Futa Harem System: Infinite Money in Tokyo
Chapter 7: Rematch
Hina didn’t ask if she could.
Lena realized it when she woke at five-twenty, ten minutes before Rei’s alarm, and found Hina already awake, propped on one elbow, watching her in the dark with gleaming eyes.
“Good morning,” Hina whispered.
“Hina…
it’s five in the morning.”
“Five-twenty.” Hina smiled.
“Rei wakes up at five-thirty.
I set an alarm for five-ten.”
Lena glanced beside her.
Rei was asleep, curled at the foot of the bed with her head on Lena’s hip, her mother’s sword in its case on the floor beside her like a sentry.
Yuki was snoring softly into her pillow.
“It’s my Thursday,” Hina explained.
“I wrote it on the schedule.
Three times.”
“Rei erased it three times.”
“That’s why I woke up earlier.” Hina leaned down and kissed her, slow and deep.
When she pulled back, her voice was softer.
“If you don’t want to, say so.
I’ll go back to sleep.”
Lena looked at her.
Hina, the hidden yandere who had stood outside the fence until two in the morning, who had said with a smile that she’d kill anyone who hurt them, was now looking at her like a puppy waiting for permission.
“I want to,” Lena said.
Hina smiled as if she’d just won a final, and slid beneath the sheets.
Hina was the opposite of Rei.
Rei was study, precision, control.
Hina was hunger.
She didn’t observe, didn’t measure.
She simply wanted, and showed it with her whole body, her hands gripping Lena’s hips as if afraid she might slip away, small, muffled sounds rising from her throat that made Lena shiver all over.
Lena bit the pillow so she wouldn’t wake the others.
Hina looked up from beneath the sheet.
Even in the dark, Lena could see her smile.
And then Hina sped up, deliberately, as if she wanted exactly the opposite.
Lena came with a cry no pillow could muffle.
Rei shot upright, her hand already on the sword case.
Yuki fell out of bed with a “What?
What happened?”
Rei’s alarm went off.
Five-thirty.
Hina poked her head out from under the sheet, wiping her lips with the back of her hand, and looked at Rei with the most innocent expression in the world.
“Good morning,” she said.
“You’re late.”
Rei stared at her, hand still on the case.
Then at the alarm.
Then back at Hina.
“You set an alarm,” she said slowly, “to beat me.”
“Yes.”
Rei was silent for a second.
Then, to everyone’s surprise, she laughed.
A real, loud laugh that didn’t suit the Ice Queen at all.
“Well played,” she said.
“Tomorrow I’ll wake up at five.”
“I’ll wake up at four-thirty.”
“You two,” Yuki said from the floor, rubbing her head.
“Please.
I’m making a new schedule.
With times.”
*Ding.*
[Hina Takeda | Love: 100% — LOCKED]
[Achievement unlocked: “Alarm Clock War” — Two members of your harem are competing for the morning slot.]
Lena and Yuki reached Hongo at eight-thirty.
Hina had already gone to volleyball practice by taxi, because Lena had banned her from the motorcycle while she was pregnant.
Rei had gone early to the Student Council, because, as she put it, “if the President is late, everyone will know why.”
Lena’s first class was Accounting.
It was boring.
It was incredibly, profoundly boring, and Lena loved it.
Because for the first time in her life, she was sitting in a lecture hall without worrying about whether she could make rent, whether she’d get fired, whether she’d have anything to eat tomorrow.
She listened to the professor talk about balance sheets and cash flows and thought: *someday, these will be my numbers.*
Next to her sat the girl who had dropped her pen three times at the welcome ceremony.
Her name was Nanami, she was a second-year, and today she’d brought three pens, just to be safe.
“Do you take notes in Greek?” Nanami whispered, glancing at Lena’s notebook.
“In Japanese.”
“Your kanji are prettier than mine.” Nanami blushed.
“Could I…
could I take pictures of them after?”
[Nanami Okamoto, 20 | Attraction: 70% → 81%] This chapter was copied from novelping.com without permission.
“Of course,” Lena said.
Nanami dropped her pen.
At the end of class, Nanami photographed Lena’s notes page by page, with the seriousness of someone photographing a work of art.
Then she hesitated, phone in hand.
“Will…
will you be here on Tuesday too?” she asked.
“Every Tuesday,” Lena said.
“For four years.”
Nanami smiled as if she’d just heard the best news of her week, and ran off, forgetting two of her three pens on the desk.
Professor Sakura Fujiwara’s office was on the fourth floor of the Economics building, at the end of a long hallway with an old wooden floor that creaked.
Lena knocked at exactly three.
“Come in.”
The office was small and full of books, in stacks on the floor, on the shelves, on the windowsill.
It smelled of paper and green tea.
The professor sat behind her desk, glasses pushed up on her head and a pen between her teeth, and when she looked up and saw Lena, the pen fell.
“Lena.” She stood abruptly and banged her knee on the desk.
“Ah.
Have a seat.
Please.”
Lena sat.
The professor sat as well, adjusted her glasses, straightened her jacket, and opened a folder with hands that weren’t entirely steady.
“So,” she said, in her lecture-hall voice.
“My research group studies corporate acquisitions and the structure of Japanese industry.
I don’t normally accept first-years.
Ever.”
“But?”
“But your answer on Monday was…” The professor paused.
Searched for the word.
“It was the answer of someone who has read the books because she loves them.
Not because she has to.” She looked at Lena over her glasses.
“I don’t see that often.”
Lena smiled.
