Chapter 7: The Faction Summit
Three days later, Yuma still walked funny.
He'd tried to hide it. He'd woken that morning stiff from the hips down, every muscle between his legs humming with a deep worn soreness that felt less like injury and more like an echo. Twenty-three times. The number kept surfacing in his head at odd moments, in lectures, in the shower, on the train, and each time his face went hot all over again. Uma had kept the notepad. She'd shown it to him at breakfast, grinning, and he'd buried his burning face in his coffee.
Now they walked the long central hallway of the main building together, heading for the library, because Uma had a genetics paper due and Yuma had sworn an oath, somewhere around the sixth round of that night, that he would never again let her study alone. The hallway was wide and marble-floored, arched windows throwing long morning bars of light across the floor, students drifting past in twos and threes.
Uma had his hand. She always held his hand in public now, laced fingers, no hesitation, and swung it a little as they walked. She was in the brown sweater again, the fluffy one, and the black mini skirt, and she smelled like the melon shampoo she'd used in his shower that morning, because of course she'd stayed over. Of course she had.
"Your gait is compromised," she said, glancing sideways at him, her voice soft and warm and entirely too pleased about it. "Statistically significant compromised."
"Say it louder, why don't you."
"I said what I said." She bumped her hip against his, gently, mercifully. "I did warn you I get carried away."
"You warned me at fifteen. There was no warning for the other eight."
"I consider eight to be a rounding error." Her thumb stroked over his knuckles. "A beautiful rounding error. You were so brave."
"Uma."
"So brave," she repeated, melting into a whisper, the way she did, and he gave up and just walked, red-eared, holding her hand, and that was when the masked man appeared in front of them.
It happened fast. One moment the hallway ahead was clear, the next a figure peeled out of the crowd flow and stopped directly in their path, and Yuma's first honest thought was that the man was enormous. Six-two at least, broad-shouldered, a V-shaped body in baggy black pants and an open techno jacket of black and yellow, blue striped tattoos winding up one muscular forearm. His face was a white mask, smooth and blank, painted with glowing crossed-out eyes and a stitched grinning mouth, and a Shinto ribbon belt of off-yellow rode his waist over the baggy pants like it was the most natural thing in the world.
He stopped awkwardly. Deliberately awkwardly, Yuma would think later, rocking on his heels like a tourist.
"Hey," the mask said, voice bright and easy, one gloved hand raised in a lazy wave. "Seems like you two have been having some fun."
Uma's hand tightened around Yuma's.
"Let me guess." The masked man leaned in, and through the painted grin came an unmistakable sound, two theatrical sniffs, loud, unhurried, obscene. "Sniff. Sniff." He straightened up and tapped his own masked chin as if consulting an invisible ledger. "Nine inches on you."
He pointed at Uma.
"And two inches on you." He pointed at Yuma.
The hallway seemed to keep moving around them while they stopped. Yuma felt the blood leave his face and then, immediately, flood it back hotter than before. Beside him, Uma made a small strangled sound, half gasp, half growl, and stepped half in front of him, her shoulders drawing up.
"How," she said, "do you know that."
"Know what?" The mask tilted, the crossed-out eyes glowing pleasantly. "I said I was guessing."
"You sniffed us!"
"Sniffing is a guessing technique. Very old. Very Shinto." And then he laughed, and the laugh was so open and stupid and joyful, a big bark of a laugh that turned heads down the hallway, that some of the menace just drained out of the moment against Yuma's will. The masked man pressed a hand to his chest through the open jacket. "Okay, okay, I'm sorry. That was rude. Truly. I'm sorry. I joke when I'm excited and I got excited. Forgive me, newlyweds."
"We're not married," Uma said automatically, and then went pink to her ears, because she had said it like a woman defending a title she was already wearing.
"Mm," the mask said, in a tone that suggested he knew something.
"And how would you even," Yuma started, and his voice came out lower than he expected, rougher, and he stopped, startled by it.
The masked man's painted grin somehow got wider.
