The sun is once again setting over the famous Honolulu beachside. Behind the beachfront patio, Nakano Ichika reviews Nakano Miku's appearance for her meeting with her tutor in about thirty minutes' time, as she has handpicked the outfit that Miku is wearing for tonight: light beige waistcoat, navy blue camisole with a bow tie that exposes the very top of her cleavage, and grayish-green and white checkered skirt.
"Are you sure this hat is really that necessary? I swear it's like one of those golfer hats, it's gonna make you look like an old lady, Miku," Ichika advises her, patting the flat gray beret on her head that has replaced the blue headphones for tonight as her choice of headwear.
"Y-You told me not to bring my headphones to this, so...so I borrowed this from Itsuki," Miku pouts back at her older sister.
"I mean, you don't need to feel compelled to wear something around your neck or on your head..."
"I feel more comfortable if I wear something on my head...or at least around my neck..."
"Then in that case, maybe a shawl would've been better? We saw a couple in a store earlier this afternoon when we were out shopping, right?"
"It's a bit too late for that now."
"I know, but just as an idea for next time..."
Ichika checks the time on her phone to make sure they've still got some time left, time that she can use to prep Miku for this upcoming outing with Uesugi.
"So...how do I look?" Miku asks timidly, fidgeting in front of her sister.
"It's great; it makes you look grown-up and mature while also drawing out your inner beauty. Fuutarou-kun's sure to notice you like this!" Ichika nods to herself self-convincingly.
"R-Really...?"
"Honestly, I don't think so."
"Aw..." Miku slumps a little at Ichika's whiplash reaction.
"Like, let's face it, Fuutarou-kun isn't the sort of person to care for clothes or appearances or anything, so I highly doubt he'll care what you look like going in."
"Then what was the point of dressing me up like this?"
"Um...for me to have some fun going out shopping with my little sisters ~ !"
"Ichika..."
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I kid. But...I mean, maybe there's a chance?"
"Chance of what?"
"That he'll like what you're wearing? You do look a lot different than your usual self, so he'll probably notice that at least."
"Fuutarou's seen us in swimsuits and he didn't really have much of a reaction even then, so I doubt it."
"Er, yeah...good point, I forgot about that."
Miku sighs heavily and pulls up the shoulders of her beige jacket, her nerves beginning to kick in as the minutes pass and bring her closer to her meeting with Fuutarou. Upon seeing her do this, Ichika gets a naughty little idea.
"Oh, oh, I know, Miku - I know how you can get his attention for sure," she murmurs deviously, creeping up to her sister and slowly putting her hands on her little sister's shoulders.
"Whenever you sound like that, that always means you've got a bad idea in mind..." Miku says cautiously, trying to back away, but Ichika locks her down in place.
"It'll be fine, it'll be fine. All you need to do...is...show ~ a little ~ bit of ~ skiiiiiiin ~ "
As Ichika coos to her sister, she slowly peels the shoulders of the beige jacket off, once again exposing Miku's bare shoulders.
"I-Ichika...!"
"Haha, just kidding, just kidding," Ichika apologizes quickly with a few chuckles of amusement as Miku pouts back at her for her antics. "But no seriously, it could work, I'm just saying. Fuutarou-kun's a boy too, you know, how can't he notice this sexy figure that you've got going on? Especially when you've got the hot camisole action going on, too, with, of course, the assets ~ "
"I-I'm not gonna try to seduce him, what the heck...!" Miku hisses back in growing embarrassment, with her cheeks blooming to match it while she quickly pulls her jacket back on properly a second time and turns her body away slightly from Ichika in an effort to hide her breasts. "We haven't even known him for a full month and - and you're telling me to do that...?"
"Hey, what can I say, there are always fast tracks to success. And you've definitely got tracts for that."
"You would know, huh?"
"We're all quintuplets here, we all basically have the same body."
But Miku shakes her head. "That is...that would be unfair. I don't like doing something like that...just to get Fuutarou to notice me."
"Right, right. But I'm just saying, it's an option in case you're ever interested ~ "
Ichika once again steps up to Miku to straighten up her posture for her and uses the tips of her fingers to turn Miku's pout upside down.
"Let's review, Miku," the eldest quintuplet nods strongly at the third. "You walk up to Fuutarou-kun, tell him 'good evening, Fuutarou', and ask him how his day went. You have to be confident in yourself, Miku - don't be shy, don't be timid like you usually are, just think of this - treat this as like another lesson that he's giving us as our tutor. Just act like you've been lately around him during those, but add a bit more assertiveness to what you're saying."
Having heard this routine a few times before already, Miku nods, but her worried blue eyes eventually must fall to make her gaze down at the ground.
"I know it's easier said than done, Miku. But every girl's gotta go through something like this eventually, you're never gonna grow out of your shell if you don't at least go through this or something like this. It doesn't have to be in high school or whatever, but the earlier the better. I'm pushing you the most like this because you're the shyest of us; you're the one who needs this kind of a push the most."
"I never...wanted it, though..."
"Then what? If you don't go out and do this, or if I or another one of our sisters doesn't give you a push from behind like this, what are you going to do? Just sit back and let your relationship with Fuutarou stay the way it is now?"
Miku's soft blue eyes quickly steel themselves in the face of Ichika's pressure.
