A/N

Sunglare: I can see your point that I portrayed Nino/Miku/Itsuki behaving too harshly; the fact that since I'm writing this fic in English and thus have the liberty of using profanity amplifies their portrayal quite a bit as well, I'd imagine.

However, some counterpoints I'd like to bring up are that Nino drugs Fuutarou on the first day that they meet; while it's played for laughs in the manga, I don't think it's unreasonable to think that drugging someone the day you meet them and knocking them out is harsh all by itself.

I also think that Itsuki's behavior is still appropriate, not just because I have Fuutarou's lack of tact/social skill cranked up to max but also because Itsuki is the youngest sibling, and she may feel most vulnerable when she gets picked on, despite being the youngest out of quintuplets. We know from the manga that she's the one who's most prone to being a crybaby, and since she's the one who explicitly states wanting to be like her mom, for this fic I interpreted these aspects as a sort of inferiority complex that Itsuki harbors. And as a youngest child myself, I know firsthand what it feels like to not have my words taken seriously or having my argument shut down before it can even start, so while obviously I can't directly compare my own family situation to a character like Itsuki's, I do have a bit of a connection with her there that causes me to believe that Itsuki is capable of acting like how I've written her.

Miku is also like Itsuki where I can relate heavily with her character; she's an introvert with a few secrets to hide and loves headphones, all of which is also me. By far the harshest moment from Miku in this fic is the confrontation between her and Fuutarou, when the topic of her old school gets brought up; in this instance, since in the manga Miku states that she doesn't like thinking about her old school, clearly she has a few things to hide about it that she doesn't want Fuutarou to know about since it's none of his business. I've had my moments before where I can turn unusually antagonistic towards someone who brings up a topic that I don't want to deal with, even if they didn't bring it up intentionally or it's not their fault that it got brought up, and I've seen other people, both introverts and extroverts, react the same way or similar.

Hope this helps clarify where I'm coming at with their portrayals.

"Ten of diamonds."

"Jack of clubs."

"King of spades."

"Ace of hearts!"

"Pass."

Engaged in a particularly fierce match of giappuniza, Fuutarou concedes his turn to draw a card from the draw pile as Raiha wears a confident look.

"Now for my secret weapon - " she announces, pulling five cards from her hand at a time and slapping them down on the discard pile before her, "straight, Jack high!"

"You've activated my trap card!" Fuutarou announces suddenly, matching his sister's flair, and he, too, suddenly throws down a five card hand of his own. "Heart flush, ten high!"

"P-Pass..." Raiha whimpers, reeling from the unexpected blow as she's forced to draw a card.

Seizing his newfound advantage, Fuutarou goes all-out: seeing that Raiha, after pulling the trigger with her straight, has only six cards left, and this is right after Fuutarou played a flush, meaning the chance that she has another five-card hand at her disposal is minuscule. He does not bother calling out his hands, so certain is he of his imminent victory, that he rapid-fires the rest of his cards down before a stunned Raiha: three-high full house, pair of Aces, a two of spades, and a final four of clubs to clear his hand.

"Uwaaaa...I was so close, too," Fuutarou's sister groans. She reveals the rest of her cards; sure enough, she did not have cards that could beat any of his own final hands. "That flush was the end of me, aaaaaagh..."

"You forced me to break up a straight flush from before when we kept playing pairs, so I think this time it was a lot closer than you might think. I just got lucky with one of my card draws that gave me what I needed to complete the flush just in the nick of time," Fuutarou reassures Raiha.

"You still beat me almost every time, though...you're too smart, Onii-chan."

"But you're getting better. You're taking more time with your cards, thinking about them more, like when to use them or sacrificing some hands to maintain an advantage."

"But that doesn't really mean anything if I can't win, does it...?"

"Well, this's just a game, it doesn't really mean anything to begin with. But no, it still does mean something; it tells me that you're getting smarter, and you can apply that to anything else, too. Doesn't have to be just about a game."

Pouting somewhat, Raiha gets up from the floor where she's tumbled backwards upon receiving her loss and sits up.

"You're just saying that to make me feel better about losing," she accuses her brother, watching him shuffle the deck after gathering up the cards.

"Well, no, that wasn't my intention, actually. And it's good to know that you're not satisfied with losing, either; that means you want to improve to reach a goal, which, in this case, is winning a game of giappuniza. Keep at it; you'll be better than me at this someday."

"That's a bit hard to imagine..."

"I mean, you've already beaten me a couple times, haven't you?"

"Yeah, but - but since it's a card game, that's just dumb luck sometimes! And not just that, Onii-chan, you're so good at this game that you can make mistakes or take randomness into account and still know exactly what to do! You just said earlier that you had to break up a really good hand to fight my pairs, right? I wanna learn how you make those kinds of decisions too."

"I could teach you that, yeah. It's an important skill to learn - knowing how to adapt on the fly and calculating risks and all that."

