Friday, November 10th
Futaba sighed as she stepped out of the train to Shibuya station. The ride from Yongen-Jaya was unusually vacant for rush hour, but something about the lurches of the cabins and the harsh metallic sounds of the wheels always managed to put the girl a little on edge. Walking through the labyrinthian hallways, her eyes sparkled when she picked out the tall, svelte artist leaning slightly against a wall, idly watching the crowd.
She bounced over to him and felt the bad taste that usually followed her out of trains and busses leave her behind, but her stride slowed when she saw his gaze lock onto a group of dark-skinned, curvaceous foreign tourists loudly walking by. Futaba saw his nostrils flare, and she nearly went home right then and there, suddenly feeling a lot smaller and her chest a lot emptier.
The young computer nerd was always hopeful she'd grow up into an attractive adult, but with every day that the promised growth spurt eluded her and she saw that same infantile face in the mirror, she became more and more painfully aware of the possibility that she'd look 13 for the rest of her life. She was worried. Worried that Yusuke might never see her as more than just a little girl. Just like those restaurant waiters who always defaulted to giving her the kids menu, or the ticket booth attendants demanding to see her ID to let her buy tickets to a pg-15 movie.
Futaba shook her head. Now was not the time to worry about things she couldn't change. Baby-face or not, today she'd jumped out of bed with a single goal in mind: 'Have a fun date at the art exhibit with Inari.' And she wasn't going to give that up so easily. She took a deep breath and walked up to Yusuke.
"Inari! Hey!"
"Ah, Futaba! A pleasure to see you." He turned to her and his shoulders relaxed. "How does the setting evening sun find you?"
"Marvelously so, Inari dearest." She put on a fake posh accent and bowed, making a show of pinching at the ends of her jacket like a fancy old-timey dress. "And I do hope the twilight breeze doth not rustle thy britches."
He smiled and put a hand on his hip, enjoying the show.
"Shall we depart? Our carriage shall sortie from the Ginza estate and the exhibition hath already commenced!" She continued.
Having known the girl long enough not to take her joke in poor taste, Yusuke straightened his posture and reciprocated the gesture, extending his palm out. "If I may have the privilege of being your escort, Lady Sakura."
"Indeed thou may." She took his hand and strutted with him through the station for a few boisterous steps before breaking out into laughter. Aside from Akira, Yusuke was the person with whom Futaba felt she could most easily be her goofy, silly self.
Yusuke, too, enjoyed his time spent with the girl. Most people he encountered were quick to label him eccentric and odd, and while he could not disagree with them, he found that such judgements interfered with how they interacted with him and their discussions usually died out unsatisfyingly. With Futaba, however, conversations seemed to flow in a way that they seldom did with others, and specially so when compared with other women who usually ran away in fear after a few minutes of talking.
The artist was so accustomed to staring at the breasts of women that the natural angle of his head had adjusted to facilitate this action. His neck was now always slightly arched forward and his spine was beginning to buckle into a slouch, no doubt this was only made worse by the less than stellar posture he would assume when 'handling his paintbrush', so to speak. On occasions where he was staring off into space or lost in deep thought, his eyes would always settle at a point that coincided to the chest level of a woman the height of the average Japanese woman at a distance of approximately 2 meters away. He had surmised that this tendency of his was a contributing factor to most women's aversion to him, but Yusuke had decided long ago that it was far more enjoyable and easy to masturbate to a woman than it was to fight for the respect of one.
Fortunately for him in these trying times, Futaba was short, so the spot his eyes idled at was conveniently at eye level for her. Being so skinny and always in such heavy clothing, Yusuke also found it was easier to pull his gaze away from her body compared to the heavier-set rainbow-haired girls that roamed the walls of his art school. This does not detract whatsoever from the thousands of strokes of his blade he had done in Futaba's honor, but now that he was a participant of the No Nut November challenge, he had welcomed the opportunity to spend time with a girl he could look at and not immediately begin to question the true worth of his little man.
