Chapter 4: Mysterious wolf Fudoma 謎の狼フドマ
The morning after the cafeteria, Yuma walked the long path between the business building and the medical wing, and Matthue Kellenard fell into step beside him like they had been walking together for years. The campus was bright and washed with spring air. Somewhere a tennis racket smacked a ball, over and over, a steady heartbeat.
"I barely slept," Matthue said. "I keep replaying it. That punch. One punch, Yuma. Clayton Verne dropped like a building."
"One punch," Yuma agreed, soft.
"And he just walked off. Didn't even take the thanks." Matthue pushed his wavy blonde hair out of his eyes. "You know what bothers me? Nobody thanks people like that. They just become a rumor. 'The guy who knocked out Verne.' Ten years from now nobody will even know his name."
Yuma thought about that. Teon Matsumani had a dragon tattoo and a face like a closed door, and he had used his fist for their table without being asked. It sat strangely warm in Yuma's chest.
"We could thank him," Yuma said. "For real. Not just a nod in a hallway."
"Like how?"
Yuma turned the idea over as they walked. It came out small, the way all his ideas came out at first. "Dinner. Invite him to dinner. Uma's place is nice, or yours, or... something. Cook for him. Sit with him like people."
Matthue stopped walking. Then he grinned, wide and bright. "Yuma, that's the nicest idea I've heard all semester. Yes. Absolutely yes. Oh, but can you imagine if he says no? What if he's, like, terrifyingly no?"
"We'll ask nicely."
They found Shirley and Uma on a bench outside the wellness hall, Shirley still in her practice skirt with a towel around her neck, Uma leaning into her shoulder and laughing at something on her phone. Shirley saw the two of them coming and elbowed Uma.
"Look," she said. "The boys have plotted something. Look at their faces. That's plotting faces."
"We have an idea," Matthue announced, hands on hips. "Dinner. For Teon. As thanks."
Uma's eyes went round. "You want to invite Teon Matsumani to dinner."
"To thank him," Yuma said. "He helped us and just left. That's not right."
Shirley was quiet for a second, chewing the inside of her cheek. Then she flipped the towel off her neck. "I think it's a great idea. I really do. And I'm coming, because I want to see his face when someone is kind to him for once." She paused. "Also, honestly, I want to ask him some things. Amatsu Matsumani is his wife, you know. There are rumors about a second person in that marriage and I have never gotten a straight answer from anyone."
"Rumors?" Uma tilted her head.
"Mm. Later. Over his shoulder, if he says yes." Shirley stood and stretched, all six feet of agenda unwinding. "Fine, boys. Let's go ask the dragon."
They found him in the garden courtyard that afternoon, under the biggest cherry tree, lying flat on his back in the grass with his arm over his eyes and a textbook open and forgotten on his chest. Up close he was even bigger than the cafeteria had made him look. Tall, lean through the compression shirt, the green dragon coiling down his forearm like it was breathing.
Shirley hung back. So did Uma. The two of them, the boldest women Yuma knew, suddenly found great interest in the flower beds.
Yuma made himself walk forward. He stopped a respectful distance away, went down into a deep, proper bow, and held it.
"Matsumani-san. Thank you. For yesterday. You helped us and we wanted to say it properly." His voice was thin but it did not break. "Would you... allow us to make you dinner? As thanks. Tonight, or any night. Please."
Silence. The cherry petals ticked down around them.
Then Teon moved. He lifted his arm, looked at the bowing boy, and slowly, unhurriedly, stood up. It was like watching a wall decide to become a person. Behind Yuma, he heard Shirley's breath catch and Uma make a small sound.
Teon looked at each of them in turn. Something in his green eyes shifted, from flat to warm, so quickly it could have been imagined.
"You're the one with the little boyfriend," he said, nodding at Uma, and then he smiled, and it changed his whole face. "Dinner. You're inviting me to dinner."
"If you would honor us," Yuma said, still half-bowed.
Teon laughed. It was a real laugh, surprised out of him. "Stand up, kid, you're going to pull something." He rolled his shoulders. "You know what, yes. Yes, I'll come. That's..." He seemed to search for a word and land somewhere honest. "That's really nice, actually. Nobody's ever cooked for me for that reason."
"Then it's settled," Matthue beamed.
