Knock, knock, knock.
"Enter."
The door to Dr. Nakano Maruo's office in the city hospital clacks open and shortly clacks shut, and the head physician turns in his office chair just in time to find Uesugi Fuutarou enter with a white school binder that's rather stuffed with a fat stack of papers riding inside.
"Your associates seem to have taken their sweet time with this," the doctor remarks casually, turning fully to his employee to give him his full attention as Fuutarou seats himself with the usual plastic folding chair that he pulls over from the nearby wall against which it rests when not in use.
"That's how it goes for no-names like me," Fuutarou grumbles in annoyance. "It's nice that, given the magical crisis the world's in right now, the Clock Tower's opened up its services to the general magical populace when it otherwise wouldn't, but as you might imagine, the bigger magical families and the ones who can afford to pay bigger bucks for their services get priority. Not much a poor bastard like me can do about that except swing my dick around and wait for them to get back to me."
Dr. Nakano gestures slightly at Fuutarou. "I have heard about this...Clock Tower. You will forgive me for asking this as an outsider, but my understanding of the Clock Tower is that they are quite the self-preservative organization."
"Self-serving would be the more correct term, honestly. And the real name for their organization's the Mage's Association; these days, mages like me refer to the Association as just the 'Clock Tower' since that's where their headquarters and main branch are located in London. That way, it's easier for mages to discuss business related to them out in public so that people who accidentally overhear don't think twice about what they heard; 'Clock Tower' sounds a lot more benign than 'Mage's Association', even if most people will just think we're talking a bunch of crap."
"Because you are afraid of accidentally introducing unwanted outsiders into the world of magecraft?"
"The Association is, despite the fact that magic is dying in this world. While personally I don't care too much since that's pretty similar to how I got my own start as a mage, I do have to care a little bit since another mage running around is potentially another enemy."
"Like Shirazumi Rio."
"Yeah, you get it."
Fuutarou flips open the cover of the binder to reveal the first page of the binder's immense stack of contents.
"In any case, the Clock Tower boys got back to me on the Heisei samples I sent them a month ago or so...maybe even two months by this point."
"Mhm. So what did they find?" Doctor Nakano eyes the binder's title page with keen interest for a moment before glancing back over at the tutor he's hired for his daughters, who clears his throat and takes a somewhat deep breath.
"Long story short, as I thought might be the case, they found that the Heisei samples I captured off Rio's boys two months ago when they tried going after the girls are an even more magically altered drug that's even more dangerous than the usual Heisei we've seen and dealt with over the past year or so. The tests that they conducted produced similar, if not identical, results to the ones I got from my own little testing I did, in that as a liquid-based drug, if it's injected directly into a person's bloodstream, it will cause immense cellular death on an irreversible scale, which is a fancy way of saying once you've injected it, you're fucking dead in a few minutes; it's basically melting you from the inside out. The rate of cellular death depends on the dosage, but it only takes a few millimeters of the drug to reach a fatal dose which can kill you."
Fuutarou raises a finger.
"However, what the Clock Tower was able to test that I obviously couldn't was the effects that this liquid Heisei has on magical entities; my own testing was limited to test subjects who were not mages and thus had no mana circulation. Liquid Heisei does not affect magical entities in the same way that non-magical entities are, and if nothing else, at least it doesn't kill them, at least not right away. But they report that it does react strongly with mana and causes the mana to amplify erratically, which can result in dangerously stronger acts of magecraft, like spells and runes and the like. Some of their tests showed that sometimes, the drug reacted so strongly with mana that it caused the magical test subject to lose control over its mana circulation, which went haywire anyway, and other times it overloaded their Magic Circuits and shut them down for a period of time, depending on how badly the Circuits reacted to the drug."
Dr. Nakano fixes himself a cup of coffee from the coffee maker in his office as Fuutarou is busy explaining the tl;DR for him, and he sits back down in his chair just as the young tutor wraps up his explanation.
"I have to wonder how the Clock Tower was able to procure these test results," he comments dryly before the coffee moistens his throat for him.
"Ha, ha, that's rich coming from you." Fuutarou's voice is somehow even drier than his employer's.
"As dull and dry as I am, I am still a doctor and a physician, Uesugi-kun. Just because I am used to seeing and hearing the worst that humanity has to offer does not mean I have to like seeing and hearing them."
"You should; it'll make life easier."
"Ah yes, because I should learn of life lessons from a fifteen-year-old."
