The haunting plips of slowly dripping water force Miku's senses back awake. So many times has she listened to such a noise, and so unnerved she is by it that they can wake her immediately. Such is the case now, as the third quintuplet once again finds herself abducted to this bloody crimson prison that holds her hostage every so often.
And besides, Miku knows that's not water she's hearing.
But now is not the time to be brooding introspectively - Miku jolts where she sits on the bloody water, suddenly remembering that this is just like the last time that she'd been here, in that again, there was no waking up in her bed at three in the morning with a growing headache and clammy hands, and instead, she's just skipped the prelude altogether and dived straight into this nightmare, though against her accord as usual.
But if this is in fact the same as last time -
"...Itsuki...!" Miku whispers, a fresh wave of dread washing over her.
Even without her younger sister's screams to guide her, Miku forces herself past her own usual grip of depressed anxiety to get up and look around. And to her silent surprise, she actually spies Itsuki lying on the surface of the blood about fifty meters away, and to her relief, it doesn't appear that she has awoken yet, but as if to prove her wrong, the youngest quintuplet begins to stir, so Miku takes off as quickly as she can to reach her sister, cursing her own lack of physical ability as she clumsily hurries over to Itsuki's side to help her waking sister up amidst heavy, labored breaths of her own.
"M-Miku...? Ow, ow...!" Itsuki, sluggishly opening her eyes to the sight of a panting Miku, immediately winces and clutches at her head with both hands. "Oh no...Miku, please do not tell me..."
"...sorry," the third quintuplet mumbles guiltily, unsure of what to say to her younger sibling, and the crestfallen whimper that Itsuki makes offers no solace. But before the head-splitting headache can fully take root again, Itsuki catches a glimpse of Miku's own deeply troubled countenance.
"...Miku, do you, um...not have this headache...?" Itsuki asks slowly, trying to deal with the pounding in her head and take some of the worry off her sister's mind at the same time, and Miku shakes her head.
"I don't remember if we talked about this last time since it's been a little while, but this place's been haunting me for a long time, so I've already gotten used to this place," Miku replies.
"But...why does this place even...happen? If that makes any sense? Why is this a thing?" Itsuki wonders aloud, also taking a look around herself to get a better idea of what this nightmare looks like.
"I don't know. I've always wondered that myself. Well, more accurately..." Miku sighs deeply, casting her gaze down at the blood on which both of them sit. "...I used to wonder why, back when I first started getting this nightmare. It's been happening for so long that...I just stopped, you know, wondering about it...it's bad enough being here, so why torture myself even further by thinking about it too..."
"I-I can completely understand that," Itsuki concurs shakily, shuddering and inhaling sharply as she unfortunately realizes that she and her sister are currently sitting on what's practically an ocean of blood. Miku quickly reaches and pulls Itsuki in close in an attempt to do whatever she can to help Itsuki cope with her bad hemophobia. "...I apologize for troubling you like this, Miku, I really do..."
Miku gives a rather confused sigh. "W-What are you saying? I'm the one who should be apologizing; I'm the one who's forcefully dragging you in here."
"Wait, on purpose?"
"No, not on purpose..."
"Then how can it be your fault...? This is not explicitly your doing, right?"
"Maybe not, but...I can't help but feel like I'm responsible..." Miku again stares past Itsuki in her embrace off into the dark, blackened horizon where the dark sky fuses with the bloodied sea. "Even if you tell me that this isn't my fault, the fact remains that I'm the reason why this nightmare exists; I'm the one who created this. And I don't want to excuse myself just because I don't know how I made this place or why, even."
The two sisters fall silent for a few minutes, with Itsuki doing her best to deal with her terrible headache. Every whimper and sharp breath that Itsuki utters is a painful reminder to Miku that this nightmare was never intended for anyone else's presence, further deepening her frustration that this nightmare that she intended to take with her to the grave has now somehow performed the impossible and spread to one of her sisters like an infectious disease.
Not only that, but the longer Miku listens to her ailing sister, the more she quietly mulls over her own experience with this nightmare. Before she knows it, a question that Miku is finding more and more disturbing the longer she dwells on it is brewing in the back of her mind, and against her own judgment, she decides to elaborate on it.
"...Itsuki, how bad is your headache right now?" the third quintuplet asks softly.
"Um...it is quite painful..." Itsuki responds, her voice tinged with uncertainty. "You can clearly see it for yourself, right? Why do - ouch - you ask...?"
Miku opens her mouth to reply, but she suddenly changes her mind and closes her lips in favor of hugging her sister more tightly, which Itsuki also responds to by silently snuggling up with her older sister and closing her eyes to shield her mind against the hellish sight all around her.
The thing about Itsuki's headache that disturbs Miku at the moment is the fact that Miku herself doesn't remember ever having a headache this bad while inside the nightmare itself. She traditionally a similar head-splitting headache during the moments before entering her nightmare, at least before Itsuki got dragged into it, but while she does have a degree of headache once she's inside, it has never been to the point of debilitating pain like what Itsuki is suffering now. Miku only said that she doesn't get headaches while inside this nightmare anymore due to how long she's known it earlier to Itsuki, but now that this is the second time she's seeing Itsuki suffer like this, the third quintuplet is slowly beginning to have her doubts.
Maybe she's looking too deeply into this. The most likely explanation for the discrepancy between the headaches that the two quints suffer as a result of this nightmare is the fact that this hellish landscape belongs to Miku, whether she likes it or not (which she does not). So of course an outsider, if they were ever to somehow find their way here, would be unable to withstand the mental pressure of this place as well as the primary occupant of this realm herself. Miku would love to fully invest her faith into this likely explanation, but for a reason she can't quite pinpoint, Miku finds herself unable to.
The two quintuplet sisters spend some time huddled miserably together like this, neither speaking nor surveying their surroundings, though to be fair there is not much to survey in a place like this. Miku is somewhat surprised that Itsuki isn't bombarding her with questions about this place, as it could at least help distract her from the piercing pain that her headache must be producing, but she's probably got her reasons. Or maybe the pain she's experiencing is simply too great for her to be able to focus on doing anything else. Such a notion causes Miku's blood to run cold for a second, which she mitigates by hugging Itsuki even more closely. As if in response to this, Itsuki finally says something to break the deafening silence.
