Beta in an Alpha World (Chapter 7)

I honestly wasn’t sure whether I was better off or not, from the moment Izumi waved goodbye to me and departed for her much-deserved vacation, which left me alone in the apartment with my generous, conscientious, and decidedly-overbearing “little” sister Violet.

For the record, it’s not that Violet and I have a bad relationship. In fact, considering she’s an Alpha and I’m a Beta, I’d say the two of us have to be in some kind of unofficial top one-percentile of amiable mixed-size sibling bonds in the whole world. I can say without hyperbole that I owe most of my confidence, optimism, and maybe even my life itself to my sister. Since we were kids, Violet’s always been highly vocal about her desire to see Betas treated equally to their much-bigger counterparts. And she often walked the walk as well as talking the talk by joining Beta youth activist groups – usually as one of the very few Alpha members, if not the only one. There’s no question in my mind that my sister loves me dearly, and in a way even looks up to me, as physically absurd as that sounds. It wasn’t a surprise at all when she instantly volunteered to “housesit” while Izumi was gone, since I legally can’t live in our place alone (which makes it a bit more like babysitting, if you ask me), and Violet is unequivocally a more focused and cognizant person than my roommate, so I didn’t have to worry at all about being accidentally smushed underfoot or trapped in somebody’s flat. With all that in mind, why exactly did some part of me have the feeling that the metaphorical other shoe was about to drop? Well…

“So, have you been doing your exercises?” Violet asked barely ten seconds after Izumi had shut the apartment door behind her. With me seated safely at the center of her gigantic palm, my sister held me up in front of her face, scrutinizing me with a schoolteacher’s suspicion. “Because I’m guessing you haven’t. At all.”

I sighed, having guessed this conversation was coming, but I’d foolishly thought maybe I’d at least get past the first few hours of our resumed cohabitation before Violet started aggressively taking charge of my personal security, in her own characteristically extreme way. Knowing my sister would see right through a lie, I shrugged and shook my head no. Violet let out a disappointed exhale of her own, pursing her lips and tsking under her breath. There wasn’t condescension in her demeanor, nor had there ever been, but I could also tell that no part of my sister was willing to debate this subject with me.

“That’s what I was afraid of,” she said, and wagged a humongous disapproving finger.

“Hey, I’m not Hercules, but I’m no slouch, either. See?” I insisted with a forced chuckle, trying to lighten the mood as I flexed my admittedly average biceps.

“Har-har. You know those exercises aren’t just to keep you in shape, right? They’re for your own safety, you and every other Beta, so you don’t get hurt if someone’s not being careful: the most important thing in the world,” Violet gently scolded. “All those years when we were younger and I helped you practice, I thought you understood why you had to keep it up. I’m sure Izumi would help you, if you just asked her. Or any of your other Alpha friends. Those exercises just might mean life or death someday. I don’t mean to make you think about that, since it’s not fun, but somebodyhas to. Because I swear, if a person steps on you someday and… s-squishes you, because you didn’t keep training like I taught you? I swear, I’ll reach right into the afterlife and pull you back out myself, just so I can give you a piece of my mind. Well, that settles it. Whatever you were planning to do the rest of this afternoon, cancel it. We’re getting you back on the wagon, right now.”

I deflated slightly, pre-emptively wincing at the assured hours of “exercises” that now laid before me, but I also couldn’t even summon much self-righteousness, because I knew that Violet’s strict overprotective tendencies came only from a place of heartfelt care. How could I guilt her for that? The answer was that I couldn’t. Particularly because Violet would’ve been even more miffed with me if only she knew about some of my recent accidental encounters with the bottoms of certain oblivious giantesses’ feet. But once we got started just a few minutes later, I could at the very least harbor some moderate annoyance that my little sister couldn’t (just this once) treat me the way most Alphas treated their Beta siblings by temporarily forgetting I existed.

“Ready? We’re going to start you off with an easy one, now, since you’ve been neglecting your practice,” Violet said, though of course that question was more of a rhetorical.

“Yep,” I dully replied.

Seated on the coffee table with both feet flat on the ground, my sister had unstrapped her right sandal, but didn’t completely remove it. Instead, she arched her heel out and slid her toes several inches back along the weathered insole, leaving a vacant space at the upper section of her footwear’s inner platform, where sunken toe-shaped depressions weightily marked the firm but malleable ground. I knew exactly what was coming next, and so I held obligingly still as Violet lowered me all the way down to that sandal, then delicately gripped my half-inch body between her fingertips and deposited me with expert caution onto her summery shoe’s insole just a hairsbreadth away from her reared-back toes. Instantly I was reintroduced to an atmosphere I hadn’t been made to endure for several pleasant years now. Indeed, many times during our adolescence, my sister had put me through exercises designed to improve my chances of survival if (or rather when) an unsuspecting Alpha ever stepped on me, just as she was about to do now. So this wasn’t exactly new territory, and a flood of memories – some good, some bad – came rushing back the moment I got a look at my towering sibling’s pedicured digits scrunched like boulders just beyond, and more vividly, inhaled that familiar sweet-and-sour aroma of sporty sweat and sandal filth mixed with Violet’s favorite melon-flavored soap. Some things never change.