Itsuki’s Substitution 2 (Patreon)

Where on Earth was that substitute?

Coach Juri Kanashimi looked down at her wrist. It was nearly ten minutes past, and Nakano still wasn’t here! Yuuka had texted when the girl had stopped by the rec room to pick up her clothes, but that was nearly eight minutes ago.

Juri lifted her hands over her head to let out her frustration as a stretch and a breath. It was obvious that Vice Principal Hoshiakari’s idea had been far too enthusiastic, which of course meant that you could expect things to go at least a little awry, but eight minutes just to get changed? What, was she taking a pre-workout shower?

Nakano had to be somewhere in the department. Maybe she went out the wrong entrance and ended up in the pool. Or maybe, more likely, the clothes didn’t fit the overfed redhead… Juri didn’t know Nakano, but she certainly knew of her.

Everyone knew about Hachinomori’s waddling pastry-woman. At track meets, other coaches had asked Juri if the rumors were true, or if Hoshiakari had somehow contracted a bipedal piglet who could teach English class.

But… Juri was in no place to judge another’s ability based on their physical appearances. After all, if she was in such a good space, she could have already started class rather than sitting on her butt and staring at the clock on her phone…

The most likely answer was usually the most obvious. Nakano was probably one of those princessly-types. She could very well be having one of those nervous episodes that those softies got when they’re forced to do anything outside of their normal routine. Juri had a hard time imagining a girl plumping herself up to the size of a two-bedroom apartment with a strong adaptability and an ironclad will…

“Ugh…” she muttered. “I sound like my sister…”

Checking her phone for the fifth time in two minutes, Juri quickly shot off a text before dropping the phone in her lap and turning to the soft hubbub of her mingling students.

“Alright!” she called over their heads. “Form up your rows! Come on. We’re gonna start. Class leaders to the front!”

The leaders of the fifth and sixth grade classes eagerly popped up and came to the front, but the third graders seemed to have forgotten who they had elected before a small girl with dirty-blonde hair hurried up to join the other two, stumbling over her untied shoes and quickly panting, “I’m here! I’m here, Coach Kanashimi! I didn’t forget!”

“Right...” Juri turned to the eldest of the leaders, a boy with dark hair and darker eyes that were just smart enough that you could tell he regretted ever volunteering for this position. “Jun, you’ll be leading the others in stretching exercises. Okay? Do you all remember what they are?”

“We do them every day,” Jun shrugged.

“It’s the butterfly lunges and then the bunny kicks!” the little girl called.

Juri nodded. “I’m going to check on our assistant and see where she’s at.”

The three leaders bowed in unison and then went to the three Xs which marked their spots at the head of their respective class. A much larger red X, the one normally occupied by Juri’s assistant, was left empty.

“Side stretches! Seven seconds!” the leaders called. “Ready? Begin!”

Juri passed them by, circling around the gymnasium’s edge and moving towards the staff lockers. Maybe Nakano hadchickened out. Or… turkied out. Or piggied.

Whatever they called you when you carried more fat than protein.

Still, Hoshiakari had vouched for the girl… If nothing else, that had earned some slight leeway. Though now Juri wondered whether that vouching was supposed to be an acknowledgement of Nakano’s willpower, or if it was the older woman’s silent affirmation to the necessity of this little stunt.

The brunette wasn’t good at this crap. Hidden meanings, convenient happenstances, it was all a bit too Machiavellian for her nowadays. At thirty-years-old, Juri’s once-sharp tongue had been blunted into the shape of a hammer. A little bit dull, but honest and straightforward, and it made for far easier a life than her old job had been. Frankly, she preferred this life. That blunt edge is what made teaching kids fun, and it made her a good coach.

If mom had wanted her tubbiest daughter to get a good workout, she should just say so.

Allowing herself a mental shrug, Juri rolled up to the staff locker, reached for the handle, and came up short when she heard a husky whisper hiss through the door’s small crack, “Can’t you suck it in??”

“I am! Don’t you have a bigger entrance?! What about the double doors??”

“That’s on the other side of the gym, you nit!”

Juri paused, hand still on the handle. More noises came, meatier noises that sounded like exertion twinged with high-pitched gasps of chubby pain, and quite suddenly she remembered thinking once that the partition that separated the staff locker from the gymnasium was rather… thin.

