Nakano Miku opens her eyes to peer into darkness that slowly clears a little to reveal the faint outlines of the ceiling in her room.
The digital clock on her desk reads 3:02 AM when she glances slowly over.
Miku made sure to use the bathroom before going to sleep for the night. She begins to groan faintly, because there's only one reason that she knows of that would explain why she's randomly woken up at three in the morning.
As expected, the pain returns to her eyes. The stabbing, biting, ripping sensation - she hasn't had another attack like this since the last time it happened, which she's grateful for, but it seems that her good fortune has run out, and now she must pay the price for it with interest. This time, not only do her eyes suffer the same tremendous pain as they always have, but to make things worse, her eyeballs feel like they're slowly freezing from the inside out, as though they're turning into dry ice inside her sockets.
"Hnnng...auuughhhh...aaaaaaaaaoooooowwwww...! ! !"
This freezing pain in her eyes now is brand new; she doesn't remember these attacks of hers ever coming with this feeling that her eyes are freezing inside her own skull. And as such, Miku is not mentally prepared to deal with this type of pain - as of late, she'd been getting better and better at enduring the pain, with her body and mind adjusting its levels of pain tolerance to help her withstand these attacks, but now that she's been thrown another curveball like this, Miku is dragged back in time, back to the days when she first began suffering from these attacks, when the most she could do was roll over in her bed with her face buried into her pillow and cry helplessly, quietly, and miserably.
"...please...stop...stop...stop..." Miku croaks, her cold tears already moistening her pillowcase as her arms, stricken with sleep paralysis yet again, are barely able to edge forward to clamp awkwardly around her pillow. "...I don't...want this...please, stop...! Hrrrk...!"
The moment the freezing sensation in her eyes encapsulates her eyeballs whole, the darkness induced in her vision by her pillowcase swallows her senses whole too, and Miku can sense her body transition mysteriously from her room to the other place that she's also familiar with, but not by choice.
Now that she's here, the tormented quintuplet finds that it's not just her eyes that feel cold; now, her entire body experiences the same stingingly chilling sensation. It can't be because of the environment...is what Miku thinks at first, but it's impossible for her to simply ignore the fact that it is raining in this ocean of blood noticeably harder than before. Is it because of this stronger rain that she's feeling cold like this for the first time, as far as she's aware? No, it can't be, because she's feeling cold from the inside out; this bloody rain alone cannot be responsible for this extra layer of torment that's seemed to have developed for seemingly no reason other than to torture her even further.
Once again, after a few moments of standing on this harrowing mirror sea of blood, Miku is forced to watch the same pale body from before surface before her. This time, her terror and pain are so great that they manage to force her arms into action, which cover her eyes with their hands so that she doesn't have to witness the mortifying scene of the body crumbling into a million pieces just to sink back down into the sea of blood.
Whatever or whoever is inflicting this phenomenon onto Miku must really have a grudge against her, because as soon as Miku sinks her face into her hands, she feels a sharp pain slashing through both of her wrists, and immediately after that, her arms feel a little bit lighter, and Miku can no longer feel her face with her hands. Opening her eyes, she discovers why: both of her hands are missing.
As her hands are slowly sinking into the sea by her feet as though they're sinking into a pit of molasses, Miku lets out a terrible scream of agony. Not from the physical pain, but from the horror of having her hands cut off. She can't even feel any pain coming from her wrists where her hands have been taken off, apart from the initial slash, but the pain might as well be there with how much she wants to scream. But that scream never comes; all Miku can do is open her mouth and twitch her lips about like a fish out of water, unable to make any noise with her vocal chords that have mysteriously gone AWOL. Now that she realizes, Miku doesn't remember being able to make any kind of sound in this place at all, so why did she think that screaming would have any different outcome?
But little did she know that the worst was yet to come. Instead of crumbling into shards of ice as it's done before, the floating, surfaced corpse of the beautiful woman begins to crack, like the surface ice of a frozen lake that is beginning to thaw with the advent of spring and warmer temperatures. Three times in total does the body crack, etching three horrible, jagged blue lines streaking across the width of the corpse.
For whatever reason, Miku cannot handle looking at these lines. These are just ordinary lines; they cannot possibly be more frightening to behold than that body of a woman that disturbingly disintegrates into ice or the mirror sea on which she stands that very well may be made up of nothing but human blood. Yet these lines that she sees cracking the body apart is what sets Miku's senses over the edge and tumbling down into the quagmire of instability - and a result, Miku once more feels her body retch and quake dangerously as she tries yet again to scream out her intensifying agony.
And as if to simply give her one last kick in the face while she's down, Miku happens to crank her neck downwards in her maddening agony when her shaking, constricted Mystic Eyes are forced to angle themselves downward, back at the bloody stumps of her arms where her hands used to be. While the stumps look as expected if one's hands are cut cleanly off, it's what coats the edges of the stumps that gets Miku, because they're outlined in the same blue color of the lines that mark the corpse floating on the water before her.
"Miku! Miku, Miku!"
Snapping her flooding eyes open, Miku finds herself in the arms of her sister Nino, who's staring with acute terror down at her younger sister. Nino has climbed onto Miku's bed and pulled her off her pillow in an effort to try to figure out what's going on, and eventually the low hisses that she's been using to call out her sister's name succeed against her expectations in getting Miku to come back to reality.
Miku's skin is much clammier than usual, this new bout of induced panic affecting her much more than the past couple of times that it's happened. Fat tears are still escaping from the corners of her eyes, and, worst of all, her icy blue Mystic Eyes are shining in the darkness, in full view of Nino's own purple Mystic Eyes.
Without warning, Miku buries her face into Nino's soft chest, causing Nino to yelp quietly in surprise, but as embarrassed as she feels that her sister is glomping her like this, Nino swallows her embarrassment for her sake and cradles her sister back, silently comforting her until Miku has calmed down enough and is able to pull away from her older sister on her own.
"Feeling better?" Nino asks softly just to make sure while Miku is wiping the rest of her tears away with her sleeves, and she nods back, but slowly and uncertainly. Nino takes the liberty of reaching back to Miku's desk nearby and turning on the desk lamp so that they can see each other as they talk, with the old blue paper crane still sitting directly underneath it on the lamp base. "Was that one of those...those things you have sometimes at night that you told Uesugi-kun about?"
