The big clock on the wall down on the first floor of the Nakano penthouse softly strikes eleven o'clock in the late morning. As today is the Saturday that their tutor has designated as their day to head out and grab lunch and parfaits together on his dime for all the hard work that the quintuplets put in for their midterms, the girls have all woken up by this point in time, gotten dressed, and are waiting for Fuutarou to arrive at around noon. Because of the incident that Nino and Yotsuba ran into yesterday evening, Fuutarou texted Ichika, telling her that just to be on the safe side of things, he'll personally head to the family cafe with them to ensure their safety, so Ichika scheduled a small limousine to come pick up the five of them to take them there, as it is a bit of a ways away from the high-rise.
The five of them total, because, naturally, Nino will not be joining them.
Setting down their glasses of water on the glass table, which they carry one in each of their hands, Miku and Yotsuba join Ichika and Itsuki at the couches in their living room. Miku takes a seat on the carpet, while Yotsuba remains standing, silently sipping her water while they wait for their tutor to join them.
"...now that you've had some time to calm down, Yotsuba, would you mind explaining what happened yesterday?" Ichika asks quietly, finally looking up at the third of her younger sisters. "Because Nino sure as hell won't talk to us no matter how hard we try, and Fuutarou said he'll explain things once he meets up with us and once we're done eating lunch."
"I still think that...we ought to let Uesugi-kun explain what happened. He will be here shortly, and we can ask him to tell us while we are eating," Itsuki suggests. "Whatever happened clearly affected Yotsuba quite badly. We should not put pressure on her to tell us if she feels she is not ready."
But Yotsuba shakes her head while Itsuki is talking, though she waits for her younger sister to finish her thought before speaking up herself.
"It's fine, Itsuki, I was going to explain my side of the story by today anyway. Like Ichika said, I just needed...last night to calm down, that's all."
Lowering her glass of water and patting herself on the cheek, Yotsuba inhales sharply to begin talking.
"You guys know that yesterday I headed out to give the sewing club a hand with something. Well, we finished early, so I had an extra two hours on my hands before I was supposed to get back home, so I decided to go to Izumi to buy some snacks because I noticed we'd run out before leaving home yesterday. And I ended up running into Nino there."
"You met Nino there? Izumi's not exactly close to home..." Ichika slowly raises a hand up to her forehead in thought, mentally picturing the location of the Izumi supermarket relative to their home.
"Yeah...from here, you'd have to specifically go out of your way to go to Izumi since there's the Tokyu supermarket that's a lot closer to us," Miku notes quietly. "Izumi is...in the direction of where Fuutarou lives, I think."
"Sounds about right. So yeah, I met Nino there, and I helped her pick out groceries and stuff..." Yotsuba takes another sip of water. "But while we were at it, I asked her if something was wrong, because something about her felt a bit off at the time, and since it was just me and her, I figured she'd maybe answer me honestly when no one else was with us."
"Was something wrong with her?" Itsuki asks.
"Well, um..." Yotsuba uncomfortably shifts where she stands. "...long story short, she...Nino has a serious problem with Uesugi-san. Something about him is really...really bothering her."
"...and you're sure this isn't just Nino being Nino, right, Yotsuba?" Miku asks from the floor, looking up, though she finds that having to arch her neck up at Yotsuba like this is pretty discomforting, so Miku opts to get up and sit on the short couch instead.
"Yeah, this is definitely different. This isn't what Nino was like at the beginning when Uesugi-san was first starting to tutor us, because back then, we knew it was just because Nino didn't like someone like Uesugi-san whom we barely knew coming into our house all the time to tutor us."
"By the way, should we really be talking about Nino like this?" Miku turns to her other sisters sitting together on the long couch. "She can probably hear us from up there if we talk loud enough."
"Yes, that is another good reason why we ought to leave this discussion for later," Itsuki nods, but Ichika shakes her head.
"If Nino hears us talking about her, then that's all the better. We've tried our best to get her to come out of her room to talk to us, but she hasn't listened at all so far, so if this can somehow convince her to come out, then it's doing our job for us." Ichika leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees slowly. "In any case, keep going, Yotsuba. It'll probably be a bit before Fuutarou-kun gets here anyway...what did Nino say that tipped you off that this time is different from before? How did she act?"
"She sounded legit pissed with him," Yotsuba answers right away. "We've all heard how Nino sounds whenever she's just annoyed or a little angry at something, right? Not this time. She said that she hated how Uesugi-san just came into our lives so suddenly, how he's been spending a ton of time with us, and how we've been changing because of him."
The rest of the quintuplets respond with a little silence as they digest Yotsuba's testimony.
"...it's got to be because of that promise she made to us when we were younger, after Mama died," Miku mutters softly, looking down at the edge of the glass table in front of her.
Ichika nods. "Yeah, it has to be. I figured that there was a chance it was because of that. I even mentioned it to her directly when Nino and I had that little argument before she ran off to the supermarket." The eldest quintuplet looks up at Yotsuba again. "Did Nino tell you about the argument she and I had when you met her?"
"Uh, yeah. She told me the gist of what you two talked about."
"Good, then it saves me the time of telling you myself since I already told these two about it." Ichika sits back up on the couch again. "Go on?"
"So um...Nino and I argued for a little bit ourselves about it. Actually, before that, she asked me if I thought there was anything changing about her, so I told her that, y'know, lately she's been studying with us and she hasn't been as antagonistic towards Uesugi-san like she's been in the past, and then I started asking her what it was about Uesugi-san that bothered her, and then it...it just spiraled out of control from there, and then we started arguing for a bit before one of the supermarket employees had to come over to tell us to be quiet."
Yotsuba pauses for a moment to take another deep breath.
"We didn't talk much after that until we'd bought everything and started heading home. I started to talk to her again, to try to, uh...convey to her, I guess, that what she was doing, blaming Uesugi-san like she was, wasn't right. I tried telling her that there's no way Uesugi-san knows how we're changing around him, and even if he does, there's not really much he can do about it since this's his job and all. But Nino argued back, asking why Uesugi-san had to be both our tutor and our...our, uh, protector? Bodyguard? I don't know what word to use there, sorry...at the same time. She was asking why Uesugi-san couldn't just stick to being our bodyguard so that we won't really need to see him very much, and why he couldn't leave the tutoring part to someone else."
"Uesugi-kun did talk about that after midterms, remember?" Itsuki reminds everyone, not that Yotsuba needs it. "So Nino must have kept what he said in mind."
"She even mentioned that too," Yotsuba nods in agreement. "But that was when we got attacked by three bad guys we passed by earlier while walking home. I'm...I'm pretty sure one of them was a mage like Uesugi-san, too, and...and he shot me with something, and it hit me in the face, on my nose..."
"So that's why you had a bit of a bloody nose when you came back home?" Ichika asks as Miku blankly stares off at the large sliding glass window that leads out to the veranda, and Yotsuba nods.
"Uesugi-san treated it a little before I came down from the roof, so I'm all better now. But Nino attacked the guy who hit me and yelled at me to run away; I'm pretty sure she wanted to hold off those guys to buy me time so that I could escape. But I didn't want to leave her there, so I didn't...I didn't know what to do. And since it was just Nino against those three guys, eventually they were ganging up on her, and one of them even stabbed her in the right shoulder, right at the top, so I couldn't just ditch her like she told me to."
"That also explains why her shoulder was all bloody when she came back..." Miku grimaces.
"Luckily for us, though, the bad guys started arguing with each other about their bounties or whatever, and while they were distracted, Uesugi-san arrived just in time to deal with them and get us out by teleporting us back up to the roof. He asked Nino to show him her injury, but Nino started going off on him..." Yotsuba hesitates for a few seconds before continuing to finish her anecdote. "Eventually, she let him heal her wound, and she left right after that. I stayed behind to apologize to him for all the stuff Nino told him, just in case he took anything that Nino said the wrong way..."
