Individual panels available for 2nd tier subs and above on my Subscribestar and Fanbox
Makoto squinted down at his own fingertip, trying desperately to spot the friends who had volunteered to save Celeste. His skin looked the same as ever. Just the ordinary ridges and swirls of a fingerprint, but somewhere, impossibly small, they were all still there. He blinked, his eye looming like a titanic sun over their fragile worlds, never realizing how hopelessly beyond his sight they had become.
It was supposed to be simple. Now that Celeste had finally been found, all he had to do was activate Miu’s invention when signaled so they all could begin their slow growth back to their normal size. While he gripped the small device, he had accidentally bumped it against the corner of his table. It was an action seemingly so small, so insignificant, he almost didn’t register it. He couldn’t have known that it had rattled the inside in such a way that when he finally pressed the button, he’d resign all of their fates to be just as small and even more insignificant…
Kirumi steadied herself on top of a single fingerprint ridge with what seemed like a valley of canyons. The ground was rough, each crevice a trench deeper than she could ever hope to cross. When she dared to glance up, the hazy orb of Makoto’s eye consumed the sky. It seemed immense, unblinking, and impossibly close. Its dark pupil dilated, a void that seemed to swallow her whole. She had dealt with demanding tasks before, but nothing could have prepared her for the terror of realizing she wasn’t even visible to the one she meant to help. “I must… remain calm, I cannot falter, no matter how vast he seems…” She tried to assure herself, but her body betrayed her words, her hands twitched, her breathing ragged as she stared upwards. To Makoto, she was less than dust.
Far smaller still, Komaru Naegi writhed among the fibers of Kirumi’s glove. The threads were thicker than trees, coiling and tightening around her limbs as she tried to untangle herself. Her hands reached for the light above, though she knew it wasn’t the sun but the dim space between woven strands. She could feel Kirumi’s hand twitch as the maid tried to shift her stance, each small movement above causing the woven landscape to shudder violently. “I’m right here! Someone save me!” Komaru screamed, though the sound went nowhere, swallowed by fabric and silence. To Kirumi, she was no more than lint.
But Mikan Tsumiki was lost deeper still, stranded in the thicket of Komaru’s eyebrow hairs. The stalks shot skyward in thick, bristling lines, blotting out the light. She dropped to her knees, terrified, with her body slick with sweat. Both her own and Komaru’s. Every nervous tremor from Komaru rippled through the forest, the ground itself buckling beneath Mikan’s shaking knees. She had always been fragile, always fearful, but now her panic filled the air like a storm, vibrating through every colossal follicle around her. “Forgive me…” She whispered to herself, unable to do anything else. To Komaru, she was just a fleck of dirt.
On Mikan’s trembling shoulder sat Chihiro Fujisaki, his small body dwarfed by the towering fibers of her uniform. His legs bare as he lost his shoes and socks in all the chaos. The fabric rose like a woven labyrinth, rope-thick threads shifting with each anxious shrug. He tried to map a path forward, but every stitch was an obstacle, every movement of Mikan’s body a quake. When she whimpered in fear, the sound was a thunderclap that rattled his bones. Chihiro looked up at her face so close, yet so unreachable… He knew was utterly powerless… “It’s like… I don’t even exist…” He said, resigning himself to his fate in this pink landscape. To Mikan, he was just a germ.
On the plain of Chihiro’s bare foot, Miu Iruma trudged forward across a desert of pores. Each crater yawned wide enough to trip into, some glistening with the oily sheen of sweat. The smell of flesh and musk enveloped her, acrid and suffocating. “Hah… this fuckin’ sucks…” she muttered weakly, her usual bravado stripped away. She had joked once about shrinking as a kink, about lording over tiny “toys” when she had created this invention for their search… But now here she was reduced to a speck crawling across another’s skin. She screamed upward, but even he couldn’t hear her. To Chihiro, she was nothing but a slight itch.
And smallest of all, dangling on the thinnest edge of existence, was Celestia Ludenberg. She clung with numb fingers to a single strand of Miu’s hair. A strand was supposed to be thinner than thread, but to her it was thicker than a mountain. The strand was swaying with every faint movement of Miu’s head. Celestia’s once pristine composure was gone; no elegance could mask the terror of dangling above the void, a speck upon a speck upon a speck. “Not like this… I am… Celestia Ludenberg… I am the greatest gambler who’s ever lived… I refuse to disappear until I’ve achieved my dream!” She looked upward through layers of sky that were only more bodies… Makoto, Kirumi, Komaru, Mikan, Chihiro, Miu. each an unreachable giant, each oblivious to her cries. To everyone else, she was nothing.
Makoto shifted nervously, lowering his fingertip to his face. “Kirumi? Komaru? Anyone?” His voice trembled with worry, but to the others it was an apocalyptic roar. He scoured the ridges of his fingerprint, still believing he might see the faintest twitch of movement. But there was nothing. No sign. No sound.
