"Good morning, onee-san. Want some coffee?" The youngest sister was currently sitting at the kotatsu, the TV turned on but on such a low volume that it was basically whispering. Backing up her offer for refreshment was a mug of steamy coffee with a spoon resting against the lip, and a small pot of a dark liquid located on the far side of the table. Along with her cup of joe, Mutsumi was working on another microscopic invention. Notebooks and pencils were scattered in a semicircle in front of her, along with a reference book that she held in her hand.
"I think I'll pass." The eldest sister yawned, looking around the room before making her way to the bathroom. "Where is everyone?"
"They're already on their way to school," Mutsumi said calmly, juxtaposed to her sister's reaction from inside the lavatory. The door quickly swung open, Ichika's face wet with water and a panicked look plastered all over it. "hurry up. I'll wait outside." Mutsumi cleaned her space, switching off the TV as she readied her things for school. Ichika took an additional ten minutes to get ready, even though she was rushing to get dressed and prepare her things. Surely the room was a dump at this point, but that was something the six of them will deal with once they return; Yotsuba would probably clean it up as soon as she got home.
"Why didn't you wake me up sooner?" Ichika groaned as the two began running to catch up with the others.
"You seemed to enjoy your nap..." Mutsumi replied, already working up a bit of a sweat. "By the way, do you have any plans for his birthday yet?" All six of them were at a standstill, especially since Nino failed to get an idea of what Fuutarou might want. Distracting her from the exercise could only work for so long, as such, Mutsumi soon found herself leaning against a wall to catch her breath. Though, with the extra stimulation, her mind did begin to wander. "Hey, Ichika. Do you think Nino actually did ask him?"
"What do you mean?" The first sister, in slightly better condition, asked while helping the youngest stand up straight. The two turned the corner, spotting a haze of red a few buildings ahead of them.
"What if she asked him what he wanted, but didn't tell us so that she could..." Mutsumi muttered, stopping herself with a cough as the two slowly closed the distance. "Anyway, just some food for thought." The youngest sister said, wiping her face clean of sweat.
"Food?" Itsuki asked, turning around and meeting gazes with the two tardy Nakano. "Ah. What took you so long?" Standing still to wait for them, the middle sisters, relative to Ichika and Mutsumi, made their topic of conversation heard.
"Now that I think about it, wouldn't it be kind of weird if we just asked him what he wanted?" Miku said, walking beside Nino as the two lead their group up the stairs and into the school building.
"You have a point." Itsuki chimed in. "But what are we to do? If we can't ask him, or think of our own ideas, then we won't be able to get him anything at all."
"What if we ask the others. They know him longer than any of us since we all arrived during the second year." Mutsumi suggested as the six of them arrived in their room and took to their seats. "Yotsuba, you're the class rep, you should have an easy time asking around." With that out in the open, they went through the motions of their school life. Mutsumi took down as many notes as she could, paying more mind to the teacher's lecture compared to how she used to do it. Not only did she have Fuutarou to compete with, but now the Takeda student was also aiming for the top scores. It had been a while since she's been this exhilarated. On the topic of her two rivals, they seemed to be in some kind of argument on the topic of one of their lectures.
"After this, I have to meet with the history teacher. Then I'll go to the library to fix my notes, and then..." He quietly during one of their last periods of the day. The rest of the class were busy copying what the teacher had written on the board, doing the exercises on their notebooks, but not Fuutarou. He had already planned on teaching the sisters this topic, so his notes were already written down, though he'd need to retool it as to not repeat what the sisters doing at the moment. His notes had become quite messy in recent weeks; his job at Revival, as well as the responsibilities of his position in the class, ate at his time until he found himself racing to finish his notes. He was fortunate that some of his classmates were getting more adept at distinguishing the sextuplets; that was another load off his back.
"You spelled it wrong." Mutsumi's voice took his attention off of his schedule. The white-haired sister was currently standing over two of their classmates, one girl with long black hair, and one boy with long brown bangs. "It's supposed to have two of those, for it to make sense." She pointed to the girl's notebook, correcting her answer to the activity with ease since it was English class and she was used to speaking it.
"No, I think this one works too." Takeda raised an eyebrow, shifting in his seat to glance at the sentence in question. "If it was written like this, then the meaning would change, yeah?" He winked towards Mutsumi, grinning as the girl analyzed his statement. Mutsumi shook her head, reading over it multiple times.
"Alright, listen here you little..." She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. She seemed irritated, at least more than usual. She grabbed onto Takeda's collar, pulling him closer to the paper while pointing out her reasoning. A thorough lecture from a fluent speaker came after that, the teacher stopping whatever they were doing and confirming things that the girl with platinum blonde hair said. Finally letting go of his clothes, Mutsumi rubbed her fingers together before wiping her hands on her hoodie. Sadly for Fuuutarou, her rant transitioning into a lecture meant that they were retreading ground that they've already covered, so his mind had wandered back to the topic of his packed schedule.
"Ugh, I don't have time." He thought silently as his classmates left after the final bell. Wandering around the room while on cleaning duty, he picked up one of the few items that were left behind: a notebook without any sort of identification. "Yotsuba, do you know who owns this?" Asking around to the other person that willingly stayed behind, Fuutarou turned to the fourth sister who was burdened by her own responsibilities. On the topic of the fourth sister, she had been acting quite strange since the day had started, at least when Fuutarou saw her.
Going around and talking to the other students was normal for her, but something she said to him earlier that day caught his attention. "Uesugi-san, what do you think of m-" She muttered right after P.E. as they were carrying the materials they used back to storage, her train of thought interrupted by the arrival of Ichika and Miku. Once they had arrived, the topic suddenly became forbidden and she had never brought it up again.
