Yutaro (30), broken by a toxic corporate job, takes a leave of absence to recover in his late grandmother's old house. He expects quiet solitude but instead witnesses something impossible: a tiny figure stealing sugar cubes from his kitchen.
That figure is Marienne, a sharp-tongued girl from the 'Hitokage'—a race of tiny people living beneath the floorboards. She is a walking contradiction: a WiFi-stealing, S-rank sass-master who treats Yutaro like a plaything, mercilessly teasing him over his
The Girl in the Crawlspace - The marriage consultant is 18 cm tall.
I run my fingers along the gap in the floor.
Three centimeters wide. There's definitely a hollow space between the wall and the floorboards. The footprints I saw last night end just before this gap.
(Did she disappear from here?)
Takahashi Yutaro brought a flashlight and shined it into the gap. A small passage continuing deeper. Dust marks, worn smooth and rounded. Evidence of traveling the same route over and over again.
"……No way."
Crawling along the gap, he emerged into the space beneath the floor. What he found there was a sight he'd never imagined.
A bed made from scraps of cloth and cotton. A small chair carved from wooden chopsticks. A table made from an inverted plastic bottle cap. Even a miniature shelf with buttons arranged as dishes.
"Someone's living here……living under this house."
His voice trembled. Curiosity consumed his entire body before fear could take hold. Who was it? How had they built such an intricate life?
He went out to the garden and examined the base of the persimmon tree. A small cloth bundle was wedged into a gap between the roots. It was empty, but the sweet smell of sugar still lingered. From there, faint traces led to the crawlspace vent. On the second floor, in the Western-style room, he found similar scuff marks near the air conditioning pipe below the Wi-Fi router.
(They're moving through the walls.)
Yutaro pulled out his phone and opened his contract information. The data logs showed abnormally high usage during late-night hours. Someone was using this Wi-Fi every night.
"I was being watched……that's what this is."
A feeling larger than self-loathing welled up inside him. Someone was here. In this mansion he'd thought he was alone in all this time.
Yutaro spent the entire day waiting for night to come.
2 AM. The kitchen lights were off. Yutaro crouched in the shadow of the sink. Three sugar cubes sat on a silver saucer, placed beside the sugar bowl.
A sound. A small shadow slipped out from a gap in the wall.
In the moonlight, he saw her clearly. A girl about eighteen centimeters tall, her flax-colored hair braided into three plaits. Translucent pale blue wings trembled slightly on her back.
The moment the girl reached for the silver saucer, Yutaro gently cupped his hands around her.
"Kyaa!?"
The girl shrieked and writhed. She made a strange gesture, as if trying to look away. But nothing happened. The color drained from her face.
"W-why……it's not working……"
"Hey, you don't have to run. I'm not——"
The moment he opened his hands slightly, their eyes met directly.
The girl's eyes widened.
"……Ah."
A short sound. Then all color vanished from her face.
"You idiot!? You saw it! You saw it just now!?"
"I saw it, yeah, but first of all you're the one who——"
"My life is over! What are you going to do about this!?"
The girl tried to escape but couldn't squeeze through the gaps between his fingers. Eventually she gave up and started stamping her feet.
"What's your name?"
"Like I'd tell you, you giant!"
Even as she said it, the girl's eyes were fixed on his pocket. Where his phone was.
"……Actually, I wanted to ask you something. You were searching 'first date tips' and 'how not to be hated in your thirties' on dating apps, weren't you?"
His heart froze as if cold water had been poured on it from inside.
"H-how did you——"
"Didn't you know? I can monitor your Wi-Fi and your phone together."
The girl sprawled across his palm with a triumphant expression.
"And your profile photo——you should edit it. It makes you look uglier than you actually are. But——"
The girl grinned and made a gesture like tapping an invisible screen.
"I already fixed it for you. Made it smaller."
"Smaller……?"
A bad feeling washed over him. Still crouching, Yutaro pulled out his phone with one hand. He opened the dating app. His profile photo had been changed to a thumbnail the size of a bean. No responses. Matches: zero.
"……You did this."
"I thought it'd be funny."
