The ticking of a clock and the typing of keys on a laptop's chiclet keyboard fills the room of the head physician of the city hospital. Yet another late night shift...same shit, different day.
The head physician's room is neat and tidy, like always - health reports on various patients currently hospitalized in the rooms below sit neatly stacked on the side of the main table that also holds various books, science magazines, and thesis and dissertation papers from talented young up-and-coming medical students. More health reports are tacked neatly onto a bulletin board on the wall directly over the main table of the head physician's room, complete with pictures of their respective patients so that they give clear, immediate information on their listed patients; these are reports for the more urgent cases the hospital has at the moment, whether hospitalized or not.
Dr. Nakano Maruo pauses his moderate typing to pick up his mug of home-brewed coffee without looking and guides it up to his lips so that he can take a sip - as homemade as this coffee can get. So practiced is he in the art of drinking coffee without having to break eye contact from his work laptop, as he has trained himself in this art over the course of the years he's worked here in this hospital, both before he became head physician and after, that it's as if he is using his eyes to guide his cup of coffee. To a bystander, it would be difficult to tell which is the true machine between the doctor and the computer at which he works, as if his constant night shifts weren't enough to go by - though, it could be argued that the head physician has worked so many night shifts by this point that he's used to a nocturnal schedule by now.
Another calm night working the graveyard shift, it would seem - Dr. Nakano finishes the email he has been typing, gives a cursory glance at the email body to see if his email browser has detected any spelling errors for his email that is written in English, and confirms the email address to which this email is being sent before clicking "Send".
The name of the email recipient: "Augustus Il".
Done with the last of his duties for this phase of his graveyard shift, Dr. Nakano picks his mug of coffee back up to savor its taste. Rare is it for him to have a moment of respite like this, as his usual set of circumstances would normally involve him having to make rounds of the hospital grounds, check on the patients in the Emergency Ward to help monitor their statuses with the ER crew on duty, check various hospital equipment and ensure their quality and emergency readiness, take inventory of backup medical equipment and supplies, and write reports for various patients, many of which now either sit stacked up on the side of his table or end up on the bulletin board in front of him.
But tonight it would appear that he finally has some time to himself. All the reports that must be done for the patients tonight have been written, all the emails that he must send have been composed and sent, and lately there has been a gradual increase in the number of graveyard shift hospital staff due to the worrying increase of substance abuse victims, so those extra staff members have been able to handle some of the responsibilities that the head physician usually takes onto himself...though the doctor is still wary of the staff when it comes to certain tasks like taking inventory and checking medical supplies. They've had a few unfortunate incidents before that have occurred due to staff negligence, so the head physician has grown distrustful of anyone else when it comes to those specific responsibilities.
You want to make sure something is done right, you go do it yourself.
But upon the staff's insistence tonight, he's entrusted many of the tasks he would do to them, though again, he makes a mental note to himself to check after them at the end of their shift. So now he's ended up with a few hours of not much to do, so for a few very long moments, he simply sits in his chair, slowly draining his coffee in incremental sips, gazing rather aimlessly at the reports at the bulletin board before him. He's so used to working, doing something productive, that even now, when he truly has nothing to do tonight, Dr. Nakano's eyes wander around on their own, searching for something he could do that is at all anything meaningful, and they settle on having him read over the various files on patients currently hospitalized.
The only problem is that these are files he's read over dozens of times already. He already knows all the patients in the hospital right now, their current afflictions, and their estimated periods of hospitalization. He could recite them all from memory if he really wanted.
Sighing quietly, Dr. Maruo lets his eyes fall from the bulletin board - and they descend upon a small framed picture instead. That picture frame has been sitting on that table for as long as he has had this room as a hospital physician, but the physician, for all his diligence and responsibility, can't seem to recall the last time he's specifically given this picture his attention.
For old time's sake, the quintuplets' father reaches over and picks up the picture frame to pull it closer to him so that he can get a better look. The picture depicts a lone woman - a beautiful woman with brilliant sunset-red hair and the most stoic smile that one will find in the entire country. So stoic is her face that she could be mistaken for a statue and the error would be easily excused.
How many years has it been? But the physician swiftly purges the thought from his mind - there is no point in indulging himself in pointless questions like that. Questions such as those should very well be left unasked, for they bring nothing but trouble and distraction even if they can be answered.
Though, if there is one tangential thought that Dr. Nakano will indulge in, it's that he silently wishes that the woman in the picture frame could see how much her five children have grown since she has been gone.
Without warning, the phone also on the left side of his main desk begins to ring. Dr. Nakano is almost thankful for this phone call, for it provides him with something that will continue to tether him down to the earth so that he may continue being one of the many productive human beings on this Earth that the planet needs. So he returns the picture frame to its home on his desk and picks up the receiver.
"Nakano speaking."
"Dr. Nakano, there's someone here in the lobby who wants to see you; a friend of yours, he calls himself," the graveyard shift receptionist informs with an awkward tone; clearly she hasn't ever had to deal with a situation like this where someone just waltzes into the hospital lobby not to see a patient, since these are not patient visiting hours, but to see the head physician directly. "He insists on meeting with you."
Rolling his eyes somewhat, Dr. Nakano keeps his composure and answers, "While I hesitate to call him a 'friend of mine', he is indeed a long-time acquaintance. Please tell him that I am in my office; he will know where to find me."
"U-Understood, Doctor."
Setting the receiver back down, the head physician takes the stack of hospital reports on the right side of his desk to put them away to make some space for his imminent guest, who doesn't even bother knocking on his door to enter and puts up a hand of greeting to the doctor as he closes the door shut behind him.
"Yo!" Uesugi Isanari flashes a wide grin of eagerness over to his high school classmate. "I had some business in the city and was goin' back home, and the hospital was on the way so I decided to stop by with some drinks! Interested?"
In his right hand is a small plastic bag of a half dozen assorted canned drinks ranging from UCC canned coffee to non-alcoholic Suntory White Sour, so he sets them all out on the corner of the table where the reports used to stand so that his ex-high school classmate can pick from them if he's in the mood.
