"Gosh... why must I be the one to clean out the storage room on my one weekend off?" Umi huffed as she entered the dusty shed, equipped with a feather duster and various cleaning chemicals. The dimly-lit room hadn't been cleaned out in years, and old boxes filled with knick-knacks and who-knows what else lined the floors and walls.
Umi Sonoda wasn't dressed in her Otonokizaka school uniform or any of her usual workout attire, but a simple sweatshirt and sweatpants fitting for the gloomy March day. It wasn't a look she was used to, and she hoped no one would see her like this, but she had to admit it was most comfortable.
Stepping over some inconveniently placed items, Umi walked to the back wall of the shed, where a dusty wooden shelf barely clung to the nails holding it up. On the shelf was a cardboard box with handwriting seemingly hastily written in sharpie. The Kanji was barely legible, but Umi's experience helping with Honoka's homework had trained her to read terrible script.
The box simply read「開けないで！」which told Umi someone really didn't want this box opened.
"Hmph, do they want me to clean this place or not?" Umi grumbled. She wasn't one to disobey her parents' word, but she had a task at hand. Putting on a face mask as to not be assaulted with dust, Umi flipped open the unsealed container and peered inside.
Within the dusty old cardboard box, seemingly untouched for who knows how long, was what appeared to be... A thriving civilization. If her eyes weren't deceiving her, there was what looked like a sprawling, shrunken city within this old box in her family's storeroom!
Umi gasped aloud before trying to calm herself and assess the situation. How was this possible? She paced back and forth around the shed, peering back into the box every few paces just to make sure she wasn't dreaming. But it was real. She could see the little specks that were presumably people, or some kind of life-forms, living their lives in the tiny streets and buildings. The dots drove tiny cars, walked through tiny parks, and went fishing at tiny dots of water that were lakes. It was a surreal sight.
Immediately thinking of contacting her parents, the authorities, or some kind of government official, Umi pulled out her phone. But moments later, she returned it to her pocket. What could they do about this? This was an entire civilization of people who looked to be doing pretty well despite living where they were. It wasn't her place to disrupt that, she thought.
Still though, Umi couldn't just leave them in this dusty old storage room locked up forever. She would bring the box inside the house and figure out what to do from there.
The school idol gave one last glance to the teeny tiny city sitting in the moldy old box. It was almost... cute that they could live like that. Umi, as bizarre as this situation was, took comfort that they were too small to really understand their place in this world.
Grabbing the box, Umi left the shed and returned to her house. She walked towards her room and shut the door, leaving just her and her thoughts on what to do with this tiny city in her hands.
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