"...will that...will that thing...show up again? The one that...that attacked us last time...?"
Upon hearing these words, Miku immediately lifts up her head to dart her eyes around, as if Itsuki is about to summon that monster merely by talking about it, but thankfully it is nowhere to be seen. She even checks the blood on which they sit for what good that'll do, since the water is too murky and darkened to see much past the surface.
"I don't know. I hope it doesn't, though," Miku says quietly and nervously back.
"That monster attacked you too, right, Miku?"
"Uh..." Hesitating, Miku recalls their previous venture into this nightmare together, and sure enough, Miku remembers the monster corpse stabbing her through her own chest before slashing Itsuki's eyes out. "...y-yeah...it did..."
"Were you hurt at all afterwards...? Like how my eyesight got worse after it attacked me?"
The third quintuplet finds herself feebly reaching for words as she tries to figure out if she's suffered any detrimental effect following that incident, but try as she might, she can't, so Miku shakes her head.
"I don't think so. Now, granted, I just might not know it now, but...for the time being, I don't think anything's happened to me, so don't worry about me. How's your eyesight been lately? I know...I haven't asked you about it in a while."
"Thankfully, it has not gotten worse since the last time we were here, and I have had no problems with my new glasses that Father got for me."
Miku nods. "And what about your Mystic Eyes? Have you been, um, feeling anything...different about them lately?"
Itsuki shakes her head as a foil to Miku. "Not that I know of. Like you said yourself, however, this may simply be because I am ignorant of the potential signs of development from my Eyes..."
Managing a weak but clear smile, Itsuki angles her face up to her older sister to greet her with it.
"I can tell that you have been spending a lot of time with Ichika," she manages a forced giggle, trying her best against the oppressive air of Miku's nightmare.
"Ichika..." It takes a moment for Miku to understand, and when she does, her cheeks begin to flush. "...no, this is...I didn't mean to, um..."
Chuckling a little more, Itsuki snuggles back into Miku's chest. "I know that...we usually do not stress the difference in age among us, but...I would be lying if I said that I did not like the idea of Big Sister Miku. Now I know why you wanted Yotsuba to call you Miku-Onee-Chan so much during our vacation in Hawaii."
"Y-You still remember that...?"
"Well, I did just now because of how you have been behaving." Itsuki presses her right cheek against Miku's bosom.
"I don't know anything about being an older sister, though, that's still all Ichika. I was just...trying to look out for you. We don't need to act like we're older sisters in order to take care of each other, right?"
Itsuki continues to smile regardless. "I am just saying that for a moment, it seemed like you were the oldest instead."
"You'd say that if anyone else were in my place, though, since that's what everyone else would do too."
"Haha, maybe so..." Itsuki pauses. "...by the way, how are we...supposed to get out of here...?"
Miku cringes a little when her sister asks this; she was wondering this bit herself but didn't want to be the first one to point it out. Though, it's not as though it makes her feel any better that her own sister ended up being the one to ask it.
"...I hope it's not like last time, at least," Miku mumbles.
After another short pause and to Miku's small surprise, Itsuki manages to pull herself away from her older sister, though not without difficulty and not too far. It takes the elder quint a moment, but Miku realizes that Itsuki is actually checking the rough area where Miku was struck last time, somewhere through the center of the chest.
"I told you, I'm fine," Miku says in a low voice. "It's you I'm more worried about."
Itsuki gives a small nod back, but Miku isn't sure if she means this.
"I do not remember if I have conveyed this properly before, but...I'm sorry that you had to keep this nightmare all to yourself," the youngest quintuplet croaks, unable to meet her older sister's active Mystic Eyes. "I do not know if this was one of the reasons why you became the way you are now, as in personality-wise, but...surely there must have been signs that you were showing that you were going through something like this. None of us caught wind of such signs. We - "
"No, no, Itsuki, that's - you're thinking about this too hard," Miku interrupts quickly, partially in alarm. "I - I, um...this isn't...anyone's fault. This place just sort of...happened. If there's anyone to blame, it's the girls who put me in the hospital back then. But even then, something tells me...I get the feeling...even if they never hospitalized me, something like this...would have happened one way or another."
The last segment of Miku's thoughts is enough to compel Itsuki to raise her gaze, also partly in alarm.
"This would have still happened regardless...?" Itsuki repeats slowly.
"Well...I...obviously I don't know that for sure," Miku blurts out quickly. "But...what's also obvious is that this place is definitely magically related somehow. Something like this, something so...so disruptive like this...I'm of the opinion that even if I never went to the hospital back then, I would've started having this nightmare at some point."
Itsuki bites her lower lip a little. "But that...does not...I would still worry for you regardless, would I not?"
Blinking quickly, Miku mimics her little sister with the lip-bite, realizing that her argument just now wasn't the correct one. "S...Sorry. But I still stand by the fact that this isn't anyone's fault. Well, except for my own. Did I tell you last time? If not, I always wanted to keep this place to myself. I didn't want anyone else to get involved."
Itsuki listens patiently to her big sister. Certainly Miku would be the type to keep something like this a secret from everyone else.
"Even still, something like this that has quite clearly caused you much pain over the past several years...you should not have kept it all to yourself like you did. Even if there was nothing the rest of us could have done, would it not have at least taken some of the pain away, that the rest of us could have done what we could to keep your mind off this place?"
Miku inhales sharply. "B-Because...I was afraid of...I was afraid of somehow getting everyone else involved in it. Like...like what happened with you. I don't know how, but...all of a sudden, you're here now with me. I didn't want something like this to happen. Something like this, a nightmare of this scale where...where it's not just some bad dream but...but something a lot worse...I thought surely, surely there's no way nothing will happen if I tell everyone else about it...?"
But Itsuki doesn't buy this, and she folds her arms slowly to prepare her rebuttal.
"...I do not think that is the case, Miku. Because if it were, why were you so surprised the last time we were here when you realized that I had somehow found my way here?"
"...what do you mean? Because...I never wanted anyone else to have to suffer this with me!"
"I understand that, but from what I remember, you gave the reaction of someone who was seeing something that they'd never expected. If you truly anticipated something like this where one of us, one of your sisters would get dragged into a place like this, then...you would have given a somewhat different reaction. I am no, um, psychologist or...or anything like that, but, um..."
