The quiet click of the penthouse door sounds off behind Ichika, who pulls off her shoes, stacks them up in their usual spot against the side of the wall before stepping into the house, and makes her way to the living room, where she tosses her bag onto the shorter couch and flops on her back on the length of the longer couch perpendicular to it. Taking a deep sigh through her nose and resting the back of her right hand over her eyes and forehead, Ichika closes her tired eyes, as if she's about to go to sleep right here in the living room.
But contrary to usual Ichika behavior, the eldest quintuplet doesn't fall asleep on the spot.
The house sounds quiet for a late Sunday afternoon...or perhaps it's already early evening. Nino wanted to go see a movie today, and Itsuki mentioned something about going with her to watch, so they're probably still at the movie theater or stopping by some other places on their way back home if the movie's already done. Yotsuba might be outside as well, giving a hand to her friends or clubs at school as she often does. Miku is probably in her room, playing games or watching anime or something...doing the usual otaku-ish stuff.
The loud hustle-bustle of the streets of the city...the car engines, car horns, chatter of pedestrian conversations, the voices of her friends and coworkers at work, the ambient music from the Starbucks, heck, even the breeze that's been gracing the city today...and last but not least, the babble of her four quintuplet sisters...
All of it - absent. For this rare moment in the Nakano penthouse, Ichika is alone, with nothing but silence to call her companion. It's a heavenly sensation, one that Ichika knows she doesn't get a lot of, mainly because she typically falls asleep too quickly to allow herself any such time to enjoy the gift of silence whenever she's able to.
Not that she feels any more alone than normal.
Pulling her hand somewhat off her forehead to open her eyes and dreamily gaze up at the tall ceiling above her, Nakano Ichika lets her lips part and rest agape as she breathes with her mouth, softly...and calmly.
As her hand pulls away and the schoolgirl opens her eyes correspondingly, her left eye is the usual blue, as is her ri -
Her right eye shines subtly with a divine golden aura, with no more trace of blue left in them. But it's not a solid shade of golden - breaking it is a ring of black, surrounding the constricted pupil that faithfully remains blue, as though it is clinging desperately onto the previous image of Ichika's right eye. This ring of black, from afar, appears to be a solid enough ring - but up close, it becomes clear that rather than being a solid shape with the absence of color, it is instead many individual lines of black that revolve around the blue dot of a pupil like an asteroid belt.
Blinking slowly with her exposed right eye, Ichika watches the ceiling with deliberate intent, the same kind of intent that a house cat would employ watching the rest of the house from a high perch. It would seem that once again, she's let herself get carried away.
And it had to happen to the worst possible person she could let it happen to.
Groaning lightly, Ichika presses her right palm over her eyes, mainly over her mutated right yellow one. She's not sure when her eye changed...the start of elementary school, maybe? But all she has is a wild guess.
Ichika knew that she was always a little...special. Even during the quintuplets' younger days when they truly were identical sisters, dressing the same, talking the same, having more or less the same preferences, and always hanging out together, Ichika always acted with one foot outside the box, deviating from her sisters to establish her own individuality even from those early ages, but not to the point where it would betray their collective identity as quintuplets. Evidence of such deviant behavior included stealing little trinkets from the rest of her sisters like candy and toys, claiming first dibs on snacks and gifts and using her first-born status as rationale for it, and leaving people she didn't like stunned on the ground, unable to move. These little pieces of evidence for her deviance could easily and conveniently be considered to be the initial signs of an emerging personality that Ichika would grow into in the years to come, so no one, not even her sisters, would suspect otherwise.
...leave people stunned on the ground, unable to move?
Ichika still remembers the day that their mother first told her that she was the oldest, and the context behind that situation. The quintuplets at the time had been curious about the exact order of their ages, because someone had to be the oldest and someone had to be the youngest, and they wanted to know for knowing's sake. But they had been very shy about asking their mother about the topic, though Ichika doesn't quite remember why they were so nervous about it at the time. But eventually they did ask, and that was when Ichika first learned that she was, in fact, the eldest quintuplet.
She remembers feeling a kind of...pride for being the oldest. While she didn't let it show so that she and her sisters could continue being the cute set of identical quintuplets who ran around doing everything from being the sweetest five kids in the world to causing havoc and being a collective pile of little shits, Ichika never relinquished that soft-spoken pride of being the eldest sibling. And she wasn't satisfied with just knowing that she was the oldest; she wanted to show people that she was the oldest. She just didn't know how to go about doing that, or if she even should at all.
