Under the scorching sun, the heat nearly throwing their minds for a loop, the six sisters approaching the pool was a sight to behold. "It's so hot..." Mutsumi whined, unzipping her track jacket, revealing the loose white shirt she wore underneath. Stuffing her hand into the pocket of her shorts, she pulled out her phone and checked her messages. "He's still not here. We should probably go in now." She suggested, noticing the sign that was a clear warning for some people.

The sisters followed her sightline, then their attention shifted toward Mutsumi and Nino. "I don't have one!" Nino denied their accusations before they could be vocalized, but the thought of having a permanent mark on her body to show her feelings toward someone crossed her mind a few times.

"I might get one. Who knows?" Mutsumi said, pulling one of her arms out of the jacket to show her shoulder. "Maybe here... or..."

"What would you want, if you were to get one, Mutsumi-chan?" Ichika asked as the six of them entered the premises of the pool. "Would you get a picture? Or maybe the name of your lover?"

"Oh, maybe." Mutsumi grinned, walking slightly ahead of everyone. "After all, the kanji for Fuu does look kinda cool." She teased, running away before her sisters could catch up to her to tease her back. The other five eventually caught up to her, meeting with her as she was in the middle of tying her hair up into a ponytail. They spent the next few minutes getting changed into their swimsuits, some more quietly than others.

"Nino, how do I look?" Mutsumi asked, cheerily posing and doing twirls to show off her swimsuit. It was a simply shaped bikini, leaving much of her chest exposed; navy with teal accents that created small hexes around each angle of the triangular cups. She paired that top with a plain navy bottom and some olive sandles. She waited for her sister's answer, her smile emitting a radiance that seemed off coming from her. If it were Yotsuba, it would've been normal, but having that type of air around Mutsumi was odd. "Do I look cute?"

"You look great," Nino said before got pulled into a hug, nearly losing her top since she was fiddling with the straps on her back. She managed to break free, finishing up her own preparations and stepping to the side. Now that she had some time to think, and she could see every angle of her sister, the simple look of Mutsumi's swimsuit accented her natural curves; meaning that Nino's own curves were quite gorgeous since they were sextuplets.

"Where'd Itsuki go?" Miku asked, emerging from a changing room and meeting the other two, all three of them just inside of the changing area. The three of them looked around, Mutsumi zipping up her jacket over top of her bikini. "Actually, where are Ichika and Yotsuba?"

"Found them!" Mutsumi raised her arm, pointing toward the three other sisters as well as their tutor. She shot the others a glance, all three of them grinning with the same idea. As a gentle breeze blew past them, the three of them broke into a sprint, toppling Fuutarou over as all three of their bodies collided with his.

"Y-Yo... Nino, Miku, Mutsumi... You're crushing my windpipe..." Fuutarou tried to talk, his voice coming out weak and barely audible. He flailed his arms around, eventually getting freed by Yotsuba since she noticed that he was struggling. "It's nice to see that you two have been well." After getting back on his feet and rubbing his back to soothe the pain, he looked at the three girls that assaulted him as they sauntered up to him, pressing their bodies against his again.

"So like, get this. My contacts got washed away, so I can't really tell who you are. Are you even Fuu-kun?" Nino said, leaning forward while pressing her chest against his left arm. She made an effort to draw his attention toward her chest. "Let me take a closer look, or rather take a closer look at me." Her swimsuit covered her midriff but left her sides fairly exposed, however, her lower body was the opposite, the fabric tightly hugging her skin and highlighting her curves.

"I was happy when you invited us out to the pool. I think my top is a bit loose..." Miku slyly loosened her top, using his body to keep the top on her chest. "I can't really reach my back to do it properly." In contrast to her sister, Miku's top was leaving her chest out for everyone to see while her hips and thighs got covered by the bottom of her swimsuit.

"Fuutarou-san~ It's so hot~" Mutsumi slowly unzipped her jacket, pulling out a bottle from one of the pockets. "Can you rub some sunscreen on me?" She smiled, taking his wrist in her hand while squeezing some lotion into his palm. "What do you say, Fuutarou-san~" Fuutarou took a few steps back, getting out of the awkward situation when Yotsuba yelled for them to eat and get ready to go swimming.

"You got a lot..." Ichika said, watching her sister set down six separate servings of yakisoba. The six sisters sat down first, Fuutarou leaving for a while in order to get some food for himself. Itsuki snatched Mutsumi's bottle of sunblock from her, intending to apply the sunblock on her sisters herself.

"Killjoy!" Mutsumi whined, getting her back massaged as Itsuki spread the lotion around her back. "What do you want to do, Itsuki? Well, aside from the obvious." She asked, eating her noodles as the fifth sister finished the coat on her back and moved on to Yotsuba.

"How about that?" Yotsuba pointed at the large slide that towered above everything else. Mutsumi started bouncing in her seat, her newfound enthusiasm helping her scarf down her food.

"Hurry! Hurry! Let's go!" The sixth sister leaped up, throwing away her trash as Fuutarou approached with a serving of yakisoba and a drink. "Fuutarou-san! Come with me!" She ran to his side, setting his food down on the table before she tugged his arm with one hand and pointed to the slide with the other. Fuutarou was taken aback, his confusion giving Mutsumi the edge she needed to drag him around. The two of them ascended, standing up at the top.

