A/N
PortosCpt: If I told you that someone were to die, that would be spoilers, no?
Greatly appreciate this recent little bump in support lately; I'm not sure if it's because it's a new year or because the second season for the anime is about to come out that people are beginning to browse the 5toubun section here on Fanfiction a bit more, but I'll take whatever I can get. Speaking of which, shoutouts to Season 2 that should have started airing by the time this chapter comes out.
"Here's your stop. This isn't exactly the nicest place in the city, so do make sure to get home safely, miss, especially at this hour," the taxi driver bids the third quintuplet who emerges from the taxi after paying the fare.
"I will, sir, thank you."
Nakano Miku doesn't wait for the taxi to zoom out of sight and for its engine to hum off into the distance, for she immediately breaks into a brisk walk towards her destination in this old, run-down business park, towards the only set of lights still stubbornly illuminating the suites and its accompanying parking lot. Strapped over her right shoulder is a moderately-sized plain and unmarked sports bag, which Miku carries with her as she climbs the stairs up to the second level of this sorry-looking set of business suites and to the front door of Uesugi Fuutarou's house.
Raising her delicate right hand up to press the conspicuously faded door buzzer, Miku hesitates somewhat, because it just now strikes her that this is the first time that she's stepping foot into the place that her tutor calls home. Why did she not realize this sooner, when she was at home preparing for this nighttime escapade? And to think that Itsuki chose to hide out here...for the one quintuplet among them who started off with a hardass attitude about how the girls as students shouldn't try to pursue any kind of inappropriate relationship with their own tutor, Itsuki sure is bold for deciding that this was the right place to stay, especially considering what happened to cause both her and Nino to run away from home in the first place...
Well, in her defense, part of the reason why both Itsuki and now Miku are even here is because the youngest quintuplet forgot her more important belongings back at home. In a desperate attempt to resume her studies, feeling the pressure of their finals at the end of the week looming over her even in this domestically turbulent time, Itsuki borrowed the Uesugi office phone to call one of her sisters to see if they could do her a solid and bring over her study materials and purse, but Miku was the only one who was available to fulfill this request; Ichika, despite Fuutarou's orders to stay at home for the day, went to work after studying with the others for most of the morning and afternoon, citing that simply staying at home all day was making her feel like a waste of human productivity, whatever that meant. Yotsuba shortly thereafter also followed suit, citing her obligation to the track team to go training with them. Naturally, then, Miku, the sole quintuplet other than maybe Itsuki herself who would be prone to staying at home all day, would have to carry out the mission of delivering Itsuki's requested loot over to the Uesugi household, the address to which the latter provided.
But Miku did not leave right away. Instead, as a tradeoff of sorts for doing Itsuki this huge favor, Miku told Itsuki that she would come late so that the two of them could talk. This meant that Miku couldn't just leave as soon as she got her sister's call for assistance, since Ichika and Yotsuba would come back and wonder where Miku went off to. No, Miku needed to wait for the other two to return home and go to sleep before sneaking out of the Nakano penthouse so that she wouldn't have to bother either of them with where she'd gone. So preoccupied was she with the preparation and the questions she'd ask Itsuki that she completely neglected to consider what she'd need to do to return home, and now that issue, too, is pressing against the back of her mind. Itsuki made it clear that she didn't want anyone else to know where she was, so Miku would rather not betray her and be forced to reveal to the others where she'd been overnight, as much as it's partly Itsuki's own fault for much of what's happened lately.
Miku shakes her head a little to clear her mind. No matter; she'll deal with those things later. For now, she must meet with her sister.
As instructed by Itsuki to prevent the members of the Uesugi household from waking, Miku taps her knuckles very lightly and softly against the door, pulling her hand away from the door buzzer. The inside of the house sounds silent, so surely even these barely audible taps should travel through the inside of the suite.
Sure enough, after a short pause of silence, the door handle turns quietly before allowing the door itself to open, and out peeks Nakano Itsuki, the ambient light from above the door on the suite roof giving Miku the ability to correctly identify her younger sibling.
Itsuki quickly puts a finger up to her lips to have her older sister remain silent, which Miku was already planning on doing as the latter quietly offers the sports bag containing Itsuki's belongings. Itsuki relieves Miku of her burden to quietly put it down against the wall near the spare futon that Raiha spread out on the floor of the office suite for their guest before rejoining her fellow quintuplet outside.
"You didn't just lock yourself outside now, did you...?" Miku asks Itsuki with a worried look on her face as the elder watches the younger shut the door fully but quietly behind her so as to not wake Uesugi Isanari and Raiha, both of whom are snoring quite loudly to the point where Miku silently wonders to herself why she wasn't able to hear either of them while waiting for Itsuki outside.
Itsuki shakes her head. "No, do not worry, I unlocked the door so I can head back inside. We will be talking right here anyways so we will not have to worry about anyone else trying to sneak in," she explains. "Luckily it does not feel too cold tonight..."
"Of course not, we're in the middle of summer by now. But are you sure the others inside won't hear? Fuutarou's papa and his sister?"
"As long as we keep our voices down, we should be fine..."
Taking a deep breath, Nakano Itsuki reopens her eyes once she's mentally prepared for this imminent conversation that she'll have with Miku and locks eye contact with her.
"...so what would you like to talk to me about, Miku?" she asks.
"A lot of things, actually," Miku immediately replies. "First...are you alright?"
Blinking back at Miku for a second, Itsuki then breaks out a small smile of relief.
"...I am doing much better, thank you," she replies with a tiny nod. "I know that I have been making everyone worry. I apologize for making you and everyone else worry about me."
"If you really do feel bad, you really ought to come back home..." Miku sighs. "...but you won't do that just yet, will you?"
"You are correct. Like I told you over the phone earlier today, I cannot afford to come back home first."
"Even after everything that's happened?"
"Yes, even after all that has happened."