"A fifteen-year-old who kindly reminds you of all the inhumane testing that pharmaceutical companies and medical research labs do on animals for the sake of developing medicines and drugs for humans, but that's besides the point. To answer your question, obviously the Clock Tower tested the Heisei samples I sent them on live subjects - I hear they're using criminal mages that they bring in from around the world on charges of risking the emergence of magic into the public world domain."
"Could they not simply use homunculi?"
"You'd think so, but in a time like this, I can see homunculus production being pretty expensive. If they could produce their own homunculi as test dummies, I don't know why the Clock Tower would render its own services available to the magical public like they have since they're obviously in a position where they wouldn't have to. And that's before whatever they might think of homunculi production in the first place, which I have no idea about since I'm not very involved with them in the first place."
"So prisoners and those they press criminal charges against are used as live test subjects instead."
"Probably. It's the most likely explanation." Fuutarou sits up in his seat a little to better his posture, closing the binder cover with his right hand and pushing the binder along the desk closer to Dr. Nakano. "And all this is the most likely explanation of why Shirazumi Rio is, or was, going after the quintuplets two months ago."
Setting his cup of coffee down on his desk next to the binder that Fuutarou is giving him, the head physician slowly crosses his arms. "I see; it seemed that we would come to that conclusion when you began discussing the Clock Tower's test results on magic entities. Shirazumi Rio perhaps wished to test the liquid Heisei's effects on live subjects, which would explain the Heisei abuse deaths around the city this year, and targeted my daughters as a result."
Fuutarou nods. "There's still a lot of questions that I still need to find answers to. For one, how the hell did Rio know that the quints are mages?"
"Better question is, does he know? He may have gone after them simply because they are quintuplets; I believe you gave a similar rationale in the past."
"I know I did, but now, especially after I've had a run-in with him, I'm willing to bet that he's aware of their magical status; I'm not sure how, but he knows them by name, even though he mistook Itsuki who was with me at the time for Nino instead for some reason. Mages like us for the most part don't care about identifying individual outsiders, especially the bad ones like Rio, because for the most part they just treat outsiders and anyone they don't like as either pawns, guinea pigs, or just straight-up trash, so it's pretty telling that the quints are especially important to him if he's bothered taking the time to know their names. And not to mention, the girls got targeted before we started seeing the liquid Heisei death cases start popping up around the city. So again, the question from this angle is now: how did he know?"
"It sounds as though he is working with others, perhaps someone who is feeding him intel. The drug trafficking problem is quite widespread throughout the city, much more so than what the city itself reports, after all. While of course I would not know this for sure myself, I would not be surprised if Shirazumi is in direct contact with other drug traffickers who can sell him information along with drugs."
"But that doesn't make sense; Shirazumi's either producing or importing his own drugs by the looks of things, with how he had his own drug cache in the middle of the city. Not to mention, I've run into a few gangs of his boys running around with liquid Heisei samples on them, so it's very likely that he's the only one with access to them, and now that we know what liquid Heisei does to magical entities, we can clearly see why he'd want to keep them to himself. So it doesn't make sense for him to really interact with any of the other drug traffickers at all; I think he's basically running his own show within this big drug ring he's got going on. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he came to the city because there was already a drug crisis going on and took advantage of the situation to build up his own operations while the police are busy dealing with everyone else."
"Be as that may, Shirazumi could not have found out about the girls all on his own; we have made sure of that and you know this. This means that he must have been fed information about the girls from somewhere, from someone. I believe you mentioned that you have info-dealers in the city with whom you sometimes collaborate?"
"I do, but they're not that many and I have my eyes on them in case they step out of line. Though, I'll admit it's not out of the realm of possibility that one of them could have been meeting up with Shirazumi in secret or something."
"I suggest, then, that you go investigate your info-dealers, if you have not done so already."
"That I'll do, yeah. And that's funny, you're finally giving me a direct order for once and it's not unreasonable."
"Whatever could you mean? Everything I ask of you is completely reasonable."
"Bullshit." Fuutarou scowls lightly at his boss. "Out of curiosity, how long did you know that your daughters were magically inclined?"
"I believe a topic like that should remain within the family, Uesugi-kun. Unfortunately, while I recognize the work that you have done for the girls thus far, I do not recognize you as part of the family."
"Whether or not I'm 'part of the family' is secondary to the fact that the girls are starting to discover their latent magic potentials, which I notified you about when I first detected them having Mystic Eyes. Even if you don't tell me, Nino's already told me about how she'd been aware of it herself ever since middle school, when her vision suddenly worsened and she needed to start wearing contacts. And those aren't just any contacts, those are goddamn Mystic Eye Killers that even change her eye colors back to blue like before her eyes turned Mystic. So it's safe for me to assume that you've known about them being mages for a long time if you already had connections to people who could get Nino those Mystic Eye Killers, and some damn good ones at that."