While Fuutarou starts to get fancy with his shuffling to distract Raiha for a moment, the two of them hear the floor-shaking rumbling of a very loud motorcycle engine decelerating as it approaches the office building near them before shutting off. After about five minutes, some familiar, heavy stomps clomp up the stairs outside, and soon enough, Isanari barges in through the front door, having unlocked it with his door key.

"Alright, I'm back! Raiha-chan, I've got the groceries you've asked for," Isanari booms at his children heading to the kitchen to put them away in their old, rickety refrigerator. "Also some actually good milk, too."

"Make sure you drink the damn milk on time before it expires, Dad," Fuutarou calls over.

"I got it, I got it, sheesh, you sound like Raiha sometimes."

"You deserve it, though. Also, didn't you just pick up groceries yesterday? Why again tonight?"

"I forgot a few things, so I went back tonight to grab 'em. Oh, and Raiha, Dad got you a special little treat." Ignoring his son's trademarked harsh manner of speaking, Isanari turns to Raiha to hold up a packet of meat. At the sight of it, Raiha's eyes light up like a Christmas tree.

"H-Hamburger patties!?" she squeals, launching herself off the floor to hurry over to her father to make sure she isn't seeing things.

"Yep! We'll be eating good this week! Or at least for tonight or tomorrow, whenever you feel like making it."

"Yaaaaay! I love you, Daddy!"

"Hahaha, I decided to splurge just a little bit since business's been better recently. It's been a while since you last had hamburger, right?"

"Yeah, yeah! And guess what? Today Onii-chan took me to the crepe stand near the new bookstore in town since he wanted to go there anyway for some reference books for his tutoring job, and he got me a strawberry crepe with chocolate chips!"

"Hot damn, that sounds amazing! Hey, kid, why didn't you get me one too, you dimwit?!" Isanari barks over at Fuutarou.

"You think I'm gonna buy a damn crepe just for you and bring that crap all the way here just for you to eat? You were even in town yourself, go get your own!" Fuutarou fires right back.

"Raiha...hear me out for a sec," Isanari spins around and firmly presses his hands down on his daughter's shoulders, looking her straight in the eye. "I've been thinking...it's time to re-educate your brother. He needs to learn how to address his father more properly, and treat him with more respect."

"Not a bad idea, yeah!" Raiha gives her dad a big smile. "But first, let me re-educate you to stop smoking, because you smell like cigarette smoke right now."

It is at this moment that Isanari knew, he fucked up.

"N-No! Raiha, this is - I was just - I was just hanging out with an old buddy of mine from high school! And - and - he smoked a cigarette! I wasn't the one smoking, Raiha, I swear! Besides, I-I bought you hamburger today, didn't I?!"

Raiha quietly pulls over the small stool that she uses to reach the kitchen counter and stove properly so that she can cook dinner, grabs a homemade slapstick made of old newspapers and taped at the handle with bright red masking tape that's standing on a nearby dish rack, and turns to her father.

"No! No, Raiha, anything but the slapstick! Anything but that!"

"Daaaaaaaaaaad..." Raiha drawls dangerously, her own black eyes losing light rapidly and taking small but ominous steps towards Isanari. "What did I say about smoking in this household?"

"But this happened outside, Rai - "

"GUILTYYYYYYYYYYYY! ! ! !"

Moving faster than any elementary schooler has any right to, Raiha unleashes a furious flurry of blows from her newspaper slapstick upon her dad, who cowers and shrieks as his own daughter lays down the law on her dad for breaking the rule of coming into the house smelling like cigarette smoke. Fuutarou is quietly glad that he has breath fresheners and showers to help get rid of his own cigarette smell from the other night as he enjoys the sight of his dad getting whipped by his sister and the subsequent cracks of the folds of old newspaper reverberating through the office.

"Okay, Raiha, that's enough, Dad gets the point now," Fuutarou calls over to his sister, who obeys and ceases her beating, huffing and puffing at her extreme exertion. Isanari sprawls out on the floor of the kitchen, rolling over and cringing in fake pain.

"F-Fuutarou...your...your dad...won't be with you for much longer..." Isanari groans, weakly reaching out a hand to his son. "You must...carry on the business...and - "

"Right, right. So what about the results?"

"You don't even care about your own dad dying?!"

"...but you're not dying."

"SHOOOOOOOOOOCK! ! ! !"

"Dad, stop shouting out sound effects, you're weird."

"Oh geez, you're no fun, are ya?" Sure enough, Isanari bounces back up to his feet, rummages through his pocket, and tosses him a flash drive, which Fuutarou catches. "Those are what we came up with, so you can check 'em out when you get the chance."

"Cool, thanks. Where's the sample now?"

"I left it with Maruo, he said he'll store it for you to research."

"Then I'll go tonight."

"You sure? Why not just stay the night? It's Saturday night, we can watch that one show about the sextuplets!"

Fuutarou scowls heavily at his dad. "...you sure you're not doing this on purpose?"

