A/N
W1rath56: Since thankfully the previous chapter seems to have changed your mind about my interpretation of Nino, I no longer feel the need to roast the living shit out of you, so I'll give you a more polite and concise rundown of what I would have responded with had I put out this chapter without seeing your latest review.
Basically, there are two reasons why you think that I am writing Nino badly; the first is pacing. If it's taken me 60 chapters to do what the manga did in less than 50, then I'm clearly taking my sweet time with this story. You're hardly the first to express this concern, and given the word count for this fic already, it does seem like it takes forever for anything significant to happen, especially pivotal events that happened in the manga.
This being said, as I hope you've noticed by now, it's a habit of mine to write at a slow pace and I don't plan on changing that, for better or worse. The characters are the primary driving force behind my writing, and fleshing them out in a way that successfully incorporates both their canon descriptions and behaviors and the fanfic setting that I've put them in is the greatest part about writing this fic. But it takes both time and effort to do that well (or as best as I can), and that results in much, much slower pacing compared to what most readers are used to, I would imagine. The fact that reading a fanfic, especially one of this length, takes quite some time longer than reading a manga also adds to the sense of slow pacing.
A corollary to this is that because the pacing is so slow, characters in this fic can display behavioral trends that they might otherwise not if you were to look at this fic from a strictly puritan perspective based on the manga. That is what I think was the main reason why you were a bit upset with my depiction of Nino, that she just wasn't changing her opinion of Fuutarou fast enough.
Which leads me to the second reason why you thought I was writing Nino badly, and to put it simply: you're a Nino simp. Which is fine, a lot of QQ fans, myself including, are. But try not to let that influence your opinion of this fic as a whole, because nowhere did I say that this was a Nino fic, and here you are telling new readers to do the same and judge this fic solely on my depiction of Nino, which I can't say I condone. I think this should be a conclusion that you should have reached on your own, but I can't guarantee your satisfaction with this fic if you came here specifically to read about just your favorite quint and no one else.
A legitimate counter-argument I can make that doesn't involve me pointing out your own personal bias is the manga's depiction of Nino, specifically in Chapter 44 (of the manga), when she tears up at the laughably short anecdote Fuutarou gives her about his sudden meeting with Rena while taking a shower in her hotel bathroom. It's meant to serve as the first of a domino effect of events during the Seven Goodbyes arc that eventually make Nino develop feelings for Fuutarou himself, but in my opinion, that was one of the more contrived events that the manga showed.
Why would someone like Nino, who's traditionally shown opposition to Fuutarou tutoring her and her sisters, suddenly start crying at a lame story that Fuutarou told her that basically went "I met someone, they left, and now we can't ever see each other again" with no details in between to make it a more compelling story? Yes, she was nice enough to Fuutarou to let him into her hotel room and have him take a shower, and she wanted someone to talk to since she'd been by herself for a while, but it feels forced to have Nino start pitying him over a story that lasted five seconds, even if she has quite the romanticized view on relationships, because of her whole opinion of Fuutarou and him disrupting her family life as an outsider. (Remember Chapter 41 and what Nino said to Fuutarou outside her door?) And the kicker is that all Negi needed to do to make that scene more believable was to have Fuutarou go more in depth with his story about meeting Rena so that way Nino's reaction would be more understandable, but Fuutarou's character prevents him from doing that because in the manga, it isn't like him to explain something like that in the first place.
There are other examples I could bring up at the risk of making this A/N too damn long, but all this to say, when I read back the manga in preparation for writing this fic, I honestly feel like the story advanced a little too fast. (Don't get me started on what I feel about the anime.) It had amazing details to the overarching story that led up to the selection of the winning quint in the end, the kind of details that make you go back to read old chapters and make you go "Oooooh, I get it now", don't get me wrong, but I care a little bit more for the smaller details, the kind that might not necessarily be jaw-dropping or super important to a story but rather make characters feel more real and relatable, details that ultimately don't do much for the plot itself but are still fun to notice and pick up on. And even though I get that it was a serialized manga with its own time/space constraints, there wasn't as much of that sort of detail in the manga as I would have liked, so naturally, in an effort to not make the same mistake, I took a different approach in my own fic, and I don't regret doing so in the slightest.
Yes, it means that Nino was a colossally annoying fuck for a lot of the chapters she showed up in before the last one. But the fact that now she's finally changed her mind about Fuutarou for good after 64 chapters makes it a lot more meaningful in my opinion because I've spent all this time building up her own reasons to oppose Fuutarou, including those that are unique to this fic, and then having her overcome them to finally accept him and stop seeing him as just an outsider.
As for the Fate stuff, I was just inspired by it; I merely borrow its magic system since I'm most familiar with Nasuverse magic in particular, though that's not saying much given how much I don't know about it. I'm at best a casual when it comes to Nasuverse lore, so I highly advise against taking the more magical stuff in this fic seriously. There will be inaccuracies if you compare it to source material and things that I bend to my own wishes simply because it's convenient for this fic.
Last thing, I promise: Tsunderes are walking contradictions in and of themselves. So calling my depiction of Nino contradictory when that's literally in her nature as a Tsundere isn't a valid critique IMO, but I think we're past that now.
Having had Ichika text him the PDF files detailing the track team's practice routes around the city and studied them, Uesugi Fuutarou, having triangulated them using his tracking of Yotsuba's exact position in the city with the help of his surveillance runes, now sits at a two-person table in the outdoor patio of a cafe called Mimi's, an American-style cafe that specializes in breakfast and pasta dishes and sandwich platters for catering. He remembers seeing a branch in the area where he studied abroad in the past, but it's his first time actually being in one of their establishments. For the record, though, it's not like they're sitting in to eat or anything; that would be absurd given their task of securing Yotsuba today.
He and Ichika, after dropping off Miku and Itsuki at the Mariott to settle things with Nino, teleported over to the other side of the city's downtown, not far from their own high school, after Fuutarou determined that this block would be an ideal staging point to execute their operation. After he determined the track team's route for today's training thanks to Yotsuba's moving coordinates, Fuutarou is aiming to perform a stealth switch by yoinking Yotsuba away from the rest of the track team while simultaneously having Ichika replace her without anyone from the team noticing. He's outlined this general plan to Ichika, but they still need to work out the details; thankfully they still have some time before Yotsuba and the track team pass through their area, by which point the track team members will begin to feel the effects of exhaustion hit their systems and dampen their perceptive senses to facilitate an easier sister switch that Fuutarou aims to pull off. So to help pass the time, Ichika looked for a cafe in this area where they can kill time while they wait for the fourth quintuplet while Fuutarou quickly went back to the Nakano penthouse to retrieve an extra set of Yotsuba's training uniform given to her by the track team for Ichika to wear for their bait-and-switch later today.
"Yo, I'm back," Ichika announces cheerfully, sliding into her seat shortly across from Fuutarou and causing him to look up. The first quintuplet is now changed into Yotsuba's extra set of summer training clothes as per his instructions, having changed in the bathroom inside the cafe to do so. Ichika sets the bag that Fuutarou gave the clothes to her in down next to him as she takes her seat, the bag now holding the clothes she's been wearing when they all left the Pentagon.
