"...sugi? Mr. Uesugi...please wake up."

Fuutarou doesn't recall having fallen asleep in the first place, though, much less close his eyes at all. But he does find himself hunched over in his seat with his head resting against the desk in front of him, on top of his folded arms, so maybe he was sleeping. Or maybe he was just putting his head down? He's not sure, but he doesn't feel the imperative to argue or protest, so he pulls his head up.

Taking a look around at his unknown surroundings and down at himself, Uesugi Fuutarou finds himself in some kind of...dressing room, of sorts. At least, that's what it seems like...not much of a dressing room, though, for how bare and unused it is. Not in terms of its actual furnishings, but more in the sense of how much the room has been used - barely anything's been touched, and really the only signs of occupancy are some extra clothes that have been hung up with coat hangers along some of the clothes racks. Fuutarou himself appears to be wearing a snappy white tuxedo and a dash of cologne, though perhaps hilariously, his hairstyle is the same as ever. Perhaps that was intentional.

Funny...Fuutarou's never worn a tuxedo before, and he's certainly never had the idea to go out of his way to wear one.

Turning around and face the person who's called out to him, Uesugi finds a beautifully dressed woman is standing behind him, watching him get back up to his feet from his chair and analyze his surroundings for a few moments. She is quite tall, almost as tall as Fuutarou himself is, and she has donned a black kimono beautifully sewn with an image of a winding river, in the same style of traditional Japanese paintings. She has jet-black hair that is somehow darker than the kimono she wears...but that's just about all Fuutarou can see. She has a face...but for some reason, he can't seem to register what it looks like.

Now that she's gotten his attention, the lady in the kimono meets his eyes and smiles calmly.

"The bride is ready."

...is it that day already? Fuutarou thought it'd never come.

He nods at the lady, who smiles briefly back at him and turns around herself to lead him out of the dressing room. The two of them soon reach the closed front doors of the chapel, where the wedding will take place, but strangely, as Fuutarou realizes once they arrive and after he takes another cursory look around...

"...she isn't here," he says quietly, turning to the woman in black...

...who is gone. In her place where she once stood is another lady, a lady perfectly dressed in a pure white wedding gown and veil, complete with a bouquet of flowers in her hands. She smiles back up at him; her smile shines brighter than the sun's rays that pour into the chapel lobby where they stand down from the transparent ceiling above them.

"I'm right here, Mr. Uesugi," she says peacefully. "I've always been here."

Something is not right.

Fuutarou slowly faces the door before the two of them. "...sorry I took so long. Apparently I was sleeping in the dressing room..."

The bride laughs a little. "Yeah, that sounds like you, alright. Did you have a good dream, at least?"

"Hm...funny you mention that, because I was dreaming about the day when I first met you."

"The day when you first met me...ah, when you first met all of us?" The bride also sets her eyes straight forth at the doors in front of them. "Ichika, Nino, Miku, Yotsuba, and Itsuki...the day when you found out that we were quintuplets, right?"

Fuutarou nods curtly as the doors shudder and begin to open for them slowly.

"Haha. Well, it didn't seem like a dream to me."

When the doors finally come to a stop, having opened fully for the couple-to-be standing behind them, Fuutarou steps into the chapel, takes a deep bow, and slowly marches formally down the aisle to the altar at the front of the chapel.

No bridesmaids.

No family members.

No audience.

No music.

No fanfare.

The chapel is empty.

Fuutarou reaches the empty podium, his hands down by his hips clenched for reasons he himself can't explain. Once arrived at his next destination, the bridegroom stays as he is, facing forward still, while the bride follows his trail soon after and approaches him, taking his side before the podium on the marriage stage of the empty and otherwise silent chapel.

"Hmph. I guess you're right," the groom remarks once the bride takes his side before the podium. "Even now, as an actual adult...I still see that moment in my dreams from time to time."

Then, Uesugi turns around. On the first row of pews, closest to the small stage, now sit five bodies, slumped in various positions on their respective benches that were definitely not there the first time he passed them.

Each body is staring with wide, lifeless eyes, cast in unique directions. But despite the pale discolorings of their skin, the colors in their frozen eyes are undeniable - yellow, purple, blue, green, and red.

Uesugi coldly looks at each of them in disgust.

"...it was a fucking nightmare," he whispers.

Directly on cue, a heavy, ominous bell tolls deafeningly in the chapel, despite the fact that it has no room to fit such a heavy-sounding bell, let alone hide it from view. The bride next to Uesugi Fuutarou explodes into a mass of black mist that spreads throughout the chapel at the same time, and while the mist disperses, a shrill, ear-splitting series of hair-raising screams fills the air of the chapel like five separate sets of fingernails clawing their way down a chalkboard.

