A/N
"This story...seems to have strayed from its original concept" - because it's not as if it's already strayed enough from the original manga with the inclusion of magic, right?
Snarky answers aside, that's the exact opposite reaction I was expecting given how much of a twist I'm giving the original manga; typically when you mix stuff like magic into a story that had no magic elements originally, that kind of thing usually gets received poorly (read: speaking from experience). So I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that two of the more recent reviews as of this chapter actually want more of the magic/action stuff. Did the ending of the original manga really upset you all that much?
Jokes aside, in response to why there is such a big break from the "action", the Golden Week arc was designed to return the fic to a more familiar setting/atmosphere to the original. In a manga like Gotoubun no Hanayome that's strictly a slice of life harem manga where death as a concept is only really prevalent in one area, chapters 9 and 10 are quite the vibe check, especially since I hadn't really done much in the way of world-building yet leading up to those chapters to make it clear to the reader that such scenes should be expected (unless you count reimagining Fuutarou as a mage). Really the only place that could have warned the reader about it was the giant A/N that you should've read in the first chapter, but even then it doesn't do those scenes in chapters 9/10 justice. What it should have made clear, however, was my intention to focus more on character interaction and less so on my own machinations for this fic - though you may argue that those are precisely what make this fic interesting in the first place.
I can't promise you that the action of this story will be consistent in terms of pacing; I'm thrilled to know that at least some of you like it enough to be vocal about it and ask for more, as writing action sequences is some of the most fun in writing I'll ever have, but in spite of this, I have to ask that you be patient with me if the pacing of the action, or the lack thereof, is too slow (or God forbid too fast) for your liking.
All this being said, of course it would be just my luck that I begin to write a chapter with some action in it and then have people wonder where all the action went while I'm in the middle of writing it. Being a fanfic writer is suffering KEKW
Edit: after doing a bit of research, I realized that the bakery's name is supposed to be "Revival". Chapter 21 has been adjusted accordingly.
3:03 AM.
A high school boy wearing a set of not-so-high-school clothes stands on the edge of a tall corner building, at the bottom of which sits an SMBC bank location, though the automatic teller machines outside should be seeing no customers at this time of the night. Traffic is correspondingly light, with really only taxis and the odd private car occupying the streets and roads below - should this be a weekend night, then traffic would be considerably heavier at around this time, even though this place is still a good twenty minutes from the heart of the city's downtown.
Uesugi Fuutarou raises a hand up to his black cap and pulls the visor down a little, as if that'll somehow help shield his eyes against the whipping high-altitude winds of the night that slap and pummel the fringes of his black hoodie jacket and the black half-kilt that ruffles about behind his legs. He's stood here, vigilant and surveying, for the past hour now, as he realizes when he raises his left hand to check his smartwatch for the time.
Armed with this knowledge, Fuutarou carefully scans the landscape from his vantage point, mainly checking the streets and sidewalks. There is a chance that the target has diverted from their usual path tonight, and that Fuutarou will have to track them down himself. Should that be the case, then that would imply that his presence would be compromised, and he'd have to forfeit his pursuit of the target, which the young tutor is unwilling to do, given the past week's worth of effort he's put into locating, studying, and tailing the target.
He waits another ten minutes to account for possible delays in the target's pathing, and in the meantime, he pulls up a news app on his smartwatch, reading the headline article about the fifth missing person case that has been registered with the city police in these past two weeks. But after those ten minutes elapse with no different results, Fuutarou moves into action. Once more raising his left wrist, he toggles the smartwatch's display off its usual clock functionality to pull up his own custom app that he's downloaded on it, which pulls up a map of the city block that he is currently occupying, running in real-time, as the diagram of a vehicle moving down the street indicates while its engine rolls across the streets down below. One more toggle, and Fuutarou's smartwatch suddenly projects the interactive city map like a hologram that its owner can manipulate directly as though operating a tablet.
"Display pathing with timestamps," Fuutarou orders his smartwatch.
Immediately at his directive, the holographic map zooms out to cover the southern half of the city, and a red line paints itself snaking through the city's buildings and streets. The timestamps confirm Fuutarou's estimates that he should have seen his target at this juncture at around the one hour mark, as the target's previous excursions through the city at this time of night produced enough data to suggest such an average.
What a coincidence that the night Fuutarou has reserved to track the target in person, the target would appear to be compromised. How suspicious.
Pulling out his Google Pixel 3 and unlocking it with one hand so that he can keep the map of the city up before him, Fuutarou dials a familiar number and waits for the call to go through.
"Hey kiddo, what'cha need?"
"Giving you clearance to operate Dragon, I need you to track tonight's target."
"Got it, booting up Dragon now. Target location?"
"Unknown, possibly compromised."
"What about you?"
"Unknown as well. I haven't done anything to blow my own cover, but we'll see for sure."
"Got it. Running scans now along intended route, stand by."
On Fuutarou's hologram map, cautionary notifications pop up, pointing down at numerous circle-shaped outlines that are faintly painted into the city floor, underneath the building and street models. These notifications indicate the locations of Uesugi's surveillance runes of the network he's planted throughout the city that are now scanning their respective zones for a match on their target. This is a risky move on Fuutarou's part, as he himself knows all too well, because having the runes scan for the target directly like this will certainly tip off any mages within their zones, as they can sense the unnaturally rising levels of magical energy in those areas. He has to bank on the chance that whoever the target may or may not have run into are not also mages themselves.
