Futa Harem System: Infinite Money in Tokyo
Chapter 14: First Editions
On Thursday, Hina’s alarm went off at four-thirty, inside her pillowcase, and Rei’s went off at four-thirty-one, inside her sword case.
Lena woke to the sound of two phones buzzing in stereo and two women sitting up at the same time on opposite ends of the bed, staring at each other in the dark like gunslingers.
“Thursday,” Hina said, “is mine.
It’s laminated.”
“I know,” said Rei.
“I’m not here to take it.” She lifted her chin.
“I’m here to watch you wake up at four-thirty and know that I made you do it.”
Hina considered this.
Then she grinned.
“That’s so petty.
I love you.”
“Likewise,” said Rei, and lay back down at Lena’s hip with an air of deep satisfaction and closed her eyes.
“Carry on, Takeda.”
From the left side, Yuki mumbled, without opening her eyes, “I’m adding a rule.
No alarms inside furniture,” and went back to sleep.
Ayaka, across Lena’s stomach, hadn’t moved at all.
Ayaka, it had turned out, could sleep through an earthquake, a heron, and Hina.
Hina crawled up Lena’s body and kissed her, and her mouth was warm and soft and she smelled of sleep and the honey shampoo Ayaka had chosen for her.
“Can I?” she whispered.
“Yes,” Lena whispered back.
“Every Thursday, yes.”
“Every day yes,” Hina corrected her, “but I only get Thursdays.
And Sundays.
Because I’m reasonable.” She slid down under the sheet.
“Very reasonable.”
Hina was reasonable for about forty seconds.
She started gently, for once, almost shy, her lips moving over Lena in slow, soft kisses, and Lena realized after a moment that she was being careful not to jostle Ayaka, whose head was a few centimeters away on Lena’s stomach.
It was so unlike Hina that Lena almost laughed.
Then Hina wrapped her hand around her and took her into her mouth properly, and the urge to laugh vanished entirely.
She had a way of going deep and staying there that made the room spin.
She did it now, eyes closed, her throat relaxed, her free hand gripping Lena’s thigh, and held it until Lena was clutching the headboard with both hands.
Then she pulled back slowly, her tongue dragging along the underside, and did it again.
And again.
Steady, relentless, like a serve she’d practiced a thousand times.
Ayaka murmured something in her sleep and pressed her cheek closer to Lena’s skin.
Hina looked up from under the sheet, saw it, and her eyes flashed, not with jealousy but with wicked, delighted challenge.
She sped up.
“Hina,” Lena hissed.
“Hina, she’s right there, I can’t—”
Hina hummed.
Lena came, biting down on the back of her own hand so hard she left marks, her whole body shuddering, her hips lifting off the mattress, Ayaka’s head rising and falling with her.
Ayaka slept on.
Hina emerged, flushed and triumphant, and crawled up to her place on the right.
She looked across Lena at Ayaka’s peaceful sleeping face with real wonder.
“She’s a professional,” Hina whispered.
“I respect her so much.”
At the foot of the bed, without opening her eyes, Rei said, “Four fifty-one.
Twenty-one minutes.
Sloppy.”
“You were TIMING ME?”
“Someone has to,” said Rei.
*Ding.*
[Hina Takeda | Love: 100% — LOCKED]
[Achievement unlocked: “Silent Running” — Completed the morning without waking a sleeping harem member.
(Partially.)]
Accounting was at ten-thirty.
Nanami had brought one pen and, for the first time, didn’t drop it once.
“I practiced,” she said, when Lena noticed.
“I held a pen all evening while watching TV.
My sister thinks I’m insane.”
After class, she walked Lena to the Economics Society in the basement of Building Eight, talking faster and faster the closer they got, until at the top of the stairs she stopped dead.
“They’re going to hate you,” she said.
“Not hate.
But.
The President of the Student Council denied their fog machine yesterday, and you’re…
you’re the President of the Student Council’s…” She went red.
“You know.”
“I know.”
“They held an emergency meeting about it.
With a whiteboard.”
The basement room was full of fluorescent light, old sofas, and about twenty students, and when Lena walked in, the conversation died.
On the whiteboard, someone had drawn a fog machine with a sad face and, next to it, a very unflattering cartoon of Rei with icicles for hair.
The treasurer, a third-year with round glasses and a sweater vest, stood up.
“You’re Lena.”
“I am.”
“Your girlfriend,” he said, with great dignity, “has destroyed the most important takoyaki stand in the history of this university.”