Unfortunately for him and his dick, as the two chatted away while waiting for the train that would take them to the art show's venue, the group of foreign tourists from earlier, including a rotund dark-skinned woman in Yoga pants, appeared behind Futaba. The largest of the women bent down to tie her shoelace and Yusuke leaned forwards imperceptibly, snaking his gaze around Futaba's jacket to get a better look at the cleavage that sat nestled between the pink winter coat and light grey sports bra.
In his many years of study of the female form, Yusuke, the artist, had become a master at accurately identifying the various traits of a woman's physicality through sight alone, much like a recruiter who can instantly tell whether an applicant will be a good fit for the company's profile off a few conversations and a skim through their CV.
'Nationality: Jamaican. Height: 164cm. Weight: 117 kilograms. B/W/H: 141, 126, 152. Band/cup size: 48-O.' he began noting down mentally, completely ignoring whatever Futaba was saying.
"Uhh, Earth to Inari! You there, dude?" Futaba asked.
"O-oh! Apologies, I appear to have zoned out." his cheeks flushed and his eyes darted up to meet hers for a split second, then shot up towards a random wall.
At his reaction, Futaba took a sharp breath and her eyes widened. She'd seen that look before dozens of times. That same look Akira always had when staring at Makoto's ass, the same one on Ryuji's and Morgana's faces whenever Ann was nearby. The same one Haru had when talking about Akira.
Lust.
'Did Inari just…' she thought to herself, heart skipping a beat. '…Stare at my boobs!?'
Subconsciously, Futaba straightened her back and stuck out her chest proudly. All those hours spent browsing for platforms for her boots to get a few extra centimeters, trying on oversized jackets to hide her tiny figure, shying away from things like tank tops and skirts? They all began to feel far, far away. Deep down, she knew it shouldn't be something to be proud of – no woman right in the head should enjoy objectification – but Futaba now felt she could at least be considered that. A woman! The train finally arrived. Futaba stepped forward and with confidence foreign to her dragged Yusuke onto it by the wrist behind her.
'I hope Futaba didn't catch me staring at that exquisitely plump BBW cleavage… The girls must not know of my muses…' Yusuke scratched his chin nervously.
Futaba leaned against the handlebar in the center of the cabin's hallway, her usually knock-kneed legs splayed wide and her arms rested on her hips confidently as she watched the pipes and vents in the underground tunnel whiz by outside. The high-pitched metallic squeals and musty smell no longer bothered her nearly as much and she felt a new kind of warmth surging through her. Yusuke stood nearby and held onto the bar diligently.
"I must say, I am quite looking forward to this exhibition. I can scarcely recall the last time I've seen you so upbeat." Yusuke whispered, careful not to break the respectful silence that was customary to Japan's railway network.
"Nyehehe! It's gonna blow yo mind…!" Less in tune with the unspoken rules of society, Futaba pulled her jacket off and casually flung it over her shoulder, requiring Yusuke to awkwardly lurch out and grab it before it hit the ground.
"Beg yuh a pass!" the large woman from earlier appeared out of nowhere and shoved a wrinkly map covered in pen-markings and highlighter circles upside down into Futaba's face. She yammered off questions in a language the red-head could not comprehend (Jamaican Patwah) at a volume even Futaba could recognize as 'too loud.' Makoto and Akira constantly told Futaba to stay off those 'racist internet websites,' but every time she encountered a foreigner, the stereotypes only seemed to write themselves and her inner nationalist was getting agitated.
Just as the red-head was beginning to understand the gist of the woman's question and recover the composure that had been smashed out of her like a bullet out its casing, the train lurched its biggest one yet. It caused her, the Jamaican lady, Yusuke, and everyone in the car to gain half a second of air time before crashing back down. After all the commotion, Futaba found heavy, yoga-pants-textured mass pressing her face and torso against the train door's window.
"Mi sarry bout dat, gyal! Yu aright?"
"Ma'am, please move! You're hurting her!" Yusuke leaped to the rescue and started trying unsuccessfully to pull the overweight woman off her.
All the confidence Futaba had felt moments ago was being crushed, squeezed, and wrung out through her eyes. The screams of metal on metal clawed at her brain like nails on a chalkboard blasting from concert speakers, the vibrations and jerks of the train thrashed at her bones, and the tunnel walls mere centimeters away from her face occupied her entire field of view through the glass as they flew past at a speed that now felt incomprehensible to the girl. She tried to breathe, but her lungs wouldn't expand. A vice was compressing her ribcage.
