"Fuutarou!"
"Uesugi-kun!"
Hearing the door open from the living room, Miku and Itsuki, having been phoned by Nino that she's found their tutor and is in the process of dragging him back home with her, have already gathered downstairs to wait for them to come home and immediately bound for the front door when they hear it open. Sure enough, they are rewarded with the sight of their classmate and tutor taking off his shoes in the shoe lobby before stepping foot inside their penthouse with their sister in tow.
"Hey, it's been a while," Fuutarou greets his students, both of whom look positively elated to see him in good health and lead the way for him into the living room.
"Indeed, it certainly has been," Itsuki answers him as they congregate in the living room, settling into the couches where she and Miku were waiting. "It has been, what, three weeks, I believe?"
"We missed you, Fuutarou," Miku smiles at Fuutarou as he sits down next to Itsuki on the long couch and reaches over for a rice cracker on a small snack platter prepared by the quints in anticipation of his arrival.
"Even though it's only been three weeks?" he quips back before popping the rice cracker into his mouth whole.
"Seems like you don't realize how much of an impact you've had on our daily lives already." Scoffing loudly, Nino sets down her bag of freshly purchased yukatas next to the short couch where she sits, watching with a subtle look of diluted envy her sisters as they sit on either side of their tutor. "Think about it - you came in here three, no, four months ago by this point as our tutor literally out of the blue, and before we even ask you, you start spending anywhere from two to six hours in our own house every single day for this whole time. And then summer vacation starts and boom! You're gone, just like that. You think we wouldn't notice the difference?"
"Well, I'm not gonna lie when I say that a part of me was thinking you wouldn't miss me all that much," the young tutor replies curtly.
"If that's meant to be a lowkey roast towards me, then first of all, fuck you; second of all, even if I ended up not missing you at all, you know that I'd be in the minority. Look at the two girls next to you and see if you can say that again to their faces."
"That's why I said 'a part of me'."
Nino tosses her hands up a little in incredulity. "The hell's that supposed to mean...?"
"A-Anyways! How have you been?" Itsuki asks, afraid that another fight might boil up between the two.
"Busy. I haven't been gone for no reason. How about the rest of you? Enjoying summer vacation?"
"We'd enjoy it more if you spent at least some of it with us," Miku pouts a little. "Even if it's just to tutor us like you usually do."
"Eh, I'd like to give you girls some time to yourselves. Like Nino said, I've been hogging a ton of your time ever since I started this job of being your tutor, and while I did so because I believed it was in the best interest of both my job as your tutor and your chances at surviving high school academically, I still understand that I've taken away a lot of your time that you all could've spent doing other things that you would've liked doing as high schoolers."
"Now you're starting to sound like Ichika," Miku points out.
"Yeah, and it's funny you mention her because I was even thinking about what she's said sometimes to us, about how we're only high schoolers for three years in our lives, and that we should make the most out of it."
"But you're not making the most out of it, though."
"Hm? What do you mean?"
"As in, you're always running around working and doing mage stuff!" Miku pouts again.
Fuutarou grimaces with a painful degree of difficulty. "I mean, what am I supposed to say to that? I can't just stop, you know?"
"Sh-She knows, she knows, it was meant to be a joke," Itsuki again hurriedly says to clear up this misunderstanding.
"Yeah, I wasn't trying to judge you or anything because you've been busy," Miku nods calmly. "I'm just saying that because Nino brought up how you went from spending so much time with us to all of a sudden not seeing us at all for basically all of summer vacation so far. I'm just saying that we missed you."
Snorting shortly with amusement, Fuutarou pops a second rice cracker into his mouth. "You say that like it's been months since we last saw each other."
"Because to us, it has!" Nino gripes. "Did you not get literally anything I just told you just now?!"
"I get it, I get it, sheesh, it's just that you girls sound like you don't know when I'm coming back or something. Like, you know for a fact we'll be back to our usual schedule once second trimester starts up - as a matter of fact, we need to start meeting up earlier than that, even, so that I can make sure you all did your summer homework properly. You haven't been neglecting those at least, now, have you?"
"Miku and I have been doing our homework, yes. I cannot speak for Nino, however," Itsuki nods over to her oldest sister present at the living room.
"I-I'm doing my homework too, okay! I just...haven't gotten too far into it, that's all!"
"That's what Nino usually says whenever she hasn't started something that she's supposed to have," Miku says flatly, gazing back at her older sister with judging eyes.