Watching the mist travel about the chapel, Fuutarou, having not bothered to get out of its way and has consequently gotten engulfed by it, suddenly doubles over as blood suddenly flies from his right side. The pain is crippling; Uesugi is accustomed to sharp pain but this is to the point where even he must take a knee with how paralyzing this pain is. The blood that's shot out from his liver and is staining the stage and the floor just beneath it are not the normal red, but black, and the pain doesn't subside - instead, it only gets worse. It spreads slowly throughout his body, starting from where his liver should be, gripping him with more and more and more pain on top of the pain that brought him down to his knees to begin with.

Struggling to stay on his knees with how bad the invasive and oppressive pain is, Fuutarou, with one hand over his open, festering wound, has to support himself from collapsing entirely with his other hand against the stage floor, and as he looks up with labored breath and blurring vision, he is just about able to make out the sight of five girls whose bodies he saw slumped on the first row of pews before him just a moment ago. Like marionettes that are barely attached to their strings, they awkwardly stumble forward to stand over the ailing groom and stare down at him with their sickly colored eyes, and they continue to do so as the last of Fuutarou's strength swiftly leaves him like the black blood gushing from his side, causing his left elbow to buckle and forcing the rest of his body to collapse into a quickly growing pool of his own black blood.

The throbbing pain in his right side wakes up Uesugi Fuutarou for real this time, and he jerks suddenly to his right, rolling off his thin blanket on the hard floor, clutching at his right side. His body suffering a bout of micro-trembles, Fuutarou waits patiently for the pain to subside before sitting up on his blanket to check the condition of his wounds.

Nothing is wrong with them; just some aftershock pains that his body must have been experiencing while getting his liver to heal from the wound he's taken from Shirazumi Rio the other night. The cuts on his arms and chest are just about fully healed, and Fuutarou has taken the liberty to erase the scars from his arms so that he won't attract unnecessary attention to himself; it's rather easy to remember someone if they happen to be walking around with their arms filled with cuts and scars. He could perform magical surgery on himself to hasten the healing process, but that would mean having to use precious magical resources in order to do that when he'd rather not. Of course, he could always operate on himself without any such resources, but while Uesugi can tolerate a good deal of pain, he'd rather not find out how much that would hurt. His name isn't Leonid Rogozov, he knows that much. The only supplies he used the other night when he and Itsuki had to stop by the hospital were some disinfectants in case Rio's knife was dirty and magic ointment to counteract any potential poisons or minor-level curses that could have been applied at the time of injury; everything else he's treated himself with his own magical stitching, though the hospital did provide the shelter he needed to be able to do so safely.

So the most he's been able to do is keep himself isolated to focus on recovery. He still goes to school, of course, but that's only to keep up appearances so that Itsuki and the rest of the quintuplets don't realize that he's having a hard time. The silver lining to his situation is that he's also been able to wound Rio very heavily, so Uesugi can take the risk of taking these few days off leading up to their midterms from having to keep watch over the city at night, because Rio's probably forced to recuperate as well. And so far, judging from the lack of incidents this week, it's working out this way.

The room is eerily quiet; Fuutarou can only hear himself breathe. But picking up his phone that is charging against the wall next to him and checking its digital clock, the injured mage realizes that it's just about time for him to head out anyway, despite the fact that the sun hasn't even risen at all yet, so he gets up to prepare for the day. Today is the day of the overnight cram session that he told the girls they'd have the day right before midterms, so he grabs his messenger bag and fishes out a stack of papers, specifically worksheets that he's made for the girls to do during their cram session tonight, and checks them over to ensure their quality. Once that's done, he puts the sheets back into his bag, checks that his bag has the reference books and other study materials that he intends to use to have the girls study with for tonight, and closes his bag back up and carries it over to the door before doubling back and fixing himself a little breakfast consisting of a small bowl of old white rice sprinkled with a few dashes of nori komi furikake and a banana.

As soon as breakfast is done, Fuutarou washes his dish, disposes of his banana peel properly, and picks up his messenger bag to head out. He briefly contemplates taking a shower before leaving, but he figures that Ichika or one of the girls will force him to take a shower before they go to sleep tonight anyway, regardless of whether or not he's already taken one at his own place, so Fuutarou locks the door behind him and climbs down the stairs to travel the dark roads that are now just barely beginning to receive the fledgling rays of the sun for the day.

Since he plans on taking a quick nap when he reaches his classroom, Fuutarou briefly runs a few thoughts through his head in consideration of his situation while walking through the city to get to school. Shirazumi Rio fits the description of Ebata-san's murderer well enough for him to assume that he is in fact the one who's putting targets on the quintuplets' backs; the fact that he somehow knew one of the quintuplets' names directly, Nino, is pretty convincing evidence of that, though he still wonders to himself why Rio got Itsuki's name confused with Nino. He doesn't seem to come off as the most levelheaded fellow, so maybe he's got a harder time than he does differentiating the quintuplets, or maybe he just doesn't care about whom he gets his hands on.

