A/N

PortosCpt and Coffeeandanxiety: I don't consider myself a talented or skilled writer, just some dude who's wasted the past eight and a half years of his life writing mediocre fanfiction. However, with all due respect to the original manga, to hear someone say that they like one of my stories better than the source material is a huge confidence booster to me. Thanks for reading.

"...no, I want you two to stay where you are. Given what went down last night, I can't risk having even more of you hurt; two are already enough as it is."

Nakano Yotsuba's hearing wobbily focuses itself as she awakes quietly in her hotel bed. Her head feels incredibly sore, specifically the back of her head, and on top of it she has an unbearable headache that begins to pound the inside of her skull the moment she wakes. She's not sure whether her headache is caused by the soreness in the back of her head or vice versa, but what she does know is that she hasn't had a headache this bad that she can remember.

"I'll head over as soon as Yotsuba's up. Oh, speaking of which, looks like she's up now, so we'll leave for your place soon, hopefully. I'll explain everything again together with Yotsuba, since she'll wanna know what happened too, obviously."

Disconnecting the call, Uesugi Fuutarou, having walked briskly over to the fourth bedridden quintuplet after seeing her stir and awaken, pockets his smartphone and stoops a little next to Yotsuba, who tries to sit up wearily upon seeing him approach her, but she clasps her head and whines softly with pain as her splitting headache thumps her head even harder.

"Easy, easy now," Fuutarou warns her quietly, lowering his voice considerably. "Headache? Is it a headache?"

Yotsuba manages to nod, and her tutor helps her sit up in bed slowly so as to not worsen her condition.

"...I don't think I've ever had a headache this bad before," the fourth quint mumbles with a strained voice.

"It's that bad, huh. Here, sit still for a second."

Following her classmate's instruction, Yotsuba tries to sit up with her back straight as much as possible, though the slight fuzziness in her head on top of her already existing afflictions make it a challenge for her to have good posture. Thankfully Fuutarou's big hands gently landing about the back of her head do much to distract her from the soreness, and even more so when she begins to feel a soft warmth start to emit from his hands where they press against her head.

"Tell me how the pain is. Getting worse? Getting better?" the high school mage asks for feedback while he applies his magical treatment to his patient, who nods shortly with affirmation.

"It's getting better already. It's...it still hurts a lot, but...it's not as bad as before."

"And if I stop?"

Fuutarou cuts off his mana flow to his hands to terminate his magic treatment, and Yotsuba winces again, her posture faltering once more as the pain returns, the same as before.

"Ow, ow - it, it went back to how it was..."

So Fuutarou reapplies his magic treatment, though he warns the quintuplet, "Alright, but I can't keep this up forever since we need to go soon."

"You don't need to keep doing it, Uesugi-san. If we need to get back home, we should leave first. This isn't anything I can't handle."

Fuutarou glances down with hesitation at his classmate. "I dunno...looking at this while I was treating it the first time, it seems like you got hit back here pretty badly. I'm surprised you can even sit up like this, let alone wake up this quickly."

Yotsuba tries to pout up at her tutor, but due to the pain, it comes out as more of a grimace instead, which is something Fuutarou has seen out of the quintuplets a few times throughout the months that he's known them.

"But you said we needed to leave as soon as possible, right? Did I hear you right when you were on the phone?"

"Yeah, but once you're feeling better enough to walk on your own, which I'm not sure if you can even do."

"I definitely can! I just have a headache, that's aaaaaaaa - !"

Pulling the covers of her hotel bed back to get herself out of bed, Yotsuba manages to swing her legs out to plant her feet on the carpeted floor at her bedside, but as soon as she tries to get up to her feet, her headache exacerabates fourfold, and Yotsuba is forced to collapse back down on the bed, and Fuutarou, watching her carefully as she tried to get up, catches her and eases her back down so that she can sit on the side of the bed properly.

"You sure about that?" Fuutarou asks again to a somewhat embarrassed Yotsuba, who's shaking her head not to answer her classmate but merely to try to clear her head, albeit with no positive results. "I can carry you back to the penthouse if I need to - "

"N-No! What're the others gonna say if they see you walk in with me on your back or something..." the fourth-born moans. "Ichika already teases me enough for still wearing panties that I've had since elementary - "

"I'm not gonna lie, Ichika's probably right about that, you should really go out and buy some new ones."

"That's none of your business, Uesugi-san!"

"I know it's not, but that doesn't change the fact that that's kinda weird." Sighing heavily but secretly relieved that Yotsuba is at least feeling fine enough that she's able to have a nonsensical conversation like this, the high school tutor reapplies magic treatment for Yotsuba's pain for the time being so that Yotsuba can recover more quickly for the two of them to leave.

"...just what on earth happened last night?" the quintuplet asks the inevitable question finally. "And...and where's Nino...?"

"I'll explain everything that I know on my end once we meet up with the others back at your place," Fuutarou says calmly. "As for Nino, she's not here. But she's safe, so don't worry about her."

"...what...what do you mean by that? She's not here, but she's safe?" Yotsuba's face contorts with a mixture of discomfort and worry. "Surely you have to know by this point that if you tell me something like that, Uesugi-san, I'll still worry about her regardless? I mean, what do you think I was doing last night before I blacked out somehow?"

Sighing again but shortly through his nose this time, Fuutarou frowns too. "Well, I wish I could explain in more detail, but between looking after you and her, it's been pretty difficult."

Yotsuba doesn't really know what Fuutarou is getting at, but with the way he's wording his thoughts, she gets the feeling that she's not meant to understand.

"I don't really get it still. You told whichever of my sisters you were talking to over the phone that it's dangerous for them to get out of the house, but when it comes to Nino, you're okay with her being by herself out there somewhere? Do you even know where she is right now?"

"Surprisingly, I do. But for my own reasons, I don't want to disclose her location."

"Huh? Wh...Why not?"

"Because now, this really is my responsibility to deal with her."