"And shut it, you!"
"Well, like I said, when you start doing your homework is irrelevant since I'll make sure you do them one way or another before school starts up, but we can have that discussion later when it's actually relevant." Having eaten his small fill of snacks, Fuutarou gets up from the couch and gestures at Itsuki to scoot over so that she ends up next to Miku and he himself can take Itsuki's old seat so that he can face the two of them together. "So, to summarize, Nino told me about your nightmare earlier this morning when I ran into her at Starbucks today, and I'm here to check up on you two because from what she's told me, it sounded serious enough that I wanted to stop by and make sure the two of you are still okay."
Having anticipated having this conversation, since the girls already know that someone like Fuutarou wouldn't take time out of his busy day to visit them simply for the sake of visiting, Miku and Itsuki both sit up in their seats on the couch.
"Itsuki came into my nightmare for a second time, Fuutarou," Miku says quietly but firmly. "And this time, it was...a lot worse than before."
"If it's alright with you, can you explain to me what happened, and maybe the differences between this time and the time before?" Fuutarou asks. "Because I don't think you told me what exactly happened in those nightmares you've been having. And since this's happened for the second time, I can't just hope that this is one of those kinds of problems that just solves itself over time. If it's too traumatic for you to remember, I won't press the issue, but..."
But Miku shakes her head quickly, a sharp look of determination in her eyes that contrasts just as sharply with the uncertain apprehension in Itsuki's.
"I can explain. Basically, my nightmare brings me to this weird place...it's an ocean, or some kind of huge body of water in the middle of nowhere, and it's big enough where I can't see where land is, or if there's even land anywhere at all. And it's not water, either...I'm pretty sure it's blood."
Itsuki winces at the direct mention of blood. Fuutarou momentarily casts a cautionary gaze over to the youngest quint before turning back to Miku to let her continue while he listens attentively.
"I don't know how deep the blood is, either, and until today I didn't try to reach down through it to see for myself. I can also hear something dripping around me, probably more blood, but...but I can't see where it's dripping, I can only hear it. The sky is pitch black, and there's no sun or anything anywhere."
"And yet, we...we could see everything in that nightmare as though...as though there were light," Itsuki blurts out suddenly, to both Miku's and Fuutarou's surprise. "Because there is no sun or any visible source of illumination anywhere, we should have been completely in the dark; we should not have been able to see anything. But everything was as clear as day."
Hearing Itsuki mention this causes an urgent question to spring up in Fuutarou's head, but he suppresses it for the time being to ask Itsuki about it later once the girls have spoken their share.
"Right. And...there are two more things," Miku continues. "The first is that once I'm in the nightmare for long enough, I don't know for how long exactly, though, there's this...body that floats up from underneath the blood's surface, a corpse. And then...and then it starts calling my name. And the second thing is...the corpse then gets covered in these...these really weird-looking...black lines and dots. They just...cover the whole corpse."
The mention of black lines and dots also seizes the young mage's attention - he feels like he's heard about them before, but...where, exactly? Again, though, he keeps his peace for now.
"And then...after I see the corpse, it...it calls out my name, like I said, and...and that's when I wake up. At least, that's how things were...until Itsuki showed up."
"And how's it different now?" Fuutarou asks calmly.
"The first time...I think I mentioned this before, but...before Itsuki started showing up, I would have this...this stage where I'd wake up in the middle of the night in bed, in my room, and then my head would start hurting really badly, and then I'd be, like, teleported or something into the nightmare like that. Like, it's a...it's a transition, so to speak. But when Itsuki joined, I stopped having that transition; I woke up straight into my nightmare, and I found Itsuki because I heard her screaming somewhere, and...and somehow I found her."
Itsuki is already slowly shaking her head, looking miserable just thinking about her experience inside Miku's nightmare. "My head...my head started hurting really badly too, like I was having a terrible migraine that would not go away for all the time I was there. I do not know how to exactly explain why I was having such a bad headache...it simply felt like the nightmare was a place where I simply...was not supposed to be in. It felt like I did not belong there...if I had to put the feeling into words."
"We can discuss what you think was happening afterwards. For now, just tell me the facts, just the stuff you know has happened for sure," Fuutarou says in an effort to keep the girls on track, and they both nod back.
