"And that'll be it for tonight."
Closing the English reference book that he's been using to review to the girls their school English material for the month of May, Uesugi Fuutarou exhales quickly and stashes it away in his messenger bag, then drains the rest of water in the glass that Miku has gotten for him that is devoid of any unknown drugs.
Surveying the glass table, the tired young tutor observes his current three students. Ichika has immediately set her head down on her arms on the edge of the table, clearly mentally exhausted from today's lesson. Miku isn't faring much better, also resting her head and her back against the long couch behind her, and Yotsuba, having groaned a sigh of relief at Fuutarou's end of lesson, has opted to eagle-sprawl on the floor at the side of the glass table where she's been sitting, gazing with a thousand-yard stare up at the very tall ceiling of their penthouse.
Fuutarou isn't exactly setting a good example himself - he's been constantly demonstrating little ticks of behavior to get himself to focus properly in today's lesson, and while he's somehow managed to keep himself focused on his own teaching and make it seem to the girls that he isn't really all that bothered, he gets the sense that the girls have all noticed his ticks today, because both Ichika and Yotsuba have been more cooperative and more focused on their studies than usual when their lessons are usually filled with Ichika's gentle teasing and/or Yotsuba's occasional antics. Miku, too, has been regularly bringing snacks for them to enjoy throughout their lesson, but Fuutarou suspects that she knows that he's more energy-depleted today than usual and is trying to help him out.
But he can handle his own fatigue - it's the girls he's worried about. The fact that they've been having lessons every weekday for about a month and a half by this point, and then throw in the weekend auxiliary lessons and the pressure of midterms coming up next week is finally starting to take their toll on his students. He first started noticing their mental fatigue crop up earlier last week; back when he first started giving them lessons, the girls would still have energy left at the end of the day to talk to him and interact with him, but lately they haven't even had the energy to do that, with the exception of seeing him out and bidding him good night. Miku, naturally, is the one who's hanging in there the best, because both Ichika and Yotsuba have their own agendas to take care of, spontaneous or not, but even Miku is fast reaching the end of her rope.
And then there's Nino and Itsuki to worry about, another whole can of worms that he really doesn't want to have to deal with, yet something that he must solve by this week, a problem to which he has yet to find a solution, despite all his attempts to verbally convince them. Well, that's not quite accurate: he's willing to deal with that problem, but he just doesn't have much faith in his ability to do so, no thanks to his own selfishness that he projected to Itsuki back in Hawaii during Golden Week.
"Good work, you three," he says finally, raising his head at last after going through his mangled thoughts in his head, and his three students all sit up tiredly to give him their attention. "I know I've been hard on you all with all these tutoring sessions for the past month and a half, especially when none of you, maybe except for Miku, ever even studied this much before I showed up."
"You got that right...I feel like I studied a hundred times more than I ever did my whole life in these past six weeks," Ichika chuckles, finally breaking out a small version of the pleasant, amiable smile that Fuutarou has come to know her for.
"The sad part it, that's probably not even an exaggeration," Yotsuba giggles weakly. "I think my brain's been expanding in size too. I can feel myself getting smarter!"
"Too bad that last mock test we took didn't seem to suggest that too," Fuutarou remarks offhandedly, causing Yotsuba to pout back at him in protest, but unlike other days, she doesn't repay her tutor with a comeback of any kind, likely because she's just too pooped out for tonight.
"Fuutarou, what about you? Ever since Sunday, you haven't been looking too great yourself either," Miku points out finally out of concern for her tutor. Finally one of the quintuplets is calling him out on it, and Fuutarou isn't surprised that Miku's the one to do it, given her relationship with him, which he believes is the closest out of the Nakanos not named Maruo.
"Eh, don't worry about me," he says quickly, shaking his both his head and his right hand at his students in swift deflection.
"Don't say that, Fuutarou-kun," Ichika responds in kind, however, which takes the young tutor back somewhat, since Ichika usually isn't one to comment on someone else's well-being like this, as that has traditionally been Miku's role. The eldest quintuplet pulls her head up off her arms and the table to face him properly. "You're worrying about us right now because we've been studying like you've wanted us to for all this time. You can't let us do the same for you?"
Pulling on a difficult expression, Fuutarou feels himself stumped for words, as he can't refute Ichika's logic at the risk of incurring hypocrisy.
"I'm only saying that because you girls probably never studied this much before, so you all must be really tired and it shows," he explains slowly, facing Ichika back. "Whereas I've had pretty rough periods of time where work really kicks my ass. I know how to deal with situations like that...but for you girls, I feel like maybe this kind of a situation is hitting you all pretty hard."
"It is, I don't deny that. I'm sure all of us here can agree that we're so tired we'll probably feel our brains leak out of our ears when we go to sleep tonight," Ichika chuckles somewhat morbidly. "But as our tutor, you wouldn't be setting the best of examples for us being as tired as we are, right? Us being tired is understandable. But if the boy who's supposed to be teaching us is just as tired as we are, how're we supposed to be able to study properly to begin with?"
