Adrian wastes no time. As soon as they reach his dorm room, he clears a space on his desk and sets her down.

  Mira, however, is spiraling. Despite her new crisis, her mind fills with indignation toward the man who just saved her life—the same man who nearly confessed to her yesterday but is now treating her like a lab anomaly. Still wrapped in the leaf from earlier, she glares at him, speaking with the entitlement of someone who believes he owes her the world.

  “Alright. Step one: I need clothes. This is not a fantasy novel—I refuse to spend my time wrapped in leaves.”

  “A practical issue. Let’s fix it.”

  Adrian acts on instinct. He wraps his scarf around her to ensure she stays warm, though the gesture doesn’t soothe Mira’s temper in the slightest. From a drawer, he pulls out a crisp handkerchief and inspects the weave before reaching for a pair of small scissors.

  Mira’s eyes widen. “Wait. Wait. Are you seriously about to tailor me something?”

  Already cutting, Adrian doesn’t even look up. “Do you have a better plan?”

  A few precise snips later, he folds the fabric and secures a makeshift tunic with a thin thread.

  Mira stares at it. “...This is disturbingly well-made. Do you do this often?”

  “No, but I understand structure and proportion. Wear it before you start overthinking.”

  She mutters under her breath but slips it on, begrudgingly admitting that it fits better than expected.

  With the wardrobe crisis handled, Mira can’t hide her frustration. “Let me get this straight,” she says at last, exasperated. “Your first reaction to finding me tiny isn’t panic. It isn’t concern. It’s intellectual excitement?”

  Adrian leans back, utterly calm. “Would panic have helped?”

  Mira throws up her hands. “It would’ve made me feel less like a test subject!” She takes a deep breath, shaking her head. “I can’t believe I was ever so stupid to think you’d be anything but this—this detached, calculating machine.”

  Adrian continues, showing little concern for her anger. “You should have been resting in your room. Why were you in the forest at this hour? And what’s with the camera at midnight, and these pajamas?” He gestures at her camera and the sleepwear neatly folded on his desk, acting as if talking to her in this tiny form is totally normal.

  Mira pouts, crosses her arms, and turns away to avoid his eyes. “I thought I was just dreaming. No one questions how ridiculous they look in a dream.” Her voice speeds up slightly. “Did you see that butterfly? I’ve never seen such a magnificent creature in my life. It’s appeared in my dreams a few times, but this time it looked so surreal that...”

  She catches herself. “But that is

  the problem right now. How do I turn back?”

  Adrian doesn’t answer right away. He pulls something from the inner pocket of his coat: a sealed glass vial, no longer than his finger. Inside, suspended in a nutrient gel, floats a delicate blue mushroom—its cap faintly pulsing with bioluminescence, as if breathing.

  The glow reflects on the steel walls around them. Mira’s eyes widen.

  “This… this one,” she whispers, inching closer on the desk, palms flat against the cold metal. “I

  it. In the forest.”

  Adrian doesn’t even look at her as he sets the vial onto the table beside her.

  “How many times,” he says calmly, “do I need to remind you to get close to unknown fungi?”

  Mira blinks. “Wait—”

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  He finally turns to face her. “There’s a high possibility you came into contact with a biogenic fungal strain that triggers physiological regression. In plain terms: you touched it, and now you’re two inches tall.”

  Her entire expression unravels into pure disbelief. “You’re not serious.”

  Mira points at herself, nearly trembling. “You think I shrank because I ? What is this—fairy folklore meets academic misconduct?! Tell me something realistic!”

  Adrian folds his arms, perfectly composed.

  “How is

  realistic, by the way?”

  But Mira doesn’t hear him anymore.

  “Adrian…You’re a genius,” she whispers, her words cracking at the edges. “You understand things people don’t even have names for yet. Can’t you just—” Her breath catches. “”

  She wants to scream, but instead she just stands there, barely tall enough to reach the height of a pen, shaking from something too heavy for her size. Until the tension in her chest finally gives way to something messier, something warm and wet and uncontrollable.

  “I haven’t even finished my first semester,” she says, barely audible, her voice cracking as the first tears spill over. “I’ve only just started here. I haven’t earned anything yet. I still get nervous raising my hand in class. I still memorize the route to class every morning because I don’t want to be late. I still eat with my friends in the same stupid corner of the canteen because it finally feels like mine. ”

  She rubs at her face with both hands, furious, trembling, overwhelmed—frustrated that even the act of crying feels wrong in this body, too small for the size of the grief inside her, as if her emotions had outgrown her skin and now had nowhere to go. Her breath hiccups, sharp and ragged, breaking unevenly in her chest before collapsing into a sob that rips free without grace, without control.

  “I don’t know what I did, what cursed mushroom or hallucinated dream logic caused this—how this happened—but I can’t let it ruin everything—” Her voice cracks as another sob overtakes her, louder now, raw and helpless. “I’ve worked too hard——I can’t go back to being nobody—I can’t disappear—”

  She cries without filter, without timing, like a child who’s been holding it in too long—loud, wet, and unstoppable. Her entire body shakes with it, tiny hands pressed against her face as if she could block out the world just by covering her eyes. When she looks up at him, her eyes are soaked, red-rimmed, and nearly swollen with salt. Her expression is unguarded, too open, and too honest.

  “Tell me you have something,” she begs through the mess of her sobs. “Anything. Even if it’s just a maybe. Even if it’s impossible, you’ll try. ”

  The last word breaks completely, shattered by the force of a breath she doesn’t manage to catch in time. There is no composure left in her voice. She is just a girl now—tiny, terrified, tearstained, and clutching the shape of a future she hasn’t even begun to live yet, terrified that it’s already slipping away.

  *

  5 minutes later~

  “Where are we going?” Mira asks, peering up from the fold of his scarf that is now her passenger seat, strapped carefully to the dashboard with a bit of washi tape and far too much nonchalant elegance on Adrian’s part.

  “Figure out what’s happening to you.”

  “Then why are we in your car?”

  “To my lab,” Adrian replies. simply

  Her stomach sinks a little because of the word he chooses.

  “I thought you had a private lab on campus?”

  “It’s unsafe,” he says, voice as smooth as the car’s suspension. “And too slow for advanced testing.”

  Her heart hitches.

  A tiny warning bell rings somewhere in her ribs. “Wait… are you—are you planning to run tests on me?”

  “Do we have any other way to figure this out?” he says.

  Mira stares at him in horror, frozen for a heartbeat, then tries to stand—only for the car to hit the slightest curve in the road. She immediately loses balance and tumbles backward into the fold of the scarf, landing flat on her back like a startled breadcrumb.

  She pushes herself upright again, eyes wide.

  Now she’s in a moving vehicle, the size of a doll, with heading to an off-campus lab that’s

  and .

  Her throat tightens. She swallows.

  “You’re not,” she finally says, voice trembling, “you’re not going to do on me in your shady lab, right?”

  Adrian exhales. Slowly. Sharply. His jaw tenses just enough to betray his restraint.

  “Mira,” he says. “My lab is not shady. It’s legally registered, with licensing, oversight board certifications, and full digital compliance.”

  “There are things I can’t tell you,” he continues, evenly, “but I don’t do shady research.”

  Which is exactly what someone who does shady research say.

  She doesn't say that out loud.

  She just pulls the scarf tighter around herself, eyes fix on the windshield, as the car speeds toward who-knows-where, with who-knows-what kind of machines waiting—and prays none of them come with scalpels.