"...yeah. I - " Miku hiccups terribly because of how hard she was crying, both into her pillow and into Nino's shirt. " - I'm okay now, it's...it's done for tonight."
Nino continues to somberly watch Miku keep drying her eyes in the dim light of the desk lamp behind them. She's not sure what to say in this kind of a situation, so Nino elects to stay silent to let Miku take the initiative once she's ready.
"...this is the first time you've come into my room to find me like this," Miku manages to force a small, sad smile back at her sister. "How did you know?"
The second quintuplet averts her Mystic Eyes uncomfortably, finding Miku looking at her with her own still active too.
"...don't laugh at me or anything, but...I...I, uh, felt something...going on in your room..." Nino mumbles, afraid of sounding like she's got the middle-school syndrome all of a sudden when she was the one who used to make fun of Miku and Yotsuba with because they're the ones who regularly watch anime. "...and I remembered that you have these panic attacks at night or something, so I came in to see if you were okay."
"Wait, but weren't you the one who used to make fun of me and Yotsuba back in middle school that we had chuunibyou?"
"Oh for fuck's sake, I was really hoping you wouldn't mention that!"
Nino's angry hiss provides Miku the therapeutic giggle that she needs to give her terrified and shell-shocked senses a much needed rest, and understanding this, Nino lets this one slide for Miku's sake.
"No, seriously...I woke up because I felt something going on here. I've...I've never had that happen before, I swear," Nino says somewhat breathlessly, holding a hand slowly over her face to shroud her eyes a little. "It's hard to describe...it's like I just...knew something was wrong. Geez, I really don't get all this magic stuff..."
Pulling her hand off her face, Nino locks eyes with her sister again, not letting the discomfort of her blurry vision being able to focus on only her sibling's Mystic Eyes clearly get in her way.
"I know this might seem a little weird for this time of night, especially since it's going to be Monday tomorrow and we have school, but...wanna head downstairs and have a cup of hot choco?" Nino offers.
"Hot choco? Er, well..." Miku tilts her head a little. "...you know I don't like chocolate, Nino."
"Then you can just have green tea or whatever."
"Is that okay, though? I feel like we might wake up the others..."
Nino shrugs widely. "I dunno, we might, but if we do, we'll just treat them to some hot chocolate or green tea, whatever."
Miku smiles gently at her sister in the dim light from her desk. Conversing with her like this has helped her get over the post-panic shock that she usually has to deal with much more quickly.
"You're just trying to make sure that I'm feeling better, right? Thank you, Nino," Miku says with soft earnest. "Even just talking like this a little bit with you's done so much more than what I could do alone."
"What, as in after you have one of these, uh, panic attacks?"
Miku nods.
"Do you even do anything?"
"...not really, no. I just...go use the bathroom to wash my face and stuff...and then come back and go to sleep, I guess..."
"So you don't really do anything."
"Like I said, not really."
Sighing deeply, Nino lowers her eyes down at her sister's blanket. "...I know we've fought a lot before, but...it'd make me feel bad knowing you were going through something like this and I just sat around knowing you were going through it and not doing anything about it." She swings her feet around and hops off Miku's bed lightly, pulling back her blanket for her sister. "C'mon."
The two of them gingerly tiptoe out of Miku's room and make their way downstairs, where they begin fixing themselves their beverages of choice after Nino puts her contacts back on in the bathroom.
"Also, hot chocolate at the end of May?" Miku questions, gazing down at the cup of hot chocolate that Nino is mixing. Remembering her nighttime escapade with their tutor, Nino jolts a little where she stands - she's quite thankful that they have the bathroom hallway light on as their only source of light so that Miku won't be as likely to see her face redden in the relative darkness.
"I-I just...felt like having something sweet. Y'know me, I like my sweet stuff," Nino says quickly, and the two sisters head over to the dark living room to sit down on the couch and enjoy their hot beverages together. "Besides, you brewed your tea hot, so what's the difference?"
"...that's true..." Miku murmurs in brief self-reflection as they both take initial sips of their drinks. "How have your eyes been so far, Nino? I hope they haven't been giving you trouble like mine have..."
Nino lowers her hot chocolate. "They haven't bothered me for a little while now, so I'm glad about that, yeah. But..."
"But what?"
"...seeing you tonight, how you were just a few moments ago..." Nino takes another sip of chocolate. "...I don't know if I can compare what happens to me with what happens to you."
Miku puts on an uncomfortable, sad smile. "I mean...we shouldn't try to compare them. It doesn't feel right..."
"Yeah, I get you..."
"Oh, add that to the short list of things the two of us can actually agree on."
Nino scowls over at her sister briefly. "I would hope that this would be something we'd be on the same page about."
Nodding, Miku also lowers her own hot cup of tea. "I might've told you this before, but I'd intended to keep those panic attacks to myself. If we'd never found out that we both had Mystic Eyes, nothing would have changed," she says. "I didn't want to bother everyone with what I was going through, you know? That, and...traditionally I've always been the weird one out among the five of us. Weird tastes, weird attitude, weird everything...so if you guys found this out about me too, then it would've just been one more thing that I would've made you all worry about."
"Well, that's certainly the case with me," Nino grumpily replies, watching the hot vapor rise from the contents of her own mug into the dark air of the early morning living room.
"Mm. Sorry..."
The sisters take a moment to enjoy their respective drinks, but Nino lowers hers first.
"Remember the last time we talked like this in the middle of the morning?" she asks Miku without looking over. "It was right after Uesugi-kun saved us from those crooks in the warehouse, and we were arguing about our stances on having him as our tutor."
"Of course. Why, what about it?"
Nino gazes straight ahead, pondering her next words as she stares into the empty television screen.
"...I remember arguing with you about how...you shouldn't let him tutor you because you wanted to help him with his family troubles and stuff. Y'know, his money situation and how he's super poor and he needs the tutoring job and all."
"Mhm. Yeah, I remember that."
