Kuromaru wilted. "Don't know what you've got against puppies..." he mumbled unhappily around his bone, sitting down and looking forlornly upward.

Ryouma didn't budge. He continued to glare.

Kuromaru's ears flopped sideways, and he let his eyes go droopy.

Ryouma still didn't budge.

With a heavy sigh--humans--he set the bone carefully on the floor by the wall. "I'll stop talking about puppies," he promised morosely, and slipped into Ryouma's apartment. "But we'd better leave the door open. In case someone tries to steal it. Raidou lives just down the hall." He glared at the far wall, as if Raidou might appear right through the plaster. "And that Ibiki pup--he never leaves HQ, and we don't like him." He glared in the other direction. "He made Tsume smell bad."

Then, laboriously, he crawled up onto the bed and settled himself amid the blankets. "That was a lot of hamster."