Itsuki sighs quickly, also realizing that she herself may be pressing the issue here a little too much, as her recent run-in with Nino painfully reminds her.
"...I apologize, Miku. I...I just..." The sudden whiplash of emotions that Itsuki's forced herself to undergo causes the guilt of her current feelings to surge out of control for a moment, resulting in tears in her eyes that she can't suppress in time. "...ever since we began to differentiate ourselves from when we were young, I focused everything I had into studying, so much so that I stopped paying attention as much to my own sisters. I never questioned why Nino suddenly lost her eyesight when we entered middle school, either. Like, it is undeniable that there were signs, right? And I was just ignoring them all this time..."
"But you couldn't have known that those were supposed to be signs of any kind. No one did!"
"Perhaps not, but now that I know that you were keeping something like this to yourself for a long time, I do not feel any better about it..." Itsuki wipes her eyes. "And this is made all the worse by the fact that before recently, the two of us in particular...we never really spent time together, did we? Not as much as we did with the others. So I cannot help but feel guilty that I did nothing to help you. Nothing to...make any of this...a little more bearable...oww...!"
Itsuki's headache, which had receded to a degree while she was talking, flares up again without warning, and Miku starts to reach forward for her sister in response. But what makes her freeze in her tracks is the blood that now falls from Itsuki's eyes and down to its kind below.
"I-Itsuki, your - your - !"
But as Miku tries to alert her sister to the alarming anomaly that is happening to her, Miku herself finds her chest contracting sharply, squeezing the air out of her lungs suddenly and causing her to cough violently. While thankfully this sudden panic attack, if she can even call it that, lasts only for a moment so that she can manage to breathe properly again, the pain remains - and to Miku's horror, this new pain is spreading from the exact point in her chest where she had been struck.
To make things even worse, Miku's eyes which were cast down at the blood beneath the two of them as a result of her panic attack can see Itsuki's left hand press against the bloody surface of the mirror sea as she is groaning loudly, her right hand squeezing her face over her eyes in an effort to cope with the escalating pain on her end.
Itsuki's left hand is covered with a single black line that runs horizontally over its back.
Oh no.
Against her better judgment, an extremely disturbed Miku, before she can think about what she's about to do, looks up at her younger sister, only to find Itsuki marked with the same lines and dots that have infected her long ago.
The nightmare continues, before Miku even has a chance to scream out her sister's name. Without warning, much like all the afflictions up until now, a pair of blackened hands, or more accurately the shapes of human hands, emerges from the bloody water around Itsuki silently and seize her by the ankles. It's only when they've done this that Miku can finally utter her sister's name, which is about the same time that Itsuki herself gives out a sharp scream upon pulling her hand off her bleeding eyes to see what has taken hold of her.
"Miku, Miku - !"
Itsuki begins to shriek, but three more charred shapes of human hands splash out of the water to follow suit and grab hold of the youngest quintuplet; two of these newcomers grab her elbows while the last, instead of latching onto a limb like a parasite, presses itself against Itsuki's freely bleeding eyes. Miku has since dinved forward in an effort to pull the hands away while Itsuki herself tries her best to shake herself free of these ill-fated appendages desperately, but despite the girls' screaming and pleading, these hands, with one mighty tug, yank Itsuki downwards beneath the surface of the water, and the youngest quint barely has time to let out one final cry before it is rudely cut off by a loud splash that throws blood all over Miku's face and front.
"Itsuki?! Itsuki! ITSUKI! ! ! ! !"
Still screaming her sister's name, her eyes quivering beyond control at what is unfolding before her, the third quintuplet tries to dunk her hand into the water to reach down for her freshly abducted sister, but her palm simply smacks painfully against the surface of the sea as though it really were made for glass, just for her.
Miku's sharpened desperation shifts instantly into ire, fury the likes of which she's never felt before. She has known frustration, anger, and annoyance - but never before has she felt so damn furious. She would frighten the daylights out of herself that she was even capable of demonstrating such raw emotion, if Miku herself weren't screaming at the blood beneath her to return her sister.
"GIVE HER BACK!" she's bellowing through tears of her own, "GIVE ME MY SISTER BACK! LEAVE US ALONE, GODDAMN IT - "
The third quintuplet won't be finishing that sentence. A second violent cough is all that she can muster as Miku finds herself lifted up off the surface of the water, her strength rapidly leaving her limbs and mind, as the same black blade that struck her before silences her a second time, again through the chest. The last thing that Miku manages to see is her own blood becoming one with that of her own nightmare...
Gasping for breath, Nakano Miku convulses out of control as she struggles to sit up in her bed, wondering why it's so difficult for her to do so, until -
"Fucking finally you're awake! Are you alright?"
A terse but extremely worried Nakano Nino is whispering down at her, already holding Miku upright somewhat. Miku tries to answer, but as soon as she takes a breath to supply her lungs with the air they need to allow her to talk, the third quint retches forward strongly and starts to cough violently.
"Whoa, whoa, take it easy, take it - " Nino starts to say to help her sister calm down, but with Miku's desk lamp turned on and armed with her backup glasses, Nino spies the shivering sight of blood thrown against the top of Miku's blanket and against her hands. "Oh my God, Miku, you're - you're throwing up blood!"
Miku can barely raise a hand up at her sister to get her to shut up for a second as she finishes coughing after a few moments, with a deathly uncertain and concerned Nino waiting for her to stop coughing up a lung.
"...I'm fine now, Nino," the third quint finally declares after it's clear that her bloody coughing fit has finally subsided.
"Yeah, that doesn't sound too convincing when you've made a fuckin' mess out of your blanket!" Nino hisses in a low voice, but she can't sound angry longer than this. "We should call Papa or Fuuta - uh, Uesugi-kun or someone, we can't just leave you like this."
"No, no, I'm serious, I'm fine. I coughed like this because...because I had another nightmare," Miku insists quickly. "But more importantly, Itsuki...! Go check on Itsuki!"
"And what, just - just leave you here like this?"
"Yes! Itsuki, she's - she's - just go, damn it!" Being fed up with trying to put her thoughts into words, Miku simply jams her finger in the direction of Itsuki's room as she herself swings her legs out of bed. Seeing that there's no changing her mind, Nino helplessly leads the way as the two quints scramble quickly but as quietly as they can over to Itsuki's room.