Either way, his duel against him was a boon of information that he needed greatly in order to advance his assignment, because now Uesugi knows what his target looks like, how he fights, how he talks, and what he's capable of doing. Rio is predominantly a knife user who prefers to fight up close and personal but brings a savage, wild edge to his fighting style; that, and his ability to deliver ranged knife attacks using his runes extends his attack range significantly, which adds to his overall danger. Uesugi knows that Rio is indeed going after the quintuplets, and that he probably knows them by name, if he already knows Nino's, but he clearly can't tell them apart and, thankfully, he doesn't know where they live.

But as their fight the other night showed, while Uesugi is less skilled overall than Rio is at knifefighting, in terms of overall fighting ability, he is confident that he can beat Rio if there are no restrictions to hold him back, like enclosed space or a potential hostage situation. While Rio's ranged knife attacks are dangerous, he can parry them with perfect timing on his blocks, as the cut he got as a result of one such parry on the back of his hand shows - and the one that struck his liver too, at that. And Rio clearly does not know how to deal with a long melee weapon like a naginata that Fuutarou used against him for the final segment of their confrontation, an advantage that Fuutarou will surely keep in mind for the next time they meet. All this, for the price of an injured liver and a handful of cuts - not a bad price, he supposes. The young mage has certainly paid more for less in the past...

However, he still doesn't know what Rio is up to exactly. Sure, he's probably got the confirmation he wanted that Rio is targeting the Nakano quintuplets, but he still doesn't know why. Their kidnapping attempt from a month and a half ago and the existence of liquid Heisei, especially now that he's seen what their effects are firsthand, indicate that Rio may intend to use the quintuplets as test subjects for that new liquid Heisei drug, a notion that he even pitched himself to Ichika during their Golden Week vacation to Honolulu, but then Fuutarou still has to keep asking why: if that's what Rio is up to, then why does he want to test it out on the quintuplets in particular? Just because they're quintuplets? If that's the case, then Rio would have an easier time just looking for twins or something in the city and kidnapping them to test out his drugs if identical siblings is what he's looking for. There's something else that he wants, something more that would explain why he's going after the girls in particular.

Uesugi also still doesn't know what Rio's involvement exactly is in the drug black market that's been raging in the city's underground recently. How much of it is because of him? How much of it does he control? What's his influence on the rest of the drug rings in the city? Clearly he's strong enough or influential enough to be able to hire other gangs to do some of his dirty work for him, and he probably even has his own little gang running around the city as well, judging by the stuff that those gangsters he tested out the liquid Heisei samples on said back then...assuming it's Rio they were working for. He would've liked to beat some of the answers he's looking for out of Rio, but Itsuki unfortunately called the police on them that broke up their fight, and while he did say to Itsuki that he wasn't angry at her because of it...he's a little bit annoyed by that.

Taking a deep sigh, Fuutarou clears his mind and fishes out his headphones, this time from his storage rune since his messenger bag is pretty full with papers and books at the moment, and hooks it up to his phone to put on some city lofi to vibe out on the rest of his way to school. He's got a long night ahead of him, so it's probably not the best idea to beat himself up mentally with questions like this when midterms is the next big obstacle that he and the girls have on their plates right now.

The young tutor enters campus grounds just as the clock strikes six and makes his way over to his homeroom, being the first one there as usual and easing down into his chair to rest. Putting his head down on his arms on his desk, Fuutarou feels a wave of uncomfortable deja vu wash over him. Here's to hoping he doesn't get that same dream again...

Barely does he put his head down does he sense someone enter the classroom with him, a lone person, who opens the door loudly but closes it quietly after himself or herself. Not only does the person see Fuutarou sleeping in the middle of the classroom, but they're deliberately trying to not wake him up, and after putting their backpack or bag down at one of the desks in the back of the classroom, they approach him slowly from behind. Fuutarou deduces that it's one of the quintuplets, but given that it's still just past six in the morning and class won't start until two hours from now, and as far as he knows none of the quintuplets have any zero period classes or club obligations, so which one of the quintuplets is this? Who among them would have a reason to be at school so early?

He gets the answer surprisingly easily, because the quintuplet whispers to him softly,

"...Uesugi-saaaan...?"

Huh...it probably makes sense that it's Yotsuba. Ichika would never be up this early, given that her sisters always wake her up to go to school; Nino would be up, since she's known as an early riser, but she'd be at home making breakfast for everyone. Miku maybe? But she doesn't have a reason to be at school this early; the same could probably be said of Itsuki. Yotsuba makes the most sense in hindsight, given how heavily involved she is with a whole ton of clubs around school, so there ought to be a time when one of them asks her to come to school early before classes start to have her help them out with something.

But still, this early, at barely past six? Even Yotsuba shouldn't have a reason to be here so early. Has she been acting funny lately? Fuutarou wracks his brain silently, digging through his somewhat hazy memories of the last two days, but he can't seem to find anything that would explain Yotsuba's presence here at school.

Maybe the answer lies within the person in question.