"Your responsibility...?" Yotsuba mulls over her tutor's words for a moment, but she quickly understands. "Wait, is this still because you think you're responsible for her fight with - "

"No, it's not that anymore. That's already done and dusted." Fuutarou begins to massage Yotsuba's head gently, and the latter's will to keep up a conversation falters with her friend's comforting touch. "This time, it really is something personal between me and Nino."

But Yotsuba bolsters her mental fortitude as much as she can, unwilling to let Fuutarou's treatment distract her from her feelings that begin to bubble up to the surface.

"I don't believe you," she says suddenly. Her voice has gone a little hoarser than it was just now to match her current tone, and the young mage, accustomed to Yotsuba being on his side all the time, widens his eyes briefly in surprise.

"Don't believe me? What did I say that would make you doubt me?" he asks with a little smirk of amusement. "And besides, I didn't ask you to believe me, I'm just telling you how it is."

Yotsuba opens her mouth to rebut, but Fuutarou's response makes her realize that she must be coming off as unreasonable, given their history over the past several months. So she rethinks her own words and speaks again, this time with a more composed tone than what she otherwise would have put out.

"...sorry. I'm just...a little frustrated," she admits, letting her head droop a little. At this, Fuutarou's amusement grows, exemplified by a little snort that he gives.

"Hm. So even our genki-as-fuck Yotsuba can feel a bit frustrated, huh?"

"Why do you sound like you're surprised by that?"

"Because I didn't think it was possible, honestly. No matter what you'd go through, you'd always keep your head up and power through. Ironically - actually, more like fittingly, over the past few months of me tutoring you, you have a tendency to bullhead your way through your studies too, always butting your head against whatever it is that you're trying to learn until you get it. It's not like you to let something get to you to the point where you'd admit feeling a little ticked off."

Listening to her tutor effortlessly break down her behavior, Yotsuba feels the frustration that she's been briefly harboring disappear, unable is she to maintain it now that Fuutarou has pointed this out to her.

"You're right," she says quietly, "it really isn't like me to be that way, is it?"

A certain silence befalls the tutor and student pair. Fuutarou isn't able to get a read on this sort of silence, which alarms him internally - he's used to awkward silences, tense silences, serene silences - but this one? He's not sure.

Thankfully, Yotsuba dispels this odd silence on her own by continuing to talk. "I don't know what happened last night after I, uh...blacked out, I guess, but since you'll explain everything when we meet up with the others, I won't worry about that. I'm just a bit frustrated because I spent all evening yesterday making sure Nino wouldn't run off on her own, you know? Like, when she makes a threat, she doesn't always follow through with it, but when she does, she sticks to it pretty faithfully. So I spent all that time following her around, only to wake up now and find out that she's gone again. Wouldn't you feel a little bit frustrated by that too?"

"The feeling of always chasing something, only to fail when you finally reach it?" Fuutarou smirks darkly. "Oh yeah, I know that feeling real well."

"You're not talking about our grades, are you?"

"Mainly that, yes."

"Mmmuuuu!"

"Hahaha..."

Yotsuba blinks up at her classmate. "Huh? Uesugi-san?"

"What?"

"...did you just laugh?"

"Yeah, I did. Why?"

"Er...well..."

"What's so strange about laughing a little? Is your head okay, Yotsuba? Do I need to treat it again?"

"Gosh, you don't need to take it that far! But no really, it's just - " the fourth quintuplet looks away. " - I don't think I've ever heard you laugh quite like that before, that's all..."

"Yikes, so I'm that much of a Debbie Downer that you girls can't even fathom me having a little laugh every now and then, huh?"

"No, no, it's not - "

"I've even laughed a bit with you and your sisters whenever we'd crack jokes while studying, and now you're saying you're surprised at me laughing...how could you, Yotsuba..."

"It's not that!" Yotsuba whines a bit more loudly than usual in her determination to stop Fuutarou from teasing her further. "This one was different! You don't laugh like that when we're with everyone else! You sounded a lot more natural here, I'm just saying! That's why I said I don't think I've ever heard you laugh like this before, okay?"

"Aight, aight, stop yelling, you're gonna make your headache worse." Speaking of which, Fuutarou carefully ceases magic flow into his hands and pulls them away, in case a sudden termination of his magical treatment to alleviate Yotsuba's headache may result in more acute pain and undo all of his work. "How do you feel now? Better?"

Yotsuba rubs the side of her head near her left temple. "It...it's still there, but...at least it doesn't outright hurt anymore. It's more uncomfortable if anything."

"Okay, good. Can you stand?"

Back at the Nakano penthouse, on the thirtieth floor of the Pentagon luxury high-rise, the three original quintuplets of Fuutarou's tutoring posse, Ichika, Miku, and Yotsuba, are gathered back in their living room, Fuutarou having successfully escorted her back to their bastion of safety.

However, the silence in the living room indicates that Fuutarou himself is not present with them. Having delivered the fourth quintuplet back to the rest of her sisters, the girls' tutor explained the situation and the current whereabouts of their fifth sister and promptly departed to track down Nino and recover her first, since Itsuki is also safely squared away at the Uesugi office at Daikazoku Business Park. Since he has left, the three quintuplets still residing in the penthouse have spent this time digesting their current situation and the information their tutor has provided them. Obviously with what has transpired in the past twelve hours, they are under instructions to stay at home and forgo school and work today, so it's not as though the girls have much else to do but study for their finals at the end of the week.

And they really ought to be studying, but given the circumstances, they can be excused for not being in the mood for it right now.

Finally breaking the silence, Ichika, usually the icebreaker in these types of situations, speaks up, though unlike most times, she doesn't try to be upbeat about the situation at hand at all.

"...so things basically went from bad to worse, huh..." she sighs. Her two sisters don't reply at first either, merely glancing up at her when she speaks and looking away in their own directions once she's gotten her thought out there.

