Chapter 3: Lunch with the Family
The next day was warmer, and the walk to the cafeteria felt different in Yuma's body. Lighter. He caught himself humming on the path between the marble archway and the dining hall, and stopped, embarrassed, and Uma looked over at him with her whole face smiling.
"You're humming."
"I'm not."
"You absolutely are. Little tune and everything." She bumped her shoulder against his arm. She was a head shorter than him and still managed to bump it convincingly. "I hum too, when I'm happy. Usually in the lab. People give me looks."
"What do you hum?"
"Theme songs. Whatever I watched that week." She pushed the cafeteria door open with her hip and the smell of grilled fish and warm rice rolled out to meet them. "It's a good sign, you know. The humming."
The cafeteria was a bright, wide room with floor-to-ceiling windows, hanging greenery dripping from the ceiling planters, polished wood tables reflecting the afternoon sun. Yuma had eaten here hundreds of times, always alone, always in a corner with a book propped against his tray. Today he scanned the room for people instead of empty seats, and found them immediately.
The four of them occupied a long table near the windows like they owned it. Mynia sat with perfect posture over a salad, Nreanna had her feet hooked on the chair rung and was demolishing a mountain of curry, Shirley was mid-laugh at something, and Uma raised her hand and waved so hard her sleeve flopped.
"There's our boy!" Shirley called, loud enough that three nearby tables turned to look.
"Shirley, inside voice," Mynia said, not looking up.
"This is inside. This is my inside voice."
Yuma followed Uma over, his tray suddenly feeling fragile in his hands. And then he noticed the two people he hadn't been told to expect.
At Shirley's right sat a slim blonde young man in a pink polo and white shorts, handsome in a clean European way, blue eyes, an easy friendly face that broke into a smile the moment he saw Yuma coming. And at Mynia's left, half hidden behind a laptop, sat a very short young man with a fluffy black bowl cut and glasses, in a green sweater vest, who looked up, saw the group looking at him, and turned faintly pink.
"Everyone," Uma announced, setting her tray down, "Yuma's here."
"Yuma!" Shirley stood halfway and gestured at the empty stretch of bench across from her. "Sit, sit. And look who else is here, because the timing was too perfect. Boys, introduce yourselves. Well, one of you. The other one is shy."
The blonde extended his hand across the table. "Matthue. Matthue Kellenard. Shirley's told me a lot about you, actually. Mostly last night, at length, while I was trying to sleep."
"Matthue." Yuma shook his hand. It was a warm grip, firm but unhurried. "Nice to meet you. Are you, um. In the medical program? You look like a medical program person."
"Futanari health and wellness, actually. I want to be a doctor for them one day." Matthue said it without any awkwardness at all, as if it were the most normal career ambition in the world. "There's a real shortage of practitioners who understand the anatomy. So."
"And this," Mynia said, and her voice changed, just slightly, some low proud register that Yuma hadn't heard from her yesterday, "is Timmy."
Timmy lifted one hand in a small wave. Up close he was even smaller than he'd looked from across the room, compact and neat, his glasses catching the window light. "Hi. Timmy. Hi." He cleared his throat. "Sorry. Hi."
"He's eloquent in text," Mynia said. "I have proof."
"Mynia." Timmy's ears went red.
Yuma laughed before he could stop himself, and Timmy's shy smile cracked open into a real one, and something in the table eased.
Uma nudged Yuma's elbow. "Go on. Sit with them. Get to know each other, the two of us can go get food." She tilted her head toward the serving line. "I want to try the special today and I want you to witness it and tell me if it's a mistake."
"It's always a mistake," Nreanna said around her curry. "Last week it was pineapple curry. I'm still recovering."
"So you admit you tried it."
"I have no fear, Uma. That's my whole problem."
Uma laughed and steered Yuma toward the line. He glanced back once at the table, at Matthue pouring tea and Timmy typing something quickly into his laptop and closing it, and felt a strange lightness. People to sit with. It was such a small thing and it had never once happened to him here.