"Welcome back. Our drinks aren't here yet."
"They're not? Shucks, maybe we should've just found a Starbucks somewhere or something."
"Don't sweat it, we've still got some time." Fuutarou checks his phone to confirm Yotsuba's current position, and sure enough, her estimated arrival is still about twenty minutes away.
"How much time, you'd say?"
"About twenty minutes at the track team's current pace."
"Twenty minutes? You should order something to eat then. You eat fast, right?"
"I do, but that's besides the point."
"And what point is that?"
"That I'm not hungry at the moment."
Ichika busts out laughing in disbelief, quickly covering her mouth and lowering her voice so that her laugh deescalates into a giggle instead.
"Did you hang out with Yotsuba or Itsuki too much recently or something? Because you're starting to get as bad as they are at lying," the eldest quintuplet asks, still holding back a few residual giggles.
"Hm, I guess I have been hanging around Itsuki a lot recently..."
"Itsuki, huh? Why, has she been asking for extra tutoring lessons from you during lunch at school recently or something?"
Fuutarou rubs his chin thoughtfully. "Not really for that, it's just that we seem to be running into each other a bit more than usual for whatever reason. You think I should stop so that I don't get bad at telling lies?"
"I mean, you hang around other people enough and their tendencies do start rubbing off on you, after all. I'm not sure if you know that or not with how you are."
"I've heard of such a thing, but yeah, obviously I don't usually hang out with other people to have that happen to me. But I guess with you girls, it was bound to happen eventually."
While Fuutarou is talking, a waiter delivers the drinks that they've ordered and smoothly exits, diving back into the cafe to deliver more orders for the rest of the customers out here in the patio. Fuutarou picks up his drink, a French roast coffee specifically prepared in-house, and watches Ichika take her own, a triple-berry lemonade, and take some delicious gulps out of it.
"Phew, that was good ~ !" Ichika lets out a satisfied little cry after the rush of her sweet beverage quenches the thirst that was building up in her ever since they'd left the penthouse.
"I thought you liked coffee? Why didn't you order some?" Her tutor inquires while raising his own cup of French roast to his lips to take a quieter sip than his partner.
"Oh, I like, uh, frappuccinos and stuff like that more," Ichika explains, setting down her tall glass of triple-berry lemonade. "I'll be honest, I was never really a fan of straight coffee like that. Like, I'll drink it if there's nothing else that I like available, but..."
"So that explains your obsession with places like Starbucks."
"It's not an obsession! I can stop drinking frappuccinos whenever I want!" the quintuplet pouts.
"Oh ho, can you, now."
Ichika lets out a heavy sigh. "Fine, fine, I can't actually give up my frappuccinos, they're just too good. What about you, Fuutarou-kun? What do you prefer?"
"Just coffee like this," the young mage replies, once more raising his cup and sipping to enjoy the deep, rich flavor of this French roast coffee to the fullest. For someone like him who can normally only enjoy coffee from free coffee dispensers in hotels or other such establishments, Fuutarou can immediately taste the difference.
"Huh. You're pretty old-timey for someone like you."
Fuutarou offers a cheeky little grin back at his student. "Heh, what's that supposed to mean."
"You know what I mean! You, like, use your phone and these complicated apps to do your ma - uh, I mean, your, your...your work." Ichika fumbles for the right words after realizing that talking about her tutor's magic out in the open is perhaps not the best idea she could have.
"What, I can't do that and drink coffee at the same time?"
"No, no, it's just that...I just feel like frappuccinos and such would fit your image better, that's all!"
"Oh, you already know what I'm about to say to that."
"Yeah, yeah, I know, you don't care about your image or whatever..." Rolling her eyes, Ichika sips up another gulp of lemonade through her straw.
"...so what, you just drink frappuccinos just for the sake of your image, then?"
"Hey, I do actually prefer frappes over regular coffee, I don't drink them just for my image. Actually, I do remember you drinking one the last time the two of us were together."
"Ah, yes, the day when you dropped the mic on me and ditched my ass at Starbucks, I remember."
Before Ichika can realize that she has spoken words that she probably shouldn't have, Fuutarou hits her with the swiftest of replies referring to their last eventful encounter, causing a long pause between the two high school students. Fuutarou carries on as he usually would, monitoring his phone and checking his email with his thumb slowly scrolling up and down his phone screen, but Ichika, now fully aware that she's stepped on a big land mine that crept up on her in her blind spot, does her best to recollect herself in the wake of the figurative explosion.
"...now that I think about it, we, uh...we haven't been alone together like this ever since then, right...?" the first quintuplet speaks up a little nervously, feeling somewhat pressured to put something out there in an effort to kill the tension in the air between them.
"No, we had that morning when I met you outside that same Starbucks and we walked to school together, remember?" Fuutarou points out. His steady voice appears to have no change in its tone, and this subconsciously causes Ichika to feel more relieved that he at least doesn't sound like he holds a grudge against her because of that incident. "In case you're wondering, I'm over it now. It just came as a surprise to me back then...not only did I not expect you to have a Mystic Eye, but I didn't expect you to go so far as to use it on me, either."
"Aha...er, well...if it makes you feel any better - "
"Like I said, I'm over it. In fact, I was under the impression that both of us had moved on from that already." Ichika watches her tutor take his third and final drag of French roast coffee to set his empty cup down on the table in front of him for the last time, at least for this cup before a possible refill arrives. "Unless there's something you wanna talk to me about regarding it? We still got some time to pass, after all."
Ichika tries to take another sip of her own lemonade, but finding it difficult to do so, now that whatever sweetness of the drink will merely be muted by the one-sided awkwardness of the conversation, she places down her glass on the small table without taking a drink.
"Well, it's just that...I totally forgot that even happened, I'll be honest," the quintuplet admits with a difficult smile. "So...I guess I did move on from it, in a sense...?"
"In a sense, yeah. Doesn't sound like it now, though."
"I mean, yeah, of...of course not. Not when you brought it up like that."
"I thought you still remembered, so I brought it up as a bit of a joke. I guess you didn't take it the same way."
"A-A joke...?"
"...point proven."
Sighing, Ichika finally takes that extra sip of lemonade that she's been meaning to. "And once again, I'm reminded that despite your wide array of skills, social skills are not among them."
"Of course not. I've got a very particular set of skills, after all..." Fuutarou sets down his own cup of coffee and slowly pitches his hands together with his elbows on the table, his hands hiding the lower half of his face. "...skills that I've acquired over a pretty long career; skills that make me a nightmare for failing students like you."
Unimpressed by her tutor's attempt at some dark humor, Ichika smirks back. "A nightmare, or our academic savior?"
"I guess a bit of both." Fuutarou parts his hands to use one of them to run it up over his hair. His other hand for a second also reaches up to his head to take off his snapback cap that isn't there before realizing its absence and awkwardly sinking down underneath the table out of Ichika's view. "It certainly was a nightmare most of the time for me, I can tell you that much."
"And that nightmare's still going on for you right now, isn't it?"
