How We Met Again

Chapter 3: Not All Things Last Forever

Over the course of the following week, Yotsuba and I met up after school each day to study. The thing that struck me the most was how bad she was at most of her subjects, apart from language arts. Math especially -- her abilities were just dismal.

"You'd never actually learned what a variable was before now, had you?" I sighed.

"Nope! One day, I was just happily doing multiplication and division, and then boooooom! Suddenly there were English letters everywhere!"

"Ok, then let's start from the beginning I guess..."

I wasn't really tutoring her, per se. I probably spent about fifteen percent of the time she was there answering questions. Another ten percent or so was just... talking. The remaining seventy-five percent was productive studying, more or less.

The right balance.

I twirled my pencil in my hand, staring down at the question in front of me -- a somewhat tricky geometry problem.

There's no way things would be this easy if I had taken the job with the volleyball demon. She probably would have spent the whole time fighting me, and biting my head off.

Suddenly, a thought occurred to me as Yotsuba cheered happily at having been able to solve a linear equation.

That tutoring job... it was offering five times the going rate, right?

I glanced over at the gleeful redhead.

...and there are five of them. Quintuplets.

Dawning horror.

I would have had to tutor all five of them. Probably all at once.

Living hell on earth.

I had definitely dodged a bullet there, even more-so than I had already believed.

"Hey, Uesugi-san," Yotsuba said, confused. "Th-this question has two sets of equations for two variables. How do I solve it?!"

I sighed, and leaned over the table to teach Yotsuba about the magical world of variable substitution.

The next day, in the early hours of the morning, I woke up with a start. The apartment was still mostly dark save for the weak pre-dawn light filtering in through the window, and I could hear my dad snoring on the futon next to me. Raiha was splayed out on her own futon, her blanket no longer covering her. Clearly, she had rolled about in her sleep.

Despite the lack of light, I felt strangely wired. I sat up, and heaved Raiha's blanket over top of her, so that it covered her up properly. My brotherly duties complete I rose to my feet, and in the little light I had to work with I attempted to find clothes to get dressed. As I checked my phone, I saw that it was 5:03 am, a fact which explained the minute-by-minute strengthening of the sunlight coming under the window curtain.

I looked around the small apartment, and a sudden urge took me.

I want to go for a walk.

Finding a scrap of paper, I wrote a quick note explaining myself to Raiha, and stuck it to the fridge with a magnet. I then stepped outside, breathing in the crisp early-morning air.

At 5:07am, the streets were largely devoid of traffic, though some early commuters were beginning to take to the roads. I walked along the sidewalk near my house, and revelled in how calm and quiet it was. It was also a little chilly -- as expected of early September. Luckily, I'd checked the weather before leaving the apartment, and had brought a coat.

I walked for what felt like hours, but in reality was probably closer to twenty minutes. In my wanderings, I eventually stumbled across a small park which I had never been to before despite its relative proximity to my home. Naturally, it was empty, but I sat on the swing and pushed myself back and forth for a bit. The traffic on the street nearby had slowly but steadily increased since I had left -- perhaps a car every two or three minutes.