Dr. Nakano lets a slight, wry grin curl his lips.
"Impressive deduction, Uesugi-kun. However, I will only leave it at that; I continue to maintain that such matters are for the ears of my daughters only, not yours."
"That's fine. But I have to wonder when it is that you'll actually bother talking to them about this."
"Again, that is for me to decide, not you."
"I never asked you to tell me either, I'm just wondering aloud."
As Fuutarou stands up out of his chair to leave, having delivered his findings courtesy of the Clock Tower research team to his employer, Dr. Nakano raises a hand to stop him from flying out of his office, and so Fuutarou complies and stares down at his boss standing up.
"What now?" he asks with a hostile edge to his voice.
"It has been a while since your last report regarding the girls' progress. Is there anything that I ought to know about?"
At this, Uesugi simply scowls with disgust down at the quintuplets' father.
"Last time I checked, you didn't care about how well your girls are doing, only that they weren't failing," he snaps back at the head physician. "But if you must know, we've managed to drag their grades just above failing, as you heard from Nino after they got their midterms back. We're working on having them maintain those grades since they all seem to have a bad tendency of forgetting everything they've learned for a test once that test is done, and I can't have them doing that for their finals next month for this trimester. Other than that, everything's going okay. I'm still having some trouble getting Nino to study with everyone sometimes, but that's about it."
Not even bothering to bid the head doctor a good night, Fuutarou, having rid himself of his burden of the binder carrying the Clock Tower's test results, removes himself from his employer's office to leave Dr. Nakano alone, once more, in his office in the hospital in the dead of the night.
Once the door is shut firmly again with a bit more force than necessary, Dr. Nakano, briefly wondering if he should call in one of the hospital staff to take a look at the door to make sure the hinges are alright, turns to the binder that Uesugi has left behind for him so that he can begin perusing its contents. As he opens it back up, he pulls out his smartphone, whose locked screen reads June 12th, dials a number after unlocking, and waits for the call to connect.
"Good evening, Mr. Mayor. I'm surprised that you are still up at this hour..."
"Ah. O-ha ~ "
The same day, Uesugi Fuutarou finds himself greeted by the eldest quintuplet just outside a Starbucks chain, the same one that they had met in some time prior before midterms. Ichika gives him a slight wave of morning greetings as he approaches her with his usual messenger bag hanging by his left side.
"Morning. Mind explaining to me what you want this early in the day, since you wouldn't tell me about it over our texts?" the young tutor asks with a slight scowl down at the oldest quint, who pushes off the railing that she was leaning against while waiting for her tutor to arrive so that the two of them can head to school together for the start of the week.
"Well, before that, you don't wanna comment on my summer uniform?" Ichika asks him teasingly, tugging lightly on her popped dress shirt collar. Now that it's just about the middle of June, all the schools in the city have mandated summer uniform dress code, and Asahiyama High is no exception.
"Not particularly. What's there to comment on?"
"Plenty, if you know where to look! And I daresay with a girl like me, it's really easy to figure out where to look ~ " Ichika suggestively pulls again on her collar, this time directly over her bust.
"Hm, now that you mention it, I do notice you're not wearing your jacket around your waist," Fuutarou remarks alternatively without even looking over at her.
"You didn't even look at me while saying that, though!"
"Because I noticed it as soon as we met."
"Then why didn't you say anything?"
"Because it didn't seem worth mentioning. You'd probably just say something like, 'haha, okay, but what else do you have to say' or some shit like that."
Ichika hangs her head dejectedly. "Sometimes, Fuutarou-kun, I really wish you weren't so darned smart..."
"Sometimes? The hell's that supposed to mean? You think I can just turn my brain off some of the time and turn it on other times?" Fuutarou raises his hand up to his right temple, pretending to be twisting an imaginary switch attached to the side of his skull and reacting appropriately. "Duuurrrr, hiiiiiii, I'm Yooooooootsubaaaaaaaa, breathing is, like, preeeeeetty fuuuunnnnn ~ "
The eldest quint, who'd been waiting to meet up with Fuutarou with a latte that she bought from Starbucks in hand and was in the middle of taking a sip, snorts suddenly, ducking her face away as she coughs a few times lightly to clear her throat. Still in character, Fuutarou twists his hand back the other way to turn his brain on again.
"You alright?" he asks, watching Ichika pull out a napkin that she took from the Starbucks store before leaving to wipe her nose.
