Chapter 1: Bottle Witness to Forbidden Devotion
The air in Yumi’s apartment always smelled like old wood and something faintly sweet, like rotting fruit. To Delilah, two inches tall and currently wedged behind a baseboard, it was the scent of a cave system. The ceiling was a forever away, a white emptiness punctuated by the occasional, terrifying dust web drifting like a ghostly net. She heard them before she saw them—the pets. A soft, synchronized chirping from a shelf to her left, a skittering scuttle from a jar on the right. The walls were lined with them: glass containers holding beetles with iridescent shells, moths with wings like powdered sugar, and things that just clicked in the dark.
She wasn’t supposed to be here. Yumi was at work, and Yuri thought Delilah was napping in the dollhouse back in their own apartment. But Yumi had been acting weird lately, whispering to Yuri while staring a little too long, her fingers brushing Yuri’s hair with a possessiveness that made Delilah’s skin crawl. So, Delilah hitched a ride in Yumi’s bag this morning. A risky move, but she was good at risky.
She crept out from behind the baseboard, the deep pile of the rug swallowing her feet up to her calves. It was like wading through tan moss. A discarded sequin from Yumi’s last craft project glittered ahead, big as a trash can lid. Delilah vaulted over a thread, her heart thumping a frantic rhythm against her ribs. She was looking for proof. Something concrete to show Yuri that her sister’s "overprotectiveness" had curdled into something else.
Ahead, the blank white wall seemed to run forever. But there, near the floor, a panel looked… off. The light trim didn’t quite meet the edge. Delilah scurried over, her tiny hands pressing against the cool, painted wood. It gave, just a fraction. She braced her feet against the baseboard and pushed.
With a soft, groaning sigh, the panel swung inward.
The space behind was dark, smelling of cedar and Yumi’s jasmine perfume, overwhelmingly strong at this range. Delilah’s eyes adjusted. And then her blood went cold.
It was a shrine.
A small, recessed shelf, meticulously organized. A dozen printed photos of Yuri, some candid, some clearly taken from a distance without her knowledge, were pinned to the back wall. In the center was a framed picture of them as kids, Yumi’s arm tight around Yuri’s shoulders. Arrayed before it were little offerings: a hair tie, a single pearl earring Yuri had lost months ago, a cookie wrapped in cellophane. And in a place of honor, propped upright, was Yuri’s favorite hairbrush, a few long, dark strands still caught in its bristles.
Delilah’s stomach churned. Okay, this is officially fucked up. She fumbled for her phone, a speck of micro-technology glued to her back with a dab of honey. She needed a picture.
The front door of the apartment slammed open.
The sound was a thunderclap. The floorboards vibrated. Delilah jumped, her phone slipping from her fingers and vanishing into the rug’s fibers. A wave of noise and smell washed over her: the clatter of keys on a table miles above, the heavy, uneven thud of footsteps, and the sharp, sour tang of gin.
Yumi was home. And she was drunk. Early.
“My pure, sweet girl,” Yumi’s voice boomed, slurry and thick. She was talking to herself, her footsteps staggering closer. “My perfect little Yu-ri.”
Panic fired through Delilah’s veins. The open panel was right there, a dead giveaway. She couldn’t get back to the baseboard, not in time. Her eyes scanned the immediate jungle of the rug. A glint of glass caught the light from the distant ceiling fixture. An empty liquor bottle, tossed on its side, its neck creating a dark, circular cave mouth.
It was a terrible idea. It was the only idea.
She sprinted, the fibers grabbing at her. The booming footsteps grew closer, shaking her world. She reached the bottle and scrambled up the slick glass, her fingers slipping, her heart hammering against her sternum. She dove headfirst through the neck, tumbling down the curved side and landing in a heap on the sticky, sweet-smelling residue at the bottom.
The world outside went dark as a colossal shadow blotted out the light from the bottle’s opening. Then Yumi’s face loomed, impossibly large, her features distorted and magnified through the curved glass. Her eyes, glazed and redThe room tilted and spun as Yumi collapsed onto the floor beside the bottle with a groan that vibrated through the glass. Delilah held her breath, pressed flat against the sticky interior.
“Had to see her,” Yumi muttered to the empty room. Her giant hand, smelling of gin and office paper, fumbled across the rug and found the loose panel. She pushed it open fully. A sliver of light from the room cut into Delilah’s bottle-cave, illuminating Yumi’s profile as she stared into the shrine.
A heavy, wet silence filled the apartment, broken only by Yumi’s ragged breathing and the distant chirping of a cricket in a jar.
Then, a soft, choked sound. A sob.
Yumi reached into the shrine with a trembling hand. Her fingers, each bigger than Delilah’s entire body, closed around the hairbrush with a terrifying gentleness. She pulled it out and held it close to her face, her nose brushing the bristles.
“They don’t see you,” she whispered, her voice raw and close, echoing slightly in the bottle. “They don’t see how fragile you are. How the world wants to crush you. Swallow you.” A tear, magnified and prismatic through the glass, traced a path down her cheek. “I see you. I keep you safe. I keep all of you.”
Her other hand came up, holding a small, sharp pair of crafting scissors. Delilah’s blood went to ice. But Yumi just carefully, reverently, snipped a single, long hair from the brush. She laid it across her palm, staring at it as if it were a sacred relic.
“My sister,” she breathed. “Mine. All mine. No one else gets to have you. No one else gets to touch you.” Her voice dropped to a guttural whisper, a sound full of booze and longing and something cracked deep inside. “I’d rather fill jars with your pieces than let them have the whole.”
Delilah shut her eyes. She couldn’t look. The words wormed their way into her, cold and final. Yuri, with her easy laugh and trusting heart, had no idea. She thought Yumi was just a clingy, drunk mess. She didn’t know about the jars, the shrine, the whispers in the dark.
