Not even the quintuplets can believe their ears, so shocked are they to find anyone they know come to their rescue - and out of all the people it could've been, it's their classmate and hired tutor whom they've barely known for a week. In Nino's case, she also can't believe her eyes, for as much as Fuutarou looks different in this street getup, that is most definitely him and his voice that she hears and finds unbearably annoying, even now.
Bending his knees to stoop down to the ground momentarily, Fuutarou first pockets his Ace of Spades, then reaches down and picks up Miku's blue Audio Technica headphones, which have fallen off her neck after being knocked askew by the thugs who've trapped and restrained her and her sisters. He takes advantage of the surprise value of his undetected entrance that's left everyone around him stumped into silence by retrieving Miku's headphones, brushing the dust off the exterior of the earcups, and pulls out his phone to sync with it wirelessly.
"W-Who the hell are you?" the well-dressed boss finally speaks out, completely unsure of what to do. The thugs don't know what to do either - if Fuutarou had simply shown up without doing anything, they would have confronted him immediately, but this is a guy who just tossed a normal playing card so hard at one of their buddies that it's stuck in his brain.
"Who am I..." Fuutarou murmurs, still paying more attention to his phone than to anyone around him as he pulls up his music playlist and thumbs through it to find an appropriate track. "Oh, right...I'm these girls' actual tutor."
Uesugi pauses for a moment, pulling on the headphones properly and holding them by their earcups briefly, causing them to glow mysteriously with blue light. Miku doesn't remember her headphones having such a light-up feature before...
"And a really bad one, apparently," he adds as a side comment.
"I ain't heard of a damn tutor who shows up throwing cards at people to kill them!" the mustached boss cries in disbelief. "Look, kid, you're getting in the way; I don't know what these girls are to you, but if you think you can just walk up and rescue them like you're some sorta white knight, you're fucking wrong!"
But the boss is silenced again by the sound of Uesugi giving off a small chuckle of amusement.
"'Think'?" he smiles over at Nino's acquaintance, who scowls deeply and barks at his underlings.
"We don't have time for this - if you wanna get paid, get this motherfucker outta my sight!"
As the boss relays his new orders, Uesugi finds and selects a track before stowing his phone away in his right pants pocket, and the song starts pumping lyrics into his ears through Miku's headphones just as the thugs around him approach him threateningly.
"Oh, I see you feelin' yourself! Hahaha...that type 'a pride ain't good for your health - c'mon!"
"As you wish..." Fuutarou mutters...in English.
The first thug, the big man, reaches out his left hand to grab Fuutarou by his jacket sleeve, but Fuutarou withdraws his left hand from the jacket pocket that it's been hanging out in with a speed that's far too fast for the average street thug to react to, grabs tight hold of his adversary's wrist, and tugs him suddenly to the right, forcing the thug to stumble forward despite his superior body mass and weight. Simultaneously, Uesugi angles his left elbow and pops him in the face quickly but crisply, putting just enough strength behind the elbow stab that smashes into the big thug's nose and swiftly breaks it.
Reeling backwards from the surprise counter and the shock of having his nose broken so easily, the big man grasps at his profusely bleeding nose, instinctively trying to stop the bleeding. The other thugs, alarmed that their big man has been repelled with such ease, stiffen up and make sure to close the distance around Fuutarou together to properly utilize their numerical advantage. Two men then charge at him, with the last man staying behind to cut off any avenues of escape should the quintuplets' classmate attempt to disengage.
Equipped with faster feet, Fuutarou puts them to good use to counter his numerical disadvantage and swiftly sidesteps the straight punch from the thug to his right, ducking his head low enough underneath the attacking punch so that Miku's headphones don't get knocked off his own head, too. Before the thug can turn to face him properly, Fuutarou lets rip a quick straight to his opponent's exposed left side, causing him to reel; his head is forced to lower from the pain of Uesugi's strike, and Fuutarou grabs the thug by the face and tosses him backwards like he's flinging a stuffed doll across the room, buying himself a bit of time so that he can deal with less enemies at once - even just a few seconds of having less bad guys to think about at the same time can be critical.
The second thug who's attacked first changes course and raises his right leg, attempting to step kick Fuutarou in the gut with his left leg without waiting for the third thug behind him to coordinate another attack with him. Uesugi simply reacts to the kick and literally slaps the foot to the side with his bare right hand, causing his enemy to get knocked off balance and crumple embarrassingly on his left hip. The third thug then comes in to assist, but it's far too late for a coordinated attack, meaning Fuutarou is able to fight three one-on-one duels in a row, and the quintuplets' tutor blocks a punch aimed at his chin, catches his wrist as well, and tugs his enemy towards himself so that his right hand can grab him by the neck.
Lifting him up for a moment and slamming him down against the ground at his own feet, Fuutarou stoops down again, this time to deliver a series of rapid-fire knuckle strikes with both hands against the thug's face, repeatedly causing his head to knock back and forth between his fists and the hard asphalt. It doesn't take very many of these to knock the thug out, and Fuutarou swiftly stands back up once this is achieved, leaving the man unmoving and unconscious at his feet, with a small pool of blood beginning to form beneath the back of his head.
Slowly beginning to realize that maybe his underlings really don't have a chance against this freak of a tutor, the mustached boss takes out his phone again hurriedly to dial a number, but Uesugi pivots and draws his Ace of Spades in one fluid motion and fires it with a sharp reverse wrist flick. Nino, who's still laying on the ground where she'd been pinned by the first thug who is now dead, spies a sudden, brief, but noticeable flash of blue light that wraps around the shape of the card as it's held between Fuutarou's fingers before it rockets out from them. The boss yelps in surprise as his phone is knocked out of his hand, and he turns to look at what just happened to it, only to find the Ace of Spades lodged right through it.