•••
The special was, in Uma's judgment, delivered solemnly over the tray, "a seven out of ten, the sauce carries it but the rice is dry," and they carried their food back to the table, where the seating had rearranged itself in their absence. Shirley had pulled Matthue's chair closer to hers. Timmy had made a small space for Yuma on his side, and Mynia watched the whole arrangement with the satisfaction of a general reviewing a battle plan.
"So," Shirley said, once they were settled. "The boys have heard about you too, Yuma. I texted Matthue last night. I texted Matthue forty times last night."
"It was forty-one," Matthue said, sipping his tea. "She told me Uma had a boyfriend, that you were sweet, that you were cute, and that you were a Fubánlá. And then she sent me a picture of the courtyard cherry blossoms for some reason and said 'this is how I felt about it.'"
"The blossoms were very emotional yesterday," Shirley said with dignity.
Yuma felt his ears warm. "You texted your boyfriend about my, um. About that?"
"I text my boyfriend about everything. It's my love language. He's the listener and I'm the talker, it's a whole system." Shirley reached over and patted Matthue's hand where it lay on the table. "Anyway, you two should talk. You're both, you know. Ours."
"Ours," Yuma repeated.
"The club of boys who belong to one of us," Nreanna said, waving her spoon. "Very exclusive. Very nice matching outfits, incidentally. Matthue, the pink polo. Timmy, the green vest. You all dress like stationery and it's adorable."
Timmy made a small noise into his collar.
"Timmy dresses himself," Mynia said. "I only approved. Everything he picks is correct." She said it with such plain finality that no one argued.
They ate for a while. Yuma learned that Matthue was from Lyon, that he'd moved to Japan alone at eighteen knowing nobody, that he lifted small weights three times a week "mostly so Shirley has something to look at," which made Shirley choke on her juice. He learned that Timmy was in computer engineering, that he was building a game, that he spoke barely above a whisper until the word "physics engine" came out of his mouth and suddenly there was a whole confident sentence attached to it.
"You built the network code yourself?" Timmy asked, actually looking up from his tray.
"I made a market simulation for one of my classes. It's not, um, the same thing."
"It's the same thing. It's just people instead of packets. People are easier, they're all the same four behaviors." Timmy adjusted his glasses, gained a moment of full confidence, then seemed to realize how much he'd said and shrank back down. "Sorry. I talk a lot about this."
"Don't apologize," Yuma said. "Nobody's ever wanted to hear about my stuff before."
"Same," Timmy said, and they looked at each other with a small mutual understanding.
"So," Matthue said, setting down his tea. "Can I ask? Shirley said Fubánlá, and I know what the word means, obviously, I'm getting a doctorate adjacent to this world. But she didn't tell me the number."
"Matthue," Shirley said.
"What? It's data. I'm going to be a doctor. Data is my whole future."
Yuma looked down at his tray. Yesterday this question had come out of nowhere on a bench, and he'd nearly gone red to the collarbones. Today it still made heat climb his neck, but underneath the heat was something new, something almost like wanting to say it.
"Two inches," he said.
Matthue's fork stopped halfway to his mouth.
"Two," he repeated. "Actual two? Clinically?"
"Clinically. I checked. After the event, I thought maybe, um, maybe the math would help me. It didn't, obviously. Two is two."
"Two inches." Matthue set the fork down entirely. "Yuma. That's not a Fubánlá, that's a museum piece. Shirley, why didn't you lead with this?"
"I said Fubánlá! Fubánlá implies the number!"
"Fubánlá does not imply the number. There are Fubánlái and then there are, I don't know, there's whatever Yuma is above Fubánlá." Matthue turned back to him, blue eyes bright and completely sincere. "Congratulations. Genuinely. That's, and I say this as someone with a professional future in this field, extraordinary."
Yuma felt the smile arrive on his face before he decided anything about it. It was absurd. It was a number, it was the number that had ruined half his life, and here was a handsome medical student from Lyon calling it extraordinary over cafeteria curry. "Thank you," he said, and his voice came out steadier than he expected. "That's, um. Nobody ever. Before this week."
"I had the opposite," Timmy said quietly.