The young high school mage continues to stand on the edge of the roof of the SMBC bank building, with his left arm raised to support the live model of the city and his right hand also raised to hold his phone, patiently waiting for feedback from his father who is manning the auxiliary remote controls of Uesugi's magical surveillance system from the relative comfort and safety of their home.
"Negative, Ghost Rider, no positive ID."
"Toggle to history scan, that might give us something."
"It might, yeah. Scanning again."
As Isanari controls the surveillance runes to execute a second round of scans, this time having the scans check their surveillance logs of the past hour and a half, Uesugi navigates through the model of the city from his smartwatch with his right pinky finger, again dragging the cityscape across as though he were on a tablet doing this.
"Bingo, looks like your hunch was right. Target was on her intended path tonight, but..."
"Where did she break off?" Uesugi asks, swiping the cityscape back to the start of the intended path so that he can work along with his father.
"About halfway through. Do you have your map up?"
"I do, send it."
Isanari remotely updates his son's smartwatch map, and Fuutarou observes the red-highlighted path get truncated to indicate their target's area of disappearance.
"Keep tracking history scans; even if Rio's on the move, he shouldn't know about Dragon," the young mage says.
"Already on it, keep an eye on your map since it's getting updated as we speak."
A new blue-highlighted line begins to etch itself onto the map as Isanari is talking, showing Fuutarou the direction in which their target has diverted. Recognizing the new streets, the tutor gets a move on and immediately bounds from the roof of the corner bank building he's been keeping watch on to the roof of the building across the street. While he traverses the roofs of the buildings in this fashion, he toggles the hologram map into a more portable rune panel that breaks off from the smartwatch and hovers on Fuutarou's left, sustained by magical wireless signal from the watch so that he can maintain full movement while still being able to keep an eye on the updating map guiding him towards the target's new and unintended location.
"So what's the deal tonight? You haven't been around lately so I'm not in the loop yet," Fuutarou hears his father's words creep into his ear. He's also toggled on another small magic rune that's hovering next to his right ear so that he can keep his phone in his pocket as he moves about.
"During the week that we were down in Hawaii, there've been a few disappearance cases. People heading out at night and failing to return home; the ones who had families or friends, they reported them; the ones who didn't, usually their workplaces reported them or something."
"And you think they're kidnappings?"
"Just a theory. We already know the city's becoming a hotbed for drug trafficking and drug use, but the city's also big enough where people can start manufacturing drugs right here; drug dealers don't want to have to import shit into the city all the time since that's expensive, so being able to simply bring in the materials and then make the drugs themselves is the cheaper alternative; that, and they can start branding their own drugs to gain an edge over their competitors. They can hide their drug labs around the city and the police can't possibly find them all; even if and when they do find one drug lab, another two or three'll probably pop up somewhere else to replace the one that got raided."
"So how do the kidnappings factor into this?"
"They need lab rats to test their drugs on, and obviously no one's gonna do that shit for free unless you're a goddamn junkie with a death wish to begin with. These are home-brewed drugs we're talking about - meaning that most people don't know what the fuck they're doing, so God knows what they'll end up making, and even worse is what kind of shit they'll do to a human being if someone takes them."
"And that's why the quints were almost kidnapped the other month? To be used as lab rats?"
"Probably. Though in their case, there's a real chance there's a bit more going on behind the scenes than just that..."
"Judging on the timing of these incidents, though, I think Rio tried to get his goons to kidnap the quints so that they could use them as guinea pigs, but since you intervened, he had to get his guinea pigs elsewhere."
"And laid low for a few weeks after the quints incident to make sure his trail went cold? Yeah, that's quite possible. He's at least going about this a bit smarter than the rest, I'll give him that. Most idiots start panicking the moment something in their plans goes off."
"Speaking of the quints, have you told them to stay inside at night? I'd suspect Rio'll jump at any chance to try to grab the quints again if he could."
"I actually didn't. This'll sound pretty bad, but ever since I found out about the disappearance cases, my first guess was that Rio is back on the move, meaning that he might go after the girls again."
"So you're using them as bait?"
"Yes."
"Not even ashamed about it one bit, huh?" Isanari chuckles darkly.
"No such thing as shame in this line of work. We both knew that going into it, didn't we?"
"Good answer, kid. I'm glad I raised ya right."
"Raising your kids in near-abject poverty all their lives? Some job you did..."
"Haha, let's just ignore that part now, shall we?"
Noticing the updated pathing on his map rune stopping soon ahead, Fuutarou halts on the roof of a family cafe that is closed for the night.
"History scan ends here; target's probably in the area. Going dark."
"You got it, see ya on the other side."
Deactivating the telecommunications rune, Fuutarou keeps the map rune active to see if the history scans will indicate the target's location elsewhere, but another few minutes of waiting shows that this is not the case. Once he confirms this, Fuutarou taps on the rune itself like a tablet and activates the surveillance rune in his vicinity to run a full scan. He runs the risk of alerting any enemy mages if there are any in the area, especially if it's Rio himself, which would also potentially compromise the target, but this is a risk that he's willing to take.
