Ai Yori Aoshi

Kaoru Hanabishi is a Tokyo college student living on his own when he encounters a striking yet clearly lost young woman in a kimono at a train station. Offering to help, he escorts her to the address she’s searching for—only to find it’s an empty lot in his neighborhood. With nowhere else to go, Kaoru invites her back to his apartment and asks if she has anything that might explain why she came.

She produces an old photograph of two children, which Kaoru recognizes as himself and Aoi Sakuraba, his childhood friend. The bewildered visitor is Aoi—now his betrothed—who has traveled to Tokyo to marry him, a confession that catches Kaoru off guard and stirs painful memories of why he once walked away from the Hanabishi family.