"For now, yes, because I want to take this at my own pace, Ichika. While I appreciate the help that you're trying to give me, I don't want to accelerate this relationship I have with him, assuming I even can at all. While you're not wrong about how just sitting back and letting the relationship stay as it is isn't the smart thing to do, for now I want to enjoy the relationship I do have with him. Is there something so wrong about that?"
Backing off a little, Ichika tilts her head somewhat in response. "There isn't, but...like I said yesterday, we're at that point in our lives already where time flies fast, and things will unfold quicker than you might imagine. You can sit around and enjoy what you have now, but...if you don't get out there and make something out of what you do have now, you might forever miss your chance."
"Then that should be a burden of responsibility that I and I alone should bear. If for example nothing comes out of this relationship I have with Fuutarou, then I won't be bitter about it if I recognize that I didn't do enough on my part to make something out of it."
"Alright then, fair enough. So long as you get that."
"It kind of sounds like you're saying this kind of stuff from experience too, Ichika."
"Haha, yeah, kind of. I've seen it happen a few times here and there, so...I just don't want my own sisters to go through that sort of thing and have that on their minds for the next couple years as their big regret or something."
"That's the oldest for you, always looking after us younger ones."
Ichika giggles a little. "And Itsuki earlier this morning was telling me how I'm only older by a few seconds or something."
"Older is older."
"Try telling that to Itsuki, though."
The eldest quint glances over in the direction of the patio. Part of the reason why they have been waiting behind the patio at a safe distance is not only so that the two girls can hang out nearby while waiting but also to keep an eye on the live show that is being held at the beachfront patio, which has finished at the top of the hour but still has people lingering afterwards in and around the patio area.
"People still aren't clearing out...what's got everyone just hanging around there...?" Ichika mutters to herself in annoyance, checking the time on her phone again, which reads fifteen to the half.
"Just give them some time, there's still fifteen minutes left. If they don't clear out by then, you can just text Fuutarou to meet me somewhere else. It doesn't have to be that patio."
"But it's the most romantic spot we have here! Minus scaling a mountain somewhere behind us or taking a boat out to sea."
"Let's just keep waiting, it's only fifteen minutes..." Miku takes a sigh of her own and takes a seat at a nearby wooden bench. "I'm just more worried about how I'm going to have to explain myself to Fuutarou about why I've been trying to ask Nino and Itsuki to join us for studies..."
"Just be honest with your feelings, that's all you have to do. It'll be easier than it sounds, at least once you get the ball rolling."
"And like I asked before, what if I'm not sure of my feelings in the first place?"
"Then you'll find them as you go. Just do what comes natural, like they say."
"I don't know...I don't know if it's really going to be that easy..." Miku looks up at Ichika, who's opted to continue standing. "What if Fuutarou tells me that he doesn't want me to help him out with this? And that's the end of that? What else am I going to talk to him about?"
"Wait, you didn't think of what other things you wanted to ask him?"
Miku shakes her head.
"Oh no, talk about unprepared..." Ichika sighs dramatically, making Miku pout again.
"I don't want to be told that by the one who always oversleeps and makes the rest of us find her school stuff for her most mornings," she declares accusingly.
"But I'm always prepared for things that I think are important. We go to school every day, but things like this - meeting up one on one with a boy you might like doesn't happen often now, does it?"
"So you know what it's like meeting with a boy you like, then? You've never told us about having a boyfriend."
"W-Well, I mean, I've never actually had one myself, to be fair, but I've been in other situations before where it's normally pretty nerve-wracking." Ichika nonchalantly takes a glance over to the patio to help deflect some of the attention away from her, but in doing so, she notices that the patio is now suddenly mostly empty, the party-goers from before having departed rapidly with the last few now beginning to shuffle out of the patio and vacate it.
"Finally, they're all clearing out now. Miku, it's your chance to get up there," she announces, walking swiftly over to Miku and standing her up on her feet. "Remember everything that I've told you, but most importantly, have confidence in yourself and act naturally like you would around him whenever he's over at our place tutoring us."
Nodding without a word, Miku takes a few deep breaths, composing herself, and once she's done this, she looks back to find her eldest sister smiling back at her reassuringly.
"Now go get 'im, tiger," she encourages firmly, stepping aside so that Miku can make her way to the patio, and Ichika watches Miku slip out of sight to do so.
Trying her best to stay composed and keep everything that Ichika's told her organized in her mind, the third quint looks around, checking to see if anyone else is in the vicinity of the patio or its surroundings. Strangely, all of the party-goers who were just here have disappeared, having already retreated into the resort or dispersed throughout the beach. The situation feels stranger and stranger as she approaches her destination - the ocean breeze has ceased all of a sudden, even though it has no right to on this beach, there is a general unnatural absence of sound, with only her own footsteps being the immediately recognizable sources, and the air itself seems to be growing colder and colder, which normally would be a welcome temperature change in the hot Hawaiian beaches, but not when Miku feels as though she is becoming cold from the inside out.
Then, she hears a twang of an electric guitar. Due to the artificially induced near-total lack of sound, the guitar twang comes off as much louder than it probably is, and it's certainly loud enough to make Miku jump a little upon hearing it, so unexpected does it occur. The party that was going on here on the beachfront patio did have a live band that was playing earlier, so maybe there's someone still left behind, perhaps packing up their instruments still? Miku doesn't really know how bands work, after all...
