A/N

Molomar: Oh, it's a problem with my pacing you have? Tell me, are you the type of reader who lacks the ability to read stories longer than a hundred thousand words? Or do you prefer other fanfic writers on this site who put out one chapter of two thousand words every week or every other week and call that good pacing? Maybe you should stick to some of those "one-shot collection" fanfics that I've seen here; I've written one of my own, if you'd like to go read that instead.

Sarcastic remarks aside, my style of writing has typically led to me writing very long stories; worldbuilding, details, and conversation flow are all things I focus on in my repertoire, and they're things that typically add to the length of a story, which my other fanfics that I had heavily invested into in the past are proof of. If you want an example of truly egregiously bad pacing, go attempt to read Ambience: A Fleet Symphony and try to wrap your mind around the fact in 4.5 million words, only 3 - 4 months elapsed in the story itself.

So I'd daresay that this story is a significant improvement over what I used to write - because unlike A:AFS, Five Equal Angels is well within completion. At this point, it's not my own ability or my motivation that stands in its way, but my life outside of the internet. So you'll excuse me for giving you some harsh words here, since I was finally able to reserve this month of October to dedicate mainly to fanfic writing, and one of the first reviews I get for what I personally consider my best fanfic to date after finally posting a chapter for the first time in three months is a complaint about its pacing, especially in light of my previous works.

So please spare me the flattery of being a "really good writer"; for what little effort you made in prefacing your critique with some laughably meager praise, you sure spent a lot more effort complaining about what you didn't like than what you did like. At the end of the day, writing a story that I like writing is more important to me than cutting a story short just to pretend to be a better writer than I am.

derethl2: rather than chewing you out like I did to the guy above, I'll let this chapter answer your review.

Once again, the ticking of a clock on the wall eventually drags the consciousness of Uesugi Fuutarou back to the proverbial surface. At least it's a different clock than what he's normally used to.

But it's not just a clock's ticking that haunts him during his waking moments as he sits up at attention, regaining his senses rapidly thanks to the long and refreshing nap. As he rubs the top of the bridge of his nose to eject what's left of the sleepiness in his head, the young mage senses, much to his alarm, slight traces of residual magical energy in his immediate vicinity. Once he's quickly finished rubbing his face, he looks up to turn around to survey his surroundings to spot where he senses these slight traces of leftover magical energy.

"Good morning, Fuutarou. Or...maybe good evening should be better."

Before he can turn around in his seat on the long couch, Fuutarou is stopped by Nakano Miku, who appears to be the sole quintuplet left on this floor. Not just this floor, either - when Fuutarou silently scans magically for any other presence in the house, it appears that he is alone in the Nakano penthouse with the third quintuplet sitting in the single-seat couch to his left.

"What happened when I was out?" the young mage asks, clearing his throat to get rid of its "morning" voice even though the clock on the wall over the TV displays 8:32 PM.

Miku's blue eyes, at first fixed on her tutor, slides slowly off his image and down onto the corner of the glass table in front of both of them.

"...long story short, right after you fell asleep, Itsuki and I got into a fight with Nino. Well, more accurately, I sort of started it, but Itsuki got involved and it just went to shit as soon as she did."

"How so? For something like this, I'd like the full story instead of the abridged version."

Miku sighs shortly, nodding understandingly.

"So...Nino insisted that she'd go off to study on her own after you showed up. Do you remember Nino yelling at you about how she wouldn't study with us anymore?"

"Yeah...that much I remember."

"You fell asleep pretty quickly, so Nino was able to go full Nino mode. She tried going up to her room to leave us, but Itsuki stopped her to argue with her, but then I told her that it was pointless to try to convince her otherwise, so I gave her some of the worksheets you made for us for this week so that she could work on them on her own, but she slapped them out of my hand. I told her to pick them back up, so she picked one up, but she tore it in half instead. That really pissed off Itsuki when she saw that, and so she slapped Nino in the face. Nino then punched her in the face back and gave her a bloody nose, and after some more arguing, Nino called Itsuki a whore, and Itsuki had enough of it and punched her in the face back."

Fuutarou does nothing but stare down at the edge of the glass table in front of him as he silently listens to Miku's testimony of her sisters beginning to punch each other in the face...suppressing a sudden, sharp, almost unexplained surge of anger.

"I can see her slapping someone, but...punching someone? Especially her own sister?" Fuutarou runs a slow hand up and over his black hair after his few moments of silence. "Yikes...maybe Nino was onto something when she kept saying that she didn't want me in this house anymore."

"You're seriously believing her now of all times?"

"No, obviously not. So what happened next?"

"Well, you can kind of imagine it for yourself, right? Nino and Itsuki got into an actual fight right on the spot at the bottom of the stairs." Miku nods slightly over in the direction of the scene that unfolded a few hours ago. "Ichika, Yotsuba, and I all had to hurry over to break up the fight. Thank God Yotsuba's strong, so she could hold Nino back on her own; it took everything Ichika and I had to hold Itsuki back."