Their mother's death was the catalyst for that eldest-sibling sentiment to finally come to fruition, because by that point, even at nine years old, Ichika knew that their family's situation wasn't great up until recently; while she probably didn't fully grasp the concept of "poor" at the time, she understood that their mother passing meant that there would be no one to take care of them in the same way that she did, and their father being away at work all the time certainly wasn't going to help the situation.
So Ichika took it upon herself to become her sisters' surrogate mother. Nino may have promised to make sure to keep all five of them together, and Itsuki may have physically told them that she would take over for their late mother to be their new mother, but Ichika was the first to truly act upon it. Long before Nino gained her notorious reputation for being a hot-blooded, streetwise schoolgirl who'd fiercely defend her sisters at the drop of a hat during middle school, Ichika was that guardian, making sure that her sisters were safe and quietly dealing with possible threats to them out of sight whenever possible whenever they presented themselves and looking for part-time jobs to help prepare her for life after school, assuming she could even finish school in the first place.
As aforementioned, Ichika doesn't know when her eye turned this way as it is now; she doesn't even know when she was able to control it like she can now, or when she learned to do so. It was one of those natural things that just...happened. The first incident of this was back when she and her sisters were temporarily participating in a kids' soccer league, in which one of their team coaches, whom Ichika had noticed was eyeing them abnormally frequently to the point of ignoring the other kids just to watch them play, told Ichika to meet him with her sisters because their father had apparently called him and asked him to give them a ride back to their house. Ichika, knowing that that was a blatant lie because their father never called anyone he didn't know, met him alone, without telling her sisters, intending to deal with him by herself, just without knowing how.
It would have been a tragic mistake, as that soccer coach had seized her in an attempt to drag her to his car - but before Ichika knew what was happening, the kidnapping attempt didn't last for very long, because the coach was on the ground, unable to move at all.
Perhaps Ichika was in possession of this kind of power for all her life; maybe it developed on the spot, right when she needed it the most. Either way, starting from that point forward, she knew that she was truly a bit different from the rest of her sisters, because she had a kind of power that only she knew about, like she was straight out of a manga, and that difference became the source of her pride. It was the one thing that separated her from the rest of the pack, the thing that made her truly unique from the four other sisters who were otherwise the exact same as her.
And so she kept using this power in similar manners: when Yotsuba developed a reputation for being a club-hopper, as in she bounced around constantly from one club to another without ever committing to one to get in the graces of as many of the upperclassmen throughout the school as possible, Ichika confronted the girls who were the cause of the initial waves of such gossip. When Miku became hospitalized from the "knockout game" that was played on her by several of her bullies at school, she tracked them down to threaten them to never do that again. Whenever she or her sisters would be confronted by scary guys around the city, Ichika was always there to make sure that they didn't come back to harass them again. Even after Nino built her reputation as the quintuplet who refused to take any bullshit from anyone, Ichika was still there, protecting her sisters by confronting the people who gave them trouble head on to get them out of their lives, whenever she felt it was necessary.
However, she did all this with a twist: none of her sisters know anything about this. None of them have any idea that it's because of her, or at least a big reason why, that the people who preyed on them before, whether they be their schoolmates or strangers around the city, have largely left them alone. That's in part why Nino gained her reputation as the most hot-blooded quintuplet among them, because Ichika never revealed hers and never had to share it with her younger sister.
She doesn't mind having her thunder stolen like this...it's not something to be proud of in the first place, anyway. She's quite aware without having anyone else tell this to her face that going around hunting people down like that of her own accord, this vigilantism of sorts, could very well be considered a bad thing to do, even if all the people she's done this to are fully deserving of it. She doesn't know what this power that she has can do - all she knows is that when she focuses on someone's eyes with her own, she casts some sort of...spell over them of sorts, which can leave them in a stunned state, as if their whole body's instantly developed lockjaw and remains that way for a few moments, and the effect either buys her time to escape from them or gives them a good enough scare to make her seem a whole lot more threatening than she really is. Quite conveniently, such a spell also allows Ichika to alter her victims in such a way that they stop doing what she wants them to but simultaneously forget that she was the one who compelled them to do so, as she discovered after she "took care" of Yotsuba's gossipers, so all she needs to do is make sure that she isn't seen by third parties whenever she employs her power. She can do other things with it, but leaving people temporarily incapacitated like this and be left unaware that she was the culprit is by far her most common use of it. Whether or not it has any other after-effects or additional side effects, Ichika doesn't know, and she's never made a conscious effort to find out because all the people she's done this to are people she couldn't care any less about.
