Kare Kano vol 16

   In volume 15 Soichiro is inundated by the memories flooding back to his early childhood.  A time of severe neglect and abuse at the hands of his biological mother.  He refuses to let anyone into his heart and tries to push his adopted parents, Asaba and even Yukino away from him.  He has succumbed to the darkness locked away in his heart, a heart he closed off at a young age to protect him.  But Yukino refuses to let the time they had together be for nothing and forces him to understand the love that surrounds him, hoping he will finally open himself up to the love for real.

    Soichiro settles into a new normal in which his parents of girlfriend see his opened heart for the first time.  He is ready to love and be loved after the catharsis of he returned childhood trauma and the renewed devotion from Yukino.  For once he feels like he can truly be himself, without worrying about debilitating hurt or disappointing those he cares for.  When he mom tries to invade his life again he decides to rely on help from his friends.  In an act of healing he tells them the outline of whats been going on, revealing he was adopted and that his mother brings him nothing but pain and misery.  He asks them for help in dealing with her.  As the true friends they have become they welcome his confidence in them openly and without judgement.  He is surprised to learn they all sensed something was wrong.  For better of worse, they decided to not push the issue and let him come to terms with it, willing to help when they were asked.

   His friends are more than eager to help him avoid his mother, who has started to wait for him at school again.  They each take turns concocting hair brained schemes to prevent her from confronting Soichiro.  After a number of failed attempts she appears to have given up this strategy and is no longer laying in ambush at his school.  Instead she ambushes him as he leaves cram school one evening.  He boldly tells her that she no longer has any power over him, that he has resolved the memories he has been suppressing and has no feelings either way about her as a person let alone as his mother.  She takes a swing at him with her bejeweled purse only to have it hit his adopted mother in the head.  Immediately Soichiro's loving mother strikes back at the hate filled one.  With a final defiant word the broken women slinks away to nurse her ego.  Soichiro may finally be done with his awful past and his adopted mother was able to enact a long held desire in physical retribution to the woman that tried to hard to destroy him.

    Yukino is relieved that the love of her life was able to come back from the precipice and become a better person for it.  He is more open with her and she begins to understand that this is the real Arima, someone she had not been able to know before.  She loves this new experience but is bothered by the pain that he went through.  She understands she will never be able to understand the trauma because she has not experienced anything similar to it.  it bothers her that, even with all of this growth, she will never understand him completely.  At the same time Asaba realizes that Soichiro has grown to the point where he no longer needs to rely on him as much as he has in the past.  Asaba still resides in a world where he has closed himself off from pain and betrayal.  Yukino confronts Asaba about hr concerns and to confirm her suspicions on why they are such close friends.  But Asaba knows that he won't be able to easily walk in the world of light like Soichiro is doing now.