Chiasi 2

I woke up and checked that the box house was still there.
    I knocked on the cardboard “Small guy, you awake?”
    I could have opened the box to check inside, but that would have been very rude, It was his home after all.
    “Yes, do you want me to come out?”
    “You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but you probably want breakfast.”
    “Aren’t you going to place it inside?”
    “I’d rather not. Bring out the spoon and water cap.”
    I went to fix breakfast for myself. When I came back I found him outside, waiting next to the spoon and cap. He had covered himself with a scrap of cloth. However he needed to hold it or it would fall off.
    I was going to ask him what he wanted for breakfast, but then I realized that whatever he could ask for, I could not give him. Ended up giving him more water and breadcrumbs from my toast. I felt bad for that, but I kept telling myself there was nothing wrong with it. I also added a small piece of banana. I ate the rest of the fruit.
    “May I eat inside?” He asked, probably so he wouldn’t have to worry about covering himself.
    “Sure.”
    He picked up the spoon and I was a bit amazed at how effortless he looked. I mean, that spoon was made of steel. It looked enormous on his hands. If I tried to lift a piece of steel that large it would weigh over 100 kg. Yet he moved it like it weighed nothing. Then I remembered a commonly known fact about ants, that they can lift several times their own weight. This has nothing to do with ants in particular, it is actually about the square-cube law. Weight depends on volume, which in turn depends on the cube of longitude, while muscular strength depends on muscle cross section, which depends on the square of length. So, if length is reduced to 20 times, weight would be reduced to 8000 times, but strength would be reduced only 400 times. So if a normal human can lift about half their own weight, this little guy could lift ten times his own weight.
    “Take the spoon out when you’re done.”
    I got to work on the next thing: clothing. He looked pretty miserable trying to cover himself with a scrap of cloth. I got the sewing machine and picked some cloth. A very thin light blue fabric left over from some cosplay project. Then I realized I have to measure the guy first. Fortunately by that moment he came out, however before I spoke he went into the “outhouse”. While he was busy, I went to get more toilet paper. I pretended to be focusing on the sewing machine while he went back into the main box. Then I replaced the toilet paper.
    “Hey little guy, can you come out? I need to measure you.”
    “Didn’t you already measure me yesterday?”
    “That was just your height, I need to measure your body to make clothing.”
    With some reluctance he came out, still covering himself with the scrap.
    “Sorry, but I’ll need you to drop that.”
    He did so and went back to covering his groin with his hands.
    “Sorry, again, but I need you to stretch your arms to the sides.”
    He blushed and looked down, but slowly extended his arms. I didn’t actually wrap the tape around him, that would have been too hard with a chance of hurting him, and it wouldn’t even be that accurate, so I just measured how wide his chest was in two perpendicular directions.
    “Thank you, that’ll be all.”
    I designed the garment on paper and cut the fabric. It was hard working on something so small, but the design was very simple, so it was done quickly.
    “Ok, your new clothing is ready, I’ll leave it by your door.”
    He stretched an arm through the door to pick it up.
    “B-but… this is a dress.”
    “Yes, trying to sew pants or shirts would be too complicated on such a small scale, and would probably be very hard to move in due to cloth thickness and seam size.”
    “Ok… thank you.”
    “Come out  and let me take a look, I want to see if it fits well.”
    “Do I have to?”
    “Please?”
    He came out, wearing the dress, blushing and looking at the floor. His arms folded in front of him.
    The dress was just a truncated cone of light blue fabric that began under his armpits and ended over his knees. It had only one seam at the back plus the hems. It was held by two thin white ribbon strips glued to the fabric. (I was not going to sew something that small).
    He looked kinda like a tomboyish girl. Very cute. I took notice of how smooth his legs were, as a matter of fact, he didn’t seem to have any body or face hair. Or at least none that I could see.
    “How does it feel?”
    “It’s too breezy.”
    “Guess that can’t be helped. Try to move around, run, jump, let’s see how it holds up.”
    He looked straight at me. “Are you a pervert?”
    “If I were I would have left you naked.”
    He looked back at the floor for a while, then set off to run a few laps around the box-house. Next he jumped straight up. We were both surprised at how high he could jump, about 30 cm. That’s like 4 times his height.
 He held his skirt as he fell back down.
    “Wow, that was incredible, did it hurt to land?”
    “No, not at all.”
    If a normal human fell from a height proportional to that, they might break their legs, or at least it would hurt a lot.
    “Can you jump to the roof of your house?”
    He could. And just as easily, he jumped off.
    “Impressive. Let’s see how long you can jump horizontally.”
    I shouldn’t have asked that. To jump distance you need space to run up to speed, plus more space to jump over and land. The table he was in was pretty small. So in a reckless impulse he jumped to the bigger table, the one I originally found him in.
    “Be careful, you didn’t know if you could have made it. What would have happened if you fell to the floor?”
    “After the other jumps I felt like I could do it.” He did look way more confident now.
    He tried jumping several times around the table, he could jump very far.
    “This table is too small. Can you put me on the floor?”
    I placed my hands on the table and he jumped in. He no longer seemed to care about the skirt. On his scale the fabric was too stiff and didn’t fly up.
    It was then I realized this was the first time I had touched him.
    I gently put my hands on the floor, he jumped off and sprinted around. I watched from my bed, he seemed to be having fun, running and jumping around. Turns out he can jump a distance of up to one meter, which is huge considering how small he is.
    He jumped into my bed, from it he jumped into the large work table and finally back into his home table. He stood by the door.
    “That’s amazing, little guy.”
    “Aren’t you gonna name me?”
    “Oh, right, what will it be? ...how about Chisai?
    “Chisai? I don’t know, it sounds kinda weird.”
    “How so?”
    “It doesn’t sound like a normal name.”
    “What would a normal name be like?”
    “...Dave?”
    “I’ll be honest, it’s a foregin name.”
    “I thought it sounded weird, also kinda girly…” He seemed to remember he was wearing a dress after saying that.
    “Ok, Chisai, I’ll go buy some things, see you in a while.”