Rather, she doesn't want her sisters to know that she possesses this sort of power, that her right eye holds some kind of mysterious power that she's been keeping a secret from the rest of them for the past however many years that it's existed. At the time when their mother died, when she first resolved to look after her sisters in their mother's stead, Ichika never imagined that this was how she'd go about it. Sure, she was thrilled to have this power at first, something that very clearly didn't seem normal for a nine-year-old girl to have, but the novelty of it wore off each time that she found herself using it. With each bad person that she felled with it, the more she felt herself becoming someone she was not, if that makes any sense; Ichika slowly began to develop the sense that this power is somehow foreign, and that she was never intended to have it, though obviously she still hasn't been able to figure out why it makes her feel this way.
No need to watch anime with Miku and Yotsuba whenever they have their anime nights when she's already living in one.
So this power of hers that helped cement her feeling of uniqueness and individuality that segregated her from her sisters became the same reason why she felt she was distancing herself too much from them. She wanted to feel unique and one-of-a-kind, yes, but not to the point where she didn't even feel like she was a part of the gang anymore; she still wanted to roll "with the boys", so to speak, or in her case it'd be "with the girls". She didn't want to feel like a freak. She didn't want to feel left out. And sure, she knew as they grew older and began to establish their own personalities and quirks, especially after their mother's death, that they would eventually all have to go their separate ways, but Ichika didn't want to splice herself off quite like this; this wasn't how it was supposed to happen.
That's why...at the warehouse...
And yet, she maintained her vigilantism anyway. She kept going to her part-time jobs, eventually landing on one that she likes the most and seems the most promising in terms of pay and future career choice. After all, Ichika promised herself that she would be the one to look after the girls after their mom passed. Sure, Itsuki might say she wants to become their new mom, figuratively speaking, and Nino might have the reputation for keeping the sisters safe, but it's Ichika who's working to become their breadwinner; it's she who's going out there and doing the dirty work of dealing with the people who'd try to make moves on them. Ironic, then, that the very same power that threatens to destroy her sense of sistership with her siblings is the very same power that's helping her maintain it.
All the same, though, Ichika still doesn't want her sisters to know. She's fine with taking a sideline for her sisters for the sake of becoming able to support them if there ever comes a time when their father stops doing so for whatever reason; she's fine with being known as the constantly narcoleptic, carefree frappuccino-drinking freshman whose seemingly biggest concern in life is how long the line is at Starbucks. Just so long as her sisters don't know that she's a freak, everything else is fine...
...or so she thought. Halfway through their final year at Kurobara, Ichika awoke when Miku knocked on her door during the middle of the night, asking if she could spend the night with her. Ichika had never seen Miku so rattled and spooked before, to the extent that Miku was physically trembling even though it was still late summer. And that's when Ichika noticed that there was something off with her sister's eyes - and that's when she discovered that she wasn't alone, that she wasn't the only freak in the household to have a weird eye.
Now, Ichika has conflicting feelings about it all. Should she reveal to Miku that she's in the same boat, as a fellow possessor of weird eyes? The initial answer to this was no; so far, Miku has no idea that Ichika wields her own little dirty secret. But if Miku can develop them, then perhaps the rest of her sisters can...maybe it's something genetic; they are identical quintuplets, after all. Hell, maybe her other sisters already have their own eyes, but they're just keeping theirs a secret from the rest of them too, just like she is. But is she willing to risk revealing everything that she's done on a precarious gambit of finding out if the rest of her sisters have weird eyes like she does? And for what, exactly? Simply for the reassurance that she isn't the only freak in the house? That if all of them are freaks, none of them have to feel any different from each other?
Freak, huh...that's the word she used to describe herself all this time. Until recently, it never occurred to her that "freak" was a weird way to spell "mage".
And speaking of mages...
Ichika has never tried using her power on someone she knew was a mage. She didn't intend on doing that to him initially specifically because she knew that Fuutarou-kun was a mage, because once he revealed his status as one to them, that's when Ichika learned that she, too, must have been a mage all along. While it's clear that he was telling the truth when he told them that two mages could walk by each other on the street and not even know, Ichika figures that this wouldn't exactly hold up well if she ever had to use her power on Fuutarou-kun himself.
But he was being such an edgy, annoying little idiot back at the coffee shop. Going on about how he doesn't want to make friends...sure, Fuutarou-kun is clearly in a worse situation than her, she won't dispute that. But is his life really that bad that he can't even consider making friends with the girls he's tutoring, especially after all those hours of tutoring and such? Is he so busy and self-concerned that he won't even let someone like her be concerned about his health? And what's with that kind of attitude, refusing to reciprocate someone's sentiments about being a friend? It's not like she's asking him out or anything like that, all she cares about is being friends! And to think that he can't even handle something like that...