Returning to the present, the fourth sister turned to examine the paper; her face contorting in deep thought as she tried to recall which of the students used that color of school materials. "I don't know." The girl said, turning on her heel in an attempt to exit the room before he could bring up another conversation topic. Well, there was an attempt.
"Give me half, Yotsuba." He said, walking over and reaching for what was in the fourth sister's hands: more notebooks. Yotsuba, somewhat startled, took a few steps back as the two met gazes. Fuutarou flinched first, taking a step back. "Let's hurry and get this over and done with."
"U-Uesugi-san." Fuutarou looked over as the fourth sister fidgeted and adjusted the notebooks in her hands. "What do you think of me, Uesugi-san?"
"Is this about what happened on the island?" Fuutarou asked, to which the sister had to pause and think for a moment. Fuutarou didn't wait for her to answer; what happened on that island was something that kept niggling at the back of his mind. "Actually, we haven't really talked about it." Fuuutarou wanted to pursue this line of thinking, to question her on her motives and ask her why she said those things that night.
"No...well maybe." She replied, setting the notebooks down on a desk to give her full attention to the tutor. "There's a rumor that we're going out. And, well..."
"Good grief, so that's what it was..." Fuutarou sighed, pulling out a nearby chair and taking a seat. "How did they even come to that conclusion...there's no way tha-" He stopped himself as he turned to look at Yotsuba's face. With the events of the island fresh in his mind due to him bringing it up earlier, the vision of her revealing herself as the impostor Itsuki made him reconsider his next words carefully. "Gossip about love spreads quickly...huh?" Deciding to change the topic, Fuutarou sent out a list of possible suspects for the person that started the whole conversation.
"Thinking back on what you said last year, you were pretty against it at the time. Something about it being against the responsibilities of a student." Yotsuba placed her hand to her chin, looking back on the simpler times that were only a year prior. For whatever it's worth, even though she wasn't academically gifted, Yotsuba was average at judging people, not like it was hard to tell that Fuutarou had changed since that time in the cafeteria. "Have your feelings changed?" She was confident in her prediction but wanted to confirm it by having him admit it himself.
"Perhaps...perhaps I have changed a little. Lately, I just can't bring myself to mock such sincerity." Having been put on the backfoot, Fuutarou rested his elbows on his thighs as he brought interlocked fingers to his face. Yotsuba smiled at the statement, though whether this was because she was happy that he'd lost some more of that harsh edge or if it was because her feelings now had an even better chance of getting through to him was unknown.
"I'm glad Uesugi-san has accepted this." She thought, picking up the notebooks once more to exit the room. "No matter who you love, or how you come to love them, I'll support you," Yotsuba said, turning her head to face him. She couldn't tell him everything yet, not of the past. "Because...I love Uesugi-san too. So I want to be able to support you and make you happy." She could hear her heart beating faster with every syllable, and for a moment she thought to play it off as a joke but something kept her from retracting her statement; something that currently had platinum blonde hair.
It might've been a coincidence, or she might've been listening in on everything, but Mutsumi stood by the doorframe with only a few strands of her hair visible to the people inside; Yotsuba only found out due to her excellent nose and the scent of some freshly soldered wires emanating from nearby. Was she working on something in the hallway? Was she doing it so often that it stuck to her clothes? Whatever the case, Yotsuba knew that her sister was there. The sister that told her to speak with him before they returned, the sister that supported her feelings as much as she supported everyone else's. Either from the confidence that Mutsumi gave her, or fear that they would have another spat if she didn't confess, Yotsuba decided that it was time to uncork the bottle. It was at this point that Mutsumi crossed both of their sightlines, a pair of earphones in her ears with the other end of the wire inside of her breast pocket. Taking that as a sign, the fourth sister left the boy to his own devices.
"I...need to go to the restroom." Discombobulated, he headed in the opposite direction of the two sisters, entering the first male restroom he encountered.
The calm environment let him think. If he were to speak frankly, there were a lot of things on his mind at the moment. The events of the island were only a few weeks ago, so they were occupying his thoughts, especially since he had just had a serious conversation with the Itsuki that got the jump on him on the first night. Aside from that, his busy schedule of studying and making notes for his students made him stress out; the national mock exam wasn't too far off from the current date. Not to mention his part-time job at the cake store and Nino's declaration at work. It was almost overwhelming. Frustrated by the constraints put on him by his situation, he sighed as someone walked up to him, the one person that always seemed to find him in restrooms. "Uesugi-kun."
"Every time! What is your goddamn problem!?" He yelled; his mind on overdrive and not caring for formalities, not that he'd be very formal with the current breach of his sense of privacy.
"It must be tough, being the Nakano's tutor that is," Takeda answered his question by not answering it and changing the topic. The method he uses to determine which restroom the black-haired genius was using would have to wait, as he brought up a much more interesting topic.
"You...how do you..." Fuutarou, already running on fumes at this point, could barely make a cohesive reply. Takeda chuckled, turning his head to face the tutor and stare into his eyes with his own.
"How about it? I can take your place if you want. Yeah?" With a wink, the light-haired rival placed a fairly tempting offer on the table. Grinning while whispering like a little devil on Fuutarou's shoulder, he waited for a response as he did what people do in restrooms. Neither of them noticed, especially since it blended in with his sweater vest, but a tiny device was currently stuck to the shaded portion of Takeda's collar
Elsewhere, the sound of footsteps suddenly halted as one person put a hand to their ear. "...Yotsuba, go without me. There's something I forgot to do."
A/N: Sorry for my absence. I got distracted by some things IRL and Bofuri. Read through some of it in the past few days. Not gonna give details, but it goes from "Cute girls play video games" to "Cute girl breaks Geneva Convention and commits hundreds of war crimes " really quick and I love it!