A/N
Another ten chapters. You know the drill.
Though, this break might be a bit shorter than usual. We'll see...
Uesugi Fuutarou's eyes open slowly, staring up at the ceiling for a moment as his vision refocuses, before blinking a few times to help expedite the process. He's gone to sleep on the hard floor off the carpet in front of the big flatscreen television as the quintuplets are all still fast asleep themselves.
Exhaustion still grips his senses - even if he's gotten used to waking up with suboptimal hours of sleep, it doesn't mean that his body is rested enough, and this is doubly so when he's got a serious wound to recover from. But as much as he wants to go back to sleep, Fuutarou forces himself to stay awake. Given the morning rays of the sun that are pouring into the penthouse, it's about time to haul ass over to school for their midterms.
Getting up from the hard floor, Fuutarou grunts under his breath and is about to get up to his feet when the yellow blanket decorated with lemon prints drapes down his chest. Oh yeah, he's forgotten that he went to sleep a few hours ago with a blanket - he usually doesn't bother with one, if his chronic sleeping at school is any indication. He remembers trying to insist to Nino earlier that morning after they hung out a little out on the veranda that he didn't need one, but Nino threatened to kick him out of the house if he didn't accept at least a blanket to go to sleep with, and he didn't feel like putting up an argument with her at five in the morning.
Sitting up on the floor gives Fuutarou a chance to rewind the events of the morning. He didn't expect Nino to want to take him aside for a little bit just to chat with him like they did. Ever since the midnight talk he had with her and Miku in regards to their Mystic Eyes, he and Nino haven't really interacted all that much, not even at school; the most they've ever had in terms of dialogue were either simple greetings of "good morning" or "good afternoon", or of course Nino's usual mopey attitude around him whenever the topic of tutoring was at hand.
But standing outside that morning on the veranda, enjoying some hot chocolate and casually chatting about stuff going on in their lives...Fuutarou enjoyed it. Maybe not something to be expected from someone like him, but it was a nice change of pace, and he's not against those. And speaking of changes of pace, he's the most glad about being able to talk to Nino normally like they did. Not having to deal with her usual antagonism, not having to put up with her constant insults, her unrelenting profanity, her abundant irritability...Fuutarou wishes Nino could be more like that, more often. Not because he doesn't like her personality, everyone's entitled to acting however they want and Fuutarou himself doesn't care enough to go out of his way to convince people to act otherwise, but just so that they can actually have some nice conversations from time to time.
Maybe his earlier run-in with Ichika this week at Starbucks is doing a number on him, Fuutarou ponders to himself quietly. All that talk about friends and such that Ichika was hammering into his head back then at the start of the week...given how he feels about the fact that he and Nino were able to talk normally like friends would for a solid half an hour or so earlier that morning, maybe he's subconsciously recognized that the eldest quintuplet was in the right all this time, or at least enough to the point where he'd start taking her advice. Maybe he can even go so far as to say that Ichika was just trying to look out for him...then in which case, he'll have to make a mental note to himself to apologize to her for trying to be a stubborn and edgy idiot for going on about how he doesn't need friends or whatever.
He then glances over at the peacefully sleeping quintuplets; all five of the girls are still in their same places, including Nino, who's returned to her short couch to go back to sleep there. The runes that he's placed on them, including on Nino after she fell asleep, are still active, invisible to the naked eye but hovering over each of the girls' heads to softly block normal levels of ambient noise from reaching their ears to ensure that they can get the sleep they need for their tests today. Because of this, though, they won't be able to hear any alarm clocks that go off - not that any of them had set any because they all drifted off to sleep while studying - so Fuutarou's made it a point to himself to be their human alarm clock and wake them up when it's time for them to get ready for school.
And that time is now. Fuutarou then pulls the blanket on him aside and gets up to his feet to neatly fold up the blanket so that he can set it against the side of the glass table for the quints to figure out what to do with it. Getting a good stretch in and slapping his cheeks quickly to try to get himself to wake up a bit more, the young tutor, rubbing his right side, turns around and glances up at the clock.
8:05 AM.
School starts at 8:30, and their exams begin at 8:45.
He was supposed to have woken up a whole hour beforehand.
Oh for fuck's sake.
Immediately springing into action, the young mage pivots and rushes to the kitchen, snapping his fingers in the quintuplets' direction to remotely remove the noise blocking runes from over the quintuplets' heads. He doesn't start yelling at them to get up, however, because the racket he's about to make in the kitchen to start fixing everyone a fast breakfast will do that job for him. Yanking open refrigerator doors, Fuutarou grabs five eggs, two at a time and then one, and sets them down on the kitchen counter as he also grabs five small rice bowls from one of the cupboards, fills them with rice that's been kept warm in the rice cooker that Nino prepared before going to sleep the second time, and cracks one egg over each bowl of rice swiftly but accurately before chucking the broken eggshells across the kitchen into the tall, sliding wastebasket that's built into one of the cupboards near the stove that he's pulled open while filling up the rice bowls for this purpose.
The loud, hurried racket he's making begins to do its job of waking up the quintuplets, starting with Itsuki, then Nino, followed shortly by the others. Sitting up on the couch, the youngest quintuplet squints irritably over to the kitchen where all the banging of cupboard doors and sharp cracks of eggshells are coming from.
"What on earth are you doing first thing in the morning, Uesugi-kun? If you're hungry, you can always just wake Nino up to have her make you something, can you not?" she calls over in a somewhat raspy morning voice.