"Knowing Nino, it's not really easy to take what she says a different way, she's usually pretty clear about the point she's trying to get across, especially when she's pissed off," Ichika sighs. "But at least we can rely on Fuutarou-kun coming at this reasonably."
"Well, I don't...I don't know..." Yotsuba interrupts. "He took it pretty poorly, getting yelled at by Nino like that. Usually he doesn't let Nino get under his skin, but this time..."
"Fuutarou probably knew that like you said, there's something off with Nino right now, so he probably reacted accordingly," Miku guesses. "Honestly, the rest of us should've seen this coming. We all knew Nino wasn't really being her usual self like before midterms..."
"We just wrote it off as her finally accepting Fuutarou-kun as her tutor, especially because she was the one who helped him keep his whole tutoring job," Ichika nods as well. "I also want to make it clear that I'm partly responsible for how things turned out last night. That argument I had with her just before she was going to leave to pick up snacks, I didn't need to start yelling at her or start talking to her so harshly, yet for some reason I did. That wasn't supposed to happen. And now it's turned into this big giant mess..."
The quintuplets on the first floor fall into another uneasy silence.
"...we need to convince Nino somehow that she needs to let go of that promise from six years ago," Miku speaks up. "We know how important it is to her, but the fact of the matter is that it's an impossible promise to keep. At some point, we're all going to go our separate ways; we already see it a bit in Ichika, who's been focusing on her part-time job more and more lately. So for Nino to get angry at Fuutarou is pointless, because we were all going to have to change at some point anyway."
"And just how are we going to do that? Never mind the fact that Nino isn't in a talking mood right now, which on its own is super rare since she loves yapping about whatever's bugging her, how are we going to make her let go of a promise that she's held onto for six years? You know what they say, old habits die hard," Ichika shrugs helplessly.
"Um...logically, we would need to have her understand that change is inevitable. She needs to understand that it is simply unreasonable to expect all five of us to stay the same as we were when we were in elementary school. Even physically, we are much different now, with our different hairstyles and tastes," Itsuki adds.
"Yeah, and so like I was saying, how're we gonna convince Nino to see that?"
As Itsuki pauses, unable to find an adequate answer, Yotsuba continues to gaze down at the glass of water in her hands, down at the water's trembling surface. But then she hears her younger sister reply with,
"Perhaps...we can have Uesugi-kun talk to Nino directly? Because he is the one who is causing her this trouble, correct?"
"No, we can't do that!" Yotsuba raises her head quickly to jump back into the quintuplet meeting. "We can't have Uesugi-san handle our problems for us! He's already got his hands full dealing with his own business, we need to resolve this on our own, shouldn't we?"
"I agree with Yotsuba; Fuutarou didn't even do anything wrong from what we're aware of," Miku nods at Ichika and Itsuki. "It's just Nino who's spontaneously gone back to hating him like before and then some. This is something we as her sisters need to come together to take care of. We're quintuplets, right?"
"Yeah, yeah! And don't forget what Mom said," Yotsuba adds. "The important thing isn't where we are, it's that the five of us are together."
"Careful now, you'll start sounding like Nino too if you keep that up," Ichika says rather sarcastically with her dark humor, and her sisters chuckle awkwardly at it. "But...I actually disagree with you two. I think that Fuutarou-kun does need to be the one to talk to Nino. I do agree that there's nothing that he's done wrong, at least from what we can tell, unless he's been secretly having run-ins with Nino that we just don't know about, which still might be a possibility. Barring those, let's give him the benefit of the doubt, right? But the fact still remains that Nino's problem lies with him, not us. Us talking to her probably won't get us anywhere in this case because we're going to keep seeing Fuutarou-kun because he's going to keep coming here to tutor us since that's his job. So even though he probably didn't do anything wrong, he still needs to be the one to talk some sense into her."
"That is right. We can help out by talking to Uesugi-kun today while we are at lunch and tell him everything we know about the situation so far; Yotsuba needs to be the key witness like with us since she was with Nino yesterday when everything happened. Unless you already explained everything to him?" Itsuki looks up at her older sister, who shakes her head.
"I still need to tell him what happened; he said that it could wait until today, if we did decide to go eat lunch with him."
Nodding, Itsuki sighs softly as she leans back against the back of the couch next to her oldest sister.
"...I know we are talking about how to get Nino to calm down, but...in all fairness, talking about this does make me realize just how much of an impact Uesugi-kun has had on us even in these two months," the youngest quintuplet murmurs, gazing up at the clock on the wall over their large flatscreen TV.
"A lot's happened, that's for sure," Miku begins to smile warmly as she, too, reminisces on their past two months. "I know in the beginning none of us were really thrilled to have to deal with a year-long tutor, but...I guess it really worked out for us."
"Well, in hindsight, we probably would've come to know Fuutarou-kun either way, right? Like what Nino was complaining about to Yotsuba, even if Dad had gone with hiring another person to handle our tutoring, he probably still would have hired Fuutarou-kun to be our bodyguard of sorts. Obviously we don't really know how much of a direct impact he would've had on our lives if things turned out that way, but..." Ichika trails off from there.
"So he would have probably still been able to instigate some kind of change among us," Itsuki finishes Ichika's thought for her. "A change Nino would have taken fault with either way."
"Yeah, exactly."
"But in Nino's defense, if we only knew Uesugi-san as our bodyguard, just as someone who protects us behind the scenes or whatever from these bad guys, wouldn't we, uh...not care about him as much? I don't know how else to put that, sorry," Yotsuba apologizes quickly.
"I'll admit that maybe I wouldn't have been affected as much," Ichika raises her hand a little. "Since I'm the type 'a gal who likes getting to know people and all, so Fuutarou-kun coming over every day and tutoring us for hours on end gave me lots of opportunities to get to know him and have a better opinion of him, now that we have a better understanding of what he does for us. Nino would probably be annoyed with him but not royally pissed off like she is now, since she doesn't need to worry about him being such a big part of our lives."
"But what if we had gotten another tutor instead of Fuutarou from the very start, and that tutor ended up being like Fuutarou? What then?" Miku points out.
"I'm not sure, but no one knows since that never happened. And I think it's better for us to think about what we do know rather than the hypotheticals. And speaking of what we do know..."
While Ichika is talking, the electronic doorbell rings, and Miku jumps up to her feet from the short couch to join Yotsuba as the two of them hurry to the front door to welcome the guest that they're expecting. The oldest and youngest quintuplets both watch their middle sisters slip out of sight briefly to the front lobby.
"I'm sure those two don't mind having met Fuutarou-kun like this at all," Ichika smiles shortly. "You were like Nino in the beginning, remember, Itsuki? How you didn't like him tutoring us at first."
"Y-Yes, I remember that...no need to remind me," Itsuki stammers a little and turns away in embarrassment, remembering the olden ages. "But...I have managed to overcome that initial resistance for the betterment of my grades, and ever since midterms, I have been studying along with everyone else."
"That you have. Do you like Fuutarou-kun as much as Miku and Yotsuba do, though?"
Itsuki blinks blankly at her oldest sister. "...come again?"
But Ichika isn't paying attention, because their sisters return holding some shopping bags while Uesugi Fuutarou, still carrying the good majority of bags, follows them into the kitchen.
"You really didn't need to buy all this for us, Fuutarou..." Miku says worriedly as she sets down the bag that she's taken off her tutor to help him as Yotsuba does the same, with Fuutarou following suit last. Seeing what is going on, Ichika and Itsuki both get up from the couch to see if they can help with anything, but it turns out that they've already brought all the groceries in.
"...wait, did Fuutarou-kun really buy groceries for us or something? What brought this on?" Ichika asks, uanble to hide the amazement from bleeding into her voice.
"Well, yesterday Nino and Yotsuba were coming back home with groceries, but since they got attacked on their way back, I had them just leave it all behind so that I could take them home right away," Fuutarou explains, but Yotsuba, turns to Ichika and says,
"Uesugi-san actually went back to the place where we got attacked, and he looked at all the groceries he bought for us and bought them all again!"