"Yeah, I'm fine, don't worry, that just...that just came out of nowhere..." Ichika is trying very hard to suppress the silly grin and laughter that she wants to let out as she cleans herself. "Just hold my drink for me for a second..."
So the two of them momentarily stop so that Ichika can blow her nose, with Fuutarou acting as her human cupholder, waiting for her to finish.
"Was that really that funny? I never thought of myself as a comedian," the young tutor thinks aloud as the two of them get a move on again, with Ichika taking her drink back.
"The joke itself was pretty good, I'm not gonna lie, but it's the fact that it's you doing it that makes it funnier, you know?" Ichika explains, properly sipping from her latte this time. "You're always so straight-faced and stoic and stuff...it's so easy to forget that you do have a sense of humor. It's like you know how to get people with it when they least expect it. And not to mention, you go from all stone-faced to a goofball so smoothly like that. You really ought to consider becoming an actor or something if your whole mag - er, I mean, your other job falls through or something."
"I think Yotsuba has a better chance of graduating by herself than that ever happening."
"Wow, it's really that bad, huh? Also, you're dissing Yotsuba a lot, aren't you?"
"Can't blame me when last Friday, she somehow scored a perfect zero on that practice test I gave you to round out the week, and it was specifically filled with questions that she'd been asking all last week! How the hell are you gonna ask all those questions, study them hard, and then just magically forget all of them when you get tested on them!? Forget Nino being a dipshit towards me, Yotsuba's the worst out of everyone because it feels like she pretends to be learning yet isn't learning anything at all!"
Fuutarou is speaking with obviously exaggerated anger polluting his tone so that it's clear he's still joking around about Yotsuba.
"Yeah, you were really popping off after you graded our tests last Friday. I don't think we'd ever seen you get so pissed off that you started slamming the glass table. I'm surprised you didn't break it with how hard you were hitting it."
"I had a rune underneath my fist where I was hitting the table where it was absorbing most of the shock so that I wouldn't break it. I was going for the comedic effect, after all."
"I mean, you don't need to tell me about it, everyone was already howling at you getting tilted off the face of the planet."
"Yeah, even Yotsuba, which triggered me even harder. Goes and gets a big fat zero on a test that's filled with nothing but questions that she asked all week, and then goes on to just laugh in my face about it - oh yeah, talk about getting absolutely triggered..."
"You ought to talk to Yotsuba directly, then. Maybe give her an extra lesson after school in the library or something. You know, kinda like a punishment game."
"Except in this case it's not a game."
"Okay, then something similar to it."
Fuutarou glances over at Ichika briefly. "Then enough of that, why did you want me to meet up with you like this? Usually I'm already in homeroom by now, waiting for class to start."
"You mean sleeping in class."
"To me, they're the same, you know this."
"That I do. But no, um...I just wanted to walk to school with you today."
"...that's it?"
"That's it, yep. That's all."
"...why, though? We walk back to your place from school a lot of the time anyway."
"But it's a different feeling, walking to school like this, don't you think?"
"It is, yes, but if you're going for the whole 'oh, I want to walk with Fuutarou-kun to school' experience, then that's no different from what we usually do anyway."
Ichika puckers her lips hard up at her tutor. "Fuutarou-kun, you dummy! I can't believe it's possible for a guy to be so dense like you! Density of your magnitude should be a crime, damn it! A criiiiiime!"
Fuutarou snaps his fingers into finger guns to point quickly next to him at his student. "Quick, what's the equation for density?"
"Mass over volume!" Ichika recites immediately, as if Pavlov'd into recital.
"Excellent. At least one of you's retaining what we're learning."
"Ehehe ~ Are you proud of me, Fuutarou-kun?"
"More so than Yotsuba, that's for sure."
"Oof, but that's a pretty low bar..."
"It's either you can clear a low bar and be disappointed, or you can set a high bar and not clear it and still be disappointed."
"So either way I'll be disappointed?"
"Welcome to life, Nakano Ichika."
"Oh, shut it, you wannabe boomer. Also, for someone as dense as you, you have no right teaching us the formula for density."
"You sure as hell aren't gonna teach it to yourselves."
Ichika reaches up with her plastic cup and knocks the side of Fuutarou's head with it.
"In any case, Ichika, even if you don't tell me, I get the feeling that you didn't just want to walk to school with me by calling me out here. Knowing you, you'd ordinarily never bother getting up this early on your own, so clearly something's on your mind," Fuutarou determines as they approach another crosswalk, and this evokes a small sigh out of the quintuplet.
"As perceptive as ever, huh. Even if I sit here calling you denser than a rock, you'll just prove me wrong by saying things like that..."
