Volume Sixteen: Foreshow Written by Kashiwae Masato Illustrated by Chayamachi Suguro Summary by Amparo Bertram August, 2000

The middle of August, a holiday called o-bon in Japan, is supposedly a time for visiting the graves of one's ancestors. Thus, many places give employees time off to go back to their parents' or grandparents' house, generally near the family gravesite. However, many people use the holiday to travel overseas, which means it's an extremely busy season for Nobuyuki. He hasn't had a chance to see Sidney's eyes for three days; when he comes home, Sidney is already asleep, and Sidney has to leave in the morning before he wakes up. This night is mainly uneventful for him until one couple, Mr. and Mrs. Endou, are several minutes late coming back from seeing the Empire State Building, which holds up the rest of the tour group a bit.

Sidney rushes to an apartment where a dead body was discovered. Someone had reported a foul smell to the fire department, thinking that it was a gas leak. It turns out to have been a body that had been rotting in one apartment for a month. Everyone--including Steve, who had come to investigate the "gas leak"--wonders why a homicide detective would show up for what is apparently a suicide. Sidney keeps repeating that he's there "just in case." The deceased, a man named Kenneth, was a junior at West Point when Sidney had been an incoming cadet.

When Nobuyuki gets off work, he is thrilled to hear from Dmitri that Sidney had returned home only a minute earlier. Excited to see each other awake, they start kissing in the doorway. Suddenly Sidney breaks it off and heads for the shower, claiming that he needs to clean up first because he was with a body that had decompsed for a month. Nobuyuki considers it odd that Sidney would be so visibly upset about it, but he eventually shrugs it off, not wanting to dwell on it when there are more pleasant things to think about. He waits for Sidney to get out of the shower and then, telling Sidney to wait for him in the bedroom, takes his own bath. [Note: Supposedly one of the reasons they kept Nobuyuki's old apartment was so they would have two bathrooms and could bathe at the same time...yet they never do.]

Nobuyuki tells Sidney that he's "cute" when he's sleeping. According to him, it's as if Sidney's bangs are drooping over his eyes to play with his fluffy lashes. This merely confirms Sidney's belief that there's something wonky with Nobuyuki's adjectives.

Kaplan calls Sidney and Henry into his office to explain the abuse of authority they demonstrated by investigating Kenneth's death without leave, not to mention in the middle of the night, provoking complaints from the apartment building's other residents. Sidney explains that he knew the victim. He also says that he thinks it's odd that Kenneth would have killed himself by drinking rat poison and suffering, when he had a loaded gun in his nightstand. Kaplan finds that suspicious enough that he gives them the go-ahead to investigate further if anything turns up in the forensic examination.

Steve shows up at the Sky Travel office to chat, prompted by having seen Sidney the previous night. He asks when Nobuyuki is taking his vacation. Nobuyuki has to postpone his vacation until October because both Kiyomi and Yamashina are returning to Japan at the same time for their engagement ceremony at the end of September, Nobuyuki's usual vacation time, leaving the office shorthanded. Takada insists that Nobuyuki needs to practice using the computer more before then, since he is still making elementary errors. Steve volunteers to give him lessons any day that he's free, which Nobuyuki accepts gratefully. Kiyomi thinks this is a bad idea, knowing that Sidney will be jealous, but Nobuyuki as always is too dense to get the point. Dale believes a little competition won't hurt Sidney, and it will be fun watching how the situation plays out.

Sidney is contacted by the FBI agent Jason, who heard about Kenneth's death. He explains that he had met with Kenneth once. When the order came for him to go to Saudi Arabia, he wanted advice on how to get out of it. Rather than pursue a career path in the military, Kenneth had chosen to remain a low-level officer on a clear-cut route to leaving the army, and since Jason also wanted to leave the army, he figured Kenneth was the right person to consult. He found out that Kenneth was a recovering alcoholic. He had turned to drinking after a cadet under his command had died from sudden heart failure during training. He reasoned that if one death in a non-combat situation affected him so deeply, he would be useless as an officer in combat. Perhaps to make up for losing that cadet, he grabbed Jason's arm and insisted that he should use any means at his disposal to get out of the army so he wouldn't have to fight. Jason did so, relying on connections to get into the FBI. He came to see Sidney because he is positive someone whose personal philosophy is "survive at all costs" would never have committed suicide and must have been murdered.

At work that night, the Endou family is once again several minutes late returning to the bus. Nobuyuki thinks it's strange that they would have taken the night tour twice in a row. They apologize profusely when they finally show up, explaining that they had gotten on the bus of a different travel agency by accident. Nobuyuki is somewhat disappointed when he gets home that Sidney isn't there yet.

Sidney spends all day examining the information gathered about Kenneth. He had been manager of the second floor of a drug store, but he quit on July seventh for personal reasons. The last newspaper found in his trash was dated July fifteenth, so he was alive until then. No fingerprints were found in his apartment except his, including on the suicide note and the glass of rat poison, though that doesn't prove anything. The note itself said only "Sorry." The body's decomposition is so advanced that there is no way to tell whether he had any other injuries, such as from someone forcing him to drink the poison, though there were no signs of a struggle in the apartment. In essence, Sidney has only his intuition and Jason's belief that it was a murder to go on.

Sidney gets home just as Nobuyuki is about to fall asleep. Nobuyuki plays 'possum in bed, and when Sidney comes in to give him a kiss, he suddenly puts his arms around Sidney's neck and surprises him. Sidney feels that he couldn't possibly be happier.

The next day at work, Mayumi calls Nobuyuki at the Sky Travel office in a panic because Mr. and Mrs. Endou haven't shown up for their bus to the airport. They had the hotel check the room; there was no sign the couple had used it since the previous afternoon. Nobuyuki tells her to go ahead and take the rest of the tourists to the airport while he searches for the missing couple. He knows he dropped them off in front of the hotel after the night tour, so it isn't simply a matter of them getting lost. They must have intentionally gone somewhere else instead of returning to their room.

