Chapter Text
It was a Tuesday morning. The air was heavy, but the sky was bright blue, dotted with a few gray-white clouds that looked like cotton candy for November.
Gempa was doing the dishes while Blaze, Ais, and Duri were at the table enjoying delicious pancakes. Although it was a school day, the three high school students were at home because their school was undergoing renovations for an indefinite period of time.
Their online classes were starting in about twenty minutes. Blaze and Ais were the first to finish their breakfast, while Duri took his time savoring every bite, adding maple syrup to his plate every few minutes. When Blaze and Ais put their forks and plates in the sink, Gempa called out to them:
“Blaze! Ais! Can you go get the water packs from the basement, please?” There are no more bottles in the cupboard."
“Okay!” exclaimed Blaze, and Ais simply nodded. They both headed down the hallway, went down the stairs, and Blaze opened the door to the basement, where tools, cans, and other items were stored.
The basement was also where Solar had decided to set up his own laboratory.
A multitude of glassware lay scattered across the tables and shelves: beakers, measuring flasks, and graduated test tubes. There was also a whole bunch of machines, such as a microscope, a scale, and a voltmeter. As soon as he came home for the weekend, Solar would set about concocting new experiments.
“It's really messy in here,” Blaze sighed, dodging the balls of paper scattered across the floor, with Ais close behind him.
The water packs were stacked in a corner at the back of the room, near a shelf where Solar had placed empty test tubes. However, as Blaze bent down to pick up two water packs, Ais noticed that one of the tubes placed high up contained a turquoise blue liquid.
Blaze turned around with the packs in his hands and walked around his brother to make room for him to grab more packs. However, one of the water packs he was holding bumped into the shelf.
The glassware shook and the blue tube, which was dangerously close to the edge, fell.
Ais's eyes widened and his body moved before he could even think.
“Watch out!” Ais pushed his twin brother with all his might, causing Blaze to fall onto the pile of water packs and drop the packs he was holding. Blaze instinctively closed his eyes as he fell.
The entire contents of the tube spilled onto Ais's head before crashing to the floor, glass shards flying everywhere, and a loud crash echoing through the room.
When Blaze opened his eyes again, he saw no one in his field of vision.
“Ais?” His heart raced as he quickly turned his head from right to left. No Ais. As panic began to creep into him, a small voice reached his ears:
“B-Blaze?!” Blaze looked down at the source of the voice and found himself face to face with a miniature version of Ais staring at him with wide eyes. Drops of blue liquid dripped from his hair and clothes.
“Ais!?” Blaze stared at his twin brother, utterly dumbfounded, his mouth agape. Ais, impressed by his brother's size, stepped back and stumbled, falling to his backside.
“W-why are you so huge!?” Ais looked around in horror at the giant environment surrounding him. “W-why is everything so big?!” Blaze's heart skipped a beat when he saw how frightened his brother was. Although he didn't understand the situation at all, he first tried to calm Ais down by speaking to him in a softer voice:
“I... I think you've shrunk.” Ais gasped and his body began to shake involuntarily at this news. Blaze slowly moved his hands in a reassuring motion, desperately trying to calm Ais, who was beginning to hyperventilate. “Please, Ais, calm down. Follow my rhythm, breathe in... breathe out... breathe in...” Ais followed his brother's advice and tried to regulate his breathing.
Once Ais's tremors subsided and he was breathing more regularly, he spoke again:
“I-I think I've shrunk because of this liquid,” he said, touching a strand of his wet hair.
“Solar and his inventions, he's really impossible,” complained Blaze. “I'm going to call him right now and explain the situation in shaa Allah.” With that, Blaze took his phone out of his jogging pants pocket, opened the Contacts app, and clicked on the genius’s profile. The phone rang for several seconds, but Solar didn't answer.
“No way...” Blaze muttered as he clicked on the red button to hang up. As he was thinking about calling him back, Gempa's voice rang out above the twins.
“What's all this noise, Blaze and Ais?” he shouted as he turned off the kitchen faucet. “You're taking a long time to bring back those packs of water.” Receiving no response from them, Gempa headed for the basement, the sound of creaking stairs echoing above them.
“Alamak!” Blaze whispered. In less than a few seconds, he stood up and placed himself in front of Ais to hide him from Gempa's view.
