“...And the way she’s all, like, super haughty but in episode fourteen when the protagonist is in trouble she totally goes out of her way to help, but then she’s like, “I’d never go out of my way for a commoner like you! Don’t misunderstand!” Oh, and did I mention the way she talks is like, totes cute? Like, for real for real.”

Marin’s eyes glittered as she gushed to Gojou in one of her usual lengthy diatribes about just how much she adored a particular character from an anime she liked. Although barely understanding what was going on, Gojou was taking close notes, as by now, he knew where this was going. Once Marin got fixated on a character she always wanted to cosplay them, and he was waiting patiently for her inevitable request. Today he was having the virtues of a character from Jeanne Academy, from what he had gathered, an anime about an ordinary girl who suddenly comes into an enormous inheritance, but to claim it must graduate from a prestigious all-girls academy for rich girls. Although Marin claimed to love the protagonist Maria as well, the character she was truly enraptured by was her haughty, egotistical rival, an extremely spoiled young heiress who constantly butted heads with the humble Maria, although Marin claimed that her egotistical nature only made her more endearing.

“You may have mentioned it.” Gojou said cautiously, still a little overwhelmed by her sheer enthusiasm, Marin having said it at least three times across her rant. He discreetly glanced at his watch, revealing that Marin had been explaining the virtues of this particular character for at least ten minutes after a request from her to come over to her house over summer break. The two had weeks to work with, and the decision over what would be her big cosplay to focus on had been a hot topic, but after a lot of thinking, it was clear that Marin had settled on this one.

“I know, right? Cuz it’s like, oh my god! I just wanna, like, hug them!” Marin squealed, nearly dancing up and down on the spot. “We’ve like, gotta do it! Gojou, we’re def doing her next!”

“Just one thing first. There’s one” Gojou asked, holding up his hand to ask for her patience, Marin cutely cocking her head. “You, um, never actually said what her name was…”

“Omigawd!” Marin’s hands flew to her mouth, her long, painted nails glittering. “I’m so sorry, Gojou! It’s Vivian! Vivian Marybeth, or Vivi for short! And I really wanna do her school uniform, just so you know! I’ll lend you my box set!”

“Alright, let’s take a look.” Gojou smiled, pulling out his phone and typing in the name, his smile freezing at the sight of the character who appeared. It wasn’t the elaborate uniform with its complicated, intricate design, nor her mess of incredibly long drill-shaped curls. No, it was something he couldn’t have predicted at all.

“What is it? You found her?” Marin asked innocently.

“No, I must have typed it wrong. How do you spell Vivian again?” Gojou tried to laugh it off, only for Marin to snatch his phone out of his hands.

“Let me take a look. Nope, that’s her!” Marin confirmed, a thin layer of sweat beginning to form on Gojou’s forehead.

“B-but…” Gojou stammered. He had been asked to do characters with unrealistic proportions before, but this…! “She’s… She’s…!”

“Pretty cute, right?” Marin smiled.

“She’s fat!” Gojou burst out, pointing accusingly at the screen and the drill-haired blonde before hm. A bulging gut, hips wide as a doorway, breasts bigger than her head (not much of a difference from most of Marin’s tastes, really), a massive second chin… Vivian wasn’t just fat, she was downright obese! Gojou didn’t have that much experience with anime, but he was pretty sure that fat girls like her weren’t usually main characters! She wasn’t even drawn in a cartoony, exaggerated way as fat side characters tended to be, she was clearly beautiful beneath the weight!

“Oh, did I forget to mention it?” Marin pressed a nail to her lip, appearing particularly airheaded today. “Oh, I forgot to mention that we’re doing the winter uniform, that’s the summer uniform.”

“You most certainly did! “ Gojou complained, then took a deep breath. Surely there was some logic behind Marin’s choice. “Um, does she lose weight at any point?”



“Nope!” Marin said cheerfully. “She actually gets fatter as the show goes on. She’s like, a big eater, you know? That’s totes relatable. There’s even, like, an episode where she tells Maria that she’s gonna teach her how to be a real lady, and, like, Maria imitates her and does whatever she says, and she gets super fat too! Which was super cute, but ‘cause it’s an anime she was back to normal next episode. In the manga though, it was like, an entire arc, I think the author’s editor had to force him to change her back…”

“You’re right!” Gojou gawked, ignoring her extended tangent as he saw the character’s appearance in the later episodes, obviously even chubbier, although befitting her wealthy character, her uniform was very finely tailored to comfortably fit her. “So how in the world are you going to cosplay her? You mentioned that some people like to cosplay fan-redesigns, right? So, are we doing a skinny Vivian?”

“Nope! I wanna be the proper Vivi!”

“Uh? How? You’re, you know, not overweight right now!”

“What do you mean right now?” Marin said sensitively, but let it slide in the face of his panicked apology. “Don’t worry, I know how we’ll make it work!”

“You mean like padding? Maybe? No, we couldn’t make a realistic figure based on that…” Gojou was already putting his mind to work on it when the doorbell rang for a delivery, Marin perking up and running to get it. A moment later, she returned with a large box, dropping it down in front of him.

“And here’s the ticket!” She said triumphantly, Gojou having a look of dismay as he realised what Marin had bought.

“A fat suit!?” He exclaimed, Marin smiling shamelessly. “How much did this cost!? You didn’t even ask me if I could pull off the costume or not!”

