The Carnivore Club Part 2

Legoshi reflects on his Sophomore year, with all the opportunities for growth he could ever want. Enjoy!

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Everyone talks about the Freshman 15, when fresh-faced college students, in their first bid with freedom, accidentally put on weight without their families or strict authority figures checking what they eat- but Legoshi really thought there ought to be a name for what happened to all the weight people put on in their sophomore year… because that had to be a thing, right? He couldn't be the only one. His second year in college- and his second year as the Carnivore Club's taste tester- had come and gone, and all his efforts to keep the weight off had proven fruitless- if nothing else, Legoshi was easily twice as big now.

When the summer break came and the wolf waddled his way back to Cherryton, he had to face the stunned faces of Jack, Haru, Juno, and all the others- followed by a startlingly severe dressing down from Louis. It had been a pretty tiring experience- stern workouts and severe dieting under the deer's tutelage left Legoshi desperate for any real food, and the second he came back to college- admittedly having lost a good number of pounds- all that iron discipline the stag tried to impart on the wolf went right out the window at the Carnivore Club's Welcome Feast. Where Legoshi had been dieting, Tobo and Kurok, the bear and crocodile who ran the club, had further perfected their culinary skills, and the carnivore dishes they had prepared were so tantalizing that Legoshi's hunter instincts took over and he gorged himself, outeating everyone- even the already heavyset Tobo and Kurok.

But then, something strange happened. Perhaps strange wasn't the right word, but once he realized what it was, it was welcome. Legoshi became calm. He felt his hunter instincts and carnivore urges dull, until the fear of hurting a herbivore evaporated, melting like snow. His appetite wasn't getting any smaller, that much as true, but the wolf no longer feared he would snap. Why would he, when the Carnivore Club was making so much tastier food, out of fish of all kind, eggs, tofu, and other proteins?

"You seem… happy, Legoshi," Tobo commented after the first few months- and when the wolf had regained all the pounds he had put back on.

"Do I?" Legoshi grinned between bites of a fish steak, dimpling his round cheeks.

The heavyset bear, who was starting to look lean compared to the club's official taste tester, chuckled. "You seem practically over the moon, whenever you're here eating. You're way more easygoing than freshman year."

Legoshi stopped, looking up at Tobo. "Wait, what?"

"I'm not criticizing," the bear said quickly, holding up his hands. "But, you've always got this big dumb smile on your face- hell, we get enough in you, and you're the life of the party! Remember when we got you dancing on the table after three filets- and you snapped it in half?"

The wolf stopped, a shrimp hanging out of his mouth. "...Huh. Eating… makes me happy?"

"Hey, different strokes and all that, right?" Tobo chuckled, patting Legoshi's wide back. "You gonna want another shrimp omelet?"

The rotund canine blinked, realization hitting him. "Uh… yeah, yeah definitely."

From that moment forward, Legoshi made one of the bolder moves in his life, and threw restraint to the side. If eating made him happy now, why hold back? Keeping his weight under control became a very low priority, and his meals and snacks became larger and more numerous. Halfway through the year, if one of the wolf's hands didn't have an egg sandwich or a fish stick in it, then he felt like something was missing. It became a game amongst the Carnivore Club to see just how much food Legoshi could put away in a meeting- the club members won if they managed to provide enough food to get Legoshi full, and Legoshi won if they ran out of food; Legoshi usually won, and the rest of the club had to pay into a pool to get the wolf dessert to finally sate his hunger.

Halfway through his sophomore year, the effects of the Carnivore Club's ongoing game with him, and his increasing comfort with eating, left its mark on the already chunky canine. Legoshi's weight skyrocketed from an already obese form to something gargantuan. He quickly grew wider than he was tall, and kept expanding from there- the wolf's belly alone outweighed the largest of pachyderm students, an enormous grey boulder that refused to be encased in any shirt that wasn't as large as a tent. When he stood up, it hung off his waist in thick reams, spilling down his legs until it came dangerously close to scraping against the ground. How he managed to walk was a question for the physics department; each of his tire-sized legs rolled off each other, his immense, blubbery rear bouncing rhythmically with each step. Towards the end of the year, the shirts he wore were little more than bras, holding tight to the pair of flour bags that passed for his chest these days. His back was caked in layers of fat and his arms were swaddled in lard; just watching him move or even take notes in his classes was a wonder.

Legoshi still blushed whenever he felt too many eyes on him- but then, when he was the biggest student on campus by a quarter of a ton, it was something that he was just going to have to get used to, he figured. Overall, Sophomore year had been good to Legoshi. All that heft and size actually gave him some kind of confidence. Sure, he was never going to get rid of the stares or the increasingly colorful nicknames he had attracted over the year; his personal favorite was "Lardoshi." At least it rolled off the tongue easily enough.

The wide wolf settled in to the custom desk set aside for him, reflecting on the year. It was still odd carrying all this excess weight around, and he was starting to forget what it was to feel full- but, oddly enough, he was feeling happy. He was calm, he was centered, and weirdly enough, he was looking forward to two more years of the Carnivore Club- big things were on the horizon.