After all, it's not like the quintuplets are involved.
Immediately, the map rune pings a location, and Fuutarou identifies it - in an alleyway behind a closed coffee shop. The map rune also detects three unknown signatures in the same immediate area as the target's ID, and the mage now spies the vehicle likely used for this kidnapping case, a third-generation black Suzuki Wagon R parked just outside the closed coffee shop.
Double-checking his Presence Concealment rune to make sure that it has remained active all throughout the night, Fuutarou springs into action. Leaping off the roof of his current building, he crosses the street, making as little noise as possible and using sound suppressing runes placed on the soles of his shoes to do so, to sneak up to the corner of the coffee shop where the alleyway begins. This is where he waits for a moment to eavesdrop on any conversations that may be going on to pick up any tidbits of information that could prove useful later on. But even before he begins to actively eavesdrop, he can already hear subdued groans and heavy breathing coming from down the alleyway.
"Oh...ohhhh yeah...dude, I haven't had a pair of tits this good since after that one concert I went to last year...high school girls are still the best...!"
"It was that one Mike S. concert, right? Come to think of it, he hasn't given one in a while..."
"Yeah, so like, whenever you're fuckin' done, dude, we ain't got all night just to sit here watching you titfuck this chick."
"You fuckin' kiddin' me, bro? Like hell I'm done with her, I haven't even gotten to the actual good part yet! As if you'd know anything about getting laid, you fuckin' loan shark piece 'a shit."
"Says the guy who needs to pay for whores or drug bitches off the streets to get laid, is that supposed to be some sorta accomplishment for you? Hey, Ichikawa, stop fuckin' recordin' this shit, where's the shit?"
"Ah fuck, I left them back in the car, it looks like..."
"Fucking dumbass, go fuckin' get it."
"Fine, shit, dude. You better not start 'til I can get back so I can record the rest of this, Kasai."
Footsteps begin as the last speaker is still talking, and they travel in Uesugi's direction at the corner of the coffee shop. Fuutarou, deciding on his course of action that he wants to take quickly, opts to wait for the thug named Ichikawa to pass by him to get to the Wagon to unlock it and begin rummaging through it for the things he'd accidentally left behind. When he's properly busy searching, muttering to himself irritably why he can't find what he's looking for, the young mage walks up to him from behind carefully and jams his left elbow swiftly into the back of Ichikawa's head, instantly rendering him unconscious and causing his body to slump messily against the seat of the car.
Pulling out the unconscious thug and propping him up on the asphalt against the rear right car tire, Fuutarou searches the car quickly himself and finds what Ichikawa was probably looking for: a small plastic bag of injector needles, all filled with a familiar white substance. Pocketing the bag of injectors for the time being, he then shoves Ichikawa's body into the car, searches his pockets for the key and takes it for himself, then closes the door and locks the car behind him as the mage himself takes Ichikawa's place and dives into the alleyway.
"Yo guys, I got 'em, what're we gonna do with these?" Fuutarou calls out casually to the others once he rounds the corner to where the other two thugs are. The guy named Kasai is in the middle of snapping pictures with his own phone of a girl, also clearly unconscious and slumped against the wall of the adjacent building next to the coffee shop, her messy upper body exposed with her high school uniform top forcibly removed and tossed aside, and the third unnamed assailant is sitting on an overturned plastic grate, also on his phone while having watched his buddy assault the girl.
The unfamiliar voice of Fuutarou, however, immediately grabs the other two men's attention, and they both stare back at him for a moment, as if not understanding what's going on.
"Hey, who the fuck are y - "
Fuutarou immediately puts his left hand against the side of Kasai's head and slams it against the wall next to the slumped girl. To the unnamed thug still sitting on his plastic grate, watching the young mage do this to his partner in crime is like watching someone smash a pie into someone else's face, except replace the pie with an actual human head and someone else's face with a brick wall. Unblinking, Fuutarou watches Kasai's eyes roll up somewhat in their sockets as blood slowly oozes down the wall where his head is pinned against it, and letting go of his head, he keeps his dull black eyes on the body as it crumples pathetically to a heap next to the unconscious girl.
"What the - hey, back off - !"
Noticing movement from the third thug, Fuutarou immediately identifies his movements as those of someone about to draw a gun, and without hesitation, he draws a playing card from his pocket faster than his adversary can draw his own weapon and flicks it. The Ace of Clubs jams itself square into the man's neck, lodging a corner in the middle of his trachea and blocking it off. Dropping his weapon that clatters onto the ground beside him, the unnamed hoodlum stumbles backwards, struggling to breathe but merely "inhaling" some of his own blood instead that clearly does not supply his lungs with the oxygen he needs to survive, so the only noises he can make as he falls on his back are pathetic gargles, a clear sign that he is drowning in his own blood.
Fuutarou didn't throw the card hard enough to pierce the spine, since the hoodlum is at least able to tear the card out of from his own neck with some admittedly impressive willpower, willpower that is unfortunately wasted on a worthless piece of trash like him. All he can do at this point as he suffocates on the ground, choking and retching, is stare weakly back up at Fuutarou who slowly walks over to him and simply stands over him, staring back down at his next victim until he expires. Once he confirms the gangster dead, the young mage retrieves the bloody card to remove the evidence, wiping the blood on the card against the suffocated man's shirt before pocketing it. He'll have to remember to put his dress pants into the laundry tonight to get rid of the smeared bloodstains inside the pocket.