Even just thinking about their rocky conversation makes Ichika's right eye glow dangerously.
Ichika cups her hand over her right eye that's flaring up until it can return to normal. Ordinarily, she wouldn't have let herself get so agitated in that situation; it's not worth getting all angry like that over a mere conversation, as the social skills that she's developed over the years have taught her. But not only is Fuutarou-kun someone close to her, but Ichika herself has been through a lot; Fuutarou-kun may be poor, but Ichika and her own family were also, at one point, very poor. Fuutarou-kun may go around being busy with his magework and such, but Ichika knows how that feels as well, being out late at night tracking down people who have wronged her sisters in significant enough ways to make her journey into the night to come after them.
Perhaps Fuutarou-kun has more on his plate than she does, but even if that is the case, Ichika knows better than anyone else what Fuutarou-kun does and what he's going through, and he acts as if his position and situation is something special. If the oldest quintuplet has anything to say about it, it's that it's not.
So she lost her temper and cast her spell on him to leave. But to her silent horror, she didn't get the same feedback from Fuutarou-kun that she would normally get from casting her eye onto other people; she felt as if only half her power went through to him, but the other half was blocked by...something. From his reaction, it seemed like his body was physically affected by her incapacitation spell, so maybe that was the half that worked - perhaps Ichika should assume that her tutor is quite aware of what she's done, or tried to do, though obviously she couldn't stick around to confirm whether or not he does.
What should she do now, in this case? If Fuutarou-kun knows what she's tried doing to him, then what would he do? Report it to their dad? Maybe Nino always being suspicious of him is starting to make sense. What if he wasn't just sent here to tutor them? What if he was sent here for other reasons as well? As a matter of fact, was Fuutarou-kun's behavior back at the coffee shop all just an act, a ploy to bait her into using her eye on him so that he could confirm if she had any sort of magical ability? He's certainly smart enough to think of doing so - after all, the best actor is the kind who never lets their audience realize that they're acting, at least not in the moment. What if she's just let herself walk right into his trap, and now he knows without question that she's also a mage whose only talent stems from the power that's vested into her right eye? But then again, what would he even do with that knowledge?
No...it's not "what would he do", the question should be "what could he do". Fuutarou-kun knows all five of them fairly well by this point; he knows where they live, how to get inside their high-rise, where they are at all times...he even has runes inside their house, ostensibly for additional home security. He goes to the same school as they do; hell, they're even classmates at that, even after being transferred a week into the new school year when the quintuplets normally should have been split up into different classes. He probably even meets with their dad more times than the girls themselves do.
The more she dwells on this, the more Ichika spooks herself, realizing that their classmate and tutor Uesugi Fuutarou-kun has an uncomfortably chilling amount of access to them and their lives. And for all the stuff that he's told her back at the coffee shop, as edgy as it all seemed, he's probably not lying about any of it - if he wanted to, he could step in and systematically ruin their lives in indescribable ways before any of them can realize what the hell is going on. And he was able to get all this in a mere two months. Yeah, Fuutarou-kun did bail her and her sisters out of a tight spot back at the warehouse, and clearly their dad also trusts him enough to the point where he was willing to give him a spare keycard to their own penthouse, but Ichika can't help but feel her stomach tie itself up into a bit of a knot knowing that a boy they didn't even know two months ago is now such a huge part of their lives.
Could Nino be right all along about him...? But even if she is...even if the perceived threat that Fuutarou-kun could pose to them is very real...
One of the doors opens on the second floor, which lets out the previously muffled pair of voices coming from one of the rooms so that Ichika can now hear them properly.
"...aaaaa, he was so cool fighting with two swords like that! And with Asuna with him ~ they're like the coolest couple ever ~ !"
"You think so?"
"Aw c'mon, Miku, I know you don't like that show very much, but still, doesn't that sound so cool to you? Having a boyfriend like that who fights with you and stuff?"
"But I can't fight..."
"That's besides the point, though!"
Miku and Yotsuba climb down the stairs to fix themselves some snacks after their anime binge day, as this will be their last day off before studying for the rest of the week before their midterms at the end of the week, and upon descending, they spy Ichika lying on the long couch in the living room.
"Ah, Ichika, you're back!" Yotsuba calls out to her while still on the stairs, but Miku adopts a more concerned tone when addressing her.
"You look tired, was it tough at work today?" she asks as she approaches their oldest sister, while Yotsuba trots off to the kitchen to make drinks and grab snacks.
"Mmnnn...something like that," Ichika groans a little, sitting up on the couch once she's made sure that her right eye is back to normal. "I just ran into Fuutarou-kun on my way back home at Starbucks..."