"On purpose? What do you me - " It then strikes Isanari. " - oh."

But Fuutarou shakes his head anyway, pocketing the deck of cards that he puts back into its small, worn-out box and picking up his backpack.

"You're leaving now, Onii-chan?" Raiha asks.

"Yeah, since we've already eaten dinner and all for tonight. I'll try to be back as soon as I can."

"Okay then! Stay safe!"

"Will do."

"What about the bike? You don't wanna use that?" Isanari asks as well, but his son simply shakes his head.

Waving goodbye to his family, Fuutarou steps outside and closes the door tightly behind him. Rather than walking along the second floor scaffolding to the stairs that will take him down to ground level, he simply swings his legs over the railing to mantle and drops straight down to the ground, saving himself a bit of time, and small blue runes expand and illuminate upon contact with his feet, cushioning the impact.

As he walks across the empty parking lot into the darkness, Fuutarou thumbs through his phone, pulling up a special app that displays for him each of the locations of the surveillance runes he's planted throughout the city. He selects the network of runes he's set down in the immediate vicinity of his home around Daikazoku Park and minimizes the app window, switching it over to some music instead. Finally pulling out his own pair of Audio Technicas from his backpack, Fuutarou zips it shut after putting them on, swings it back around his arms again to wear it properly, sticks his hands in his pockets, and sets off into the still, quiet Saturday night.

"You can't go doing this to us, Jong In! Especially after everything we've been through!"

"I've had enough! I'm leaving - and don't bother to tell the rest of the family, either, since I'll know if you do!"

Gathered at the couch armed with drinks and snacks, Ichika, Miku, Yotsuba, and Itsuki are seated in front of their huge 70-inch TV, watching the latest episode of a Korean drama show subtitled in Japanese for their viewing convenience. Having been invited by the first and fourth quints, the third and fifth have reluctantly joined them, as Korean dramas do not appeal to them - or so they thought. Now, with the season finale episode airing, everyone is deeply engrossed in the show - Miku, who first started out playing a mobile game on her phone, has put it down to watch, and Itsuki, having busied herself with the snacks the most out of her sisters, has set aside the butter popcorn so that she can pay attention.

"I thought by helping your family, I was doing something right in the world. Trying to improve myself, be a better person - but you were all just using me in the end!"

"Jong In! Jong In, listen to me! Listen to me, please!"

"What was I doing all this time, then, Hae Eun? What else do you think I was doing? And look what happened, look how everything turned out. And yet, even while knowing everything, you still ask me to listen to you? You're pathetic, Hae Eun! I've had enough!"

The quintuplets watch with eyes wide with suspense as the female character in the show breaks down sobbing, with the male character walking away in the final scene before the credits begin to roll.

"Whew! That got the blood pumping, didn't it?" Ichika laughs excitedly, relishing the aftermath of the season finale. "They already announced a second season for this, so let's make sure to watch it together, okay ~ "

"How'd you like it? It was good, wasn't it?" Yotsuba presses on her sisters, grinning widely at Miku and Itsuki in particular and delivering them her trademark giggle that goes "shi shi shi shi!"

"It was great...I liked it a lot more than I thought," Miku nods eagerly, her thrilled eyes brimming with quiet excitement. Itsuki tries to hide her enjoyment, but her sisters already know what's up.

"I-It was better than I thought, I will admit," she replies, reaching for the bowl of popcorn to partake of it. "I still prefer my science shows, though!"

"Oh come on, it's always those science shows with you. Every time you're watching TV here, you're always on the Discovery Channel or something like that," Ichika chuckles. "It wouldn't kill you to watch something else every now and then?"

"Though, I do wish Nino were here to watch this with us," Yotsuba remarks while cuddling next to Miku, who leans her head against her younger sister's shoulder now that the excitement is wearing off and is slowly replaced by snack-induced drowsiness. "She loves these shows, doesn't she? She was really looking forward to this finale too, I thought."

"Yeah, Nino's reactions are always the best - she always squeals and gasps super dramatically and stuff whenever we get episodes like this," Ichika nods fondly, but that fondness does not last. "Actually, about Nino, didn't she say she was gonna be back by now? Like Yotsuba said, she usually makes sure not to miss episodes like this..."

"Didn't she say she was headed out somewhere to meet with one of her friends...?" Miku asks sleepily, tucking her chin further behind the arch of her blue headphones.

"Must be one of those days...sometimes she has nights like this when she does not return until very late at night. Honestly, even if it is a Saturday night, what is she doing outside so late..." Itsuki mumbles irritably as she pops a handful of popcorn into her mouth.

"Well, I sometimes come back pretty late myself with my friends, so I'm sure she's fine," Ichika reassures her sisters.

As her sisters are talking, Miku silently pulls out her phone again and unlocks the screen to check her text list. So far, Nino hasn't responded to any of the texts that Miku has sent her about them getting together to watch the K-drama's season finale tonight...rather uncharacteristic of a girl who was renowned at their old school for being one of the best at managing an IRL conversation and multiple text groups at the same time if need be.