“Hey, it was on sale!” Marin defended her obvious impulse purchase.

“What are you even going to do with it after this cosplay?”

“I’ll figure it out!” Marin quite clearly hadn’t thought about it at all.

Once he had calmed down, Gojou had an obvious question to ask.

“So, uh, are you going to be posting the photoshoot when we’re done?” He asked. “I’m not sure that your followers will like this sort of thing."

“Whaaat? Come on, it’ll be hilarious. I’ll probably get way more followers because of it!” Marin said optimistically. “Come on Gojou, I always wanted to do Vivi!”



Gojou sighed, shaking his head at this ridiculous situation.



“Guess that’s that, then. Does this thing come with measurements?”

Marin gasped dramatically.

“Oh-em-gee Gojou, you’re the best!”

–

“Oh my god, it’s just like Vivi’s room! I’m like, really getting that rich girl vibe just being here, ya know? ” Marin squealed as the two entered the room they had rented for their photoshoot, a classically decorated bedroom with expensive furnishing that was designed to resemble a western-style mansion. jumping happily onto the four-poster bed, before getting right back up with a frown. “Wow, this is actually kind of uncomfortable, guess they cheaped out on the mattress. I was hoping I’d sink into it or something just like that one scene with Vivi!”

“I always wondered what it’d be like to live in a mansion.” Gojou said, feeling like he had stepped into another world, although it was really just an ordinary apartment from the outside. “Anyway, let’s hurry up and get your costume and makeup on, we only have this room for an hour.”



“No problem! I’m sure you can get my makeup on just like that.” Marin said confidently, although that wasn’t what Gojou was worried about.

“I’m just being safe because I don’t know how long it’s going to take for you to get ready in that fat suit. To be honest, I don’t even really know if the uniform fits properly.” Gojou admitted. “You did try it on first, right?”

“Um…” Marin’s expression was like that of a child who had been caught with their hand in the cookie jar. “This thing is like, actually

 hard to get on by myself, and I kinda wanted to wait and see how I looked once the whole costume was done, so… Sorry!”

“So we don’t even know if the costume fits!?” Gojou exclaimed, despair in his voice. “Forget the costume, this room was expensive, you know! We can’t afford a second shoot!”

“It’s fine, it’ll be fine!” Marin insisted. “Just let me get it on, alright? I’m sure you’ve done it perfectly! The immersion will be worth it!”

“At least I brought the sewing kit…” Gojou mumbled, turning away as Marin undressed, stripping off even her underwear. She wanted the purest experience, like she really was becoming another person… even if rather than feeling fat and fluffy, she just felt like she was wearing a padded suit.

“Okay, zip me up!” Marin said, turning with her hands on her suit’s hips once he was done. “How do I look?”



“Well… It’s a suit, alright.” Gojou scratched his chin, the suit utterly unconvincing when she was “naked” like this. The suit lacked nipples and the skin colour was off, but the general shape of her false-obesity was right for the character. The suit also stopped at her neck, which Gojou had been concerned about. There was a total disconnect between her slim, beautiful face and her bloated body, one that he’d have to take into account once the suit was on.

“Well yeah, it’s not like we’re taking photos of me like this.” Marin laughed. “This totally reminds me of this one sketch I saw on TV with a fake sumo suit.”

 “The effect should hold up once you’re dressed, other than your face.” Gojou looked at it critically. “I thought this would happen, so I added some extra padding around the collar that should push up your cheeks again and make you look a little chubbier. We can take photos from angles that emphasise that, and worst case scenario, we can ask Sajuna for help editing the photos. Morphing your face to have a second chin shouldn’t be too hard…”

“Let’s hurry up, I wanna see!” Marin said excitedly, beginning the arduous process of actually getting the costume on. Gojou helped slide on stockings, shoes, white gloves, a long skirt, and finally a blouse and the most intricate part of the set, the blazer itself, if it could be considered that. Although it resembled a uniform at a distance, looking at it closer revealed a mess of straps and bands that were all good and well in 2D, but made the costume extremely tight around her fake midsection as a result.

“I probably should have let this out a bit more, any tighter and this thing would have torn.” Gojou admitted as he finished fastening it, having gone based on the suit’s measurements without testing it while she was wearing it. “Just try not to strain too much, okay?”



Perhaps the easiest part as a result was doing her makeup, then placing on a heavy blonde wig with no less than four enormous drill-shaped curls, two on the side, two on the back, all hanging down past her huge fake breasts. It certainly gave her the stereotypical anime rich girl look, Gojou completing it by doing up her collar to give her slightly puffy cheeks.

“Oh my god, I look amazing!” Marin gasped as she looked at herself in the mirror. “It’s just like I gained, like, two hundred kilos!”

“It’s… certainly a look.” Gojou said unsteadily as he saw Marin’s usual energetic mannerisms at a size where she looked like she’d struggle to fit through doorways. Marin started giggling at her own reflection, snapping selfies from every angle.

