Five Equal Angels

by Hieda no Akyuu

Alternate retelling of the original manga. With more than just tutoring skills at his disposal, Uesugi Fuutarou is hired to guide the Quintuplets to graduation, but this time there is more to it than just tutoring and more at stake than simply avoiding academic failure.

68. Checkup

"By the way, did you see that one bakery that's right across the street from Revival?"

"Yeah, the owner of that place is working to open that place probably in a few months from now, right now she's taking care of other things. I know she hired some contractors to replace the signs and polish the exterior up a little bit so that people walking by the area know about its grand opening later on."

"So what's your boss gonna think about it, Komugiya, I think it was called? I can't imagine someone like him would be thrilled to know that there's a bakery right next to it."

"Oh, yeah, it's as you'd imagine, he's positively fuming about it...and I don't blame him, considering how much time it took him to find the location where Revival is now and to establish his business there. The one thing that's stopping him from going over to make a fuss to Komugiya's owner is the fact that Komugiya apparently doesn't specialize in cakes; it's much more of a traditional bakery than Revival is, looking it up online..."

Chatting casually with Nino with Miku close behind, Uesugi Fuutarou steps out of the elevator with the two quints whom he's found at the shopping district onto the thirtieth floor of the Pentagon luxury high-rise. Fuutarou briefly checks his smartwatch for the time, which reads 17:42 as Nino swipes her keycard in front of the door to their penthouse for him to let the three of them inside.

"Oiii, Ichika, Itsuki, we're hoooome ~ " Nino calls loudly into their penthouse suite, pulling off her shoes with the others. "We got some bread and cake on our way back ~ "

To nobody's surprise, an excited pair of footsteps hurries out of the living room to greet them, and sure enough, it's Itsuki.

"Cake?! May I ask what kind of ca - "

To everyone's surprise, the fifth quintuplet appears before her sisters and their familiar guest dressed with nothing but a loose bathrobe that is not tied and remains open down the middle. This wouldn't normally be a problem, but as Nino and Miku both instantly realize to their silent shock, both of them have neglected to inform their sisters back at home that they were bringing their tutor home with them - and of course, neither of them have anticipated Itsuki taking a bath this early.

Before either of them can react, the eyes of both Nakano Itsuki and Uesugi Fuutarou meet and lock, with Itsuki blinking quickly as though she's unable to register this person who isn't one of her sisters standing with them in the shoe lobby.

Fuutarou's black eyes at first stay with Itsuki's blue ones for a few seconds...then slips downwards. The only reaction he gives after this is to close his eyes and give a small but approving nod, all without a word.

"UESUGI-KUUUUNNN!?" Itsuki shrieks, almost at the top of her lungs.

"Y-YOU GODDAMN PERVERT! PERVERT! PERVEEEEEEERRRRRTT!" Nino roars in tandem. Quickly tossing her bag of snacks and cake down onto the floor adjacent to the shoe lobby, the second quintuplet seizes her tutor and pins him against the door behind them, which is quite the feat given Fuutarou's personal strength, in a noble but ultimately futile attempt to save Itsuki's dignity. Miku, at the same time, also drops her own bag and quickly holds her hands up in front of her tutor's face, looking over her shoulder to keep an eye on Itsuki, who's now collapsed to her knees on the floor after realizing what it was that her tutor nabbed a glimpse of just now, holding the folds of her bathrobe over her chest with uncontrollable tears now surging forward and already beginning to gush out of her eyelids.

"W-What the heck's going on here? Wait, F-Fuutarou-kun?!" The eldest sister, now having gotten up from the couch in the living room too in immediate response to hearing Itsuki scream, recoils herself when she notices their unexpected guest, and she silently thanks her younger sisters for sparing her the same embarrassment that Itsuki unfortunately has to suffer.

"Ichika! Just - just what the hell are you two doing just standing around like that in - in - in bathrobes?!" Nino yells, also having to arch her neck to look behind her while still pinning their tutor against the door, even though Fuutarou himself is exerting no signs of resistance and is simply waiting patiently for the girls to release him while still holding onto his bags.

"What does it look like?! We just took a bath! We didn't know Fuutarou-kun was coming today! Did you two drag him here or something?!" Ichika fires back, but she kneels down anyway to help Itsuki back up to her feet so that the two of them can properly dress themselves to spare themselves any further embarrassment. "You should've called us or texted us or something! We all have phones, don't we!"

"Y-Yeah, but - but you - we don't take baths or showers at this time of the day unless it's Yotsuba! How were we supposed to know that you two decided to take a super early bath?!" Nino defends herself hotly.

"Just get dressed, you two, we'll explain everything later," Miku urges hurriedly, and Ichika, feeling more compelled to listen to the voice of reason among the siblings, escorts her youngest sister up to the second floor of their penthouse to dry themselves off fully and put on some clothes other than bathrobes. And once the two quints still with their tutor ensure that their bathrobed sisters are safely out of sight, especially out of Fuutarou's, they relinquish him.

"We good? A'ight, let's put these away in the kitchen," he says simply, kicking off his shoes but making sure to line them up neatly with his feet on the shoe lobby floor before heading in.

"Hey, listen, you! You just saw Itsuki naked and that's your reaction?!" Nino hisses at her classmate, figuratively nipping at his heels as she and her sister follow him into the kitchen to drop off their goods and prepare some cake and snacks for everyone.

"I mean, it's not like this's the first time it's happened," Fuutarou snickers darkly, offering a troll grin over to Nino.

"You look at me like that again and I'll personally make sure it never happens again," she threatens back broodingly with an aggressive smile of her own that's anything but happy.

"It's strange, though," Miku wonders aloud, handing some plates to Nino so that the latter can cut some pieces of cake and place them on those plates. "Nino is right; we don't normally take baths at this hour, unless it's Yotsuba and she's come back from club activities or something and she wants to take a shower as soon as she gets home."

"And both Ichika and Itsuki were in bathrobes, so they probably took a bath together? Like, outside of the rare hot springs visit, none of us've had a bath with anyone else for the longest time, like since we entered middle school, I think," Nino adds to Miku's thoughts.

"Maybe they just had some quality bonding time?" Fuutarou suggests innocently, but Nino severely misinterprets this as her tutor trying to make a dirty joke.

"I'm gonna call Papa that you're sexually harassing us, you asshole!"

"...what did I even say? I don't see what the big deal is here, all I said was that Ichika and Itsuki probably spent some time in the bath together, that's all. Given how much I've dragged everyone through the meat grinder to prep for finals today, I'd imagine everyone's tired as hell," the young tutor explains with an eyebrow raised over at Nino. "So they probably decided to soak in the bath a little bit. Then again, I don't know what that feels like, but I'd imagine that's something rich girls might do if they're tired."

Annoyed that Fuutarou is probably right about the situation, Nino nitpicks her tutor's words instead. "No, you do know what that feels like, you idiot, you've taken a bath here before, remember? Specifically, it was the night of the first time you stayed over at our place here for an overnight tutoring session!"

Fuutarou pauses. "Huh, you're right, I did, and I forgot about it. Eh, my point still stands, though, since I don't take long baths anywhere near enough for me to really know what that feels like. I'm more surprised that you remember that, Nino."

Repeating Fuutarou's last few words in her head, Nino can't stop her cheeks from poofing into shades of red and quickly turns away from him so that he won't see her reaction. "I-I have a good memory, okay? Don't question me!"

"I guess so. If only you used it more for studying..."

"Shut up already, God!"

As the three in the kitchen are preparing some cake and drinks for everyone and set the glass table in the living room, Ichika is quickly blow-drying Itsuki's long peachy-red hair in the latter's room, since Ichika's room is too messy to be blow-drying anything in.

"Are you alright, Itsuki?" she asks with a rather amused sigh, trying her best to extend her sympathies to her youngest sister.

""Y-Yes, but..." Ichika can tell by the stuttering in Itsuki's voice that she's still trying to recover from the emotional shock of getting walked in on by the boy she's now developed feelings for. "...I really wish that either Nino or Miku would have given us some proper advance notice...!"

"Yeah, that would've been nice...then again, we didn't need to spend that much time in the bathroom, either. How long were we in there for because we were both so tired? Like an hour? Hour and a half? It was the best bath we had in a while, to be fair, but I guess that means that we're not entirely blameless in this situation..."

Turning off her hair dryer and setting it down on Itsuki's desk to comb her sister's hair a little, Ichika pats Itsuki's head comfortingly.

"Hey, look on the bright side, Itsuki - you definitely scored some points with Fuutarou-kun, right?"

"Th-This was n-not how I wish for our relationship to develop, though...!" Itsuki stammers hard again; she plops her face back into her hands in pure embarrassment, now that Ichika has reminded her of what has just transpired.