"She's probably just venting about Uesugi-san to her friends, right? Maybe even about us, too, ehehe," Yotsuba suggests absentmindedly. "She's always been like that, talking about stuff with her friends that she can't really talk about with us since we're her sisters and all."

"It's fine though, I made sure to have it recorded so she can watch it when she gets back. I don't mind watching it a second time, it's so dramatic," Ichika swoons a little.

"Well, yeah, it's a drama..." Miku mumbles.

"Though, don't you think that the finale kinda hits close to home?" Awkwardly grinning this time, Yotsuba takes a pair of chocolate Pocky sticks from the open pouch on the table, offering one to Miku, who shakes her head in denial and prompts Yotsuba to simply munch on both at the same time.

"Not very. This is a TV show; it should not have to remind us of what is going on in our own lives," Itsuki replies shortly.

"Ah, there goes Itsuki again, talking like a grown-up," Ichika giggles. "But now that Yotsuba's brought it up, it's been a few days since Fuutarou-kun's been here. I was half-expecting him to show up more anyway this week, but man, I guess he really is a boy of his word. That's kinda rare these days..."

"But Ichika, how would you know about boys? We've only just started attending a co-ed school this week..." Miku points out, causing Ichika to flinch a little.

"Er, well, you know, I'm a bit of a socialite myself, aren't I? Not to Nino levels, but I know a lot of people from my part-time and all..."

"Sounds like you meet all kinds of people," Yotsuba remarks, still nibbling on more Pocky sticks like a squirrel nibbles on food.

"You could say that, yeah. But poor Fuutarou-kun, right? I mean, he's got to deal with us five all being potential dropouts and all ~ "

"You don't really sound that sympathetic, though," Miku again points out.

"Well, that's more because I'm just unmotivated to study. It doesn't help knowing that I'm already pretty stupid in school anyway. But maybe ~ " Ichika places a precocious index finger on the middle of her lips. "Maybe, when Fuutarou-kun returns on Monday, he can convince me to study..."

"Speaking of which, you've been hanging out with him a bit more and talking with him lately this week, haven't you?" Yotsuba recounts.

"Yep. Have any of you noticed what he's been doing in class?"

Yotsuba and Miku shake their heads, while Itsuki declines to respond and simply continues to shovel popcorn into her mouth.

"He's been working on the lessons he'll be giving us next week. He's not even paying attention to what our teachers are doing," Ichika giggles again. "I couldn't believe it myself either, so I talked to him after class one day just to see if that's what he was really doing, and sure enough it was. I didn't think someone was that crazy enough to ignore everything from all their classes just to focus on other people's lessons like that. I wonder if he's been a tutor for a long time?"

"Come on, Ichika, he's the same age as us. Unless he's some sort of child genius..." Miku murmurs, having gone back to playing her mobile game on her phone. "...oh nice, a Buster Brave chain..."

"He pretty much gives off the image that he is, too," Yotsuba agrees.

"Certainly has the arrogance of one too..." Itsuki adds immediately after.

"Itsuki, do you still have a grudge against Fuutarou-kun for the other day? You should really learn to let that go," Ichika says gently, leaning to the side a little so that she can better talk directly to her youngest sister. "Yotsuba already told us that he wants to apologize to you for going overboard himself. You should at least just get it over with and say sorry back and make up."

The youngest quint opens her mouth to speak her mind, but surprisingly, nothing is spoken, and Itsuki closes her lips, gazing down emptily into the popcorn bowl, about a third of which she's eaten all by herself.

"See? You're a nice girl, Itsuki; you're not the type who'll hold grudges like that for long," Ichika reminds her sister as the latter returns the popcorn bowl back to the table. "At least not to the extent that Nino does sometimes."

"Nino's on another level, you mean..." Miku snorts quietly.

"Well, yeah. Don't let Nino catch you saying that around her, though."

"I know."

Ichika clears her throat quickly. "But no, really, Itsuki, you should go talk to him at some point soon. You've been to his house before, right? Earlier this week? Go back over and just make up with him. He really is just trying to do his job as best he can, and since it's a boy from the same class as us, the least we can do is try to work with him, right? Otherwise it's gonna be super awkward all the time running into him during class and around school and whatnot."

But Itsuki stubbornly shakes her head.

"I do not want him as my tutor. I will study by myself - that is what I have decided," Itsuki staunchly declares with a quiet voice. "I will tolerate him tutoring the rest of you, but I will not let the likes of him teach me. Someone like him who holds his own words as absolute, not caring for what we think - we already have someone in the family who is very much so like that, and I do not have the patience to deal with another person like that in my life."