"You could learn how to study on your own, for starters."
"Oh, but you know we're too dumb for that. That's why Dad hired you, right?"
Fuutarou hangs his head defeatedly. "I appreciate that you're being honest with me, but I've never felt so depressed hearing the truth like that...especially when it's one of my own students saying it..."
Ichika manages to give a hearty laugh, enjoying these reactions she's getting out of her tutor-classmate that she usually doesn't get to see.
"Hey, they called me the Heartbreak Girl back when we were still at Black Rose because I'd turn down all the guys who used to ask me out," she professes.
"But Black Rose is an all-girl's academy."
"Right, but we ran into plenty of guys whenever we'd hang out around the city. Nino used to drag me and the others around a lot whenever she'd hang out with her crowd around the city after school. For some reason, the guys would hit on me a lot..."
Fuutarou eyes her in disbelief. "Yeah, I wonder why..."
"Oh ho ~ ? Fuutarou-kun, maybe...you know the reason ~ ?" The eldest quintuplet leans in a little in Fuutarou's direction, and her right hand seductively traces down her collar to let loose the top button of her white dress shirt. "Maybe...you could teach me that too ~ ?"
Fuutarou's black eyes are fixed on Ichika's blue ones, refusing to budge as Ichika wants them to.
"I'm fifteen, and what is this?" her tutor asks flatly.
"I-Ichika...!" Realizing what her oldest sister is trying to do, Miku scrambles to Fuutarou's rescue and covers up Ichika's now partially-exposed bosom with her own hands.
"Awww...you're too experienced for that, huh? Shucks, I tried, I tried ~ " Giggling at her own failure, Ichika lets Miku button her up again. "Besides, I know you're probably dead tired like us right now, but you're a healthy fifteen-year-old boy, aren't you? You know you wanted to look ~ "
"Your dad's gonna stuff me in the morgue the next time I go see him if he finds out I'm ogling you."
"Aha...yeah, that...does sound like something he'd do, actually..."
"Has Dad ever put anyone into the morgue?" Yotsuba asks curiously.
"No, that was just a joke. Though honestly, I agree with Ichika, it wouldn't surprise me if he actually did at one point - he's a heartless motherfucker sometimes."
Yotsuba sets her elbows on the glass table and rests her chin on her palms, gazing back at her tutor.
"About Dad, actually, if you're a mage, is Dad one too? Or is that something you can't tell us?"
Ichika, Miku, and Fuutarou all stare back at Yotsuba and her innocent question, but only Fuutarou remains looking back at her because Ichika and Miku avert their own eyes from the sudden question regarding Fuutarou's primary line of work.
"I get the feeling that the longer we know each other, the more you're able to swindle these kinds of answers out of me, Yotsuba..." Fuutarou sighs weakly.
"Ehehe, that's because we're friends, right? And friends trust each other!" Yotsuba gives her tutor another one of her vibrant smiles. But this time, her radiant smile that stretches from ear to ear comes off as rejuvenating, a welcome sight for Fuutarou's own perpetually bloodshot eyes tonight. Maybe it's because he can't scrounge up the energy to feel annoyed at Yotsuba's near-constant upbeat nature, or because he really could use a mental pick-me-up of any kind, but whatever the reason, Fuutarou can feel at least a little bit of weight shed itself off his mind.
"I wouldn't exactly call us friends yet, though..." Fuutarou says softly.
"Not yet? Even though you've basically seen us every day for the past six weeks?" Ichika points out. "So how much longer do we have to keep this up for you to consider us friends?"
"You're my students, first and foremost, and I'm your tutor, first and foremost. Besides..."
But Fuutarou stops himself. He was going to say that it's better off for someone like him to not have any friends at all, but he realizes that that may come off as rather edgy and self-serving, so he opts not to say it aloud.
"Besides...what?" Miku asks, interested to know what he was going to say.
"Besides, I have standards for people to become my friends!" Fuutarou announces quickly, deciding to take advantage of this conversation topic. "If you want to become my friend, you have to pass your midterms first!"
Fuutarou expects the quintuplet sisters to all groan at him and protest, or at least point out to him how absurd he sounds to them right now. But when he surveys his students again, for some odd reason, they are all beginning to look slowly but progressively more motivated.
"So all we need to do is pass our midterms...?" Miku murmurs to herself, nodding in the process.
"If that's all we need to do, Fuutarou-kun, you'll regret setting the bar so low," Ichika smiles coyly but dangerously back at her tutor like a movie-perfect femme fatale. "And you can't take that back, either."
"I've heard that one before, back when I made you all take that first mock exam," Fuutarou returns teasingly with a smirk of his own. "Will the five of you be able to score higher than a hundred points collectively this time around?"