Miku discretely nibbles the inside of her lower lip. She wants to tell Itsuki about what happened to Nino and Yotsuba last night and the lengths to which their tutor had to go to rescue them both, but she decides not to mention this, since she assumes that Fuutarou must have told Itsuki know about it already, and she doesn't want to be that person to bring up a sensitive topic such as that. So she switches gears.
"...I've never seen you actually punch someone," Miku murmurs. "I think I speak for everyone, Nino included, when I say that your punch looked clean."
At the mention of her uncharacteristic act of violence, Itsuki can't stop her face from reddening up and must quickly turn away a little from her sister to mitigate a little bit of the embarrassment that she's feeling.
"I-I'd - never hit anyone like that...! I didn't even know that I was even capable of punching like that!"
"You sure, Itsuki? Been taking secret karate lessons recently or what? Something else you wanna tell me? It's okay, I can keep this a secret from the others too, y'know..."
"No, no, no! I swear, this was not something I learned consciously! And even if I did, why would I tell you? You will just use the information as blackmail against me!"
"I mean, I can already use the fact that you had me come over to bring you your stuff as blackmail, technically...Nino would have a kick out of that, now, wouldn't she?" Miku sighs though, making it clear that her last spoken thought was a mere joke. "But still...that really was your first time hitting anyone, wasn't it? Besides the times when we were still kids."
Itsuki nods. "I...even now, I still do not completely understand what came over me that pushed me over the edge like that. I will admit that it has been occupying me quite a bit over the course of today..."
"Well, it has to be because your Mystic Eyes activated at that moment, right?"
The mention of Mystic Eyes silences the two of them for a few minutes, after which Itsuki is only able to give a very pained smile at first.
"...so you were able to feel them?" she asks, her voice sounding hoarse all of a sudden, even though they really shouldn't be.
"Yeah...it was pretty obvious. Especially to those of us who already had Mystic Eyes. So Nino, me, Ichika..."
"I suppose something like that would not have gone unnoticed..."
Miku is observing her younger sister carefully, especially when she first brought up the topic of Mystic Eyes.
"...you don't seem as stressed as I thought you'd be," Miku points out. "Or rather, I should say...you seem like you're dealing with the fact that you have Mystic Eyes too pretty well for how recently we told you about them."
"Well...that is because Uesugi-kun found me here and talked to me about them," Itsuki explains calmly. "I was able to sort out a lot of the...the more, uh, how should I say...turbulent?...feelings that I had in the wake of my fight with Nino. He really helped me to calm down."
"...what did you talk about with Fuutarou?" Miku asks quietly.
"He asked me for my side of the story, of what happened when the fight happened. Uesugi-kun wanted to triangulate our accounts so that it all lined up and he could get a complete picture of what had happened while he was sleeping."
"He didn't ask you about your Mystic Eyes at all?"
"Well, he did, but...that was not the first thing he asked. He did ask me to show them to him, though. But I feel like if I did not bring up the topic of me being a mage along with the rest of you guys, he may have never brought it up himself. Maybe."
"I don't know...not only is he a mage, but he also doesn't want us getting involved in magecraft. Remember?"
"Well...perhaps..."
Miku slowly crosses her arms, not taking her eyes off Itsuki. "...you're sure about that? That Fuutarou would never have asked you about your Mystic Eyes if you'd never brought it up?"
"Er, well, I...I don't feel like he would have, but...that is just a hunch and not much else." Itsuki's face grows a little concerned with the hard look on Miku's face. "W-Why, is there...is there something more to it that you can see?"
Now that Itsuki is lampshading Miku's insistence on this particular question, Miku snaps back to reality. Why was she pressing the issue with such a question that hard?
Just as she questions herself, however, Miku crashes headfirst into her answer. Itsuki, one of her quintuplet sisters, interacting alone with their tutor, the boy for whom Miku has feelings for. It doesn't help that Itsuki specifically said just now that he "really helped [Itsuki] to calm down", so Miku's mind temporarily took a hike imagining what Itsuki meant by that.
The third quintuplet bites the inside of her lower lip harder to force herself to mentally reset. Itsuki wouldn't mean this in that way, right? Like, sure, she may be warming up to their tutor, but every single one of the quintuplets has, so that by itself shouldn't be a big deal. And it's hard to imagine that Itsuki of all people would feel the same way towards Fuutarou as she does, especially not when she's the resident moral pet of the quints. Yeah, maybe Miku's looking into this a little too hard, so she'd better back off before Itsuki gets suspicious herself and somehow figures out that Miku's the one who has genuine feelings for their own tutor.
"Er...no, I was just...I was just thinking that it's a little strange, you know?" Miku stammers shortly, waving her hand a little in an attempt to maintain verbal posture.
"W-What is?" Itsuki asks back, unsure of where Miku is trying to take this conversation. Miku, for her part, counts the lucky stars on her younger sister's hair that the latter is a little inexperienced when it comes to reading social cues like this like Ichika is able to.
"That Fuutarou wouldn't ask you about your Mystic Eyes on his own. He's a mage, right? He's said before that he can sense magical energy, though I don't know if he's told you. So I figure that his first reaction to you having Mystic Eyes of your own would be to ask you about them, and you're saying that he wasn't going to ask you about them if you never brought it up yourself...?"
"I believe so, yes. Because the conversation we had after he tracked me down here was mainly about our finals studying and...and..." Itsuki lowers her gaze, her cheeks beginning to glow a little with residual warmth as she recollects the previous night. "...and how he cares more about having the five of us stick together. He didn't start the conversation with magic or ask me about my Eyes, nothing of the sort. That is why I believe he would have never mentioned them at all if it were not for me."
The second half of Itsuki's reply strikes a deep chord with Miku, who falls quiet as usual for a few moments upon hearing it.
"...really puts things into perspective, huh," Miku sighs lightly while turning a little to the rusty railing next to her to peer out to the dark, dilapidated, and cracked parking lot. "About how far apart we've become from each other when someone outside of our own family's putting more effort into keeping the five of us together than ourselves."
