Volume One: Window Written by Kashiwae Masato Illustrated by Chayamachi Suguro Summary by Amparo Bertram Late September, 1995

In the course of their banter about the situation, Sidney reveals that his boyfriend of five and a half years, Rod, just left him that morning. The reason, he explains, is that Rod's company penalizes smokers, so the smell from Sidney's cigarettes clinging to his clothes is a problem for him. Both Sidney and Nobuyuki are heavy smokers, and they are frustrated by the constraints they have to put up with as non-smoking areas continue to grow more prevalent. Their conversation is interrupted by the radio of the patrol car Sidney had commandeered announcing a murder at the Washington Hotel. Sidney is about to head toward the murder scene when he spots a Japanese woman dazedly meandering across the busy street and dives to rescue her. He takes over Nobuyuki's van to drive the woman to the hospital. They entrust the young woman to the hospital staff, who rush to prevent her from having a miscarriage.

From her murmured Japanese words "Where are you going?" and "everybody," Nobuyuki guesses that she had wandered into the street while chasing after someone. Sidney offers to go along with him to pick up his clients so he won't be mistaken for a kidnapper again, and the uniformed officer he had driven with, Henry, kindly leads the way for them through the city traffic. The tourist couple is wary at seeing a strange American holding their baby, but Sidney introduces himself simply with "Police, tomodachi, OK?" to reassure them. For Japanese tourists who are twitchy because the only thing they know about New York is that it's dangerous, having a cop around to guarantee their safety is a huge plus. Coincidentally, they are staying at the Washington Hotel, the same place where a Japanese man was found murdered earlier. Since they're headed the same place, Sidney continues to stick with Nobuyuki.

Upon arriving at the hotel, Nobuyuki joins his co-worker Kiyomi Nonomura to help calm their clients, who are understandably frightened at hearing a murder had taken place in their hotel. Kiyomi is a full-time employee hired fresh out of college by the main office in Tokyo, an extremely competent career woman, in contrast to Nobuyuki, a college dropout who never wears anything other than cheap T-shirts and jeans. Still, Nobuyuki has been working with the company longer and has a knack for handling difficult situations, so she relies on him to take care of the anxious tourists in their care. He promises her that he'll try to find out the details of the case from his detective friend.

Nobuyuki and Sidney live in adjoining apartments that have low rent because they are joined by a door connecting their bathrooms. They were originally a single hotel suite room that was split into separate apartments. When Sidney finally gets home at 3am, he gets Nobuyuki to unlock his side of the bathroom door so he can come over and beg for food. On top of being a total slob, Sidney is a horrible cook, so he generally ignores the refrigerator and eats out if left to his own devices. While Rod had been living with him, Rod had taken care of most household chores, but now that he's gone, Sidney has to fend for himself again. After Nobuyuki saves him from starvation, he says that the woman they took to the hospital earlier in the evening, Mariko, is actually the wife of the murder victim, Hirokazu Katagiri.

Mariko is still in danger of a miscarriage, so Sidney takes the youthful, non-threatening Nobuyuki along as a translator when he goes to question her. Her husband was found stabbed in their hotel room shortly before Sidney encountered her, which makes her a prime suspect. At first she believes she is in a hospital in Tokyo. She responds to Nobuyuki's questions with great confusion, and it becomes clear that she has lost five years of her memory. She is shocked to see the name on her passport, because she claims Katagiri is her older sister's last name.

After leaving her hospital room, Sidney picks the lock on the emergency exit to the fire escape in order to go out and smoke. When he and Nobuyuki were boys, a neighbor had a garage full of classic cars, which he used to practice sneaking into so that the two of them could gaze at the fascinating vehicles. As they discuss the case, they come to the conclusion that the victim had originally been married to Mariko's older sister, making Mariko his second wife.

The two go out for supper and continue discussing the case. They hypothesize that Mariko and Hirokazu came to New York for a honeymoon, yet their passport pictures, taken shortly before, show them as more tired than happy. Whether Mariko's older sister had died or divorced, in any case the circumstances of their marriage couldn't have been completely unshadowed. Nobuyuki starts to sympathize strongly with Mariko, prompting Sidney to tease him that he's falling in love with her as a yamato nadeshiko, the Japanese ideal female. Nobuyuki denies it, though he does agree to continue translating for her so that they won't have to inform the consulate about her amnesia, which would set her up to be the focus of a media circus.

Sidney, surprisingly, has quite a sweettooth. His meal consists of pancakes smothered in syrup.

Nobuyuki's parents came to live in Whitestone, a suburb of New York City, when his father was assigned to work overseas. His mother was not good at English and in their all-American neighborhood quickly went from being shy to being terrified to leave the house. She also became extremely homesick, running up huge phone bills from calling her parents. Her parents advised her to come back and visit Tokyo to make her feel better, but by that time she discovered she was pregnant and her doctor advised her that such a long flight would endanger the fetus. She remained in America to deliver Nobuyuki prematurely, after which she was so weakened from her physical and emotional ordeal that she could no longer even get out of bed. Her parents hired a Japanese housekeeper to care for Nobuyuki once he was healthy enough to be brought home.

