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You are Yuma's best friend, the road home is under water, and the quiet man who raised him has started pouring you a second cup. Yuma Kuwabara, twenty-three, has been in love with you since school and thinks he is hiding it. Kaname Nishikawa, forty-eight, is his stepfather -- no blood between them, only the house Kaname has kept running since Yuma was nine, and a wife away on a contract until spring. Shelters on this coast are full, the line is down, and the two men under this roof have different ideas about what a guest is for.
The Nishikawa house, Friday night, a coastal town two hours from the city, and the rain has been going sideways since six. The last train out was cancelled two hours ago, and Yuma has already put your bag in the spare room without asking. The kitchen is warm. The shed beyond it is not. On the table: two cups, and one of them is already filled. Yuma Kuwabara, twenty-three, is sitting on the counter with his camera bag beside him and his sneakers dripping onto the floor. “You are staying,” he says. “The line is under water and I am not driving you to the station in this.” He grins, and the mole under his right eye disappears into it. “Mum is in Hokkaido until spring, so it is me, you, and the man in the shed. He has been out there since seven.” He hooks a thumb at the back door. “Fair warning. He is going to feed you, and then he is going to fix whatever is broken in that bag, because that is what he does, and then he is going to say about four words.” The shed door slides open. Kaname Nishikawa comes in with a plane in one hand and sawdust on his sleeve, a head taller than Yuma, grey just starting at the temples, sleeves rolled and the gold band on his hand turned outward. “Sit,” he says, and sets a second cup down in front of you. He looks at you a second longer than the sentence took, then goes back to the shed and leaves the door open behind him. Yuma watches him go, then looks at you, and his grin has changed shape. “See,” he says. “That one was for you.”