Letting her head hang for a moment, Miku straightens up her back to look back at her classmate.

"Needless to say, that's the first time we've ever seen Itsuki like that," the third quintuplet murmurs. "Never mind her punching Nino in the face too...the moment she slapped Nino, it was almost as if...Itsuki wasn't Itsuki."

With Miku's recounting and the lingering traces of magical energy, Fuutarou is swiftly able to put two and two together as Miku lets out another heavy sigh and rests her face briefly into the fronts of her knees, as her legs are once again held up with her feet resting on the edge of her couch.

"I guess that's how I was like to Nino in the alley that one time..." she mumbles to herself so softly that Fuutarou can't quite catch what she's saying.

"...Itsuki's magic potential activated, huh?" Fuutarou groans under his breath, hunching his back forward to hold the side of his face with his right hand, his right elbow resting on his right knee in order to do so. "That would explain this new magic signature that I'm sensing right now that I haven't sensed yet..."

Miku nods slowly. "Since we're alone right now, I think it's for the best if I told you that Itsuki's Mystic Eyes...they're active now, too."

"Yeah, I figured. Given that that's how you and Nino first discovered your own magical potentials, it's no surprise that Itsuki's the same way." Fuutarou begins to let his right index finger tap slowly against his temple, not unlike an active metronome.

"You wanna know what the real surprise is, though?" Miku nods over at Fuutarou this time. "You slept like a log through the whole thing. Even when the others started raising their voices and yelling and punching each other, you didn't wake up the whole time. I almost wanted to wake you up so that you'd step in to stop them, but I didn't want to, well, bother you when you really needed this nap. So I was just kind of...hoping that you'd wake up on your own, but you never did."

Fuutarou shrugs simply with a cheeky grin on his face. "Eh...it happens."

"Don't just 'meh, it happens' me!" Miku pouts indignantly over at her tutor. "I'm serious, you know! If you'd been there, you could've stopped it all and calmed everyone down."

"You've got way too much confidence in my ability to keep order in this household."

"I'm serious about that too! You would've done a lot better of a job than the rest of us, at least. More to the point, though, how the heck did you even manage to sleep through all that? Even Itsuki herself would've woken up if people were literally punching each other in the face. You've usually been able to wake up whenever it's time for lunch at school, right?"

"Yeah, but you'll notice that these days I haven't even been able to do that either," Fuutarou rolls his eyes a little, though it's mainly at himself. "Yes, I'm normally able to wake up whenever I sense something happening in my immediate area; doesn't need to be loud noises or anything physical because blah blah, bullshit mage powers, blah blah. The only problem is that I can do that when I've been maintaining a healthy - or in my case, a 'good enough' - sleep schedule. But when my sleep schedule starts having multiple two-hours-of-sleep nights in a row, and for repeated weeks on top of that, eventually my body just has enough and forces me to at least get a night of 'better' sleep so that I don't literally drop dead one of these days from sheer exhaustion."

Narrowing her eyes in disbelief at her tutor, Miku scowls the hardest she's ever scowled at Uesugi Fuutarou.

"You look like you don't believe me. You should; I'm quite experienced in the field of working yourself into utter exhaustion. This isn't even my final form!"

"...dumb memes aside, it's not that I don't believe you, but it's just...before these last few weeks, you're always so punctual and...efficient, if that's the right word. Whether you realize it yourself or not, but...by this point, you've become that person in our lives whom we can turn to and rely on, and that extends to stuff even beyond tutoring." Miku tilts her head a little while it's still resting against the front of her knees. "So the fact that you didn't wake up to intervene when we probably really needed you...well, not probably...we were at a loss for what to do, you know...?"

Fuutarou scratches his head a little. "Well, I understand that I've kinda become a big part of your lives and all, even if it wasn't in the most organic way, but that's pretty dangerous, relying on someone else to get involved in your family affairs, right? Never mind Nino blasting me for doing that already, but if I'm not here at all and another fight breaks out among you, then what'll you do? You need to learn how to deal with these kinds of situations just among yourselves first."

"We have, Fuutarou. What, you don't think we haven't had fights like this break out before? It's the fact that it got violent like it did today that was a first - and Itsuki's Mystic Eyes activated on top of everything else. Didn't I already say that this fight was unlike any other we'd seen up until this point?"

The young mage and tutor raises an apologetic hand up to his student. "Alright, alright, I get it. And sorry for sleeping through this; I've been pushing myself so hard these days that today turned out to be the day where I just had to get at least some decent sleep so that I don't end up pushing myself off the brink. For what it's worth, I don't expect you to understand what this feels like, and for your sake I hope you never do, so let's just leave it at this, that I've been making too many bad decisions that've led to things turning out like this."

Any amount of irritation that Miku has been accruing towards her tutor gets disintegrated when she hears Fuutarou's apology, so all she can do is give a soft sigh as she adjusts her headphones a little to make it more comfortable as it sits idly around her neck.