Thankfully, Itsuki's room is not locked, and so the two quints carefully allow themselves inside while turning on the lights to their younger sister's room. The first thing they're greeted with is -
"Don't...don't get any closer...!"
Neither of the quints have heard their sister have such a small, high-pitched voice before. It is the cry of a truly helpless girl with no understanding of what's just happened to her and is left to fester in the aftermath of a cruel, unreasonable fate, like a crying mouse dropped into the cage of a hungry snake as it pounces on its meal.
Itsuki is already sitting up in her bed, and when her sisters barged quietly inside, she snapped her eyes over to them to see who they were. Her hands are covering her face, but through cracks in her fingers, her eyes are mostly visible. Her Mystic Eyes are out in full force, but for the first time to the quints' knowledge, they are shining the brightest that they've ever seen any of their own Mystic Eyes shine. Not expecting her sisters to force themselves in, not that they needed to thanks to the door not being locked, Itsuki tries to turn away quickly to hide her eyes, but it's too late.
A cold sweat running down her scalp, Nino slowly and quietly closes the door behind her and approaches her youngest sister carefully, flanked by her other younger sister, who is wiping her mouth and swallowing back as much of the taste of blood in her own mouth. Rather than addressing the cowering Itsuki first, Nino turns to Miku first.
"...so what the hell happened this time?" she asks tensely, adjusting her backup glasses. When Itsuki requested their father to procure for her better glasses, Nino also put in an order for a pair of corrective glasses of her own, as she'd been meaning to do so for a while now since she'd gone for a long time with only contacts. She's quite thankful she did.
"We had another nightmare," Miku begins explaining, "and...this time...I saw Itsuki get dragged beneath the water by these...these hands, these black hands. There were five of them. They pulled her under, and...and I tried stopping them, and I tried reaching into the water but I couldn't. And...and then..." Miku gulps. "...that's...that's where it ended."
Miku's plain and straightforward description is almost worse than a more detailed one, because Nino's imagination is almost forced to run rampant with filling in the details on its own, making Nino spook herself with what this scene must've looked like. Given that Miku has already shared with her what this nightmare of hers looks like in the weeks prior, Nino at least has something of an idea of what Miku is talking about.
"...so I'm guessing that's the reason why Itsuki's eyes are shining like lightbulbs right now?" Nino asks, gesturing over to their younger sister, who's since feebly accepted the fact that she cannot hide this strange state that her Mystic Eyes are in and has lowered her hands, which are also smeared with blood, as is her face just underneath both of her eye sockets. The lack of an answer from her sisters more or less confirms this to Nino, who sighs heavily and thinks aloud, "Why is this even happening? And why to the two of you in particular?"
"That's...kind of what I want to find out, too," Miku mumbles dejectedly. "I don't want to keep putting Itsuki through this."
"Speak for yourself, you aren't handling this very well yourself either," Nino points out.
"But I've gotten used to dealing with this. This is Itsuki's second time, she isn't able to handle this as well as I can!"
"Maybe not, but unless I'm mistaken about this, this is the first time since I've known about you having these nightmares that you've coughed up blood right in front of me."
"I've coughed blood before; you just never saw because I'd always go to the bathroom to wash it off."
Turning to Itsuki this time, Miku slowly but deliberately leans over her younger sister's bedside, making sure that she isn't about to give Itsuki an unnecessary scare with sudden movement.
"How's your eyesight, Itsuki? Did anything change? And how are you feeling right now?" she asks in a low voice, serious but with enough of a caring tone to let Itsuki know that Miku is asking these things out of concern for her.
"...I think...I think it is still the same..." Itsuki murmurs uncertainly, "but they hurt, my eyes...my eyes hurt a lot. Not as bad as the headache I have inside the nightmare, but..."
The youngest quint sniffles a little before forcing herself to look back up at her older sisters.
"...could...could you get me a towel...? I...I don't want to blink..." Itsuki mumbles, pointing at her eyes.
"Better yet, you should go to the bathroom and wash your eyes. Don't they always tell us to wash our eyes right away with water during science class, whenever we're about to do labs involving chemicals?" Nino suggests as Miku immediately begins searching for a towel in the room.
"Well..."
Itsuki is about to refute Nino in saying that it may be a rather unfair assessment to compare blood to a laboratory chemical, but she gets Nino's point, and so she opts not to make a small ruckus about it and slowly gets out of bed with her sister's help, careful not to get any blood on her blankets or bed. Seeing her sisters on the move, Miku forgoes her search for a towel and joins them to head down to the bathroom, where they make sure to clean both Itsuki and Miku up before returning to the second floor once their business is done.
"Itsuki, do you want to spend the night with me?" Nino offers quietly as they reach the top of the stairs. "You've been quiet this whole time, and not to mention, you're still shaking."
It's as if Nino read her mind, since Itsuki was contemplating asking one of her sisters if she could spend the rest of the night with them; not only was she afraid of asking this in the first place, but she didn't know who to ask - though on second thought, it would make sense to spend the night with Miku. Regardless, the fact that Nino offered first makes it significantly easier for Itsuki to seek emotional asylum, and she gratefully nods.
"Wait, Nino, she should stay with me," Miku interrupts swiftly.
"Hm? Why?"
"Because...I don't know what's going to happen if Itsuki sleeps with you."
"Huh? What do you mean?"
"Let's...let us get inside first...we must not be talking out here..." Itsuki suggests softly, pointing into Nino's bedroom, and the sisters oblige, shuffling into Nino's bedroom as Nino closes the door behind them so that they can talk in private.
"What I mean is, Itsuki and I just woke up from my nightmare. We all know that it's got to be some kind of magically induced nightmare somehow; and now tonight, you've seen the proof, Nino, when you saw me coughing up blood and Itsuki bleeding from her eyes," Miku elaborates slowly. "So...my point is, what's to say that something won't happen to you if you decide to go to sleep with Itsuki?"
"What, like...I'm going to be dragged into your nightmare too, somehow?" Nino asks, watching Miku nod back. After pausing for a moment, Nino speaks up again. "I don't care. If I'm gonna get my ass dragged in, so be it."