Her vision went spotty and blurry, she felt uncertain pressures on her skin and indistinct voices at her ears for an indeterminate amount of time that could have been anything from a few seconds to a few minutes. When she finally came to, the first of her senses to recover was touch. She felt she was kneeling on a cold hard floor with a soft, weighty fabric covering her head, shoulders, and back, and there were two large wiry hands clutching at her upper arms, compressing her snugly but not painfully. Next was sound. She heard a sporadic wheezing and panting that initially confused her, but outright scared her when she realized they belonged to her. Finally, with her vision the other senses returned as well. Yusuke's eyebrows were furrowed upwards in distress, and his eyes were wide with panic. Futaba blinked a few times as her brain finished putting itself back together, and she clutched at her chest to make sure her heart was still there.
"Oh, thank goodness…" Yusuke sighed in abject relief, causing her to perk up at attention.
Yusuke would never have assumed Futaba's tiny arms had enough strength to heave someone close to three times her weight off her, but after she blacked out, she managed to throw the Jamaican woman halfway across the train car with a glass-shattering shriek. She became unresponsive after that, and Yusuke pulled them both off at the next stop, not bothering to acknowledge the other woman or anyone else but her, really.
"I-I-Inari?" she trembled. "W-w-w-what happened?"
"Nothing happened." He softened his grip on her arms once the light had returned to her eyes. "Nothing at all."
"…Ah." she readjusted her glasses with one hand and pulled the jacket further over her face with the other.
"Are you alright?"
"Yeah… I… I think so." Her mannerisms had stabilized somewhat, but she still looked shaken.
Yusuke nodded and smiled sincerely. He got to his feet and extended a hand down to her, and right then as she looked up to his towering form, through the lingering panic in her head, Futaba thought him the most attractive man in the world.
"We still have three more stops to get to the exhibit, no?" he pointed at a recently-arrived train behind him as he helped the girl up. "Come."
Yusuke started to turn, but felt Futaba's grip on his hand tighten and her arm pull back. Her lips and knees trembled and she hunched over in fear. He saw her beg with her eyes, pleading him not to put her on that train again. To him, she looked like a puppy. A puppy that used to love going for car rides until he learned that sometimes, he would end up at the vet. A puppy that quickly came to loathe the car above all else because of that, one who had all the fun he'd had at the dog park and at his friends' houses replaced with fear. His heart twisted at the desperation on her face. Before, He'd thought his leader mad, to have such a close relationship with a cute girl and never once see her in a romantic light. But right then, he understood what Akira had meant all those times about seeing Futaba like a little sister.
Dead-set on maximizing her comfort, he ignored the dozens of confused onlookers at the station nearby, knelt back down on the floor and looked up at her.
"Correct me if I'm wrong Futaba…" he said in his calmest voice. She was still looking wide-eyed ahead. "But these trains can be compared to data buses in computers, yes?"
The mention of technological terminology caught her ear. After to a few seconds to process the question, she slowly tilted her head down to him, and he saw her face soften just the smallest bit.
"Y…Y-y-yeah… C-carry information… From p-place to place…"
"Excellent. Then it appears my research proved fruitful…" he nodded. "And so, would a computer's cache be akin to the station's waiting area? Where data waits to be transported?"
"Cache… K-k…kinda…" she said. Yusuke could see the gears in her head realign themselves and begin to spin as she toyed with the analogy. "Cache might be more like the ticketing machine…"
"Heh. I should have known that the best fountain for these answers was always right under my nose." He chuckled and felt the air between them soften further. "One aspect that constantly eluded me in my glean is logic gates. Would they be comparable to a railway map? Deciding what information goes where?"
"W-what?" The color abruptly returned to her face and raised her voice, almost sounding offended. "No! Logic gates are operators! They don't tell data what to do, they are the ones that make the data useful. Without logic gates, you can't even have a computer!"
