Futa Harem System: Infinite Money in Tokyo
Chapter 13: Red Italian
Lena did not sleep after Fujiwara’s message.
She lay in the dark with Hina’s damp hair on her right shoulder and Yuki’s glasses digging into her left, Ayaka draped across her thigh and Rei curled at her hip, breathing slowly, her platinum ponytail loose across Lena’s skin.
And she held the name in her mouth without saying it.
*Haruka.*
At four fifty-five, Rei stirred.
She didn’t wake like the others.
Yuki woke shyly, Hina woke all at once like a switch, Ayaka woke slowly like a cat.
Rei woke the way she did everything, by deciding to.
Her eyes opened, clear and grey, and found Lena’s in the dark.
“You’re awake,” she whispered.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“I know.
I felt you not sleeping.” Rei pushed herself up on one elbow.
“Wednesday is mine.
But if something is wrong, tell me first.”
Lena looked at her.
At this woman who had been told at twelve whom she would marry, who had never been allowed to want anything, and who was asking, even now, permission to want something.
“Something happened,” Lena said.
“I’ll tell you.
Today.
I promise.
But not in the dark, and not before training.” She reached down and touched Rei’s cheek.
“And I want you.
Right now.
If you want me.”
Rei searched her face for a long moment, the way she searched an opponent’s guard for an opening.
Whatever she found there, it satisfied her.
“I want you,” she said, simply, and slid down the bed.
It was different this morning.
Lena felt it immediately.
There was no strategy in it.
No timing, no clock on the nightstand, no study.
Rei took her into her mouth slowly and held her there, eyes closed, as if she needed to anchor herself to something.
Her hands were spread flat on Lena’s hips.
Her breathing, through her nose, was long and slow and a little unsteady.
Lena slid her fingers into the loose silver hair and simply held on.
After a while Rei began to move, and the movement was tender, almost reverent, a long, unhurried rhythm that built so gradually that Lena didn’t notice how high she’d climbed until she was trembling all over.
Rei hummed softly against her, a low, broken sound.
Her grey eyes opened and lifted, and in the half-dark they were wet.
“Rei,” Lena breathed.
“Rei, I’m close.”
Rei didn’t answer.
She just took her deeper and stayed, and Lena came with her hand over her own mouth and her other hand cradling Rei’s head, shaking, gasping silently into the dark.
Rei swallowed and laid her cheek against Lena’s stomach and stayed there.
“Whatever it is,” she whispered, “I’m stronger than I look.”
“You look very strong.”
“Then I’m stronger than that,” said Rei.
*Ding.*
[Rei Kurosawa | Love: 100% — LOCKED]
[System Note: She knows something is coming.
She chose to trust you anyway.]
Lena told her at six-forty, in the garden, on the flat stone by the koi pond, after training, both of them still in their fencing whites, sweat cooling in the October air.
She showed her the message.
Rei read it once.
Her face didn’t change at all.
“Kurosawa Haruka,” she said, very evenly.
“That’s her name.
My father kept it after the divorce.
He said a Kurosawa doesn’t give anything back.”
“Do you know if she’s…?”
“Alive?” Rei handed the phone back.
“No.
She left when I was ten.
She gave me the sword.
She said, *Rei, someday you’ll need to cut something, and I won’t be there to do it for you.* Then a car came.
My father told me she had chosen money and a man in Kyoto.
I was ten.
I believed him.” She was silent for a moment.
“I stopped believing him when I was sixteen.
But I never looked.”
“Why not?”
Rei watched a red-and-white koi glide under the surface.
Not even the story.”
Lena took her hand.
“Do you want me to look?” she asked.
Rei was quiet for a very long time.
The heron landed on the far side of the pond, considered them, and left.
“Not yet,” she said at last.
“I’m not ready.
Tell Professor Fujiwara to keep reading, but don’t let her call anyone.” She squeezed Lena’s hand, hard.
“Let me fence first.
Let me be a student for a while.
Let me be in your house for a while.
Then I’ll be ready.”
“Okay.”
“Thank you for telling me in the daylight,” Rei said, and then, so quietly Lena almost missed it, “and for not lying.”
Statistics was at nine, in a basement lecture hall with no windows, and it was taught by a young lecturer who spoke very fast and wrote even faster.
Lena took notes for herself and, without being asked, a second set in clean, large print, which she photographed at the end and sent to Nanami.
*”Oh no.
Thank you.
I was there, I just understood nothing.
— N.O.”*
*”Where were you sitting?”*
*”Behind you.
Three rows.
I dropped a pen.
You didn’t hear it.
That’s okay.”*
Lena turned around.
Three rows back, Nanami ducked down behind her laptop so fast her bangs flew.
[Nanami Okamoto | Attraction: 88% → 89%]
At lunch, Rei sent a message to the harem’s group chat, which Yuki had named *The Committee* and which Hina had renamed *Lena’s Wives (+ Committee)*.
*”I have found the takoyaki stand.
Four hundred thousand yen.
It was the Economics Society.
Their treasurer says it is ‘a deluxe takoyaki stand with a fog machine.’ I have approved one hundred thousand and denied the fog machine.
They are calling me a tyrant.
— R.K.”*
*”you ARE a tyrant 🥰” — Hina*
*”A fog machine is excellent for atmosphere.
Approve it.
— Ayaka”*
*”Lena is going to a meeting of the Economics Society on Thursday with Nanami Okamoto.
Just so everyone is informed.
— Committee”*
*”who is nanami okamoto” — Hina*
*”Hina.
— Lena”*
*”just asking!!!!