"Except." Teon held up one finger. "Instead, you come to me. My house, tonight. My wife's cooking, and trust me, you don't want anyone else's food after hers. Seven o'clock." He was already pulling out his phone, typing an address. "Yuma's the one who asked, so Yuma, you're responsible for bringing your appetite. All of you. She cooks too much for two people and it makes her sad when there are leftovers."
They agreed, of course they agreed, and he walked off with his textbook under his arm like a man with somewhere pleasant to be. As soon as he was out of earshot, Shirley grabbed Matthue's sleeve.
"He said yes. He said yes like it was nothing. Matthue, he smiled."
"I saw," Matthue said faintly. "I'm going to need to sit down."
The house sat on a wide quiet plot of land a fifteen-minute walk from campus, past rows of ordinary family homes that somehow made it stand out more. It was modest in footprint but immaculate: a dark tiled roof, a swept stone path, a small garden that had been loved. The windows glowed amber in the evening.
Amatsu answered the door.
She was tiny, five foot two at most, with a short black bob and a violet blouse, and she looked up at the four of them the way you look at a gift you weren't expecting. "You came! Teon said you would but I didn't believe him, he exaggerates. Come in, come in, shoes off, there's slippers, no, those are Rosé's, the brown ones are yours."
She ushered them inside to a dining room that smelled like a restaurant. The table was long and crowded with dishes still steaming: rice, grilled fish, pickles, soup, rolled omelet, vegetables glazed and shining. Teon sat at the head already, in a plain black shirt, looking oddly domestic for a man who could end careers with one hand. Amatsu took the seat at his left and patted it like she'd won it.
Yuma sat and did a small, automatic count of the chairs. Six seats, five guests plus Teon. One empty chair beside him at the head, on his right. He didn't dwell on it. There was soup in front of him and the soup smelled incredible.
Except. He leaned toward Uma and whispered, "This is Mexican food. Some of it. Look, the rice, the... that's not Japanese."
Uma whispered back, "Maybe she likes fusion? She went to culinary school here."
It didn't seem worth the energy. Amatsu was telling Matthue which dish to try first with the seriousness of a surgeon.
Then Teon set down his chopsticks, turned toward the kitchen doorway, and called out, easy as breathing, "Rosé. Everyone's here."
The kitchen door swung open and a woman walked out carrying the last platter, and Yuma forgot how to swallow.
She was tall. Taller than anyone at the table, six foot three at least, with coffee-dark skin and a curtain of brown curls, red lipstick, diamond studs catching the light. A strapless tube top printed with the Mexican flag strained over a chest that defied engineering. Below it, tiny black body shorts with little chains swinging at her hips, and legs that went on like a summer road.
And under those shorts, unmistakably, a very large bulge.
Yuma's chopsticks stopped halfway to his mouth. Beside him he heard a small strangled sound, which was Uma. Across the table Shirley had gone very still, her blue eyes fixed with the intensity of a hawk that has spotted a very large rabbit.
"Hi, everyone," the woman said warmly, setting down the platter. Her voice was a low, rich alto. "I'm Rosé. I made the tamales, so if you don't like them, lie to me."
The chair beside Teon was hers. She sat down in it like it was a throne she had been saving, leaned over, and kissed Teon's cheek. Amatsu, on his other side, beamed at them both.
The silence stretched exactly long enough to become rude. Shirley broke it, because Shirley always broke it.
"Okay." She set down her glass with a click. "I'm sorry, I have to. Teon. Who is Rosé? Because I have heard, from multiple people, that you are a traditionally straight, married man, and that woman has a bulge I can see from here."
Teon didn't flinch. He picked up his chopsticks again, entirely calm. "I was straight. Am still, mostly. BiFutasexual is the word, these days." He glanced at his wife, then at Rosé, and something fond and unguarded crossed his face. "It's a long story. A good one, though." He turned to them. "You want to tell it?"
Amatsu actually clapped her hands together. "Yes. Oh, yes, I love telling it. Everyone eat, eat, this story is better with food."
So they ate, and Amatsu told it.
She had a storytelling voice, soft and bright. She and Teon met at Rindo Ira, her in the culinary program, him in economics. She was the cute quiet one. He was the tall mysterious one with the tattoo, and every girl on campus had a theory about him, and somehow she got him. Married within the year. She showed them the rings like evidence.