Yusuke stood back up to full height. She continued rambling and Yusuke smiled warmly.
"If you really wanna make the comparison, then logic gates are the bricks and concrete and stuff that the station is ma-"
Another color came to her face. Red.
"Inariiiiii~~~!" she pounded her fists on his chest. It didn't hurt. "Why'd you make me go off like that~! It's embarrassing!"
He chuckled charismatically and stuffed his hands in his pockets. "We'd best be going. The exhibition awaits."
"Yeah… Sorry I freaked back there…"Futaba took a final deep breath and presented her hand. The bravado she had earlier had not completely left. "H-hold my hand?"
Fingers interlocked, the two hopped back on the train and completed the journey to the art exhibition. Try as she might, Futaba couldn't stop the fluttering of her heart.
Once at the venue, they were floored by its enormity. It was set up inside a warehouse that would have looked completely unassuming were it not for the fields of fake grass laid about the entrance and the red carpets and overhead decorations that adorned the front wall. Futaba and Yusuke had come on foot and in clothing that could at best be described as 'casual', but many of the other guests presenting their tickets to the security guards had arrived in fancy left-hand-drive European cars and wore full suits and ties. Futaba's rebellious side got a massive kick out of walking into the event in her big boots and jacket, whereas Yusuke's inner artist felt a pang of guilt for disrespecting the event until he laid eyes on the show inside and forgot all about that.
Futaba had briefly explained it to him as an art show that uses modern technology like lasers to provide a more immersive experience with existing traditional art, and the online brochure described it as a 'blockbuster digital experience,' but Yusuke was completely flabbergasted by the scale of the exhibit. Paintings from Monet and Van Gogh crawled along 20-meter tall canvases on the walls and ceiling, sculptures from Ghiberti and Donatello hovered in the air as holograms being rotated in space, Music by composers ranging from Phillip Glass to Beethoven to Buxtehude echoed inside a special chamber designed for listening, and there was a small ballet near the center with a banner above the stage that read 'The Rite of Spring.'
Futaba seemed equally as captivated. She immediately started rambling off dozens of obtuse technical-sounding words that Yusuke didn't recognize and her amethyst eyes sparkled with joy. She bounced left and right, not sure which attraction to investigate first, and elected to just run in some direction and see where she ended up, but not before grabbing Yusuke by the sleeve and forcing him to come along.
'Definitely a puppy.' Yusuke smiled.
"There's this one interactive one I really want to try…!" Futaba beamed "It's supposed to use infra-red motion capture and brain-wave analysis to let you paint with your mind on this huge projector!"
The room, helpfully labelled 'Painteractive' by a sign above the threshold and comparable in size to a small movie theatre, was worryingly empty and blocked off by yellow security tape. A nearby employee explained that unfortunately it was closed due to a software error with the projector. Dejectedly, they moved on, but Futaba's mood quickly improved when she saw a virtual reality attraction that claimed to put you inside one of Salvador Dali's paintings.
It was easy to get lost in all of the activities, and indeed, for a precious twenty minutes, Futaba and Yusuke did just that. Though most of that time was spent running back and forth between whichever set of exhibits she saw in the periphery of her eye, and Yusuke doing his best not to trip over his own feet marveling at the presentation. All in all, it was a blast, and the two found nearly endless topics to gush over between sprints, though their fun would not last long, as soon…
"Yoooo, FAGsuGAY KitaGAWKah! Hahahahaha"
It was Chadusuke. He was surrounded by a gaggle of 6 or so air-headed looking women of all ages, races, and sizes in formal wear that hung unprofessionally to their bodies by half-done buttons and loose belts. It was clear that Chadusuke had just finished showing them some 'behind the scenes action,' and they were shamelessly following him around, lazily clawing at him in hopes of getting some more. He was dressed in his usual hard pink tank top and green sweatpants that did nothing (or perhaps everything) to accentuate his junk, and he carried with him a monstrously large and somewhat phallically shaped grip trainer which on the side read '500kg'. With each squeeze of the device a grunt escaped his throat that sent the women clinging to his arms into inappropriate swoons. While Futaba and Yusuke had been subject to endless disapproving stares the entire time for their attire, nobody seemed to bat an eye at Chadusuke or his group of love-drunken followers.