"Sure is. But thankfully, it seems like we're at the tail end of it, but I don't expect it to end so easily."
The first quintuplet notices the empty coffee cup that's sitting before her classmate. "Do you want a refill? If refills cost extra, I can cover it."
Fuutarou shakes his head. "I'm good, I just wanted one cup, that's all. Coffee is good to perk me up every so often, but I'm not about to chug it every day and build a reliance on it. That'll be the actual end of me of that ever happens..."
Ichika watches Fuutarou scroll through his phone for a little while longer.
"...you told Miku about me being a mage, didn't you?" she asks softly.
"That I did," the young mage replies without missing a beat, his black eyes still focused down on his phone.
"Did you tell anyone else, then?"
"Nope."
"Then why just her? I thought you'd tell everyone about me, not just her."
"At the time that I informed her about you, I considered Miku to be the most trustworthy out of the five of you, so I gave her the slip because that way, Miku would be able to keep an eye on you at home for me if you were up to some more shit. If you feel like I did you dirty with that, then I apologize for that, but do remember that you cast an immobilization spell on me through your Mystic Eye and left my ass; my opinion of you wasn't the highest at the time, so I had to take some measures to make sure you weren't a threat to your own family like I thought you were to me."
"Like I said, you just made me angry with the whole friends thing we talked about back th - " Ichika tries to argue, but she finds herself immediately silenced by Fuutarou merely raising a single hand calmly up to her.
"I get it, I really do. Believe it or not, I've been working on the whole friends thing as much as I can, though of course you're the final judge of that at the end of the day." The young tutor pauses for a moment as well. "...I'd like to think that it's because of that that I'm able to sit here with you talking about it when normally I wouldn't bother."
"What, because we're friends?"
"I mean, you said that we were, right? You're certainly paying for this coffee that I drink and I'm sure as hell not paying for it."
"Look, I get that you're poor, but one cup of coffee won't break the bank for you, will it?"
Fuutarou cracks up at Ichika's reaction as she yaps at him, and she frowns harder in seeing his chuckles.
"Bullying the poor now, are we? Is this some kind of bourgeoisie joke that I'm too poor to understand?"
"No it's not! I'm just pointing out how silly you sound saying that, you of all people!" Ichika's lips are tightly pursed together in between her sentences. "And what kind of guy walks into a cafe with a girl and makes her pay for it? Friends or not, that's kind of lame, isn't it?"
"Well, not like I would know, now, would I? And besides, in this current year, you can't hold such gender stereotypes as standard. I yearn for true gender equality, an age where guys and girls can pay for each other's cups of coffee no matter what the occasion!"
"You're just saying that so that you can get a free coffee!"
"Aye. At least I'm only stopping at a free coffee, though." Fuutarou finally sets down his phone on the small squarish table, done with his email check and other private business. "One day, I'll be able to pay you back for this coffee, though. Ideally."
Sensing that her tutor has gone back to being serious, Ichika turns down her own knob to match the atmosphere of the conversation. Fuutarou's spoken intent to reimburse her for the coffee throws her off a little, because she doesn't feel like this is something Fuutarou would normally say. She certainly can't think of a time before now when he has offered to pay back whatever trinkets of goodwill that she or her sisters have given him in the past, so why, all of a sudden, is he saying something like this now?
"I mean, you don't need to feel like to have to pay for anything. I know I made a bit of a fuss about making me pay for your coffee, but I really don't mind. And besides, realistically, how the heck am I supposed to get mad at having to spend an extra five hundred yen or something when money's the least of our family's concerns?" Ichika asks.
"Well, it's more that...I don't like feeling like a burden. If I get help from other people, that means I'm being a burden to them, so in order to get rid of that feeling, I gotta give something back to make up for the time and effort and anything else they've committed to giving me help." Fuutarou scratches the back of his head slowly. "This should sound familiar to you, right?"
"Sure does, yeah. But doesn't all this extra stuff you do for us count as that? You making sure that we're safe and all, I mean?"
"But that's part of my contract, that's expected of me."
"Expected of you, or more like you expecting that out of yourself?"
At this, Fuutarou raises his hands in defeat. "Got me there. How did you know?"
"Well...Dad is just a really aloof person. If there's anything we as his daughters know about him, it's that. It's not like I knew that for certain or anything, but any one of us could have guessed that...that you're not necessarily going out of your way to take care of us because of any contractual obligation, but because you want to. And everything that's happened ever since Nino and Itsuki fought is proof of that." Ichika leans forward and gently boops Fuutarou on his nose. "Besides, doing all this for us doesn't seem like what Uesugi Fuutarou-kun would normally do, no?"
"How do you know about everything that's been going on?" Fuutarou swiftly asks, causing the firstborn quint to quickly withdraw her booping hand.
"Well, let's just call it an oldest sister's hunch, haha ~ " Ichika laughs a little, but her tutor leans across the table himself regardless.
"...Ichika, what were you doing at the park in the middle of the night two nights ago?" he asks in a low voice, despite the fact that he's already cast a small Bounded Field to localize his conversation with Ichika. "Was that even you I met?"
"Nope ~ "
"Do you have any idea what I'm talking about?"
"Nuh-uh ~ "
Watching the first quintuplet take a sudden, very keen interest in her triple-berry lemonade, Fuutarou eyes her with slightly furrowed eyes that only look disinterested, a veil to hide his growing concern on the inside.
There are two possible explanations for what's going on: the first is that the other Ichika whom the young mage is inquiring this current Ichika about is a special kind of doppelgänger that she commands control over who looks like her and can act independently of the original. However, this is quite the advanced clone that Ichika can use, because the clone talks and behaves much differently compared to Ichika herself - by that point, it's less of a doppelgänger and more of a homunculus who happens to share the same appearance, and that is well into advanced magecraft territory, especially for someone like Ichika who shouldn't have such magical expertise.
The second explanation is that Ichika is in fact telling the truth and knows nothing about this second Ichika whom Fuutarou has told her about. If that's the case, then he's got a potentially serious problem that he must add to his bucket list of problems that need to be dealt with around the city, because the only logical conclusion that he can draw is that the second Ichika must be a Shapeshifter or a mage capable of somehow altering their bodies directly to mimic other people's appearances. Fuutarou has dealt with a couple before, and from these first-hand experiences, he knows that they can be very annoying to deal with, sometimes even deadly. So if in fact this second Ichika is a Shapeshifter or something of the like, then he needs to go on a search and destroy mission to hunt her down and exterminate her before she can go around and start causing havoc.
But the second explanation just doesn't hold up, since this is the first time he's met the second Ichika, and if she really were a Shapeshifter or something, she'd've made herself known much, much earlier with whatever shenanigans she would have caused. That, and the Ichika clone actively assisted him that night in both locating Nino's and Yotsuba's whereabouts when they were first kidnapped and ending the fight between him and Shirazumi Rio. Given that Shapeshifters are generally selfish and cause trouble for their own amusement, Fuutarou feels compelled to drop this hypothesis.
Especially when he clearly remembers the Ichika double having her own Mystic Eye in the eye that it shouldn't have been in.
