twisted in Daiki’s grasp and—with a burst of force—landed a kick against his knee. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to loosen the grip on his arm.

“Satoshi!” Kaito made a break for it, dashing toward me like a drowning man reaching for a raft. “Help me!” he gasped, falling to his knees. “Please!”

Cracking his knuckles, Daiki limped towards the two of us. “Hold him in place, Satoshi.”

“Daiki. My man.” Tomoya shook his head, forcing a chuckle. “What are we doing here? What's the plan? What’s the end goal?”

I assume Tomoya waited for Daiki to come up blank and calm down once he realized that his bloodlust was pointless.

But no. He had it all figured out.

“We knock this bastard out, throw him into Kaede’s boot, and then watch her get eliminated for ‘unlawful termination.’ You know. The shit that happened to Sayaka.”

Kaito clung to my arm—nails digging in. “He’ll kill me!”

“Nope. Kaede is going to be the one who kills you.” Rubbing his knee, Daiki looked back up at me. “Come on, Satoshi. Grab the freak.”

I let out a slow breath and relaxed my muscles. Kaito must have taken that as a sign of reassurance because his grip on my arm loosened.

That was his mistake.

I immediately shoved Kaito straight into Daiki’s waiting fists. He barely had time to scream before hitting the floor like a KO’d boxer.

Tomoya sighed, rubbing his temple. “Shit, man.”

I expected a little more. If anyone was going to try to keep the peace, it was going to be Tomoya.

“Daiki is right.” I exhaled, shaking out the tension in my arms. “This is the only option.”

There is no need to justify my actions—to myself or anyone else.

I don’t want to die.

No human really ever wants to die, and we’re three deaths past the “nobody has to die” stage.

“Help me.” Daiki huffed, lifting Kaito’s limp form and making me focus on the present. “Before they come back.”

I nodded and followed orders. The thing about lying is that you need to keep lying to keep the lie alive. Otherwise, you create an illogical reality.

Opening the cage’s door was the easy part. There was no lock on it. If an average hamster were as smart as a human, it could have figured it out.

Dragging Kaito across the classroom was another story. It felt like traveling through a dead birch forest, with the legs of chairs and desks as our trees.

But in the end, Daiki and I managed.

With one last heave, we threw Kaito’s body into the dark cavern of Kaede’s boot. The black leather swallowed him whole, and—for a brief second—I thought I saw his eyes open in dazed confusion.

…

I stared into the depths of the president’s boot for a while longer. It was the closest I’ve ever been to witnessing the abyss—a darkness so dark that nothing else seemed to exist. All that I could see was the vague contour of her foot imprinted into the dirty foam and a human being curled up in a fetal position.

And to think this was only one of her boots…

“Let’s go back, Satoshi.”

Like a storm, we heard the pounding of their feet before we ever saw them.

Rika swung open the door, flooding the classroom with laughter. “It’s okay, Kaede. We should still have ten minutes before the next announcement,” she said with a grin. Then, turning toward the cage, she waved at us boys.

Leaning against the bars, I waved back. She probably couldn’t even see it, but responding to Rika felt natural. No. More than natural. Required. As instinctive as saying bless you after a sneeze or washing one’s hands after a meal. It’s just what you did when a giantess gave you attention.

Sauntering over, Rika drummed a finger against the metal lock, making it rattle. “Are you little guys hungry?” she hummed, reaching into her pocket. She pulled out a piece of egg sandwich wrapped in a tissue. “Here,” she said, flicking her leftovers inside.

We swarmed the bread instantly. It was marked with Rika’s teeth and softened by her saliva. I knelt, grabbing a chunk for myself. As it touched my lips, I caught the faint sweetness of her spit.

Then, with a piece of egg in my hand, my attention turned back to Kaede—Kaede and her black boots.

I knew she was going to put them back on. It was inevitable. They were already lined up neatly at the edge of her desk.

The moment Kaede turned her back to us and reached for her boots, Kaito realized it too.

Her fingers curled around the shaft of the boot, lifting it effortlessly from the floor. A boot taller than my entire body. A boot that had swallowed Kaito whole.

In one smooth motion, she slid her foot inside.

Kaede flexed her toes absently while pulling at the laces. I could picture the way Kaito’s body was mangled between them—smeared and soaked until all that made him human had become just another layer of grime lining the imprint of her foot.

