Five Equal Angels

by Hieda no Akyuu

Alternate retelling of the original manga. With more than just tutoring skills at his disposal, Uesugi Fuutarou is hired to guide the Quintuplets to graduation, but this time there is more to it than just tutoring and more at stake than simply avoiding academic failure.

49. Tonkatsu Curry

Knocking in a peculiar fashion, as if following a beat, Uesugi Fuutarou waits to be answered. He's dressed in a similar style as he was on the night he visited Takebayashi at the Night Crawler nightclub, the same streetwalker style that fits him as naturally as a dog trying to sleep in a cat's bed because the cat is occupying its bed. Fuutarou waits outside in a long hallway on the top floor of a three-story commercial building in the heart of the city, shadowed by the cluster of skyscrapers that easily overshadow it and whose number is slowly growing. It's two in the morning; by this point, most generic businessmen and salarymen in the area have long since gone home to rest up for their next busy days at work here, and the same holds true for the rest of the building that Uesugi is paying a visit to at this ungodly time of the night.

Yet, perhaps due to the peculiarity of his knocking, Fuutarou's summons are answered swiftly by a pair of hurrying footsteps on the other side, and soon enough, the door opens to reveal a tall Caucasian man in his mid-twenties, rocking a snapback cap like Fuutarou himself with the English letters S.O.B. printed with stylized font above the visor, several silver chains with a small medallion hanging off one of them around his neck, and wearing a long-sleeved olive shirt that sports the words "BELIEVE ME" and has its sleeves rolled up and clean jeans.

"Hey, what's up, Ryu?" the young mage grins shortly.

"Yooo, what's good, dude?" the man speaks in American English with a vivid Californian accent as he goes in for the hand clasp into chest bump greeting with his guest before beckoning into the room. "Come on in."

Fuutarou closes the door behind him as his American acquaintance heads in first, going to a moderately-sized refrigerator to fish through its contents to give his guest something to drink, deciding on a bottle of Kamoshika Cidre.

"I know you're not real good with super alcoholic stuff, but you don't mind cider, right?" Fuutarou's friend asks, offering it to him, and the young mage nods, accepting it.

"Yeah, cider's fine." He takes a quick glance down at it. "Kamoshika...you usually drink Angry Orchard, no?"

"I do, but I drank 'em all, so I gotta head out and pick up some more. Tak stopped by here and dropped off a pack of that Kamoshika stuff, sayin' I ought'a try it out, so I did, and it's good, I like it."

As his friend is talking, Fuutarou twists off the cap and takes a sip of the cold, refreshing cider.

"Word out there's that the apple growers in the country's lookin' to expand into the cider business, and I guess they've been doing that. Couple years back, I don't think I saw as much of that cider brand as I do now whenever we walk into stores 'n shit," Fuutarou's friend remarks, watching him take another sip.

"Yeah, I heard about it too. It's because Japan's farming population, especially those in the apple industry, is getting old, and they're struggling to find successors or enough people willing to become farmers to take over once they need to retire. Not to mention, the apple crop itself is vulnerable to bad weather, which translates to volatile income for those in the industry. So expanding into the cider business helps deal with some of those problems, though I don't see it being a permanent one."

"Growing old, huh. I've only ever lived in this city, and there's not much of an older generation here, is there..."

"There is, but they're situated mainly in the suburbs, and since you usually stick to downtown, you're never really gonna see them."

"Right, makes sense." The two men move to the neighboring reception area, where there are two black couches and a low table in between them, with a few American fashion magazines sitting on them. "So, what brings ya here at two in the fuckin' mornin'?"

"Why else would I be here at two in the morning?" Fuutarou delivers a cheeky grin at Ryu.

"Oh c'mon, bro, you know I can never tell with you. You always do your own fuckin' thing, after all."

The two men exchange a brief round of chuckles before Fuutarou sits up in his seat on the couch.

"I'm looking for a guy who's been stirring up trouble in the city. Drug trafficking, possible money laundering, you know, the usual shit that people do in the city these days."

"Yeah, you're tellin' me. But you gotta be more specific than that, plenty 'a dudes runnin' around the city doin' that kinda shit."

"His name's Rio Shirazumi. Heard of it?"

"Rio Shirazumi...Rio...Rio..." Ryu leans back in his own seat across from his guest, stroking his chin thoughtfully. "Nah, sorry, ain't ringin' a bell. What's he like? I might know who he is, and I just don't know his name..."

"He's like me. A mage."

Ryu snorts under his breath. "Well shit, bro, that's all you needed to fuckin' say, no goddamn wonder I haven't heard of his ass. You think someone like me's gonna be able ta keep tabs on mages?"

"I just figured I'd ask. You never know - the city's nightlife is something else."

"Truuuuuuue. But either way, I ain't heard 'a him. But what's he like? It's been a while since you came to us askin' if we've seen someone you're lookin' for.'

"I only met him once." Fuutarou takes another long drink of his cider. "But that one time, we had one hell of a fight. Blonde hair that looks dyed, red leather jacket, and jeans, and he uses a knife to fight."

"Shit, that sounds like a pretty damn distinct profile. Red leather jacket and blonde hair? Even in a city like this, someone like him'd stand out hella hard in a crowd."

Listening to his friend Ryu, Fuutarou nods slowly. Perhaps Rio also knows how to use Presence Concealment magic and is using it to traverse the city undetected?

"I'm hunting him 'cause he's going after a few clients of mine, and I've also got reason and evidence to believe that he's contributing to the whole drug problem in the city. So by taking him out, I'll be killing two birds with one stone, if that's the right phrase."

"Yeah it is. Your English is pretty damn good for someone who said he'd only lived abroad a couple years, huh?"

"I'm just a fast learner," Fuutarou answers simply before continuing. "When's the next time you'll be performing? And where?"

"Our next show? Next month at the Night Crawler, second weekend."

"Next month, huh...you gonna be doing any side gigs before then? Any collabs? Guest appearances?"

"I'll have to check our schedule again, but we should have a few guest appearances for some shows throughout the month, yeah."

"Good. In that case, I want you and the boys to pay attention to anyone who matches that description I just gave you about Rio Shirazumi; also be on the lookout for anyone who might be smuggling needles into the venue."

"Needles...so this Rio dude's got his hand in the needles business, huh?"

Fuutarou takes another long swig of his cider, wanting to drink it all before leaving so that he doesn't have to deal with holding a bottle on him when he exits the building. "The situation is...weird, let's just say. He's not specifically dealing with needles, it's just that the drug he's making happens to use it. He's a mage; he doesn't really give a shit about the other drugs or his 'competitors'. I think he's just trying to circulate whatever drug he's got to see what their effects are like."

"Real shit? Son of a bitch ain't sellin' drugs to make a profit, only to see what it does? Damn, bro," Ryu grimaces with a click of his own tongue. "Like, I don't mind drugs 'n shit; like, it's like this in America too, as you know. But I dunno, man, hearin' somethin' like that where a muh'fucka's out here circulatin' a drug just so that he's got free guinea pigs...I dunno how well that shit sits with me."

"Exactly the same boat that I'm in. I'm not asking you and the boys to go out of your way to track this guy down, though; he's a mage, and having fought him once before, like I said, he's dangerous and I don't want any of you getting involved with the likes of him. Like I said, I just want you all to keep an eye out and hit me up if you see anything like I mentioned."

"Yuh-huh, ain't gonna do nothin' weird, no sir. But why do you think someone like this Rio bastard's gonna bother showin' up to one of our shows?"

"It's not just your shows in particular; I also have a friend I know who works at the Night Crawler as a late-evening shift bartender who's keeping an eye out for me over there too. And as for why, my theory's that since the Night Crawler's the most popular nightclub in the city where even during weeks where there aren't really any shows going on it still manages to maintain a good turnout of people every night, it's the perfect place for Rio to circulate his drug."

"Sounds like he's jumped into the drug game a bit late, though. Like, we already know lots of other drugs that're circulatin' through that place already."

"It is, yeah. You hear about the drug abuse deaths and the kidnappings in the city lately?"

"Shit, yeah, I do. I take it that the Rio dude's the one responsible?"

"Indirectly, yeah; not all, but a lot of the drug abuse deaths were cases that, after I investigated them, had direct links to the drug that Rio's circulating. And the kidnappings were pretty much all a direct result of gangbangers with Rio's drug draggin' people off the street, sometimes literally, and shootin' them up just to see what would happen since Rio paid them to do that. At least, that's what my theory's looking like."

"Jesus, this shit's startin' to sound a hell of a lot like that one movie with Denzel Washington in it...I forget the name since it's been a while since I last saw that shit, it's the one where he plays a real famous drug lord in Harlem back during the Vietnam War era...good movie, we should hang out some time and watch it after I remember what its fucking name was, goddamn it...it's gonna be like Netflix 'n chill, except it'll be with the boys, y'know..."

Fuutarou drains the last few drops of his Kamoshika cider and gets up from his seat on the couch, prompting Ryu to also jump up to his feet. "I gotta get goin' now, but I got one more favor to ask you."

"Yeah, do it up, bro. What'cha need?"

"You still got that guitar in the back?"

At the mention of a guitar, Ryu's face lights up enormously.

"Yooooo...Mikey boooooyyyy, you ain't tryin'a tell me right now - "

"No, it's not for the reason you're thinking of."

Ryu immediately hangs his head thanks to the muscles in his neck going slack with disappointment. "Fuuuuck...bro, why ya gotta do that shit to me, man? Gettin' my hopes up 'n shit..."

"That's your first mistake, getting your hopes up around me."

"Bro, like, you can't keep gettin' away with it, I'm tellin' ya!" But Ryu leads his friend out of the reception room and tells him to wait while he goes to the back to grab the guitar in the studio, and when he returns, he shows Fuutarou a plain black guitar case and opens it up to show him its contents. "You mean just the regular guitar, right?"

Fuutarou nods, taking the guitar case. "Yeah, this's good. I'm surprised you still have it here."

Ryu grins, pointing his hand in the shape of a finger gun back at his buddy. "It's been waitin' there ever since ya left, waitin' for ya ta come on back."

"Ain't happening." Fuutarou hands Ryu his empty cider bottle and snaps the guitar case shut. "...for now."

---

Eight hours later, after dropping his newly borrowed guitar from his good friend Ryu, the young mage steps into the polished floor of Revival, with the tinkering little doorbells behind him jingling to signal the entrance of a customer.

"A new customer first thing on this glorious Sunday morning! Come in, do come i - " The illustrious manager, easily identifiable by his own dyed blonde hair and clean-cut and stylized beard, practically moonwalks out into view from the kitchen to greet his potential customer before seeing that it's only Fuutarou. "Oh, it's just you. I'm afraid I don't have work for you at the moment; business has unfortunately been rather slow, no thanks to that shitty bread shop across the street..."