"Call your boys off and leave. I won't ask this again," Fuutarou quietly issues his ultimatum to the boss, slowly lowering his card-flicking hand as the thug he tossed behind him confronts him again, albeit at a further distance away. But the mustached man grits his teeth, unwilling to back down.
"It's just one guy, goddamn it! What the fuck are you idiots doing? Take him down already!" he barks again.
The three remaining thugs regroup for another attempt to take their intruder down; the big man, while unable to stop the bleeding, opts to help his boys since the faster they can bring Fuutarou down, the faster he can treat his broken nose. Again, the thugs close the distance, and this time the big man stays behind to let his smaller coworkers spearhead their charge, who attack from opposite sides of Fuutarou rather than directly at his front.
Seizing his own initiative, Fuutarou sidesteps directly at the attacker to his right, slipping past his left hook aimed for his liver and riposting with another hard elbow strike, jamming it against the enemy's throat at an awkward angle. The thug begins choking and gasping terribly, stumbling backwards and trying to breathe properly, and Uesugi pivots quickly to find the other thug, whose pincer attack is thwarted due to Fuutarou's sidestep, lunging at him to grab him by the legs so that the big man can come in to do some damage.
Uesugi bends his knees to lower his center of gravity that will help him maintain his balance as the thug crashes into his shin, failing to knock the tutor off his feet, and Uesugi drives his knuckles down against the thug's forehead, forcing him to let go of his legs. The big man finally steps back in, brandishing a big hunting knife whose blade is longer than the length of Fuutarou's hand.
"Fuutarou!" Miku cries out at the sight of the dangerous weapon in the big thug's hands.
But Fuutarou does not heed her, though whether it's because he's not concerned about the knife or because he simply can't hear her over the music blasting in his ears at the moment is not clear. Nevertheless, the thug steps in and roars, swinging his knife at Fuutarou, who dodges, ducks, sidesteps, and back-steps to avoid the strong swings. The big thug adapts quickly, ditching his powerful swings in favor of weaker but faster jabs, pokes, and stabs instead, but for one particularly deadly stab, the young tutor does not opt to dodge it and instead stands his ground, letting the knife come aimed at his left eye.
PING!
A strange, somewhat high-pitched metallic ringing sound is emitted and echoes briefly through the warehouse reception bay. The big thug cannot believe what he's seeing - he's pressing his knife against the back of Fuutarou's raised left hand, which is bare and is in clear contact with the sharp point of his big hunting knife. However, as hard as he might try, he can't push the knife further past the skin to do damage.
Without warning, Fuutarou steps in and buries his right knuckles into the tall thug's gut, causing his knees to buckle slightly and his grip on his knife to loosen, which the high school freshman capitalizes on by snatching the knife right out of the thug's hand by the blade before he realizes what Fuutarou is doing. But he's not done with the knife: tossing it shortly up into the air so that he can catch it with his thumb and index finger on his right hand, Uesugi turns and chucks it at the thug whose throat he elbowed a few moments ago as the latter is trying to get back up to his feet while still gasping for air. The knife blade cleanly angles itself for the man's face and pierces his skull squarely through the middle of his forehead, with the sheer size of the tracker knife splitting the frontal lobes of his brain and swiftly ending his life.
When the big thug tries getting back up to his own feet behind him, Uesugi once again puts him out of commission by re-pivoting and ripping a powerful left hook into the thug's right side, striking him dead center against his liver, which flexes and smashes painfully against the center of his body, shocking his vagus nerve sufficiently to force the big guy to his knees, then to the ground as he clutches his liver, groaning terribly and gasping for air painfully.
The final thug, having developed a black eye from the punch he's received from Fuutarou following his unsuccessful tackle attempt, finally manages to land a punch, but in his desperation he doesn't choose his target carefully and merely hits the freshman on the back of his left shoulderblade, which is largely ineffective. Simply shrugging it off, Uesugi retaliates with a devastating backhand blow that catches the final thug on the chin, and while it's not strong enough to knock the guy out cleanly, it does make him lose control of his body for a split second, and he stumbles, catching himself before he fully collapses again.
But the backhand blow to his chin is enough to seal his fate: Fuutarou calmly walks up to the thug, who gets back up to his feet as quickly as his body will allow and throws out a punch wildly in true self-defense this time, but Uesugi catches this punch for a third time. And this time, he catches his fist with his right hand, pulls his arm closer to himself, and swiftly jams the base of his left palm against the back of the thug's elbow. A gut-wrenching crack splits the air as Uesugi's left palm strike completely shatters the man's right elbow.
Not even giving him time to scream in agony properly, Fuutarou, still holding onto his injured opponent's broken arm, steps to the thug's right a bit, raises his foot, and then stomps his right knee at an angle from the front. Because the thug's right leg is outstretched since he's propping him up with his arm, another swift crack shatters the night air behind the warehouse.
As the thug is going down for good with both a shattered right elbow and right knee, Fuutarou still doesn't let him touch the ground again just yet. Still holding him by his right arm, Fuutarou pulls him up by his neck, gets a solid grip on his face, and delivers the coup de grace of a clean, painless neck snap.
The quintuplets watch the body of the gangbanger crumple lifelessly like a puppet with its strings suddenly detached at Fuutarou's feet, their innocent blue eyes tainted with fear mixed with awe, amazement, and horror. Fuutarou walks by Nino over to the last thug left alive, the big guy, who's trying his best to deal with the liver pain and is almost back up to his knees. He's tall enough that even on his knees, Fuutarou can comfortably put his hand on the guy's chest if he wanted, albeit at a low angle.