So Fuutarou pretends to be asleep to see what Yotsuba does; admittedly he'd be able to do this better if he weren't planning on getting some extra sleep here in the classroom before class starts; he was planning on actually paying attention in class for their midterm reviews so that he can adjust the lessons he'll administer to the quintuplets later tonight, and his injured liver certainly isn't doing him any favors. Still, he maintains his vigil through his exhaustion, waiting for Yotsuba to make a move while he continues to feign sleep.

Slowly, he hears Yotsuba's footsteps inch closer and closer to him...and then suddenly step away. Yotsuba grunts a little, and it sounds like she's lifted up a desk nearby and sets it down next to Fuutarou's so that she can seat herself there. Finally, the fourth quintuplet eases her own head down gently on Uesugi's right arm, making sure not to wake him or make his arm uncomfortable by restricting its blood flow.

"Uesugi-san...thank you for keeping Itsuki safe the other night."

Fuutarou's heart sinks hard for the first time in ages. It's funny how dangerous situations like his fight against Shirazuki Rio and having his liver pierced by a knife doesn't intimidate him or make him queasy anymore, but a girl thanking him does. Regardless, how the hell does Yotsuba know about what happened earlier this week between him and her younger sister? He even took Itsuki aside for a moment after class before lunch yesterday to double-check that she didn't go blabbing about it to her sisters, for the main reason that he doesn't want Miku or Ichika getting worried over him for sustaining even more injuries since the last time he'd been over at their house for tutoring, and Itsuki swore that she didn't spill the beans to any of her siblings. He'll have to take Itsuki aside later and have her tell him the truth...at least it seems like only Yotsuba knows about it, given how secretive she's behaving at the moment, and Yotsuba is far from the worst quintuplet who could also know about it -

"I don't know what happened that night...but I'm sure it was because you were protecting her."

...well, there's his answer. Perhaps Itsuki is telling him the truth after all.

Yotsuba falls quiet for a few more calm moments, and then Fuutarou feels the weight of her head pull up and away from his right elbow.

Then, he feels her lips brush ever so gently against his cheek. Because of how his head is positioned on his crossed arms on his desk, she can only easily reach the far rear of his right cheek with her lips, where his sideburns would start forming if he had any, but the positioning of her own body and the movement of her weight according to Fuutarou's magical senses all indicate that Yotsuba has, in fact, just given him the world's softest kiss.

"...thank you, Uesugi-san. You've always been looking after us...always..."

...always?

At the worst possible moment, the wound in his liver flares up with excruciating pain again. While it isn't nearly as bad as the first time it's happened today, it's still enough to cause Fuutarou to inhale sharply through his nostrils and hold his breath in a strained manner to counteract the pain that has not once been treated with painkillers of any kind thus far. He can't exactly pretend to still be asleep after this, so Fuutarou heaves a deep sigh and slowly pulls his head off the desk and sits up slowly; he does still pretend to have just woken up, rubbing his eyes and yawning greatly to sell the impression as best he can, and with how Yotsuba has reacted, backing away quickly with a sudden blush in her cheeks, watching her tutor and classmate get up, it seems like he's done a good enough job.

"Mnnn...tsk, ouch..." Fuutarou inhales slowly, letting the pain permeate tolerably throughout his abdomen before exhaling patiently again. "Oh...it's you, Yotsuba. Mornin'..."

"G-G-G-Good morning!" Yotsuba stammers heavily; given what she's just done, this is understandable. "I-I-I-I wasn't doing anything suspicious, I swear!"

"Suspicious...?" Pretending not to know what she's talking about, Fuutarou does look down to note the very close proximity to which Yotsuba has brought the neighboring desk over. "...well, last time I checked, I didn't have a desk sitting literally right next to me..."

Her muscles fueled by pure embarrassment, Yotsuba quickly clambers to pull the desk away, back to its original spot, but all she ends up doing is scootching the desk over and causing the chair's feet to screech against the hard floor loudly. Fuutarou even pretends to wince at the loud noise, even though his senses are well warmed by this point, by holding his hands over his ears.

"What're you doing so early at school, anyway?" Fuutarou asks calmly, making his voice sound huskier than it is to maintain his guise of just having woken up, which is easier than usual to do thanks to the pain from his deep wound that he's had to deal with for the past two days.

"U-Uhhhh...nothing...nothing in...particular...!" the usually cheerful and genki quintuplet shakes her head quickly, sounding much meeker than usual; she's going to start seeming like Miku at the rate she's going. The quintuplet leans backwards slowly, corresponding to the slight lean that Fuutarou hits her back with when he narrows his eyes at her.

"Hmmm...suspicious," he concludes.

"I-It's not suspicious! I just, um, decided to come early to school today! Aha, ahaha ~ !"

"But Yotsuba, the only reason why you'd be here at school early on your own is if you have club obligations or because you're here to help around school with someone or something. And so because of that, you'd be somewhere else right now rather than be here at homeroom with me, so that must mean that you don't actually have any club obligations or promises to help anyone out today. Am I wrong?"

