"—she and Karato tried to rape a middle schooler having her first heat and Inori ran into them and beat them up, I was mad at them, they kept making excuses."

    "You're... dating the guy who beat them up? Damn."

"Naoko—"

    She lifts her hands in surrender. "I know, I know, that was shit of them, just, yeah, I can get why they'd be pissed off." She elbows Tamiki who blinks and also grabs a couple of bentō boxes from her bag.

"Do the two of you always have more than one of those? It's not even lunchtime."

    "I like sharing," says Tamiki. "And Naoko does too even if she likes to pretend she doesn't. She's got an image to keep, see." Naoko elbows her again and she grins.

"...these are for us?"

        "Unless you have your own then this one's mine," says Naoko.

"—uh, yeah, keep it, except, it's not lunch?"

        "Yeah but we figured Tōkan was gonna be bummed out up here and food always cheers me up."

"You were right, I am bummed out." He puts his cigarette out and accepts Tamiki's box. "So, I see you got over yourself?"

    "...you're still fucking Subaru, right?" says asks.

Subaru chokes on his smoke and turns away to cough it out. Damnit, he'd been doing such a good job of not thinking about it until then, and now it's back on his mind and he has no idea what to do about it.

...probably nothing. Definitely nothing while Inoue and Tanaka are here, but... Tōkan's got enough on his plate already.

He clears his throat after he's no longer hacking his lungs out and looks at the other three again, trying to catch up with the conversation he lost.

"...suppose you guys know anything about that shit."

    "About what?" wonders Tamiki.

"Hōji suddenly acquiring cronies and getting them to beat me up, the police thing..."

    "Police thing?" Naoko looks equally confused.

"Damn. You really don't know, huh. Hōji is pressing charges against Inori for aggravated assault."

        "...he's an omega. Who in this country would believe her that an omega beat her up? Hell, what cops would believe that, and what cops would even take it seriously? Joke of the year, scrawny omega boy beats two alphas up at the same time, on his own."

"Inori was in heat at the time, too," adds Subaru.

    "...Yamada beat Karato and Hōji up, on his own, while in heat? What the fuck, Subaru."

"The epithet is apt." Boy's a demon.

"Remember the sports storeroom thing back then?"

    "Sto—that was you?" asks Tamiki.

Okay, Subaru... doesn't want to listen to that. He looks away again, tuning their conversation out and continuing to smoke and think. Tōkan was right, it is weird as fuck that all of that happened, in a way Subaru's having a lot of trouble with, now that it's been pointed out. What happened? What changed? It can't just have been people confirming that Tōkan was dating Inori, can it...? It doesn't click.

The conversation suddenly stops, though, when Tōkan's phone rings and he looks—well, kinda scared, is what he looks, when he sees who's calling. "Moshi moshi? ...motherfuckers. Have you called Ōta-san? ...I'll call her. When? ...fuckers. But it's good that it took them this long, I think, means they're struggling to build a case—this isn't legal advice. I'll call Ōta-san. I'll be on may way to your place soon." He gets to his feet right then and starts pacing. "Of course, I'll do that now. Thank you for calling me, Haru."

    Tamiki and Naoko look rather spooked. "What happened?" Tamiki asks.

"My guess is the police decided to detain Inori. Fuck."

Tōkan is already on the phone again, though, and gets straight to business. "Yeah. Inori just got detained by the police." Pause. "I hope so. Thank you so much, Ōta-san." Another pause, then he hangs up and is striding away. "I have to go, I'm sorry," he says, throwing the other three an apologetic look and flying off.

The girls exchange looks, then look at Subaru. "He doesn't mean the Ōta I think he means, does he?" asks Tamiki.

Subaru sighs. "Yeah he does. They're on the case."

"Wow," breathes Naoko. "That's, uh. That's something."

"Yeah. But good, probably. And if Inori was detained... then they have something to do, which is good. The whole thing could end today."

The girls look dubious but don't contradict him and decide to change the subject to something lighter.

Subaru has a hard time paying attention to class for the rest of the day, and to the extent the "miasma" is affecting him he's thankful for it; he's really not in the mood for the alpha teenager version of socialisation. Tōkan texts him when he and Inori's parents get to the precinct, and then much later when Ōta Makino is out of the interrogation room with news. There's something about his texts that makes Subaru think he finally made the connection between the lawyers and Subaru's ex, which he guesses was to be expected, really. But Tōkan doesn't press, and Subaru doesn't go there either, and they end the conversation on the note that Subaru wants to be told of any further developments.

When Aoki arrives at the restaurant he's having dinner with Subaru at he says without preamble, "So your boy's managed to charm the pants off Mother, too."

"—hello to you, too, Aoki, nice to see you, how was your weekend?"

The omega waves a dismissive hand and flops down onto the chair across the table from Subaru. "She's having a little bit of a 'never meet your heroes' moment with Yamada, though."

"Oh?"

"Not, like, awfully so, she said he was very headstrong and stubborn and that that's good because he wouldn't get bullied by cops or lawyers or anyone."

Subaru smiles, a bit. "But also getting him to cooperate is like trying to herd a cat. A feral cat. A hungry feral cat who has just noticed you're made of meat."

"—that's evocative. Something like that, yeah, she didn't say so but she never says shit, I just guess it anyway." Shrug. "She's optimistic, though."