The manager glumly points out the front door to the bakery across the street, and Fuutarou, having seen it a few times while visiting his friend's artisanal cake shop, knows which shop he's referring to.

"Kinda cheeky for you to be calling that place a 'shitty bread shop' when I've seen how some of your experimental cakes turn out," Fuutarou grins with amusement at the manager's chagrin.

"Oh, quiet, you. They're called experimental for a reason, I'll have you know." The manager sighs lightly, putting his hands on his hips. "Anyways, what can I do for you? You're not the type who just shows up to chat, after all."

"You know me," Fuutarou nods in confirmation. "I'm here to make a parfait."

"Excuse me, sir, we sell cakes here, not parfaits," the manager dully recites, throwing out a hand in a declining gesture.

"Bullshit. I demand to see your manager."

"I am the manager!"

The two men exchange a few chuckles at this inside joke between them, a reference to several incidents that they've had here at Revival where customers have demanded to see the store's manager, only to have the manager recite that particular line due to the usual shortage of staffers in the store.

"No, but seriously though, what're you doing in my shop," the manager asks again with another polite, professional smile that is hiding all the opposite sentiments behind it.

"I am serious. I wanna make a parfait."

"Boy, I swear to God, if you don't start takin' me seriously, I'ma slap your cheeks so hard your firstborn's gonna feel it."

"Alright, calm down, Mr. Thirty-Five-Year-Old Virgin."

The manager immediately reels, clutching his heart as if he's just been stabbed there with a kitchen knife. "Uuuffff! H-How dare you go to such lengths to wound my pride like that...!"

"...Boss, every time Valentine's Day rolls around, we always joke about being the ones who made Singles' Awareness Day a thing, it's not like you're not used to that."

"Nonsense, Uesugi-kun! I only said that before, but now that I'm already halfway through my thirties, that joke's slowly not becoming a joke anymore! You don't have to worry about that because you're less than half my goddamn age! Ah, how blissful it must be to still be so young ~ "

"Ah shit, Boss, you're going into your whole Boomer mode again."

"Shut it, you! We boomers still got some fight left in us! We will conquer the final obstacle that bars us entry into the mystical paradise of companionship known as marriage! And not even you can stand in my way!" The cake shop manager stands up tall, once more assuming his hands on his hips to strike a heroic pose that could put him on a movie poster of a superhero film, but Fuutarou is already walking straight past him, helping himself into the kitchen.

"Yeah, good luck with that," he drawls with a lazy flick of his wrist, totally ignoring the manager's brief but somewhat grandiose speech of self-confidence. The manager in question follows after him, still with a miffed look on his face that his sole part-time employee simply waved him off like he was just a scrap of paper wafting down the street.

"So? Why a parfait?" he asks, leaning lightly against a nearby commercial refrigerator while watching Fuutarou gather up the necessary tools and browse the other fridges for ingredients. "I know I've been joking around with you, but I hope you're not so blinded by whatever it is that you're doing to not see that this is a cake shop."

"Remember a while back you told me that a friend of yours who you studied with back in culinary school went into dessert-making and recently started working at one of the Saizeriya chains here?"

"Hm...yeah, I do remember that. Did you go?"

Fuutarou nods, checking the flavors of ice cream, yogurt, and gelato available. Admittedly there aren't too many flavors, as his manager keeps reminding him that this is a cake shop and not an ice cream shop, but he can still make do with what he's got access to.

"I went there with a few friends from school. I'm tutoring them too, and I promised I'd take them there if they did well on their midterms a few weeks back."

"Friends from school? One of them wouldn't happen to be the one who stopped by here a while back and had us bake that five-section cake that one time, was it?"

"Funnily enough, she was supposed to be there with us, but she couldn't make it."

"I see. Wait, wait just a damn second, didn't you say that you didn't know what friends were either? I thought we were in the same boat!"

"That was a lie, I never was in the same boat as you. Who'd want to be in the first place?"

"Guh!" For a second time, the manager doubles over, feigning pain coming from his chest. "R-Rejected by the only other person who could understand me! How could you betray me like this, Uesugi-kun!? We were brothers, once!"

"We were never brothers, Boss!" Playing along this time, Fuutarou points dramatically across the large central table once he's assembled all the necessary ingredients. "You expect loyalty and brothership in a day and age like this? Truly, your own shortsightedness was your own undoing!"

"Such words have never been so painful, yet so truthful! Aye, it is as you say - such is the result of my own folly and the upbringing of this new generation of young adults. However, even my own shortcomings cannot deny the shame that ought to be placed on your name!"

Fuutarou gets to work on crafting his parfait. "You said that you used to be into acting for a time, right?"

"Yeah, before I switched to culinary school. I was part of the theatre club back in grade school...those were fun times," the manager nods sagely, reminiscing on good times long past.

"Out of curiosity, what made you switch? I don't think you've ever told me that."

"Oh, it was a stupid reason. In my final year of high school, I met a girl in my class and become infatuated with her, to the point where I even joined the same club that she was a part of, the cooking club. It was there that I also found cooking to be quite enjoyable, so I had to choose between pursuing a possible career in acting or culinary. Acting at the time was a bit more unstable as a profession unless you made it big right away, so I went with the safe pick and went to culinary school, which I told you about."

"Safe pick...yeah, and look how this turned out for you."

"Hey, hey, cut me some slack, it's the first time I'm running my own show here. Give me some time, and I'll show you what I'm really made of."

"Right. So that's your origin story, huh? Got your heart broken by a classmate in high school and now you're the President of the Heartbroken Middle-Aged Guys Club?"

"Who are you calling a heartbroken middle-aged guy, huh!?"

"Who the hell else?"

"I'm going to dock your salary, you hear!"

"Go ahead, it's not like you're even gonna give me my paycheck for helping out over the month."

Speaking without looking at his boss, Fuutarou commits most of his concentration on the parfait he is preparing, washing the various fruits that he'll add to the parfait at a nearby sink like strawberries, blueberries, grapes, and raspberries.

"Going for the simple homemade parfait style, huh?" the manager asks, observing Fuutarou's prep, and the young tutor nods.

"I don't have very much experience in making desserts, but I did take the time to look up some easy homemade ones, and they seem pretty easy to make. The only problem is that what I'll make is gonna look real sad compared to the ones we had at Saizeriya."

"Naturally. That guy actually specialized into making desserts, especially parfaits, so those things are his pride and joy; you'd have to train for a thousand years in a mountain dojo somewhere before you have a shot at making a parfait that'll beat his."

"For once what you're saying doesn't sound like a bad joke."

"...is that supposed to be a complement?"

"Who knows." Fuutarou swiftly and efficiently chops up the strawberries that he'll be adding. "How's the business doing lately? I know I haven't been by for the past week or so."

"Pretty slow as usual. It's starting to get a bit concerning, honestly." The manager folds his arms worriedly. "And no, before you ask, I haven't been spending all this time just holed up back here working on new cakes; I've been doing all the stuff you've told me to do like making social media pages and putting ads online and such. Maybe it's one of those things where it takes some time before we start seeing the results, but for now it's about the same as usual. By the way, I hope you know that I'm charging you for all the stuff you're using."

Fuutarou just waves his hand at his boss. "Sure, whatever, just take it out of my non-existent paycheck that you'll never give me."

"Oi, oi, oi, I'm not a bad guy, I actually will pay you properly. As soon as we start getting some actual business goin', obviously."

"Goddamn it, Boss. On a somewhat related note, it's just about summer, right? Why not consider branching out to other stuff? Cold treats and all that."

"Uesugi, you know how I feel about that. For the last time, we're not a silly little ice cream shop."

"And those 'silly little ice cream shops' make more money in a month during summer than you ever have baking cakes."

"Oh c'mon, that's not a fair assessment when I've only been baking cakes for a living for the past four months!"

"Excuses, boss. Excuses."

"By the way, did you make sure to wash your hands? You didn't even bother changing into uniform!"

"Have you ever seen me in uniform? That's the better question. And yes, I did wash my hands, don't worry."

"I'll give you a better question, why the hell weren't you?! Is that why I haven't been getting many customers? Because people see that my only employee's not even wearing my uniform and think that this place's run by a bunch of loonies?!"

"Well...they wouldn't be wrong about that last part..."

"Goddamn it, Uesugi-kun! My biggest mistake was hiring you! ! ! !"

---

Nakano Nino, the second of the identical quintuplets, sits on the lone chair at one width of the dinner table while the rest of her sisters all sit around her along the lengths of the same table. The clock to the side, built into the large wall behind their television, reads ten minutes to eleven in the morning, and Nino, still with a bit of reluctance tugging at the back of her mind, does her best to ignore it as she sets her eyes down at the table in front of her.

"...sorry for making you all deal with me for the past two days," she apologizes finally. "And...sorry for hitting you that night, Yotsuba."

With a big fat grin on her face that seems to have completely forgotten what Nino did to her two nights ago, Yotsuba nods heartily. "It's okay, I'm over it now. I'm just glad you're feeling better!"

"You're lucky it was Yotsuba you hit, Nino," Miku remarks. "Anyone else, and there probably would've been a bloodbath afterwards."

"Or at least, they wouldn't forgive you as easily as Yotsuba did," Ichika notes.

"But the important thing is that we are all back together again," Itsuki smiles at Nino. "Even though it was a bit scarier than usual this time around."

"Yeah, you said it. That's the first time we've seen Nino literally board herself up in her own room, or however close she could get to it," Ichika shrugs, taking a sip out of her Shirley Temple that Yotsuba has made for everyone after they ate a late breakfast.

"Was that the first time she's ever done that? Yeah, I guess it is..." Miku quietly marvels at this. "Usually she's so convinced that she's right that she wouldn't do something like that since she thinks it'd make her look like she's wrong..."

"Hey, hey, don't make me go back to how I was acting yesterday," Nino snaps irritably at her younger sister.

"But I still want to know what made you act like that, Nino. I might not care about the whole you hitting me part, but now that you're feeling better, I do want you to tell us what made you act like that," Yotsuba insists. The big fat smile on her face is no longer there as she switches her tone to something a bit more serious.

"Yeah, I second that. Normally I wouldn't mind, but you can't deny that you acted so differently this time that we're all pretty curious as to what was going through your head the past two days," Ichika nods to support Yotsuba's proposal, and Nino takes a sip out of her own Shirley Temple to prepare herself for a long conversation.