Actually, it's only natural for Ichika to want to hide the fact that she knows about her clone. Mages all have their secrets, after all, and it's only natural for them to be loathe to reveal them, so Fuutarou can't bring himself to fault her for making things vague. But the fact that this second Ichika is actually capable of magic and fighting is what keeps him on edge, because she's a brand-new contingency in his overall agenda to keep the quintuplets safe that he can't account for. The fact that she behaves differently than the original means that he has no idea what the doppelgänger will do or how she will react to future events, because sure, she may have given him a hand with this last incident, but that doesn't mean she's suddenly obligated to keep helping him when the need arises; she very well could swing the other side of the pendulum and start doing things that Fuutarou would much rather not have her do. Plus, unlike the rest of the quintuplets, Fuutarou simply doesn't know what the clone is like, so he can't anticipate what she might do and plan accordingly. All these things and more stand in Fuutarou's way of dealing with this body double of Ichika's, and Ichika's apparent refusal to tell him anything doesn't help at all either.
For now, he can risk not pressing the issue, simply because the second Ichika has not actively been causing him trouble at all and even bailed him out of what could have been a much worse situation had she not shown up at the time that she did. But sooner or later, the mystery surrounding her must be dealt with - that, and he needs to find out why Ichika is actively denying her existence, since it's not like there's much else of an explanation for her sudden appearance this late into their relationship that he can think of.
Resetting the conversation, Fuutarou sets his coffee cup and saucer down on the edge of their table.
"Then never mind that for now; let's quickly go over what we need to do here one more time since Yotsuba'll be here soon."
"When Yotsuba passes this cafe, you're going to sneak her away while I take her place, right? It should be simple," Ichika shrugs.
"And that's easier said than done. Not on my part, but for you. Remember that the track team still has a good bit of their training route left to go even here; are you able to keep up with them?"
"For a little bit, yeah. I go for occasional jogs around our place too, you know. That or I work out a bit at the gym in our high-rise. You said you needed me to keep up with them so that you can talk Yotsuba into ditching the track team, right?"
Fuutarou nods. "But it's Yotsuba we're talking about here, after all, and even if she doesn't seem like it, she can be real stubborn sometimes as she is today. So the more time you can buy me, the better."
Laughing shortly again, Ichika raises her arms upwards in a big stretch to help get herself warmed up for her part of this task. "Having me buy you a coffee, then some time, what next?"
"Some aspirin for this headache I've got babysitting a whole set of quintuplets who always love running off whenever I'm not looking, but that's besides the point. If you get too tired, then just stop and call me, and we'll come over to settle the score, whether Yotsuba's ready to do so or not."
"Call you?" Ichika finally begins to look a little confused at this plan. "But wouldn't the rest of the track team get a little suspicious about me calling someone?"
"That's the thing: you don't actually need me to answer; all you need to do is ring me. You know what a pager is?"
"Surprisingly, yes, I do, but only because my boss at work sometimes uses one."
"Good, just treat your phone like a pager, then, and that'll let me know that you need to get bailed out. I don't need you to be tiring yourself out so much to the point where you can't study later tonight."
"Assuming that your plan's already going to work before it even starts? That's awfully confident of you."
"It sure is. But in a situation like this where I don't have the time to think of and plan around possible contingencies, I've gotta have faith in what I'm doing. Oftentimes it's one of the only things I have going for me in times like these. More to the point, it's already friggin' Wednesday; we do not have time to lose if I'm to do my job properly and have you all pass your finals for this trimester. I'm not about to lose my main income stream after only a couple of months when my contract's set to the end of high school."
Ichika puts on another big ol' pout back at her tutor. "So you just look at us as yen bills, then, is that it? We're nothing but yen signs to you, aren't we!"
The young mage smirks as he puts up a sign with his hand at Ichika.
"Fine, then I'm never buying you another cup of coffee ever again!"
"When you said that it literally won't make a difference if you do? Shame, shame..."
"Oh, you're the one talking to me about shame, is it!"
"Why yes, I am, but get ready; Yotsuba's almost here."
Seeing her tutor straighten up in his seat to keep a vigilant eye down the street, the oldest quintuplet also sits up at attention and readies herself for a long jog, hoping that she's at least capable enough to keep up with the rest of the track team.
"What if one of the track team members realizes that I've taken Yotsuba's place?" she asks quickly as Fuutaoru readies another Presence Concealment spell for the stealth switch.
"Call me like I mentioned before. Basically, whatever happens that isn't according to plan, call me, that's the bottom line."
"Even if you don't have enough time to convince Yotsuba to quit the track team?"
"Yeah. Because if it comes down to it, I'll go up to the track team captain myself and tell her that Yotsuba's leaving due to her academic performance."
"But you know that they won't really give a crap, right?"
"I do. But all I need to do is tell them that your dad is gonna force her to quit if he finds out that her helping the track team out is the reason why she tanked her finals. And if that doesn't scare them enough, I can always tell them that your dad has the power to defund the track team and disband it starting next trimester."
"Th-That's just messed up! You can't just threaten them like that!"
"Oh ho, but I can. And I'm sure your dad has no problem with that if I tell him that doing so is necessary to secure everyone's graduations." Fuutarou slowly gets up from his seat, with Ichika following suit. "Obviously I don't want things to get to that point, but it is something I'll resort to if I need to settle things quickly. For now, get ready to start joggin'."
Under the cover of Uesugi's spell, which renders them unnoticeable by those around them in the outdoor patio, the two high schoolers move to the patio boundary. Being a novice mage herself, Ichika can sense the feeling of being under the influence of a magic spell, which comes in the form of the hair on her arms and nape standing up like she's getting the chills, and not necessarily in the good way. Trying to adjust to this feeling as best she can, Ichika glances down the direction in which her tutor is looking, and sure enough, right on cue, Yotsuba and the rest of the track team is jogging down the street, making their way through the city.
"Go, go."
Urging his student on, Fuutarou reaches over to Ichika in case she needs help vaulting over the short railing, but she manages herself just fine, and Fuutarou then swiftly expands his Presence Concealment rune to cover a larger area to give the two of them a bit more time to execute their maneuver. Yotsuba, who's trailing the rest of her teammates in the back of the pack, perks up a little, but before she can react fully, she finds herself stopped in her tracks with someone's large, warm hand over her mouth tightly to prevent her from shouting or making noise, but not so much that she can't breathe through her nose at the very least. In addition, before she can even think about screaming or yelling, Yotsuba hears a comfortingly familiar voice hiss softly into her right ear:
"Shhh, Yotsuba, it's me. Don't yell."
The young mage stands still with his package in hand where he's secured her to make sure that he gives Yotsuba adequate time to assess her new situation amidst her heavy breathing, while he in the meantime watches Ichika, having successfully slipped into the back of the track team after Yotsuba's detainment, jog after the rest of the girls down the street. Once the team is mostly out of sight, Fuutarou eases his hand off the fourth quintuplet's mouth, and immediately she bursts out, perhaps not surprisingly,
"U-Uesugi-san...!?"
At least she makes sure to keep her voice down so it comes out as a very loud but hushed cry, but Fuutarou raises his finger up to his lips to remind her to maintain their low profile.