Just as well, because Ichika is still mulling over the situation a little herself. Fuutarou didn't mention anything about how he ran into Ichika Alter over the course of the night. As callous and confrontational Alter is, she wouldn't lie about what she's experienced if she decides to share them with her, so she can reliably take her alter ego's word for it that she did in fact assist Fuutarou in his endeavor to rescue Nino and Yotsuba.

This is giving her deja vu, because this reminds her a lot of the standoff they had between them earlier at the coffee shop: Fuutarou didn't tell the others about their run-in, most likely because he knew that revealing such information would disrupt her relationship with her sisters...though, as it turns out, it didn't stop him from telling Miku. To be fair, however, Miku's probably the best at keeping secrets among the girls with how quiet she is most of the time anyway.

Even though she knows that it's in her own best interest that Fuutarou did not mention anything about meeting her Alter, the firstborn quintuplet still feels quite miffed at her tutor's choice of behavior. To her, it almost feels as if he's throwing her a bone, and she resents that. Being a sort of self-made girl, a headstrong, confident young woman who's carved a path out for herself with her part-time job and all, Ichika doesn't appreciate being handed freebees or empty complements, but she is fully aware that Fuutarou mentioning the fact that she has another version of herself running around the city at night to her sisters now would only serve to further complicate matters, so she quietly but painfully swallows her pride.

For sure, though, Ichika has to expect Fuutarou to take her aside and speak to her in private to find out what's going on, but she's not pleased with how all this is unfolding, though exactly for what reason she's not quite sure of herself. She's just frustrated because she can't get a read on what Fuutarou is planning, and she feels an unreasonable urge to understand him not as a classmate or a student, but as a fellow mage.

Whatever the case, it was a conscious decision of hers to send her Alter out to assist him, and it seemed to be the correct one, judging from Alter's testimony. Maybe this time he's keeping the other Ichika a secret as thanks for the assist? Ichika almost wants to go to Fuutarou herself and demand him to tell her what's going on in his mind, but that wouldn't be what Nakano Ichika would do; that's not the kind of image the people closest to her have of her, and she's not keen on destroying that image herself.

As Ichika mulls over her own thoughts quietly and discreetly, the third quintuplet is doing the same, though it's more obvious with the darkened, perturbed expression on her face. Her sisters attacked? Again? At a time like this, when they ought to be studying for their finals? As if the fight that broke out between Nino and Itsuki weren't bad enough, now Nino and Yotsuba ended up getting attacked and almost kidnapped again? Miku had thought the fight between her two sisters already the worst case scenario; she didn't even consider the possibility that it could devolve even further down than that, so the unfortunate news that Fuutarou brought with him upon safely returning Yotsuba back home hit Miku like a ton of bricks when she first heard it.

At the very least, it would appear that all of her sisters are safe. Yotsuba was hurt, but apparently all she suffered was a moderate concussion to the back of the head, which Fuutarou was able to treat to the point where Yotsuba only has an uncomfortable headache rather than some of the other symptoms that concussions would bring with them, whatever they are. Itsuki is staying at Fuutarou's place due to her unwillingness to "give in" to Nino in the aftermath of their heated confrontation, and Nino, whose whereabouts their tutor did not reveal, is allegedly safe for now, at least from the enemy mage who assaulted the two quintuplets the previous night.

As for Nino, when Fuutarou first told them that she suffered a stab wound to her gut, Miku almost freaked out. She knows that given the nature of Fuutarou's contract with them, the girls ought to be prepared for something like this to possibly happen, especially given their first experience with getting kidnapped, but Nino getting shanked almost took Miku over the edge. Granted, Nino has already gotten injured like this when she took a knife to the shoulder, but at least Fuutarou healed it and she promptly returned home; that, and it probably wouldn't have been a fatal wound unless it was left untreated for too long. Now, even though Fuutarou assured them that he'd healed her stab wound completely over the course of the night, the secondborn not being at home physically tilts the third quintuplet hard because she can't look over in one direction and expect to see Nino, safe and sound, sitting on the couch or something.

Knowing that Nino could have been that close to death has finally struck palpable fear into Miku's heart. Why is it only now that she finally grasps the possibility that in their present set of circumstances, any one or more of them could die, and the rest of the quintuplets would have to live the rest of their lives without them? It's not like they haven't been put in danger like this before. Has she been that oblivious to this obvious danger that at any moment, she could have lost any number of her sisters to that enemy mage who's been after them this whole time, as Fuutarou alleges? She herself could have been targeted and killed too, and that would have brought her surviving sisters much grief as well.

All the mornings that Miku and her sisters have found their classmate with his head in his arms at his desk at school, deep asleep even as class began...if it were not for all these countless nights of work on his part, how much more danger would Miku and her sisters have been in? They could cite these dangerous scenarios that they've been put in as evidence that Fuutarou has not been doing his job properly, but that's Nino's job to do that, not Miku's. Miku would rather believe that if Fuutarou did not spend all these sleepless nights keeping the city safe for her and her siblings, they would have been kidnapped for good and possibly even killed or worse long ago, and that thanks to his work, the worst that the quintuplets have had to experience thus far are the handful of incidents up until this point, many of which, if not all of them, were caused by the girls' own misdeeds anyway.

As she sifts through these uncomfortable, heavy thoughts, the third quintuplet feels a familiar sense of urgency claw at the back of her mind, the urgency that she must do something to help Fuutarou. While she's sure that he's doing the best job that he can to keep all five of them safe, Miku can't help but want to be capable of defending herself and her sisters in the event that Fuutarou cannot reach them in time, sort of like how things seemed to unfold over the course of the previous night. And now that she's confronted her oldest sister about her own magical career that she's had for a while now, it seems, Miku feels her desire to become a mage herself skyrocket at an all-time high. If Ichika can develop her Mystic Eye and train herself in its usage enough where Fuutarou calls her a mage, Miku can do it too. There's no way she can't, for as Fuutarou said himself, they are quintuplets, and they can do whatever the others can. It also does feel a bit embarrassing to buy into that kind of quintuplet mentality, though.

