A/N
Bananarambo: Thanks for the kind words. Your review reminded me of how I felt when I first began writing this fic, that people wouldn't like reading about a fic that takes an existing IP and adds too many new elements or too big of a new element since then, it wouldn't feel like the same franchise anymore. I had that criticism made of one of my previous stories (and rightfully so), so going into Five Equal Angels, I strove to avoid making the same mistake.
Well, let me rephrase that, since I'm already fundamentally taking Gotoubun and changing it into something potentially very different just by adding magic to it, a story element that wasn't present at all in the original. More accurately, I made sure to ground this fic firmly in the same qualities that made the original so good - but of course that was easier said than done, especially because before this fic, most of my other works are chock-full of magic bullshit that just sort of spills out of my ears at times. But thankfully this time around it seems like I've been able to put a stopper to that, or so I would like to think.
Now, however, I feel like I'm facing a small conundrum: now that it appears this fic is being generally well received, with the occasional concern that the pacing is quite slow (which it is, but that's for another time), as the previous chapter demonstrates, I do need to make something out of the whole magic element thing that I've planted into the fic as a plot-driver of sorts. Or in other words, now that people are still sticking with me at this stage of the story where magic will only become a bigger and bigger part of the story, I need to ensure that this fic still feels like a Gotoubun fanfic in the meantime and not begin relapsing into my old habits of overstuffing my content with more magic bullshit. While I'm proud of the magic bullshit I cook up and can assure you that this story will have its fair share of it, for better or worse, the challenge now is to maintain this fine line between indulging my own magic power trips and keeping the sense that this is still a Gotoubun fanfic at the end of the day, and I'd be lying if I said that this doesn't feel at least a little bit daunting.
I suppose this much is to be expected, taking this fic down this particular direction. Thanks again to everyone for reading.
A quiet footstep manifests on the third floor of an ordinary apartment building, followed by a slowly increasing number of more footsteps like it. On this perfectly ordinary Saturday evening in the middle of the summer, with the kids out for summer vacation and spirits in the city high as a result of the presence of the season, these quiet, eerie footsteps that are enough to make anyone's hair on the backs of their necks stand on edge indicate anything but.
There is no police tape yet, no yellow "DO NOT ENTER" or "POLICE ZONE" ticker tape barring entry into the room to which the footsteps slowly make their way or the entire floor of this apartment building. It would appear that the footsteps have gotten here before the men and women in uniform have, which is admittedly quite the rare occurrence, but thanks to the tip-off of this apartment building's landlord, this small miracle was made possible.
The door to the mysterious room opens quietly, sparing the relaxing summer night an additional sense of eerieness that could have resulted if it had creaked open instead. Once the footsteps have slipped inside, the door snaps shut just as quietly as it opened behind them, sealing them away from the rest of the world for the time being.
The contents of the room inside reveal the entombed reality that is shrouded from the rest of the world: a young man in his late twenties, still dressed in a T-shirt and shorts like he himself is still in a relaxed weekend mood even in death, lies strewn across this room in five separate pieces. This abdomen lies like a bloody sack of rice on the futon still unfurled in the corner of the room, his arms and legs have been tossed around like gnawed chicken bones, and his head lays on its side, facing the direction of the door as if to greet its guest even beyond the grave, though the expression on what's left of his face is far from what a guest would expect of a house welcome.
Silence reigns supreme in this room for a few moments longer, only broken by an occasional pair of footsteps that seem to be investigating this room, even though that can't be right. What cannot be disputed, however, is the sheer amount of violence and decay that has taken place in this room: dried, days-old, perhaps even weeks-old blood coats parts of the walls, the floor, and what little furniture furnishes this apartment room. The narration may have made an analogy about chicken bones just above, but entire bones of varying sizes form a constellation of human remains across the floor, the organic matter that they still had stuck on them when they were first produced well along the process of decaying. The bigger body pieces that still do have most of their flesh intact sport nightmarish gouges ripped out of them, and all these missing chunks suspiciously take on the rough shape of a large human mouth. The limbless and headless human abdomen on the futon has multiple of these gouges of varying sizes that expose its innards, which have also been physically pulled out and chewed, snapped in half like licorice sticks and thrown around like confetti. Perhaps worst of all, the face of the decapitated head is missing about half of its original surface area, and the skin and muscles that were once housed beneath the former have been pulled and torn away to expose the mangled remains what once occupied the depths of this bodyless head.
Finally, the soft tapping of a finger against a screen joins the now-absent footsteps, followed by a dial tone.
"Hear you loud 'n clear, kid. What's up?"
"I'm at the apartment where we got the tip-off. Confirm my coordinates?"
"Coordinates confirmed, I see you. What's goin' on down there?"
Uesugi Fuutarou eyes again the blood splatters on the walls around him. While there aren't as many as he expected, the ones that are present still etch a lasting image into his mind as he casts a panoramic glance around.
"Dismembered victim, five pieces. Male, probably late twenties. Skeletonization process suggests time of death was about four weeks ago."
"Two weeks...yeah, no wonder the landlord called me saying that he had tenants there complaining about a bad smell coming from one of the rooms on the third floor."
"To be expected, yeah. Remains show human bite marks, suggesting the victim was partially consumed. Needless to say, but we've got another Shirazumi victim on our hands."
Uesugi Isanari sighs heavily on the other end of the call.
"This asshole's getting a lot bolder lately. First it was just kidnapping, but now he's just straight up eatin' his victims in their own homes. What do you make of this, kid? What's your take?"
"Hm, here's what I got," Fuutarou replies calmly as he continues to survey the room, seeing if there's anything else of interest that he ought to know about while he's on the phone with his dad. "Based on my own investigations and such over the past four months, I'm putting together a picture of what Shirazumi's up to: he moves into the city to put in his bid on the drug trade and black market currently flourishing here. We don't know when, but for now that's not important. What is important is that he doesn't stop at just drug trafficking: he wants to develop his own strain of Heisei for reasons we currently don't know still, and he's been testing it out on his clients while attempting to also kidnap the quints on the side. Now, after repeated failures of trying to kidnap them, he's getting more and more aggressive, and he's starting to kill and eat his victims in their own homes or as they're out in the city."
The young mage eyes the remaining, decaying eye of the man's head on the floor.
"Shirazumi doesn't strike me as the type to accelerate his agenda just because he feels like it, because if that were the case, he'd've been way more aggressive with his agenda from the very start. I get the feeling that there's something going on externally that's causing him to exert more drastic behaviors like this, because as a mage, even he must know the risks of pulling off shit like this. He might be able to hide a few bodies, but with the number of bodies he's starting to rack up, he can't get rid of them all, and I don't know if his gang can clean up all the shit that he's leaving behind, either. And I sort of doubt that they even know about it, about the shit that he's up to."
"Which means that eventually, something like tonight's gonna happen where we find out about it."
Fuutarou nods, even though he knows his dad can't physically see it. "Well, the more bodies he leaves behind, the more clues for us to work with so that we can finally ID the trail of this motherfucker. What I wanna know is what the hell the police is up to. This body's been here for four fucking weeks; I highly doubt that the tenants around here only now started smelling the decay coming from this room. You said the landlord is someone you've worked with before, right? I assume you can trust him that he's not hiding anything from you regarding this?"
"Yep, we go way back, so you shouldn't feel the need to suspect him as being an accomplice."
"Well, you say that about anyone, don't you?"