"The corpse that I told you about...after a little while, it came back, and...it attacked us, which it never did before when it was just me," Miku says. "But it went after Itsuki; it didn't go after me. The first time, I...I don't know how, but I...I knew it was going to attack her, so I tried to stop it, but it...it stabbed me in the chest, I think, and then it...it slashed out Itsuki's eyes, and that was the end. The second time was the same...it attacked Itsuki again, but this time it dragged her underneath the water, and when I tried to stop it, it attacked me, too - it did the same thing, stabbing me through the chest, and that was the end, too. And this time, the two of us...both woke up bleeding; I woke up coughing up blood, which wasn't a big deal because that's happened to me even before Itsuki started showing up to my nightmares, but Itsuki...she was bleeding out of her eyes."
"Which is what Nino told me about earlier, and the reason why I'm here right now," Fuutarou nods over to Nino, who's been listening to her sisters talk quietly. "Your eyesight hasn't changed, has it?"
Itsuki shakes her head. "I-I believed that for sure...after something like that, that my eyesight would suffer further, but...I have not seen any changes, other than the initial change from the first time. I am telling the truth right now, Uesugi-kun, I am not trying to hide anything form you."
"So both of you are feeling fine right now? Physically, that is."
Both the third and fifth quints nod in affirmation, which causes Fuutarou to lower his head slightly in mild consternation, a look that, as mentioned before, is not something the quints are used to seeing on their tutor's face.
"...if you end up looking like that at us, Uesugi-kun, that's not exactly making us feel much better," Nino calls over to him.
"I'm fully aware, thanks," Fuutarou sighs. "The thing is...I'll tell you what I told Nino when she first told me what was going on, and that's that what happened to you two doesn't just happen and not have some kind of consequence later. Like, even if none of you were mages, right, and you're bleeding out of your eyes, that's a clear sign that something's wrong with you and you have to get checked up to see exactly what your problem is. That also applies to mages, too - mages don't just bleed out of their eyes either for no reason or because it's some kind of common side effect of using magic or anything like that."
"So...the fact that we feel fine is...weird?" Miku asks uncertainly.
"Yeah, because that means I have literally no leads that I can use to pinpoint the problem and maybe come up with a solution to it. Not that I would know how to really treat something like Mystic Eyes in the first place with how little experience I have with them, but I'd rather at least know something rather than nothing. If both of you feel fine and there's really nothing wrong that you know of, then I can't help you. It's like going to a doctor for an illness that you think you have but you're showing none of the symptoms for; what's the doctor supposed to do by that point? Prescribe some meds for you to take just in case? In my case I can't even do that."
Fuutarou straightens up in his seat on the right end of the long couch.
"But...that being said, what I can do is maybe get a better understanding of this nightmare that the two of you are having, since it might not necessarily be part of whatever your Mystic Eyes are. So this is where something like Itsuki saying she felt like she didn't belong there comes in." The young mage gestures over to the youngest quint. "If there's anything you two want to tell me, anything at all that seems even minutely significant, tell me. We never know if even the smallest of details might lead us to learning something about this nightmare that can bring us closer to understanding it or, God forbid, doing something about it."
Miku opens her mouth to speak but hesitates, but both Itsuki and Fuutarou notice this and courteously wait for her to recollect her thoughts in order to speak them.
"...I've been thinking a little bit ever since Itsuki said earlier that she felt like she didn't belong there," she says softly and pensively, "but...I think she's onto something with that. It might really be a place where...ordinary humans aren't supposed to come into. Or...at the very least...people who aren't intended to be there. That would explain why both of us have these big headaches whenever the nightmare's involved...I think."
"Good point, but clarify one thing for me, Miku - you said you get headaches before you got into your nightmare, but does it persist while you're inside it?"
"Persist? As in, I still have the headache while I'm inside the nightmare? No...I only have it before I get in it."
"Yeah, that's the thing I wanted to know. Because now that we know that, how do we explain the difference in the timing of those headaches?" Fuutarou points out. "Why is it that you get headaches before you enter the nightmare, but Itsuki gets it while inside the nightmare? And at the same time, this is what I assume, why is that while Itsuki has her headache, you don't have yours? You don't have a headache while Itsuki does, right? You didn't mention that if you do."
"N-No, I don't, but...I figured that was because...that might have something to do with the fact that I started having this nightmare first."