“I know,” Lena said.
“She told me.
She was very proud of it.”
There was a dangerous pause.
Then someone in the back laughed, and then someone else, and then the treasurer sat back down and put his face in his hands.
“Can you get us the fog machine?” he asked, muffled.
“No,” said Lena.
“But I can explain why your budget lost.”
She went to the whiteboard, erased the sad fog machine, kept the icicle Rei because it was honestly very funny, and spent forty minutes walking them through their own proposal. The source of this chapter is g.com.
The projected sales were too high for a stand on the side path.
The cost of octopus was based on last year’s prices.
The fog machine was rented at a rate that suggested someone’s cousin owned the rental company.
“It’s my cousin,” the treasurer admitted.
By the end, twenty economics students were arguing passionately about takoyaki margins, and Nanami was standing in the middle of them, explaining the break-even point with a marker in her hand, her voice steady, not dropping anything.
She saw Lena watching her and went crimson to the roots of her hair.
But she didn’t stop talking.
[Nanami Okamoto | Attraction: 89% → 91%]
[System Note: Confidence detected.
Origin: you.]
It began to rain at five, a cold October rain that turned the ginkgo leaves on the paths to yellow paste, and by six it was pouring.
Professor Fujiwara’s office was warm, and lamp-lit, and the kettle on the windowsill was already steaming.
The second chair was beside hers again.
Tonight there was a plate on the desk, too, with two onigiri wrapped in plastic.
“From the convenience store,” Fujiwara said, not looking at her.
“So my stomach doesn’t embarrass me.”
“I’d rather it did.”
The professor’s ears went pink.
She pushed one onigiri toward Lena and opened her laptop.
Lena told her about Rei’s answer: keep reading, don’t call anyone.
Fujiwara listened without interrupting and nodded once.
“That’s wise,” she said.
“Hoshizora has never voted.
Not once in nine years.
Someone who never votes is either asleep or waiting.” She pulled up a chart.
“And whoever she is, she’s holding exactly enough to matter if the vote is ever close.”
They worked until nine.
Fujiwara taught her how to read a securities report, how to find the footnote where companies hide the things they’d rather you didn’t see, and Lena found three of them by herself, and on the third Fujiwara turned to her in the lamplight with an expression of such pure academic joy that Lena forgot what they were talking about.
“You’re going to be very good at this,” the professor said softly.
“Better than me.”
“I doubt that.”
“I don’t.” Fujiwara looked at her a moment too long, then turned back to the screen.
“That’s the problem.”
At nine-ten, they stood together at the doors of the Economics building, looking at a wall of rain.
“You don’t have an umbrella,” Lena said.
“I never have an umbrella.
I always think I’ll be here until it stops.” Fujiwara tightened her coat.
“I’ll take a taxi.”
“There are no taxis.
It’s Thursday and it’s raining in Tokyo.” Lena held up a second helmet.
“I live twenty minutes past you.
I have rain gear in the bike.”
The professor looked at the helmet as though it were a dangerous animal.
“I’m thirty-five,” she said.
“I’m a tenured associate professor.
I’ve never been on a motorcycle.”
“Neither had Rei Kurosawa.”
Fujiwara stared at her.
Then, slowly, she took the helmet.
She held on very tightly.
At first, rigidly, the way you hold a rail on a crowded train, her hands locked at Lena’s waist.
Then, at the first long curve on Hakusan-dori, she gave a small gasp and pressed herself to Lena’s back, arms wrapping all the way around, her helmet against Lena’s shoulder.
By the time they reached Sengoku, she had stopped holding the bike and was only holding Lena.
At a red light, under the streetlamps, with rain drumming on their rain jackets, Lena felt her laugh.
A small, astonished laugh, muffled by the helmet.
“What?”
“I feel twenty-four,” the professor shouted over the rain.
“I feel like I’ve just closed the shop and I’m running home.”
The light changed.
Lena opened the throttle.
Fujiwara’s building was an old four-story apartment block near Sengoku station.
Lena pulled up under the awning.
The professor climbed off, unsteady, took off the helmet, and her hair came down wet around her face.
Her glasses were fogged.
She took them off and held them and looked at Lena, unfocused, in the yellow light.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Anytime.”
Fujiwara stepped closer.
One step.
Then another.
Close enough that Lena could see the raindrops on her eyelashes.
[Sakura Fujiwara | Attraction: 96% → 97%]
And then she stopped.