Yotsuba immediately hangs her head, very visibly depressed at the fact that Fuutarou is able to dig underneath her lie and disintegrate it so effortlessly.

"Uesugi-san, has anyone told you that you're just too freakin' smart sometimes?" she pouts softly, her blue eyes still glued to the floor near her feet and her green hair ribbon drooping as it's prone to do whenever its owner gets crestfallen like this.

"No one needs to tell me that. I live every day of my life knowing how smart I am, and how annoying that must be to everyone around me, including myself."

"...you annoy yourself with how smart you are? Is that some kind of smart person joke that I'm too dumb to understand, Uesugi-san?"

"Er...well, it's not that dumb people can't understand it, it's just...I think you can understand what I was trying to get at with that for yourself."

"But I just said that I'm too dumb to understand it."

"...you're not dumb, though?"

At this, Yotsuba glances up at her tutor and hits him with a weak smile.

"Aha, you're funny, Uesugi-san. That's a joke even I can understand."

"...that wasn't a joke, though."

Yotsuba's pathetic attempt at an awkward chuckle is extinguished swiftly, never having stood a chance against Fuutarou's cold bluntness.

"Uesugi-san," she murmurs, her gaze having dropped back down again, "you don't need to sugarcoat things for me. I'm well aware of how I'm the one who consistently scores the lowest on the practice tests you've given us lately, during the last few times you tutored us."

"Maybe, yeah. But I wasn't talking about your academics, necessarily."

Yotsuba blinks a few times at Fuutarou as he shakes his head briefly, rubbing his right temple. He's not doing this to keep up his whole "I just woke up" impression, this is genuinely to clear his head of the sleepiness that'd been sinking into his head during the time he'd kept quiet when Yotsuba first entered the classroom.

"...Uesugi-san isn't talking about academics or test scores while using the word 'dumb'? Uesugi-san, are you sick or something, by chance?"

"Hm...not sick, but..."

Debating briefly whether or not he should let Yotsuba know about his new wounds, against his better judgment, he decides to let her know about them. Yotsuba probably came out here to school with the intention of seeing him, because why else would she come straight to homeroom where she knows only one other person would probably be at this hour. That, and given that he'll be heading over with the rest of the quintuplets to their penthouse again for the night, they're bound to find out sooner or later.

So he lifts up his clean white dress shirt down by his right side, and since Yotsuba is already sitting to his right, he conveniently doesn't have to angle his body for her to get a good angle on the bandages covering new magical stitches that he's sewn to close the wound.

Surprisingly, Yotsuba doesn't react strongly to the sight of his new wound. She just has an expression that seems to imply that Fuutarou has merely confirmed her fears, and it's frankly a bit of a painful expression that even Fuutarou himself feels.

"The other night when Itsuki was out late...you and the others probably could figure that one out on your own, but...I ran into some trouble in the city. Itsuki happened to walk right into it while she was on her way home from the library, so I had to keep her safe from the crossfire," Fuutarou explains, pulling down his shirt again. "Been dealing with this for the past two days as a result...oh, and try not to tell the others if you can. Though I'm sure they'll figure out about it on their own at some point..."

Just like before, Yotsuba reacts by...not reacting at first, and it takes her a few moments before she gets up, pulls the desk behind Fuutarou aside, and stands behind him so that she can put her arms around him, resting her forehead against the back of his head.

"...somethin' wrong?" Fuutarou asks his student quietly, and he feels her face move up and down against the back of his hair. Maybe he really should have taken that morning shower before coming to school...

"There's a question that I can't seem to answer on my own, Uesugi-sensei," she murmurs softly; her breath tickles the hairs on Fuutarou's nape a little. "I don't understand why you go so far to keep us safe. Are we...are we that important to you?"

Fuutarou snorts a little, but not in a way that implies ridicule.

"I can't exactly say 'no' to a question like that, can I?" he points out. "Unless I want to go out of my way to look like the biggest asshole in the city."

"But...Uesugi-san, hear me out, please?"

"Sure."

"You're a smart person, and you always do things so efficiently whenever you can. I've only seen you fight once before...but even then, you looked so strong and skilled. So for you to come back with injuries like this...maybe I'm overthinking this, but...it feels like to me, you're putting so much more effort into your work in protecting us than you need to."

"Mmnn, I think you're giving me too much credit. I'm bound to run into strong enemies, you know, it's just part of the job. I was only able to fight those bad guys back at the warehouse like that because none of them were mages like me, just normal gangsters who think they know how to fight but don't really stand a chance against an actual mage. The guy I fought two days ago was a mage like me...and he was strong. I think he's the guy who got me that cut on my chest that Nino told you lot about from before, too. So this guy's no joke, I have to take him seriously."

"...so I am overthinking this?"

"Yeah, little bit." Fuutarou slowly raises his hand to rest it comfortingly on Yotsuba's left arm over his left breast. The touch of her soft skin, toughened from the combination of years of physical activity and her relative lack of skin care product usage compared to some of her sisters, graces his fingers...as Fuutarou's eyes flash with the memory of the jarring dream he had before waking up this morning. "But like I said before, I don't think you're dumb. This is what I meant from before, about you when it comes to things like this."

