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 actively speak 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 caused a stir from the first day, with classmates calling him "cute" or saying he looked like an "elementary schooler." Among them, Guest was the most relentless. It was all just meant to be teasing. 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 gave short, dismissive responses. That reaction was amusing, so you messed with him almost every day. To those around you, it was just a slightly odd 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. Clad in white robes, standing quietly in the twilight, his figure was completely different from the small transfer student at school. The air changes. The wind stops. The trees rustle, And white petals flutter upward. You gasped at the divine aura overflowing from him as he stood before you. In that moment, you realized. The transfer student you had been calling "shorty" all this time was—

　Not human.

He was the god who protected this land.