“I’m your professor,” she said quietly.
Her voice was not entirely steady.
“You’re in my class.
I grade your exams.
I won’t be that kind of woman, Lena.
Not even for you.” She swallowed.
“Not yet.”
“I know,” Lena said gently.
“I’d never ask you to be.”
Fujiwara looked at her for one more second.
Then she put her fogged glasses back on, turned, and went inside without looking back.
But at the third-floor window, a minute later, a light went on, and a figure stood in it, and didn’t move until the Ninja had turned the corner. This chapter was copied from novelping(.)com without permission.
*Ding.*
[System Note: The candidate is protecting you, not herself.]
[New Hidden Condition detected: “The Professor’s Line.” Will reveal when conditions change.]
The villa was warm and bright when she came in dripping, and Yuki was waiting in the library.
She had fallen asleep in the big leather armchair by the fireplace, a book open on her chest, her glasses askew.
Lena stood there for a moment just looking at her.
Then she went upstairs, came back with the package that had arrived that afternoon, and knelt beside the chair.
“Yuki,” she whispered.
“Wake up.
I want to give you something.”
Yuki woke with a start, and her glasses fell off, and she caught them.
“You’re wet.
You’re soaking wet.
Did you drive the professor home?”
“How did you—”
“Ayaka.
She said your shoulders would be ‘conflicted’ when you got back.” Yuki squinted.
“They are.
What is that?”
Lena put the package in her lap.
It was wrapped in plain brown paper and tied with string, because Lena had asked the dealer in Jimbocho not to make it fancy.
Yuki untied the string with careful fingers, folded back the paper, and went utterly still.
It was a book.
Small, cloth-bound, faded to the color of weak tea, the title stamped on the spine in delicate characters.
*Yukiguni.* Kawabata Yasunari.
Sogensha.
1948.
“This is,” Yuki said, and stopped.
“This is the first complete edition.
Of *Snow Country*.
This is…
Lena.
These don’t exist.
There are maybe forty in the world.
The library at Waseda has one behind glass.”
“Now the library in Denenchofu has one,” Lena said.
“Not behind glass.
You’re supposed to read it.”
Yuki held the book in both hands as if it were alive.
Her mouth was trembling.
She opened the cover, very slowly, and turned the first page, and then she began to cry, silently, her tears dripping onto her sweater, carefully turning her head so none fell on the paper.
“Every book,” she whispered, “you said I could fill this whole library.”
“Every shelf,” Lena said.
“It’s your library.
I’ll find them.
One at a time.
First editions, letters, manuscripts.
Everything you’ve ever wanted to touch.”
Yuki closed the book and placed it on the side table, in the exact center, and then she slid out of the armchair, onto the carpet, into Lena’s lap, wet clothes and all, and kissed her like she was drowning.
They made love on the rug in front of the cold fireplace, under the empty shelves that would one day be full.
Yuki undressed her, piece by piece, wet charcoal skirt and white blouse one button higher, and pressed her down onto the rug, and climbed on top of her in nothing but her glasses.
She sank down onto Lena with a long, shaking sigh and rode her slowly, her small hands on Lena’s chest, her hair falling forward, reading Lena’s face as if she meant to memorize the whole book of it.
“I love you,” she said, over and over, in Japanese and then in the clumsy Greek Lena had been teaching her.
“S’agapó.
S’agapó.”
She came with her head thrown back and her glasses slipping down her nose, and Lena came with her, holding her hips, and afterward Yuki collapsed on her chest, both of them laughing and breathless on the floor of the library.
“I’m going to read it tonight,” Yuki said.
“In bed.
With the first light.
Can I?”
“Read it to me.”
“Every word,” Yuki promised.
*Ding.*
[Yuki Sato | Love: 100% — LOCKED]
[Library: 1 / ∞ rare editions acquired.]
Lena’s phone buzzed at midnight, on the library rug.
Yuki was reading aloud, under her breath, the first line.
It was Mizuki.
*”Ms.
Lena.
Mr.
Kurosawa knows his son has written to his daughter.
He found out this evening.
I don’t know how.
He has not said anything to Chairman Takamura yet.*
*He told me to book him a table for tomorrow afternoon.
A café in Hongo, near the university.
He did not tell me which one.
He told me to look up which cafés Rei goes to.*
*I am going to give him the wrong list.*
*Please choose very carefully.
— M.H.”*
[End of Chapter 14]