Yotsuba can't help but to give a small smile. "Yeah, but if only it could help me actually pass my tests, then that'd be great, haha."

"We'll work on that tonight as best we can, don't worry."

The tutor and student remain like this for a few minutes in mutual silence as the sun's rays grow stronger and stronger inside the classroom.

"...do you like it when I do this, Uesugi-san...?" Yotsuba asks softly, breaking that mutual silence on her own.

"...I don't particularly mind."

"Ehehe...I thought you would."

"Would I?"

"Well, back when we first got to know you, you seemed like the kind of person who wouldn't like it when people get all close to you. Didn't you even say at one point to us that we shouldn't have any need for relationships or stuff like that during high school because it's pointless or something?"

"Did I? I don't quite remember...but still, you've got a point."

"Then how about now? What makes you let me hug you like this?"

Fuutarou simply shrugs. "I'm tired right now, I guess. Need some more sleep, to be honest."

"...you shouldn't have come to school today, then. You could've texted Ichika and told her to get the review material for you."

"Yeah, I could have..."

"...but you didn't."

"Seems like it. Admittedly I'm not in a state to be making good judgment calls right now..."

Yotsuba giggles lightly. "Uesugi-san, you dummy. Ehehe..."

"Hmph. Enjoy your one chance to call me an idiot, Yotsuba...I'll remember it."

"Kyaaaa, ahahaha ~ Uesugi-san has a grudge against me now, oh no ~ "

"Heh, I'm gonna haunt you and put a curse on you."

"Who are you, Takeo-san?"

"Okay, let's not get too crazy now."

The two classmates share another laugh together, but Yotsuba continues to stick close to her tutor.

"By the way, you still haven't answered my question from earlier, about why you came to school so early," Fuutarou reminds her.

"I did! I said there's no particular reason!"

"But I said that you're probably lying. And we all know that you're the worst among you quints at lying."

"I-I'm not! Itsuki is really bad at lying too!"

"Well, now you're just trying to dodge the question."

Yotsuba gives the back of Fuutarou's head a big pout that he cannot see, as much as he'd like to. He can at least hear it, with the cute grumbles she makes with her pursed lips. But the grumbles come to pass, and Fuutarou waits patiently for Yotsuba to answer him for real.

"...I came to school to see you, Uesugi-san," Yotsuba mumbles, bordering on flat-out whispering. Her words drop onto Fuutarou's nape and crawl around his neck to reach his ears. "It's like you said...I wouldn't be here otherwise unless it was for some kind of obligation. I did have to lie to my sisters that I had something come up in the morning that I needed to attend to just for today, so that's why I came to school by myself. And I figured you'd be here already..."

"Mhm. And what's the occasion?"

"Er - "

Yotsuba hesitates, realizing that Fuutarou was sleeping when she spoke her first words to him this morning, and the memory causes her blush to resurface slowly as she struggles to keep her feelings under control.

"...I just wanted to make sure that you were okay," she answers finally, having given herself another few moments to convey her thoughts with clarity. "When you texted Ichika to tell the rest of us not to talk about whatever happened the other night with Itsuki, we figured it was because you were keeping her safe. And the past two days you weren't looking so good here at school...and I guess now I know why."

"So you came out here alone to check up on me?"

Yotsuba nods, despite the fact that her tutor can't see her do so.

"Problem with that is...it's a bit dangerous to be walking around the city by yourself during a time like this. Who knows what could've happened to you when I had a hole in my liver two days ago..."

"Ah..." Yotsuba grows uncomfortable again. "...sorry."

Fuutarou blinks heavily; he's finally reaching the end of his rope in trying to stave off his exhaustion, and his eyelids feel quite sluggish as a result.

"Mmm...but I still appreciate the sentiment. As a rule of thumb...if you find me at school here, that means I'm fine. Probably..."

Leaning his head back, Fuutarou closes his eyes and rests it against Yotsuba's bosom.

"I'd meant to get some more sleep here before class started...since you're here, can I ask you to wake me up when class starts?" he sighs lightly.

"Like I said, you should've really stayed at home today..." Yotsuba pouts a little, but it quickly gives way to a happy little smile, full of warmth and relief. "...but of course, Uesugi-san. By the way, you didn't take a shower recently, did you?"

"Shit...I was just thinking that to myself, too..."

The two of them break out into a few last chuckles and giggles before Fuutarou lets himself drift off to sleep like he'd intended to, and Yotsuba remains as she is, leaning down behind her tutor's desk, nestling his head on top of her chest. She makes a mental note to herself to put Fuutarou down on his desk like he usually sleeps in class once their classmates start filing in, but until then, she has about an entire half an hour all to herself to spend with her classmate and friend.

But is this really okay for her to do?