"Nino, you don't understand," Miku urges her older sister. "This place...it's bad, it's really bad. It's...it's an ocean of...of blood. Blood everywhere, as far as you can see. The sky's completely dark, and you hear nothing but...but blood dripping somewhere constantly, and you can't even see where it's dripping."
Normally Nino would pass off Miku's description of her nightmare as the latter trying to scare her, but given the context, she knows Miku is far from lying. Even if Miku were trying to give Nino a good fright, Nino is still quite sufficiently spooked by what her sister is describing to her.
"And...and there's this...this thing, this corpse...that I keep seeing, and it's always following me. Before Itsuki showed up, it would just show itself to me, and just looking at it would make me freak out. Now, now that Itsuki's here...it's been...hunting us, or something, I don't know. It keeps attacking us." Miku inhales unsteadily. "Nino, my nightmare is not something that people are meant to see, I don't think. And much less my own sisters. It's bad enough that it's pulled Itsuki in; I don't want the same to happen to you, I really don't."
But to Miku's surprise, Nino pulls on a face of steadfastness and stands her ground.
"I appreciate your concern, but...but now that I've seen the two of you physically suffering from this nightmare you keep talking about, I can't in good conscience just stand idly by and let the two of you go to bed tonight all scared and stuff. The same went for the other times I found you waking up from your nightmare, even before Itsuki got involved; like, how do you think I felt when I left you to go back to sleep on your own? I wasn't sure if I should've asked you to come spend the rest of the night with me since you might've not wanted that; I don't mean this as an insult, but you're used to being alone so I can assume that you could handle yourself after having one of these nightmares. But I can't say the same about Itsuki."
"Honestly, it sounds like you're insulting her more than me," Miku remarks to Itsuki's chagrin.
"I guess so, yeah. But that's not meant to be a jab at her either; I just don't want her to go to sleep scared and afraid. Even if having her spend the night with me is somehow going to get me dragged in too, that's a risk I'm willing to take."
"But I'm telling you, it's not worth it...! What if you do get pulled in? Then that means I have to watch both of you go through the same thing that I have!" Miku pleads with her older sister.
"I know. And if it does happen, I apologize in advance for making things even worse for you. But at the same time, I'm still sticking with what I said earlier, about how I can't just sit here knowing that Itsuki's going to go to sleep tonight shaking harder than she does than when she sees me cooking filet mignon. I don't want to deal with that kind of...guilty conscience either, you know."
Such is the air among the sisters that not even Nino's joke about Itsuki's big eating habits is enough to lighten the mood.
"Let me add another thing too," Nino continues. "I know that, um...I can be a big pussy when it comes to things that spook me. Like, I'm not good with horror stuff...I'm not comfortable around blood, though obviously not to the same extent as Itsuki...so on and so forth. But more than any of that, what scares me the most is something bad happening to any of you, any of my sisters. I don't want any of you getting hurt; I just can't stand that, I actually can't."
"That is quite rich, coming from someone who punched me in the face the other week," Itsuki cheekily slips in.
"I-I still feel bad about that, okay? Cut me some slack here!" Nino hisses lightly back. "Anyways! Do you see where I'm trying to get at, Miku? This nightmare of yours might do a number on me if I end up getting dragged in too, but...I would rather have that than go to sleep every night from now on knowing that the two of you have to deal with this on your own while I'm here doing nothing about it."
"I mean, it's not like we can do anything about it in the first place..." Miku adds dejectedly.
Sighing exasperatedly, Nino takes a step forward and puts her hands firmly on Miku's shoulders.
"Goddamn it, Miku, I know! I know what I'm doing might be stupid! I know that things probably aren't going to pan out the way I want them to!" she asserts quietly but resolutely. "But I don't care, I want to do something! Don't you see? I'm your older sister, for fuck's sake! And I want to let you know that I want to do everything I can for you! Like, holy shit, I wasn't just spouting total bullshit when I promised you all that I would keep everyone together!"
Feeling somewhat stunned at Nino's emotional words, Miku quickly shifts her gaze as Itsuki looks on. "...but I thought you said you entrusted that promise to Fuutarou now?"
Nino lets go of her sister. "I did, you're right. But he's not here right now. I am."
The three sisters stand in silence for a few minutes before Nino awkwardly scratches the back of her shortened hair. At first she tries to tussle it, only to realize that she's got short hair now and she can't toss a lock of her own hair whenever she wants, so she goes for the hair scratch instead.
"Honestly...you should spend the night with us too, Miku," Nino suggests a little bashfully. "Just...you know, pretend like...pretend like we're younger, when we used to sleep together in the same room all the time."
"Well, back then, we had to sleep together since our old apartment was only one room to begin with..." Itsuki points out again.
"Oh shut it, Itsuki, I know. Actually, you're wrong, our old apartment when we lived with Mama did have one bedroom, but we didn't really use it, if I remember correctly..."
"Itsuki, if you want to spend the night with Nino, then...it's up to you, I guess," Miku sighs finally, making up her mind. "But don't say I didn't warn you."
"And what about you? Will you not be spending the night with us too?" Itsuki asks back.
"If I'm so worried about you passing on the nightmare to Nino by spending the night with her, how do you think I'll feel about me doing the same?"
Sniffling again, Itsuki draws close to Miku, looking up at her with moistening eyes.
"...we can't, Miku-onee-chan...?" she pleads softly.
"Hnngg...!"
Taking super effective damage, Miku can't stop herself from throwing her arms around Itsuki, who pumps her fist behind Miku's back at her successful ploy.
"Alright, you fucking sis-con, maybe I ought'a kick you outta my room for being weird right now," Nino grunts, rolling her eyes as she heads over to the closet to pull out a few more pillows. "Remember these? I still have these old pillows we used to have. Figured they'd come in handy one of these days..."
"Oh wow, these are quite nostalgic..." Itsuki marvels as she recognizes the old pillow that she used to sleep with when she was younger. "So you even kept these..."
"Well, yeah...I couldn't bring myself to toss them out...though I probably should have at least given them a wash or something, they smell kinda musky..."
Turning off the bedroom light and turning on her own desk lamp so that the girls can make their way to Nino's bed and climb in, Nino takes off her backup glasses and switches the light off before joining her two younger sisters in her own bed, with Miku completing the quintuplet sandwich.