"If that was supposed to be some kind of...passive-aggressive way of reminding me what Nino and I caused, then I believe I already apologized to you over the phone. If I could have apologized to the others as well, I would," Itsuki murmurs, joining her older sister in peering out into the relative darkness of the rest of the business park.
"Then come back home if you really want to apologize. You do realize that the five of us not being together is really putting a dent in Fuutarou's ability to tutor us all effectively, right?"
"But you know I cannot do that; I even explained over the phone why I cannot."
"And you're okay with knowing that every day that goes by of you refusing to come home, you're just making it harder for everyone?" Miku turns her head to Itsuki. "Even if we're not talking about ourselves, what about Fuutarou? The fact that he had to come out here to find where you were and make sure that you're safe, does that not mean anything to you? Not only that, but he probably needs to figure out how he's going to tutor every one of us before finals arrive."
But to Miku's silent shock, Itsuki merely gives an empty grin of self-depreciation.
"But I already know what that feels like, though? The feeling of knowing I am doing nothing but making life harder for everyone else around me," she replies hoarsely. "I did not need something like this to happen to be aware of that."
Hearing this, the third quintuplet begins to panic internally a little, becoming acutely cognizant of her rather aggressive attitude towards her younger sister and growing very apprehensive that she might have stepped on an invisible emotional landmine.
"W-What do you mean? This's the first time I'm hearing about this, Itsuki," Miku says quickly. "Was it something that Nino said to you in the past?"
The fifth quintuplet shakes her head calmly, and rather chillingly, the small but empty smile remains on her lips.
"Of course this would be the first time you are hearing me say something like this, because I never shared these feelings with anyone. Much less you, Miku...I do not believe we have really ever talked seriously like this, just the two of us. It is usually you and Ichika, or you and Nino, maybe sometimes Yotsuba...but not me."
Itsuki takes a short breath.
"Every one of you - Ichika, Nino, you, and Yotsuba - everyone else has something that they're good at, something that they can call their own. Ichika is out here already working a part-time job; Nino has learned to cook; you are the best among us at studying and you are only getting better; and Yotsuba has her physical talent in sports and all that. I alone remain the one among us who has nothing going for her, unless you were to count my ability to simply eat a lot."
Miku stares back at her younger sister.
"...wow, I never thought I'd see the day when I'd hear you make a food joke about yourself willingly," Miku gawks a little.
Rather than getting embarrassed and pouting or showing any such reactionary sentiment, Itsuki merely returns the empty smile to her face. "I know, right? But that should go on to show you that I am serious when I say that I understand well the feeling of making everyone else's lives harder. When the only thing I am good at is the joke that I am most commonly associated with, how do you think that makes me feel?"
"But that's just not true. You can't say that when you actually outscored me in our midterms earlier this year," Miku points out again. "How can't you say that you aren't at least good at studying, too?"
"That was an outlier; I guessed on a lot of questions that I was unsure about and got lucky on enough of them to outscore you," Itsuki counters. "Do you remember the study sessions we had immediately after midterms? Remember when Uesugi-kun was scolding us for getting a lot of questions wrong that we answered correctly on our midterms proper? My reason for that was because I guessed on a lot of them. Had I not had a little luck on my side, you would have outscored me for sure. And besides, even before Uesugi-kun became our personal tutor, you did not have to study much in order to get the same grades as the rest of us, and whenever you did study seriously, you could get much better scores if you tried. Meanwhile, I've spent hours on hours on hours in my room, desperately studying for tests in hopes that I could improve my grades but to no avail most of the time."
Itsuki pauses.
"Or are you trying to downplay your own strengths in order to try to make me feel better?" she asks.
Miku has sensed a growing front of coldness emanating from Itsuki halfway through her words, so by the time Itsuki presents this jabbing question to her, Miku at first isn't sure how to respond. But the same coldness that's stumped her simultaneously spurs Miku's mind ever onwards, because for some reason, even though this is Itsuki she's talking with, she's somewhat reminded of all the arguments she's ever had with Nino.
"Or maybe it's you who's feeling sorry for yourself," Miku counters. "If you're trying to guilt-trip me, then don't even bother, Nino's way better at it than you and she's been doing it for longer."
"I do not doubt that. However, whatever the case, none of this will change the fact that I cannot come home until Nino does first...even if I can only do so at the cost of being a burden to everyone else."
And the youngest quintuplet promptly turns to her older sister.
"But I should also apologize to you for not being as good of a sister as Nino has been to you. For this to be the first time for the two of us to have a serious conversation like this...it's a shame, isn't it?"
"What...?"
Unable to control herself, Miku, spurred on suddenly by a surge in confused anger, also turns sharply towards her fellow quintuplet.
"Nino, a better sister to me than you...?" she spits in a low voice, subconsciously keeping her voice down with how late it is at night, even though there's no one else around to hear her voice even if she did raise it, and it's not like the Uesugi family inside the office would hear either. "How can you say that? Nino and I have had more arguments between just the two of us than all the other arguments that've happened in our family combined! You call that 'being a good sister'?"
Itsuki pauses again.
"...well, perhaps not exactly a 'good' sister, but...it is certainly better than having a sibling that does not talk to you at all most of the time," she answers simply.
"That's a bunch of crap, Itsuki, and you know it. You've gotten into arguments with Nino too, haven't you?"
"Yes, I have. And it is precisely because of those arguments I have had with her that I, ironically enough, feel comfortable around her much of the time. Have you noticed all the times that Nino and I have gone out together to the city on weekends for lunch or to watch movies together? In fact, watching movies together has become our little thing that just the two of us do."
Itsuki slightly points a calm finger up at Miku.
"I am sure that you also have nuances in your relationship with Nino that only the two of you have, even within our family, that the rest of us are not aware of. And that is because we have come to know both who she is as a person and as our sister, even if we had to learn about her through fighting and arguing. We know how she will act, how she will behave, and what she is like in general."