"I know I might talk like that a lot, but seriously, I don't think there's a reason to suspect him, he's just a friggin' landlord, kid."
"I mean, given the relationship that we've got with our own landlord..."
The two men share a few morbid chuckles.
"But it's funny that you brought up the police. I don't know if you meant to or not, but have you been checking the news lately?"
"As much as I can, but you'll have to fill me in on stuff that I'm missing. I know that the media's reporting less and less stuff about the city's drug problems; a few months back they used to be all over the headlines, but now they only get like one article on the side a week and that's it."
"That's it, more or less. We know for a fact that the drug trade in the city hasn't gotten any better, and if anything, it's gotten worse overall, yet the media it talking less about it when you figure they ought to talk more."
"Which means that there's someone in the higher-ups of the city, someone who can pull strings, who wants to divert attention away from the drug problem." Fuutarou sighs quietly. "I got the feeling this was the case, but I was busy trying to follow Shirazumi's trail."
"But there's more. The media's one thing, but have you noticed that there aren't as many drug busts by the police lately?"
"Yep. Police activity around the city's been decreasing, even if I just go by how frequently I've been hearing police sirens lately, or how infrequently, I should say. But no, there've been less uniforms out in the city overall, and the ones I have seen sometimes aren't even on duty."
"It's almost like they've been tasked with doing nothing, right? Or it feels that way?"
"Hm, I wouldn't go so far as saying they're literally doing nothing, but yeah, I'd agree. So you think the police are directly involved?"
"In some way, but we'll need proof."
"I'm down with that, but you're gonna need to lead me to 'em first."
"And I got you covered. Maruo knows a few people in the police department, so I'll hit him up to ask him if he can arrange something."
"Got it, I'll stop by the hospital tomorrow and talk to him."
Closing the call, Uesugi Fuutarou pockets his phone and kneels down to inspect the abdomen with its exposed intestines. Carefully hovering his hand over the remains, Fuutarou applies a small rune that analyzes the dismembered body, and closing his eyes to focus on his magic, despite the fact that it's already quite dark in the room, the young mage gets to work.
"Hah? Taking a walk this late at night?"
"Ahaha, yeah, I just, y'know, felt like taking a walk, no big deal ~ "
Nakano Nino sighs on the other end of the line.
"You're gonna give Uesugi-kun an aneurysm one of these days...but since Itsuki's out right now returning a textbook she borrowed from an upperclassman, I won't chew you out too hard. Just come back home before anything happens, alright? We don't want a repeat of what happened last time, do we..."
Giggling with her sister, Nakano Yotsuba, dressed in a refreshing summer casual style, closes her phone and pockets it to continue her lonely walk down the small residential street. It has been quite a while since she has last been out by herself; the first few weeks of the quintuplets' first summer break as high school students has been quite hectic - not in a bad way, mind you, for the girls have been living it up to the fullest by heading out to enjoy great food and drinks at many of the city's high-class restaurants, enjoying themselves in the city's recreational spots like the arcades, water parks, movie theaters, and shopping malls, and hanging out with their friends from school and, of course, with each other. Of course, they've also spent at least some of their vacation time working on their homework from school and studying on their own, as instructed by their tutor, so that they don't completely forget about all the material that they spent so much time painstakingly studying for their first trimester.
But they've done all this without seeing their tutor once for the past four weeks. Ever since summer vacation began, none of the quintuplets have seen him once, and neither has he visited them once. The quintuplets didn't question this, of course - since finals are done and summer vacation gives him the excuse to not have to come in to tutor the girls in person, he finally has a chance to focus solely on his work as a mage, a chance that he has taken full advantage of from the looks of things. Even when the girls got their finals scores back and found, to their overwhelming surprise and joy, that they all barely managed to pass their exams, when Yotsuba phoned Fuutarou out of pure joy to let him know of the good news, momentarily forgetting that he would more than likely be busy with his own work, their tutor merely congratulated them and told them to keep up their good work going into the rest of the year when he finally did pick up.
Even when Yotsuba asked him to stop by to celebrate with them, Fuutarou turned down her offer, apologizing for being unable to.
Yotsuba walks with her gaze fixed down on her feet, as though counting the number of steps it's taking her to walk from the Pentagon high-rise to the set of swings that she finds herself drifting back to every so often.
The advent of summer vacation and all the fun she's had with her sisters during the past several weeks were at first sufficient to distract her from the brooding thoughts that have been fermenting in the back of her mind, and Yotsuba was hoping that she would be able to keep the status quo throughout the summer. After all, if she was able to last this long, she should be perfectly capable of lasting until the end of break, thereupon which she'd be able to see Fuutarou regularly again, just as she'd gotten accustomed to for the past roughly four months leading up to summer vacation.
Then why does she find herself drifting back out into the suburbs again?
Why is she wandering outside, alone?
Why is she...?
Why...?
These questions and others like it, no matter how much they bombard her mind, cannot stop her legs and feet from moving on their own, so often have they done this that such an act has become more muscle memory than anything else. Yotsuba herself doesn't bother trying to stop herself from letting such thoughts lay siege to her mind - she's tried many times to stop them, but they won't stop harassing her, and especially during a time like this, Yotsuba is in no mood tonight to even attempt to secure herself some kind of peace of mind. Thus, she continues to walk, eyes down and her signature green hair ribbon drooping with her neck, towards her own little comfy spot, the one spot that she can truly call her own in the whole city.
And eventually she reaches it - the small children's park with the swing sets slightly overlooking the heart of the city in all of its modern nighttime cityscape beauty. Taking her usual place on one of the swings, she steps onto it and, like clockwork, begins to rock herself to and fro, standing on the swing and silently enjoying what she can of the countless lights on this fleetingly comfortable, dreamy summer weekend night.
Yotsuba sorely misses Fuutarou.
And if only her feelings could stop there.
The final week of first trimester leading up to their exams...following the events of that week, now that she's had the few weeks afterwards of summer vacation to think about and dwell on them, Yotsuba has found herself sunk even deeper into her own mental pool of quicksand with even less of an idea of what to do to escape it, if she can even escape it at all by now.
Her sisters like him. Both Miku and Itsuki like Fuutarou. Miku was obvious; she was the first one besides herself who started seriously liking him, and since her affection for him was gradual and built up over the weeks and months, Yotsuba could see her feelings for Fuutarou as natural, as though the two of them were just really close friends and not necessarily romantic partners. But Itsuki is the wrench that's smacked Yotsuba hard on the head, figuratively speaking - while the rest of the quints were perhaps all quite surprised, no one was more shocked to hear this than Yotsuba herself - though of course Yotsuba herself didn't show it. Itsuki, the sister who was always about platonic relationships and how romantic ones in school should be absolutely forbidden?
No, it's not necessarily because of Itsuki's opinions on what the nature of relationships of grade school students should be like that has taken Yotsuba off guard so badly, if Itsuki even holds such opinions nowadays. It's just the fact that Itsuki was able to keep this under wraps so well from everyone until that final week that has tilted Yotsuba so hard, because that would mean that literally any one of her sisters could also have feelings for their tutor. Itsuki, of all people, who has claimed with good reason to be the worst among them at lying and deceiving others, was able to keep her feelings for their tutor a secret. Then again, maybe it was less that Itsuki was actively hiding her feelings for him from everyone else and it was more that she had very recently discovered such feelings and thus didn't have the time to make them a well-kept secret...yeah, that probably sounds about right.