"...for someone who was so against this, you're snuggling up real close, aren't you?" Nino snorts, feeling Miku wedge herself firmly against her. Itsuki has already done the same.
"W-Well...if...if I'm already here...I may as well...right?" Miku stammers back.
"Just admit that you wanted to snuggle up for tonight, alright? You're not as cute if you keep being against me all the time..."
The three sisters, snuggled up together in the dark in Nino's bed, fall under their first spell of peaceful silence since they woke up, but Itsuki breaks it once last time.
"...just like old times," she remarks contentedly, and her two sisters giggle with her.
Though, before closing her own eyes for good, Nino dwells on her youngest sister's words for a moment. If this were just like old times, then...the others should be here as well. Not that there'd be space for all five of them; her bed barely fits the three of them as it is. But having the others here too would be nice...
"So that's why I heard you girls clomping around outside my room earlier this morning, huh?"
Nakano Ichika and Nakano Nino are sitting inside a Starbucks downtown, resting after a small shopping trip that had the two sisters search for some summer clothes that would fit them better and for some yukatas to wear for the upcoming summer festival later in about a month. One of the perks of being identical quintuplets is that the five sisters all have identical bodies and measurements, meaning that if any one of them went out shopping for clothes, she could buy them for everyone else, too - a convenient perk that all five siblings have taken advantage of at some point, and today, Nino has used it to its fullest extent with several bags of new clothes sitting on the chair next to her at the four-seater table at which she and her older sister are seated, enjoying their drinks.
"Mmmhm," Nino sighs lightly, her straw delivering small gulps of Mocha Cookie Crumble Frappuccino to her mouth while she checks her schoolmates' Twitter timelines on her phone. "I should ask you, though, why didn't you come out to join us?"
Ichika lowers her own drink, a simpler Espresso Frappuccino this time. "Huh? What do you mean?"
"Don't lie to me, Ichika, I know you were awake while we were running around earlier this morning."
Chuckling softly, the eldest quint takes another sip of her own drink. "Very good, Nino. I take it that you sensed my magical signature when you passed by my room? You did have to pass it twice, after all."
"Magical signature...I've heard Fu - Uesugi-kun talk about it a few times." Nino sits up and sets down her phone to give her sister her utmost attention. "But that's besides the point. Why didn't you come out to give Miku a hand? We all know by now that you're the one who's most experienced out of the five of us in this magic stuff. If someone like me who gave the least amount of shits about this magic crap before we found out we were mages can consistently wake up to whenever Miku gets a fit, then so can you."
"Hey, hey, you can't single me out; Yotsuba didn't do anything either."
"But Yotsuba's Yotsuba, you know this. Not trying to roast her or anything, but do you seriously expect someone like Yotsuba to get up to this? And that's before we talk about how heavy of a sleeper she is in most cases."
Ichika lets out a sigh of her own. "I mean, let's be honest, it's not like you girls would've wanted me to come out to check on you anyway. There's already enough distrust between the rest of you and me because of the fact that I've kept my mage status a secret from the rest of you for so long. Can you deny that, Nino?"
Nino hesitates at the truth to her sister's statement, but she doesn't let it faze her. "That's true, I can't deny that. But at the same time, despite that distrust, you should've still come out to see what was wrong. Like, this is one - no, two of your own sisters who were literally bleeding after they woke up from Miku's nightmare or whatever it is. We're still sisters, right? We've always looked out for each other in the past, even if there was beef going on among us for whatever reason."
Listening to her sister quietly, Ichika checks her own phone for the time. She probably shouldn't mention to Nino right now that she'd actually known about Miku's nightmare fits for much longer than Nino is aware of...
"So I have your permission to come out and be the big sis that I ought to be for any nightmares Miku and Itsuki might have in the future, then?" Ichika smiles curtly.
"Why do you need to ask for my permission? You're the oldest, what the heck."
"Yeah, but I'm just trying to cover all my bases. I don't know if you might go off on me for trying to help when you don't want me to, you know? I sure don't want to risk the two of us ditching home again. We wouldn't want that now, would we?"
"God..." Nino groans, arching her neck backwards stressfully. "You're not going to let that one go for a while, are you?"
Giggling heartily at Nino's expense, Ichika shakes her head. "Nope!"
"Goddamn it."
"I mean, you kind of deserve it, with all the shit you pulled." Ichika reaches forward to her sister to lightly hold up a lock of Nino's recently shortened hair. "Though, I will say, if there's one good thing that came out of it, it's that I actually really dig your short hair look."
Nino blushes a little at Ichika's kind gesture, but she lets her sister do as she please as Nino herself looks away to the side, towards the rest of the coffee shop.
"I-It's not like I intended to come out of that whole thing with short hair," the second quint murmurs quietly. "I'll admit that it was a...a spur of the moment kind of thing."
"Why, do you miss having long hair?"
"For the most part, fuck no. God, you have no idea how much time I save when it comes to washing it, holy shit. And whenever I need to tie my hair up to cook, it's not as freaking annoying as it used to be. But..." Nino sheds her aggressive attitude almost as soon as it flares up. "...I'll have a few moments sometimes, like...like, you know how I toss my hair back every now and then whenever I talk?"
"Yeah, you sometimes do it without realizing you don't have long hair anymore, I've seen you do it a few times," Ichika chuckles.
"Yeah, exactly. I do that, and...and I have all those cosmetics in my room and in the bathroom that I don't need as much of anymore since I don't have long hair now. Like...all these little things, these signs around the house...even outside the house too, since I'll have friends from school whom I might run into sometimes who tell me that they're still not used to me with short hair..." Nino sighs deeply, absentmindedly inserting her straw back into her mouth for another long, pensive sip. "I keep getting reminded of what I've done, and the fact that I used to have long hair. I would love to just sit here and pretend like I don't miss it. But for some reason, I can't."
Ichika nods sagely. "No, I get it, I really do. Remember, you're far from the only one who's had to deal with a sudden transition from long to short hair."
Nino looks back up at her older sister. "Oh yeah, right...both you and Yotsuba cut yours, I keep forgetting..."
"Yeah, everyone got used to it pretty quick. It's not as bad as you think. Well, it shouldn't be..."
"Yeah, thanks for pointing out the fact that I'm still feeling attached to my long hair."
