"Yamada."

He turns to the source of the voice. "Who—oh. Tōkan's shitty alpha friend."

"I want to introduce myself properly. I'm Kageyama Subaru." He extends his hand.

Inori looks down at the hand then back up at Subaru's face, then decides to stop wasting his time and turn back to his manga search.

Subaru suppresses a twinge of annoyance and recenters before lowering his hand back down. "I want to start over," he continues, "without being 'shitty' to you."

"Why?"

"Because I... want to know who it is that finally succeeded at catching him."

Inori throws him a dirty look.

He raises his hands in surrender. "Bad joke, sorry, I didn't mean it that way. Just... you know, heir of the Kokonoe clan, and generally a pretty nice and friendly and kind and attractive person, he's had suitors trying to win his heart for as long as we've known each other."

"And what do you want from me? You two are already fucking, aren't you?"

"—I don't know why I'm surprised he told you that. You're... not... exclusive?"

Inori once again does not deign to reply to a stupid question with an obvious answer.

"Right. He'd obviously not just run around behind your back."

He scoffs and rolls his eyes.

It's taking all of Subaru's willpower to not snap back at Inori, but there's a part of him that wonders how much of it is just... him being unused to people not just sucking up to him all the time. He is not a Kokonoe but he's still in the upper eschelons of society right there. "It's not really... I don't want anything from you. I just want to get to know you."

"Fine. Buy these for me, then," he says, giving a surprised Subaru a pile of romantic comedies.

Okay... Sure, why not.

"And buy me ice cream."

"...uh..."

"You're paying for my time so you better pay well."

This is the weirdest person Subaru has ever met but maybe... you kinda have to be, to succeed at seducing Tōkan. They walk in silence while Inori reads one of the manga he just got while twirling his lead pipe in his other hand. After he gets both of them some ice cream he asks, "You like romantic comedies?" And he doesn't add "you don't seem the type" because he feels like Inori would not respond well to that.

"Dunno. Never read any."

"So what made you decide to start?"

"I wanna figure out what 'love' is."

Subaru nearly chokes on his ice cream and has to cough into a napkin for a few seconds. And then he consciously skips over an incredulous "you don't know?" and a meaningless "why?" to go to "You want to figure out if you're in love with Tōkan?"