"I do not recall asking you to come over simply to hang out, much less ask you for a beverage," Dr. Nakano says offhandedly, watching his acquaintance pile out the cans and stack them up neatly. "Besides, I just had a cup of coffee."
"Then perfect, you can chase it with this," Isanari chuckles, handing his buddy a can of Suntory White Sour. "Gotta have somethin' refreshin' after your usual. You still drinkin' nothin' but black? I don't know how you do it, man."
Dr. Nakano almost reluctantly accepts the drink, and after which Isanari seats himself before his friend.
"...I do not drink much, but I believe the term 'chasing' is meant to be used only when alcoholic beverages are involved," he squints down at his newly acquired canned drink a little. "...also, I have never seen this particular drink before. Is this a new release?"
"New release? God no, that's been around for years!" Isanari snorts loudly, almost obnoxiously. "Serious question, Nakano, but when was the last time you've actually been out 'n about in the city?"
"Last Wednesday; I had an appointment with the mayor. So I daresay recently."
"Okay, so let me guess, you went straight to the mayor, talked to him for exactly thirty minutes, not a second more or less, and you came straight back to the hospital. Am I right?"
Pulling the tab of his Suntory White Sour open with the familiar metallic click and the nice ensuing hiss of carbonation, the doctor eyes his ex-classmate briefly. "It would appear that you know me well, Uesugi."
"Bitch, we were classmates all throughout high school! Fucking duh, I'd know you well!" Isanari bellows out in laughter, which he himself douses with a swig of his own drink, a UCC Milk Coffee. "And so? What did the mayor say?"
"...you sound as if you know this business I have with the mayor," the doctor says simply. He now begins to take a cautious sip of his White Sour - and to his surprise, it is actually rather refreshing, true to Isanari's word.
"Yeah, no shit. You think Fuutarou won't tell me about this? It's the mayor we're talking about."
Once he's taken a second sip of the White Sour, Nakano Maruo lowers the can somewhat.
"The mayor agreed to supporting your son's efforts in the city. However, he has stressed that it must be done with utmost confidentiality," the doctor answers.
"Yeah, figured. I mean, given who he's trying to indict, it's gonna be a fucking shitshow if word gets out."
"You believe that your son has what it takes to complete this investigation?"
"Bro, who's the one who hired him to protect the quints again? The fuck are you askin' me for?"
"You are his guardian, no?"
"What's that got to do with anything?"
Maruo coolly takes another sip, almost condescendingly, of his White Sour drink. "Not only are you his legal guardian, but I am under the impression that you assist with your son's operations in the city as mission control, no?"
Isanari just snorts again loudly, as if to audibly swat away Maruo's inquiry as if it were an annoying fly. "Yeah, sometimes, but that kid's fuckin' all grown-up now and has been for God knows how long. If he's confident that he can pull this shit off, I'm all fucking for it."
"Grown up? He is only fifteen years old, no?"
"Sixteen, motherfucker. You don't even know how old he is? What kinda boss are you?"
The head physician simply ignores his acquaintance's comment by taking yet another deliberate sip of his drink. Knowing that Maruo is prone to doing this whenever he is confronted with a question that he doesn't feel like answering, Isanari continues on.
"Fuutarou is more fuckin' grown-up than the vast majority of adults on this goddamn planet, Nakano. Even if that kid wanted to fight God, I'd be all for that shit," Isanari boasts, though his usual outgoing atmosphere has been replaced with one of resolute determination. "The fact that he's still here, alive 'n kickin', after all these years means that he ain't gonna let anything get in his way now."
"Perhaps. But I do feel somewhat concerned about his target now - especially when he has a previous contract of mine that he must work on first."
"Bullshit, you don't give a shit what ends up happening to him and you know it."
"Well...if that is what you insist, then it must be, yes?"
"Oh fuck off..."
Isanari chugs the rest of his coffee immediately, draining the whole can in mere seconds. Once this is done, he crushes the can with his big, bare hands and shoots the empty can into the nearby recycling bin.
"How's the situation with that Shirazumi Rio guy goin', then?" Isanari questions.
"Should you not know as much as I on that situation?"
"Just in case Fuutarou's told you stuff that he hasn't told me. He hasn't been home in a while, actually...last I heard from him, he told me that he'd be running around taking care of shit, but that's usually what he does anyway."
Dr. Maruo slowly begins to swirl his drink, with the fingers on his right hand lightly holding the can by its top rim. "Then leave it to him to decide. This is his responsibility, and he has committed himself fully to it."
"You sure sound like you don't give a shit, given your stake in this situation."
"You believe so? I am merely approaching this as objectively as possible. Becoming emotional over these such things will benefit no one."
Fuutarou's father snorts, though a little less loudly than before. "I guess that's only to be expected, coming from a doc like you. Tell me again, how many people have you seen die in this hospital?"
"Less than your number of chances to become a productive member of society."
"Oh, you think I'm not? I dunno man, in my opinion, what I work in doesn't involve people dying left and right like yours does."
"No? Your whole life, you have been directly or indirectly involved in such deaths in every career you have pursued. And yet you are trying to claim otherwise?"
"Hey, bro, not everyone's the fuckin' one percent like you. Not everyone can fuckin' graduate top of their class from high school, university, and grad school like you did and land six-figure digits straight out of school. I certainly wasn't one of them, and at the time once we got outta high school, I didn't have much of a choice."
"We are always the products of our own decisions, Uesugi. Do not forget that I even warned you that the path you planned to take coming out of high school was going to be the wrong one."
"Yeah, well, people make shitty decisions, especially when they're young, a'ight? Don't fuckin' talk like you haven't made a few crappy decisions in your life. I would point 'em out to you, but unlike you, I ain't that much of a bitch."
Isanari looks Maruo dead in the eye.
"If nothing else, at least I try to see my kids as much as I can. Even after all these years, you're still too scared to see yours."
Maruo simply takes another drink of his Suntory.
