A/N

Very short chapter for today. Originally I had meant to include this chapter at the end of the previous one, but because I've been having a packed schedule lately, I've decided to release this as its own standalone chapter instead.

Crickets are chirping in the night, and their nocturnal songs are carried about the peaceful park by the winds passing through the city tonight. Nakano Yotsuba sits with one of her older sisters on the same bench that Nino has stopped to sit in herself starting an hour ago, exhausted is she from constantly being on the run from her younger sister who's tracked her down like a hound. Of course she wasn't going to outrun someone like Yotsuba; her incredible physical prowess alone eliminates any chance that Nino could outlast Yotsuba of all people on mere endurance. Yotsuba is also mysteriously proficient at following people around; she might have a tough time initially locating the people she needs to follow if she doesn't have much information about them to go off on or if she must search for them first herself, but once she has them in her sights, there's no escaping her. At least, none of her sisters have a chance at outrunning her.

So Nino has resigned herself to this park bench to batch her breath, but now that she's seated herself to recover her strength, she feels sapped of any motivation to try to run away, since it's not like she has any chance in hell that she's going to shake Yotsuba off her trail. The suitcase that she's brought with her, packed with several changes of clothes and her vital belongings like her phone and purse, stands patiently next to her on the bench, as her initial plan upon running away from home was to check into a hotel somewhere - probably the Marriott, since it's the closest to the penthouse and Nino knows at least not to stay outside in the middle of the night for too long.

But now she doesn't care. Her frustration that's gripped her tonight, initially spawned because of Yotsuba's involvement in the matter of tracking her down, has burst into flames thanks to the detonation of her already pent-up anger at Itsuki from their fight earlier today and has subsequently raged out of Nino's weak emotional control like a wildfire in the middle of a redwood forest, the emotional flames fanned by the ember-filled winds of her emotions past that she hasn't been able to let go of completely over the past three months.

And now here she sits, on a bench in the middle of a park overlooking a man-made lake, forced to bask in a bed of smoking embers and peer out helplessly and irritably at the emotionally burnt forest that is her smoldering thoughts and sentiments. The fact that she can still feel the punch Itsuki gave her on her mouth doesn't help at all, though oddly the stinging pain she felt for a little bit following their punchout caused by the cut that Itsuki gave her lower lip has long since departed.

It's to the point where Nino can't even feel much of the gusts that occasionally roll through the park. Yotsuba is starting to rub her exposed arms a little now at the relative chill of the night, but her sister shows no such reaction, even though at the moment they're both similarly dressed in nothing but T-shirts and jeans, as Nino was too angry at the time of her departure from home to bother thinking about what clothes to wear before storming out.

It's to the point where even Yotsuba doesn't need to rub her arms to keep herself warm anymore.

After what seemed to be an eternity, the second quintuplet finally drops her hands slowly from her face, and she also slowly sits back up on the bench. Her eyes are still red from crying into her own hands a while ago when she first arrived at this bench to wallow in her own thoughts, but having already gone through this kind of a phase not that long ago, Nino hates that feeling of wallowing in her own anger, and that hatred is somehow greater than the anger that feels towards her entire family right now.

Oh, and that boy who calls himself her tutor.

Nino expects Yotsuba to greet her cheerfully as usual and urge her to return home when she sits back up on their bench, but...no such inquiry comes. In fact, the two sisters just sit there on their bench together, silently, watching the surface of the water of the lake vacillate with the draping of the wind over it. Now that she's managed to calm down, the second quintuplet, finding her current situation becoming more and more awkward as time drags on, can endure it no longer and must speak, though she makes sure to pick and choose her first words wisely.

"...you still mad at me from last time, Yotsuba?"

Her younger sister glances to her left at her older sibling slightly. "...what do you mean, from last time?"

"Don't play dumb with me, the time I slapped you the night we ran into those three guys who wanted to kidnap us and Uesugi-kun had to bail us out again."

"Oh, that..."

"Don't tell me you forgot?"

Yotsuba slowly raises her gaze up at the night sky above the two of them and merely shrugs.

