Beta in an Alpha World (Chapter 1) (Patreon)

I knew, objectively, that I was one of the “lucky” ones. After all, I (like literally billions of my kind) was put at something of a disadvantage from the moment of my birth, belonging as I did to the universally half-inch-tall Beta race. And yet still, I led a pretty decent life: I had enough to eat and drink, a dull yet doable day job, a warm place to sleep, and a roof over my head in the apartment I shared with my sweet and amiable Alpha roommate Izumi. Not too bad, all things considered. Better than many others like me had, at least. Because while society certainly did its best to accommodate the coexistence of Betas among their significantly more humongous Alpha counterparts, historically, it was still tough for absolute justice to be done, as some things inevitably fell through the cracks. Sometimes literally, since we Betas were small enough to accidentally slide into unwanted openings if we or our Alpha overseers didn’t pay close enough attention.

Even putting that risk aside, I was all too aware that – with a little bad luck – I could’ve just as easily ended up in one of those Dateline horror stories that I’d occasionally heard about, where Betas were kept like pets in cages by whatever mean ego-drunk Alpha they were assigned to house with. Or even worse, they were kept like junk food in the bellies of those same even-more-sadistic giant superiors. Gratefully, none of my family or friends had ever suffered such a dark fate, but I also knew plenty of Betas (including myself) at the very least who were shown only the most basic and legally-acceptable level of human respect by Alphas, often sneered at and looked down upon with the same disdain as mosquitoes. On top of all that, because of our half-inch population’s inherent lack of mass, strength, volume, or convenient visibility, it was all too simple for any Alpha with a chip on their shoulder to “accidentally” remind us Betas of our lowliness by talking too loud, stepping too heavily, or outright manhandling us out of impatience.

Not Izumi, though. I remember being nervous to meet her that first time more than a year ago when we were assigned as roommates, and then immediately being put at ease, when the chestnut-haired pearly-smiling Japanese-American giantess purposefully talked in a friendly whisper and even asked if her speaking volume was okay with me. Rather than instantly grabbing me up between her fingers like she could’ve easily done, she held out a pinky for me to shake hello, and cupped her hand for me to step into for a ride. After that, I knew I’d never have to worry about her purposefully lording her natural size and power supremacy over me, and we became good friends as well as roommates. Nevertheless, even with all that humble perspective on my part, I still (somewhat guiltily) couldn’t shake the feeling sometimes that living with my lovely and kindhearted roommate had its definite downsides. Izumi was a thoughtful Alpha, but whenever those thoughts started to wander, it occasionally resulted in what (at least at the time) were less-than-ideal circumstances for me.

WHOOOOM!

Relaxed in my miniature chair atop the much-grander table in our vast kitchen, I was startled by the unexpected nearness of that concussive noise – still relatively quiet, by the standards of cacophonies other giants made – but for a Beta, almost anything done by our huger peers creates at least some kind of disturbance. The irony of living with a giantess who had charitably made it a habit of controlling the force of closed doors and the momentum of her footsteps around our apartment, so as not to shake or surprise me too badly, was that I sometimes didn’t realize just how close Izumi was to me, until she was already very close. Accordingly, I hadn’t noticed Izumi returning home from work, as she was running later than usual, and I’d also failed to detect her distant shuffling through the rooms. But there was no missing the abrupt impact as she heaved herself down into a kitchen chair with obvious exhaustion. That lack of awareness was probably my fault. Lately, in response to some of Izumi’s more absentminded moments, I’d tried to ensure that I wasn’t too close to the ground whenever she returned home after a weary day of work, to avoid any accidentally negligent encounters in a space where getting stepped on by gigantic feet was an all-too-real risk.

Yet that usually-helpful preparedness had backfired today, catching me unawares. And the same apparently went for Izumi, as she let out a deep sigh, but not the instantaneous “Hello!” she would’ve no-doubt enthused if in fact she’d noticed me. This mistake, too, was on me. I’d chosen to seat myself on the tabletop surface behind a towering white mug of half-finished herbal tea that Izumi had left there this morning, using it as shade from the afternoon sunlight. Unfortunately, as I only then realized, that same mug completely obstructed my tiny body from my roommate’s view once she was sitting down. Deciding I probably ought to alert her to my presence here, and also just greet my friend after another probably-grueling day at the office, I rose from my chair. Before I could actually walk around the mug’s circumference to enter her field of view and welcome her back, however, I was instead “welcomed” by the hardy underside of Izumi’s gargantuan propped-up brown flat barreling toward me, like a freight train stood up on its end. The fact that she hadn’t noticed me became even more starkly obvious, when she leaned back and dropped both shoe-clad feet heels-first down onto the surface with a pair of burly THUNKs, and then in the same motion, slid them forward toward the middle of the table at high velocity.

By reflexively dodging back behind the tea mug, I just managed to avoid getting smacked by the speeding brunt of Izumi’s flat tread. Still, I was thrown on my back, badly disoriented with the oxygen knocked out of me, merely by the rushing wind of those feet alone and my own panicky self-defense impulse. Those extra seconds of wheezing hesitancy on my part, rather than speaking up or crawling out into the open, cost me dearly. Because I didn’t even muster a squeak before the upraised monuments of those brown leathery vessels, having probably irritated Izumi all day while clasped around her overheated feet as she bustled about the office, were each gingerly released away from her heels with a suctioned splock of warm air.