Chapter 11

After a few more minutes of picture taking, we finally made our way down to the festival. I nervously kept on looking at Ichika, wondering why she wanted me to attend the audition with her. In my previous life all I did was help her practice the lines she was going to say, but I never actually joined her at the audition.

Ichika looked as if nothing had really happened. That smile of her was the same mischievous smile I had become accustomed to. Miku noticed something was off with me and walked beside me.

"Fuutarou, is something wrong? It seems like something's troubling you." She asked with a concerned look.

"It's nothing really, just that we're already late for the festival, so a lot of people would be around the venue already. I was hoping for us to go a little early so that we could avoid all the long lines or the huge crowd that usually forms at this kind of event."

Miku nodded in agreement. "I guess it did take a while for all of us to finally get ready. Nino really can't stop posting on social media so I kind of expected that she would hold a mini phot shoot at the suite. And speaking of photos… would it be alright if we took one together? I didn't have the chance to take one with you earlier after all."

"Sure, I don't mind. Would you like it if I took the photo? My arms are longer after all, I can probably get a better angle."

Miku gave me her phone and we stopped walking to take our picture. I placed my arm around Miku's shoulder and pulled her close to me, Miku was surprised at the sudden movement, and she gave out a really shy smile. I took a couple photos and handed Miku her phone.

"Hope the photos are to your liking, I'm sure Yotsuba and Itsuki have already told you, but my smiles in photos aren't exactly photogenic…"

Miku looked at me confused, "Fuutarou, I don't know what you mean. Your smile in these photos seems really good to me, in fact, I think this is the brightest smile you've made ever since I met you!"

The photo she was showing me really did have me smiling normally. I couldn't believe it at first… but then again, Miku is the girl I fell in love with, it wouldn't be too hard to assume that being around her just made my smile more natural.

"You don't look too bad yourself, Miku. That smile of yours is just as cute as your outfit."

Miku blushed at my comment, and I swear I could see her smiling from ear to ear. Seeing her smile like that caused my heart to beat faster than usual, who knew seeing her smile would affect me this much?

We then caught up with the others and made our way to the entrance to the festival. Just as I had dreaded, the festival grounds were filled with people. Tons of stalls were selling different varieties of food, the smell of Takoyaki in particular being especially enticing.

My stomach grumbled at the smell of all the food being cooked around me, and I could hear six other stomachs grumbling at the same time. I looked at all the girls and smiled. "Why don't we get some food to eat before heading out to the place Nino rented out?" The girls nodded in agreement, and I walked ahead, "So where do you guys want to get some food?"

"Fried fish cakes?"

"Yakisoba."

"Shaved ice..."

"Chocolate bananas!"

"Cotton candy please."

As expected, the quints all wanted something different., and a debate between the five of them ensued. As the five of them were arguing, Raiha approached me and tugged on my sleeve. "Onii-chan, can we get some takoyaki? It's been so long since we had some!"

I looked at the quints and saw they were still arguing and then looked back to Raiha. "Sure, kiddo. It doesn't seem like they'll be finished arguing any time soon. We'll probably be back before they even decided where to eat."

Raiha giggled as we made our way to the takoyaki stand. Luckily the line wasn't too long so Raiha and I took the opportunity to line up. I could already hear her stomach rumbling as we made our way closer to the start of the line. After a few minutes of silent anticipation, we finally had our chance to order. "Two orders of takoyaki please."

The stall worker quickly made two sets of takoyaki. He handed out our order and Raiha excitedly held on to them. The worker turned to me and smiled, "That'll be ¥1000, my good sir! Hope you enjoy your takoyaki!"

I reached into my wallet and searched inside, only to reveal a single ¥500 coin. "Oh… would it be alright if we only get one order? Turns out I'm a little short on cash at the moment." I said, embarrassed. Raiha looked at me, concerned and gave back both orders of takoyaki."

"Here, mister. I'm not hungry, we won't be ordering after all."

"Wait, what are you doing? I know how hungry you are right now, Raiha. Just return my order, I can just eat what we have left at home."

"But… we won't have much money left! We could use it for something more important!"

As Raiha and I argued, someone had walked up behind me and paid the stall owner. She got the takoyaki and placed it right in front of our faces. The manicure and colored nails were enough of an indication that the woman giving us food was Nino. "Honestly, you say we should all go out for food, and you don't even have enough money? Talk about being careless, Uesugi."

"Nino! You didn't have to do this..."

"I didn't do it for you, dummy. Don't you see that you're putting Raiha in such a tight spot? If I hadn't butted in, she would have left the stall without any food!"

"You're right… Thanks, I'll pay you back for the food, I promise."