"Oh c'mon, Itsuki, don't be like that," Yotsuba groans a little, getting up off the couch to relocate over next to Itsuki so that she can hug Itsuki's left arm. "Uesugi-san's not like that, and you know that. Even if he were like that, he still wants to say sorry to you properly, doesn't he?"

"Then if that is the case, why has he not spoken to me at all this week?" Itsuki points out.

"Because he knows you won't listen to him..."

"That's right. He might be the type of guy who yells at girls and makes them cry, but he's not that dense to the point where he neglects their feelings all the time," Ichika adds. "He knows he hurt your feelings the other day yelling at you, and right after that happened, Miku and I scolded him a little for going overboard, and he agreed with us that he did. In fact, I talked with him about this yesterday, and he asked me how you were doing."

That last bit from Ichika makes Itsuki's lips curl uncomfortably.

"He asked me how you were doing, if you were feeling better. Like, Itsuki, you have to understand, he does really care about what you think about this whole tutoring thing," Ichika continues. "Everyone makes mistakes, right? People can get into arguments - you and Miku get into arguments with Nino all the time nowadays, pretty much."

"But we're sisters, so it's natural," Miku objects. "This one happened between Itsuki and someone from our class whom we don't really know that well."

"But arguments are still arguments, aren't they? I guess the one good thing about the arguments between you two and Nino is that since we're sisters, you can get over them pretty quickly."

"Exactly! How do you expect me to get over this with Uesugi-kun this fast?" Itsuki protests, finally turning her neck to face her oldest sibling directly.

"But is it really necessary to keep having this standoff with him for this long? Again, he hasn't done anything wrong, other than maybe rub in the fact that we're all really dumb, but not only is he still not wrong about that, because we are all really dumb, but he's already made it clear that he thinks he went too far too. You don't have to not forgive people who aren't your own family, Itsuki."

"...but it is certainly more difficult," Itsuki grumbles, turning away from Ichika soon after she's faced her.

"No one said it would be easy, either. And...don't take this wrong way either, but...you aren't exactly as outgoing as maybe me or Nino, or even Yotsuba. So it's not surprising that you'll have trouble getting over something like this."

"Well, excuse me for not being as popular and attractive as the rest of you." Itsuki fully turns away from her oldest sibling with a small "hmph!" and rests her head against Yotsuba's chest, the owner of whom begins to pat her reassuringly on the back.

Ichika pouts at her youngest sister. "You took the wrong way anyway! But no really, we're quintuplets, aren't we? You're just as cute as I am, so your potential for popularity's always gonna be there, you know!"

"She's just sulking, Ichika, let her be," Yotsuba says gently. "There, there, Itsuki."

"I'm not even crying, though..."

"But you are sulking," Miku says, still with her eyes fixed down on her phone screen.

"You do not need to repeat that to me!"

Smiling at the rare banter between Miku and Itsuki, two quints who usually get along with each other, Ichika feels her phone vibrate and pulls it out of her pocket to check, in case it's a text from her part-time work.

What she reads makes her immediately jump off the couch and hurry to the front door, removing herself from the house as she dials Nino's number. Her sisters, unable to even call out after her to find out what she's up to, simply stare at the front door that she closes behind her.

"...what is wrong with her, now?" Itsuki wonders aloud, feeling a creeping sense of unease starting to bubble up in her gut. "After all that talk, too..."

"I've never seen Ichika react like that before, what's going on...?" Yotsuba adds fearfully. "I just hope she remembered to bring her key with her..."

Meanwhile, once she's stepped out of the house, Ichika puts the phone up to her ear as she hurries to the other side of the thirtieth floor, where there is a private room that is usually reserved for special occasions like high-class dinner parties, since it is a crow's nest with a panoramic view of the city. And because the Nakano family owns the entire thirtieth floor of this particular high-rise, Ichika can use her passcard to let herself in at any time, which she does to get a view of the city.

The call connects, and Ichika, stopping before the large windows, tightens her grip on her phone.

"Nino? Nino, is that you? What's going on, this better be some kind of joke!"

"I'm afraid it's not a joke, miss."

It's Ichika's heart's turn to drop like a rock in her chest.

"Who are you? Where's Nino?" Ichika demands, letting her voice rise in decibel level. For all the work she's done for her part-time, it sure isn't helping her at a moment in time when she needs it the most.

"She's here next to me, don't worry. Nothing's happened to her either...yet. Hey, take off the tape and let her talk."

Ichika cringes a little when she hears a terribly loud ripping sound of tape being torn off someone's mouth.

"You fucking shits! Using my sisters as bait like that - I can't believe you assholes!"

"Nino?! Nino, are you okay?!" Ichika shouts into her phone.

"Ichika?! Don't come here, it's dangerous! Whatever you do, don't listen to that guy, he's gon - "

"Aight bitch, that's enough from you!"

A different, burly male voice shouts over Nino's before being followed up by a frighteningly loud smack of a hand slapping Nino, presumably in the face.

"Nino! Nino?! You said you wouldn't hurt her, damn it!" Ichika shrieks, unable to control her speech.