"You bet! We'll show you the power of quintuplets!" Yotsuba asserts powerfully, and she even flexes both of her arms at him for emphasis.
"Then I'll be looking forward to it."
Having already worn the shoulder strap of his messenger bag, Fuutarou gets up to his feet, stretching out some of the exhaustion he feels gripping his bones.
"Because you've all been working and studying hard so far, I'll give you girls tomorrow off," the young tutor declares, and the girls all cheer, though Miku doesn't quite share the same enthusiasm as her other sisters.
"But...wait, Fuutarou, does that mean...you won't be coming in tomorrow?" she asks a little meekly.
"Well, if I'm not tutoring you, I have no reason to be here, right?" he shrugs. "Besides, for all the studying you girls've done, I think you all deserve a break here. It's not good to study too much in one go, after all, and I do kind of think I've been pushing you girls a bit too hard lately. And the day after tomorrow on Thursday, it'll just be a shorter lesson than usual, and it'll be just a chill review session for maybe like two hours or so."
"Ah! Wait a minute!" Yotsuba, having reached across the glass table to clasp hands with her eldest sister in celebration of their day off tomorrow, suddenly stops as her own green hair ribbon stands up straight in alertness. "Uesugi-san is being nice to us...he's praising us for studying hard...and he's even giving us a whole day off..."
Releasing Ichika's hands and bolting up to her feet, Yotsuba quickly walks around the glass table, grabs her tutor by the shoulders, and begins shaking him back and forth, crying,
"Who are you, and what have you done with the REAL Uesugi-saaaaan!?" she cries, squeezing her eyes as hard as she can while shaking Fuutarou with equal or near equal force.
"But I'm right here, though?" Fuutarou says while his own head is rocking back and forth.
"But - but - but what if you have...AN EVIL TWIN BROTHER?!" Yotsuba cries.
To play along and taking this opportunity to tease Fuutarou a bit more, Ichika lets out a loud gasp, raising her hands over her mouth.
"Yotsuba's right! The real Fuutarou-kun would never give us a day off! He can't possibly think of something so generous like that!" Ichika even gets up to her own feet to strike a pose that is perhaps far more ridiculous than it needs to be by putting an outstretched hand in front of her face in such a way that only her blue eyes can be seen in between her fingers and pointing directly at her tutor with the other hand. "You've exposed yourself, fake Fuutarou-kun! Now, tell us who you really are!"
In response, Fuutarou pulls Yotsuba's hands off himself and takes a step back. He parts his feet at the perfect distance, puts his left hand down on his belt at his left side, conjures up his pair of aviators from his storage rune to snap onto his face for the sake of the pose, and points just as dramatically back at Ichika.
"Well done seeing through my disguise, Nakano Ichika. I am not, in fact, the Uesugi Fuutarou who has been contracted to tutor and protect you. I am instead his alter ego - M. K. Shinoda!"
Fuutarou acting this way is so blatantly out of character for him that even Nino, who's been sitting at the table watching videos online on her phone this whole time, stops what she's doing and looks up at him, and all four Nakano quintuplets down on the first floor stare at Fuutarou for a full five seconds before -
"PFFFFFFFFFFFF - AHAHAHAHAHAAAA! ! ! !"
Both Ichika and Yotsuba start laughing their heads off, and Miku slowly succumbs to the hilarity as well, inching her hands over her face so that Fuutarou won't have to see her giggling under her breath at how ridiculous he looks. Nino, too, who's heard the entire conversation go down, has to duck her face down and hold her phone up so that Fuutarou doesn't call her out on joining in.
Watching the girls all laugh at him, Fuutarou immediately turns around and assumes another Indian-style sitting position, facing the wall behind him next to the big flatscreen TV in the living room, with the wall literal inches from his face.
"F-Fuutarou, what's - what's wrong - ?" Miku calls out, trying her best to stifle her own increasing laughter as she gets up to go over to her tutor. Upon reaching him, she finds a dark aura of depression emanating from him, and the first thing she hears out of him is a deep, life-contemplating sigh.
"I guess I'm really only cut out to be a tutor, huh...I shouldn't even try to act like anyone I'm not..." Miku hears him muttering to himself. "More homework...longer tutoring sessions...tutoring every day...yeah, that'll show 'em..."
Upon hearing this, Miku feels the urge to turn around to yell at her sisters to recruit them in helping her snap Fuutarou out of his cloud of depression. But upon second thought, tutoring every day...longer tutoring sessions...won't that mean that she'll get to spend more time with him...?
Shaking her head quickly to get such thoughts out of her head, Miku puts her hands on her tutor's shoulders reassuringly.
"Don't worry about it, Fuutarou. Ichika just set you up, you know she likes doing that."
Suddenly Fuutarou whips his neck around to angle his gaze up at her.