"Oh, c'mon, it's not that bad. And besides, sometimes relationships can get the push they need if they're not really going anywhere with things like this, you know? Just a little slip-up here or there...they're just happy little accidents, that's all ~ "

"Ichika...!"

"Okay, okay, I'll stop, I'll stop..." Ichika hastily backs off to go back to combing Itsuki's hair.

As the eldest quint is doing so, Itsuki can't help but silently replay her memory back in her mind, now that Ichika has brought it up again so soon after it's happened. Since her eyes were fixed on her tutor so tightly when she greeted him and her sisters, the fifth quint keeps seeing Fuutarou's eyes stare back into hers for the first few seconds...before dropping a little down from her own eyes and giving that small nod, as though in understanding...or perhaps in approval. Subconsciously raising her arms over her chest as if to shield them from Fuutarou's view that is long since gone, Itsuki can't quite fully eliminate the blush that refuses to budge from her face because of this newest incident between her and their tutor.

The quintuplets have long been aware of their ample chest sizes; puberty hit all of them like a truck capable of sending humans into another worlds when the girls entered junior high, and their growth has been rather consistent all throughout school since then, with several of the quints occasionally joking or complaining to the rest about how they felt that their breasts were still growing and how inconvenient they were getting or had the potential to become. Itsuki herself was not one of them; she got accustomed to her bust size rather quickly, though admittedly she was usually too busy occupying herself with her studies that proved to be a sufficient enough distraction for her to not concern herself over something as trivial as this. Combine this with Itsuki's traditional lack of care for relationships and the quints' previous attendance at an all-girls' academy, and this naturally means that Itsuki has never once thought about how she would be perceived by boys her age, never mind her own tutor...that is, up until now.

Itsuki finds this whole situation so strange, though. It's not as though she was totally oblivious to this; after all, she's the one who preached to her sisters about how they ought not to pursue active relationships while in grade school and should instead use that time to focus on their studies. She's the one who once firmly believed that they should not do the same either with Uesugi Fuutarou, their new private tutor who's been assigned to see them through high school graduation, and as the kicker, she was the one who walked in on Fuutarou and Nino in the living room together that initiated the mock court scene that they played out for fun to figure out what those two were up to.

But now that Fuutarou has gotten as good of a look as he'll get at her, Itsuki can't help but feel uncomfortably aware of the fact that she has a kind of body that boys would be sexually attracted to. So pure was her perception of relationships between boys and girls, so inexperienced is she in such matters, that only now does this notion plant itself in her mind like an irremovable parasite that bites at her every thought no matter what she does.

Itsuki tries to protest this notion internally as best she can. Why? Why would anyone become attracted to her when she has sisters who both wear makeup regularly and are much more socially experienced than her? Ichika and Nino, for example, are both outgoing girls who would know how to talk to guys and make themselves presentable for them, whereas in sharp contrast, all Itsuki knows how to do is study and talk in keigo. Nobody would be attracted to her because of her looks, right?

But as much as she wants to delude herself into this mentality, Itsuki keeps seeing Fuutarou's eyes flick downwards in the direction of her chest.

The youngest quint doesn't know how she'd face Fuutarou now. What if he now has the impression of her that Itsuki is a naughtier girl than she's let off so far? She already must deal with the embarrassment of developing feelings for their own tutor when she was the one who's been advocating against such a thing; must she now also somehow deal with the added layer of exposing herself to him too? Despite what he might say, would Fuutarou start having a different opinion of her from now on because of what's happened today?

So much for thinking about how she would be able to progress her relationship with Uesugi Fuutarou.

Ichika sighing yanks Itsuki back out of her Pensieve as she remarks, "Oh, now that I think about it, we need to finish that episode that we were watching before the others came home sometime. Wanna finish it later tonight, or not in the mood anymore?"

"Um...maybe...maybe next time..." Itsuki manages to squeak out.

"Gotcha. Hey, don't worry about it, Itsuki," the eldest quint reassures her gently while wrapping her arms around Itsuki's thorax. "Things like that can happen sometimes; if you think about it, something like this was bound to happen to one of us with how often he visits us, right? In my opinion, you should think of this as a way to really make progress on your relationship with Fuutarou-kun; you should take advantage of this and get a little aggressive with him. This all might've been one big accident or a misunderstanding, but you should take what you can get."

"...but...but I don't want Uesugi-kun to think that I'm some kind of...that I'm a super naughty girl or anything..." Itsuki whimpers almost tearfully. "I'm not that kind of girl...I don't want him to think of me that way, because I'm not..."

"Well, in that case, did you at least see how he reacted when he saw you? Normally I'd say that since he's a boy our age, he would've looked you all over, since what kind of high school guy wouldn't do that when there's a super cute girl standing half-naked in front of him. But then again, it's Fuutarou-kun we're talking about, and he's an idiot sometimes when it comes to these kinds of things..."

Already plagued enough by her own insecurities, Itsuki frantically shakes her head, causing her dried hair to flutter in all directions.

"Hey, hey, I just combed your hair, Itsuki..." Ichika sighs again while quickly sorting her sister's hair out. "Listen, I can tell that you're in a pretty uncomfortable spot right now with everything that's just happened, but if you're serious about having feelings for him, you've got to act on this and not let it hold you back. Besides, don't you want some of the snacks that they brought back?"

"L-Look, I am quite aware that I am certainly partial to food and food-related subjects, but what does that have to do with what just happened?"

"Because you aren't you when you're hungry. Should I tell Fuutarou-kun to go out and buy you a Snickers too? That way you'll also get some extra time to yourself so that you can figure out what you wanna do."

"Er...that...will not be necessary..."

Ichika sighs. "For what it's worth, Fuutarou-kun has seen me practically buck-naked more than a few times too, you know, on top of that one time he walked in on Nino - "

"But does that not make this whole situation even worse...? Since Uesugi-kun has a whole track record of walking in on us during inopportune times like this?"

"I mean, it hasn't happened that often..."

"The fact that such things happened at all should be concerning in and of itself!"

"Yeah, well, you might be right, but sometimes those kinds of things can just happen without anyone seeing it coming, you know? Like today, for example, you rushed out to see what kinds of snacks and cake Nino and Miku brought back today not realizing that they'd brought Fuutarou-kun along with them too. Neither of us knew he was coming, and it's not like anyone told us either, so you ran out there forgetting to wear your bathrobe properly since you were more excited about the food." Ichika shrugs a little and watches Itsuki process this truth. "It's not anyone's fault - well, I guess in this case, any one of those three could've called us beforehand telling us that Fuutarou-kun would be stopping by, but to be fair, we don't usually take showers or baths at this time of the day, usually later at night. So as much as this might bother you, there's not much of a point for you to dwell on this for too long."

Ichika leans in, the expression on her face changing suddenly to a wry grin, and before Itsuki can question her motive for this change, the eldest quint whispers suggestively down to her younger sibling:

"Also, you seem to be more worried about Fuutarou-kun getting himself into trouble than about him seeing you almost naked now, Itsuki-chan. Why is that, I wonder...?"

Ichika begins giggling loudly, expecting Itsuki to start pouting at her or reacting loudly back at her, but she doesn't hear any such reaction from her sister, and out of concern that she might've somehow hurt her feelings, Ichika quells her giggles to check on her, only to find Itsuki still sitting meekly on her chair, with both hands on her face that is steadily sizzling with embarrassment.

"...it's...it's not...like that..." the fifth quintuplet mutters shyly.

This sight of Itsuki acting unusually reserved and shy, much more so than she normally does, is more than enough to send Ichika into a bit of a swoon, and she dives down onto Itsuki and clutches her tightly, cooing at her excitedly.

"Awwww, look at you, look at you, Itsuki-chan, so you do know how to act cute after all! See, you've got a shot with the boys, you've got it in you!"

"I-Ichika...!"

---

After Itsuki finally feels ready to return downstairs and she and Ichika have gotten appropriately dressed this time, the two of them make their way down to the first floor to find the other three already having set the glass table with snacks, slices of cake, and beverages. Nino is watching a talk show on the big TV, while Miku and Fuutarou are chatting about the questions they had on their finals earlier that day over cups of green tea.

"Hey, welcome back," Fuutarou nods over at the girls just joining them. Ichika does so more enthusiastically, of course, while Itsuki slinks around the dinner table to scoot into the kitchen, doing her best to not make eye contact with her tutor as she escapes into the kitchen for no particular reason.

"Ooh, ooh, what'd you get?" Spying all the delicious looking cake on the table, the first quintuplet stoops over the couch behind Miku to take a closer look, and Fuutarou gestures out to the table to point them out.