Carefully stepping as quietly and stealthily as possible, which is a forte of Miku's from the years of staying up late at night playing games and watching shows and anime on her computer and having to traverse the house late at night, the third quint inches her way into the patio, climbing the short stairs leading up to the same drink bar where Nino got her sisters the round of ginger peach sodas yesterday. Next to the bar behind the drink bar is an open area that has been repurposed into a makeshift stage, presumably for the live band that was playing earlier.
And there sits Uesugi Fuutarou on a seat holding a simple, solid black electric guitar next to its amplifier.
Without really knowing why, Miku ducks instantly out of sight as soon as her eyes fall on him, taking cover behind the drink bar and its deactivated soda machine. Perhaps her nerves are just getting to her and is causing her to act much more self-consciously than usual - so Miku takes a minute to recompose herself and peeks out slowly again like a gopher peeking out of its tunnel to see if the coast is clear.
Fuutarou is much differently dressed than when she and her sisters have last seen him. Rather than his usual white dress shirt and dress pants, Uesugi is now sporting a Riviera Hawaiian shirt, complete with a pair of aviator sunglasses, and a pair of white Chino shorts. For someone she's literally only seen once wearing something other than his usual school uniform or clothes like it outside of one other instance, Miku already finds Fuutarou's new look quite refreshing...though she wonders a bit how he even got those clothes in the first place, or perhaps more relevantly, who got him to wear clothes like that.
She doesn't get a lot of time to dwell on these questions though, because Miku sees Fuutarou grunt a little as he stretches out his hands and fingers after checking the guitar he's holding and the amplifier that he's sitting next to. Clearly it doesn't seem like he's packing up the instrument in his hands, so maybe he'll play a little bit more? Miku didn't know Fuutarou could play guitar; perhaps he was the guitarist for that live band that was playing earlier?
The quint, not considering whether or not she's adequately hidden from Fuutarou's view, continues to watch from behind the drink bar as her tutor picks up the guitar on his lap to hold it properly and begins to play.
Perhaps fitting for the early evening setting of the beach, Fuutarou plays a slow, calming, and pensive melody. The notes he plays are crisp, clear, and permeating - they fill the cold, empty air with their presence, as if the sounds they produce are enough to warm the air with their vibrations. They certainly make Miku begin to feel warmer on the inside for whatever reason just listening to them.
Fuutarou carefully watches his fingers as they play the guitar, as if ensuring that he will not allow a single mistake to sully this quiet, calming melody that he wishes to play. E, G, B, A, G, F, B, D, E...the notes are simple, but the sounds they produce are deep, rich, and strong, so much so that even the guitar strings themselves begin to softly emit long lines of blue light. The entire melody itself is also quite short, lasting around only a minute and ten seconds before Fuutarou loops back to play it all over again, but within two repetitions of this melody, Fuutarou gets the hang of it and is able to play without having to keep his eyes peeled on his hands and fingers, instead closing his eyes entirely so that he himself can enjoy the music he makes.
The more she listens to this music, the more Miku finds herself wanting to hear more. Even if all Uesugi is doing is repeating the same pensive melody over and over, Miku finds herself unable to move, so unwilling is she to interrupt Fuutarou now of all times. She wouldn't have wanted to interrupt him anyway even if the music he was playing was bad, since he clearly appears to be enjoying himself playing this guitar, and this may perhaps be one of the only times when he can do something that he appears to genuinely enjoy.
Miku herself feels her uncertainty and nervousness that she was being wracked with coming into the patio steadily bleed out of her system. Her breathing and heartrate that were growing a bit erratic in anticipation of her meeting with Fuutarou tonight have calmed and normalized, the nervous micro-shakes in her hands and the jitters and butterflies in her stomach have disappeared, and the internal coldness has defrosted and warmed up, and Miku overall finds herself standing behind the drink bar, gazing ahead at the lazily rolling waves and the beautifully colored canvas of Waikiki Beach's sky, feeling...
...at peace.
The bad memories that she's kept in the dark corners of her mind...the blood...the distant screams...the muskiness of the air...the nervous, chilling sweatiness...the middle-of-the-night awakenings and trauma...all the things that have robbed her of whatever peace that she could manage to find on her own for the past six years...they all feel as though they are simply...melting away.
And so Miku continues to stand behind the drink bar, also enjoying the single, lone melody that Fuutarou plays over and over like it's the only thing he knows how to play, which Miku doesn't mind. With a small smile of content and the ocean breeze beginning to roll back into the patio gently brushing against her clothes and face, the third quintuplet, having closed her eyes to fully absorb the melancholic but soothingly therapeutic strings, opens them again...
...and her blue eyes are subtly but vibrantly beaming at their irises.
As if her very sense of time were blurred, Miku snaps to attention and blinks a few times as if in confusion when the music suddenly stops. Turning to see why the music has stopped, the shy quintuplet spies him setting the guitar he's been playing down on the ground next to him, leaning it against the wall behind the amp.
As much as she wishes to listen to more, Miku takes one more deep breath. The music just now, whatever it was, has left her with a renewed conviction that not even her usual timid nature can halt, and so armed with it, she steps out from behind the drink bar to approach Fuutarou fearlessly, confidently.
Fuutarou notices her long before she even physically reaches him but waits for her to approach him instead, staying where he's seated and giving her a quick smile of salutations when she nears him.
"Hey, how's it going?" he opens up the conversation first like this, pulling up a second chair that's next to him to offer to Miku.
"Good evening, Fuutarou," Miku answers politely as she gracefully accepts Fuutarou's token of goodwill and takes a seat next to him. "I didn't know you were a musician."