The rustling stopped. The heavy, rhythmic sound of deep, drunken sleep began, punctuated by soft snores.
Delilah opened her eyes. Yumi had passed out right there on the floor, the hairbrush clutched to her chest, her face pressed against the rug fibers just inches from the bottle. Her parted lips were a fleshy canyon, each breath a warm, gin-scented gale that wafted into the bottle’s neck.
Delilah was trapped. She was in a fucking bottle, a stone’s throw from a sleeping giantess who dreamed of keeping her best friend in pieces. She looked up at the distant circle of light, the mouth of her glass prison. Then she looked at the colossal, sleeping face of Yumi, peaceful and grotesque in repose.
Outside, a moth in a jar beat its wings against the glass with a frantic, papery sound. Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.
Delilah slid down the curve of the bottle, hugged her knees, and waited for the world to start moving again.
Delilah slid down the curve of the bottle, hugged her knees, and waited for the world to start moving again.
Time stretched and compressed in the strange, sticky dark. The sour-sweet smell of old gin was making her head fuzzy. Yumi’s snores were like distant machinery, shaking the glass with every exhale. Delilah counted them. She counted the frantic taps of the moth in the jar across the room. She traced the sticky patterns on the glass with a finger. Anything to keep from thinking about the words fill jars with your pieces.
A change in the rhythm of breath was her first warning.
The snores hitched, stuttered, and stopped. There was a gargantuan, wet intake of breath. A low groan vibrated through the floorboards. Delilah froze, pressing herself deeper into the curve of the bottle.
Outside, the colossal form of Yumi stirred. A hand, pale and enormous, slid into Delilah’s limited view, fingers splaying across the rug fibers as Yumi pushed herself up. Her head lolled, and her bleary, bloodshot eyes swung aimlessly before settling—with a slow, dawning horror—on the empty gin bottle right beside her cheek.
More specifically, on the tiny, denim-clad figure curled inside it.
For a long second, Yumi just stared. Her hungover brain processed the image: the loose panel, the open shrine, the hairbrush in her other hand, and her sister’s two-inch-tall best friend, trapped in her liquor bottle. Her eyes, puffy and confused, widened. Then her whole face, from her neck to her hairline, flooded a deep, mortified crimson.
“Oh,” she whispered, the word a puff of stale alcohol that washed into the bottle. “Oh, fuck.”
In one clumsy, panicked motion, Yumi’s fingers closed around the bottle. The world upended. Delilah was thrown sideways, tumbling over the slick glass as the bottle was lifted into the dizzying height of the room. She caught a nauseating glimpse of the shrine from above, the pet jars on the shelves, before the neck of the bottle was aimed downward over a plush rug.
Yumi gave the bottle a sharp shake.
Delilah spilled out, landing with a soft thump on the deep pile. She rolled, coughing, the air suddenly clear and gin-free. She pushed herself up on her elbows, glaring.
Yumi loomed over her, having scrambled to her knees. Her face was still flaming red, her hair a mess. She quickly shoved the hairbrush behind her back with one hand, while using the other to slap the wall panel shut. It wasn’t subtle.
“Delilah!” Yumi’s voice was too loud, too bright, cracking with forced cheer. “Hey! What a… surprise! You, uh, you visiting? You should’ve said something. I would’ve… cleaned up.”
Delilah just stared, slowly getting to her feet. She brushed a sticky speck of lint from her shirt. “Cleaned up the shrine? Or the empty bottles?”
Yumi’s smile tightened. It looked painful. “The shrine? Oh, that. That’s just…” She waved a dismissive hand, her gaze darting everywhere but at Delilah. “It’s a memory box. For my sister. You know how sentimental I get when I drink. It’s harmless.”
“Harmless,” Delilah repeated flatly. She took a step forward, a tiny figure in a vast landscape of rug, looking up at the giantess who was now nervously picking at her own cuticles. “You have her hairbrush, Yumi. You stole it. You were talking to it.”
“I was drunk!” Yumi’s laugh was a brittle, shattering sound. “You know how I am. I get maudlin. I miss her. She lives right next door and I miss her. It’s silly.” She leaned forward, her giant face descending to Delilah’s level. Her expression tried for conspiratorial, but her eyes were frantic, pleading. “Look, you can’t tell Yuri about this. She wouldn’t get it. She’d think it was weird. It’s not weird, it’s just… sisterly devotion. You understand devotion, don’t you? You’re devoted to her, too. We’re the same, really.”
The air left Delilah’s lungs. We’re the same. The words hung in the sweet, rotting air of the apartment. She looked from Yumi’s desperate, red face to the closed panel hiding the photos and the hair. She thought of the jars lining the walls, the things that lived inside because Yumi liked to look at them.
“We’re nothing alike,” Delilah said, her voice quiet but clear.
Yumi’s forced smile finally died. A different look cooled her features, something flat and calculating. The embarrassment was still there, but it was now edged with a sharp, metallic threat. She leaned back on her heels, her shadow engulfing Delilah.
“Aren’t we?” Yumi murmured. Her tone was casual, but her eyes weren't. “You live in her house. You rely on her for everything. For safety. For your life.” She paused, letting the weight of that hang. “It would be so easy for something to happen to a tiny. A misplaced book. A careless step. A sudden… swallow.”
The moth tapped against its glass jar. Tap-tap-tap.
Yumi’s smile returned, thin and without warmth. “So you’ll keep our little secret, won’t you, Delilah? For Yuri’s sake. You know how upset she’d be if anything happened to you.” She stood up, a tower of looming, hungover menace, and brushed off her skirt. “Now, let’s get you home. My pure, sweet sister is probably wondering where you are.”