🔪🥰” — Hina*
At three, Hina and Yuki locked themselves in the downstairs bathroom with a paper bag from the pharmacy, and Lena, Rei, and Ayaka stood outside the door like three husbands in a television drama.
“It’s too early,” Ayaka said, reading the box over Lena’s shoulder.
“It says ten to fourteen days after.”
“It’s my body,” came Hina’s voice through the door.
“It’s early if I say it’s early.
I’m doing six.”
“Six tests?” Rei said.
“One for each of us.
And one for the baby.”
There was a long silence.
Then a long squeal.
Then Yuki’s voice, high and breathless: “Faint!
It’s faint, but it’s there, it’s there on all of them, the line is there!”
The door flew open.
Hina came out holding six plastic sticks in two fists like a bouquet, her face wet, and walked straight into Lena’s arms, and put the sticks in Lena’s hands, and then put her own hands on Lena’s face.
“I knew,” she said.
“You told me.
But now there’s a line.” She laughed, sobbing.
“Now there’s a *line*.”
Lena held her.
Behind them, Ayaka had her hand pressed to her mouth.
Rei had turned to look at the wall with great interest.
Yuki was sitting on the edge of the bathtub, still holding the box, crying into it.
*Ding.*
[Hina Takeda | Pregnancy: Day 8 — Confirmed by external test.]
[Estimated due date: late June.]
[Gacha Tickets available: 5.
Use one?]
*Yes*, Lena thought, without hesitating. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
*For her.*
The screen flickered gold, spun, and slowed.
[Gacha result: ★★★★ “Maternity Blessing”]
[Effect: Hina Takeda will experience a healthy, comfortable pregnancy.
Morning sickness: none.
Fatigue: minimal.
Mood: (System is unable to guarantee mood.)]
[Gacha Tickets remaining: 4]
Lena laughed into Hina’s hair until Hina demanded to know what was funny.
At five, after class, Lena walked into the Ducati showroom in Setagaya with Ayaka on her arm and came out an hour later with a Panigale V4 S, red as a ripe tomato, and an expression Ayaka later described to the others as “the face of a woman at her own wedding.”
“It’s beautiful,” Ayaka admitted, standing beside it on the showroom floor.
“But you can’t wear that leather jacket with it.
That jacket is for the Kawasaki.
This one needs something Italian.
Something fitted.
Black with a single red line.” She was already pulling one off a rack.
“And gloves that match the seat.”
“You’re enjoying this.”
“I’ve spent eight years dressing women for galas,” Ayaka said.
“Nobody has ever asked me to dress a woman for a motorcycle.” She zipped the jacket up under Lena’s chin herself and stepped back, and her eyes went dark.
“Oh,” she said softly.
“Oh, I’m going to be useless all evening.”
Lena rode it home through the dusk, Ayaka following in a taxi, and the Ducati was nothing like the Ninja.
The Ninja growled.
The Ducati screamed, a high, furious, joyful Italian scream that made every head on Kampachi-dori turn, and leaned into curves so eagerly it felt like flying.
Lena laughed inside her helmet the whole way.
She parked it in the garage, in the second of the five spaces, next to the Ninja.
The black and the red side by side.
Three empty spaces left.
She looked at them for a long time.
“No,” said Yuki, from the kitchen doorway, holding a ladle.
“Not this week.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your face said Harley,” said Yuki darkly, and went back inside.
That night, Rei came to her alone.
The others had understood without a word.
Hina had taken Yuki and Ayaka to watch a movie in the media room on the second floor, loudly, with popcorn.
The big bedroom was quiet, and Rei stood at the foot of the bed in her red sweater and looked at Lena for a long moment.
“I want to forget my father for an hour,” she said.
“And my mother.
And the takoyaki stand.” Her voice wavered just slightly.
“I want you to decide everything.
I’m tired of deciding.”
Lena got up, walked to her, and pulled the red sweater over her head.
She laid her down gently on the bed and kissed her, everywhere, slowly, from her lips to her throat to the hollows of her collarbones, to her small, perfect breasts, until Rei was arching and gasping and her hands had stopped trying to direct anything and were simply holding the sheets.
She took her time.
She used her mouth until Rei came the first time with a sob, her thighs trembling around Lena’s head, the Ice Queen’s composure shattered into a thousand bright pieces.
Then she rose over her, and Rei wrapped her arms around her neck, and Lena slid into her slowly, all the way, and held there.
“Look at me,” Lena said.
Rei looked at her.
Her grey eyes were wide and wet and completely unguarded.
They moved together for a long time, slow and deep, Lena setting every beat of it, and Rei let her.
She let go of everything.
She cried a little, near the end, and laughed while she cried, and came with Lena’s name on her lips and her nails in Lena’s back, and Lena followed her, holding her as tight as she could.
Afterward Rei fell asleep on the right side of Lena’s chest, in Hina’s place, because Hina wasn’t there to claim it.
Hina came back at midnight, saw them, smiled, and lay down quietly at Lena’s hip without a word.
Lena’s phone buzzed once, with a message forwarded from Rei’s phone, which Rei had left on the nightstand, unlocked, with a note on it in her elegant handwriting: *Read this.
I don’t want to read it alone in the morning.*
It was a photo of a letter.
Handwritten on heavy cream paper, delivered to the Student Council office that afternoon by courier.
*”Kurosawa Rei-san.*
*We’ve met only twice, at our fathers’ dinners, and both times we said nothing to each other.
I’d like to change that.*
*I have no interest in our engagement.
I suspect you don’t either.
But there is something else I think you should know, and I can’t put it in writing.*
*It’s about your mother.*
*Friday.
Any café you choose.
Bring whoever you trust.*
*— Takamura Kaito”*
[End of Chapter 13]