Because as much as Yotsuba herself claims to be the worst at keeping secrets and lying, she herself knows that this is absolutely not true.
Building off the suspicion she has now that any one of her sisters could also harbor feelings for Fuutarou, Yotsuba notes that lately, Nino has been acting suspiciously nicer towards him. Normally she would have at least thrown an insult or two at him during the weeks leading up to their finals, but ever since summer vacation started, she hasn't once talked bad about him. Well, okay, she has poked fun at him every once in a while, but her "insults" have been heavily diluted to the point where they ought to be considered playful teasing than actual insulting. Nino has also frequently expressed interest in souvenirs or buying things that they come across that Fuutarou might like if they got them for him, and on more than several occasions, the fourth quint has walked in on her older sister practicing new recipes and experimenting with different dishes, all while muttering things like "mm, he probably wouldn't like it if I made the flavor too strong" or "I should teach him how to do this the next time he's here".
And, of course, there's the whole incident with the track team when Fuutarou bluffed to the other track girls calling Nino his girlfriend, and Nino jumped in to confirm it.
First, it was Miku, then Ichika. And now, Itsuki and finally Nino.
Yotsuba smiles to herself. Honestly, she's happy - back when she met Fuutarou in Kyoto six years ago, she'd brought him over to her sisters to show him off to them, to show them that she'd made a new friend - but more importantly, to show them what a great friend he was, what a kind boy he was. And now, six years later, they're all starting to realize just that. Honestly, she couldn't be happier with how things are turning out, after all this time. She's getting what she wants.
She's getting what she wants...right?
And besides, she's already told herself that there's no way that she can keep Fuutarou all to herself. After all, without her sisters coming through for her, none of them would have met Fuutarou, and Yotsuba wouldn't have been able to meet him again...or at least not in the way that they did that April. Uesugi-san belongs to everyone, that's what she told herself, and Fuutarou himself has certainly been pushing this point across by bringing the quints all back together just in time to study just enough to pass their finals together.
So there should be no reason why right now, Yotsuba feels so alone.
The fourth quintuplet simply smiles into the night, towards the bright city landscape.
"Even though it does feel a little lonely, I'm at least glad that everyone can see what makes Uesugi-san so wonderful. I really am!" she says aloud.
Even Yotsuba knows she isn't fooling anyone.
"No, really, I am!" she tries again, keeping her smile the same.
She's not fooling anyone.
"I am glad. I'm not lying..." Yotsuba says aloud a third time.
She's not going to fool anyone.
"...I'm...not lying...
The fake smile and certainty are both gone.
"...I'm not..."
So busy is Yotsuba in trying to cope with the void inside her heart that she only now feels the tears streaming down her cheeks as she continues to swing gently back and forth before the city skyline.
And yet, her smile forges on as she continues to gaze out to the sea of city lights with only the creaking of the old swing set on which she stands keeping her company on this fleeting, solitary summer night.
Yotsuba is not lying to herself; this much she knows. She truly is happy, both for her sisters and for Fuutarou, that the latter is finally getting the recognition that she always believed he deserved, and it should be all the better that they've even taken an extra step in showing him their appreciation in the form of their feelings, too. But while she may not be outright lying to herself, Yotsuba is forced to acknowledge with those tears rolling down her face that she is certainly trying to deceive herself. So long as her sisters are happy, she will be happy too. After all, she'd pledged to herself ever since they entered high school to never live selfishly ever again, especially not towards her own sisters. She would do everything she could in her power to work towards their happiness, because striving for her own has never worked out, and in some cases, it's almost led her and even her sisters down the path of even greater misfortune. Which means that doing the same when it comes to Uesugi Fuutarou, especially when it comes to someone like Uesugi Fuutarou, would result in the exact same outcome of misery and ruin.
But clearly, this is not the case: Yotsuba cannot let go of her feelings for Uesugi Fuutarou. Ever since that early morning which she spent with him in their homeroom class, before anyone else had come to school for that day, when she was fortunate enough to cradle a napping Fuutarou in her arms and chest, Yotsuba has subconsciously allowed her feelings for him build back up when she intended to throw them away, when she should have thrown them away. What makes Yotsuba feel the worst about this whole situation is that the decision she made to stay true to her feelings that morning at school with her classmate in her arms stemmed first from her pure desire to take care of him, to protect him from whatever worries and concerns that may have been plaguing him at the time, just as he'd done for them, even despite knowing that the only one doing any sort of protecting around here was the boy she was trying to comfort. Yotsuba didn't want to admit it at the time, but really, the only person she was comforting that morning was herself.
Maybe, just maybe...if Fuutarou had never revealed to them about his secret identity as a mage...if the quintuplets had gone this whole time being unaware of their tutor's true occupation and abilities, and if they stayed ignorant of such things for their next few high school years to come, maybe Yotsuba would have been able to let go of these feelings. Maybe she would have been able to truly relinquish these old feelings she had for him in favor of securing those of her sisters, as she had pledged to do. She's not sure why she feels this way in regards to this hypothetical scenario, given that she's never been one to be able to handle the theoretical such as this. Maybe this is just another absurd instance of coping that she's doing to herself by arbitrarily pulling out some kind of weird what-if situation that has no relevance to what's actually going on right now. But beyond that, Yotsuba knows with absolute clarity that alongside her desire to see her sisters be happy, she possesses another deep wish to be by Fuutarou's side. Not even to fulfill the promise that she made with him six years ago when they were kids, since there's absolutely no chance of her ever becoming even half as diligent of a student as Fuutarou, but just to let him know that he doesn't need to face the dangers of the world alone, that he doesn't have to feel like he must do everything on his own...that he has friends that he can look forward to coming back home to.
Yotsuba doesn't want Fuutarou to feel alone. Because for a very long time, that's what she felt, and she can't stand knowing that this is what her classmate might have felt as well for the past six years. And even worse, it might still be how he feels to this day, and that possibility is almost enough to truly tip the fourth quintuplet off the edge into the dark, bottomless pit in the back of her mind.
These two desires are mutually exclusive; they cannot truly coexist. Yotsuba wants to support her sisters as they let Fuutarou know their feelings and enjoy his company as a little more than just friends at school, as a little more than just tutor and students. But the facts that she sorely misses him and that her sisters having feelings for him as well is causing her genuine heartache means that she cannot sit on the sidelines forever.
By this point, the smile on Yotsuba's face is only barely hanging on by a thread, and depending on perspective, it might not even look like an actual smile at all anymore. Regardless, Yotsuba continues to maintain what vestiges of a smile that she still has as she keeps rocking back and forth on her lonely swing, the city lights before her flickering with sweet nothings and empty promises.
"Uesugi-san..." she says. Her voice is not a whisper, not a murmur, but it comes out fractured and wounded. "...Fuutarou-kun."
Yotsuba is almost surprised at herself that she still remembers how she used to call Fuutarou when they first met.
"It's not just my sisters who love you," she croaks into the apathetic night air, tears wetting the sand in the swing set pit beneath her. "I loved you all this time...too."
Yotsuba's tears feel warm, and so do her eyes. The warmth of the summer night have masked these from the quintuplet, who is currently being further beleaguered by these volatile, almost chaotic thoughts drifting about in her mind as she fails to reach a resolution between her two conflicting sides.