The younger quintuplet then folds her arms slowly. Not aggressively, however.
"In comparison, what do the two of us know about each other? Not much, am I right?"
Not impressed by Itsuki's initiative, the third quintuplet merely narrows her eyes at back at her in almost a bored way.
"Yeah, I suppose we don't," Miku shrugs lightly. "I don't know about you, but the Itsuki I knew wouldn't ever punch her sister in the face, no matter what the circumstances were."
The sudden mention of that particular aspect of their fight silences Itsuki immediately, right as she's opening her mouth to respond.
"Because for as much as we fought, I know for a fact that neither Nino nor I ever came to actual blows. Sure, we'd bother everyone with how noisy we'd get sometimes arguing, we'd argue over the dumbest crap sometimes, and we'd argue anywhere, at any time. But neither of us ever once crossed the line to decide that hitting the other was the best action to take. No matter how bad our arguments got, they'd all be over within the day, and the next day we'd go about like they'd never happened. So if you claim to know Nino as well as I do or the rest of us do, what made you think that suddenly punching Nino in the face that day was how we'd normally go about settling an argument?"
Miku waits for Itsuki to respond, giving her time to assemble a rebuttal, but none comes.
"Itsuki, be honest with me right now: are you trying to stay away from us because of the fact that you managed to awaken your own Mystic Eyes? Because you think that maybe your Mystic Eyes are the reason why you acted rashly and lashed out at Nino yesterday? And because of that, you feel like you can't face us the same way, and you're buying time to think about how you're going to behave around us from now on?"
Finally, Itsuki finally speaks up, but only in sheer amazement that Miku was able to pinpoint with surgical precision the true reason why she's been insisting on not returning home.
"W-Wha...Miku, how did you..."
Sighing a little, the elder quintuplet closes her eyes briefly, then reopens them, putting her own magical blue Mystic Eyes on full display in this moonless night. The sight of a fellow pair of Mystic Eyes grips Itsuki's own, and Itsuki, still quite inexperienced in the handling of her own Eyes, can't stop her own pair from surfacing too.
"I think I should tell you about this first," Miku says quietly. "Back when Nino and I first discovered our own Mystic Eyes, there was one day when I lashed out at Nino myself. Do you remember the day when I had a bit of a standoff with our homeroom teacher?"
"Huh...? S-Standoff with our homeroom teacher...? Wait, when did this happen...?"
"Guh, never mind then. The important thing is that I got pissed off at Nino one day and I practically dragged her into a nearby alleyway while the two of us were walking back home, and that's when we realized that the two of us both had Mystic Eyes. Normally I wouldn't ever, like, manhandle anyone like that. Just like how I'm asking you if you'd ever normally hit someone, you'd be asking me the same thing if I told you about the run-in I had with Nino; the only difference is that I didn't actually hit her or anything, but it did get a little physical, more so than any of the arguments the two of us had in the past had ever gotten."
Miku quietly slides her hands into the pockets of her long skirt that she's worn specifically to ward against the relative chilliness of the night, even if it is in the middle of the summer.
"My point is that I was...I went through the same thing that you did. In a different context, in a different setting, in a different audience, the fight that I had with Nino could have easily blown up into something way worse, which is what ended up happening between you and Nino instead. But I still felt the same feelings that you are now. Things like...how would I be able to face Nino from now on, now that I practically dragged her into an alleyway to basically bully her? Was that kind of...violent behavior just part of who I really was as a person, or was that my Mystic Eyes' fault?"
"But it sounds like only Nino witnessed that. And you said that that happened when the two of you first found out that you had Mystic Eyes?" Itsuki replies. "So it is not as bad as the fight between me and Nino!"
"I agree, it wasn't. And I consider myself lucky because it wasn't. But that doesn't mean that I don't know what you're going through right now. Again, if things had happened differently, I could very easily be in your shoes right now, and our roles tonight would potentially be reversed." Miku slowly pulls one hand out of her skirt pocket to gently tuck part of her hair back over her shoulder. "We certainly haven't talked a whole lot as sisters, just the two of us. But we're still sisters at the end of the day. Quintuplets, even, if you'd like to go that far. The amount of interaction that we've had, or I guess the lack thereof, shouldn't stop us from trying to understand each other. And, I suppose along those lines, it shouldn't stop us from trying to get to know each other better from now on, either. That's why I want you to come back home, no matter how hard it is for you to do right now, because keeping to yourself about important things like this benefits no one, and especially not you."
Then, Miku lowers her voice, her facial expression darkening somewhat as her overall facade grows more timid and bashful.
"...we're family, after all, right? And...I'll try to do a better job of being an actual sister, too."
Itsuki stares for a moment.
"...I hope that does not involve forcing me to start calling you 'Miku-Onee-chan' like you got Yotsuba to do back in Hawaii," the youngest quintuplet says cautiously, taking an awkward step backwards.
"Oh come on, where did that come from!"
The sudden change in topic successfully derails the serious conversation between the two quintuplets as both of them slip into a small smattering of giggles that can only be made by a pair of high school girls enjoying one another's company.
"Well, if you want me to call you Onee-chan that badly, I shall have to consider it..." Itsuki adds, raising a finger up to her lips coyly. She has completely forgotten that her Mystic Eyes are still active, and so her softly glowing red eyes create a striking image of Itsuki that Miku has never seen.
"Guuhhhh...please don't tease me anymore..." Miku whimpers painfully, practically cringing at herself. "Besides, I...I really don't know...Yotsuba's the type to do that naturally, but...but I guess because we haven't really talked all that much, I just...I don't know if I can handle you calling me that..."
Before Miku can mentally prepare herself, Itsuki swoops in close and whispers right up in her older sister's face,
"What's the matter, Miku-Onee-chan?"
Surprisingly, not only does Miku buckle forward with how hard she ends up cringing, but Itsuki, too, slapped with her own mental collateral damage, pulls her face away to clench her hands around the rusty railing next to her to compose herself.