Looking straight down into the dark depths of Uesugi-san's unshowered black hair, Yotsuba feels like she's looking into a mirror. Was it right for her to come to school all on her own, just for the sake of being with Uesugi-san? She even premeditated this, having built up the courage to tell a blatant lie to her sisters about having some kind of obligation at school that she said she needed to keep for today before school and then executing this impromptu plan of hers.

Does she have the right to be so selfish?

The answer is no. No, she doesn't. What she is doing is very bad. She shouldn't feel this way for a boy who is their tutor; not just her own, but also that of her sisters. She shouldn't feel this way for a classmate whose work is dangerous and incurs risks of injury like he's demonstrated the past two weeks, or perhaps even worse; it would go against what he'd want, too, as he's the type of person who wouldn't want more people worrying about him than necessary. The only people who would have that right would be his own family, his dad and Raiha-chan.

That's right...Uesugi-san belongs to everyone, not just her. He's not being contracted to tutor just one of them quintuplets; he's committed to tutoring all five of them...protecting all five of them. The memories that they've had so far ever since they first met this school year, from the failed dynamic entry he tried pulling off on them to the last overnight study session he held at their penthouse...while admittedly their time together so far has been relatively short, Yotsuba already finds herself cherishing every last one of them. And what makes her the absolute happiest is the memory of that last overnight study session, when all five of the quintuplets convened to study together...just like they used to when they were younger. And best of all, Uesugi-san was there too with them...teaching them, talking with them, joking and laughing with them...being with them. And so this ensuing happiness she derives from these memories should mean that for the sake of the quintuplets as a whole, things ought to remain how they are; the status quo must be maintained.

But it's not. The very act of coming to school this morning, and with the intention of seeing Uesugi-san alone at that, threatens to shatter that month-and-a-half long status quo. Why? Why did she feel so compelled to do this? It wasn't like...an overflowing desire to do something like this; it wasn't as if she was trembling and giddy while coming to school this morning because she just couldn't wait to see her tutor. As a matter of fact, she was very calm the past two days, even when she premeditated her plan of meeting Uesugi-san alone today...maybe a bit too calm. But the fact of the matter is that she still let her feelings towards Uesugi-san drive her to go out of her way to do something she otherwise wouldn't; she even told a smooth lie to her sisters in order to get here when she's normally supposed to be the worst one among the Nakano quints at lying. So why? Why does she -

- oh, that's right. This isn't a test; it's not a pop quiz. The answer is actually...very simple. So simple, even Yotsuba knows what it is in a heartbeat.

Of course she would. Out of all her sisters, she's the one who would know...who should know.

Melancholic nostalgia and sorrow washes over her, causing her to pull her arms inwards against Fuutarou's sleeping chest a little bit more tightly. No...it's not her fault that the status quo can't be maintained. Because if she thinks about it, she would have been totally okay with keeping things as they have been...Uesugi-san coming over to tutor them everyday, hanging out with them at school. No, this isn't her fault. That would have to lie with her sisters, the two who've been studying with her for the past month and a half, because over this period of time, Yotsuba has seen both of them change in the way they behave towards and treat their tutor.

Miku, who'd grown reserved, cold, and brooding in recent years, was finally able to start looking like a little bit like how she was in their younger years, something she'd never once done for anyone else they'd known. Ichika, who, despite Uesugi-san not being her type at all by her own self-admission, has gone out of her way to talk with him and banter with him in a way she'd only do with people she considers her close friends.

Yotsuba can tell. As someone who already had feelings for Uesugi-san from the beginning, she can tell. Even if Miku doesn't say it herself, she can tell. Even if Ichika denies it if she asks, she can tell. They, too, are developing feelings for him. She may not know their reasons, and perhaps their reasoning is irrelevant when it comes to a situation involving love, but the signs, at least to Yotsuba, are unmistakable.

At first, Yotsuba didn't act on this. Because neither Miku and definitely not Ichika have demonstrated any explicit sign of clear intimacy towards Uesugi-san, Yotsuba doesn't know exactly when they began to like Uesugi-san as more than just a friend, and as such she can't point to any clear incident that marks the beginning of her knowledge of such. All she knows is that at some point, she became privy to the fact that two of her sisters, understandably the ones who've been studying with her and Uesugi-san for all this time, now harbor feelings similar to her own in regards to the boy they call their classmate and tutor. Yotsuba didn't act on this knowledge like she has today because she didn't take it very seriously at first. She remembers feeling glad that Uesugi-san is being valued by her sisters, just as much as she does, that the boy she first met and fell in love with six years ago in Kyoto was finally getting his just due for his qualities of being a good friend and a caring person, but then it developed an edge of melancholy as she was forced to recognize that the feelings her sisters have for him are more than what mere friends should have for each other.

Mom used to tell them all the time, didn't she?

If one of you makes a mistake, overcome it together.

If one of you is happy, share it with everyone.

Joy.

Anger.

Sorrow.

Love.

Life.

You must share it among the five of you...in five equal parts.