"...I guess I must have. Sorry about that, haha."

"...how the fuck do you just forget something like that...?" Nino balks at her, half wondrously and half annoyed.

"Well, you did apologize to me for doing that eventually, and I knew that you were in a terrible mood that night. I mean, you got hurt, right? One of those bad guys stabbed you in the shoulder and all. And I tried getting in your way between you and Uesugi-san, so..."

"But just because I said sorry, you take that at face value and just get over it?" Nino runs her hand up through her own hair in disbelief. "I guess that's just Yotsuba for you..."

The quintuplet in question grins somewhat at her sibling. "I mean, you know me, right? I don't really get angry at much, if at all."

"Tch...guess so..."

"So why did you expect my answer to be any different?"

It's Nino's turn to glance back at her sister. "Because you're acting different tonight."

Yotsuba blinks back at Nino, lifting her head a little in surprise. "Different? How...how so?"

"Normally, when I sat back up just a few moments ago, you'd've taken that as an opportunity to ask me to return home with you. Yet, you just kept sitting here doing nothing. It's like...it's like you were waiting for me to start talking. I've...never seen you really act like that before. Usually you just blab about shit if that's what you wanna do, and you don't let what's going on around you stop you."

Listening to her older quintuplet sister carefully, Yotsuba again smiles, but this time with a noticeable degree of sympathy.

"That's...that's true, I guess. It's always a bit, uh, humbling to hear other people point out what I do to me, huh?"

Nino has begun to fold her arms while Yotsuba gives her an answer. "If you're trying to feel bad for me just because you saw me cry, I don't care. Your or anyone else's sympathy doesn't mean shit at this point."

"It's not...because I'm trying to pity you."

"Oh ho, it's not? Then why?"

Yotsuba returns her gaze back down to a normal elevation level, looking across the lake to the other side from them.

"A lot's happened tonight. Obviously you don't need me to tell you that, but..." she hesitates for a moment. "I don't...really know why myself either. I guess...seeing you two fight like that...it just...everything happened so fast, and it was just so shocking..."

"You certainly reacted fast at the time though," Nino points out.

"I did, but...as I was following you throughout the city, I did think about everything that happened. Especially ever since you stopped here, I didn't need to focus on following you around, so...I've been able to think about stuff today."

Nino scoffs silently. "So? Isn't there something you wanna say to me? Spit it out already."

"Um...there is, but..." Yotsuba raises an uncomfortable finger up to her cheek to scratch the latter. "...it's a bit embarrassing to say, now that I think about the kind of situation we're in..."

Gawking a little at her younger sister in growing disbelief, Nino feels her irritation coming back, though thankfully for a different reason.

"Yeah, you're definitely acting weird tonight. Just go back home already if you're gonna be acting weird; I won't get mad at you if that's what you're worried about, since...well, I don't think I need to explain why."

"But you know I can't do that. Not until I get you to come back with me."

"Then fucking tell me why you're acting so off today! If you didn't come all the way here to yap my ear off, why did you even follow me all the way here?!"

Yotsuba lowers her hand again. "...I just realized...I forgot to tell Uesugi-san that I can't study with him this week because the track team wants me to train with them for their next meet."

Nino's facial expression doesn't change for a few seconds, but it eventually gives way to a slow and steady facepalm.

"...that's what you're upset over right now...?" she sighs tiredly. She would like to have groaned, but she doesn't even have the energy for that. "Here I was, starting to feel a bit bad that the shit Itsuki and I caused at home was going to give Uesugi-kun a tough time since I bet he's running around right now trying to get us all back together, but it turns out that you would've made him bust his nuts over you anyway?"

Finally, Yotsuba perks up and grins playfully. "Yep, I guess so, haha!"

"Don't 'haha' me, Yotsuba! I just covered for your dumb ass tonight, you know that?!"

"Ehhh, not fully, though. Even if all this gets settled, the track team still wants me to train with them every day for the rest of this week."

"...wait, but this is finals week; all club activities are shut down so that we can study for finals, right?"