“Oh my god, this is hilarious! I look like a total fatty in this thing! Like, for real! Being able to do something like this is the best!” Marin laughed. “Aah, I totes shoulda brought more stuff so we could have recreated my favourite Vivi scenes! I totally got so excited I forgot all about it! There’s like, this scene where Maria is hiding under her belly, and nobody can see her, it’s like, so funny! Oh, Gojou, can you run down to the convenience store? I was gonna do the scene where she has like, her whole bento sitting on her gut and doesn’t even need a table! And she’s like, “this is my noble privilege!” and stuff! But I like, got hungry and ate the one I brought by accident. Come on Gojou, we gotta do it!”



“We don’t have time for that!” Gojou protested. “Maybe when we get home, okay?”



“Fiiiiine.” Marin sighed. “Okay, let’s start over here next to the wardrobe. Once we’re done, we can do some shots on the bed…”



Gojou pulled up Marin’s expensive camera and was about to take his first shot, Marin striking a regal expression, but just before he could press the button, Marin’s composure broke and she let out a sudden gasp.

“What is it?” Gojou was concerned,

“Nothing, I just feel kinda funny.” Marin said breathily, feeling a strange tingling all over her body. “I think this thing is heavier than I thought it’d be. I’m feeling, like, super weighed down right now.”



“Do you need to sit down? We can do the bed first if you want.” He suggested, but Marin shook her head.

“No, I’m fine, I won’t have to wear it for long.” She seemed determined, but felt extremely strange. Her cosplay felt really tight, and it was really digging into her neck. It was supposed to do that a bit to emphasise her cheeks, but she was certain it hadn’t been this uncomfortable a minute ago.

“If you say so.” Gojou decided to respect her wishes and put his concerns aside long enough to get the shoot done.

“Woah, these look even better than I thought!” Marin grinned as she scrolled through the photos after the initial round was done. “Ooh, this one’s cute. Gojou, your collar thing is like magic! I don’t think we’re gonna have to edit these at all!”

“Now that I look at it, it’s more convincing than I thought.” Gojou glanced over at Marin, who all of a sudden really did look like she had broad, soft cheeks, and a wobbling second chin. A bit too much, really. Could a collar really do all of that on its own?

“And the gloves were a nice touch!” Marin commented on the poses where she had her hands held up. “That’s Gojou for you, as authentic as ever! This totally matches the shots in the manga where her hands are kinda big and soft!”

“Uh, I suppose so.” Gojou was a little confused, having bought gloves sized for Marin’s normal hands. Perhaps it was just a placebo effect?

“Oof!” Marin grunted as she planted herself down, feeling like she really did have a huge, fat ass and a bulging belly ready to pop out of her blouse. It was even deforming properly, just as if she really did weigh over three hundred kilos and had a gut to match, one huge fatty wave of flab that would have hung down past her waist had it been unrestrained. “This thing really squishes realistically. I might need some help standing up, actually…”

Gojou took the photos, but again felt like something was off. Marin’s cosplay was too authentic, too realistic. She didn’t look like a petite girl wearing a fat suit, she looked like she really was fat! Fat, and ready to burst out of his carefully crafted costume. He could see the strap straining, wincing every time she posed from her seated position. It was more than he could bear when they finished and she was about to stand up, the craftsman in him knowing unconsciously that she was about to go past the point of no return.

“Urgh, I can’t breathe in this thing…” Marin said, looking uncharacteristically uncomfortable. “Fat suits are no joke. Okay, just give me a second to get up, and we’ll-”

“Ah! Marin, no! Not like that-” He cried as she strained to stand up, Marin barely having time to give him a look of confusion before her cosplay went through a cataclysmic failure, her position thrusting her gut forward and straining it just a little too hard. The strap around her belly snapped, her gut instantly lurching outwards, a button flying off and smacking Gojou right in the forward. With her belly bursting outwards it caused a cascade reaction, each of the buttons on her blouse popping off while the blazer could no longer close properly, the buttons around her chest just barely hanging on. Marin froze in place, then let out a sigh as it seemed to have stopped, only for the exhale to push her breasts too fat, and three buttons snapped all at once, her breasts flopping out onto her shelf of a belly in one smooth, embarrassing motion.

Marin was dazed for a moment, then squealed, Gojou letting out a cry of despair as weeks of hard work were ruined in an instant. The costume was ruined and Marin was downright indecent, her huge, puffy nipples on full display while her blubbery, pale gut sagged downwards. Marin tried to pull the blazer around her, but only ripped more of it in the attempt. She lurched to her feet, another snapping sound heard as her skirt’s waistband gave out, slipping to the floor.

Gojou collapsed to his knees while Marin went red as a beet, then began to babble out a wild apology as she waddled over to him. Gojou’s eyes nearly bulged out of his head as he saw her bare breasts, totally realistic despite the fact that it was supposed to be a fat suit. Wait, did it have nipples before in the first place? Large and chunky ones too, with thick areolae. Marin’s second chin wobbled as she undid the last remaining button on her blouse, trying to avoid causing even more damage, but wasn’t her face supposed to still look skinny once the push-up collar was gone?

“Oh my god, Gojou, I’m so sorry! This is all my fault, I should have been more careful, I should have tried, the suit on first, I should have-”

“M-M-M-M-Marin!” Gojou stuttered around, slapping his hands over his eyes after staring at her puffy nipples, an instinctual reaction whether his conscious brain had decided they were real or not.

“What, this?” Marin laughed incredulously cupping her breasts. “Come on Gojou, it’s just the suit! It’s… huh? Were those always there?”