"Fine, fine, I will. I figured I'd have to talk about this," she mutters. "I won't make it long, though, since it's not worth getting everyone all worked up about like I was - "

"No, I think you should explain everything, Nino," Itsuki says calmly, almost in a motherly fashion, like a parent trying to give counsel to their troubled child. "It will help you sort out your own thoughts as well while you explain what you were going through to us."

Nino scowls a little back at her. "That's for me to decide. In any case, the long and short of it is...I just can't stand Uesugi-kun."

"Right, we figured as much from what Yotsuba was able to tell us about your behavior on Friday night. So you're going to have to tell us a bit more, like Itsuki said," Ichika says.

"Not to mention, you were studying with us pretty well for the most part for the past two weeks after midterms. Why did you just...blow up like that all of a sudden?" Miku follows up, though of course she and Itsuki are in a position where they have to pretend like their conversation in the middle of the night earlier that day never happened.

"Why do you think? Because I was keeping it in all that time," Nino clicks her tongue back at Miku. "It wasn't bad at first. And honestly, I didn't mean to end up like I did. After I lied to Papa saying that we passed our midterms, I figured I should at least make good on what I did for Uesugi-kun and study with everyone. But as the days went on, like...all the feelings I had about him from before just kept stacking up."

"Well...I suppose that makes sense. You never really liked him ever since the beginning, and even if you did have a bit of a change of heart after midterms, it'd be unrealistic to expect you to start liking him all of a sudden..." Ichika nods slowly.

"Exactly. So...all the resentment I had towards him and stuff, I still had that. And so going through hours of studying with him and everyone else, watching him hang out with everyone, interact with everyone and whatever...like, it wasn't long before everything that he was doing went back to getting on my nerves. It was just that, I didn't want to say anything about it because it wouldn't make sense, right? Like, I - I was all like, hey, Uesugi-kun, here's your job back, make sure it do it better next time, and then a week later I'd be like, no, I don't wanna study with you anymore because you're getting on my nerves - that doesn't make any sense, right? So I just sort of...kept it in, I guess."

"You could've talked with us about it. It didn't need to get to that point on Friday," Yotsuba points out gently.

"I probably should have, yeah, but...I didn't."

"Then...why not?"

"I don't know. If I had to say, I guess...I guess it's because I must've thought that I could get over it or something, I dunno. Maybe I just didn't want to deal with them, those feelings I had."

"You thought that if you just didn't pay attention to feelings like that, they'd just eventually go away? That's some pretty convenient thinking you've got going on there," Ichika smirks a tad bit before taking another sip of her fizzy drink.

"Hey, you don't need to rub it in," Nino snaps back lightly. "I've learned my lesson."

"Hopefully you did, yeah."

"Then...why did you keep resenting Fuutarou? Even if you understood enough about him and his situation to help him keep his job as our tutor?" Miku asks.

Nino sweeps a lock of her long, peachy-red hair back over her right shoulder. "I couldn't stop thinking about how much of an impact Uesugi-kun's having on our lives. It was one of my original gripes with him back when he first starting tutoring the three of you, and then it came back with a freaking vengeance on me."

"Does this, by chance, have something to do with that promise you gave us when we were younger?" Itsuki asks. "The one you gave us soon after Mother died?"

Sighing quietly, Nino directs her somewhat sullen blue eyes down at her own tall drink, of which she's already consumed a third. The cherry that Yotsuba has added in each of their Shirley Temples sits on top of the ice cubes that float at the surface.

"It does. And I still haven't forgotten about it. As a matter of fact, if I think about it, that's the source of it all, of why I resent Uesugi-kun so much. It's because of that promise I made with you all that makes me feel this way, you know? I wanted the five of us to grow up together, to stick together, to be together. I didn't mean for there to be someone else. I just wanted it to be the five of us. Yeah, I get that the promise I made wasn't going to age very well since we're all going to go our own separate ways at some point and we're never going to be together forever like we are now. But I at least wanted us to stay together for as long as possible like this before it's time for us to say goodbye to this kind of a life that we currently have, living together and going to school together and such. And so when someone like Uesugi-kun shows up and starts tutoring us for anywhere from two to six hours a day, and sometimes even on the weekends too, like..."

Nino shakes her head slowly.

"...I couldn't handle that. It was actually easier for me to deal with that before midterms, back when Itsuki and I didn't join you three and just studied on our own, because I could just sit around not accepting Uesugi-kun as my tutor; I didn't have any obligation to force myself to put up with him. I didn't have to force myself to watch him ruin the whole promise I made to you guys by sitting in with everyone while having him tutor us."

Nino's four sisters all solemnly listen to her testimony, occasionally taking sips out of their Shirley Temples while listening.

"So the moment you decided to handle things that way..." Miku begins,

"...eventually something like this was going to happen," Yotsuba finishes.

Nino nods slowly. "Not as...as extreme as this...I think. Because, like...that night, Yotsuba and I got attacked, right? That one guy hit Yotsuba in the face with something, I don't know what, but it made her nose bleed, so I got pissed off because of that. Then another guy stabbed me in the frickin' shoulder, and that hurt like a bitch, on top of me being scared of seeing blood and whatnot...and then when Uesugi-kun finally did show up, I started getting angry at him because he took so damn long to show up to save our butts, and then when he teleported us back home, I just...I just blew up on him. I just lost it."

Hearing all this, Yotsuba begins to press her lips together uncomfortably.

"Nino, by any chance...did any of what I said to you earlier that night make you angry too? Or rather, I should say, did anything I told you before we got attacked contribute to how you got really mad at Uesugi-san when he brought us home?"

The second quintuplet recalls to the best of her memory the conversations she had with her younger sister that night at the Izumi supermarket, raising her hand up to her chin to help her think.

"...no, you weren't...I don't think anything that you said to me then was another reason why I got so mad at him," Nino shakes her head in denial. "But if there were something that pissed me off, it's the fact that you didn't run away from those bad guys when I clearly told you to."

Inhaling sharply at this, the fourth quintuplet averts her eyes with even more acute discomfort. "...s-sorry, but...I-I couldn't just...leave you behind..."

"And so what if Uesugi-kun didn't reach us in time? What if those guys didn't waste their time fighting themselves and actually did their job of kidnapping us? Then that'd mean two of us would be dead or worse, while if you'd've ran away, at least only I had to get offed!"

"Okay, okay, Nino, that's enough, you know Yotsuba isn't the type to leave anyone behind like that," Ichika intervenes while Nino is still talking, sensing the tension levels at the dinner table rising at worrying speeds.

"I know she isn't, but..." Nino scratches her head briefly in frustration. "Ugh, it just ticks me off, thinking of what the rest of you would think if you found out the next day that the two of us are missing or dead..."

A hard silence falls on the quintuplets, which Yotsuba, naturally, takes the hardest of all. Ichika, who's sitting with her on their side of the table, puts an arm around her silently but comfortingly.

"I also wanna mention that part of that was because of the first time I got everyone into trouble two months ago," Nino reminds them. "Y'know, back at the warehouse when I was meeting that guy whom I was buying that Heisei drug from at the time. I told you guys to just stay home because there wasn't anything good that could come out of you guys coming to bail me out, yet you all showed up anyway. It was a similar thing with Yotsuba two nights ago, I just wanted her to get out so that only one of us would have to suffer, not two."

"You expected to...to die, Nino...?" Itsuki asks in a hushed voice.

"I mean, do you think those were situations that could end well for me if things had gone my way?"

"But...but now that we have Uesugi-kun looking after us - "

"We didn't know that was his job the first time around. Even this second time with me and Yotsuba only, it's not like I expected him to show up like - like some kind of knight in shining armor or something. Ask Yotsuba; those guys who jumped us could've easily killed us both if they didn't start arguing amongst themselves!"

Yotsuba remains silent as the quintuplets briefly glance in her direction.

"But you shouldn't have just gone in and started attacking them like that; you need to prioritize your safety first and foremost," Ichika insists. "Like, they were just regular thugs, right? If you had money on you, I'm sure they might've thought twice if they realized they could just make some quick cash instead."

"Yeah, fat help that did the last time you tried that."

"Those guys were different, Nino, you should know that better than we do. Yotsuba said that these guys who attacked you this time around weren't any sort of organized gang members or anything like that. So you shouldn't have just charged in like you did; you should've at least tried to stall for as long as you could so that you could buy time for Fuutarou-kun to show up."

"But that's just twenty-twenty hindsight you're using. Obviously if I'd known he'd show up soon, I would've handled that differently - "

"But you knew he was on his way, because he'd done that once before, and we know that's something he should do."

"No I didn't, what the hell? Just because it's his job doesn't mean that he'll do it!"

The quintuplets all exchange somewhat confused looks, like they don't know what to make of what Nino is saying right now.

"...what do you mean? That's...that's his job, of course he's going to do it. When hasn't he?" Ichika responds slowly, raising her left eyebrow over at her younger sister, who raises her hand in self-correction.

"Sorry, that's - that came out wrong. What I meant to say was: I don't want to feel like we're relying on him for protection. Because if we do, that's just going to make me feel even worse, you know? Not because I don't think he'll do his job, but because of the stuff I said about him ruining my promise to everyone."

Ichika leans forward a little over the table, pulling her comforting arms off Yotsuba's shoulders.

"So can I get one thing straight with you, Nino?" the eldest quint asks. "From what I'm hearing, it sounds like it's not actually Fuutarou-kun you have a problem with. Is that right?"

It's the second quintuplet's turn to avert her eyes, and after a moment's hesitation, she, too, nods her head slowly and shortly.

"...that's right. I don't actually hate Uesugi-kun...you'll notice that I've only ever said that I resent him," she reveals quietly. "In the beginning, sure, I probably legitimately hated him. But...eventually, even if it was reluctantly, I did come to recognize that he's a hard worker, and that he does a lot of things for us. And even if I myself don't like it, all those weeks that I sat here at the dinner table listening to him tutor the three of you showed me that you all like having him tutor you. And so no matter how much I didn't want him tutoring us, outside of a few times in the beginning where I tried sabotaging him and the lessons he made for you guys, I didn't bring myself to try to stop him from doing his job."

"And that's why you lied to Papa to help Fuutarou keep his job..." Miku notes quietly.

"That's not saying that I like him or I'll get along with him or anything like the rest of you clearly do. I'm just saying that I get why he's here," Nino clarifies quickly.

"Then if that's the case, isn't the real problem here not Fuutarou-kun, but the fact that you're still clinging to that promise you made us so long ago?" Ichika points out with a deep frown. "Because to me, it sounds like it's holding you back. Because without it, you wouldn't really be all that resentful towards him. Maybe a little bit in the beginning, like you said, since we all were like that towards him just because of how suddenly Dad dropped a tutor on us, to be fair. But now, it's like, the rest of us have gotten over that except you. Even Itsuki, who was with you in the beginning about not wanting him to tutor us with her own reasons why not, got over that and she's been studying with us regularly since the end of midterms."

