With a sharp inhale through her nostrils, Nakano Miku snaps her eyes open into the darkness of her room.

Her skin is cold and clammy, what parts of it haven't been underneath the covers of her bed. Finding it difficult to breathe, Miku can't seem to shut her eyes or move the rest of her limbs, for that matter. Slowly but surely, Miku regains the ability to breathe properly - not because of her own willpower, no, but because that's how it always happens - there is nothing she herself needs to do.

There is nothing she herself can do.

After what seems like a dreadful eternity staring up at the ceiling of her pitch-black room, Miku finally regains full motor functions and slowly sits up in bed, surveying her room robotically.

It's her room, yes. There is no doubt that this is her room, that this is her room that she is in right now.

Miku has to make sure. She has to double-check, triple-check...quintuple-check, even.

Because there are some nights when it feels like she's somewhere else.

Even when she's inside her own room.

The digital alarm clock on her desk within arm's reach from her bedside reads 3:24 AM. So late, Miku thinks to herself. Everyone else should be fast asleep at this hour, too. It's in her best interest to just go back to sleep.

But of course it wouldn't be that easy.

"Hrrk...! Nggghh, aaaagggh...!"

Finally, the pain hits. Not physical pain; Miku is by no means a sickly girl, even if she has the demeanor of one and carries herself about like one, and neither does she have any current physical afflictions.

Miku doesn't know how exactly to describe this pain. Nothing about her body physically hurts, but her head just starts to pound like someone's taken a chisel and hammer and is stabbing her against both of her temples at the same time. It doesn't hurt, but it hurts like hell all at once. A phantom pain, a pain that doesn't exist, yet torments her so anyway.

Cringing at the unbearable pain that only escalates more and more without any concern for her own well-being, Miku narrows her eyes in the dark and quickly raises both of her hands to clutch at her face tightly, as though doing this will somehow ease the pain, which It doesn't, but what else can she do? It's to the point where even trying anything at all, doing something to give her mind something else to focus on rather than the pain is therapeutic, even if, in the end, it doesn't even matter what she does.

But this isn't the bad part. It's what follows after.

"Stop...! Please...stop...stop...stop...!" Miku breathes, her subdued, almost bored voice now twisted into a high-pitched, terrified tone. "Don't...show me...don't...don't...don't...don't...don't...don't...!'

The pain builds and builds and builds. Miku knows full well what is about to happen, and there is nothing she can do to stop it, other than beg helplessly to nobody in particular for her panic to cease. The blurry outlines of her bed, furniture, and the rest of the room bleed into the darkness, being indistinguishable and disappearing altogether as Miku's eyes, still wide and staring through the cracks in her fingers, unable to close themselves, begin to emit a pair of small blue lights.

Her clammy skin on her hands moistens up even more without warning, becoming slippery and disgusting. Did her hands just start pouring out buckets of sweat all of a sudden? Miku finally manages to tear her hands off her own face to check them, but...that's not sweat on her hands.

That's blood.

Feeling her heartbeat pounding in her throat, along with the chiseling pain throbbing in her temples, Miku is unable to keep her hands raised before her, and they drop lifelessly to her lap. With her hands out of the way, Miku's eyes gaze emptily down at the ground before her, because she's no longer sitting up in her bed.

Blood stretches as far as she can see in all directions. The air is stagnant, heavy, and suffocating. A suspicious liquid, probably also blood, is dripping from above somewhere, and the tiny splashes they create echo as though Miku is in an enclosed space, even though there are no boundaries to this space that she can see - black atmosphere conjoined in chaotic but silent unity with a blood-red mirror sea, at the epicenter of which stands an equally silent Miku.

She's been here before. She doesn't know how many times she's been here before. And she knows what will come next.

A small girl's scream, crashing through the silence like a baseball struck through a window, rattles the mirror blood sea:

"MOOOOOOOOM! ! ! !"

Finally, Miku's eyes manage to blink - and find themselves staring down at her bloodless, clammy hands on her bed blanket, no longer subtly glowing in the dark. She's back in her room, which means...the nightmare is over.

For now.

Miku can still feel the aftershocks of the throbbing in her head still pounding against her temples, so she lifts her hands back up to the sides of her head to nurse them. It's only when she does this that she feels something leak out of her eyes and dribble swiftly down her cheeks and down onto her blanket. She knows what they are, though...and there's no point to wipe them away if there's more where they came from.

