Futa Harem System: Infinite Money in Tokyo
Chapter 12: Six to Nine
Lena fell asleep at three in the morning on page two hundred and six, with the phone on Ayaka’s shoulder and the words *cross-shareholding* swimming behind her eyes.
She woke at five-oh-five to Yuki’s voice, very small, very close to her ear.
“Lena.
It’s Tuesday.
Tuesday is mine.” A pause.
“But you were up until three.
I saw the light.
So if you want to sleep, I’ll go read in the library and it’s fine and I won’t be sad.
Much.”
Lena opened her eyes.
Yuki was lying on her side on the left, her glasses on, her cheek on her own hand, looking at her with so much tenderness and so much effort not to want anything that Lena’s heart turned over.
“Come here,” Lena whispered.
“I want you more than sleep.”
“That’s a very good line,” Yuki said seriously.
“Can I use it in my essay?”
“Only if you kiss me first.”
Yuki kissed her first.
Then she slid down Lena’s body slowly, past Ayaka, who had migrated in the night to Lena’s thigh and was now sleeping with her face in the pillow and her hair everywhere; carefully, so as not to wake her, Yuki lifted a strand of black hair aside like a bookmark.
She settled between Lena’s legs.
She took her glasses off and folded them.
“I read something,” she whispered.
“Last night.
While you were reading about companies.”
“In which book?”
“I’m still not telling you.” Yuki was pink to the ears.
“But I want to try a thing.”
The thing, it turned out, was going excruciatingly slowly with her lips and using both of her small hands at once, one wrapped around Lena and one cupping her lower, gently, and it was a very, very good thing.
Yuki watched her face the whole time, myopic and intent, adjusting every time Lena’s breath changed, like a translator searching for the right word.
When she found it, Lena’s back arched and her hand shot out and grabbed the first thing it found, which was Rei’s ankle.
Rei, at the foot of the bed, opened one eye.
“That is my ankle.”
“Sorry,” Lena gasped.
“Carry on, Sato,” said Rei, and closed her eye again.
“Excellent form.”
Yuki made a sound that was half laugh and half hum, and the hum did it.
Lena came with her knuckles in her mouth and her whole body bowing off the mattress, and Yuki held her through it with both hands, her eyes closed, as if she were listening to a piece of music she’d been waiting all week to hear.
Afterward she crawled back up to her place on the left, put her glasses on, and said, satisfied, “Five twenty-two.
I’m consistent.”
“You’re perfect.”
“I’m consistent,” Yuki repeated, pleased, “which is better.”
*Ding.*
[Yuki Sato | Love: 100% — LOCKED]
[Status: “Eager Student” → “Eager Scholar”]
[System Note: She will not tell you which book.
The Host has three guesses.]
At five-thirty, Lena fenced Rei badly, and Rei told her so fourteen times.
At six-forty, she ate breakfast with Ayaka, who was dressing for work at the boutique and, between bites of toast, quietly took Lena’s black pleated skirt away from her and replaced it with a charcoal one.
“The black is for Ginza.
The charcoal is for being taken seriously in a professor’s office for three hours.” She paused.
“And a white blouse.
Not the open collar.
One button higher.”
“How do you know I’m going to a professor’s office?”
“Yuki told me.
And you’re nervous.
I can see it in your shoulders.” Ayaka buttoned the button herself.
Her fingers lingered.
“She’s at ninety-five, isn’t she?”
Lena stared at her.
“I didn’t read it in your System,” Ayaka said, with a small smile.
“I read it in your face when Yuki said her name.”
Lena realized, slowly, that the Eye of the Stylist worked in both directions, and that she now lived with four women who could read her like a book.
Accounting was at ten-thirty, and Nanami had brought one pen and a pencil case containing six more.
“Contingency,” she whispered, sliding into the seat beside Lena.
“I did problems six through eight on Sunday night.
By myself.
I got them right.” She held up the problem set as if it were a medal.
“I checked the answer key three times.”
“Nanami.
That’s amazing.”
“It’s not amazing.
It’s homework.” But she was glowing.
“I thought, maybe, if you’re not busy, on Thursdays after class, we could…
Together?
There’s a study circle.
The Economics Society.
They meet in the basement of Building Eight.
I’ve never gone because I was scared, but if you went…”
“I’ll come Thursday.”
Nanami dropped a pen.
It was a contingency pen.
She didn’t even pick it up.
[Nanami Okamoto | Attraction: 86% → 88%]
At five fifty-eight, Lena knocked on the door at the end of the fourth-floor corridor.
“Come in.”
The office had changed.
The stacks of books that had covered the floor were gone, or rather, they had been compressed into perfectly squared towers against the walls.
A second chair had appeared at the desk, beside the first, not across from it.
On the windowsill, an electric kettle and two cups.
Two.
And the room smelled not only of paper and green tea, but faintly of a hand cream that was new.
Professor Fujiwara stood by the window in a grey sweater instead of her blazer, her glasses pushed into her hair, her arms folded tight.
“You’re early,” she said.
“Two minutes.”
“I’ve been here since four.” Fujiwara pressed her lips together, as if annoyed at herself for saying it.
“Sit.
Did you read the files?”
“Two hundred and six pages.”
The professor’s eyebrows went up.
“In one night?”
“I’m a fast reader.” It was true now.
Yuki had made it true.
Fujiwara sat beside her.
Not across.
Beside.
Their shoulders were eight centimeters apart.
Lena knew because the professor kept glancing at the gap as if it were a variable she had not accounted for.
And then they worked.
For three hours, it was real.