"I get that you're busy and all, but literally working yourself to death doesn't sound like the best work schedule you could have, even if you are a mage," she criticizes quietly.

"Well, if I had to work myself to death, it's either doing so as a mage or as a corporate wageslave downtown, so..." Again, Fuutarou shrugs, but Miku isn't having any of Fuutarou's dry and dark humor.

"Take better care of yourself, Fuutarou. And that's not a suggestion."

"Understood, Nakano-sensei. Could you also tutor the rest of your sisters too, while you're at it? You're the smartest among your sisters, after all."

"Not if our midterms are any indication, with Itsuki scoring better than me."

"Hm, got a point there. Then maybe I'll ask Itsuki to tutor everyone instead. Speaking of Itsuki, actually, where is everyone else?"

Miku tussles her hair a little as she lowers her legs so that her feet can properly rest against the cold floor. "So after we managed to break up the fight between her and Nino, Nino ran out of the house after she had one last argument with Itsuki, saying that she wouldn't come back home until Itsuki apologized to her for today, and so Yotsuba chased after her, saying that she'll make sure to keep tabs on her and call us in case more bad guys show up to come after them like that last time. Ichika said that she got a text from her part-time saying that they needed her, which is probably fake since she said that she'd managed to clear this week with her job so that she could study with us for finals, so she probably didn't like the vibes in the house or something, I guess. Itsuki also left, saying that if Nino was going to act like this, she might as well do the same until Nino came back home first."

"So basically, they think that whoever comes back here first is basically saying that they were the one at fault for the fight today..."

The third quint nods, watching her tutor slowly lean backwards against the couch and place his right hand over his face tiredly.

"Ugh...we'd just managed to get everyone together, and then this shit happens at pretty much the worst possible time..." Fuutarou lethargically peeks out from between the cracks in his fingers, up at the clock on the wall over the TV across from him. "...I feel worse about it given that it wasn't even me who brought everyone together, since that was thanks to Ichika and her little blackmailing scheme that helped me out in that regard."

"I know this isn't any of my business, but...it is really necessary for you to work this hard?" Miku asks. Her voice has grown soft and rather timid, now that she sees Fuutarou begin to take this situation seriously.

Miku watches Fuutarou's black eye roll a little over in her direction in between his fingers, look in to her eyes for a few seconds, and then roll back to how they were before.

"...no, I don't mind you asking. Normally I'd agree that yeah, this isn't any of your business, but now, it's very clearly affecting my performance as your tutor, so it's starting to become your business too," he concedes, nodding slowly. "Long story short, yes, it's actually necessary. It's just that...it's one of those things that I can't really explain right now...and maybe I'll never be able to, depending on how things turn out in the future."

"Hmph. Secretive now, aren't we," Miku pouts again, but this time she doesn't pout as hard.

"Sorry. It's not exactly my intention, but...that's how we mages gotta be sometimes." Fuutarou pulls himself up to sit up properly on the couch again. "In any case, you are correct that it's now my responsibility to bring everyone back again, given that I was the one who slept in what was supposed to be one of my own lessons, and so the first thing I gotta do is find who's missing. Do you happen to know where Nino and Itsuki are? You said that Yotsuba's tailing Nino, right?"

"I did. Itsuki said that she'd be staying at the Marriott Hotel downtown, so you should be able to find her there. As for Yotsuba, let me call her real quick..."

Miku pulls out her phone and dials Yotsuba's number to connect to her, and Fuutarou gets up from the couch to pick up his messenger bag and survey his surroundings. The fact that Itsuki's also activated her Mystic Eyes right here and now...was the fight that she had with Nino that bad that it somehow triggered her latent magic talent to emerge from dormancy? And Ichika probably witnessed it too, though what that means exactly he's not entirely sure of either just yet. At least he's been on good terms with Itsuki lately, so meeting with her to work things out might not be so bad, but her newly acquired Mystic Eyes could prove to be a spanner in the works for the diplomacy that he must conduct with her. He doesn't even want to know how bad things will get with Nino, though...

However, he doesn't let the inevitable conflict with Nino stop him from mentally getting back to work, now that he's gotten the precious few hours of good rest that he's needed. First, he needs to find Itsuki and work things out with her. Given the situation, with two discontent quintuplets that he's got to track down and account for, Fuutarou figures that dealing with Itsuki first is the play to make, given their good terms with each other for now - this means that he has a decent chance of convincing Itsuki to come back home so that they can resume their studies with time to spare. Once Itsuki is secured, Nino is next; while he's nowhere near as confident that negotiations with her will go anywhere near as smoothly, he's got no choice but to dive into it if he's to do his job as their tutor. That, and since they're adamant about not returning home before the other, he needs to synchronize their returns back home; the easiest way to do that is to deceive them by telling one quint that the other agreed to return home first. However, naturally that runs the risk of the quints simply not believing him, and even if they did, they would both realize that Fuutarou lied to them in order to convince the two of them to come back home, and they'd more than likely get angry at him and consequently become unwilling to study. Which means that the best way to go about this situation is to be earnest with them...but again, how would that go with Nino?

