Epilogue- Tom Nook's Business Expansion

Tom Nook has been getting fat and happy off all the money he made during Apollo's summer-long binge. This one was from our latest growth sequence, to cap off this experiment. Thank you all for your patience, and enjoy!

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Tom Nook sighed, looking over his notes. This was, by his calculations, the fourteenth bench Apollo had crushed under his blubbery rear. Well, that was alright— it just meant the eagle was further indebted to him. "Well, that'll be another four thousand, four hundred and forty bells on your tab… you can handle that, can't you, Apollo?" Tom patted the mountainous belly rising above him, and somewhere in all that blubber, Apollo gave an affirmative grunt. The tanuki glanced up at the jiggling mound of feathers that was once a fit and trim jock, and smirked— not like Apollo could see the look on his face.

Tom had invested heavily in snack foods the past year, knowing that certain villagers would fork over a small fortune over the summer. That he packed the foods with extra additives, seasonings, and sugar was neither here nor there. The major takeaway was Apollo, his new favorite customer— he was pretty certain the money he made off Apollo this summer alone was going to put his nephews through college.

Of course, he could have made even more bells if he hadn't eaten a good percentage of his inventory himself. Tom Nook couldn't help it; he had always had a big appetite, it was true, but this summer had tipped him over into unbridled gluttony. He had offered feeble excuses at first— he was just checking the quality, he wanted to familiarize himself with the product, but everyone could see that the tanuki had found something he loved as much as bells.

The tanuki might have looked skinny compared to Apollo, but in much the same way the moon looked small compared to earth— he was still very much a round, obese ball of a tanuki. His boulder-sized belly spilled out beyond his keg-sized thighs and drooped to the ground, giving a wide shelf for his pillowy chest a place to rest. Every other part of him had grown plush and round, from his ballooning behind to arms layered in thick blubber. His face had rounded out even further, bloated cheeks resting comfortably against his double chin. Honestly, Tom had grown used to his weight— why should he worry about his waistline when he was filthy rich? It only made the idea he was a "fat cat" that much more accurate.