Nino raises her nose back at Ichika due to the tone that she's getting from her. "Your point?" she returns, even though she has a good idea of what Ichika will say.

"My point is - forget that promise you made us six years ago," Ichika shakes her head firmly. "It was a nice little promise that you made to us, a neat little coping mechanism that we probably needed to help us get over Mom's death back then. But from the start, a promise like that was never going to work. You even said as much yourself just now; how you said that you understand that we can't be the same forever, that our lives as they are now aren't going to stay like this forever. So even you understand that without me or anyone else having to tell you. So how does it make sense that even if you understand that, you still feel so resentful towards Fuutarou-kun?"

"Because he's instigating change in everyone here that I didn't want to have happen so soon!" Nino growls lightly, doing her best to control her anger that is beginning to rise again.

"Instigate change? But that was already going to happen no matter what, right? With or without him! It's not like we can't make friends with other people at school or something, right?"

"I know that, but things like that I'm okay with because that's just natural! We go to school, we meet new people, get to know them, hang out with them a little, but at the end of the day we all still come back home and have our lives like this together. You can't tell me that all the time that Uesugi-kun's spent with us is something that happens to most people! You can't sit there and tell me that having one of our classmates tutor us for anywhere from two to six hours every day, and sometimes even on the weekends too, is normal!"

Ichika scratches her forehead a little. "...maybe not, but...I still think that you're letting yourself cling to that promise of yours too much. Like, let me put it this way, right? The rest of us aren't suddenly going to hold it against you when we think you're not keeping your promise; like, oh, we're all changing now, now that Fuutarou-kun's here to tutor us, let's start shoving it in Nino's face that she's not keeping her promise from six years ago! That's not how it works; that's not how we'd react. Something like that, we know that for the most part, a promise like that was just you trying to look out for us when we were kids. So of course we're not going to really pay much attention to it these days. I think you're just being a little selfish with your promise just because you think that you're not doing a good enough job of upholding it when clearly the rest of us don't really bother with it."

"Selfish? Selfish? That's rich, coming from someone telling me what to think about something that's clearly important to me," Nino scoffs back. The rest of the quintuplets have, in the meantime, delegated themselves silently to the sidelines, opting to watch their family conversation get narrowed down to just the first and second quintuplets. "If selfish is how you're going to think of this, then I can say the same thing right back, and you won't have a point to make about it."

"Then it seems we're at an impasse," the eldest quint determines firmly, making sure to correct her posture. "But make no mistake, Nino: this whole 'selfish' argument aside, I don't think even you can dispute the fact that it's your promise to us that's holding you back, that's making you feel this way towards Uesugi-kun. No matter what you might think of him and what you think he's doing to us, there should be no reason for you to be so resentful towards him. He's just our tutor; he's just our friend, and the guy who's keeping us safe from the bad guys in town. Yes, there've been a couple close calls, but the important thing is that we're all still together; we're all still able to talk together like this, like what we're doing right now. So if you think about it, Fuutarou-kun's been doing more to keep your promise to us for you than you give him credit for. Because if it weren't for him, who knows what our situation would be like right now. Would we be sitting here without you? Without you or Yotsuba? Would any of us still be here if it weren't for him?"

Nino bites her lower lip visibly. "But it didn't have to be him. It could've been - "

"Oh? It didn't have to be him?" Ichika interrupts her younger sister swiftly. "But didn't you say that you don't particularly hate him? Then why are you saying that like it's him that you have a problem with?"

"Listen to me, Ichika! I meant that Papa could've easily hired two separate people to do Uesugi-kun's jobs; one to handle our tutoring, and one to handle our protection. Did it have to be handled by the exact same guy? Why didn't Papa hire a - a - a professional tutor or something and just let Uesugi-kun handle our whole bodyguarding thing on his own?"

"Oh, you meant it that way...because clearly, it seems like Fuutarou-kun and Dad have some history together, right? And if you know anything about work contracts, Nino, they can get really complicated sometimes. On top of that, Fuutarou-kun's a mage, too, and he's using magecraft and all that to keep us safe, so imagine how complicated the contract Dad's got in place with him must be with magic being involved and all that. And not to mention, Dad's a super busy person with all his hospital work, so do you think he's got the time to look through two different contracts, both of which involve his daughters? Maybe the tutoring contract would be simple enough, to be fair, but even then, why bother relying on an external tutor when someone you already have history working with and feel is reliable can do both the tutoring and the bodyguarding at the same time? How about this, Nino - what if whoever Dad would've hired as our tutor if it weren't Fuutarou-kun were also out to get us like all those gangsters, huh? Ever thought of that?"

Nino opens her mouth to speak, but like a fish out of water, her mouth can only tremble and quake a little as the second quintuplet finds nothing she can respond with to this point. Ichika presses her advantage to finish this thought:

"What if Dad hired Fuutarou-kun because he couldn't trust anyone else to do the job? In a situation in the beginning two months ago when Ebata-san was killed and we didn't even know about it until some time later, when Fuutarou-kun brought us back home from that warehouse, Dad couldn't know what our situation was really like until Fuutarou-kun could get to work and start figuring the situation out. At least, that's what I'd think. So why would he hire someone he didn't know anything about to have access to our house, and to us? What if they were a mage, too? We don't know what mages can do - as far as we're concerned, they can do anything, pretty much, right? What if a mage who's coming after us, like whoever's gunning for us now, was posing as a tutor, and Dad found their application or resume that they forged or something and hired them? Then it should be easy to figure out what happens next, right? Boom, we're all dead. And there'd've been zero point in hiring Fuutarou-kun as our bodyguard or whatever because - "

"No, that's not true! Because Uesugi-kun could've done a background check on potential tutors for Dad!" Nino blurts out, finally managing to grab onto a firm rock amidst being washed away from the torrent of Ichika's rationale. "That would be part of his responsibilities of keeping us safe! To make sure that Papa doesn't hire any phonies!"

"Well, well, then that sounds like you're actually trusting him to do his job when earlier you said that you couldn't trust him to reach us in time whenever we got into trouble," Ichika almost smugly points out.

"I-In this case, I don't mind that since it's not like he's going to be interacting with us much, you know! So it's not like I need to deal with him personally or anything!"

"Then what if our tutor whom Fuutarou-kun greenlights for Dad suddenly turns rogue and does something bad to us when both Fuutarou-kun and Dad think that he's trustworthy? What then - "

"Alright, alright, you two, please - that is quite enough hypothetical thinking that we had no need for," Itsuki interrupts quickly to break up this seemingly never-ending argument between their two oldest sisters. "Besides..."

Pointing up at the clock, Itsuki watches her sisters turn to see what time it is, which is now almost half-past eleven.

"Oh gosh, we've already been talking for this long..." Ichika puts a hand over her mouth briefly to express her surprise. "When did Fuutarou-kun say that he'd be stopping by? Noon?"

"Yeah, sometime around noon. Knowing him, he'll arrive a bit sooner than that," Miku mentions.

"He always says that if you're on time, you're late, doesn't he?" Yotsuba chuckles a little.

"Yeah, says the guy who almost got us late for our own midterms," Nino chortles back, and her sisters, except for Yotsuba, all let out varying levels of groans.

"Oh boy, here we go again..." Ichika sighs with a forced grin before taking a big gulp of her Shirley Temple. "In any case, we might've spent the last fifteen minutes just going back and forth with each other like this, but at least you apologized to Yotsuba for hitting her the other day, and you're at least somewhat back to your normal self, which is good, since we were about to start ordering delivery for three meals a day until you got back to normal if it weren't for Fuutarou-kun volunteering to cook for us..."

"Learn to cook for yourselves for once, damn it!" Nino gripes with a grunt of sarcastic amusement.

"But are you sure you're okay with Fuutarou coming in today, Nino?" Miku asks her older sister.

"Yes, I am, don't worry about me. Now if you'll excuse me, I gotta start making lunch for us before - "

"Oh, don't worry about that, Nino," Ichika waves her down as her younger sister starts getting up out of her seat to head to the kitchen. "Fuutarou-kun said he's going to handle lunch for us today."

Nino scowls down at Ichika. "So that's what you meant by 'ordering delivery'?!"

Ichika finds herself blushing a little as Miku, Yotsuba, and Itsuki all burst into laughter at Nino's joke that does much to break up the tension that was left behind from the eldest two quints' argument. "N-No, that's - that's not what I meant, guys! Geeeeeeezzzzz..."

"Didn't you check your phone this morning, Nino? Uesugi-kun sent us a group text," Itsuki informs her.

"Well, I wasn't even paying attention to my phone since I had this to deal with. Actually, how the hell does he know my number? I never gave it to him!" Nino blinks at the rest of her siblings. "Wait a minute, you guys didn't give it to him, did you?!"

"Aha, she found out ~ " Ichika smiles plainly as everyone goes for another round of giggles.

"Grrr...normally I'd blow up again over this, but...now's not the time for that," the second quintuplet once more puts a lid over her annoyance and manages to let it go. "I guess more to the point, what's he bringing?"

"Homemade fried rice and tonkatsu curry!" Yotsuba says, showing Nino her phone with their tutor's group text. "He said that he and Raiha got up super early today to make enough portions for all of us and then some!"

"Tonkatsu...? Uesugi-kun knows how to make that...?" Nino can't stop herself from wondering aloud, her lower jaw going a little slack with amazement. "And wait, does he mean that he and Raiha-chan made the curry itself from scratch, too...?"

"It's possible, though it probably won't end up looking like curry that we're familiar with," Miku notes.

"Any curry is fine by me," Itsuki smiles, wiping some dripping saliva from the corner of her mouth.

"Of course it is when you're the one saying that! And don't start drooling even before the food gets here!" Nino berates her youngest sister swiftly as Itsuki ducks behind Miku for cover from Nino's wrath. "Actually, now that I think about it, it's probably Raiha-chan doing most of the heavy lifting...she told us back in Hawaii that she handles most of the cooking in their household..."

"In any case, let's get the table all set and wait for him to show up, shall we?" the eldest quint suggests amicably, and the rest of her sisters follow her lead and get up to help set the table for lunch.

---

As soon as the clock on the wall strikes noon, the quintuplets plus one all clap their hands together once and chant,

"Itadakimaaaaaaasu!"