Well, actually, on second thought...he needn't worry about what he's going to do about Nino - he knows exactly how he'll approach that.

As the young mage is formulating his course of action in his head, he hears Miku's soft voice croak out nervously,

"...Fuutarou...Yotsuba isn't...picking up."

The words are enough to make Fuutarou's heart sink like a rock dropped into a pond in his chest.

"I know I asked Yotsuba if she had her phone with her and if it was good on battery, and she said it was. Yotsuba always picks up the phone no matter what as long as she has it on her."

While Miku is talking, Fuutarou quickly whips out his own phone and unlocks it, opening up his custom app that gives him a map of the city in order to quickly track Yotsuba's and Nino's locations. His rune history is able to give him a detailed footprint of both quintuplets' progress throughout the city, and the map pinpoints the fourth quintuplet's position, located nearby their high school, about half a klick to its west. Nino's coordinates are nearby, further north, near a manmade lake where people can row small two-seater boats for recreation.

"Found 'em; thankfully they seem to be okay," the young mage mutters, watching their statuses carefully to ascertain their conditions. "But just in case, since it's nighttime now, I'm gonna go bring 'em back home. Miku, call Ichika and have her come back home ASAP, preferably by getting a ride from one of her coworkers or something."

Miku nods. "Okay. Will you be leaving now?"

Fuutarou answers by getting up and heading over to the glass door to his right.

"Stay here, just in case. And again, sorry that things went to shit like this. I'll do my best to not have such a shitty sleep schedule moving forward."

"That doesn't sound very convincing when you're literally about to head out to do more mage stuff in the middle of the night," Miku retorts, lowering her phone, and Fuutarou smirks a little with self-degradation.

"Yeah, life's kinda cruel like that, isn't it. I'll let you know if anything happens, but hopefully I don't need to."

Opening the glass door to the veranda, the high school mage steps out, closes the sliding glass door behind him, and once again leaps over the railing to plummet down the side of the skyscraper.

Getting up and heading over slowly to the glass door to lock it after her tutor has dived out of view, Nakano Miku just as slowly returns to the single-seat couch to resume her seat. The course of events that have elapsed today have rendered her unwilling to do much of anything, much less study, as much as she knows that she ought to for her finals at the end of the week. As she once more pulls her legs back up and buries her face against her elevated knees, Miku sinks once again into the pensieve that is her accumulating thoughts that have been weighing down on her mind for the day.

Ever since Nino brought up the possibility that Ichika could be in cahoots with their tutor, Miku hasn't been able to stop thinking about it, even though Miku knows that more likely than not, Nino probably wasn't getting anywhere with it. But what if it's true? What if Ichika has known Fuutarou before they met him as their tutor and classmate upon transferring to Asahiyama High School? And if so, for how long? And what would be the implications?

Miku begins searching her memory carefully, trying her best to dig up any relevant detail that she can recall regarding her oldest quintuplet sister. Even when they were younger, when they were truly identical quintuplets, once they learned the order of their ages, typically it was Ichika who was their de facto leader, and appropriately she was the one who started growing out of their collective quintuplet shell first. Well, technically, that would be Yotsuba, who one day decided to wear a hair ribbon so that she would "stand out" from the rest, but in Miku's opinion, Ichika was the first to take such a drastic step that was cutting her hair, for the quintuplets' long hair was such an integral part of their collective identity that cutting it was, for that time in their lives, out of the question.

But the third quintuplet is unable to find on her own any evidence or any particular memory that would pinpoint the start of Ichika's own magical career, if that's accurate. Obviously the biggest piece of information about Ichika that would point to such a direction is the mystery of her part-time job, which the rest of the quintuplets have almost no idea about. All they know is that she has one and that she's been working for about two years now, starting in the middle of junior high while they were still attending Black Rose, so the lack of information they have about it and Ichika's corresponding lack of communication with her sisters about it is more than suspicious enough to warrant a possible connection between Ichika and the her involvement in the magic world.

But even if Ichika's part-time job is magically involved, that by itself doesn't prove her connection to Uesugi Fuutarou; they would need further evidence to prove that. The two of them certainly haven't really shown much behavior suggesting that they have a prior relationship before their current one as tutor and student; even if they did, the two of them are impeccable actors/actresses to be able to keep up this behavior of theirs for the past three months, which is plenty of time for one of them to slip up and betray a hint or two about it, and given that Nino's been with them for much of their tutoring for the last several months, ironically enough, she would have eventually been able to catch on.

But that hasn't happened, so there's no point in contemplating this for now. As a matter of fact, there's no need for her to think about this; there are more pressing matters at hand, so why is Miku sitting here in the living room thinking about whether or not one of her sisters has had a deeper relationship with their classmate than the rest of them?

Jealousy, that's why.