For a good twenty minutes, the third quintuplet sits up in her bed, quietly and patiently waiting for the aftershock throbs in her head to subside. It's bad enough that she has to experience this in the first place; she doesn't want to have to go back to sleep with the experience fresh on her mind, so she'll wait however long she needs to to let them go away on their own.

Once they have gone away for the night, Miku finally wipes the tears from her face with the backs of her hands and dries off the wet spots on her blanket as much as she can. And once that's done, she sits up in bed, scanning her own room warily and wearily, and eventually her tortured eyes rest upon a single blue paper crane whose color is beginning to fade, sitting underneath the lamp on her desk. After staring at that fading blue paper crane for a few moments, she gets out of bed, stealthily opens her door slowly and in such a manner that the hinges on her door don't creak loudly to potentially wake any of her other sisters up, and quietly heads down to the first floor to use the bathroom, since there is none on the second floor where the quintuplets' bedrooms are.

Washing her face thoroughly and taking her time, Miku stands at the bathroom sink and gives her hands the same treatment, dully looking down at them. The nightmare is still so vivid in her mind that even now, even when she knows there is none, Miku can see blood washing off her fingers, her fingernails, in between her fingers, and off her palms and the backs of her hands.

The scariest part is the fact that no matter how much "blood" she seems to wash off, she seems to be making no progress.

Halting her own mind-numbingly pointless hand washing, Miku turns off the faucet, dries off her hands and face, switches off the bathroom light, and makes her way back up, knowing exactly where to go even in the near-total darkness of the living room to head back up to her own room. As she passes the kitchen, though, she notices one of the cupboards above the sink that's been left slightly ajar. While she doesn't know how the cupboard door has been left ajar or who neglected to close it properly, Nino will make a big deal out of this in the morning to her sisters, even if she's the one at fault, so Miku, preferring not to have to deal with that bullshit in the morning, takes a slight detour into the kitchen, shuts the cupboard, and goes on her way back to her room.

The door to Miku's room clicks softly shut, again to not wake up the other quints this late in the middle of the night as the nightwalker quintuplet crawls back into bed without another word. And thus, without incident, the Nakano household settles back into its picturesque nighttime landscape once more.

With one exception.

Pushing off the wall next to the short hall that leads into the large bathroom, a dark figure straightens itself up, gazing in the direction that Miku has walked to return to her bedroom. It is very hard to tell in this darkness what the figure looks like, but just like Miku before it, the figure walks perfectly through the living room without bumping into anything, but it doesn't head for the stairs. Instead, it heads for the sliding window that leads out to the balcony that offers a magnificent skyline view of the city downtown.

The moonlight has grown a little stronger over the course of the night, enough to the point where soft moonlight is able to bleed through the sliding window. So when the figure steps into it, it's easier to see what it's wearing.

Dark dress pants, and...a shin-length half-kilt that drapes behind the figure's legs as though it were wearing a trench coat. However, as the figure opens the sliding door quietly and closes it behind itself to step out to the balcony, the figure is not wearing an actual trench coat, but rather a simple black zip-up hoodie jacket and a black cap. Oddly, there are two scissor-shaped tufts of hair sticking out the back, over the snapback flaps.

With a tiny vial of fine white powder cradled in his right hand, the figure stands out on the balcony for a few moments, probably enjoying the brightly lit skyline, before mantling over the balcony railing and dropping out of sight.

The next day...

"Good, everyone's here today for once. Thanks for that, Itsuki."

Clapping his hands together once, Uesugi Fuutarou stands before his supposed students, the five quintuplets, who are begrudgingly giving him their audience, sitting on the long couch across from him after he's moved the second long couch out of the way so that there is nothing standing in between them. Itsuki, whom Fuutarou has thanked for doing as he's requested the previous night, continues to scowl back at him, saying nothing in return. Ichika is, not surprisingly, dozing with her head cradled on Yotsuba's thighs; Miku, sitting in the middle of her sisters on the sofa, has her knees tucked inwards to her chest and her heels on the edge of the sofa; and Nino, sitting on the other end from Ichika, is busy texting on her phone.

"...you still haven't given up? Even after what happened to you yesterday?" Miku grumbles as usual, her Audio Technicas cupping her cheeks somewhat.