So he does exactly that.
A blue circle appears quietly over the tall thug's chest, specifically directly over where his heart should be. It's a small circle, and the light that it gives off is not very bright at all, to the point where only the quintuplets, Fuutarou, and the boss looking on can see it clearly but not the thug himself.
Fuutarou puts his right hand out and places his outstretched fingers pointed directly at the rune he's planted over his final enemy's heart.
"You're done."
Performing a one-inch punch, Fuutarou smashes his right fist straight through the planted rune, shattering it into oblivion as the blue lights fall like shards of glass before disintegrating into the air as they fall. The tall thug doesn't move at all from the punch, with the exception of the initial contact of the strike, and he looks up at Fuutarou, confused as to what he's done.
But just like his fellow gangbanger before him, the big guy slowly crashes like a giant to his side without warning. Fuutarou has stopped his heartbeat - the empty, glazed look in the dead man's eyes confirms it for him.
Raising a single hand up to Miku's headphones, the blue lights from before light up around the earcups again, but this time with one of the earcups exposed, tiny blue runes can be seen rotating mechanically around the earcups, after which Fuutarou removes the headphones.
Having witnessed his entire crew get slaughtered by a single boy who looks the same age as the girls he was trying to kidnap, the mustached, neatly-dressed boss takes a fearful step backwards, unable to take his eyes off Uesugi as he walks with the same chillingly calm gait over to the van and drapes Miku's headphones back where they belong, around her own neck, before turning to him and approaching him.
"G-Get away! Get away, stay away from me, damn you!" Nino's acquaintance shrieks the moment he realizes that Uesugi is headed for him, but the tutor clad in almost entirely black, save for the white dress shirt underneath his hoodie, cares not for the boss's demands.
"Moving into this city, establishing a drug trafficking hub, bringing in gangbangers from outside the city - all of this, on my territory," Fuutarou growls softly, stopping near Nino, who by this point has sat up to watch the scene unfold in its entirety, so that he doesn't leave any one of the quintuplets too exposed in case the boss tries pulling a fast one on him. "Never mind what you tried to do to these girls tonight, give me a reason why I shouldn't just end you right where you are."
"A reason - oh yeah, that's right! A tax, right? You want a cut of our profit for operating on your territory? We'll give it to you, we'll give you a cut of our profits! We can work something out, man, c'mon, what do you s - "
Nino glances back over at Uesugi...who is no longer standing next to her. Instead, the quintuplets hear the boss have his breath cut short as he, too, collapses to the ground without a word after Uesugi, somehow appearing right in front of the man, has jammed his right heel against the mustached man's right femoral artery, shocking it enough to disrupt his nervous system and render him unconscious.
Keeping his silence and being content with giving the boss he's knocked out a deep frown of disapproval, Fuutarou reaches down and drags him back over to the van, tossing him down against the rear left tire so that he can dump him into the back of the van later, but he does first pickpocket him, taking his wallet and phone and pocketing them himself. He also searches the bodies of the dead thugs for the key to the van intended to kidnap the quintuplets with, which he finds on the body of the guy whose neck he's snapped.
As he works on removing the girls' binds, Fuutarou dials a number on his own phone while the silent quintuplets, afraid to even utter a single word, let Uesugi do his job of freeing them. When he's done with Itsuki's binds, Fuutarou gestures for her to look at him directly so that he can examine the severity of Itsuki's bleeding, which has thankfully stopped for the most part but still needs tending.
"Uesugi reporting. Drug traffickers at the old storage warehouses...they caught one of the quints and used her to bait the others to coming over to kidnap all of them at once," the tutor says quickly, holding his right hand over Itsuki's nose as his hand begins to glow with the same soft blue light as before while his left holds the phone to his ear. "4 CKIA, one down, one detained. Send cleaners over, need to extract hostages to safety."
Not even waiting for a response from the other end of the line, Fuutarou pockets his phone once more and pulls his right hand away, having treated the bleeding to halt it fully.
"All of you, get in the seats up in front, now," Fuutarou orders, pointing at the front of the van. "We'll use this to get you all back home, once I'm done with this place. I'll explain everything when we get back to the high-rise, this isn't the place to talk."
As the girls comply and vacate the back of the van, Uesugi grabs the unconscious boss, ties him up with the red rope and slaps tape from inside the van over his mouth, and tosses his ass into the van, closing the door down after him. He then picks up the dropped needles filled with the strange white sedatives, puts them back into the metal lockbox from which they've been taken, shuts and secures the lockbox, and brings it with him into the van as he enters the driver's seat. Soon, the unmarked white van's engine revs to life, and it swiftly pulls out of the reception bay through the open gate and vacates the premises, leaving the bodies of the dead thugs in its wake.
Having parked the van directly outside the luxury high-rise and leaving it unlocked with the keys still inside after phoning instructions to his cleanup crew to retrieve the van overnight, Fuutarou escorts the quintuplets up to their penthouse, carefully scanning the lobby and thirtieth floor upon arrival to double and triple-check that there isn't a surprise ambush waiting for them, which thankfully there is not. Still having his own passcard to the Nakano penthouse, he unlocks the door for them and holds the door open for them, beckoning them into their own house and closing and locking the door once everyone, including himself, is inside.
"Itsuki, sit at the sofa, I'll be there in a second. Somebody get a small towel and bowl of water, fill it up halfway," he calls over to the girls while planting a rune on the front door to help reinforce it in case of a follow-up attack on the penthouse itself, as unlikely as he thinks it will be. The rune planting doesn't take long, and he rejoins the girls in the living room, though he does take a minute to repeat the rune process with the sliding window doors that lead out to the veranda, which the girls watch in silent intrigue.