Regardless, Miku makes a mental note to herself to summon up the courage and go ask Fuutarou to teach her magecraft no matter what. No matter how many times it takes her, no matter how many times her tutor may reject her, she won't give up until he gives in...of course, after this whole situation has blown over.

And finally, Yotsuba. Since she was knocked out for everything that Fuutarou shared with her sisters here in their home before leaving, she can't really dwell on them as much as her sisters probably will. So instead, she quietly hones her thoughts on whatever must have happened at the hotel room that Fuutarou brought her and Nino to after he rescued from from their would-be kidnapper, and on everything that happened that she herself can remember.

Once again, the fourth quintuplet realizes to her silent misery that she has once again burdened the boy she loves. Perhaps she can forgive herself for deciding to tail Nino around the city, but for that long? Did she really need to follow Nino around until it became dark out? She should have known better than be just as stubborn as the sibling she was tracking; she should have just called it quits and returned home in hindsight, because with how things turned out, she just ended up as another victim for this Shirazumi Rio person who's targeting her and her sisters.

Thinking of the situation in this way, Yotsuba is forced to contemplate what she holds dearer to her heart: her sisters or Uesugi Fuutarou. What happened last night was the result of her love and concern for a distraught sister of hers; she followed Nino around to make sure that nothing bad would happen to her while outside, but she clearly failed to account for the possibility that she herself might be in danger too, thus putting her tutor back into a tough position and an even tougher responsibility to rescue them from the clutches of their would-be kidnapper.

Would she have been willing to do the reverse, though? Leave her sister to be in danger on her own so that she wouldn't make Fuutarou's job as difficult by being another hostage that he would need to rescue? Yotsuba isn't sure if she's quite okay with that kind of a situation either. Technically, this would have been the correct thing to do, but just because it's correct doesn't mean it's right.

Since she's never been good with theoretical stuff and other such what-if's, Yotsuba reverts back to thinking about what did happen. Fuutarou must have treated whatever injuries she and Nino sustained overnight; she's sure that the two of them would be in much, much worse states had he not. Never mind their rescue, if it weren't for his specialized treatment, Yotsuba probably wouldn't have been able to walk back home with her own two legs either.

Speaking of treatment, now that she dwells on it a little, what was that kind of treatment? It felt like a head massage, but his hands felt much warmer than usual. Maybe he used a form of magical aid? It has to be, otherwise she'd still have an absolutely head-splitting headache. She wonders if Fuutarou had to treat her like this while she was out cold, too, but as she thinks this, Yotsuba recalls the time when he treated Itsuki's bleeding nose back when he rescued the quintuplets from their first kidnapping experience at the warehouse. Didn't he do something similar then, too? Healing Itsuki's nose with magic? Maybe magic healing like that was something Fuutarou only reserved for emergencies.

Since she is seated on the carpet next to the glass table with her knees up against her chest, Yotsuba slowly hugs her legs against her chest more a little more tightly. Now that she's dwelt on it, she can't get her mind off the soothing comfort of her tutor's healing hands when he worked to alleviate her crushing headache. Just on its own, it almost felt like she was in a spa with her head being massaged like that, but the fact that it was Fuutarou doing it made it feel even better. Yotsuba is almost embarrassed just thinking about it, as though it were some sort of guilty pleasure that she ought to keep a secret from the rest of her sisters. Though, a secret like this makes her acutely aware of the insecurities regarding her relationship with their tutor...

"...so now what do we do...?" Miku is the next to speak, which how much time has elapsed since Ichika last spoke.

"...what do you mean? We just have to sit at home here until this whole thing blows over, like Fuutarou-kun said," Ichika shrugs weakly. "Not much else of a choice we got, do we?"

"Well, yeah...I know that." Miku sighs lightly. "It's just..."

"Just what?"

"...it doesn't feel right, not having Nino and Itsuki here."

Forcing a little grin, Ichika unfolds her arms and reclines against the couch a little, trying her best to relax. "It shouldn't. Not during a time like this."

"The house already felt empty when I was here alone yesterday, after everyone bailed," Miku murmurs miserably. "I'll admit, there've been times when I thought this house just wasn't big enough for the five of us with what happens among us sometimes, but...when everyone else left, it felt weird...being here all by myself."

"So you want everyone to get back together as quick as possible, right?" Yotsuba nods, chiming in now that a conversation is striking up finally between her two sisters, which compels her to join in, if only to distance herself from her own dark thoughts. "It's like, y'know, we won't be ourselves until everyone's back together."

"Fuutarou's gone to go get Nino back, which leaves only Itsuki. Can we call her? See how she's doing, at least?" the third quintuplet asks, glancing back and forth at both of her sisters present.

"I mean, if Fuutarou-kun says she's safe and sound, we don't need to worry about her. Besides..." Giving a little sigh, Ichika reaches into her left pocket, which is not usually where she keeps her own smartphone, to pull out another one that isn't hers, but both Miku and Yotsuba recognize it as Itsuki's to their dismay. "...she didn't take her phone with her. As a matter of fact, she practically left behind the stuff that she probably needs the most."

"Wait - if she left the house with a suitcase of stuff, how did she forget her phone...?" Yotsuba gawks in half-amazement, half-shock.

"Itsuki can forget stuff pretty easily if she's tired or under pressure of some kind, and given what happened yesterday, this doesn't surprise me. Still, you're right, Yotsuba, she really shouldn't forget this kind of stuff...imagine what could've ended up happening to her if Fuutarou-kun didn't find her first and keep her safe at his own place."

Yotsuba forces a very weak-willed smile back at her oldest sister. "Well...the thing is, I don't need to imagine."

Ichika cringes a little at Yotsuba's response, realizing what she means by this. "...I guess so, yeah. Sorry, I didn't...mean to bring that up..."