"...I regret...everything," the youngest quintuplet breathes heavily like she's just dodged a bullet or something. "I am not doing that again. EVER."
"Yeah...that might...be for the best..." Miku coughs a few times, trying her best to regain her own composure. "F-For some reason, that didn't...that wasn't..."
"It was awful!" Itsuki finishes for her sister. "Can you imagine if I called everyone else that? Thank goodness none of you insisted that I address any of you like that when we were younger!"
"I would hate to have to call Nino that every time, too. I could probably see myself talking to Ichika like that. But Nino? Ewwww..." Miku agrees miserably, sticking out her tongue in disgust. "Never mind that, then. Goodbye to that childhood fantasy..."
"Wait, so that means you actually did want me and Yotsuba to call you that when you were young after all!"
"I mean, yes, but...at the same time, not really, since I never insisted on it. And it would've been a waste of effort just seeing how our relationship turned out to be..."
The mention of their particular relationship brings the two quintuplets back down to earth, and the banter and air of camaraderie quickly exit the stage just as soon as they entered.
"Right back to where we left off, then..." Itsuki sighs shortly, gazing up at the empty black sky as her amused smile slowly bleeds off her face; the lack of any stars in the sky certainly doesn't help her mood from deteriorating slowly. "I think I should mention now that...I appreciate you telling me that you know what I'm going through, Miku. I feel like you wouldn't have been able to tell exactly why I was planning to stay here at Uesugi-kun's house."
"But now that I think about it, doesn't that mean that you basically lied right to Fuutarou's face? Weren't you the one among the five of us who was the worst at lying?" Miku pouts a little at her younger sister. "What's going on, Itsuki? Did your Mystic Eyes give you the power to lie through your teeth or something?"
"N-No! I just - I just - I didn't mean to lie to him like that!" Itsuki stammers quickly, scrambling to defend her dignity. "At the time, it didn't feel like I was lying to him! But...but now, now that we've had this conversation, I guess I'm forced to realize that I did in fact feed him a white lie..."
"Then that means you got me good. I'm impressed you were able to give me the slip like that, Itsuki."
The sudden entrance of Uesugi Fuutarou's voice makes both of the quints jump; for Itsuki, upon recognizing the voice, she somehow jumps a second time as she spins in the direction of the voice. Behind her walks into view their tutor, who lowers his hand after adjusting his snapback cap before rendezvousing with the two quints having a nighttime chat.
"Fuutarou! Are you alright? Did anything happen while you were out today?" Miku asks swiftly but quietly, surging forward a few steps to greet him with relief and joy etched all over her face.
"I'm fine, yeah. I just got back from bringing Nino back to her hotel room, and now I'm here to check up on Itsuki, so you can imagine my surprise when I realized you were here chatting it up with her," Fuutarou explains concisely, giving the two quintuplets a firm look. "What's the occasion tonight? Did you bring Itsuki some of her stuff that she'll need or what?"
"Um, yeah, I did. We were just...talking a little bit together before you came," Miku explains shortly.
"How did you even get here? Late-night taxi or something?" Fuutarou asks, narrowing an eye at the third quint, who tenses up suddenly with the implications that come with her tutor's question and is forced to nod again. "And how exactly were you planning to get back home? Unless you intended to stay the night, which sounds a bit strange..."
"I-I didn't...think about that part...sorry..." Miku hangs her head a little. "I was more focused on getting Itsuki her stuff and...and talking about a few things."
"That so. Don't worry, I'm not mad at you or anything. A bit too busy to be angry at much of anything, really..." Giving off a big sigh, from which the two quintuplets can sense their tutor's exhaustion merely by hearing it, Fuutarou gazes back over at Miku. "At the very least, I appreciate you telling me the truth from the get go like this, unlike what Itsuki did, apparently. Since when did you get so good at lying? Weren't you supposed to be one of the worst ones at it, aside from maybe Yotsuba?"
"I-It was not a lie at the time, I swear!" Itsuki pleads with her tutor, though she remembers to keep her voice down. "I...I only realized over the course of today that...that I was in fact staying here for other reasons as well, but the initial reason was truly because I wanted Nino to go back home first before me."
To Itsuki's surprise, Fuutarou nods back. "That makes sense, actually. For someone who's not very good at lying, the way you'd have to lie properly without others noticing immediately is to say something that technically isn't a lie, so I'll bite."
Sighing a breath of relief, the youngest quintuplet gives off another small smile. "I suppose this is one of those times when it is convenient that you are quite smart, huh?" she remarks.
"Yeah, and you know what's also convenient, knowing that your tutor can run around making sure everyone's all safe and sound, as much as they can be..." Fuutarou rolls his eyes somewhat. This counter-remark from the young mage causes Itsuki's forehead to plummet into an apologetic bow.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I didn't mean for all of this to happen, either! I really am...!"
"On that topic, Fuutarou, what did you do all day today? For you to come back home this late at night, never mind why I'm here, what have you been doing?" Miku points out to their tutor. "Since, you know, you didn't stop by at all today to tutor us...we didn't call you or anything since we felt like you were busy, and we didn't want to bother you..."
Sighing a second time, the young tutor lifts up his snapback to run his hand over his black hair, as he is prone to do at times.
"...After I brought Yotsuba back to your place, I had to go track Nino down again," he reveals, and his tone of voice makes it clear that he's not entirely comfortable sharing this information with them. Perhaps he feels obligated to let them know, as one of their sisters is directly involved.
"You had to track her down again...? What on Earth does that mean...?" Itsuki wonders aloud; she is becoming alarmed at this peculiar choice of words from her classmate.
"So, let me explain...after yesterday night, once I recovered Nino and Yotsuba and brought them to the Mariott downtown, I treated their wounds and made sure they were all - "
"WOUNDS?!" At this, Itsuki cannot contain her outburst, and a look of horrified shock immediately seizes her face to go along with this. "Wait a minute, were they - were they attacked again!?"