"Ohhh," he said, drawing it out. "Oh, there it is. You know what's wild? Look at you. Look at this." He gestured at Yuma with both hands, presenting him like an exhibit. "Three days ago this guy had a duller face. Skin a little rougher. Hair thinner, I'm telling you, thinner. And the voice, the voice was up here somewhere." He held a flat hand at shoulder height and then dropped it six inches. "Now look. Clearer face. Softer skin, glossy, like you got baked in a gentle oven. Thicker hair. Voice dropped. You know what does that?"
"Nothing does that," Yuma said quietly.
"Correct!" The mask clapped once. "Nothing does that. Nothing in any textbook. And yet." He spread his hands. "Here you are. Glowing. And she's glowing too, by the way, hello, gorgeous, no notes, ten out of ten, but she came like that. You got built."
Uma's eyes had gone narrow and sharp in a way Yuma had only seen once before, when Elianna Sogran blocked their path at the pool. Her body had shifted without Yuma noticing, weight low, one small hand hovering near his sleeve, and he realized his own feet had quietly set themselves a shoulder-width apart. They were doing it together, without a word. Some part of both of them had decided, over the last week of threatened tables and cafeteria ambushes, that this was simply how the world worked now.
The masked man did not seem to notice, or seemed to notice and find it delightful.
"Also," he said, conversationally, rocking back on his heels, "you two never told me your names, and I never told you mine, and yet I've been calling you newlyweds this whole time, haven't I. Interesting. Suspicious. Someone should look into that."
Yuma's stomach dropped. He looked at Uma. She looked at him. He was certain, absolutely certain, that neither of them had said a name since this man had stepped in front of them, and he was equally certain that the man was right, that somehow the words newlyweds had landed on them like they'd been introduced.
"Who are you?" Uma asked. Her voice was still soft, always soft, but there was steel in it now. "What do you want?"
The mask paused.
And then, instead of answering, the figure simply turned his head to the left, down the hallway, raised one hand, and crooked two fingers in a lazy come-here gesture.
"Uusal," he called. "Over here. Bring your boss energy."
A woman was coming through the morning crowd, and the crowd parted for her the way water parts for a ship's prow. She was tall, six feet of her, with long dark hair full of volume and grey eyes flecked with a little yellow, tan skin, an athletic frame moving under a strapless tube top patterned in the Mongolian flag, a short skirt hung with ancient red and blue and yellow designs, a small traditional hat perched with total confidence on all that dark hair. Flag earrings swung as she walked.
Yuma knew her from posters. Everyone knew her from posters. The south courtyard had one, half a meter tall, of this exact woman with this exact hat, smiling that exact generous smile, over the words FUDOMA BLOCK: EVERYONE WELCOME.
"Uusal Khaan," Uma whispered. Her steel cracked straight through into open awe.
"Hi!" Uusal arrived warm, her grey eyes finding Uma first, then Yuma, and her smile was easy and real and nothing like a politician's, or exactly like a very good politician's, Yuma couldn't decide. "Sorry, sorry, are these the, is this the, hold on, you said."
She turned to the masked man.
"This," the mask said, and reached out, and put one gloved hand flat on top of Yuma's head like he was crowning a chess piece, "is the guy I want you to join your council!"
Silence.
Yuma stood there with a stranger's hand on his hair and Uma's hand crushing his fingers and absolutely no idea what was happening. Uusal looked at the mask, then at Yuma, then back at the mask, one eyebrow climbing.
"Um," Uma said. "I'm sorry. Excuse me. We don't even know you. Either of you. You walked up, you sniffed us, you knew our, our sizes, you knew things about Yuma's body he didn't know, and now you're, what, handing him to the leader of the Fudoma bloc like a, like a recommendation letter? Who are you?"
The mask turned back to her. The glowing crossed-out eyes seemed, somehow, to twinkle.