"I mean, shouldn't we try to figure out why Itsuki is having this nightmare too in the first place?" Nino interjects, in an effort to be involved in the conversation, as she's certainly not accustomed to just listening to other people talk right next to her and not being a part of it. "Why is it that all of a sudden, Itsuki's inside the same nightmare as Miku? How the hell does that work, exactly?"
"Well, I can only assume this is magically induced, so literally anything is possible - or in other words, I have no freaking clue right now. I'd like to know as much as you do, I can assure you."
Rolling her eyes, Nino leans back in her chair, looking clearly disappointed. "Not to roast you or anything, but like, for someone who knows literally everything when it comes to our schoolwork and stuff and someone who gives off the image of a badass mage or whatever, you sure don't seem like you don't know what you're doing."
"Nino, please do not give him a hard time over something like this..." Itsuki sighs, turning to her older of her two elder sisters. "He is trying his best, can you not see that?"
"I'm not trying to! I'm just saying, like...!" Just as soon as she'd leaned back, Nino surges forward in her seat again at her sisters. "Look, I'm just saying that it's pretty frustrating to know that someone like F - I mean, Uesugi-kun has a hard time with this. Because like we've been saying for some time now ever since we knew that our Mystic Eyes were a thing, if someone like him doesn't know what to do, what the hell are we supposed to do? Like, I know that I know nothing about magic or whatever so I'm clearly not in any position to criticize Uesugi-kun for not being able to solve this quickly like we're used to, but...is this something really so complicated that it can't be dealt with like how he deals with everything else?"
Fuutarou also lets off a big sigh of his own. "Unfortunately, no; this isn't a kind of problem I can solve by punching bad guys in the face or dumping their bodies into the river. Let's put it this way, Nino - if someone gets injured in the eye, for example by a bad cut, blunt trauma, chemical exposure, etc., and as a result they lose eyesight in that eye, they can't just go to a hospital and see a doctor or get surgery for that eye in order to recover their eyesight. The human eye is still too complicated an organ for modern medicine and surgery to repair completely when destroyed; it's not like an arm or a leg that can be replaced by a prosthetic one if you lose one."
The talk of losing an eye or eyesight strikes severe discomfort into the minds of the girls, especially Itsuki, who slowly looks away down at the carpet beneath her feet, blinking steadily as though cherishing what eyesight she herself has left.
"I've also told you before that I became a mage at a really young age - at least, I know I told Nino that. But what I need to add is that growing up, I didn't really have anyone else to rely on but my family, since mages by nature tend to distrust each other and as a result lead pretty isolated lives for the most part, away from other mages. I say this not to garner pity but to emphasize that everything I know about magic is mostly self-taught, and what bits of it wasn't I honed and trained myself in on my own. While I'm honestly glad that that's how I learned how to be a mage, the main drawback to it is that I didn't get a 'proper' magical education that would make me familiar with the basics of magic and how it operates in this world, and I can't just waltz into a library in the city and just read up on modern magic because books like that don't exist here, at least not that I know of. I'm trying to go about treating your Mystic Eyes in ways that I know because I don't have any other options."
Nino scoffs quietly, but she makes it discrete. "Tch...excuses."
"Nino, it's not an excuse and you know it," Miku says firmly, almost raising her voice across the living room at her sister. "Fuutarou's been trying his best to help us but he's in a situation where he can't treat something he has no idea about. It's like you expecting me to know how to make a Crème brûlée when I don't even know what that is."
"You remember that even after all these years? Don't tell me you're still angry over that...?"
"Regardless, even if I don't know how to treat your conditions now, having more details and information about what's going on is always better than not having them so that if and when I do find myself in a position to do something about it, I have a better idea how to go about it," Fuutarou says quickly. "The important thing is that you're okay for the time being, but like always, let me know if anything else concerning or serious happens."
Fuutarou gets up as he says this to head back to the front door to gather his shoes.
"Wait, you're leaving already?" Miku says, unable to hide the sharp concern in her voice. "At least have dinner with us, no? We - we were thinking about getting dinner ready."
"Not tonight, I still have things to take care of," Fuutarou says as he gets up from putting his shoes back on. "It might not seem like it since nothing's really happened for the past few weeks as far as you quints have been concerned, but right now is actually a pretty dangerous time with Shirazumi Rio running around - you can tell them what I told you back at Starbucks, Nino - and I need to monitor the city to track him and see what he's up to. Don't forget to do your homework - especially you, Nino."