"Yeah, but that only applies to club activities on school grounds. The school can't do anything about clubs wanting to meet outside of school, you know?"

"Hmph, so a bit of a loophole, then." Nino sighs a little and leans her back against their bench, refolding her arms. "So you haven't changed much either, huh."

Yotsuba's smile fades a little, but it still persists as she casts her own gaze out over the lake like her sister does.

"No...I haven't," the fourth quintuplet freely admits. "I still can't help myself when it comes to helping people out, I still get involved with too many clubs and too many people, and I'm still a big fat idiot who still gets single-digit scores on my tests, even practice ones. But I'm trying to change, though! I've been scoring a bit better on the latest mock exams that Uesugi-san's given us!"

"Yeah, but you still need to work on the whole 'I'm helping out the track team so I can't study as much as everyone else' part," Nino snickers, but realizing that she's starting to enjoy their conversation, she hastily suppresses her amused grin.

"Aha, yeah...I still need to work on that bit." Yotsuba sighs a little herself. "It's just that...I made that promise to Eba-senpai, the track team captain, a few weeks prior, so it's not like this just suddenly came out of nowhere..."

"Even still - " Nino was about to advise her sister to consider canceling her commitment to the track team so that she can focus on her studies, but again she halts herself from going further and quickly salvages her dialogue, realizing that this is something she'd rather let Fuutarou handle since she shouldn't have any stake in Yotsuba's situation. "Well, if that's your decision, then whatever. Can't say no to people who ask for help, right?"

Tussling her hair a little, Nino waits for Yotsuba's reply, but it doesn't come as soon as she anticipates. So she glances over at Yotsuba to see what the matter is, and the latter is still gazing out to the man-made lake before them, with a pensive and brooding look in her darkened blue eyes. Starting to feel like she's the one putting Yotsuba on the spot now, Nino starts growing a bit distressed for doing so.

"...just ignore that, I was just being sarcastic," Nino mutters, weakly flicking her hand a little in a pitiful attempt to wave her last spoken remark away. "You can tell I'm still in a bad mood right now."

Yotsuba shakes her head, though. "No, no, it...it wasn't because of what you said."

"Oh. Then...if not me, then...?"

"I just...you just reminded me of a conversation I had with Uesugi-san a while back...I think this was right before our Golden Week vacation to Hawaii. It was similar to what you said, so...I ended up thinking about it a little bit just now."

Their tutor, huh. The mention of his name makes Nino want to feel sick to her stomach - or, at least that's how she would have reacted had this been several weeks prior. Now, though, she feels intrigued, and she hates the fact that she's starting to feel curious, but talking with her sister like this tonight is distracting her from the heavy tension that she's put herself through earlier that day, so she indulges in this spot of curiosity just for tonight.

"Uh huh. So what was that about?" Nino asks as casually as possible, trying to sound nonchalant about it.

"He basically told me that...that I have to be careful when it comes to helping other people out. He told me about something called an 'opportunity cost' I think, if I'm getting that right; apparently it means something like, uh, the cost that you'd need to pay for doing something - or in other words, stuff that you can't do because you're already doing something else."

"Heh...that guy, always wanting to teach us something even if he's just talking to us normally..." Nino rolls her eyes. "But I guess in your case, it means that since you've promised the track team that you'd practice with them for a meet, you can't study as much with us, right?"

Yotsuba nods. "At the time, I didn't really get what he meant. No, no, that's...that's not true, I knew what he was saying, what he was trying to tell me. But I didn't listen to him and kept doing what I was doing. But now, now that today happened, I just..."

To Nino's horrified surprise, Yotsuba then puts her own face into her own hands, though not completely so that her eyes are not hidden, as her elbows slowly descend until they rest on her knees. Her blue eyes do not look like they are about to weep either, unlike Nino's from earlier.

"...I guess you could say that it's all catching up to me now."

Yotsuba's words hit home too much, so much so that Nino can't come up with something else to say to her younger sister at first. In fact, Nino doesn't know how to carry on that kind of conversation, for all the years of social experience that she's got under her belt.