The girl said it without a shred of remorse. Yutaro stared at the screen for a moment, then——he laughed.
"Ugh, this is the worst……"
The girl looked surprised.
"Why aren't you angry?"
"I don't have the energy to be angry. But somehow——"
Searching for words, Yutaro continued.
"When I was in Tokyo, I barely laughed at all. And here I am, laughing at a photo the size of a bean."
The girl looked away. The tips of her wings shifted color slightly.
Yutaro gently lowered his palm to the table and set the girl down. He took chopsticks and cloth scraps from a kitchen drawer and clumsily assembled a small chair with his clumsy hands.
"What are you doing?"
"A chair. You won't feel settled on my palm."
The girl watched silently. After a moment, she murmured softly.
"……Why aren't you angry?"
"Because I was happy someone was here."
A brief silence. The kitchen wall clock pointed to 3 AM.
"Marianne."
"Huh?"
"My name. Marianne. I'm from a race called Hitkage——though it's basically ancient history at this point."
"Hitkage……"
"A small race that lives in the shadows of humans. We've been hiding in the crawlspace of this house and deep in the mountains for a long time."
Yutaro stopped shaving the chopstick and looked at the girl.
"So before you came to this house——"
"I've been here since Fumie's time."
At that name, Yutaro's hands stopped.
"Fumie——my——"
"Your grandmother, right? I know. I saw her photo."
Marianne's voice softened slightly.
"Fumie took care of me. The sugar cubes, the Wi-Fi——she provided everything. After she died, a neighbor named Kurata Sayuri comes once a month to restock. Even though I never asked her to."
Her voice trembled at the end. Her wings deepened in color.
Yutaro instinctively reached out his index finger. He was about to stroke the girl's head when——
"Don't touch me, giant! I don't need to be touched by a clumsy oaf like you!"
At the shriek, Yutaro pulled his hand back.
"S-sorry."
The memory of her small body heat lingered on his fingertip. Marianne turned away, but her wings were lighter in color than before.
"……Thanks to Fumie's Wi-Fi, I was connected to the outside world."
Marianne sat on the chopstick chair and crossed her legs.
"Every night I'd peek at your phone and mutter to myself 'all human men are idiots.' 'Dating apps for men in their thirties impossible' 'workplace harassment disability benefits how long'——I remember every search."
"……Don't say all of it."
"If you don't want me to say it, then tell me. What are you running from?"
The girl's eyes pinned him down, cutting off any escape. Yutaro sat down on a kitchen chair and was silent for a while.
"……There was a boss. A section chief named Kurokawa."
His voice naturally grew quieter.
"His catchphrase was 'there are plenty of replacements for you.' He also said if I wanted to quit, I could, but there'd be no next time. Overtime exceeded eighty hours a month. One day, when I was about to board a train, I suddenly couldn't stop crying. My heart was racing too. The hospital said it was adjustment disorder."
Marianne said nothing and listened. Her usual sharp tongue had stopped.
"Being alone in Tokyo scared me. So I came here."
Silence. Outside the kitchen window, wind rustled the cedar leaves of the shrine.
"……I lost my place too."
Marianne's voice was different from her usual sharp tone. Low and quiet.
"We have a rule. We can't make eye contact with humans. The Manazashi law. If you break it——"
Her words stopped there. Marianne's wings trembled slightly, and she said nothing more.
"If you break it, what happens?"
"……Never mind that. The sugar cubes."
She changed the subject. Yutaro didn't press further. It felt like there was something he shouldn't ask about yet.
Outside the window, the sky was beginning to lighten. Marianne stepped down from the chair and walked toward the gap in the wall.
"I'll leave sugar cubes out tomorrow too."
"Of course, you idiot."
With those words, Marianne's small form slipped into the gap in the wall and vanished.
Yutaro crouched on the floor and gently traced the small footprints she'd left behind with his finger. He'd never felt this way in Tokyo. Someone was in this house——in this place to return to.
But the words Marianne had left unfinished kept catching in Yutaro's mind.
"If you break it, what happens?"
What waited beyond that answer she wouldn't give? Yutaro still knew nothing.
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