And with that, Fuutarou exits the penthouse swiftly, politely closing the door behind him and leaving behind a pensive Itsuki and Miku and a mildly irritated Nino. The second quint, however, drops her irritated look quickly to pull on her own shoes and open the door to give chase to the boy who's just left.
"Nino? Wait, Nino, where are you - " Itsuki tries to call after her, but Nino responds by calling over her shoulder,
"I just wanna ask Fuutarou a few more things, don't worry!"
Dashing over to the elevator lobby as fast as she can, wishing that he had Yotsuba's stamina and athleticism for times like this, Nino barely manages to catch sight of her classmate just as the doors to his elevator begin to close, and Fuutarou, noticing the quint sprint into the lobby, reacts swiftly and slaps the OPEN DOOR button inside the elevator.
"What's up? Did you need something?" he asks courteously, watching the panting Nino as she catches her breath for a second before slipping inside the elevator with him.
"I know you're busy, so...we can talk while we go down," Nino breathes heavily, so Fuutarou nods and hits the other button to close the elevator doors to descend down the luxury high-rise. "First...are you actually gonna do something...about their Mystic Eyes...? Because...the way I see it...things've just been getting worse for them and...the most you can do is just stare and watch. And...and I know you already said that...that this is something you have no idea about, I get it, I really do, but...is there really nothing you can do...?"
Standing up straight and brushing her newly shortened hair out of her face, Nino leaves her neck arched upwards with her hands on her hips next.
"Like, don't get me wrong, Fuutarou, I'm not saying all this...because I distrust you, I'm not saying this because I think you're legit not doing anything about this. I'm...I'm saying this because I...I'm really concerned for my sisters. Like, you know how much I worry about them. I don't want any of what's happening to them to happen in the first place, and seeing them cough up blood or bleed out of their eyes is...it's honestly fucking scary, and I'm not saying that just because I don't like the sight of blood. And not to mention, that sort of thing could happen to me, too!"
Nino sharply turns to her tutor.
"You're absolutely certain that you don't know what's going on?" she asserts in a low voice to Fuutarou. "You're not trying to hide anything from us, now, are you?"
"I spend all this time busting my balls over the five of you, just to hide some shit from you about your Mystic Eyes?" Fuutarou raises his eyes. "I believe I've already told you just how dangerous Mystic Eyes can be, and even more so when we don't even know what your sisters' or yours do yet in the first place. Why do you think I'd run the risk of messing with your Eyes when something bad could happen as a result? That'd be pretty counterintuitive to all the time and effort I've spent keeping everyone safe, right? Or do you disagree?"
"No, it's not that I disagree, but..." Nino clearly looks more and more frustrated as the conversation drags on. "Look, I'll be straight with you: my sisters and I have talked a few times about how it's...it's weird that you became our tutor just before all this magic stuff started happening to us. Sure, you could say that you became our tutor because you knew we were being targeted by a freak who wants to kidnap us for whatever fucked up reason, and if things stopped there we probably wouldn't have known any better. But the fact that we have this Mystic Eye bullshit to deal with on top of that...it just feels like, how do I say...your timing is just...weird, I don't know how else to put it."
"I see. So you have your suspicions about me regarding your whole Mystic Eye situation, huh."
"Well...!" Hearing the slight exasperation in her crush's voice, Nino feels her frustration slip into subdued panic and starts to fret, but the elevator doors open to interrupt her, and she tails Fuutarou out of the main lobby. Fuutarou in turn quietly casts a Presence Concealment rune over the two of them and leads Nino to the corner of the lobby, out of the way of potential passersby so that they can at least finish their conversation. "...I don't want it to sound like we distrust you, Fuutarou, I really don't. It could just be that we're all just...just confused and scared as to what the hell's going on with us and our Mystic Eyes - well, scratch that, we are scared and confused, since we don't know what they're doing to us and we only ever found out that we're supposed to be mages super recently. We just want answers, and, well...you're the only one who can get them for us."
"Yeah, and let me tell you, trying to manage both that and tracking Shirazumi isn't easy." Fuutarou yawns a little bit, rubbing his right eye in an effort to refocus. "But I'm not lying to you when I say that I'm doing everything that I can do find out something about these Mystic Eyes. And if I'll be honest, there's a chance that I might not even be able to do anything about what's going on; sometimes that's just how magic is. Sometimes there just isn't an answer to a problem you're having...no easy ones, that is."