Everyone turned. He was looking at his tray, and one hand came up, hesitant, and gestured vaguely down at his own lap, where the front of his green shorts was, unmistakably, enormous. The shape of it was visible through the fabric, thick and long, resting against his thigh.
"Oh," Yuma said.
"Thirteen inches," Timmy said, and laughed a little, embarrassed, the sound cracking in the middle. "It's, um. It's one of the top ten at the whole school. People ranked it. There's a ranking. I didn't ask for the ranking."
"There's a ranking?" Matthue looked delighted and horrified in equal measure.
"There's a ranking of everything here now," Nreanna said. "I'm first in a category I'm also not going to name in a cafeteria."
"Ball size," Shirley said instantly. "It's ball size. She's famous for it."
"Nreanna has a category," Mynia confirmed, serene. "Timmy has one too. And mine, but mine is private."
"You have a category?" Shirley leaned forward.
"Private."
Timmy hunched a little smaller. "After the event everyone stared. Everyone. I couldn't walk across campus without, you know. Points. Whispers. Photos, once, which Mynia handled." He glanced sideways at her, and something soft crossed his face under the embarrassment. "She made it stop. All of it. In like a week."
"I made a list," Mynia said, as if this explained everything.
"She made a list," Timmy told Yuma solemnly. "You don't want to be on the list."
"You're on the list," Mynia said. "Special section."
Timmy went red to his ears again, but he was smiling into his collar, and Yuma thought he'd never seen a boy look so embarrassed and so safe at the same time.
•••
The trays emptied slowly. The sun moved along the table, warm on Yuma's hands. And somehow, without anyone deciding it, the conversation turned to the girls.
"The thing about Shirley," Matthue said, "is that nobody else gets to see this one part of her. The, um. The soft part. She does this thing after every match, win or lose, where she just puts her forehead on my shoulder for a minute. Doesn't say anything. Just leans. And everyone else sees the star player with the big serve and the, you know." He gestured at Shirley's general tennis-champion energy. "And I get the leaning."
"She leans on you?" Shirley said, sounding genuinely surprised.
"Every match."
"I do not." She paused. "I might do that."
"You do. I look forward to it more than the matches."
Shirley stared at him for a second, then made a sound like a kettle and hid her face in his shoulder, right there at the table, and Matthue wrapped an arm around her and looked over her head at the others with quiet triumph.
"She does the leaning," he confirmed.
"Uma hums," Yuma said, without planning to. "In the lab. Theme songs. She told me this morning like it was a secret and I think it was a secret."
"It was a secret," Uma said, mortified, into her tea.
"And she watched me for a month before she said anything. Told her friends about me every day. I was, um, apparently a legend, before I knew any of you existed." He shook his head slowly. "I spent two years at this school being invisible on purpose. And the whole time someone was, what, keeping notes on me?"
"I kept a mental file," Uma admitted.
"There's a file?"
"Sections."
"There's a file with sections," Timmy said, and for the first time he laughed fully, an actual bright laugh, his whole small frame shaking. "Mynia has a file too. Actual documents. I found one once. It had bullet points about me. My sleep schedule had bullet points."
"The sleep schedule was concerning," Mynia said. "I fixed it."
"She fixed it," Timmy echoed, dreamily. "Nobody had ever. You know. Noticed my sleep schedule before. And now it has an owner." He sighed. It was a deep, contented, completely unguarded sigh.
Matthue sighed too, leaning back, his hand still around Shirley's. "The key thing," he said. "I know it sounds strange from outside. But when she holds it, I don't have to hold anything. All the, um, all the noise about who I'm supposed to be, it just. It lives in her purse. In a little velvet pouch." He smiled slowly. "Best purchase I ever made, that cage. Life-changing."
"She told him that on the second date," Shirley said, face still half buried. "'Life-changing.' On date two."
"It was accurate."
And then, without any coordination at all, all three of them sighed. Timmy, Matthue, Yuma. Three dreamy, helpless, identical sighs, one right after the other, and Yuma realized it a half-second after it happened and started laughing, and Timmy was already laughing, and even Matthue cracked up.