"Whoa-ho-ho, this is some lunch you brought us!" Ichika cries out, unable to help herself as she marvels down at the food that their tutor and classmate has brought them. Before each of the high schoolers sitting at the dinner table sits a big plate of freshly steamed and fluffy white rice half-covered with Raiha's trademark homemade curry that is also poured over the crispy, perfectly fried cuts of pork katsu that sits next to the fluffy rice. "It smells so goooood ~ !"

"Raiha-chan...thank you...thank you..." Itsuki is murmuring her thanks, on the verge of literal tears from the mere aroma of the curry tonkatsu meal before her. "If only I could trade Nino for you..."

"Food really does turn you into a different person, now, doesn't it?" Nino menacingly smiles towards her youngest sister across the table.

"We made a lot this morning, so help yourselves as much as you want," Fuutarou informs the girls. "And I don't really plan on bringing home the leftovers since Raiha can just make more for our family anyway, so let's try to finish it all; either that, or you can save the rest and reheat it for dinner or something."

"Okaaay!"

And thus the quintuplets' Sunday lunch with their tutor begins, kicking off about half an hour of merry talking, gossiping, laughing, and eating. The first floor, especially around the dinner table, becomes pungent with the scent of homemade curry, and Yotsuba makes sure to have everyone's Shirley Temples topped off with the big pitcher of the drink that she's mixed in preparation for their lunch with Fuutarou.

"So your little sister really made all this, huh," Nino remarks aloud, munching on a piece of pork cutlet smeared with curry on one end.

"She made all the curry, yes. I made the tonkatsu," Fuutarou clarifies.

"Even still, this is pretty impressive. This's as good as the curry we'd eat at family restaurants and such."

"That so? Glad you think that way. I'll tell Raiha that everyone liked it."

"This tonkatsu is really good too!" Yotsuba says quickly, not wanting to let Fuutarou feel left out. "It matches the curry so well!"

"It tastes like you two practiced making tonkatsu curry at lot," Ichika notes before taking a bite of curry rice with her spoon.

"So, originally I was the one who got Raiha to pick up cooking," Fuutarou explains to his students after taking a drink of his Shirley Temple. "Years back, right when our mom passed away, since our dad was usually pretty busy and only came home at night, I had to cook for the two of us for a time, so I figured I should teach her what I knew about cooking so that in case I needed to get out there and find a job myself, Raiha would be able to take care of herself. And when I did start looking for jobs, I tried getting jobs in the food industry, and whatever I was able to learn from the kitchens I worked in, I brought back home to teach my sister."

"And now Raiha-chan's basically as good as Nino at cooking, huh? I guess we have her big brother to thank for that," Miku smiles over at her tutor.

"Not just as good as, this food is even better!" Itsuki exclaims, her eyes unable to stop sparkling ever since she took her first bite of Raiha's curry rice.

"I appreciate your kind words, but for the sake of making sure that Nino doesn't blow her top for the second time this weekend, let's try to chill off on the praise," Fuutarou says calmly, warily eyeing the second quintuplet who's now starting to glare daggers over at her youngest sister. "Besides, that's just your bias for Raiha showing through there."

"That's right! Uesugi-kun gets it!" Nino nods strongly in agreement. "I'll make us curry rice later this week for dinner and we'll see just whose food is better then!"

"I don't know if you should be letting my little sister get you all worked up like this, Nino..."

"Just leave her be. When it comes to food, Nino's pride always gets put on the line," Ichika explains with a chuckle. "Especially when it's to get us to praise her for it."

"Ah, so she's one of those types? The type who makes food for her siblings because she wants to take care of them so much?"

"N-No, that's not it, you're wrong!" Nino pouts at Fuutarou as her sisters all giggle at her expense. "I was literally the only one who bothered learning how to cook, so I don't have a choice but to cook for everyone! That's why I was teaching Miku how to cook before you showed up so that it doesn't have to be just me cooking all the time in this house, I'll have you know!"

"For what it's worth, I still do think you're the better cook between you and my sister, having cooked with both of you and eaten the food that the two of you make."

Nino opens her mouth to defend herself, thinking that Fuutarou was going to diss her somehow, but she stops herself when she hears what he says.

"Ugh, now y-you're just trying to pull my leg," Nino grumpily frowns, looking away while doing so.

"So much for saying earlier that you were all resentful towards him, huh?" Ichika snickers lightly, and Nino snaps her eyes back up to her, her face once more reddening like a whistling teapot.

"Th-That's got nothing to do with this! I swear to God, you guys!" Nino says hotly as Ichika's snicker escalates into a full-blown laugh. Itsuki, meanwhile, is trying to seriously gauge the quality of her curry rice and tonkatsu, mentally comparing with the food that Nino has served them in recent memory.

"...what makes you believe that Nino's cooking is indeed better than Raiha-chan's?" the fifth quintuplet wonders aloud. "Because to me, they are both excellent; that joke about me wanting to trade sisters with you aside, I am having a hard time determining which is truly better."

"Well, logically speaking, Raiha's knowledge and experience of cooking is limited to what I taught her in the beginning and what little she's been able to figure out or look up on her own," Fuutarou explains after eating a spoonful of his own curry rice. "We do have internet at our place thanks to our dad's office being in the same house, so she can look up things there, but she just doesn't have the sheer experience that Nino does; that, and Raiha likes making things that she already knows how to make, or stuff she's comfortable with making. But then again, part of that is because we're poor, and she doesn't have the luxury of being able to experiment around or have the money or ingredients to use to practice making new foods with. I'm sure she'd love to learn how to cook new dishes, but given our financial situation, she doesn't get very many opportunities to do so, whereas Nino does have those things."

"Hey, hey, that's not cool, trying to guilt-trip me like that."

"That wasn't my intention; I was just trying to explain why I think you're still the better cook at the end of the day. You're just looking a bit too deeply into my explanation."

"Then you could've just said 'you have more experience' and left it at that!"

"Now, now," Ichika waves her hand at Nino to get her to calm down.

"But that'd just be a really vague answer..." Fuutarou shrugs, munching on a piece of his own pork cutlet smothered with curry.

"But we were surprised that you'd be making tonkatsu for us, Uesugi-san," Yotsuba smiles cheerfully. "Like Nino said before you came, we didn't know you could make tonkatsu from scratch."

"I've made tonkatsu before; it's not that hard. It just, uh...it can make a mess if you're not careful, so I tend not to make it too much. But I guess you can say the same about making curry..."

"I mean, cooking in general can get super messy," Nino points out to her tutor.

"Yeah, but our kitchen back at home is right next to my dad's office, and our place is just one big room, pretty much, no other separate rooms or walls or anything. So we try to keep the place there as clean as possible. Today was an exception, obviously, with what, us working with the breadcrumbs and whatnot."

"You ought to bring Raiha-chan over at some point so that I can teach her how to cook," Nino offers nonchalantly.

"But Fuutarou said that he'd like you to teach the two of us yesterday," Miku reminds her older sister.

"I'd rather teach Raiha-chan than the two of you."

"Well, so much for that plan," Fuutarou grins darkly before scooping up another spoonful of curry rice. "Guess we're just gonna have to teach ourselves the rest, just between the two of us."

Hearing this, Miku turns her head away slightly in embarrassment. Even though they've already done so yesterday, for Fuutarou to put it in those exact words still comes off as a little embarrassing for her.

Nino, watching their interaction, narrows her eyes at the two of them on her end of the table. "Oooooooon second thought, maybe I should teach you two, if only to keep an eye on you two," she says suspiciously. "Who knows what'll happen if we leave the two of you alone."

"Speaking of being left alone," Fuutarou mentions now, looking up from his plate at the second quintuplet, "maybe this is something I should be able to clearly see, but I'd rather hear it directly from the person in question. How are you feeling?"

The quintuplets, having expected their lunch conversation to turn in this direction at some point, quiet down once they hear their tutor begin addressing the elephant in the room. Nino, for her part, tussles her hair slowly in response.

"Better," she answers simply at first. "And yeah, that should've been obvious when you came here, right? If I'm willing to sit here and eat lunch with everyone, including you."

"True. Did you apologize to Yotsuba?"

"Yes, I did."

Fuutarou nods and says simply, "Cool," before munching on another cut of tonkatsu. The quintuplets wait for their tutor to say something else, expecting more out of this phase of this conversation, but they simply wind up staring at him eat his own lunch for a couple minutes straight, with only Itsuki eating alongside him because she's eating while staring at him at the same time.

Especially puzzled is Nino. "...that's it? Just...'cool'? Isn't there anything else you wanna say?" she asks him slowly.

"Is there?" Fuutarou merely shrugs back at her. "You tell me."

"W-What kind of a question is that? You were angry at me on Friday night when I started going ballistic too, you know. Don't you wanna say stuff to me too? Because now's your only chance to do it."

"Then I'll pass. If you've resolved your issues with your sisters and made up with them, then that's all I care about."

"Is it, though? I don't think it is." Nino puts down her utensils for the time being to fold her arms tightly across her ample chest. "You can't tell me that when you went over to me and literally picked me off the ground and held me up in the air after I hit Yotsuba."

"Er...i-is...is that true, Fuutarou...?" Miku asks meekly, visibly surprised at Nino's testimony.

"It is, I don't deny it. I'll admit that it was a bit of extreme behavior on my part too because that was my kneejerk reaction to seeing Nino hit Yotsuba like that, so I acted on my instinct to detain Nino in case she started going after Yotsuba for real. But to make things clear, I didn't hurt Nino; I just held her by her collar up in the air so that she couldn't do anything else to her."

"Even still, I don't believe that you really don't have anything to say to me right now, because you went off on me when you started manhandling me like that."

"You trying to exaggerate what I did aside, no, I really don't have anything to add. I only talked to you like that because I needed you to calm yourself down. In that situation, telling someone like you who's clearly pissed off about something to calm down isn't going to do shit unless that someone respects me enough to consider calming down as something they should do, and I doubt I'm that kind of person to you, Nino. So I fought fire with fire, so to say, to stop you from hitting Yotsuba again if you were planning on doing that and to get my point across to you that I needed to take care of that stab wound you had on your shoulder."

Fuutarou takes a drink from his fizzy beverage to help clear his throat.

"If you think I hold something against you for how you acted two nights ago, that's not the case. Whatever it is that made you that angry that night is clearly something that I don't get, and I'm not going to sit here demanding you to tell me just because I'm your tutor. I think that that's your business and your sisters' business if they're involved but not mine. Not to mention, as far as I know, you still see me as an outsider, so what's the point of me trying to stick my nose in further than I already am when you're probably gonna blow up like that in my face again."

"That's right. And yet even as you say that, today you've just waltzed into our house like you always do and even brought us lunch. Is that what an outsider would do?" Nino challenges.