"...is...is that..." Surprisingly of all people, Miku speaks up first. "...is that...magic...?"
"Yes," Uesugi says directly, feeling no need to beat around the bush as he lowers his hand once the defensive matrix is set and bleeds into the windows themselves to hide itself from view. Turning around, and approaching the girls again while Ichika returns with the half-filled bowl of warm water, Yotsuba already having brought over the clean hand towel. "I'm what you'd call a mage."
Uesugi notices that Nino hasn't bothered to go to her room to replace her clothes, probably because she, like her sisters, is having trouble processing the events of tonight. While understandable, this means Nino's torn shirt reveals just how ample her chest is, so Fuutarou swiftly removes his black hoodie jacket and drops it on her lap on the sofa, where she's sitting next to the bloody Itsuki.
"Give it back when I need to leave," Fuutarou remarks, kneeling down and taking the hand towel from Yotsuba to dip into Ichika's warm bowl of water.
Carefully wiping the caked blood from Itsuki's face, Fuutarou makes efficient use of the towel, making sure to get as much dried blood off with as much of the towel's available surface area as possible before having to dunk it back into the water basin beside him to wring the blood out. Since it's just the first cycle, Fuutarou reuses the towel to get the last bits of dried blood off, rendering Itsuki's face free of spilled blood from her punched nose. Itsuki does her best not to look down at the bowl of bloody water; Nino, too, shifts uncomfortably every time she hears the towel touch the water when Fuutarou needs to clean it off, tightening her grip around the zippered halves of Fuutarou's hoodie and forgetting that she can simply zip it up to hide her goods.
"And then next..."
Murmuring to himself mainly, the tutor puts the bowl of bloody water carefully on the low glass table behind him and turns back to Itsuki.
"You're fine for the most part, but since you got hit pretty hard by the looks of it, there's a chance you'll have more nosebleeds later," he explains shortly, raising his right hand over Itsuki's nose and pressing it gently but firmly against it, causing Itsuki to whimper with the lingering pain. "It'll hurt a bit now, but give it a minute."
The quintuplets look on as Fuutarou's right hand glows again with the same blue light from before.
"So..." Nino, unable to stand the awkward silence any longer and desperate to find something to talk about, tears her eyes off the fascinating blue light coming from Fuutarou's hand and looks directly at him. "So, magic - it really does exist? It's not just magic, as in like people doing magic tricks?"
"Maybe what I'm doing looks like a magic trick to normal people, but ask how Itsuki feels after I'm done and see if it really is just a trick," Uesugi retorts. "But no, magic does exist in this world. But not in the way you'd think."
After a minute of healing, Fuutarou removes his hand.
"Better?"
Itsuki slowly and uncertainly raises her left hand up to her nose, gingerly pressing it to check for any pain, of which there is none any longer, so she nods.
"...yes, it's...it is better now," she mumbles, unable to look at her would-be tutor directly in the eye.
"How's your head, by the way? The dude threw you down on the ground pretty hard, didn't he?" Fuutarou asks Nino, gesturing at the back of his own head.
"I-I'm fine! I don't need anything!" she hisses back.
"Good. Magical treatment isn't exactly easy..."
Turning around, Fuutarou grabs the bloody water bowl and the hand towel inside and takes it back to the kitchen to dispose of the water and wash the towel clean. Still unsure of what they ought to do or what they should expect next, the quintuplets wait for Fuutarou to return, which he does in short time, but this time with the small jar of fine white powder that he's taken from the cabinet directly above the kitchen sink. At the sight of the jar, Nino freezes up again, pointing at Fuutarou and opening her mouth to interject, but no words come out in her shock that Fuutarou has found her drug.
"Like I said, I've got a lot of explaining to do," he sighs heavily, not looking forward to having to do this as he stands before the girls again, much like how he did when he administered their evaluation quiz earlier this week. "First things first, this."
"H-How?!" Nino finally is able to blurt out her shock, but that's really all she can muster, and Uesugi simply scowls back down at her.
"That's supposed to be my line, Nino. How the fuck did you get your hands on something like this?"
"That's the drug that Nino uses to knock people out, isn't it?" Yotsuba asks tentatively, nervously looking back and forth from Fuutarou to Nino.
"Yeah, the same shit she slipped in my water earlier this week to knock me out. Well, she tried to, anyway."
At this, all five quintuplets display varying degrees of shock on their faces.
"Y-You didn't get knocked out from that? Uh oh..." Ichika murmurs, glancing nervously over at Nino, who looks positively scared out of her mind that her drug has failed to do its job.
"But that's the best roofie they had! It should be able to knock out anyone in seconds!" Nino can't stop herself from blurting out the thoughts on her mind, so turbulent is the whirlwind of thoughts and emotions in her head. "It's never failed before! And you're telling me that day, when you drank that water I spiked, it didn't do anything?!"
"It would have, but as you can guess from me treating Itsuki's nose just now, I'm what they call a medic mage; I specialize in treating wounds, both physical and magical, inflicted on the human body," Fuutarou explains, doing his best to maintain his patience. "Part of my medical knowledge also covers drugs, poisons, curses, and other afflictions that have effects on the human body. Which is why I know exactly what this shit is...and why I'm so pissed off that you have this in your possession."
Fuutarou raises the small jar of white powder for the girls to see.