"Miku, I know you were laughing at me too, don't lie to me," he accuses her swiftly.
"I-I wasn't!" are the first words that come out of Miku's mouth on impulse.
Just as suddenly, Fuutarou puts back on the aviators that he's taken off and points back up at her. Miku doesn't expect to see his alter-ego again and her own kneejerk reaction returns with a vengeance, and Miku has to turn away so that Fuutarou can't see her burst into even more giggles.
That is the last straw for Fuutarou. He gets back up to his feet without a word and strides over to the glass doors that lead out to the veranda, but Yotsuba, spying his diverted course, cries aloud and leaps after him, grabbing him by the back of his shirt in an attempt to stop him.
"U-Uesugi-san, Uesugi-san! ! ! !" she shrieks, half-alarmed, half still laughing. "That's the - the verandaaaaa! That's not the direction of the front door!"
"It is now," Fuutarou mutters dangerously, inching closer and closer to the glass doors that block his access to the veranda.
"But that's not where the elevator is! ! ! !"
"Gravity is the only elevator I need, Yotsuba. And it's one-way only, how great is that?"
"UESUGI-SAAAAAAAAAAAN! ! ! !"
It takes the collective effort of his three students to dissuade him from using their veranda as his new elevator, but once settled down, he heads for the front door to traverse down the Pentagon properly.
"Like I said, we'll take tomorrow off, and the day after that will just be a review session. Matter of fact, I think today should be our last actual lesson - we're so close to midterms by this point that trying to teach you all anything new will be counterproductive. It'll probably be better for us to just consolidate what you have learned so far," Fuutarou determines as he pulls his shoes back on.
"You better take care of yourself too, Uesugi-san!" Yotsuba reminds him as well, putting her hands on her hips and leaning in towards him. "You said at the beginning that this has to be a collective effort on everyone's part, right? You should be taking this next day off as well!"
Fuutarou merely gives her a dry chuckle, and his dead black eyes pierce her own blue eyes so deeply that Yotsuba, for a split second, can't feel herself breathe. "Well, unfortunately for me, I can't just 'take a day off'..."
The three sisters seeing him off gaze at him somewhat somberly while he quickly pops out his phone to check a new text he's received in the meantime.
"Well, even if we can't ask you to take a whole day off, maybe you can at least take it a bit easier?" Ichika suggests. "We might've been joking around for the past couple of minutes, but if there is one thing we can be serious about, it's that you need a break too. Miku and Yotsuba always go on about how you're always super busy, yet you always show up at our place to teach us. Maybe you've been late a couple times, and, uh...some days you've had to teach Miku by herself, but you haven't missed a single day yet. Lately, just like how we've been getting more burned out, you've been looking more and more stressed too."
"That's right! It just doesn't feel fair for you to tell us to take a break when it's obvious that you're still beating yourself up out there," Yotsuba nods fervently, regaining her confidence now that she's got her oldest sister backing her up.
"That's also true. Then I'll try to take it easier this week. Do try to study a little bit tomorrow, though."
"But you just said that we didn't need to!" Ichika also pouts, completing the pout trio.
"I know, but you girls are the type to forget everything you've learned if you don't review it every day. So just as a bit of insurance policy against something like that happening. I'll see you girls tomorrow at school, then."
Exchanging goodbyes and goodnights, the front door to the Nakano penthouse closes, and Fuutarou's heavy, tired footsteps clomp away on the other side towards the elevator lobby. Miku feels an uncomfortable twinge in her chest when she hears a muffled but still clearly distinguishable and exhausted sigh from the other side of the door.
"Fuutarou-kun...won't be taking it any easier, will he...?" Ichika mumbles sadly to her sisters, who offer no reassurance back, for they all know what will most likely happen.
"He's been sleeping longer and longer in class," Miku notes quietly, her eyes set on her sisters' feet on the floor. "Last month, he'd at least be awake to head to lunch with the rest of the class or when school ends. But lately...he's been sleeping through that, too."
"If it isn't one of us waking him up, he'd probably just sleep through the entire school day," Yotsuba adds pensively. "And he's been looking worse and worse and worse over the past two weeks. It's like after we came back from Hawaii, he just got so much busier all of a sudden. He's so busy that even when we know next to nothing about what he does, even we can tell how much he's probably going through."
"And he's working to help us try to pass our midterms next week..." Miku mentions, and she looks up at her sisters. "...couldn't there be, um, maybe something that we could do for him...?"
"Something we could do for him...but just what on earth can we do? He probably won't even accept it anyway, you saw him when Yotsuba tried giving him that smartwatch. And especially now, now that Fuutarou-kun did accept that from Yotsuba, he'll probably refuse anything else we try to get for him," Ichika points out.
Finding themselves at a roadblock, Ichika, Miku, and Yotsuba stand there emptily at the front door for a few moments.