"We didn't. What, can girls not handle a single slap to the face nowadays? Well, my time is valuable and I'm sure yours is too, so let's just cut to the chase, shall we? First things first, since you've called your sister's number, I'd like to assume that you read the text I sent you, but just to make sure, have you read it fully?"

"Yes, I have."

"Good, then you know what to do. I will give you exactly one hour to arrive at that address that I texted you, with all of your sisters. If you do not meet our demands within this time, I cannot guarantee your sister's safety, the one we have on us right now."

Clenching her own fist as well, Ichika can't stop her hands from trembling. As young teenage girls belonging to an affluent family, perhaps the Nakano quints should have been aware of situations like this, but now that something like this is finally happening for the first time, Ichika can hardly believe it.

"Why? Why are you doing this?" the eldest quint hoarsely asks, unable to stop her voice from beginning to quiver. "Is it money? Is it money that you want? We can pay you if that's what you want! Just let Nino go!"

"If money were all we wanted, then I wouldn't bother asking for all of you to get here, would I? Time's ticking, miss - oh, and don't make the mistake of trying to call anyone, you hear? We'll know if you do - and if you do, we'll make your sister here tell us where you are, kill her, and then come find you ourselves. And you don't want that."

And the call is shut off, leaving Ichika isolated in the crow's nest, staring blankly into the nighttime skyline of the city.

"Here's your stop, ladies."

A taxi cab hailing from the same cab company as the one that drove Itsuki and Fuutarou to the latter's house at Daikazoku Business Park earlier in the week stops at an abandoned warehouse complex. Several dim streetlights still vigilantly illuminate the sidewalks of this forlorn, emptied sector of the city, left in the wake of the city's expansion as the financial landscape of the city shifted and evolved, causing businesses that once thrived in this neighborhood to pack up and leave in favor of the city downtown or elsewhere, with only a few survivors still clinging on to their decaying homes.

Ichika, Miku, Yotsuba, and Itsuki close the doors behind them as they step out of the taxi, gazing with extreme nervousness at the warehouses before them that they've been instructed to arrive at.

"Um, so I don't want to poke my nose into other people's business, but whatever you girls plan to do around here, you shouldn't stay here long," the taxi driver warns them with a noticeable degree of apprehension of his own. "This isn't exactly the nicest part of town."

"Can't you wait here for us in case anything happens?" Miku asks quietly.

"As much as I'd like to do that, I can't, I have another client who's booked a ride right after you girls," the driver shakes his head. "And I'm not sure when another cab will be available tonight, tonight's been pretty busy for us. Just don't stay here long."

Bidding the girls safe travels, the taxi driver pulls his vehicle away to hurry to his next client, since the Nakanos' route is unusually far removed from his usual routes.

"We - We really should've just called the police. We should at least call Dad!" Yotsuba insists in a hushed voice.

But Ichika shakes her head. "The guy said they'll kill Nino if we try anything. We can't take that chance, Yotsuba!"

"But we cannot give them what they want, can we? All of us coming together, that's what they want," Itsuki reminds her sisters.

"What other choice do we have?" Miku murmurs fearfully. "We just have to hope that we can pay them off."

"Then they will keep blackmailing us! And besides, how on Earth will they know if we try calling someone?"

"Look, Itsuki, it's Nino's life that's on the line, I don't want to do anything that risks her life!" Ichika whips around and hisses back at Itsuki, who shrinks somewhat under the pressure of her big sister, who sighs heavily with a look of heavy stress on her face. "Why is this happening...? Nino, just...just what did you do to end up like this...?"

Fully aware of the tenseness of their situation, Yotsuba gathers her courage and plants herself in front of the rest of her sisters.

"We have to go in there and save Nino. If we're the only ones who can, we have to do it!" she declares with as much confidence as she can muster. "Mom always said to stick together, didn't she?"

Ichika nods emphatically, realizing that she needs to resume her position as the eldest of the quintuplets. "Yeah, exactly. Even during times like this, we have to stay together."

"But even if you say that...it was easy to say that before...this is something way more serious," Miku whispers uncertainly, eyeing the warehouse hesitantly.

"Don't worry, just let Ichika-Onee-San handle the bad guys!" Ichika taps her chest with her fist, but even as she does this, Ichika can feel the sweat returning to her palms as her heart pumps at an accelerated rate. "Stay behind me and let me do the talking. Even if you see them mistreating Nino, don't say a word, you have to be patient, since getting Nino back is our highest priority."

Yotsuba nods heartily, but Miku and Itsuki do not share the same enthusiasm as they follow Ichika to the front of the warehouse directly before them, as was instructed by Nino's captors. As they approach, the warehouse doors suddenly pull apart, pushed open by two men wearing plain, dark cargo pants and equally plain white tank tops, and a third man watches the girls slowly approach them.