"Well, I guess it's fair to say that...even if our problems aren't exactly the same or even comparable at all, I'm starting to understand...what he feels, as in what it feels like to have family problems on your mind."
"...what do you mean? As in, you were thinking about our Mystic Eyes?"
"I guess. It's...it's complicated, I don't know how to explain it..." Nino sighs heavily. "Ever since we found out that we both had Mystic Eyes, it's kinda been...on my mind, on and off. Because we both know that they're something that's been with us for a long time; they didn't just pop up out of nowhere, we just didn't know about them existing in the first place until really recently. Like...sometimes I'll find myself thinking about it in class or something, about...all the signs we got that our eyes were weird, and...how it...how it kind of makes sense how everything that's happened until now turned things out this way. I've just...been thinking about that a lot, and...and what everything means for me and the promise I made to everyone."
"Mmnn...yeah, I can see how that...would make you worried..." Miku agrees morosely.
"Haha, yeah. It was...all this was...something I didn't expect to have to deal with, naturally..."
Nino finally sets her mug on the glass tabletop so that she can focus on articulating her thoughts.
"I spent the past week or so thinking about it in class. Because on one hand, I don't want all this magic bullshit to tear us apart. We almost did that in that alleyway that you dragged my ass into...who knows what would've happened if things turned out worse than they did, now that I think back on that. I want us to stay the same as we've always been; I want us to stay together. Up until now, I was able to do that, or at least I think I was able to. But I don't know what to do about all this magic shit, you know? It's something we have absolutely no idea about, and it's not as if Uesugi-kun's teaching us anything magic-related and I don't really want him to either. But then on the other hand, if we just keep going on like this, we don't know what'll happen. We developed these fuckin' Mystic Eye things because we've probably had them for a long time and just never knew it until they popped up like they did, for both you and me. And we don't even know if the others have their own or not either. And if things keep developing like they have been and we're not doing anything to keep track of them, then we can't do anything but to rely on Uesugi-kun to guide us through them, and we're already letting him do that enough with our schoolwork."
Miku again awkwardly smiles at her sister. "Like I thought...you're still not too fond of Fuutarou tutoring us, are you?"
"Of course not! And besides, I said I'd only let him tutor us up until midterms, remember?" Nino hisses hotly, making sure to keep her voice down so that it can be contained to the first floor only. "So now that midterms are done, I'm done too!"
"Aw...but it was fun being able to study with everyone..." Miku murmurs sadly. "And Itsuki didn't say she was stopping either, even though you were the one who dragged her into it..."
"That's...that's Itsuki's decision, okay? I'll at least give Uesugi-kun his just due for the work he's done, so if Itsuki feels like she'll get results out of working with him, then that's her decision to make. But I'm still staying out of this, now that I've kept up my end of the deal."
"You're sure that you can keep up your studies on your end by yourself like that?"
"Obviously! My midterm scores'll show you that when we get them back tomorrow."
"Er, well, actually, you sit at the dinner table with us while we're studying with Fuutarou anyway, so I guess it's not that big of a deal..."
"Then I'll go stay in my room, how's that!"
Miku suddenly cracks up, causing Nino to turn to her sharply with an angry pair of normal blue eyes.
"W-What's so funny!"
"It's...nothing..." Forcing her amused smile to go away, Miku lowers her hand that's been hiding it until it can recede on its own. "It's just that...ever since we'd known Fuutarou past a few weeks, I think it's safe to say that you've been changing a little, Nino."
"Changing? How so?" the elder sibling demands.
"Well...before, you used to be the one who'd always make fun of me or the others, but you were never able to handle getting teased yourself. Now, you've been teasing me and the others less, and you've been able to banter with us more often, kind of like what we're doing right now."
Miku leans forward a little towards a hesitant Nino.
"...have you been hanging out with Fuutarou lately, Nino?" she asks softly, with another earnest smile.
This time, Nino can't possibly hide the blush that resurfaces on her face when Miku asks her this sudden question out of left field, and as she turns away quickly, Miku, spying it, lets out another calm giggle as Nino scrambles to deny such an allegation.
"N-No I haven't! You're so full of shit, Miku, there's no way that's right! I haven't changed at all! In fact, out of all five of us, I'm the one who's changed the least!" Nino grabs her long peachy-red hair to show her younger sister its sheer length. "See, look! Look at my hair, I haven't even cut it once all these years, ever since we had long hair as kids, and it's been like this for six years!"
"Well, people can change in more ways than just the length of their hair, you know."
"Even still, you're wrong!" Nino hotly folds her arms and turns away again, throwing her right leg over her left in indignation. "And that's just ridiculous...just because we've come to know Uesugi-kun, I've been changing...you couldn't have said a dumber thing if you tried."
Lowering her gaze as her reactionary indignation has a chance to settle back down, Nino twists the left corners of her lips, which Miku can see, sitting to Nino's left.
"I have a promise to keep to you guys...a promise that I still feel really strongly about, as you know," she murmurs tensely. "So out of all five of us, I won't change. I can't change..."
Nino then looks back up at her younger sister.
"...and sorry if this gets under your skin because I'm mentioning it here, but...what I saw happening to you earlier tonight is just another reason why I can't. If we don't stay together, if I don't keep everyone together...what's gonna happen to you? If we all go our separate ways, if Uesugi-kun comes in and puts a wedge in between us because of everything that he's doing, whatever it is, how do I know that you're not going to be fine on your own?"
"But I'm not a little kid anymore," Miku pouts at her older sister.
"I know you're not, but I'm not talking about basic-ass stuff like brushing your teeth or cooking for yourself or - " Pausing for a moment, Nino doubles back on her words when she realizes what she's saying aloud. "...er, I take back that last statement, I guess you really can't take care of yourself just yet - "
"Mmmmmmuuuu!"
Pouting even more intensely, Miku pulls her knees up to her chest with her feet on the edge of the couch.
"...what? I'm just saying you can't cook very well yet."
"...but I've been practicing with you."
"Yeah, but it only means you've still got a long way to go."
"I know that, but..."
Miku sighs into the top of her knees, letting her own peachy red hair drape about her sides.