"It's not that big of a deal, Yotsuba, calm down," the young tutor tries to say, but Miku objects hotly.
"It is a big deal, Fuutarou! These groceries aren't cheap, especially with all the snacks here, and you know how many snacks we can go through with the five of us. And you were already going to treat us to lunch today anyway, along with parfaits!"
Shaking his head exasperatedly, Fuutarou just gives Miku a casual hand wave to dismiss her concerns.
"How many times do I have to repeat myself? It's not a big deal, I can do this once or twice - "
"Hey, hey, everyone, just - let's just calm down, alright? Fuutarou-kun's already bought us back our groceries, so it'll be a shame if we just send them all back," Ichika intervenes to get everyone on the same page. Fuutarou, meanwhile, sets down the bag of rice he's been carrying on his shoulder and opens the cupboard where the quintuplets keep their rice to store it appropriately. "Sorry that you have to deal with this today, Fuutarou-kun."
"I kinda figured everyone would be on edge; that's why I asked you earlier this morning with that text if you were sure you'd all still want to go," the young tutor replies, turning around to the rest of the quintuplets once the rice is secure in its cupboard.
"Well...given what's happened, it's probably for the best if we go, if only to give Nino some time to herself to calm down," Ichika shrugs. "I think you'd agree, no? And we can talk about it while we're eating or something."
"Yeah, that sounds good." Fuutarou looks up at the ceiling, in the direction of the quintuplets' bedrooms. "As much as I prefer that you girls at least try to stick together, since Nino's gonna be at home, she should be fine on her own...and if anything does happen here, I can port right over, so...yeah, let's get going. You all good to go?"
"Um, l-let me go use the bathroom first..." Yotsuba mutters with a bit of embarrassment, since she's been constantly sipping water for the past ten or so minutes while waiting for Fuutarou to arrive, so she excuses herself to go answer nature's call while the others slowly shift over to the shoe lobby to wait for Yotsuba there. Now that their tutor is here, though, the girls stand about awkwardly, not really knowing what to do or say while they wait on Yotsuba to finish her business, and Fuutarou, sensing that the source of the awkwardness may be due to his presence, takes his shoes back off for the time being.
"While we're waiting, let me try talking to Nino. I take it that none of you were able to get through to her if she's still holed up in her room like this?" he asks the girls, who all shake their heads.
"Just try not to set her off again," Itsuki requests.
"...I'm not sure if I can pull that one off, but I'll try not to."
So Fuutarou hurries up the stairs to walk up to Nino's bedroom, which is right in front of the top of the stairs. He's keenly aware of the fact that Nino most likely will refuse to talk to him too, judging from her extreme behavior from last night, so he's not really here to try to get her to talk to him. The real reason is because he noticed that Nino's Mystic Eyes were, alarmingly, active even through her Mystic Eye Killer contact lenses - and while he himself is not very well versed in the knowledge of Mystic Eyes, it doesn't take a magical genius or a top-level instructor at the Clock Tower to know that Mystic Eyes that cannot be adequately suppressed by Mystic Eye Killers but nothing but bad news.
And sure enough, even as Fuutarou climbs the stairs quickly to reach Nino's bedroom, he senses a marked change in temperature. It's not actually physical temperature that he's feeling; this is undoubtedly a sign of magical energy sprawling into the area, and a mage's magical senses will physically interpret this as an increase in temperature. He can tell, though, that this magical energy is not quite mana; it's not mature or developed enough to qualify as true mana. Rather, it's magical energy that hasn't been processed enough that's leaking out into its surroundings, which is a clear sign of a novice mage. As it is now, normal people shouldn't be able to sense this kind of magical energy because it's not strong enough to begin affecting people without active Magic Circuits that can sense it, but like an oil spill in the ocean that is slowly growing, it is dangerous to leave this situation alone for too long, and worse, Fuutarou doesn't know how much time he's got to work with before this spilled oil is ignited.
As he stands silently in front of Nino's bedroom, carefully considering his choice of words since the wrong words or the wrong tone can easily be the detonator for the ticking time bomb that is Nakano Nino on the other side of the door in front of him, Fuutarou senses a shift in attention from the magical signature he feels inside, meaning that Nino has, by now, sensed that he's here. If there's anything to take away from the past fourteen hours or so, it's that Nino's progress as a developing mage, initiated by the awakening of her Mystic Eyes, has taken a big leap forward, though Fuutarou isn't sure if this is what Nino wants, if she's even aware of what's happening to her to begin with.
"...I'll bring home the parfait I promised you. And some lunch, too," Fuutarou finally says, sighing quietly to himself that he can't think of anything better to say.
"Don't bother."
Nino's raspy voice awkwardly tumbles through the locked door that separates him and Nino.
"Forget about it," she adds. "I don't want it. Just leave me alone."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, now shut up and go away!"
Fuutarou stays still for a few seconds, wondering if there's anything else that can come to mind for him to tell Nino before he leaves, but it's situations like these where his lack of social skills comes to bite him in the ass. Frowning in disappointment at his inability to communicate effectively with Nino, Fuutarou casts a small sensor rune over Nino's door before he turns silently and climbs the stairs back down to regroup with the rest of the quintuplets downstairs, where Yotsuba is now present.
"So what did she say? Did she even say anything?" Miku asks upon their tutor's return.
"Not really, she just told me go away when I told her I'd bring her a parfait and some lunch," Fuutarou shakes his head. "I didn't really ask her much. I'll be honest, I have no idea what to say to her in a time like this. Guess we don't have a choice but to leave her be for now."
"Hmmmm, so even the perfect and almighty Fuutarou-kun has something he's not very good at, huh?" Ichika smiles lightly, teasing her tutor in an effort to lighten the mood a little.
"Of course I do, and that's talking to people," the young mage sighs as the five of them leave the house, leaving Nino behind to head for the elevator lobby. "I mentioned this before, didn't I? For someone like me who usually goes around beating the answers I want out of people if I need it or negotiating for it if I can't do that, having to figure out how to talk to people, especially girls, isn't what I'd call a skill of mine."
"But you've been able to talk to us just fine, even back when you first met us," Yotsuba points out.
"Yeah, but obviously I mean in a situation like this. I can't say I've ever been in a situation like this, you know?" Fuutarou gazes darkly at the elevator button that Itsuki has pushed for them to call the elevator up to the thirtieth floor. "...makes me a little frustrated, honestly."
Yotsuba hangs her head at this. "...again, Uesugi-san, I apologize for what Nino said to y - "
Suddenly, the fourth quintuplet feels her lips pinched together lightly, and she looks up at Fuutarou, who's reached over to pinch her mouth shut.
"Again, I don't want your apology," Fuutarou says quietly as the quintuplets look on uncertainly. "There was nothing here that you did wrong in my opinion. I said I'm frustrated because this is a problem I've never had to deal with before, and I'm a little annoyed with myself because of it."
"Because it's a problem that's going to be hard for you to solve?" Ichika asks while Fuutarou lets go of Yotsuba's lips.
"Not even that. I don't mind problems that are hard to solve, because in my experience, the only real difference between easy and hard problems is the amount of effort you need to put in to solve them. What makes this problem different is that I just don't know how to go about solving it to begin with because, like I said, I don't have any experience in handling stuff like this."
"You shouldn't feel bad about this, Fuutarou," Miku says softly, looking down at the floor between her and her tutor. "If anyone should, it should be us. We're Nino's sisters, so we should know how to resolve this on our own. Nino even told me that a while back, or something along those lines. We've had fights before, so this shouldn't be anything new to us, yet we're just as stumped as you are."
"Well, even if we did have fights in the past, we can't deny that this one is a lot different from before," Ichika notes. "So I don't think our experience from handling the fights we had from before really applies here."