"You must be Nino's sisters, huh? Come in, I'll take you to where she is," the man, dressed surprisingly neatly in a sky-blue button-up dress shirt and fresh Levi's to go with his neatly kept mustache. Seeing no other choice, the four quintuplets inch their way inside, gazing warily at their surroundings as they enter the warehouse. Itsuki and Miku note with conspicuous fright that the two men behind them close the warehouse doors behind them as they come in and lock the doors with heavy latches that look far too heavy for girls like them to lift on their own.

"Are you the friend of Nino's who she keeps meeting with on nights like this?" Ichika demands, not bothering to hide the anger and stress that's built up in her chest.

"I don't need to answer that. All you need to know is that since Nino is a long-time customer of ours, I've been doing some special favors for her, one of which is what I'm doing right now. If it weren't for me, you probably wouldn't have a sister to find by the time you got here."

The quintuplets follow their escort without another word, Ichika frightened into silence by the man's own ominous words. For looking like a shoddy run-down warehouse from the outside, the inside is still furnished with scaffolding and pallets, with lots of boxes and various kinds of miscellaneous merchandise on display across the warehouse floor, though there isn't much in the way of foot traffic, since it's late at night on a Saturday.

Leading them across the warehouse, Nino's shady acquaintance takes them to the rear exit, and beckons at the four girls through the exit. At the rear of the warehouse, the girls now find themselves in the shipment reception bay, equipped with four truck loading docks that are all currently empty. A few 40-foot shipping containers rest on the other side of the reception bay, having been unloaded of their cargo and sitting off the side to wait for pickup back to their respective terminals.

There also sits a single white unmarked van, whose rear is facing them with its trunk open. Three more men dressed similarly to the two who opened and closed the warehouse doors to let the rest of the quints in stand guard around the van, and the two men from earlier also bring up the rear, closing the exit door of the warehouse behind them.

Inside the van lies -

"Nino!" Ichika cries out, hurrying forward, but one of the men near the van steps in front of Ichika's path, towering over her with his superior height and body mass.

But to Ichika's relief, Nino, hearing her sister's voice, sits back up swiftly, her hands bound behind her back tightly and her feet together so that she can't attempt escape on her own.

"You fucking idiots, I told you all not to come here!" Nino screams at them, almost hysterically. "What the fuck were you all thinking?!"

"W-What do you mean? We can't just leave you here!" Yotsuba shouts back, but Nino's acquaintance claps his hands once to get the girls' attention.

"Touching reunion, I'm sure, but now's not the time for that, maybe later," he says. Ichika turns to face him instead.

"If it's money you want, here!" She pulls out from her pockets thick wads of Fukuzawa Yukichi's, offering them to the neatly-dressed man. "Just give us back our sister!"

The man takes one look at the two thick wads of cash in Ichika's hands, looks her straight in the eyes, and laughs.

"You're supposed to be from a rich family, right? Nino's told me as much, and that's all you're offering?" he rolls his eyes incredulously. "Not like I was going to accept that anyway, but you really can't do better than that? That's pocket change for us - but maybe you girls wouldn't know much about this kind of thing, since unlike your bratty sister over there, the rest of you four are actually good girls. Well, I'd hope so, anyway."

"But you are all just criminals who want money! What do you mean, you will not accept this?" Itsuki blurts out.

"Well, now that you're here, I guess I can explain. This isn't the kind of thing we normally do, but we've been hired out by a particular client of ours who's taken a specific interest in Nino over here, and I guess by corollary the rest of you quintuplets," the man reveals. "So I apologize for this, but I'll be having you four cooperate with us as well."

The man gestures at the girls, and two men from the van and the two men at the warehouse exit approach the rest of the four quintuplets.

"Huh!? Wait, what're you - wait, stop - !"

But there's no way the high school freshmen girls can fight back successfully; with the one exception of the big guy at the van, while the rest of the men are of average height and build, they easily restrain the girls and force them over to the van as well, with the last thug equipped with red rope to bind the rest of the quints' hands and feet, like Nino before them. Once they're all restrained, Ichika and Itsuki are forced to sit inside the open trunk of the van, while Miku and Yotsuba have to sit down for the time being on the ground near their sisters.

"You fucking shits! You can't do this to us!" Nino shrieks and hollers the entire time that the men are tying up her sisters, and continues to do so even after her sisters join her in the van. Her right cheek is slightly swollen from the slap she received from her acquaintance during Ichika's call. "You fucking tricked me, you son of a bitch! This was supposed to be just between us two! Why'd you have to involve all my sisters, huh, you fucking loser!"

"Hey, believe me, I feel bad about having to do this, but money is money, and it's a whole lot more than this that your sister tried bargaining with," Nino's acquaintance smugly retorts, having picked up the money that Ichika brought in an attempt to bail Nino out and counting through it anyway. "A million yen...not bad, actually, I thought it was less. Sorry miss, seems like I misjudged you a bit - if we weren't already under contractual obligation, I'd actually be happy with this and give your sister back, but like I said, we can't do that tonight."