"For a while it was good," she said. "And then he stopped being able to, um." She gestured delicately at Teon with her chopsticks. "Get hard. With me. And Teon being Teon, he brooded about it for two months like a samurai with a secret, and then one night he sits me down at this exact table, very serious face, and says, 'Amatsu. I think I'm attracted to Futanari.'"
"You said it like a confession to a crime," Teon muttered.
"It was very dramatic. I loved it." She sipped her soup. "So I'm sitting there thinking, okay. Okay. My husband likes Futanari. And do you know what my first feeling was?"
Shirley leaned in. "What was it? Were you worried? Hurt? Nervous?" Her voice had gone quieter than usual, careful.
Amatsu smiled at her, and the smile was soft and completely untroubled. "Excited. Honestly. Not for him going, I never even thought of it like losing anything. Excited for what it could mean for us. Because Teon can't lie, he's physically incapable, so I tested the theory right there. Showed him one picture of a beautiful Futanari on my phone."
"And?" Matthue asked, breathless.
"There he went." Amatsu pointed at her husband, proud as a coach at a tournament. "Instant. Like a light switch. First time in months. And I said, well. We're not throwing away this marriage over the best news I've ever gotten. We're going to fix it properly."
The table laughed, even Shirley, who was watching Amatsu with an expression Yuma couldn't quite name.
Rosé picked the story up from there, turning her water glass with dark fingers. "I already knew Amatsu. Same cooking classes, first year. We told each other everything. I told her about my crazy ex in Mexico, the one who wanted to move to France, can you imagine. And I told her," she paused, glancing at Teon, "that I thought her husband was hot. While they were dating. We laughed about it for a whole semester."
"You had taste," Teon said, and Amatsu swatted him.
"So then one day Amatsu comes to me, all serious, and asks me if I would want to date Teon. While married to her. And she explains everything, and I'm thinking this is either a trap or the best offer of my life." Rosé smiled, red lips curving. "It was the best offer of my life. I moved in. And now Teon and I," she said it simply, no shame anywhere in her, "we have sex, and he sleeps again, and him and Amatsu, they have sex again too. Everyone at this table is well fed, if you understand me."
Matthue set down his chopsticks, frowning thoughtfully in the way of a man organizing facts. "So you're... dating him? The two of you?"
Rosé chuckled, deep and warm, and reached over to squeeze Matthue's hand. "Oh no, baby. He proposed to me."
Both Yuma and Matthue turned to Teon simultaneously.
Teon shrugged one shoulder and smiled, and there it was again, that flash of open pride, the tuff-guy shell cracking to show something almost puppyish underneath. "Second proposal of my life. Third one's pending, actually, she keeps saying I have to earn it." Amatsu elbowed him. "What! It's true."
"What do you call her, then?" Uma asked. "You said something at the table before, about roles."
Teon nodded. "Fuvé Futsuband. Our word for it. A Futanari who joins the family fully. Wife and husband both. She loves us and we love her, romantically, for real, and she takes care of us both in bed. She's not a guest in this marriage. She's a pillar of it." He said it plainly, like reciting something he'd decided long ago, and Rosé reached up and tucked a curl behind her ear, blushing slightly at the coffee-colored skin.
They ate. Amatsu refilled bowls before anyone could ask. Shirley asked Rosé about Mexico and got a ten-minute story involving a goat. Matthue and Rosé discovered they both spoke fragments of French and Portuguese and conducted a small bilingual experiment that made Amatsu laugh into her sleeve. Yuma mostly watched, warm and quiet, and felt Uma's hand rest on his knee under the table.
When the plates had slowed, Yuma set his chopsticks down. He turned to the head of the table and bowed his head slightly.
"I wanted to thank you again. For Clayton." His voice came out steadier than he expected. "But... can I ask something? Why? Why help us, really? You didn't know any of us."
Teon sat back. For the first time all evening, he took his time.
"I owed a debt," he said finally. "Not to you. To the school. I was a Largann."
Uma tilted her head. "What's a Largann?"
Teon looked almost pleased to be asked. He set his glass down and laid it out, ticking points off with a finger.
"This school runs on factions. Seven of them. The Fudoma block, biggest one, thirty-eight percent. Futanari and their people, led by Uusal Khaan. They want peace, inclusion, Futanari seminars, awareness, the works. Good people, mostly." He moved to the next finger. "The Largann faction. Eighteen percent. Anti-Futanari. Led by Elianna Sogran, and if you've heard of the thigh rankings, that's her. They want to out-perform the Futas and study the Fukuba event to reverse it. And some of them just hate."