Henry and Sidney drive to Garrison, the town nearest West Point, to speak with Kenneth's sister. She is shocked to hear that he had been dead for a month. She had talked with him on the phone right after he quit his job. Like Sidney, she had also not expected to hear that he died of poison rather than having shot himself. At that news, she reveals that the reason he quit his job was that one of the pharmacists under his charge had put the adult dose, rather than the child dose, on the label when filling a prescription. This mistake cost the life of an eight-year-old child. Kenneth got rid of the evidence, but then quit his job and gave his severence pay to the child's parents. Sidney and Henry question Kenneth's boss about this, but he hadn't known anything regarding the incident.

When Mr. and Mrs. Endou fail to make an appearance by the time their scheduled flight departs, Sky Travel calls in the police to help locate them. All of their luggage, including toiletries, was left in their room, though they had removed their valuables from the hotel safe. Mayumi recalls having a conversation with them in which she mentioned that, during o-bon season, she is the guide for all of the night tours as well as the ride to the airport. This prompts speculation that the two were intentionally late during the night tour twice in a row in order to make an impression on Mayumi so that there would be an immediate fuss as soon as they turned up missing. Nobuyuki figures out that, if they disappeared intentionally, they probably just checked into a different hotel. Since they would need to use their passports as ID, they must be listed under their real names. The Sky Travel employees start calling all the hotels in Manhattan.

Sidney tracks down the pharmacist who made the error that led to Kenneth quitting his job. He tries to question her at her home in Harlem, but she shouts that the police are harrassing her, so passersby start to form a mob around the detectives and force them to leave. Undaunted, they catch her at work instead. She is also shocked to hear that Kenneth is dead and insists it couldn't be suicide. He had told her that, if one feels responsible for a person's death, one must make amends by surviving by whatever means possible. Her sentiments echo what Jason had said, yet there is no material evidence to support a hypothesis that Kenneth was murdered.

The Sky Travel employees manage to locate the Endou family by calling their hotel and asking to be connected to their room, but the unexpected phone call spooks the couple into running again. Nobuyuki, Mayumi, and a pair of uniformed officers keep watch for them in the hotel lobby that evening, but they don't return.

Nobuyuki is awakened by Sidney's alarm in the morning, about an hour before he needs to get up. He mumbles about Sidney being beautiful again. Sidney tells him to go back to sleep, because if he gets up as scantily clothed as he is, Sidney will never be able to tear himself away to go to work.

Mr. and Mrs. Endou turn themselves in at the Sky Travel office in the morning. They admit that they planned their disappearance in the hope of getting media coverage so they can talk about poor treatment they received at work. Nobuyuki arranges for their story to be broadcast briefly on CNN, since the reporters had been following the police anyway, with himself as the translator. Kaplan calls Sidney on his cell phone to tell him to watch.

The next day, on the way back from driving the couple to the airport, Nobuyuki has a long chat with Mayumi. She tells him he looks cool in his sunglasses, which were a birthday present from Sidney to replace the cheap flea market ones Nobuyuki had been using. When Mayumi hears this, she giggles, realizing why Sidney went to all the trouble. [Note: According to the author, Nobuyuki looked like a male prostitute in his old sunglasses.] Nobuyuki has been sensing that the case Sidney is working on is somehow related to his time in the army, but he's afraid to ask and bring up painful memories...yet he can't be sure that *not* asking is the right course of action to help Sidney heal either. He gets Mayumi's advice on the matter.

At last he calls up Sidney and starts off by saying, "I'm not Beth II." He explains that he hasn't forgotten the way Sidney broke off kissing him to take a shower. He figured out that Sidney had remembered the way Beth smelled death on him and tried to attack him. He insists that, unlike the dog, he will always recognize that Sidney is Sidney, no matter what. Once Sidney is soothed by his devotion, Nobuyuki asks if the case he's investigating concerns someone he knew from the army. Sidney promises to tell him all about it.

A thought suddenly strikes Sidney, and he requests more information about the cadet who died under Kenneth's command. She had died on July sixteenth, which coincides perfectly with the time estimated for Kenneth's death. As for why he would have used rat poison rather than his gun, Sidney is told that the strychnine used in the poison causes convulsions and other symptoms that would have mirrored those of the cadet. Sidney concludes that Kenneth was, in a sense, attempting to experience what she had.

Since it's Nobuyuki's birthday, Henry suggests that Sidney seriously consider what to give him as a present, because if he falls down on the job, Steve will take advantage of any opportunity to make a move.

On Labor Day, Nobuyuki's first day off after the busy season ends, Sidney takes him out for a drive as a belated birthday present. Nobuyuki again expresses amazement that Sidney isn't a reckless driver, at which Sidney insists that he knows how to keep things under control. Nobuyuki nearly makes Sidney choke for the umpteenth time by quickly coming back with, "Oh, you call last night keeping things under control?" He hastens to add that he doesn't mind Sidney going wild.

Steve calls Nobuyuki, hoping to have him come over. He's disappointed to be thwarted, though he does get Nobuyuki to agree to visit the following Monday for computer lessons. Completely oblivious to the competition raging over him, Nobuyuki innocently asks Sidney if he wants to come along and get computer help too.

They come to a lookout point and Sidney stops the car, getting out to show Nobuyuki their destination: West Point. Nobuyuki is thrilled to bursting that Sidney has decided to share that part of his life with him. They stand there and kiss for a good long time, particularly since they will have to restrain themselves once they arrive. Finally they continue on to the campus and sign up for a tour.

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