"And I've got plans this evening to go hang out with my friends, you know?" Nino complains with a sigh, still focused on her phone that she's given a rather cutesy bunny jacket with its tall ears pointing up from the top of the phone. "Not to mention, I'm pretty sure I told you that we don't need a tutor. Unless you don't remember that part either?"

"Whether or not I remember you telling me that you don't need a tutor is irrelevant," Fuutarou coolly replies, standing with his feet somewhat apart and his arms crossed to assume a stance of staunch authority. "But you've certainly gotten that point across to me."

"That so? Then why the hell are you still here?"

"To see if you can back up your words."

Fuutarou unfolds his arms and points down at the quiz sheets that were left behind from yesterday on the low table before the quintuplets.

"Those are the tests that I made for you and intended for you five to do yesterday. I think Yotsuba told me earlier at school that she told you this already, but for repetition's sake, this is meant to be an evaluation test for me to see exactly where you girls stand right now in terms of your test scores," Fuutarou explains calmly. "Since you girls keep telling me that I'm not needed, and by 'girls' I specifically mean Nino and Itsuki, and I guess Miku to an extent, I'd like to see you all prove it."

Nino has since looked up from her phone, joining Itsuki in scowling back at the boy from their class who's standing before them; Miku's face remains unchanged and apathetic. Yotsuba, feeling the tension sparking between the sisters to her right and her tutor, tries her best to smile, but she's unsure if her efforts are really having any impact on the situation at hand. Ichika, meanwhile, is stirring and waking back up again from all the talking that's going on.

"We don't need to prove shit to you, asshole," Nino growls softly. "So why should we bother?"

"Let me make you an offer you can't refuse," Fuutarou takes a single step towards them, returning the troublesome quints' fierce gazes with a stone-cold look of his own to match theirs. "What if I were to tell you that should you take this test and pass it, I will disappear from your lives entirely, and you'll never have to deal with me ever again for the rest of your lives?"

The quintuplets all take a glance down at the tests before them that Fuutarou has put together for them. He continues,

"You all can go and graduate however you want, because passing this test will tell me that you girls really have changed and can study on your own without being in danger of becoming high school dropouts. However, I'll give you a fair bit of warning: I don't expect any of you to pass. You know that I've been through all your test scores from past years, and with the context of your recent transfer to our school, I have no reason to believe that any of you have improved in any substantial way."

Fuutarou folds his arms again, narrowing his dull black eyes down at the girls.

"You will all fail this test," he declares quietly, and somehow, his voice sounds more compelling when it's spoken with such a softer tone. "So while that offer I made you girls just now is still in place, none of you will be able to uphold your side of that offer. So instead, I'll give you all a choice: either you can save yourselves the embarrassment of not being able to back up your words about not needing me as your tutor and accept your situation, or you can embarrass yourselves by failing this test and thus waste my time, waste your own time, and then accept your situation. So - tell me, which'll it be?"

The combination of Uesugi's softer tone of voice, the same that he used against their homeroom teacher the day before, his deathly, piercing black eyes, and the overbearing conviction behind his words puts enormous pressure on the quintuplets that none of them were expecting to deal with; not even the nonchalantly friendly Ichika or the rebellious and hardheaded Nino find it in themselves to raise a word of objection, at least not at first.

"Understood. I shall accept your...'offer'."

Itsuki picks up her glasses case sitting on the edge of the low table and opens it up to pull out her glasses.

"H-Huh? Wait, Itsuki, you can't be serious right now," Nino stammers, hardly able to believe what her youngest sibling is doing.

"I am serious. All we need to do is pass this test and we will never have to concern ourselves with him again." After placing the glasses on properly, Itsuki scowls even harder than before back at Fuutarou, as though the two of them are having an unspoken contest to see who can stare at each other to death.

"But - "

"Eh...if that's how it's gonna be, I'm in, too," Ichika says sleepily, getting one last yawn in and turning towards the table.

"Yeah, let's just take the test and do our best for now. I'm sure we can all pass!" Yotsuba cheers, but she gives Fuutarou a very awkward grin towards the end, letting him know that she herself is very much so aware of how contradictory her actions right now must seem.

"Fuutarou, what's the passing score?" Miku asks, reaching over and grabbing the sheets on the other side of the table to distribute to her sisters as one by one they begin to sit at the table and off the couch. Nino, naturally, is the last to join them.