"It's nothing to feel bad over. I've been working with you girls for more than two months now; anyone who's even remotely paying attention should be able to pick up on other people's quirks after spending as much time as I've spent with you and your sisters. That, and it doesn't take a genius to know that you'd much rather sleep in than get up on your own."
Ichika pouts again up at Fuutarou. "Th-That's true, but still, you didn't need to put it that way..."
Uesugi waits patiently for the eldest quintuplet to finish sulking slightly so that she can explain herself.
"...but yeah, you nailed it just now. Obviously I didn't just want to walk to school with you, since like you said, we do that a lot of the time already. It's about, y'know...the last time we were together like this, just the two of us."
"At the Starbucks that we met at today, right?"
Ichika nods.
"I won't apologize for all the things I said. They were harsh and I'm sure to you, it seemed to come out of nowhere that day, but I still stand by what I said. I think it's ridiculous for you to still not consider us to be your friends, especially now that you've got, what, two full months of knowing us under your belt."
After pausing to take a sip from her latte, Ichika continues.
"But with that being said, I haven't forgotten what you said to us the day we took our midterms, after we were done and we were heading home. Maybe you were only saying that to make me happy; maybe you genuinely meant it when you finally did call us your friends. Either way, though, because of all the stuff you must've had to deal with during that week leading up to midterms, I still want to give you the benefit of the doubt, that you actually did listen to what I said after I left, even if you were arguing with me the whole time. I didn't expect you to do that, I'll be honest."
Looking up at her tutor, Ichika casts a bright and lovely smile towards him.
"It's not often that I get the feeling that people listen to me and what I have to say. So...thanks."
"Even though you're the oldest?"
"Well, I don't usually go around telling my sisters what to do. Besides, we all have the same birthday...well, technically, anyway. So me being older is just pedantic most of the time."
"Then what makes you feel like people never listen to you? From what I understand, you're pretty damn popular at school; you won't have any shortage of power being able to tell the boys in our class what to do and stuff."
"Aha, well, you have a point there. But it's not because of school, per se..."
"If it's not because of school..." After a quick moment of deliberation, Fuutarou glances back over at Ichika. "...I can only think of two other possibilities: whatever your part-time job is, or your dad."
"Haha, bingo. As expected of the great Uesugi Fuutarou-kun..."
"Spare me the flattery, it's not like I'm popular with the girls at school like you are with the boys."
"Ugh, how rude! Besides, you are popular with the girls, in a sense!"
"I don't count you quints, for the record."
"Tch! What, are we not good enough for you?!"
"I would like to practice my right to remain silent."
"You sure as heck aren't practicing it now!"
Sighing deeply again, Ichika presses her lips over the tip of her yellow straw jutting out of the plastic cup cover.
"So just to make absolutely sure, we're your friends now, right? Is it alright for us to establish that and make that all official and stuff?" she asks.
"Sure, I guess."
"Oi oi, what kind of attitude is that..."
"Well, just like how you said that you still stand by the stuff you told me back then, I still adhere to the shit I was going on about when we were arguing, that it's hard for me to call others my 'friends'. Honestly, I think the best we can do is agree to disagree on this topic. However, the argument that we had did point out to me that if there were ever a situation where someone asks us about us, like someone notices that I'm hanging around you quints a lot and they come up to ask me what my deal is, then telling them that you're my friends is the easiest way to deal with that situation."
"Ah...geez, I knew it. So then it's literally just a placeholder, then? It doesn't mean anything?"
"Normally, yes." Fuutarou rubs his chin thoughtfully. "...but maybe, just maybe, you girls are an exception."
"Haha...I guess we'll have to settle for being 'exceptions', huh? Is that, like, a lowkey roast or something? You're calling me and my sisters freaks, pretty much, aren't you?"
"...that wasn't what I had in mind when I said that, but sure, if that's what makes you feel better about it, go ahead, be my guest..."
"Fuutarou-kun, eventually you'll realize that that's not how you talk to a girl if you want to make them feel better about themselves."
"That's funny, I don't recall 'knowing how to talk to girls' being part of our curriculum..."
Ichika's drink once more bonks against the side of Fuutarou's head.
"Okay, I'll stop it with the dry jokes."
"Yes, please do. At this rate, I think I'll have to buy another drink before heading to class..."
"You're gonna need to use the bathroom in the middle of class if you keep drinking like that, so don't."
"What, it's not like we pay attention in class since you're just gonna teach us everything anyway."
"Goddamn it, that's not why I'm tutoring you all."
"But c'mon, you know I'm not wrong. Our teachers all suck compared to you, you teach the material so much better than they do."