The young headphones enthusiast pulls her legs more tightly in towards her own chest as she comes face to face with the ugly truth of her feelings. Miku has never felt jealous before, not to this magnitude. Of course, when she was younger, if her sisters got something she didn't or if they beat her at a game, then she got upset, yes, but that can be chalked up to childish tendencies and competitiveness, and at the end of the day she was able to let those feelings go and it would be as though they never existed. This, however, was different - this is legitimate, full-blown jealousy, and it's been eating away at her mind like a nigh-irremovable parasite all day today.

If it's true that Ichika has indeed known Fuutarou the longest out of the quintuplets under whatever circumstances are relevant, then Miku feels bitter about it, about how Ichika has spent more time with him. Miku would love to have known Fuutarou for the past several years - given her feelings for him at this stage and her decision to pursue them despite his situation as a full-time mage, she feels that if she'd've had more time spent with him, then she'd be more comfortable being with him, being more casual and friendly towards him than she is now - maybe, just maybe, she'd've been able to build up the courage to confess her feelings to him, too.

Come to think of it, now that Miku's been pulling up old memories, there was that one time when the quints were younger, when Yotsuba told the others about how she met this really interesting boy during a school trip they took to visit Kyoto. How many years ago was that again? Six? Something like that. The other quints didn't really show that much of an interest in him, though, so whoever that boy was exactly, he's remained a mere conversation topic for the girls and nothing more, and his identity Miku would never know.

...what if that boy turned out to be Uesugi Fuutarou?

Miku shakes her head sadly. No way that could be true...real life isn't a fairy tale where the love of her life turned out to conveniently be a boy who was mentioned in passing in their youth. And certainly Fuutarou himself has never acted like he'd known them before their high school days, either. Not worth delving further into, lest she feel even worse about this whole situation.

Closing her eyes to help herself calm down before her accelerating emotions can begin rocketing out of control, the third quintuplet slowly pulls her headphones up and reopens her eyes briefly to put on a playlist on her phone so that she can banish the oppression of silence that holds domain in their penthouse. It's been a long while since the house has felt truly too big for any one of them - and for as quiet as a girl she herself is, Miku can't tolerate the silence that she's currently surrounded by, not this kind. Fuutarou shared with her some music playlists about two weeks ago during one of their walks together back home from school, saying that she might enjoy them, and to her surprise, despite thinking that he'd recommend some rap to her or something, he actually gave her some chillstep and soothing future bass mixes, and she's been listening to nothing but those playlists ever since.

As her world becomes occupied by soft and calming beats, Miku resumes her seated fetal position. She doesn't want to feel this way - she knows that feeling jealous about Fuutarou is wrong, because it'll only lead to more conflicts breaking out among the Nakano sisters. She loves her sisters; she always has. Despite all the trials and tribulations that they've been through, the sisters have been able to overcome or adapt to every single one, because their mother made it clear to them before her death that no matter what happens, they must always stick together - blood is thicker than water, that sort of thing. That was one of Itsuki's arguments, in fact, when she was trying to dissuade Nino from leaving the house.

But the fact that Nino, the one who made her sisters the promise that she would be the one who keep them all together moving forward after their mother's death, is now the first to leave the house like this, and on bad terms too, forces Miku to realize that Nino perhaps may be onto something with her claims that she didn't want Uesugi Fuutarou to become so heavily involved with them. This on its own wouldn't have affected Miku so much as it does, but in light of her own growing jealousy over Ichika's "relationship" with Fuutarou, jealousy that is, by the way, completely unfounded because it's stemmed from mere conjecture from Nino and not based on any concrete evidence, the third quintuplet is compelled to recognize the potential truth behind her older sister's preaching. Obviously it's not like just because of this, she'll all of a sudden lose her feelings for her classmate and see him in an unfavorable light, but...she still can't help but feel shitty about it all.

And then there's the topic of Itsuki's newly formed Mystic Eyes that takes things from already bad to even worse.

Whatever kind of secrecy Nino, Miku, and Itsuki had going among them in regards to their own latent magical traits is now completely nullified by this incident today, since the whole point of it was to keep their Mystic Eyes a secret from Ichika. The eldest quintuplet, as Miku recalls, didn't act like she recognized what was going on magically, but since Fuutarou has already informed her about her oldest sister's hidden identity as a mage, Miku is willing to bet that Ichika is merely acting like she didn't know what was going on; it's just safer to assume that she knows for certain that Itsuki's Mystic Eyes are now active.

What makes the situation scary is that when Itsuki's Mystic Eyes awakened, the magical energy resonating from them affected Miku and Nino as well, as they were the closest to her in proximity at the time. Much like how Miku's own Mystic Eyes forced Nino's to surface when they met face to face, Miku in turn experienced the same thing as collateral when she was standing next to Itsuki, despite the fact that her younger sister wasn't looking at her when her Eyes surfaced; Miku had to exert herself to keep her own Eyes submerged, and she's sure that Nino had to do something similar as well.

