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“Yuu!” Mia crashed into Yuu at a high speed. Yuu looked up to see Mia’s hair disheveled with a look of distress on her face, despite her fringe covering an eye.
“Oh, Mia!” Yuu said. “ Is something wrong?”
“I don’t know what’s going on in there,” Mia said, pulling Yuu into the club room with her. “I was literally gone for a second and look at this.”
“Look at what?” Yuu asked. “You know I still don’t understa-”
The doors open to reveal exactly something neither of them truly understood. The room was bustling lively as ever but a little voice made them understand what was happening.
“Yuu! Welcome home!” a high pitched voice said to her.
“Ayumu?” she looked down to see her friend. Realizing she had to kneel to get a better look, she asked “What happened?”
“What? Nothing happened,” Ayumu asked, tilting her head to the side in confusion. Yuu's mouth fell open in shock. She looked really cute!
“I’m super happy you’re here now!” she said before throwing herself into Yuu’s arms.
Ayumu felt like she always felt to Yuu. Soft and kind of warm, and not like some random kid who looks like her, sounds like her, smells like her-
“Hey,” Mia said. “What do you think you’re doing?” She asked seeing the two of them being all friendly.
“Hehe, yeah,” Yuu said. “What was your problem again?”
“You’re kinda holding the problem,” Mia said, causing little Ayumu to pout and bury herself deeper in Yuu.
“Plus, “ she let out a grunt as she picked up another kid, ”it’s not like Ayumu was the only one that got turned into a kid.“
“What?!” Yuu exclaimed before taking a better look at the room and, of course, picking up Ayumu as she stood to see where Mia was.
“This one! Why are you two fighting?” She pulled two kids apart.
“I’m not fighting anyone! She’s fighting me!” a little girl hair said, relieved that she was freed from another girl’s grasp.
“I’m sure Lanzhu’s not trying to fight you,” another girl said from behind Mia.
“I just thought I made a new friend, Shioriko,” Lanzhu said after being held back, turning back to the girl she was allegedly fighting. “I thought you liked your new nickname.”
“Well, Kasukasu is a bit...”
“You’re Kasumi?” Yuu asked Kasumi.
“Yeah, I guess,” she said. “Who are you?”
Yuu looked up to Mia with her mouth wide open. “They don’t know who we are?”
“Not at all,” Mia said, letting the kids run off to coninue playing. “You wanna find out how I knew?”
Mia pointed to two girls trying to have a conversation.
“Come ti chiami?”
“Eh?” a girl tilted her head in confusion. The bubblier girl she was speaking to then pointed at herself.
“Chiamo Emma!” she said, before pointing at the other girl to get her answer.
“Emma?”
Emma nodded then pointed at the other girl again, to which the girl responded, also pointing to herself.
“Karin!”
Yuu’s eyes were the size of saucers when Mia took a look at her reaction.
“She can only speak Italian!?” Yuu said, putting Ayumu down from her arms. Still, Ayumu clung to her leg when she tried to walk away. “We have to turn them back right now!”
“Wait!” Mia stopped her from going out. “I don’t really know if the others in the school need to know about this.”
“But why? Don’t you want them to turn back into themselves?” she looked down to see a frowning Ayumu.
“You want to go?” she asked, averting her gaze from Yuu. Yuu looked to Mia for guidance, to which she merely shrugged.
“As for me, I’ll just try my best to keep them alive,” Mia said. “If you need me, I’ll be going over there.” she pointed to two kids who seemed to be unresponsive. “They look like they need something.”
She walked over to two non-verbal children that did not seem to want to talk to each other. One of them seemed to be staring into space while the other was flopped on top of a table, twisted in what was probably an uncomfortable position to sleep in.
“Kanata,” Mia said to the sleeping girl before picking her up. “Don’t you want to sleep somewhere else?”
“Aw! So cute!” Yuu suddenly said to Mia who quickly put the sleeping girl on a bench with a bag to rest her head on.
“What’s your problem now?” Mia said.
“It’s just,” Yuu scratched her neck. “I’ve never seen you so caring for other people like this before.”
“Oh, come on,” Mia rolled her eyes. “Help me with this one, please. I don’t know what she wants but I think she wants something. She won’t stop looking at me with that look of hers.”
She gestured to a girl sitting on a chair, big, round eyes looking straight at her expectantly.
“Rina?” Yuu asked. “What if you give her the board?”
“You’re right!” Mia said before getting the board out from Rina’s bag and putting it on her. “Now, Rina, you can tell us what you feel now, right?”
The board remained on with the same blank expression that the rest of the club has grown accustomed to. Rina, still, was not saying a word.
“Um,” Mia said looking further through Rina’s bag. “I think she controls the board herself.”
“So let’s go old school!” Yuu said, getting some markers and a piece of paper to hand to the girl. “Rina?”