Then, the young tutor turns to analyze his target. A first-year high schooler, just like himself - neat, metallic-brown hair that exposes her forehead is her most defining trait. Picking up the shirt that'd been forcibly removed from her, Fuutarou recognizes it and the discarded blazer nearby to be from his own school. A bit strange, since their school is quite the distance from these parts of the city, but he can attribute this to the gangsters' agenda. Checking her condition, Fuutarou monitors her heart rate, her light green eyes, her breathing - her condition is fine and is not in danger, but her symptoms match those of a Heisei user, and checking her body quickly, Fuutarou finds no telltale puncture mark of a needle. Perhaps she was forced to drink it, much in the way that he had when Nino gave him that drugged water a month ago.
Taking the tank top off the gangster named Kasai, Fuutarou uses it to wipe the girl's chest down thoroughly and tosses it back onto the concussed Kasai in mute disgust before planting a rune that wraps around the girl's midsection, then slowly rises up like a scanner to detect any amount of Heisei currently circulating through her system. The results are almost immediately conclusive, as the rune paints itself white the moment it begins scanning from its usual blue.
The student-mage ponders the situation at hand to himself as he works to remove the bodies himself, not opting to call in a clean-up crew to pick up after him this time since there is no need for their assistance. It would appear that Rio is back on the move again, once again hiring miscreants to do his dirty work of kidnapping people for the sake of testing out new strains of Heisei - but for the gangsters here to have been planning on testing the drug on this girl here in this random alleyway, it feels as though Rio is taking bolder moves. Rio should know, with his intervention at the quintuplets' attempted kidnapping, that he's in Fuutarou's magical turf, so is this a power move on Rio's part to fight back against Fuutarou's magical hegemony, or is it craftier than that by being a bait to draw him out? This clearly isn't a bait that he's familiar with, since nothing further has happened after he dispatched of the thugs here...perhaps Rio is monitoring these gangsters but is willing to sacrifice them to make sure to keep tabs on Fuutarou himself. Though if Fuutarou himself is being watched, he'd know about it.
Once he's stuffed the bodies of the thugs into the Suzuki's rear passenger seats, Fuutarou backtracks to clean up the blood splatters with his runes, meticulously removing each and every speck that he can find to remove all traces of his presence here. He spends by far the most amount of time cleaning, a good half an hour hunched over every blood spill to ensure that the alleyway was the way it was before it became tainted with death and abuse.
And once that's done, Fuutarou gathers the pistol that was dropped by the last hoodlum - a Glock 26 9mm handgun. Fuutarou scowls hard down at the subcompact firearm - mages have traditionally shunned modern technology, at least those who either come from families with deep-rooted ties to magic or have been raised and taught in a more conventional magical setting. But while newer-age and self-taught mages like Fuutarou are more willing to incorporate elements of the normal world into their art, even Uesugi draws the line at firearms.
With the rise in drug trafficking, naturally there will also be a growing illegal market for firearms such as this once drug gangs begin to form and turf wars begin to happen that require more than just a baseball bat and some brass knuckles. Fuutarou needs to step up his investigations throughout the city and stem the tide of drugs coming into and circulating around the city before it can get to that point, and he'll use these gangsters he's picked up to "help" him with that.
Fuutarou puts the shirt and blazer back on the girl and carries her back to the car, setting her in the front passenger seat this time and fetching her student handbook in her bag that's been left behind in the car to get her address.
"Matsui, huh..." he mumbles to himself.
A few moments later, a black Suzuki Wagon R rumbles down the street, away from the alleyway and coffee shop into the rest of the city night.
3:03 AM.
Nakano Miku lies in bed, eyes wide open, staring up at the ceiling.
The feeling is back. The feeling that she is somewhere else. Even if she is very clearly in her own bed, in her own room, in her own home, Miku feels as if she is somewhere totally unfamiliar, when it is in reality a place that she should be more than intimately familiar with.
She does not even bother to sit up in bed again like before; resigning herself this time to the imminent horror, Miku closes her subtly glowing blue eyes, as though rendering herself unable to see her own physical surroundings will do anything to mitigate what she knows is about to hit her with the same traumatic force as always.
And the phantom pain returns as was foretold, striking Miku's body with a particularly fierce vengeance. Like before, the pain starts in her head, specifically branching out from her temples, but tonight, Miku feels her eyes begin to pulse painfully, her eyelids twitching as a result despite being closed. As Miku turns onto her left side underneath her covers and puts up her hands to her eyes to hold them in a desperate attempt to shield herself from this pain that she cannot stop, which is as futile as a kid raising her arms over her face to defend herself from bullies several grades older, the pain seizes control of her body, paralyzing her where she turns. Her breathing quickly becomes heavy, labored, and stifled, like she's being suffocated. Sweat once more leaks out of the pores in her skin all over her body at a sharply accelerated rate.