A pair of dark emeralds peek out towards the lights of the nighttime city. They emit no light, so the only way to detect them as they hide in Yotsuba's eyes is with the assistance of the streetlights on the sidewalk passing by this small park, what little of such lights can even reach the solitary quintuplet at this angle. But with the help of the tears that they have produced, their dark colors flash subtly for the summer night to behold with each stroke of the swing set's pendulum.
Yotsuba's smile mysteriously stabilizes without warning. Straightening itself out, this newly reconstructed smile could give her a look of reconciliation and purpose...if it weren't for the fact that the gems in her eyes are completely devoid of light.
"Achoo!"
Blinking suddenly, the fourth quintuplet snaps out of her daze with the help of someone's sneeze nearby, and glancing over her shoulder, Yotsuba spies a girl walking past this park in the direction that she herself came from to get here. And to her muted surprise, judging by the peachy-red hair and the tall cowlick riding on the top of the girl's head, it's Itsuki. What is Itsuki doing out here? Was this the route that she took to return that textbook that Nino was talking about earlier? It would appear to be the case, though it still surprises Yotsuba that Itsuki would even know her way through this area, given that the southern district of the city isn't exactly a place where the quints pass through often.
Regardless, Yotsuba doesn't call out to her younger sister right away; as this park is her own little special spot that none of her sisters know about - well, maybe Itsuki does, but it doesn't look like she noticed her here as she was passing by - Yotsuba isn't keen on giving it away anytime soon. Besides, it's about time to return home anyway, and she doesn't exactly feel comfortable knowing now that Itsuki's heading back home in the middle of the night on her own, so Yotsuba waits a minute before sneaking out of the park to catch up with Itsuki, calling out to her when she does.
"Itsuki? Itsuki!"
Also taken by surprise, the fifth quintuplet turns around to find Yotsuba jogging up to her from behind, and so she waits for her to catch up.
"Good evening, Yotsuba. I certainly did not expect to run into you outside," Itsuki tilts her head a little at her fellow quintuplet, resuming her walk so that they can go back home together. "Were you taking a quick jog?"
"Ah, yeah, s-something like that, haha," Yotsuba nods quickly.
"I...see. But it seems a bit strange to go jogging in those kinds of clothes..."
"I-I didn't realize that I didn't change out of these, that's why. I just felt like going for a jog, and...and I just forgot to change clothes, ehehe. What about you, Itsuki? Nino called me saying that you were out to go return a textbook or something?"
Itsuki nods back. "That is correct. Well, it was not a textbook per se, but a supplementary material book. I intended to borrow it from the library, but their copies were already loaned out, so I asked an upperclassman whom Ichika knows if I could borrow hers, and today was when she wanted it back by."
"And she lives down here in the southern district, I take it?"
"Yes, though I am not very familiar with this area...are you?"
"Yeah, the runs I take sometimes take me through here, so I know a bit. At the very least, in case you might have trouble returning home from here, I can guide us back."
"That would be much appreciated, actually. I believe I can backtrack, but I am afraid that I may take a wrong turn somewhere, and it would be a costly mistake to make, especially during this time of the night..." Itsuki looks over at Yotsuba and notices something concerning. "...Yotsuba, um...er..."
"Hm? What, what's wrong?" Yotsuba asks innocently, so Itsuki raises a finger up to her own face.
"...it looks like you were, um...crying a little," the younger quintuplet says softly, looking away in case she's bringing up a sensitive topic for her older sister. Yotsuba, for her part, jolts a little in panic and immediately wipes what's left of her tears away without a word as Itsuki looks on a little nervously. "...is everything alright...?"
"Y-Yeah, I'm okay. Nothing's wrong..." Yotsuba says quickly, hastily rubbing her eyes and reddening the albumens of her eyes even more than they already were.
"Yotsuba."
The fourth quint hears her sister's footsteps suddenly halt, so she stops in her tracks too to find Itsuki standing on the sidewalk slightly behind her, with her own eyes full of worry and sisterly concern.
"If something is troubling you, then...is it alright for us to talk about it? If you feel like you need someone to talk to, of course..." Itsuki offers quietly. "...but if I may be frank with you, um...it takes a lot to make someone like you cry. At least...that is what I think."
Sensing Itsuki's sincerity, Yotsuba properly rubs her eyes to wipe them of any leftover tears without a word, and her younger sister slowly pulls her gaze away, unsure of what to do or say while she waits for her older sister to give her an answer back. While she is waiting, she does take the liberty of adding,
"...I know that...the two of us do not talk together all that often, just the two of us. Miku and I were the same way, up until recently. But while I may not understand what is going on or why you are all the way out here on a Saturday night, I simply cannot ignore any one of my sisters who is like this, crying by herself. Please, tell me what is preoccupying you like this."
Slowly nodding, Yotsuba sniffles a bit and clears her throat quickly before asking, "Okay. But...can you promise me that you won't tell the others? That you can keep this just between the two of us? As in, no matter what...don't talk with the others about anything we'll talk about right now."
Blinking uncertainly, Itsuki wears a difficult look on her face as she also slowly nods back. "I-If you insist...but I do not know how much of a good idea it is to keep whatever it is that you wish to speak about a secret from the others..."
"I have my reasons, Itsuki," the fourth quintuplet says calmly. The hair on Itsuki's nape and arms begin to stand up at attention; there was a certain chill to Yotsuba's tone just now that seemed unusually cold, almost devoid of feeling, but she can't quite place her finger on it. "If you can promise me this...I'll be more than happy to share with you what's on my mind. Because you're right...I...I do need to get this off my chest at some point, and it may as well be now."
Still uncertain about these terms of contract but wanting to hear her sister out all the same, Itsuki nods more firmly this time.
"Very well, I will refrain from letting the others know. However...please do not hold it against me too much if I decide to break this promise out of concern for your safety, depending on what it is that you tell me."
"I-It won't be that bad, I promise. In fact, it's...it's not really worth telling anyone," Yotsuba says quickly with her hands raised and shaking back at her younger sister in swift self-deprecation.
"But you said it is still something that you needed to get off your chest at some point?"
"Well...yeah." Yotsuba sighs deeply. "Let's, um...keep walking, we can talk as we head home."
So the two quints resume their nighttime trek back home, letting the small park overlooking the city slip out of sight. However, a whole five minutes pass without either quint speaking another word, so Itsuki awkwardly restarts their conversation as they greet a passerby going for a nighttime walk like them with his dog.
"You were never really good at serious conversations like this, huh," she remarks as amicably as she can, afraid that her words here might rub Yotsuba the wrong way, which, thankfully, they do not. This is Yotsuba, after all - she's not one to really take offense at all to words of any kind.
"Aha, yeah, you know me, I really suck at trying to act all serious..."
"Mhm. If I recall correctly, you do not deal with serious situations very well. I mean, to be fair, none of us really do, but..."
Yotsuba nods shortly in agreement. "In fact, these past five minutes or so, I was trying to figure out a way to, uh, start talking about what it is that's on my mind..."
"It is alright. Please take your time."
The fourth quintuplet feels her lips quiver. "...i-it's not really a matter of taking my time, actually. It's...it's...I don't know how to say this...it's going to be weird if I say this to you, actually."
"To me? Well, I have already resolved to hear this one out with you, so do not worry about what I might think and tell me what is troubling you."
"Mmmmnnn...okay, since - since I'm just going to keep stalling, I'm just going to say it."
Yotsuba stops in her tracks and pivots to face Itsuki, who stops out of surprise at her sister's sudden movement.