Another awkward silence ensues following Ichika's last remark. The eldest sister notices that she's the only one who's in any mood to talk; both Miku and Yotsuba look incredibly deflated, as indicated by both their body language and facial expressions. Not that she can blame them, really, especially not Yotsuba, but she'd at least like to get their spirits up, or at least that's what her big sister instincts are telling her. But what should she say, then? What can she talk about?

While Ichika quietly considers her limited options for a conversation starter, Yotsuba looks up somewhat, though her eyes still aren't at a level where she can look her other sisters directly.

"...it's my fault all this happened, honestly," she mumbles, causing both of her sisters to look over at her. They're both quite spooked by the way the youngest quintuplet present is speaking because it contrasts starkly with the usual bubbly personality and tone that Yotsuba usually carries herself with. Miku is especially affected because as someone who's spoken with such a tone before, she knows perhaps better than the rest of her siblings what kinds of dark, disturbed thoughts may be running their course inside Yotsuba's mind when she says this. For someone like Miku, having such thoughts is normal, given her emotional track record. But Yotsuba? Someone like her should not be talking like that, not in a million years. This is further reinforced when Miku looks into Yotsuba's downward blue eyes, which appear almost listless and empty. Now that's a look that definitely do not belong in those eyes.

"W-What do you mean? How is any of this your fault?" Ichika asks up immediately, both out of concern for her younger sister and out of relief that she didn't need to break the silence herself again. "You just went out there yesterday to make sure Nino wasn't going to do anything stupid."

"...I know, but...but that doesn't change the fact that in the end, Uesugi-san had to save both me and Nino anyway," Yotsuba replies, maintaining her lowered voice. "I should have...been more aggressive in asking Nino to come back. I should have known something like this would've happened. Like, it was Nino and me who got in trouble last time, right? Back when we got attacked by those three guys and Nino ended up getting her shoulder stabbed? It was the two of us back then, and it was the two of us again!"

As Yotsuba's train of thought gets rolling, the tension in her voice and its volume both begin to accelerate along with it. Subconsciously becoming aware of this, Yotsuba lowers her head down even further and puts her hands over the back of her head in muted frustration.

"Wait, wait, hold on, Yotsuba, don't - don't be so harsh on yourself. Like I just said, this isn't your fault," Ichika repeats herself, leaning forward in her seat on the long couch. "You headed out because you were concerned about Nino doing something rash, right? If anyone, it's Nino's fault for not coming back home within a reasonable time period, or at the very least checking into a hotel like she ought to have."

"But is it, though? Think about it!" Yotsuba suddenly darts her head up at her older sister, who recoils just a little bit in surprise, not expecting Yotsuba to react like this. Has she ever acted like this before, come to think of it? "We all know Nino enough to know how she'd react to what happened yesterday, when she and Itsuki fought! Like, of course she'd act like that! So if you think about it, it became my responsibility to bring her back home before it became too late out! I just didn't realize it at all until now, now that I've had time to think about what I could have done differently. I mean, I was the one who chose to go out after her, right? I certainly didn't need to, but I did because I was worried about her, and out of the three of us here, I'm the most qualified to do something like track down Nino to make sure we knew where she was! As a matter of fact, I could have just woken up Uesugi-san and told him the situation! That's what we should have done, even though we didn't want to bother him when he was sleeping!"

Stunned by this extremely rare outburst from their younger sister, both Ichika and Miku find themselves at a loss for words or any semblance of a response, which enables Yotsuba to continue her self-depreciating rant of sorts as she sinks her head back down.

"This reminds me of what Uesugi-san talked to me about a while ago...I think it was just before Golden Week...he was talking to me about how I was going around helping a lot of clubs at school, and he asked me if I needed to do that, and that he'd prefer if I'd just focused on myself first and my studies. Now that I think about that, I think he was trying to tell me that I needed to learn how to say no...say no to all the people wanting me to help their clubs out and stuff..."

"...but, wait...what's that got to do with what we're dealing with now?" Miku asks, unsure of where Yotsuba is trying to go with this.

Yotsuba glances a little towards her immediate older sister. "I'm saying that in this situation, I didn't think about what I was doing. I was just...on auto-pilot mode. Just doing my own usual thing...following Nino around, thinking I was doing the right thing just keeping an eye on her. No, I needed to...I needed to do more. I needed to be more aggressive - er, maybe not aggressive, but definitely more assertive about trying to get her to come back home or get to somewhere safe for the night."

"But I still don't get it, why blame yourself for something you could've done differently when clearly everyone is at fault here?" Ichika wonders aloud. "Miku and I could have done a better job in mitigating the, uh, fallout, so to say, from the fight between Nino and Itsuki, but we didn't because we didn't think things would get this bad. For God's sake, Nino didn't need to storm out of the house like she did and refuse to come home on her own! She's the one who's mainly at fault here!"

"But like I said, that's exactly what Nino would do! Why are you expecting her to act any differently?"

It takes a moment for Ichika to process Yotsuba's words.

"Huh..." she straightens her posture somewhat, the look on her face relaxing a little with clarity. "...I didn't think you were like that, Yotsuba."

The fourth quintuplet has already gone back to staring intently down at her feet on the floor.

"...this is just like that time..." she groans softly. "...the time I got all of us...kicked out of Black Rose..."

This time, it's Miku's turn to rise to the occasion. "No, don't say that," she asserts strongly, snapping out of her own personal cloud of misery to drag Yotsuba out of hers. "You can't even compare that to what's going on now. Nobody was in actual physical danger back then, and it wasn't you who caused us to transfer out with you, that was a collective decision that we all made to stick together. Don't get this twisted, Yotsuba."

"Exactly. You're being way too harsh on yourself here; you're making yourself start to think that this is all your fault when it's really not," Ichika nods. "Sure, maybe you could have done a few things differently yesterday, but that basically goes for everyone else as well. Even though I know I did say just earlier that this is Nino's fault, honestly it's not just her fault; it's everyone's. There's at least something that all five of us could've done differently to avoid something catastrophic like this from happening."