Marin trailed off as she squeezed her breasts, fat spilling between her fingers, able to quite clearly feel her sensitive nipples get stimulated from the sensation.

“That’s weird… Anyway, let’s get this suit off of me already! I don’t feel right, I feel really weird and heavy.” Marin looked concerned, unsure of how to vocalise the way she was feeling. Heavy and bulky and cumbersome, like it was difficult to walk, like her arms were squashing against her body when she moved them thanks to her enormous flabby biceps, like her hips shook and her belly burst with each step as she lumbered over to the bed and bent over, her hands on the covers. She felt…

“Uh, sure!” Gojou hurried, but his mouth fell agape as he looked at her back. “...huh? What is this?”

“Aah!” Marin yelped as Gojou began to sink his hands into her soft back. “What do you think you’re doing back there, Gojou!?”

“Looking for the zipper!” He said, panic in his voice. “It’s, it’s gone!”



“What do you mean gone!?” Marin almost shouted. “It’s like the size of your thumb, you can’t miss it!”



"Look for yourself!” Gojou shouted back, Marin lumbering over to the mirror and turning herself around, her eyes widening as she too realised that it had totally vanished. In fact, her whole suit looked different!

It was now her usual skin tone, and didn’t look like cheap synthetic material at all. There were no seams for her hands or her neck, and rather than merely a cheap approximation, the fat sagged realistically, with many folds, love handles, and huge, tree-trunk-like thighs that Marin felt she’d struggle just to wrap her arms around. Bulky, awkward arms, heavy, sagging breasts bigger than her head that had none of her usual perkiness thanks to their own sheer weight, and an utterly obese face inches wider than she was used to, Marin looking completely different with entire pounds of pure fat puffing up her cheeks and giving her a broad second chin. In that moment, a small part of Marin’s mind wished that her costume hadn’t detonated, as she really was the spitting image of Vivian. An even smaller part of her brain bubbled that this was just like that one scene in volume six where she outgrew her clothes, insisted on having just one more slice of cake, and they practically exploded off of her! The overwhelming majority of her brain, however, was panicking.



Marin went pale, feeling up her body with her hands, her fat squishing and rolling around her as she explored her sagging love handles, her heavy breasts, her soft skin. Gojou was transfixed as her chubby palms sunk into her body’s unmistakably real fat.

“Uh, Gojou?” She said, an awkward half-smile of pure panic frozen on her face. “It’s gone.”



“The zipper?” He said weakly as the two were confronted with the reality of the situation.

“The suit! It’s gone! I’m

“What do you mean,

” Gojou almost shouted back, unable to process what had just happened. “You’re skinny! That’s objectively true based on your measurements!”



“Then what the heck do you call all this!?” Marin screeched, cupping her breasts while her vision began to spin. “No matter how you look at it I’m a total grade-A fatass! It’s like, it’s like I just absorbed the whole suit and it turned

 somehow!”

“That’s ridiculous!” Gojou grabbed her by the shoulders and began to shake her, her entire body wobbling like jelly as even her shoulder had enough softness for his hands to sink into. “You can’t just put on three hundred kilos in ten seconds! There’s no way all of

 is real!”



“Then what is it!?” Marin demanded.

“It’s, uh, a hallucination!” Gojou suggested feverishly. “Your cosplay was so good that we’re just hallucinating! We just think you turned into the fattest woman I’ve ever seen! That’s amazing, Marin! You’re such a good cosplayer you can cause hallucinations!”

:”Like hell we’re hallucinating! This is serious, Gojou!” Marin shouted, snatching his hands and holding them in an iron grip, forcing them to play with her belly, mashing them around. “Does this

 like a hallucination? Huh?

”

“Alright, alright, I get it! I get it!” Gojou broke free and stumbled back onto the bed. “So it’s real! But, but how?”



“How should I know!?” Marin moaned, her head in her hands and her wig slumping and falling off. “Maybe the suit was haunted?”



“That’s absurd, ghosts aren’t real. I think. And why would one make you fat, anyway?” Gojou scoffed, with zero ground to stand on.

“Okay, so it was a magical fat suit then!” Marin said, sounding extremely frustrated, then perked up. “Oh my god Gojou,

That’s awesome!

“You’re right!” Gojou exclaimed. “There’s no other explanation! It’s magic! Real magic!”

The two were silent for a minute. As it turned out, reaching a conclusion on how it happened didn’t actually get them any closer to fixing it.

“This isn’t really the way I wanted to find out that magic is real.” Gojou admitted.

“Me neither.” Marin agreed, the two somewhat brought back down to earth by their disappointment. “So… now what?”



“Um… We go home and try to find a solution, I guess.” Gojou said awkwardly. He felt like had had been drained of all of his energy, and left to deal with the fact that Marin, the most beautiful girl he knew and the dearest person to him after family, or perhaps even before it, had gone from a slim but curvy knockout to a lumbering whale, a three hundred kilo or more butterball thrice as wide as when she walked into the room, currently doing her best to cover her chest as she flushed and realised that she was still functionally naked.

“Go home how? I don’t have anything that’ll fit!” Marin moaned. Needing more time than she had to come to terms with her new reality, her brain focused instead on short-term problems, like the fact that they had twenty or so minutes left before they had to leave the room, and after all the money she had burnt on that cursed fat suit and the fact that she was going to have to replace her entire wardrobe, she didn’t have the money to spare pleading for more time.