"...I like Uesugi-san, too."
As Yotsuba expects, Itsuki freezes up momentarily before blinking a few times.
"...y-you like him too...?" she asks, almost hoarsely. "Wait...since...since when...? We...we all thought that you were usually the nicest to him out of the five of us because that is just how you are most of the time, but...it was really because you...?"
Yotsuba smiles weakly. "...it's a long story. Do you still want to listen to everything?"
Nodding immediately, Itsuki takes a step closer to her older sister. "O-Of course! I was not expecting our time to be short by any means, and I said that I would listen to everything you had to say, so..." The fifth quint drops her gaze for a moment, though. "...but...this is still a surprise...that you like Uesugi-kun too...I mean, perhaps, perhaps we should have expected this? But...but the way you behave around him is - "
" - the same as I act around everyone else? Yeah, it is, I know," Yotsuba finishes her for sister. "But...to begin, Itsuki, do you remember the trip we took down to Kyoto six years ago with Mom?"
"The trip we took to Kyoto with Mother..." Itsuki repeats quietly after her sister, and her blue eyes drift in their sockets a little as she follows the logical path that she is starting to see before snapping back to Yotsuba's own blue eyes in alarmed epiphany. "...no...Yotsuba, do not tell me...that friend you met in Kyoto...he is...?"
"Wow, you actually remember all that. I didn't think you would, seeing that everyone else more or less forgot..." Yotsuba comments, her hand on the back of her neck. "But...yeah. Long story short, the boy I ran into and brought back with me when I wandered off and got lost that one night, the friend whom I wanted to show everyone...that was Uesugi-san. The very same."
Looking totally mind-blown, Itsuki blinks almost absentmindedly, so shocked is she to make this connection. "...I...I do not remember what Uesugi-kun looked like back then. Truth be told, I remember very little about our trip to Kyoto...only the general context behind it and bits and pieces of details. But I do happen to remember you telling us that you had made a friend on the night that you got lost, since we were worried about where you had gone off to."
"I think you don't remember what he looked like back then because you might've not met him, or you didn't have a chance to talk to him in person," Yotsuba reasons. "I'm pretty sure only me and Ichika did that."
"Ichika? Wait, but...but Ichika has never acted as though she had met Uesugi-kun in the past, though?"
"Maybe she forgot. You know how she is with how many people she meets and hangs out with, or used to, anyway. Not only that, but Uesugi-san used to look a lot different back then. Like, he had his hair dyed blonde, I think."
"E-Ehhhh...!? B-B-Blonde...?!"
The two girls get a hearty little laugh out of this at their collective disbelief that their strict tutor would do anything so garish as dying his hair blonde.
"But anyways, the point is..." Yotsuba slowly clasps her hands together down by her lap. "...the point is, I...I never forgot about Uesugi-san."
And once again, Itsuki's eyes open wide in another wave of belated epiphany.
"...so...so when...when Uesugi-kun first...arrived at our house to t-tutor us..." Itsuki's voice is starting to crack. "...you...recognized him? You knew who he...?"
Yotsuba merely smiles faintly.
"Remember that first day, when everyone else just kind of took off for their rooms after he introduced himself?" she reminds her sister, who nods quickly.
"You were the only one to stay back and talk to him," she whispers, with her right hand beginning to creep up to her mouth. "Because...you already knew who he was."
The two quintuplets stand together on the sidewalk, underneath the barren black sky whose crescent moon hangs low, too low to be seen from the quintuplets' perspective on the ground.
"...has Uesugi-kun recognized you at all?" Itsuki finally asks, looking back up at her older sibling. "No?"
Yotsuba shakes her head. "I don't think so. Honestly, that can't be a surprise, right? Now that we know he's a mage and he's been one for all this time, how can I expect him to still remember who I am? I'm just another girl out of dozens or even hundreds he must have had to deal with, right?"
"But...if you have always remembered who he was so strongly even after all this time, then..." Itsuki takes a somewhat deep breath. "...did you, um, like him...even back then...? Or...?"
"Ehehe..." Yotsuba sheepishly gives a grin this time. "Well...I don't think I had any serious feelings for him six years ago, but...but when we met him again five months ago or however long it's been by now, that's...that's when it dawned on me how excited I was to have him back again. I think...I think the moment I realized that I had serious feelings for him as well was...was when he told us about how he was a mage. All the work that he's been doing, both for us and for the city at large..."
The sheepish grin is now long gone.
"...I want to tell you this first, actually," the fourth quint backpedals. "Back in Kyoto when I met Uesugi-san for the first time, um...I found him getting bothered by a couple of policemen, I think. Something about another girl complaining about how he was taking illegal pictures of her out in public, but I noticed him before he started getting harassed, and when the policemen came along, I went down to bail him out, saying that he didn't take any such pictures. Luckily the policemen believed me...I'm not really sure why they just let the two of us off the hook, I'm guessing it was because they didn't really want to deal with a couple of kids' nonsense...but we decided to hang out together. Well, it was more like I dragged him along with me since I saw an opportunity to make a new friend."
"A new friend? Back then? Wow..." Itsuki marvels at this. "So you actually started growing out of our quintuplet nucleus the first..."
"Ah, well, I, uh...I wouldn't go that far...I just...actually, I don't know why I decided to take Uesugi-san with me back then..." Yotsuba giggles softly. "Oh, you know what, I think I remember. I think I skipped ahead of everyone else because I was so excited to be on a school trip, and in true Yotsuba fashion, I ended up getting lost, and when I bailed Uesugi-san out of his pinch, I brought him with me so that I wouldn't feel lonely, and to distract me from the fact that I'd separated myself from everyone else on accident."
Itsuki nods. "I believe I remember that you were missing for the whole day. We got really worried, you know."
"Yeah, I know. I got yelled at a lot by our supervisors when they found us, but...before then, we spent the whole day exploring Kyoto, just the two of us."
Even though the sidewalk on which the two quints stand is only moderately lit by nearby streetlights, for a second, Itsuki feels like someone just turned on a floodlight as she watches Yotsuba close her eyes and smile.
"It was a lot of fun."
"...Nino would sure enjoy this story. It seems to be right up her alley with how romantic it feels," Itsuki remarks gently.
"Aha, yeah, um...I guess you could put it that way. I-I wasn't trying to make it feel all r-romantic, though...?"
"No, it is fine. Everything you are telling me is memories of yours that I never knew about. So please, continue," Itsuki smiles warmly back.
"Okay. Um...where was I...so...so after we spent our day running around Kyoto, pretty much, it got late at night, and we found ourselves at a shrine. And since we didn't know where else to go, we decided to rest there for a little while. Well, I was going to - Uesugi-san had a little money on him that he could've used to take a bus back to the hotel that his school was staying at, since his school was also having their own trip to Kyoto at the same time as ours. But instead of leaving, he stayed with me - he even tossed the 200-yen coin that he had on him into the donation box at the shrine."
"E-Eh...? But why...?" Itsuki can't stop herself from blurting out her disbelief. "Er, I-I apologize, but...while I understand that this was six years ago, that...that does not seem like a kind of mistake that Uesugi-kun of all people would make...not to mention him being blonde..."
"I know, right? But he had a good reason for it - earlier that day, I'd bought five charms as souvenirs to bring back to everyone. Do you remember that?"
At this, Itsuki lets out a tiny little gasp.