"Not too loud. Long story short, I tracked you down with Ichika's help to pull you away from the track team so that I can talk to you. I know it's pretty late to ask you this now, but is it alright if I talk to you for a few moments?"
Catching her breath from all the jogging she's done today for the past hour or so, Yotsuba digests her tutor's words and consequently lets a sad and troubled frown creep up on to her face.
"...listen, U-Uesugi-san, I know - "
"Not out here. Let's head in first, I got a table for us already. More like a table that Ichika and I had, but now that Ichika's taken your place, I don't think she minds now."
"A-A table...? Wait, Uesugi-san, w-why are you just vaulting over...?" Yotsuba lets confusion take hold on her face again as she blankly watches her tutor simply swing his legs over the short railing to let himself into the outdoor patio of Mimi's Cafe.
"Like I said, Ichika and I already got a table out here. And no one's noticing right now since I have a spell up, so hurry up."
Starting to feel a little overwhelmed by this drastic change of events, Yotsuba feels like she's moving on her own when she obeys her tutor silently and follows his lead in vaulting over the railing to take a seat with him at the two-seater table that her oldest sister occupied before her. Indeed, she takes note of the bag next to Fuutarou's seat that contains Ichika's clothes that she was wearing today.
"Um...if...if this is about - " Yotsuba starts to speak up, but again she's muted by Fuutarou, who raises his hand slightly once he's deactivated his spell, just as he did with her sister not too long ago.
"Excuse me! Could we get a refill on this lemonade, please? Thank you," the young tutor quickly calls out, waving down a passing waitress who courteously affirms his request before diving back into the cafe with a load of plates. "Before we get into that, let me get you caught up with everything that's happened. First, Miku and Itsuki are over at Nino's to try and convince her to come back home."
"Huh? Wait...Itsuki's...Itsuki's back?" Yotsuba asks suddenly.
"Yeah. I was able to talk her into coming back home, but she said she'd do it if she could get Nino to come back home with her, so that's what she's up to right now. I don't know how well it's going, but hopefully well. As for you, I got Ichika to help me out here - basically, we were waiting for you to pass by this cafe, and then I grabbed you to pull you away from the track team so that we could talk for a bit like this, while Ichika took your place in the track team to make it look like nothing happened. And now here we are."
Yotsuba stays quiet, and she remains this way until after the waitress who received Fuutarou's request for a lemonade refill returns with another tall glass of triple-berry lemonade and sets it before Yotsuba for her to enjoy. While waiting for her response, Fuutarou senses a magical ping from his phone still sitting on the table where he left it to fish the fourth quintuplet out of the passing track team, as his phone is automatically configured to notify him of incoming calls and text messages magically whenever it detects him using magic within its vicinity. Reading the number on his phone screen, Fuutarou recognizes it as Nino's phone number that's just sent him a text, and unlocking his phone, he reads it silently:
We're done here. Miku and Itsuki managed to convince me to come back home, but they told me that you're busy with getting Yotsuba back. Where are you right now?
"Why?" is the first word out of Yotsuba's mouth as she gathers herself to start the conversation while Fuutarou quickly texts Nino and sets his phone down again.
"Why what?"
Ignoring the tall glass of fresh lemonade for now, Yotsuba manages to make eye contact with her tutor.
"Why...did you do all this for us...?" she asks heavily; she's still recovering from her hour-long training regimen with the rest of the track team, though she's stabilized most of her breath by the sounds of it.
"...what do you mean, 'why'...it's my job," the young mage replies calmly, tilting his head somewhat like he's stumped by what Yotsuba is saying.
"No, no, I mean...I mean..." Yotsuba inhales deeply, trying her best to put her words together coherently. "...I know it's your job, but...but..."
"Take your time."
And so she does. For another four full minutes, while she takes little shy sips from her beverage, Yotsuba again bides her time and uses it to think about what she really wants to talk to Fuutarou about, even though she feels like it really ought to be the other way around.
"...you've done so much for us in these past two days, ever since Nino and Itsuki had their...their falling out and ran away from home," the fourth quintuplet finally speaks up in a rather chillingly calm manner. "You saved me and Nino from whoever kidnapped us again, took care of us, convinced Itsuki to come back home, or at least enough that she wants to make up with Nino and bring everyone back home together..."
She pauses.
"You...didn't need to do...any of that," she smiles a very weak smile. "That was something we should have handled ourselves, no matter how badly we might've botched it if we tried to. Yet you stepped in and helped a family that isn't even your own...and in a way that, um, I'm not sure if very many people would have been willing to do as well."
The young tutor inhales slowly. "You already know what I'm going to say, though."
"Yeah. That...you feel like all this was your fault, right? Because you were sleeping when Nino and Itsuki fought. You told me when you dropped me off back home with Ichika and Miku."
"There you go."
"But still...this isn't normal," Yotsuba tries to insist. "It's not normal for you to put in so much work and effort into fixing a problem like this, all our problems like these. No one in their right mind would do what you did. Like...there's helping, and then there's this."
"Eh, 'not normal' is kind of a moot point whenever I'm involved, though. Since when have I ever acted 'normally' when it came to tutoring or whatever, right."
"Well, at - at first you did!"
"Yeah, and me being a 'normal' tutor lasted how long, exactly?" Fuutarou watches Yotsuba keenly for a response, which he doesn't get. "And speaking of people not in their right minds, that hits a bit close to home, don't you think? Considering what you were trying to do, helping both the track team out and trying to study adequately for finals at the end of the week."
Yotsuba stiffens up, now that the conversation has now swung in the direction that she initially thought it'd go from the very start.
"...I know you don't like what I'm doing. And please believe me when I say that...I've thought of listening to you and ignoring everything else to just study. But...but every time I think about quitting, I think about you, Uesugi-san. I think about everything you've done for us, the lengths to which you've gone to both keep us safe and tutor us well. And whenever I think about that, when I realize that you've been able to do seemingly everything when it comes to us and our situation, I just...I have to. I have to help the people whom I've promised I'd help. I have to at least see out my end of the promises I've made to my friends who need me. Because if you can do everything, then...then I have to try to do everything I can, right?"
Raising a single eyebrow over at his student, Fuutarou slowly lowers his phone, having just sent a fresh text, and assumes a thinking man pose with both palms pressed together before his face.
"So if I'm getting this right...you've been doing all this less because of what you wanted to do, but more because...of me."
"I-It's both. I both want to help people and I didn't want to let you down."
"Let me down?"
"Y-Yeah...well...I-I guess a better way to put it would be to say that, um...I don't feel right...knowing that you're putting in so much effort for us and I'm not doing at least something similar...that I'm not putting in a, uh, proportionally similar amount of effort...if you know what I'm getting at."
"Yeah, I do, and...that's the problem." Fuutarou looks up from his pose at Yotsuba across their small two-seater table. "It doesn't work like that, Yotsuba."
Her expression becoming more and more pained, Yotsuba doesn't give up yet. "...but...is there something so wrong with what I'm doing? Like, I understand that...this might compromise how well I do on our finals on Friday, but...but I'm confident that I can pull it off! Think about how close we were during our midterms and how much progress we've made since then!"