Even if they themselves are physically shrouded by their eyelids, Miku's rampant blue eyes, radiating darkly behind their warm curtains, tear open the visual portals to a vision that Miku does not want to see. There is no escaping what she is fated to see.
A mirror blood sea, once more - underneath the glass black sky.
Liquid drips audibly into the sea in all directions, one drop at a time.
Miku, for a brief moment, finds herself standing in the middle of this blood sea. As if she weren't gripped hard enough by fear already, upon realizing this, Miku feels absolutely terrified - for as many times as she has found herself in this horrible lucid dream, only a few times has she ever physically sensed herself to be part of this hellish landscape.
Because when she does, she sees the one thing that, more than anything else in her life, scares her the most.
Slowly, hesitantly, fearfully, Miku turns around.
She doesn't know why she turns around.
She doesn't have to turn around.
Nothing, not even the pain, is forcing her to turn around.
But she still turns around.
Because behind her, lying on its back on the surface of the blood sea, staring hollowly into the black glass sky, is a corpse.
Pale, cold, dead.
A beautiful woman whose beauty, like a snipped rose, has expired too soon.
It's not seeing the corpse alone that Miku is dreading.
It's the fact that as soon as she sets her terrified eyes on it, the corpse mutates white, as if turning itself into dry ice, crumbles, and evaporates right before her, with the bigger chunks of ice that fail to evaporate into carbon dioxide into the air and disappear sinking into the bloody waters beneath them.
Miku reaches out a feeble hand towards the corpse, even though she knows there is nothing she can do. Yet she does it anyway - and to add to this, she also tries to open her mouth and scream - even though she also knows her voice will not come out.
Not that she needs to, because that same shrill scream that she hears every time she sees this place once more shatters the cold, brittle air with
"MAMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! ! !"
Miku's outstretched right arm slumps across her bed underneath the edge of her blanket as Miku finds herself once more, sweating and shivering like an abandoned and homeless kitten in the rain, back in her bed.
Sniffling, the third tortured quintuplet tries her best to hold back her complicated emotions, but the tears begin to flow against her will, so she remains on her side in bed in the middle of the night, allowing her tears to drip out of her eyes and down to her pillow for a minute before finally having the strength to at least turn over to bury her face into her pillow properly so that she can empty out her terror and heartbrokenness in liquid form.
Miku doesn't know how long she takes to cry her fill into her pillow, but she doesn't care. At least in the relative safety and isolation of her own room, she doesn't need to deal with anyone judging her for crying like this. She doesn't need to worry about people giving her weird looks or tell her mean things about her. Perhaps most importantly, she doesn't need to bother her sisters and get them to worry about her, because this is something Miku doesn't think can be shared with anyone, and especially not with her own quintuplet siblings. This has to be something she must keep to herself forever.
Or, at least, that's what she thought at first. Pain does wonders to change minds, it seems.
Finally sitting up, Miku wipes her eyes with the backs of her hands and gazes forlornly down at her blanket at her lap. These..."incidents"...she's not sure what to call them, exactly. Visions? Hallucinations? Lucid dreams? Nightmares? She's never been quite sure. But what she does know is that they happen completely randomly, without warning. That, and most of the time when they do happen, she usually experiences them in very strange, out-of-body-like sensations. But a few times like tonight, she will have a seemingly physical presence in that field, in that blood sea under the black glass sky. And every time that happens...
She doesn't know why there are two variants to this lucid nightmare of hers. It's already bad enough having to deal with the usual occurrence, but to have to be forced into that hellhole herself...
Clenching her fists tightly, Miku subconsciously converts her lingering fear and terror into anger and frustration. So tightly does she pack her fists that her nails begin to pierce the skin on her palm, drawing actual blood and causing real pain that pricks Miku's mind, reminding her the stark difference between the pain she feels now versus the pain she felt moments ago.
Miku's anger and frustration deflates rapidly once she realizes that she's hurt herself for real. She's done this before, getting riled up to the point where her usual fist-clenching becomes fierce enough to draw blood in this fashion. Nino, from whom she learns cooking from time to time, is the first to notice the scars on her palms, and Miku would prefer not to have anyone ask about such scars, so she's done her best to control her anger as best she can so that she doesn't end up with more scars. It would seem for tonight, she's failed that objective of hers.
Heaving her heavy legs out of bed, Miku keeps her palms facing upwards to keep her blood from dripping haphazardly and leaves her bedroom quietly to go down to the bathroom to clean up. She winces as she runs cold water over her palms and treats them with disinfectant wipes, but for as sharp as the pain is now, nothing will compare to the pain she feels whenever she gets those lucid nightmares.
Once she's done disinfecting and wiped her hands dry, Miku gazes down at her upturned palms before she starts wrapping gauze around both hands.
She can still remember the days when she first started having these nightmares. It wasn't like she was born with them - would they ever stop? Or will she have tortured nights like this for the rest of her life? As much as she wishes it not to be the latter, Miku has a sinking, hopeless feeling that it very well may be.
Just thinking about it makes Miku want to punch the mirror in front of her. But she doesn't, as that would practically invalidate the whole reason why she came down here to the bathroom to begin with - not to mention, she'd wake everyone else up for sure doing that too.