"And here we were, thinking we were tired..." Yotsuba mutters downheartedly.
"Well, for now, let's try not to dwell on this. Fuutarou-kun wouldn't want us to act like this, you know? I'll think of something we can do for him in the meantime, just leave this to your big sis."
Redirecting her sisters back into the living room, Ichika sets her eyes on her immediate younger sister, who is still sitting at the dinner table, having gone back to watching videos on her phone.
"I know you've been listening in on us, Nino. You can hear what people are saying down here on the first floor pretty well, after all," Ichika smiles in Nino's direction from the short couch.
Looking up from her phone, Nino scowls up at her only older sister. "And so what of it? What do I have to do with anything the rest of you're talking about?"
"Well, I was just thinking...maybe you should join us for lessons for once."
At this, Nino goes right back down to her phone. "No thanks, I'll pass. What makes you think I'll ever let him tutor me when I've already made it cle - "
"You sure about that, Nino? After all that studying you're doing at night when no one's looking?"
Tensing up just as immediately, Nino darts her eyes back up at her older sister, and Ichika's smile widens just barely at this reaction from her younger sister as she thinks to herself, gotcha.
"Y-You're just making stuff up! I'm not studying! Why would I - " Nino begins to hotly contest Ichika's hypothesis, but Ichika pulls out her phone, opens up a voice recording app, sets the volume on max, and selects a recent file to play back, and the quintuplets on the first floor can all hear a digital Nino's voice, clearly spoken behind a wall, reciting,
"...quintessential...of the pure...and essential essence of something...of or relating to...the most perfect embodiment of something..."
Lowering her phone after stopping the playback, Ichika finds the absolutely horrified expression on her sister's face quite enjoyable.
"All of our rooms are right next to each other, and the walls aren't exactly soundproof. We've all dealt with each other making noise and gotten used to each other by this point after all these years," Ichika explains with the kind of satisfaction only obtainable from exposing someone else's dark secrets. "And whenever you study English, Nino, you always practice by speaking it aloud. Honestly, to your credit, that's probably the best way to study English, and it shows since you can speak English the best out of all of us. It's just that in this case, it gave you away ~ "
"But I thought English was already your best subject, why are you studying it more when you could be studying other things?" Miku asks.
"W-Well, it's - it's not like I get super high scores on English! And I know conversational English, it's the vocabulary that I always have a hard time with because they always test us on words that I barely ever get to use!" Nino exclaims quickly in self-defense, her cheeks circulating blood rapidly through them. "And I'm not studying because of Uesugi, don't get me wrong here!"
"Isn't it? But I don't even properly remember the last time you studied," Ichika points out. "It must've been, gosh, all the way back in the beginning of middle school that I heard you actually studying in your room. You're telling me that it's all just a big coincidence that midterms are coming up, and you're starting to study again when normally you wouldn't even know about midterms until the day of?"
Having gotten up out of her seat at the dinner table, Nino gapes at Ichika, as if she's got more stuff to hurl at her in her own defense, but having been caught red-handed, all she can really do is lower her gaze, red in the face and still unwilling to admit her secret studying.
"Nino...you should join us. Really," Yotsuba says calmly. Ichika realizes as Yotsuba takes the lead now that it's probably best for Yotsuba to try to talk Nino into studying with them and Fuutarou, since Yotsuba is speaking with her own serious voice that is entirely pure-hearted and genuine, to the point where not even Nino will go against what she says, despite Ichika herself usually being the default figure of authority among the quints.
"No. I refuse," Nino shakes her head adamantly as she tussles her hair and folds her arms.
"Then at least be with us for midterm studying. Just give it a shot, that's all we ask. Study with us and Uesugi-san for this week until midterms. Please?"
"Hell no! I still haven't gotten over what he did on Sunday, either!"
"Oh yeah, speaking of which, why did you scream like that on Sunday? The second time, not the first time," Ichika wonders aloud, and at this, Nino's face's shade of red deepens even further.
"Uesugi tried to - he tried to - he tried to take his anger out on me because I asked him to pierce my ears!" she finally cries. "So I screamed in self-defense, yeah, that's exactly it! I was just - protecting myself!"
"Protecting yourself from a boy who's supposed to be protecting you already - yeah, something doesn't add up there," Miku rolls her eyes a little.
"Hey, this's happened to me before! You can't blame me for acting that way!"
Arching her neck backwards a little, Ichika, exhausted from all the studying she's been doing and the part-time work that she's been putting in whenever she's got the time, sighs a little because she's definitely not in the mood to sit through Nino's fierce attitude tonight; already Nino's screechy voice is making her head start to pound, and she'd rather not deal with a headache tonight if she can help it.
