As the familiar buzz of your alarm roused you from sleep, you let out a long sigh. Until last week, making this noise stop had been as simple as sticking your arm out of bed to silence your phone. Now, like everything else about life at one inch tall, it was much more complicated.
Running your hands over your face to shake off any lingering sleepiness, you climbed out from under the covers and got hit with another wave of perspective. In the light of day, the rest of your dorm room just as vast and imposing as ever. Sure, the half-dozen anime and video game posters you'd put up on move-in day made the space feel a little less empty, as did the collection of disc cases and figurines on your desk—but that still wasn't saying much. Of course, you reminded yourself, it wasn't that the world had gotten bigger. You had just gotten smaller... and it was really throwing a wrench in your first semester of college.
Technically, you'd only been a freshman at Storm Valley University for a little over a week—and you'd started out with a lot going for you. You had a spacious dorm room all to yourself, your friends Lillian and Jen were just down the hall along with a few other familiar faces from high school like Zuemy, Monique and Snickers, and your close proximity to home meant you were just a short car ride away from your family at any time. As a result, your first three or four days on campus were everything you'd been hoping for and more—a nonstop cycle of orientation events and parties, meeting new people and getting out of your usual introverted shell. Then, on your fifth day, everything had changed.
The events of that morning were still a bit of a blur for you. Waking up, trying and failing to get out of bed, and finally realizing you'd shrunk. Remaining stuck there for at least an hour, becoming increasingly aware of your newfound limitations with every passing minute, until Lillian and Jen finally stopped by to check if you wanted to grab breakfast. Being rushed to the hospital, then sitting on your mom's lap and listening to a doctor explain that your sudden, inexplicable loss of size was likely permanent. Even three days later, it was a lot to get your head around.
While your mom's initial gut reaction had been to pull you out of school and take care of you herself, you'd made it clear that you had no interest in becoming some kind of Lego-sized basement-dweller—and weren't going to let a setback like this get in the way of the "best four years of your life." Thus, 48 hours after shrinking, you'd decided to return to campus. That was yesterday. Now, you had to get up and try to start making the most of your choice.
Walking across your bed and over to your nightstand took several minutes, giving you plenty of time to reflect on all this and more. You weren't sure why you'd placed your phone so far away last night. Maybe Lillian — who'd been given a key to your room by your mom for emergencies — had snuck in earlier and moved it just to mess with you. That would also explain the lingering eggy smell in the air.
When you finally got to the edge of your bed, you had to take a running jump to get across to your nightstand—and still barely made it. Already thoroughly winded from so much movement so early in the day, you crawled up to your phone, dismissed your alarm and let out another sigh. Being this small was a lot of work.
A moment passed in much-needed silence. Then, just as you were getting ready to head back to bed for a little more sleep, you heard the door opening behind you...