"If you think this's just a regular roofie that's just really good at its job, Nino, you're horribly wrong," he says to the quintuplet in question. "This is called Heisei, it's a drug made from a secret recipe of other drugs that are the basis for your every day roofies and stuff, but it's magically processed so that its effects are enhanced a ton. Normal roofies don't knock you out within seconds of ingesting unless you have a damn near overdose or its potency is really high, but this shit does, and you only need a tiny bit of it to do that. I'm sure this sounds pretty familiar to you right now, huh?"
Unable to deny Fuutarou's words, Nino forces herself to look away, gritting her teeth again but this time more so in embarrassment that her open secret is now being fully exposed.
"So it...it wasn't just a regular drug..." Miku mutters broodingly. "I had a hunch that it wasn't..."
"Right. This stuff is dangerous - a big enough dose can cause a normal person to go into a coma for up to three or four months depending on the exact dosage. And anything noticeably more than that, and it just flat-out stops all your brain activity and makes you go to sleep forever. Turns you into a vegetable, as some people like to say - effectively, it straight-up kills you."
Fuutarou raises the jar of Heisei again to examine its contents again. Itsuki finally raises her head to pay attention to Uesugi, as his talk about the dangers of this drug and its effects on the human body catches her attention.
"It's a great soluble...what that means is - "
"It dissolves in water really well."
The quintuplets all turn and stare at Itsuki, who blushes fiercely and puts her hands over her mouth.
"I-I'm sorry, I didn't - mean to - " she stammers, hiding her face behind her hands.
"Very good, Itsuki. Even if your grades are still terrible overall, I did notice that your best subject is science," Uesugi rewards her with an amused grin as Yotsuba and Miku pat Itsuki reassuringly on her back. "Yeah, it's what you said - this drug dissolves in water extremely well. Nino, when you first got a hold of this, you were probably told to put it in people's water whenever you use it, right?"
Still pouting irritably, Nino does at least nod back at him.
"Of course you'd turn this into a freaking science lesson," she grumbles. "I can't believe you right now..."
"Hey, if you think about it, this is the first time I'm able to have all five you in one place willingly, so I'm about to teach you as many things as I can so that I can do my job for once," Fuutarou chuckles. "But back on topic - Heisei is odorless and very soluble. But it also has a slight taste to it if you know what to look for, and if you put it in water, it'll make the water taste a bit metallic, even more so than your average tap water. But that's not normally an issue because for most people, by the time they taste it, it's already too late."
Fuutarou once more turns to Nino, showing her her own jar of Heisei.
"Now, answer me. You clearly weren't aware of just how dangerous this stuff can be, and I'll assume that the guy I dragged with us and dropped off at my place before coming here was your dealer for this shit. When did you first meet this guy? And how did you get in touch with him?"
"Wait, wait, wait!" Nino suddenly experiences a brief epiphany and interrupts Fuutarou. "Yesterday, at the bookstore - you were listening to us the entire time?!"
Fuutarou nods. "It was pure coincidence, to be fair; I didn't know that you and the guy were going to meet there in the bookstore, but that's why I asked you what you were doing there too, since it seems rather strange to meet a guy at the bookstore of all places. In any case, yeah, I did listen in when you two sat down near me once I realized it was you I was hearing."
Twisting her lips, Nino hides her eyes from Fuutarou by lowering her gaze to the floor beneath her socked feet.
"Nino, is that why...?" Ichika asks hesitantly, with a soft voice. "All those nights when you'd head out by yourself over the last couple years...was that why? To meet that guy to keep buying that Heisei stuff?"
A tense silence follows Ichika's inquiry, and Nino keeps her head down still, more or less confirming this uncomfortable revelation.
"Let's try to keep the family business for later, since you girls can work things out after I'm done with what I've got to say," Fuutarou mediates calmly. "Nino, just answer me for the time being. I know from the conversation that I overheard between you and the guy that you've been meeting with him for the past three years or so. How did you meet this guy? I'm not asking this to embarrass you in front of your sisters, I'm asking this because I need that information."
After another tough pause, Nino finally drops her hands from her Gendou pose, though she doesn't want to look back up at Uesugi.
"I met him at the beginning of middle school, back when we first entered Black Rose," she mumbles. "You know me, Uesugi, I'm the popular one among us, the type of girl who knows about everybody at school. Some of the friends I had back then had older siblings of their own who did drugs, and they told me that if I were ever interested in buying some for myself, they could hook me up. F-For the record, I've never had an interest in trying drugs, I know they're bad, okay? But - but because I was so popular, obviously there were some girls who hated me for it, and they'd threaten me whenever I passed them in the halls or something, saying stuff like 'you better watch your back' or 'you've got such nice hair, shame if someone were to burn it off'..."
At this, her sisters begin looking horrified - with the one exception being Miku, whose expression doesn't change much, only looking mildly surprised.
"Y-You never told us about this, Nino!" Yotsuba is the first to exclaim, staring at her older sister in shock. "Why didn't you tell us? Why keep something like that all to yourself?"
"I'm about to explain why, gosh!" Nino gestures back in annoyance. "So, like, I didn't really pay much attention to them at first, right? Since, you know, it's just their jealousy talking and I shouldn't have a reason to take them seriously. But one time while I was out with friends shopping, we ran into some older guys, probably high schoolers at the time, who started hitting on us and were really annoying about it, following us around and stuff and just being super creepy about the whole thing, so I called the police on them, and that blew up badly..."
"Oh yeah, that...yeah, Dad had to get involved..." Ichika nods tiredly, remembering those particularly difficult times. "...it wasn't pretty."
"Papa scolded me for resorting to having to call the police for something like that," Nino grumbles, also recounting the unfortunate memory. "But I had the feeling that stuff like that was only going to continue, and if Papa didn't like me calling the police for things like that, and since Papa himself is never around for us for the most part, I knew I had to do something on my own, especially if the next time this happened, it might happen to one of my sisters instead."