Ichika pauses.

"And...if you're acting like this because you feel bad for what you've made Fuutarou-kun go through to rescue you and Nino...all I have to say is that he's not mad at you for this, Yotsuba. He's not the type who'd get mad at you over this. Miku, he wasn't mad or anything when he woke up and you told him about what happened while he was out, right?"

Miku shakes her head. "No, of course not. Well, he...he was annoyed that things had gotten like this, but he wasn't mad at anyone in particular. And speaking of which, he even said that he met Yotsuba at the park, right? He wasn't mad at you, was he, Yotsuba?"

But it would appear that Yotsuba is no longer in a talking mood, judging by the silence that follows Miku's inquiry. The two older quintuplets share a quick glance of uncertainty and concern at Yotsuba's lack of a response, unsure of how to handle the situation now.

"...since it doesn't seem like anything we're saying is helping you feel better, Yotsuba, we'll drop the subject," Ichika sighs heavily and gets up from her seat on the couch, pulling out her phone. "I'll order up some takeout since Nino obviously isn't here. For what it's worth, at the very least everyone's safe, despite everything that's happened, and we'll wait for Nino to come back home tonight or whenever Fuutarou-kun said he'll bring her back."

The firstborn thus leaves her two sisters as she retreats to her own room briefly so as not to disturb them with her phone call. Miku lets her eyes slowly turn to Yotsuba to check on her, but she still hasn't moved an inch ever since she put her face back into her knees while hugging her legs. Is that what she looks like whenever she assumes a sitting fetal position like that, too?

Not knowing what else to say, Miku mutters offhandedly, "...Fuutarou isn't mad at you, Yotsuba, honest. He cares about us too much to get to that point."

To Miku's surprise, Yotsuba lifts her head up just a bit at this, enough to the point where her eyes are now visible. But they still don't look back at her older sister.

"...I know he isn't, Miku," she croaks, her voice reduced to just a whisper now.

Bright neon lights. The fresh ocean breeze. The dusk of the setting sun as its top, the last visible part of it, is finally beginning to bank underneath the horizon, its dying rays of natural light peeking through the various bars of a nearby Ferris wheel.

Nakano Nino is standing on a small bridge connecting one half of a seaside amusement park to the other, one of a set of three such bridges whose responsibility is to connect the park to give its attendees access to other side at any time. Naturally, she occupies the bridge that faces the west, facing the sun that is all but set this Tuesday evening. The suitcase that she'd taken with her from the Marriott faithfully stands by her side, the only thing that's kept her company on her lone journey to the last recluse, the absolute final safe haven that she has left. And given the circumstances, perhaps this place is no longer so safe any more.

Nino has lost track of time ever since she arrived here. It hasn't been that long since she found this bridge and stood here to look out at the view. She wants to say that she's here to enjoy the sunset, but even she's not completely sure what she's doing...at least, that's what she tells herself. The ambient conversations and comfortable hum of passersby have ceased as the rest of the park's attendees have departed for the evening, though the park itself remains open for at least another few hours, so now, other than her suitcase, the only sounds that stop her from feeling completely alone are the whistling of the sea breeze, the groans of metal from the Ferris wheel in the distance, and the refreshing rolling of the waves lapping against the pier on which this part of this amusement park is located.

The second quintuplet is fully aware that her stubborn venture out to this amusement park, which isn't even located in the city, could have put her once again in grave danger. She's aware that she's putting yet another responsibility on her tutor's laundry list of responsibilities when it comes to the quintuplets' collective safety.

She knows that what she is doing is wrong.

She knows that what she is doing is stupid.

"...I'm so stupid..."

Nino says this aloud. Whether it's to herself, to the wind, or to nothing in particular, she's not sure either. She doesn't whisper this, murmur this, or mutter this - she says it out loud, loud and clear for others to hear, if there were any others to hear it.

As it were, there happens to be one person who hears it.

"We all think that at one point or another, don't we."

Nino doesn't flinch or even move a muscle, continuing to gaze out at the setting sun from her place on the bridge, leaning a little against the safety railing. To her left, spaced about five meters away, also stands Uesugi Fuutarou, dressed in his magecraft black.

The young mage slowly pulls off his headphones that he's got on, simultaneously pulling out his phone that they're connected to. The song currently playing reads "PROMISES I CAN'T KEEP" before the phone screen goes dark, and Fuutarou both pockets his phone again and slips his headphones back into their storage rune to get them out of the way.

Until the sun completely sets, the two high school freshmen stand together on this bridge, silently watching the beautiful scenery unfold before them. Maybe they understand that this is something that they normally don't get to see in the city, something that is more important than whatever the two of them are going through right now.

Finally, Nino speaks. She knows that she's got to be the first one to talk, because if Fuutarou wanted to talk, he would've already done so.

"You here to take me back home?" she asks. Her tone is soft, but her voice is audible enough to be heard over the breeze and the waves.

"Obviously," Fuutarou answers curtly and concisely. Neither of them have taken a glance at the other, preoccupied are they with taking in the evening beauty.

"Doesn't really seem like it, though."

"Can't blame me. The circumstances we're dealing with right now are, let's say...unique."

"Hmph...you're not wrong...though, I do have to wonder how you managed to find me here. Given what you told us about how you monitor me and my sisters, and given that this park isn't anywhere near the city, you shouldn't have found me here."

"I've got my ways. I wouldn't be a proper mage if I didn't have my fair share of secrets." Fuutarou raises hand slowly to adjust his snapback cap with his visor. "But for someone who's asking how I found them in a place that they thought I wouldn't be able to find, you sure don't sound all that surprised."

"Because I figured you'd find me here anyway, one way or another, sooner or later. You always do. It's your job, isn't it? And we all know you take your job seriously. Not to mention the whole mage thing you've got going on."

