Doing Tinder while tiny was absolutely wild. Naomi wasn’t sure she’d be able to handle it much longer. 

She was one of the first victims of SSP. She’d long made her peace with it and she adapted. She found a job, a place to stay, a major she loved studying. So many tiny people were absolutely lost, crippled, desperate and depressed. Naomi was proud of having pulled through. The world was still an amazing place. 

And amazing places had to be explored with someone by your side, she thought. Now that she’d moved out of her house and got her life back on track, she was ready to date. Meeting people is hard when you’re barely the size of a grape, though, so she decided to utilize the technological wonders of the age. Tinder, then. A little profile filled with pictures — a couple nice closeups of her face, a couple from a session she did with a macrophotographer, a few just showing her doing cute things while tiny. Cleaning up, reattaching a button to a giant shirt, eating. Good stuff. 

But — good God, the people… 

There wasn’t a lot of tinies on Tinder, and, to be fair, Naomi wasn’t sure she wanted to date one. What! Many people these days enjoyed mixed-size relationships, didn’t they? Sure, it was weird, but it could be so incredibly sweet. She’d be protected, loved, cared for. She could ride on someone’s shoulder or wrap herself in a massive scarf when going to sleep. It could be so, so cute. 

Except, it seemed, the app was hellbent on matching her with the… less vanilla types. A few folks stood out the most, because they were the hottest, seemingly the most interested — and the weirdest. 

There was Lin, a very polite Chinese woman who, apparently, wanted to sometimes wear Naomi as jewelry. She actually sent the girl a picture of a set of intricate golden chains attached to a larger chain. “I have to admit I’m looking for a tiny to both date and wear”, she said at some point during their conversation. Lin was an artist and a scholar; she shared some of her work and promised to take Naomi out on an amazing date, and she seemed genuinely interested in the tiny girl, asking questions and relating whenever she could… overall, Naomi had a great feeling about her, but Lin never hid that putting those golden chains on Naomi was one of her end goals. “I also have a little cage,” she said at one point, and Naomi asked: “is this a power thing to you?”, to which Lin replied with a little essay about symbolism and aesthetics. 

Another memorable character was someone to whom it was, in fact, about power. A man, Troy. He was off-handed about it. Casual. He replied infrequently and overall didn’t seem to care too much about this going anywhere, which only made him all the more interesting. He looked like a total stud and she assumed that she’d be a side piece at best, which put her off. She’d normally long unmatch him, but there was something — something beyond his obvious masculine beauty — that kept her interested. A bad-boy vibe, perhaps, and a casual confidence, like he knew she’d already fantasized about him. Oh, of course he knew! They both knew that if they’d ever got together he’d slap her around — a lot — and she’d kneel in front of him, puppy-eyed and bothered. There was something toxic in her attraction to Troy. Once, he sent her a picture of some other tiny woman — she seemed to be on the floor, walking away from him — and she couldn’t stop wondering how’d he look from way below like that. 

So, the two most interesting matches on Tinder so far; one of them would make her into an item, to the other she’d most certainly become some strange sex toy. Both seemed interesting. And unsafe. Not worth pursuing, no. It would never be anything special. Unless?..

She lifted her eyes, checking that there was no one there. Naomi Bao was working as a cash register agent at Pollatore Footwear at Magna Mall. Her responsibilities amounted to scanning barcodes with a robotic arm — sometimes she had to ask the customer to turn it a little — and processing payments. Pollatore was, of course, completely cashless and that made her job easier. 

So, Tinder… She liked to kill time on the app, and she hoped it would eventually yield a result. It has to be said Naomi wasn’t using her personal device to swipe left and right at work. She didn’t actually have one portable enough to use at home (miniaturized phones were too expensive). She did have a tiny workstation at her place, but at work she actually just use the tablet… the same tablet that was used for checking customers out. She was obviously misusing store property, but she figured no one would actually mind. People barely came to Pollatore. This day was slow, too. Quiet… Maybe even a little too quiet. 

Where the hell were the other two? 

There were two more girls working at Pollatore, both normal-sized. Their names were Nicole and Amy, but they were nowhere to be seen. Amy was the manager and she wasn’t supposed to randomly leave like that. “Maybe we’re taking a break”, Naomi thought. “I sure wish they’d closed the store before they left, though.” She didn’t want to end up in the awkward position. Customers that came to Pollatore were the kind that always wanted assistance: show that, fetch that, what do you think, help me put these on… some of them, she swore, just enjoyed having pretty young women take their shoes off and on for them. Rich people! Maybe she’d be one of them, one day. But she’d be tiny. It was impossible to get nice shoes as a tiny, no one made them. She had some stupid clog-looking slippers on right now. There was so much stuff at Pollatore that she’d love to try out… but all of it was big enough for her to use as a slide. 

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a shadow behind the glass front door. Was someone going to come in? She put her best face on, prepared to give her little shtick. “I apologize, our helpers aren’t around right now. Let me know if there’s anything I can assist you with.” Yeah, something like that. Still, how irresponsible of her coworkers to leave her like that! Maybe they just randomly shrunk and were somewhere around? That would be the weirdest coincidence. Like it somehow spread from one 1” girl to two more. Naomi didn’t know if that’s how SSP worked and, frankly, she did not care.