"Because I'm being such a jerk about this, I'll give you all a really lenient threshold," Fuutarou says. "Our school's passing threshold for exams is 30 points, so while I'd normally make it 60 points to pass so that there's a reasonable buffer between passing and failing, I'll drop that to 50...no, 40 instead, just for you five. Get 40 points or higher, and you pass."

"Ugh...even though we don't owe you anything..."

Murmuring in annoyance under her breath, Nino, also having grabbed a pen from Yotsuba's pencil bag, writes down her name at the top of her mock quiz before giving Fuutarou one last look of irritation.

"We'll make you regret talking like that down at us...!"

"I'd love to see you try." Fuutarou taps his phone's screen to set the timer. "Exam period is the standard one hour. Normally I'd like to have you five go to your rooms and take this test for the sake of academic integrity, but I'm already asking a lot out of you all, so here is fine. But if I catch any of you trying to cheat, that's an immediate 0; that's your only warning. Begin!"

An hour later, having taken some time to grade the girls' papers, Uesugi returns from the Nakano dinner table to announce their results.

"Okay, I'm done grading. I'll admit, you've all done much better than I thought - you got a full 100!"

Fuutarou places the graded mock tests on his end of the table and pushes them towards the quints so that they can see the scores for themselves.

"If I totaled everyone's scores, that is."

An awkward silence ensues following Fuutarou's dagger of truth as the quints stare blankly at their test results. Ichika got a 12; Nino received a 20; Miku scored a 32; Yotsuba hit an 8; and Itsuki netted a 28.

The grim reality finally begins to sink in: Ichika sheepishly smiles, having closed her eyes and leaned her head lightly against Miku's left shoulder and headphones. Nino sighs with a "Geh...!" as she sprawls over the table, laying her arms out in front across the glass top. Miku, now Ichika's temporary pillow this time, awkwardly looks off to the side. Itsuki's lips quiver, looking down at the table before her and avoiding the sight of her abysmal 28 score.

Gazing back down at the girls, especially down at Itsuki and Nino, his two biggest opponents, Fuutarou refolds his arms slowly.

"So...tell me more about this whole...'you don't need a tutor argument' that you two in particular keep telling me about," the triumphant tutor questions the two sisters in particular. "For your reference, I shouldn't have lowered the pass mark all the way down to 40 even if that's still technically passing because there'd be too much of a risk that any one of you could easily score much lower than that, yet I lowered for you all anyway just to give you the benefit of the doubt. And even with that, only one of you even broke the 30 point mark."

"Fucking shut up already, God...!" Nino snaps back up at Fuutarou, positively seething now with frustration. "We fucking get it, dude, we're all fucking stupid! God, just shut up!"

"Is this all you have come to do, Uesugi-kun?" Itsuki, back to grinding her teeth together in anger at Fuutarou's oppressive words, quietly speaks, as though trying to match Fuutarou's own quiet intensity from before they began their tests. "Did you merely come to our house today just to press the point on us about just how inadequate we are in our grades?"

"Honestly?" Fuutarou pauses for a moment, deliberating to himself. "Yeah. That's all I've come to do today."

Itsuki immediately jumps up to her feet, her fists once again clenched tightly. Ichika, hearing the sudden movement and immediately seeing the balled fists of her youngest sibling, becomes alarmed at this sight and speaks up right away. "Whoa, whoa, Itsuki, calm down, he hasn't said anything wrong!"

"Please be quiet, Ichika, I have something to settle with him," Itsuki snaps at her oldest sister before refocusing her attention exclusively on her would-be tutor.

"Oh? You're approaching me?" Fuutarou tilts his head in mock interest towards Itsuki. "What do you have to say to me this time, hmm?"

"What do I have to say to you? Oh, goodness, where on earth should I start?" Itsuki can't help but break out a smile, so gripped is she with incredulity at Fuutarou's mocking words. "Last night, just before I departed your home, you told me to get my sisters together for you when you arrived today because your family was gracious enough to feed me, so I did what you asked of me as a favor, like you said - "

"Wait, Itsuki, you ate dinner at his place? Even though you had dinner with us right before you left?" Nino perks up from the table, her face etched with confusion.

"We had curry, by the way," Fuutarou adds swiftly.

