Chapter 7 - Questions with Nana from Mecchen House (cont.)

I sighed. “Alright, Jamie. Let’s assume she’s lying, what then? She brought us here. Why? How?”

He bared his slabs of teeth. “How should I know? I’m not her! I just met her. I just have a feeling about her.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Oh, yeah? I thought you said you didn’t have feelings, you just fake it. Why should I believe your phony feelings of someone we just met?”

Jamie threw up his hands. “I don’t need to take this anymore! Why am I even with you two?! It’s clear neither of you really want to get home. I WANT TO GO HOME! NOW! And if I have to tear up this entire forest to do it, I will.”

He kicked the tree behind him and only wound up limping around and wincing. He kicked with the other leg and tumbled to the ground, producing a massive plume of dark-tinted dust. He thrashed around on the ground until it looked like he was exhausted. He looked over at me. I looked back at him and said, “I do want to go home, but we have to face facts that we might not have control over that. Someone somewhere seems to have brought us here for reasons we don’t know.”

Nathan chimed in, “I made a sincere promise to get us home. I truly do want to get home, for my family and for you both. I love my family and I miss them but, as Kelly said, this is out of our hands. We can only wait, listen, and learn. Nana said she read about this stuff in books. She doesn’t have the books but maybe someone does? Maybe a library?”

Jamie was still for several moments, then sat up. “That’s… not a bad idea at all. But how are we supposed to know where one is in this strange place?”

I could help with that. I told him about the map I saw on the small building down the street. Jamie stroked his chin. “Yeah. That could definitely work. Very good. We at least have a lead. We’ll be home before we know it!”

I didn’t share Jamie’s enthusiasm, in fact, I was hitting myself that I didn’t think to pass a message to Nana for Ms. Ishida that we might be back at Mecchen House in the evening. But then I wasn’t even entertaining the idea of returning ‘till that moment.

We went back through the narrow alley and used the crosswalk. The anime shop looked really nice from across the street. We passed the computer repair shop and a couple of gift shops with a similar theme in their windows: giant cats. I made a note about them.

It took me a quick, full-on look at the small building with the map to realize what it was. The uniformed men in the doorway rather gave it away too. It was a police box. A small, community police station that regularly showed up in anime I’d seen. The officers in the doorway loomed taller than even Nathan. One wore a dark, thick paint-stroke of a mustache. He bowed to me and I returned it.

He smiled and asked, “Morning, what can I do for you girls?”

All memory of my question evaporated with that one word. “What did you say?”

He repeated his question with ‘I said’ attached. I could tell Jamie was miffed, but he seemed hesitant to mouth off to a police officer. Nathan just froze, eyes wide.

When my thoughts composed themselves, I asked where we could find the nearest library. He went over to the map and gestured a bit. The map was labeled, “Ogawa and Sekkei Region.” The area was laid out like a multi-colored, tangled set of nets clustered near a small river splitting the region in half. Sea framed the bottom with small projections like a gentle interference-pattern.

[Crude map of the area]

He circled a green-colored square with his finger. It didn’t seem far from the blue triangle which marked our current location. We carefully thanked the police officer and put some distance between ourselves and the police box.

When we were safely out of earshot, Jamie growled into the air. “How dare they! I have half a mind to flash myself to them! I know I know. I’d be in jail and we’d be no closer to getting home.”

Nathan finally spoke. “I can’t believe he thought we were girls…”

Jamie folded his arms and his bag flopped around. “Mustache must be clouding his mind.”            

With my bag secure, I scratched at my hair. “I don’t think we look any more like girls than we did last night…”

Jamie lowered his head. “Excuse me? We had Katsumi-boobs glued to our chests!”

“I mean in the bath, before all the dress-up.” I mentioned the changes I noticed to each of them.

Jamie’s only reaction was, “I can’t believe you watched me that long! I swear… baths should be taken alone.”

I watched the two of them. Had they changed any since last night? Their faces were still smooth and soft. Arms too. Nathan’s chest still looked muscular but… maybe a little softer than before? He’d worn breast forms overnight, but so had we all. Looking at Jamie’s chest, I noticed it did seem a little softer than what I was used to seeing when I looked at him. He crossed his arms over his chest and glared at me. “They’re just a little irritated. I blame Katsumi. They’ve been irritated since breakfast.”

It turned out all three of us had felt irritation since then. Again, it made sense. Still, I was sure we were missing something. A cop doesn’t mistake your gender just for a bit of an irritated chest and soft skin. I’m sure they saw plenty of bishounen regularly.

Then, I thought back to when Nana left. I thought further back to when I first met Nana. I thought about how small she felt, especially with her long, grey, feathered hair. I fast-forwarded to when she just left. She didn’t feel quite as tiny.

I wrestled with that for a moment.

I could feel my eyes widen when the epiphany reached me. That explained why she didn’t feel as small and those police officers felt so tall.

Nathan and Jamie watched me intently. It took me a long time to finally say the words, “We’ve gotten shorter.”

It seemed like we’d all shrunk by about the same amount. That’s why it didn’t seem as obvious looking at Nathan and Jamie. I hit myself for not realizing it sooner when looking at Nana. It had to have happened gradually as we walked.

We tried to find a neutral means of comparison, but Nathan simplified things by running into the gift store to buy a tape measure. He came back with a colorful bag and a rainbow of yen bills. Jamie snagged the tape measure and held it up to himself. He trembled as he measured out then hissed, “What the heck is one-hundred-and-sixty-nine centimeters?”