As she'd told Fuutarou earlier before he left, Miku was able to have a front-row view of Itsuki at the time of her ocular activation. That really was the first time that anyone had seen the youngest quintuplet like that - murderous is too extreme, but...whatever word that has the same intensity as the word "murderous" but without the implication of wanting to kill, that would be what Itsuki became at that moment. Serious to a fault, unwilling to yield, fiercely determined. Itsuki oftentimes talked about wanting to be the quintuplets' surrogate mother in the past; honestly, that might be the first time that Itsuki can now say she's lived up to her own little promise.

That notion, to Miku, is chilling - because that means that Itsuki had to become someone she normally isn't for her to fulfill her own promise to her sisters. And from her perspective, it almost feels as though what gave Itsuki the power to do so was her Mystic Eyes.

Even behind closed eyelids, Miku can feel her own Eyes bubble up slowly, like a concerned pet dog that's sensed something wrong with its owner and is slowly walking up to them to investigate. She knows she herself must have been the same way that day when Nino confronted her, when she dragged Nino into that alleyway. She's been her normal self ever since then so thankfully she hasn't needlessly tortured herself over this, but now that she's seen it happen to one of her sisters, Miku can't help but to audit herself introspectively as well. She hoped that even with these bumps and disturbances in their daily lives, she and her quintuplet sisters could live out their lives as normally as possible, and perhaps they needn't worry about them at all.

Miku wanted to be the only one with Mystic Eyes in her family not because she wanted to be special, but merely so that her sisters wouldn't have their own daily lives slowly but surely dismantled by them. And now, before her very eyes, she's watching it happen to her sisters, one by one - and there's nothing she can do about it.

Striding swiftly, Uesugi Fuutarou keeps a watchful eye out on his surroundings as he hurries through the large community park northwest of his high school. During its major expansion years, the city planned several of these community parks, but only one of them ended up being built due to their relative sizes in their respective sectors of the city. The park features plenty of avian wildlife, fountains, recreational paths for both walking and jogging, multiple children's playgrounds, and even a huge man-made lake with water spouts and community boats that be rowed and ridden free of charge under the supervision of a park custodian. Fuutarou has only been by this park a few times, as the nature of his work doesn't usually require him to be in this area, but that doesn't stop him from knowing the place well enough to narrow down Yotsuba's and Nino's last known coordinates.

The evening makes it easy for him to track individual targets, since there's no one else out and about at this hour at the park today, though it does have its share of nighttime visitors, mainly nearby residents who fancy going for walks in the night on occasion. This allows the high school mage to head straight for the first presence of human life he senses, which is located in the unceremonious location of the park's centralized public bathrooms.

Thankfully he doesn't need to wait for the presence, because as he approaches, he spies Yotsuba emerging from the ladies' restrooms, stretching her arms out tiredly in front of them now that she'd done with her business. He waves her down to signify his arrival, and Yotsuba lightens up at the sight of her tutor, illuminated by the nearby lampposts that line the walkways of the park.

"Uesugi-san!" Yotsuba hops over to him, elated to see him come to fetch her. "Did Miku tell you to come get us?"

"No, but she did try to call you to see where you're at right now, but you didn't pick up, so I rushed over in case anything happened," Fuutarou explains quickly, sighing a breath of relief that the fourth quintuplet is fine. "Why didn't you pick up? Did something happen to your phone?"

"Ah, yeah, I have it!" the fourth quintuplet pulls out her phone to show her tutor. "But, uh...yeah, it's...it's out of battery. Haha."

Rolling his eyes heavily, the young tutor reaches over and rubs his knuckles lightly against the top of her head, causing her to whine a little and go "Owie owie owie ~ "

"Then why did you tell Miku that your phone was good on battery? Because Miku was under the impression that it was fully charged or at least good on battery."

"Ehehe...I forgot to check. Teehee." Yotsuba innocently smiles back up at her classmate.

"Don't 'teehee' me, you better say sorry to Miku afterwards...got the two of us getting worried." Fuutarou takes the time to shoot Miku a quick text, informing her that he's found Yotsuba and that she's doing fine, and that her phone was in fact, out of battery.

"Don't worry, I will."

Pocketing his phone again, Fuutarou looks down at his student again. "So what about Nino? I know she should be in the area, but maybe you know where she is right now exactly?"

Yotsuba nods, her bright smile fading in the darkness of the evening now that Nino is brought up. "She's sitting on one of the benches near the side of the lake nearby," she explains, pointing in the general direction of her runaway sister.

"Okay, good, that means she's alright too." Fuutarou then crosses his arms. "So what the fuck happened while I was out? How did things turn out like this?"

Yotsuba tilts her head a little in confusion. "Didn't Miku wake you up? You didn't ask her for what happened? She was there too."

"I mean, she did, yes, but I want to cross-reference so that I know Miku isn't, like, fabricating anything, though I doubt she'd do that. But just in case, though, I wanna hear your side of the story."

Yotsuba's eyes drag themselves downwards to look at the ground.