The elevator arrives, opening up to invite the four quintuplets and their tutor in to take them down to the ground floor.
"We'll talk more about this at lunch. Might be a lot to ask, but let's try to enjoy ourselves for now," Fuutarou advises the girls just as his stomach rumbles deeply as it's prone to do often.
"Ah. You didn't eat breakfast today either, did you?" Miku pouts up at her classmate.
"Obviously not, since I knew we'd be eating together today."
"Eat some breakfast for once, Fuutarou!"
The quintuplets all chuckle at Miku's admonishment towards their tutor as the elevator doors slide shut.
"And now, for the one we've all been waiting for ~ "
Ichika, Miku, Yotsuba, Itsuki, and Fuutarou, sitting at their table at a Saizeriya family restaurant, are all armed with spoons with tall parfaits standing on the table before them. Ichika's is a lemon sherbet gelato parfait, topped with chocolate wafers and sprinkled with chocolate chips; Miku's is a matcha parfait with vanilla gelato, a scoop of red beans, and three pieces of green tea rice cake; Yotsuba's is a fruit parfait stacked predominantly with orange and tangerine slices but also with strawberries, kiwis, cherries, cantaloupe, watermelon, and whipped cream; Itsuki's is a strawberry parfait with custom Neopolitan ice cream made from Strawberry, Vanilla, and Chocolate Häagen-Dazs ice cream and strawberry-dipped Pocky sticks buried into the tall column of silky peach ice cream on the top.
Fuutarou's is a plain vanilla and chocolate parfait with chocolate syrup and two chocolate chip cookies. It also happens to be about a quarter of the size of the girls' desserts.
"Let's dig iiiiinnn ~ !"
The girls all excitedly plunge their spoons into their delicious parfait desserts, making good on Fuutarou's midterm promise to them while Fuutarou calmly munches on one of the chocolate chip cookies, since the cookies are in the way of him using his spoon to eat the ice cream beneath. He has to wonder if what he's eating is really a parfait when it's literally just ice cream with cookies on top.
"Haaauuuuu, this is sooooooooo gooooooood!" Yotsuba squeals, unable to contain her joy as the natural sweetness of her parfait due to its sheer fruit makeup seeps into her taste buds. "This might be even better than some actual ice cream places around here!"
"Yeah, it's really surprising how good this is. You wouldn't expect a place like this to have these, huh?" Ichika remarks as she, too, takes another big bite out of her lemon sherbet parfait.
"They even have matcha parfaits...I might come back on my own just for this," Miku smiles warmly after savoring the delicate but unmistakeable taste of her beloved matcha.
Itsuki, already about to take her fourth bite of her colossal strawberry parfait, notices Fuutarou, who's sitting in between her and Miku on one side of their table, take a spoonful of chocolate and vanilla swirl ice cream out of his comparatively tiny dessert.
"...are you sure you do not want us to get you a bigger parfait, Uesugi-kun?" she asks, eyeing her tutor's portion and finding it difficult to imagine having to settle for such a tiny amount when hers is four times as big.
"Again, I'm fine. I'm not one to typically eat desserts much," Fuutarou sighs tiredly. "Do you girls really need to keep asking me the same questions over and over even when we're not studying? It's bad enough just with that."
"Now, now, let's just all enjoy what we've got. If Fuutarou-kun wanted to have a bigger portion, he would've gotten it for himself," Ichika intervenes, in case another argument can potentially begin to develop.
"Are we sure it's not just because Uesugi-san is a cheapskate and he's intentionally getting a small parfait for himself so he doesn't have to pay as much?" Yotsuba asks aloud to everyone.
"If I wanted a bigger one, like Ichika said, I would've gone ahead and done so. I'm already paying for everything today, one more extra-large parfait isn't going to tip me over the edge."
"Yeah, says the guy who brought in all those coupons for a place like this!"
"Hey, listen, I've had them sitting around for a while and it'd be a waste to just let them expire, so that's why we came here, a'ight?" Fuutarou snaps at the fourth quintuplet as her sisters all laugh at the absurdity of having to bring coupons for a family restaurant that's already got a magnanimous reputation for having cheap, hearty meals. "You all make it sound like I'm a cheapskate, but none of you know the real hustle. It's a tough world out there, I'm just sayin'."
"Yeah, it must be real tough having to tutor five cute quintuplets all at once, huh?" Ichika teases her tutor some more, pointing her spoon in his direction.
"Like you wouldn't believe. Sometimes I wonder if your dad's paying me enough for this shit."
"Ohoho? So what you're saying is...you want some more compensation, huh...? Weeeeell, we may be able to negotiate something...a bit extra..."
Ichika takes her spoon while she's talking and slips the bottom tip of her utensil into her collar before tugging it outwards a little bit.
"I-Ichika, please refrain from doing anything i-inappropriate!" Itsuki cries lightly, reaching over to tuck Ichika's collar in.
"Ahaha, juuuuust kidding, I'm just playing with him ~ "
"Just pay me back in good grades. That should be cheap enough, right?" Fuutarou shrugs simply before taking a big bite out of his chocolate-vanilla ice cream.
"Ah, now you're just asking for the impossible."
"With that kind of attitude, it will be."
"How did you even know about this place, Fuutarou? As in, did you know that the parfaits here were really good?" Miku asks curiously. "I know Itsuki was the one who first mentioned it to us before, but usually you wouldn't think of a family restaurant like this, especially one like Saizeriya that's based on Italian cuisine, to have such good parfaits. Did you come here before?"
"Yeah, a couple times. This place is really cheap and you get a lot of food, so it's pretty ideal for families like mine who're on a tight budget, to say the least. But besides that, a friend of mine who runs a bakery that opened recently in the city knows the person who makes parfaits here - apparently they attended culinary school together, and he told me to come here in case for whatever reason I wanted some good parfaits."
Yotsuba nods thoughtfully at her tutor. "You don't seem like it, but you actually know a ton of people, probably, huh?"
"Part of the job, I guess. There's only so much I can do on my own, as much as I'd like to do everything by myself, so knowing the right people and what they do is important, even if it's for stuff that's not as important like taking everyone out to lunch at a good spot or something."
"I hear that," Ichika nods deeply, taking another bite out of her lemon sherbet parfait. "Knowing the right people will get you places for sure. They certainly don't teach you that in school."
"Well, at least you get it. And hopefully you'll be able to teach the rest about it too."
"Even though you're the one tutoring us?"
"My job's to teach you school stuff, not life lessons."
"But aren't life lessons more important than school lessons?"
"Yes, but that's not under my jurisdiction."
Ichika pouts a little over at Fuutarou. "Oh, you and your silly 'jurisdiction' and stuff again..."
"You have a part-time job, right, Ichika? Then you should know how important contracts are and such."
"I do, but, like, we're friends here, right? So we don't need to be so rigid around each other, especially now when we're just chilling and eating lunch together."
"That's true, but even still, the life lessons I have to tell aren't ones that would be useful to the rest of you." Fuutarou scoops up his last spoonful of ice cream to finish his dessert well before any of the other quintuplets. "The fact of the matter is that my life is very different from all of yours, almost too different to really compare, in fact."
"You are not trying to privilege-check us right now, are you?" Itsuki scowls a little over at her classmate sitting next to her.
"No, I'm not, where'd that come from. And besides, isn't that something Nino would say? When'd you learn how to say stuff like that?"
"I-I have been hanging out with Nino quite a bit these days, so I suppose I must have picked it up from her, is that so wrong?"
Sighing again, Fuutarou puts his spoon down.
"Just to be clear, I'm not trying to sound bitter that our lives are so different, and I'm not trying to suggest that one lifestyle is somehow better than the other. We all have our problems and struggles; I'm sure you girls need to deal with problems that I never have to or never need to worry about dealing with."