“You’re right! What’re we going to do?” Gojou began to panic, wracking his brains for a solution

“Maybe we can reuse the cosplay?” Marin suggested, but when the two inspected the damage, it was clear that it was beyond repair. Gojou simply didn’t have the materials to make it decent, at best being able to stitch the skirt together.

“Agh, it’s no use, there’s no way I can modify this into something wearable in time!” Gojou ran his hands through his hair, trying to think of what else he could possibly use. Struck with inspiration, he dashed over to the wardrobe, flinging it open and smiling as he saw a spare bedsheet.

“If anybody asks, we didn’t touch it.” He warned Marin, whipping out his scissors and slicing it up as quickly as possible. Although it was incredibly bare bones, he soon was able to put together a makeshift dress for Marin, a not particularly attractive one, but one that had a hole for her head and arms, and would do. Marin slipped it on, looking miserable as it hung over her blubbery gut and melon-like breasts. She didn’t usually wear dresses that went down past her knees, but right now she was content to cover as much of her body as possible. She was able to just barely squeeze her bloated feet into her shoes, although it was a painful fit just intended to get her home, and with only a couple of minutes left, the two were somewhat ready to go, Gojou packing up the costume and her now ill-fitting casual clothes.

“Well, it’ll get you home.” He consoled her. “Let’s leave the makeup on for now. It might, uh, make you harder to recognise.”



“I don’t think I’m going to have to worry about anybody recognising me.” Marin said, looking ready to cry as he held her hand and led her out of the apartment. But even that was an embarrassment for Marin, who went first, and stopped halfway.

“Um, Gojou?” Marin said with a quivering voice as her hips were lodged firmly in the doorframe. “I’m stuck?”

“Huh?” Gojou was struck dumb when he realised that Marin had managed to get her hips halfway before stopping, and was currently wriggling and trying to shove herself out. He hesitated for a moment, then placed his hands on her waist, grabbing her muffin top and causing Marin to let out a particularly girly sound.

“Try to twist a little!” He advised, then shoved forward, Marin glad that he couldn’t see her blush as his groin pressed into her blubbery ass, straining for a second before she popped free. Marin stumbled forward, trying to turn it into a dash for the elevator to burn off her sheer embarrassment, although she instantly ran out of energy and slowed back to a walk. Walking was hard enough as it was, and lifting her legs high enough to run was simply out of the question. They were silent in the elevator, Gojou pushed into a corner as Marin dominated the space within.

“Are you okay?” Gojou asked a while later, still taking her hand as she nearly doubled over while they waited for the train, huffing and puffing just from walking to the station.



“Totally fine.” She said, but Marin was huffing and puffing from exhaustion just walking to the station. She glanced around, acutely aware of the stares she was getting. Somebody even half her weight would be an unusual sight, and a truly obese girl like her was doomed to the spotlight. “You know, I usually like it when everybody wants to look at me, but this is a little much…”

She laughed weakly as the train arrived, Gojou making sure that she was the first to get on and the first to get a seat. Marin collapsed with a sigh of relief onto her seat, or as it turned out, three seats, as her ass and hips spilled out. Fortunately there weren’t many who wanted to sit near her, leaving Gojou awkwardly gently pressed against her flab, wishing he could do something, anything to help her.

“The dress is more than enough.” Marin whispered with a smile, able to easily tell what he was thinking through his expression. Even now Gojou was overwhelmed, but less by her looks and more by the reality of her sheer size and what it brought with it. Even a fatty, Gojou had realised, Marin was still as cute as ever. And although their situation was terribly embarrassing, there remained a certain warmth that he always felt sitting next to her.

Thankfully, Marin’s apartment wasn’t too far away from the station, and after a short walk she rushed inside, nearly slamming the door behind her after entering while turned to the side to avoid another mishap. The door opened slightly, Marin’s fat face popping out in the one crack she left, and even that little glimpse was enough to expose her obesity. There was no way for Marin to hide how fat she was short of not showing herself at all, and that was exactly what she intended to do: to hide herself away in her apartment until a solution could be found..

“We’re gonna fix this, okay? We’ve still got a few weeks before we go back to school, and I’m gonna spend every second of it finding out how to undo this!” Marin insisted.



“I’ll be doing the same.” Gojou said, trying to look positive. “Between the two of us, we’ll probably have it done by the end of the week!”

Somehow, Gojou knew as his smile wavered, that it probably wasn’t going to be that easy…

–

“Not going to be that easy” had turned to be a grave understatement, Gojou would soon discover, as he dropped everything to spend his days scouring the internet for any scrap of information that could lead to a cure for magically induced obesity. Days turned into weeks with no progress, their daily Line strategy meetings going from optimistic progress reports to shooting back and forth “still nothing” every couple of days. Eventually, in the final week before the new school term started, Marin stopped posting entirely. The night before the first day of school, Gojou rubbed his bleary, overworked eyes and was hit with the realisation that he had just spent three weeks “searching” and had amounted to little more than spending way too much time on crackpot occult websites, conspiracy theorist imageboards, and social media accounts for housewives who believed in healing crystals, chakras, and astrology. There were simply no leads for the extremely specific scenario of a cursed fat suit, no matter how generously he phrased it, and he was starting to believe that it might be more productive to start reading weight loss blogs than anything else.