"...well, after you went to sleep, Nino tried going back up to her own room, but Itsuki stopped her trying to convince her to stay with us. Miku told her not to worry about her and tried giving Nino some of the worksheets you made for us, but she knocked them out of her hand and then tore one of them in half when Miku told her to pick them back up. That was when...Itsuki hit Nino, and then Nino hit Itsuki back, and then they argued for a bit, and then Nino called Itsuki a bad word, and then Itsuki hit Nino back again."

Following along with Yotsuba's abridged testimony, Fuutarou figures it more or less matches what he's heard from Miku.

Yotsuba looks back up again, but she doesn't direct her gaze back to her friend - instead, she turns somewhat to gaze out to the lake underneath the black nighttime sky.

"That's the first time we've ever seen Itsuki like that," she murmurs quietly. "Not only that, but...something felt...off about her. You know me, Uesugi-san, I'm just a big dumb-dumb, so I don't know how to describe what I felt other than...something just didn't seem right about the situation, other than Itsuki and Nino actually fighting each other."

Fuutarou nods. "I heard from Miku that this is the first time one of the fights you girls sometimes get into has gone physical."

"Yeah, it is. Like, arguments and stuff like that, those happen from time to time, especially given Nino's standoffish nature and such; it's bound to happen. But they've at least never let their arguments come to blows like that, so...needless to say, it's been a bit of a...a shock to all of us." Yotsuba then turns to briefly look in Nino's general direction. "...I'm sure it is for Nino, too. She's probably the one who's feeling the most, in fact."

Putting a hand on his hip, the young mage raises an eyebrow at Yotsuba slightly. "Not Itsuki? I feel like maybe Itsuki would be the one who'd be most affected by this sort of thing."

But Yotsuba shakes her head. "Itsuki might not have the same kind of daily intensity that Nino's got, but she's stronger than she looks. Nino, on the other hand...she's always been, uh...delicate? I don't know if I have any right to call her that myself, but...she's the most prone to being affected by things like this, let's just say. That's why she's the loudest of all of us, right?"

"Hmmm...since you're the second loudest, does that mean you're the second-most delicate too?" Fuutarou asks, leaning in towards Yotsuba interrogatively.

Yotsuba blinks up back at him for a second, but she just smiles pensively at him.

"Nah, not really...I'm just really stupid, that's all," she answers calmly.

Once again, Fuutarou reaches out and places his hand on Yotsuba's head. He's done this often enough that this time, Yotsuba doesn't wince or act surprised at this - all she does is lower her gaze down at Fuutarou's side as he does this.

"The feeling's mutual," he sighs quietly. "Especially tonight."

"But...you didn't do anything," Yotsuba mutters back, starting to clasp her hands lightly together down by her side.

"Precisely. I didn't do anything because I was out cold at your place when everything happened. That was my mistake." Fuutarou inhales sharply through his teeth, taking in two lungfuls of crisp evening air. "Miku scolded me a little for sleeping through everything today, which is understandable, since I deserved it. You were one of the ones who wanted me to take better care of myself too, right? I should've listened."

"Eh? But...I don't think I told you anything, at least not lately...?" Yotsuba wonders aloud.

"Well, maybe not, but wasn't there that one morning when you helped me go back to sleep in the classroom?" the boy points out. "I have to admit, that was the best pillow I've ever used in my life."

Grinning a little, Fuutarou glances down at Yotsuba, but she doesn't seem to be in the mood to share his humor.

"...that's proof enough for me that you wanted me to take better care of myself," Fuutarou trails off, feeling a little awkward for making an inappropriate joke at a time like this, since he thought that Yotsuba would laugh at it to help lighten the mood. "I'm just saying that, uh...I should've listened so that, y'know...things didn't have to turn out quite like this tonight."

After a moderate pause, with Fuutarou still with his hand on Yotsuba's head since he doesn't know whether to take it off or not, the fourth quintuplet raises her head a little, though not quite up to her tutor's own eye level, not with his hand still on her head.

"...if you think you're the one reason why things ended up like this, Uesugi-san, you're wrong," she says softly, making sure to enunciate her words so that she can't be misunderstood. "It's not your fault. It's ours for not being able to keep this situation under control."

"I disagree, it is at least partly my fault," Fuutarou corrects. "Not only was today supposed to be a full tutor day since we got finals at the end of the week, but I slept through it because I wasn't managing my sleep schedule well enough lately. Not only that, but since I was so tired I slept through the whole fight, I couldn't do anything about it to settle everyone down and make sure you all were studying like you're supposed to. It has to be partly my fault."

"Actually, how did you sleep through all that, by the way?"

"Hah, Miku asked me the same exact thing too, but like I said, I was so tired that I needed at least a couple more hours of sleep. Just think of it like being so tired that you oversleep your alarm clock or something."

Hearing this from her tutor does no favors for Yotsuba's conscience, which compels her to take a step forward and put her arms around the boy before her.

"...please take care of yourself, Uesugi-san," she whispers into his chest. "My sisters and I fight like this every now and then...even if this one's the worst one we've had so far. But we can sort out our own problems, no matter how bad they get - but we can't do the same for you. The most we can do is ask you to look after yourself and hope that you do."

