HIH: A Chapter 24 Preview (Patreon)

It was a brand new day and everyone in the club was happy, Megumi especially. Her excitement was practically radiating off her like a big smiling ray of sunshine. Now that the club had not only enough members but an actual, honest-to-goodness, request box, they could finally get down to business and actually start helping the school. For the entirety of first period, she had a big goofy smile plastered across her face and she didn’t shy away from letting everyone around her know the exact reason in great detail. When lunchtime had finally come she practically ran out of the room while excitedly grasping Furyu, Rentaro, and Fujo’s hands. Seeing the small wooden request box they left outside the club room brought her immense amounts of joy. Clutching it with both hands, she held it like a baby and impatiently waited for everyone to arrive before seeing all the requests they got.

Once everyone had gotten into the club room, Megumi proudly made a show of opening the box. With a dramatic movement, she unlatched the box and smugly dumped it out onto the main table. However, as Megumi would soon find out, things would not go as planned. Holding the box upside down, everyone in the club was shocked as… absolutely nothing fell out.

“Eh..?” Megumi’s stared at the empty wooden box with an emotionless grin on her face. Even after shaking it a couple of times, nothing fell out. She and the rest of the club were completely speechless, Makoto especially since it was her idea.

“Tch.’ Makoto grimaced, trying her hardest to hide how sad she was. Everyone stood silent for a couple more minutes before they started to wonder why something like this happened. “Are you sure you told everyone?” “Did you forget to add a tiny slot so Micros could leave their suggestions?” “Did you grab the right box?” All these and more continued to be asked until things almost boiled over into an argument. Standing on Megumi’s shoulder, Rentaro did his best to comfort the girl. It was either super obvious or not obvious at all, but Megumi was extremely sad about this. She was usually never this quiet.

“I’m sure we’ll get some tomorrow— huh?” Patting a strand of Megumi’s hair, the tiny boy caught a little glimpse of what looked to be a small piece of paper stuck between one of the hinges. Gasping, he pointed at its location excitedly. “Megumi, look!!” He yelled causing Megumi to perk up for a moment and almost cause Rentaro to go tumbling off her shoulder and into her shirt.

Carefully putting Rentaro back down on the table, she looked at the hinge, and sure it was: a tiny piece of paper with micro-hand writing on it. In an instant, her sad, almost blank, expression faded away and she cheered with all her might. Makoto was pretty much the same but she hid her happiness by turning away from everyone and pretending to be on her phone. Due to it being pretty difficult to read, Mai did the honors and picked it out before turning up her megaphone and announcing the request to the entire club.

“Please do something about the Micro walkways! I want going to class to be safer!’ While it was definitely a sensible request, the look on Mai’s face gave everyone the impression that she’s already tried that. Nevertheless, she didn’t give up hope and graciously accepted everyone's feedback and ideas.

"Naturally, if we want to actually implement any of the ideas we'll have to write out a request form and submit it to the student council, but for now let's all just get everything jotted down so we can submit our ideas all at once." She said, pulling out a tiny notebook and pen from her bag. Almost immediately every member of the club had come up with an idea. The micro walkways were already pretty unsafe so finding a solution to make them safer was pretty easy, the real difficulty was somewhere else…

"Hmmm, back at Okisana, the micro walkways were all elevated to about chest height," Megumi explained, holding her hand horizontally near her chest. "And they also had those flat escalator things you see at airports! So maybe we could put in a request for something like that." As over-optimistic as this was, elevating the walkways off the floor would dramatically decrease the likelihood of being stepped on. And so the Micro-Rep Support Squad's first suggestion was put into writing!

"Yeah, and if movin' them super high up is too much we could always just put up some small walls along the edges of the walkways," Furyu said, placing a pencil right next to Rentaro. "That way if someone's about to step on a tiny…" Without warning, the delinquent took one of her shoes off and slammed it lightly on top of the pencil.

"Their feet wouldn't be able to land flat makin' it impossible for them to get squished." With his heart beating out of his chest, Rentaro found himself underneath the tattered sole of Fury's uwabaki. Just like Furyu had said, he was saved from being crushed by the small height of the pencil. Stuck crouching in the small gap between the table and the dirt-ridden bottom of Fury's shoe, he could feel himself blushing extremely hard at how hot the situation was. Even if he preferred feet and socks, being this close to the bottom of her shoe was exhilarating. Especially since the odor from her freshly removed shoes was currently permeating the air.