"I mean, that's not exactly hard to do with I only need to teach the five of you at a time when our teachers need to deal with twenty or thirty."
"Even if you put it that way, it's not like that's any of our concern, as bad as that sounds, I know. All we care about is passing our own grades, right? And you're the one whom Dad hired to do that. So if that's the case, and you do such a good job of it anyway, why should we bother paying attention to our teachers in class?"
Fuutarou's expression darkens suddenly. "Guess I'll have to request our homeroom teacher to let me move my seat to the back of the class so that I can make sure y'all're paying attention."
"Aaaaaaaaah, don't do that, don't do that, we'll pay attention, I promise, okaaaaayyy ~ "
Scowling at Ichika, Fuutarou rolls his eyes somewhat.
"And besides, the main reason's because I myself didn't do a good enough job on my own, so you still need to pay attention in class."
"Oh, there you go again about not having done a good enough job. In hindsight, you basically did the impossible, you know that? You taught us enough to help us pass a subject each, and some of us got close to passing two. All that in less than two months! You should be proud of what you've managed to accomplish."
"Are you gonna lecture me about that one too, just like how you did in regards to the whole friends thing?"
"Oh ho ho, that's not a challenge I hear, is it? Because I'll do it, don't you try me!"
As Ichika giggles, the young tutor lets his memory recall the paralyzing sensation that followed immediately after Ichika spoke those same words last time.
"Are you gonna paralyze me like you did the last time when you left Starbucks after saying that?"
Ichika's giggling immediately ceases as though jazz music stopped playing, even though there was none to begin with. Her hand cautiously lowers her drink.
"...I figured you'd ask about that eventually. I'm just surprised that it's taken you this long to bring it up. I thought for sure...that you'd pull me aside at some point to talk to me about it, but it's been two weeks since then and it's only now that this's happening," Ichika smiles weakly.
"Because as much as I would've liked to ask you about it, my responsibility is to be your tutor, so that comes first, and we had a lot to review and study after midterms so that if they come up on finals, all of you'll be prepared for them."
"At least, we hope."
"Yeah. Hopefully. But in any case, since you decided to text me and ask to go to school with me, I figured this would be a good time to talk about it, and even better that you started off with something that would've lead naturally into this eventually."
"Heh heh...you're not wrong there. Guess I really dug my own grave, huh?"
Ichika takes one more deep breath.
"Do you want to see it one more time? I promise I won't, uh, do the thing I did you to last time."
Fuutarou nods. "Just make sure not to have it on for too long, since we're out in public and all. But just a quick peek should be enough."
So Ichika closes her eyes briefly, stops walking to turn to her tutor, and looks back up at him. Reciprocating, Fuutarou catches his quick glimpse of Ichika's single Mystic Eye in her right eye, with its bright golden hue, thin blue outline around the constricted pupil, and the thin black belt in the iris.
"Aha...I'll admit it's pretty weird bringing it up like that and then not use it," Ichika giggles quietly as she shuts her eye to put it away, opening it again to reveal its regressed blue eye. "The vast majority of the time, I only bring it up if I'm dead serious on using it, like you saw last time. How do you like it? It's cool, right?"
"What does it matter if it's cool or not to the person looking into it?"
At first glancing back up at her tutor in subdued confusion, Ichika then understands what Fuutarou's getting at and turns away slowly.
"...yeah, I guess the people who see it don't really care about that. It's just...I think it's...pretty cool, okay? Don't judge me." Ichika gives a tiny pout.
"...Ichika, this is a very important question I have to ask, and don't ask why I have to ask this, but..."
"Fuutarou-kun, stop."
"...are you..."
"Don't say any more."
"...by chance..."
"Shut up, Fuutarou-kun."
"...a closet..."
"Kyaaaaaaa...!"
"...chuuni?"
By this point, Ichika is reeling badly with her free hand over her head.
"Aaaaaaaaaaah, Fuutarou-kun went and said it! You actually went and said it! I can't believe you, I can't believe you, I can't believe you...! ! ! ! !"
"Wait, but...technically that's not chuunibyou, because that describes kids with delusions of grandeur or some shit like that," Fuutarou mutters to himself critically. "In your case it's not, because you really do have a secret power."
"Y-Yeah, yeah, uh huh, that's exactly it, right, right! I'm - I don't have chuunibyou if my powers are real!"
"The fact that you're talking like one isn't helping your case."
"Gaaaaaah! I-I-I know, I know, I know, but - but - but - ! ! !"
"But what?"
"It's just so embarrassing if you put it that way, gosh!"