"And what makes you think it is worth my time to change the mind of a fool?" he asks quietly back. "Think what you will, Uesugi. I look forward to when your son produces results...regardless of what they may be."
"Yeah, well, it takes one to know one." Isanari gets up to leave, flipping the head physician the bird as he does so. "You wanna come over sometime for curry? Raiha's been on a curry spree lately; we've been eating nothing but the Uesugi House Special for the past week."
"I will decline, thank you. You know I am not much of a curry person myself."
"No? But Itsuki absolutely loves it! And you call yourself her father? C'mon, bro!"
"Who said that parents and their children must share the same tastes?" Maruo pauses for a moment. "...on second thought, how do you know Itsuki is partial to curry?"
"Oh, we had her over for dinner one night. She absolutely demolishes Raiha's curry, I'll tell ya fuckin' what!"
As his classmate is laughing heartily while recalling Itsuki's massive appetite, the quintuplet's father wonders quietly to himself if curry is truly Itsuki's favorite food or if this is merely a case of his youngest daughter simply inhaling food like she usually does.
"A'ight, have fun at the hospital. I'm sure you do even without me tellin' ya, given how much you fuckin' stay here in this shithole," Isanari laughs one last time as he opens the door of the office to depart. "And go home to see your kids sometime, eh? That couldn't kill ya every once in a while."
"I would like to kindly repeat myself to you that I do not appreciate those who tell me what to do as a parent," the head doctor rebukes his ex-classmate, though it is more of a passing comment than any firm statement.
"I'm tellin' ya that as a fellow father, motherfucker. Whether or not you appreciate the feedback ain't shit; any fuckin' decent parent would tell you that straight to your face, and it doesn't take an old high school classmate of yours to do that."
"Duly not noted."
Isanari groans aloud. "Agh, this fuckin' bastard, playin' hard to get again..."
"Though, you do have my permission to treat the girls to a curry night if you wish."
Fuutarou's father is already halfway out the door when he freezes in his tracks to turn his head to glance over his shoulder at his former schoolmate.
"Huh, that's rare, comin' from you. But you do know that Itsuki's just gonna fuckin' eat everything, right?"
"I am aware, yes. But this is not coming out of my pocket now, is it?"
"Oh fuck off!"
"Nakano...Itsuki...you said?"
"Yes."
After another minute of searching, the Marriott Hotel check-in receptionist shakes his head. "I'm sorry, we don't have a guest admitted here under that name. Nothing's coming up in our database."
Scratching his head in genuine confusion, Uesugi Fuutarou nods curtly back at the hotel staffer. "I understand. Thank you for your help, that'll be all for me today."
Bidding the receptionist good night, the young mage exits the hotel and immediately pulls out his phone. Itsuki is not at the hotel as Miku said she was; this means that Fuutarou will have to search for her himself, just like how he needed to for Nino and Yotsuba. Swiftly running his fingers over his phone to pull his map of the city back up again to locate Itsuki this time, Fuutarou quickly begins looking for Itsuki's signature. He does this all with a great sense of urgency, because now that Itsuki is not where she's supposed to be, until he finds her coordinates, Itsuki could be anywhere - and if she's somewhere she's definitely not supposed to be, then that can clearly only mean one thing. And based on his past experiences, a lot can happen in the amount of time that's elapsed since the quintuplets began dispersing from home until now.
The silver lining of this whole situation is that Itsuki's latent magic potential is now active; this means that the young mage should be able to locate the youngest quintuplet much more easily than before with the rune network across the city. Tracking non-magical persons with magical means is actually very challenging because sensor runes like the ones Fuutarou uses detects targets by scanning for magical signatures, such as magic energies or abnormal levels of emotional disturbance, and because normal people do not exude such signs, under such normal circumstances, tracking them with Fuutarou's runes, for example, would be out of the question. However, because Fuutarou has spent so much time with the girls, even for someone like Yotsuba, for example, he can track them even if they have no such magic signatures to speak of; it just takes his runes a longer time to ascertain their presences on the map.
Itsuki's magic talent being active now thanks to her newly acquired Mystic Eyes therefore means that it should be extremely easy for his runes to pick up Itsuki's trail, since he already has her ordinary signature down; it's just going to look horribly amplified on his sensor runes. Practiced and seasoned mages who have dealt with other hostile mages before can train themselves to hide their presences and mask their magical footprints to significantly reduce the likeliness of detection; Fuutarou has noticed that Ichika is likely to be capable of this, for example, since her own Mystic Eye took him by such surprise during their run-in at the coffee shop, and ever time he's checked Ichika's signature on his runes, outside of that one incident, they've never detected her with an amplified signature yet. But Itsuki, having just now become a fledgling mage whether she realizes it or not, is not going to know how to hide herself from magical scrutiny.
And sure enough, Fuutarou's magic theory is proven when he finds Itsuki's signature, now bloated by residual magical energy, on his phone. But she's on the other side of the city...
...at Daikazoku Business Park.
Fuutarou stares down at his phone for a moment, his hands having frozen when his brain registers what his eyes are relaying to it. Itsuki is at the office? But...why?
Somehow even more confused now than before he entered the Marriott, the mercenary mage shakes his head a little to clear his thoughts and disbelief and decides that for now, he ought to rendezvous with Itsuki to ensure her safety, though by the looks of it, nothing appears to have happened to her, and he knows that Raiha is safe at home...looks like Isanari isn't home yet from his business trip into the city, though. So Fuutarou gets a move on, reactivating his Presence Concealment spell so that he can leap across the rooftops of the city downtown to traverse over to his father's office.
Mid-flight, Fuutarou minimizes his map app but keeps it active in the corner of his screen while he dials Miku's number.
"Hello? Fuutarou?"
"Yeah, it's me. So - "
"Uh, sorry, Fuutarou, it's - it's hard to hear you! There's a lot of wind on your end!"
Cursing under his breath, having forgotten that not only is tonight quite windy in the city, but he's also roof-jumping his way back home, Fuutarou raises his voice greatly so that he can be heard well enough.