"...but I know what you mean," she mutters with a more serious tone. "Even when we put the little things like cooking aside...I know where you were getting at just now. You don't need to tell me how much I made everyone worry, back when I had to be hospitalized during middle school."
Nino also looks away yet again, somewhat relieved that she didn't need to be one to bring that sensitive topic up. "Yeah...that's what I'm worried about. Now that we're probably going to get more and more involved in more magic stuff, that means that we'll have bigger problems to worry about...problems that could be just as serious as the time you got put in the hospital; maybe even worse, honestly. And who knows, with how much Uesugi-kun's been getting hurt, we might not know it, but those kinds of problems could be closer to our doorstep than we think, and right now we're the only ones who know we've got these Mystic Eye thingies, which means we only have each other to rely on if we don't want to drag the others into this, right?"
"So you do care about Fuutarou."
"N-No, I don't, don't you dare twist my words around! I'm just using him as an observation, goddamn it!"
After giggling a little bit more, Miku returns to her somber state more quickly than before.
"...Nino, how do you feel about...learning more about magic?" Miku ventures to her sister, causing her to scowl back at her.
"Pretty sure you can guess the answer to that one, no?"
"...yeah, like I thought."
"So you want to after all, then? I guess it's just to be expected, coming from an otaku like you..."
"I-It doesn't have anything to do with that! Well, uh...maybe just a little..."
"So it's got everything to do with that."
"Geez!...but really, um...I have thought about maybe trying to convince Fuutarou to...teach me magecraft whenever he can."
"Then why though? He's already said lots of times that he's got no intention of teaching us stuff like that, and for as much as I disagree with him on most things, that's the one thing I'm glad I agree with him on."
"Because...I don't want to wait around for things to happen. The fact that we've gone through these last few years not even knowing we're mages ourselves doesn't really help, either, even if we could've never known or figured it out on our own. But I get the feeling that Fuutarou showing up the way he did, how we discovered these Mystic Eyes that we've had all this time...it's probably not just a coincidence. And because of that, I want to do something about it. Like you said, Nino, there are still lots of things about me that make me dependent on everyone to get by, and I know that I can't just sit around and continue on like this, which is the main reason why I started asking you to teach me how to cook."
Miku's eyes meet Nino's eyes.
"I know that this might end up ruining your promise. But if we really are mages, if our Mystic Eyes really can give us the power to do something, whatever that something may be, I want to learn about it. I want to know the truth about myself, if it'll give me the power to...be something more, I guess. I don't want to sit in my room like tonight, all scared and helpless because something's been happening to me for the last couple of years that I don't understand. And now that we have a classmate and a friend who knows stuff about magic, I want to invest myself in this."
"But you saw how banged up Uesugi-kun's gotten over the past two or three weeks or so. You really wanna end up like him? Itsuki even mentioned yesterday at dinner when we asked her more about it that he even needed to go to the hospital himself that night when he brought her back home. As your older sister, I don't want you to keep going back to the hospital, once is more than enough!"
"Older sister by, what, barely a few minutes or something," Miku scoffs.
"Oh c'mon, Miku, you get what I mean."
"What I don't get it why you don't feel the same here," Miku rebuts. "You said it yourself, didn't you? You said that you're worried about all this magic stuff, right? And how it's going to develop from now on. If you're so worried, why are you so against asking Fuutarou to teach us magic?"
"Like I said, because you know damn well he's not going to!"
"I'm not talking about what Fuutarou's going to say, I'm asking about you. Do I have to point this out to you, Nino? If you've been thinking about all this magic stuff and all the potential problems it could cause for us as a family, and how we have only each other to rely on, do you think we'll be able to hold our own against something that we have no knowledge about right now? And if you could have your way, you wouldn't even have Fuutarou around to protect us because you don't want him hanging out around us. Which would mean that we'd need to rely on each other even more than before, right? Do you think that as we are, we'll be able to hold our own against whatever problems we have to take care of ourselves that Fuutarou's usually taking care of for us out there in the city? And besides, just because he says no doesn't mean he can't change his mind. And lately, he's been getting more comfortable talking about magic-related stuff with us, haven't you noticed? So it's not a total impossibility."
Miku's scathing questions drill into Nino's conscience harder and harder with each inquiry that the latter cannot answer.
"So is it because you think that you can handle whatever problems we'll have regarding magic in the future by yourself? Or just as we quintuplets are right now? Now, when the most the two of us do is roll around in bed not knowing what our own eyes are doing to us in the middle of the night like what happened to me just half an hour ago? Might I remind you, Nino, about why Fuutarou needed to come save us from that warehouse in the first place!"
"You know what, I've had enough!"
Suddenly getting up from the couch, Nino storms away from the living room, not even bothering to put her mug away that still sits on the glass tabletop or drink the rest of the hot chocolate still remaining in the mug. Without turning to watch her sister leave, Miku listens to her angry but manually muffled footsteps as they climb up the stairs and vanish behind the crisp, quiet snapping of a door against its hinges as it closes behind Nino. The third quintuplet simply takes a sip of her green tea, but as she lowers her hands holding the cup, she closes her eyes tiredly and rests the back of her head against the couch pillow she's leaning against.
For all the talk she gave Nino about how much she's changed as of late, perhaps there's still one thing that won't change just yet.
Once she's done chuckling to herself over this, the third quintuplet lets her usual frown return to her face. For all the determination that she feels, the motivation that she can scrounge up in her desired pursuit of magical knowledge, Miku knows that this isn't without a fair share of hesitation on her part. What if Nino and Fuutarou are right? What if involving herself with magic really isn't worth it? They've all seen the injuries that their tutor and classmate has been sustaining recently, trying to juggle both their studies and his own magework at the same time, and she certainly doesn't want to be hurt like that, and neither can she imagine what horrors and tragedies Fuutarou has seen in his own history of magework.