"Alright, that's enough, that's enough. The three of us kind of need a break tonight, so let's give this a rest. All I'll say is this, Nino," the eldest quint says, speaking with a firm voice to let her sisters know subconsciously that she is taking control of the situation here. "If you're gonna study in secret like that in your room, which isn't really even secret by this point, you might as well come study with us. Like Yotsuba said, at the very least, study with us for midterms next week, and you can go back to doing whatever once they're done. I won't ask you why you've felt compelled to study like that lately, and I don't want you to think that we're pressuring you to let Fuutarou-kun tutor you."
"But like, isn't that basically what you're doing?" Nino argues quickly.
"Maybe it is, I'll admit, if thinking that's what's going to make you feel better about yourself. But that's not what's important, your grades are what's important here, and how you're going to get them. And as your sister, not even as your older sister, just as your sibling who cares about your grades, I'd really appreciate it if you could come study with us."
"That's funny, I don't recall you ever really caring that much about your own grades, and yet you're standing there saying you care about mine?"
"Aha, well...I, uh, guess you got me there. Even still, I can still be concerned about the kinds of grades my sisters get, right?"
Grumpily frowning at her older sister, Nino folds her arms slowly across her chest. "Then why aren't you also telling Itsuki this too? Why's it just gotta be me here? Just because I happened to be downstairs and not Itsuki?"
"Itsuki's been studying all this time, though," Yotsuba points out quickly. "I, uh, I don't know when you started studying on your own in your room, Nino, but we know Itsuki's always been studying, even before Fuutarou got hired to be our tutor."
"Exactly. She's been diligent all on her own this whole time, whereas you only just started studying now that midterms are right around the corner," Ichika agrees, nodding her head. "That, and between you and Itsuki, you'll benefit much more with a tutor like Fuutarou-kun helping you."
"I call bullshit on that. Just because Itsuki studies by herself doesn't mean she magically doesn't need a tutor either! Look how much she's studied and look at the kinds of test scores she gets!" Nino rebuts, raising her voice again, but this time she controls her tone because she's actually trying to make a cohesive argument.
"Well, that's...I won't argue against that, and I understand you're saying that now since we brought Itsuki up, but right now I just want to know if you are willing to study with us," Itsuki continues. "Will you do that for us? For our sakes?"
"Study with you? For your sake? That doesn't make any sense," Nino scowls.
"No, it makes perfect sense. We're quintuplets, after all - remember when we were younger, when we used to do everything all together?" Ichika pulls on her best sisterly smile as a last resort to sway Nino's opinion. "While we've grown out of that habit since then over the years, there are still lots of times when we'll all gather together to do something together again. And no matter what it is, we always enjoy doing stuff together at the end of the day. And I'll bet it'll be the same even for studying. It's just that we haven't all studied together before because we never cared to do something like that. Even if you won't really take advantage of Fuutarou-kun's lessons, just you being there will make Miku and Yotsuba really happy, I'm sure of it."
Yotsuba is also nodding strongly, listening to every word Ichika says with stoic fervor. "It's true, Nino! Being able to study together - even if individually we don't like to study, you at least have to admit that studying together is gonna be a lot different, right?"
Finding herself pressured from two fronts, technically three if Miku also decides to join in on these quintuplet negotiations, Nino falls silent. Now that her secret nighttime studying has been exposed thanks to Ichika's preparation, Nino can't try to hide the fact that even she feels the looming pressure of midterms this following week.
Perhaps more importantly, though, Nino can't deny the added pressure she herself feels from the boy who isn't even here in their house now: Uesugi Fuutarou. Yes, Fuutarou has been bugging her every day lately to get her to come study with her sisters under his tutelage, but he'd only ask her once a day and no more before leaving her alone for the rest of the day to tutor her sisters. And even Nino can tell that Fuutarou by this point has already mentally resigned himself to the fact that she will probably never willingly join his lessons. She has also been able to tell, just like the rest of her sisters, that Fuutarou has been looking increasingly tired as of late; normally she'd just walk right out of the classroom with her sisters at lunch or at the end of school, but repeatedly seeing her male classmate with his head in his arms, silently catching some Z's at his desk straight through the school bells indicating the different times of the day - the sight of him like that has managed to lodge itself in her mind. Throw in all the other shenanigans that she's been through involving Uesugi, and as a result, whether she likes it or not, mainly the latter, Nino cannot deny to herself that her would-be tutor has been on her mind quite a bit lately.
As if just to guilt-trip her harder, Nino's memory also flashes the sight of Raiha's happy, slightly cream-smeared face on the day that she bought that strawberry crepe for her to bail Uesugi out of a potentially sticky situation, no pun intended. And of course, the memories they've made with Raiha during their Golden Week vacation in Honolulu, at Waikiki Beach - and the marked absence of her brother during most of that week.
