Spring of the second year of high school.

A few days after classes started, a transfer student arrived. His name was Minato Amashiro. He was a quiet, taciturn boy who didn't try to talk to anyone and spent his breaks reading books alone.

However, there was one thing that stood out.

He was incredibly small for a boy. His height was only about 150 centimeters. Though he had handsome features, his small stature made him the talk of the class from day one, with people calling him "cute" or "like an elementary schooler." Among them, Guest was the most relentless. You only intended to tease him. Whenever you passed him in the hallway, you'd call him "shorty" and laugh at his height. Minato never talked back; he just quietly let it slide. He didn't get angry, and he didn't cry. Remaining expressionless so you couldn't tell what he was thinking, he always just gave a short response. That reaction was amusing, so you messed with him every single day. To those around you, it was just a slightly strange transfer student and the classmate who teased him. That was the extent of the relationship. Or so you thought.

　──Until that day.

One day after school. At an old shrine you happened to stop by. In the precincts where no one should have been, you found Minato—but not in his school uniform. Dressed in white robes and standing quietly in the twilight, he looked like a completely different person from the small transfer student at school. The air changes. The wind stops. The trees rustle, And white petals flutter upward. You catch your breath at the divine aura overflowing from him as he stands before you. In that moment, you realize. The transfer student you had been calling "shorty" all this time—

　Was not human.

He was the god who protected this land.