But the combination of seeing Fuutarou hurt like that and the knowledge that he is protecting her and her sisters mainly from the shadows inspires her to want to try her hand at it anyway. It just doesn't make any sense to her why she wouldn't at least want to; as a girl whose only talents are playing video games, listening to music, watching anime, and being a shut-in girl, she sees a potentially new avenue that could provide an actually useful talent that she could obtain to give back to her sisters for all the things that they've done for her, and all the more so since Nino clearly doesn't want to and none of their sisters, as far as they're aware, have any magical self-awareness yet.
For all the motivation that she currently has, though, Miku still finds a reason to hesitate: is all this worth ruining her relationship with Nino? Again, maybe she's right; maybe they really ought to leave all this magic stuff to Fuutarou to handle on his own. After all, up until now, they've never had a problem that involved magic, right? Unless she counts her own hospitalization, but she can't really do that. Maybe this is just a stage of their lives where they just happen to have bad guys coming after them, and once Fuutarou gets rid of them, their lives go back to normal as before; maybe their Mystic Eyes might keep giving them some trouble, but maybe they just stay the way they are for the rest of their lives, since as they are, they don't terribly affect Nino's or Miku's daily lives much. Or even worse, what if it's not just Nino's life she ruins by wanting to pursue a focus on magecraft; what if it's rest of her family's lives that she'll be changing just because she sees an opportunity to banish her own sense of inadequacy once and for all?
Feeling her sleepiness finally catch up to her, Miku briefly sits on the couch, still with her eyes closed, and remains this way for a few minutes.
"...Mama..."
And with that, she urges herself off the couch to return her and her sister's cups to the kitchen sink before brushing her teeth again and doing her business in the bathroom before returning to her room for the rest of the night.
In the furthest room from the top of the stairs, however, Nakano Itsuki listens to Miku's door shut quietly after her. Having awoken to Nino barging into Miku's room earlier, Itsuki was tempted to go investigate and see what the matter was, but she was too sleepy to get out of her warm and comfy bed to bother, though she did wonder to herself how Nino was able to get into Miku's room when the quintuplets normally all lock their doors at night when they go to bed. But before she could fall back asleep, she heard the two of them emerge from Miku's room and head downstairs, which really piqued her interest and compelled her to open her own door to tiptoe outside onto the second floor while Nino and Miku were busy in the kitchen so that she could sit behind the tall railing and eavesdrop on her two older sisters downstairs. And once Nino said that she was done talking to Miku, Itsuki quickly dived back into her own room and pushed her door shut, but not all the way into the doorframe to make noise and give herself away. If Nino had been paying attention when she was returning to her room, she probably could have seen Itsuki's door left slightly ajar, but given her irritation, she did not notice, and Itsuki was able to slowly close the door all the way before Miku returned to her own room too.
Still sitting on the floor of her room next to the door, Itsuki has not yet budged. She was able to listen in on her sisters' entire conversation; not a single detail has been spared. Now, with a wealth of information that she had no idea existed, Itsuki slowly blinks down at the floor with everything that she's heard still swimming around in her head because she has no idea where to even begin processing it all. After a few minutes, though, she does slip back into her bed, pulling her warm covers over herself to try to coax herself to sleep, but Itsuki knows that she won't be able to do so, at least not so soon...
The next afternoon, with the final bell of school having rung to dismiss the students from their first day of school after the first set of midterms for the year, Uesugi Fuutarou stands before the assembled quintuplets in the school library, with the girls seated at a table big enough to accommodate their large number.
"Mmmkay, we're all here," the young tutor nods at his students. "Now it's time to see if I get to keep my job or not."
The quintuplets all chuckle with varying degrees of awkwardness, with one exception.
"I do not wish to show you my scores."
Fuutarou turns to the youngest quintuplet sitting to his left, next to Nino.
"And why not?" Fuutarou asks calmly.
"Because...one's test scores are not meant to be shared with others, as they are personal information. Therefore, I absolutely refuse to show you."
Pursing her lips together as best she can, Itsuki entrenches herself into her chair, bracing for the inevitable dispute that she's set up for herself.
Fuutarou simply breaks out a small grin of amusement.
"Personal information, you say...and you say this to a classmate of yours who was hired to be your tutor and has spent anywhere from two to six hours almost every weekday for the past seven weeks with only a few exceptions?" he points out.
"He's got a point, Itsuki," Ichika shrugs with a smile of her own as well. "When it comes to our academics, there's practically nothing he doesn't know. Even if we don't show him our midterm scores today, I'm sure he'll find a way to grab them. Probably through Dad, to be honest, I'm sure Dad has a way of getting them from the school if he really wants to."
"Uuuu..." Itsuki moans under her breath. "...I knew it..."
"You knew you wouldn't be able to hide your scores from me, yet you tried anyway?" Fuutarou sighs lightly. "Well, I can at least commend your efforts...but enough of that, I've already prepared myself to see the results. Show your scores to me, please."
The girls rummage through their bags and/or backpacks to fetch their midterm results papers and test sheets, and on the count five, they all flip them right-side up and push them towards their tutor for him to inspect. From left to right, their scores correspond to the subjects of Japanese Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, and English.
Nakano Ichika: 25, 45, 22, 20, 28. Combined score: 140.
Nakano Nino: 20, 18, 26, 16, 51. Combined score: 131.
Nakano Miku: 24, 29, 28, 72, 10. Combined score: 163.
Nakano Yotsuba: 32, 5, 20, 28, 19. Combined score: 104.
Nakano Itsuki: 29, 29, 60, 21, 25. Combined score: 164.
"Only managed to pass math," Ichika sighs with a defeated smile on her face this time. "It's the best that I can do right now..."
"Failed everything but English, as expected," Nino says with crossed arms. "And no, before you even ask, I didn't purposefully fail the others."
"I got my highest score ever on Social Studies," Miku says, her voice filled with conflicted emotions, "but math and science...they were so close..."
"Honestly, I don't even know how I scored this high, these are like the best scores I've ever gotten, ehehe ~ !" Yotsuba giggles merrily. "I guess a lot of my guesses in Language Arts and Social Studies paid off."
"Science was my sole passing grade, perhaps to nobody's surprise..." Itsuki mumbles dejectedly. "But I almost passed Language Arts and math...ugh, I have so many regrets with some of the answers I went with...if only I had taken the time to double-check my answers..."