“Hnnnmmmfff… T-t-tight, tight!”

“Turn the other way! It’s like moving a couch!”

“I am not a couch!”

The gym coach blushed.

She looked over her shoulder to see several students were looking in her direction while they stretched, then turned back when the doorway gave another angry grunt and a startled yelp.

Taking her phone from her pocket, she quickly opened up the messaging application before typing and sending it off. ‘Everything okay?’

From behind the door, she heard Yukka’s merry ringtone.

“You’re late.”

“I know I’m late! *Glah…!* Why is everything in this department so tiny?!”

“Why are you so big?!?!?”

Juri coughed, and the doorway abruptly became silent. Behind her, she could hear the leaders call “Butterfly kicks! Fifty seconds! Ready? Begin!”

“Miss Nakano, can you hear me?” she asked, quietly.

“Y-yes… Hello.”

“Hi.”

“She’s stuck, Juri,” she heard Yuuka’s voice, punctuated by the popping of the slight girl’s bubblegum.

Juri wiped at her eyes. The already wide picture that her mind carried of Itsuki Nakano grew several hundred pounds heavier as she tried to remember how much the doorway would reveal of the tight passage. “If I open up this door, would the students be able to see you?” she asked.

“Umm… I don’t… think so…”

“Okay. I’m going to come in.”

She waited a moment, listening to the awkward shuffling and a quick but heated back and forth of whispers that might have come from a pair of young schoolgirls behind her rather than the two supposed adults just beyond. Then, she pulled open the door and rolled through it.

“Oh…… Oh, dear.”

In a scene that wouldn’t look out of place in Wonderland (with an Alice that had eaten far, far, far too many cakes), a girl that was as red as her hair looked to be suffocating between the gymnasium and the privacy walls. A veritable giantess of blubber, Nakano’s gut and her rear were flattened against either surface, and the progress she’d made had tugged at her shirt and plucked at her shorts, doing little favor for her obese decency.

A muffintop of purest white dough, a buttshelf that was larger than a pair of truck tires, so many curves that were undeniably female were topped by what Juri instinctively thought of as corded rope before realizing it was an immense double braid of luscious red hair.

“Hello,” Nakano blushed. An attempt was made at plucking her shirt from a creased love handle. It failed. “It’s n-nice to meet you. Miss Kanashimi.”

Juri blinked. She wondered if she was seeing double, or maybe quintuple! It took a long time for her eyes to look over the girl’s immensity, her mind struggling to discern that the label of giantesswas completely incorrect.

Nakano was not tall. She was standing on her tiptoes, as if her body were fighting for every single centimeter of space, abusing her verticality because there just wasn’t room. If she hopped, she’d probably stick.

Juri probably would have said something extremely intelligent, like ‘Uhhh,’ or ‘Wow…’ but both she and Nakano were saved from that awkward impression by a light clap that came from behind the behemoth as a pair of hands topped the privacy wall.

“Hnnngh!” grunted Yuuka, her light sneakers kicking the wall as she hoisted herself up. She came over it easily, sitting atop to glare past Nakano’s fatty blockade and prodding the stuck girl with her shoe. “I don’t think she’ll fit.”

“You’ve already said that…” Nakano pouted.

Yuuka, as spunky as ever, rolled her eyes and continued snapping at her bubblegum. “Well, what do you want me to do? Push you?”

“Oh, God. No.”

Juri cleared her throat. “That’s quite unnecessary,” she said over her two juniors. “Nakano, can you… wiggle your way out, or something?”

Nakano’s blush turned brighter and her legs wibbled. It made Juri realize that her thighs had muffintops. They even had love handles, with piles of fat puffing over the tops of her knees and even her shoes.

“M-maybe out… the other way…” she panted even after her momentary struggle.

“That would be preferable. You can come around to the gymnasium’s main entrance, where the students come in at the start of classes.”

“Alright…” Tides of chub washed against white stone as she began the arduous task. It was too fatty and firm to truly merit such a liquid comparison, but Nakano’s massive curves invoked the slopes of a globe and its massive seas…

Or maybe that was the bright colored gym clothes… At least the dolphin seemed to be enjoying the width of its landscape.

“Yuuka,” she said, “I need you to get dressed too. We’re gonna need your help as well.”