"Some green tea cloud cake for Miku, chocolate gateau buttercream cake, and some caramel mocha cake, along with a buttload of regular snacks we got at Mitsuwa on the way back. Oh, and since I was interested in trying a new cinnamon bread from a bakery I know, I bought a few loaves of it and decided to share one with you guys."

"Oh, that's so sweet of you. Mind if I try a slice, then?"

So Ichika rounds the couch and sinks down onto it next to Miku, as Fuutarou is currently occupying the single-seat short couch. As she helps herself, Nino glances over in Itsuki's direction at the kitchen.

"How's Itsuki doing? She didn't really take that well," she asks Ichika in a low voice, though Nino is sure that she can easily be heard by Itsuki.

"She's fine now, just give her an extra minute or two." Ichika points her fork at Fuutarou that's impaled a piece of caramel mocha cake. "So, Fuutarou-kun, how was the view, hm ~ ?"

"View? Oh, on Itsuki?" Fuutarou rubs his chin thoughtfully. "I really only have one thing to say to that."

"And? What is it?"

"Quintuplets really are something else."

Nino, who was in the middle of taking a sip from her grape Ramune, suddenly detonates a small Ramune-based explosion from her mouth, blasting the amount of the beverage that she would have ingested out across the living room, though thankfully the TV remains unmolested.

"J-Just what the hell are you trying to say?! That's fucking sexual harassment again, you c-creep!" Nino stammers, trying her hardest to recover from her explosive spit-take. "And you owe me another fucking Ramune, asshole!"

Fuutarou simply blinks back at Nino while Miku wipes her mouth with a napkin and Ichika is trying her best to suppress her overwhelming laughter at Nino's exaggerated reaction.

"...buying you another Ramune is fine by me, but all I said was that you girls are just built differently, I guess."

"And just what the hell do you mean by that, damn it!"

"What, do you actually want me to tell you more? You want me to describe what I really felt in more detail?" the young mage raises an eyebrow over at Nino. "You think what I've said so far was sexual harassment, but oh boy, I don't think you know what that really means."

"It's okay, Nino just doesn't want to have a little fun. You can tell me, though," Ichika offers instead, wiggling a little up to Fuutarou. "Did seeing Itsuki like that get you worked up a little? Hm ~ ?"

"Ichikaaaaa!" Itsuki hollers from the kitchen, and soon she hurries over with a glass of water in her hands - the realization that Ichika will start teasing her by proxy if she doesn't join them soon finally gives her the drive she needs to overcome her residual embarrassment, though seeing Fuutarou up close like this again as she takes a seat on Nino's other side furthest from their tutor causes her to relapse a little.

"Just kidding, just kidding," Ichika calls over to Itsuki as she watching the latter take a seat.

Having the four quintuplets now gathered back again in one place finally, Fuutarou clears his throat quickly and sits up on his couch. "Alright, now that we're all here again, let's talk; you can eat while I yap to you all about some stuff."

"The thing you said you wanted to talk to us about, right?" Miku asks, folding her used napkin and placing it neatly on the edge of the glass table in front of her.

"Hm? What's this about, our studying plans for summer vacation or something?" Ichika also pipes in before popping another piece of yummy cake into her mouth.

"Surprisingly, no. It's about something...a little different."

The way Fuutarou says that last bit catches everyone's attention as the tutor himself grabs a slice of cinnamon bread and tries it, thoroughly examining his boss's work to critique him later on it. Nino sighs when she soon figures it out.

"So we're finally gonna have one of these talks, huh? I guess it was only a matter of time," she remarks, casting her gaze back to the TV to watch some more of her talk show.

"Yeah, so lower the volume by half or so or record it so you can watch it later, since this is pretty important."

Having shed her teasing big sister image now that she's sensed what Fuutarou intends to discuss with them and fallen unnaturally quiet, Ichika drinks some strawberry Calpico to wash the cake she's eaten down.

"If this is about me, then you didn't need to bring everyone together like this," she says simply.

"If it were everyone, then Yotsuba would be here too, no?" Fuutarou points out.

"So then...if Yotsuba's not here..." Miku deduces quietly, "...you want to talk to us about our Mystic Eyes, right?"

Uesugi Fuutarou nods, taking another big bite out of his bread and finally nodding a little in approval, having made his final verdict on it. While Fuutarou is finishing, Nino deliberates to herself silently and then mutes the TV with the remote without a word.

"So...this is something that I haven't done yet, but I figured I might've needed to depending on how things panned out," Fuutarou explains, using his tutor voice of speaking clearly and enunciating his words well so that his students will understand perfectly. "And given how things have gone so far, I think it's necessary for me to do this now."

"You're not trying to blame us for anything, are you?" Nino frowns over at her tutor.

"I really should, truth be told, but that's besides the point I'm trying to make here, so let's just ignore that. From now on, I want to keep you girls informed about what's going on and what I'm up to...and obviously we're not talking about the tutoring side of my gig."

"Even though you said before that you didn't want to do something like that?"

"I know, I'm well aware of what I've told you girls in the past. But both people and times change, and in my case, I think you girls have gotten involved in enough magic-related stuff to warrant being informed on everything that's going on. I would have had this talk with everyone earlier, but we kinda had finals to worry about first - but now that that's out of the way and we've got some vacation time from school to relax, I figure now's the best time for this."

By now, Itsuki begins to give her tutor her attention, as the seriousness of the conversation and Fuutarou speaking to them like he's back to tutoring them again help her finally push aside what embarrassment she still harbors over what happened a little while ago.

"Let's start from the top: the five of you are being targeted by a man named Shirazumi Rio; he's a dangerous mage like me who's after you for reasons currently unknown. What I do know from investigating this case for the past several months is that he runs his own drug gang in the city and is working on magical drug, either on his own or with the help of his gangbangers, so I would assume that he wants to kidnap the five of you as guinea pigs for his drug trials, but I don't know that for sure. The drug that he's working on is an even more heavily modified version of the same Heisei drug that Nino laced my shit with back when we first met - by this point, it's actually not even the same drug anymore, and it only uses Heisei as a base. I don't know what his goals are with it, and I'm still trying to figure out what they are."

The girls all have varying degrees of concern and worry on their faces as they carefully listen to their tutor.

"Shirazumi Rio...the same person you were fighting on the night I accidentally ran into you two about a month or so ago?" Itsuki asks quietly, and Fuutarou nods.

"The very same. He wears a red leather jacket and jeans that are torn at the knees, I'm sure you've seen jeans like that since the rips are supposed to be fashionable or something."

The description triggers the last memory that Nino saw at the park that week, of a man wearing those very same clothes approaching her while leaving behind an unconscious Yotsuba, and not surprisingly, she sits up quickly in anger.

"That bastard? That's the guy who's been coming after us all this time?!" she hisses venomously, her old voice surging back in full force.

"Yeah, that's him," Fuutarou nods. "Who else did you think that guy who kidnapped you was?"

Nino manages to bottle her flaring anger by crossing her arms and angrily chugging what remains in her Ramune bottle, which reminds her that she's totally neglected to clean up the Ramune that she's spit out, since Miku only wiped what was on her face. "Well, now I have a name to go with the face. You best know I'm not ever forgetting his bitch-ass ever again. Besides, I hate leather jackets for whatever reason, so now there's zero chance of me ever changing my mind on that."

"Cool, I'll make sure to never wear leather jackets around you, then."

"I'll be honest, though," Ichika speaks up, working on her second slice of caramel mocha cake that she's taken a great liking to ever since Fuutarou got them their birthday cake during Golden Week, "for someone who's got his eyes set on us, he doesn't bother us all that much. As in, like, I thought they'd constantly be harassing us or trying to kidnap us every other day or something like that..."

"Well, like I said before, mages like to work discretely. If a mage tries doing something like that constantly, it becomes very easy for other mages who might have an interest in taking them out to study everything about them - their habits, patterns, abilities, and even travel history in a given area based on their magical signature if enough of it still lingers and can be examined. So Shirazumi himself can only show up a few times since he wants to stay off my radar as much as possible too, and for all other times, he'd rather get his gangsters to do some of the work for him, which is what could've happened on the first night Nino and Yotsuba ran into trouble."

Nino grimaces resentfully at this, but she doesn't say a word about it.

"So after I was able to fight him off this week and bring Nino and Yotsuba back, I knew that he more than likely wouldn't show himself again for some time. Of course, given what kind of a person he is, he might go against expectations and start going hard, but that's his grave he's digging if he wants to do that. But that does mean that I was able to let you girls go do whatever you wanted after finals today since I didn't see Shirazumi anywhere in the city for the past few days, meaning that he's likely back in hiding and planning his next move."