Fuutarou grimaces back at her briefly as he carefully tops the rice and eggs in their bowls with soy sauce first before using a salt shaker to gingerly apply light dashes of salt to finish the simple breakfast meals.
"We're gonna be late for school. Hurry up and get ready to leave, all of you!"
The words "late for school" pierce through the air like bricks thrown through glass windows, and all the quintuplets except for Ichika, who hasn't gotten up yet, spin around at the big clock that's built into the wall high above the flatscreen TV.
Naturally, Itsuki is the first to react audibly, and she does so by letting out a small but high-pitched scream of horror, and even her ahoge almost jumps out of her head with how frightened it looks.
"Aaaaaaaaaaahhhh! ! ! ! ! Wh-Why is it already past eight o'clock?!" she cries out shrilly, which finally gets Ichika to wake up as well and pull her heavy head off the glass tabletop to rub her eyes at what's going on.
"Wait, why did we - how did we all oversleep?!" Miku cries as well, her confused blue eyes darting around at the rest of her sisters. "Did - did none of us set alarms...?!"
"And we only have about twenty minutes...I think we're in some deep trouble right now..." Yotsuba groans, holding her hands over her head in sinking misery.
"What about breakfast? What are we going to do about breakfast?!" Itsuki frets with panic.
"Ugh, I need to go do makeup, quick..." Nino grumbles as she takes off swiftly for the second floor to her room.
"Mmmmunya, munya...Onee-chan is still pretty sleepy, so she's gonna go back to sleep...make sure to take my midterms for me, pwetty pwease..." Ichika mumbles as she lets her face sink back down into her arms against the glass tabletop, but Itsuki reaches over and manages to catch her face before it can land against her hands.
"Oh no you do not, Ichika, we're about to be late for our midterms and you still want to sleep?! Please wake up!"
"I've got breakfast taken care of, and I'll put your stuff into your bags. All of you, change into your uniforms, now!" Fuutarou barks at the girls, and the force he puts behind his voice startles the girls, even Ichika, because not once has he raised his voice like that at them before with such intensity. "You don't change, you don't eat!"
The threat of going to school and taking their midterms of all things without any food in their stomachs is enough to incite action in the girls, and most certainly for Itsuki, who positively turns and bolts like her name's Yotsuba to go to her room to change into her school uniform, as do the rest of the sisters - with Ichika, naturally, lagging a little behind, dragging her feet up the stairs sleepily. As the girls are busy changing and doing makeup in their rooms, Fuutarou carries the small bowls with seasoned rice and egg over to the glass table all at once, putting his prior restaurant waiting experience to good use here, and he makes a second trip back to the kitchen to grab five glasses of water to put next to the rice bowls waiting for the girls to come back and eat them. He also packs the girls' belongings together wherever he can; Itsuki's and Ichika's bags are already down here on the first floor, so the young tutor takes the liberty of packing those two girls' school stuff into their bags so that they don't have to worry about doing it themselves, and for everyone else, he stacks up their books, papers, and pencil bags neatly in small, consolidated piles so that it's easy for their owners to pack them once they come back down from their rooms.
Just as Fuutarou is working on packing up his own books and papers, most of which are just reference books, worksheets, and practice tests that he's had the girls take, the girls begin filing down the stairs to rejoin him.
"Here, grab a bowl from the table and pack your stuff," Fuutarou urges them, clasping the main pocket of his messenger bag shut and pulling it up over his shoulder.
"But...we just don't have enough time," Miku worries aloud, glancing urgently up at the clock, which now reads 8:14. "It's about a forty-five minute walk from here to school. Even if we run, we won't be able to make it..."
"I can! I've run back and forth from home to school before!" Yotsuba interjects energetically as she wolfs down her rice bowl alongside her younger sister Itsuki, though for markedly different reasons.
"Well, other than you then...the rest of us don't have three-minute kilometer times like you do," Miku retorts.
"That's right, Yotsuba might get there in time, but that doesn't account for how the rest of us are gonna get there," Nino says, having done her makeup as quickly as she could, though she dabs a bit at her face at places where she feels she could use a bit of touch-up.
"You either walk or get a ride to school, right? What were you planning to do today?" Fuutarou asks.
"We've been walking to school lately; we didn't expect this all to happen, so I doubt we would've planned otherwise," Nino answers. "We can't call a cab or anything now, the services we normally use need at least a half an hour's amount of advance time to schedule one of their drivers."
"Goddamn bourgeoisie."
"Shut yer trap! And besides, even if we were to go with the el cheapo taxi services, it's not like they can get here instantly either! And with traffic and other stuff to consider, by this point, we'll be late either way!"
A tense silence befalls the six high schoolers, broken only by the clinking of chopsticks and sounds of munching.
"So? Anyone got any bright ideas, then?" Nino shrugs, taking her time with her own rice bowl, now that she's resigned herself to the fact that they're going to be late to school, no matter what.
"Well, since Yotsuba can make it to school, let's have her get there. Even if we all get screwed and can't take our midterms, at least Yotsuba should be able to," Ichika suggests quickly.
"Ah...but..." Having set down her empty rice bowl on the table, Yotsuba hesitates, glancing first over at her eldest sister, then to everyone else. "...but I don't wanna feel like I'm leaving everyone behind."
