"You could stop to ask him questions like this," Ishiah suggests. A first impression isn't enough to offer his suspicions on any of the above, but he's watched Rin more than often enough to know that Rin has a tendency to evaluate everything at face level — and the meeting with Yukio, however brief, showed that the younger brother didn't expose himself so simply.

"If you don't know what Yukio thinks about your father, try to find out. If he seems angry, try to uncover where his anger is directed. The worst case scenario might be that he bears some degree of anger with you, in which case you have the ability to either address that or leave it be. But there's also the chance that there is some other fact that you haven't considered yet that has constructed the wall between the two of you." Ishiah's eyes briefly skirt to Rin's glass, where condensation starts to slide down the side, pooling at the rim.