"And a lead pipe! A-and a school uniform with a red shirt," says one of his classmates, an alpha called Hōji.

"We got nailed from behind!" says the other, Karato.

Tōkan peers at both of them with a thoughtful expression, looking up at them from the bench he's sitting on on the school rooftop. He opens his mouth—

—but before he can say anything his friend Subaru says, "It was probably Yamada Inori, from Yoshikiri High."

"You know him?"

"I know of him," he says, shaking his head. "Rumours. They say he shows up alone, with the mask and lead pipe, and beats people up. He's like a wild dog."

Tōkan looks at the other two again. "For no reason?"

Karato shudders under the weight of Tōkan's gaze and says, "No reason!" in a near-squeak.

"Maybe he's got it out for alpha schools," muses Subaru. "We seem to be his main target. But he's not in a gang or anything. Maybe he's a beta or omega that hates alphas."

"No fucking way!"

"Betas are one thing but there's no way he's an omega. An omega wouldn't treat an alpha like that."

"Omegas just—"

Tōkan gives her a look.

...she turns away. "They're not that physically strong," is what she mumbles.

"Well, find him for me. I think I wanna have a chat."

Tōkan is a popular kid in a popular school, so it's easy to get word out and find someone who knows someone who knows Inori and can get a message to him. By the end of the schoolday they've got a meeting scheduled, if you can call it that, at the nearby storeroom.

So there the four of them wait, in awkward silence, which of course is exactly as Tōkan wants. He has a suspicion about those two and he's usually right about his suspicions. He bets this Inori dude is going to confirm it.

After a while of waiting they start to get a bit fidgety, though.

"Hey, uh, do we have to be here too?" asks Hōji.

"Yep," Tōkan replies, and that's that.

But they aren't kept waiting for very long. He shows up, as promised: alone, a mask covering the lower half of his face, one end of the pipe held in his right hand, the other end resting on his shoulder.

"Yamada Inori, hmm?"

Yeah, he's definitely an omega.

"What's it to you? You wanna fight?" He flicks his wrist so the pipe's other end makes an arc all the way to the ground, clanging loudly.

Tōkan raises both eyebrows. "You don't recognise them." A statement, not a question.

"Who?" And for what seems to be the first time he looks at the other three.

That's when they're hit with it, all four of them at the same time: a wave of pheromones strong enough to straightforwardly pierce through all of their tolerants wafts over, carried by the wind.

Tōkan seems unaffected by it, but the other three all stagger back almost in unison.

"Wh—these pheromones—what—" stammers Subaru.