"We're disgusting," Matthue said.
"We're in love," Shirley corrected. "It looks the same from outside."
"God," Nreanna said, propping her chin on her hand. "Look at them. This is what Fuku Binri wished for, right here. Three boys sighing over lunch like a choir."
"The chosen few," Uma said softly, and her hand found Yuma's knee under the table, "get to have joy by it."
•••
The laughter was still settling when the shadow fell across the table.
Yuma noticed it first, the light dimming on his tray, and looked up. Three guys stood at the end of their table. Taller than any of the boys sitting. One of them, a broad-shouldered young man with a buzzcut and a lanyard he'd tucked into his collar, was looking at the group with a curl to his lip.
"Wow," the buzzcut guy said. "Look at this. Look at this little tea party."
"Can we help you?" Matthue asked. His voice stayed even.
"Just walking by. Just observing." The guy's eyes moved down the table, over Matthue's pink polo, over Timmy's small hunched frame, over Yuma, and lingered there with contempt. "Cute panties under the table, ladies? Oh, sorry. My bad. Those are the boyfriends, right? The Fudoma." He said the word like something rotten. "Little femboys and their big-dick girlfriends. How's it work, huh? She takes you shopping? Picks out your little outfits?" He laughed, and the two behind him laughed on cue. "Man. This school. You're all so gay it's unreal."
"Okay," Shirley said, starting to rise.
"Sit, tennis girl, this isn't about you."
"Sit down," Matthue said quietly. He was already standing. Yuma watched him do it, watched this slim, calm, friendly young man put his tea down and stand between the table and the three of them, and something in his posture had completely changed. "You've got your laugh. You've had it. Now move along."
"Oh?" The buzzcut guy, Clayton, someone down the table had said the name, stepped closer. "And what's the femboy going to do?"
"Matthue, don't," Timmy said, small and urgent.
"Back up, Timmy. It's fine." Matthue didn't move. He stood maybe eye level with Clayton, solid, unhurried. "You want to say something to me? Say it. Leave the table out of it."
Clayton grinned and rolled his neck. The two friends spread out slightly, one drifting toward Matthue's flank, and Yuma felt his stomach drop, frozen, half out of his seat with no idea what his body was doing.
"Come on, then," Clayton said. "Let's see what the little,"
"Clayton."
The word came from behind them. Not loud. It cut across the cafeteria anyway, the way a specific kind of voice can, and heads turned all down the row of tables.
A figure in a black compression shirt stood ten feet away by the window line. Tall, lean-muscled, short black hair in a wolf cut, a green dragon coiling down one arm. Grey sweatpants. He hadn't been there a moment ago, or he had, and no one had registered him among the lunch crowd. His face was unreadable, half in shadow from the hanging planters, green eyes steady on Clayton.
"What did I say," the figure said, "about messing with Fudoma?"
The name came out of Shirley's mouth in a whisper. "Teon."
Clayton's grin soured, and something nervous crossed his friends' faces. He covered it with a laugh and popped his knuckles, one hand then the other, loud in the quieting room.
"Come on, Teon. A sick in the head lone star fuck isn't going to scare,"
He didn't finish the sentence.
It happened between one blink and the next. One step, a short right hand, and Clayton's head snapped sideways and his legs went and he went down, fully out, onto the cafeteria floor with a heavy sound that Yuma felt in his own chest. His tray of untouched food skidded a foot across the tile.
Teon looked down at him. His breathing hadn't changed.
"Fuck you, bitch," he said, quietly.
The cafeteria was silent. Somewhere a chair scraped. Clayton's two friends stood frozen, and then one of them muttered something and they grabbed him under the arms, hauling him up between them, his head lolling, and retreated fast toward the far doors, one of them shouting over his shoulder, "You're done, Matsumani! You hear me? You're done!" The door banged behind them.
Teon turned. His green eyes swept across the table, over Shirley, over Yuma and Timmy and Matthue, still standing with his fists loose at his sides. There was no speech in his face, no performance. Just a single slow nod, the kind you give across a room to someone you respect from far away.
