Appalled and uncertain on how to react to his new step sister's bizarre sense of humor, Shuichi sat there for several moments merely gaping at her as he tried to come up with something to say as Raizen reached out and very lightly tugged on a strand of River's hair and muttered softly, "Too soon love."

Causing the girl to look down at her plate and sigh before excusing herself and quietly leaving the table. Leaving Shuichi and his mother and soon-to-be step father to speak alone.

"You'll have to forgive her Shuichi. Despite how she worded things, the event itself was actually traumatizing to her since she was both still somewhat young and alone with her mother with it happened. Trying to make it out to be something to smile about is a sort of defense mechanism that she developed to help her cope. She's actually still very upset about it." Raizen said gently, not wanting him to think badly of his step sister.

Nodding his head in understanding, Shuichi began to look over his menu a little bit as he waited for his sister to return to the table so that he could try speaking with her again.

He felt that he had a much better understanding of her personality now that he had finally been forewarned. And as such he was still somewhat eager to get to know the young lady.

By the time she returned to the table almost fifteen minutes later, he and his mother and step father had all placed their food orders.

Sliding into her seat, River looked a great deal more composed than she had when she had excused herself from the table. Something Shuichi wasn't sure if he was thankful for or something else altogether.

"Sorry, I needed a few." She said in a similar manner to Yusuke when he was apologizing for something. The movements and facial expressions were...strangely awkward. Looking almost as if they were rehearsed.

And yet he couldn't find it in himself to call her out on it.

"Sorry for...upsetting you Shuichi." River said with a slight wince, almost as if the words hurt to say or something as he gave her a kind smile and told her to forget it. She was probably just suffering a bad case of nerves.

She absently agreed with him as she looked over her menu until she found what she wanted to eat and motioned a waiter over to take her order. Listening intently to everything she said as she placed her order just in case he needed the info for future reference, he was mildly surprised to know that she had ordered the same thing as him.

The delux seafood platter with soup and a salad. Although her food had some slight tweaks to it.

For starters, his was the delux seafood and sushi platter. With miso soup and a salad.

Whereas River's preferred food was simply a delux seafood platter with shrimp, clams, stuffed crab shells, mussels, oysters, scallops and baked salmon. And her soup was a lightly flavored vegetable with some tofu.

She had also ordered some dipping sauces for the seafood along with some pickled ginger.

Something that he almost never did unless he was suffering from a vitamin deficiency or something. Still, her choices were somewhat interesting. Partially because he didn't know of any females human or otherwise who could manage to eat everything that she had ordered.

So to say he was curious about whether or not she would actually be able to eat everything was a little bit of an understatement.

However once everyone's food came and they all began eating, he would pause periodically to cast River a quick glance and was more than a little shocked to find that all of her food was more than a quarter ways gone.

Catching his eyes for a moment with her own, she frowned at him for a second before looking down at her food and seemingly realized what had him so perplexed and swallowed what she had been chewing before asking, "What?" In a slightly defensive tone jostling him from his thoughts long enough to shake his head slowly and respond with a light- if not somewhat wary sounding,

"Nothing."

Before Raizen caught his attention by asking River how long it had been since she had last eaten anything. Apparently it was a normal occurrence for the girl to go days and days without sustenance of any kind.

Which in itself was just a tad bit alarming considering just how frail human bodies were. Not only that but Shuichi's mother would be marrying River's father in the not too distant future and the last thing he wanted was for his mother to call him in hysterics because the girl had starved herself to death or something.

She was going to be his sister after all. And despite his deceptive appearance, he was a fox demon above all else.

And demons by nature were territorial, greedy things. He was no different. Which meant that he would be spending more and more time with his sibling than he had originally anticipated just to make sure that she stayed healthy and whole.

After that, things sort of got back on track. Dinner was less tense now that he had a better understanding of both Raizen and River. And before long the two were telling he and his mother stories that had them both smiling and laughing and after several hours of talking he learned that aside from her already listed hobbies, River also went to school and worked part time for her father's company as a secretary/receptionist.

She had moved out on her own and lived about half a block from Shuichi's home in her very own two story, four bedroom, three bathroom house that came complete with a fenced in yard and a nice garden too.

All in all Shuichi was rather impressed that she had achieved so much at such a young age.

Finally dinner ended, and he bid his mother goodbye and then his step father and when he looked around for River- found her curiously missing until her father had told him that she was probably waiting for him outside so that she could walk him home.