"Chadusuke, why are you here? This exhibition is not for your Neanderthalic kind to loiter in." Yusuke scoffed.
"Yeah, haha. Y'know, I was kind of thinking that, too, but I got invited by the Prime Minister's brother after repairing relations with Korea last week, and I got nothin' else going on till the U.N. hearing at 8, so I figured-!" His phone rang, he shook off two girls who had been clinging to his arm and pulled it out of his pocket, causing his enormous dong to jiggle as the fabric threatened to explode. "Oh, one sec. Yeah, Hey, man. No, I told you, you can't start the nuclear fusion process until AFTER the deuterium has been primed. We don't want another shipment to go to waste. Yeah. Okay, good. Say hi to your wife for me." he hung up. "Sorry 'bout that, ladies. You know how those Germans can be, hahaha!"
"Debauchery such as this has no place here, Chadusuke. You are disgracing the arts!" He was about to scold the blonde caricature of a man further, but stopped when he felt a tug at his sleeve from behind
"Inari, I don't like this guy… He's creepy… Can we go?" Futaba scuttled to his back and poked her head out.
"Woooaahhh! FAGsuke, you didn't tell me you were here with a girl!" with a quick and cool flex of his muscles, all of the women grabbing at him were launched off a few feet in every direction. "Damn, she's tiny, little bro. Am I gonna have to change your name to FAGsuGAY PEDOgawa? Hahahahahaha. I can totally do that, by the way. I can call the PM and ask him to change your name legally."
Yusuke's blood boiled. He was about to throw logic out the window take another swing at the guy, but Futaba hopped out and made her voice heard before he even had a chance to consider it.
"Shut up! Dumbass! I'm 16! You don't know anything!" she was fuming.
"Hmm…?" Chadusuke raised an eyebrow. He shot a threatening glance at Yusuke, a similar one to the look he'd given the man during their last encounter with Ayoto. Yusuke's stomach tightened as he saw a bulging forearm extend outwards towards Futaba and the subsequent terror that overtook her. "Let me take a look, girlie."
Yusuke grabbed Chadusuke's wrist. His fingers were long and dexterous thanks to years of painting, but even they were not able to fully close around Chadusuke's tree-trunk arm.
"Don't you dare." There was fire in Yusuke's eyes and acid in his voice.
Chadusuke didn't move. Not because he couldn't, or even because he wouldn't. Chadusuke didn't move, because this, too, was a test for the artist. The 2-meter tall blond tower of muscle returned the gesture and the two glared each other down like professional boxers just before the first round, daring the other to back down or make the first move. Futaba could only watch on as Yusuke protected her from this barely-human monster that was Chadusuke. she grabbed at her shirt again, her heart was about to burst.
Chadusuke finally retracted his hand and stood up straight. He walked right up to Yusuke, enormous figure making the already tall painter look downright diminutive by comparison, and looked down at him. He didn't budge. Wordlessly, Chadusuke took a few steps back and spread his arms out, beckoning for the girls to return to their homes upon his biceps. He turned away and walked off into the exhibit, but Yusuke thought he saw a small approving smile on his face as he did. No matter, he had more pressing issues to attend to.
"Futaba, are you alright?" Yusuke's face softened the instant he lay eyes upon her. She blushed a deep red and her heartbeat tripled.
"Y-yeah! Yup! All good!" She blurted out loudly. Yusuke saw her swallow, twirl her hair, cough, and re-adjust her glasses all in the span of 2 seconds.
"Good. Chadusuke is an unfortunate acquaintance of mine, but worry not, for I shall not allow him to lay a finger on you." Yusuke said. He offered his hand again. "Do not permit him any space in your mind. Shall we continue?"
"Yes! Let's go! Inari! Excellent idea!" She slapped his hand with an awkward and painful high-five before robotically beelining to another attraction.