"Starbucks? He, uh...doesn't seem like the type to go there..." Miku thinks aloud, wondering to herself why someone like their tutor would ever have a reason to go to a place like that. "Wait, he likes coffee, doesn't he? But it's probably a bit too expensive for his liking..."
"He said Dad gave him a Starbucks gift card. Apparently he got it from one of his coworkers and he just passed it off to Fuutarou-kun because he'd never have a need for it. At least, that's what Fuutarou-kun said."
"Oh..."
Ichika wants to ask her sisters what they've been up to, but given their little conversation while coming downstairs and one of the big reasons why Miku and Yotsuba in particular like to hang out together, the answer is rather obvious. That, and...Ichika feels the itch to talk about their tutor a bit more, if only to vent out the rest of her frustrations regarding him safely.
Reading the somewhat perturbed expression on her oldest sister's face, Miku leans in a bit closer to Ichika.
"...is something bothering you, Ichika? Did you, um...maybe have a fight with Fuutarou?"
Hearing this, Ichika jolts a little, sitting back upright with a surprised look on her face facing her younger sister.
"H-How did you know...?" she asks, a little spooked at the scary accuracy of Miku's guess.
"...it's not often you come home looking like that, and it takes a lot for you to," Miku answers softly. "So when you mentioned Fuutarou and meeting him at Starbucks...I figured it might be because of him..."
"Even though I've never had a fight with him before this?"
"Well...that seemed like the most likely explanation. It could've been something else, I don't know...and who knows, you might've had a fight with him before...you told us that you've run into him a few times before randomly around the city, right?"
"Er...yeah, that's...that's right..." Ichika scratches her sideburns awkwardly. "You're too smart for your own good, you know that, Miku?"
"My test scores don't quite reflect that, though."
"Oh, it's always test scores with you. Has Fuutarou-kun gotten you hooked on studying all the time?"
The two of them share a few giggles as Yotsuba joins them briefly to give them some Shirley Temples, complete with cherries on top.
"I'll be back with the snacks ~ !" she says cheerily after dropping off their drinks and retreating back into the kitchen, leaving the two others alone again for now as the sounds of cupboards swinging open and shut and the clatter of a tray tumble out of the kitchen.
Miku glances back at Ichika while Yotsuba is making a ruckus on the other side of the floor.
"What made you get into a fight with him?" Miku asks calmly.
"You aren't mad at me for getting into a fight with him?" Ichika asks in return, briefly diverting Miku's initial question. "Given how close you are with him."
"C-Close...I'm not close with him," Miku blushes suddenly, pursing her lips back at her older sister.
"Aww, c'mon, you know it, don't you?"
"Geez, Ichika...but seriously, I'm not. We get into fights all the time, don't we? Like between me and Nino, Nino and Itsuki...even Yotsuba and I have our disagreements here and there."
"Well, that usually stems from the animes you watch."
"I'm just trying to make an example here."
"I know, I know." Ichika's smile slowly wears off, however. "...it wasn't...like a...big fight or anything. We just had a little...disagreement, like you said."
"Over what?"
By this point, Yotsuba returns with her tray of snacks consisting of seaweed senbei rice crackers, grape Hi-Chew, and dorayaki, and seeing the others and sensing that they're having a serious conversation of sorts, the curious Yotsuba joins them and sets the tray of snacks down next to them on their side of the glass table while she takes a seat on the carpet next to them.
Ichika sighs moderately, taking a rice cracker for herself and thanking Yotsuba for providing for them. "Well, we started out just talking normally, right...and then I asked him how he was doing with that injury Nino told us about that he had..."
Miku's eyes flash with the sight of Fuutarou's magically stitched wound across his chest at the mention of it.
"Oh yeah, Nino told us about that, didn't she? How's Uesugi-san doing? I hope he's okay," Yotsuba pipes up with concern.
"He's doing fine; he said it's almost all better."
"So what was the problem?" Miku asks.
"He got all...how should I say...he got all defensive when I asked him how he was doing," Ichika explains, allowing some of her festering frustrations from earlier that day bleed into her voice. "Like, when I asked him how his injury was doing, he was all...what did he say...he said something like, 'oh, how did you know', and he stared at me like this."
Ichika tries her best to emulate the look that their tutor gave her back at the coffee shop.