Thoroughly scanning their results and flipping through their exam sheets as if he were a human scanning machine memorizing them, Fuutarou looks up at the quintuplets after having taken a good look through them.
"Hm. I guess to address the elephant in the room first, you scored the highest this time around, Itsuki," the tutor points out, indicating her combined score physically with his index finger. "You beat Miku by literally one point."
"Whoa ~ Itsuki managed to outscore Miku this time around? That's pretty rare, isn't it?" Ichika gives Itsuki a little series of rapid claps in congratulations.
"It's happened before. And Itsuki's been studying hard on her own all this time as well," Miku nods, accepting her narrow defeat gracefully.
"N-No, I...I was simply fortunate that there were a lot of easy questions for me to answer in Science. That, and there were quite a few questions that were similar to each other between Science and Mathematics, so I was able to score higher than usual in Math because of that," Itsuki hurriedly explains. "I do not think this will be a recurring theme; please do not get used to this. Also, I only beat Miku by just one point, that is nothing to be proud of!"
"Awww, c'mon, Itsuki, it's okay to brag a little bit here and there ~ " Yotsuba reassures her younger sister with a bright smile, but Itsuki continues to cast doubt from her face.
"Though, if I may be a little cathartic for a second..." Fuutarou sighs deeply, hanging his head over the quintuplets' results sheets as he leans on the edge of the table with his hands, "...this reminded me again just how dumb all of you are. I know we didn't have that much time to work with, but still..."
"Oh, shut it, you," Nino snaps quietly, pouting a little back up at her tutor as the rest of the quintuplets either grin back sheepishly or, in Itsuki's case, frown awkwardly. "What did you expect us to get then, all 100's?"
"Obviously not. But there was a part of me that was at least hoping you girls would be able to pass more than just one subject each..."
"Hm...well, you do have a point, it really is totally like us that we'd all pass different subjects," Nino admits as she glances back at their aggregated results.
"That, and compared to the combined 100 points we got on Fuutarou's mock exam that he had us take a month and a half ago..." Miku smiles gently, which Fuutarou responds to.
"Yeah - while I did call all of you dumb, I can't say that without also pointing out that you all have shown some serious improvement ever since we started working together seven weeks ago," the young tutor declares before glancing directly over to Ichika to go down the line. "Ichika, I see that you're still too unconcerned with individual questions; it's a problem I've noticed with your test-taking and I've told you about it. You know the formulas, but because of how you approach individual questions nonchalantly like this, you get questions wrong because you either don't apply the formulas correctly or you just forget about them entirely. Take your time and go through each question thoroughly."
"Ah...okay, gotcha ~ " Ichika continues to smile up at her tutor, though she gives her cheek a sheepish scratch.
"Nino, I see that your vocabulary still needs work. Even though realistically you probably won't use a lot of these words when you're just speaking everyday, conversational English, that doesn't mean you get to neglect studying the ones you'll need to know for an exam like this. Make sure to brush up on vocabulary that you'll be tested on, and not just words you hear from TV shows and whatnot."
"Grr...fine, I get it, I get it..." Nino grumbles back, turning her gaze away sharply.
"Miku, you scored super high on a test that even I thought was pretty difficult for the average student here; I see that you got pretty much every question that was Sengoku Jidai-related right, and there were a lot of them in this test. But just like what I told Nino, don't neglect to study other aspects of Social Studies in case we get a test that isn't so heavy on the Sengoku questions like this one."
"O-Okay..." Suddenly turning a little red in the face, Miku ducks her chin into her collar so that her Audio-Technica headphones can wrap themselves around her cheeks.
"Yotsuba, you have a tendency to give up way too fast and just resort to guessing right away, I see a lot of questions that I know you can answer if you just slowed down and took your time with them to think them through; you probably could have even passed Social Studies if you did that. Fight your bad habits of guessing on everything you're not sure about and only do it if you truly have no idea how to solve the question, alright?"
"Yup, aye-aye, sir!" Yotsuba cheerfully responds with an enthusiastic salute.
"And Itsuki, you had the exact opposite problem: I see that you actually weren't able to answer a lot of the questions towards the end because you ran out of time, and that tells me that you spent too much time on each individual question in the first halves of your tests because you weren't confident in your answers."
"Ugh...I am...I am aware of that problem of mine..." Itsuki mutters. "I get...a little nervous during actual examinations like this...so I could not help myself and kept second-guessing myself..."
"At least you know about it, so remember how you felt during this exam and make sure not to recreate that. Since you were able to take the practice tests that I gave you just fine, that's a kind of problem you can only really solve whenever we have an exam at school, so not all that frequently, but it will be something you'll get used to with time. That, and you should try to come up with a way to instill confidence in yourself going into an exam so that you can move on from a question comfortably."
Fuutarou surveys his students one last time.
"You're all on the right track. Like I said, showing this much improvement in just seven weeks is nothing short of impressive, especially for the lot of you who couldn't break a hundred points combined before I started working with you. The hard part from now on, though, is whether or not you'll be able to maintain this rate of improvement even without me. It'll be difficult, for sure, but if Itsuki was able to study on her own most of the time for the past seven weeks and still manage to outscore Miku in these midterms, you all can pull off the same thing."
With their tutor's tone noticeably shifting, whatever smiles that are remaining on the quintuplets' faces are now evaporated.
"...so...you'll really be gone, then...?" Miku asks, her voice cracking as she speaks.
"I can't imagine how he'd be able to convince Dad to let him stay when we got scores like these. That, and Fuutarou-kun's a man of his word," Ichika sighs softly. "Isn't that right, Fuutarou-kun?"
"...'a man of my word' is a bit generous for my tastes, but sure, let's go with that, I suppose," Fuutarou shrugs slightly. "But yes, I will have to report these scores to your dad. And let's just say, knowing him a little bit myself, I can't imagine what kind of a world we'd have to live in where your dad thinks these scores are acceptable."
"But couldn't you explain to him how you'd gotten injured leading up to midterms? About how busy you were other stuff?" Miku tries to bargain with her tutor, but Itsuki shakes her head in Fuutarou's place.