Nino gawks a little back up at her tutor. "So basically, we might as well go fuck ourselves? Like, we're totally screwed?"
"If putting it bluntly like that is how you prefer hearing it, then yes."
Sighing deeply, the second quint pauses for a moment before looking back up at Fuutarou.
"...then what about Ichika?" she asks, her voice regaining its serious edge with this topic switch.
"What about her?"
"We all know that she's an active mage. Well, maybe Yotsuba doesn't know since she's clueless half the time, but the rest of us do; it's not a secret anymore."
"Hm, that so."
"Yeah. So I've been wondering...if she's been an active mage for some time now, that means she's got Mystic Eyes of her own, right?"
"I can confirm that she does in fact have one," Fuutarou nods.
"Tch, like I thought. So I was thinking...since me, Itsuki, and Miku all just found out that we're mages and we have these Mystic Eye things, it could be that Miku's nightmare, whatever it is, might only target us three, but Ichika isn't affected by it because her Mystic Eye's probably already developed and she knows how to use it and all that."
"Eh, I wouldn't say it's that simple, though the fact that you're all identical quints does make things simpler than they normally are..."
"The hell do you mean by that..."
"What I mean is, along that logic, where does Yotsuba fit into the picture? Are you saying that Yotsuba is also a practiced mage just like Ichika?"
"Er..." Nino recoils a little, finding it practically impossible imagining someone like Yotsuba to be a mage of any kind. "...okay, maybe you have a point, but - "
"So you're saying you care about your sisters, yet you totally forget that Yotsuba's one. I see how it is."
"Sh-Shut up! Shut the fuck up! I didn't forget about her!" Nino begins to bop Fuutarou's arm out of embarrassment. "Sh-She's just a fuckin' handful sometimes, that's all!"
"Oh, yeah, I'm sure you didn't just forget about her...is that why you passed off your promise to me, because I wouldn't forget who your sisters are?"
Nino doesn't even bother saying anything; she just stands there glaring daggers up at her tutor.
"A-Anyways! The point I was trying to fucking make was that if there's someone I distrust, it's her, alright? The fact that she's kept her own mage identity secret from us all this time has got to mean she's up to something."
"And how does that have anything to do with your Mystic Eyes, or rather the nightmare that Miku and Itsuki are suffering right now?"
"I don't fuckin' know, but you said you don't know much either, so I'm just trying to help you with some ideas! You never know, figuring out what Ichika's up to might lead you to something useful to know about us! She's the oldest out of all of us, after all, so don't you think it's worth investigating?"
"Oh, so now you're commissioning me to spy on your sister now? Is that it?"
"I'm not telling you to do anything! I'm just giving you a suggestion, a suggestion!"
Chuckling shortly, Fuutarou waves Nino down to calm her. "A'ight, I get it, I get it. Is there anything else you want to talk to me about? Because I don't have much time. That, and Miku and Itsuki're gonna be pissed at you because you spent more time with me than they have today."
"Tch, I'm the oldest one out of us three, I'd like to see them try."
"Yeah, and have Itsuki punch you in the face again like last time."
"I'll fuckin' punch you in the face too if you don't stop cracking bad jokes." Nino cracks her knuckles menacingly, but she lowers her hands just as quickly as she's lifted them. "One last thing, I promise. I kind of already know the answer you'll give to me if I ask you this, but I figure it's worth a shot anyway."
"And what's that?"
Nino takes a deep breath to ready herself. "How...how willing are you to teach me...magic...?"
"Extremely unwilling. As in, not at all."
"Geh." Reeling a little at Fuutarou's curt and immediate answer, the second quint lets a fresh wave of disappointment wash over her face. "Again, I figured you'd say that..."
"Miku asked me the same thing earlier, if that makes you feel any better," the young mage informs his student. "So she's certainly got the same idea too. I don't know if you already knew that because she told you."
"That I did; we've talked about it a few times. Ironically, back then, I was opposed to you teaching us magic, but...times have changed now, haven't they."
"They most certainly have if now you're also asking me to teach you some shit."
"And I'm guessing you said the same to her? As in, you declined her too?"
"Obviously."
"And what were your reasons for refusing her? And are they the same as why you said no to me?"
"Yep; because becoming a mage isn't worth it. Much better for you to stay a normie and stay out of anything magic-related. I wish I could explain the exact reasons why to you instead of speaking in general terms, but I can't because this is just one of those things that you have to experience for yourself to truly understand, and I don't want you to go through that process to begin with. Or in other words, it's one of those things that you're just gonna have to trust me on, and I know that's something you have a hard time doing."