The next several minutes were decidedly awkward, as Futaba was unable to get Yusuke's moment of chivalry out of her head and was barely able to resist squealing like a little girl, let alone relax on what she was now acutely aware to be a date with her savior. Nonetheless, Yusuke put forth his best efforts to keep her entertained and comfortable, and eventually she returned to normal and the two were able to enjoy the rest of the exhibit unbothered, only occasionally being interrupted by a far off moan from a woman no doubt engaged in further heathenry with Chadusuke.
"Disgusting…" Yusuke whispered to himself, replaying his encounter with his enemy in his head.
"What'dja say?" Futaba asked, looking up from the small screen at the exhibit of her present interest.
"Ah, Nothing." He focused his attention on the game she was playing. It looked to be a first person shooter with the setting inspired by M.C. Escher's reality-bending stairscapes. "What is this?"
"This is a modded version of Doom, it lets you jump onto walls and stuff, which is pretty cool, because the Id Tech 1 Engine shouldn't be able to do that. I actually talked about this one to Ann the other day, funny coincidence…" She effortlessly headshot some demonic creatures that had been painted over to blend into the background "I have a good idea as to how they'd handle the projection mapping, but even I'd need a few days to make something like this!"
"I see…" Yusuke looked around for Chadusuke. "Futaba, if you'll excuse me for a moment, I'll be in the bathroom."
"Sure, but hurry up! I'm ranked 13th in the any-percent category for Doom Ultimate!" she boasted.
Not understanding half the words she said, Yusuke caught up to Chadusuke and successfully convinced the girls to give them a minute to talk by promising them a strand of his blond hair on his behalf. The two ducked away to the blocked off 'painteractive' room, hiding behind the projector screen for further privacy.
"A cock fight? This Monday?" Chadusuke asked incredulously. "Bro, I've got a 50-incher when hard. You had some balls the other day with Ayoto and with this little girlie back there, I'll give you that, but you know you're gonna get creamed, right?"
"I am more than aware of the disparity in the size of our lances, Chadusuke, but I will not be taking 'no' for an answer. Like honorable warriors, we shall joust to once and for all end this ridiculous contest and move on with our lives."
"Sounds like it's more for you than for me. Hurrrgghhh… What do I get out of it, FAGsuke?" Chadusuke squeezed his grip trainer again.
"In the event that I win, you will no longer refer to me by any such degrading nicknames and leave me to my devices, never again to bother me or my associates with your presence. In the event that you win, I shall relinquish all that I have to you and grant you full agency over my every waking move. Essentially, I will become your willing slave."
Yusuke had a plan. A big one. He wouldn't gamble his life away so spontaneously. It seemed to the artist that Chadusuke suspected as much, too.
"Slave, huh? Heh, pretty intense." he chuckled and extended an arm for a handshake, not breaking eye contact. "I'm game."
Futaba pursed her lip in boredom as she leisurely meandered around the exhibit now that she had thoroughly stomped the game with ease. Any time a security official tried to escort her out after assuming from her attire that she had somehow snuck in, the girl was more than happy to flash the ticket she'd gotten from Ann (which turned out to be a VIP-tier full-day pass, go Ann!) and the guard promptly apologized and left her alone.
"Yusuke sure is taking a long time in the shitter! Maybe he's got hemorrhoids from sitting on his bony ass all day!" Futaba blurted out loud, delighting at the disgusted reactions of some pompous-looking old people nearby.
She walked past the projector room and frowned slightly, she hoped they would fix the exhibit soon, as it was the only one she and Yusuke hadn't seen yet. Futaba slapped herself in the head comically when she remembered she was a master hacker and could just fix the thing herself if she felt like it. Feeling stupid for not realizing it sooner, she jovially limbo'd under the safety tape, waltzed up to the projector room, and plugged her phone into one of the dusty projector's USB ports to inspect the damage as decompiled code flooded her screen. Within minutes she'd corrected the issue (a single misplaced semicolon) and the projector beamed onto the screen a dazzling pure white as its slow cold-boot sequence executed.
Peering over the lip of the window for the projector, Futaba saw two suspiciously familiar silhouettes behind the screen. Upon closer inspection, she saw they belonged to Yusuke and that insanely roided acquaintance of his, Chadusuke. It looked like they were discussing something, and Futaba couldn't resist eavesdropping a little, though they were too far away for any words to make it all the way up to where she was spying from.
