Rié reveals her husband’s true identity to Yuto

Rié’s disclosure to Yuto makes the truth about his father a family matter they can face together, rather than a secret Rié must manage on his behalf. After a lawyer who had investigated the man for more than a year brings her the account, she tells Yuto that she has learned why his father changed his name and offers him a choice about whether to read everything. Yuto takes the document upstairs; when he returns, his questions and tears show that the revelation has altered neither his attachment to his father nor his wish to preserve his memory.

The disclosure and Yuto’s choice

Rié approaches the conversation cautiously. She says a lawyer who had been investigating Father for over a year came to see her three days earlier, and that she has finally learned why he changed his name. Yuto notices the document on the table, which Rié has been handling restlessly. Before she explains its contents, he asks whether his father did anything wrong—whether the police might take him away. Rié answers that the wrong was “Just one tiny thing—changing his name . . .” She points to the lawyer’s written account and warns that it may shock him, adding that she has not fully accepted it herself.

Rather than deciding for him, Rié asks whether Yuto wants to know everything at once or would rather wait. His response is direct: after Ryo and Father have both died, he asks, what could be more shocking? He takes the document Kido compiled, checks how many pages it contains, and says he will read it upstairs. The choice gives Yuto an active part in learning the truth; Rié does not simply hand him a secret without asking how he wants to meet it.

Reading the past and responding to it

Yuto stays in his room for about an hour. When he comes back, he hands Rié the pages and checks the central fear that had shaped his first question: Father never killed anyone, right? Rié assures him that he did not. Yuto’s response is sympathy—he feels sorry for his father—rather than rejection. He now understands the kindness he received as partly rooted in what Father had wished his own father would do for him. Rié confirms that this inheritance of care was one reason for Father’s tenderness, but insists it was not the only one: he also cared about Yuto himself.

The revelation brings Yuto’s accumulated grief into the open. He apologizes to Rié, then hangs his head and begins to cry; she cries with him. His apology does not erase the pain of what he has learned, but their shared tears replace concealment with an exchange in which each can acknowledge the other’s feelings. Rié had worried that he might keep everything inside; now he sees the account, asks questions, and expresses pity for the man he had loved as his father.

A name, a grave, and a promise to Hana

After crying, Yuto asks what will happen to their surname and whether they will become the Haras. Rié proposes Takemoto instead, which would return them to the family name of his maternal grandparents. The question connects the new knowledge of his father’s identity to Yuto’s earlier insistence that he wanted to remain Taniguchi: he had explained that he was known by that name at school and feared that changing it would mean losing the name by which his peers recognized him. His concern also came from not wanting to do something unfair to the father he had lost or to let that father be forgotten. Now, after reading the account, he gives a slight nod to Rié’s proposal. Their decision is not presented as a simple erasure of his attachment, but as a choice they can discuss in light of what they have learned.

Yuto also asks about his father’s grave, recalling that the ashes had remained in an urn and that Rié rarely spoke about him. Rié suggests placing him in the same grave as Ryo and Grandpa. Yuto agrees because then none of them will be lonely. In this practical exchange about where the dead will rest, he gives his grief a concrete expression: his concern extends beyond the man he called Father to the family members who have died before him.

Before the conversation ends, Yuto asks whether Rié will tell Hana. He judges that his younger sister would not understand if they told her now, and Rié agrees. Yuto says they have to watch out for her. Rié recognizes his seriousness, looks him in the eye, and promises that he can tell her whenever he needs to talk. Her closing admission that she should have kept him informed, and his refusal to blame her, mark the disclosure as a change in how they will handle the family’s past: not by withholding everything, but by sharing what Yuto is ready to know and protecting Hana until she can understand.