"Oh c'mon, don't be like that now of all times. Just because we all overslept, doesn't mean we have to drag you down and make you unable to take your midterms."
"And speaking of oversleeping, shouldn't you have woken us up on time? You're our tutor, you know! And this whole fucking overnight studying thing was your idea! Us being late for school right now is your fault, you know! What do you have to say for yourself, huh?!" Nino jams her finger in the direction of her tutor before her, who's got a difficult expression on his face and a hand up to his chin, deep in thought.
"Nino, stop it! It's not his fault!" Miku flares up alongside her sister, immediately jumping to her tutor's defense as she's prone to do whenever Nino starts criticizing him for something.
"Yeah, I'm with Miku on this one, Nino, that's pretty unfair for you to put the blame on him when all of us just drifted off to sleep in the middle of studying and forgot to set alarms on our phones," Ichika points out, and Nino herself squeezes her lips together, remembering the small amount of time she spent earlier this morning drinking hot chocolate with Fuutarou out on the veranda.
But to the girls' surprise, Fuutarou interrupts.
"No, Nino's right, this is my fault. I put these little runes over everyone when you all fell asleep that block ambient noise so that you all could get a good night's sleep, even down here," the young tutor explains quickly. "I was planning on waking up early to wake the rest of you up so we could have plenty of time to get ready and head over to school, but I was the one who overslept instead. This is my bad."
"Hey, see? Even he says so!" Nino folds her arms in a see-I-told-you attitude to her two neighboring sisters.
"Aha...uh, well, I guess, at least, it did its job super well? I do feel really well-rested, more than I usually am..." Ichika shrugs awkwardly.
"Er...yeah...maybe...maybe it wasn't such a good idea to do that for us right before midterms...?" Yotsuba mentions slowly, afraid of sounding like she's trying to criticize Fuutarou herself.
"It's because of your injury the other night, wasn't it?"
Ichika, Nino, Miku, and Yotsuba all turn quickly to their youngest sister, who, having finished her rice bowl as well, lowers it in her hands while gazing intently back at their high school tutor.
"You are not the type of person who would oversleep, especially not for such an important day like today," Itsuki continues quietly. "And there is only one explanation that I can think of that would account for your mistake today."
"Wait, wait - Fuutarou-kun, is that true? You got hurt again?" Ichika spins around again the opposite direction to gawk up at her tutor, who clicks his tongue with sharp irritation and rubs his forehead in frustration.
"Itsuki, I told you not to talk about that. And we really don't need to deal with this at this point in time, either," Uesugi insists intently, glaring back at Ichika before she can say anything more on the subject. Both Yotsuba and Nino look away with two different degrees of discomfort, while Ichika stares back at their tutor in somewhat watered-down shock. Miku also looks down at her feet; she, too, had an idea about what had happened because she was the one who greeted Itsuki when she returned home that night and spied the blood splattered on her clothes and school bag, but she didn't ask Fuutarou about what happened since he was at school and seemed to be doing well enough, and she didn't want to bother him about it just to sate her own morbid curiosity. "Right now we need to settle on a way to get to school, and I've come up with a plan just now. I'll explain it as we go; if you're done eating, hand your bowls to me and I'll go put them away. In the meantime, go to the door and get your shoes on. Yotsuba, if you have more of those hair ribbons that you wear, go grab four of them, one for each of your sisters."
With their tutor in full manager mode, the quintuplets don't find it in them to protest his directive and head to the lobby collectively while Yotsuba dashes back up to her room to grab extra hair ribbons for everyone and Fuutarou makes a detour to the kitchen to put their bowls and chopsticks in the sink to be washed later; the half-drunk glasses of water will have to be taken care of later.
Once their tutor rendezvouses with the girls and pulls on his own shoes, he ushers them out and heads with them to the elevator lobby, talking to them while they walk:
"Itsuki already knows about this because we used one the other night, but I have a system of runes set up throughout the city that can act as one-time-use teleporters; I have them set up in case of emergencies, and today's an emergency, so we'll use it here. The closest - "
"Wait, wait, hold up, hold up, you can make teleporters?!" Nino blurts out, unable to hold her amazement back. "What is this, Star Trek!?"
"...the fact that you even know what that show is aside, yes, I can make teleporters. They're probably among the most complicated things I can do with the magecraft I know how to use, but I can still manage them, if only pretty inefficiently. But I can't just have us teleport anywhere I want; there needs to be an exit rune that we can teleport to, and unfortunately the closest one to school that I have active right now is still like ten minute's walk away, and right now it's already - " Fuutarou checks his phone, which reads 8:22. " - only eight minutes til the first bell rings."
The elevator arrives, and the six of them file in swiftly. Miku reaches for the lobby button, but Fuutarou swiftly reacts and grabs her wrist, causing her to jump a little - Fuutarou's grip is scarily strong. Instead, Fuutarou drops her wrist and punches the button for the roof.
"R-Roof? How do you have roof access, Fuutarou? Not even we have that..." Miku mumbles, realizing what button her tutor's just pressed.
"Let's just say that knowing your dad has its perks," Fuutarou grimaces with a dark grin. "Either way, the roof is where I have one of my teleporting runes, so we'll use that. I figured it'd come in handy one day, but I didn't quite expect to have to use it like this..."
"What, for your students who're running late for their midterms?" Ichika giggles.