Sighing shortly for a third time in a row, Fuutarou, having anticipated this kind of reaction from the youngest sibling, fits his cap back onto his head. "They were. You didn't tell her about it, Miku?"
Miku, looking rather puzzled herself, slowly shakes her head. "I...I thought Itsuki already knew. I was...under the impression that you told her."
"Nah, I didn't. I was out the whole day today; the last time I talked to Itsuki was yesterday night - technically two nights ago by this point, the night that the fight between her and Nino occurred. And I didn't call her or anything either. So this has to be the first time that she's hearing about what happened."
"And just exactly what happened? Please spare me no details!" Itsuki insists. Her eyes, still with their Mystic Eyes active, are peeled open wide, glued to Fuutarou's face, unblinking.
Uesugi gazes with a rather jaded look of his own back at Itsuki. "You sure? It's just going to make you feel worse."
"...I know it will," Itsuki murmurs, averting her eyes for a moment before shakily raising them up to meet with Fuutarou's black ones. "But...I am at least partly responsible for all that has taken place. I must know."
"Aight, then. Long story short, after I woke up, I tracked Nino and Yotsuba down first to the public park up in the northwest sector, the new park with the artificial lake and free boat rides. At that time, they were still doing fine; Nino obviously didn't want to talk to me, and I left them there since Yotsuba would look after Nino for me and I needed know where you were. I think while I was talking with you that night, Nino and Yotsuba were taken by the guy who I told you is targeting the five of you. I then tracked his ass down to the same warehouse from before, the one where you were all taken hostage the first time because Nino was an idiot and trying to buy drugs. Sick joke, I know. I managed to chase him out and brought the two to the hotel, where I spent the night treating the injuries they had. But earlier this morning, while I was sleeping, Nino slipped out of the hotel and went off somewhere, while Yotsuba was still in the room, so when Yotsuba woke up, I took her back to your place and then set off to go find Nino again."
The two quintuplets listen to their tutor's synopsis of the events of the past thirty-six hours with varying degrees of difficulty.
"I did find her again and had a bit of a talk with her, and somehow I was able to convince her to come back. For now, she's staying in the same hotel room that I booked for them, at the downtown Mariott, and she's in the same boat as you, Itsuki, where she doesn't want to be the one who goes back home first. And so now I'm just coming back from the Mariott to check on you again."
A short pause ensues following the end of Fuutarou's testimony. Both Fuutarou and Miku have their eyes fixed on Itsuki, who's looking positively crushed under the mental weight of responsibility that she has claimed she ought to take. Unable to stand seeing Itsuki like this, Miku tears her own Mystic Eyes away and faces her tutor.
"So...so Nino is alright right now, right?"
"Yeah she is, don't worry about her." Fuutarou puckers up his lips a little, his eyes drifting over to Itsuki for a moment before drifting back to Miku. "The issue right now is that I can't tutor you all at once because Nino and Itsuki both refuse to come home. Today is, what, Wednesday, right? Finals is Friday, so I have two days to somehow convince the two of them to return so that we might have at least one full day of review for your finals before we're all fucked."
"But then again, you said that Nino doesn't want to come back, so..." Miku mumbles dejectedly.
"Right. So depending on what kind of answer Itsuki gives me right now, I'll either have to cut my losses and tutor you all individually, at least for Nino and Itsuki, or the two of them can reconcile and make everyone's lives a little bit easier. We've already lost the past two days to due everything that's happened, and those were days we couldn't afford to lose. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that now, I'm genuinely concerned if I'll be able to keep my job past this weekend."
"Huh? P-Papa's still going to fire you if we fail our finals this week too?" Miku wonders aloud in alarm. "But didn't he already impose those terms on you for our midterms, and now he's doing it again? Why?"
Fuutarou simply shrugs wide. "Welcome to the corporate world, Miku. Despite my job being not so corporate, that doesn't change the fact that I have an employer, and if I don't do whatever my boss wants me to do the exact way he's specified, then I won't be employed by him for much longer. That being said, I'm only under the assumption this time that he's gonna fire my ass if he finds out that you all trashed your finals; he hasn't, like, called me into his office to tell me that those same conditions from before are still active, per se, but knowing him, he's probably expecting the same results from last time. And I can't have Nino covering for my ass again either. So I have to assume the worst if things don't work out quite as planned."
"I don't mean to make things even worse, but...after we were done studying today, Yotsuba went out to go practice with the track team again," Miku also informs; she full well knows that she is betraying Yotsuba's trust, for the fourth quint had made sure to let Miku and Ichika know not to let Fuutarou know what she was up to. "She'll probably keep practicing with the team this week too, so...technically it's not just Itsuki and Nino who're giving you a hard time."
Fuutarou rolls his eyes again, this time with a truly annoyed look on his face. "For fuck's sake...but I guess I'm not all that surprised, given it's Yotsuba. Someone from the track team must've pressured her back into training with them...makes me really wanna go find out who it is and make sure they don't do that again..."
"...I don't think you should be getting other people involved in this."
"I know, I won't. I said I would like to, but I know where to draw the line..."
"Uesugi-kun."
Both Miku and Fuutarou turn to Itsuki, whose voice that's now suddenly filled with determination strikes the two of them as odd, given what she was looking like a moment ago, and sure enough, the youngest quintuplet stands before them with a resolute look on her face, contrary to the shock and dismay that was there earlier.
"I have decided. I will not stay here past tonight," she declares quietly. "Tomorrow, you will tutor us just as you have...with all five of us together."
"Cool, that's good to hear," Fuutarou replies without missing a beat, looking a little unimpressed himself. "And how do you suggest that we go about doing that?"
"Tomorrow, I shall accompany you to the hotel Nino is currently staying in. I will...attempt to reconcile with her. No matter how long it takes, I will convince her to return home with me, so that...that way, we would come back home at the same time, so neither of us would need to concern ourselves with who's conceded the conflict between us."