"Yeah, it's pretty windy outside tonight! Itsuki isn't at the Marriott! I checked with their receptionists just now, they said she hadn't checked in at all!"
Having raised the volume of his phone call, Fuutarou can hear Miku gasp shortly in shock.
"Then - then - "
"Don't worry, I found her! I'm moving to her location now, it looks like she's fine!"
"Oh okay, thank goodness. But...if she's not at the hotel right now, where is she?"
Fuutarou opens his mouth to answer, but then hesitates. Would it be a good idea to tell Miku that Itsuki ended up at his place? This is Miku he's talking to, after all. How would she handle that?
"I think she might be at one of her friends from school's house or something, I don't know exactly! I know her coordinates so like I said, I'm moving to her now! I'll let you know if anything else comes up!"
"Fuutarou, wait, wait! Don't hang up yet!"
"I'm still here, why?"
"I - I need to check something here at home - !"
So Fuutarou holds the call, waiting for Miku to take care of whatever she's up to back at the penthouse as he himself continues to soar discretely across the night sky of the city, now reaching the western suburbs, about to enter the abandoned sector of the city where his family lives.
"Hello, Fuutarou? So - so I checked Itsuki's room because I thought it was weird for her not to check into a hotel of some kind, and it turns out she forgot her purse! It's still here! She only left with some clothes in a suitcase but she left her purse here! She doesn't have any money or anything with her right now!"
Rolling his own eyes, Fuutarou groans loudly. "Okay, I'll keep that in mind, thanks, Miku!"
Disconnecting from the call for good this time, the young tutor accelerates to reach Itsuki's coordinates at home faster. Ever since he departed from the Marriott, Fuutarou has been feeling dumber and dumber for fully trusting Miku and merely taking her word that Itsuki was at the Marriott. If he were paying attention, he would have checked for Itsuki's coordinates as well when he scanned for Nino and Yotsuba earlier before he left the penthouse; he simply assumed that Itsuki was secure at the hotel and removed her as an additional variable that he needed to worry about while he went to make sure the other two were okay. Technically speaking, Miku should have made sure that Itsuki had left home with everything she needed at least, but Fuutarou refuses to put any blame on Miku; realistically, in the wake of a family feud like what she'd described, how is anyone going to expect her to make sure that Itsuki was leaving the house with everything she needed? If anything, Miku probably didn't want anyone to leave the house in the first place.
Dwelling on his mistakes like this isn't like him, so Fuutarou shuts up mentally and focuses solely on traveling, reaching his home business park quickly and forgoing the stairs to simply leap up to the second floor and ringing the loud and buzzing doorbell to have his little sister answer the front door of the office.
"Ah, Onii-chan, it's been a while!"
Even outside the office, the high school mage can smell the delicious, irresistible scent of freshly made Uesugi curry, and immediately his mouth begins to water; it is at this point that Fuutarou realizes that he hasn't eaten shit for the past twelve hours or so. Perhaps Itsuki coming here was a blessing in disguise; he can grab some dinner here before moving on with his usual nighttime duties for tonight.
"Oniiiiiii-chan ~ !" Raiha immediately glomps her older brother as soon as she throws open the door; Fuutarou can't help but feel some of the anxiety and disappointment in himself bleed away from his mind now that his little sister's hugging him, so he stoops down, picks her up, and closes the door behind him so that the two of them can enter the house properly. "Waaaah! I-I'm not a little kid anymore, Onii-chan!"
"To me you still are. I take it that you're having curry tonight?"
"Yeah! Wanna join us for dinner?"
"I haven't eaten in a hot minute, so yeah, I'd love to. And I can see why you said 'we'..."
Setting his younger sister down on the floor so that she can hurry into the kitchen to prepare a serving of curry for her brother, Fuutarou sighs a little through his nose as his target, Nakano Itsuki, turns around from serving herself a portion of Uesugi-Style curry onto a big plate and freezes upon seeing another unexpected guest to the household for tonight.
The two high schoolers lock eye contact as soon as Itsuki turns around. To Fuutarou's relief, his student's eyes are, for now, their usual bright blue.
At a loss for words, Itsuki watches Fuutarou slowly cross his arms as he puts on a questioning, interrogative look to greet her with, and unable to stop her face from reddening up, the youngest quintuplet breaks eye contact and looks away in subdued embarrassment, still holding onto her plate of curry that is to be her own dinner tonight.
"...m...my apologies...for, um...intruding..." she mumbles sheepishly, her ahoge drooping down also in embarrassment.
Fuutarou holds his pose for a few moments, which really puts Itsuki on the spot as she doesn't know what to do in this kind of an awkward situation. Raiha, after scooping her brother a portion, turns around to find the two high schoolers with her having an awkward standoff.
"...um, did something happen between you two?" the elementary schooler asks nervously, unsure of what's going on herself.
Now that his sister's about to get involved, Fuutarou drops his confrontational body language and steps forward to receive his dinner from his sister.
"Nah, just a bit surprised to see her here, that's all," he answers quickly; obviously he doesn't want to get his sister involved in this, especially given what's happened between Itsuki and Nino earlier today, so beckons to the quintuplet at his house to come eat. "Let's just eat for now, I'm actually starving."
"Wow, it's not often I get to hear Onii-chan say that he's actually hungry," Raiha notes, marveling at this rare occurrence, and the three of them sit down one by one at their small foldable dinner table. As soon as Raiha herself is seated, though, she takes one look over at her brother's plate, and her own giant, massively oversized ahoge becomes electrified and sticks right up at her shock upon seeing how fast her brother is eating. "H-Holy cow! Onii-chan, c-calm down, the curry isn't about to run away!"
Fuutarou is already a third through his curry since he is shoving entire spoonfuls into his mouth and is taking the time to chew it all down, and he ignores his sister for the time being as he continues to eat. The three of them eat in relative silence, in fact; the awkward air that was already present between the two older kids continues to persist even here, and the only times that people speak are when they want more helpings of Uesugi curry.