"Oh," he said. "Yeah. Right. Rude of me. That's twice now, I'm on a streak." He straightened, squared his huge shoulders, and swept into a bow so deep and so theatrical that the ribbon belt flapped, one arm sweeping wide across the marble floor, his voice suddenly ringing with the polish of a man who had practiced exactly this.
"I am the Elite Legend and heart throb," he announced, to Yuma, to Uma, and at rising volume to what was now a small audience of stopped students along both walls, "Fuku Binri, at your service!"
The name went through the hallway like a current through water.
Yuma felt it happen. He felt the stopped students around them stiffen, felt the whisper ripple outward, felt a girl by the archway clap both hands over her mouth. Fuku Binri. The name from Teon's dinner table, said low over candlelight like a password. The name Nreanna chased across an ocean. The astrophysicist. The Shinto priest. The man who named a god. The man behind, if even half of it was true, everything.
Uma's hand had gone completely still in his.
"You," she said. Her voice came out barely above air. "You're the, you're him. You're the one who."
"Mm-hm," Fuku Binri said cheerfully, straightening out of his bow, utterly unbothered, adjusting his jacket like a man who had just been introduced at a party. "But we're not here to talk about me. We're here to talk about him." He pointed at Yuma again. "Uusal. I actually mean it. This guy is someone you want to have."
Uusal had been watching Yuma with those grey-yellow eyes for a while now, openly, the way one appraises a horse at market, and at Fuku's words she stepped closer and did it properly. She looked at his face. She looked at his hair. She looked, briefly and without apology, lower, and something in her expression registered and filed it. She circled him a half step, humming.
"Hmmm," she said. "He's not that bad, now that you say it. There's something to him. Quiet guys always photograph worse than they are, I've found." She stopped in front of him and smiled, and up close the smile was warm enough to melt the appraisal right off. "I think he would do great!"
"Great at what?" Yuma asked.
Nobody answered immediately. Fuku was looking at Uma now, and something about the mask made it impossible to read anything at all, and that, Yuma was learning, was the point of the mask.
"Confused?" Fuku asked pleasantly. "You both look confused. You're doing the confused faces. Very synchronized, by the way, you've been together too long, it's adorable. Go ahead. Ask. This is the asking portion of the event."
"What is going on," Uma said, slowly, each word placed like a stone, "and why is the legend Fuku Binri in our hallway asking my boyfriend to join a council?"
"Great question. Uusal?" Fuku stepped back and gestured, presenting the floor, and the tall Mongolian woman folded her hands and gave them both her full attention, and Yuma understood suddenly why thirty-eight percent of a school followed her.
"Okay, so, honest version," Uusal said. "The Fudoma bloc is trying to grow. Properly grow. You've seen what's happening. The Largann have gotten louder this month, the pressure is rising, and Elianna Sogran is out there telling neutral students that Futanari and their partners are a problem to be studied and solved. We win people by being warm, not by shouting. But being warm needs faces. Voices."
"Fuku's idea," she added, with a small sideways look at the mask that carried, Yuma noticed, a weight of something other than politics. "He wants representation from every kind of person on a public council for the bloc. Male, female, Futanari. A PR team. Real couples, real stories, standing up in front of the school and saying this life is good and gentle and open to everyone. So when the pressure comes, people see faces they know instead of a percentage."
"Percentages don't make friends," Fuku said. "Faces do."
"We've been scouting," Uusal said. "There's a couple everyone's already half in love with, you know. The pool story travels. The girl who got called Tofu to her face and the boy who stepped in front of her and said he loved her in front of half the school. People repeat it. It's a good story. Stories are the whole job."
Yuma felt Uma's fingers loosen in his. Her awe had rearranged itself into something steadier.
"Why him, though," Uma said. "There are Fudoma boys everywhere. Matthue. Timmy. Boys with stories twice as dramatic as ours. You walked up to us out of nowhere. You knew things no one could know. Why our hallway? Why him?"
Fuku Binri tilted the mask.