"Whoaaa...I knew Itsuki was the meat bun monster, but I guess she's a bigger curry monster instead..."

Nino's joke at Itsuki's expense does wonders for the tense atmosphere, immediately breaking it up as everyone except for Nino, Itsuki, and Fuutarou all bust out laughing; even the introverted and usually brooding Miku can't help but smile, though she quickly hides her face afterwards.

"W-W-Will the rest of you just shut it!" Itsuki hollers, frustrated out of her mind that things are just not going the way she wants. Exasperated by her sisters' behavior, Itsuki simply ditches the hope of trying to get them to settle down and turns back to concentrate on chewing Fuutarou out instead.

"You tell me to get everyone together for you, which I did for you as a favor, and with the belief that you had something actually productive in mind for us!" the youngest sibling yells, having to raise her voice over her sisters' laughter. "And instead what do you do? You merely have us take this silly evaluation test and use our bad test scores just to rub in the fact that we are not the most academically gifted students in the world! You even had the gall to be so confident that we would fail, just to embarrass as much as you could!"

Itsuki stomps up to Fuutarou, who coldly stands his ground against her and does not flinch a single bit when she jabs her right index finger up at his face.

"Allow me to repeat myself, Uesugi Fuutarou-kun!" she growls with absolution. "Did you come here to tutor us? Or did you simply come here to make fun of us?"

"Both," Fuutarou replies chillingly and swiftly, even before Itsuki has a chance to lower her hand from his face. "Certainly, it's my job to be your tutor, the tutor for all you, and while you might not believe me at this very moment, I would've rather not resorted to doing this and ruin everyone's impression of me right off the bat, even if admittedly part of it was my fault from the very beginning. But that aside - "

Fuutarou takes small but forceful steps towards Itsuki instead, causing the latter to subconsciously back away from him, unable to take her eyes off him.

"You girls are in such a horrible position grades-wise that I felt it necessary to hammer the point home by giving you these mock tests," Fuutarou declares with impunity. "And with your past test scores in mind, at least to me, it is crystal clear that no one has bothered doing this before me! As much as the truth hurts, somebody needed to step in and say this straight to all of your faces, that for all the studying you all may or may not do, you need external help to be able to get your grades anywhere but down! But unfortunately for your sakes, no one did, including your own dad, apparently, so as the tutor he's hired to do what should've been his job, I took the liberty of confronting you all about just how shit of a position you're all in, knowing full well that I run the risk of having you all fucking hate me after I'm done!"

Raising his voice more and more as he speaks, Fuutarou finishes his rant practically shouting straight into the face of Itsuki, who's frozen solid after a few backwards steps as Fuutarou's damning words echo in her ears. Disengaging, the young tutor backs himself up to remove himself from her personal space, having spoken most of his due by this point.

"You wanna talk about how I have the 'gall' to be confident in the lack of your academic ability? Let me be clear and say that it's not quite 'gall', it's fact, and facts don't care about your feelings about the matter. In fact, your dad could've taken any random person off the streets and told them to tutor you, and they'd instantly know that all of you need some serious help," Uesugi continues, having just a bit more left in the tank before he stops, and for the coup de grace, he turns sharply towards Itsuki. "You're gonna prove me wrong, you said? Mmm, can't quite say that I'm impressed right now."

A loud sniff follows Fuutarou's harsh words just as he is finished talking. A single tear appears on Itsuki's face, dribbling down her left eye slowly at first, then streaking down as the floodgates slowly but surely crumble in the face of the frustration, embarrassment, and anger that come crashing through.

Itsuki opens her mouth to say something, but instead she removes herself from the living room, stomping away and up the stairs with her face bowed so that her sisters can't see her face, even though they all immediately know what she's doing.

"Itsuki? Itsuki! Itsuki, wait!" Ichika calls after her, having gotten up from the table in alarm.

"Just leave her be," Fuutarou says quickly and quietly this time so that Itsuki is less likely to hear him.

"Uesugi-san, that was..." even Yotsuba, normally Fuutarou's cheerful advocate, is shocked at the lengths to which Fuutarou has gone just now, but she isn't able to get the rest of her thought across because as soon as she realizes what is wrong with her youngest sister who slams the door to her room as hard as she can as she disappears from view, Nino almost jumps up to her feet, takes four strides past the table and sofa, and punches Fuutarou as hard as she can right on the jaw.