"U-Uh...Onii...chan? That's...that's your fifth helping of curry tonight...you know Dad needs some too, right?" Raiha reminds her older brother as he returns for the fourth time from the kitchen back to the dinner table. Between just the two high school kids, with Itsuki's usual appetite and Fuutarou's suddenly voracious one, they've almost devoured the entire stock of curry that Raiha has made tonight, and given how much Raiha usually makes whenever it's curry night, that is an accomplishment in and of itself.
"Don't worry, there's still enough for a full plate for him when he comes back," the tutor shrugs.
"But you know Dad always eats as least two plates' worth!"
"Okay, well, if that's not enough for him, I'll just go out and grab something for him. This'll be my last helping anyways, I'm just about full now."
Itsuki watches her tutor wolf down even more curry as she herself works on her own third serving. "...I do not think I have ever seen you eat so much at once," she marvels as well, taken by such surprise at Fuutarou's hidden appetite that she's able to break through the awkward air that once held dominion between them.
Fuutarou nods curtly. "It's rare, I'll admit. Usually for the human body to operate at maximum efficiency, you actually want to be a little hungry. My problem is that I do that too often for the sake of saving money...so every once in a while I'll pig out like this."
"Will you not put yourself in a food coma after eating so much? Especially when you have not eaten this much recently?"
Her classmate shakes her head. "Nah, not really."
Raiha turns to her older friend. "Uh, Itsuki-san, did something happen recently that made Onii-chan like this? Like, I know Onii-chan can eat a lot sometimes, it's not like this's the first time it's happened, it's just - I've never seen him eat this much."
Itsuki chuckles awkwardly. "Uhh...yeah, I don't...I do not know either...haha..."
Suppressing his urge to laugh out loud, Fuutarou settles for a slight smirk instead.
"Itsuki, after we're done with dinner, I need to talk to you outside, if that's alright with you," he informs his student once he's done with his fifth and last plate of Uesugi curry, getting up to wash and rinse his dish at the kitchen sink.
"S-Something did happen, didn't it...?!" Fuutarou can hear his sister squeal in a hushed voice to Itsuki, who furiously shakes her head in desperate denial.
"No, I - I swear, Raiha-chan, n-n-nothing happened! I do really do not know what is going on!"
"Uuuu, I don't trust you, Itsuki-san! I think you're hiding something from me!"
"Please believe me, I am not...!"
"That's what someone who's trying to hide something would say...!"
The fact that his little sister is successfully bullying his classmate is quite impressive, and Fuutarou enjoys what he can out of Itsuki being put on the spot by Raiha while he washes and rinses his plate. Once he's done, he waits for a minute or two for the girls to finish so that he can take their plates and wash them as well, to save his sister the trouble of having to wash the dishes herself, which she must do if neither of the boys in the family are around to do it.
"Itsuki, wait outside for me, I'll be done with these in just a moment," Fuutarou calls over to Itsuki as he's giving the two dishes one last good rinse before shutting the water off to dry them with a clean towel.
"O-Okay..."
Not questioning her tutor, the youngest quintuplet opens the front door and steps outside as per Fuutarou's instructions. Once the door closes after Itsuki, the elementary schooler next to him looks up at her older brother.
"Onii-chan, don't scold Itsuki-san too much, okay? If this is something tutoring-related that you need to talk to her about..." Raiha asks him feebly, tugging on the side of his shirt.
"I won't. We just need to discuss some things for our finals this week."
"Oh yeah, this week is your finals, isn't it..." Raiha tilts her head a little. "Then...wait a minute, why is...why is Itsuki-san at our house today? I was so happy to see her come back that I forgot to ask her why she showed up in the first place..."
"She was just visiting a friend who lives out in the suburbs south of here. You know, the neighborhood just outside of this sector. I told her to swing by our place if she wanted some dinner before going home."
Raiha raises an eyebrow. "...but that neighborhood isn't exactly close to us..." she thinks aloud suspiciously.
"I told her that you wanted to see her again and so I convinced her to stop by."
"Did you?! Yaaay, thanks, Onii-chan!" Immediately believing her brother, Raiha gives her brother another big hug. "Again, just don't scold her too much, okay?"
"When did I ever say that I was going to scold her..."
"Well, why else were you giving her that look earlier when you arrived? Wait, didn't you say when you came home that you were 'a bit surprised' to see her here? What's going on here?"
"I just didn't expect her to still be here. I guess she couldn't resist you making some curry for her, huh? Was it because of her that tonight's curry night?"
"No, I just wanted to make curry tonight!"
"Well, glad it worked out, because it was delicious." Uesugi turns to his sister once the dishes are done. "Alright, Raiha, here's the thing: Itsuki needs to stay the night, maybe even two. There's stuff going on that we can't really explain at the moment; all you need to know is that Itsuki needs to stay here for the time being. I'm gonna go out and talk to her about how we're gonna handle stuff for the next few days, but for right now she needs a place to stay. Is it alright if she stays here?"
Raiha, hearing the seriousness in her brother's voice as he talks to her, nods earnestly.
"Yeah, of course! She can stay with us for as long as she wants!"
"Thanks, Raiha. Did you do your homework for today?"
"Yep! All done!"
Fuutarou ruffles Raiha's hair lightly and pats it, and she giggles lightly at her brother messing with her hair a little. Uesugi then leaves her in the office to meet with his student, who is patiently waiting for him outside the office, looking up at the night sky above. The young mage, following Itsuki's gaze before she turns around to greet him, puts his eyes up at the bright moon in the sky.
"Let's go for a walk. Obviously we're gonna talk about stuff I don't want Raiha is hear about," Fuutarou sighs deeply, nodding towards the stairs, and Itsuki nods with him and takes point, leading the way to ground level so that the two of them can go for a nice walk in the night. This is especially beneficial, considering that the two of them have gorged an incredible amount of curry just between the two of them tonight, so the cool, windy night air is therapeutic for both of them.