“What?!? No way!” the small girl declared. “I’m just on rec room!”

“Well lock the rec room, and get your butt in uniform. I’m going to need both of you.”

“H-here, take my arm,” Nakano offered her wrist up to Yuuka.

The little dark-haired girl glowered down at the chubby wrist. “You want me to pull you?? What if you fall on me?”

Juri closed her eyes, let out a strained breath, spun, and exited the door.

She came back to the front of the class as the leaders had the students finish their high lunges, which was the final for the midmorning stretches before the short two laps around the gym. She got back to her normal position and blew her whistle as they finished, gave a shout and a signal for the cardio warmup, and then leaned back and tried not to think about corks and champaign bottles, and instead focused on how the hell she was meant to deal with the upcoming lesson.

******************************************************************************

It took Nakano five minutes to unlogged herself and to circle the gym, longer than it had taken several students to complete their two laps.

Luckily, for both Nakano and Juri, third-grade girls tend to run like baby seals, so they were only finishing their first when the beefy redhead lumbered through the wide double doors and thudded across the wooden floors to stand besides Juri.

It couldn’t have been an easy five minutes. Tiny droplets of sweat marked her fat double chin, but she managed not to gasp or wheeze, which was already better than Juri’s redefined expectations.

After a few moments of husky breathing Nakano murmured, “Wasn’t quite the… introduction, I was hoping for.”

Juri “That’s alright,” Juri replied, keeping her eyes on the students. “Nobody has a good first day. I’m sure Yuuka is just as ruffled.”

“Hmm…” Nakano puttered, as if disbelieving. Another moment passed before she asked, “Umm, you’re Coach Kanashimi, yes?”

Juri smirked. “That’s what they wrote on my whistle,” she joked before her hands went down to the arms of her seat. “They wrote it on my wheelchair too, just so I wouldn’t forget.”

Nakano brightened further. “I-I wasn’t gonna mention-”

Juri waved an easing hand, this time fully spinning her seat to look up to her assistant. “It’d be dumb not to,” she chuckled. “This is kind of a physical job.”

The gym coach had spent a few years now growing familiar with nervous expressions and flicking eyes. It was rude to stare, sure, but you had to get used to it when you’re missing one leg and stuck in a chair.

She’d made a few changes to the traditional coach uniform, including a black sports jacket inscribed with ‘Head Coach’ across the back and choosing to wear track pants instead of the usual shorts. The knotted leg always caught peoples’ attention, but she’d much rather rip off that bandage of awkward courtesy than meander in circles of well-intended pleasantries.

“You’re Nakano, right? Teach second-grade English?”

“Yes!” the big woman said, seeming to get a bit more bounce to her step, which translated to a big wobble through her belly. “You can call me Itsuki, if you’d like. It always feels strange to have my superiors refer to me with the same level of respect.”

“Heh. Superior, huh?” Juri asked. “Most other teachers look down on us who only teach gym. If that’s the case, you can call me Juri. But it’s probably best if we keep things formal in front of the students, don’t you think?”

“O-oh…” Itsuki chuckled, brushing a red lock of hair back from her pink blush. “Yeah. Sorry. I’m not really used to working directly with other teachers.”

“You’re doing fine,” Juri lied, but only just a little. Itsuki could be doing much better, but she seemed like a pleasant enough girl and was clearly out of her element. She could be doing far worse.

At that, the door to staff lockers thudded open and out marched Yuuka, arms crossed and feet thudding, still chomping on her beloved bubblegum. It must be hard to pull off a scowl with a mouth full of sugar, but the raven-haired girl was nothing if not willful.

To Itsuki, Juri asked, “You’ve already met Yuuka, I assume?”

“We… didn’t exchange names…”

Juri let out a light laugh. “Yeah, that tracks. You’ll have to excuse my baby sister. She means well, but she’s a lot friendlier when she’s sitting with her feet up on her desk.”

“Heh… Sounds relatable… Wait, sister?”

“Mhmm,” Juri nodded.

Their hushed conversation came to an end as Yuuka approached, though a bubble of laughter threatened to rise from Juri’s lungs when she noticed that her sister’s resigned stomps were somehow quieter than the soft-but-strong *Doom* that came from Nakano simply shifting her weight from one trunk-sized-leg to the other.

“Thank you for joining us,” she inclined her head. “We both really appreciate your assistance.”