"And then he went on about how I shouldn't be making a big deal out of this, and that I shouldn't bother worrying about him or his injury or whatever." The eldest quintuplet frowns deeply, pursing her own lips a bit angrily. "Like, seriously, what's with him! I just wanted to ask him how he was doing, and he gets all pissy like that. Miku, you should tell him off at some po - "
Suddenly, Ichika hesitates. She's just remembered that Fuutarou-kun could very well remember the conversation they had back at Starbucks, but she currently has no way of knowing, so if Miku does actually talk to him about it, it'll be a coinflip to see whether or not he actually does remember. But the fact that Uesugi is a mage tilts the odds in his favor and not in hers - either way, Ichika changes her mind mid-sentence, as she'd rather not make Miku get involved too.
" - er, on second thought, maybe you don't have to," she quickly corrects herself.
"...I wasn't going to tell him off for anything, but out of curiosity, why did you want me to do that anyway? Just because I'm the one who gets along with him the most?" Miku asks.
"Yeah. But like I said, you don't need to...I forgot to say that I told him to keep our little fight today just between the two of us so that the rest of you don't have to get dragged into this. You know Nino's gonna jump at this chance to give Fuutarou-kun some flak when he's already gotten enough from me."
Munching on a dorayaki herself, Yotsuba swallows her mouthful to speak up. "Uesugi-san's just that kind of person, isn't he, though? Someone who doesn't want people to be concerned over him."
"Well, I get that, but there's gotta be a limit to that, right?" Ichika turns to Yotsuba. "My whole argument against him was that we've known each other for just about two months now - "
"Month and a half," Miku corrects her.
"Okay, month and a half, whatever. But we've spent so much time together with him already; like, think about the amount of time that you'd normally spend with someone whom you've known for a month and a half and think about how much of a friend you'd consider them to be."
Miku and Yotsuba exchange a quick glance at each other.
"Uhhh...maybe we're not the best ones to ask that to, y'know...?" Yotsuba smiles awkwardly back at her eldest sister.
"Yeah...you and Nino are the ones who go around making friends. The rest of us don't really bother," Miku agrees.
"Oh c'mon, it's not rocket science or anything!" Ichika sighs exasperatedly. "My point is that we've spent enough time with him in such a short period of time that I think it's fine for us to consider us friends with him. You can at least agree with me on that one, right?"
Both of her sisters nod, and Ichika accepts a dorayaki from Yotsuba who hands it to her.
"But Fuutarou-kun kept going on and on and on about it, how I shouldn't be concerned over him, that, uh, what else did he say...that he'd rather not have to spend time trying to make friends because he's too busy with his mage stuff..."
Miku lowers her own half-eaten rice cracker, as she's avoiding the Hi-Chew candies. "What I'm more interested in is the fact that you even let yourself get bothered by something like that to this extent, Ichika. Normally you wouldn't really care about stuff like this and just let it go or ignore it..."
"Uh huh. Ichika's always the one who steps in and breaks up Nino's fights with either you or Itsuki. So it's pretty rare to see you be the one who's bothered by something," Yotsuba also agrees.
Ichika can't help but smile sheepishly at her sisters.
"So it's really that big of a deal that I'm talking like this, huh? Onee-chan can have moments like these, too."
"We know. That's why we're here for you, just like how you've always been there for us," Miku smiles warmly back at her older sister. "But what about Fuutarou? You didn't yell at him, did you?"
"Well..." Ichika quickly recalls her leaving the Starbucks after attempting to hypnotize her own tutor. "...we just...yeah, we just kind of...argued back and forth, and then I got fed up enough and just left. That's all, really..."
Miku and Yotsuba quietly eat their respective snacks for a minute.
"It does feel a bit weird to know that you two got into an argument like that," Yotsuba notes thoughtfully. "Usually you two get along just fine. So to hear you talk about Uesugi-san like this..."
"It can happen, Yotsuba. Remember yesterday, when I accidentally went back to my own room and spent the night with him? When we woke up, we talked for a little bit...and I can understand how Ichika got frustrated with him."
Ichika smiles in amusement. "Oh, did he act the same to you like he did to me? What did he say to you?"
"Well, he didn't like...say anything that would make me argue with him. It's just, uh..."
It's Miku's turn to remember her own encounter with her tutor, specifically the moment when she demanded him to take off his shirt so that she could see where he was hurt.
"...er, yeah, let's just...um...forget about that..." Miku trails off lightly, her cheeks beginning to glow with embarrassment as she tries to turn away, but Ichika, spying a chance to tease her, pounces on the opportunity.
"Whoa, whoa, hold up there Miku, you got something juicy to share with us, don't you? C'mon, why don't you share it with us ~ " she coos after Miku, who turns a full one-eighty degrees to put her back to her oldest sister.
