"From everything Tōkan's told me about the man? Yeah. People have their places in society's well-oiled machine and leaving one's place is just as bad as committing a crime. Same kind of thing, to him."

"Wow is my mother going to enjoy crushing him."

Subaru lets out a strangled laugh.

Aoki grins that same sharklike grin again. "She eats men like him for breakfast. That kind of mentality right there? That makes it personal. And I wasn't joking when I said not even Kokonoe Tochima has enough money to convince anyone who can stay toe to toe with my parents to work this case. It is too obviously going to fail."

"I hope for Inori's sake you're right."

"Hey, hey, stop that." Aoki snaps his fingers in front of Subaru's face a couple of times. "You're on a date with me not with Yamada," and he's blushing a bit as he says that, "so let's change the subject from him."

He blinks a few times. "Date?"

"Oh please don't tell me you fell for my lie on Friday, do I have to make everything explicit? If you tell me you're exploring your sexuality again after growing up a bit and I tell you I'm not letting you experiment with me obviously you should plausibly deniably experiment with me anyway."

Subaru bites his lip. "Aoki, I don't, don't want to lead you on again and end up disappointing you—"

"We'll just be grownups about it, then. Take it slow, not jump to any conclusions, that shit."

"Why?"

"'Cause I have feelings for you, numbnuts. And you have feelings for me, too, you may be totally in love with your boy but you're not zero in love with me."

Subaru grimaces. "I'm not, I'm, I want to get over him."

"...okay that makes this sound a little bit more like a bad idea."

"Yeah."

Aoki harrumphs but the waiter chooses this moment to ask them what they'll want for dinner. They scramble to look through their options on the menu, which they've been ignoring so far, and eventually Subaru picks for both of them since Aoki sucks at making choices.

When the waiter's gone he says, "Nah, let's do it anyway. We're teenagers, now's when we get to fuck up and pick up the pieces afterwards if we break. Which is not to say we shouldn't still be smart about it, obviously, like I dunno maybe you do need a big fat knot to get sexually satisfied—"

Subaru chokes on his spit and starts coughing.

"—but if that's the case that doesn't mean we can't still be friends. Ride it, figure out who we are, you know?"

After coughing some more and drinking some of the complimentary water to clear his throat he says, "You know, I think I know what my type is."

"Your type?"

"Yeah."

"And what, pray tell, is it?"

"Dominant, emotionally intelligent, straightforward people."

Aoki snorts. "Well thank you. My type is clearly dumbasses."

"Ouch."