"I'm heading out now." Mutsumi slung a black drawstring bag over her shoulder. "Anyone need anything?" The sixth sister reached for the door, intending to go out to get more supplies for her little creations. It was only yesterday that Kiku was over, and only yesterday when Ichika finally revealed her true colors.

"Nothing really. If you bump into Uesugi-kun, can you tell him that he's running late." Itsuki walks up to the doorway, setting herself down to wait for their tutor. "It's almost time for our study session and we've managed to gather everyone." She says as the sound of the door swinging open is followed by her sister's footsteps. Mutsumi turns to face her.

"Figures. People like him only stay so long as they have something to gain. It was only a matter of time until..." Walking backwards, Mutsumi's train of thought was stopped by something touching the bottom of her shoe. Turning to look at it, she finds a familiar black haired tutor lying face down in the hallway. "Fuutarou-san!? Itsuki, get Yotsuba!" She turns him over, finding his eyes devoid of life. Leaning into his chest, she hears his pulse, along with a quiet snore.

"Uesugi-kun? What's wrong? Is he?"

"He's alive. Just asleep." Mutsumi sighs, winding her arm up before slapping the tutor awake. "Oi!"

"Huh? Oh. I must've done it again. I was so focused on studying that before I knew it, the sun was up."

"What's with this guy? All that just for some money?" Mutsumi thinks to herself as she gets up. "You're late already."

"Don't rub it in, I get it okay?" He smiles with a slight twinge of irritation.

"Whatever. Be thankful that I started teaching them while they waited for you. They should be..."

"Let go Miku!" Nino yelled, grabbing onto one side of...something? Fuutarou looked at it in awe for a moment, trying to realize what was coiled and pulled taut between the two sisters' arms. "You've had it for the past hour!"

"Mutsumi gave it to me! I'm solving it!" Miku pulled her arm closer. Both of their arms were wrapped in a metal coil painted green, with sections exposing a black liquid. The tips of their fingers reached a small orb made of the same metal, with levers and switches that were the size of pinheads. The entire device, and by extension their forearms, was encased in a clear plastic tube with elastic bands to keep it in place, the only openings other than the arm holes was a small hole that faced a red button on the sphere.

"What are you doing?" Fuutarou asked, handing his things to Itsuki to inspect the contraption. "What is this?"

"I would like to ask you the same question. When did you have time to make so many, Uesugi-kun?" Itsuki caught everyone's attention as she gazed into his bag. The whole room went silent as she pulled out an encyclopedia's worth of paper, all tinted with guide questions.

"Well, it's not fair if you guys are the only ones trying your hardest. I've got to set an example." He sighed.

"What the hell? How?" Mutsumi thought to herself, scanning the boy and stopping at the sight of his eyebags. "All night? He spent all night making these? I...don't believe it. It's a fluke, they're probably not even good review sheets." Her hand drifted to her face. She murmured as she pressed the red button and released her sisters from her puzzle game. "Fuutarou-san, do you have an extra copy for me?"

"You're joining us now?" Ichika asked, hiding her annoyance. There, for a fraction of a second, Mutsumi saw her eye twitch as the two stared each other down.

"I have to make sure he's teaching you correctly. Plus, I want to gauge if he's a threat."

"A threat?" Miku, Yotsuba, and Itsuki all shared the thought. "Is she going to kill him?" They worried as their tutor handed her a sixth of the papers.

"Tch! These cover most of the exam's topics. No! He must've asked a teacher for a study guide and rearranged them to make these." Mutsumi scans the paper in her hands. "But there's just one thing...one thing keeping me from focusing." Looking to her opposite at the table, she meets the gaze of her sister. Her attention gets focused on Ichika, blocking out any stimuli.

"So, Mutsumi. Is he up to your standards?" Ichika asks, tightly clutching her pencil as Miku's hand reaches for an eraser nearby.

"Perhaps." A sick grin curls on Mutsumi's face. "Fuutarou-san, can I see one of your notebooks? There's something I want to double check." She lied. "There has to be something. Something he used, he couldn't have printed all these in a night!" Page after page, row after row, all filled with the same notes she's seen him write down. Her teeth were grinding against each other, causing Ichika to snicker to herself.

"Something wrong? Not turning out as you expected, little sis?"

"It's nothing important, onee-san." She kept reading his notes, completely immersed and catching some facts that she missed on her own review. Her vision and hearing tunneling into it, she didn't even notice Nino leave the table in a rage until Fuutarou slammed his arm on the stack of papers on the table.

"Damn...this set is going to waste." Fuutarou grunted, clearly frustrated by something that passed the youngest sister's attention.

"You were going to set an example, weren't you? I'm counting on you." Itsuki's words accompanied Fuutarou's footsteps as he chased after the second sister.

"Fuutarou-san, you should just give up. There's nothing you can do. There's nothing someone like you could do, you don't have it in you." Mutsumi taunted, but it fell on deaf ears. Fuutarou had started talking to Nino, stopping the girl on the stairs.

"Shut up. What do you know?" Nino snapped. "What gives you the right to lecture me? You're just a hired tutor. An outsider." Nino's anger flared up like a grease fire, causing Fuutarou to recoil and retreat slightly. One of her sisters came to his side, however.

"Here. Fuutarou made these for us." Miku stood against Nino's anger. "Take them."

