[His hand goes still, and internally, he winces. He supposes he should have seen this come up sooner or later.]

I know you can. I just wanted to move the conversation along, since you've already made it pretty clear you don't want to participate.

[He didn't want to listen to people tossing insults at her or otherwise saying unkind things about her. The deflection seems to have worked, by and large... not that it stopped Hayame elsewhere in the discussions.]