"W-What kind of person is he, Fuutarou?" Miku asks uncertainly.

"He's a fucking sociopath. As much as the five of you like roasting me for having no social skills, this guy in infinitely worse - for one, he's a cannibal."

Understandably, all four quintuplets reel at this revelation.

"C-Cannibal...!? Like, as in, he actually eats people...?" Ichika lowers her cake, briefly losing her appetite.

"Um...perhaps not the best time for a snack, I suppose..." Itsuki also mumbles, though not even the talk of a cannibal can stop her from consuming her slice of chocolate gateau cake.

"Yet you're eating anyway," Nino snickers, to which Itsuki responds by indignantly shoving her piece of cake into her mouth.

"Yes, that kind, and I'm not trying to scare you girls either, that's actually what he is. I haven't actually seen him eat people in person, but every time I've fought him, he's talked about eating me or eating you girls, and I don't think he's saying that just to scare me either or just to be a huge edgelord..."

"I don't know, I still feel like this dude's just trying to scare you," Nino scoffs.

"I highly doubt that when like I said, I've fought him on a few occasions, and each time they were pretty close fights that I had to take seriously. And while I've never caught him in the act of actually eating another human being, remember that he's the leader of his own drug gang in the city, and the recent series of kidnappings around the city that was going on last month or so are because of him and his gang."

"Wait, they were? Why haven't the police caught him yet, then? Shouldn't this be their kind of job?"

"It is, but unfortunately the police isn't exactly equipped to deal with a drug problem this bad; it's blown up suddenly out of their control and they're hard-pressed to contain the situation at large, much less the shit that Shirazumi and his gang are stirring up. Not only that, but unless they have mages under their own contracts over there, I really doubt that they can do anything against a mage like Shirazumi, and I know for a fact that the police doesn't have anyone like me and never did, otherwise I'd know about them. So all these kidnappings that've happened because of Shirazumi and his boys, I've been doing my best to investigate each one and even prevented a few from happening if I was able to get to those people fast enough, but for the ones who weren't so lucky, I could never find a body, and obviously neither could the police. Why is that, I wonder..."

The high school mage leaves his students in a deeply disturbed silence for a few moments.

"...so that is why Father hired you?" Itsuki asks quietly, finally breaking the quiet. "Because he knew that it would be better to rely on another mage like you?"

"More or less. That, and I'm the only mage in this city, and I've kept it that way for some time, so it's not like he had much choice going to anyone else." Fuutarou takes a slice of green tea cloud cake to eat next. "In any case, Shirazumi's a tough opponent for me...a lot of mages go mad or lose their sanity in their magical careers for all kinds of reasons, and their resulting insanity can manifest in all sorts of ways, like cannibalism."

"You make it sound like it's not exactly rare..." Miku murmurs uncomfortably.

"It is, actually, but not rare enough to the point where such a trend goes unnoticed. For what it's worth, at the very least Shirazumi being a cannibal or being basically as good as one with how he's been acting means that he's a very one-dimensional character, so it's easy to understand his motives and predict what he's going to do; my only problem with him is that he's really fucking good at keeping himself under my radar, so it's basically impossible to track him most of the time without a proper lead. That, and it's an irredeemable piece of shit, so I can slit his throat whenever I get the chance."

"Well, it's nice that you're telling us all this so we at least know what the hell's going on, but since he's an actual mage who can do shit, what are we supposed to do exactly? We can't defend ourselves from people like him or his gangsters like that one time I got stabbed in my shoulder," Nino points out.

"Maybe not if you put it that way, but you can keep an eye out. Whenever you walk around the city or need to go outside, you should always try to be vigilant about your surroundings," Fuutarou answers. "I know that's asking for a lot, since you're all just high school kids who aren't used to this kind of situation, but noticing when you might be in trouble and giving me a call that something's about to happen can be the difference between me being able to bail you guys out of a bad situation again or not."

"This sounds like something you should've told us a long time ago, though! Am I wrong? You could've told us to do that back when we first found out you were a mage!" Nino exclaims, perhaps rightfully so, and Fuutarou himself acknowledges it.

"You're right, I could have told everyone to keep an eye out. And honestly with how things turned out, if I had known how things would turn out, I would have. But by my own admission, I didn't want to have to directly involve any of you because I didn't want you all to worry about this on top of your academics, since I'm not sure how well you girls would handle having to stress out about both of those things."

Ichika smiles back at her tutor with an opened can of UCC Coffee in hand. "You were worried about us over that because you thought we were all peabrains, weren't you?"

"Well, judging by the tests that your dad kept that you took during middle school, I wasn't going to be very optimistic, you know? I thought I was gonna have to deal with a bunch of dumb rich girls who were just leeching off their sugar daddy all the time. But," Fuutarou raises a finger as Nino is about to get pissy with him again, "now that I've spent quite some time with everyone, I know that's not quite the case anymore. You're not stupid, you all just suck at studying."

"And there's supposed to be a fucking difference?!" Nino explodes anyway as both Ichika and Miku also burst into amused giggles at Nino's rather predictable reaction.

"Uh, yeah, of course. If you were stupid to begin with, I would've quit this job immediately because I knew it'd be literally impossible for me to complete my contract with your dad about how I'm going to guide you all to graduation. But the fact that I've stuck around means I think a little more highly of you all than that. The past few months have proved that as long as you're all putting in the work, learning how to study properly and diligently, and keep taking your tests, even smooth brains like the five of you can eventually graduate high school no problem, but it's going to take even more work to get there, so don't let up now just because your first high school finals is done."

"Lecturing us even when we aren't studying...you're that dedicated to your job, huh?" Ichika teases her tutor again.

"First and foremost."

Itsuki leans forward a little in an effort to make herself seen to her tutor around Nino, who takes notice of this and flattens herself against the back of the couch as a courtesy.

"So all these drug problems that the city has been having that we have seen on the news for some time now, are they all magically related? As in, are there more mages like Shirazumi Rio out there in the city committing similar crimes as he is right now?"

Fuutarou shakes his head curtly. "Not that I know of - even someone like Shirazumi I'd be able to find out about eventually if enough time passes, either because I pick up on his trail at some point and at least know about his presence here or he makes himself known by challenging me in my own territory, as mages are often prone to doing. That, or I suppose there could be a mage who's technically that good at keeping themselves hidden, but I wouldn't know why anyone would feel the need to hide for any extended period of time, especially in a city like this."

"I see. I just felt that this whole drug situation is very strange, because the country as a whole does not have this bad of a drug problem elsewhere, does it?"

"Not traditionally, but there've been fluctuations of drug trafficking over the years...one of those things that flares up and dies down, comes and goes, but rarely does it stick around for too long in any one given area. This city is an exception, though..."

"Has the drug problem this city's had always been a thing? Because now that I think about it, according to the news, this isn't the first time that the city's had problems with contraband, right?" Miku says, putting her strength in history to applicable use.

"Yeah. Here's a brief history of the city to put this into a better perspective: while this city itself was established half a century ago, it was only fairly recently that it started expanding commercially and industrially in an attempt to revitalize the region economically starting around twenty years ago, and progress really took off once the city was able to secure foreign investment starting about a decade ago, and the city's still growing even today. So for these last ten years, the city government and officials have really been concentrating hard on making the most out of this economic boom they're got going on. That's why our downtown's one of the most modern of all the metropolitan cities in Japan, that's why there are so many foreigners living specifically in this city, and that's why there's a whole abandoned district in the city's west sector where I live, since that's where its old commercial-industrial parks were located before they relocated the other side of the city to take advantage of better infrastructure there."

The girls quietly munch on their snacks and cake, listening to their tutor just as much as they would when he's actually teaching them.

"But while the city itself obviously enjoyed a lot of success and grew into this metropolis we all live in right now, it didn't come without its problems, and its biggest one and the one that's most relevant to us right now is its problem with drugs. When it first began expanding aggressively, pharmaceutical companies, both domestic and overseas, were among the first to begin investing into the city, and so the city officials worked closely with them to facilitate their entry and help their businesses thrive, since that meant more jobs the local people here and great cash flow. Then things started getting shady: a few corrupt officials worked out deals with other corrupt higher-ups in the pharmaceuticals to take bigger pieces out of the profits being made in the pharmaceutical industry, which caused a number of layoffs, and some of those people who were laid off decided to get revenge by sneaking into hospitals and pharmaceutical storehouses, stealing drugs and medicine, and selling them themselves as back alley deals, which then encouraged more people to follow suit, thereby endangering the whole process since now you got people with no idea how to administer these drugs properly competing and oftentimes doing better than the people who were doing it first and had actual medical knowledge of what they were working with, even if they were still basically stealing it from their former employers. Independently, too, actual contraband started leaking into the city, like the drugs we've been dealing with - black market hustlers brought them into the city domestically little by little, and foreigners brought their own drugs - mainly cannabis but others too - by having them shipped to more distant cities like Sapporo or Kumamoto and then trucking them inland to the city to avoid detection as best they could. A lot of them were still caught, either by border control or by the city's own security checkpoints, but some still managed to make it in. It wasn't any one particular source that was the major problem what I can tell - for huge problems like this, it's almost never just as straightforward as blaming it all on one problem alone - but rather all these little problems that were left unchecked and thus grew and grew until they're this giant pain in the ass that it is today."