At this, Nino turns her head to cast her tired eyes over at her tutor and classmate, who does the same to meet her eyes briefly before both of them resume casting their gazes out at sea.

"...how's Yotsuba?" the second quintuplet asks, and her voice sinks a little when she mentions her younger sister. "Is she...alright?"

"She's doing fine; I brought her back home, so she's safe with Ichika and Miku," Fuutarou answers crisply. "Between the two of you, you were the bigger worry I had, given that you had the more serious injury."

Nino's mind focuses on the gut wound whose pain she can no longer feel. She's since taken off the layer of clean bandages that had been wrapped around her midsection to hide the wound, expecting the pain to stay with her all day, but she realizes that at some point, the pain simply vanished on its own as she was wandering throughout the park until stopping here on this bridge.

"...and...Itsuki? What about her?"

"Itsuki's at my place. She ended up forgetting her purse and phone back at your place, so I had her stay at my place for the time being."

At this, Nino smirks, then giggles a little.

"Yeah, that sounds about right. Itsuki's pretty forgetful when things like this happen," the secondborn chuckles. "Still, I'm glad. She didn't have to go through the bullshit Yotsuba and I did last night."

Listening to what little she's spoken ever since he got here, Fuutarou notes Nino's rather strange attitude and behavior, because they don't really match up with how she'd normally act towards him in situations like this. Nino was being nice to him up until yesterday, when he remembers her reverting back to the the old days when she used to be pissed off all the time towards him. Fuutarou's mind is already coming up with various theories that would explain Nino's current behavior here, but he mentally waves them away.

"Why did you come here? This isn't exactly what I'd call close to the city," the young mage sighs, fixing his standing posture and straightening his back a bit more to draw his full height.

At first, Nino does not answer. She continues to gaze out to the colorful evening hues of the sunset whose sun is now well out of view of the two classmates.

"...this amusement park's been around for as long as I can remember," she finally begins. "Mama took me and my sisters here once, back before she began getting sick. It was a lot of fun; it's one of my fondest memories from my days as a kid, because it was one of the only times that I ever remember Mama smiling."

Fuutarou says nothing.

"I don't know if one of my sisters already told you this...I feel like they would have by this point, but I'll just say it again just in case, but...we weren't always a bunch of rich spoiled bitches living off their dad's wealth. We used to be just as poor as you, if not more. As a kid, I didn't think about what it must've cost Mama to bring us all here for a day, but...now's a different story, obviously. I remember...at the end of that day, I asked Mama if we could all come back here again, just like we did then. She said yes, she'd bring us back, that it was a promise. We never did, because the next year, her health took a turn for the worse, and...well, it never recovered."

Nino slowly runs a hand up through her peachy-red hair, which is fluttering lazily behind her, lifted up by the breeze that's sifting past the two teens, and she takes a somewhat deep breath.

"Promises are important to kids, you know. Kids don't know a lot about the world, about life in general. So whenever they make a promise, or when a promise is made to them, they typically put their complete faith in it because they usually don't know what else to expect; they don't know what can go wrong unless they've already seen what can go wrong. So when Mama promised me that she would take us back here one day, I took that to heart. Even when Mama's health was worsening, I still held her to that, all the way up until she actually died."

Nino sighs shortly.

"I was hurt by that, naturally, but...I knew that I couldn't fault her for it. How could I? It wasn't her fault that she wasn't able to keep her promise of taking us back here. Besides, obviously losing Mama was the bigger issue for us than some dumb promise that wasn't relevant anymore. Even still, I couldn't ignore that...that kind of pain I felt when I realized that we wouldn't ever be able to come back here as a family again, and I had no one to blame for that."

"So you learned to point fingers and blame people for bad shit even as a kid? That explains a lot, actually," Fuutarou murmurs thoughtfully, as thoughtfully as words like this can sound with this kind of context.

"You're gonna talk like a jackass even during a time like this? Read the fucking atmosphere much," Nino gripes, but there is hardly any venom in her voice, and she resumes her little monologue anyway. "That aside...I made a promise to my sisters right after Mama died. I promised them that I would be the one to protect them, that I'd become our new Mama who would look after them and keep them safe. They all think that I made that promise only because I was trying to cope with Mama's death at the time."

Fuutarou again glances slightly over in Nino's direction, but this time she doesn't reciprocate.

"Why not clarify it to them? That there's more to your promise than they realize?" he asks quietly.

"Because it doesn't matter at this point; there's no use telling them anymore. It happened because of my unwillingness to let go of a promise that Mama made to me, and it should have died with her. But with me being the stubborn bitch that I am, which you know a lot about, I'm sure, I didn't let it go; I didn't put it to rest. Maybe you can say that I was only a kid back then, and we all make bad decisions when we're kids, but like I said, kids take promises to heart. I was no exception to that, and I haven't been able to let go ever since."

Nino now also straightens up her back and turns slightly to face more in Fuutarou's direction, looking at him directly.

"Right now, out of the five of us, I feel like I'm the only one who isn't growing up. Ichika's a really independent girl who goes out and does her own thing, working at her part-time or whatever she does. Miku's been studying hard with you, and her grades have been improving really fast as of late because of our midterm prepping. Yotsuba's working hard too, juggling both club stuff and her studying. Itsuki's also been studying as well, but she's gotten over her initial distrust of you and now her grades are improving, too. None of them have something that's holding them down, something that's holding them back. They're free to do whatever they want, to grow up however they want. Well, actually..."

Lowering her gaze a little, the second quintuplet reevaluates her words.