"Oh, you saw me playing the guitar just now?"
"Mhm. It was...really good, I got really immersed just listening to it."
"Did you, now...I'm not really that good. Just something I picked up on the side..."
"For something you just 'picked up on the side', it sure sounded like a lot more than that."
"No, really, I'm not lying about that. It really was something I picked up on the side."
Miku pouts suddenly for reasons Fuutarou doesn't quite grasp yet.
"So you're trying to tell me that you're so talented that even for something that you 'picked up on the side', you're like a professional at it?" she mumbles, sounding incredibly discouraged. "Sure must be nice being that talented...a dummy like me wouldn't know about that..."
"...listen, I wasn't trying to flex my talents or anything to anyone, how the hell did you end up with that conclusion?" Fuutarou groans lightly. "Sometimes, I swear, you girls are a handful to deal with..."
"And now you sound like Ichika."
"Oh for fuck's sake..."
Just as suddenly she started pouting, Miku begins to giggle at Fuutarou's constant reactions of dismay.
"I'm just kidding. But if you don't mind...I would like to hear a little bit more about how you got started learning guitar and your history with playing it."
"Why, what brought this on?"
"Well...this is the first time I've seen you playing an instrument. I'm...not trying to say that you don't strike me as a musically-inclined type, but...I don't think it's unreasonable for me to say that I didn't expect to see you here playing a guitar."
"Hmm...guess not." Breathing in deeply to collect his thoughts, Fuutarou averts his own gaze. "It's...not really much of a story, and it's not like I've really done anything with it."
"You don't need to downplay anything that you did. I know I complained just now about you trying to flex your talents or whatever, but...I really would like to know. Don't worry about coming off as if you're bragging."
"I'll try not to sound like that anyways. I just picked up playing the guitar a while back as part of one of my contracts a long time ago...I needed to act undercover, so to speak, at the time, and playing the guitar was something I felt was appropriate at the time. I ended up liking it, so even though I can't really own my own guitar at home, I do try to play whenever I get the chance."
"Oh...so you weren't like the guitarist for the live band that was playing here earlier?"
"No, no, I'm not that good to be part of an actual band, God no. I guess whoever was their guitarist forgot their guitar here? They were having a party here after all. So when I got here, I saw it and felt like playing it a little."
Fuutarou glances back at the guitar that he's set against the short wall behind the amp.
"Things like playing music requires that you put in a lot of time, effort, and practice in getting to the level where you can start playing in bands, in front of people for their entertainment and enjoyment," Fuutarou says. "Comparing me to the guitarist of an actual band is...I don't know, personally I think that's a bit insulting to them. Maybe I'm just overthinking it, but for me to be compared to an actual guitarist, someone who's undoubtedly spent hours, days, weeks, months, maybe even years playing the guitar...I feel like I'm invalidating all their efforts that they've dedicated to mastering their skills."
"...but even still, can't you say that you at least have the talent for it? Because I think you do."
"If it's a question of talent, then the matter becomes subjective, in which case, if you feel like I have the talent to be a guitarist, that's fine...I appreciate those words. I guess my only true gripe with that is that I don't really see myself as 'talented'..."
Producing a small blue rune with his palm, Fuutarou pulls out the sugar tea that Nino bought for him earlier in the afternoon. The cup feels exactly the same as it had when Fuutarou first put it into his magical storage, so it's as if he just bought it five minutes ago.
"The main reason for that is because back when I was younger, I was a dumb kid who couldn't do anything right. I didn't really have a talent for anything," the young tutor confides with Miku, looking down at the wooden floor beneath his feet and taking a sip from his sugar tea, whose taste he finds...unique. "So for me to hear that I'm 'talented' makes me laugh a bit at myself, since I'm still in the mindset that I'm not, and that I always make mistakes and fuck up."
"But that was then...this is now. You obviously don't make as many mistakes as you did before, I'm sure."
"I guess not, no. You could say I'm kind of stuck in the past, mentality-wise."
Hearing this, Miku also breaks off her gaze, opting to put her eyes down at her own lap.
"...you're not the only one who feels that way, Fuutarou," she speaks quietly. Her voice isn't projecting her usual softness like normal, merely conveying her inner sense of empathy. "Out of...the five of us, I'm the one...who'll probably fail the hardest."
Fuutarou slowly looks up, taking another sip from his sugar tea. The more he drinks, the more he's able to adjust to its flavor...and gradually, he thinks he's enjoying it more and more. Only time will tell for sure, though.
"But you're the one who got the highest score on that evaluation test I gave you five?" Fuutarou brings up. "Not to mention, you're the one who follows my lessons the best out of you three who do bother to attend."
"It wasn't always like that, though."
Miku clasps her hands together on her lap.
"Back at our old school, I was actually the one who got the lowest test scores," she reveals.
"You? But when I looked through all your old tests, you were consistently the top scorer among your sisters. Again, it doesn't mean much since most of those grades you got were still failing, but..."
"I know. And it certainly seems that way, right? That's only because...one of my homeroom teachers really liked me. He knew that I wasn't a very good student and that I got failing grades a lot, if not all the time, so he went out of his way for me to inflate my grades. Not by much, of course, since he knew that it would be a bit too obvious if I were suddenly getting perfect scores out of nowhere, but thanks to him, he made it possible for me to go through middle school without having to worry about outright failing."