“Yes. Thank you for your assistance, Miss Kanashimi.”

Yuuka lifted a dark eyebrow, looking from Itsuki’s inclined double chin to the belly that threatened to swallow her shorts. She looked as if she was about to say something, but a cough from Juri bought a flicked glare and a polite bow. “Yeah, my pleasure,” she replied. “I’ve had to help out before. Juri’s always asking me to lend my feet.”

All of the color blanched out of Nakano’s face. The pink from her cheeks, the peachy color of her skin. With her white shirt and red hair, the girl resembled a massive serving of vanilla ice cream coated with a thick cherry sauce, only held form by the circular bowl that was her overtaxed shorts. She looked between the two girls, her eyes notably flicking towards Juri’s right stump, which made Juri’s chuckle feel nice and warm.

“As I said. You’ll have to excuse her,” she said grinning, then turned that grin straight to Yuuka. “She hasn’t quite realized yet that I can still beat the crap out of here, even with only one leg.”

“Spooky,” Yuuka said flatly, popping another bubble with her gum. Nodding towards the assembling students, she asked, “Have they already done stretches?”

Juri turned to watch as the last heard of panting baby seals tumbled across the finish line, gasping for air. Most of the students had already recovered and were now standing closer to the head coach and her lovely assistants, so Juri made the willful decision not to kick her sister in the shin and then beat her with her chair.

“Ahh, alright. Guess we already got our warmup in,” Yuuka said, tapping Itsuki on the elbow to get her attention and then pointing towards the right side of the giant red X. “You take up there, and I’ll take the left side. The three class leaders will each be at the head of each class, and the rest just follow our lead.”

“Our lead???” Itsuki asked. “W-what are we doing?”

“Jumping jacks.”

Juri didn’t think that Nakano could go any whiter, but the pile of vanilla ice cream became the snowy white of powdered sugar. Then it all came back as a rush of pink and a laborious breath, a blush so bright that it took over her whole face. “I-I haven’t done jumping jacks since…”

She tapered off, blue eyes looking down towards her own massive heft. She seemed to be looking at herself, as if trying to remember the size that she was when she was last in a gymnasium.

It had to be a long, long, long, long, long time ago.

Juri, rolling to her position between them, blew her whistle and called, “Class leaders, form up!”

The three children from earlier hurried up to their positions. The third-grade leader, the little girl who Juri noticed had been the last student to finish their run, came huffing and puffing up to the small X in front of Nakano’s left side and chirped, “Hi, Ms. Nakano!”

“Hello, Miss Sumei. How have your studies been going?”

“Great!” she said. “I’m class leader this semester!” Then, in a whisper that could be heard from Mars, she hissed, “Don’t worry. I hate gym class too!”

Juri had been mid-whistle, which made her sputtering cough all the worse. She tried to keep the blush from her own face as she said over the class, “Twenty-five jumping jacks! Ready? Begin!”

******************************************************************************

*Whump!*

*THOOM!!*

*Whump…!!*

*THOOM!!!*

“Hoogh… hoogh… hooogh…!”

*… Whump!!!*

Nobody laughed. A few of the older students stared, leaning or standing on tiptoes to try and see over their classmates. Some people looked disgusted. More looked fascinated, wearing the same expression that Juri had seen worn on the face of dozens of recruits the first time that they’d watched a real tank roll past them on the base.

Juri had seen plenty of heavy armaments slowly roll by. She’d even had the chance to fire a few of them. She had believed she was made of sterner stuff, but even her bearing began to break apart as Yuuka loudly counted the class to number twenty, and Nakano expelled a desperate breath that sounded somewhat like the number five.

The head coach slowly turned towards the third-grade class…and then she forgot herself, instead watching openly as Nakano’s massive heft throbbed, her belly leapt, her legs separated, and the woman made of sugar and piles of pale dough spread arms covered in more fat than Juri had in her entire body tried to make a point above the butterball’s strand of cherry red hair.

She hopped again, coming all of two centimeters from the floor. From this angle, Juri couldn’t tell if Nakano’s thighs were even capable of separating, but they certainly responded to being smashed together with such absolute force, just as her chest responded to her tiny hop with a slap that reminded Juri of practicing hits wearing boxing gloves.

Up, down. Spread, condensed. Juri watched in fascination.