"Oh, don't worry, I'm well aware of the progress everyone's made, but unfortunately that's tangential to the point that I want to make here, which is about how you're trying to do what I'm doing in terms of the amount of effort put into doing whatever we feel we need to do. To put this into perspective for you, Yotsuba, at the risk of making myself sound like an arrogant asshole, how many exams have you passed on your own throughout school?"
"Um...just the ones we needed to advance to the next grade...so...not a lot..."
"Right. And how many times do you think I've been in situations like the ones in the past few days where I need to track down targets, secure them, and defeat enemies along the way?"
Yotsuba slowly looks away. "...a lot...probably."
"Correct again. See, the issue here isn't about your desire to do everything you want to; it's the fact that you simply don't have the experience or the results to prove that you have what it takes to accomplish everything that you want."
Biting her lower lip a little, the fourth quintuplet hangs on desperately. "But...but if you think about it, everyone starts out like that, right? Everyone starts out having no experience and no idea how they're going to do the things they want to, right?"
"Right, and I can even testify to that myself. But the thing is, you've chosen a bad time to enroll at My Hero Academia, because what you're doing right now is endangering not only my position as your tutor, but also the rest of your sisters' happiness. If you don't pass your finals this week and your dad gets wind of it, I might be gone as your tutor, and depending on whatever other tutor you get after me, they may or may not be good enough to teach all five of you well enough. And if any one of you fails enough, you'll be held back, and then the five of you'll get split up - and that'd be a damn shame."
Never has Yotsuba heard words so painful to her ears before.
"...but if you've been through this yourself...you'd get it, right...?" she asks.
"I do, to an extent. But I think I've told you this before - try not to compare whatever I do with most other things, like whatever you're doing, for example. You're studying for finals and helping out the track team at the same time because you want to; I became a mage because I had to."
"...as in, you...didn't have a choice, right?"
Fuutarou slowly nods.
"What you're doing is quite commendable, Yotsuba, and you shouldn't let anyone try to convince you otherwise, not even me, despite me saying all this to you right now. But again, the problem is that your desire to do good and help others can come at a cost, and one that you might not realize until it's too late. I talked to you about opportunity cost before, right? Back before Golden Week? Well, this isn't exactly opportunity cost, but...in a sense I guess it is, because with you spending all this time training with the track team that you could've used to just study and prep yourself better for finals, you put the interests of others at risk. Yes, there are times when you can't help it since there can be conflicts of interest, but there shouldn't be a conflict of interest here, not at a time like this when we have no time. That, and..."
The young mage gestures to his student.
"Why do you study?" Fuutarou questions the quintuplet. "When you train with the track team, you're helping them so that they can do well as a team and place high in regionals. But when you study, what's your motivation for that? I don't think it's a stretch for me to say that you don't really...study for your own academic results, do you?"
Dropping her gaze again, 428 blinks down at the contents of her glass, her lower lip quivering now that she's not biting it, before she shakes her head.
"...I'm...studying so that...I can do well with everyone else, and...and we can all stay together, just like...just like Mom wanted us to be," Yotsuba murmurs.
Fuutarou nods understandingly. "Do you see a pattern here?"
"Pattern?"
"Yeah. Between you helping the track team and you studying, what is it that both of those things share, do you think? From what you've told me so far?"
Yotsuba falls silent yet again. She already knows the answer, of course, and she's sure that Fuutarou does, too. She just doesn't want to say it out loud, because if she does, then Fuutarou will proceed to deconstruct it and break it down right in front of her, and she's not so sure how well she'd be able to handle that.
Perhaps to her luck, her tutor glances down at his phone, seeing a different number pop up on the screen this time - Ichika's number.
"You can answer that one later. Right now, we gotta move, Ichika's in trouble," the young mage murmurs urgently to his classmate, standing up from his chair while Yotsuba also hastily gets up with him, practically relieved that she doesn't need to give him an answer for now.
"Um, how is she in trouble? Is something happening to her right now?"
"Nothing like what happened to you and Nino the other night, if that's what you're talking about, but remember, Ichika took your spot in the track team. I'm guessing the rest of the team found out about the two of you swapping places." Fuutarou quickly shoots another text before triangulating Ichika's position relative to their own. "Good, we can actually head there on foot, since they don't look like they've gone too far. You're not too tired, right?"
"Nope, I'm good to go!"
"Alright, then let's move."
Since Ichika has already paid for their drinks before she left, Fuutarou and Yotsuba head out from the cafe properly and transition into brisk runs themselves to reach Ichika's position quickly.
"Ichika should be pretty good at impersonating us. If she's in trouble, then I think Eba-san, the track team captain, might've been able to tell that Ichika isn't me!" Yotsuba calls up to Fuutarou. "And that's pretty weird, since the vast majority of people we meet can't tell the five of us apart from each other!"
"Whatever the case, we gotta bail Ichika out. It's not like she went in there with detailed knowledge of what you girls in the track team are up to these days."
Dipping and diving throughout foot traffic in the city street sidewalk, Yotsuba has to concentrate most of her focus on keeping up with the nimble and dexterous Fuutarou, who leads and helps carve a path through pedestrian traffic for her to follow.
Back at the cafe, before they left, Yotsuba would have answered her tutor with "everything I've done was for the sake of others". What would her tutor have told her in response? Probably something like how she needs to focus on her own studies more so that she doesn't drag everyone else down or so that she doesn't put pressure on everyone else around her from being able to do their own best.
Yotsuba's heart pounds in her chest, but not because of the running. She knows that Fuutarou is right - perhaps it wasn't the best idea for her to commit to assisting the track team or whatever else team at school when she needed to focus on her own studies first. And despite her own wishes, Yotsuba is already preparing herself to have to discard those selfish sentiments too for the general interest of her sisters and her tutor, the most important people in her life, by stepping in for Ichika and telling her team captain that she can't help them out after all. That, and it seems like there's no way for this situation end without Yotsuba going home with all of her sisters to study, so she might as well end it here herself to make the transition easier for everyone. And don't forget about all the trouble that she's caused for Fuutarou himself over the past few days...
It just really hurts to have to do this, though knowing that Itsuki is probably going through something similar, and perhaps Nino as well, brings her a little bit of comfort that alleviates the pain.
Fuutarou and Yotsuba soon reach their destination, at a large open-air shopping mall with large pedestrian bridges criss-crossing its airspace to facilitate easy access to various parts of the shopping mall for its visitors.
"There they are!" the fourth quintuplet calls out urgently, but something about the scene ahead catches her eye. "Wait, what - "
Noticing this anomaly as well, Fuutarou quickly ushers Yotsuba behind a corner so that they can watch the scene unfold without their influence. The track team, having paused here in the middle of the shopping mall, has made a sort of semi-arc with its members around what can only be a nervous-looking Nakano Ichika, who appeared to be trying to talk her way out of her sticky situation, but she's since silenced herself because of a few more figures approaching them from a different direction.