Fuutarou listens to Miku's anecdote with a quiet but intensifying sense of self-disappointment. He had checked through their test scores, but he didn't think to check each of the questions individually...perhaps he'd put too much faith in their teachers when he should have known they probably weren't the best anyway.
"That was back when I was starting to become who I am now," Miku continues, "a shut-in girl who doesn't care about her appearances for the most part, wears headphones, plays video games, and ignores school. I had more fun being an otaku than being at school, and so during middle school I didn't put any effort into my grades. It was only when my classmates eventually noticed that one homeroom teacher I had who liked me was giving enough clues about the fact that he liked me that I started seriously studying again, because they began making fun of me and whatnot, calling me the teacher's pet and stuff like that. But by that point, it was too late, since I couldn't study properly with all the games I wanted to play and anime and shows I wanted to watch. I did manage to get my grades back up to not failing eventually so that I wouldn't need to have my own grades purposely inflated, but...that obviously doesn't mean much when I'm still treading the line between failing and not failing even now."
"I see. But that doesn't explain why you feel like you'll fail the hardest."
"Everyone else has the potential to do better than me, it's just that they aren't tapping into their potentials yet, I don't think. Let's see...I know for a fact that Ichika is smarter than she seems, she just sleeps a ton and concentrates more on her part-time job, whatever it is, than on school. Nino's kind of like me before, she just doesn't really care to study since she'd rather hang out with friends and be the school socialite that she's always been, but she's actually smarter than she lets off, just like Ichika. Yotsuba...er, let's get back to her, Itsuki just studies harder and more than me, so eventually she will actually beat me in grades, I'm sure of it."
"Yotsuba's the only one you're not too sure about, huh?"
"Er...yeah. But a long time ago, she used to be super studious too. She just...transitioned to focusing on athletics and sports clubs early on in middle school. I guess they caught her interest and she ended up wanting to involve herself more in those than studying. But I'm sure if she focuses back on studying, which she's already doing with us, she can beat me, too."
Pulling up her legs so that the soles of her shoes can rest against the edge of her wooden chair, Miku once more sits with her lower face against the fronts of her knees.
"I feel like I've already hit my potential. So while for now it seems like I'm the best among my sisters, that won't last forever," she concludes somberly. "Eventually, my sisters will all get better test results and grades than me because they'll hit their own potentials later at the times when they need it the most. I'm already at my potential and I still can't guarantee myself that I'll graduate - so now here I am, thinking that high school will be just like middle school all over again, but this time with no teacher to bail me out."
Fuutarou suddenly snorts, following it up with a few chuckles.
"...what's so funny?" Frowning at her tutor's amusement, Miku is about to pout when he replies with,
"So...am I a joke to you, then?" Uesugi points at himself.
"B-But you're just our tutor!" Miku stammers quickly, just as quickly as her cheeks fill with embarrassed warmth. "It's not like you can just...forge test scores for me..."
"I mean, technically..."
"And you don't need to go that far! I would rather you not..." Miku turns away for another moment. "...I've had enough of knowing that I have grades I don't deserve."
"As you should. There's only so much you can do with abilities and skills that you don't truly own..."
The two of them let a silence ensue to help pace their conversation a bit, which Fuutarou uses to take another drink from his sugar tea.
"Then answer me honestly, Miku," he starts, "do you think you can graduate high school?"
"Graduate...high school..." the third quintuplet mumbles to herself - now that Fuutarou is beginning to ask her the real questions, her nerves are slowly but surely returning with a vengeance, like spicy wings whose burn is not immediately felt but ramps up more and more over time. "I...well..."
Miku intentionally stalls, hoping that Fuutarou will take over the conversation for her as she struggles to come up with an answer, but he does not give her that luxury, instead waiting patiently for her to give him a definitive answer as he'd asked with his sugar tea in hand. Recognizing that he will probably wait for as long as he needs to for an answer from her, Miku takes a deep breath.
"...I don't...know."
Fuutarou lowers his plastic cup in response.
"And that's the worst answer you could've given me."
Never before has Miku heard such daggers - and never before has she felt her heart clench so tightly. Her neck weakens, causing her head to hang noticeably, and her own peachy-red hair drapes down like curtains blown shut by the wind to hide the side of her face from Fuutarou's view, even if he isn't looking at her at the moment.
"...why?" is all she can muster to ask. "Is it so wrong to be...unsure...?"
"Well, of course, it's your graduation we're talking about here."
"I know, but...graduation is still three years away. And our first year barely started...is it that important that I know the answer to something like that now?"
"To me, it is."
Fuutarou sets down his half-consumed cup of sugar tea on the ground next to one of his chair's legs.
"My job is to tutor you and your sisters, all five of you, and make sure you graduate without problems - I can only imagine the number of times I've said that over the past three weeks - but what I haven't said nearly as much is the fact that I can only do so much work on my own. I can sit here and teach you all the material you need to know for school to get good grades, but if you learn that material uncertain about how your high school fate's going to turn out, you might as well not even learn it at all; I might as well not even bother teaching you."
Those last three words again send shivers down Miku's back.
"To illustrate my point better...I've told you that I work at your dad's hospital, and that I'm a medic mage. I've treated my fair share of patients over the years, as inexperienced as I am since I'm still pretty young. But it's a pretty similar concept: patients come to the hospital to be treated, because they're sick and want to get better, and they come to the hospital knowing they have a problem with their bodies that they can't fix on their own. We diagnose their problems and treat them, and they, for the most part, receive our treatment willingly and cooperate with us so that we can do the best job we can in fixing whatever problems they have.
