Volume Two: Snow Written by Kashiwae Masato Illustrated by Chayamachi Suguro Summary by Amparo Bertram January, 1996

In the present, New York is having the harshest winter in the four years since Nobuyuki returned. He gets a call from Kiyomi begging him to come help her pacify the tourists who are upset that a strong snowstorm has disrupted their schedule. Traffic is virtually impossible, but the subway is still running, so he reluctantly agrees. Sidney, who is home for his day off, teases him that he's willing to risk the snowstorm because Kiyomi is a yamato nadeshiko. Nobuyuki insists that Sidney doesn't know what he's talking about, but he realizes he can never win a verbal argument.

He sets off into the storm, but before he makes it to the subway entrance, his attention is caught by something bright red staining the snow. He takes a closer look and discovers it is a man bleeding heavily. The man calls out to him, "Stay away, Yukionna! I can't die yet!" Nobuyuki rushes back to tell Sidney. Sidney and the apartment's security guard Dmitri, a husky immigrant from the former Soviet Union, brave the storm to reach the man. Nobuyuki is upset with himself for always relying on Sidney in a crisis when he should be able to handle problems alone. The two men carry the stab victim back to the apartment building, but it's too late. The man has already died from a knife wound in the stomach.

After the proper authorities arrive, Sidney and Nobuyuki return to their respective rooms to take hot baths and warm up after going out in the cold. [Cultural note: The only way to save oneself from getting sick after having been doused with water or chilled in any way, according to Japanese general knowledge, is to take a hot bath and then immediately dry off completely.] Nobuyuki relates what the man had said to him before dying and tries to explain the Japanese Yukionna legend. Literally, it means "Snowwoman," but she is more like a type of deadly fairy than a monster like the Abominable Snowman. She wanders the land in a white kimono during snowstorms and seduces men to their doom.

Nobuyuki finishes and puts on his robe, wondering whether there was anything he could have done to save the victim. Sidney guesses what he's thinking and pounds on the connecting door, demanding entry. Sidney comes in, wearing nothing but a towel over his shoulder, and proceeds to convince Nobuyuki not to feel guilty because nothing could have saved the man. He finishes by averting his eyes and telling Nobuyuki to tie his robe shut. Nobuyuki keeps forgetting about Sidney's sexual orientation, particularly since he hasn't had a boyfriend around after Rod.

A detective shows up at Sidney's apartment. It turns out to be Henry, the former traffic cop, who was just promoted to detective the day before. Henry, a Black man about Nobuyuki's age, was selected out of the traffic division by Sidney and has been assigned as Sidney's partner. He's thrilled to tackle his first assignment. Nobuyuki tells Henry to call him "Nob" as Sidney does, since his full name is a bit difficult to pronounce. He then calls Kiyomi to explain that he's been involved in the investigation of the murder of a man named Van Senders, a famous fashion designer. Kiyomi recognizes the name and informs him that, although Van Senders is known for a line of women's clothing called Snow Lady, it is a line of summer professional wear and has nothing to do with the Yukionna myth.

Nobuyuki complains that Sidney orders him to get fully dressed, while Sidney himself runs around half-naked. Sidney replies, "It's okay for me. *I* know what I'm doing." Nobuyuki clearly has no clue that Sidney finds him attractive. In fact, Nobuyuki has no clue that *anyone* might find him attractive.

The three of them set out to pay a visit to Van Senders' wife, Julia. She's a golden-haired model who lives in a high-class penthouse that is decorated entirely in mirror-like red surfaces with shiny black furniture. Completely dry-eyed despite the death of her husband, she sips champagne and maintains she knows absolutely nothing about Van's death nor why he was wandering around Chelsea in a snowstorm. The two of them lived separately. She suggests that if they want to know anything, they should ask Van's vice-president, Neil Nelligan.

That night, Nobuyuki dreams about when he and Sidney were boys playing in the freshly fallen snow one morning. Sidney's dog, Beth, found something buried in the snow. Believing it to be some kind of treasure, the boys started digging it out, revealing an arm with a red sleeve. At that point, Sidney realizes what it is and runs to fetch an adult. It turns out to have been the mother of Keith, one of the other neighborhood boys. Unbeknownst to anyone else in the neighborhood, she had a severe alcohol dependency. She had come home drunk from her night job as a waitress and fallen asleep in the snow, freezing to death. Ever since then, Nobuyuki has had nightmares about finding the body whenever it snows heavily. Sidney remembers his problem and invites him over for some cocoa.

Sidney makes the cocoa in an unwashed corn soup pan, pours in a ton of sugar, and serves it in an unwashed coffee mug. Nobuyuki wonders if being in the army made Sidney lose his sense of taste.

Kiyomi shows up to work in a Senders suit, hoping that it will help Nobuyuki with the case. Nobuyuki knows zip about fashion, however; his boss, Takada, lectures him that he should wear something better than a T-shirt and jeans so he won't tarnish the company's reputation, but Nobuyuki counters that he's less a target for muggers the way he dresses. From Kiyomi's information and a later conversation with Sidney and Henry, it becomes apparent that there's something fishy about Senders' relationship with Julia.