She shook her head. "No need, I know the situation you guys are in. It wouldn't feel right to let you guys pay me back when you're struggling financially. Consider this as a way to make up for all the crap I've done to you…"

I saw that Nino really was regretting what she did to me over the last week. I accepted the food and gave Raiha her takoyaki. She looked at it in excitement and hugged Nino, careful to not drop the food she had just been given. "Thank you, Nino! You're the best!"

Nino crouched down and patted Raiha on her head, "Anything to put a smile on your face, Raiha. I know how hard it is to go around being hungry, so eat as much as you can, then we can go buy some more food if you want, deal?"

"Deal!"

And with that, we followed Nino to the yakisoba stall, where she got five orders of yakisoba, which she placed in my hand. "The least you could do is carry all of that, it would be such a pain if I got my yukata dirty after all."

I rolled my eyes and smirk, "Whatever you say, madame Nakano."

"And what was that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing."

"Right… that's what I thought."

After visiting the yakisoba store we made our way to the rest of the quints, who all had five servings of the food they had wanted earlier.

Yotsuba was the first to see us and waved at us. "Uesugi-san! Raiha-chan! We couldn't decide that we wanted to eat, so we got all of them instead!"

I shook my head and smiled. "At this point, I'm not surprised. You all have such unique tastes, choosing just one food seemed like an impossible task for you guys!"

All the quints laughed as they exchanged food with each other. Once everyone was ready, we finally made our way to the spot Nino had reserved for us. The only problem was that the crowd had gotten way too big in the time we spent getting food. People were coming from all directions, effectively separating our little group. I saw Raiha being swept away with Yotsuba, I saw Itsuki struggling to come back to us, Miku was in the same predicament, while Ichika disappeared way too quickly for me to notice where she went.

"And then there were two…" I looked beside me and saw that Nino was still there, holding on to the sleeve of my shirt. Surprisingly she held on to me without telling her, the Nino from my past life loathed the though of holding on to me at first, so this put a smile seeing as how the rocky start we had was being undone.

She looked at me, an eyebrow raised. "And why are you looking at me that way? Don't tell me this is the closest you've been with a girl?"

"You'd be surprised, really. I've actually seen girls almost naked a couple of times." Although in this life, I hadn't experienced it much, I still technically wasn't lying.

Nino shook her head, "Raiha doesn't count."

"Why would you even bring in my little sister? Obviously, she doesn't count!"

"Wait… so you really have been that close with a woman before?" Nino really looked surprised. Well, anyone would to be honest, since when has the guy who's only ever done studying ever been lucky enough to see what most teenage men want to see?

"Yeah, didn't expect me of all people to actually experience that, did you?"

This back and forth banter between us continued till we reached the placed Nino reserved. It was a two-story building with a roof that could give a perfect view of the fireworks. Nino showed a QR code to the owner and he let us in. Nino and I sat down at the bench that was closest to the railings and tried to search for her sisters, but despite us having a bird's eye view of the area, we still couldn't find them.

"Your sisters do know where this place is, right?" I asked Nino as she tried contacting her sisters.

Nino's face pale as she realized something. "I… never told them where this place was."

I stood up and sighed, "I guess I'll go look for them, stay here just in case they miraculously find their way here."

Nino nodded and continued trying to contact her sisters. Just before I turned the other way, I noticed a red-headed girl with an all too familiar cowlick near the takoyaki stand we had visited earlier, so I went down and headed in that direction.

After squeezing myself through the crown, I finally caught sight of the youngest quint. After struggling to get to her I finally managed to grab her arm before she could go any further. "Itsuki! Wait!"

A flashback of what happened in my previous life came in, I had done the exact same thing and Itsuki greeted me with a scowl, clearly disappointed that I was the one who found her. The Itsuki I saw now wasn't angry in the slightest. In fact, she was relieved and even on the verge of tears.

She reached for me and smiled. "Uesugi-kun! Thank goodness you found me! As soon as I got separated from all of you, I didn't know what to do! So I just walked around trying to find you guys…"

"It wasn't easy looking for you, but not that it matters, really. Nino's waiting for you over there." I pointed to the building where Nino was waiting at and gave Itsuki directions, you could never be too sure with the quints, after all. "And have you seen anyone else when we all got separated?"

"I believe I saw Miku being swept away towards the overpass near the entrance, I think that would be your best bet in finding her." Itsuki pointed at the overpass, which wasn't too far away from where we currently were.

"Thanks, Itsuki. You better call Nino and tell her you're on your way, although I doubt the crappy cell signal here would let you." And with that, I made my way to the overpass. Thankfully there weren't that many people in this area so finding Miku wasn't too difficult.

I saw her sitting on a bench, holding her ankle. In my past life Miku did hurt her ankle when she got separated from us, and I guess the same thing happened in this life too. I sat down beside her and patted her head. "It must hurt, doesn't it? Good job finding a place where you could rest and that I could easily find you."