"But that's not always the case...I've had to travel out to treat patients, or I've been in situations where people were hurt and I've tried administering first aid to them. But I've had a few people who've rejected my help, people who were in obvious need of help but didn't want it. They would turn me away - sometimes I had the chance to ask them why, sometimes I didn't. But as nice as it was knowing those people's rationale behind why they didn't want to be treated, that didn't change the fact that they didn't want to be helped. And when it gets to that point, the situation becomes dangerous: either I help them anyway and suffer the consequences, whatever they may be, or I do as they ask and leave them be. After being through both types of situations, I've come to the conclusion that just doing as they say is the better option because at the very least, that means I can't be held liable."
Fuutarou now glances over at Miku.
"While clearly that's a very extreme example I told you about, the principle is at least similar, I think. I haven't been teaching Nino or Itsuki thus far because neither of them want to show up to my lessons. I could force them to take my lessons, but that wouldn't accomplish anything - they wouldn't learn anything since they don't want to, at least not from me, and they would hate me even more than they already do."
"Then what about someone like me...? Someone like me who...isn't sure about what she can do?"
"You fall under the same category of 'I can't teach you', but for a different reason. You may willingly let me tutor you, and you may learn the material just fine from me, but if you don't have confidence in yourself or you're uncertain about your abilities and what you've learned, come test time or any situation where you're put under pressure and you'll crack. You'll start doubting yourself, you'll start second-guessing yourself - it's a snowball effect, because once people who are like that first let those kinds of thoughts get in their heads, they can't stop them. And when you start second-guessing yourself in one thing, it spreads like a virus and infects your confidence in a lot of other areas. And soon enough, you let yourself be paralyzed by all this doubt you've let be planted in your head, and so you end up not being able to do anything; you can't progress anywhere, because you both physically and mentally crippled yourself from doing so. Basically, you set yourself up for failure, failure that you'll inevitably have a difficult time recovering from."
"But even if I did have confidence in myself...what if I still fail? Itsuki and I...we both studied a lot on our own, even before we met you. Even then, despite how much we did study, neither of us saw much of an improvement...and sometimes, us studying made our grades even worse. So now that we know something like that can happen...what's the point of trying to be confident?"
"Because the difference between being confident and not is your ability to rebound."
Reaching back and picking up the solid black guitar, Fuutarou stands it up on his left thigh.
"Mistakes will happen. Failures will happen. We'll try one thing and it won't work out; we'll try another thing and that might not work out either. Just because you put in a lot of effort into doing something doesn't always mean you'll be rewarded for it...sometimes because we didn't do it a certain way or the 'correct' way, or sometimes because of things outside of our control that we can't do anything about. There is no guarantee for success...but getting back up and trying again, either because you're confident that you can get it right the next time, or because you don't want to give up on something, is what's important. Of course, it's also important to recognize when you need to stop because by that point it's most likely just going to end up being a waste of your time and effort - but I don't think school is something you should just give up on.
"But back to what I was saying earlier, the reason why I think being unsure is the worst thing you can be is because I have to continue tutoring you with the threat that you'll lose your motivation halfway through it, burn out, and stop wanting to come to lessons if you run into an obstacle along the way that makes you rethink why it is that you're studying and taking tutoring lessons. And if that happens, that means I've effectively wasted both your time and my time, time that I'm sure the two of us would've loved to use in our own respective preferred ways. It's to the point where I would much rather deal with people who flat-out tell me that they don't want to have anything to do with me than people who aren't sure of what they want and so end up burning my time and effort making me try to figure out what it is that they want, only for them to tell me that they didn't need my help after all."
For a whole five minutes, the tutor and student sit in silence on the beachfront patio stage. Again, Miku knows that she must re-initiate the conversation herself if she wants it to go anywhere from this point.
"Then...I'll go ahead and say it, for the sake of...not wasting your time," Miku raises her head slightly, but her hair still obscures her face from her tutor. "Since I'm like this...and I don't know if I have what it takes to change myself...you should give up on tutoring me, Fuutarou."
"I can't do that, either."
At this, Miku finally hits her breaking point. She swiftly stands up and turns to Fuutarou, confronting him with the first look of genuine anger that he's ever seen her wear. No pouts, no clenched fists - just Miku and her blue eyes whose irises appear to smolder softly like embers underneath an extinguished campfire.
"Then what are you trying to tell me right now, Fuutarou? First you tell me that you don't like people like me who aren't sure about themselves and aren't confident in themselves, then I tell you to stop tutoring me because of that and you then tell me no. I understand that I might be the kind of girl you don't like, but it sounds to me like you don't really know what you want out of me either!"
"No, I do," Fuutarou replies curtly. "Let me explain why. May I ask that you give me that chance, at least?"
Miku says nothing, which Uesugi takes as his cue to continue. He slips his hand back into the light blue magic rune that appears once again for him and pulls out a neatly folded piece of paper, which he opens up to show Miku. It's a chart that he's made recording the details of the quintuplets' evaluation test results from the first week, with X's and O's indicating which questions each of the quintuplets got wrong or right.
"Do you notice anything about this?" he asks her, holding the piece of paper up for Miku to see comfortably. After a few moments of scanning, Miku nods slowly.
"We...all got different questions right. Or, rather, probably more accurately, none of our correct answers were on the same question..."