"I-I do! In fact, I have kept it with me in my bag all this time. I can even show you!"
Yotsuba chuckles at Itsuki's excited reaction, thankful that she at least has remembered the charms. "It's okay, I believe you. But since Uesugi-san scolded me about how I had wasted the money I had on me for sightseeing today on those charms when I should have thought twice and used it more wisely, like getting a ride back to our hotel or calling someone to come find me, he tossed his money away too so that I wouldn't have to be alone. We started chatting a little bit afterwards, since...well, we...didn't really have anything better to do..."
The fourth quint trails off, and her eyes also sink a little bit down past Itsuki's chest.
"What did you talk about with him?" the younger quint asks patiently and warmly. It takes Yotsuba a few moments, but she manages to finish gathering her old memories together to pitch the rest of her story.
"We started talking about how both of our families were poor. I think...I remember Uesugi-san mentioning first about how his family was poor...I think it was because his family would normally use 5-yen coins to give to the donation box instead of the 200-yen one that he threw in because of me...so I told him about how our family was the same way. I told him that it didn't bother me that we were poor, but...since Mom was working so hard for us just to take care of us, it bothered me more that I was such a big burden on Mom."
The mention of their late mother in such a context cause Itsuki's face to contort with sharp concern and melancholy, but she holds her tongue to allow Yotsuba to continue for now.
"Because quintuplets like us aren't normal, right? It's not normal for a mother to have five kids at once like ours did. So at some point, I started asking myself, how much easier would it have been for Mom, how much less would she have to work so damn hard if I just...wasn't there?"
"Yotsuba," Itsuki finally speaks up, sensing a big red flag planted in Yotsuba's words, but the elder quintuplet just smiles back and shakes her head.
"Don't worry, they weren't...they weren't those kinds of thoughts, they never were. But I was serious, even back then, about thinking of ways to help Mom out, to make it so that she wasn't working herself to death almost every day. I told Uesugi-san about all this, not only because he was a brand new friend I had made that day, but because he also came from a poor family just like us, and...well, it wasn't exactly common to come across other kids who were from truly destitute families like we were. So I shared with him my thoughts and feelings on this matter, and I asked for his opinion, his experiences. I asked him how he felt about his situation, being poor and all."
"...and what did he say?" Itsuki asks softly. At this, Yotsuba pauses again for a few moments before talking again.
"He said that he was in the same position as I was, more or less. That while being poor itself wasn't a problem for him, it was anyway because of the effect that it was having on his family, too. He told me about Raiha-chan and how his family was worried about how they would be able to afford her education once she started school. His mom already died, so it was just his dad working to support him and his sister. He said that while it wasn't a great feeling being poor, there wasn't much he could do about it other than do his part."
Itsuki blinks again. "...'do his part'...could he have meant...?"
Yotsuba nods slowly. "I think so too. Uesugi-san's told us that he was a mage from a very early age, right? He was probably already a mage when I met him in Kyoto. Obviously back then, I didn't know what he was referring to then, and of course he didn't have any reason to share that kind of information with me. But when I told him what I told you just now, about how sometimes I wondered if me being gone would've made Mom's life a little easier, he told me that that wasn't the right way to think about it. He told me that if that were the case, if I truly felt that way, I should instead think about things I should do myself to make her life easier. He told me to change myself for the better instead of getting rid of myself, and that while doing something like that wasn't going to produce immediate results, if I followed through with it, it would be the most meaningful way to resolve things and the best way to thank Mom for all that she's done for us. While I agreed with him that what he suggested was the better way to think about things, I asked him what I should do to set out on that path, and he suggested just doing well in school for starters. If I did well in school, if I studied hard, got good grades, went to an amazing university and landed an awesome job that paid really well, then I wouldn't ever have to worry about being poor, and better yet, all the hard work that Mom put into taking care of us wouldn't be wasted. He said that he was going through a similar situation too, actually, and in his own perspective, he was aiming to 'become someone necessary'. So I took what he said to heart too, and we promised each other and even made wishes at the donation box for the 200-yen coin he put in earlier that we'd put ourselves on the path to becoming ace students as our first steps to working ourselves out of poverty."
An elongated silence follows the end of Yotsuba's recollections. Itsuki's eyes are drooped back down to the ground.
"...so in reality, Uesugi-kun was the one who changed you in the beginning?" the latter asks quietly, and Yotsuba give her the emptiest smile Itsuki has ever seen out of her.
"So imagine my surprise when Uesugi-san shows up as our tutor five months ago, and when I realize that he's the same boy that I made that promise to in Kyoto six years ago. Funny, huh?"
"I really do not think you find that funny, Yotsuba," Itsuki says firmly with sharpened concern written all over her face. "I am starting to see the picture now. Because of that promise you made with him...that is why you began studying so hard when we entered middle school. But things did not work out, as all five of us had terrible test scores and grades overall all throughout school, and...and now, five months ago, to be exact, when Uesugi-kun introduced us as our new tutor, you realized that he had become that ace student that the two of you said you would become. And...and not only that, but...but he's also a professional mage on top of that, working to protect the city and protect us."
Yotsuba closes her eyes, bracing herself for the guillotine that Itsuki is unintentionally raising over her neck.
"Yotsuba," the youngest quint breathes, "all this...all of this...has been gnawing away at you all this time, yes...?"
"Yep!" the fourth quint confirms with a hearty nod and a great big smile. "So I headed outside tonight to try to walk off all the stuff I was feeling. I'm feeling better now, though, now that I was able to talk with y - "
Itsuki quietly hugs her older sister. It is as though the nighttime breeze flowing through the city slows to a halt with just a single gesture of warmth.
Yotsuba blinks a few times. "...what's this all about, though...?"
"Forgive me for my intrusion, but..." Itsuki tightens her arms around her sister a bit more. "...but it would seem that Uesugi-kun is rubbing off on me a little bit here."
"Er, what do you mean...?"
"I mean that on the off-chance that perhaps...perhaps you still feel like you may need someone else to be there for you..."
These words, along with Itsuki's almost motherly warmth and affection, gouge out entire chunks of Yotsuba's facade of well-being, but she manages to keep herself together, but only just. Still, Yotsuba can't stop herself from reciprocating her sister's love, hugging her back as well and tucking her cheek in next to Itsuki's.
"...if I may share something with you as well," Itsuki murmurs after they finally part, "I, too...can understand what it feels like to know someone close to us who...is doing exactly everything that they have set out to do. You may not believe me, but - "
"You're my sister, Itsuki, of course I'm going to believe you," Yotsuba says directly. "That, and you took this time to listen to my big fat sob story tonight. Whatever it is that you want to say, I'll also gladly listen."
"I-I see. Well...what I wanted to say was that...I also went through a small version of...what I think you must have gone through. Do you remember the promise I made to everyone when Mother died?"
Yotsuba nods.
"I kept that promise dear to my heart. Funnily enough, now that you have told me all this, it would appear that we both ended up going down a similar path of studying to become better and stronger people."
"Well, you know...I ended up giving up, while you kept on going, so..."
Both girls chuckle awkwardly for a moment.