"But why this city? Why were so many drugs tried to be brought here? Well, not just tried, but actually brought here?" Itsuki asks aloud.

Fuutarou sighs. "That I don't have an answer for still. I know, it's weird that this city and this city alone in the country has this big of a drug problem when something like this is basically unheard of in the rest of Japan. Well, it's not as though the rest of the country is totally free of having a drug problem, but that's not the point right now - what's strange is thathere, from my own research that I've done to figure out what's really causing this drug problem, is that I can't seem to pinpoint the cause or causes to any of the usual answers that would explain it."

"Well, that's obvious, isn't it? Shitheads like that Shirazumi Rio guy are shipping it all in," Nino scoffs simplistically. "You out of all of us should know, right? Since you're trying to fight one."

"And you'd be right in this case, but you'd be surprised how few times the true reason behind a drug problem here in Japan is legitimately because of a rise in a significant black market presence because of the Yakuza or other shady group or individuals. To add, black market trade is never this blatant, where you have people literally getting kidnapped off the streets or people being found dead in their homes from overdoses and such. And even then, eventually the city or the government will get wind of things going on here and move to crack down on it, but nothing significant has happened yet, not for almost a whole decade."

Fuutarou takes a sip of water to clear his throat.

"And arguably the weirdest thing of all...there's no mention of this city's huge drug problem outside this city," the young mage broods, giving a long, drawn-out sigh of mild frustration. "I've looked up news articles in other nearby cities, other areas of the country - and I couldn't find another single article anywhere discussing this city's drug problem."

"Well...you know...we live in a country where drugs are super taboo, right?" Ichika murmurs nervously, fidgeting a little. "Like, everyone knows drugs are super bad and you shouldn't take them. So people would rather not talk about it, right? And since it seems like a problem only our city has, why let it spread beyond here?"

"That certainly didn't stop Nino from having some contraband drugs of her own, now, huh?" Fuutarou nods over in Nino's direction. "I'm surprised you girls didn't rip her a new one when I told you what she had on her, honestly."

"Hey, I didn't use any of it myself! I only ever used it out of self-defense!" Nino snarls back righteously.

"Yeah, that's why we didn't give her too much of a hard time. We just told her to never buy it again - and never let Dad know about it, either," Ichika adds quickly too.

"But you still used it, right? What if people at our school found out about Nino having an illegal drug in her possession? It'd be a huge fucking scandal at our school, and likely your dad would have to pull you all out and throw you all into another school," Fuutarou replies coolly, biting off a piece of another cinnamon bread. "And probably in an entirely new city, since they won't ever let you live that shit down here. Word would spread fast."

Nino clicks her tongue in annoyance. "What's your deal, though? Why're you lecturing me about something like this all of a sudden?"

"Admittedly, no real reason since that was just a huge tangent when I started talking about how I was trying to get to the bottom of this city's drug problem. But for what it's worth, a lot of actual drug users don't do them for the drugs themselves; they use them as an escape or a way to deal with whatever they've got going on in life because they feel like they're their only option. While you might think that's a stretch, it's really not when you consider that you used Heisei as a way to efficiently and discretely get rid of guys who gave you a hard time in the past. You didn't use Heisei for yourself, and if possible you probably wouldn't have wanted to use it at all in the first place, but you got some anyway because it was an option for you, or maybe even one of your only ones. Just something to think about - but again, I digress, and sorry for making you listen to that."

Wiping his fingers for the last time, Fuutarou sits up properly with a deep breath.

"Right now it's probably easiest if I blame the root of the city's drug problem on mages like Shirazumi who're actively propagating the contraband drug scene here, but it's obvious that Shirazumi himself can't've been the originator, though him being here and screwing with things isn't what I want either. So I need more evidence to suggest beyond Shirazumi's own involvement that there's an actual magical institution here that's behind this drug scene here, and this is something that you girls can actually help me out with, and a reason why I'm giving you girls this talk without Yotsuba here."

At this, all four of the girls also sit up with him if they weren't already doing so.

"You want...us to help...?" Miku asks almost breathlessly, her eyes wide at attention.

"Yes, because this is something you can do easily since it's not like you need to go out of your way to do this. Basically, all I need you girls to do is keep an eye and an ear out for kids at school talking about drugs or things like that. Obviously they're not going to make it that obvious, but you girls know our classmates a hell of a lot better than I do and might actually talk to some of them on a regular basis. You might even hear something just walking through the hallways or past the shoe lockers, who knows, since I'm probably snoozing my ass off in class all day anyway."

"D-Do you think that our own school might have a problem with these drugs, too...?" Itsuki asks apprehensively.

"Thankfully no; the reason why I'm asking you to do this is because I need any lead possible that'll give me a potential new lead on Shirazumi, and the faster I can deal with him, the sooner the five of you will be safe, and the faster I can get back to investigating the city's drug problem at large. I don't actually expect any of you to turn up with any intel, just so we're clear; it's just that I get the feeling that some of you want to do something that'll help me with the shit that I'm doing, so this is a little something that you can do in turn."

"Oh boy, I wonder what made you think that..." Nino drawls dryly, and Miku shoots her a quick scowl.

"But just because I've given you a green light on this does not mean you're all superheroes all of a sudden, alright? I don't need you girls making my job even harder by intentionally putting yourselves in shitty situations," Fuutarou warns sternly. "And, not to mention, you're all even bigger targets than before now."

"Bigger targets? How so?" Miku asks.

Fuutarou merely motions up to his eyes with his right hand, pointing to them like he's adjusting a pair of glasses. The gesture is clear, and the four quintuplets all begin exchanging rather awkward glances at each other, and most notable of the interactions among them are with Ichika.

"...you don't all have to give me those kinds of looks," Ichika says rather meekly herself, knowing that she's on the receiving end of many of these awkward looks. "Big Sis's gonna be hurt, you know..."

"So you fucking knew all this time, huh?" Nino growls softly under her breath, but her irritation is still made clear. "Why wait until now to tell us for sure?"

"Hey, hey, no need for that again, Nino," Fuutarou says firmly and strictly over to the second quint, who quickly disengages, learning her mistake from earlier that week. "Because I want you all to show your Mystic Eyes to me real quick."

"Wait, we have to...?!" Ichika jumps a little as she turns to face her tutor in surprise, and he nods.

"I think we've crossed the point where we can no longer maintain just a strict tutor and student relationship anymore, because enough shit's happened now that that's no longer possible, as much as I would've liked to not involve you any more into magical matters. What I'm doing with you right now, telling you all to keep an eye out for suspicious stuff that might happen at school or just around the city too, I guess, is entirely between you and me; there's nothing involving contracts or your dad here. This also extends to your Mystic Eyes, because they're all still in the process of developing, and having things like what happened to Itsuki this week can be potentially dangerous because it'll be like a giant signal light to Shirazumi potentially telling him where exactly you are if something happens while you're outside. So I'd like to begin monitoring them closely from now on, if none of you mind - consider this a free service on my part."

"Heh. This sounds like one of those 'buy-one-get-one-free" ads on TV," Nino smiles wryly, unable to keep her amusement down.

"Yeah, seriously. I'm your tutor, and I come with a free magical health checkup every other week or something like that..." Fuutarou cracks a dry joke of his own. "But again, I digress. Let's see some Eyes, shall we? If you don't want to show them, then that's up to you, I'm not here to force anyone to do anything, but it would be nice for everyone to show theirs so that I can compare everyone's."

"Even though you said yourself that you don't know a whole lot about our Eyes?" Miku points out quickly.

"Yes, but I'm still trained as a medical mage, and after studying what I could about Mystic Eyes and cross-referencing it with what I already know, I should at least be able to keep an eye on your, uh, Mystic Eyes, no pun intended, I swear, since at the end of the day, Mystic Eyes are just magical circuits located around your eyes. This is going to be a learning process for me too, so I think we're all more or less in the same position, as close as we'll ever get."