Now that Nino thinks about it, though, as this awkward point in their conversation forces a few moments of silence between them, the second quintuplet realizes that she's interacted with the fourth sibling more than these past four weeks or so than they had for the past several years. Ever since the quintuplets began hatching out of their shells and growing up to leave their collective quintuplet nest, the girls have established relationships among them, relationships that were more well known for better or worse among the quintuplets as a whole. For example, Ichika and Miku hang out often together, as for the most part they are usually on the same wavelength, and Nino is oftentimes at odds with Miku and Itsuki, as today can painfully attest to.

Brushing the hair that's being blown into her face out of the way, Nino glances down over at Yotsuba, but rather than making eye contact, she lets her gaze remain angled downwards instead, unsure of where to really look before she restarts their conversation.

"...now that I think about it, this's the first time we've ever really...hung out like this, huh," Nino murmurs quietly, and her words make Yotsuba lift her face out of her hands in interest.

"I guess...now that you put it that way, yeah, this might be," Yotsuba nods in agreement. "Though, we did 'hang out' together that one night when, you know..."

"Okay, let's not count that for obvious reasons."

"Aha...yeah, probably not."

But Yotsuba hesitates again.

"...but I still want it to count, though," she smiles weakly over at her older sister.

"Huh? But...why?" Nino gives Yotsuba a terribly confused look. "Like, never mind most of the shit that happened that day like me getting fucking shanked in my shoulder, I hit you that night, didn't I? Even if I did say sorry to you afterwards once I'd calmed down after that weekend, like...don't you still feel bitter towards me for that? 'Cause that's what I feel whenever Miku has to say sorry to me, her apologies never really seem genuine, though I guess I already know why..."

But Yotsuba shakes her head. "No really, like I said before, I don't really mind. I've almost forgotten that you'd slapped me at all, to be honest."

"And I'm asking you, why?"

The fourth quintuplet finally resumes eye contact with her sister.

"...because you're my sister," she says quietly. "Ichika always tells us that time's going to fly by when we're at this age, right? And that we should cherish any and every memory that we make? Well, I want to include even the bad ones. Whether we have good times together or bad, I still want to remember and cherish them all. Even something like when you hit me, I still want to be able to look back on that with you and laugh at the whole situation, even if it was pretty serious at the time. I don't want to think about a time or a memory we share and have to feel sad or bitter about it, and I think it's safe to say that we all already have our fair shares of sad times to think back on, so...anything that I don't necessarily have to feel bad about is a good memory to me; any time that I spend with any of my sisters is what I want, even if, like you said, the two of us in particular might not've hung out like this in a while, just on our own."

Listening to her sister talk, Nino can't believe that there would ever come a time when Yotsuba of all her sisters would be the one to help her compose herself like this. Seriously, since when did Yotsuba develop a serious, mature side to her? Where did this all come from? Who is she, and what happened to the real Nakano Yotsuba when Nino wasn't looking?

And it's not just Yotsuba, though Yotsuba behaving like this is the most jarring: Miku, before today, anyway, has also been acting more mature in their own one-on-one conversations that they've made over the past several months. All this serves to make it plainly obvious to Nino that her sisters truly are growing up and maturing, and that she's the one being left behind in the Nakano quintuplet nest.

"...must be nice, being able to say stuff like that..." Nino mumbles aloud before she can stop herself.

"...say stuff like this? What do you mean?"

"Well...just...you know...being able to speak your thoughts so casually like that."

"I wasn't...being 'casual' about it, though..."

"Okay, maybe...maybe not casually, maybe that's the wrong word here. More like, um...just...just saying what you wanna say."

"But don't you do that already?"

Yotsuba's innocent words slap Nino back in the face, a lot harder than the latter expected. Perhaps that's karma for hitting Yotsuba the first time.

"...never mind. Forget I said anything..." Nino again waves the dead end of a conversation away with her right hand.

Having realized to herself that Nino talking to her extensively like this means that she can probably start to convince her to return home, Yotsuba sits back up with Nino and turns to face her.