"Maybe not to you," Fuutarou briefly points his index finger across the table back at the quintuplet in question, "but I know that your sisters don't see me the same way, at least."

Setting down his spoon and chopsticks, now that he's already wolfed down his meal faster than even Itsuki, Fuutarou first wipes his mouth with a napkin before looking back up at Nino and saying:

"And might I add that for someone who still views me as an outsider, you sure are enjoying the food I brought you."

Nino quickly darts her blue eyes down at her plate. Sure enough, she's already eaten through half of her food, a rate that matches both Miku's and Ichika's.

"Th-This - this's because I hadn't eaten anything all day yesterday," she blurts out quickly, the words escaping her tongue before she can take the time to think them over. "And I only barely ate those riceballs you made for dinner yesterday earlier this morning - "

"Oh, so you even ate those onigiri I made for you. Interesting, very interesting," Fuutarou nods in understanding as Nino's face goes even redder as soon as she realizes that she's let slip some information that she probably shouldn't have, given the context for their current dialogue. "For someone who distrusts this outsider who's talking right now, you sure trust him an awful lot, enough to eat the food he's made."

Nino puts down her own spoon on the table next to her plate, a bit more loudly than she probably needed to.

"So then what's your point? Just spit it out already; where are you trying to go with this?" she demands assertively.

"I don't have a point; I didn't come here to make one," Fuutarou answers swiftly to oblige her. "But I would like to ask you this: do you really still see me as an outsider? Or is that a cover-up for something else?"

Nino narrows her eyes at her tutor while her sisters look on somewhat tensely. Cover-up? Does he somehow know about the conflicting feeling that she has towards him? Could maybe Miku or Itsuki have told him? Nino should have asked them earlier that morning if they talked to Fuutarou about her to any considerable degree, but it's obviously too late for that now. Then for now, she goes with this:

"I'm not trying to cover up anything. You're still an outsider to me," Nino answers confidently, "but I'll at least recognize the work that you've done for me and my sisters, like how I'm eating the food you made for us out of courtesy for your and Raiha-chan's efforts. But that's all."

Fuutarou nods curtly. "Alright then. That's all I wanted to hear."

"...eh?"

Slowly growing confused, Nino blankly watches their tutor pick up his empty plate and take it over to the kitchen sink so that he can wash the dishes all together once everyone else is done eating. In the meantime, Fuutarou himself returns and looks around at the girls' plates.

"Anyone want seconds? Like I said, we made plenty," Fuutarou reminds his students, waving the ladle and rice scooper he's brought from home to scoop the curry from its tupperware and rice from the Nakanos' large rice cooker onto their plates.

"Wait, wait wait wait wait!" Nino stands up from her own chair quickly, staring at her tutor with an utterly confused frown. "Something's not right here. Why's that all you have to say? Are you saying that you're okay with me thinking that about you?"

Fuutarou returns Nino's frown with a small one of his own. "Yes. What of it?"

"Well, like...that doesn't bother you at all?"

"No, not when I already knew you thought of me like that. Do you not remember that one conversation we had outside? The night when I accidentally walked in on you after you'd come out of the shower, and you ran out and accidentally locked yourself outside?"

"Okay, okay, stop, I remember that, you don't need to go into so much detail."

"Then yeah, I still kept in mind what you told me back then." Fuutarou takes Itsuki's plate, which the latter has held out to him while he and Nino are talking, and carefully puts another serving of fluffy white rice and piping hot curry onto it before giving it back to its owner. "But I also kept in mind the fact that you think of me as an outsider because you were concerned about your sisters and what would happen if an outsider like me got so involved with them. That's why, when I saw you hit Yotsuba that night, I got pretty angry myself and intervened, because for a moment I felt like it wasn't just me who was the source of what you've been going through, if that makes sense."

The young tutor snaps the plastic lid back over the tupperware containing the rest of the curry.

"So now that I can see that you're back to getting along with your sisters and that you've apologized to Yotsuba, there's no need for me to get involved any further in this. Everything's back to normal, or at least it should be. Which means that I can go into this week not having to worry about our lessons being jeopardized."

The quintuplets all groan in unison, during which Nino takes the opportunity seat herself again.

"It's always back to studying with this guy," Ichika sighs with another chuckle.

"Hey, might I remind you girls that finals are fast approaching, and I don't intend on wasting the second chance that Nino gave me," Fuutarou reminds his students sternly. "And we can't afford to have things like this happen anymore, just so you know. Weekends are a valuable source of time to use for studying."

"Tch. You're even taking our weekends away from us? What a hardass," Nino complains, gobbling down a spoonful of her own curry rice and downing it with a swig of her Shirley Temple.

"I wouldn't have to if your grades weren't all so pathetic. But there is that silver lining that you've all been improving, and if we can keep this up, I think you all can actually at least pass all of your subjects."

"Ehh...I think you're putting too much faith in me; I don't know if I can pass Math at all," Yotsuba smiles weakly, and she hands her plate back to her tutor. "Seconds, please!"

"Not with that attitude, you won't. You can't give up, not until the bitter end. As your tutor, I won't let you give up partway through; that's not what I'm being paid to do." The young tutor, reopening the curry tupperware, puts another helping of curry rice onto the plate and returns it to Yotsuba.

"By the way, Fuutarou, why aren't you having seconds? This is your food, you know?" Miku points out.

"Oh, don't worry about me, I ate a whole serving already before coming here. Since Raiha couldn't join us, I ate some with her in the morning after we were done cooking everything, so I'm pretty full now."

"Speaking of Raiha-chan, where is she? I was just about to ask why you didn't just bring her along," Nino wonders aloud.

"She's over at another friend's house for a school project, so a bit of bad timing. I'll bring her here another weekend when we're not so busy..."

---

An hour later, all of the curry is eaten and all the Shirley Temple is drunk, and Nino, Ichika, Yotsuba, and Itsuki sit at the dinner table, absentmindedly watching Fuutarou and Miku wash the dishes for the crew.

"Hey, Nino, how's it feel not having to clear the table and wash the dishes?" Ichika says quietly, gently poking fun at her younger sister.

"Amazing. You have no frickin' idea how good this feels," Nino snorts in a deadpan tone, pulling out her phone to check for any text messages from her friends. "All these years of cooking and washing the dishes for everyone...ugh, sign me the hell up."

"W-We help you wash the dishes from time to time," Itsuki objects while Yotsuba nods with an indignant pout.

"Not enough, though."

The eldest quint leans a little closer to Nino across from her at the table. "But don't you remember what Fuutarou-kun said earlier? About how you trust him an awful lot, considering that you think of him as an outsider? You're even letting him wash the dishes for you."

"You're not going to get under my skin with that, Ichika, so don't even try. Besides, that's the least he should do for intruding on us as much as he has."

Nino pulls her gaze away to put it down on the screen of her phone.

"But I really thought he'd, like, yell at me or something...or scold me or something like that..." she mumbles, the volume on her voice being turned down several notches so that Fuutarou and Miku can't hear her over the sounds of running water and clanking dishes. "Given how harshly he reacted to me hitting Yotsuba, I thought he'd chew me the hell out today when he got here. The moment he started talking about how I seemed like I was back to getting along with everyone, I was like, oh shit, here we go..."

"Uesugi-san is a nice person; he knows that you had a lot going through your head," Yotsuba insists.

"Not just nice, he's considerate," Ichika adds onto Yotsuba's thought. "He trusted us enough to handle this on our own and didn't intervene more than what he did. If Fuutarou-kun were any other boy from school, either they'd chicken out and bail on us entirely or they'd try to get super involved because they're trying to be the world's greatest simp and they think that hours of playing dating game sims is going to somehow help them solve our problems or something dumb like that."

"That's an awfully specific example you just gave there," Nino notes worriedly.

"Eh, don't dwell on it. I've met my fair share of weirdos and guys who don't know when to back off whenever a girl starts having some trouble."

Itsuki glances next to her at Nino, with whom she's been sitting at the table for lunch. "Nino, you are fine with studying with us like usual starting tomorrow, yes?"

"Yeah, I am, don't worry about it. If he's not going to pursue this, then I won't either. There's no need for me to drag this out any longer. Like Uesugi-kun said, I don't want to waste the second chance that I gave him by not studying with him; then there'd be no point in me saving his job for him."

Smiling with relief, Itsuki nods. "That is good to hear. But just in case, if you feel like something like this could happen again, please make sure to talk to us."

"I'll be the judge of that."

Having finished the dishes, Fuutarou and Miku, after drying their hands, return to the dining table, where the tutor summons his small storage rune with his right hand and puts his left hand underneath it. At this small display of magecraft, the quintuplets all perk up, curious to know what their tutor is doing. As they watch, though, a moderately sized plastic jar the size of a regular jar of jam slips out of the storage rune and perfectly slides down onto Fuutarou's outstretched left hand, and he twists off the cap and puts it down on the table before Nino. Because the jar is see-through, the girls could already see its contents even without Fuutarou having to unscrew the cap, so they can already see that it's a homemade parfait made with two layers of yogurt, blueberries, raspberries, grapes, and strawberries. Once the cap is off, Fuutarou reaches into the old shopping bag with the recycling emblem on it to pull out a box of store-bought granola, and opening it, he carefully sprinkles the top of the jar with clusters of granola and hands the clean spoon that he's brought with him from the kitchen to Nino.

"Here's the parfait that I promised I'd bring you," the young tutor announces simply as Nino blinks down at the admittedly small parfait. "I'm sure it's a sad excuse for one compared to ones you've eaten before; I know for a fact that it just looks outright pathetic compared to the ones I bought for your sisters for dessert after lunch yesterday. But since I couldn't just buy one to go, and since I've never tried making parfaits before, I just went with this. If you don't want it, that's fine, I can just eat it myself."

"But didn't you say that you were already full?" Yotsuba asks.

"Obviously I meant that I'll eat it later when I'm at home or something. I read that this kind of parfait is even considered to be a breakfast food of sorts, so I could stick it in the fridge and save it for tomorrow when I'm on my way to school or something."

While Fuutarou is talking, Nino picks up the spoon that he's brought her and scoops up some yogurt, fruit, and granola, silently putting the bite in her mouth. Watching her eat her first bite of Fuutarou's parfait, Miku gives her a tiny little smile.

"How is it?" she asks.

Chewing slowly and swallowing, Nino lowers her spoon somewhat.

"...if this's meant to be a parfait," she says deliberately, "then it fucking sucks. Who the hell uses yogurt for a parfait? What are you, poor?"

"Why yes, I most definitely am poor," Fuutarou says flatly. The swiftness and matter-of-factness of his delivery causes the rest of the girls to start cracking up a little. "I take it that it's not to your tastes, then?"