One by one, every volunteer had vanished into the spiral of shrinking, lost in the endless cascade of scale. Each stood trapped in a world too massive, too alien, to comprehend.
The plan to save her had only doomed them all. Each rescuer only followed her into oblivion.
And above them all, Makoto searched the empty lines of his fingertip, never realizing there was nothing he could do for them…
Fatal Fates
Celestia clutched the single strand of Miu’s hair as though it were a rope dangling above an abyss. Her tiny hands burned from the effort. The air around her vibrated with Miu’s nervous muttering, every syllable a thunderclap. Then the world shifted. Fingers the size of towers swept into view, combing through the locks. Celestia screamed, her grip slipping. The strand jolted violently, and she was caught in the rush of fibers as Miu’s hand dragged down. The immense ridges of a fingertip closed in, and before she could even finish her scream, the pressure smothered her utterly crushed, obliterated into nothing against the unknowing girl’s strand of hair
Down below, Chihiro stiffened. He felt a crawling, itch run across his foot. The boy winced, distracted by that faint itch that crawled across his bare skin. Reflexively, he bent down and scratched, his nails tearing across the terrain like avalanches. His nails tore trenches into his skin, obliterating everything in their path. Miu’s fragile body crumpled beneath, erased in the blink of an eye as Chihiro sighed in relief. All that remained of her was a phantom itch now gone.
Mikan shook violently, her voice whispering apologies no one could hear. Chihiro had been stranded on her trembling shoulder, a lone speck among the endless forests of fibers in her uniform. He clung to the fabric, fighting not to fall. But when Mikan’s shaking hands rose to press against her shoulders, her palms came down like falling continents. He had time only to look up, eyes wide, before the walls of flesh pressed him flat. The fibers shattered, his body folding against the weight until there was nothing left but silence in the weave. Mikan whimpered softly, unaware her desperate self-comfort had snuffed him out.
Komaru, drenched in sweat from the suffocating heat of the glove, huffed and lifted an arm to wipe her brow. Her bare arm dragged hard across the forest of her eyebrows. To her, it was a moment of relief. But To Mikan, perched weakly in the forest of eyebrow follicles, it was an apocalypse. The bristling hairs bent and tangled, shoving her between two walls of skin. Her scream was smothered instantly, her body grinding into nothing as Komaru wiped her brow. She didn’t even pause, lowering her arm casually, leaving Mikan’s existence erased in a smear of sweat.
Kirumi raised her gloved hand to her lips, pressing her palm against her face as the weight of the situation bore down on her. She leaned forward, breath quivering in her chest, then exhaled softly into the gloved hand she held before her face. She allowed herself that quiet exhale, a fleeting moment of composure. But within the fibers of that glove, Komaru’s world unraveled. Tangled tight, she watched in horror as the vast lips parted before her, the darkness of Kirumi’s mouth like a chasm waiting to swallow her whole. The sigh that followed became a hurricane, the force pressing into her tiny body until eventually even her own body was torn apart by the hot winds, flinging her remains into the air before the current scattered her away into oblivion, erased in a breath too vast to comprehend. To Kirumi, it was nothing but a tired sigh of frustration. To Komaru, it was her end.
And at last, Makoto. He stared at his fingertip with bloodshot eyes, searching desperately to find a sign. Just one shimmer, one twitch, one flicker of movement. But there was nothing. Kirumi had been there, pressed between the massive ridges of his print, her arms outstretched to the looming face above her. She could see his pupil, vast as a sky, staring down in futile desperation. Her own heart pounded like a war drum, hoping he might notice.
In that moment of doubt, his thumb rubbed unconsciously against his fingertip, dragging across the ridges and valleys of his own print. The smallest motion in the world to him but for Kirumi, it was the collapsing of reality itself. His thumb pressed against her world. The pressure was instant, impossible. The ridges of his fingerprint collapsed like mountains grinding together. She screamed but the sound never carried. Her body crumpled in a sickening crunch, the delicate pieces crushed into a film of dust between his skin.
Makoto pulled his hand back, staring at his fingers. To him, nothing had changed. Just the familiar spirals of his print. But deep down, he felt a hollow ache.
Every rescuer was gone. One by one, erased without ceremony, by hands and habits too massive to even recognize them.
And above it all, Makoto whispered into the silence, his voice shaking.
“…I’ll… I’ll find some more people to help. I just need to find someone…. We’ll keep searching. We’ll bring them all back. And when this is over… we’ll laugh together… like it never happened…”
The words shook with a brittle hope, but deep down a small part of him knew… There was nothing left to save. His small “hope” was only the last defense against despair, a hollow lie he forced himself to believe, because accepting the truth would mean breaking completely.
So I know I said before that the story was done, but I got hit with a big idea for it a while back and I just had to go all in for this. Especially because this is is spooky month and what’s spookier than existential shrink horror?
I have to thank Kitamiya for sharing all their micro environments. They created most of the ones used for this image set.