Rina began her work on the paper instantly. Masterful strokes and multiple colors were required to fully express her true emotions. Mia and Yuu stood above her watching every move to hopefully understand what was going on inside her head.
However.
She couldn’t draw too well in this form.
“I don’t get it…” Yuu said.
“Honestly, I hope she doesn’t really feel this way,” Mia said, trying to take a closer look at the finished artwork.
“I have a cookie,” Yuu said after rummaging through her bag, causing Rina to look at her. “She could always just be hungry. Or bored.” she gave Rina both a cookie and her cellphone opened to a random
app.
Rina graciously accepted the phone right away and went straight to tapping away on the phone letting both Yuu and Mia take a break.
“I think we’re good for now,” Yuu said as Mia sat down with a sigh.
“For sure,” Mia said. “I’m glad they can mostly take care of themselves. I mean, except...” she gestured to Ayumu who fell asleep with her head leaning on Yuu. “She must really like you, huh?”
“Well, I’m really happy!” Yuu said. “Isn’t she so cute?”
“Has she always been this way?”
“As far as I can remember.”
“Damn.”
“Actually, I think I need to go to the bathroom for a second.” Yuu said, using her hand to move Ayumu’s head over to Mia’s arm. Mia flinched from the sudden contact with the little head before Yuu quickly left.
“Be back fast,” she said as Yuu shut the door a little too loudly, waking Ayumu up.
“...Yuu?”
“She just went out for a second,” Mia pointed at the door when Ayumu started looking around the room.
“She’s gone?”
“Yeah, for a bit.”
“She’s dead?!” her eyes started to well up with tears. “Yuu is dead?!”
“Whoa, whoa calm down, buddy,” she said trying to get Ayumu to stop crying. “She’s not dead. Stop crying.”
This did not help her stop crying. Ayumu’s wails began to fill the room turning a few heads and gaining the interest of a few girls who went to try to cheer her up.
“Are you okay?”
“Yo, Ai,” Mia said. “Can you make her stop crying? She thinks Yuu’s dead when she just went out.”
“I don’t think she’s dead,” Ai started. “But sometimes our friends have to go away for a long time. But that’s okay, since she’s probably working to be better so when she sees you again she’ll be happier.”
“Wait, wha-”
“What would she be doing that she can’t do with me also?” Ayumu asked through tears. “Am I not making her happy anymore?”
“That’s not true!” someone else said. “In the show I watched, the main character left because she is happy and wants to make you happier.”
“That’s better,” Mia said. “You go Setsuna!”
“But then,” Setsuna thought harder, “in tonight’s episode, she accidentally fell to the dark side and she does not remember her friends anymore. I think they’re going to fight next week. It’s going to be so cool!”
“NO!” Ayumu screamed. “I don’t want to fight Yuu! I don’t want her to forget me!”
“Okay, okay, that’s only in the show,” Mia tried to console her. “That’s probably not real.”
“That’s right. I saw a show about a true story.”
“We’ve had enough of stories, Shizuku. Please, just,” Ayumu’s high-pitched cries were getting really frustrating for Mia and the stories these girls were telling seemed to be making things worse. Her proximity to this number of kids was getting to her. “Stop crying.”
“I saw a drama where a man left a woman because he did not like her anymore. He found another woman but he came back to the first woman because he still loved her. So I think she’ll still come back.”
“But with someone else?” Ayumu wailed. “Why?”
“I don’t know.” Mia said. “There’s no reason any of those things would happen. That’s impossible-”
“Hey, Mia,” Yuu popped in the door and Ayumu almost instantly stopped crying. “Ayumu, got you a cookie!”
“Thank you so much!” Ayumu graciously accepted the cookie and began chewing on it. Mia simply stood in her place in shock that Yuu and a cookie had been enough to pacify her.
“Sorry about that,” Yuu said. “There was a line.”
Yuu peered down to see Emma tugging on her skirt.
“Hey, what do you need?”
“È scappata!” Emma said. Yuu looked up to Mia for help.
“What the hell do you want me to do?”
“English is closer to Italian, right?”
“I don’t understand her whatsoever,” Mia said. “Is she hungry?”
“Let’s try,” Yuu gave Emma the cookie which she happily put in her mouth and took a bite. Mia and Yuu made a sigh of relief.
Emma, unfortunately for them, then immediately shook her head and pointed at something.
“What happened?” Yuu asked again. “You need to go to the bathroom? You don’t like something in the cookie?”
“Mia amica!” she pointed at the door again.
“Mia?” Yuu asked. “She’s right there.”
Emma shook her head again, demolishing the whole cookie, before pointing at the door again, trying to come up with any way for them to understand her.
“What?”
“Karin!” Emma shouted.
“Oh, shit,” Mia said. “She might be right.”
“What about Karin?” Yuu asked.
“You’re not gonna understand her,” Mia said. “Let’s do a headcount instead.”
“Okay. There’s one, two, three,” Yuu began counting the girls in the room. They all kept moving so she had to restart her count a few times.