Uesugi Fuutarou says nothing. He feels like if he says anything here, it wouldn't come off as genuine, so he keeps his peace in the hopes that Yotsuba will understand.

"...as much as I would love to leave this to you girls to sort out, though, I have to take part in this as well," he mutters back. "If that's alright with you."

"It is, don't worry," she nods. "And even if I weren't, you'd still go find Itsuki after this, won't you?"

"That's right. What gave it away?"

"Well, given that Nino and Itsuki were the ones who ran out of the house, even a dummy like me can figure out where you're going to go after this, right?"

"I don't think being a dummy has anything to do with being concerned about your siblings, but I digress." Fuutarou finally pulls his hand off Yotsuba's head, and Yotsuba herself takes this as a cue to let go of her classmate. "We don't have a lot of time; we've already lost a full day today that we could've spent studying, and we're gonna lose more if I don't act fast. How's Nino right now? She in any mood to talk, or no?"

Yotsuba shakes her head. "All the time I've been tailing her today, she's been constantly yelling at me to leave her alone. I doubt she'll act any differently towards you."

"Yeah, figures. I'll try it anyway, just in case, but if she's still in no mood to talk, I'll leave her to you so I can go find Itsuki."

Letting the fourth quintuplet know of his plans, Fuutarou, following his magical senses to locate Nino nearby, heads over to her and finds the bench where she's sitting at to see if he can talk to her, but even before he can get within fifteen meters of her from behind, Nino hoarsely calls out:

"I know that's you, Uesugi-kun. Don't you dare get closer to me; I don't even wanna look at you tonight."

Fuutarou figures as much. He quickly scans for any residual magical energy emanating off Nino, but to his surprise he finds none, which means Nino isn't haphazardly letting her Mystic Eyes run rampant, so he doesn't bother wasting his breath and swiftly pivots to leave her be, returning to Yotsuba who's standing in front of a nearby vending machine, which spits out a second drink for her.

"You're leaving now, right? Take this before you go," the quintuplet with the green hair ribbon says, offering her tutor a chilled orange drink, which he accepts.

"Thanks, I'll drink this later. Make sure Nino doesn't stay out here too long, alright? You two've already had one bad experience being out and about late at night, as much as I hate bringing it up." Twisting his lips, Fuutarou throws one last glance over in Nino's direction. "I would really prefer staying until we can convince Nino to come back home, but as it stands, since I need to also get Itsuki back home, and she's probably more willing to listen to me than Nino is right now, I've got to make the most of it and see if Itsuki can return tonight. That, and Itsuki's staying at the Marriott right now, so she'll be easy to find. Will you keep staying with Nino or are you gonna go back home on your own?"

"I'll be staying here. Maybe...maybe Nino won't like that, but...especially after what happened last time, I don't want to leave her alone all by herself out here," she answers with a slight nod.

"Mm, alright then. If you can, try to get Nino to come back home with you. If not, tell her to at least sign into a hotel or something, and then go back home yourself."

Yotsuba nods again. "It's okay, Uesugi-san. Everything will be okay."

"And you're the one telling me that?" Snorting under his breath, Fuutarou slips the orange drink that Yotsuba's given him into his storage rune, but his amused grin doesn't last long. "...I do hope everything will be fine, Yotsuba. Because sometimes it's just not that simple..."

Bidding her farewell for now, the young mage bounds out of sight to head downtown for the Marriott Hotel to meet up with Itsuki, and the fourth quintuplet watches him depart, disappearing into the darkness of the night beyond the lights of the park. Once he's out of sight, Yotsuba turns around to slowly make her way over to where Nino is seated.

To Yotsuba's quiet surprise, her older sister doesn't say anything when she approaches her, so she capitalizes on this inch that she's been given and turns it into a mile by seating herself right next to Nino, who is sitting hunched forward on their bench with her face in her hands, her elbows resting on her knees. The two sisters don't exchange any word for a good few minutes, until Yotsuba breaks this silent pact by asking,

"...you didn't mean to turn Uesugi-san away like that, did you?"

And Nino simply responds with, "Shut up, Yotsuba. For the last time, just go back home already."

Yotsuba says nothing in response, but she doesn't budge from her seat next to her sister either. She braces herself in case Nino intends to slap her in the face again like last time - and given what's happened between her and Itsuki today, it's entirely possible that Nino is still in a belligerent mood.

But no such slap comes - and when Yotsuba pays closer attention, she realizes that, with the help of the nearby illumination of a streetlight, there are several tears slowly rolling down Nino's hands where they cover her face and eyes.

Suddenly understanding, Yotsuba scoots over closer to her older sister and gives her a warm hug too, a kind of warmth that isn't meant to ward against the night temperature that's become somewhat chilly by this point.

"...it's not that you didn't want to see him, but that you didn't want him to see you like this, huh?" the younger quintuplet asks softly.

Nino says nothing.