The two high schoolers stay quiet until they've left the business park grounds, with Fuutarou leading this time as he knows the area much more intimately than Itsuki does. And as such, he is the first to talk.
"...so, mind explaining to me what happened earlier today while I was out cold?"
Having braced herself for her tutor to interrogate her about this, Itsuki gulps a little, even though she's not eating anymore, before postulating her response.
"...um...well, long...long story short..." she begins nervously, trying her best to compose herself, "...Nino and I got into a fight, and...and it turned physical."
"Yeah, I know, both Miku and Yotsuba confirmed that for me."
"Wait, then...then if both of them already told you what happened..."
"I'm just trying to triangulate everyone's stories so that there isn't any weird discrepancy between everyone's accounts."
Itsuki gives Fuutarou a weak smile. "...my sisters would not fabricate something like this to you, Uesugi-kun."
"I don't know, maybe Nino would."
"Er...well...perhaps..." Itsuki hesitates a little. "...did you get a chance to speak with Nino...? Miku texted me that Yotsuba was going to track Nino so that she does not get herself into even more trouble..."
"I met with her and Yotsuba, yeah, but Nino wasn't in any mood to talk to me, as you might imagine."
"Aha...yeah, I guess that makes sense."
Fuutarou points at his own face. "So did you get seriously hurt anywhere? I don't see any, like, injuries on you or anything, and you seem fine."
"Er...well, Nino and I...we both punched each other in the face. Nino hit me on the nose, so I had a bit of a nosebleed, and...and I hit her in the mouth." Itsuki reaches out with her right hand to show her tutor the slight cut she got on her middle knuckle when it connected with Nino's lower teeth. "I got this when I hit her; it must have been her teeth..."
Fuutarou squints down at Itsuki's outstretched hand. "...I don't see anything, though?"
Narrowing her eyebrows in confusion, the youngest quintuplet pulls her hand back to inspect her cut. "H-Huh? Wait, I thought...I thought there was at least a scar there? I know I cleaned it before leaving the house, but..."
Seeing that Itsuki is having a hard time seeing her own hand in the relative darkness of the night, since there are not very many active streetlights in the abandoned sector of the city, Fuutarou turns on his own shoulder-mounted blue-light rune to illuminate Itsuki's hand so that she can take a better look at it. And sure enough, Itsuki can see that there is no trace of a scar on her middle knuckle.
"The reason why you don't have a scar there anymore is because your Magic Circuits are online now," Fuutarou answers the very confused Itsuki, and at the mention of magic, the ahoge quintuplet immediately dashes her gaze up at her tutor. "Miku told me about how your Mystic Eyes activated during your fight with Nino; when I woke up at your place about an hour and a half ago by this point, I also sensed a magic signature that I hadn't felt before. Mmm...more accurately, I should say that I hadn't felt your signature amplified like that before, which can only mean that your latent magical talent is now finally active and working."
Eyes widening with horror, Nakano Itsuki says nothing at first. Now forced to face this revelation that she has been desperately trying to keep suppressed in the back of her head up until now, the quintuplet grinds her gait to a slow, excruciating halt, and Fuutarou matches her pace, stopping with her on the empty sidewalk of this abandoned commercial sector of the city.
"...so...so it is real, then...?" Itsuki finally croaks out, her voice cracking a little due to her self-inflicted horror. "...I...I'm...I am a mage too...just like you, Uesugi-kun...? Just like...my sisters...?"
Fuutarou raises both of his arms slightly. "Rejoice, girl. For your wish will come true at last."
"I did not wish for this, though!"
The young tutor quickly drops his arms. "Sorry, that was a joke."
"And what kind of a joke is that for you to make at a time like this...?"
"A bad one. Some priest in another city told me that, but I didn't take him seriously and neither should you. Anyways..."
Raising his right hand up again, the young mage points at Itsuki's eyes.
"You have your Mystic Eyes now, right? Can you show them to me? I assume Miku told you what Mystic Eyes are, right?"
The mention of Mystic Eyes causes Itsuki to turn away from her tutor, though not completely. Fuutarou can still see her eyes that are cast down at the sidewalk on which they stand, extremely reluctant to comply with his request.
"...must I?" she practically whispers into the wind.
"If possible, yes. While I can't say if just knowing what your Eyes look like will be of any relevance in the future, because I've already had Nino and Miku show me theirs, I'd like for you to show me yours. Do you even know how to activate them, though? You might not, seeing just how recently you activated them..."
Itsuki doesn't answer him for a good minute or so, but Fuutarou is patient and is willing to give Itsuki as much time as she needs. His patience indeed pays off, for the youngest quintuplet finally relents and closes her eyes.
The moment her eyelids close, the high school mercenary mage-for-hire immediately notices the wind levels in their area die down almost instantly. Any attentive human being in their area would immediately realize that something is wrong, because wind doesn't just die down this fast, this suddenly.
And just as suddenly, Fuutarou senses and immense, extremely alarming spike in magical energy right in front of him. The fact that he's even bothered to make note of this should be evidence enough: out of all the quintuplets whose magical energies he's been able to sense due to their Mystic Eyes, Itsuki possesses, without a doubt, the most potent Eyes among them. It doesn't mean very much overall since Itsuki has no knowledge of how to control and utilize this immense power, but nonetheless, it is still worth noting to Fuutarou.
Itsuki opens her eyes again, shyly displaying them in full view for her tutor and fellow mage to behold. The neon red, nebulous hazes have returned, with their dim blue lights encapsulating black holes of infinite darkness. Like her sisters', Itsuki's Mystic Eyes are their own sources of magically generated light, and as such, Itsuki's eyes glow with mysterious, powerful auras that are sure to mesmerize any onlooker who is uninitiated to the sight of her eyes. The wind, too, has not picked up yet and remains dead, rendering their world silent and still.