"I don't know...we used to be poor when we were kids, but we were lucky enough to have Papa take care of us after Mama died," Miku mumbles, staring deeply into her matcha parfait that she's eating slowly, bit by bit. "Did any one of us tell you about that yet, Fuutarou?"
"Itsuki did, actually, yeah."
"Oh? This is new to me, when'd she tell you about our mom?" Ichika asks curiously.
Fuutarou glances for a moment over to Itsuki, silently asking for her permission to divulge this information. Judging by the uncertain, uncomfortable look on her face, though, Fuutarou decides to give a partial answer and says,
"We ran into each other after school, and I decided to walk her home since it was getting late at the time. We just talked about a few things along the way, I guess."
"Hmm, that so..." Ichika eyes Itsuki for a moment before her eyes return to her tutor so that Miku can continue.
"So...we also know what it's like being poor, Fuutarou, but we were lucky enough to get out of that situation. You, on the other hand...you're still poor, and on top of that, you work so much harder than all five of us ever have combined. Even if you say that our problems are different, how can we look at each other and not see that, clearly, you've got it a lot tougher than we do?"
"By trying to not worry about it so much. It might be easy for me to say this, but...try not to dwell on it, because if you do that, you'll start finding yourself worrying about me more and more and more, to the point where you'll want to get involved with me and the shit I do, and that's the last thing I want you to do."
Miku's heart sinks terribly hearing these words.
"Kind of ironic, isn't it? That you're the one telling us that," Ichika points out.
"I'm aware. Still, I maintain that this is how things should be. If you want to feel bad for me or the position that I or my family's in, I'd rather you feel that way towards the rest of the city with all the problems it's got going on right now. The drug problem, the other poor families who live in the less fortunate districts that oftentimes get displaced because the city's demolishing infrastructure and housing in those areas for future development and whatnot...the point is, I'm not the only one having a hard time, and I think it's unfair for me to ask anything more for myself."
The girls remain silent for a bit, eating their parfaits without a word after Fuutarou speaks his piece. Surprisingly, it's Yotsuba who speaks up first.
"While you're not wrong, the fact of the matter is that you're someone very important to us now, Uesugi-san," she says quietly, gazing at a tangerine slice nestled in the remainder of the whipped cream in her parfait glass. "And...we want to care about you, just like how you care about us...even if you only care about us because it's contractual."
"That's right. Yotsuba knows better than any of us how that must feel, having to care about a lot of people's problems at once because she's the one who goes around trying to help as many people at school as she can," Miku testifies on her younger sister's behalf. "And besides, it's unfair of you to ask us to do something like that, worrying about the rest of the city. That's not our job, there's no way a bunch of high school girls like us can do something like that when we're not as strong or hardworking as someone like you. But we can at least try to help someone who's become a big part of our lives by now, right?"
"And it's got nothing to do with being fair or unfair. You even said it yourself, Fuutarou-kun, when you were talking to us about how we shouldn't worry about your situation because it's just different. If you're going to say something like that, then why won't you let us worry about you just because we want to? Or are you trying to imply that you were lying to us when you called us your friends from earlier, after we were done with midterms?"
Fuutarou slowly but sharply locks eye contact with Ichika, who subconsciously sits upright, growing rapt at attention, but Fuutarou doesn't hold the ominous stare for long.
"...no, you're right. I was being contradictory," he sighs quickly. "I guess it's not right for me to say those things. I'm just used to not expecting much out of other people that I'd rather people leave me alone than try to give me a hand at all. But it looks like I'll have to make an exception for the bunch of you."
"I mean, Father wants you to have us raise our grades and reach high school graduation safely; by default, you must have high expectations from us, no?" Itsuki chuckles amicably.
"That's...also true. Though I can't say that I'm not having second thoughts."
"Oh come on, Uesugi-kun, what is that supposed to mean?!"
"You know exactly what I mean, Miss I-Forgot-The-Formula-For-Density-Even-Though-My-Best-Subject-Is-Science!"
"But that's MATH!" Itsuki blurts out indignantly.
The quintuplets all chime into a chorus of soft laughter as their tutor throws his hands up and rolls his eyes.
"For once, it's not me Uesugi-san's telling off for getting a question wrong!" Yotsuba grins from ear to ear.
"Oh, don't tempt me with a good time, Yotsuba," Fuutarou raises the ante on Yotsuba's relieved grin with a particularly malicious one of his own.
"Aaaaaaaaaah, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay, I'm fine!"
Miku, watching Fuutarou leer over at the cowering Yotsuba with the threat of exposing her academic mistakes from the past week, glances down at the small, empty parfait glass that her tutor has long since cleared, though Itsuki, being the big eater that she is, is about two-thirds through hers, while everyone else has only eaten about a third of their own. So she digs in a spoonful of her own matcha parfait and calls out to their classmate.
"Fuutarou, do you want a bite of mine?" she asks once she's gotten his attention. "It's going to take us a while to go through these, and I know you still have room for more."
Fuutarou grimaces down at Miku. "Do I have a choice in the matter?" he asks.
"Well, if you don't want there to be, I can arrange for that too," she replies simply. "Now say 'aaaah'."
"Oooh, wow, Miku's getting bold," Ichika whistles, eagerly watching the sight of Miku spoonfeeding a bite of her matcha parfait.
"M-Miku, that is not - this is not appropriate behavior that should be demonstrated between a tutor and his student," Itsuki calls over to her older sister in a low voice behind Fuutarou's back.
"We're here as friends, not as tutor and student," Miku replies swiftly in self-defense. "Besides, you should give Fuutarou a bite of yours, too, Itsuki. You're going to keep putting on weight if you eat huge desserts like that all by yourself."
"I-I do not need to be reminded of my weight, thank you very much!" Itsuki yowls as Ichika and Yotsuba both erupt into stifled giggles of their own. "And you two, please be quiet!"
"I mean, all that food's gotta go somewhere..." Fuutarou shrugs as he savors the matcha flavor of Miku's parfait.
"Do you actually like Miku's parfait? Isn't matcha a weird flavor?" Ichika asks, watching her tutor's reaction to the taste.
"I've actually had matcha ice cream a few times as a kid. It tastes a little weird in the beginning, yeah, since it's not a flavor you'd expect on ice cream, but I got used to it pretty quickly and it's nice. It's been a while since I last had something matcha-flavored, too."
Miku's eyes widen at hearing Fuutarou's praise of matcha.
"Well, would you look at that, someone else who actually likes matcha in stuff that's not tea. Congratulations, Miku, you've found yourself a new comrade," Ichika laughs.
"I think I like it better now since I'm older, just for the record. As a kid I liked the usual sweet stuff, but now that I don't usually have sweet stuff as much, I think I'm losing my sweet tooth..."
"Would you like another bite, Fuutarou?" Miku offers again, much more eagerly than before, even offering a small smile with this second spoonful of matcha gelato.
"Sure, it's good," Fuutarou nods as he accepts her offer.
"Mhmmmmm ~ maybe next time, it should just be the two of you," Ichika giggles. "Maybe find somewhere nicer than this, though. Isn't there that one high-class restaurant Itsuki likes going to? Miku can take him there at some point for a date."
"D-Date..." Mumbling to herself shyly, Miku sinks her eyes figuratively back into her dessert as her cheeks begin to flush.
"I mean, c'mon, isn't that what you're already doing right now? Just pretend we're not here, go on, go on ~ "
Thinking quickly to stop what she perceives to be inappropriate behavior, Itsuki jabs her spoon into her own parfait and turns to her tutor.
"U-Uesugi-kun, that is quite enough, do you not also want to try a bite of my parfait?" she stammers somewhat. She has to wonder why she thought this would somehow be the solution to the problem that she saw between Miku and Fuutarou.
"Oh ho ho, what's this now, Itsuki-chan? Is this...jealousy I'm seeing?" the eldest quintuplet, never one to pass up an opportunity to tease, leans in a little towards her youngest sister.