Hands dried and wrapped and with a heavy heart, Miku trudges back up the stairs and quietly closes the door behind her to return to bed.
Listening to Miku's door click shut, Nakano Ichika, also laying in bed amidst her piles of discarded clothes, trash, and other miscellaneous accessories, gazes into the wall next to her bed, underneath her curtained window.
For a moment before Ichika closes her eyes to return to sleep, a pair of soft, divine yellow lights float in her pupils.
"Fuutarou? Fuutarou ~ "
Waking motionlessly to a soft but soothingly familiar voice, Uesugi Fuutarou inhales slowly but deeply as he promptly sits back up in his seat in his homeroom class, having fallen asleep during his last class of the day. The clock at the front of the classroom reads almost four in the afternoon, clearly well past the time that school has ended.
"You didn't need to come back for me, Miku," he murmurs, picking up the messenger bag next to him that he hadn't even bothered opening for his books and notes.
Nakano Miku, in her usual school clothes of a drab blue cardigan, white button-up dress shirt, green pleated skirt, dark thighhighs, and Audio Technica headphones, stands to Fuutarou's right, straightening up now that she's successfully woken up her tutor.
"It was late, and you'd fallen asleep during our last class. I called my sisters to see if any of them ran into you on their way home, which is usually what happens when you come over to tutor," Miku states, demonstrating her own perceptive ability. "So I figured you were still sleeping here."
"With deduction skills like that, I kinda have to wonder how you can't pass your tests."
"Mmm! That was uncalled for!" Miku pouts back at him suddenly. "And I'm trying my best, too."
"I know. And sorry about the joke, I had to."
Looking down at his desk since he's noticed a piece of paper that he doesn't recognize that someone must've slipped underneath his arms as he was dozing, Fuutarou picks it up as he reads its contents.
"Our homeroom teacher put that there. He was going on about how since you always sleep in his classes, you must already know all the material, so he's left those as instructions to have you make a study guide for the entire class."
"I vaguely remember him talking about something like that, yeah." Fuutarou opens his messenger bag and slips the study guide instructions sheet inside before clasping it up again, and Miku watches him put the paper away.
"Sorry that he's been trying to get back at you. I wish we could tell him what's going on," Miku mumbles apologetically, still gazing sadly at her tutor's bag.
"Don't bother, this isn't something worth getting worked up over. Besides, it's also something that...you can't exactly just tell someone about, you know?"
These words resonate much more deeply within Miku than she expected, and she briefly looks up at him to meet his own dull black eyes before lowering them quickly again and nodding slowly.
"...yeah. I know...that feeling."
Fuutarou watches Miku's reaction, having sensed a slight change in her tone of voice with that last discourse.
"Something bothering you, Miku?"
Sharply looking back up at Fuutarou, the third quintuplet, alarmed at her tutor's own sharp perception, reflexively shakes her head, blurting out before she can think her actions through,
"N-No, not at all...I'm...I'm okay..."
"Hm. Sorry I asked, I guess I was overthinking that. Let's get going."
Miku trots after Fuutarou, following him as the two first-years begin to make their way out of the school grounds.
"I've been meaning to ask, but...is there a particular reason why you sleep at school?" Miku asks out of curiosity. She's more than happy to simply walk beside her tutor in comfortable silence, but now that she's woken Fuutarou up this afternoon, the question has formed in her mind as they step out to the school plaza.
"Mages either operate during the middle of the night or in ways so that they can't be seen or otherwise observed by others. So being at school, where there are a lot of people around, I don't need to worry about getting ambushed by another mage or worry about them trying anything funny," Fuutarou answers swiftly, almost as though he wasn't sleeping fifteen minutes ago. "It's rather convenient; I work throughout the night, come to school and get sleep wherever I need to, then go back home or go tutor you girls before going back to do other work."
"So it's a safe place for you to get some rest?"
"More or less."
"Why not just sleep at home? It's not like you need to come to school, right?"
"Wow, and I thought I was the blunt one."
"I-I'm just saying it how it is," Miku defends herself quickly, again with another pout.
"Fair enough. I would, actually, but..."
The quintuplet's tutor takes a pause as the two of them hit the streets and step off the school campus, waiting for a crosswalk signal to turn green for them.
"The thing is, as you've seen yourself, my line of work is pretty dirty. I've made plenty of enemies along the way with what I do, any one of whom could turn up in this city to attack me. I don't want to involve my own family or, even worse, get them caught up in the crossfire if that ever happens. So whenever I'm with my dad and my sister, I'm always keeping an eye out. So I've decided that the best place to get some sleep is at school where it's the least likely that people are going to try some shit. It's scummy of me to potentially put the lives of other kids at school on the line rather than my own family, even if statistically speaking it's next to impossible that anyone's gonna attack the school directly because of me, but the fact of the matter is that I care about my family more than random other kids at school, and so I'll prioritize their safeties above everyone else's."
The signal turns green, and Fuutarou and Miku cross the street, passing other pedestrians along the way. Dwelling on Fuutarou's last words silently, Miku walks for a while with her eyes pasted on the sidewalk.
"No...that's not scummy at all. I would do the same," Miku finally speaks up. "Isn't it natural for you to want to look after your own family and keep them safe?"
"It probably should be, yeah."