"Because I have good taste," he said. "And because he changed. Three days ago he was a nice quiet boy with a nice quiet life. Now he's a nice quiet boy who glows. Whatever she did to him, and whatever he did right back for her, that's the product, isn't it? That's the thing we're selling. Not sizes. Not factions. That." He pointed at their joined hands. "Two people who got better by finding each other. You can't fake that. Believe me. I've watched a lot of people try."
The hallway had gone quiet around them. The little audience of students stood pretending not to listen, and failing completely.
Yuma stood there, and his mind, unhelpfully, went to the pool. To Elianna Sogran's voice, sweet and clinical, calling Uma a fake woman, a Tofu, telling him he deserved a real one. To the way Uma's face had cracked in the changing room doorway after, tears and gratitude tangled together. To her whisper that night, I'm going to fulfill all your desires, and the way she had, all night, every promise kept, the tally in her round neat handwriting. Twenty-three.
These people wanted him to stand up in front of a school that contained her, and say no.
"Okay," Yuma said.
Uma turned to him. Uusal blinked. Even Fuku went still.
"I'll do it," Yuma said. His voice was low and steady and surprised even himself. "On one condition. Fuku owes me something. Not now. Sometime. A favor, named later, no veto." He looked up at the mask. "You want a face for your bloc, that's the price. I've learned recently that when someone gives you everything, you're allowed to ask for one thing back."
There was a pause.
Then the painted stitched mouth split into a grin so wide it looked like the mask might crack, and Fuku Binri laughed, that big open joyful bark, throwing his head back so the fluorescent light caught the crossed-out eyes, and he slapped his own knee and pointed at Yuma with pure delight.
"Ohhhh," he said. "Oh, Uusal. Uusal, do you see? Do you see what I found?" He wiped the mask's eyehole with a knuckle, theatrical, though there was nothing to wipe. "Ok, in due time," he said, warm and easy and completely unbothered, as if Yuma had asked to borrow a pen. "In due time. You have excellent taste in debts. Deal."
He stuck out a gloved hand.
Yuma shook it. The grip was enormous and careful, like the hand was conscious of its own size.
"Welcome to the council," Uusal said, and her smile turned businesslike and bright all at once, and she was already moving, producing a phone from somewhere, thumbs flying. "First meeting is Thursday, there's a room in the union building, I'll send the time. Uma, you're on it too, obviously, you're half of the couple, and frankly you're the better speaker of the two, don't argue."
"I wasn't going to argue," Uma said faintly.
"Great. Also do either of you have opinions on banners? Everyone has opinions on banners. Wrong opinions, but opinions."
"Banners," Yuma repeated.
"We're a PR team now, there's going to be banners." Uusal was already backing down the hallway, waving, hat tilted, drawing the stopped audience along in her wake like a tide going out. "Thursday! Drink water, both of you, glowing people dehydrate!"
And then she was gone into the crowd, and the crowd swallowed her, and the little audience of students dispersed in a rustle of excited whispering, and the hallway was just a hallway again, marble and light and the distant library doors.
Fuku Binri remained. He rocked on his heels, hands in his jacket pockets, the mask tilted at them both.
"For what it's worth," he said, lighter now, almost quiet, "you two are my favorite thing I ever made. And I didn't even make you. You made you." He tapped two fingers to the painted grin. "Thursday. Banners. Try to have opinions."
Then he turned and wandered off down the hallway in the opposite direction, baggy pants swishing, humming something that sounded suspiciously like a shrine hymn, and within ten steps a passing group of students recognized the mask and swarmed him, and he was laughing again, loud and joyful, surrounded.
Yuma stood holding his wife-to-be's hand in an empty stretch of marble hallway.
"Uma," he said.
"Mm."
"Did any of that actually happen?"
She looked down at their hands. Then at the notepad-shaped bulge in her bag, where the tally lived. Then at him, at his clearer face, at whatever it was the mask had seen that she hadn't, and her eyes went soft and wet and fierce all at once.
"You're glowing," she said, and pulled him toward the library by the hand, "and I'm going to take full credit for it, forever."