"As far as parfaits go, hell no. If you say you're gonna get me a parfait, either just take me out somewhere and get me one, or learn to make an actually good one, not some el cheapo let-me-throw-fruit-and-yogurt-together-into-a-jar type shit."

Shrugging in defeat, Fuutarou reaches for the parfait he's made for Nino. "A'ight, then I guess I'll have to eat the rest of this la - "

But his hand is stopped by Nino's, which seizes his wrist suddenly and with a much stronger grip than Fuutarou expects.

"Hold it. I never said it was bad," she clarifies for him.

"But you said it's garbage."

"As a parfait. But...just as a food..." Nino slowly weakens her grip on her tutor's wrist before letting go of it entirely, taking another bite out of the parfait jar. "...it's...y'know...not bad..."

Swiftly getting up from her chair, Ichika stands up next to their tutor and nudges him a little with her elbow, wearing a suggestively teasing look on her face.

"Hey, Fuutarou-kun," she whispers loudly so that everyone at the table can still hear, "you're in."

The table promptly explodes with laughter from the quintuplets, which is proportionate to the blush that explodes onto Nino's face as she starts yelling at her sisters to shut up and stop taking her words out of context. Fuutarou, with only a heavy sigh as his reaction, puts his hands on his hips, watching Nino angrily shovel more and more of the parfait into her mouth.

"Well, as long as you like it," he concludes shortly. "You can call it whatever. Doesn't have to be a parfait."

"But hey, this really can be a good breakfast food, like you said! It looks easy to make, it's got a lot of fruit, and it looks healthy!" Yotsuba says supportively, analyzing the contents of the parfait.

"Indeed, the yogurt and fruit will give us plenty of energy that our bodies can use quickly to give us the boost we need to pay attention in class in the morning until we can get to lunch, and depending on how easy it is to make, I am sure that we could easily prepare these the night before or even the day of," Itsuki nods.

"Yeah, this is super simple. It's literally just...put in yogurt, then some fruit, then another layer of yogurt, then another layer of fruit, and then sprinkle some granola at the top like what I just did," Fuutarou explains shortly. "The toughest part of it is either washing and cutting the fruit up or picking out the fruits in the first place. The actual assembly is easy-peasy. So easy, even Miku can do it."

Miku pouts hard at Fuutarou next to her as the rest of her sisters laugh again, this time with Nino having a chance to join in.

"Fuutarou, you meanie..." she grumbles, continuing to pout at him with her arms straightened out next to her sides in irritation.

"Sorry, I couldn't resist. But no, really, it's actually really simple. Maybe give this a try as a breakfast food in case you guys don't have time to make a real breakfast or if Nino doesn't feel like making breakfast for you guys or something."

"Can I have a bite, Nino?" Yotsuba asks curiously, having eyed her sister partake in her parfait, so Nino obliges her, guiding a spoonful of yogurt, fruit, and granola to her younger sister's mouth. "Mmm ~ ! The crunchiness of the granola, the texture of the fruit, and then smoothness of the yogurt - it's super good!"

"Oooh, I wanna try too ~ gimme a bite too, Nino ~ " Ichika also leans in and says "Aaaa ~ " while opening her mouth to receive a taste as well.

"Hey, back off, Uesugi-kun made this for me!" Nino yowls at her sisters as Miku and Itsuki also imitate Ichika.

"Oh ho ~ so you really do like what Fuutarou-kun made for you, huh?" Ichika teases Nino some more.

"I-I don't particularly mind it! And I don't want to make him feel like his food's going to waste!" Nino says hotly in self-defense, using her spoon like a fencing rapier to keep her sisters at bay. The scene reminds Fuutarou of that one Jurassic Park meme of the man trying to hold three dinosaurs surrounding him at bay. "Stay back, all of you! This is mine! Go make your own or get Uesugi-kun to make you some!"

"Awww, don't be like that. Besides, Itsuki's looking like she's just gonna grab the entire jar and make a break for it," Ichika points out, and sure enough, Itsuki's blue eyes are swirling, mesmerized by the sweet, sweet goodness of Fuutarou's homemade parfait while a small trail of drool is beginning to emerge from the right corner of her mouth.

"Itsuki, for fuck's sake, you just ate, so stop drooling!" Nino screeches, beside herself with delirious incredulity. "Uesugi-kun! Uesugi-kun, tell these stupid idiots of sisters I got to BTFO, will you!?"

"No can do. Remember what I told you? This is your problem, so I'm letting you handle it," Fuutarou raises his hands innocently. "I'm just an outsider, remember?"

"Y-You son of a bitch, Uesugi-kun! I know you're only saying that because it's convenient for you! Itsuki, hey, Itsuki, no, wait, stop - !"

Unable to contain herself any longer, Itsuki dives with her hands outstretched for Fuutarou's parfait jar, which Nino manages to intercept by snatching the jar away just in the nick of time out of Itsuki's grasp, causing the youngest quintuplet to whine like a sad dog.

"I guess I know what I'll be doing before I leave today," the young tutor thinks aloud as Nino reluctantly gives Itsuki a bite, which immediately raises her spirits again, and in so doing, she gives bites to Ichika and Miku just so that everyone has had a bite.

"Teaching us how to make this parfait?" Miku asks once she's swallowed her bite of Nino's treat.

"Yeah. Hopefully you have some fruit stocked up. It doesn't have to be the same ones that I used for Nino's."

"You don't need to teach them, I can do that!" Nino says once she, too, has taken another big bite from her parfait. "This shit's so easy - literally the hardest part about making this is cutting the actual fruit itself!"

"That's...what I just said, yeah."

Then, Fuutarou feels his phone vibrate and reaches into it to fetch it. It's a reminder that he's set for himself, notifying him of a meeting he's got with Dr. Nakano later on this afternoon.

"...actually, scratch that, you'll have to get Nino to teach you 'cause I totally forgot that I have a meeting with your dad in a few hours," he announces briefly.

"Whoa, the ever-diligent workaholic named Uesugi Fuutarou-kun forgot about a meeting? And one with Dad, too? You're slacking, Fuutarou-kun. For shame, for shame," Ichika shakes her head in mock disappointment, but to her surprise, she finds Fuutarou actually looking a bit disturbed by this himself.

"It's a good thing I set a reminder like this just in case, but...I guess I'm letting myself get too distracted with all this, for me to forget that," he agrees with another sigh.

"Er, well, it's - we still appreciate it, you coming over and eating lunch with us! We really do!" Ichika says quickly, stuttering slightly in an effort to undo whatever discomfort that she's impressed onto her tutor with her last couple of words. "We aren't distractions to you...right?"

"Yeah, if you're late to a meeting with Papa because of us, just have us explain the situation to him, I'm sure he'll understand," Miku also adds reassuringly. "By the way, how's Papa doing?"

"The same as usual, working too much to give his daughters any attention," Fuutarou shrugs for a third time or so. "Nothing you're not used to."

"I do wish that one day, we could all eat together, though," Yotsuba sighs longingly. "But...it is Dad we're talking about, so..."

Fuutarou is already moving to put the empty tupperware that he's washed out in the kitchen sink back into the shopping bag that he's brought it in, and he waves and bids the quintuplets who stay behind at the dinner table goodbye as Miku and Yotsuba trot after him to see him off at the door.

"Again, thanks for coming by, Uesugi-san. Today was a lot of fun," Yotsuba nods wholeheartedly at their tutor, who pulls his shoes on to get ready to leave.

"If you wanna try making that parfait that I made Nino, I can send you the recipe I found online with some simple instructions on how to make it. It should be really easy though..."

"Aha, but remember, we're total dummies, especially me. I think for my own sake, I could use those instructions."

"I-I could probably make that without the instructions..." Miku mumbles uncertainly.

"Then I'll just send it in a group text to everyone, how's that." Once his shoes are on, Fuutarou turns to the girls one last time for the day. "If anything else happens, be sure to let me know. We're lucky that Nino came to her senses on her own, so I'm pretty glad about that so that we don't need to deal with it going into this week. But just in case, keep in touch."

The two quintuplets both nod confidently back at him, and Fuutarou, before turning to leave, reaches out with his free left hand and puts it back on Yotsuba's head, smothering her green hair ribbon for a moment in the process.

"Might be a bit late for this by now, but sorry that I couldn't stop Nino from hitting you. In hindsight, I probably could've stepped in faster to make it so that she didn't hit you at all," the mage says in a low voice so that he won't be heard by the others back at the dining table.

Her heart fluttering a little when she feels her friend's hand on her head again, Yotsuba quickly shakes her head.

"It's okay, I'm already over it. And you don't have to apologize, it was my own fault for trying to get in Nino's way when she was acting like that; I got what was coming."

"Eh, I don't quite agree with you saying that, but...again, that's none of my business. Thanks for handling that situation as well as you did...wish more people would be as mature as you."

Yotsuba feels her face fill with warmth at the sound of Fuutarou's kind words. Her heart does the same, but it also fills with a twinge of pain, because she knows that she isn't as mature as he thinks she is.

Watching Fuutarou give Yotsuba another headpat, Miku finds herself taking little microsteps to put herself ever so slightly closer to her tutor so that he'll notice her, too, before he leaves. And notice her too he does, and Fuutarou also pats Miku on her head too before bidding the two of them goodbye for the day.

---

"Whew ~ that's the best I can do for tonight."

It's now Sunday night, nearing the quintuplets' bedtime so that they can get plenty of rest for the start of the school week tomorrow. Ichika has already gone to sleep, citing her need for lots of it tonight since she'll be leaving their tutoring session with Fuutarou early so that she can go to her part-time job. Miku and Yotsuba are playing Mario Kart together over in Miku's room, which leaves Nino and Itsuki, who are in the latter's room where the second quintuplet is helping the fifth quintuplet with her English studies, which is one of her weaker subjects. Nino stretches out her arms in exhaustion, looking forward to taking a good night's rest tonight.

"Thank you for helping me out tonight," Itsuki thanks her older sister earnestly, causing Nino to look away, a little bit bashful.

"...wouldn't asking Uesugi-kun tomorrow for help with English be better? I'm not a tutor like him, so I was surprised you even bothered asking me for help with this," she says quickly to divert Itsuki's attention away from herself.

"Well, given that yesterday was supposed to be an extra weekend lesson, I did not get the chance to ask him the questions I had regarding my English studies, so...I figured I would turn to the next available source of help."

"It's not like my English score is that good."

"It is still better than mine."

"While that's true..." Nino trails off, browsing through Itsuki's notebook that is filled with questions and answers from her past two months of self-study and studying with the rest of her sisters and their hired tutor. "...you've been working hard, haven't you."