The girls exchange hesitant glances at first, but Miku, seizing the initiative first, appropriately activates her own azure Mystic Eyes for Fuutarou to see, and the others follow suit quickly, not wanting to be the one to hide theirs from everyone else anymore. Soon, the young mage finds himself surrounded by no less than four pairs of bright, multi-colored Mystic Eyes - golden for Ichika, purple for Nino, blue for Miku, and red for Itsuki. The quintuplets sit still and try their best to maintain eye contact with their tutor, who peers back into each of them with a deeply studious look of his own, something all of the girls cannot match for more than a few moments at best when Fuutarou gives them his attention, not even Ichika, who does still manage the best out of her sisters at a remarkable four seconds' worth of time spent looking directly back at her tutor.

"Do you really have to look at us like that...? It's so weird," Nino complains, but her complaint comes out as a mumble.

"Sorry, I know this is pretty uncomfortable, but I literally don't have another way to have hands-on experience with Mystic Eyes, and certainly not four pairs at once," Fuutarou murmurs, studying Ichika's Mystic Eyes as the eldest quint finally turns away a little out of bashfulness at being looked at in this manner.

"Um...I don't mind if...you have some more, uh, hands-on experience with me..." Miku mutters back, and she inches closer to Fuutarou as she says this.

"Don't you dare," Nino hisses over.

"Hm?" Fuutarou glances over at the two quints, breaking his focus momentarily to see what's up.

"Nothing!"

"Okay."

Fuutarou takes about a few minutes per quintuplet, sometimes returning to previous quints he's already checked, to conduct his magical analyses, with the girls still sitting about awkwardly, as this is their first time receiving such treatment. While their tutor is busy with this, Ichika and Nino can't help but steal little glances at him every so often, breaking their eye contact with him quickly every time since they're afraid that Fuutarou will suddenly catch wind of them staring at him while working, but it would appear that he's so engrossed with his magical analyses that he either ignores that they're doing this or has no idea about their intermittent behavior.

"Alright, so..." the young mage announces after completing his work, taking a deep breath. "From what I can tell, being the novice mage that I am, your Mystic Eyes are all in good shape; nothing particularly wrong with any of them so far."

"Wait, how could you tell just from...l-looking at us like that...?" Nino stammers back, unable to look her classmate in the eyes for the time being.

"I've trained my own eyes extensively to analyse the conditions of patients over the years, both for regular and magical afflictions. In your girls' case, your Mystic Eyes, or just Mystic Eyes in general, are directly made of Magic Circuits, huge and complicated networks' worth of them, in fact, that give your eyes their Mystic power, since powers like that you won't get just from having an average set of Magic Circuits. And Miku, pop quiz."

Miku blinks in surprise. "Um...me?" she asks, pointing up at herself.

"Yep - I believe you're the only one I told the answer of this question I'm about to ask you to. When mages use their Magic Circuits, what byproduct is created as a result?"

"Hey, that's not fair, you've already been getting magic lessons from Fuutarou-kun too?" Ichika playfully whines. Nino, on the other hand, gives Miku a solemn look before turning away somewhat.

"Um...if I recall correctly..." Miku dives back into her memory, which digs up the time of her tutor's first night over at their penthouse with them, the morning when Miku accidentally ended up sleeping with Fuutarou in her own bed. Suppressing the embarrassment of this memory before it can show on her face, Miku looks back up at her tutor. "It was...heat, right?"

Fuutarou nods strongly. "That's right, heat. So logically, if you girls have your Mystic Eyes activated, you need to keep using magical energy to keep them on, so to speak. And because your Mystic Eyes are Magical Circuits themselves, when you run magical energy through them, they produce heat as a byproduct."

Ichika slowly nods in understanding; she'd always wondered why her Mystic Eyes always left her eyes feeling warmer than usual but she keeps this revelation to herself for now.

"That heat is the main sign that medic mages like me look for whenever we treat Magical Circuits; if there's too much heat being produced or too little or anything else that's out of the ordinary, we know something might be wrong. While I might not have intimate knowledge of Mystic Eyes in particular, just working with the basics, I know I can do at least this much."

"Wait, then, does that mean you can actually see heat...?" the first quint asks out of amazement.

"No, not physically, I'm just using my own magical energy to gauge the amount of heat being released by your Mystic Eyes or by another active Magical Circuit. More precisely, part of what I'm doing is directly monitoring the ambient temperature around your eyes by amplifying my own eyes' thermal sensitivity."

"Uh, Japanese, please?" Nino calls over, but Itsuki spares her tutor the trouble.

"It means that he is actually feeling the heat coming from our eyes with his own eyes," she explains. "Uesugi-kun, would I be correct in comparing that to putting a hand against someone's forehead to take their temperature?"

"Yeah, that's exactly it, actually," Fuutarou nods. "You picked up on that faster than I thought."

For whatever reason, Itsuki feels abnormally elated at deducing her tutor's explanation. She does her best to hide it too, like Ichika before her, but unlike Ichika, she isn't entirely successful in masking all of it.

"Eeuugh, that sounds...weird," Nino recoils a pinch as she gives their classmate a strange look.

"Well, it's either that or I literally shove my hands or, even better, my own face up to every one of yours to check your Mystic Eyes, and given what happened with Itsuki earlier today when we came here, I'm not entirely sure if that's what you want," the young mage scoffs quickly, winning the ire of the second quintuplet again as the fifth once more relapses into a double facepalm of embarrassment.

"I mean, there is one of us who wouldn't mind if you did that with her, so..." Ichika gestures with both hands next to her, and Miku nods enthusiastically, even emitting her own little "hm, hm!" of agreement.

"Don't you even think about it, Miku. But beyond all this, what was the point of you giving us this...this checkup or whatever?" Nino folds her arms back at Fuutarou.

"Again, the point of this was for me to make sure that everyone's Mystic Eyes are doing well for now. Because now that everyone here's clearly awakened them, they've had side effects that are affecting everyone in various ways, and some more than others."

The mention of side effects dampens the mood of the living room as several of the quints, Miku and Itsuki specifically, let their gazes fall a little.

"Not only do we need to take care of those side effects if they start becoming problems, but I need to continue monitoring everyone's progress so that they can develop as smoothly as possible and with as little hassle as possible," Fuutarou finishes.

"But, wait...sorry for sounding like I'm saying the obvious here, but this means that...our Mystic Eyes haven't stopped developing?" Nino asks.

"Yeah, they haven't. There are still quite a number of dormant Magical Circuits in everyone's Mystic Eyes except Ichika's, and even then I'm fairly certain she's still got a few. When those dormant Circuits activate, they'll contribute to the power of your Mystic Eyes too, but the issue is that we don't know what those activations could be, and it's not like we're going to deliberately try activating it by force, so we need to let them take their course."

The girls take a few moments to themselves to process this information.

"...then...about Miku's Mystic Eyes..." Itsuki asks slowly, glancing over at Miku in case she wants to object at any point, "...when she had to go to the hospital that one time..."

"Yeah, I'm thinking that that incident she suffered was probably the accidental activation that triggered her Mystic Eyes to awaken," Fuutarou nods slowly and sympathetically.

"Yikes, even something like that...?" Nino grimaces as she puts her hand over Miku's in an effort to comfort her from some bad memories. "Then what, if we all get punched in the back of the head and knocked the fuck out too, we'd go through the same thing?"

"I don't know, and the reason for that's because Mystic Eyes are essentially mutations in your Magical Circuits, like a genetic mutation in normal people. Because that mutation could literally be anything, everything that's related to it - its activation, its abilities, its limitations - we don't know anything about them, and we can't know until those Eyes themselves begin to show signs of what they're all about. So just because Miku happened to activate hers by getting clapped in the back of her head, that doesn't mean the same will happen to the rest of you. Case in point, Itsuki activated her own Mystic Eyes on accident earlier this week just because she got really, really pissed off at you - enough to actually manage to pour magical energy into those dormant Magical Circuits of hers for the first time and finally awaken her own Mystic Eyes."

"I-I still do not feel good about that situation, either...!" Itsuki blurts out quickly.

"Well, regardless of what you feel about that situation, now you have your own Mystic Eyes that you need to deal with. Which brings me to my next point: Itsuki, how's your eyesight doing?"

The mention of Itsuki's eyesight takes her sisters a moment to process, but they soon understand the implications and turn urgently to their youngest sister, who knew this would happen as soon as Fuutarou mentioned this in front of everyone.

"Wait, eyesight...? Itsuki, is your eyesight actually getting a lot worse?!" Nino, clearly alarmed over her younger sister's ocular health, asks Itsuki urgently.

"P-Please, Nino, everyone, allow me to explain...!" the fifth quintuplet says quickly. "The morning of the nightmare that I shared with Miku, when I woke up, I discovered that my eyesight appeared to have indeed worsened. But not by much, and to answer Uesugi-kun, it has stayed the same since then. As a matter of fact, my glasses that I usually use to read things up close still function just as they did before, but now I think I simply need glasses all the time. It really is not that big of a deal."