"Actually, now that you mention that, since you're working with us now, how does that change things for you?"
"Doesn't really change much, if I'm gonna be honest. I still do my whole routine of working through the night, coming to school to sleep for the most part, and then head back home or go do whatever I need to. I suppose the only real difference it makes is that if something does happen at school during the middle of the day, my top priority is making sure you and your sisters are safe above everyone else. It's part of the reason why all six of us are in the same class, because if something does happen during school, chances are it'll be in the middle of class."
"...is that why all of us are in the same class together?"
"You're telling me it took you that long to figure that one out?"
"W-Well, I thought - we thought it was only because we'd transferred in a week late, and it was just going to be a temporary thing..."
Fuutarou shakes his head. "I had your dad arrange for the school administration to move five kids from our class out to other classes during the first week of school, before the five of you joined, so that there'd be room for all of us to be in the same class."
"P-Papa can do something like that...?"
"He's the head physician of the best hospital in the city. While you might not think that someone like him would have much power in the grand scheme of things, he can pull quite a few strings, more than you can imagine. How else did you think he was able to transfer you and your sisters out to Asahiyama?"
"I mean, we knew that part...but...being able to get us all in the same class..."
Scowling heavily, Fuutarou clicks his tongue irritably. "Your dad spends so little time with you all that you're not even aware of just how powerful of a person he is in this city? That fucking bastard."
Miku raises a cautionary hand up to Fuutarou. "It's...it's okay. We're used to him working most of the time..."
"Mm. And I guess I've got no room to criticize him for that either..."
Lowering her hand once Fuutarou backs off from verbally attacking Mr. Nakano on his own, Miku begins to sport a very small smile.
"Fuutarou, are you getting more comfortable being around us?" she asks with this sudden change of topic.
"Hm? What do you mean?"
"Oh, like, um...you talked with me about some of your other work. I figured you didn't want to talk about stuff like that...since you told us before that you'd rather keep stuff like that to yourself just for our sake, and for the sake of keeping your tutoring and your mage work separate."
"Well, this was stuff I didn't mind talking about since it's not like I'm going into detail about my mage stuff. It's also understandable for you to ask why I'm sleeping in class all the time since that's not exactly normal student behavior. And, of course, you're someone who knows me a bit better than our average classmate, so I'm more willing to talk more about stuff like this."
Miku feels her cheeks warm themselves when she hears the last reason.
"But am I opening up to you girls? Maybe I am. I just can't be bothered to tell for sure myself." Fuutarou pauses again. "...and I hope you don't take that the wrong way."
"It's okay, I'm used to you being insensitive."
"You get what you pay for."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"As in, I'm being paid to be your tutor and look out for you. Getting all intimate and such wasn't part of the terms of contract, so I don't need to be bothered with stuff like that."
Pouting a third time, Miku glares playfully up at her tutor. But before she can think about what she's about to say, she finds herself asking,
"So what if your contract did tell you to do that?"
"Cut the contract."
Slumping over, Miku hangs her head and arms in instant depression. "Fuutarou...you really are an insensitive dummy, aren't you..."
"I'm serious, though. How the fuck am I gonna get all friendly with someone like Nino?" Fuutarou's face contorts horrifically with disgust and fear. "Imagine being friends with someone like Nino, can't be me!"
Fuutarou's reaction causes Miku to let loose a snort of laughter, which she quickly stifles even though she wants to laugh harder than this.
"See? You agree with me on that one," Fuutarou points out to the Miku who's struggling to contain her laughter.
"N...No...F-Fuutarou, I wasn't..."
"Lies, all lies! Just let it out, Miku, laugh at Nino with me! You know you want to!"
"I'm not laughing AT her...!" the third quint insists with a squiggly smile still lingering on her face. "B-But seriously! Nino isn't...isn't as bad as you think, Fuutarou."
"Oh, is she now? Convince me." Fuutarou crosses his arms in jest, holding his head up high.
"Nino is actually a very sweet girl underneath that tough, bratty facade of hers. Once you can get past that facade, she'll open up to you."
"So they're what those otaku kids call 'tsundere' or something like that?"
"Um...yeah, actually, she's probably a tsundere, to be honest."
Once more, the young tutor's expression twists to express his confusion.
"Nino being a tsundere makes sense, I guess, but sweet? Forget the 'dere', she's got as much of a potty mouth as I do, and she can throw some mean punches, too," Fuutarou remarks as he recalls all his moments with Nino. "She's gotta be all 'tsun'. Granted, she's bought some stuff for me, but that's not because she genuinely cares about me or anything like that."
"Like those Hawaiian clothes during our vacation last week?"
"Yeah. She also bought a crepe for my sister when we ran into her at Tsutaya's last month, so that was nice of her. But again, I can't really imagine getting along with her."
Miku smiles again, this time with a more kindhearted tone. "If you approach her in good faith, she'll come through for you one day," she says reassuringly. "I'm sure of it. She always does, even for me."
"In good faith, you say..." Fuutarou scratches his head. "I mean, I've been doing that, or at least I think I have. What else do you mean by that?"
Chuckling, Miku looks back up at her tutor warmly.