"Yeah, see? Even you know how absurd that sounds. Anyways, we'll teleport over - once we do, Yotsuba, you run straight for the school as fast as you can; you should still be able to make it even with the time we have left. The PE teacher should be on duty to catch late students coming into the first-year student lockers, and especially today when it's midterms. Make sure he sees you, Yotsuba. The rest of you, get your best Yotsuba impressions ready."
The elevator doors slide open to let them out into the roof access lobby, and climbing the stairs nervously after Fuutarou, wondering if they're really allowed to be here, the quintuplets, except for Itsuki who's been here before, trot after their tutor, who points at Nino.
"You have that passcard I gave you from before? I need that one, specifically," he says, and so the quintuplet fishes it out for him, who uses it to unlock the roof access door before handing it back to Nino.
The quintuplets head out to the large pentagonally-shaped rooftop of the high-rise, still following their classmate down to the helipad before them.
"Wow ~ so this is what the roof looks like. Gosh, the view must be absolutely killer from up here..." Ichika wonders breathlessly, taking as much of a look around as she can while Fuutarou preps the large rune that he's planted here.
"Was this how Uesugi-kun brought you back home from that other night?" Nino mutters to Itsuki, who nods a little shyly. "Wow, lucky you."
"I-It was not lucky at all! Uesugi-kun made so much fun of me when we returned!" Itsuki pouts impatiently.
"Did he? About what?"
"About - about - stuff!"
"...that's awfully vague, don't'cha think?"
"Girls, pay attention, please!" Fuutarou barks back at them once the teleporter rune is ready to be used. "So let me repeat the plan real quick: Yotsuba, you run in ahead of us and make sure the PE teacher sees you. Afterwards, the four of you should've gotten a ribbon from Yotsuba; wear that just like how Yotsuba wears hers and go in posing as Yotsuba. This'll be our little Operation Doppelgänger that'll get you girls around being late."
"Ugh...I'm...I am not so confident in my impression of Yotsuba..." Itsuki worries as Fuutarou beckons the girls to follow him and step onto the rune, and once everyone's standing in the center, he activates the rune, giving the girls a countdown.
"Stay relaxed, girls, you're gonna feel like crap if you tense up when this thing 'ports us. Take a deep breath and loosen up, I'll count us down. Five, four, three, two, one!"
The flash of light that flares up from the helipad on the high-rise roof dies down, revealing a drastic but expected change in scenery - the quintuplets and their tutor find themselves now standing in a moderately sized pocket in a back alley somewhere.
"W-Whoa...! It...it actually worked..." Ichika remarks breathlessly, blinking about them because she's hardly able to believe that teleportation is actually a thing. "Wow, being a mage has its perks, huh..."
"Not...not really..."
The palpable amount of strain immediately grabs the attention of the quintuplets, who all turn around sharply to see what the matter is, and Itsuki and Nino both throw their hands over their mouths: an unmistakable blotch of blood the size of a large fist is blooming slowly over his right side, with a marked trail dripping down to make its way towards the waist. Fuutarou doesn't let their blue eyes dwell on it too much; he puts his hand over it and presses it firmly against the reopened wound, squeezing his eyes shut while letting his head hang as a painkiller as his hand over his side works urgently to stop the bleeding.
"Uesugi-san?! Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no - " Yotsuba begins to panic, wide-eyed, at the sight of the wound Fuutarou told her about yesterday morning being reopened, and she paces up to him, with Miku and Ichika also following suit. "Uesugi-san, please, if you need to go to the hospital - "
"Shh, keep your voices down," Fuutarou hisses at the worrying girls. "Right now we're next to a pretty busy street at this time of day; if you know where Hanamaru Udon is, we're literally right behind it."
"Oh! Hanamaru is like, right outside campus, if you walk west!" Yotsuba notes, momentarily distracted by her tutor's diversion.
"Right. This isn't serious; what happened was...I forgot to account for all of us teleporting at the same time, since I usually only ever teleport myself and that's pretty simple. But for every person I teleport, I have to commit more mana and do more magic calculations to make sure the teleportation process executes smoothly. Since we were in a rush, and because I forgot that I wasn't teleporting just myself this time around, I had to do what's called an emergency surge, which forces my body to produce a whole bunch of mana to fuel the teleport, but it puts a whole bunch of strain on the body as a result. That strain made my injury open back up, but it didn't hurt my liver at least, so I got pretty lucky there."
Taking the time to explain quickly, Fuutarou then raises his head back up to stare hard back at the hesitant Yotsuba.
"Get going, we'll follow after you. Don't worry about me, this won't kill me."
"That kind of makes me worry even more if you say that, though?!"
But Yotsuba feels her will to protest slip away when Fuutarou's steeled gaze turns into a full-on glare.
"Either you can let me deal with this on my own, or you can make all your sisters and you fail your midterms instantly, Yotsuba, I don't think this is a very hard decision to make."
The fourth quintuplet freezes where she stands; Fuutarou might as well slap her across the face to get the same effect. The rest of the quintuplets, also growing wide-eyed at Fuutarou's words, glance nervously back and forth, slowly, from their sister to their tutor.
Nodding suddenly, Yotsuba then turns and bolts out of the alleyway at top speed, towards the direction of their school.
"Hey, Uesugi-kun..." Ichika mutters softly after Yotsuba's well and gone from the scene, "...don't you think you were a bit harsh on her? And it's not like she was the only one who reacted like that."