Nobuyuki, in contrast to his mother, grew up to be very adventurous, and he quickly made friends with the older boy next door, Sidney. The two played together constantly. Unfortunately, Nobuyuki's father found his wife's condition to be extremely inconvenient because she couldn't accompany him to company functions as a wife should. Eventually he acquired an American lover and effectively moved in with her; Nobuyuki even forgot what his father looked like. When Nobuyuki was nine, his mother finally decided to get divorced. She took Nobuyuki back to Tokyo, where he worked at adapting to the foreign environment.

Nobuyuki and Sidney wrote letters to one another for a number of years after that. When Sidney was ready to graduate from high school, however, he sent a letter saying that he had convinced his parents to let him attend West Point, and then his letters abruptly stopped. When Nobuyuki later heard about the Persian Gulf Crisis on the news, he worried about whether Sidney had been sent there. Then, in early 1991, just as victory was declared in the Gulf War, Nobuyuki's sickly mother died. Several months afterward, his father showed up to claim him as his heir. In the ensuing legal argument, Nobuyuki realized that he still had dual citizenship with America by virtue of being born there. By Japanese law, a Japanese person can only retain dual citizenship until his twentieth birthday. Making up his mind, on the eve of his August 21st birthday, Nobuyuki left a long letter of explanation for his grandparents and flew to New York to give up his Japanese citizenship. He called Sidney's parents to obtain his childhood friend's address. Sidney had recently resigned from the army and joined the city police as a homicide detective. Nobuyuki showed up at Sidney's apartment filled with a whirlwind of emotions at getting to see his friend again after eleven years.

Sidney contacts the Tokyo police about the case, and they send over a detective who knew the Katagiris. When Sidney and Nobuyuki pick him up at the airport, he explains that several years before, Mariko had not gotten along with her stepmother, so she moved in with her newlywed older sister Chikako. Soon thereafter, Chikako was diagnosed with stomach cancer and given only a year to live. She managed to hang on for three years. Mariko and her brother-in-law Hirokazu bore the burden of caring for Chikako all that time with practically no help from anyone else. When Chikako finally died, Mariko broke down and confessed to having murdered her. The visiting detective was the one who had investigated the case, but he insists that murder was completely ruled out as a cause of death. The doctors' opinion was that Mariko had been exhausted from being essentially chained to her sister's bedside with no freedom to be a normal college student, and though she loved her sister, at some point she no doubt wished for the ordeal to end. That means she had wished for her sister to die, a common occurrence for family members of someone with a protracted illness. Nobuyuki empathizes with Mariko's guilt, because he had felt the same way about his mother. The complication is that Mariko continued to live with Hirokazu after her sister died; when the two decided to get married, both of their families objected.

With the background at least partially filled in, Sidney takes the visiting detective to see Mariko, hoping that the familiar face will help bring her memory back. Tragically, seeing the detective does bring back a memory--the memory of her sister's death. Mariko screams as the memory consumes her, and the sudden shock causes her to miscarry. Afterward, Nobuyuki spends a bit of time talking with the Japanese detective. The man asks why Sidney doesn't work with a partner. Sidney does have one, but the man hates gays, so he refuses to work together. That was why Sidney asked the uniformed officer Henry to drive him around.

Nobuyuki is afraid that Sidney would be disgusted with him if he knew that Nobuyuki had occasionally wished his mother would die so his life would be easier. Sidney picks up on his fears and declares, "If any friend of mine experienced that kind of emotional darkness, I'd slap him upside the face and say, 'You idiot! No matter what kind of awful things you think about, that doesn't change the fact that I like you. And don't you forget it!'"

Later that evening, as Nobuyuki is headed out to work, he runs into Rod at the elevator. Rod gives him the keys to the apartment to return to Sidney. He uses the opportunity to tell his side of why he moved out; he was jealous of Nobuyuki. Despite knowing that Nobuyuki himself isn't gay, it became impossible for him to ignore the hints about Sidney's feelings. Rod, who as a stock analyst makes three times Sidney's salary, had wanted to move to a bigger apartment, but Sidney refused--most likely because of not wanting to be separated from Nobuyuki. Nobuyuki's room had originally been Rod's workspace; Sidney had thrown away nearly all his possessions, his classic car model collection and books about Japan, so Rod could take that space, leaving the extra room free for Nobuyuki. The only things he didn't get rid of were several cookie tins filled with Nobuyuki's letters. All of this information comes completely out of the blue, and Nobuyuki can't stop pondering it all night. He hadn't known Sidney had any interest in such things, yet he recalls that Sidney had used the word tomodachi, Japanese for "friend," when speaking with the tourist couple earlier, and he wonders where Sidney had learned it.