Back behind the screen, Yusuke and Chadusuke squinted slightly at the sudden light. Chadusuke saw the seriousness in Yusuke's eyes.
"Oh, bummer, they fixed it." Chadusuke complained. "This room's where I was bangin' all the girls, hahaha."
Yusuke ignored his comment and accepted the handshake. Chadusuke pulled him in for an unexpected whisper and spoke quietly into his ear.
"I've been goin' easy on you these past few times Yusuke," the blue-haired teen tensed slightly at how the ever-present lax in Chadusuke's voice was suddenly gone, and how he had addressed him by his proper name instead of his usual nicknames. "but only 'cus I see potential in you. This time, I'm goin' all out. You better be ready."
Futaba saw the two silhouettes merge into one, and her throat instantly went dry. A memory, which up till now had sat repressed and nigh-forgotten at the back of her brain, violently resurfaced from the depths of her psyche and flooded her brain with anguish.
"That hurts, Ryuji."
At Leblanc's… last Sunday…
"DOESN'T IT FEEL GOOD!?"
Yusuke… pants down, ass in the air, getting dry-humped… by Ryuji…!?
"I would prefer […] at the back…"
Akira and Morgana… watching!? Yusuke is an exhibitionist!? He likes men!?
"Would rather […] big […] than little."
Futaba fell to her knees and tugged at her hair in panic. All of work Ann and the others had put in to help her ask Yusuke out, all the confidence she'd built up both before and during the day today to cozy up to Yusuke, all the times her heart had skipped a beat when he'd taken care of her at the train and with Chadusuke. The delicate sandcastle that contained them all had just been struck by a tsunami, forever washing the grains of her efforts and dreams out into the indifferent sea.
'Yusuke likes… men!? D-does that mean he'll never love me back!?' Tears welled in her eyes. 'No! he took my hand, rescued me from that fat black lady, protected me from this muscly guy, was even checking me out at the station! he looked straight at my boobs!' Futaba tried to rationalize the situation, but the freshly-remembered incident at Leblanc, and now seeing his date sneak away to hug another man in private… It was almost too much for her to process!
Yusuke took a slightly deeper breath than usual. "An all out attack. I wouldn't have it any other way."
Breaking the embrace and looking each other in the eye through the dim light, Yusuke felt for the first time in months a sense of drive and passion for something other than painting and masturbation. Seeing how Futaba had utterly broken down on the train, and the primal fear that had overtaken her when Chadusuke tried to grab her, he knew he would not be able to forgive himself if his negligence and hedonism allowed some harm to come to the girl. But not only was this battle to be fought in her honor, it was also for his own. This would be a chance to prove to the world and to himself that Yusuke Kitagawa was a name worthy of respect. Yusuke could feel a rush of adrenaline and giddy anticipation he hadn't remembered since first cutting down shadow Madarame with his sword all those months ago.
"Can you, uhh…" Chadusuke scratched his head. "Text me the time and place? So I can put it in my schedule."
"…" Yusuke blinked. "Oh. Y-yes of course."
"You have my number right?"
"Yes, yes I believe I d-…I cannot find it"
"I thought I gave it to you last year?"
"Well, I cannot find it in my contacts list."
"Alright, alright no worries. Here, I'll give you a missed call. What's your number?"
"Y…You do not have my number?"
"Bro, I have the number of every world leader on Earth…"
"It's fine. Allow me to pull it up, here it's +81-…"
"…Like, how am I supposed to keep the number of everyone I ever meet?"
"-453-…"
"Oh, sorry can you start over?"
"*sigh* +81-03-… Bah, I dropped the phone…" Yusuke bent down.
"Wow. Awkward. You should try this grip trainer, bro. It'll seriously up your strength. Hrrrrnnngghhhh… Ahhhh. It hits, man." Chadusuke groaned loudly.