"I know it's hypocritical of me to say this, but can you come back home? We've had a good thing going for all of us studying together; it's going to be a waste if we all separate now, with finals right around the corner."

Nino snorts, shaking her head. "Hey, at least you recognize it, but still...no, I can't go back yet. You heard us arguing as we left the house, didn't you? Itsuki and I can't reconcile, at least not any time soon; we've had such a falling out this time around that it'd be hella weird if we came back all of a sudden. That, and Itsuki's still a bitch for slapping me first. Besides, even though the fight between me and Itsuki was obviously pretty serious, I don't want to be told to come back home by you right now, considering that you're going to be practicing with the track team all week this week anyway."

Shrinking dejectedly, Yotsuba casts her eyes down on the sidewalk underneath her feet again, accepting that there's nothing really she can say to Nino, now that she's pointed that out.

"...then...then what will you do now?" the younger sister asks the elder.

"Find a hotel to stay at, and...I suppose try to study as much as I can on my own," Nino mumbles, slowly getting up to her feet to stretch her sleepy limbs out. "Even if I've talked things out with you here, I just can't stand having to face Itsuki right now, and I'm sure she feels likewise. I don't care if you try following me around still, but don't expect to be able to stop me, Yotsuba. I mean it."

Not waiting for her sister to give her a response back, the second quintuplet, having fetched her phone from her suitcase, grabs the suitcase handle and sets off from the bench, leaving Yotsuba still sitting there as she scrolls through her phone's directory to find the number for one of the city's higher-end taxi services.

"Maybe your sister can't, but I certainly will. Turn around if you don't fancy her gettin' her head ripped off."

Nakano Nino freezes as her finger was just about to hit the call button to ring up a taxi, then spins around, letting go of her suitcase and clutching her phone tightly to see what's going on.

A tall man in a curious red leather jacket and conspicuously blonde hair is holding Nakano Yotsuba by the hair, having dragged her body a short distance from the bench on which the girls were just sitting on just a minute ago. Yotsuba is limp in his grasp; her eyes are still open, but they are glazed and listless, so freshly has she been knocked unconscious, and her knees and hands are scraping against the sidewalk of the side of the lake.

The instant Nino sees Yotsuba in the man's grasp, her Mystic Eyes, in the tremendous resurgence of her rebounding fury, flash into view with a vengeance -

"You - let go of her, you fucking bas - "

- but only for a moment. The man in the red leather jacket doesn't wait for her to finish her thought as he opens a rune with a large seven-inch knife in his left hand, and the moment he stabs the rune with his blade, a receiving rune that has silently appeared in front of her abdomen flashes briefly with a sinister red light.

Nino sees the blood fly from her gut first before she feels the pain - in fact, she buckles to her knees first due to the shock of her fresh stab wound before she physically registers the pain. Even still, even as the man in the red leather jacket approaches her with slow, taunting steps, dragging the unconscious body of her sister with him, the second quintuplet, finding her breathing quickly becoming labored and heavy, tries her hardest to get back on her feet, clutching at the freely bleeding gash right next to her belly button.

"Whaddya know, you bitches really are quintuplets - same face 'n everything," the quintuplets' assailant chortles dangerously as he walks up to the stumbling quintuplet who's feeling her strength rapidly leave her for reasons she does not know. "Looks like you're Nakano Nino this time, just like the pictures in your phone."

In her blurring vision, Nino desperately tries to summon her strength; she's supposed to be a mage, right? Just like the boy who tutors them. She's even got these magical eyes that proves that she's a mage. Shouldn't right now be one of those times when she's supposed to be able to draw on her hidden power or something to beat this guy?

Even as her Mystic Eyes are receding and bleeding out of view, Nino looks back up at the man who's parked himself right in front of her with his sister's hair in his hand, and as fiercely as she can, she lunges at him to tackle him.

The man's left fist meets Nino's head in midair. The sound that his knuckles produce against her face is akin to a large rock being dropped from a tall height against asphalt, and Nino certainly drops like one, the back of her head getting slammed into the ground from the force of the punch that's just punted her world from red to black.