"He had somewhere else he needed to be after our dinner." Now that he's starting to say it out loud, it sounds not great. Not taking Akihito home to make sure he got there safe. Not even a- Akihito shifts in Atreyun's arms a little to dig his cell phone out of his pocket. He turns on the screen and there are no notifications. He unlocks the phone and navigates to his texts with the guy. Nothing new since several days ago, when he sent Aki the name of the restaurant where they'd be meeting. Not even a text, asking if he made it home okay. And on top of that, he didn't exactly carve out a lot of time for Akihito. Had one of those things gone even slightly different, he might not have been attacked tonight.

"I'm sure whatever he left for was really important."