He’d returned to school without hearing a single word from Marin, who he also hadn’t seen in person since the incident, and had decided in return to respect her space and talk to her when she was ready. That was what he said, but he was also terrified of what might happen to their relationship after this, and if he did anything wrong, and so it was easier for him to not address the problem at all. He almost dreaded seeing her for the first time, only to find that Marin’s absence from his life continued at school. For the first few weeks Marin didn’t come to school once, Gojou denying any knowledge of the reason why when her friends came to him demanding answers. Even Sajuna Inui contacted him wanting to know what was going on and why she had been absent from her usual social media for so long, but all he could do was feign ignorance.

“She’s probably not going to come today either…” Gojou mumbled into his desk, finding himself alone as usual without Marin there to break him out of his antisocial habits. But as if he had finally stumbled upon a magic incantation, he overheard bewildered chatter coming from the hallway, and his jaw dropped as he looked up just in time to find out what was going on. Marin! It was Marin, at last! Everything about her was totally unchanged from her usual daily outfit, just like the last time she had walked into class. The short skirt, the dyed hair, her loose shirt was there, same as it ever was… except for the fact that the person wearing it was now morbidly obese. Marin’s choker sunk into her bloated neck, her so-called loose shirt was pushed tight by her sheer bulk and flesh bulging out in every direction, and her ass was too big for such an inadequate skirt to cover properly, a hint of her fat cheeks hanging out from underneath, beknownst to her or not.

The class was, understandably, shocked. Gojou saw students rubbing their eyes, unable to believe what they saw, while girls quietly jeered in the back and boys bemoaned the loss of their eyecandy. Just how had she managed to bloat herself this badly in the short time since they last saw her?

“Um…” He began, only for Marin to walk right past him like he wasn’t even there. He froze, slumped slightly, then returned to his desk, Marin not so much as giving him a sideways glance as she began to chat with her gobsmacked friends. That made sense, that she didn’t want to talk to him after that. It must have been hard enough to force herself to go to school without him making it worse. If anybody could bounce back from this it was Marin, and he’d only get in the way, and so Gojou began to blend into the background, the class too distracted by their idol turning into more of a fertility idol since they last saw her.

“Isn’t that your dream girlfriend, bro?” He heard one boy poke his friend in the ribs, the other immediately rushing to defend himself.

“No way, I’d never be into a tub of lard like that!” He insisted, eager to distance himself. “Who’d want a girl who’d get even half, no, a tenth that fat? She was probably only good for her looks anyway, you know how gyarus are. I’m not rich enough for her to stick with me.”

“Didn’t she say she was a model? No way in hell that was true, they’d never let her get this bad.” Another student said, his face curled in distaste at the sight of her. “I bet she was only saying that to explain where her money came from.”



“She had compensated dating written all over her. Bet she got dropped by her sugar daddy and cried herself into a tub of ice cream.” Another speculated wildly, Marin’s weight turning into a game for them. “That or she’s into his weird fetishes.”

Their cruel words weren’t exactly quiet, but although Marin was clearly within earshot, she didn’t seem to react at all, acting as though it were an average school day back when she didn’t weigh more than all of her friends put together, cheerfully arriving at her desk where her curious and confused friends were gathered round.

“Sorry to keep you waiting!” Marin declared, casually leaning over her desk, her gut sagging onto it and pressing against the wood.

“Girl, what the hell happened to you over summer break?” her friend Nowa asked incredulously, her eyes nearly bulging out of her skull at the sight of Marin’s weight. “That can’t all be real, can it? If you’re pranking us right now, it’s okay, you got us, you can stop now.”

“Oh, you’d better believe it.” Marin giggled, standing up and taking Nowa’s reluctant hands and placing them onto her belly.

“Geez, there’s no way this is just a bunch of pillows or something.” Nowa murmured, almost entranced as she played with her belly until she realised that she had been doing so for almost twenty seconds, blushing and darting backwards. “Okay, but still, what the hell? I know your diet sucks, but seriously, Marin, I didn’t think it was this bad! And you missed school too! I thought something seriously bad happened to you, you know! I guess this counts as seriously bad…”

“Oh, you know, it’s a unique, well, semi-unique condition, or like, a bug! You know, a virus, a rare disease!” Marin rattled off enough contradictory evidence to make a medical student have an aneurysm, her friends simply nodding dumbly. “I’m over it now, but for a really long time I had like, no metabolism! So I’ve been like, stuck in bed for aaaages, and maybe because of it I put on a little weight. Oh, and I had to wait a while for a uniform my size to arrive.”

Just saying it was magic would have been more believable, Gojou thought with his head in his hands, but at least she seemed to have her spirits up.

“There's nothing little about this, Marin.” Nowa raised an eyebrow. “

“Come on, it’s not that bad.” Marin claimed, nearly breaking her chair as she sat down, her rear end spilling over the sides of her chair, past her desk, and nearly bumped into the students adjacent to her. “I’m just a little heavy, I’ll bounce back! It’s no problem at all!”

Marin continued to insist that everything was fine, seemingly oblivious to all of the disparaging comments around her, and her social stock plummeting through the floor. Gojou wrote it off as simply Marin’s amazing personality taking it in stride, although he remained secretly concerned, but Nowa, Marin’s closest friend in her girl gang, knew that Marin wasn’t being open about her feelings. When Marin was insulted she challenged whoever said it, and normally anybody who laughed about her weight would have had her stomp over and give them an earful. Yet Marin let it all bounce off like it wasn’t there, and the longer the day went on, the more it bothered Nowa.