"And let's not forget whose fault it was that we're even in this position," Nino adds with crossed arms.
"But - but - !" Miku once more tries to come to Fuutarou's defense, but the boy in question speaks up first before she can get started.
"Right, I get it. And I know I was harsh on her, but I don't have much of a choice at the moment. I'll make it up to her later; make sure to tell her the next time I see her. In any case, the rest of you, get your ribbons on, and I hope your Yotsuba impressions are good."
"How do you suppose you'll walk around school like that, though?" Ichika points down at the blood trail streaking down his shirt. "You don't seriously plan on going around and telling people that it's just paint or something, are you?"
"...I'll be honest, I'm not terribly sure of that myself..."
Once she's put on her hair ribbon, Miku quickly takes off her signature pale blue cardigan and hands it to her tutor.
"Wear this," she offers. "It'll hide your shirt underneath. Don't worry about the blood getting on it, I can just wash it once you give it back."
Strapped for choice, Fuutarou nods and receives the cardigan from her, finishing his emergency treatment at around the same time.
"I'll probably look pretty weird in this, but it's better than the alternative..." Fuutarou remarks to himself as he pulls the cardigan on. "Thanks, Miku. Everyone else ready?"
The four remaining quintuplets nod, and together, they emerge from the alleyway and cross the street to get onto campus.
"Ichika, text Yotsuba to make sure that she's gotten in without any problems," the young tutor orders, and Ichika complies.
"You really ought to take the time to get our numbers, Uesugi-kun," Itsuki suggests. "You only know Ichika's, right? After midterms, the next time we all meet together, we will give you our numbers so that you can communicate with us more smoothly."
"Huh? Wait, I have to give him my number too?" Nino asks incredulously.
"Last time I checked, you were also a quintuplet, Nino."
"Yeah, that's a good idea, but let's leave it for later. For now, let's just concentrate on taking those midterms before your dad fires my ass," Fuutarou agrees.
"Not that our scores right now would be of any help to you in that regard anyway," Nino scoffs caustically.
"Right, it's not, but a chance is better than no chance. Not to mention, it's gonna be pretty fucking pathetic of me to tell your dad that the reason why you all failed your midterms is because I overslept and forgot to wake everyone up on time."
"I still don't think that's your fault. None of us set any alarms...!" Miku insists.
"Maybe not, but the spells that I mentioned that I put over all of you would've blocked those from reaching you, so none of you would've woken up on time anyway. Nino isn't wrong, Miku, the burden of responsibility of how things are turning out right now is on me alone. Ichika, did Yotsuba get back to you?"
"Yeah, just now, she said she made in it safe," the eldest quintuplet relays, holding up her phone.
"Okay, good. And right on cue..."
The young mage gestures quickly to the four quintuplets with him as they approach the first-year student lockers, where, just as expected, the scary-looking PE teacher infamous for his strictness and nonexistent tolerance for rule breakers and deviants across campus is standing guard, ready to catch any students coming in late.
"Alright, ladies. Operation Doppelgänger starts now. Good luck," Fuutarou nods at the four girls as all of them hide around the corner of the school building whose entrance at which the PE teacher is standing guard.
"I'll go in first..."
Nakano Miku, perhaps contrary to her reserved nature, surges forward and fearlessly approaches the intimidating teacher, who notices her walk around the corner and scowls at her deeply as she bids him good morning.
"Hey, you're late!" he booms at her, but Miku stops him in his tracks by pointing up to her hair ribbon.
"Whoa, whoa, don't you recognize this ribbon, sir? I had to step outside for a second to help a teacher out," Miku informs him cheerfully, just like Yotsuba would. Fuutarou and her sisters stealthily watch the encounter go down from their corner of the building.
"...must be nice, being able to pull something like that off, huh?" Fuutarou remarks under his breath.
"Says Mr. Mage over here who can literally teleport around the city," Nino retorts swiftly without skipping a beat.
"Touche. But seriously, I see now why you all say Miku's the best at impersonating you guys."
"Just Miku things, really. I don't know where and when she's learned to mimic us so well, but that's kind of how it's always been," Ichika smiles in amusement. "Oh, looks like they're about to be done."
"Hmmm...yes, that face, and the ribbon too, as you mentioned...I do remember seeing you come in earlier. Well, your midterms are about to start, so hurry it up and get to class," the PE teacher says gruffly, pointing his thumb over his shoulder.
"Yes, sir ~ !"
As Miku heads in, Fuutarou ushers in the others one by one, giving each of them a few minutes' berth between quintuplets so that their repeated appearances will at least seem believable. As Itsuki is admitted without a hitch, Fuutarou can't help but grin a little at the PE teacher, who is growing very visibly confused as to why he's seeing the same student walk through his posted entrance four times over in a span of ten minutes. Though, Fuutarou wonders to himself why the teacher isn't stopping Nino or Itsuki, the last two to enter, to verify whether or not it really is the same student; they're all even sporting different clothes, too. Maybe the teacher is just too dumb to notice? How the hell did he even become a teacher here at this school if he keeps rolling less than 5's on all of his spot checks?
"Oooh...I...I deceived a teacher...what have I done...?" Itsuki groans shakily as she joins the rest of her sisters, including Yotsuba who's waited outside the student lockers for them. Nino just scowls at her.
"Ah, get over it already, no one likes that teacher anyway with how hardass he is with everything and everyone."