"But it is," Miku joins in. "What if as your Mystic Eyes develop, it costs you a little bit of your eyesight every time? What if...what if you actually go totally blind because of them? Like Fuutarou said, since these are Mystic Eyes we're talking about, anything can happen, so..."

"Yeah, just look at me, I'm practically blind with how bad my eyesight got," Nino nods heftily as she jabs a finger at herself. "Like, we all remember what happened when Uesugi-kun walked in on me that one night, right?"

"And then you have me and Miku, and we haven't really lost our eyesight at all..." Ichika adds, albeit awkwardly.

"The point is that I need you to continue monitoring your eyesight, Itsuki," Fuutarou says, doing his best not to talk over any of the girls. "I know you're basically already doing that, since you use your eyes all the time, obviously. But if possible, if you notice your eyesight worsening, report it to me immediately, since like Miku said, I'd rather not have anyone here go outright blind."

"But the question is, do our Eyes even stop developing," Miku wonders aloud.

"Theoretically they should - remember that your Mystic Eyes awaken and grow stronger by activating the Magical Circuits that they're directly associated with. So once they've run out of Magical Circuits to awaken, that should be the limit of their development..."

"...you don't seem quite sure about that either, though," Ichika points out, noting her tutor's uncertain look as he hands a fist up to his lower face in tumultuous thought.

"Because Mystic Eyes are just such a wildcard of a magical ability that you're never quite sure what exactly their limits are. Lots of Mystic Eyes probably are finite in their power and easy to figure out since there's more of their kind out there than others, but from what I've researched, there are some really strong ones out there, like one that a certain Burial Agency elder had called Mystic Eyes of Retrocognition, which literally let him look into the past."

Not surprisingly, the girls all balk at this to varying degrees. "L-Look back into the past? Seriously?" Nino is the first to let her disbelief known.

"Yes, seriously. I know I didn't really put the scope of your potential powers into perspective until now, so I can see how that can seem shocking."

"Wait, so - so that means that our Mystic Eyes can do crazy shit, too, right?"

"Well hold your horses for a second, since we don't even know what your Mystic Eyes do. Remember, they're all - well, most of them are still in their infancy in terms of development. Again, I stress again, do not rush them because they might have irreversible consequences that we won't know about until they happen. Think of them as ticking time bombs, almost - we gotta take our time and not just randomly mess with them, otherwise they could blow up in your faces - maybe even literally, who knows."

Nino bites her lower lip, then releases it to ask her next question:

"So...so let's just say hypothetically, uh...if we wanted to, er, train our Mystic Eyes somehow...we wouldn't be able to do that right now?"

"No, of course not, you don't even know what your Eyes do. And while you all may be mages by technicality, none of you have received any kind of magical training, so you'll have no idea what you're doing with your Magic Circuits if you start messing with your Mystic Eyes and I can't be held responsible for what might come out of that. Well, actually, no, I'm still responsible for that, since your dad's gonna fucking kill me if he finds out that you girls all have Mystic Eyes..."

The quintuplets once more exchange quick glances of alarm among each other.

"Hold on, so that means - that means Papa doesn't know about us having these Eyes?" Nino balks at her tutor.

"No, no, I said that wrong, that's my bad," Fuutarou shakes his head to quickly correct himself. "It's not that your dad doesn't know about you having Mystic Eyes or being mages at all - after all, he's the one who got you those contact lenses that somehow returned your eyes to normal, right? So he has an idea about your relation to magic. What he doesn't know is the sheer extent to which you're all magically inclined. Right now, to him, you girls just have a slight magical problem here or there that he can easily rectify, like in Nino's case when he got her those Mystic Eye-Killer contact lenses."

"So you're actually hiding the fact that you're doing all this for us from Dad? But...why?" Ichika asks, growing bewildered again.

"Because he'll accuse me of trying to cultivate your magic potentials behind his back," the young mage explains calmly. "Your opinion of him may differ from mine, but to me, he comes off as a kind of man who doesn't like it when outsiders like me start getting a little too involved with his family, since that's mostly the case with his work at the hospital."

"What, even though you've been working with us for all this time?" Nino lets out a much needed chuckle.

"Yes, since all those times have been for the expressed purpose of tutoring. Even things like what we're doing now, just hanging out and eating snacks together and watching TV, your dad is fine with. But what I'm doing now with giving you girls magical checkups like this is definitely going to cross the line for him, and if he ever finds out, I can't imagine him taking this well."

"But again, Fuutarou-kun, why? Why are you going out of your way to do something like this for us? You wouldn't normally do this, with how busy you already must be," Ichika shakes her head, but to her surprise, Fuutarou simply gives a quick laugh. "Wait, why're you laughing at me? This wasn't a joke, in case you misread the atmosphere."

"No, I just found it a bit funny that you're the one asking me something like that," Fuutarou remarks, cracking his knuckles quickly and giving his fingers a good stretch to keep them from being too inactive. "Miss 'You-Should-Start-Looking-At-Us-Like-Friends'."

"Mmmuuu! That's not fair, throwing my own words back at me like that!" Throwing herself into another pout from hell, Ichika flicks her chin away with crossed arms.

"But now this is just one more thing that you need to worry about," Miku says worriedly to Fuutarou.

"No, it's really not. Like I said, we meet all the time, and my checkups only take a few minutes for each of you, so it's really not that big of a deal."

"Well, even if that is the case, then what about your decision to involve us much more into this magical side of our problem?" Itsuki points out. "You spent these past three months, four months even, with the mentality that you would keep us as removed from the magic world as possible, but now you are suddenly reversing that entire methodology. I am worried that such a drastic change in roles for you could produce a burden that may be very heavy for you to bear."

Another rare moment of Uesugi Fuutarou not answering a question right away crops up, and his noticeable vocal absence hangs heavily over the girls who wait silently for him to reply.

"...ideally I would have never let you girls ever know about the magic world, about my 'secret' identity as a mage. Ideally, I would have only ever been a tutor to the five of you and that's all you would have known me as," the young mage sighs deeply, running a hand over his head while bowing his neck a little to do so. "Even now, there's a big part of me that doesn't want to go through with what I've discussed with you so far."

"Then if it's because of us, you shouldn't feel compelled to do it," Miku urges softly. "You said it yourself that this isn't a contractual obligation on your part, right? We've been able to deal with the symptoms of our Mystic Eyes on our own so far, so just let us keep dealing with them like we always have. We'll be okay, Fuutarou, I promise. Please don't feel like you need to do this because of us."

But Fuutarou shakes his head back. "It's not the burden that worries me, and again, it's really not a burden at all. It's the same reason that I told you all when I first showed you that I was a mage - it's because I just don't want any of you to get involved with the magic world, because nine times of ten, nothing good will come of being here."

"But clearly we're the ones getting dragged in, whether we like it or not," Nino argues, and her sisters around her nod in agreement, "whether it's because of our own damn Eyes or because of that Shirazumi bastard who keeps coming after us. Like, yeah, sure, maybe if we're the ones being idiots and messing around with magic, it's only reasonable for you to tell us to knock that shit off, but that's not what's happened to us, like, at all! So if all that's gonna happen, then we might as well get ourselves involved! You know me, Uesugi-kun, I sure as hell ain't the type of girl to go down without a fight if you let me!"

"While your eagerness is very nice to see, unfortunately it's going to take a lot more than a bunch of fighting words to truly dig past the tip of the iceberg known as magic," Fuutarou says with blunt, brutal honesty. "You're a bunch of high school girls with no magical credibility other than your possession of Mystic Eyes that you don't even know how to use for the most part, saying that you'll be able to hold your own against a psychotic mage who's running around out there drugging people and/or eating them because he's a fucking cannibal and a lunatic and potentially a whole city's worth of junkies and other third-rate mages-for-hire who'll stop at nothing to take the fullest advantage of you all if you give them a chance."

Listening to her tutor with a familiar rising anger bubbling up in her chest, the second quintuplet, managing to suppress her voice down to a sizzling shimmer at least, begins to fume, "Listen here, you little - "

"Then - how does teaching us magic sound, Fuutarou...?"

This utterly silences Nino, whose own royal purple Mystic Eyes dart over to her younger, perhaps bolder older sister. Everyone else's eyes are on their tutor's, who, to Miku's silent dismay, shakes his head again.

"No can do. First of all, where would I find the time to teach you all magic with how much time we need to focus on studying for school in the first place? And that's before all the shit that I'm up to whenever I'm not tutoring you."