"Ahaha, sorry for the holdup, everyone!" one of the newcomers says loudly, and the peeking Fuutarou and Yotsuba soon discern the rest of the quintuplets assembling to confront the rest of the track team, and the greeting catches everyone else's attention, with the other track girls expressing their relief at the return of who they think is the real Yotsuba. "That was just a little prank that we like to do every so often to people, y'know, a quintuplet joke and all. Again, sorry about that."
"Oh, so it was just a prank, huh?" Eba, the track team captain with her black hair tied up in a ponytail, turns to "Yotsuba" from Ichika, who's still a bit on edge about everything that's happening right now. "It's a good thing you came right now, since I was in the middle of asking why this sister of yours was trying to get in the way of our training."
"Yeah, yeah, don't worry, again, just a harmless little quintuplet joke."
With a perpetual smile on her face, Eba grins just a tad bit wider towards "Yotsuba". "Well, unfortunately, this joke of yours isn't funny, so stop horsing around. I don't need to remind you that we're all prepping for regionals right now, right? Since you've agreed to help us, we've got to make the best of your talent, along with everyone else's, so that we can do our school proud and take the entire event!"
Ichika, taking an uncomfortable look around while the track team captain is talking, notices her tutor and her younger sister spying on them from a distance and tries to wave discretely over to them.
"Oh, is that so? That's good to hear, it really is! By the way, what were you talking to my sister here about before I got here?"
"Huh? That doesn't really matter right now, does it?"
"Maybe not, but it looked like you were talking about something way more serious than what a harmless joke would warrant, right? So what were you talking to my sister here about?"
Eba takes a small step backwards, beginning to feel uncertain about the true identity of this new "Yotsuba" as well, for she looks identical to the Yotsuba she's familiar with, with short hair and a cheerful, upbeat smile that is slowly turning not so upbeat anymore with every few seconds that pass.
"I-I was just asking her why she took your place here with us in the middle of our training! She tried to impersonate you, you know, and obviously we didn't take too kindly too that since we didn't know this was supposed to be some kind of prank you're all playing on us until you told us."
"Yeah, we noticed that she was starting to fall behind during our run, so we stopped for her and asked her who she really was because Yotsuba easily keeps up with us - hell, she's faster and stronger than most of us!" one of the other track and field members calls out from behind their captain. "Then after we called her out on it, she started telling us this bullshit about how she wants to quit the team all of a sudden. The Yotsuba we know would never say something like that, so that's how we knew it wasn't her for real!"
"Oh, but do you now? What if I were to tell you that the part about me quitting the team isn't a joke?"
The entire track team looks stunned, and none more than the track captain herself, whose creeping fear about this Yotsuba is now proven correct, much to her angst.
"N-Nakano-san...?" Eba stammers, unable to come to terms with this revelation and still hanging onto the delusion that she's still talking to the real Yotsuba. "Wait, why...why are you - "
"Why? What the fuck do you mean, why?" The "real" Yotsuba takes a few menacing steps towards the track captain. "We all know finals is this week and that everyone's studying hard for them, everyone except maybe the rest of you meatheads who don't care about it, especially you upperclassmen who know that your academic scores don't matter as much when it comes to getting accepted by a university with your athletic records instead. But I was never like that; I'm a fucking freshman, for God's sake. So isn't it obvious what you did here, Captain? You got carried away and didn't think about what I needed to do be doing when you asked me to join the track team; all you care about is winning regionals so that you can just add it to your resume. And relying on a ringer like me to help you win is just plain pathetic, don't you think?"
"Yotsuba" stops with her face mere inches away from Eba's. With blazing violet eyes staring wide-eyed down at the track and field team captain, she hisses harshly,
"So? Are you a fucking idiot or what?"
A subtle burst of magical energy resonates from the epicenter that is the confrontation between "Yotsuba" and the track captain, and when it hits Fuutarou, he becomes very alarmed - the magical burst is the largest he's sensed from the quintuplet that it belongs to, never mind the fact that she's using her Mystic Eyes right now on a mere civilian.
"We need to move," Fuutarou hisses himself down at Yotsuba before the two of them quickly swing out of the corner behind which they've been hiding so that they can intervene. Meanwhile, Eba, uttering a meek and defeated apology as she sinks to her knees right in front of the impostor Yotsuba who's wearing all the same clothes that the real Yotsuba is, even down to the hair ribbon. The only thing that she's gotten wrong is her shoes - she's wearing flip-flops.
"F-Fuutarou-kun!" Ichika blurts out, relieved to see him catch up with the real Yotsuba in tow. Hearing his name called, Nino blinks quickly, accidentally letting her Mystic Eyes fade back into obscurity as she, too, turns towards the latest newcomers to the showdown.
"Hey, finally managed to catch up," Fuutarou lets out a heavy exhale after they've all rendezvoused. "Looks like you didn't need me here after all, though."
"Huh? Wait..." Eba jolts back up to her feet again, albeit somewhat awkwardly still. She's privy to the fact that Yotsuba is one of five identical quintuplets, but this is the first time having all five of them gathered in the same area, with three of them wearing the exact same clothing for the most part. "Who's - who's the real Yotsuba, then?!"
"Holy fuck, you still can't tell...?" "Yotsuba" rolls her eyes sarcastically while the real one jumps forth to reveal herself.
"It's me, it's me! I'm the real Yotsuba, for real this time!" the fourth quintuplet declares quickly, but she too inhales slowly and deeply. "Um...it's as my sisters tried telling you. I, uh...as much as I wish to assist the track team in regionals, I can't join everyone for training this week because I need to study for finals really badly. I should have told everyone this earlier so that something like this wouldn't have happened at all, I'm so sorry..."
While Yotsuba is wholeheartedly apologizing to the rest of her teammates and team captain, Fuutarou takes a head count. Ichika, Miku, Yotsuba, Itsuki...so the one with the uncharacteristically short hair now is -
"...Nino," the young tutor greets the second quintuplet, who now puts on her signature butterfly hair ribbons that give her her defining profile, except this time, there is no long hair to complete it. "Got a makeover since we last met up?"
"Heh. Wouldn't you like to know," Nino smiles coyly up at her classmate.
"Well, if it's something personal, then it's none of my business. What I would like to know is what made you come here to help us out."
"Miku and Itsuki told me about what the rest of you were up to, and once you explained to me your plans, I decided to get ahead of you and help Yotsuba settle things, that's all." Nino raises a finger up at her tutor with a slight scowl. "I'm telling you now, but it's definitely not because of you that I did any of this, alright?"
Uesugi Fuutarou merely offers a reserved grin back at his student. "Yes, yes, whatever you say."
"Hey, by the way, who are you?" one of the track and field members, unable to help but notice Fuutarou's conversation with Nino while Yotsuba is talking to their team captain to hammer out some details regarding the future of Yotsuba's involvement with the team, calls out to the young mage. "What sorta business you got buttin' in on this, actin' like you know one of our underclassmen's sisters or somethin'?"
"Me? I'm not just acting, I'm these girls' tutor," Fuutarou says matter-of-factly.