For as staunchly opposed as she was to letting Uesugi tutor her along with her sisters initially, Nino has gradually felt her starting opposition to him begin to develop cracks, cracks that, like those on a damaged windshield, have been silently growing bigger and bigger over time, especially after they returned from Hawaii, in such a way that now that she looks at herself retrospectively, even Nino finds herself a bit surprised at just how much less opposed she feels to Uesugi compared to a month ago. All that time she's spent downstairs with her sisters, listening to Fuutarou tutor her sisters, seeing how much fun they seem to be having studying with him...she really should've just holed herself up in her own room so that she wouldn't find herself in this position in the first place.
All this angers her out of embarrassment, which would be an understandable reaction, of course, but Nino can't quite bring herself to keep being angry because she feels like she's lost the moral high ground in this argument, and the fact that she's been trying to study secretly on her own is her own undoing, now that Ichika's used it against her here. So now, as Nino stands here at the dinner table, helplessly brandishing her double-sided lightsaber back at three of her Jedi sisters who are all waiting on her final answer, the second quintuplet slowly comes to the inevitable conclusion that she's been driven figuratively into a corner, confronted by her three dutiful sisters who now possess the moral high ground over her and her back against the two walls that are her own grades and the indirect pressure that Fuutarou poses to her.
Having broken into a small sweat and unable to bear the pressure any longer, Nino finally relents and looks back up defiantly at her sisters.
"Fine, fine! I'll let him tutor me, but only for these midterms coming up! Once those are done, I'm going back to normal!" she lashes verbally out. "There, that's what you wanted, right?"
Nino's consent transforms the terse, tired looks on her sisters into faces of joyous relief, and Yotsuba begins to cheer triumphantly while Ichika and Miku both sigh breaths of relief.
"Yaaay! Thank you, Nino!" the fourth quint, naturally the one to still have the energy left to run over to Nino, gives her a big ol' hug, which Nino feebly tries to resist, but she just can't bring herself to turn Yotsuba away when she's so clearly happy.
"Y-You don't need to hug me over something like this...!" she grumbles loudly, unable to reciprocate her younger sister's hug. "And by the way, I'm not done! If I'm gonna let Uesugi tutor me, I've got some demands I wanna make!"
"Well, I mean...I'm not sure if your demands are going to be reasonable at all, but I guess we can at least hear them out," Ichika shrugs.
"First, since I'm joining you guys for now, I want Itsuki to come join us too!" Nino expresses. "You said that we used to do everything together, right, Ichika? Then it wouldn't be right if we left Itsuki out of this!"
"Aha, that's a good point! Let's go convince Itsuki too!" Ichika gives a little golf clap at her younger sister's suggestion. "Itsuki? Itsuki! I know you can hear us! Come out for a second, there's something we wanna talk to you about ~ !"
"Can sound really travel through our rooms that easily...?" Nino mutters to herself in disbelief.
"You're the one who always calls us down for dinner whenever anyone's still in their rooms," Miku points out to her sister, who jolts a little at this, having never had this put into perspective for her like this before.
Sure enough, Ichika's raised voice does indeed summon Itsuki, who emerges from her room looking quite distressed to peer down at the rest of her quintuplet sisters on the lower floor.
"Just what on Earth do you want from me, all of you?" Itsuki demands indignantly, having had to deal with hearing her sisters downstairs arguing for the past half an hour, almost. "Please keep it down, I can hear all of you from here! I will have to borrow Miku's headphones to study if you all cannot - "
"Sorry, sorry, that's our bad, we're done with everything now," Ichika raises a hand up to her own face to convey her apology up to her youngest sister. "But we have something to ask you, Itsuki - would you be willing to study with all of us with Fuutarou-kun for midterms next week?"
As expected, Itsuki also balks at this ridiculous suggestion being pitched at her.
"Has my answer not been clear yet? No, I do not want to - " Itsuki begins to say, but this time Nino is the one to talk back.
"Itsuki, everyone's convinced me to join them for midterm studying," she reveals, much to Itsuki's understandable shock.
"Eeeeehhhhh?! But - but - " Leaning over the railing somewhat with both hands on it, Itsuki stares wide-eyed down at Nino. "But - how did this happen, Nino!? Were you not also opposed to Uesugi-kun tutoring us?!"
"Look, I'm only doing this just for these midterms, and I'm going straight back to how I was before!" Nino yells back. "But my condition for joining everyone in studying was to have you come join us, too!"
"I-I refuse! I absolutely refuse!" Growing terribly red in the face in embarrassment, Itsuki reels where she stands behind the railing. "You have betrayed me, Nino! How could you throw me under the bus like this! Whatever happened to the Anti-Uesugi Fuutarou Coalition?!"
"'Anti-Uesugi Fuutarou Coalition'...? You two were a lot more militant about this than I thought..." Ichika remarks with a light giggle.
"D-Don't look at me, I didn't come up with that, Itsuki did!" Nino hisses fiercely back at her older sister before looking up at Itsuki again. "I don't care, Itsuki! You're gonna join us whether you like it or not, because I sure as hell don't either!"