"You are mistaken! I am - I am merely trying to put distance between Miku and Uesugi-kun, as there should be between teacher and student!" Itsuki blurts out.
"Yes, because doing the same thing that Miku is doing is going to solve that, huh?"
"F-Forget that detail, Ichika!"
"Ah, if that's the case - " Yotsuba joins in too, taking a spoonful of her own fruit parfait and offering it to her tutor as well. "Here you go, Uesugi-san! Please help yourself!"
"Then me too ~ " Ichika chimes in, doing the same with her own lemon sherbet dessert.
"Me three," Miku also joins in, even though she was the one who started this all.
"Gee, Miku, how come Fuutarou gets to eat three times from your dessert?" Ichika laughs sarcastically as Miku pouts back at her oldest sister. In the meantime, Fuutarou grimaces again, this time down at the four spoons stretched out to him whose contents are intended for him to consume.
"...I knew I shouldn't have let you girls start this," he grumbles miserably before diving in, eating the quintuplets' bites of their desserts one by one.
"So? Whose did you like the best?" Ichika asks coyly, eating off whatever gelato's left over on her spoon after Fuutarou takes her bite last.
"You're asking me? Food is food, it's all good to me," he replies dryly. "I don't really have a preference for desserts or just sweet stuff in general. Not that Miku's was sweet, necessarily, but still. And I'm full now, that's enough dessert for me for about a month."
As the young tutor takes a drink of water, he glances over at Itsuki, who's suddenly become awfully quiet and is looking straight down at her lap, not even at her dessert that she's almost done finishing. She's still holding her clean spoon in her hand, though.
"Brain freeze, Itsuki? Take it easy then," he tells her, and Itsuki just nods really quickly. Miku, also noticing Itsuki's strange reaction, blinks down at her spoon that was about to feed her another bite of matcha parfait, and she, too, realizes what she's about to do to herself.
"Now that it looks like we're about done with these," Fuutarou sighs one more time after taking a look at everyone's progress, "I believe you all wanted to talk to me about what we're gonna do about Nino. I've explained my side of the story on our way here and while we were waiting to be seated, so we can hopefully keep this short and simple."
"Though, it's still going to be far from simple," Ichika answers crisply. Having noticed the strange reactions from Miku and Itsuki, Ichika smiles at the two of them while Yotsuba blissfully continues chowing her way through the rest of her parfait. "We think that it'll be for the best if you talk to Nino directly, Fuutarou-kun, since you're the one she has a serious problem with. But obviously that's easier said than done, since you tried talking to her earlier before we left the house and she didn't really talk to you other than tell you to get out."
"So...simple for you, not so simple for me. Got it," Fuutarou nods profoundly. "Just like most of my other contracts where my clients expect me to figure out everything on my own. I'm really glad to see that no matter who the client is, the nature of my job never changes."
"Ah, Uesugi-san, Uesugi-san, your eyes! Your eyes are going blank! Come back, come baaaaack!" Yotsuba cries, reacting swiftly by jamming another spoonful of her fruit parfait into Fuutarou's mouth to put some energy into him like she's clumsily switching out batteries.
"We'll talk to Nino as well whenever you're not here; it's not like we're just going to sit back doing nothing," Ichika frowns. "But at least for right now, doesn't it just make sense that you try to get through to her first?"
Fuutarou swallows his last mouthful of fruit parfait and locks eyes with the eldest quintuplet. "Then help me out by telling me what you think I should know going into this. So far, I know that Nino's been acting unusual in hindsight after midterms, which I misinterpreted as her finally cooperating with us to improve her grades and be a good student. Is there anything else you guys want to tell me that's been going on with her? Things that I don't know about that she's been doing or...?"
"Should you not know, Mr. Mage?" Itsuki snaps lightly to him; it would appear that she's recovered from whatever slight bout of meekness she was showing earlier. "May I kindly remind you that you are the one who has us all under constant surveillance for our protection."
"Careful now, like Ichika said, you're starting to sound like Nino there," Fuutarou scowls a little. "But again, for your information, I said that I don't know literally everything that you five are up to, that's just way beyond my own capabilities as a mage. I just know your locations and whether or not you all seem to be in danger, which was how I knew Nino and Yotsuba were getting attacked yesterday and went over as quickly as I could. So obviously I don't know any of the details of your interactions with her while I'm not actually there."
The quintuplets all glance among themselves, visually searching each other for answers they don't have.
"...I don't think any of us really saw anything out of the ordinary with her, other than what Yotsuba already told you," Miku shakes her head slowly.
"Yeah...I probably wouldn't have even thought this was a problem if Nino hadn't made a big deal out of it," Yotsuba adds.
"Could Nino also be mad at me too? Considering how we were the two who would be against Uesugi-kun tutoring us. Perhaps she feels like she is left alone?" Itsuki suggests.
"But if that were the case, then she wouldn't have been studying with us for the past two weeks after midterms. There's gotta be something more to it - I'm starting to think it's something that she's keeping to herself, because otherwise one of us would've noticed it by now. We're not quintuplets for no reason, right?" Ichika says firmly.
"Something that she's been keeping to herself, huh. Well, shit, then that just makes talking to her even harder. Or rather, it'd be more appropriate to say that there's more riding on the line when I do go talk to her later," Fuutarou groans somewhat before pulling out his phone. "For now, let me get everyone's phone numbers. It's been getting trickier keeping everyone on the same page when I only have Ichika's number, so I hope none of you mind this."
"I was going to force you to go around getting everyone's numbers anyway," Ichika remarks as the girls all take out their own phones so that they can exchange their contact info. "By the way, I'll give you Nino's number too for what should be obvious reasons..."
"Yeah. Though I'll bet you Nino's gonna get pissed at me for somehow having her number..."
"Aha, yeah, that sounds like her, alright..."
Once Fuutarou has logged everyone's phone numbers, he puts his phone away and pulls out his wallet to pay for everyone's food and dessert at the standing payment tablet that has patiently stood on the far side of the table next to the condiments for this moment.
"By the way, did any of you feel like it was a bit warmer back at your place on the second floor? At the top of the stairs or something?" Fuutarou asks carefully, eyeing the quintuplets to gauge their reactions.
As expected, Yotsuba and Itsuki give him blank or puzzled looks, while Ichika and Miku gaze back at him with concerned focus.
"...no, not...not really? That seems like an awfully random question, are you sure this is not some kind of pop quiz question that you are giving us?" Itsuki replies.
"Er, well...I...I thought I felt the air being a bit warmer there, but...it could've just been my imagination..." Miku says quickly. Ichika says nothing, opting to keep her peace.
"I see. Sorry, I thought maybe one of the runes I put there might be malfunctioning or something, I'll take another look at it when we get back, I guess. Also..."
Setting the mobile payment kiosk aside, Fuutarou takes a look around at the quintuplets to get their attention one last time before they leave while Yotsuba arranges their empty parfait glasses on the side of the table so that their waiter can more easily collect them to put away.
"I might need a few days to think about how to approach Nino. In the meantime, do what you can to calm her down, but don't try to force it on her. In my experience, people who're really pissed off don't just chill out just because other people tell them to; they typically have to let themselves burn out, and only then will they start calming down on their own. So let her do her thing for now while I try to get some things ready."
"Looks like that's our only choice, knowing Nino. If it were anyone else, this wouldn't be so much of an issue..." Ichika sighs. "Nino's always been the hothead out of the five of us, and she's always been proud of doing her own thing to the point where she sometimes rubs it in your face if she feels like it."
"My concern for us is now how we will be able to cook for ourselves," Itsuki wonders aloud, looking around the table herself. "With Nino refusing to come out of her room like that and she being the only one of us five who knows how to cook properly, what shall we do about food?"
"Miku and I made some onigiri for breakfast, remember? That wasn't too bad, even you said so, Itsuki," Yotsuba points out.