"Well, in any case, we all got in, which is good. Now's the hard part though of actually doing well on our midterms," Ichika reminds her family, and Itsuki nods, getting out of her miniature depression of having lapsed into a school deviant for a moment.
"Yes...all of us have worked and studied hard so far. It is now time to show Uesugi-kun and Father what we can do, what we are truly made of," Itsuki states confidently.
"And Nino, don't go failing your tests on purpose," Miku glares a little at her older sister, who snaps back,
"I won't, I already said I won't! Fuck's sake, you still haven't let that one go?"
"Ah, speaking of which..." Yotsuba looks around quickly, "...where's...where's Uesugi-san?"
At the mention of their tutor, the quintuplets look around as well, realizing that their tutor has not joined them.
"Wait a minute...of course he wouldn't come in with us, he can't pretend like he's one of us," Miku groans loudly, her chest filling up with cold ice at the uncomfortable epiphany. "Did he...did he only focus on getting us into school, but not...himself?"
"Sounds like him, alright," Ichika sighs. "Ichika-onee-chan's gonna give him a good talking-to after school, don't you girls worry - "
"Spare me that talk; you all should be in class by now, no?"
Fuutarou's voice pops in out of nowhere, and the girls swiftly turn to face the lockers, where Fuutarou is casually walking in from to join them.
"Sorry that took a bit longer than I expected, I had to make what's called a Presence Concealment spell to slip past the teacher outside. Makes people unaware of my presence, as long as I'm not doing anything that would explicitly draw attention to me," Fuutarou explains again. "Anyway, c'mon, let's go. It ain't my fault if you all are late to the actual start of midterms by this point."
As Uesugi is heading off to their classroom, the quintuplets all look at each other.
"We haven't done this in a while, but should we do a quick Quintuplet Special?" Ichika asks.
"Yeah, yeah! Let's do one real quick for good luck!" Yotsuba nods wholeheartedly, and she grabs Nino's hands. "You too, Nino!"
"W-Why?! Why do I have to do it too? This kind of stuff's lame to do at our age!" Nino tries to protest, but the sisters all convene their hands, holding each other's thumbs and pinky fingers that intertwine and lock with each other.
"Let's all get good grades and surprise Fuutarou-kun and Dad, yeah?" Ichika asks her sisters.
"Let us fight like our lives depend on it. Uesugi-kun has been doing the same for us; it is only right that we behave the same towards our own battlefield," Itsuki nods.
"Yeah," Miku smiles brightly. "Let's do this, everyone."
"Ou ~ !" Yotsuba cheers. "C'mon, Nino, you too!"
"Ergh...O-Ouuu..." Nino awkwardly mimics Yotsuba, causing the sisters to all giggle together and head off after their tutor towards their homeroom to take their midterms.
The final bell of school rings to signal the end of the day, as the classroom is filled immediately with the groans of relief from all the students eager to go home after all the studying that they've done for the sake of their midterms today.
Having packed up her backpack the fastest, Miku hurries over to where her tutor is sitting in the middle of the room as Fuutarou is putting his pencils back into a side pouch of his messenger bag.
"Fuutarou, how are you feeling?" she asks with subdued concern so that their classmates around them won't eavesdrop on them.
"I'm good. Hanging in there, at least," her tutor responds with a quick thumbs-up gesture as he gets up from his desk. "More importantly, how well did you think you did?"
"Well...I..." Miku lowers her gaze, almost in shame. "...I...tried my best."
Miku peeks back up at him through his bangs, expecting him to sigh heavily or show some other sign of frustration or disappointment, but instead, she just finds a small smile peeking back down at her.
"Then that's all that matters. Good work, Miku."
The third quintuplet blinks silently back up at her classmate, but before she can say anything else, the rest of her sisters join them as well, ready to head home after a long day of testing.
"Hanging in there, Uesugi-san?" Yotsuba asks as well, and Fuutarou nods, turning to her.
"Sorry for earlier this morning, yelling at you like that. That was unwarranted," he apologizes to her calmly, but Yotsuba shakes her head back at him.
"I shouldn't have let myself be distracted. I mean, you know yourself better than anyone else does, so I should have trusted you. I mean, we already trust you enough as our tutor, right?" she points out. "So let's go home together, Uesugi-san ~ "
"Hmm..."
"What, you seem pretty uncertain," Ichika pipes up. "I thought you said you'd be fine by now?"
"I am, but I do need to head home. Work-related stuff...that, and I haven't seen Raiha in a bit, so I'm sure she's getting a bit worried about me."
"Why, was Raiha-chan not at home lately?"
"No, she was. It's just that I'd been busy prepping for midterms myself, but mainly because I've been taking care of this - " Fuutarou points down to his right side. " - and I'd been prepping for the tutoring stuff that we did yesterday. Lots of prep work, basically, and I had to run around the city the last few days anyway just to get ready. Let's get a move on, we can talk as we go."
So the quintuplets and their tutor begin heading for the girls' penthouse, bidding goodbye to their friends whom they run into on their way out of campus.
"So what's our tutoring schedule gonna look like now?" Nino asks, walking with her phone out while checking the Twitter feeds of her favorite Japanese actors.
"I don't know. That'll depend on what kinds of scores the five of you are gonna get on your midterms today, remember?"
"Ah..."
The girls are all once again reminded of the condition that their tutor informed them of during their first overnight study session that their father apparently put on him, and a heavy air hangs over them as they shuffle down the street towards home.