"R-Regardless, um...for my part, the thing that I upheld the most was the fact that I wanted to become like Mother, and I believed that studying and excelling at school would be the correct way to do so. But just like you, I failed so many times. My grades never went up, and I always felt like I was never making any progress. And not only that, but Nino and Ichika honestly feel like they are more qualified to be like Mother than I am, with the ways they behave. So when we got to know Uesugi-kun more and more, I realized that he was basically what I was trying to become, too. And that bothered me because...because Uesugi-kun wasn't just another one of my sisters doing what I wanted, right? I could...I could understand and accept if you guys, my sisters, became successful, because then at least someone in our family could, um...'carry on' the promise that I had made to everyone, about how I would become Mother in Mother's absence. But now, it's...it is someone who isn't directly part of our family at all. And in fact, it is our own tutor, our own classmate, even. There is someone else whom we know very well who is doing everything that I wanted to do and set out to do...and here I am, just failing at it all while he is succeeding and then some."
Itsuki lowers her head.
"...I have not told anyone else about these feelings of mine, too. While everyone knows about the feelings I have for Uesugi-kun, Uesugi-kun himself included, I have kept what I just told you to myself until now as well."
Yotsuba smiles softly back at her younger sister. "Uesugi-san really is rubbing off on you, huh? Did you tell me that so that I wouldn't have to feel like I'm the only one sharing secrets tonight?"
"Well, n-not necessarily because of that reason...I just wanted to let you know that...I do understand what you may be feeling towards Uesugi-kun, or at least part of it. But...I suppose you would be right in saying that I do not want you to feel alone."
"I see. Well, if it's any consolation to you, though, we all managed to pass our first trimester finals, so we're both finally starting to get a little bit closer to what we intended to be, right?"
Itsuki nods heartily, and the two of them resume their walk back home.
"...about Uesugi-kun, though..." the youngest quint speaks up again as they walk. "If you were the first one to have feelings for him...what do you feel about the rest of us also developing our own relationships with him? Because...now that you have revealed to me your own feelings for him, I...I am not sure what to make of the situation anymore..."
Yotsuba chuckles a little. "Yeah, it's...it's getting a bit crazy, isn't it? Now, it's me, you, and Miku who all like Uesugi-san. Ichika's always been nice towards him, and Nino's been a lot nicer to him lately too, compared to how she was before."
"But you were the one who has known him the longest. You were the one who first met him in Kyoto and the one to remember him for all this time. I, um...I may not be the most knowledgeable in the field of romantic relationships, but...even if I approach this with a logical mindset, I feel that...if I were in your shoes, perhaps...perhaps I would feel a little bit miffed."
"How so?"
"For example, if...let's say that I brought home a cake to eat for later and I put it in the refrigerator - "
"Wait, we always make fun of you for eating so much, why are you making an analogy about food on top of that?"
"I-I-It is the first thing that came to mind, okay? You really did not have to bring that up!"
Yotsuba bursts out into her signature laughs while Itsuki fumes quietly at her side.
"A-Anyways! Let us say for argument's sake that I had a cake I wished to eat. I would get angry if I found out that my sisters found the cake as well and starting taking pieces of it for themselves without letting me know, right? I know this is a rather forced analogy, but if I think of what you have told me like that, then...I cannot help but feel that you may have some...opinions regarding our own feelings for Uesugi-kun, too."
But Yotsuba shakes her head. "Don't worry about me, Itsuki. It's not like it's anyone's fault that you and Miku started liking him too. We've spent so much time with him, he's spent so much time with us...given our circumstances, like, you could even argue that something like this was bound to happen, in a sense."
"But...I do not know...are you sure about this - "
"Itsuki."
Again, the fourth quintuplet halts without warning, and Itsuki almost walks straight past her older sister because of it before stopping and turning to face Yotsuba.
"Please don't worry about my feelings for him," the fourth quint says quietly and modestly. "See, Itsuki? This was the reason why I didn't want to tell you what was going on at first, because I knew you'd say something like that. You're too kind, Itsuki. You really are."
Itsuki inhales sharply, her blue eyes quivering back at Yotsuba.
"...if you know that I am too kind of a person, Yotsuba, then surely you must know that I will not settle for an answer like that. Besides, you told me when we first started talking that you would share with me everything that is on your mind tonight. So please, tell me: what do you really feel about Miku and I having feelings for Uesugi-kun? And...is it truly alright for things to keep going like they have been recently?"
Yotsuba feels her lips slowly part as she stalls on her answer, which she eventually delivers after her own blue eyes slide away from Itsuki's.
"...I'm not the only one who likes Uesugi-san anymore, Itsuki. This isn't like six years ago when I was the only one who really knew him. Now, we all know him. We've all studied with him, worked with him...hung out with him. He's not just my friend, he's a friend to all of us. And Uesugi-san's demonstrated the same thing to us, too: he's worked with every single one of us and cares for every single one of us. Even though there're five of us, he still tries his best to spend as much time with everyone as he can."
"But along that logic, that means that you have as much of a right to pursue your feelings for Uesugi-kun as we do." Itsuki fixes her gaze on her sister, on the cusp of outright glaring at her. "Yotsuba, do not tell me that you plan to do nothing while the rest of us possibly develop our own relationships with him, will you?"
The empty smile has crept back onto Yotsuba's face. "And what if I plan on doing exactly that? What's the issue with that?"
Itsuki's eyes contract for a moment upon hearing this.
"...the issue is that it...it just feels wrong," the youngest quint mutters, finally breaking her gaze with her sister. "Everyone...I think that everyone has a right to happiness. Yes, our case is special because we are sisters who have ended up having feelings for the same boy, so our paths to happiness are obviously more complicated than others. But even then, just because your sisters have let their feelings be known to him does not mean you must feel obligated to simply stand aside to make room for us. And if nothing else, that is not what I want, Yotsuba, because that will make me feel like I am a direct reason for why you felt like you could no longer act on your own feelings for Uesugi-kun."
"Well, that's just the nature of liking the same person, right? Like, we've watched those K-dramas with the others at home where two girls end up fighting over the same guy to see who goes out with him at the end," Yotsuba debates with rather chilling calmness to her voice.
"Perhaps so, but not only is this not a drama, but we are also sisters. It cannot be as simple as this."
"Yeah, you said it right there. It really wasn't ever going to be that simple."
"...huh? What do you...?"
Yotsuba takes a long, quiet sigh. "Itsuki, why do you think we even had to transfer schools in the first place? It was because of - "
"No, wait, wait, wait - that was a collective decision that we all made so that we could all stick together," Itsuki interrupts her sister quickly, a rather uncharacteristic breach of her usual polite behavior of patiently waiting for the person she's talking with to finish their thoughts first.
"I know it was, but that's not what I was going to talk about. All the things that I did during middle school leading up to us getting kicked out of Kurobara Academy was totally selfish. When I first started studying hard for school, like I'd promised Uesugi-san back in Kyoto, I did okay at first, but then my grades started dropping. And at the same time, Miku started improving her grades too. I got frustrated by that, and so I turned to sports to make myself feel better, because I knew I was good at sports. Remember how I joined literally every sports team and club at school that had an open spot? I even got our baseball team to win that one tournament back then. And because I liked how I was so good at sports, I devoted everything I had to them, completely forgetting about actually studying, but worse, the original intent of the promise I had made with Uesugi-san. It even got to the point where I didn't want anything to do with the rest of you, that I could become my own self apart from the rest of you, that I could prove that I could become something so much more than the rest of you. When Ichika offered to share hair care tips with me, I rejected her, saying that I wasn't about to cut my hair so soon like she did. When Nino asked me if I was interested in taking cooking classes with her, I told her no, that I was too busy with club stuff. When Miku offered to help me study for tests at school, I told her no, that I didn't want her to group me together with her and the others. I don't know if you remember this, but when you asked me if I wanted to go try some new restaurants with you after school, I told you no, that I couldn't afford to eat so unhealthily so that I could stay in top shape for all the sports teams I was a part of."