Then he walked off. No word. The crowd of students parted for him without being asked, and he was gone down the aisle between the tables, the dragon on his arm sliding out of sight.
Nobody moved for a full three seconds.
"Matthue," Shirley breathed, "are you okay, are you," she was up and around the table, hands on his face, turning his jaw like he might be secretly concussed.
"I'm fine. I didn't even get touched." Matthue sat back down slowly, like his legs had only just remembered they were optional. "I was, um. I was actually about to handle it."
"You were about to be a lovely memory," Nreanna said, arriving at a run with Mynia and Uma close behind, all three of them flushed and out of breath. Uma's hands went straight to Yuma, his shoulders, his arms, checking him like he might have a hairline fracture.
"What happened? We heard a crash from the other room, someone said there was a fight, are you hurt? Is anyone hurt?" Her voice shook slightly on the last word.
"We're fine," Yuma said. "Nobody touched us. He just."
"There was a guy," Timmy said, and then, wonderingly, "Teon Matsumani knocked him out. In one punch. He didn't even, it was one punch."
"Clayton and his friends were harassing the table," Matthue said.
"Calling us, well. You know the words. And Matthue stood up," Yuma started.
"Matthue stood up?" Nreanna voice went up an octave.
"And then before anything happened, Teon just walked in and asked Clayton what he'd said about Fudoma, and Clayton tried to answer and that was the whole fight." Yuma shook his head slowly. "One punch. He looked down at him, said one thing, and walked off. He didn't even want thanks."
"I tried to give him a nod back," Timmy said faintly. "I don't know if he saw it. He was already leaving."
Mynia had gone very still, her yellow eyes on the far doors where Clayton had been dragged out. "Clayton Verne. Economics. He's been building a little reputation for weeks, testing the Fudoma tables, picking the quiet ones." Her voice was flat and precise. "He made a list, in other words. So did Teon, apparently. Teon's list just arrives faster."
"Who even is he?" Yuma asked. "I've seen him around. I think. Black shirt, walks alone."
"I think he’s Married…" Shirley said, pressing a hand to her chest. "Happily.. to I think Amatsu Matsumani. And she is a very nice, however I don’t think she is a Futa, because from what I know Teon actually is traditionally straight. However I think He's in economics. He does, um. Whatever it is he does. Nobody knows. He spoils his wife with random hugs in public and threatens absolutely no one except people who deserve it." She looked toward the far doors. "And he just did that for our table."
"He did it for the table," Matthue said quietly. He was looking at his hands. "I was standing there for you two and someone I've never spoken to in my life was standing behind me."
Timmy had both hands wrapped around his closed laptop now, holding it like a stuffed animal. "My legs are shaking," he announced, matter of fact, and Yuma realized his own were too, a fine hum under the skin that he hadn't noticed until it was named.
Uma dropped onto the bench beside him and pulled his arm against her, her forehead briefly to his shoulder, and he felt her exhale the fear out of her body.
"You're okay," she said. "You're okay. You stood up."
"I didn't do anything."
"You were going to." She pulled back and looked at him, and her eyes were bright and wet at the edges. "Matthue was going to. And then that man was, apparently, always going to." She laughed, shaky. "I go get one tray of food. One."
"The special was a seven out of ten," Yuma said. "For the record. If we're grading the whole lunch."
Uma laughed for real then, and around the table the fear broke up into pieces, into Shirley fussing over Matthue's knuckles even though they'd never made contact, into Nreanna flagging down a passing staff member to deal with Clayton's abandoned tray, into Mynia quietly taking out her phone and typing something with the expression of a person adding a name to a file.
Under the table, Yuma realized his hand was still trembling slightly, and that Timmy, sitting beside him, was nodding at him, a small conspiratorial motion, one small scared boy to another.
"Top ten," Yuma said under his breath. "Huh. And the scariest guy in school just saved all our lunches."
"Don't tell Mynia there's now a bravery ranking," Timmy whispered back. "She'll start keeping it."
"She's already keeping it," Matthue said, without opening his eyes.