"Well shit, imagine what I must feel then every time I need to cast a spell or something."
"Then that means you're even more of a closet chuuni than me, aren't you?"
"Maybe, but the difference between the two of us is that I don't feel the need to get embarrassed just because I can use magic and have magical powers. And back on topic, it seems like you've had that Mystic Eye for a while now, given how good your control of it is."
With her classmate anchoring the topic like this, Ichika manages to calm herself down. "'Mystic Eye'...so that's what it's called, huh?"
"It's not my area of expertise, but I have been studying more about them, so I know a few things about them...hopefully enough to tell you a bit more about them if you have any questions."
"Mmm...maybe later. Not really in the mood to...talk about it, y'know?"
"Even though you were the one who said that it was pretty cool having a special power in your eye like that?"
"Sh-Shut up. Forget I said that."
"No."
"Then next time, when we're at home or something, I'll paralyze you again to teach you your lesson!"
"Bring it on, next time I'll be prepared."
Glaring indignantly at Fuutarou for a moment, Ichika lightens up her expression, but the frown still lingers on her face.
"You're not scared, Fuutarou-kun?"
"Scared about what?"
"That...I have this power that you didn't know about until two weeks ago."
"If I were, you'd know by now that I am."
"That's...that's true...but still, I thought you told us before that mages don't like other mages, generally speaking."
"That's also true. But for the time being, I don't need to worry about you posing a serious threat to me because you're not exposed to the magic world completely yet; right now, you're just a high school girl who happens to have a Mystic Eye. I don't know to what extent exactly you've been using it for, but given your relative control over it, it's clear to me that you've used it plenty of times, like I said, enough to know what your Mystic Eye does. But you don't know how to fight, and you obviously don't have any knowledge of magecraft. Now that you've wasted your Mystic Eye's gimmick the first time and I have an idea of what it does, I should be able to know what to do to counter it, thus neutralizing the potential threat you pose to me."
Rolling his neck a few times and yawning, Fuutarou rubs the back of his neck.
"And that's before the whole tutoring side of my contract, too."
"What, you'd still try to teach me even if I did pose a threat to you?"
"Yeah, of course. If you're concerned about the danger concerning a contract like that, just remember, I do far more dangerous shit normally. What does concern me, however, is the fact that you've chosen not to share this with your sisters, and so they have no idea about it for the most part. Why is that?"
Ichika tenses up nervously at Fuutarou's biting question.
"...how did you know?" she asks slowly, and Fuutarou also slowly turns to Ichika while they continue their walk to school, which feels like it's taking forever.
"About three weeks to a month ago, Nino and Miku came to me asking about them, back when we had our first overnight cram session, if you remember that one, so I talked to them about their own Mystic Eyes at night in Nino's room while everyone else was sleeping. Neither of them mentioned anything about you having one; as far as they're concerned, they're the only two in the family who has Mystic Eyes. But then you showed me yours on me last week at Starbucks; not only did you show me, you used it on me, which neither Nino nor Miku can do, actually use their Mystic Eyes. For you to be able to know what your Mystic Eye does and use it in a definite, tangible way, despite the fact that I called you nothing more than a high schooler with a gimmick power, you at least do have a basic understanding of magecraft - and thus, as far as I'm concerned, you are a mage. The fact that Nino and Miku both have Mystic Eyes as well also makes them mages, but you're the only one I've seen actually use your Mystic Eye like one. All this to say, you're probably aware of the fact that your sisters also have Mystic Eyes, but because neither Nino nor Miku mentioned you at all when I talked to them about theirs, you've elected to not tell them and keep this to yourself. And I want to ask you why."
Ichika stays silent for a long time - and by 'long time', she does so until they reach campus, which they were close to anyway at the time Fuutarou pitched this pressing question to her. Having sipped quietly on her latte the entire rest of the way so that she can toss the empty plastic cup into its appropriate recycling bin before the two of them head into their school shoe lockers, Ichika stops and gestures to her classmate to the side so that their conversation won't get overheard by passing schoolmates.
"...sorry, but...I don't think I can answer this now. I have my reasons...it's just...I wasn't exactly prepared to...talk about it, you know? I know you want me to talk about it because you're concerned for me and my sisters. But...now's not the time. Maybe...maybe later."
Fuutarou nods curtly. "That's fine. Whenever you're comfortable - in fact, actually, you don't even need to tell me at all. I only asked that out of concern because right now, among the five of you, there are three Mystic Eye holders: you, Nino, and Miku, and Yotsuba and Itsuki aren't accounted for here. With Nino and Miku knowing about each other but not you, and you knowing about the other two - answer me this then, you do know about those two having Mystic Eyes, right?"