I glared at Jamie. Hadn’t he figured out the metric system by now?

I did a quick and alarming calculation in my head. “You’re around five-six now…”

Jamie dropped the tape measure. “That’s not possible. And that’s not fair. I spent almost all of high school that tall!”

I picked up the tape measure and measured Nathan. About five-eleven. An inch taller than I was yesterday. He used to be four inches taller than me. Nathan took it with a good degree of calm.

I measured myself last. I was still just an inch taller than Jamie at five-seven. I was Carolyn’s height now. I nearly dropped the tape measure too. I checked it again. It was right. So, unless this was a trick tape measure, we’d somehow shrunk three inches, over seven-and-a-half centimeters, since coming here. I gave the tape measure back to Nathan, who put it in his bag.

It wasn’t the sort of thing that could be passed off as a trick of the way this world looked or a play of light and depilatories. We had become three whole inches smaller. The only way I could imagine that happening in the real world involved a violent ejection from a jet plane. Sure, you lose about an inch due to gravity at the end of the day and get it back when you sleep. But this was three inches.

My first, natural thought was abject terror of Katsumi. My second was wondering if the tree-lined path was somehow involved.

Jamie favored the former theory. “It’s gotta be her doing. You had to piss her off like that, didn’t you?” I had to admit, if that was right, it sure fit. I tell her she can’t ever make anyone into girls, and she shows us she can in the most extreme way possible. Why just three inches shorter though? If she really wanted to show us and could do it, then I’d think we’d just spontaneously turn into girls. I still couldn’t buy the idea of Katsumi with gender transformation powers. She’d be far too tempted to abuse them more than this. Unless, she just made things happen when she was really ticked off. Katsumi as an unconscious, gender-altering telekinetic goddess? Naahh…

I looked at the theory about the path. Jamie waved his hand. “That’s absurd! I spent more time along that path than anyone. Ergo, I should be more changed than either of you. Right?”

Nathan and I both looked at him.

His eyes were the same, and his face looked as androgynous as ever. But that went for all of us. I focused on his shoulders. They never looked as masculine as Nathan’s shoulders, but it seemed like someone had been slowly chipping away at the square contours of them and was about halfway through their work. They had a definitely-softened slope to them. His arms looked a little thinner, but it could be due to the form of the shirt he was wearing. His legs sustained a similar reduction. His waist looked about the same, along with his hips. He still seemed well within the realm of male in an anime sensibility.

Jamie gripped his arms and touched around his body. “Darn it. I need a look in a mirror.” He used a section of silvered window as a fair substitute.

I turned my eyes to Nathan. He touched his face. I looked at the sun glinting off his hair. It looked thick, but then he always had thick hair. What bothered me though was how the sun caught his hair. In this light, it looked faded, almost purple, from its usual black. Not too serious, but considering we’d just gotten three inches shorter, it was worth noting. Nathan grimaced and touched his hair as well.

His face looked about the same and, on the whole, I still got the impression of him more as a swimmer than a muscle-bound guy. His jaw looked rigid and tense. I gave him a touch on the shoulder. He crouched a little and rubbed his arms.

Jamie clawed at his hair. “Nothing else may be growing, but this stuff is. I have to stop in a bathroom to make sure nothing else shrunk by three inches.”

I didn’t get much of a chance to glance at myself in the window before Jamie trudged off in search of a public restroom and we had to follow. It’s just as well we didn’t linger; the guy at the register inside the store was beginning to look at us funny.

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Stores along the road gave way to small offices. I noticed a couple of insurance businesses: Eternal Comfort Insurance and Key to Prosperity Coverage. The rest became a blur. I saw an investment group here and there. Software company. Repair shop. People walked to and fro. Dozens. My eyes passed from one to the other. There were groups of schoolgirls, businessmen, older women with large bags, and more businessmen. Some were full of color. Some were clad in dull, gray tones. Together, they were a flowing work of art which made me want to sit and muse on it for as long as I could. Cars, mostly compacts, moved like lines of oversized ants down one path and another. But we had a destination to get to, and Jamie sure wasn’t interested in stopping.  

The road widened and, as it did, grass and full trees banded the road. Rigid, brown light poles dotted the landscape. At least we were going in the right direction for the library. If nothing else, we’d find a restroom with a mirror in that place.

I noticed a sign for a train stop. It had a small version of the map at the police box. The yellow line had stops right next to the library. One-time fares were listed to the side. Not bad. Since Nathan paid for the tape measure, I found it was only fair that Jamie paid for this. He gave surprisingly-little protest. He just said, “Next time, you pay.” I agreed, on the condition it wasn’t supper.

The train stop was just down the street past some government buildings. Most were only a few stories tall. The texture of reflective stone with ivory and silver dominated the landscape. The windows caught so much of the sky that the buildings almost seemed like still specters of faded white. I could see tracings of their interiors like rigid internal organs. People flowed along the gray and dull-red pavement. This time, I had to stop and look down at the ground. There was just too much to absorb. My eyes wanted to fly from one well-drawn work of art to the next. I could only take in a tiny bit of it without becoming dizzy. Jamie admonished me with, “It’s just a city. You’ve been to cities before. Ignore what isn’t important, and focus on your goal.”

I noticed Nathan seemed as captivated by the surroundings as myself.

Jamie groaned and said softly, “You do recall that we want to get ourselves fixed and get out of here, right? Come on, priorities! Train station, restroom, library, and then solutions. We get out of here, get ourselves fixed, and get back to our apartment.”