"Isn't figuring that out your job as our tutor?" she points out, the afternoon May sun soothingly illuminating her face and peachy-red hair. "And besides, you wouldn't get it even if I told you."
"I'll agree with you on that one."
Suddenly, a particularly large growling comes from one of their stomachs, and it isn't Miku's.
"Nngh...ignore that," Fuutarou tries to brush it off, but Miku immediately steps in front of her tutor to get him to stop in his tracks.
"Fuutarou, be honest with me," she demands in a low voice, half-pouting, half-glaring back up at him. "When was the last time you ate?"
Cringing with silent embarrassment, the young mage averts his gaze while putting his hand over his mouth.
"I didn't get a chance to pick up dinner or breakfast," he admits finally after deciding he probably shouldn't lie straight into his own student's face.
"Then I'll buy you something. We passed by a McDonald's just now, didn't we?" Miku points past Fuutarou, back at the restaurant that they walked by a few minutes ago.
"You don't need to, I can just wait until dinner later toni - "
"I don't want our tutor teaching us on an empty stomach," Miku pouts a fourth time. To add emphasis, she straightens up her back and mimics Fuutarou with his crossed arms, even throwing in a chin turn to look away from him to assume an air of supreme self-righteousness.
"Okay, Itsuki, calm down."
Fuutarou's joke instantly breaks Miku's guard, and she doubles over snorting out another laugh that she again must stifle.
"Are my jokes really that funny, or are you just one of those weird people who laughs at anything that sounds even remotely funny?" Fuutarou wonders aloud as Miku has to regain composure once again.
"It's because you don't seem like someone who can make jokes like that, and so when you do, they're funnier than they have any right to be!" Miku blurts out in frantic self-defense, mainly of her pride.
"Okay, good. You didn't seem like the type, anyway." Sighing, the tutor begins to turn around. "Fine, I'll bite - pun not intended. Don't laugh at that, either."
"I won't, sheesh."
So the two of them double back to the McDonald's so that they can get Fuutarou a quick bite to eat, lining up in the relatively short line.
"I'll just get something small...something like - " Fuutarou begins to say, but Miku raises a hand up to him to stop him.
"Get a combo. And make it at least a medium. You get a small, and I'm making you pay for it."
"...then I just won't get anything if that's gonna be the case."
Miku simply pouts for a fifth time back up at him.
"...Miku, you can't just pout at everything that you don't agree with just because."
"You can't stop me." So Miku keeps pouting back up at him.
"Ugh...fine. I'll go with that...that 'Mega Teriyaki' or whatever..."
So the two of them head up to the register when called, place their order, and split up after they do so so that Miku can find the two of them a table while Fuutarou fills up his fountain drink.
"Did you see the cashier when she saw you pull out your card?" Fuutarou groans as he plops himself down across from Miku in their small two-seater table along the wall of the McDonald's. "She looked like she was gonna bite my damn head off for making you pay for me."
"You deserve it, for not taking care of yourself properly for the past twelve hours," Miku retaliates swiftly.
"Look, that's not...oh forget it."
Resigning himself to his perhaps undeserved loss, Fuutarou sips on his blue Powerade as they wait for his order to be called.
"By the way, you didn't get anything?" he asks, gesturing back at his student.
"Oh, no, not really. I had lunch so I'm not very hungry yet."
"Okay. And what about the others? I'm already running late for tutoring today because I slept in at school, so with this we're gonna be even more late."
"I texted the others already, so they know. They'll be waiting for us back at home."
"Assuming Ichika doesn't leave again for work."
"I mean, with how late we'll be arriving, yeah, she probably will."
"Bleh." Fuutarou lets his tongue hang out in defeat. "I'll have to start sleeping earlier in class, then."
"I never thought I'd actually hear those kinds of words get spoken seriously like that..."
Having checked his smartwatch, which alerts him to a few new emails that he's received, Fuutarou pulls out his phone to check them, so their conversation is truncated for the time being. This gives Miku some time to herself, which she spends surveying the rest of the McDonald's, in which, besides themselves, there are a handful of other people, including two high school girls, wearing the same base uniform as she is with the white dress shirt and green pleated skirt, are sitting together nearby at their own table, chatting it up animatedly.
"I just don't know what to do for our date. It's coming up this weekend, too..."
"This is your first date, right?"
"Yeah. You gotta help me, Otorin ~ "
"How the heck do you want me to help with you something like that? Figure it out yourself."
"Waaahh, that's mean ~ ! That's why no one ever wants to go out with you, since you're always so cold and distant like that..."
"Well, I was never interested in that type of thing to begin with..."
As the girls nearby continue to converse and banter, Miku finds her own blue eyes drifting back into place, eventually settling back onto Fuutarou who is still on his phone, now texting a reply back to one of the emails he's received.
Then, it hits her.
Hearing his order called, Fuutarou swiftly pockets his phone and fetches his meal, returning with it and an extra set of napkins.
"You alright, Miku? Your face's lookin' kinda red there," Fuutarou notes down at his friend and student. "You ought'a be taking care of yourself, no?"
Miku weakly shakes her head, wishing that her bangs were longer so that they could hide even more of her face than they already do.
"...it's...it's not that..." she mumbles bashfully, pulling on her headphones to isolate herself from her own embarrassment.