She would, if Fuutarou didn't react precisely and catch the punch before it can connect.

"And I haven't even gotten to you yet," Fuutarou murmurs softly as Nino, trying to pull her fist away but quickly realizing that Fuutarou's grip is monstrously strong, struggles to pry her fist free. "Since you've been telling me what's on your mind so freely lately, I think I'll do the same: you've punched your tutor enough."

"S...Since...since when did I say you were my tutor...?" Nino seethes, panting and gritting her teeth.

"Okay, okay, really, guys, that's quite enough!"

Finally taking action, Ichika dashes over and grabs hold of both Fuutarou's and Nino's wrists to also pull them apart, though the eldest quintuplet also finds out just how scarily strong Fuutarou's grip is. The sisters are only successful in having Nino escape his grasp because Fuutarou lets go, and Nino fires the nastiest look of silent fury back at him in retaliation as she rubs the fingers and knuckles on her right hand.

"I know that you're frustrated with us because we haven't been cooperating with you, but you really didn't need to go so far as to make Itsuki cry!" Ichika gestures vehemently at her male classmate. "You couldn't hold back even a little bit?"

Fuutarou shakes his head, to Ichika's sharp dismay.

"Holding back would mean that I'm pitying her or otherwise trying to sugarcoat this situation, and I have no intention of doing that give how dire it is," he replies curtly. "Besides, even if she did end up crying from that, I can tell that she's a strong girl; I have faith in her that she can handle that. Actually, the fact that she ended up crying from that is proof of it."

"...what kind of fucked up logic is that?" Nino snaps broodingly. "You made her cry, and therefore you know she can handle it? Itsuki's right, you just love being an asshole, don't you?"

"When I feel it's appropriate, yes, in fact. I admit it," Fuutarou fires back immediately. "And right now is one of those times."

He looks up at the second floor, in the direction of Itsuki's room door, which he can see the top of from the living room.

"And since we were on the topic, yes, I stand by my faith in Itsuki that she'll learn to handle what I've said to her. I've had the displeasure of doing this a few times to other people in the past, and I've certainly had stuff like this happen to me before as well. If Itsuki didn't care about what I said, most likely she wouldn't have reacted like that; people who truly don't give a shit simply accept their situation and either move on or do nothing about it - but if Itsuki's taken it that much to heart that she ended up crying from it, to me, at least, it shows that she does in fact care."

Fuutarou drops his gaze back to the rest of the quintuplets still with him.

"I don't know if she's told you what happened last night after she dropped me off, but after she ate dinner with my family, she told me that she was going to prove me wrong, that she didn't need me as a tutor. While I don't intend to step down just because of that, since this is still my job, after all, it does tell me that the motivation is there, that she is prepared to do what it takes to get her grades on track. And ultimately that's the end goal; not just for her, but for all of you."

"Don't try to sweet-talk us all of a sudden, now that you know you've made our sister cry, you jackass," Nino growls again. She's building up the confidence in herself to throw another fist at Fuutarou again with how much he's talking and how much she can't stand it.

"I'm not trying to. If there's any sort of a brain between your ears, you'll know that I'm saying this to explain myself and why I made her cry just now," Fuutarou relapses into his harsh attitude momentarily to silence Nino. "Like I said, the facts don't care about your feelings, and the most important fact to me is that I'm here to help you girls get your grades up and graduate safely without dropping out of school or having to transfer again like you just did. I've been given the 'by any means necessary' pass by your dad, and I intend to put it to good use."

Then, Fuutarou gives a deep sigh, closing his eyes and letting the exhaustion that's backed up in his head flood into his vision, which is temporarily blurred before correcting itself by the time he reopens his eyes.

"That being said...today's already been rough as it is, and for all my talk about facts and shit, the fact is that I made your sister cry, so I'll make sure to apologize properly to her at some point when she'll let me," Fuutarou says, his voice now emptied of its cold, brutal tone. "This'll be it for our, uh...'lesson' for today. You said you had friends to meet up with today, right? Is it too late for that? If not, you can get going. Tell your friends that some idiot held you up at home..."

"Y-You don't need to worry about me, jerk," Nino grumbles, but she does quickly go back to the table behind her to check the time on her phone, which tells her that she's still got a bit of time that she can use to meet up with her friends. So she leaves the living room for her own room to grab a few belongings so she can head out.