For they are identical quintuplets - born of one entity that happened to split itself in five to give life to all of them.

All for one, one for all.

Naturally, then...this means that Yotsuba is not special. She cannot be special. She cannot treat herself as anything special. She is nothing special. And not only that, but the only reason why she's even here, the sole reason why everything that has happened up until now, while admittedly not much has happened yet, has culminated to this brief, fleeting moment of quiet happiness that she has all to herself...just her and the boy she loves...is because of her sisters, because of the sacrifices they had to make because of her. Maybe she could have still met Uesugi-san even if her sisters chose not to make those sacrifices, since her Dad would probably have hired him as their tutor regardless in hindsight, but she's at least certain that things would have not happened in such a way that she is able to experience the feelings that she does now.

Then if she knows she is nothing special and that she shouldn't try to behave as such, why is she here? What is she doing right now, embracing Uesugi-san as he gets some much-needed sleep? She shouldn't be doing this; this isn't fair to everyone else, to Miku or Ichika. For all her thoughts on how those two were the ones to start breaking the status quo, Yotsuba is the one tearing it apart beyond repair. And that would make her a hypocrite, a deceiver...a trickster, and a liar. And her whole reason why she can't lie very well is because she hates the feeling of deceiving people.

These feelings, these memories...while their number is not many, that's perhaps for the better, for she needs to get rid of them.

She must get rid of them.

So then...why can't she?

She's usually very good at doing so. Smiling when she's not supposed to, laughing when she doesn't feel the urge to. All those clubs that she's been a part of throughout middle school, all the people she's known, all the friends she's made, and all the memories she's created with all the above - she's been able to easily discard them all whenever the situation dictated it. She used to feel bad about it, but she's done this so many times that she doesn't bat an eyelash at doing it again. All things considered, discarding the feelings she has for a single boy should be among the easier things she can do, especially one who wouldn't care what happens either way if he knew about it. It's something even Uesugi-san would want.

But she can't. She just can't. As much as she repeats to herself in her mind over and over as she clenches her hands in front of Uesugi-san's chest that she must let go of the boy she has in her arms, her arms refuse to budge.

I can't.

Not yet.

I can't.

Not yet.

Because in her arms right now...is someone whom she considers her friend. A friend who is tired, injured, poor, and probably hungry. Scratch that, definitely hungry, if his growling stomach is any indication. A friend whose alternate life as a mage, working to keep the city safe for her and her sisters, she knew nothing about until a month and a half ago, and probably would have continued to be ignorant of if that incident never happened. A friend who's probably been living this brutal, strenuous life for longer than she can imagine, enduring pain and stress that she can't imagine. If she never had an idea about Uesugi-san's work as a mage, she probably wouldn't feel this way. If she were never privy to the injuries he's had to take, the life he must lead...maybe she'd actually be able to toss aside all the feelings and memories she's had of him, shared with him.

If she'd never known just how much of a caring person Uesugi Fuutarou really is, Nakano Yotsuba would be able to let it all go and let him fall into the bottomless darkness of her discarded memories, where he'd turn into just another blackened piece of regret for her to look back on and feel sad about for the rest of her life.

No...she's not doing this because she wants to feel special, because she really doesn't. She doesn't deserve to have feelings for someone like Uesugi-san, not when she couldn't even keep the promise the two of them had made to each other back in Kyoto, six years ago, the promise to study hard for the sake of growing up and being able to take care of their families through their academic success. While she's never forgotten it herself, Yotsuba has never produced the results to prove it. She, who shortly after her fateful meeting with Uesugi-san at Kyoto enjoyed a sudden shift in socioeconomic status thanks to her dad, was then able to live a life of comfort, privilege, and prestige, and yet she still could not uphold the promise she made to that boy she fell in love with when she was the one between the two of them who should have. And the boy who also made the same promise to her, despite all the odds that he must've faced over the years, was the one who succeeded when he probably wasn't expected to. Even when he doesn't seem to recognize her from six years ago, which can be excused due to the quintuplets' identical natures back then, Uesugi-san not only remembered their promise, but he also became someone who could do more than take care of just his own family, but take care of hers, too.

Yeah, Yotsuba thinks to herself. She really is nothing special. She's stupid, ditzy, loud, and incorrigibly stupid. Did she say stupid twice? Because that's how stupid she is. Compared to the boy in her arms right now, even being the breast pillow on which his head rests is too good for her. Miku is better deserving of being in her place right now, or maybe Ichika, one of those two. Itsuki as well...and, hell, maybe even Nino, if she'd even think about doing this in the first place. Anyone else, any other one of her sisters...but not her.

And yet, she cannot pull herself away, because this isn't for herself that she's doing this. This has nothing to do with her...well, not as much as it might seem.

Because if only for a moment, one small, fictional moment in their imaginary little corner of the world, she wants the boy she loves to feel safe.

If for a moment, she can have another use for her arms that have done nothing but thrown almost everything they've ever held away...