"Who's the one who bought you guys out, then? At least tell us that!" Ichika shouts back, sitting at the edge of the van's trunk next to Nino.

"Telling you won't do you any good, so there's no point," the man shrugs as he taps in a number in his own phone and raises it to his ear. "Yeah, we've got the customers. Sedate them or nah?"

The quintuplets all freeze in horror at the word "sedate".

"Understood. We'll get to your hideout in twenty." The neatly-dressed man cuts the call and pockets his phone, nodding at his men. "Sedate them."

One of the men, already prepared for this possibility, has retrieved a gray metal lockbox from the shotgun seat and opens it to reveal its disturbing contents: an array of needles and vials containing a strange, murky white liquid.

At the sight of the needles, both Nino and Itsuki, their eyes widening in utmost fear, begin to scream in fright as two of the men work to fill the needles with the white liquid in their vials.

"Oh for fuck's sake, shut the fuck up!" one of the men near the van, annoyed at the girls' shrieking since he's had to deal with Nino's crap all evening long, turns and pops the closer of the two screaming quintuplets right in the face, which happens to be Itsuki. She reels and crashes backwards into the interior of the van, yelping with acute pain, and all four of the quintuplets simultaneously call out their sister's name.

"ITSUKI!"

"Hey, boss, these girls are hella annoying. Can't'cha just let us have some fun with them at least if they're gonna be this bitchy?" the guy who's punched Itsuki in the face complains to the well-dressed man.

"You're already crossing the line hurting one of them like that," he snaps, watching Itsuki curl up and face the side of the van so that she can hide her heavily bleeding nose where the thug smashed her. "That's tonight's pay cut from you right there."

The offender throws his hands up in the air. "But that bitch deserved it! Actually, I should've smacked your bitch ass," he points to Nino, who glares hatefully back at him with all the anger that she can draw from within her. "Fine then, if I'm not gonna get paid for tonight, don't mind if I just have some fun with that bitch for all the shit she's made me deal with!"

"Hey, wait, stop - " Nino's acquaintance tries to get him to stop, but he knows that his own underlings are much stronger and more experienced in street fighting than he is, so once Itsuki's attacker goes over to Nino and grabs a hold of her shirt to pull her out of the van, there's nothing the boss can do but hope that he'll be quick about it.

"No, stop, stop! Don't take her, leave her alone! Just take me instead!" Ichika also screams out, trying to plead with Nino's molester.

"That's real cute of you miss, but your bitch of a sister's annoyed the shit outta me all day today, so I'ma teach her specifically a lesson in fuckin' humility. Don't worry, I'll be a real nice tutor, hahaha!" the thug laughs gleefully, and pinning her down on the ground before them, he grabs the collar of Nino's shirt with both hands and tears it in half down the middle with a mighty heave, exposing Nino's undergarments.

"Fucking - stop! Stop, you shitty creep!" Nino bellows all the while, putting up as much of a struggle as she can. "Why aren't you telling this fucker to get off me!? You're gonna let this happen when you promised me nothing would happen to me?!"

"I did say that I wouldn't do anything to do," her acquaintance shrugs, watching the other thugs finish up filling the needles with the mysterious sedative. "As in, not me personally."

Nino stares with dead eyes up at her acquaintance.

"Don't look at me like that, Nino. After all, all these years I warned you that you shouldn't be in this kind of business because of how dangerous it is," he sighs. "This isn't something that a student like you should get involved in, this isn't something you should be buying, blah blah blah, all those things - I tried being a nice person to you and dissuade you, but since business is business, I let you do what you wanted, hoping that you'd just stop doing this once you realized what kind of danger you'd put yourself in potentially. But now it's too late, and now you've even gotten all your sisters involved. You should've seen this one coming."

"GO FUCK YOURSELF!" Nino shrieks at the top of her lungs. "EVERY ONE OF YOU, FUCKING GO TO HELL!"

"Sure!" the man on top of Nino laughs, grabbing hold of Nino's bra this time. "But not before I fuck you first, bitch!"

The man's head suddenly jerks unnaturally slightly to his right, and before Nino or anyone else realizes what's happened, the thug collapses quietly to his left, sporting a single ordinary playing card jammed halfway into the side of his head. A two of spades.

"Can I ask you something, Nino?"

An almost shadowy figure stands among the quintuplets and the thugs, all of whom now snap their attention to this new voice that wasn't with them a moment ago. It wears plain black dress pants, a half-kilt behind the legs like a trench coat, a black hoodie zip-up jacket sporting the kanji 毘沙門天 on the back underneath the hood, and a black cap whose visor sports a stylized white logo with six strokes.

Uesugi Fuutarou, with his left hand in his hoodie pocket and his right hand by his side, knuckling an Ace of spades, peers down at Nino lying on the ground with her torn clothes.

"How do you always get yourself into situations like this?"