"She's not wrong."

"She's not, that was just a very evocative image."

"Anyway. What are you going to do about your father, then?"

"Wait, mostly, to see which of Ōta-san's feelers pan out.

"But in the meantime I am going to go have a chat with Dai."

"...you're doing that thing."

"...what thing?"

"The thing where you say things as if they're the last bit of a scene in an anime, like a cliffhanger. You're not talking like people."

"Excuse you, I am people and I am talking ergo therefore q.e.d."

"'But I'm also gonna go talk to Dai and see what's up from his side of things, maybe prod him a bit.' Sounds much more natural, doesn't it? 'But in the meantime I am going to go have a chat with Dai' has such gravitas, such finality, you are absolutely an anime boy."

"...called out."

"Yeah, no shit." He flicks Tōkan's forehead then gets up. "Gonna go back downstairs, relieve Inoue and Tanaka from the burden of fielding all those questions on their own."

"You say, as if they're not having the time of their lives. You should've seen Tamiki's face when I told her she was allowed to be a bit liberal with the truth and maybe mix in some speculation there, it was like New Year had come early."

Snort. "Regardless."

He gets up, too. "Toughest nuts to crack are gonna be Hōji and Karato themselves, I need to figure out an ending to this story that lets them save face when it becomes obvious they're gonna lose. Will be easier for them to back out without my father using them as scapegoats."

"...you lie. That's how you save face in this kind of situation. You lie and then no one calls you on it."

"Yes, well, what lie are they telling that'll be face-saving when they're going all-in on this like that?"

"It was just an investigation. They wanted to make sure nothing untoward was happening. The kids got a bit too agitated in their ruts, you know how it is, they'll grow up and get over this. Everyone has an embarrassing story from high school."

"Those are face-saving for their families, not themselves."

"Oh, come on, they use their hormones to get out of shit all the time, not taking responsibility is a specialty of theirs."

"Ice cold, man."

"I tell it like it is."

Unfortunately Kokonoe Tochima is, actually, richer than God, which means that he can, actually, find a prosecutor who'll look at the case, and do so at the very end of the deadline so that Inori will 100% have to spend at minimum two days in detainment. The Ōtas try to get him out on bail but the judge refuses because Inori committed the alleged crime repeatedly and might commit it again if released; arguments that it's not yet been determined that what he did was a crime at all as opposed to self-defence and/or a misdemeanour fall flat, because in case it is a crime it's a pretty serious one.

("Bullshit," says Kaiyō in a rare moment of outward irritation. "If he were an alpha he'd have been released on bail, it's understood that alphas just get into fights and that's how it is, but because it's an omega it must be so serious. ...ah, my apologies for the outburst.")

    ("You have nothing to apologise for, Ōta-san," says Harutsugu. "I'm very aware of how rigged this system is in my favour and in my opinion it requires more rather than fewer colourful words to be properly appreciated.")

Which means that nothing stops Tōkan from having his chat with cousin Dai on Wednesday after school. Dai is already waiting for him there at the upscale tea house they're meeting, and Tōkan is directed to him when he mentions his name.

"Tōkan-kun! It's been so long," says Dai, genially. He looks like a Kokonoe alright, branch family or not, tall and black-haired and broad-shouldered but not too strongly built, in a suit that would make Kokonoe Tochima proud. "How have you been?"

"Well enough, all things considered. How are Taemi and Hikaru doing?" Those being his mother and sister, because of course Tōkan wouldn't be interested in Dai's father, who is not a Kokonoe and who married in.