Volume Five: Morrow Written by Kashiwae Masato Illustrated by Chayamachi Suguro Summary by Amparo Bertram Early February, 1997

The incident is handled as an unfortunate accident, but Nobuyuki has a bad feeling about it. Sidney is worried that he is feeling depressed due to having been present when a person was killed, though Nobuyuki insists that's not the problem. He does, however, feel a twinge when he hears that Sidney is going to talk to Rod. He still believes that Sidney's breakup was his fault. He muses that he ought to be happy now that he's living together with Sidney, which is what he always wanted, yet somehow he feels discontented with things as they are.

Sidney's bangs have gotten long and fall over his eyes. Nobuyuki gazes into Sidney's eyes, entranced by the blue that matches the sky, and leans forward to push his bangs out of the way. Sidney jerks away, breathing heavily. He maintains that Nobuyuki is dangerous because, as a "kid," he doesn't understand the effect he has.

Oddly, the next group of tourists Nobuyuki takes out for a night tour includes a woman named Naoko Takizawa, the same last name as Kouichi Takizawa, the man killed in the accident. He doesn't think too much of it until, in the middle of the tour, she runs out into the street and gets hit by a car. Nobuyuki instinctively calls Sidney as soon as the woman is taken to the nearest hospital, feeling that more than simple coincidence must be at work. Luckily, she only has a broken leg. While at the hospital, they meet a friend of Sidney's from the army who is there for his five-year-old son. The boy was a Gulf War Baby, born with multiple defects. It is the first time Nobuyuki hears of such a thing. Sidney briefly explains about the Gulf War Syndrome, though he quietly adds that he's one of those who don't suffer from it.

Nobuyuki has Henry call Sky Travel's main Tokyo office about the accident. They find out that Naoko was Kouichi's wife. She had signed up for the tour a month before, while Kouichi was still alive, and wrote down his New York address as her emergency contact. Nobuyuki is puzzled why Naoko would sign up for a tour with Sky Travel when her husband worked for Global Tours, a different company. Even if she had planned to come to New York to surprise her husband, he can't figure out why she didn't cancel the trip when Kouichi died.

On the way back home, Nobuyuki muses that he knows very little about Sidney's time in the army. He had thought the Gulf War had ended quickly in a decisive victory with very few casualties. He hadn't realized that so many soldiers and their families were still suffering ill effects from the time spent there. He wants to know more about Sidney's experiences, yet he can't bring himself to ask. When they get back to their apartment, Sidney tells him that the man they met at the hospital, Jim, was one of the few who continued to treat him well even after finding out he was gay.

In the morning, Sidney relates that he had consulted a financial expert and heard that Global Tours' bankruptcy had been predicted as early as a month beforehand. He thinks it's strange that it had taken Kouichi completely by surprise the day of his accident. Nobuyuki suspects that the "expert" he had talked to was Rod, and that makes him wonder whether the two will get back together again.

Henry and Sidney take Nobuyuki to the hospital to act as a translator for Naoko. She tells them she's certain her husband was murdered. She insists that there's no way he would have run out into the street without looking. As a child, he had been the only survivor of a car accident, and the trauma from that made him frightened of cars ever since. He got his current job from the uncle who raised him, and even though it terrified him, he stuck with it because Japan was in a recession and there were no other jobs available. However, Naoko insists that the uncle hated Kouichi because the uncle's daughter had also been in the same accident. The girl had switched seats with Kouichi shortly before their car was hit; Kouichi survived, but the girl didn't. Naoko is positive that the uncle, who had been in New York the day of the accident, is responsible for Kouichi's death.

Sidney and Nobuyuki reminisce that they used to play rock-paper-scissors to decide who would sit in which seat on car trips. After Nobuyuki teaches the game to Henry, he admits that it wasn't exactly fair, because he knew Sidney almost always threw "rock." Sidney is astonished to find out why Nobuyuki nearly always won.

They find out from the local Global Tours office manager that the uncle had reportedly been in his hotel room for at least an hour before and after the accident. That would have been enough time to drive to New Jersey and push Kouichi in front of a car, then make a quick getaway. Later, Nobuyuki goes back to talk to Naoko. She tells him that the uncle's first company had gone under around the time that his daughter had died; he had taken the money he had saved up and helped found Global Tours. Nobuyuki wonders if perhaps the daughter had been with Kouichi's family because her father was too busy with work to spend time with her. If so, the uncle might have been pushed over the edge when his new company as well went bankrupt, leaving him with nothing but guilt.

Nobuyuki wants to tell Sidney this latest information. He decides to make a dash for Police Headquarters, even though it's raining. However, he stops when he sees Sidney and Rod together on a restaurant terrace. They look so natural together, he doesn't want to interrupt. Nobuyuki delivers the information to Henry and heads straight home, but the damage has already been done; being exposed to the freezing rain has made him develop a fever. As he huddles alone in his apartment beneath two layers of blankets, he ponders that as soon as he feels better and the Takizawa case is cleared up, he should start searching for a new place to live. That way he won't be a hindrance to Sidney and Rod getting back together.

