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Chiememe, my love
Tamaki is… they don’t actually dislike Chiemi at all, really. They weren’t ready to call her a friend by the time they died, but they didn’t hate her or anything. She’s one of the only Gaia kids they ever felt something remotely positive for (as opposed to out-and-out dislike or ‘meh, whatever’), so...
Honestly, Chiemi had quite a few things going for her in Tamaki’s eyes - she was a fellow smoker, she was willing to talk mastermind clues with them (even if Tamaki proceeded to be a shit and not share said clues with the class at large at her behest), she… they honestly really liked her general attitude and found her to be a genuinely decent conversational partner during the brief time they interacted outside of a trial. Well, they liked parts of her attitude, when she wasn’t being a “pissy brat”, because as we all know, Tamaki Manabe never, ever gets pissy ever and has conducted themselves with maturity and poise throughout the game. Whatever you say, Tamaki.
And then Chiemi did sort of try to take the fall for them during Nicanor’s murder trial using an explanation that left them slightly… baffled (Red paint? Using the cleaver like that by accident? You can’t even.. oh my god, what the fuck, Shinozaki?) And I’ll be honest, if Tamaki had not been so willing to jump all over martyrs in previous trials (if only because martyrs got in the way of killing whoever was actually guilty, alas, there were no noble motives for it), making the very action of supporting that behavior suspicious by default, they would have happily thrown Chiemi under the bus, using “well, she wants to die, and we need to discuss masterminds” as a smokescreen. (Pretty sure everyone would have called their bluff if they did that, but still…) God, Tamaki sucks.
But hey, that didn’t happen, so as far as Tamaki knows, they and Chiemi don’t have any particularly hard feelings between them. And hey, she was willing to actually stay behind and revive the dead kids unlike so many of those rotten, self-serving assholes, so that's automatic bonus points in Tamaki's book. They definitely wouldn’t mind meeting her over that smoke now that this whole mess is over, and they’re back among the world of the living.