When Julia married Van, she was on her way to becoming a supermodel. In fact, it was her name and talent that boosted the Senders clothing line to fame and fortune. In contrast, signing an exclusive contract with the Senders Company essentially froze her career, preventing her from becoming as huge a star as she ought to have been. At the time, her modeling agency warned her against it, but she broke her contract with them and did it anyway. Now, her contract with Senders is about to end. She went back and apologized to her previous agency, re-signing with them.

That was slightly odd, but it could be explained by Julia making a poor career decision. The real complication is the matter of Van's stock. Van owned 50% of the stock in the company, his vice-president owned 30%, and Julia owned 20%. With Van dead, Julia stands to gain all of his stock, placing her at 70% and giving her control of the company. In shocking late-breaking news, Neil holds a press conference and reveals that, in his will, Van left all his stock to a boy he fathered before marrying Julia...and he named Van as the boy's guardian. That essentially puts Neil in control of 80% of the company's stock.

Henry is a speed demon behind the wheel of a car, but otherwise he is careful and methodical. He managed to track down one of Van's girlfriends from college, around the time when Van's son was born. She says she isn't the mother, and that she doesn't know much about Van. The extent of what she can tell them is that he dated a number of women, all with long, black hair, but that the woman he always drew in his design notebook was probably the one he really loved and the girlfriends were just substitutes for her. The three [don't ask why Nobuyuki tags along on an official investigation, he just does] proceed to question Neil. Van had returned to live in the ragged apartment where his company got started, in stark contrast to Julia's penthouse. Neil, an accountant, had decided to throw in his lot with Van just when the company was trying to make a name for itself; he was persuaded by Van's charismatic passion and confidence. When he heard about Van's will, on the other hand, his first thought was to wonder if Van wanted to crush the company.

They also visit the orphanage where Van's son grew up. The boy had been left on the orphanage doorstep by a woman who gave only "Alice" as her name. The head of the orphanage tried to track down the boy's parents, to no avail. He named the boy Leroy. After eight years, Van showed up saying "you should have a boy here about eight years old" and claiming to be the boy's father. He had no proof to support his claim, and he had just gotten engaged to Julia (who didn't know he had a son), so he couldn't officially adopt Leroy. Instead, ever since that time, he continued to provide the orphanage with large donations.

After the day's investigation, Sidney feels rather down about the fact that murder investigations often dig up things from people's lives that they would have wanted to remain secret. Nobuyuki does what he can to cheer up his friend. Sidney observes that Nobuyuki has an unconscious ability to empathize with others--as he puts it, the tendency to "synchro" with them. Nobuyuki drops by the Sky Travel office so he won't be fired for skipping work to play detective. There he discovers that Julia had tracked him down and paid a large sum of money to hire him as a tour guide for the following day.

That night, Nobuyuki can't sleep. He keeps thinking about Keith's mother and hallucinating snow falling from the ceiling. When he was little and plagued by this nightmare, he would go next door and sleep with Sidney to make the nightmare go away. He decides to try the same tactic, slipping through the connected bathrooms and heading for Sidney's bedroom. Just before he can reach it, the door is jerked open and he's pinned from behind, something hard pressed into his neck. Sidney quickly realizes he isn't a burglar and releases him, warning Nobuyuki not to sneak up on him while he's sleeping. Nobuyuki had never thought about the dangerous, gun-wielding side of Sidney's line of work before.

Sidney thinks he came over for cocoa again. When Nobuyuki says he wants to sleep over, Sidney can only hold his head in his hands and groan. He tries to explain that even when they were kids, Nobuyuki's sleepovers were half torture for him, but Nobuyuki doesn't get the hint; he protests that he doesn't snore or move around too much in his sleep. Finally Sidney caves and crawls back into bed, letting Nobuyuki do as he pleases. Nobuyuki contentedly snuggles into the bed and sleeps soundly until morning.

When Sidney pulls the covers over his head, his feet stick out the bottom. Nobuyuki gets the urge to tickle his feet, but he restrains himself.

In the morning, Julia shows up at the apartment building to begin her day tour. She essentially drags Nobuyuki around on the subway as she goes where she pleases. By the afternoon, she decides she wants to meet Leroy. Sidney and Henry want to speak with him anyway, so they swing by to pick up her and Nobuyuki--Sidney all the while teasing Nobuyuki for having prevented him from sleeping the previous night. At the house where Leroy is staying, it comes out that Senders Company isn't really making a profit because Van kept putting as much money as possible into expanding. Even his own salary wasn't very high. The one who was making enough money to cover the donations to the orphanage was Julia. Leroy is shocked by this information, though Julia shrugs it off by saying that she only loaned Van the money as her business partner and didn't know what he had done with it. She leaves without so much as speaking to Leroy, which makes the boy collapse in tears.

