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 - Episode 3
The smartphone screen glowed pale blue.
Takahashi Yutaro lay in his futon, staring at it, unable to move for a while.
Matching count: zero.
He remembered his profile photo from last night—shrunken to the size of a bean. He'd thought about deleting it and taking a new one, but in the end, he'd left it as is.
"……Well, whatever."
Saying it aloud, he sounded lighter than expected. Back when he was in Tokyo, he would've dragged something this trivial around all day.
Outside the window, it was already bright. A bird perched on the persimmon tree in the garden. Yutaro pulled himself out of the futon and descended the stairs.
When he opened the kitchen door, a paper-wrapped package sat on the threshold. Kurata Sayuri. A woman in her mid-sixties who'd been coming and going from the estate since Fumie's time, living nearby. She'd let herself in again today and left pickles and simmered vegetables.
(Conscientious woman.)
He unwrapped the package. The smell of stewed taro rose up. It reminded him a little of his grandmother's cooking. Yutaro reheated it in the pot while glancing at the sugar jar. Three sugar cubes, as always.
Nothing happened until evening. It wasn't a psychiatry appointment day, and he had no reason to go out. Sniffing the tatami scent, Yutaro sat on the veranda and watched the day fade away.
Two in the morning. The kitchen light off, Yutaro sat by the sink. Three sugar cubes on a silver plate. It had become a ritual of this hour.
A small shadow slipped from a gap in the wall.
"Still awake, you."
It was Marianne. A girl eighteen centimeters tall with flax-colored hair braided into three strands. Her thin blue wings folded lightly as she perched on a chopstick chair. Her wings grew pale when she was in a good mood and darker when she wasn't—Yutaro had only recently begun to notice this.
"Nothing else to do."
"I know. The dating app was zero again today."
Her mouth curved into a smirk.
"You're the one who edited it."
"That's true, but."
Marianne hopped down from the chair and tapped the smartphone screen on the table.
"I've decided. Starting today, I'm going to be your matchmaking consultant."
"Consultant."
"You alone will never meet anyone on this app. Ever. I'm going to supervise. Be grateful."
Yutaro raised an eyebrow.
"Supervise—like turning my photo into a bean?"
"That was practice. The real thing starts now."
A bad feeling crept over him. By the time Yutaro reached for his phone, it was too late. Marianne's fingertips—moving too fast for human eyes to follow—swiped across the screen.
"Hey, wait—"
"Done."
His profile had been rewritten.
*Hobbies: Reading, watching movies. I prefer to spend my days off relaxing.*
And this had been added:
*Special skill: Talking to myself in the kitchen at night. Future dream: Sharing three sugar cubes with someone.*
"……What the hell is this."
"Mysterious, right? Women are weak to mysterious men."
"Mysterious? It's incomprehensible."
As he spoke, Yutaro noticed his voice was shaking. The tremor was laughter.
"What is this, sharing sugar cubes……that's about you, isn't it."
"Oh, you figured it out?"
Marianne said it without a shred of shame. Yutaro stared at the screen, unable to stop what was welling up from deep inside.
"Ah, no good……a thirty-year-old man writing 'I want to share sugar cubes with someone'—nobody's gonna understand that……"
He laughed out loud. His voice echoed alone in the dark kitchen.
Marianne stood with her arms crossed, watching. Her wings had faded just slightly in color.
"Why don't you ever get mad at me."
"Can't bring myself to get mad when it's you."
"Is that a compliment."
"Who knows."
Yutaro picked up a chopstick. He'd promised to make her a chair tonight. He needed to shave down the legs to fit her size. Moving the cutter blade carefully, he said quietly:
"I have to call Kurogawa again tomorrow."
Marianne's gaze shifted.
"Like, confirming your leave of absence and stuff?"
"Yeah. That guy says the same thing even over the phone."
Yutaro's hands stopped for a moment.
"He says there's plenty of replacements for me. That's his catchphrase. He told me if I want to quit, quit—but there's no place for you to go after this."
His voice was flat. He didn't realize he was speaking this way deliberately—that putting emotion into it would only hurt more.
"I was coming home after midnight every day. Being told my personality was wrong became normal, and even when the hospital said I had adjustment disorder, I didn't really understand it at first."
Marianne said nothing. She just listened.
"There was a day on the train when I suddenly couldn't stop crying. I didn't even know why."
The tip of the chopstick he was shaving bent slightly. Yutaro kept moving his hands without noticing.
Silence flowed. Outside the window, wind rustled through the shrine's cedar trees.
"……Me too."
Marianne spoke quietly.
"I didn't have a place. Ever."
"You were driven out of the village, right."
"Yeah. The reason—I won't say now."
Her wings shifted to a darker shade again.
"But when I came here, Fumie was kind to me. After Fumie died, there was no one."
Marianne's voice drifted away from its usual sharp tone.
"I'd connect to Wi-Fi and peek at how humans live. That was the only time I felt like I was still connected to something. That was all it was, the whole time."
Yutaro set down the chopstick.
(We're alike.)
Back in Tokyo, he'd done the same thing—stared at his phone screen, pretending to be connected to someone. When really, he wasn't connected to anyone at all.
Before he knew it, Yutaro's right hand was moving. He extended his index finger toward Marianne's head—
"Don't touch me, you giant!!!"
A shriek pierced the air. Marianne leaped from the chair, clutching her head as she stumbled backward. Her wings turned nearly crimson.
"S-sorry……I didn't think——"
"You didn't think?! I don't appreciate being casually touched by a clumsy giant like you!"
Marianne's face was red. Whether from her wings or something else, Yutaro couldn't tell.
"……I apologized."
"Don't you ever do it again."
Even as she said it, Marianne came back to the chair. Closer than before.
For a while, neither spoke. The kitchen wall clock's ticking sounded unnaturally loud.
"……Hey."
Marianne murmured softly.
"Why do you think I'm still in this house."
"Huh?"
"A banished Hitokage should be able to go anywhere. The mountains, somewhere else."
Marianne stared at her own knees.
"But——I don't know why, but it feels like I have to stay here. I've always felt that way."
Her voice trembled.
"I don't remember the reason. But if I left this place——it feels like I'd lose something important."
Yutaro couldn't quite touch whatever lay beneath those words. But his chest stirred with unease.
"……I see."
He answered briefly. Marianne said nothing more. She climbed down from the chopstick chair and walked toward the gap in the wall.
"See you, giant."
"Yeah."
Her small form vanished into the darkness.
Alone in the kitchen, Yutaro picked up his phone. He closed the dating app and opened his phone carrier's contract page instead.
Login screen. A familiar name appeared in the account holder field.
Takatori Fumie.
"……Grandma."
His whisper sank into the quiet kitchen.
He checked the contract date. It started over fifteen years ago. And——the renewal date was just last month.
His grandmother, who'd died three years ago, still had an active contract under her name.
(Who's renewing it?)
Was Kurata Sayuri handling it for him? But then it would be strange not to change the name. As if keeping this name mattered somehow. As if staying connected under this name meant something.
Yutaro stared at the screen, unable to move.
From deep in the wall gap, a faint sound like breathing came. Marianne must have already fallen asleep.
(I have to stay here, she said.)
Marianne's words from earlier repeated in his mind. A premonition without reason. It had a shape similar to the nameless unease in his own chest.
He turned off the kitchen light. In the darkness, only the silver plate beside the sugar jar caught the moonlight, glowing faintly.
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