The handle of the basement door turned and the door swung open. Gempa stood on the first step of the staircase and looked down, meeting Blaze's gaze. He also noticed the pieces of broken glass scattered across the floor. Blaze's forehead was beginning to glisten with nervousness.
“What's going on here? I just asked you to bring back the water bottles, so why did you—”
Gempa stopped when he saw that someone was missing.
“Where's Ais?” Blaze swallowed hard, a lump of anxiety filling his throat.
“G-Gempa, something's happened, but I-I want you to stay calm please.”
“Blaze, tell me what's going on!” Gempa stepped forward and stopped in front of Blaze. Duri was now also in the room, having heard Gempa shout.
Blaze took a big step to his right, revealing Ais completely.
Gempa and Duri lowered their gaze and gasped in surprise, looking at their brother's tiny figure. Just then, Blaze's phone started vibrating in his sweatpants pocket.
He motioned to his two brothers standing in front of him before picking up his phone and answering the call, standing right next to Ais.
“Hello?” Solar was the first to speak on the other end of the line.
“Finally, Solar, you're answering!” exclaimed Blaze. Ais instinctively moved away from him, the sound of his voice echoing loudly in his ears. “I was starting to worry about you too!”
“I'll remind you that I'm at college! And what do you mean by ‘you too’?”
“We have a problem. Ais and I went down to the basement to get some water packs, but... I got a little too close to your shelf and the contents of a test tube with blue liquid spilled all over Ais, who tried to protect me. And now Ais has shrunk.”
“Blaze, put it on speaker!” The pyrokineticist complied and pressed the microphone button. Solar could hear Gempa's voice and gritted his teeth, expecting to be scolded.
“Solar! How many times have I told you to tidy up your lab!? Why do you have a product that can shrink things in the first place?!”
"I only made it to make it easier to carry my things when I go back to boarding school, so that my things are lighter to carry and they return to their normal size shortly afterwards. Last time, I was in a hurry because I had to rush to catch the train, and I hastily put the test tube away on the shelf. I'm sorry!" pleaded the boy with glasses at the end of his tirade.
“How do we get it back to his normal size now?!”
“Um... How tall is he?” Solar asked. Blaze crouched down and moved closer to Ais. Blaze's hand was intimidatingly large, bigger than his own in both width and length, but despite the fear that overwhelmed Ais, he remained still, telling himself that his brother wouldn't hurt him, and let Blaze compare his height to his fingers.
“Uh, he's about the size of my pinky finger to my wrist...” said Blaze, still crouching near Ais.
“Around 10 centimeters then...” muttered Solar, "and if all the liquid fell on him... I think the effects of the tube will wear off after 48 hours and he'll be back to his normal size by then, in shaa Allah.
“48 hours?!” Blaze, Gempa, and Duri exclaimed in unison. As for Ais, he whispered:
“I'm going to have to stay like this for two days...?”
“Wait, isn’t there any other way?” Blaze asked, watching his twin’s reaction closely.
“I could create a product capable of making him grow, but it would take me at least a week, so the best thing is to wait in shaa Allah. Until then, keep an eye on him. I’ve never tested the product on a living being, so I don’t know what effects it might have. How is he doing right now?”
All three brothers present turned their attention to Ais. They were all standing around him, watching him, and Ais’s entire body stiffened under their gaze. He had lost all sense of spatial orientation and felt as vulnerable as an insect at this size.
“Um… I guess I’m okay,” Ais stated. Blaze wasn’t fooled, he could tell his twin was hiding his true feelings.
“Are you hurt?” Duri queried, glancing nervously at the shards of glass.
“No,” Ais replied, shaking his head. He was soaked and tiny, but he wasn’t injured at all.
“Okay. I’m sorry, Ais, and I’m sorry, everyone. I’ll be more careful about where I put my things next time in shaa Allah. On that note, I’m going to leave you now; my next class is about to start in shaa Allah. Take care of him. Bye.” With that, Solar hung up.
A heavy silence hung over the basement. Blaze sat up straight and shoved his phone into his pocket with obvious frustration, his fists trembling. He felt terribly guilty about the incident. It was he who hadn’t noticed the tube on the shelf and had knocked it over, but it was Ais who had taken the hit instead. He knew that what had happened was meant to be and that it was fate, but he wanted to do something to make up for his carelessness.
“Let me take care of him.”