"Yeah, you really should apologize to her. Even if Itsuki is the crybaby out of us five, to see you go off on her like that..." Ichika gives off a big sigh of her own. "It was scary, you know? It doesn't help that you look pretty scary, now that I think about it. Well, these tufts of hair back here don't really help your image that much..."

The eldest quint tries flattening out the two tufts of hair but to no avail, since for some reason they just spring back up like weeds that refuse to be flattened.

"Don't worry about them, it's just a side effect of when my sister cuts my hair."

"S-Side effect...you make your sister's haircuts sound like they're some sort of drug."

"Well, there is a certain joy in knowing that your sister loves you enough to give you a haircut, so...technically you're not wrong...?"

Nino comes stomping down the stairs and swiftly vacates the premises, with Yotsuba and Ichika bidding her goodbye and safe travels. Once the front door is slammed closed, Fuutarou picks up the graded tests of the quintuplets and eases himself down on the floor on the short end of the table, going over them in depth.

"I guess what happened today necessitates me coming clean to all of you, and I hope that you'll let Itsuki and Nino know what I'm about to tell you three here," Fuutarou says, having restored his composure, "but this is the sort of person that I am, unfortunately. In just about everything I do, I'll be direct and get straight to the point without bothering to beat around the bush, to the point where, as you saw, I'm willing to trample all over people's thoughts and feelings just so that I make my point clear or to do my job, or in this case, both."

"But you couldn't at least be a bit nicer about it...?" Miku asks softly from the other end.

"I don't think so, no. I've been in situations before where I've tried being nicer than I usually am, but whenever I do that, people take advantage of that and do everything they can to exploit the fact that I'm giving them some leeway. It's not to say that you girls will necessarily behave like that, but just from my own personal experience, it's better for me to be safe and cover all my bases by allowing no such leeway."

Inserting the graded tests into his messenger bag and fastening the clasps, Fuutarou looks back up at the three remaining quints, of whom Ichika has resumed her seat next to Miku and Yotsuba has elected to sit on the couch this time.

"It's to the point where most of the time, I don't even bother going this far, if you can believe it. Today's the first time in a long while that I've yelled at someone into crying like Itsuki did, because I've learned a long time ago that going this far for most people isn't worth it, because I'm just not that invested in their situation, and so there's little reason for me to put in all this extra effort to point out what their flaws are. But I did it here because I do think that you girls have what it takes to improve to the point where graduation from high school will become a reality, not just because I'm a big fat asshole who enjoys yelling at girls and making them cry."

"Just because..." Miku reels a bit in disgust. "So you are a sadistic bully, huh?"

"Okay, I don't enjoy that at all, how's that?"

"Too late..."

"Shit." Fuutarou rolls his eyes with Yotsuba giggling a little and Ichika smiling somewhat.

"You sure do have a lot of faith in us, though, you know?" Ichika points out sleepily, having returned to resting her head against Miku's shoulder. "Now that you've looked through all of our test scores from our old school and how much we haven't improved since then, it's a bit strange for you to talk big like that, isn't it? Saying that you have faith in us despite all this. You sure you aren't just saying this just to get cozy with us?"

"If that's how you wanna see it, then I won't stop you. After all, I did say 'by any means necessary', right? With how closely I'll have to work with all five of you, by that point, having to work with you all not just physically but emotionally will be important going forward. Even if I haven't gotten off to the best of starts with some of you..."

"Yeah, you really didn't," Miku nods in affirmation.

"Thanks for the confidence, I guess."

Getting up from his seat on the carpet and picking up his bag in doing so, Fuutarou pulls out his own phone to check the time.

"You'll be going for now? You don't want like a drink or anything?" Yotsuba asks, also standing up with him.

"Yeah, this test was all that I had planned for today. Now that I have a complete picture of where you're all at academically, I'll spend the rest of this week putting together lessons and figuring out how to structure them," he nods. "So because of that, I won't be coming in for the rest of this week. The next time I'll be by is next Monday, when I'll be starting my lessons for real. But just because I won't be here for the rest of this week doesn't mean you should all just slack off, either. Here - "

Reaching into his bag, Fuutarou produces five extra copies of the tests, along with an answer key for those tests, and places them on the table before him.

