"...I don't know what you're talking about."
After a moment of stunned silence, Hoshikawa Teru turned his head away, refusing to make eye contact with Heiji Hattori.
Tangze would be switching with him soon. Before that happened, he shouldn't create too many unexpected complications that might add uncertainty for Tangze.
"I mean, when we ran into each other outside the café a couple days ago." Heiji scratched his chin twice and said awkwardly, "The way I put it wasn't appropriate. You couldn't choose where you came from, and standing with the Organization wasn't a choice you made willingly either. What I said was kind of me taking my emotions out on you."
"I don't think there's anything you need to apologize for." Hoshikawa Teru shook his head slightly. "Although it may have sounded overly blunt, wasn't everything you said true?"
If Tangze had not existed, Hoshikawa Teru would most likely have grown into exactly the sort of person Heiji Hattori despised. So he was not angry at the offense.
Of course, the assumption was meaningless. Without Tangze, he would already have been burned to ashes in the flames of the Organization's purge, alongside the death of the father he hated most.
"But the way I said it was too presumptuous." Recalling what he had said at the time, Heiji scratched his head. "You're not your father, after all. Some things were beyond your control. To have made it this far, you must have put in a lot of effort too."
As he said this, Heiji thought of Tangze's circumstances. Thinking about how Tangze had to do everything possible to keep a low profile because of the cases surrounding him, then comparing that with Akechi Goro's soaring popularity, he could not help feeling indignant on Tangze's behalf.
Someone who had done