"True, that'd be pretty convenient. And since I was able to get Nino to calm down a little, I think that might actually work, assuming that you really are motivated to settle this whole thing," Fuutarou muses, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "I have to ask you first though, why this sudden change of heart? I thought you were just gonna stake out here until Nino goes back?"
"Well, is it not obvious?" Itsuki holds her arms out a little to gesticulate. "I am trying to make amends for my share of actions that caused everything in the past two days to happen. It is as you say, we have lost precious time that we should have been using to study for our finals with you; we cannot afford to lose any more. If the issue now lies with me and Nino refusing to come home, then I feel that I must take it upon myself to go to Nino and talk this out with her. That, and..."
Gripping the back of her right elbow, Itsuki looks down at her tutor's feet.
"...I can hardly imagine myself being able to study properly, especially not after hearing about what has happened to the others. I just...do not know if I would be able to concentrate on much of anything with this kind of a guilty conscience."
Fuutarou nods curtly. "Alright...now that I've got Itsuki's cooperation on this, here's what we'll do: Itsuki'll stay here for the night, since it might still be a bit awkward for her to return home tonight, which means I'll have to take Miku back home. Tomorrow'll be another no-school day for the five of you; I'll meet up with Miku first, and then we'll come pick you up before heading to the Mariott. I'll leave you two to talk it out with Nino there; if you can't manage to convince her by the end of the day, then I'll just have to tutor you all individually; I don't know what you'll wanna do in the case that Nino doesn't want to come back home with you, Itsuki."
"Erm...well...I have not...thought that far..." the youngest quint murmurs shyly.
"Don't forget about Yotsuba as well, Fuutarou," Miku reminds him. "She'll probably be out practicing with the track team tomorrow like she was today, now that she's committed to helping them out."
"Ugh...yeah, gotta do something about her too, I guess..." The young mage also takes a moment of silence to deliberate on the situation before raising his head again, a look of slight epiphany now occupying his eyes. "Hm...I think what I'll do is...after I drop you two off at the hotel so that you two can handle things with Nino, I'll track Yotsuba down and see if I can intercept her, assuming she's out training with the rest of the track team, and try to convince her to lay off the track practice. I don't know why I even have to do this in the first place, given how much I've drilled the importance of studying and passing your goddamn finals into those dense heads of yours, but - "
"Hey, you of all people have no right to say that we have dense heads...!" Miku pouts back up at Fuutarou.
"Then it takes one to know one, let's leave it at that," Fuutarou shrugs nonchalantly. "But we'll go with that plan in case no one else has any immediate objections or alternative suggestions."
"Well, I have one regarding Yotsuba," Itsuki raises her hand slightly, even though she need not do so. "Why not simply talk to Yotsuba before she goes to practice? Like, sometime in the morning or so? Is there a reason why you feel like you must meet Yotsuba in the middle of her practice?"
"Because here's how it's gonna go down if I meet her at home: I'll yap my butt off at her, and the moment I leave with Miku to come pick you up, she'll just slip out of the house and go train with the track team anyway," Fuutarou groans. "I don't know about you, but to me, Yotsuba feels like the kinda girl who's gonna be really hard to convince otherwise once she's set her mind to something. And this is sports we're talking about here, it's gonna be damn tough making her change her mind for good since to her, something like practicing with the track team is a cakewalk. It's best if I catch her in the act...though, you do bring up a good point, I could talk to her first before we leave, so that when I do catch her red-handed, I'll have more leverage to work with."
"Just...try not to be too harsh on her, please? She out of all of us deserves it the least...at least compared to what Nino and I have done..." Itsuki asks.
"Well, I'll try not to...but if Yotsuba still insists on doing other shit right before finals when I've repeatedly told her over the weeks to not do that, you'll forgive me for making a bit of a deal out of it, but we'll see how it all goes down." Fuutarou then waves his hand a bit at the two quints before him. "And I notice both of you still have your Mystic Eyes active. Were you talking about them or something?"
Having totally forgotten about the fact that their magical eyes are exposed, both siblings quickly hide them from view so that their normal blue eyes come back to mask them.
"I...I was going to ask about them to Itsuki...since we all basically know that she has them now," Miku mumbles quickly, looking away from her tutor. "But then you arrived, so...we kind of forgot about them."
"Then while we're on the topic, how have you been feeling today, Itsuki?" Fuutarou turns to the younger. "Because now that I think about it, for both Nino and Miku, they've had symptoms leading up to their own Mystic Eye activations that they've had for some time. But as far as I know, you haven't shown any such symptoms, and your own Eyes seem to have activated without any warning."
"Er, is that a...bad thing?" Looking a little nervous, Itsuki puts her apprehensive eyes back up at her tutor.
"Not necessarily, but at least with Nino and Miku, they've been dealing with these kinds of magical symptoms for a while now, so if they were to suffer any magical consequences of having active Mystic Eyes, generally it'll be more of those same symptoms...or so I think, anyway. With you, Itsuki, since you've shown no such magical symptoms, if you do begin having side effects of having active Mystic Eyes, then I won't know what you're dealing with initially, and bad shit could happen if we can't diagnose them properly."
Another short but painful pause ensues, which is followed up by Miku, who asks,
"...Fuutarou, by this point...is it even possible for us to stay out of the magical world? Is it even possible for us to still lead normal lives?"
The two quintuplets watch their tutor's reaction, and Fuutarou goes from giving Miku his attention to looking away, past the railing next to him and out towards the rest of the parking lot, which both quints have done a few times themselves over the course of their conversation.
"A part of me still believes that it is, and I'm gonna do everything I damn well can to maintain that. But...as the past forty-eight hours have shown, maybe that's not possible after all. It certainly would be possible if I only had to work with one or two of you, but you're quintuplets, so...I don't know. Especially when basically all of you except Yotsuba have these things called Mystic Eyes, which normal people definitely shouldn't have..."