Lowering the paper at Miku's correct answer, Fuutarou keeps his icy gaze locked back at up the middle quintuplet.
"Remember what you told me before as we were talking?" he reminds her. "You told me as your explanation why you feel like the biggest washout among your sisters that all of your sisters have yet to hit their potential when it comes to their grades, that they can do as well as you can if they all put in the effort. What should keep you from thinking that your potential can't match theirs?"
The anger that was emitting from Miku's hot blue eyes dries up almost as soon as it'd started.
"The five of you are quintuplets. Not just any quintuplets - true monozygotic quintuplets. I even double-checked with your dad on that, not that I had to," Fuutarou smirks a little, recognizing the ridiculousness of his own actions when he's been plainly able to see how identical the quintuplets are physically just from interacting with them. "While obviously I didn't bother researching all five of your exact genetic makeups, for the sake of simplicity, I think it's reasonable to say that for all intents and purposes, the five of you - Ichika, Nino, Miku, Yotsuba, and Itsuki - are the exact same person in terms of what you're capable of. You all have the same physical parameters and the same mental abilities. If you all had been born as separate siblings and not as quints, I probably can't make this same argument, but that's not the case."
Fuutarou slips the mock test results back into his storage rune.
"Whatever you can do, the other four can do. Likewise, whatever the other four can do, you can do," he concludes. "So my conclusion is, if one of you can do something, in this case study to the point where she can graduate safely, everyone else can do it too; there's no reason why the rest wouldn't."
This time, Fuutarou slowly gets up from his seat, holding the guitar so that it doesn't slip off his thigh where he's been standing it on. Reconnecting his gaze back with Miku's, Uesugi peers so deeply back into Miku's eyes that the quintuplet forgets to breathe for a second.
"And I never said that it's impossible for someone who isn't confident in themselves to learn how to be confident in themselves, either. Normally I would be hesitant to be confident in someone else for their sake, especially for someone like you whom I've only known for three or four weeks. But even now, there's a sliver of hope that I see with the mock test results that you've given me, and a sliver of hope's all I need to work with to get all five of you to graduation. A chance, no matter how small, is always better than no chance."
Miku blinks up at her tutor.
"...you'd go so far just because of something like that? Something that's just...a faint little sign of hope?" she asks before she can stop herself.
At this, Fuutarou smiles faintly.
"Better that I have a tiny bit of hope to work with than none at all," he sighs quietly, breaking eye contact. "You'd be surprised what people would do when they have nothing else..."
But the faint smile is gone as quickly as it'd appeared.
"But for the sake of this conversation, it's become clear to me that you might have what it takes to get good grades, but you just lack the confidence to know that you can do it. While I can't instill that in you for you just because I'm giving you this kind of a speech, at least know that not only do I believe that you have what it takes, but I'll do my job as your tutor with that exact same attitude. But like I said earlier, for this to work out, you also have to put in the effort. Do I have your trust that you'll continue to cooperate with me on this, after all we've talked about tonight?"
Miku doesn't answer immediately, digesting everything that Fuutarou has said to her up to this point. Once she's done this, she smiles a little, with wry amusement in spite of it all.
"...are you sure you're not saying that just because you have a little too much faith in our whole quintuplets thing?" she asks with a faint smile of her own.
"You asked me why I'd go so far just off a single ray of hope; with that kind of context, having faith in your quintuplets gimmick, or the excess thereof, doesn't seem that unreasonable, I don't think."
Fuutarou gives the side of his hair another scratch.
"You don't need to give me an answer now. It's not something I can expect you to come up with on the spot just because I asked, either."
Miku nods in relief. "Okay. And...um, Fuutarou, if it's alright with you, I want to tell you something..."
"Sure. What's up?"
Fidgeting a little as her nerves return, but thankfully not as badly as before, Miku prepares herself for the topic she'd meant to talk to him about before all this.
"I don't know if you've noticed by this point...but for the last few weeks, I've been, um...talking to Nino and...and Itsuki. About...you know...studying with us."
"Really? Thanks for the help...even though that's something I would like to do on my own."
Miku nods, having expected this type of response from him - but then, in light of the conversation they've been having up until now, an urgent question pops into her mind.
"Fuutarou, didn't you tell me how you didn't want to teach us if we were unwilling to cooperate? Then...why were you telling us that you wanted to be the one to convince those two to come join us?" she asks, confused.
"Because I made an exception for them," Fuutarou sighs quickly. "That's how I normally work with people to keep things simple - work with the people who want my help, and don't even bother with people who don't. But given that you're the daughters of a guy with whom I work closely in a hospital that he's the head physician of, and in the hopes that maybe I could somehow get them to show up to lessons, I told you girls to leave that responsibility to me."
"But now...?"
"Now, I've since gone back to sticking with what I usually do. You've noticed how the past week I didn't even say anything to Nino and Itsuki even when I had the chance to ask them to come join us?" Fuutarou shakes his head. "I've given up on that now. The next realistic chance that I have to get them to come to tutor is at midterms. That, and..."
Running a hand up through his short black hair, Fuutarou frowns deeply thinking about his run-in with Itsuki.
"Has Itsuki told the rest of you about this morning?" he asks Miku, almost sheepishly, which again catches her off guard.
"Er, no...? I think I remember Ichika talking with Itsuki earlier this morning before we met up with Nino at the shopping mall..."
"Maybe they were talking about it, then..."