"...the truth is that...the fight between me and Nino...I was the one who started it," the youngest quintuplet murmurs quietly, but her voice, despite being small and soft, somehow maintains a stable, firm tone so that in this windless world, Fuutarou can still understand perfectly. "Miku tried to give her the worksheets you made for us to Nino when Nino was trying to leave us to go study alone in her own room. Nino rejected them by slapping them away, and when Miku demanded that she pick them back up, Nino then tore one of them in half. Seeing them slapped out of Miku's hand was one thing...but watching one of the sheets get torn in half was another thing entirely. I..."
Itsuki gulps again; the tension that she's exuding tells Fuutarou that she's doing everything she can to both maintain a stable train of thought while at the same time dealing with the fact that there are now magical eyes that she knows are brimming with power in her own eye sockets.
"...for lack of a better phrase, I lost it. I became...unreasonably angry when I saw that happen. In hindsight, that was just one piece of paper, just one worksheet. There was no reason for me to have gone off the rails like that and instigated an even worse fight than what had been already going on at the time. Yet, I...I..."
"Out of curiosity, why did you get angry? I think I remember you realizing that my worksheets were all handwritten, right? When I first got to your place. Was it because of that?"
Nodding, Itsuki briefly makes eye contact with her tutor, but upon realizing this, she shyly drops her gaze again.
"No matter my own opinion on the matter, no matter what the circumstances, the fact of the matter was that you put in an unbelievable amount of effort making those worksheets for us. That, to me, also told me that you were working just as hard as we were studying for finals this week, if not more, to help us out as much as you could." The quintuplet braces herself and gathers up the courage to look back at her tutor in the eyes. "You are a very efficient person, Uesugi-kun; you do not need me to tell this to you, for you know it very well. Someone like you would never normally spend God knows how many hours crafting worksheets like that by hand, and yet...you did so anyway, because I feel like...you are the kind of person who wants to put in the effort about something you care about very much. Is that the case?"
Fuutarou cracks a tiny grin back at Itsuki, nodding slowly. "A bit embarrassing, but yeah, I tend to go the extra mile for stuff I care about. I know you girls have been working really hard lately, studying for finals. It's all the more impressive when I consider the fact that you girls went from basically not studying at all, well, maybe except for you, Itsuki, to studying diligently every day, whether or not I'm there to tutor you all. Didn't I say before that I like leading by example? I don't like the idea of watching you girls work hard and me just sitting around not doing shit."
Having begun to smile while listening to Fuutarou, Itsuki then forces it to subside as she returns to her own somewhat turbulent thoughts. "...at the end of the day, however, that does not change the fact that I acted out of character, so to speak, and hit my own sister. Not just once, but twice and then some. I...I did not know I was capable of doing such a thing. The thought of me laying a hand on my own siblings before tonight would have been out of the question...preposterous, unbelievable, whatever else you can say to describe this. And yet, it happened."
The quint turns to her classmate again.
"Perhaps...you may know the answer which I seek, but...was my violent behavior the result of my Mystic Eyes, Uesugi-kun? Or...was it because...I was always capable of exhibiting such acts of violence?"
Fuutarou merely shrugs.
"I don't know, in part because I have very little knowledge outside of very basic stuff on Mystic Eyes and how they work and what they do. But the other part is because we live in a world where rarely is it because of one sole reason that something happens; it's usually because of a group of reasons all working together, coincidentally or not, to make something happen. If I'm understanding what happened between you and Nino correctly, you could argue that it was because of your Mystic Eyes activating, that it gave you a surge of magic energy that you didn't know what to do with or knew how to control, so it went rampant in your body and caused you to become much more aggressive than you usually are, but then again we'd have to consider the possibility that you getting angry in the first place was what caused your Mystic Eyes to activate in the first place, which then gave you that extra aggression that tipped you over the edge to slap and punch Nino in the face, blah blah blah. I would love to sit here and just feed you an easy answer to make my own life easier, but I'm not going to do that, especially not when I thought it was worth my time writing a hundred worksheets by hand for you and your sisters."
The young mage slowly folds his arms while talking.
"The important thing to know is now, you definitely have Mystic Eyes of your own, and because it seems that you're not very comfortable with the idea of having a pair of your own, you need to learn how to come to terms with it. Nino and Miku seem like they've been able to keep it under control, so if they can do it, so can you. Obviously this all happened at a pretty bad time, but we have to work with what we got, which means you need to get it together and under control sooner rather than later if you want a shot at passing your finals this week. If you need to stay at our place to help you get it together, then you're free to do so. I heard from Miku that you don't plan to go back home anyway, is that right?"
Itsuki nods in confirmation. "That is correct. The fight between me and Nino got bad enough where...we both do not want to return home because whoever does so first is basically admitting defeat in our argument. Nino would rather drop dead than admit defeat in anything, but at the same time I do not want to let her win like I usually do because I actually feel very strongly about this matter."
"But weren't you pretty shocked at yourself for punching her?"
"Yes, that is still the case. But that is irrelevant to the point that I still think it was wrong of Nino to spurn your hard work like that. I still insist that she apologize to you for doing such a thing. So until she has done that and has told me herself in person that she has apologized to you, I cannot return home; this is something I refuse to budge on, and...not even you can convince me otherwise, Uesugi-kun."
Sighing heavily, Fuutarou drops his folded arms and puts them again on his hips for the third time today or so. "...even though you know that by doing this, you're jeopardizing your chances of passing your finals safely?"
Again, Itsuki puts on a guilty face when confronted with this dilemma. "...yes, even knowing that. I just...cannot yield on this. I am sorry."
To her surprise, though, her tutor merely tosses his hands up into the air. "Well shit, then, nothing I can do to change your mind."
"E-Eh? But...but I thought you would be stricter on me for this..." Itsuki stammers a little, taken back by how easily she's been able to convince her tutor to look the other way.
"Normally I would, yes. But given the circumstances and my own failure to mitigate the situation from blowing up this hard because I was fuckin' snoozing at the time, I'll make an exception. That, and..."
"...and?"
Fuutarou closes his eyes while he arches his neck backwards to get some of the stress in his head out.