"Hm? Huh? What's going on, did Miku do something with him?" Yotsuba asks with the innocence of an elementary schooler, so Ichika turns to her to spell it out for her.
"Think about it, Yotsuba: Miku spent a night sleeping with Fuutarou-kun. In the same bed. In her bedroom."
Finally, the implications click in Yotsuba's head, and Yotsuba, too, feels her face flush for her own older sister Miku.
"Aaaaaaaaahh...! M-M-Mikuuuuuu, n-naughty things like thaaaaaat...not okay, not okaaaaay!" Yotsuba cries out in a small voice that squeaks like a mouse as she wags her finger in Miku's direction.
"I-I didn't do anything n-n-naughty with him! I didn't have any intentions like that whatsoever!" Miku desperately tries to defend herself, but Ichika doesn't let up the pressure.
"Oh no? But you're the closest to him by far out of the five of us. And you always look so happy whenever he shows up, always giving him that angelic smile of yours that you don't ever give the rest of your beloved sisters ~ " Ichika even clasps her hands together in romantic fashion.
"Ichikaaaaaa...!"
After sparing a few laughs at Miku's expense, Ichika and Yotsuba both take a swig of their Shirley Temples.
"I do agree with Yotsuba, though," Miku mentions as they're taking a drink. "Fuutarou...is just that kind of guy. He does stuff on his own...and he likes it that way. He's basically been like that the whole time we've known him, if you think about it."
"I guess so, but still...to me, that doesn't excuse him from saying stuff like how he doesn't want to bother becoming friends with us. Maybe it could just be me overthinking things, but that doesn't stop me from feeling a bit...irritated, I guess, at him," Ichika admits. "If you were there in my shoes, what would you two have said back to him? How would the two of you act if Fuutarou-kun told you two that he doesn't want to think of you two as friends?"
Again, Miku and Yotsuba exchange passing glances.
"Well, I'd...probably get mad too!" Yotsuba freely admits, offering a wide but shy grin of her own. "But to be fair, I want to listen to his reasoning for it. I'm sure he's not saying that just to be mean; he doesn't seem like the kind of person who'd do something like that. Like, you know how he's always being all efficient and stuff? And he's even said himself that he's not the best around other people, so he's probably not conveying his feelings in a way that we can understand, but it makes sense to him or something, I don't know. But I'm confident that he has a good reason why he's saying stuff like that."
"Yotsuba's right, I want him to explain himself to me first, and he probably does have a good reason. But even so, even if he does have a good reason, Fuutarou does care about us. Even if he doesn't admit it himself, I'm sure that he thinks of us as something along the lines of friends...even if to him, we're not exactly at that point yet," Miku nods.
"But what if everything he's doing's just one big act?" Ichika pitches to her sisters. "What if he's only pretending to care to get you to think that about him?"
"Whoa, whoa, calm down there, Nino," Miku smirks a little, causing Yotsuba to laugh shortly at her joke.
"I-I know I'm sounding a little bit like Nino right now, but seriously, especially now that Fuutarou-kun's said those things to me, what if he's serious about that? And he very well may be, it's Fuutarou-kun we're talking about, after all!"
Miku continues to smile a little after her smirk. "Even then, Ichika, I wouldn't want to put him down for what he thinks. If his reasoning were bad, then sure, we can criticize him all we want for it, but like you said, it's Fuutarou we're talking about; he wouldn't say something like that unless he has a good reason to. And since I want to give him this benefit of the doubt, I'll let him think what he wants...but at the same time, I'd want to work to show him that we can be more than just student and tutor, that we can be friends wherever we meet. At school, around the city, at home, on vacation, wherever. If Fuutarou is willing to put in the time and effort to teach us and get our grades up, then we can teach him to open up a little bit more, can't we?"
"Ooooh! I like that, I like that! That's a great idea, Miku!" Yotsuba exclaims. "That way, it's a learning experience for all of us! That's wonderful, isn't it?"
"Hmm...I do kinda like the sound of that, actually..." Ichika rubs her chin thoughtfully as well.
"Even though you just came back from yelling at Fuutarou?" Miku asks mischievously.
"Eh ~ it is what it is. What's he going to do about it, you know?" Ichika laughs cheerfully in response. "He deals with Nino's crap all the time without even flinching; I think I'll be fine too."
"Hey, even Nino's changing too. You notice how she isn't yelling at Uesugi-san as much these days?"
"Ah yeah, that's right, that's right ~ now if only we can get that stubborn Fuutarou-kun of ours to change his own attitude and start seeing us as his friends too, and everything'll be fine ~ !"