Itsuki grimaces, that gem of a memory being dug up for her by her sister, but she remains silent to hear the rest of Yotsuba's testimony.
"I started off with good intentions - but then it devolved into me just wanting to feel special. I wasn't working to become someone my family could rely on in the future, I just wanted to make myself feel better. And because of that, things got so bad that in the end, at the end of our third year this year, they told me I had to be expelled. I'd failed my finals, my make-up finals, and the second-chance that they gave me after that, the one that Dad managed to get for me after convincing the school board there to give me that second chance. Yet even still, even after I treated all of you like crap, especially during our last year at Kurobara, you all threw yourselves off the cliff that I'd fallen off to save me."
"N-No need to make it sound so dramatic..." Itsuki mumbles bashfully, and Yotsuba smiles softly at this.
"And that's what I would hope it sounded like, because it was supposed to sound dramatic to you. Because for me, that's more or less how it felt. To this day, I still can't believe that the four of you went that far despite how badly I treated all of you. I would've never held it against any of you if you had just left me to fall all the way down to the bottom; that's why I asked you all when you barged into the principal's office that day why you were doing something like this just for me."
"Because we are sisters, Yotsuba," Itsuki says gently. "We are family. Yes, there will come a time when we must part and go our separate ways; Ichika has always been preaching that much to us. But that time does not have to be so soon. And just like what Ichika always tells us, I am sure that we all want to be together as much as we can until that time comes when we really must say goodbye, at least to our lives as teenagers. It is as we told you in the principal's office: Mother asked us to stay together. For as long as we are able to do that, we will always overcome whatever it is that may come our way."
Itsuki hesitates.
"...although, our last week of first trimester leading up to our finals was a rather scary moment..." she murmurs uncomfortably.
Yotsuba, continuing to smile, clasps her hands behind her back.
"When you guys told me that, I finally understood what Mom told me, too. Remember how I started wearing these hair ribbons so that I could start distinguishing myself from everyone else? I started doing that right before Mom died, and when I showed her my ribbon, telling her that I could be special now, that I didn't need to be an identical quintuplet anymore, she said that while doing that was fine and all, the important thing was that the five of us were still together at the end of the day."
"...now that you mention it, I think I remember that day. We were on the pier in Kyoto...and...I had noticed you wearing that ribbon, and..." Itsuki's face contorts more and more with discomfort. "...I decided to start wearing these star-shaped hair pins to copy you."
"You have a better memory than I thought."
"Th-Thank you. But...I remember wondering why you looked at me like you did back then. I...suppose I know why now."
"Again, don't worry about it, since that was six years ago and all. But the point I'm trying to make here is that when you guys bailed me out and transferred schools to Asahiyama with me, I vowed to myself to never act selfishly ever again. I would stop thinking about trying to be special, because Mom was right - trying to be special wasn't going to get me anywhere. I want to live for everyone's sake from now on."
"...and that extends to your feelings for Uesugi-kun."
"Yes."
Itsuki takes a deep breath.
"Then there is a small correction you ought to make," she says. "You should have said that you want to live for everyone else's sake."
Yotsuba stares back at her younger sister.
"And you're telling me there's a difference?"
A chill goes down Itsuki's spine, but the sharp tug at her heart pulls her back from the brink.
"There is, yes," she says firmly, standing her ground. "When we transferred schools with you so that we could all be together, we did so with the intent of making sure that we would all be happy. How would the others feel if they also know what I know now, the things you have told me tonight? For instance, everyone knows now that both Miku and I have the same feelings for the same boy, the very same boy who is also our tutor and classmate. What would be the problem exactly if you were to tell the others that you also have feelings for him too?"
"The fact that I would be right back to acting selfish again, of course," Yotsuba answers curtly. "It would mean that I haven't learned my lesson at all, and that I'm just reverting back to how I was when I forced all of us to transfer out."
"But again, that was our conscious decision to transfer with you!"
"I know it was, don't misunderstand. But just because you did it willingly doesn't mean that I can't still feel really guilty about it. Because if someone were to come up to me and tell me that I'm the reason why all of my sisters also got expelled out of our old school, I wouldn't be able to refute that, because that's the truth. That was something that I was directly responsible for, and there's no getting around it."
For the first time tonight, Itsuki is at a complete loss for what to say, leaving Yotsuba with free rein to dictate what she wants to her younger quint.
"Itsuki, as much as it was a conscious decision for you and the others to flunk with me out of Kurobara, it's just as much of a conscious decision for me to be like this from now on. I made too many mistakes over the past few years, and now I have to answer for them, even if it means letting go of the boy I love. Don't feel bad that you might be stealing Uesugi-san away from me, because you're really not; it's more because someone like me who made a promise to that very same boy and twisted its original intent so badly that I got my entire family kicked out of our last school doesn't deserve someone as hardworking, earnest, and caring as him. I broke my promise to Uesugi-kun and even trampled on it while he kept it this whole time, and he doesn't even remember me from back then - and that's before we talk about how hard his life must have been as a mage for all this time. In what world can you say that I should still have the audacity to say that I still deserve the love and affection of someone like him as much as anyone else, much less my own sisters whom I once degraded and shunned in my own selfish pursuit to becoming special and unique?"
"...but..."
"Itsuki."
The fifth quintuplet slowly gazes back up at her older sister.
"Please, don't say any more. Don't argue with me on this," the fourth quintuplet asks quietly. "And...I'm sorry for putting you in such a tough spot tonight, with all the stuff that I've talked about. But...you wanted to know what was on my mind, so...I did."
The two sisters now arrive at the main walkway leading to the elevator lobby of the Pentagon high-rise, whose thirtieth floor is their home. Before they step onto the walkway's tiles, Yotsuba stops, and so does Itsuki.
"For what it's worth, another reason why I've decided to be like this is because I know what can happen if I decide to act in my own selfish interest," Yotsuba adds. "I have three whole years of my life that I can use to show you exactly what happens when I try doing things for my own gain, for my own good. I don't want to make those same mistakes again, I really don't. I don't want to risk being the reason why we have to split up earlier than we should, because if that happens, then not only will I disappoint all of you guys, but Mom, too. And that'll mean that...there truly was no point to me being born, to me being part of a family of quintuplets. So whatever I can do to not feel like I'm going down that path again...I'll do it."
"Then..." Finally finding her voice, Itsuki croaks out whatever words that she can find to her sister. "Then at the very least...you should let Uesugi-kun know about how you still remember him from six years ago. Something like this...it would be a shame for him to never recognize you as that girl he met once in Kyoto."
Yotsuba lets out her last laugh of the night; a soft, painful one.
"No, I don't think I will," she says simply. "He doesn't need to know. He's already such a busy person, right? Even if I told him, even if he comes to know of all this, he's just going to be disappointed that I didn't study properly and yell at me to do better next time like he always does, haha. Because that's just the kind of person he is."
The two of them enter the elevator lobby, and Yotsuba hits the button to call the elevator down. While they are waiting for it, Itsuki whispers,
"...I'm sorry, Yotsuba."
So Yotsuba reaches down to join a hand with one of Itsuki's.
"Don't be. This is how things should be."