"Take these, review them, and try to see if you can raise your scores. Go over each problem carefully, mostly the ones you got wrong, but also the ones you got right, since you might get questions you got right before wrong the next time. This'll be your first homework assignment from me, and while I'm not going to force you to do it since there's not much of a point for me to force this on you like a teacher would, you all need to start somewhere."

The tutor gives the three girls one last surveying glance for the day.

"You have my word that I'll be committing myself to this responsibility of seeing you all through graduation. I may have been incredibly insensitive to you all so far, and even without that in mind, I understand that some random kid from your class coming in and bossing you girls around will come off badly to you, so while I still have the chance, I apologize for crashing into your lives like this without much of a prior notice. However, this all being said, I can't do it alone; a tutor can't teach if the students don't cooperate. You three - well, maybe except not Miku - may be willing to work with me more so than the others, so I'm thankful that you're giving me a chance. I'm not your parent; after today, I don't plan to force anything down your throats because that manner of teaching does more harm than good. But along that same logic, it's you five who are in control of your own fates; you five are the ones who'll determine whether or not you graduate in three years or get kicked out of school before that happens. I'm only here to put you all on the right track and help you stay there. Have a good rest of your week."

With a parting nod of farewell, Fuutarou departs the living room, with Yotsuba quickly following after him to the front door.

"Sorry that I made such a scene...that wasn't exactly how I'd planned things to go," Fuutarou apologizes in a low voice to the fourth quint, pulling on his shoes in the shoe lobby. "I got caught up in my feelings there, just like the others."

"It's - it's okay, I'm sure...I'm sure Itsuki will understand," Yotsuba nods hesitantly, still unsure of what to make of today's "lesson" herself yet. "But...maybe next time, yeah, be a bit nicer?"

"Will do. And...since you're the one I trust the most out of you five, tell Itsuki that I said I'm sorry."

"I'll try my best, but you'll do that too at some point, right?"

"That's what I said to Ichika, but...we'll see how Itsuki herself handles this. For all the stuff I said about being confident that Itsuki can handle this, I'm not so sure of that myself, to be honest. There's a definite chance that she just fucking hates my guts now and won't listen to another thing I say."

But Yotsuba shakes her head.

"I think she'll come through. Nothing you've said is wrong, Uesugi-san - she's a strong girl. All of my sisters are." Yotsuba gives him a smile, a smile that Fuutarou senses a degree of sadness hidden somewhere behind it. "So...please continue to have faith in her. I'll do my best to cheer her up and convince her that you're not a bad person, but please...don't abandon her. Please stick with her until the end."

"Oof, big words for my third day of tutoring," Fuutarou chuckles, causing Yotsuba to realize just how embarrassing she must sound talking like this and blushing wordlessly. "Don't worry about it, I was spouting big words myself just earlier, so I've just put a ton of pressure on myself too."

Opening the door and turning to bid Yotsuba one more goodbye, Fuutarou pauses in the doorway.

"Uesugi-san? What's wrong?" Yotsuba asks, noting his hesitation, but when he beckons to her to come closer, she obeys, unsure of his intentions.

"This, uh...might just be a nitpick from me, but..." Fuutarou says slowly, "but...just now, when we were talking about Itsuki, you said that all of your sisters are strong girls."

"Um...yes, and?"

Once again, Fuutarou puts his hand on Yotsuba's head, flattening her hair ribbon a second time.

"This just might be me looking too deep into it, but..." the tutor drops his voice down to a whisper so that the others still in the living room won't hear. "...don't exclude yourself from them. You're a strong person too, Yotsuba - so I have just as much faith in you as I do in everyone else."

Fuutarou notices that Yotsuba's standing still, her face hidden by her bangs as she refuses to make eye contact with him, so he pulls his hand away.

"S-Sorry, I hope you're not angry at me too all of a sudden. It's a bad habit of mine...you've been the nicest one to me so far, and I tend to, uh, say things like this to people who can get along with me..." Fuutarou apologizes. "Enjoy the rest of your day, Yotsuba. I'll see you tomorrow at school like always."

The tutor closes the door for Yotsuba this time slowly and softly, so as to not anger Yotsuba further, who listens to Fuutarou's footsteps on the other side walk away and subside.

Without meaning to, Yotsuba lets her head lean forward and bump softly against the front door.

"...you're wrong, Uesugi-san..." she mumbles almost incoherently. "...someone like me...I'm not strong at all..."