Looking down at her torn shirt and realizing that she can just zip up the front finally, Nino zips up the front of Uesugi's black hoodie jacket quickly.
"So I went to those friends who said they could hook me up and asked them to get me in contact with whoever their dealer was, and that's how I first met that guy. I still don't know his name, now that I think about it..." Nino sighs, rubbing her brow. "Not that it matters now, that fucking cuck, betraying me like that. But anyways, that's how I first met him. I told him that I wanted something that would be able to knock someone out cold super fast, since the way I figured I would deal with guys hitting on me or my sisters is to spike a drink or something and give it to them somehow, depending on the situation, and so that way I can get them off us and leave without creating much of a scene. Or if it does, I don't have to stay around to deal with it, you know?"
Nino then points back at the jar of Heisei that Fuutarou holds down near his side.
"And he gave me that. He said it was one of his newest products, and that it was one of the most expensive things he had. I was like, shit, I don't care, I'll buy it if it's as strong as you say it is, and he said I'd better see it in action for myself. And sure enough, when I got the chance to use it, it worked like a charm."
Turning to grab the couch cushion behind her, Nino hugs it tightly, resting her chin on the top of the sturdy cushion.
"He never told me just how dangerous it was. He never even told me what its name was - I guess he didn't need to, since that's all I ever bought from him. I'm not lying to anyone here when I say that I didn't buy anything else from him. I didn't buy that stuff for selfish reasons, I swear. I bought it because I wanted to help protect myself and my family from potentially dangerous situations where we'd get confronted by guys who might come after us to hit on us or because they know that we're rich girls. And I didn't want any of you guys to know either since I didn't want you to worry about it," Nino adds, turning to her sisters hesitantly. "Since I know you'd want to get involved too. Same thing with what happened tonight - I didn't want you guys to come after me and just stay at home."
"Oh come on, Nino, you know we cannot do that," Itsuki urges with her sister. "What kind of sisters would we be if we did not go to help you?"
"But that was too dangerous of a situation for us all to have gone into like that!" Nino rebuts. "And before you start yelling at me, I'm fully aware that I shouldn't have gone tonight either! I know it's my fault for letting you end up getting hit like that, Itsuki! That's why I just didn't want any of you to come to help, because that's exactly what they wanted! They didn't have any intention of negotiating or bartering with you, asking all of you to come in like that!"
"But what else could we have done...?" Ichika also sighs heavily. "The guy who called me with your phone, he specifically asked us all to come in, and he said that if we tried calling anyone for help, they'd know, and they'd just kill you on the spot. I've never been in this kind of situation before, none of us have. So I didn't want to take that risk, any risks at all."
"At least we had Fuutarou to save us," Miku mentions, and all of the quints except her instinctively glance over at the standing Uesugi, who gives them a small wave back with his free hand.
"But we can't rely on him! Even if - even if he did save us for tonight!" Nino stammers, unable to stop her cheeks from reddening again.
"Actually, you can," Fuutarou speaks up again.
"Huh? Wha, what do you mean?"
"You girls were wondering why your dad hired me as your year-long tutor, right? For a year straight, all of a sudden like this?" Fuutarou points up at himself. "He didn't hire me to be just your tutor. I'm your bodyguard, or...something."
Oddly, the girls don't seem terribly surprised at this, but they do have an air of understanding about them when Fuutarou reveals this.
"Yeah, that makes sense, after everything that's happened," Yotsuba nods sagely, her clover-shaped hair ribbon also nodding with her.
"But Yotsuba, every time you say that, you don't actually get anything at all," Ichika gently pokes fun at her.
"No, no, I'm serious, it really does make sense! I really do this time!"
"Is it because you or Papa knew that something like this was going to happen to us? What happened earlier tonight?" Miku asks softly, gazing back up at Fuutarou.
"Not this exactly, but earlier this week your butler, I think his name was Ebata-san, was found murdered in his car after he dropped you off at home."
"Oh...oh no..." Itsuki raises a hand up to her mouth in horror, her eyes widening with the same sentiment, and her sisters also show similar reactions. "So...that was why..."
"Yeah. That was how your dad knew that you girls are being targeted right now. So he's hired me to find Ebata-san's murderer because we suspect whoever they are, they're coming after you girls. That same guy was probably the same guy who hired Nino's dealer and his cronies to try to kidnap you. So my job is twofold: one, be your tutor and help you all get your grades up to the point where you all can graduate without too much issue, and two, keep you girls safe and out of danger while I track down whoever's targeting you."
"But - but then why didn't you just tell us this to begin with?" Nino points out. "Why wait until something like this happened to tell us who you really are and what your true purpose was?"
"What are you saying? If I told you that I was a mage and that magic legitimately exists in this world, you'd just laugh me out of your house. You already didn't want me here before, so how would that've changed anything?"
Stumped by Fuutarou's seemingly peerless logic, Nino struggles to come up with a counterpoint.
"Y-You still could've warned us ahead of time! But because you didn't, Itsuki ended up getting hurt!"
"Oh, so you're saying it's my fault now when just a few minutes ago you said that it was yours?"
"But, but none of this would've happened if you intervened earlier! You said you overheard my conversation with my dealer at the bookstore, right? Why didn't you tell me what was going on after I bought your sister the crepe?"