"...so Dad really was serious about all that..." Ichika mutters under her breath.
"The tests were still as hard as ever...I'm not so sure if we'll be able to make it..." Yotsuba adds sadly.
"Before any of you even ask, I did the best I could on mine. I didn't try to intentionally fail any of them," Nino repeats herself, just to cover all her bases.
"No one even asked you," Fuutarou scowls down at her.
"Just in case anyone asks, okay!?"
"I just...regret that I did not join everyone else in studying with Uesugi-kun. Maybe it really would not have made much of a difference, but...it would have been better than what I ended up doing, which was to not join and have regrets about it all," Itsuki admits somberly.
Miku shyly tugs on her own pale blue cardigan that Fuutarou is wearing to hide the bloodstains on his white dress shirt underneath to get his attention.
"...what's going to happen if Papa fires you as our tutor? Do you know?" she asks uncertainly.
"Hm. Well, let's start with the obvious, and that's that I won't be teaching you girls anymore, which means I have no reason to stop by your place anymore," Fuutarou says plainly. "So Nino's gonna finally get what she wants after all this time."
A few of the quintuplets force a few chuckles, and Nino grows irritated at Fuutarou's statement.
"...did you really need to point me out on that? Go fuck yourself..." she swears under her breath, turning away from her tutor. Something about Fuutarou saying that about her genuinely pisses her off somehow.
"But your dad mentioned nothing about my other responsibilities in regards to the five of you," Fuutarou continues. "His words were 'if even one of the quintuplets fails, I will be terminating your contract as their private tutor'. So you'll still see me around, but it'll mainly be at school. And unless we specifically arranged to meet at some point, if you see me outside of school, it probably won't be for a good reason."
"So what you're saying is, if you stop working as our tutor, every time we see you, you'll end up with another new injury or something like that, right?" Ichika doesn't even bother trying to smile try to lighten up the mood. "...I can't exactly say that I'm a fan of that."
Fuutarou pauses.
"I agree," he says quietly. "I'm not a fan of making my friends worry about me."
Ichika's blue eyes dart to the side, over at Fuutarou.
"Things are only going to get harder from here on out for me, regardless of whether or not I end up keeping this whole tutoring thing going," he continues. "And your dad, being who he is, probably knows this too. There's a chance that he's aware of the situation that I'm in right now, and that he's asking me to test my skill as a tutor to make sure that I'm able to do everything that my contract with him contains with results that he finds satisfactory. So if it turns out that I can't tutor you girls adequately enough, what are the chances that I'll be able to focus on protecting you, too?"
"But that's - that's ridiculous. What if you can't do as good of a job protecting us because you're busy tutoring us and preparing lessons for us in the meantime?" Miku counter-argues.
"A good point, but when it comes to business, it's rare for people to care about the reasons behind why things happen if it's between two parties that aren't already in an intimate relationship or something. Your dad doesn't really give a shit about how I go about doing my job; when it comes to tutoring, all he cares about is that we're not doing anything explicitly shady like cheating or forging test documents or anything of the sort, and when it comes to bodyguarding, he doesn't give a shit at all what I do so long as it's nothing blatantly drastic or wrong. All Dr. Nakano cares about is whether or not the five of you are passing your tests like you should be, especially now that I'm here, and that you all stay safe under my watch."
Uesugi Fuutarou takes a look around at his quintuplet students.
"My point is this: in the likely event that I step down from my tutorship position, things are going to be a lot simpler for me. I don't need to worry about keeping up with class studies, I don't need to bother with crafting lessons, I don't need to grade any more papers or tests that I have you all take, and I don't need to go through the pain of making those tests in the first place. I'll admit, this tutoring thing was a lot harder than I expected - I went into this being all arrogant and stuff, thinking that this would be a walk in the fucking park. I'm a mage; my usual jobs consist of me doing stuff that's a thousand times more dangerous, of course I'd be able to handle tutoring a few kids, even if they are quintuplets."
Fuutarou shakes his head, which serves as a mental reset for his thoughts.
"No, I was wrong. Individually, if I could have done each part of my contract with you separately - as in, I only had to worry about tutoring you all or I only had to focus on keeping you all safe - I probably wouldn't have had any problems. But I didn't anticipate that having to do both at the same time would turn out to be so draining. And as a result, as of the last two weeks...I've been slipping up."
He then removes the pale blue cardigan prematurely, handing it back to its original owner.
"Again, sorry for getting it dirty," he says down at Miku.
"Wait, are you sure it's - ?" Miku inhales sharply as Nino and Itsuki again avert their eyes to avoid having to look at the dried bloodstains on his white dress shirt.
"The cut itself is fine; I just need to restitch it later tonight. And I don't need to worry about people noticing this, they're going to assume that I'm okay because I'm walking with a bunch of cute girls," Fuutarou replies swiftly and mechanically.
"Ah - Uesugi-san called us cute," Yotsuba points out.
"Wow. So you really are a proper high school guy, why didn't you say so earlier?" Ichika snorts a little, reaching over and ramming her fist lightly into her tutor's left arm. "Well, at least you know how devilishly cute we all are ~ "
Sighing and refusing to take Ichika's bait, Fuutarou stays on track with his own thoughts.