Ichika lets out a short laugh as she gets up from her seat, picking up her own handbag and frappuccino. "Sorry. But you'll forget about it soon enough, just give it some time."
"You heading off now?" Nino asks.
"Yep, it's about time for me to head to work. You won't have any trouble with the bags?"
"I don't think I will, they're pretty light since they're just clothes. And if for some reason they are, I can always call a cab."
"Okay. Then catch you later, I'll be home at around seven or eight."
Nino watches her sister head out, and once she's out of sight, she picks her phone back up to scroll through whatever of Twitter and Instagram she didn't check yet, sipping more of her drink all the while. But she finds herself thumbing through her phone without purpose and without much enjoyment, so she sets down her phone to gaze out of the window next to her.
There is a familiar-looking boy with short black hair in a weird haircut, standing out on the sidewalk with his phone up to his ear. He appears to be talking to someone, and Nino watches him talk silently for a minute or two before he cuts the call and pockets his phone before heading straight into the very Starbucks she's occupying.
"...Fuutarou?" the second quint blinks, the sudden epiphany hitting her so suddenly that she forgets to react in character.
"Hm?"
The high school tutor glances over, hearing his name called out of the blue, and the two high schoolers' eyes meet.
"Hey, Nino. Been a while," Fuutarou greets her with a small, curt lift of his hand, approaching her table but refraining from taking a seat just yet.
"Fuutarou!" Nino can't quite hide the happiness and relief from bleeding into her voice as she returns her tutor's greeting, quickly getting out of her seat. "Tch, yeah it's been a hot minute, where the hell've you been?"
"Been busy, what else?" Fuutarou returns dryly. "Give me a moment first, let me buy something before they toss my ass out for loitering..."
So Nino patiently waits for her classmate to order a drink, which he picks up soon after since he only ordered a simple cappuccino.
"So, how's it been," the young mage asks as he slips onto the chair across from Nino, the same one that Ichika was sitting in not too long ago.
"Lonely!" Nino gripes. "You spent basically the entire first trimester freeloading in our house for anywhere from two to five hours a day, and now that it's summer vacation, you all of a sudden just go poof and don't come visit us for the next three weeks? How's that work, huh?"
"Well, first of all, there ain't any tests or exams that I need to whip you girls into studying for, so there's that. Second of all, things are ramping for me on my end, and thank God this didn't happen when we were still in school."
"Is that some kind of secret talk for 'I've been really fucking busy'?"
"Gee, I wonder how you could tell."
"Oh, I don't know, just me not seeing you for the past three weeks, maybe?!"
"You sound like it's the end of the world if you don't see me for that long."
Nino pouts at him. "So you're gonna spend all that time and effort stalking me during finals week, talk me down and drag me back home, and then call me your girlfriend in front of our own upperclassmen from the school track team, just to not see me for the entirety of summer break so far? We only got a little over another month!"
"I don't see the problem in that."
"I do, you son of a bitch!"
Nino quickly reaches across the small table and flicks Fuutarou in the forehead.
"Ow," he responds nonchalantly, slurping up his drink. "But for real, though, I was busy. Things are...getting complicated on my end, to put it lightly."
Nino's attitude seamlessly transitions from irritated to concerned. "...is it something you can talk about? You can talk about it with me, I'll keep it a secret from everyone else."
"Not really. I'm not saying that because I can't tell you, but because it'll just cause you and the others more distress if I do. It's one of those things that you're better off not knowing..."
"Well, along that logic, now that you've told me, I'm gonna be distressed either way!"
"That's also true." Fuutarou sighs deeply. "Fine, I'll let you in on what I've been up to. Basically, Shirazumi Rio is acting more and more erratic, and I've been following his tracks to see what he's up to."
"Shirazumi...the guy who's after us, right? If he's supposed to be after us, why hasn't anything happened to any of us the past couple weeks? You even told us that we were free to do whatever we wanted, right?"
"Yeah, exactly. And what I've discovered so far is worrying."
"How so?"
Fuutarou pauses to take another sip. "He's been breaking into people's homes, killing them, dismembering them, and eating them - partially. He didn't do this before our finals - at least not to this extent, but now it's like he's caring less and less about covering his tracks as a mage."
"E-Eating people...?!" Nino can't contain her horror at this.
"He's a cannibal, yes, so that's his thing."
"Holy shit, that's fucking disgusting..."
Fuutarou shrugs. "Welcome to the world of magic, where half the people in it are deranged lunatics and the other half are also deranged lunatics but they're pretending not to be. You get used to it pretty quick...or, more accurately, you have to."
"But...why's he eating people? Just because he's a cannibal, or...or does he have another reason than that?"
"Huh, quite the insightful question you have there. What makes you ask?"
"Well, because, last time...when he kidnapped me and Yotsuba, he could've easily done way worse things to us before you saved us, but he didn't. So I get the sense that he's being, uh...selective...? With who he, uh, eats...?"
"You're actually right, in a sense. Ever since he started going on his killing spree, he's only gone after the people to whom his gang's sold drugs to. Since I was already aware that he's most likely developing a custom drug, my current hypothesis is that he's first selling that drug of his to people, letting them take it, and then once they have, he tracks them down, kills them, and then eats them for magical sustenance of some kind."
Cringing at this chillingly methodical sequence of events, Nino uncomfortably drinks more of her mocha. Fuutarou notices this, so he wisely decides against continuing this discussion.
"...again, probably not the best thing to talk to you about," he reasserts. "What about you? How've you and the girls been doing? Other than you roasting me for not seeing you for the past three weeks?"
Finishing the rest of her drink, Nino sets down her empty plastic cup. "...Miku had another nightmare earlier today, and...I think it's the worst it's ever been."
"How so?"
"Miku woke up coughing blood. That was the first time I'd ever seen it, but apparently it's happened before, and Miku said I just didn't know about it since she'd go to the bathroom to clean it off. But Itsuki was also bleeding...and from her eyes, too...!"
This catches Fuutarou's attention immediately, and he leans in swiftly.
"How is she? Did her eyesight get worse because of that, or...?"
"She's fine now, and she says her vision didn't get worse. At first I thought she was lying so that we wouldn't need to worry about her, but she's been acting the same all day today before Ichika and I headed out to go shopping before you showed up, so I have to assume she's actually telling the truth."