"Why, what did the two of you do?"
"Itsuki wanted to talk to me, so I met up with her earlier today. Like, we're talking midnight or one in the morning."
"Oh..." Miku shies away from Fuutarou a little. "You're not, uh...getting involved with her or anything like that, right...?"
"Your dad would actually kill me if he found out, no bullshit. No, but for real, she wanted to talk to me, so we met in the middle of the night while the rest of you were asleep so she could talk to me privately about it."
"Would she appreciate you talking about it like this to me, though?"
"I mean, it's one of those open secrets, because she told me that she wanted to come join us for the tutoring."
Miku's eyes open wide.
"Then, that means - !" Growing excited, she begins to beam, but Fuutarou shakes his head.
"I rejected her on the grounds that I didn't want her to accept me as her tutor if her basis for it was because of what I did last night during your dinner with your dad," he explains calmly. "I would much rather that she join us because her primary motivator is her willingness to learn from me and get her grades up, not because of some silly argument I had with your dad; I feel like that would just be a cheap way to earn your girls' respect enough to be able to tutor you. Naturally she didn't take that well, so I'm back to square one with her."
As her tutor is explaining himself, Miku pouts harder and harder.
"I'd be angry with you, too, Fuutarou. After all the talking that I did to Itsuki and Nino," she, too, complains.
"Hey, I do feel bad about that. I didn't know that you were going around talking to those two whenever you could and whenever I wasn't around, and I didn't mean to make your efforts go to waste, even if I did say I didn't really want you to go around doing something like that. Sorry."
Hearing Fuutarou apologize, Miku lets go of her pout.
"It's okay. You said it yourself, didn't you? That sometimes even if you put effort towards something, it doesn't work out. It's just one of those times, that's all."
"Yeah...you're surprisingly adaptable, though."
"I've been told that before. But still..." Miku tilts her head slightly, looking back up at Fuutarou. "But you said that you shouldn't give up, right...? Talking to Itsuki, that is."
"But I also said that it's still important to know when to fold. When it comes to those two, nothing I'll say's going to convince them to show up to lessons, so in a sense, you trying to talk to them to get them to come has actually been helpful, though to what extent we'll never know. If nothing else, Nino and Itsuki have both been somewhat nicer to me recently, and I don't think it's a coincidence - and Itsuki was even at that point where she would have liked me to be her tutor, if I didn't go and ruin it for myself. So even if I told you that you didn't need to go off and do something like that, thank you, Miku, for giving me a hand anyway."
Not expecting to have Fuutarou give her a word of thanks, Miku quickly turns, trying feebly to hide her warm blush from her tutor.
"N-No...I didn't...do much..." she manages to utter behind her hands on her cheeks, and once she's managed to get over this initial wave of shyness, Miku adds, "...you don't need to thank me for...for that. I was...just trying to help, because...you've been putting in so much effort on your end. I felt like that was...that was the least I could do."
"Likewise, I don't think I've been doing all that much for you girls yet."
"Eh? But, but..." Miku is able to push past the barrier of her shyness because her confusion at Fuutarou's statement, again, gives her the courage she needs to inquire further. "You've been coming over every weekday for the past couple of weeks, spending at least two hours with us, teaching us all the material we have right now at school...and you don't think that's a lot? And...and that must be on top of everything else you must have going on..."
"Not really, everything I've been doing's just regurgitating everything we've been hearing at school. Like I said before, it's so early into the school year that for now; all I can do is reteach the lessons in a way that maybe you girls will find enjoyable or at least interesting. The tough part's yet to come."
"Which is?"
"Exam time. Once you all need to start taking exams, we'll see if my lessons actually did anything. And if they didn't, we go over the material that you've had trouble with, and I'll have to rethink how I'm tutoring you all."
Miku sighs along with him. "Still a lot of work to do, huh..."
"For everyone involved, yep. There's no getting around that, unfortunately."
But the normally timid quintuplet smiles again, this time more brightly and, taking Fuutarou's advice to heart, with more confidence brimming from it than ever before.
"Whatever the case," she says, taking a step away from him on the wooden patio floor and then turning to him, leaning slightly forward and looking at Fuutarou at an angle with her newfound smile, "please take responsibility for getting my hopes up. And, of course, do the same for all my sisters, too. On their behalf, even if they won't study with us now, please guide us to graduation, Fuutarou-sensei."
Fuutarou nods, grinning confidently himself. "You got it. Thanks for believing in me."
Resuming his seat, Fuutarou lifts up his guitar to hold it properly again.
"Since I probably won't have another chance to play some guitar for a while, I'll stay for a bit longer." He glances up at Miku. "You said you liked whatever I was playing, right? Wanna stick around for a bit longer?"
Unable to stop herself from smiling from ear to ear at Fuutarou's request, Miku nods hugely, the biggest nod she herself remembers giving in a long time.
"Yes, please!"
So the two of them sit together on their chairs at the hardwood patio floor, as the pensive but relaxing guitar notes once more hum throughout the beachfront patio. As the notes begin to play, Miku, now at the epicenter, immediately feels what lingering senses of anxiety that remains in her heart disintegrate, leaving nothing but a satisfying feeling of warmth and contentedness.
Does she have feelings for Uesugi Fuutarou, the boy playing the electric guitar next to her, as Ichika has wanted her to discover? She cannot say - but what she does know is that the time she has spent with him and is spending with him is something she will not soon forget.