"Because you seem like the type of person who'd just yell at me to mind my own business," Fuutarou coldly answers. "Nino, and also you too, Itsuki, since I told everyone else, but you two weren't there at the time, and right now's the best chance I have to repeat myself, but I'm not going to stop you, any of you girls, from doing whatever you like. I may be the person your dad hired to be your tutor, and now your bodyguard, but that doesn't mean I suddenly have the jurisdiction to force you girls to do whatever I tell you to. I'm not your damn parent, your dad is, so I'm not going to stand here telling anyone here that oh, this is your fault, you shouldn't have done this, whatever. I'll be here to teach you school lessons, but I'm not here to teach you a moral lesson. You girls are all old enough to be making your own damn decisions, and while some of them are pretty questionable, you just need to learn from them and make sure something as bad as this doesn't happen again."
Giving a deep sigh of his own, Fuutarou slips the jar of Heisei into a rune that appears beneath his hand, and the rune swallows up the jar, causing it to disappear into thin air.
"And besides, if I told you girls who I really was, that would change your behaviors around me drastically," he adds. "I'll admit to using you girls as bait in an effort to draw out the guy who killed Ebata-san so that I could catch him, but it looks like he played it safe tonight and used a third party to try to get you girls. Not only that, but we mages, even the bad guys, don't want to show magic if we don't need to, otherwise it'll attract unnecessary attention to us that we don't want. If possible, I actually didn't want to tell or show you girls that I was even a mage at all, but the shit that went down tonight kinda ruined those plans."
"You never wanted to show us...?" Miku asks wide-eyed. "But...why not?"
Shaking his head, Fuutarou removes his logoed cap briefly.
"The magic world isn't something to show normal people. As long as you don't know that it exists and as long as you don't end up doing less-than-legal things, most likely you don't need to worry about whether or not something from the magic side of the world will affect you. Though, like with anything, there can be exceptions, like tonight. But regardless, magic isn't what you think it is. Forget the usual preconceptions of it that you have, that normal society might've imposed on you about it. It's not about unicorns and rainbows and pointing magic wands at each other and yelling wingardium leviosa like an idiot - no, it's not pretty. You're better off not knowing anything about it if you can help it."
"But still, why not? Can you...tell us more about it, at least...?" Finding herself more and more deeply invested in this topic from an emotional standpoint, Miku leans forward in her seat a little.
"I just told you that you shouldn't ask...fine, I can at least tell you this much, now that you all know that I'm a mage, I guess," Fuutarou grumbles with muted frustration. "Right now, the magic world is dying off. Mages are inherently selfish people, first and foremost - the universal goal of all the mages in the world, at least in the eyes of most of them, is to achieve some sort of nirvana or immortal state, some kind of post-mortem state of consciousness that they can use to essentially live forever. They all have different ways of going about it, but they're all gonna fail in the end because none of them understand that immortality is an impossibility - or maybe they do, but they don't want to accept the truth. But still, they'll try - and they'll do whatever it takes to try pulling it off. Stealing, pillaging, murdering, anything they feel like doing to accomplish whatever their goals are, they'll do it. And it's because of that destructive behavior that's been going on for God knows how many thousands of years that the magic world is now at the point where there are simply not enough mages left in the world."
Fuutarou gazes back at the quintuplets, who, for once, are an attentive audience.
"Too many mages acting in their own self-interest, and too little acting for anyone else's. Because of all the magical conflicts and feuds and the unwillingness to cooperate for the sake of the survival of magic as an institution, magic is now in actual danger of dying out; we mages are a dying breed. Hell, I can say the same about myself, you know? No matter how I try to paint myself, I'm a mercenary, a hired gun. While right now I'm being paid to keep you girls safe and to tutor you so that you all don't fail school completely, I've been hired to do all sorts of things in the past, and a lot of them aren't pretty. And especially nowadays, when it's not a secret to us mages that magic is slowly dying out, what mages are still around, instead of trying to preserve magic and ensure its survival in the future, are working even harder to reach their goals of immortality or whatever else stupid plans they have, so ironically the situation now is even more cutthroat than it has been."
Ending with a small shrug, Uesugi stuffs his hands into his pants pockets.
"But then what about you, Uesugi-kun?" Ichika asks. "You're still a mage too at the end of the day, aren't you? What about yourself? What made you become a mage? Or is it one of those things where you have to be born as one?"
"Yeah. And...why did you become a medical mage?" Itsuki adds on.
"No, I wasn't born as one. There are certain mages who come from really old magic families who have bloodlines and all that, but nowadays they're really hard to find. Most mages these days are people like me, people who either stumbled upon it on accident and taught themselves or had another mage they know teach them." Uesugi pulls out his phone to check the time briefly. "And why I became a medic mage...mainly it was to differentiate myself. Remember that I have a family to support, my dad and my sister. And I'm a very young mage compared to most others out there, so I have to have something in my resume that will stand out to my clients when they're deciding on which mage they want to hire for whatever it is that they're doing. The medical side to magic isn't very popular since it's pretty boring compared to everything else you could potentially learn about magic. Like, think about it, why bother learning about how to magically stitch a big cut on your arm, for example, when you can learn how to blow someone's head off with magic if that's what you wanted?"
"But you still went through with it, even if becoming a medic mage or whatever is really that boring," Ichika points out.
"Yeah, that's true, because even if it's boring compared to other stuff that I could've learned in its place, it's one of the most useful fields of magic. Anyone can learn how to hurt people using magic, and honestly it's not that hard to do. But not as many people know how to heal the wounds that magic can make - and that's exactly why it's a valuable skill, because not everyone has it when it really matters. Not that it's seemed to've done much favors for my family's financial situation, though..."
Uesugi smirks in self-derogatory humor off to his side, creating another uncomfortable atmosphere for the quintuplets who sit in their privately owned thirtieth floor and the expensive penthouse in which they live.