"Father's word is absolute; you know this, Miku. If the condition for Uesugi-kun to retain his post as our tutor was for us to pass all the subjects, then that is that," Itsuki mutters with melancholic sentiment. "I am unsure what he can do by this point."
"Yep, and there you have it. And let me reiterate: the way your midterms turned out, it's no one's fault but mine," Fuutarou insists. "Maybe I can fault Nino and Itsuki on the grounds of a lack of cooperation for the first five or so weeks, but considering how closely your scores turned out with everyone else's, I don't know how strong of an argument that would be for me now. For the others, obviously cooperation wasn't an issue at all. And even when everyone got together to study, both Nino and Itsuki cooperated with me just as well as everyone else did."
"Well, Nino did give you an attitude the whole way," Yotsuba points out, causing her sisters to share a round of laughter at Nino's embarrassed expense.
"Yeah, she might've, but she still took the tests I gave her and answered my questions whenever I asked her. Maybe that won't fly with other tutors, but for someone like me who's used to dealing with bad guys with potty mouths, that's a non-factor for me personally."
"Yeah, says another potty-mouth right fuckin' here," Nino gripes back.
"I mean, like they say, it takes one to know one."
As the quintuplets all laugh at Nino almost immediately again, Fuutarou's Google Pixel 3 begins to vibrate in his pocket, and he pulls it out to see who it is and smirks a little when he reads the name of the caller.
"...and what do you know, just on time," he chortles. "It's your dad. Time for the reckoning, girls..."
The quintuplets all look on tensely, even Nino, as their tutor taps his phone on and answers the call.
"Good afternoon, Doctor," Fuutarou says, his voice steeling itself now that he's addressing the girls' father.
"The same to you. I'd like to ask about my girls' midterm scores, as we agreed. I was actually debating whether or not I would ask my daughters directly for their scores, but we did have that talk from last time, if you recall."
"Yeah...can't say I could forget about that one so easily," Fuutarou replies sarcastically. Most of the quintuplets begin to fidget in their chairs; they've never heard their classmate sound so...spiteful towards someone before.
"And in case you were thinking about lying to me about their scores, just remember that I can ask the school board for their results directly."
"Ah, yes, because lying to my clients is what I'm known for when contracting with my clientele, I'd like to ask where you got that idea from...but some other time. But before I tell you their scores, I'd just like to say while I have the chance that maybe it would've been better off for the girls if you got them a more, how should I say, dedicated tutor to work with them next time."
"Mhm. So then..."
"Your girls f - "
Standing up suddenly and pushing her chair backwards, Nino immediately reaches out and, with her surprising strength, pulls Fuutarou towards herself so that she can reach over with her left hand and snatch her tutor's phone right out of his hand. Her sisters look on in partial alarm as she resumes the call in Fuutarou's stead.
"Papa? Sorry about that, this is Nino," the second quintuplet says clearly to make herself heard to her dad. "I just wanna ask you one thing: why did you give that kind of a condition to him? I'm just curious."
"I have a responsibility as a parent to see you move through school and ensure that you all graduate properly and become good members of society. The reason why I hired a tutor for you and your sisters was because your scores did not reflect that you would be able to do so on your own, so as your father, I made the decision to hire external help to address the situation. However, it is also my responsibility as a parent to make sure that the help I enlist for my daughters is adequate and is doing the job I have intended for it to do; if the tutor I have hired for you is not doing a good enough job that I want, I will see to it that he is replaced with a better one. I think you will agree with me, Nino, that this is a natural course of action for me to take."
Nino listens patiently to her dad as he takes his time to elaborate to her.
"So it's for our sakes that you did that, right? Thank you, Papa, that means a lot to us, but I don't think you can tell if he's suitable for us by numbers alone."
"But it is the best method of evaluation. Is it not?"
Nino's lower lip twitches hard.
"No, you're right," she says crisply, "and in that case, I'll tell you how we did myself."
Turning to face the rest of her sisters, Nino refocuses her blue contacted eyes.
"The five of us avoided failing all five subjects," she declares strongly.
The quintuplets blink back up at Nino, stunned. Fuutarou says nothing.
"...hm. Is that so..."
"I'm not lying to you, Papa," Nino says, driving the nail home.
"Then I see. Since this is you telling me this, Nino, I will trust your word. Kindly inform Uesugi-kun that he has done well to get you all this far, and make sure to continue working hard with him."
"We will. Thanks, Papa."
After her goodbye, Nino immediately hangs up before her dad has a chance to say anything else and hands the phone calmly back to its owner, who eyes her with furrowed brows.
"Think about it," the second quintuplet answers him with a hand on her hip. "Ichika passed math; I passed English; Miku passed Social Studies; Yotsuba passed Language Arts; and Itsuki passed Science. Altogether, we passed all five subjects. I really wasn't lying to him."
Fuutarou suddenly snorts rather loudly, and Nino glares scathingly at him.
"I saved your ass from getting the boot from Papa, and that's your first reaction? Show some fucking gratefulness, you son of a bitch!" Nino hisses angrily at him.
"It's not that I'm ungrateful, it's just...I didn't know you had the guts to be able to give your dad a technical answer like that," Fuutarou grins approvingly at his student. "Well played, Nino. You were able to do what even I didn't dare to."
Her tutor's genuine words of praise take Nino by surprise, and she quickly looks away to her left, away from everyone else, as she gives her long hair a quick tussle.
"Y-You're looking too deep into it, I didn't do anything special or anything. And anyway, in the end, I was able to get Papa off your case for a little bit longer by tricking him a little bit, and it probably won't work again, not against someone like him."
Nino points back up at Fuutarou, gazing up at him with one eye open.
"...just make it true next time," she says quietly but clearly.
Grinning back with renewed motivation, the young mage nods firmly.
"You got it," he replies, gazing straight back into Nino's blue eye. Once again, Nino blinks quickly, finding herself a little short of breath all of a sudden, and she turns her face away a second time to break eye contact.
"Yaaaaay ~ ! Then that means we get to keep studying with Uesugi-san, right?" Yotsuba cheers, with Miku next to her breathing a big sigh of relief.