"...you might not believe me, but...I would prefer that you girls sort out the problems going on between you first before you concentrate on studying, because you girls study better when you're together. It's a bit counterintuitive, since initially before I took this job I was predicting that usually bigger study groups actually mean less efficient studying since people tend to talk a lot and stuff and get distracted constantly, but for you girls, your quintuplet power is real; your scores have been better and better starting from when all five of you began to study together, regardless of whether or not I'm there to tutor you all. Because of that, I don't want you all to go back to studying alone because clearly that hasn't worked at all, and because of that, I'm willing to take the risk of sacking the first couple of days this week in trying to get everyone back together in the hopes that you girls can study hard for whatever remaining amount of time we have left to pass finals."
Blinking at her tutor and listening to him with subdued amazement, Itsuki looks back down at the sidewalk near Fuutarou's feet.
"I will be honest, um...I did not expect you to prioritize our family cohesion over our studies like this."
"Totally understandable, given what I'm usually like. But no...for as much as I make you all study hard and get on your asses about studying so that you don't flunk out of school since graduating high school at least is important, what's more important is family. And there isn't much else in the world that's more important than that. Even I know that."
Itsuki's red Mystic Eyes widen slowly.
Then, the ambient wind returns. Just as slowly as Itsuki's widening Eyes, but they return gently, caressing the two high schoolers on the empty sidewalk in the middle of the night like silk curtains. Fuutarou glances around briefly, noting that the winds have returned, and he looks back in Itsuki's direction, only to find that she's now right in front of him, pressing her head lightly against his chest. He didn't even sense her moving at all, so he has no idea how she got right in front of him so fast, even if she was standing close by to begin with.
Monitoring Itsuki's magical status, Fuutarou notes, to his own quiet surprise, that the tension he's been sensing from her is rapidly subsiding, and the turbulent magic signature that he's been reading from her ever since she resurfaced her Mystic Eyes is also stabilizing quickly.
"...everything alright, Itsuki?" he asks quietly. He carefully reaches his right arm around Itsuki's left shoulder and puts his hand behind her head, patting it softly, making sure to keep his left eye closed so that the wind that's carefully blowing her ahoge doesn't cause it to go right into his eye.
"...I thought for sure that you'd be angry with me because of this...because of what I'd decided," she mumbles, and her voice is starting to sound a little hoarse and broken. "I know this is such a selfish reason that I'm doing all this. I know this isn't what I should be doing, that I should just...be the bigger woman in a time like this when we have finals at the end of the week and we ought to be focusing everything we have on studying for them...why? Why are you letting me get away with this when all you'd need to do is just drag me back home if you needed to?"
Fuutarou just shrugs. "Eh...I just don't like the sound of that. And besides, sometimes - I don't like taking the easy ways out. Sometimes it's worth doing things a bit less efficiently. Just, maybe, don't punch your sister in the face next time; I can't really condone that, so if you do it again, you're on your own."
Itsuki starts to pout into her classmate's chest, but for some odd reason, it ends up turning into a small smile instead, but Fuutarou will never know. She finally pulls herself away from him, with Fuutarou withdrawing his hand when he sees this to give her the space she wants, and when she looks back up at her tutor, the boy gazes back into the usual pair of calming blue seas.
"Just for your information, I will still be doing my best to study while I stay at your place," Itsuki smiles.
"As I hope you would. Huh, actually..." Fuutarou breaks off to ponder to himself. "What if this's all just a 500 IQ move on your part to get personalized one-on-one tutoring with me so that you can score the highest on finals again, kinda like how you did back during midterms? Eh, naaaaah, you're not that smart to pull that one off..."
"I am right here, you know!" Itsuki pouts for real this time. "But now that you mentioned it, I am not against such an idea."
"Glad to see you're enthusiastic about it, at least. But not tonight - I imagine you know why."
Itsuki nods back. "You are going to go talk to Nino, I presume?"
"Bingo. Like I said, I only briefly met with her and Yotsuba since I just wanted to make sure that they were okay."
"Then...you came to talk to me first?" Itsuki points at herself.
"Yeah. I figured between you and Nino, you'd be more willing to talk things out with me. And now that you have, it's clear to me that what you did earlier tonight was an honest mistake, and that your intention wasn't primarily to hurt anyone. Now I need to go see Nino's side of the story, and once I've done that, I want you two to come home together."
"Ehhh...I am not sure, Nino is...quite the stubborn princess..." Itsuki sighs. "But I suppose there is no other way at this point, is there?"
"Yeah, not really. I'm screwed no matter what."
"You, screwed? When we are the ones who are looking at academic failure if we do not pass our finals?"
"Well, if you fail, I lose my job, and that don't look so good on my resume."
"As if you need a resume!"
"Hey, it's nice to keep one around just in case..."
The two high schoolers beginning banter between them, Fuutarou and Itsuki begin heading back to Daikazoku Business Park so that the boy can make sure his classmate can return to his father's office and house safely. As they walk back, Itsuki points back up at the full moon, which is shining almost as brightly as the sun in the day.
"Tonight is a full moon, it would seem," she smiles again, turning to her friend. "Hey, Uesugi-kun, did you know that my favorite celestial body is the moon?"
"Moon? But you have these little star-shaped hair clips that you always wear, right?" Fuutarou asks, pointing out the hair clips in question.
"Ah, yes, I do, that is correct. I told you before that I love to go stargazing, so that is why. But even still, even though I do like the stars in the sky a lot, the moon holds a special place in my heart. I suppose part of the reason why is because it is the most significant celestial body you can see with the naked eye from Earth."
"What about the sun, though?"
"Well, you cannot look directly at the sun, that is dangerous!"
"True, true. So the moon is the next best thing for you?"
"N-Not just the 'next best thing', it really is very beautiful in its own right," Itsuki says, turning to Fuutarou and giving him an earnest smile. "Especially tonight."
Fuutarou looks down at Itsuki first, then up at the moon.
"...I guess it is, huh," he agrees quietly.