"I love you too, Haru," Kuroji says, fondly exasperated.

"Tōkan-kun, stay over at our place tonight?" he asks. "It... would feel good, to have you there, so you can be with us if... if anything comes up."

"—yeah, sure, I can do that. I'll come visit him here tomorrow, too."

"I know you will."

"We should go, then. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Bye~~~! I'll miss you~~~~!"

Kuroji rolls his eyes but gives Harutsugu a quick peck on the lips before leading Tōkan back to the car.

"...you know, Kuroji-san..." he says, once they're driving. "Your relationship with Haru-san gives me a lot of hope."

"Hope?"

"Yeah. I... knew that in theory it was at all possible for an alpha/omega couple to work, but... you two are so happy. I didn't really believe it, before."

Kuroji smiles, flushing softly. "I see what you mean. I'm a very lucky man, Harutsugu is everything I could have hoped for. And... it may be hard to believe, but it only gets better, from where you are. Our relationship has only grown over all these years, I couldn't imagine feeling the way I do, right now, back when I first started dating Haru."

"That only makes me more excited for the future."

"Good. You should be."

He smiles to himself and leans back and against the window, grabbing his phone again to idly browse Twitter.

Everything will be fine. This will be remembered as a scary but ultimately pointless situation that lasted a week, if that.

Then he sees a post and freezes for two seconds before saying, "That asshole."

"—huh? Is everything alright Tōkan-kun?"

"No, it's not," he says, scrolling slowly down the webpage he's reading. "It's actually worse than I'd thought. This whole thing is my father's fault."

"...it is? How do you know?"

He runs his hand through his hair and says, "I guess I could be wrong, just... Today he was at the inauguration of a new hotel owned by the Kokonoe group, and he had my cousin Kokonoe Dai be the one to cut the tape. Which is basically telling the world that Dai is his heir, or at least heavily hinting that way. I'd never seen Dai with him before, he's a year older than me and from a less important branch of the family..."

"That's... a lot of politicking within a family," Kuroji says, frowning.

"You tell me." Sigh. "So this is a message to me, in a way, he's saying that if I don't shape up he'll disown me, look here he even already found a replacement and I should stop feeling safe in my position."

"This is really hostile. ...but what does it have to do with Inori-kun?"

"It's hard to explain. It's... a lot of different pieces coming together into a more coherent picture if it's him. Last Friday, that whole thing came out of nowhere in a way that doesn't make sense without... uh, enemy action. And then this today, especially after Ōta-san mentioned all of the costs and barriers that are being somehow overcome, the Hirune family doesn't have that much money, but my father does. It all makes sense as a whole if I imagine that my father is trying to remove Inori-kun from the picture and either remove me with him, if I won't leave him, because then my reputation will be tarnished by association, or force me to cut ties and become a proper heir.

"I know it sounds like kind of guessing but I... I'm usually right about these things."

"Everything I hear about this man makes me like him less and less."

"Try being raised by him." He covers his eyes and looks away. "So it's really, actually my fault that this is happening to Inori. It literally just would not be happening if it weren't for me."