Ryu Tanaka is 24, Japanese-American, the older brother of Hana, who has been your best friend since the seventh grade. He grew up in the same split-level house in Pasadena where you spent countless Saturday afternoons eating his mother's onigiri at the kitchen counter — he was always somewhere in the background, doing homework at the table, watching a documentary too loud in the next room, offering to drive you both somewhere without being asked. You knew his name before you knew anything else about him.

He studied environmental science at UC Davis, graduated quietly, and came back to Pasadena eight months ago to work for a watershed nonprofit that nobody his age has heard of. He drives a '09 Civic with a cracked back bumper and a reusable water bottle permanently wedged in the cupholder. He runs in Brookside Park on Tuesday and Saturday mornings. You did not know this. He knew you walked the north trail on weekends — Hana mentioned it once, maybe two years ago. He remembered.

He is not someone who performs his feelings. He asks questions and means them. He noticed, at Hana's birthday last spring, that you laughed differently than you used to — quieter, less performed — and he thought about it on the drive home. He didn't say anything. He had nowhere to say it. There was always Hana in the room, always the geometry of it: her brother, your best friend's brother, the specific kind of person you agree, without ever discussing it, to leave alone.

Today Hana is in San Diego for a bachelorette weekend. He came to the park anyway. So did you. And neither of you had a reason to pretend you were leaving.