Fuutarou raises a fist up to his mouth slowly in a sort of makeshift thinking pose. "Hm...if she's alright, then that's good, but...you don't just start bleeding from your eye sockets for no reason like that. Both for normal people and for mages...did they at least tell you the context for why that happened? Both for Miku and Itsuki?"
"Well, like I said, Miku told me she coughs up blood every so often, but she didn't tell me why or anything and I didn't press the point since Itsuki was the bigger concern. Itsuki...I don't know, I swear."
"Then how was Itsuki bleeding? Like, were her eyeballs themselves damaged, or was she just crying blood?"
"The second one."
"Okay, good. Not sure how it would've been the former anyway." Fuutarou grumbles under his breath. "Goddamn Mystic Eyes, how the fuck do they work..."
"That's not very reassuring to hear, Fuutarou."
"I know. But I'd prefer that to pretending like I know what I'm doing."
"Well, if not you, then who else?"
Tapping his right temple with his index finger, the young mage sits up properly to correct his hunched posture.
"Mind if I head back with you to your place? I don't think this is something I can just gloss over; I want Miku and Itsuki to explain to me what they saw and what happened," he concludes. "If they've shared the same nightmare twice, then most likely it's going to keep happening."
"Yeah, of course. But..."
"But what?"
Nino hesitates, looking away again for a second, but she gathers up her courage to say,
"...let's just chill here for bit longer. You must be tired, right? We can head out in a bit, and...and it's not like there's any rush, kind of..."
Shrugging slowly, Fuutarou nods in agreement. "Sure, we can just hang out a little. I suppose we should take this time to calm down, too...we've been talking about some yikes stuff just now, after all."
So the two high schoolers sit together at their table quietly. Nino would like to talk about something to help pass the time, but for as much as she's wanted to see Fuutarou again, now that he's here in front of her, she's at a loss for what to talk about. Then again, Fuutarou seems perfectly content to enjoy his drink and check his own phone for any new emails or texts, and Nino herself honestly enjoys just watching him like this. This is who Fuutarou is, after all...a serious, hardworking guy who doesn't talk much on his own. Despite her own initial dislikes for such an archetype of a guy, now that they've spent so much time together, Nino has sorely missed having his presence with her.
Thankfully, though, she does think of something to talk about at least, so she decides to just let it rip.
"...I'm sure you've probably felt something like this before, Fuutarou, but...have you ever felt like you wanted to do something for your family or friends, but you just couldn't?" she asks softly.
"When I first became a mage, fucking always," Fuutarou lets out a soft growl, which takes Nino by surprise, but it doesn't startle her somehow. "Sorry about that. But yeah, I know that feel. I think the word we use to describe it is 'powerless'."
"Ugh, seriously."
"I take it that that's your vibe right now because of what happened this morning?"
Nino nods. "I don't want to see my little sisters suffering like that. I fucking hate it."
"'Little'? You're all quintuplets, you're all practically the same age."
"I know, but they're still younger than me except for Ichika, so shut it and listen. I've always gone out of my way to keep them safe when we were younger, when we were in middle school. Like, whenever they were getting bullied by our classmates or upperclassmen or they were having bad rumors spread about them, I'd go out there and deal with the people responsible. But now I can't do that; I can't do what I'd usually do because I don't know how to go about it. How can I deal with something I'm not familiar with? This...this magic bullcrap? What am I supposed to do? The most I can do is give them a hug and try to tell them that everything's going to be okay, but...I can't really...do that, you know? Not when Miku's hurling blood and Itsuki's got blood pouring out of her eyes."
"Well, it's not like I feel any better about it myself. You entrusted me with that promise you made to your sisters when you were younger, and...I certainly don't want to let you down. And yes, I know that I'm the person who should figure out what the hell's going on with your sisters here..."
Nino feels her hands squeeze a little where they rest on the table. "...sorry, I didn't, uh...mean to put pressure on you."
"It's fine. Being stressed the fuck out because I've got problems that I can't seem to solve is something I'm used to feeling."
"I said I'm sorry, okay?"
"I heard you the first time. I'm not trying to be passive-aggressive here."
"You sure sound like you are!"
"Well, in that case, I learned from the best."
"Since when?"
Fuutarou simply points at the girl sitting across from him.
"You fucker," Nino grumpily pouts back at him as her tutor pumps his fist.
"Ha, got 'eeeemmm..."
"You shouldn't be so proud of that!"
"I am, though. I've been teaching you how to not fail at school, and you've been teaching me how to be a fuckin' biiiiiitch. Equivalent exchange, am I right?"
"You're actually gaslighting me right now, aren't you? That's what you're doing right now, isn't it?"
"Who knows..." Fuutarou then offers her his cappuccino. "Here, as an apology you can have some."
Nino glares a little down at his drink. "...why? Why do you think this's a good enough apology?"
"I dunno. It's all I have on me anyway, and I don't have enough on my gift card to buy you a whole new drink."
"You bought this with a gift card? God, you're such a frickin' cheapskate...!"
"Yes, more news at 11, take it or leave it."
So Nino snatches her classmate's drink out of his hand, takes a fast and strong sip from the straw, and inserts it back into his hand, just how she'd taken it.
"Ah."
Realizing what she's just done, Nino struggles to keep her face from exploding as she watches Fuutarou also immediately take a sip of his own, though it's not just a sip as he works to finish the rest of the drink so that they can get going.
"Alright, let's go. Do you need me to carry any of your bags for you?"
"Huh? Uh...yeah, sure..."
So Fuutarou just picks up all the bags and leads Nino out of the Starbucks so they can head back to the penthouse, disposing of his and Nino's empty cups properly before exiting. After a few minutes of walking silently by him, Nino purses her lips and, with a little difficulty, manages to put her arms around his, taking advantage of the fact that his arms are completely open from carrying her shopping bags for her.
Fuutarou merely glances down at his student and simply grins a little, not stopping his gait.
A/N
This chapter has taken a while to come out, and unfortunately the next one will most likely take a similar amount of time to write. I hope to be back on a more regular writing schedule, especially now that Season 2 is done airing, but every time I've said something like this, things didn't work out. So enjoy this offering to the Nino Gang while I'm away again.