"I refuse, Nino! You cannot make me come study with - "
"Oh yeah? How does no breakfast, lunch, or dinner from me sound until after midterms are done, Itsuki?!" Nino challenges.
"Ouch...she went there..." Ichika grimaces, half-expecting Nino to do Itsuki dirty like this.
"And against Itsuki, too...I guess she's the one person that would work really well against," Miku also comments, watching Itsuki to see what her reaction will be like.
Reeling even harder as if she's been hit by a truck that gives free rides to other worlds, Itsuki angrily points a finger down at the household cook.
"That is - that is not fair! You cannot hold our meals like that hostage! That is dirty, Nino! DIRTY!"
"Well, that's just too bad, isn't it! Not my problem that no one else in this house bothered learning how to cook! And I know how much you rely on me cooking for you!" Smiling deviously, Nino returns fire with a domineering finger point of her own back up at her youngest sister. "Just give it up, Itsuki! If I have to suffer through the embarrassment of having to let Uesugi tutor me, I'm dragging you down with me!"
Knees weak, with arms shaking at Nino's overwhelming ultimatum, Itsuki buckles and slumps a little over the railing, making sure not to let herself lean over too much.
"Uuuu...how could you do this, Ninoooooo..." Itsuki moans sadly. "I thought we were sisters...sisters cannot possibly do such nefarious things to each other like this..."
"You still haven't given me your answer yet!" Nino snaps, admittedly feeling a bit better about herself now that she's able to force one of her own sisters to submit to her own will like this.
"What choice do I have...?! I can perhaps be able to handle dinner by myself by eating out, but eating out every day is not healthy, and...and I must have breakfast to function properly in the morning..." Itsuki raises her head from the railing in defeat. "I hate to admit this, and I have no idea why this is happening, but...I shall let you have your way, Nino. But I will remember this...!"
Another round of cheers comes from Ichika and Yotsuba at the successful addition of their last quintuplet sibling for their newly enlarged study group, thanks to the unintentionally cooperative machination on Nino's part. Miku even sings with a blank face a little victory tune at their acquisition of Nino as a fellow party member.
"Ah, Miku, was that from Final Fantasy 7?" Yotsuba asks, being an avid gamer with Miku, who nods with a small smile.
"You owe me, Ichika," Nino grumbles over at her older sister, who nods.
"I'll remember this one. You should make one of Itsuki's favorites for dinner today to make it up to her, though," Ichika suggests.
"Mmm...I guess you're right. Itsuki doesn't know everything that's going on right now, and we can talk about it again over dinner..." Nino raises a hand to her chin to think about what to make for dinner today before looking up at Itsuki on the floor above them and calling out, "Itsuki, how does filet mignon sound tonight for dinner?"
At the sound of filet mignon, Itsuki immediately bolts up to her feet, her drooping, depressed ahoge suddenly regaining its strength out of nowhere and standing up at attention.
"W-Will you wrap it in bacon like last time?!" the youngest quintuplet who loves all things meat asks excitedly, and Nino can already see saliva forming inside her sister's mouth even from a floor away.
"You're luck, we still have some bacon left over, so yes, I can do that for you. So come down, why don't you," the culinary quintuplet responds, tussling her hair one more time before walking off into the kitchen to prepare dinner.
"Omigosh, thank you, thank you thank you thank you, Ninoooooo ~ !" Instead of running down the stairs, Itsuki, in her utmost excitement at one of her favorite dishes, leaps onto the side railing down the stairs to slide all the way down in a rare and unusual feat of physical ability out of the quintuplet whose most prominent physical activity is eating. She hits the first floor running to give Nino a big, loving hug of appreciation.
"Y-You don't need to hug me over this, okay?! I'm just doing this because I figured you'd be mad at me! It's not that big of a deal!" The other quintuplets watch Nino and Itsuki in the kitchen, as though their floor-to-floor conversation just a minute ago were merely a fading memory.
While Itsuki continues to hassle Nino in the middle of her cooking out of excitement for tonight's dinner, Miku turns to her eldest sister once more.
"Tomorrow's our day off...you said you'd think of something to do for Fuutarou, right?" she asks quietly.
"Yep. What's today, Tuesday?" Ichika deliberates quickly to herself before an idea pops in her head that causes her to raise her phone that she's been holding in her hand ever since she pulled it out to expose Nino's secret self-studying. "I think I've got it. Let me send Fuutarou-kun a text real quick..."
Miku leans in to take a glance at what Ichika's texting him. As she reads along to what she's texting, though, Miku widens her eyes more and more.
"...wait...Ichika...?" she murmurs softly, looking at her sister in mild alarm. Ichika merely grins mischievously back.
"You can't deny it's a good idea, no? We'll be killing two birds with one stone, so to say. Aaaaand...sent."