"So what if he made a problem set?" Nino clenched her fist, her arm trembling. "I don't..." Her eyes stared down at Miku, as if looking like a stranger. "...need these."

"True enough. I'm sure I can teach her this in a day..." Mutsumi chuckled, crumpling her share up and tossing them aside. She reaches for her bag again as her sisters' eyes are glued to the scene, trying to calm everyone down.

"Nino." Miku's tone shifted, though the change was minute. It now held a small note of...anger. "Pick them up." Mutsumi had stood up, adjusting the sleeves of her hoodie.

"Don't be conned by these scraps of paper. He was even late today. Giving us something like this..." There was a sound, a very distinct sound. Nino had ripped up some paper, but Mutsumi couldn't care less. "Give me a break! If you think this counts as teaching, then you're sorely mistaken!" Mutsumi had a smug grin, unseen to everyone else. She was about to get her shoes when a loud resounding sound stops time.

"Nino. Apologize." Itsuki stepped up, her hand hovering in the air near Nino's face. Mutsumi was stunned, watching them unravel their restraints. Nino retaliated with a slap of her own.

"Itsuki... What's gotten into you..." Nino's fuse had burnt up, unleashing her pent up enmity with the tutor onto her sister.

"This problem set is something that Uesugi-kun made just for us." Mutsumi stood, mortified at what was transpiring before her. Her feet felt robotic as she returned to sit with her sisters. Itsuki, her voice and tone oddly familiar, was trying to put Nino in her place.

"Why? He's just a tutor. Why are they siding with him? He's just a gold digger; he's not family!" Her mind was shook to its core. "Wait...he's penniless..."

"He has neither a printer nor a photocopier..."

"Unbelievable. I..I refuse to believe this!" Mutsumi held up one of her crumpled pages.

"I was astonished." Itsuki said.

"No...it's true." Mutsumi muttered.

"Everything was handwritten." The two youngest sisters said in unison, the elder's tone serious and stern; the younger's awestruck and distraught.

Her mind froze, much like her body had while watching her sisters fight. "Why...why..." Her lips trembled as Fuutarou packed his things and left for the day. Nino and Itsuki both shut themselves in their rooms. "He's just...in it for the money...why did you guys..." She had sat herself down just as Itsuki had stridden out of the door. "How...did things end up like this?"

"Mutsumi...you believe me right?" Nino puts a hand on her shoulder, lit by the light of the sunset. Mutsumi felt dazed, trying to process everything. "Mutsumi. Make him go away...protect us..." Nino leans in, whispering one more thing into Mutsumi's ear before walking past her.

"...I'll try." Mutsumi crumples the paper in her hands. "I...need more information." She says to herself as the door shuts.

"You too? Leaving again Mutsumi?" Ichika asked as a cloud covered the moon.

"There's something I have to do. Something only I can do." Tying her hair up and tucking it into her hood, Mutsumi felt her sister's hands clutching onto her arms. "Don't try to stop me. I'm...I'm going to get them back."

"Mutsumi...come back, okay? We can't lose you too." Ichika whispered as Mutsumi left their home and pulled out her phone, following a blip on her map.

"To hell with the bet, to hell with everything!" Mutsumi broke into a sprint, ducking into alleys and taking every shortcut she could see. "I'm not letting you two go." She stopped to catch her breath, holding herself up against a street light in the slums. "I'm here." She looked as the door to an old, rundown café opened.

"I'm heading out for some fresh air. Don't wait for me." Fuutarou said, stepping out and letting the door shut behind him. Or it would've if Mutsumi hadn't put a cloth in to jam the lock and let herself in.

"Fuutarou. You brought your keys right? Raiha and I'll be heading to sleep soon." An older voice, probably that of Fuutarou's father, said from a room to her right. Fuutarou gave an audible, response that sounded like he did.

"Time to scout for something...anything. Why do my sisters like you so much, Fuutarou-san?" Mutsumi thought, sneaking around the house and finding his kin sitting on futons. A light haired man was combing through a familiar young girl's black hair. "...he really does need the money." She thought as she looked about the home and its inhabitants.

"Do you think something happened with the Nakanos? Onii-san looked different when he came home." The girl asked.

"Probably. But knowing him, he's probably already thinking of something to fix it." Her father replied, tucking the both of them in.

"Him...he's trying to fix it?" Mutsumi put her hand to her lips in thought. "Let's see if that's true." She thought as she left the home and walked through the biting cold night.

"Yotsuba? You went out looking for them too?" Mutsumi passed by the park, finding her sister on the swings.

"I...yeah." The rabbit replied, her ribbon falling to her face as the momentum carrying her stopped and she was left standing on the still seat.

"I think you should head home soon. The other two are going to worry. Tell them I'll look for just a little longer." Mutsumi clutched the chain with her hand. "Yotsuba. I promise. Nobody else is leaving, I'll make sure of it."

"Do you remember what mom said?" Yotsuba asked, looking up at the night sky.

"What's important isn't where we are, but that the six of us are together." The two said simultaneously before sending each other off with a wave.

"Hey." Mutsumi said, closing the door behind her.

"So, how'd it go?" Her sister asked, sitting in a chair facing away from her.

"I need more information before I can think of a plan. Specifically, about Fuutarou-san." Mutsumi walked over, picking up something from a nearby table and handing them over.

"What do you want to know?" Her sister asked, tying her butterfly ribbons into her hair and sipping a cup of black tea.