She was surprised at my sudden appearance before her. "F-Fuutarou! What are you doing here? Last I saw, you were with Nino when we got separated!"

I smiled, "I came to find you, dummy. Nino and I managed to make our way to the spot she reserved, and I decided to look for the rest of you while Nino tries contacting you guys, unfortunately the signal here is pretty bad so she couldn't get in touch with you. Luckily your blue yukata was easy to spot. I was able to find you in no time at all after Itsuki told me where you possible were."

A pout was forming on her face, "You didn't have to call me a dummy, Fuutarou."

"Right… sorry about that. I guess it's become a habit of mine, or would you rather I call you… mine?"

Just as I said that, both my face and Miku's turned bright red. I looked away and cringed at what I just said. "F-forget what I just said! I guess being around Ichika's teasing made me like this, sorry!"

I was expecting some sort of shy remark from her, but she only ended up laughing. "Fuutarou… have I ever said you looked cute when you're all flustered?"

"Wait… did you just tease me back? And you aren't weirded out by what I said?"

She smiled at me the same way she teased me back in Kyoto. "Why would I? Just as you said you felt comfortable around me, I could say I feel the same way when I'm with you. And let's be honest, even the rest of us can learn a thing or two from Ichika!"

We shared a good laugh as we watched the people pass us by. After a few more moments of people watching, I stood up and crouched in front of Miku, with my back facing her. "Why don't we head back to where Itsuki and Nino are waiting? You can't walk that well with that injury, so the only way we can go back is through this."

Miku looked around, embarrassed, as people were starting to see what we we're doing. She hesitated a bit longer before finally riding on my back. As soon as I felt her wrapper her arms around my shoulders, I stood up.

"You ready, Miku? Just say if you're feeling uncomfortable or anything. I'll stop and we can figure out another way for us to get to Itsuki and the others."

"I'm fine, Fuutarou. But could we get out of here, please? Tons of people are staring at us…"

I looked around and people really were looking at us. "Alright, hold on tight. Wouldn't want you to fall and worsen your injury after all." And with that I made my way through the crowd.

The trip towards the venue was pretty silent, which was understandable. I more or less put me and Miku in this weird situation, if people from school saw us this would lead to quite a few rumors, and I'm sure Miku and her sisters wouldn't want that.

Just as we passed by the Takoyaki store, someone came running towards us, from afar it seemed like it was some old man, but as he got closer, I realized that it was Ichika's manager, Oda-san.

"Ichika! Thank goodness I found you! You're going to be late for the audition! We have to hurry!"

He hurriedly tried pulling Miku off of me, but luckily, I was able to break his hold on her arm. "Sir, I think there's been a misunderstanding here. This isn't Ichika you're trying to get off me."

Oda-san look confused, "What do you mean? You've got my star leaning on your back, and you'd think I wouldn't notice her when she's this close to me?"

Miku shook her head, "I'm sorry mister, but you really do have it all wrong, I'm not Ichika. I'm her younger sister."

Oda-san, annoyed, reached for Miku's arm yet again "Ichika stop playing games with me, it's almost 9:00 pm! If we don't leave now, you won't be able to make it to your audition!"

I moved back and sighed. "Sir, take a real long look at the woman on my back. Don't you see her hair? It's way longer than Ichika's. And I'm sure Ichika informed you she was wearing a YELLOW yukata. The woman I'm carrying is wearing a different colored yukata." I then noticed someone approaching Oda-san. "And if you look behind you, Ichika is right there!"

"I'm right here, Oda-san. Didn't I tell you to wait for me at the parking lot? I was already on my way there when I heard you causing all this ruckus."

Oda-san looked confused as he looked back and forth between Ichika and Miku. "But.. how… this is freaky. You never told me you had a twin!"

Ichika shrugged her shoulders, "You never asked! And I don't have a twin, I'm one-fifth of a set of quintuplets."

Oda-stared blankly at Ichika for a bit before regaining his composure. "So you have 4 sister who look exactly like you, and you thought I didn't need to know?!" He then pointed to me, "Now you better tell me the truth, is this guy your little brother?"

Ichika laughed and shook her head. "As much as he does seem like a younger brother to me, he isn't. He's just a friend from school… and also my partner for the audition for 'The Quintessential Wife' later!"

I pointed at myself, clearly confused at what was going on, leading me to say only one thing.

"Eh?"


Author's Note:

Hi! This is probably the longest chapter I've written so far, so I hope you like it! Was also wondering what you, my viewers, think of the story so far? Are there any plots you'd like to see or have a certain character have a bit more screen time? I won't guarantee that I'll be able to work on them right away, but I'd really appreciate your feedback!