"And even if you did have the time, you still wouldn't teach us magic since you don't want us getting too involved in it, right..." Ichika sighs quietly.

"Then why go through all this trouble...?" Itsuki begins to ask, but Fuutarou interrupts her.

"Because it's possible for you all to be mages or have Mystic Eyes or whatever and still not be involved with the magic world whatsoever. I believe I've mentioned that before." Fuutarou takes another deep breath. "If there's any one thing I can teach you girls and have you remember for the rest of your lives...no, not even as your tutor, but as a friend, it's that magic...isn't worth it. I'm already in this position and it's been too big a part of how I've grown up, so I gotta stick it through until the end. But not for you girls - there's still a chance that you all can come out of this without getting sucked into this hellhole called magic, past the point of no return. And I've already explained why I feel that way, and even if I didn't, I'm hoping maybe you can figure out why on your own."

The longest silence so far tonight ensues now, following this rather heavy monologue on the tutor's part.

"...so, what, we're...you want us to just never use these Mystic Eyes? Like, if you could make it so that our Mystic Eyes never hit their maximum potentials, you would, right?" Nino asks with a croaking voice.

"Yes, that's correct. That's how I would prefer things to go."

"Then wouldn't we just be throwing these Mystic Eyes away? Like yeah, I know that we have no actual magic training and I myself wasn't the biggest fan of us being mages all of a sudden, but now that we've had some time to let it all sink in, what's so wrong with us learning more about our own Mystic Eyes? At the very least, shouldn't we be able to figure out what they do, in case they're super powerful or something? And then, and then we might even be able to, you know, help you out with all this magic stuff! Do a little bit more than just listen for random shit we might hear at school or other boring stuff like that. Why do you have to make it sound like literally one step into learning magic and we're fucking done for? It can't be that bad!"

To this, Fuutarou only offers the driest of laughs.

"Again at the risk of sounding like a massive edgelord, they say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions," he answers with a soft but drawn-out sigh, grabbing a nearby bottle of water to moisten his throat that's become parched from all the yapping he's done. "You might tell yourself that, like, oh, what's the big deal, what's so bad about getting our foot in the door. Then one thing leads to another, and then another, and then another, and soon, before you know it, you're too deep down the rabbit hole, so much so that you might even get your own sisters involved too on accident. It's all the worse when you consider that you're all quintuplets, not just any regular set of siblings, either, so you all have to be extra careful."

Checking his smartwatch, Uesugi Fuutarou gets up.

"Unfortunately, I've gotta get going now if I wanna drop some of this cinnamon bread at home so that Raiha can enjoy some of it. Real quick, since this is the start of summer vacation, I won't be around as much at first since work on my end is going to be ramping up and I gotta handle that, but once that's taken care of, we can return to having regular tutoring sessions again so that I make sure you all don't immediately forget all the shit we've studied in the first trimester. Call me whenever you need to for anything, you all have my number so that shouldn't be an issue."

Bidding his goodbyes to the quints, Fuutarou makes his way to the shoe lobby, this time flanked by Miku and Itsuki who've gotten up to see him off while the other two stay behind in the living room.

"Looks like Yotsuba'll be here soon. And sorry for the heavy talk today, I didn't expect things to get that heavy," Fuutarou apologizes, fitting on his shoes with one fluid motion per foot each. "Tell the others that too. Maybe next time I'm here, it'll be a bit livelier; hopefully Yotsuba'll help out with that."

Standing up with his shoes on, the young mage takes a look down at the two quints before him.

"...you two doing alright?" he asks them, lowering his voice considerably to keep this part of the conversation among just the three of them. "I'm talking about what happened earlier this week."

Miku nods. "Nothing else has happened so far. But...knowing me and that...that nightmare...it'll probably happen again."

"Yeah, it might. Itsuki, show me your Mystic Eyes one more time?"

The youngest quint obliges.

"Hm...looks like those slashes you told me about earlier are gone now, so that's good," Fuutarou nods quickly. "Let me know if they return or anything, alright? And Miku."

"Y-Yeah?"

Fuutarou pauses, thinking about how to best put this into words.

"...what happened between the two of you is the only place that I can't physically be to protect either of you. You know this...this nightmare of yours the best, I would assume. So while you probably already know this, let me make myself redundant and ask you to keep Itsuki safe whenever you have these nightmares together, because you're the only one who can."

Miku's blue eyes widen, and she then nods firmly, grasping the gravity of her tutor's words.

"Yeah. You don't have to tell me twice," she says, giving a small but firm smile of conviction.

"Good. Then until next time..."

Waving goodbye to their tutor, Miku closes the door after him, but she lingers with her younger sister at the shoe lobby, as the quintuplets seem prone to doing whenever they see their tutor off like this. Miku wonders if she should ask the quiet Itsuki something to break the ice, but she ends up not needing to, as Itsuki raises her eyes up to her instead, though her eyes don't look very certain of themselves.

"...Miku," she mumbles quietly, "is it alright for me to...feel worried about Uesugi-kun too...?"

Nodding without hesitation, Miku steps in to draw Itsuki close, just as they'd done earlier this week, remembering to remove her headphones and hang them over her left elbow first.

"Of course. There's nothing wrong with the two of us both being worried about the boy we like," the third quintuplet replies, matching her younger sister's volume. "And...I'm worried about him too."

Rediscovering her sister's warmth, Itsuki can't resist its sisterly allure and snuggles with her, seeking refuge from her troubled feelings that have brewed up as a result of tonight.

"...I hope he keeps himself safe too," she whispers into Miku's bosom. "Not just us."

"Mm. Me too."

---

The abrasively loud ringing of a smartphone rattles, shattering the otherwise silent night air of a dark, unlit apartment unit.

"The fuck, dude, I'm in the middle of eating, damn it, what the hell do you want?"

"That's some way to talk to your employer, Shirazumi. What, can't phone in to check on you every once in a while?"

"How many times have I told you? I don't fucking like getting called while I'm fucking eating, you son of a bitch!"

The unpleasant splat of a human limb, or more accurately what's left of it, slaps against one of the walls of the unlit apartment unit.

"AND HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I TOLD YOU TO GO FUCKING GET THOSE FUCKING KIDS? HOW FUCKING INCOMPETENT ARE YOU? THEY'RE LITERALLY KIDS, AND THE BOY WHO'S GIVING YOU SO MUCH TROUBLE IS LITERALLY IN THE SAME CLASS AS THEY ARE!"

The sudden explosion of words shotguns Shirazumi Rio's ear to the point where he has to hold his phone away from his face to avoid getting his eardrum ruptured.

"Bitch, you never told me how skilled that boy you're talkin' about was! Ain't no way a fuckin' high schooler like him's got any business being as skilled as he is, motherfucker!"

"Still doesn't explain why you're taking longer than three goddamn months to do your fucking job, you dirtbag cannibal! How about instead of eating all your fucking test subjects, you spend that time figuring out how to get those girls to me, huh!?"

"Hey, I get that we're in a little bit of a contract right now, but ain't nowhere does it say in our contract that we both signed that I was working under some kinda strict time limit or timeline that I needed to operate under, so sucks for you, dipshit, but I can take as much time on this as I fuckin' want, and you can suck my fuckin' left nut!"

"Listen, kid, I was willing to give you some time to work with to do this job, but I've never heard of a mage, not even someone as degenerate as you, take this long to kidnap a few kids!"

"Oh, so now you're callin' me a kid now too? How 'bout you shut your old ass up, fuckin' geezer and a half? Go push more pencils or somethin' while I do the real work for you. That's why you're the one callin' me beggin' me to deliver you some nice pieces of high school pussy to your front door like I'm a fuckin' Ubereats driver, right? Hahaha!"

The voice on the other line clicks its tongue.

"Alright, then if that's how you wanna play, then let's play a game that'll get you to start doin' your fuckin' job right. I'll give you another three weeks - if you can't make ANY progress until then, you can kiss that drug ring you've got goin' on goodbye."

"Drug ring? The fuck ya talkin' about, old man? I ain't got no drug ring!"

"Still being retarded as fuck with me, now, aren't we? Then wait these three weeks and see for yourself what this drug ring is that I warned you about potentially losing after I'm done. Get used to the sound of police sirens in the city, because you might end up hearing a lot of them, depending how things will go between us after these next few weeks."

The phone call ends, and Shirazumi Rio, with his blood-splattered red leather jacket and torn jeans, snarls violently as he tosses the remains of his newly consumed human corpse against the wall, the same one that he tossed a limb over to. Murmuring to himself incoherently most of the time, Shirazumi pockets his phone and exits the abandoned apartment unit, the echoing sounds of heavy boots clomping down the rickety stairs outside.