Fujiwara pulled up shareholder registries on her laptop, Kurosawa Group on the left of the screen, Takamura Industries on the right, and walked Lena through ten years of quiet, patient moves.
A Kurosawa subsidiary buying three percent of a Takamura supplier.
A Takamura bank lending to a Kurosawa property developer at a rate no bank would offer a stranger.
Board members who sat on both sides, like men with a foot in two boats.
“It’s called *mochiai*,” Fujiwara said.
“Cross-shareholding.
Japanese companies have done it for a century, to protect each other from outsiders.
Friendly hands.
But this…” She tapped the screen.
“This is not friendly.
It’s two families braiding themselves together, slowly, so that one day you can’t cut one without cutting the other.”
“A marriage,” Lena said.
Fujiwara looked at her sideways.
“That’s a very literary way of putting it.”
“It’s literally a marriage.
Genji Kurosawa’s daughter is supposed to marry the son of Takamura’s chairman.”
The professor went still.
“How do you know that?”
“Because his daughter lives in my house.”
The silence stretched.
Fujiwara took off her glasses, rubbed her eyes, put them back on.
“The Ice Queen,” she said slowly.
“The fencing hall.
That was real?
I thought the blogs were exaggerating.”
“They undersold it.”
Fujiwara laughed, startled, a sound Lena suspected she had not heard in that office in years.
Then she turned back to the screen, and her face became very focused, and Lena watched the Mind of the Professor at work, not yet hers, but close enough to touch: a woman who could look at ten thousand rows of numbers and see the shape of a story.
At eight-forty, Fujiwara’s stomach growled loudly.
They both froze.
“I didn’t eat,” the professor said, mortified.
“I was rearranging the books.”
“There’s a ramen place on Hongo-dori that’s open until two.”
“I know it.
It’s terrible.” Fujiwara hesitated, and something soft and lonely crossed her face.
“The broth is too sweet.
In Fukuoka we would close a shop like that.”
“Then you can tell me everything wrong with it,” Lena said.
“While you eat.”
The ramen shop had six stools and a counter and an old man who did not look up from his pot.
They sat side by side, elbows touching, steam rising.
Fujiwara ate like someone who had once had twenty minutes for dinner, fast and neat and without wasting a drop, and complained about the broth between every mouthful. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
“Too sweet.
Too thin.
The noodles are soft.
In Hakata, you choose the firmness.
*Barikata*.
Almost raw.
You’d love it.”
“Take me sometime.”
The professor’s chopsticks paused halfway to her mouth.
“To Fukuoka,” she said.
“To your shop.
The one you worked at.”
“It closed.” Fujiwara looked down at her bowl.
“The owner was an old woman.
Mrs.
Nakano.
She let me study at the counter between customers.
She used to say, *Sakura-chan, someday you’ll be a professor and you’ll forget all about this smell.* I never forgot.” She was quiet for a moment.
“She died the year I got my doctorate.
I never went back to tell her.”
Lena didn’t say anything.
She just moved her stool two centimeters closer, so that their shoulders touched.
Fujiwara didn’t move away.
[Sakura Fujiwara | Attraction: 95% → 96%]
[System Note: The candidate has not let anyone sit this close in eleven years.]
Lena got home at ten-thirty and found Hina in the indoor pool.
She was floating on her back in the dark water, the only light coming from the underwater lamps, her short hair fanned out, her eyes closed, the sunflower key glinting on her chest.
“Three hours,” Hina said, without opening her eyes.
“And then ramen.
I can smell it from here.”
“Hina.”
“I’m not mad.” Hina opened her eyes and looked at her across the water.
“Ayaka told me she’s at ninety-six.
Ayaka can see it in your face.
Did you know that?
Now I’ve got a spy.” She smiled.
“I’m just floating.
Floating is good for the baby.
It says so on the internet.”
Lena took off her skirt and her blouse, one button higher, and slipped into the water.
It was warm.
Hina drifted into her arms without a word and wrapped her legs around Lena’s waist, and Lena held her, the water holding them both, Hina’s breath warm on her neck.
“She’s lonely,” Lena said softly.
“The professor.
More lonely than anyone I’ve met.”
“I know,” Hina said.
“I was too.” Her arms tightened.
“She has to ask.
Yuki first.
Then me.”
“I know.”
“And I’ll say yes.” Hina pulled back and looked at her, her eyes dark and wet in the underwater light.
“Because you came home.
You always come home.
That’s all I need.”
She kissed Lena, slow and deep, and guided Lena into her under the water, and sank down with a long, shaking sigh.
They moved together slowly, barely moving, the water lapping at the tiles, Hina’s forehead pressed to Lena’s, their breath mingling, until Hina came with a soft, surprised cry that echoed off the glass ceiling, and Lena followed her, holding her as if she’d never let go.
Afterward they floated together for a long time.
Hina’s hand found Lena’s and pressed it to her stomach.
“Seven days,” Hina whispered.
“She’s seven days old.”
At midnight, Lena’s phone buzzed on the edge of the pool.
It was Fujiwara.
*”I couldn’t stop.
I went back to the office after the ramen.
Look at this.
I don’t understand what it means.*
*Hoshizora Holdings.
A small investment company in Yokohama.
It owns 0.4% of Kurosawa Group and 0.4% of Takamura Industries.
Exactly the same.
It has existed for nine years, and it never votes.*
*Its registered director is a woman named Kurosawa Haruka.*
*Is she a relative?”*
Lena stared at the screen, the pool water dripping from her hair onto the glass.
Rei had told her once, only once, in the dark at the foot of the bed, what her mother’s name was.
Haruka.
[End of Chapter 12]