Tomochan Preg/Gain - Maximum Embarrassment

“It all started with a craving for sweet bean cakes,” Akemi announced, eyes twinkling. “I knew I was pregnant when I ate a whole dozen of them in one sitting! And that was just the beginning. After that, I was unstoppable.”

Tomo slapped both hands over her face. “I don’t need to hear this,” she groaned. Peeking between her fingers, she saw her mom was on a roll and nothing could stop her now.

“At first I was just getting a little chubby around the edges,” Akemi continued cheerfully. “But you, my dear, kept growing and growing. By my second trimester, I was as round as a beach ball!” She spread her arms in a wide circle to illustrate.

Tomo’s mouth dropped open. Beach ball?! She pictured her mom literally shaped like a giant ball and quickly shook the image out of her head. “Too much information, Mom!” she wailed, face burning.

Akemi just laughed. “Too much? Nonsense! I haven’t even gotten to the best parts.” She gave a proud grin. “By month seven, I’d already passed 300 pounds.”

Tomo almost fell off the sofa. “3-300 p-pounds?!” she squeaked. It was nearly impossible to imagine her fit, athletic mother ever weighing that much.

“300 was just the beginning,” Akemi said with a wink. “Your poor father even had to start reinforcing the furniture around the house around that time!”

“Reinforcing… the furniture?” Tomo echoed weakly. She imagined her dad nervously propping up chairs whenever Mom wanted to sit down and had to bury her face in her hands.

“Yep!” Akemi chirped. “I broke two dining chairs just by plopping down – crack!” She clapped her hands loudly, making Tomo jump. “After that, your dad brought home the sturdiest chair he could find (probably meant for sumo wrestlers). Even that one creaked every time I sat!”

Tomo let out a helpless whine from behind her hands. “Mom, I’m begging you…” she pleaded. But Akemi was nowhere near finished.

“Oh, and clothes!” Akemi barreled on. “By month eight, none of my clothes fit – not even the biggest maternity sizes. I had to wear your father’s old training gi for a while. I looked like a blimp trying to do karate!” She puffed out her cheeks and mimed a slow karate chop, chuckling.

Tomo frantically waved her hands. “Mooom, stop! No demonstrations needed!” she yelped, horrified that her mother was actually acting it out. Her embarrassment was through the roof.

Akemi giggled and relaxed back in her seat. “Alright, alright,” she said, still grinning. “But you should have seen me, sweetie. I had to waddle everywhere.” She emphasized “waddle” and even did a little penguin-like shimmy in her chair. “I was like a penguin who’d swallowed a watermelon whole!”

Despite herself, Tomo let out a tiny strangled laugh at that image before slapping her hand over her mouth. Her face was practically glowing red. She couldn’t believe she was actually laughing at this.

Encouraged, Akemi went on. “I was so big I took up this entire couch all by myself,” she said, patting the sofa. “If I sat in the middle, there was no room for anyone else!”

Tomo peeked out from behind her fingers at the sofa, imagining her mom’s girth filling it from end to end. She simultaneously wanted to giggle and cry. “I-I can’t… This is so embarrassing,” she mumbled, shrinking behind a throw pillow.

“And that’s not all!” Akemi added, holding up one finger. “One day I even got stuck in a doorway at the dojo. True story! Your father nearly had to butter the doorframe to get me out.” She burst into laughter at the memory.

Tomo’s jaw dropped in disbelief. Stuck in a doorway? She wasn’t sure whether to faint or run away. “I did not need to know that…” she whimpered, her voice muffled by the pillow she was hiding behind.

Akemi wiped a tear of laughter from her eye. “Ah, those were the days,” she sighed, then brightened proudly. “By the final month, I weighed well over 400 pounds.”

Tomo felt her soul nearly leave her body. Over 400…? Her brain short-circuited trying to process that number. She could practically hear a dramatic gong sound effect in her head as her mom revealed the figure.

Akemi leaned in, eyes shining. “In fact, the bathroom scale couldn’t even measure me at the end – it just blinked ERROR!” She clapped, delighted at her own tale. “Can you imagine? The scale gave up on me!”

Tomo was utterly defeated. She slid down the couch, using the pillow to cover her red face. “This is torture…” came her muffled moan.

Akemi chuckled and gently pulled the pillow away to see her daughter’s thoroughly embarrassed face. With a warm smile, she patted Tomo’s head. “And you know what? I’d do it all again for you, my sweet girl,” she said lovingly. “All that weight and all those struggles were worth it to have you.”

Tomo’s heart did a flip-flop of guilty affection, even as she remained mortified. “Moooom… you’re so embarrassing,” she mumbled, pouting, which only made Akemi laugh fondly.

“Um… Did I come at a bad time?” a familiar voice interrupted timidly from the doorway.

Tomo’s spine went rigid. No. It can’t be… Slowly, she turned her head toward the voice, dread pooling in her stomach.

There stood Junichiro Kubota – Jun – hovering in the doorway, one foot inside the room, his face almost as red as Tomo’s. It looked like he’d walked in on the tail-end of Akemi’s outrageous story.

For a moment, the room was dead silent. Tomo and Jun locked eyes, both wide-eyed and blushing furiously. Two statues carved out of pure embarrassment.

Tomo opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She was positive steam might actually shoot from her ears. Jun looked equally stunned, unsure if he should run away or pretend to be invisible.

Akemi, however, was perfectly cheerful. “Oh, hi Jun! Perfect timing!” she chirped, waving at him like nothing was amiss. “I was just telling Tomo about how I became the roundest mom in town when I was pregnant with her.” She said it with pride, as if it were the most fun fact in the world.

Tomo’s soul practically left her body. “MOOOOM!!” she wailed, her protest coming out as an embarrassed squeak. She clutched the pillow to her chest as if it could somehow shield her from pure mortification. If her face got any hotter, she might actually burst into flames.

Jun’s mouth opened and closed, but he couldn’t seem to find any words. “I-I… uh… I didn’t hear much, I just got here!” he managed to stammer, eyes darting anywhere but at Tomo or her mother.

And then… silence. A heavy, awkward silence fell over the living room as the three of them stood in a triangle of complete mortification. Tomo and Jun exchanged a single panicked glance, both red as tomatoes and utterly speechless.

In that moment, the only sound in the Aizawa household was the tick-tock of the wall clock and the thundering of Tomo’s heartbeat in her ears.