Futaba had managed to calm herself down somewhat. She reminded herself of all the times Yusuke had clearly shown attraction to women, to Ann, Makoto, to Haru. Hell, she'd seen an example of it not three hours ago with those foreigners in Shibuya! She remembered the stories Ann had told her of how they met Yusuke, and how insistent he was in having the model pose nude for her. how Akira, Ryuji, and Ann taking advantage of his attraction to women was ultimately what allowed them to succeed in taking down Madarame. She recalled all those strange, homosexually charged jokes she'd seen online from guy-friends. The incident with Ryuji back at Leblanc's could very well have been a raunchy joke that she'd managed to misinterpret, and maybe she'd also misunderstood the situation with Chadusuke? Futaba wouldn't put it past herself to miss some sort of subtle social queue indicating that Yusuke's earlier conversation with the man was far more lighthearted than she'd initially made it out to be.
'I'm sure it's all just a big misunderstanding…' She took deep breaths. 'it just doesn't make sense for Yusuke to be gay. He'd at the very least be bisexual, and I can work with that! He's the one for me and I'm the one for him! If I just keep pushing, he will return my feelings! I can't lose hope now!'
She pulled herself up over the lip again and saw her worst nightmare come true.
The simple reality of the silhouette's current state could be explained by Yusuke dropping his phone and Chadusuke's monster grip trainer's unfortunate shape lining up perfectly with both his own groin and Yusuke's head. However, what Futaba saw was…
'That's… that's…! THAT'S! CHADUSUKE'S PENIS!? IN INARI'S MOUTH!?' Her jaw dropped.
"Hrrrrnnngghhhh… Ahhhh. It hits, man." Futaba heard that one. Loud and clear.
'INARI'S SUCKING CHADUSUKE'S DICK!?' All the pigment drained from her skin. 'HE'S ALREADY TAKENNNNNNN!?'
"I'm afraid I'll have to pass on the grip trainer, thank you." Yusuke dusted off his phone. "The number is +81-03-3503-8484."
"Okay… Missed call. Ya got it?"
"Yes, I'll take the number and send the time and place shortly. But our duel will be on Monday at Kosei High."
"Monday, got it, bro." he shoved his gold-plated, diamond encrusted phone back into his pocket. "Welp. I can't bang the ladies here anymore, so I'm gonna bounce. See you Monday FAGsuke! Hahahahah."
"Unbelievable." Yusuke pinched his temple.
After a few seconds of using the sudden silence behind the projector screen to regain his bearings, Yusuke sighed and stepped out. The image on the screen read 'Loading: 83%,' and Yusuke's eyebrows un-sagged when he remembered Futaba had been eager to see this particular exhibition in action. He exited the room to look for her and found her facing away from him by a nearby exhibit of Michaelangelo's 'Pieta.'
"Futaba, wondrous news!" Yusuke started. "The projector exhibit appears to be funct-"
"Let's go, Inari. We have to prepare for the Mementos expedition." She did not turn to face him, and Yusuke was taken aback by the despondence in her words.
"Mementos? We agreed with Akira to meet at 7, that's still 2 hours awa-"
"I want to run a deeper scan on that 'backrooms' area before the others arrive." She was already making her way towards the exit.
"F…Futaba, is everything alr-"
"Are you coming or not?"
"…" Yusuke swallowed, his shoulders slumped.
The train ride back to Shibuya was only 20 minutes long, but felt like hours with the agonizing silence that had formed between them.
A/N:
Hello, gang! Another chapter down! I don't think this one is quite as long as the Sumi Mementos one, but it's definitely close! I hope it wasn't boring, though I feel there was plenty to chew on in this one, and honestly I had a blast putting it together. Like I said last time, Chadusuke is always a joy to write. Speaking of, it seems he and Yusuke have a rather personal type of swordfight coming up! I'm sure it'll be interesting to see how it plays out. Poor Futaba keeps getting the short end of the stick here, last time she walked in on Yusuke, she got so traumatized she legitimately forgot, but this time, there will be no erasing that memory from her mind. To make things worse, it looks like Yusuke is starting to see the girl more as a sister than a potential girlfriend. Who knows how this secondary plot might develop!? (me, I know. I wrote the thing.)
Anyways, next chapter will be a Mementos exploration, but with a twist! Please look forward to it, I should have it done soon! See you all there!