With Yuki’s skill, she read the professor like a character in a book: a woman who had worked harder than everyone to get here, in a field full of men who didn’t take her seriously, and who had built a wall of severity to survive.
And who was, behind that wall, very lonely.
“I used to read at night after work,” Lena said.
“In Greece.
At a café.
It was the only way I could feel like I was going somewhere.”
The professor looked at her for a long time.
“So did I,” she said at last, very softly.
“At a ramen shop in Fukuoka.
Until I was twenty-five.”
Something passed between them.
Something that had nothing to do with the aura.
[Sakura Fujiwara | Attraction: 88% → 93%]
“This year,” the professor said, finding her voice again, “my group is studying one specific case.
The holdings of Kurosawa Group and Takamura Industries.
They’ve had a strange relationship for ten years.
Joint investments, cross-shareholdings.
As if they’re preparing for a merger.”
Lena went very still.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” the professor asked.
“Because,” Lena said slowly, “I think I know why.”
*Ding.*
[Quest “The Queen’s Father” is progressing.]
[New ally: Sakura Fujiwara — Expert in corporate acquisitions.]
[Talent to acquire: “Mind of the Professor” — Academic-level financial analysis.]
“I accept,” Lena said.
“Your group.”
The professor blinked.
“I haven’t told you the hours yet.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Professor Fujiwara looked at her, and for the first time, a small, genuine smile broke through her stern face.
“Tuesdays and Thursdays, six to nine in the evening,” she said.
“Just the two of us for the first few weeks.
To bring you up to the group’s level.”
“Just the two of us,” Lena repeated.
The professor flushed down to her neck and dropped her pen again.
At five, Lena stood in the doorway of the fencing hall.
This time, no one stopped to stare at her, because everyone was already waiting.
The news had made its way around campus within a day: the Greek girl with the motorcycle had challenged the Ice Queen, lost in one second, and the Queen had walked out of practice.
The bleachers along the side, usually empty, were packed.
Lena saw Nanami with her three pens.
She saw Yuki with a book she wasn’t reading.
And she saw Hina, still in her volleyball tracksuit, sitting in the front row with her arms crossed.
Rei stood in the middle of the strip, in her white uniform, mask tucked under her arm.
“I said you’d never set foot in here again,” she said loudly, so everyone could hear.
“You did,” Lena agreed.
A murmur swept through the bleachers.
Rei blushed, just barely, under the lights.
She tossed her a sword.
This time, Lena caught it in midair without looking.
Rei saw.
Her eyes narrowed.
“One point,” she said.
“One point,” Lena agreed.
“And if I touch you?”
“Whatever you want.”
“I’ll tell you after.”
They took their stances.
Lena felt her body know what to do before she even thought about it, knees bending, wrist turning, weight distributed just right.
It was Rei’s stance.
Exactly the same.
Rei saw that too.
And something crossed her face, something between curiosity and joy.
“Ready?” someone called.
They moved at the same time.
The blades clashed once, twice, three times, so fast the sounds blurred into one.
The bleachers held their breath.
Rei attacked with the move that had disarmed her opponent two days earlier, and Lena, without thinking, answered with the exact same move, mirrored.
Their swords locked in midair.
For one second, they stood like that, face to face, so close Lena could feel Rei’s breath.
“You’re using my move,” Rei whispered.
“You gave it to me,” Lena whispered.
And then she did something Rei would never do.
She smiled, winked, and Rei, for half a second, blushed and broke her stance.
The tip of Lena’s sword touched gently against Rei’s chest, right over her heart.
The hall went utterly silent.
“Point,” Lena said softly.
Rei looked down at the tip of the sword on her chest.
Then she looked at Lena.
“That,” she said, “was cheating.”
“It was,” Lena agreed.
Rei lowered her sword.
And then, in front of the entire gym, in front of the packed bleachers, in front of Nanami, who dropped all three pens at once, the Ice Queen of the University of Tokyo laughed, threw her sword to the floor, and kissed Lena on the lips.
The bleachers exploded.
In the front row, Hina clapped louder than anyone.
But her eyes, sweeping the bleachers around her, the dozens of flushed faces of girls staring at Lena, weren’t smiling at all.
*Ding.*
[Achievement unlocked: “The Rematch” — You defeated the champion with her own weapon.]
[Your reputation on campus: Legendary]
[Your aura now affects the entire campus.]
[New candidates detected: 37]
Lena closed the screen and looked at Rei, who was still holding her by the collar.
“So,” Rei said, eyes shining.
“What do you want?”
Lena thought for a second.
“I want you to teach me to get better,” she said.
“No cheating.
Every day, at five-thirty in the morning.”
Rei looked at her as if she’d been offered the most precious gift in the world.
“Hina will be furious,” she said.
“That’s her time.”
“Hina,” Lena said, “will set an alarm for four.”
From the front row, Hina shouted: “Already did!”
That evening, while the girls were eating in the kitchen, Lena’s phone buzzed.
It was a message from an unknown number.
*”Ms.
Lena.
This is Mizuki Hayashi.
Mr.
Kurosawa spent the entire day in closed-door meetings with Takamura Industries.
I believe they’re planning something.
I shouldn’t be telling you this.
But I wanted to.
— M.H.”*
And a second one, a minute later:
*”I’m sorry.
I got your number from the detective’s file.
I hope you don’t mind.”*
[Mizuki Hayashi | Attraction: 94% → 97%]
Lena smiled and saved the number.
Tomorrow she had Microeconomics at nine.
And fencing at five-thirty.
And somewhere in between, a war that was only just beginning.
[End of Chapter 7]