"But that's it from me, I've talked enough about magic at this point. Don't expect me to bring it up again like this, and don't ask me about it either," Fuutarou warns the girls. "That being said, I want you girls to stay home for tomorrow so that I can spend tonight and tomorrow making sure that the coast is clear for you all for the time being. Since I'm our class rep, I'll bring you girls your assignments and homework and class notes and whatever else, so don't worry about it."
"Er, but Uesugi-kun, I have my part-time job tomorrow..." Ichika says hesitantly.
"If it's that important, I'll escort you there tomorrow," Fuutarou swiftly replies. "Is that alright with you?"
"Um...er..." Ichika scratches her cheek uncertainly. "I-I think it should be...? I don't know what my manager'll think..."
"I'll handle that. I've got my ways of negotiating with people..."
"D-Don't do anything dangerous, okay!"
"You should be telling Nino that."
"Oh c'mon, you just had to bring that up again, did you!" Nino shouts out, causing her sisters to chuckle awkwardly with some contextual humor.
"Speaking of which, actually, Nino, don't go buying drugs like this again," Fuutarou turns back to her for a third time with a firm voice. "I might've said that I'm not your parent so I won't tell you what to do for the most part, but something like this I have to tell you not to do because it's a serious problem that I'm trying to handle. This city's got a serious drug trafficking problem because of all the rapid growth and expansion that the city's been experiencing over the years, and while it's great for the city of course, some parts of the city have been neglected or just abandoned altogether."
"Like...like the business park that your family lives in?" Itsuki mumbles quietly.
"Right. But we were always poor, so that area being abandoned didn't really change things for us. I guess if anything, it's nice living in a part of town that's always quiet, but that doesn't change the fact that it's still a shady neighborhood where thugs like the ones from earlier tonight hang out in to sell drugs and do other criminal shit."
"Oh yeah, earlier back at the warehouse, you said to the dealer guy that this is your territory or something? Something like that?" Yotsuba mentions, strangely being more quiet and attentive than her usual bouncy, willy-nilly self.
"Yeah. One more thing about mages, I guess, mages like me are typically very territorial; mages sometimes have their personal little plots of land that they live in and operate out of, and whenever another mage comes in and screws around in it, they'll try to kick that invader out. I'm sort of like that...this city's been kinda like my territory, I guess you could say. Not that mages can't also be nomadic and travel around from place to place, but..."
Clapping his hands once to end the conversation, Fuutarou beckons to Nino to have her give his jacket back.
"So, just to reiterate: don't leave home for a full day. I've set defensive runes on the door and on the windows over there in case anyone finds out where you live and tries breaking in; even if anyone comes close to this high-rise, I'll know about it. I'll bring you all your homework and class notes from class tomorrow, and - " Fuutarou pauses to catch the black hoodie that Nino tosses back at him, covering her chest as best she can so that Fuutarou can't cop a look at her partially exposed chest. " - tomorrow'll be our first actual tutoring lesson. Ichika, when's your part-time?"
"Um...at five."
"Then I'll come in at one so that you girls can have lunch first; I want tomorrow to be a bit longer than usual since it'll be our first lesson."
Fuutarou gives everyone a good surveying look.
"You all will let me tutor you for once, yes?" he asks with a somewhat disgruntled tone, putting his cap back on. "Because I don't want to sound like I'm asking you for favors just because of what happened tonight, but at least let me do my damn job."
"Fine, fine..." Nino, finally relenting, grumbles under her breath while looking off to the side at the window doors. "...I'll be there...I guess."
"...me too," Miku nods slowly.
Itsuki maintains her silent vigil, but she can't look Fuutarou back in the face properly still.
"That's about the time when I take my nap, but I can just sleep in if you're telling us to just stay at home for tomorrow," Ichika smiles. "But are you sure it's okay for us to miss school like this? What will Dad say?"
"I'll explain the situation to him. That, and I'll let the school administration know that you've got a, let's say, a 'family emergency'."
Putting on his jacket, Fuutarou glances one more time at the second quintuplet.
"Final thing I wanna say, for real this time," Fuutarou mentions. "Please don't blame Nino for anything that happened tonight. Because whatever she did that might've been questionable, she's not wrong when she said that it's more my fault for why you all ended up in that situation like you did - if I hadn't been somewhere else at the time, no one but Nino would've needed to get involved and I could've brought Nino back home without hassle. As the guy your dad hired to keep you all safe, I feel like that's something I need to mention, which means I'm not really doing my own job very well right now either. I'll make sure I start doing a better job from now on, though."
To Fuutarou's quiet surprise, Nino doesn't react or get mad at him for bringing this up, merely sitting on her side of the couch with her head bowed slightly and gazing back down at the floor again. The tutor-mage, having said everything he's needed to say for the night, heads for the sliding window door and opens it.
"Huh? Wait, Uesugi-kun, where are you - !?" Ichika, suddenly realizing what Fuutarou might be doing, gets up from the single-seat couch and hurries over to the veranda, and Miku and Yotsuba also get up, though they elect to watch from the couches.
"It's faster this way. Make sure you lock that door behind me," Fuutarou calls, shutting the window door behind him. And before Ichika can stop him, he mantles over the veranda railing and plummets out of sight.
"Uesugi-kun!?"
Throwing open the window door again, Ichika leans over the veranda railing quickly, but there is no sight of Uesugi Fuutarou's body hurtling down to the ground thirty floors below anywhere. He has simply vanished.
Having no choice but to return, Ichika makes sure to lock the window door behind her as she turns and looks upon her fellow quintuplets.
"Well then...tonight was...something," she awkwardly states, unsure of what to do now. The rest of her sisters certainly don't, either.