"By the way, Ichika, it sounds like you're really invested in getting Fuutarou to call us his friends. Normally you don't really care for guys that much, do you?" Miku points out.
"What do you mean? I'm pretty popular with the boys at school, y'know? All I need to do is a little bit of this ~ " Ichika suggestively blows a kiss in Miku's direction.
"Yeah, but you're only popular with them. You've never actually gone out of your way to be friends with any of them, have you?" Miku frowns a little at her. "As a matter of fact, I don't think I remember seeing you really hang out with anyone at school other than us."
"Ah, don't worry about it. Our new school's really big, y'know? Lots of people to meet and remember. I'm sure I'll make some friends along the way, though you're right that I haven't really been making that a super high priority or anything."
"Maybe not, but for you to be bothered by Fuutarou not thinking of us as friends..." Miku leans in towards Ichika now. "Ichika, could it be...?"
"Wait, whoa, whoa, it's not like that or anything, I'm just a taaaad bit upset that poor Fuutarou-kun doesn't want to be friends with us! Who wouldn't wanna be friends with us five perfect angels, you know ~ ? All the boys at school would kill to be our friends!"
Ichika hesitates.
"Well, maybe except for Itsuki, since she'll eat a hole through their wallets."
"Pfffft..."
Both Miku and Yotsuba double over at Ichika's unexpected joke on Itsuki.
"And here we are, talking about how we're gonna make Uesugi-san change when we're sitting here still cracking jokes about Itsuki and her eating habits!" Yotsuba cries out.
While her sisters are recovering from their fits of giggles, Ichika feels a vibration in her pocket, and that's her phone that she's forgotten to take off its vibration mode. Fishing it out, she opens the text that she's just gotten, and her heart freezes as soon as she sees the name: it's from Uesugi Fuutarou.
I'm still coming over the day before midterms begins for our last cram session. You better tell the others, otherwise I'm asking your dad to tell you all for you.
So not only does he still remember, as she suspected, but he's even calling her bluff. Makes sense, though - as weird as it is to consider, Fuutarou-kun is probably closer to their dad than any of his daughters are, considering that they work in the same hospital, and apparently oftentimes together.
"Somebody text you?" Miku asks, nodding down at her phone.
"Er, uh, yeah...it's...it's from Fuutarou-kun..." Ichika sighs, deciding to let her sisters know; for now, this is a loss that she'll have to eat, though she's going to have to figure out a way to deal with him in private in regards to what she tried to do to him towards the end of their conversation earlier this afternoon. "He says that he'll come over again for another overnight cram session the day before our midterms start."
"Again? I mean, I don't mind, and I'm sure none of us here do, but the problem's more of how Nino and Itsuki are gonna handle it," Yotsuba says. "Itsuki...might be okay with it, but Nino...?"
"Ichika, you can blackmail Nino again, right?" Miku asks her oldest sister with utmost seriousness.
"Hey, hey, Miku, that isn't something you should ask so casually like that, you know? Blackmail is bad, mmmkay."
"So does that mean you're a bad girl too?"
"Only when it gets my cute sisters to be good girls and study ~ "
"Yeah, try telling Nino that, see how she reacts."
As they're joking around like this, the front door opens and closes, and in walk Nino and Itsuki, the missing quintuplets, fresh from their venture into the city for the day.
"Try telling me what, now?" Nino asks as the two of them join the rest of their siblings, with Itsuki, quite predictably, going immediately for the snacks and helping herself to a senbei rice cracker.
"Oh, Fuutarou-kun wanted me to tell everyone that he wants to do another overnight cram session before our midterms," Ichika plainly informs her.
"Again!? Tell him no, once is more than enough! Besides, it's just an excuse to try to get Miku to sleep with him again! I won't allow it!" Nino erupts hotly, as suspected, turning to Itsuki for support. "You tell 'em too, Itsuki! Once is enough, and the rest we can handle on our ow - "
"I see nothing wrong with one more night."
For a few seconds, there is no sound being made in the living room besides the ticking of the large wall clock behind them and Itsuki's calm munching of her rice cracker.
"Then it's settled! We're having one more cram sesh with Uesugi-saaaaan! Yaaaaaaay!" Yotsuba cheers loudly.
"I-Itsukiiiii! I thought you were on my side! Why're you letting him come back for another night here!?" Nino just as loudly complains to her youngest sister, who smiles calmly back at her.
"Oh, no real reason. I just figured that if I am to go down, I would rather drag you down with me ~ "
"ITSUKIIIIIII! ! ! ! ! ! !"
The Nakano penthouse is filled with the cries of an angry quintuplet and the chorus of quintuplet laughter.