It was immediately clear how Kou had taken the question, and 'loathsome' was not the word Renju would have used to describe it. Then again, from what she'd seen, it seemed as though Kou's opinions of most of the group were stronger than her own (or, at least, the negative ones were). Nonetheless, there were a few reasons why she didn't relish this particular prospect, and she imagined that at least some of them matched up with Kou's own.
"But there's no choice in the matter," she went on, realizing as she said it that while her answer might have been the same back in the spring when all this had started, the reasons behind it were not. "Not a meaningful one, at any rate. Leaving anyone there would be unconscionable."