"Yes, but the fact of the matter is that we will not be eating onigiri for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And I believe Miku has not quite learned enough from Nino yet to know how to cook a variety of meals in the same vein as Nino."
"Well, excuse me, Itsuki, I've been concentrating on studying lately so I haven't had time to keep having Nino teach me like she used to..." Miku rolls her eyes slowly.
"We can just order delivery until Nino starts to calm down, can't we?" Ichika just shrugs.
"But that is unhealthy! We cannot eat fast food for days on end, keeping a healthy diet and a balanced nutritional intake is important, Ichika!"
"Says the one who ate two large pasta plates all by herself when most of us could barely finish one and still somehow had room for that extra-large strawberry parfait that Fuutarou-kun bought you."
Silenced by Ichika's brutal reality check, Itsuki turns away quickly to hide her face in shame.
"Besides, delivery these days is great, you know? I know the delivery apps I have on my phone deliver entire Japanese-style home-cooked meals right to your doorstep."
"If food's going to be an issue, I can stop by to cook for you all," Fuutarou volunteers. "I'm nowhere near as good of a cook as Nino is, but I know enough, and helping her out with dinner the past two weeks whenever I've stayed over long enough to eat with you all's helped me get back into the groove of cooking."
"Come to think of it, Uesugi-san, when did you learn how to cook?" Yotsuba asks curiously.
"Didn't I tell you already? No, wait, I think I told Nino but not anyone else...basically when I was growing up, since, y'know, my family's poor and all, I started taking whatever odd jobs I could to help support my family, and I tried working all the food-related jobs I could so that I could maybe take home some free food or meals. Most of those jobs were just mundane stuff like cleaning or washing the dishes or something, but I could watch the chefs cook and observe what they were doing, or if they were nice enough, some of them even let me practice cooking with them even though they shouldn't have."
"Sheesh...you learned how to cook just by watching other people? And you're already good enough to cook with Nino? Just what kind of a super-tutor are you?" Ichika shakes her head in slight disbelief. "And this was when you were younger, too..."
"You can learn how to cook too, you know. Instead of ordering delivery all the damn time."
"Baaah, I'm too busy."
"You mean lazy."
"Wait...Fuutarou, does that mean...you can teach me how to cook instead?" Miku's eyes widen brightly at him as sparkles begin to appear at their sides.
"Um, again, I...probably can't teach you as well as Nino can, but I can certainly help you with basic stuff."
"That's good enough for me. Oh, I just got an idea!" Miku claps her hands together, a lightbulb going off in her head. "How about we have Fuutarou come over to cook breakfast and dinner for us until Nino's finally calmed down enough? That way, we can make sure that he eats breakfast and dinner every day."
"While that certainly would help him keep a consistent diet, would that be alright? Seeing how he is very busy and all," Itsuki points out in concern over his own personal schedule.
"I don't mind that at a time like this, actually," Fuutarou nods in approval of Miku's idea. "In light of recent developments, I'll have to focus on your girls' security again. So cooking for you girls'll give me an alibi, I guess I could call it, to be around you all more often."
"It's not an alibi when we like having you around," Yotsuba smiles warmly.
"That's right, at this point we don't mind at all. Of course, Nino's a different story at the moment..." Ichika sighs shortly, with her blue eyes rolling to the side, away from her sisters and tutor.
"Then that's settled; sorry for the increased intrusion ahead of time, in case anyone else starts having a problem with me coming over all the time," Fuutarou dryly jokes. "Just don't expect me to buy groceries all the time, though."
"You shouldn't have even bought them for us today!" Yotsuba pouts back up at him.
"Actually, wait a minute..." Miku urgently looks up at her tutor, the bright look on her face now suddenly gone and replaced by one of apprehensive epiphany. "You said earlier that you'd 'get a few things ready' to help calm Nino down. W-What do you mean by that, exactly...?"
"Hm? Nothing much, I've just been brainstorming a few ways in which I wanna go about approaching Nino, and it's gonna take me maybe a few days? Depends on the people I need to meet and if they're available, but that's about it, why?"
"Well...just...just hearing you say that, it...it sounded like..." Miku gulps a little, "...it sounded like...you were going to like, I don't know...do something to Nino, like, as in like an interrogation or something..."
"What on this part of the Earth's hemisphere made you think that? An interrogation? Like, tie Nino to a chair and start tickling her with a feather duster or something? Man, I guess what they say about quiet girls always being the freakiest is accurate..."
"N-No, Fuutarou, wait, that's not what I - "
But it's too late; his dry remark has already set the rest of her sisters to begin giggling heartily and teasing her for her hidden thoughts and possible fantasies.
"Again, just leave Nino alone unless she somehow feels like talking first. I'll be in the kitchen with Miku organizing the rest of the groceries I bought earlier this morning and check up on what she can do as far as cooking's concerned. And again, today's lesson is cancelled, so study on your own or do whatever."
"Okayyyy ~ "
Upon returning to the Nakano penthouse, the quintuplets disperse to carry on their own individual businesses, with Itsuki returning to her room for some more self-study while Ichika and Yotsuba flop comfortably onto the long couch to begin watching some TV together, though Ichika pulls out her phone shortly after and begins texting.
Miku and Fuutarou, meanwhile, head to the kitchen as planned, but as soon as they enter, Fuutarou immediately raises his hand to cast another spell that covers the whole kitchen. He also keenly watches Miku's reaction, if she shows any, as he casts this spell, but Miku, who's entered the kitchen first, simply tends to the groceries brought in by her tutor that still need to be sorted and stocked properly. This means that Miku's development as a mage is still going slowly, because otherwise she would have been able to sense Fuutarou casting a spell right behind her.
"Miku, there's something I need to talk to you about," Fuutarou says in a low voice, grabbing Miku's attention immediately, and she turns around urgently.
"Of course, what's going on?"
"Just so you know, I've put a spell here in the kitchen so that the others can't hear us talking - or more specifically, they'll just think we're talking about normal stuff as long as they don't physically enter the kitchen itself, which they shouldn't since we just came back from eating a huge lunch."
The third quintuplet's blue eyes widen again at her classmate.
"...this is something you can only talk to me about?" she asks hesitantly, unsure of what's going to happen.
"Yeah, because it's about Nino."
At this, Miku swiftly sheds her hesitation and stands up straight with a worried look on her face.
"Is it about her being a mage and whatnot?" she asks, and Fuutarou nods.
"When I went up to her room to try to talk to her before we left for lunch, I sensed a definite presence of magical energy coming from Nino's room. Since you guys told me that she's been holed up in her room for all this time since last night, my guess is that she's been subconsciously leaking magical energy all throughout her room all this time, to the point where I can sense it even outside her room, though it seems to have contained itself within the confines of her room only rather than continuing to spread throughout the house, which is good. That's why I asked you guys earlier before we left Saizeriya if any of you felt like it was hotter around Nino's room, and the fact that you said it felt a bit hotter there means that you can sense it too; it's just that you didn't realize exactly what you were feeling."
Miku listens to her tutor with keen attention.
"So...that was actually magical energy..." she murmurs thoughtfully but worriedly.
"Yeah. It's not quite full-blown mana; you and Nino don't know how to control your Magic Circuits yet because you've never practiced magecraft, so your bodies don't know how to process your magical energy into mana using your Circuits. "
"And...the fact that everyone else couldn't...means that they aren't mages?"
Fuutarou raises a finger. "We'll get to that in a second, because I want to fully update you on Nino's condition. I put a sensor rune on her room before we left, and I've been monitoring her status as best I could the entire time while we were away at lunch. Thankfully, she seems to have calmed down, at least as far as her magical physiology's concerned; she's still probably emotionally fried but we'll deal with that later. But if you sense the temperature near her room get alarmingly hot, text me right away, now that you have my number. Got it?"
Miku nods firmly.
"...but why is that happening? Is it because of what happened last night when she and Yotsuba got attacked?"