“Marin? I need you for a minute.” Nowa called her at the end of the day after the bell rang, luring her into an empty hallway before pinning her against a wall, her own body pressed against her belly in her attempt to cut off escape routes. The tiny girl was suddenly acutely aware that Marin could squash her like a bug if she wanted, but was determined to not let her go.

“What’s on your mind?” Nowa asked plainly, Marin’s smile faltering a little. “You can drop the act now.”



“What act?” Marin held out. “Come on, you don’t think I’m going to fall to pieces just ‘cause I got fat, right? I couldn’t help it, you heard what the doctor said, I mean, what I said the doctor said! And it’s not that bad anyway, you get used to it.”

“Look Marin, I don’t really care how or why you got this fat. Frankly, I’m impressed by it.” Nowa sighed. “But you freak out every time your eating habits catch up with you even a little, and there is no way you got over it in just a few weeks. Now spill it!”

“I keep telling you, things… aren’t going so great.” Marin’s voice cracked a little as she admitted the truth. “I mean, they shouldn’t be, right? I’m like a total whale, of course everybody’s gonna think I’m ugly now.”

“I don’t think you’re ugly, Marin.” Nowa said decisively. “If anybody’s gonna be able to pull off that size, it’s you.”

“Thanks, that really matters a lot.” Marin said, looking a little teary-eyed, hoping her makeup wouldn’t start to run. “But my agency dropped me the second they found out, they were really angry at me, even after I explained that it wasn’t my fault… I’m actually really lucky, they said I can come back if I ever lose the whole thing and don’t have any stretch marks, how crazy is that? But right now, I’m too fat to even do nail modeling. Hands get chubbier than you’d think, huh?”

Marin held up her bloated hands, her usual long, painted nails on the ends of sausage-like fingers, then continued.

“Even if I don’t think I look

 bad, being fat isn’t as easy as I thought it’d be. I’ve got like, mad respect  for Vivi now for making it look so easy.”

“Vivi?” Nowa asked.

“Uh, never mind.” Marin for once realised that now was not the time. “What I mean is, I’m so big I have to always watch where I’m going, I’m slow, I get super tired super fast, my whole wardrobe’s kaput and I can’t wear anything fashionable at all even if I go out, and to be honest, it’s super embarrassing just being here. But that’s not the worst part!”

Marin’s lip wobbled more than her jiggling body.

“The worst part is that I can’t cosplay with Gojou anymore!” Marin finally let out her tears, Nowa taken slightly back.

“Seriously? That’s the part that gets you?” Nowa sighed. “Geez, that Gojou had better be a hell of a guy.”

“Now that I’ve lost my job, I can’t afford costumes anymore.” Marin blubbered, more concerned with that than the actual loss of her career. “Makeup, wigs, cameras, it’s not cheap, ya know? And it’s probably even more expensive now that there’s more of me! And there’s no way Gojou’s gonna want to help me cosplay now that I'm like this!"

“I can’t help you with your boyfriend issues, but I can help you with a diet if you want.” Nowa consoled her, Marin’s tears suddenly drying up.

“Boyfriend? Ehehee, do we really look like that? Aww, no way!” Marin giggled, instantly going lovey dovey.

“Hey, Marin! Earth to Marin!” Nowa waved her hand in front of her face to snap her out of it, and Marin cleared her throat.

“Even if I start dieting now, it’ll take like a million years just to go from gigantic to huge!” Marin complained. “I may as well not bother!”

“You just don’t want to go on a diet.” Nowa pointed out. “Look, you-”

The two were interrupted as Marin's phone went off, Marin's eyes widening as she looked at the caller ID.

“Oh-em-gee, it’s Gojou!” Marin whispered urgently. “What do I do? I’ve been totally ghosting him for weeks!”

“You’ve been what!? Answer him then, moron!” Nowa urged, Marin visibly squirming and hovering her finger over the hang-up icon.

“But I don’t know what to say!” Marin complained, only for Nowa to snatch the phone out of her hands and answer the call, shoving it into her ear. Marin listened carefully for a moment before Nowa heard him hang up.

“I’ve gotta go!” Marin said, grabbing her phone and charging down the hallway like a battering ram. “Gojou says he wants me to come over to his house!”

“Go get ‘em, girl!” Nowa called after her. At this rate, she might need to coordinate some kind of plan with Gojou directly to keep her on the straight and narrow if this diet got off the ground…

–

A short time later, Gojou’s doorbell rang, him almost instantly flinging the door open after waiting anxiously for her to arrive. He was greeted with the sight of a doubled over Marin with her hands on her knees, gasping for air and drenched in sweat, almost enough to see her bra through her thin, stretched top.

“D-did you run the whole way here!?” Gojou exclaimed, his complicated emotions of finally getting face to face with her . “I know I told you I had something to show you, but you didn’t have to push yourself so hard!”

“It’s… fine…!” Marin coughed, steadying herself. “Actually, I think I’m gonna pass out, oh my god… But that’s not the important part! The important thing is… Okay, seriously, I’m gonna die, this sucks…!”