"Shut up, seriously," Nino groans.
"But let me ask you in turn: why did you change your mind? Why do you want to learn magic now?"
"Because I've realized since then that as much as I hate everything that's happening right now with our Mystic Eyes and us being mages all this time and never knowing it until not that long ago, that's not how I'd usually go about taking care of things. If I have a problem that I care enough to take care of, I'll get out there and do what I feel is necessary to get rid of the problem; you saw it firsthand when I tried drugging you that first week you were here. I know I come off as a complainer to you a lot of the time, but in reality I hate just sitting around complaining about stuff I don't like; I only do that because it's cathartic. I figure if I'm a mage and I've got these really powerful things called Mystic Eyes and there's nothing I can do to change any of that, then I may as well learn how to control them and figure out what they do and stuff and use them to my advantage. For my own safety and that of my sisters. And - "
Nino quickly cuts herself short; she was about to tell Fuutarou the third reason why she wanted to learn magic, and that was to eventually join Fuutarou in his responsibilities as a mage so that she could spend more time with him. He doesn't need to know that, not at this very moment.
"And...yeah, that's...that's not unreasonable, is it...?" the quintuplet drops her voice down to a mumble, still keeping her eyes fixed on her tutor.
"No, it's not. But again, this is what I told Miku, but even if I were to agree to that and begin teaching you magic, it would take such a long time for you to get anywhere that what little I'd be able to teach you probably wouldn't amount to much. And it's not like people like Shirazumi are just gonna sit around to give us time, you know? And even more so when you consider the fact that you basically have zero idea about magic..."
Nino understandably appears quite upset, but judging by the fact that she's no longer making a fuss about the matter, Fuutarou figures that she's coming to terms with his decision to refrain from teaching her magic as she's requested, so in order to facilitate the process, he silently puts his hand on Nino's head, causing her to look back up at him.
"...what's this hand for, exactly..." she mumbles bashfully, dropping her gaze yet again, so Fuutarou obliges and pulls his hand away.
"...I thought it would help you feel better, since I know things aren't going how you want," he says calmly back. "I'd say I have a good idea of how you can be when things don't go your way."
"Tch, you're damn right about that. But...I know something you can do that can make me feel better."
"And that is?"
Fuutarou watches Nino open her arms and pout back up at him. "...what's this? What do you want me to do?"
"Sheesh, do I have to fucking say it, too...?" Nino purses her lips with her cheeks brightening. "Give me a hug, damn it. It'll make up for the last three weeks that I haven't seen you for. Kind of."
Sighing, the young tutor complies with his student's demand and goes in for the hug, and Nino clutches him tightly back, savoring every bit of his warmth that she can before he inevitably leaves with her eyes closed.
"...whatever you do, just be careful out there, okay...?" Nino whispers. "You're supposed to be our tutor throughout high school, remember? Don't you go ruining your own contract with us."
"You mean with your dad."
"Well, we're the beneficiaries, so it's just as good as if we're the ones who hired you."
"Alright, calm down there, rich girl."
"Shut up. Also, promise me that you'll hang out with us next month at the summer festival."
"Do I have to?"
"Yes, otherwise you can't leave."
"Damn."
"Whew..."
Wiping her brow of sweat, Nakano Ichika, holding a chilled bottle of water with her as she enters a suite reception room of some kind, seats herself in a clean white couch, twisting the cap off her bottle to start drinking to hydrate herself.
"Hooo, that hit the spot..." the eldest quint sighs a breath of refreshed relief as she tugs a little at the moist towel hanging around her neck. She takes a cursory glance around the reception room before continuing. "...fancy you show up while I'm at work. When was the last time you visited me while I was working?"
Seated next to her is another Nakano Ichika, with her glowing golden left eye.
"Not that long ago, considering you haven't had this job for all that long either," the other Ichika quips with a stern, piercing look on her face.
"Well, maybe it hasn't been that long, but for a fifteen-year-old like me, it sure feels like it's been a hot minute." Ichika offers her alter ego her half-drunk bottle of water, causing her to promptly shake her head. "They're going to call me back soon, so let's make this brief, shall we?"