"The neutral at large," Matthue supplied quietly. "Forty percent. That's most of us, isn't it."
"Most of the school, yeah. Wandering sheep. Slowly getting herded into Fudoma because Uusal throws a good festival and prints Free Manga." Teon's mouth twitched. "Then the small ones. The Traditionalists under Moto Okaini, about one percent, gentle Christian folk who ask us politely to abstain and mind our manners. The Crescent camp, another one percent, work with the Larganns when it suits them. And the Rawul administration. Student president Kyle Rawul Marx and his little court. Two percent. They don't care about any of it. They just want the board. Watch them, both sides, they'll sell whoever's convenient."
The table was quiet. Shirley had stopped eating entirely.
"I was Largann," Teon said again. "Not a joiner. A strong one. I chased Fudoma kids off school grounds. I broke things. I hurt people I never bothered to learn the names of." His voice had gone flat and even, the way a man sounds when he has rehearsed a truth until it's smooth. "Then I met Amatsu. She didn't know what I was. She just liked me. And I couldn't be that person and have her, so I left the faction. Went neutral. Told myself that was enough."
He paused. His eyes went to Rosé, then, deliberately, downward, toward the small chains swinging at her hips, and Rosé blushed dark and swatted his arm.
"Until it turned out I was attracted to Futanari," he finished, and there was rueful laughter in it now. "The universe has a sense of humor. I beat up kids for loving what I'd end up married to. So. When I see someone like Clayton Verne testing Fudoma tables, mocking boys who can't fight back?" He picked up his chopsticks again. "I see a Largann. I see me. And I wanted to make right one small piece of it. That's all the thanks I need."
Nobody spoke for a moment. Uma reached over and squeezed Yuma's hand under the table, hard.
It was Amatsu who broke it, standing to clear plates and refusing all help, and Rosé rose to carry the heavy platters, and the two of them bickered happily about the proper way to store tamales. Teon watched them with an expression that had no mystery left in it at all.
"So," Shirley said, leaning back, eyes glittering as she looked between the husband and his two wives. "The rumors were true. And here I thought I'd have to dig."
"Ask me anything," Teon said, folding his arms, and for the first time, he looked like he meant it as an invitation.
Uma leaned forward, elbows on the table. "Which faction are you in, then? Neutral? You left the Larganns, but nobody just wanders forever here."
"Fudoma," Teon said. "Have been for two years. And so are all of you, whether you signed anything or not. Anyone dating a Futanari, anyone who is one. That's the whole membership requirement."
Yuma blinked. "By extension? We're in it? I never joined anything."
"Neither did I," Teon said. "You show up to a cafeteria with a Futanari holding your hand, congratulations, you're Fudoma. Uusal Khaan's block counts you the moment Clayton Verne counts you. Trust me, he already knows your table."
Shirley set down her glass slowly. "Uusal Khaan. The leader. Everyone says she was appointed by Fuku Binri himself. That can't be real."
"It's real," Teon said, enjoying this far too much. "Fuku Binri personally picked her. After the event."
Matthue half rose out of his chair. "Fuku Binri went to this school?!"
"Still does," Teon said. "I met him once. Sat next to him in a seminar on probability. He spent forty minutes drawing a duck on his notebook and then asked the professor if entropy ever gets tired."
The table went silent. Amatsu giggled into her hand.
"He's an astrophysicist," Teon went on, counting off again. "Quantum physicist. Ordained Shinto priest to the wish granter. He's the one who named Tsumonri the god of the Futanari, and the Occult club treats him like a living saint. And he is, genuinely, the most head-in-the-clouds man I have ever met. Total jokester. Absolutely no floor to his brain."
"So where is he?" Uma asked. "If he goes here, people would notice. Wouldn't they?"
Teon laughed, a short bark, and shook his head. "He's busy. Partaking in his creation, as he calls it." He waggled his eyebrows. "Meaning he's somewhere with a very large Futanari harem, being thanked for his wish in every possible way."
"He sounds terrible," Shirley said.
"He sounds insane," Matthue agreed.
"He's a good guy, though," Teon said, still grinning. "Best worst role model this school has ever produced."