"I don't know for sure; there're a lot of things that happened that could be the reason why Nino's behaving the way she is, magically speaking. I know she got stabbed in the right shoulder, so maybe the shock of getting hurt like that probably disturbed her pretty badly? Maybe it was the stress and trauma of being attacked like that in general? The obvious possibility is that she's pissed the hell off at me for whatever reason, but I still want to take everything into account. Hell, it could be the combination of all those things that's set her over the edge like this."
"But we know for sure it's because of what happened yesterday. Because that's the first time I've ever felt something like that passing by her room...now that I know what it really was, of course."
"Right."
"Could it be related to her Mystic Eyes? That's...that's really the only form of magecraft we have access to, right? Since, like you said, we don't know how to do anything else."
"I can only assume so, yeah. And that's not good, because like I told you two a while back, not only am I not very well trained in dealing with people with active Mystic Eyes, but literally anything can happen if Nino's Eyes continue to develop. And with how they seem to be developing now, I'm starting to get legitimately concerned that the rest of you will be affected too somehow, and naturally you'll be one of the first ones to notice."
Miku nods. "So...when you said earlier at the restaurant how you needed to prepare some things, that's what you meant? To deal with Nino's Mystic Eyes?"
Sighing heavily, Fuutarou scratches the back of his head uncertainly. "Not with them directly. But what I do plan to do is help her magical physiology stabilize so that she doesn't keep leaking magical energy all over the place like she's doing now, because it's kind of like she's pouring gasoline everywhere and it's just waiting to get set on fire. If you girls didn't live all the way up here on the thirtieth floor, I'd be racing to resolve this issue because Nino would instantly give away the place where you live to any mage who walks by this high-rise."
Fuutarou watches Miku look away briefly in discomfort; the look in her eyes tells him that while she's not fully aware of what this means, she does know that this could have been a much more dangerous situation than it is right now.
"So what I plan to do is something called Tuning; it's a form of magecraft that allows one mage to 'tune' the magical physiology of other mages, which is where it gets its name. A Tuner, then, can do things like stabilize a mage's mana flow if it's behaving erratically for some reason and improve a mage's Magic Circuit efficiency so that they can more easily employ magecraft by producing more mana more quickly and more easily to fuel said magecraft. I've already done it I think twice before; once with you back at Hawaii during Golden Week and twice with everyone before midterms I think it was, when I sang that one song in English for everyone and embarrassed myself."
"You didn't embarrass yourself, really! It was really good," Miku insists. "But...so that was why, when I heard you playing the guitar back then..."
"Oh, so you felt it even back then?"
"Well, obviously, I...I didn't know what it was that I was feeling. I just felt...at ease, I think. Like I could sit there and...and listen you play the guitar forever, almost." Miku blushes a bit, forcing herself to turn away shyly. "...sorry if...that sounded a bit...weird."
"No, not at all, that's what Tuning does sometimes. Different mages have different reactions to it, especially if they're experiencing Tuning for the first time, but you get used it as time goes on."
"I see. And you want to do that for Nino because it might help with her condition?"
"Yeah, pretty much. Since she's a mage, she should be affected by it. The only problem is, I need to get her to listen to whatever it is that I decide to play...and her being holed up in her own room like that isn't exactly ideal because all that magical energy that's lingering in her room could block the Tuning."
"So it comes back to the question of how we can get Nino to come out of her room again, huh."
"Yep. Eventually she'll have to come out, she's still gotta use the bathroom and eat, after all. Not that it guarantees that she'll start talking to us..."
Clearing his throat, Fuutarou then glances to his left at the two quintuplets sitting on the long couch watching TV.
"Coming back to what we mentioned earlier," he says, "you know how you said that everyone else couldn't sense the higher temperature around Nino's room because they aren't mages?"
Miku can't stop herself from letting out a tiny gasp.
"...I knew it. Our sisters - we're all mages, aren't we?"
"Hold on, hold on, I didn't go that far yet. Because Yotsuba and Itsuki said they didn't feel anything, it's safe to say that they either haven't started developing as mages yet or they might not even be mages at all, so we don't need to worry about those two for now. But...Ichika, on the other hand..."
"...let me guess, she's got her own Mystic Eyes just like me and Nino, right?"
"She does have her own Mystic Eye, yeah. Just one, though, curiously enough, it's only in her right eye. I don't think her left eye has it."
"Huh...I guess that makes sense. Though it's not like I have three Mystic Eyes."
"What, you don't wanna be Tien? Or maybe Hiei? Third Eye and all that?"
"I-I don't really...like how they look," Miku mumbles, quickly putting her hands over her forehead to hide it, even though her bangs are doing a plenty good job of that for her already. "They look...creepy."
"Yeah, maybe so. Anyway...I first found out Ichika had a Mystic Eye on midterms week, I think, at the beginning of the week when I ran into her at Starbucks."
"Oh yeah, she did tell us that she met you there. I remember her saying that she had a fight with you or something? An argument?"
"So she told you about it, cool."
"Well...not that she had a Mystic Eye."
"Clearly. But not only did she have a Mystic Eye, but she even used it on me."
At this, Miku's face contorts with horror, and she snaps her gaze over at her oldest sister sitting at the couch.
"She...she did what?" Miku hisses quietly, and Fuutarou is a bit taken back to hear her voice filled with anger.
"Let me explain, so calm down, I don't need to deal with another Nino right now. Like she said, we got into a bit of an argument at Starbucks, and towards the end, when she had enough of arguing with me, she used her Mystic Eye on me and left, I guess to head back home."
"What did it do?"
"It paralyzed me, as in I couldn't get myself to move. It wasn't a complete paralysis because I could still keep myself sitting up on my chair, but all I could really do was just sit there for a few minutes before its effects wore off. I think her Eye's also supposed to do something extra, but I don't know what it was supposed to be since my defensive spells managed to ward against it, I think."
Miku lowers her gaze down at the kitchen floor. "So...that's why, back at the restaurant, when you asked us if we felt any weird change in temperature outside Nino's room...Ichika just stayed silent..."
Fuutarou also glances over at Ichika briefly before focusing back onto Miku again.
"She's been keeping it a secret from everyone," Fuutarou reveals, as if Miku couldn't come to that conclusion on her own. "And the fact that she not only knows how to use her Mystic Eye but also use it well means that she's had it for some time now; exactly how long I can't say since I've only known you all for a little over two months by now. Out of the three of you, Ichika is definitely the most qualified to be a legit mage."
Miku remains quiet, clearly mulling over her own thoughts that must be flooding her mind.
"You can think about it later on your own while I'm not here, but the reason why I'm telling you this is because I'm a bit suspicious of Ichika and the fact that she's been keeping something like that a secret from everyone. From my own experience, mages in the same family aren't immune from doing horrible things to each other in the name seeking power or other bullshit things, and while I want to trust that you girls aren't like that, I'd rather let you know about this so that you're informed. Not to mention, she's also aware of the fact that you and Nino are also mages and also have Mystic Eyes like she does."
Still not offering a reply, Miku slowly leans against the edge of the kitchen counter behind her waist.
"The only thing I ask is that you don't tell Ichika about the fact that I told you all this, otherwise she might pull a Nino on me herself. I'm running a big risk exposing this kind of info to you, so I'd appreciate it if you could stay quiet around Ichika in regards to this," Fuutarou asks, and finally, Miku nods firmly. "Good. For now, let's take things one at a time. Do you know how to make miso soup?"
Miku pouts back up at Fuutarou, mentally switching gears to start practicing her cooking with him. "Of course I do, who do you think I am?"
"Alright, then let's make some to make sure you can."
As the third quintuplet begins to prepare the ingredients for miso soup, she wonders to herself if she should take this time to ask her tutor about the possibility of teaching her magecraft, but what Nino told her floats back into her mind. Yeah...Nino's most likely right, there's no way Fuutarou would want to teach her magecraft, and he's already stated as such a couple times before. There's no point in even trying to ask...