But she only had half the picture.

From the front, the student body saw their assistant coaches side by side and, though each girl was similar in height, though each girl wore the same shirt and the same pants with the same winking dolphin stretched over their chest, and even though Ituski’s twin locks of voluminous red hair were much alike Yuuka’s pigtails, not a person in that room could truly compare them.

It was as if they were a completely separate species. Up, down, the noise and the pumps, the wheezes and thumps, the women on their right couldn’t be human, and that made the smaller girl seem almost alien as well. The way that their chests hopped, the way their hips bounced and their mouths moved, they were liked stuffed animals. Teddy bears, one of which had been underfed, the other having been far overfluffed and was now threatening to rip at the seams as each hop of fresh hell exposed more of her belly and tugged down her blue shorts.

Juri blinked several times before realizing that Yuuka had stopped counting. She loudly blew her whistle, and the group came to a stop. It took a few extra second for Itsuki to finish her last explosive puff, her thighs and her cankles wobbling beneath the final *THOMPF* from her stomach’s impact.

“Class leaders,” Juri said, hoping her voice didn’t sound as tight as she felt, “Retrieve your carts. The rest of you, if you need to use the bathroom or get some water, do so now. We’ll begin with today’s activity in three minutes.”

“Yes, Head Coach!” most of the class said.

A few of the class only seemed to notice they’d been momentarily dismissed after the others started moving. They began to hurriedly break off into their small groups or take their seats on the floor where they’d be reassembled, while a few quickly scampered off towards the bathrooms or the water fountains.

Yuuka stood where she’d finished breathing lightly with her hands on her waist. She looked slightly winded, which Juri expected from her lazy baby sister, but was otherwise fine.

Itsuki was holding a hand over her chest, flexing against her mountainous breast as if she could somehow feel her heartbeat through the absolute avalanche of fat that covered her center.

She was covered in sweat, her skin glowing an irritated pink in several placed that made Juri wonder if her fat had somehow stretched her skin further and caused the massive woman some amount of pain. Her bangs dripped with sweat, her pink cheeks glowing as she breathed in and out, and Juri fought the urge to offer the woman her chair.

She wondered if she should say anything to the woman, after all, Nakano hadn’t said anything in complaint and was still standing as straight as she seemed to be able to. She considered wheeling over to her to tell her she’d done a good job when she noticed a pair of tiny legs that were mostly hidden behind Itsuki’s bulk and she heard the third-grad leader whisper in her obscenely loud confidence, “That’ll do, pig.”

“G-go… kart… Sumei” Itsuki wheezed.

“Okay!”

Then the small girl scampered away after the two other leaders, and Juri slowly came to Nakano’s side.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Think… dying…” the creampuff huffed. “Other than that… Pretty okay…” she looked down and to the side at Juri and might have lifted her cheek in a slight grin. “It’s not the heaviest workout… I’ve had this week…”

Juri lifted an eyebrow and, whether it was through exhaustion or just due to the hyped sense of adrenaline that must have been swirling inside of Itsuki like the fat in her gut, the fat woman laughed.

“My boyfriend and I,” she said, wobbling from side to side and kicking out each of her legs, stretching. “It’s a lot harder than… jumping… a few times.”

Juri squinted in confusion at the young woman’s cheerful chubbiness. Then, her eyes went very wide. They looked directly at eye-level, where Itsuki’s muffining gut smothered the waistband of her shorts in totality, and then they grew wider.

“How can you even-” she began, then looked around and quickly tugged at Itsuki’s shirt. The woman, evidently unable to see past her own chest and shoulders, hadn’t noticed her tee slipping up and grew several shades brighter as she took over and adjusted herself. “S-sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I should not have said that.”

“I’m more just impressed that…” Juri began, then shook her head.

“Impressed by what? She didn’t even do half of what we were supposed to.”

Itsuki groaned, turning to acknowledge the frowning Yuuka. “I did… what I could,” she said, brushing a sweaty bang back from her face.

“Yeah, well, I hope you’re gonna try harder for the activity,” Yuuka said, nodding towards the returning class leaders. “I suck at these, and I don’t think Juri’s about to hop up and volunteer.”

Itsuki blinked at the other assistant, then turned towards the approaching leaders as they began to go up and down the rows handing out jump ropes.