As the end of their senior year nears, Yukino frets over what to do to celebrate. She wanted to go on a trip with all of her friends, but everyone else is jumping so far ahead of her in life that no one will be around. Instead Soichiro suggest they take a trip together, just the two of them. Before Yukino can give him an answer an unexpected visitor makes an appearance in Soichiro's life.
He returns home one afternoon to find a guest at their house but the guest brings painful memories bubbling to the surface. Following his appearance on a daytime television show, Soichiro's mother decides, after all of these years, to reconnect with her abandoned child. He rejects her immediately, not wanting to have any contact with the woman who abused him at such a young age and then left him in limbo until his aunt and uncle adopted him and raised him as their own. She leaves the house but is not dissuaded, instead ambushing him at his school the following day. He sends Yukino and their friends on ahead, without any explanation. He hopes that he can settle this once and for all, expressing his great distaste with her. She convinces him to take a ride with her, so that she can have a chance to explain things to him. He relents, interested to understand more about the fate of his biological parents what could have lead to them abandoning him. His adopted parents have tried to shield him from much of that so he has only been ale to guess from the insidious rumors of his extended family. He was not even sure if either of them were alive any longer.
His mother tells him that his father, Reiji, was illegitimate, a product of an affair between his grandfather and a much younger woman. This marked him as an outcast, and much like Soichiro afterwards Reiji was tormented endlessly by the family. Soichiro posits that his adopted father may have been the only protector that Reiji had. He senses a sadness in him sometimes as if her is seeing the lost brother in the young man he calls son. his mother shows him a picture of his birth dad and he sees the resemblance immediately This truth only helps to compound the problems plaguing Soichiro, recognizing some of the hatred directed at him is stemming from his fathers existence in more ways than he originally recognized. How much like his parents is he really? He can't tell if his mother is being honest or manipulative. Due to his distrust of her he suspects that he does not differ much from her in the way he has lied to people and manipulated them subtly his entire life. he has perfected the lie of the upright and obedient son for his adopted parents, never revealing the true nature of his parentage as much as possible. But it may all have been for nothing as his darkness has started to leak out.
His mother convinces him to meet again, so that they may talk more about his origins. He is drawn into learning more about the things that he believes made him who he is and agrees, but worries that he is only being manipulated by her. He hopes that the truth will release him and he can be the person that Yukino deserves and that he wants to be. She confronts him the next day, wanting to understand who the beautiful woman was that he was talking to. He lies, saying it was a woman from the neighborhood and he decided to visit her house afterwards. Yukino lets the question drop but realizes quickly that he was lying to her. It changes her perspective of him and she worries what it really means.
As he agreed to, Soichiro meets up with his birth mother after school, he tries to tell her that he has changed his mind and doesn't want anything to do with her after all. He suspects she may not be forthcoming with the accurate details of his father and his birth. She convinces him to at least give her a parting memory, dinner with her at a restaurant she already booked a table for. He relents, willing to do whatever it will take to be done with her once and for all. The dinner starts with a tailored outfit and ends with his mother, quite drunk, forcing him to accompany her to a club. As midnight approaches he gives her an ultimatum and tries to leave her. She traps him at this point, threatening to continue to show up at school, striking his fear of exposing any dark secrets to his friends. She wants him back in her life and will do whatever it takes to make that happen.
He struggles to hide that he is spending every moment outside of school with his mother, lying to his adopted parents and avoiding Yukino. It doesn't take long before his aunt realizes what is going on. She confronts Soichiro's birth mother and tries to break off their interactions. He is lost though and continues to obey her demands, afraid of what ever it is that may be revealed if she were to be unleashed. Yukino realizes right away that something is wrong but finds it difficult to confront him about it, instead she confronts the only other person who knows the 'real' Soichiro, Asaba.
Asaba deflects her questions, teasing her a little bit, but also sparking a doubt with in her. She is desperate to understand why he is lying and how long it has been going on. She searches through their time together, more than two years as a couple. In the beginning she was sheltered, with nothing outside of studying and her love for Soichiro. She was afraid that she would lose to his deeper world and decided to become more worldly too. She opened her self up to more people and more things, growing a group of friends that could be trusted and relied on. But somewhere along the way her relationship with Soichiro got lost She struggles to understand if it is something she did wrong or if there was a part of him that was a problem before she became a part of his life. She wants nothing more than to understand why he is being the way he is and what it will take for him to truly be honest with her.
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