"How did we even end up with these in the first place, Uesugi-kun? For four out of the five of us to have them, is this something that is genetic? Something that we either inherited from our mother, or...or maybe a genetic mutation?" Itsuki blurts out loud, now that she's unable to hold this pressing question in any longer. "Perhaps either Nino or Miku has already asked you this, but - but how is it that all our lives up until now, we have had no idea about these Mystic Eyes that we now possess?"
"And along those lines...Fuutarou, were you hired as our tutor to do more than just tutoring?" Feeling emboldened by her sister's initiative, Miku also weighs in on Fuutarou. "Because...the more I think about it, the more I think about everything that's happened - "
"I mean, I've already explained that part, right? It should be self-evident, anyhow. The five of you are being targeted by bad guys who have magical capabilities, so obviously only other mages can deal with them."
"No, not that part, I get that much. If that's all there was to it, then I wouldn't even be bringing this up at all. It's specifically because we have Mystic Eyes that makes this all feel a little weird to me. Like...like Papa knew that part about us, that he knew that we were mages from the very beginning and he never told us."
"Well, I can't really comment on that since I don't know what he knows; I'm just his employee, after all. And if you wanna go there, then you have to ask yourselves, why didn't your mom tell you girls either? All those questions are ones I don't have answers to, sorry."
Turning his left wrist to glance down at his smartwatch, Fuutarou frowns deeply.
"It's already half past two? Shit, both of you really should be in bed by now, we'll talk more tomorrow if there's anything else you wanna discuss," the young mage insists, carefully opening the unlocked door of the office to usher Itsuki back inside. "And next time, try not to hang around like this in the open with your Mystic Eyes out; you'll make it really easy for other mages to track you down, and I've already been dealing with the aftermath of that happening."
"Good night, Itsuki...I'll see you tomorrow, I guess," Miku calls after her sister quietly, and Itsuki nods, reciprocating the sentiment before Fuutarou closes the door and waits for Itsuki to lock it on the other side. "Um...so, how are we going to go back home...?"
"Let's make it simple - up we go."
"Hyaaa - !"
Unable to stop herself from yelping a little in surprise, the third quintuplet becomes quite flustered once she realizes that Fuutarou has smoothly swept her off her feet and is now holding her in the princess-carry stance.
"F-Fuutarou, th-th-this is - "
"I know what it is, but if you've got a better idea of how you wanna be carried, I'm open to suggestions. Otherwise, we're taking off."
Looking down at his student and classmate for an objection, Fuutarou observes Miku's rapidly reddening face hide from his view, behind her soft and delicate hands that quickly rise to provide the mental shield that she needs to protect herself from Fuutarou's prying eyes.
"I'll take that as a no. Okay, try to hang on as best you can."
Miku barely manages to wrap her hands around Fuutarou's neck before he hops onto the railing in front of them and bounds up high into the somewhat chilly air of the summer night. The cool breeze generated by the speeds at which the young mage leaps through the night sweeps Miku's hair past her face, which makes her feel quite self-conscious, as normally her bangs hide much of her face, but she slowly calms down once she realizes that Fuutarou is too busy transporting her to safety to take a look down at her.
Wanting to break the silence, especially with the embarrassment of being princess-carried back home bubbling in the back of her mind, Miku decides to ask the question she's been mulling over in her head for the past day.
"Fuutarou...how likely is it that...you'd be willing to teach us, um...m...magic...?"
"Not very."
Immediately rejected, Miku whimpers a little, but she can't really say much after that since she rather expected this kind of answer.
"...but I understand why you'd ask. And I don't blame you."
Miku begins to tuck her head in against the front of Fuutarou's shoulder. It's pretty uncomfortable, but if it's Fuutarou, she doesn't mind.
"Why do you think I asked?" she inquires.
"To protect your family, no? That'd be the reason I'd ask if I were you."
"It's part of it, yeah. But...I want to help you, Fuutarou. I don't like the feeling of knowing that you're running around the city doing everything you can to keep me and my sisters safe. I don't want to feel like I'm just dragging you down all the time, having to be someone who needs to be protected. If nothing else, I just want to ease a bit of the responsibilities that you have."
Closing her blue eyes, Miku finds herself basking in the noticeable warmth radiating from Fuutarou's body, the same familiar, reassuring warmth that she's felt whenever she's spent time with the boy she is now very clearly in love with.
"I can't stay like this forever. I don't want to, either. I don't want to stay a liability for the rest of the time that I know you. Maybe it won't happen anytime soon, but...just like how we've all been relying on you for our protection and tutoring, I want to...be someone whom you can rely on too."
"I see. But what would I rely on you for?"
"Urk..."
The candid, blunt response characteristic of the young mage smacks Miku right in her ego, but even as she reels mentally and emotionally from this, Miku manages to remain steadfast.
"...I'll be honest, I don't know. But...if you give me a chance...maybe...maybe we'll find out. At least I've been practicing cooking, so...it's...it's not like I have no chance whatsoever..."
Fuutarou nods curtly. "And I'm looking forward to your progress. It's been fun learning how to cook together, even if we've had to deal with Nino."
The two of them both share a few chuckles at their experiences receiving cooking tutelage from the second quintuplet.
"...by the way, couldn't you have just teleported us back home?" Miku asks softly, wondering if her voice will still be heard with how quietly she said this, which it has.
"I could have, yeah."
"Then why didn't you?"
Miku hears her tutor sigh lightly.
"Let's just say that...right now, I feel a little more comfortable physically being around you girls. The longer...the better."
The lips of the third quintuplet part slowly, remaining agape for a few moments before relapsing into a small, soft smile that is visible only for a second before Miku buries her face once more against the front of her tutor's shoulder.
"...I want to be with you for a little bit longer too," she murmurs into the side of his chest. "Just like this."
"You too, huh. That's a relief..."
"Fuutarou?"
"Yeah?"
"Thank you for doing all this for us."
Only the winds respond immediately to Miku, but she patiently waits for him to answer her, which she knows he will.
"...anytime."