He thinks back to the moment he stepped out of the elevator in front of Sidney's apartment to see his blond friend holding another man in his arms and kissing him passionately. His knees give out and he collapses to the floor in tears at seeing Sidney again. Sidney rushes to his side and comforts him, eventually escorting him to a nearby coffee shop so they can talk. After getting caught up on recent events, Sidney asks Nobuyuki if he understands what the scene earlier had signified. He had thought it would be quickest to explain his relationship with Rod by demonstrating. Poor Nobuyuki is rather slow on the uptake, so Sidney has to spell it out for him. He then says that the adjoining apartment is empty if Nobuyuki wants to stay there. Nobuyuki is extremely grateful for the offer, and three days later he moves in to what he now knows had been Rod's room.

As Nobuyuki continues to wonder whether his presence really had contributed to Sidney and Rod breaking up, he remembers a drinking party they had thrown to celebrate Sidney's promotion. Sidney admits that Nobuyuki had been his first love; when they broke in to look at the classic cars, his heart was pounding not from the adventure but from being near Nobuyuki. Nobuyuki, however, jokingly responds that his type is the yamato nadeshiko, so he turns Sidney down. Occasionally after that, Sidney would tease Nobuyuki for "dumping" him; Rod had seemed to play it up as a joke at the time, but Nobuyuki wonders if that had made Rod feel more jealous.

Sidney calls Nobuyuki and tells him to come by the hospital after work. While finishing up his last job for the night, one of the tourists tells Nobuyuki that he saw the victim before he was killed, arguing with a woman, saying, "It's not your fault, it's mine." That, together with his encounter with Rod, clicks in Nobuyuki's mind and he figures out the motive for the murder. He arrives at the hospital, where Mariko had regained her memory and sneaked out of her hotel room. They locate her on the roof, but she won't let anyone come near her.

Nobuyuki gets Sidney to pick the lock to the fire escape. He intends to climb up and distract Mariko to allow the Japanese detective a chance to approach her from behind to secure her safely. Not wanting to risk Nobuyuki getting blown from the fire escape by the strong wind, Sidney goes up with him to prevent him from falling. Nobuyuki calls to Mariko and starts telling her about himself. He's speaking in Japanese, but he still hesitates, afraid that Sidney will intuit what he's saying. He pushes himself to continue, knowing he has to get it out in the open.

He explains how he came to live next door to Sidney and Rod. He knows Rod probably wanted to be alone with Sidney, but he accepted the guest warmly because he's a nice person. Nobuyuki could have gone off and found a different place in order to leave the two to themselves, but he didn't want to be separated from his best friend. He admits to Mariko that sometimes he even wished Sidney and Rod would break up so that he could have Sidney all to himself. Mariko tries to console him, telling him that their breakup isn't his fault, and that his friend will be upset if he beats himself up over it. She advises him to forgive himself.

As the Japanese detective comes upon Mariko from behind, Nobuyuki turns the topic to her situation and tells her that she needs to forgive herself, too. He draws the parallels that he figured out between his situation and hers: Chikako, like Rod, knew how the other two felt. She knew that both Mariko and Hirokazu cared about each other, and that as long as she was around, she was just a burden to both of them. Until just before the murder, Mariko hadn't realized that Hirokazu had also shared her feelings while her sister was still alive. When she discovered that, during their argument at the hotel, it made her feel as if the two of them had teamed up to betray Chikako. She couldn't forgive that, for Hirokazu or for herself.

When Sidney gets back in the wee hours after taking Mariko's confession, he talks over the loose ends with Nobuyuki. Mariko had intended to kill herself after killing Hirokazu, but Japan has a tradition of lovers' suicides, where a couple that cannot be together commits a double suicide so that they can be united when they reincarnate. Mariko felt that a "double suicide" in the hotel room would be like betraying her sister, so she had wandered out into the street to find a different place to die. Nobuyuki guesses that the words she had mumbled at the time were intended to be an apology to her sister: "Where are you going? Everybody loves you."

It takes a while for Nobuyuki to be able to meet Sidney's eyes. He intends to give back Rod's set of keys, but Sidney tells him to keep them, as a sign that he's always welcome in Sidney's apartment. When Nobuyuki protests, Sidney adds the stipulation "until I get a new boyfriend." He bets that he'll find a new significant other before Nobuyuki does, and he sets a kiss on the lips as the stakes. When Nobuyuki questions him about how he knew the word tomodachi, he explains that he had gotten some books about Japan in junior high so that he could find out what kind of place it was where Nobuyuki was living. He learned that single word because, if he ever visited Japan, he wanted to be able to introduce himself as Nobuyuki's friend.

Nobuyuki hasn't had his hair cut since he arrived in New York, so it is now rather long. He generally keeps it bound up in a ponytail with a simple rubberband. Other than washing it, he doesn't do anything else but run his fingers through it to get out any major snarls. In fact, he doesn't even own a brush. Sidney is far more interested in his hair than he is...

[Note: The Japanese detective in this story is a crossover character from another book by the same author, Meisai Meimu. Also note that, although this book explicitly states that Rod and Sidney had been together for a year and a half before Nobuyuki arrived, later volumes make it clear that they couldn't have been together for more than a few months. They met when Sidney joined the police force in late spring, and Nobuyuki arrived at the end of August of the same year.]

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