Ichika Alter nods curtly. "Shirazumi Rio's attacking and eating his clients. The people who buy his drugs, he's tracking them down after selling his drugs to them, breaking into their homes, and consuming them. Quite brutal, but that's just how it is, you wouldn't expect anything less from a dirty cannibal like him."
"Any idea why he's doing that?"
"Not an exact one, but my closest is that his magical physiology lets him do some magical shit by eating things. People, for example. So if he's first selling people drugs and then killing and eating them afterwards, it seems like he's first waiting for them to take whatever drugs he's selling them and then eating them."
Ichika flashes her eyes sideways at her clone. "Let me guess, he's trying to consume that drug for himself. But why doesn't he just take his own drugs straight? Why does he have to make other people ingest it first, and then eat them? That sounds really inefficient to me."
"No fucking idea, you might as well ask the man in question by that point 'cause I don't know. But he's got his reasons, that's for fucking sure."
Swishing the water inside her bottle around a little, Ichika watches the liquid swirl. "But in a way, it makes sense that he'd do that. Because that night when we were all about to get kidnapped at the warehouse, they had that big metal box full of needles and that weird white stuff which I assume was the same drug he's been selling his customers nowadays. It would certainly make sense if they planned to inject us with that crap first and then have Shirazumi eat us."
"And it's a good thing Uesugi showed up when he did, since that meant I didn't need to reveal myself," Ichika Alter chortles darkly.
"Would you have been okay with it, though?"
"Eh, eventually I'll have to show myself, but we've already had that fuckin' discussion a million times by now."
"Alright, then. So where is Shirazumi now?"
"I don't know; for a freak who literally eats people, he covers his tracks too goddamn well. It's the reason why Uesugi hasn't found him yet either, and he's been on his trail for the past three weeks."
"Someone's been able to avoid you for three weeks straight? That must be a new record or something."
"The only record he's setting here is how big of a fucking annoyance he's being in this city." Ichika Alter's lips curl into a murderous smirk. "This city's only big enough for one atrocity, and I'm that atrocity. I'll be the one to fucking end him, you'll see."
Ichika chuckles dryly. "Good luck with that, then. Anything else I should know?"
"There is, actually. I've been tracking Uesugi around at night out of boredom to see if I could find anything interesting. He visits the hospital quite a bit, I've noticed..."
"The hospital...well, he did tell us that he works there part-time with Dad."
"Yeah, but have you heard of any part-timer who goes to work in the middle of the fuckin' night?"
"I mean, there are actually some part-times out there that do that...and besides, I don't know what he does at the hospital enough to really judge him, you know?"
"Well, that ain't all. I tried getting close to the hospital myself just to poke around a little deeper, but the place is crawling with magical sensor runes. Even for something like me, no fuckin' chance in hell I'd be getting in without getting detected."
"And what does that mean?"
"It means that Uesugi or whoever's responsible for setting down that fuckin' forest of magical sensors at the hospital really doesn't want anyone suspicious gettin' in there. Like, we're talking bank vault-levels of security to guard some kinda fat loot or stash of valuables inside that they want to make sure doesn't get touched." Ichika Alter nonchalantly points sideways to the original. "He might not suspect someone like you poking your nose around in there, though. Might wanna give that a shot if you're curious."
"I don't know when I'll have the time for that, to be honest. Well, I could actually stop by if walking back home from work makes me pass by sometime, but...you know I'm not entirely fond of running into Dad while he's there. He'll just ask me what I'm doing at the hospital instead of being back home or something."
Ichika Alter shrugs. "I'm just saying it's worth investigating if I can't do it."
"Right now, I care more about getting rid of Shirazumi Rio," Ichika asserts quietly, gesturing her water bottle towards her other self. "So focus on that first. If you need to work more closely with Uesugi-kun to make that happen, do it. I'm not fond of the idea of letting that bastard get anywhere near my sisters again if we can help it."
Ichika Alter smirks, getting up from the couch. "You should tell Uesugi that you're joining us one of these nights. You've always wanted to do that, haven't you?"
Offering a dry smirk of her own, Ichika takes the moist towel from around her neck to rub her face with it. "You know I don't have the time or the energy to do that."
"But you don't deny it."
The eldest quint simply chuckles, and when she looks up, Ichika finds herself alone in the room, as though she were just talking to herself all this time. Smiling to herself, Nakano Ichika gets up too to head back to work.
A/N
IRL is now taken care of, mostly. Here's to hoping I can get back to writing regularly again, fingers crossed.