"Huh!? Wait, no shot, no way in hell you're a tutor!" another track girl cries out, pointing a finger over at the only male in the group. "And I know you, you're that one freshman who always sleeps in class! How the hell is someone like you a tutor, huh? Buuuuullshiiiiit!"
"Yeah, I know right, imagine getting tutored by a guy like him," yet another track girl joins in. "What's he gonna teach 'em, how to sleep in class just like he does or what?"
"Didn't you diss our captain for just trying to pad her resume or something for college? How're you gonna say that when you have a literal delinquent here as your tutor, huh? Are you fucking stupid or what, hahahaha!"
The sudden rowdiness and hostility the track girls are now showing towards them and their tutor start ruffling several of the quintuplets' feathers, namely those of Nino's and Miku's, but before they can defend their tutor, Fuutarou is quicker on the draw.
"Hey, girls, I know that I, uh, might've crashed your training today by coming here to borrow one of your team members, but I don't think there was a need to escalate this into name-calling and such, right?" Fuutarou says firmly over to the track girls.
"Fuu - Uesugi-kun, don't worry about me, let me fucking rip 'em a new one," Nino snarls, but Fuutarou keeps his arm gently but firmly over her chest to prevent her from advancing past him.
"Yeah you fucking did! And we're not exactly pleased with that, y'know? How the hell else are you supposed to expect us to react? And not only that, but you're trying to sell us this whole thing that you're supposed to be their tutor?" one of the track girls hollers back.
"I mean, I'm not trying to lie to you, so yeah, I am their tutor, and my job is to make sure that they pass their finals. Unfortunately, I can't also have any one of them doing other things that might take away from my own job. It is what it is; I'm sorry to yoink Yotsuba away from you all, but I have to do this in order to do my job as their tutor."
"Well, you're wasting your damn time trying to tutor a dumb bitch like her," another track girl hisses back. "That's Nino, right? The freshman that the boys're all talking about at school? I bet you're just a fucking slut, you cum-guzzling little attention whore! Go ruin someone else's club or team, why don't you, we weren't bothering you at all and you just up 'n crash ours? What's your fucking deal, huh, you fucking cunt?"
Naturally, Nino wants to walk up to that girl and punch her in the face as hard as she can, but once again, Fuutarou seizes initiative and takes a step forward himself towards the track girls. This sudden movement out of him makes them suddenly realize how much taller he is compared to everyone else, and the look on his face certainly doesn't help to make his advance any less threatening.
"Excuse me? What the fuck did you just say about her?" the young mage asks with a dangerous tilt of his head.
"I-I said that she's a fucking whore, that's what!" the same girl bravely spits out again, this time at the boy coming at them. "What's it to you, huh? You're nothing but a tutor, why the hell should you care about what I'm saying about her?"
"Nothing but a tutor? Bitch, that's my girl you're talking shit about."
Everyone freezes.
"Pfft - paaaaahahaha! Your - your girl? How's a lame fucking freshman like you got any chance in hell getting a girlfriend?" the rude track girl scoffs back. "What, you're so desperate to get some pussy that now you're just making shit up - "
"He's not making it up."
Right in front of all the girls, and especially in front of her own sisters, Nakano Nino steps forth behind Fuutarou and grabs hold of his left arm, her hand locking fingers firmly with his. With a huge blush plastered on her face that she can't possibly keep down, the second quintuplet smirks back at her upperclassmen.
"He's my boyfriend. Got a fuckin' problem with it, bitch?" she sneers cheekily back.
Yotsuba's eyes are locked onto the two conjoined hands, those of Uesugi Fuutarou and her sister Nakano Nino. The three other quintuplets all look positively shocked to varying degrees.
"And there you have it. Like I was saying, I don't appreciate any of you talking smack about my girl, so I'ma tell you what..." Fuutarou, having pulled out his phone and dialed a number while Nino was addressing the rest of the track team for him, puts his phone on speaker so that everyone can hear the dial tone, which doesn't last long before a dry voice creeps through from the other side.
"Yes, Uesugi?"
"I'm just wondering, Doc, is it possible for you to get in touch with the school administration for me?" Fuutarou asks loudly to make himself clearly audible to both the track team and his employer.
"You already know that I can, what seems to be the issue here?"
The track girls, not knowing what the hell is going on or what is about to happen, listen with rising levels of apprehension.
"Well, you see, I recently found out that the track team at our school has been appropriating one of my students for the purpose of winning their regionals with their help, and that's getting in the way of my tutoring. Is it possible for you to contact school admins to have them disband the track team until further notice?"
The word "disband" is more than enough to turn all the confused looks on the track girls' faces into those of abject disbelief and horror, and that isn't the worst of them just yet.
"Hm, the track team is giving you a hard time, I see. Very well, I will have to see what I can do."
"Thanks, Doc. You can take your time with it, though, no need to be hasty about it. I'll let you know once I've made my decision."
Disconnecting from the call, Fuutarou slowly pockets his phone again before the terrified track team and glares hard at each of the girls who've talked shit about Nino.
"I expected my upperclassmen at school to at least behave a lot more like actual upperclassmen, but I guess I've been let down in that department," he snarls back venomously. "But if you all wanna play dirty, then I'm more than happy to play along. I'll give you five seconds to get the fuck out of my sight before I have the school administration shut down your pathetic fucking club and bar you from ever going to regionals at all this year. All of you except for the team captain, that is. Five, four, three - "
The power of mere words has never been so compelling: the track girls all immediately burst off running away as fast as they can, dashing down the mostly empty shopping mall lane since it's still only the early afternoon, well outside of the shopping mall's peak visitor hours.
Smirking after them in their wake, the young mage glances down at Nino, who's still holding his arm and hand.
"Alright, that's enough, Nino. Thanks for covering my ass," Fuutarou nods gratefully, and Nino nods back, reluctantly parting ways with his hand so that the tutor can talk briefly to Eba and find out what the track team's plans regarding Yotsuba will be following finals, and before long, Eba herself is sent packing after the rest of her team, as though in a daze from the sudden whirlpool of events that all went down in such a short period of time.
"So I'm free to help the track team train after finals, but once regionals is over, I quit the team," Yotsuba summarizes for remembrance's sake.
"Right. I think that's the best compromise that we can get, seeing that you'd already given your word to them that you'd compete with them at regionals," Fuutarou nods. "But we finally got that over with. Thanks, everyone, for helping me pull all this shit off."
At this, Nino scoffs even more loudly than that one girl from the track team. "You girls hearing what Uesugi-kun's talking about right now? He's thanking us right now. That make any sense to the rest of you?"
"Quite the contrary, Fuutarou, it's thanks to you that we can even be in this position to begin with," Miku says happily with a superbly relieved smile on her face. "We should be the ones thanking you."
"That so? Then you can thank me with passing scores for your finals."
At this, all five quintuplets slip into a smattering of soft laughter, causing a perturbed Fuutarou to look around at everyone.
"...what? I'm actually being serious about that, too," he shrugs in bewilderment.
"We know. It is just that...you saying that has made us realize that we are finally back to how we were again," Itsuki remarks.
"That's good to hear. Now let's get back home, we got finals to study for and half the time that we should've had studying for it."