"What's up?"

"Hmm? Did you say something?" Mutsumi looked up at him, the smile on her face was dazzling. "Just look at this. It's so nice up here." She gripped onto the protective railing, leaning forward as they looked out at the city. It wasn't close to the view they got from the apartment, but the height of this structure still allowed for a brilliant view of the nearby buildings and the waterpark below them. They lined up, the other five joining them a bit further back since they were in the middle of eating when Mutsumi ran off. It soon came to their turn, a staff member handing Mutsumi an inflatable boat. She looked down at the slide, the sheerness of the drop bringing her back down to reality. "I have a lot of regrets now..." She said, her legs trembling as Fuutarou took the boat and set himself up. Mutsumi gulped down her fear, looking back at the annoyed and envious faces on her sisters as they waited in line. "Let's go!" She took a seat between Fuutarou's legs, leaning against him while savoring the moment of peace. It was only a moment since they went down the slide after a count of three.

"Woo!" Mutsumi ran around, splashing around in the water after all seven of them gathered around the bottom. "Yotsuba, let's race!" She ran up to the deep end of one of the pools, jumping in as she tucked her legs in. As he watched the fourth and sixth sister swim to the other side of the pool, Fuutarou leaned back, reclining in one seat at the table from earlier with his food half-finished.

"Did something happen to her?" He asked, watching as the usually serious and cunning Mutsumi got soaked by Yotsuba's relentless splashing.

"We don't know, but..." Nino answered him, taking a break from all of the water and sitting down at the table. "I haven't seen her like that in forever."

"What do you mean?" The tutor asked, sipping on his drink as Itsuki and Miku stood up to go swimming.

"Mutsumi-chan is the youngest of us, but she acts so maturely all the time." The eldest rested her head on the table, moving her hat around to give her face some shade. "But she wasn't always like that. Whenever she found something interesting, she'd always have that kind of look on her face." She added, bringing everyone's attention to Mutsumi's blissful face as she walked toward them with some ice cream in her hand. "At least, until we found out that she was sick like mom." The seven of them gathered around, wanting to go down the slide another time.

"That was amazing! We should go again soon!" Mutsumi yelled into the night sky as they left the pool. Her five sisters walked ahead of her, but she pulled Fuutarou back to have some privacy with him. "Did you have fun, Fuutarou-san?"

"Yeah..." Fuutarou looked away, not wanting to look at Mutsumi until she'd finished zipping up her jacket.

"Fuutarou-san... do you like this side of me?" She said, looking forward with a resolute face. "I was always scared, you know. People always leave me, or I always leave them. But this is the first time in a long time that I think that there will be people who will stick with me until the end. It feels nice to finally... be all of me again."

"It's different, that's for sure." He answered, rubbing the back of his neck which had become tanned since he didn't put on any sunscreen. "But it was so big of a surprise. I don't really know what to think about you." He saw Mutsumi break her cheerful aura, winding up for a punch like she always did whenever he got on her nerves. "But it's not a bad thing."

"Hey, mind if we take a picture?" Pulling out her phone, she snapped a selfie of the two of them before he could answer. "Fuutarou-san, thank you."

"What for?"

"If I hadn't met you last winter, then I would still probably be that cold and hostile girl you met then." She took a few steps to the side, closing the distance between the two of them. "I love you, Fuutarou-san." She whispered into his ear before she ran off to join her sisters' chatter.

"Ahh, finally home..." Mutsumi said, walking into the silent apartment that they owned. "I think I'll skip dinner tonight, I'm pretty tired." She added, tossing her jacket over her shoulder as she headed for her room. It wasn't that late, probably seven or eight in the evening if she were to guess without looking at a clock. Entering the room, the girl was met by what was on her desk: a string of led lights that were integrated into the visor of her cap. It was just something she did for fun, but it still wasn't finished. She sighed, taking a seat and finishing up the code she wanted to program the lights with in order to get it to light up a certain way. "Finally done..." She smiled, putting it on while pulling out her phone to send a message.

"How was the pool, Mutsumi-chan?"

"It was pretty hot today, I wish I could've gone. Maeda had me go and help him at the takoyaki place."

"Didn't you two just go to the beach with your class?"

Mutsumi didn't reply, at least not with words. Instead, she sent the picture that she stole from Fuutarou, leaving the others in the chatroom silent for a few moments before three sets of ellipses showed that they were typing up replies.

"You went with Uesugi-kun!"

"He's so tanned!"

"You go, girl! Fuutarou really looks weird with that tan though, lol."

"Nevermind that, I've got something to show you!" She sent a message, followed by some emojis, then some more emojis.

"Hurry up and show us! You're such a tease!" Tsubaki's message got her to stop. She then turned on the lights and started recording herself.

"This is so cool, and look!" She snapped her fingers, changing the color of the lights. Then she shook her head side to side to change the direction they flashed, then up and down to change the speed. After sending them the video, the four of them continued to gossip for five hours.

A/N: This was surprisingly hard to write. I wanted Mutsumi to kind of drag Fuutarou around, but that meant that the interactions between him and the others wouldn't happen. It doesn't help that there's a lot of internal dialogue from Itsuki and that one on one conversation she had with Fuutarou made it hard too. Anyway, it's time for the hospital visit chapter.