"...Itsuki's a bit like me in that she also made a promise to us sort of like the one I made, but the difference between us is that she uses her own promise to better herself. It's a source of motivation that she uses to study and get good grades in school. Mine's just a burden; mine's just a relic of the good old days back when the five of us were truly identical quintuplets with the exact same looks and even the exact same personalities. I'll admit, I liked those days the best, because back then, we were our own little tightly-knit world, where all of us could pretty much feel each other's thoughts and feelings, almost like we were straight out of an anime or something and had legit telepathy or whatever they call it. Hell, just look at my hair; I'm literally the only one out of the five of us who's kept it long like this because it's a remnant of how we used to be back as kids. But Mama's death was the catalyst in our inevitable split; it would have happened sooner or later even if she didn't die, of course, but of course that's not how I wanted it to happen. Not so suddenly like that, not with such a bad memory to go with it."

Nino once more looks back up at Fuutarou, who has since returned to giving her his audience.

"Not unlike how you came into our lives three months ago."

Fuutarou still says nothing, so Nino herself returns to looking out at the rapidly darkening sea and pier.

"That's why all this time, I've been trying to reject you, trying to chase you out of our home. You reminded me of something that happened to me six years ago that I didn't want to have happen again. Because the reality that I wanted at first, a world in which the five of us could stay truly identical quintuplets just a bit longer, was never going to return, I settled for the next best thing, and that was to grow up together and stay together as much as possible; go through school together, experience our teenage lives together, until the day comes when it's finally time for us to go our separate ways. Ichika's always told us to cherish our time right now as teens as much as we can because it's not going to last very long, but I've known that even before she started telling us that, and I was planning on doing just that. I didn't expect to have someone like you show up to throw a wrench into the works like you did."

Raising a hand again back up to the visor of his snapback, Fuutarou lowers it a trivial distance.

"...I wasn't aware of that," he says, still with his quiet voice. "I'm sorry."

"Tch. Yeah, you should be," Nino spits a little, but again, her angry attitude sputters out almost as quickly as it flares up. "...but oh well, there's no way for you to have known. And me getting angry at you over this is only going to repeat history again, and the whole point of trying to chase you out was to stop exactly that. It just...it just feels bad, though, you know...?"

"What feels bad?"

"The fact that I can't...I can't keep my promise to my sisters anymore."

"Because I'm here, right?"

"Well, kind of, but...believe it or not, I'm not really thinking about you when I say this. Like, I don't really feel angry or pissed off about this now. I'm just...really sad. Everything that's happened...us getting kidnapped over and over, my sisters all growing up in their own ways and leaving me behind in the dust or so it feels like, all this magic stuff that's been happening like our Mystic Eyes...it's hard to keep track of it all. I don't feel like I'm in control of anything anymore. I'm actually just...so powerless to do anything. The promise I made to my sisters was already a pretty empty one even at the time I made it, but now it's literally just a waste of time even thinking about it. What good is a promise if I can't even make good on it? All I've ended up doing was doing the exact same thing that I wanted to prevent. No - I should have realized that sometimes, there are promises that you just can't keep."

Nino brushes a stray lock of hair out of her face.

"Like I said, you were just like Mama's death, a catalyst to speed up the process of the five of us going our separate ways. I should have recognized that and worked with it instead of trying to reject it, but I just ended up making the same mistake twice, and now I'm paying the price of feeling absolutely fucking useless and dumb. I mean, what do you think I did today, running away from everyone to come here to a place where only one person would ever realistically figure out?"

She turns to Fuutarou for a third time.

"You're probably super pissed off at me though, aren't you? For all the shit that I've put you through for the past couple of months. Especially today; not only must you have saved us from whoever that guy was that tried kidnapping me and Yotsuba yesterday, but you patched me up a second time, only to have me basically run away and force you to find me all the way out here in the goddamn boondocks in some random fuckin' amusement park somewhere. If you've got anything you wanna say to me, you better spill it now. This's gonna be the only time when I'll put up with being yelled at, and that's your only warning," she declares.

But as she watches, Uesugi Fuutarou, who's again glanced over in Nino's direction while talking, slowly turns away yet again, his perpetually exhausted eyes pointed down past the safety rail of the bridge on which the two stand.

"...I thought you came out here because you wanted to run away from home for good or something, given what went down between you and Itsuki," he admits softly. "I guess I didn't need to worry about that after all. I'm just glad you're feeling better...hopefully."

A long pause follows Fuutarou's spoken concern.

"...that's it?" Nino gawks a little. "That's...all you wanted to say?"

Fuutarou smirks a bit with the right corner of his mouth. "Yeah, that's it. Sorry to disappoint."

Nino snorts loudly, half with disbelief and half with choked amusement. "I can't believe you. I can't fucking believe you. I gave you a chance to get everything you had against me off your chest, and you blew it? Just to say sorry? What kind of a lame beta-ass bitch are you? You fucking digust me, holy shit. I can't fucking stand you..."

The young mage feels a soft bump against his right arm. Nakano Nino is resting her forehead against the side of his arm.

"...why are you apologizing?" Nino hisses through clenched teeth, tears now slowly making their way down her cheeks. "Why the fuck are you the one saying sorry? Why? Why are you like this? Why are you so fucking good at making me feel like a total piece of shit?"

"...it comes with the lifestyle," Fuutarou shrugs a little, as much as he can with Nino's head on his arm. "So I don't apologize for that. I will apologize for making you feel the need to cry, though, because that's not what I intended, either."

"And so? What're you gonna do to make up for that, then?"

Nino feels the arm that she's resting her head against move, and she looks up just in time to find Fuutarou's body enlarge in her cone of vision as her classmate pulls her in close. The two of them say nothing, but Nino eventually relents and properly returns her tutor's gesture, putting her arms around him as well.

"...I can't keep my promise to my sisters to keep the five of us together," the second quintuplet hoarsely mumbles with a voice so light that only one person in the world can hear, "but I know now, without a doubt, that you can. Promise me...that you can keep us all together instead."

"The only thing I can promise is that I'll give 'em hell. That's it."

Nino can't help but smile. She has no reason to feel this way, but...she is starting to feel a little nostalgic.

"Good enough for me. Thank you...Fuutarou."