"Yep."

He sighs and leans forward and down enough to get his chin resting on the table, holding his ice cream cone with one hand next to his face. This is terribly undignified but it's... honest. And this guy clearly values honesty. "I'm surprised anyone wouldn't be."

Inori looks at him suspiciously.

"He's just so nice. And a good person with good priorities, and he's... much braver than I am."

"Braver?"

"...when we met, he rescued me from some bullies. I'd just been playing with some beta and omega kids at the park and then the alphas showed up and started bullying me about how I was dirty for doing that, how I needed to stay with the superior kids..." Inori inhales and looks clearly enraged. "They started pushing me around—I was small, for an alpha my age—then Tōkan showed up and got them all to back off and said a bunch of words I'm pretty sure a seven-year-old isn't meant to know to tell those alphas just how pathetic they were being. And then I grew up to become just as pathetic.

"He never swallowed the party line. Not even pretended to. Even with his dad being who he is. He just... kept fighting it and fighting it even if it made people mad at him and made him unpopular... Alpha kids fight a lot." He scoffs, then lifts his head to get some more of his ice cream before it melts. "Alphas fight a lot. We got the highest mortality rates and a lot of it is us getting into dumb fights. So he fought a lot, but he fought for everyone. All the bullied kids. And the bullies when other kids tried to retaliate against them. It's really hard to be mad at someone who's like that."

"Are you done yet? You're boring me."

Subaru sighs. "He stands up for what he believes in, and it kinda crushes him. So many of the kids he grew up with started becoming... unapologetic rapists. And all the other kids have to pretend it's fine because if we don't then we have to admit that the people we know are horrible."

"I'm so sorry about all the reasons you have to make raping me okay."

"It's not okay! It's never okay! It's shit! But we're not him and if we start making as much noise as him then we'll be all alone."

"Better be alone than surrounded by shitty alphas."

"...yeah. It is."

"Stop making excuses." He finishes his ice cream cone then grabs the extra large ice cream cup he also had Subaru buy him and starts stabbing at it with the spoon. "We don't care. We don't give a shit. You're not the ones being groped in the bus by someone three times your age when you're eleven and your first heat came too soon. And we like it a little bit and do you have any idea how disgusting that makes us feel? And people like you keep telling us we deserved it so much that we start to believe it."

Subaru doesn't ask if that's what happened to Inori. It doesn't matter, really. The point is well taken. He doesn't protest either because... yeah, he personally never did anything like that himself, but the one who got furious with Hōji and Karato the minute he heard about it was Tōkan, not him.

"I think you probably do. Love him, that is."

Inori looks at him again and narrows his eyes. "What do you know about that?"

"I know what being in love with Kokonoe Tōkan looks like."

"...fine. What does it look like?"

"You."

"That's fucking useless."

"There is not just a single thing that's love. It changes for everyone."

"Hm."

"But what do you feel if you imagine losing him?"

Inori flinches without meaning to then glares at Subaru again.

"And now imagine that you read all of those manga and you reach the conclusion that you don't love him. What are you going to feel then? Are you gonna say 'well I guess that's that, it's been a good run'?"