Ichika nods slowly.
"Right. So the situation's kind of like this - and as you should be able to tell, it's a potential trainwreck waiting to happen. What if Nino or Miku or God forbid both of them find out that you also have a Mystic Eye and that you've been using yours for a long time compared to them? How do you think they'll react? Because I can't answer that, right? You're the one who can, you're the one who knows how they'll react. If this situation isn't handled correctly, this can really blow up in our faces, and possibly at a time when we really don't want it to, like before a midterm or finals or something."
"But is it really going to be that bad of a trainwreck? Aren't you maybe exaggerating this a little?"
"I'm just saying the potential is there. Maybe Nino and Miku won't really react that strongly if they find out that you also have an active Mystic Eye. But given what I've seen personally during my own years as a mage, sometimes...people can overreact to their discoveries of magic powers and whatnot. I can't say for sure what'll happen here because this is such a unique situation with the five of you being quints and all, but it's perhaps because of a situation like this that this all has the potential to be an even bigger trainwreck than it needs to be. Maybe I really don't have anything to worry about, and I pray that's true. I just hope that your reasons for keeping your Mystic Eye secret from your sisters are good ones."
"Just trust me, Fuutarou-kun, I'll handle it. I know I shouldn't really say something like this to you at this point, but...I think that this is one of the few things that...I should keep within the family, you know? Like I said, when the time's right, I'll...explain everything to you."
"Just trust you, huh? I've heard that one before...too many times..." Fuutarou sighs lightly, turning to leave for their homeroom. "But if you insist, then I'll hold you to it. Let's get to class, we spent so much time walking and chatting that we're about to be late."
As the two of them hurry to their classroom and take their seats for first period, Ichika has one preceding thought stuck in her head as she greets her sisters who are all already in class, since the route Ichika and Fuutarou took to get to school was purposefully longer than usual due to the location of the Starbucks that Ichika texted Fuutarou to meet her at. Does she want to tell Fuutarou about this? As much as she considers him a friend now, a friend to all of her sisters and not just herself, as much time that they've spent together so far, Ichika isn't sure if she wants to make this jump just yet of entrusting some of her deepest sentiments to a boy she's only known for a little over two months.
Funny, because these days she feels like she's been warming up to him more and more. She even foresaw a conversation like this happening between them ever since their less-than-friendly meeting at Starbucks during midterms week, but now that it's actually happened, Ichika couldn't seem to muster the same courage that she imagined herself having and talking to Fuutarou straight about the circumstances surrounding her Mystic Eye and why she decided to go about behaving the ways she has over the years.
Besides, she wants to convince herself that Fuutarou is just exaggerating; surely her sisters will accept and understand her rationale for keeping her Mystic Eye secret from them for the past however many years. The fears she had from before where she was afraid of being branded as the outcast among the five of them should be gone, since the girls have all grown up since then; that, and Fuutarou's right in that Nino and Miku both have their Mystic Eyes awakened; as a matter of fact, both of them had Mystic Eyes ever since middle school, but now that Fuutarou is their tutor, Ichika supposes that it only makes sense that Nino and Miku truly discover what their eyes are.
But what if Fuutarou is right? What if Nino and Miku hold it against her that she's kept her own Mystic Eye secret from them for all this time? What if they blame her for not helping them and comforting them during the times when their eyes caused them trouble? And now that Ichika thinks about it, wouldn't that invalidate everything that she'd been doing for her sisters' sake by using her own Mystic Eye? As in, what was the point of going around acting like a cool vigilante for the sake of protecting her sisters if she never acted like a real big sister and stepped in to comfort them, when Nino lost most of her vision and when Miku came out of the hospital and subsequently began suffering from her nightly panic attacks? Was preserving her identity as a Nakano quintuplet worth letting Nino and Miku suffer the ways they did as a result of their Mystic Eyes first developing?
Was all this what a good big sister should have done?
A/N
Apologies for the sudden week break, had to be a mobile game degenerate in FGO for the Apoc raids. Now that they're done, it's time for me to get back to writing.
...or so I would like. Long story short, without going into too much detail, I have quite a few IRL problems that I must take care of. For now, for maybe the next month or so, my current situation shouldn't change, allowing me to get out some chapters like I have done up until a week ago, but there may come a point in the near future where I'll have to take another extended break to handle those IRL matters. Ideally I won't even need to take time off writing at all and it'll seem like I'm just whining about nothing, but I just want to account for all the possibilities that can happen.
Thanks for your understanding, and of course, thanks for reading.