"Like I said, I've been slipping up. It's now made clear to me that I don't quite have what it takes yet to be both a good tutor and a good mage, to do both sides of my contract well. So whatever happens when we get our midterm scores back, I'm not going to be upset, and neither should any of you. Even if we didn't have enough time to make all the studying you've done worth it, the improvement that you've all shown, even Nino's and Itsuki's, are impressive in their own rights, because you all went from basically guaranteed failure to having a decent chance at passing your midterms. And don't take this the wrong way, but that's a kind of accomplishment that most people can't say they have."
Approaching a certain intersection, Fuutarou stops, causing his students to stop with him.
"...are you so sure that we're all going to fail? I mean, look, we all have our good subjects. With a little bit of luck, we can - " Ichika begins to say, but Fuutarou talks right over her.
"I'm not saying that I'm certain you're all gonna fail, but given the progress that everyone's made and where you all currently stand now, as your tutor, I feel obligated to tell you that I'll probably lose my job as your tutor."
Fuutarou raises a hand up to scratch his cheek a little.
"...I guess I'm just venting a little while I still have the chance," he determines.
"Well, if that is supposed to be venting, Nino could sure learn from you," Itsuki chuckles a little, drawing the ire of Nino beside her.
"Maybe. But she wouldn't be Nino if she did." Fuutarou gestures down the path perpendicular to the route they usually take to go to the penthouse. "My house's this way, so I'll be going on ahead. For now, we won't have any lessons so I can focus on recovery, and because it's a bit pointless for us to keep having lessons, given the situation right now. See you all at school next Monday."
The quintuplets bid him goodbye, but with much quieter and much less expressive ways than they normally do lately, and they watch him walk off on his own, with his quick and efficient gait making his profile smaller and smaller every time the quintuplets turn to watch him leave.
"Hey, guys..." Yotsuba wonders aloud softly, "...do you think Uesugi-san's tired of dealing with us, after all?"
To everyone's surprise, it's Nino who answers Yotsuba first.
"That guy's not being honest with himself, it's so obvious," Nino snaps quietly with a firm arm-fold to go with her remark. "One day he's joking around and having fun with us, the next day he's like this. You don't do that unless you can't make your mind up about the people you're with."
"But Fuutarou's different; his case is way more complicated," Miku points out. "We've never known someone like him before. And he leads a life that's so different from ours that...he might have different reasons to act the ways he does than what we expect."
"Regardless of why he's behaving like that, are you all fine with how this's turning out, then? We studied all this time, studied so much, just to have him go away like this? Are you girls fine with that?" Ichika briefly pauses on Nino. "...well, maybe except you."
"Oh, fucking quit it with that gag, already!" Nino hisses at Ichika, who parries her malicious intent with a stone-faced grin.
"Now you know what Itsuki feels whenever we make fun of how much she eats."
"Indeed. Welcome to the Bullied Quintuplet Club, Miss Nino, please enjoy your stay." Itsuki gives Nino a wide but empty smile as she puts a hand on her sister's shoulder.
"I don't want to be in this club in the first place!"
"But what exactly are we supposed to do, though? Because Uesugi-san's right, the only thing that matters now is how well we score on our midterms. If we don't do well on those, then...it's all over," Yotsuba laments softly.
"What do you mean? You're making it sound like this is something we have to decide on when it's not. This is his responsibility, let him handle it," Nino declares. "Hey, the crosswalk's going, let's go already."
Yotsuba and Itsuki follow after Nino as she leads the charge of the quintuplets across the pedestrian crossing lane to reach the other side of the intersection to continue on their way back home, while Ichika lags behind with Miku to bring up their rear.
"Hey, this isn't what you want, is it?" the eldest asks the third quintuplet. "You don't want it to all end just like this, do you?"
"...I don't know," Miku mumbles sadly. "On one hand, I don't want it to end. I want Fuutarou to keep teaching us; some of the most fun we've had lately is when he's around. But on the other hand, I also can't help but maybe think that Yotsuba has a point. What if Fuutarou is tired of us? And even if he isn't...you saw how he's been getting more and more hurt because of us the past two weeks. The fact that he's getting hurt out there while we were all studying for midterms isn't a coincidence, I don't think. Maybe for his sake, he shouldn't teach us anymore. Maybe we're just getting in his way. I don't want someone who's our friend constantly getting hurt like that. I get that it's his job to protect us and whatever, but...knowing that he needs to do that on top of making sure to tutor us as best he can, given his circumstances..."
Taking a deep breath, Miku lowers her gaze, letting her bangs shift and cover more of her eyes than usual.
"...I don't know if I can handle knowing that."
The two sisters at first walk together silently, but then another quintuplet comes to join them from ahead of them.
"I noticed you two talking on your own. If it's about Uesugi-san..." Yotsuba says quietly so that Nino and Itsuki, who are now talking about the parfait place that their tutor promised to take them to if they did well on their midterms, discuss what kinds of parfaits they'll go for.
"Er, well...we weren't really talking about much. Just...what we could do to...keep Fuutarou-kun as our tutor," Ichika says quickly, and Yotsuba also hangs her head alongside Miku, also at a loss for ideas. But contrary to her two sisters, Ichika hardens her resolve. "Then I guess this'll have to be a job for Ichika-onee-chan, huh?"
"Huh? Do you have something in mind?" Miku asks, and she and Yotsuba perk up at her.
"It's just a preliminary idea for now. It might work...but I'll wait until after we get our midterm scores back and decide what to do from there. You just need to sit back and have a little bit of faith..."