By the time Nobuyuki gets home, he's exhausted from having put up with Julia's strange mood swings all day. He hears Sidney come home and knocks on the door to talk with him, but the one who answers is a stranger. He opens the door to see a man with curly blond hair in an expensive tweed suit. Sidney introduces him as Daniel, a stock analyst friend of Rod's who is helping examine the Senders Company finances. Daniel is excited to meet Nobuyuki, commenting, "Poor Rod. I can see why he would be jealous. And Sidney...looks like you've got your work cut out for you." Sidney orders him not to say any more and pushes Daniel, who is practically doubled over with laughter, off to the bedroom. Explaining that Daniel is also gay, he locks his side of the bathroom door and tells Nobuyuki not to disturb him. Nobuyuki, bewildered by the encounter, recalls that although Sidney always tells him to lock the door, Sidney hasn't locked his own side since Rod left. It makes him feel rather lonely.

That night, Nobuyuki has a nightmare again, but this time it's the memory of looking out the window at the snow falling the evening before finding Keith's mother. He awakens to realize that he had seen a flash of red, probably from her clothing, out the window. The reason it has caused him nightmares is the feeling of guilt that if he had said something at the time, someone might have found her before she froze to death. He gets up to make coffee and hears Daniel knocking on the bathroom door.

Daniel had intended to give Nobuyuki a hard time on Rod's behalf. He identifies with Rod because he is also in love with a man who is already obsessed with someone else, although he likes the rival too much to want to break the two apart. Nobuyuki is surprised to hear that Daniel isn't Sidney's new boyfriend. Daniel is quite amused by Nobuyuki and limits his teasing to revealing that Sidney had begged him to come spend the night, yet refusing to say why.

Their conversation is interrupted by Sidney calling to ask Nobuyuki if Julia has contacted him. It turns out that Julia vanished early that morning--taking Leroy with her. Nobuyuki rushes to meet Sidney at Julia's penthouse with Daniel tagging along. On the way, Daniel explains that Senders Company was definitely headed toward debt as the product sales, especially the men's clothing line, were not selling well enough to justify the extensive expansion plans. At one point, Daniel's hair brushes against Nobuyuki, and that prompts something to click in his mind.

Nobuyuki runs around gathering support for his hunch, Sidney, Henry, and Daniel following him in utter confusion. Sidney doesn't know what's going on, but he has faith in Nobuyuki's ability to "synchro" with the people involved. Finally all the pieces are assembled, and Nobuyuki tracks down Julia and Leroy, who were waiting for a ferry to visit the Statue of Liberty. It turns out that Julia is really Leroy's mother; she met Van shortly after giving the boy up for adoption. At the time, she had long, black hair that made her look like Yukionna. Van had been obsessed with Yukionna ever since he remembers seeing her in a freak snowstorm in Florida when he was three. In order to become a top model, Julia dyed her hair, which was why no one ever made the connection.

Van was always designing clothes for Yukionna, but the designs never caught on because they wouldn't look good on any real woman. Julia started helping him out, and by chance her designs became popular. Van, who was essentially clutching at straws, pressured her into continuing to design for him. The reason he showed up at the orphanage claiming to be Leroy's father was to use Leroy as a hostage so that Julia couldn't leave him. Still, he eventually grew dissatisfied with living a lie; to satisfy his manly pride, he tried putting out a line of men's wear that he designed himself. Since it failed miserably, he set out to destroy the company itself with bad management. When his vice-president Neil, who had believed in him all this time, found out what was really going on, he sought out Van and stabbed him for his betrayal.

What confused the case was that Van and Julia had been visiting Leroy together for the first time that day. Van and Leroy stepped outside to talk privately. Julia and Leroy's caretakers noticed that quite a long time had passed. They went outside to find Van with a knife in his stomach and Leroy staring at him. Van set off to get as far away from the site as possible, hoping the police wouldn't connect the stabbing with Leroy, and wound up where Nobuyuki found him. Everyone else assumed that Leroy had done it, but in their conspiracy to protect the boy from the police, they didn't realize that he hadn't actually been the attacker.

When Sidney comes back for a break after taking Neil's confession and knocks on the bathroom door, Nobuyuki answers, "Daniel?" Sidney sulks, "Would you *rather* I were Daniel?"

After everything gets cleared up, Nobuyuki asks Daniel to visit him after work to thank him for providing the clue (hair color) that enabled him to solve the mystery. During their conversation, as Nobuyuki demonstrates that he is utterly oblivious to how Sidney feels about him, Daniel expresses sympathy for Sidney...though he knows Sidney would kill him if he spilled the beans. He amuses himself instead by playing with Nobuyuki's hair, an intimacy that Sidney does Not Appreciate when he and Henry drive up and spot the two together.

Nobuyuki gets the feeling that he won't be having nightmares about Keith's mother anymore.

[Side note: Sidney and Daniel...did they or didn't they? Did Sidney just want Daniel to come over for an excuse to lock the door because he didn't trust his self-control if Nobuyuki crawled into his bed a second night? Did he merely want someone to listen to him let off steam? Or did he want some more serious nocturnal comfort? According to the author, it's up to the reader's imagination. Daniel is also a crossover character from another series by the same author, Desperado.]

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