“Dude, it can’t be that hard to count.” Mia said. “Let me. One, two, three,”
They both concluded their counts at the same time.
“Hold on, I think I counted them wrong.” Mia said. “There’s only ten.”
“But I counted ten also.” Yuu said. “Is Karin really missing?“
“Oh my god, she got out.”
“I have to go outside to find her!” Yuu exclaimed.
“You are not going out of this room again,” Mia said. “Stay here while I find them.”
Yuu gave her a thumbs up as Mia walked out of the room, quickly going through her options on where Karin could be. She wasn’t very big so she couldn’t have gone that far. There was, however, the real possibility that she ran off. The wide open hallways of the school had never been so big to her before. At least it must seem bigger to a child, meaning she could have been afraid from going too far.
“Why does this school have to be this big?” Mia complained walking through the school. “I mean, back in the States, college was much bigger, but-”
She heard a commotion in another room that she quickly went to check out. Inside the room was a bunch of girls in aprons and a bunch of chemicals everywhere. It was the Science club.
“Hey, Mia!” a girl from the cooking club called out to her. “You’re in the School Idol club, right?”
“Yeah, I guess,” she responded. “What about it?”
“Setsuna from your club gave us some of the soup she made. But we found out, that even in small doses, it could make you younger!”
“Wow,” she feigned interest, “tell me about it.”
“I will,” The student said. “It seems if you eat the soup, not only would you look younger, it’s almost as if you become younger as well.”
“That’s so cool,” Mia said sarcastically. She had somewhere else to be. “Do you think it’s possible to make a soup that is the opposite of this one? You know, one that could make you older again?”
“Hm,” the student thought. “I think we have some.”
“Please give me some,” Mia said.
“Well,” she thought harder. “I could give it to you right now but-”
“I will literally do anything for that aging soup.”
“Mia,” the club leader said. “You really need to enjoy your youth more. Once you’re older it doesn’t get that much more fun, you know?”
“I’m a third year as well, bro.”
“I know, I know,” the student said. “We do have the soup. It’s just that it tastes really bad. I don’t think we’ve had anyone try it since it tasted so bad. We’re thinking of a collaboration with the cooking club.”
“Please collaborate with them as soon as possible.”
“Very interested, huh,” The student said. “We’ll do that. Just please know that if you’re aged up, you still wouldn’t be allowed to drink or drive legally. You’d still be legally 14 years old.”
“Okay, okay,” Mia said. “This is for a friend. This is to help them.”
“I understand, I’ll go out in a second.”
Mia left the room to continue her actual mission.
Find Karin before someone else finds her.
As she walked through the school, her thoughts began to wander again. What would happen if someone else were to catch the School Idol club turning into children? Disband the club? Only Shioriko could do that. And she was a child right now. Maybe the chairwoman can do that? But she’s Lanzhu’s mom.
Mia began to realize how much power the School Idol club actually had on the school.
“So cute! Oh my gosh!”
Noise seemed to come out of a room and Mia feared that the worst has happened when she looked inside.
Inside, she found young girls wearing aprons and she thought she was in the Science club room again. But there were pots and pans everywhere. This must have been the Cooking club room.
“Mia!” a girl from the Cooking club approached her. “Look at what we found!”
“Karin?!” Mia yelled out as soon as she saw Karin being fed treats by the other girls. “What are you doing here?”
“I don’t know,” Karin said, before accepting another handmade candy from the club.
“You’re coming back with me.”
“Say, Mia,” a Cooking club student approached her. “the rest of the girls, are they normal sized or are they also...”
“Yes, they are!” Mia confessed. “Please! The Science club needs your help to turn them back into normal. They’ve been like this all day and I really need them back to their normal selves!”
“Okay,” the student responded as Mia tried to control her breath. “We’ll see what we can do. Please give us until the end of the day.”
“Thank you so much.”
“Let’s go!!” Mia celebrated.
“The collaboration was a success!” Yuu said as the girls were back to their normal forms.
“Urgh,” Karin said with her head in her hands. “Every other person I’ve passed today has called me cute.”
“But you’ve always been cute, Karin,” Emma said, patting her head.
“Hey, Yuu! I hope It wasn’t too much of a problem,” Ayumu said. “It’s must have been hard taking care of everyone else.”
“Ah, it was no problem,” Yuu said. “You were no problem at all and you were very cute! It really took me back.”
Mia chose not to say a word.
“Suddenly, Kanata feels so full of energy!” Kanata rose up from the bench. “I feel like I can run super far and super fast!”
“Then let’s go!” Lanzhu said. “Let’s race around the city! Lanzhu thinks that’s a lot of fun!”
“So it was all because of my soup, huh?” Setsuna said. “I guess that serves me right for trying to copy the recipe from that anime that turns the heroes into children to break into the villain’s lair!“
“You did what now?” Mia asked.
“The soup looked really yummy!”