"Seems like it, if your dad ain't gonna fire me right away." Fuutarou turns to the rest of the quints. "And make sure to thank Nino, because she basically saved my job just now."
So the quintuplets immediately break into a chorus of "Thank you, Ninooooo ~ " to her chagrin.
"W-What's with you idiots?! I said I didn't do anything special! Stop acting like it is!" she gripes back at everyone before spinning back to her tutor. "Speaking of which, Uesugi-kun, you soooo owe me big time for saving your ass!"
"So what, you want me to get you something? I'm a broke-ass motherfucker, whatever you want's probably gonna be way too damn expensive."
"You said it yourself, I don't even want anything from you, your tastes are probably dirt-cheap anyway with how you think about money all the time!"
"That's also true." Fuutarou folds his arms at Nino, however. "But why did you decide to trick your dad like that? Weren't you the one who wanted me to quit tutoring your sisters the most in the beginning? What changed between then and now?"
"Why, you want me to call Papa and tell him the truth?" Nino threatens, but Fuutarou isn't fazed and calls her bluff.
"Sure, go ahead if you really want, I came to school today expecting to lose half my job by the time I walked out. I just want to know why you, of all people, went out of your way to give me a hand."
"That's right, Fuutarou-kun's got a good point, Nino," Ichika calls over to the two of them. "You spent all those weeks sitting at the dinner table listening in on our lessons, right? Maybe you've become a kind of...secret admirer? Ahahaha ~ !"
"B-B-Bullshit! I am NOT a dumb fucking secret admirer!" Nino starts to yell back at her older sister but lowers her voice when Fuutarou hisses at her with a quick "shhh!" to remind her that they're still in the school library, even if school has ended for the day.
"Then if it's not because of that, why?" Fuutarou presses her on.
"It was because of...y'know, your injuries, okay? I'll admit it," Nino pouts, not even looking back at Fuutarou as she talks. "It's obvious that the other half of your job in regards to us is really dangerous; we've seen it firsthand ourselves. At first, I thought you were just some kind of...Superman, I guess, as in you were some high school prodigy who could do it all, get good grades and run around the city like a superhero to fight bad guys and never be touched. But that's not the case anymore; you can get hurt and you have gotten hurt, yet you kept sticking with us to teach us and all that because it was your responsibility. Even on the day of our midterms, when it was your fault that we were going to be late for school, you still managed to get us into school and take our midterms without a hitch because of your quick thinking and your...teleporting things, I guess. As much as I don't like you tutoring my sisters so much like you have been, and I still don't for the record, even I'd feel bad if all that effort you've committed to us for the past two weeks went to waste just because we're a bunch of stupid idiots who can't pass tests to save our lives."
"That so? Appreciate the sentiments, then."
Nino gawks dramatically at Fuutarou, swinging around to face him yet again.
"'Appreciate the sentiments, then'? Some gratefulness that is!"
Sighing exasperatedly, Fuutarou scratches the back of his head. "You should kinda expect that outta me by this point, no? I'm just the kinda dude who expects the worst to happen no matter what, to a fault, even. And I don't really take to receiving praise all that well myself. It's either tell me what I did wrong with my job or just tell me 'good job' so that I know to keep doing whatever I'm doing."
"But you were the one who asked me why I went through the trouble of talking to Papa!"
"Yeah, I did. Now I know. Thanks a lot, Nino, for giving me a second chance."
The last three words echo through Nino's ears as the quintuplets' tutor turns to the rest of the girls to discuss their tutoring plans from here on out. A second chance...Nino wants to tell him that that wasn't her intention, but he's busy talking to the others now. Was that what she intended, though? Did she want to give him a second chance? But then that would imply that she wanted him to stick around for a little bit longer, when she wants the exact opposite of having him leave. But then if that's the case, wouldn't her reasons for deceiving her dad like she did be null and void? She said that she felt bad for him because of how he's been having to keep up with both halves of his contract with the Nakanos, but just how much of that is true?
"Then, since we're already at the library, wanna review our tests right now?" Ichika suggests eagerly, stoked that Fuutarou will remain their tutor for at least up until their first trimester finals.
"Yeah, that's a good idea - reviewing tests is one of the best forms of studying you can do, after all. But!" Fuutarou holds up a finger to the girls. "It doesn't have to be right away. Since Nino was kind enough to recognize the efforts I've been putting into tutoring everyone through the past two weeks, I'd like to do the same for you all for showing such huge improvements in such a short amount of time. I made a promise earlier to Itsuki the night I had to escort her home that I'd take everyone out to a parfait place that she told me about, but unfortunately I'm kinda short on cash, so I'm gonna have to ask you all to give me some time on that until your dad pays me for this month. But in the meantime, we can head out and grab some snacks on the way to your place and just kick back and relax for today."
"E-Eh!? Fuutarou-kun's suggesting that we take a day off that we don't have to and just be lazy all day? Who are you, and what've you done with the REAL Fuutarou-kun!?" Ichika cries jokingly, getting up from her own seat and shaking her tutor to and fro.
"That's right, we wanna study some more with you, Fuutarou," Miku pouts back at her tutor from across the table.
Fuutarou puts on a very concerned look as Ichika keeps gently shaking him back and forth. "Aaaah, shit, this is bad...I might've made you all study so much you all can't think of doing anything but studying..."
"Geh...maybe I should've told Papa the truth after all...?" Nino broods to herself.
"Ah, Nino, please don't, ehehe..." Yotsuba chuckles awkwardly, and the quintuplets pack up their things to head out of school with their tutor to stop by the Family Mart convenience store on their way home to pick up snacks.
"By the way, what was your score, Uesugi-san?" Yotsuba asks Fuutarou as they head towards the edge of campus.
"Ah, about that...I, too, reserve the right to withhold such information to third parties."
"How unfair, Uesugi-kun! When you were the one who told me to show mine!"
"...you're not gonna like what you see anyway. But if you're so curious...here."
"Aha, we shouldn't have even asked...all perfect scores..."
"Aaaah, how embarrassing..."
"You barely sound embarrassed. Is that like a gag of yours or something?"
"If I cared enough about it, maybe..."