“Just come inside already, I’ll get you some water!” Gojou said, tugging the exhausted blonde in, Marin kicking off her shoes and flopping onto her own pillowy breasts and belly on his bedroom’s tatami mat.

“Gojou, you’re the best!” She cried appreciatively as he handed her a glass of water, turning over until she was belly-up like a beached whale then downing the glass in one shot, gasping for breath then forcing herself upright with great difficulty. “But that’s not what I meant to… okay, maybe it is what I meant to say, but I meant in a different way!”

“Just calm down and take your time.” Gojou advised, just happy to be speaking to her again.



“Okay, I’m good now.” Marin finally recovered, letting out a sigh of relief as she unbuttoned the bottom of her blouse and let her tightly packed belly flop out. “And I’m

 good now, this thing was killing me the whole time I was at school.”

Marin turned and looked him right in the eye.

“Gojou, I’m really sorry for not talking to you and not replying to your texts and stuff!” She bowed her head after saying it. “I just felt like, I got fat, and I lost my job as a model, and we can’t cosplay anymore, and so, it’s like…”

“I had guessed you were concerned about that.” Gojou smiled with relief. To be honest he had a lot of theories, but the most rational part of this brain had come up with this one. Marin’s texts had dried up shortly after a message saying that she had been kicked out of her modeling agency, and it was one of the primary reasons why he had wanted to not get too close and upset her. “But I didn’t know you weren’t going to cosplay anymore.”

“It’s not like I don’t wanna.” Marin pouted. “But we’ve got no money and no costume, and I can’t ask you to pay for everything. We don’t even have the Vivi costume after my fat ass ruined it.”

“Well, that’s the thing.” Gojou said, looking very pleased with himself as he got to his feet and opened his wardrobe, Marin letting out a gasp as he produced Vivian's uniform, completely repaired and completely ready to wear.

“You didn’t really get to wear it properly once your body changed, did you? Most of the costume was still intact, plus most of the accessories. I had to replace the buttons and straps and let it out a bit, but I think it should fit you now.” Gojou explained with a smile. “Maybe you can’t cosplay characters like Shizuku-tan right now, but I’m sure you can make the best Vivian cosplay anybody’s ever done!”

“Omigod!” Marin squealed in delight, not at the costume itself, but that even though she hadn’t spoken to him,even though she had practically pushed him away, even though she hadn’t said anything, he had assumed that she would still want to cosplay, and that their relationship might still continue the way it always had. “Gojou, you’re amazing! The bestest ever!”

Marin looked around the room, noticing that all of his usual tools for creating outfits were scattered around. She also noticed a notebook with some elaborate costume notes on it, but they didn’t appear to be for Vivian.

“What’re these for, Gojou?” She asked, noticing that the sketch had a distinctly wide figure.

“Oh, I was looking into other characters around Vivian’s weight. I thought they might be a good compromise until we can find a cure or start a diet.” He smiled, having done quite a bit of research on it since she failed to come to school. “That one’s from another manga that the author of Jeanne Academy made, in fact. I got a bit nervous and drew up plans for another five characters…”

Marin was speechless, covering her mouth with her hands. This was why she super totally wuved Gojou, for real for real! Did he have any idea how perfect he was? Seriously, she felt like the police were going to come around and arrest him for being too good for her!

“Okay, but how are we going to afford these?” Marin asked, forcing herself to calm down.

“Well, up until now we’ve been using premium materials, so I was doing research on some lower-budget cosplays that you’ve shown me before. Plus, we have some leftover materials from previous projects.” Gojou explained. “It won’t be quite the same level as Vivian’s uniform, but I think we can do any of these at a quarter of the cost! And it’s just until you get back in shape, anyway!”

“Then let’s do it!” Marin said, her eyes glittering with enthusiasm. “Gojou, get the camera, let's do it right now!"

“You should probably take a shower first.” Gojou advised, Marin sniffing her arm, her nose wrinkling as she realised just how sweat-soaked she was.

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.” She giggled, starting to undress.

“Oh, but you try it on, let me double check your measurements again, seeing as you’re getting undressed anyway.” Gojou mentioned, picking up the measuring tape, specifically his longest one.

He carefully wrapped it first around Marin’s thigh, privately noting that her thigh measurement was larger than her entire hip measurement than before, pulling the tape tight and watching as it pinched into her soft skin like the end of a stocking. However, rather than the nice round number he expected, Marin’s thigh went right past the couple of centimetres he expected it to land between, several inches larger than predicted! He quickly measured her waist, a little unsure of how to handle it when she had such a large fold of fat drooping down and getting in his way, but that too was absolutely larger!

“Hang on, this can’t be right.” Gojou muttered. “Your current weight is based on the fat suit, and even with a more realistic distribution of fat, this can’t be right. If I’m right, then that means you’re too big, the uniform won’t fit at all! Marin, you haven’t been overeating again, have you?”



Marin’s mouth opened, then closed, then opened again, with one of the most guilty expressions on her face that Gojou had ever seen, sweat pouring down her forehead again under his judging gaze.

“I just figured that we were gonna solve my weight problem with magic, you know?” She explained with a nervous laugh. “So, like, it didn’t matter how I ate because it was all gonna go away at once, right? It’s okay to stress-eat a little, right? Right? Hey, Gojou, don’t give me that look! Seriously!”