Kare Kano vol 18

 In volume 17 Soichiro's birth father, Reiji, returns to Japan after many years living in America working as a jazz pianist.  After Soichiro's adoptive father tells Reiji to stay away from the son he abandoned so long ago, Reiji turns around and kidnaps him.  Soichiro agrees to spend some time with his real father while he can, to try and understand the man that he could become through experiencing the life his father lives.

    The few days Soichiro has spent with his dad has made him admire and idolize him.  He is mostly being used as an assistant as Reiji play his concerts and meets with members of the press, but Soichiro understands a connection with him.  When he asks him if there is a half sibling in America, his father laughs and tells him that he isn't anyone who could be married or tied down.  He tells about an experience in his childhood that shape his future, the time his mother tried to make him commit suicide with her.  A moment in his life that broke his heart and mind from that point forward.

    After six days Reiji decides his time with Soichiro has come to an end.  He invites Yukino to join them for dinner and his concert that night, but after its concluded and they retire to his hotel room he tells his son that their time together is over with.  Soichiro struggles with the sudden dismissal and apparent misdirection at the hands of his father.  Reiji tells him that he just isn't the type of person who can be a parent and Soichiro was better off with the man who raised him.  Broken, he returns to his real home and his father sits him down to tell him the long and painful tale of Reiji's childhood.  Unfortunately, Soichiro's healing may have to be delayed as his birth mother learns that Reiji is in the country and has been with their son.

    Soichiro's adopted farther, Soji, tells him the story of what it was like to be an Arima growing up under the critical eye of his grandfather.  Soji was very close to his sister, Eiko, the same person behind all of the familial abuse and hatred thrust on Soichiro.  Eiko struggled to win her father approval.  he rejected the notion that she enter into medical school, in hopes of working for him at their family hospital.  That is when he spirit broke and she turned into the bitter woman that has been the bane of Soichiro's existence,  Soji didn't care for his fathers approval and ignored the rest of the family, choosing to live a life for himself.  After he met his wife and started a new family they learned she would be unable to bare children.  At this point Eiko confronted Soji about the choices he has been making and that the son of one of their fathers mistresses was being adopted into the family.  The boys name was Reiji and the name its self was given as a sign that he would be the heir to the family business, an honor Soji rejected earlier.  Eiko had plans for her own children to be the ones to carry on the family legacy and the apparent choice of a bastard son usurping them drove her to great anger and frustration.

    Soon after that their father fell ill and Soji became the head of the hospital, this lead him to return again to the family estate.  There he met the young Reiji and understood that he was being torment under his sister.  He confronted Eiko about the way she treated their half brother and told her that she needed to stop.  He took the young, damaged boy under his wing and did what he could to father him.  Soji couldn't be with Reiji all of the time, to protect him.  instead the boy, who resembled their father and had incredible intellect created his own way of protecting himself.  He grew devious and crafty, always having to outsmart his hate filled relatives.  The boy grew into a young man who's sole defensive mechanism was to be unpredictable and devious.  His life was a hard one, going from a mother who almost killed him into a different home filled with more hate than love.  There was much that Soichiro and his father had in common, but luckily for the later, he wound up in a home that was loving and considerate.

    Reiji began playing piano naturally, a trait he blamed on his dead mother.  As more time passed the more Reiji reflected his father, brilliant, handsome, desired and above others.  Reiji was alone in the large family house with his sickly father, a man who doted on his youngest son more than his other children, a man that Reiji hated with all of his heart.  The comparisons and praise aimed at Reiji had their toll on Soji as well.  He couldn't escape the reality that a child much younger then he was going to be blessed with everything he was not allowed to have.  Even though he had long put familial ambition behind him, something about Reiji's position began to eat away at Soji.  Soji began to reject Reiji, something he would regret and something that would change their relationship and Reiji's life.