For someone like Shuya, who no longer had parents, him inviting her to meet his brother, who had saved his life and picked up raising him where his parents had left off, was just as important as him taking her home to meet his mother. When he told her that his brother wanted to meet her the upcoming weekend, it was all that Frankie could think about for the rest of the week. She was going to meet the one person that seemed to mean everything to Shuya, over his friends and any girl that he might have entertained in the past; this was almost worse than meeting his mother, in regards to how nerve wracking it was.

On the evening of the occasion Frankie obsessed over her outfit, trying to put together something that Shuya would find cute, and Kazuma would approve of. As the time drew nearer and nearer she finally decided on a long sleeved white shirt under a long, berry colored sweater and black pants, and removed the headscarf that had been tied around her head to tame the curly flyaway strands of her high, curly ponytail. She finished just in time for Shuya’s arrival text, which was a good thing; she went downstairs to find that he had employed a Lyft driver for the trip. He stood outside of the car on the curb, dressed casually in a blue-gray T-shirt under a simple gray cardigan and worn in jeans, his hair loose around his face; this surprised Frankie at first, then she remembered that only she was meeting someone – Shuya was just going home.

The journey to their destination lasted almost a half hour, as they took the highway around the perimeter of the city and up the Pacific Coast. This part of the trip fascinated Frankie, as she had never gone to see the ocean; the only bodies of water she had ever seen were a lake, the Marina, and the bay. She could hear Shuya laughing at her a little as she stared out at the ocean in wonder, craning her neck to see when the highway moved further away from the coast to make an access road for visitors of the beach.

“You’ve really never seen it before?” he inquired behind her. Frankie shook her head.

“I didn’t spend a lot of time visiting San Francisco when I was growing up,” she explained.

“We’ll come back,” he assured her, drawing her attention away from the window and to his face. “I would stop now, but Kazuma would kill me if we were late.” Frankie could feel a bright smile spreading across her face as she nodded, and it reflected on his own expression.

“Okay, deal.”

Their destination was a tiny duplex nestled in a cluster of apartment buildings bearing windows with shutters and faded paint; the ocean was still in view from the street when they got out of the car, but was obscured from view by the surrounding buildings once they were at Shuya’s front door. He used his key to open the door, and led her into an apartment not much smaller than her own home in San Francisco; as they paused to take off their shoes they were met with the sounds of a television playing in the living room and the smell of something warm and delicious coming from the kitchen.

“Okay, Frankie-chan,” Shuya said lowly, placing his hands on her shoulders from behind her. “Repeat after me: tadaima.”

“Wh-what?”

“Tadaima; come on.”

“Ta…tadaima?”

“Louder!”

“Tadaima!” It was louder than she had planned for it to be, and was met with the sounds of solid footsteps from the back of the apartment; she took a step back, right into Shuya’s chest, as a hard faced man as tall as Hikaru emerged from the back.

“Who the -?” His eyes landed on Frankie as he made his way up to the front and he paused, raising an eyebrow. “Was that you?” he demanded in his raspy voice, pointing at her. Frankie could feel her neck beginning to hurt from looking up at him; she didn’t see how Noa could do it, even if it was just to argue.

“What…what did I say?” she managed to get out, feeling more timid than ever before. After a moment he sighed, shaking his head.

“Okaeri,” he said, another word she didn’t understand. “You,” he added pointing at Shuya. “Stop scaring your girlfriend.”

“What? I thought it was funny,” Shuya protested. “Anyway, Aniki, this is my Frankie-chan; Frankie-chan, this is Kazuma, my brother.”

“Your Frankie-chan?” Kazuma repeated with raised eyebrows as he stepped forward to shake Frankie’s hand.

“What? She is.”

“Are you her Shuya?”

“Yup.” To Frankie’s surprise Shuya wrapped h