She tied the knot.

And then she walked toward us.

“Where is Kaito?” asked Kaede.

And Daiki said, “I don’t know. Am I his keeper?”

The president leaned in—her massive face close to the bars. Her eyes were huge: two bright ponds swallowing everything in their gaze. At this scale, I could see the fine texture of her iris, not just two oversized marbles.

“None of you know where he went?” Her warm breath washed over us—a stark contrast to the cold steel. “I find that hard to believe.”

We shrank back, pressing ourselves against the bars. But there was no escaping the weight of her gaze.

I swallowed. A lump of half-chewed bread clung to my throat, but I forced it down. Taking a step forward, I waved at the president. She turned toward me, and I waited for her to stop moving as if she were an industrial machine in motion rather than a girl I was talking to.

“The truth is…” I started. “Kaito got out.”

Kaede’s brow arched. “Got out?”

I nodded, folding my arms. “He was near the shoes. Snooping around. I don’t know.”

“Mhm!” Daiki nodded in agreement, clapping a hand on my shoulder. “Pretty sure I saw him climbing inside one of them. Shouted for him to get back, yeah? But he didn’t listen. Went mad, that guy.”

The good thing about being tiny is that you essentially always have your poker face on. The big ones couldn’t pick up the subtle twitch of your lip, and your voice was already so distorted to their ears that any stutter was impossible to detect.

Kaede groaned, clapping her hands. “Everyone. Check your shoes.”

Rika, disappointed to find no bloodied corpse in her flats, shrugged. “Nothing here.”

Chō flipped her sneaker upside down, tapping the heel. A few specks of lint fell out, but nothing else. “Empty.”

Emiri and the bodyguard followed suit. Again, nothing.

Then it was Kaede’s turn. The moment her thighs touched the floor, a smeared imprint of blood streaked the laminate. “Ugh,” she groaned, tilting her boot to reveal a pulpy pink mass bouncing inside.

“No way.” Chō covered her mouth in amusement. “Don’t tell me the little fucker climbed into your boot.”

Kaede’s nose crinkled in disgust. “I am going to wash off. Natsumi, watch the room.”

The ponytailed girl—Natsumi, I assumed—gave a firm nod before leaning against the wall.

Daiki and I exchanged glances.

He shrugged.

I shrugged.

We both shrugged.

For some reason, Kaede wasn’t getting eliminated. Did killing someone by accident not count? I suppose that makes sense. You couldn’t even logically call it manslaughter; there was no negligence. No one should be expected to check their shoes for tiny men.

If the system only recorded intent, at least that meant the girls couldn’t weaponize this against us. After all, logic dictates you can’t intentionally do something by accident.

[FORM PAIRS]

[1 GIANTESS + 1 TINY]

[FAILURE TO COMPLY WILL RESULT IN ELIMINATION]

“Pairs?” Kaede returned to the classroom a few minutes later—just in time to see the next challenge projected on the screen.

Chō tapped her chin, counting on her fingers. “Well… there are five of us and four of them. Can’t exactly form pairs, can we?”

“So…” Emiri reread the three lines carefully. “If we’re teaming up, maybe we should let the guys decide who they want to go with?”

Kaede shook her head. “That’s not fair to them.”

For the first time since the game started, I caught a flicker of genuine annoyance on Rika’s face. “And why is that? They’re big boys. They can vote.”

“You’d be asking them to choose who gets terminated,” Kaede explained. “That's not fair.”

Rika folded her arms, glancing at the screen. “We’ve voted before.” Then, looking over her shoulder, she added, “Surely, we’re not about to start wrestling for them like little girls fighting over dolls.”

Kaede’s response was immediate. “Hide and seek.” Such innocent words, yet she said them like a challenge. “We give the men time to hide. The woman who returns to this room without a tiny is disqualified.”

“That’s…” Rika trailed off, glancing around the room like she was looking for a hidden camera. “And you just came up with that? Hide and seek?”

Kaede shrugged. “It’s fair. Everyone gets a chance. And it keeps the decision in our hands, not theirs.” The way she said it sounded strange—like she was reading from an invisible script.

A pause. “Alright.” Then Rika stepped up to the cage, placing her hands on top. “Hide and seek.”

The Game by Silicon

Ethos, Pathos, Logos

50/50

Mob Justice