"Ah...uh...well..." Seeing her sister flip through her study notebook, Itsuki also grows a little bashful herself and begins to fidget, finding it a bit embarrassing that her sister is taking a look at all the work she's done. "...yes, I have been doing my best."

Closing her younger sister's notebook, Nino folds her arms lightly and leans back in her own chair that she's pulled in from her own room.

"Can I ask you something?" the older quint asks quietly.

"Of course. What is on your mind?"

"Back when Uesugi-kun first started tutoring us, remember how it was just Ichika, Miku, and Yotsuba, right? And the two of us didn't cooperate at first?"

"Y-Yes...quite different times those were."

"Yeah, no kidding. Well, what I wanted to ask, now that I've looked at all the work you've done so far, is...how did you even manage to keep yourself motivated studying like this all on your own? Though, I guess this applies even before Uesugi-kun showed up as our whole private tutor thing..."

Itsuki adjusts her already good posture in her own chair. "Well...for me, it was because..." She falls quiet for a moment before resuming. "Nino, you know how you have that promise you made to us that you have been working to keep? The promise Ichika said that - "

"Yeah, yeah, I know, you don't need to go into all that detail," Nino says irritably, waving her hand to brush the rest of Itsuki's thought aside.

"Well...I...I also did something similar. Do you remember six years ago when I said that I would be the one who would take care of us? I believe my exact words were, if I recall correctly..."

The memory that Itsuki digs up in her mind in order to recall these exact words causes shadows to appear over her eyes as her head begins to dip down, her bangs casting shade over them from the lights on the ceiling of her room.

"...'From now on...I'll become Mom'," she mutters. Nino can no longer see her younger sister's eyes, so far down has her face banked.

"...that was right after Mama died," Nino says, dropping her own voice even lower to match Itsuki's. "Right?"

Nodding slowly, Itsuki manages to raise her head, though the shadows over her eyes remain.

"I never made it explicit like you did, Nino. I remember just muttering that to myself, with my head against the wall at our old apartment," Itsuki says, her voice becoming heavy with emotion. "I was having such a hard time coping with Mother's death that...in hindsight, I feel as though I must have been saying anything to myself just to make myself feel any bit better. But what I said then stuck with me anyway, and just like you, all this time...I had that in mind as we grew up over the years."

"That so. But why did you settle on studying, then? Because I don't know about you, but now that I remember what you said to us back then, it's like...you don't study to become a good mother, that's not how it works."

"I know, but...please hear me out. I remember talking with Yotsuba after we had come back from our Kyoto trip, our last trip with Mother before she died, and she told me about this friend she had met there with whom she got into trouble because the two of them were found wandering around late at night when we were all supposed to be in our hotel. She told me how since they were both poor, they would both do their best to study and get good grades so that they could graduate school and get well-paying jobs and become successful to get their families out of poverty. So when I said that I would 'become Mom', I eventually had to think about what I would do to make good on those words, and I remembered what Yotsuba told me and decided to pursue that path."

"But even then, that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense...? I don't know."

"I-It made sense to me at the time," Itsuki says quickly. "Because in my head, I figured that I would study hard and get good grades, and that would help me cover my academic grades, which would then leave me with time to learn how to cook, to get a part-time job, so on and so forth to act like an actual mother would. But..."

Itsuki gazes sadly over at her notebook.

"...you got stuck at step one," Nino deduces fluidly, and Itsuki nods.

"It was...quite a rude awakening for me, finding out that I was simply no good at studying. I thought that perhaps it was merely test fright at first, that somehow I was bad at taking tests, but no, I simply could not study well, because I took practice tests at home and received similar results. I could not accept that. I believed that if you studied hard enough, if you tried hard enough, if you put in enough effort, then surely they would be rewarded." Itsuki shakes her head defeatedly. "I was wrong, but I was stubborn and did not accept that. So I kept studying, and studying, and studying...all the way into the start of high school, and having made only minimal progress in the process."

Nino lifts her left leg over her right while listening to Itsuki. "So that explains why you've been a study geek all this time, huh?"

"S-Study geek...well, I suppose at this point I cannot deny that..." Itsuki sighs again.

"Hey, I'm not trying to sound like I'm judging you. Maybe I would have before now, but...but now I don't feel like doing that. I wouldn't really feel good shitting down your throat about something like this, given what I was doing for the past two days..."

The two sisters let their conversation pause for a few moments.

"Then what about now? As in, what exactly convinced you to start studying with everyone and Uesugi-kun? Because remember how in the beginning, the two of us didn't study with them? Even though we had our own reasons, I'm sure..."

The fifth quintuplet puts her eyes down at her own lap again.

"...I began to change my mind when I saw the practice test results that the three of them were producing with Uesugi-kun as their tutor," Itsuki testifies. "I saw that all three of them were improving, even Yotsuba. Granted, it was only a slight improvement, of course, and if they had only been able to show such improvement once and that was all, I would not have thought more of it. But their improvement was consistent; looking at Yotsuba's practice tests that I had her show me, it was clear that with Uesugi-kun's tutelage, they were in fact raising their grades, just as Uesugi-kun was hired to do. Of course, our midterms show that we all still have a long way to go, but the fact that he was able to tutor the three of them well enough to the point where they all had a realistic chance of passing their midterms with a little bit more time and studying planted doubt in my mind in regards to my own resistance against his tutelage. Because if even Yotsuba could show such improvement, there was no reason I could not."

The youngest sibling looks back up at her older sister again.

"What finally got me to change my mind was when you forced me to join you with the others in that first overnight studying session we had with Uesugi-kun. I could immediately tell that he was an excellent tutor; he explained things in ways that even we could understand so that all we needed to worry about was making sure we could retain the material we were learning from him. I suppose the previous weeks of teaching the others leading up to that first night helped Uesugi-kun cater his tutoring to us specifically, too. I honestly feel as though if it were not for those two study nights we had with him, I would not have been able to score as high as I did on our midterms, to the point where I even beat Miku, who usually obtains the highest test scores out of us five."

Nino notices Itsuki's hands slowly squeeze a little on her lap.

"There was also...that night. The night when...he protected me from that...that person, the person who is trying to come after us."

"But that doesn't have anything to do with your studying, does it?" Nino points out.

"Perhaps not, other than maybe that I was heading home from studying at the library that night. But...that night still left quite a deep impression on me, now that I think about it. Because...I saw Uesugi-kun fighting that person. Perhaps in the beginning he was not doing this, but when I accidentally stumbled upon the street where the two of them were fighting one another, Uesugi-kun began to fight to protect me and even took a hit that was meant for me."

"Heh. So I guess I'm not the only one who likes the type of guy who're brave enough to take a hit like that for them?"

"I am not s-saying that he is my type or anything! It is more that...that afterwards, when he escorted me home, I realized that Uesugi-kun is basically the embodiment of everything that I wished to become: smart, good at studying, and powerful enough to protect and take care of your family."

Raising her head all the way back, Itsuki arches her neck backwards so that her closed eyes end up pointing straight up at the ceiling.

"I cannot cook, I cannot study, and I cannot take care of my own family," she murmurs softly. "I rely on you and Father's money to feed me, and I have spent so much time trying to study and to no avail on my own that I neither possess any other meaningful skills nor have any idea if the path I have chosen really is the right one for me. Ichika has been working her part-time job for quite a while now, so by this point she has probably made a fair amount. You learned how to cook from the start of middle school, so now you are the only one who can make sure that our diets are healthy and balanced. These are things that a mother would do, things I should be able to do if I said the things that I did to everyone after Mother died."

Nino sits quietly, listening to Itsuki without a word of her own. Once she's done talking for now, Itsuki notices that Nino, who would usually butt in to interject her own thoughts, hasn't done so yet.

"...well, I'm glad you at least recognize how vital my cooking is to the five of us. Like you said, without me, all of you are just going to order takeout all day, every day, and I'd hate to think what that'll do to everyone's health. I know for a fact that you weigh yourself every day after taking a shower."

"A-Aack! P-Please don't tell the others, please!" Alarmed at her secret habit being found out, Itsuki bows her head quickly.

"I won't, don't worry about it."

"Thank you...but how did you find out...?"

"Oh, I think it was when I was heading to the bathroom to take out my contacts...I don't remember exactly when it was, though...probably last year? But anyways," Nino pulls her arms off her chest and turns her swiveling armchair to face Itsuki directly. "You might be bothered by how you don't seem to have anything that would make you come off as 'motherly', but...I don't think that's the case."

"You do not...? But...what about me would be something that could qualify as a motherly trait?"

"Well...maybe it's not directly something you'd consider motherly, but..." Nino pulls her own eyes away from Itsuki. "You never give up. Even when you keep seeing yourself get bad test scores time and time again, you keep studying anyway to try to work past them so that you can do better next time; don't think that I haven't seen you get upset at getting your test scores back when we got back home from middle school. Even when you feel like you aren't improving, even when you start having doubts in the path you decided for yourself, you don't let them pull you away. That...that resilience, that determination, I guess...I think that's pretty damn mature of you."

"...but is that real maturity, or...is it simply stubbornness?" Itsuki wonders aloud.

"I don't know, I can't answer that, especially not when I just got over me being a bitch for the last two days. But my point is that that's what you have over us, Itsuki. I might know how to cook, Ichika might be working already, but you...you don't give up. I think...that's a way more valuable thing to have, especially when I think about how I was acting lately."

"...how so?"

"Well, you never self-destruct like I did. At least, I've never seen you like that. You bounce back from your lows really fast. You never get legit mad at anyone, and even if you do, it's not for very long. So it's not stubbornness that you have. Well, maybe a little, but it can't be just that. Anyways, we've been talking for long enough, let's get ready for bed."

Glancing sideways at the clock on Itsuki's desk, Nino gets up from her chair so that she can head downstairs to prepare for bed, and Itsuki follows suit. But before she turns to leave, Nino swiftly steps forward before Itsuki can react and puts her arms around her younger sister, who tenses up at first in surprise at Nino's sudden embrace.

"If nothing else, at least that makes two of us for the 'Can't Keep Our Promises' Club," Nino mutters with a grin. "What'cha say?"

"I-I intend to keep my promise, Nino! I have not admitted defeat yet!" Itsuki cries softly, but she, too, reciprocates Nino's hug and squeezes her older sister back. "...but...thank you, Nino. I'm glad that...you're feeling better now."

Nino smiles as well; it's been a long time since she's heard Itsuki talk normally like she used to. "Same. You can ask me to help you with English any time."

"Then I will help you with Science!"

"Ugh...no thanks, we already have Uesugi-kun drilling that into our dumb heads for at least an hour every day."

"Awwwww..."