The experience makes him remember a time when he was supposed to have gone out to a snowball fight with the other neighborhood kids but had gotten sick. Sidney was quite disappointed to hear that he couldn't come out to play. Rather than going directly to the snowball fight, Sidney climbs up to Nobuyuki's bedroom window and writes "get well quick" in the frost with his finger. Unfortunately, this causes Sidney to come down with a cold as well. [Cultural note: Japan abounds with curious notions about what causes people to get sick. Being exposed to water--either from rain, snow, sweat, or some other source--is at the top of the list and can cause one to develop a fever almost instantly. The narration explains that if Sidney had gone to the snowball fight where adults were supervising the children, he wouldn't have caught a cold, but because he took his gloves off to write on the window, he got sick. Don't ask it to be logical, that's just the way it works.]

Sidney hears Nobuyuki coughing from the next room and asks Henry's wife Kate to come over and look after him. He picks the lock on the bathroom door to let her into Nobuyuki's apartment. When Nobuyuki wakes up, she gives him okayu, a type of rice porridge, since it is the traditional food served to sick people in Japan. She gets Henry on the phone, and Nobuyuki asks him to look into the calling history of the cell phones used by both Kouichi and his uncle the day of the accident. He also asks Kate if she would know why Naoko would have come to New York using a different travel agency from the one that employed her husband. Kate turns the question back on him, asking why he hadn't contacted Sidney before returning to New York, instead waiting until after he had arrived and revoked his Japanese citizenship.

Nobuyuki mulls over the question for a long time. Sidney and Henry come over to show him the results of their investigation. They are fascinated by the pot of okayu that Kate left, so they both try some. Nobuyuki is touched by the way Sidney fusses over him, and he finally realizes the answer to Kate's question. After they show Nobuyuki the cell phone records, they prepare to head to the hospital to speak with Naoko.

Nobuyuki takes a shower before going out. He insists that he feels fine, despite still having a slight fever. Sidney warns him that going outside with damp hair will make his cold worse. He carefully runs his hands through Nobuyuki's hair and ensures that it's completely dry before letting him leave the apartment.

Nobuyuki had thought of the cell phone angle because he once had a classmate who, as a joke, told a friend that he had been rejected for his first choice college. The friend committed suicide at the news, and Nobuyuki's classmate then jumped in front of a train from the guilt of what his joke had done. Nobuyuki felt that phoning Kouichi to tell him that Global Tours had gone bankrupt may have had a similar effect, so finding out for certain who exactly had called him was the key to solving the mystery. When they arrive at the hospital, Nobuyuki confronts Naoko with the phone records that prove Kouichi's uncle had called her in Tokyo, and then she had been the one to call Kouichi and tell him the bad news. Nobuyuki angrily accuses her of blaming the uncle for Kouichi's death as a way to lessen her own guilt.

Sidney is surprised by Nobuyuki's uncharacteristic anger and drags him out into the hallway for a more private discussion. Nobuyuki tries to shake him off, but Sidney just holds him more tightly. Eventually they get to the heart of the matter, and Sidney makes an unanticipated confession. As they finish, Henry rather embarrassedly calls them back into the room.

Nobuyuki apologizes to Naoko for getting angry at her. He empathizes with her reason for wanting to come to New York secretly; when he did the same thing, it was because of fear. He spent eleven years in Japan wanting nothing more than to see Sidney again, but when the time came to return, he was afraid to call and find out that Sidney didn't feel the same. She had felt the same at being separated from her husband. He knows it probably won't eliminate her guilt no matter what he says, but he assures her that Kouichi's accident wasn't her fault. After they leave her room, he explains everything to Henry and Sidney amid bouts of dizzyness. Sidney realizes that his fever has gotten worse and, ignoring Nobuyuki's protests that he doesn't need to be hospitalized, scoops Nobuyuki up into his arms and calls for a doctor.

Nobuyuki recovers from his cold several days later and stops by the Sky Travel office. Kouichi's uncle shows up with a present of Japanese sweets, apologizing for the trouble he inadvertantly caused. He admits that he had asked Naoko to inform her husband of the bankruptcy because he was ashamed to tell his nephew that he had failed. Once the man leaves, Takada advises Nobuyuki that one never knows when accidents may happen, so to avoid lifelong guilt, he would be better off apologizing to anyone who needs it right away rather than procrastinating. He meant it as a hint to get Nobuyuki to apologize to him for missing so many days of work, but Nobuyuki has someone else in mind.

Taking a couple of the sweetest of the Japanese treats home for Sidney, he asks for Rod's phone number. He intends to apologize to Rod for the part he played in the breakup so that he won't continue to wallow in guilt, though he keeps his plan secret from Sidney. He does reveal that he had considered moving out of the apartment until hearing Sidney's confession.

Nobuyuki answers Sidney's concerns by saying he truly wants to stay together. He enjoys being with Sidney, even though he's too much of a "kid" to really wrap his mind around Sidney's feelings for him. Sidney responds that he's relieved he doesn't have to hide his feelings anymore; on the contrary, he can express them more directly. He demonstrates by kissing Nobuyuki on the cheek. However, he quickly adds that he wants Nobuyuki to speak up if he ever feels uncomfortable. He promises to stop the instant Nobuyuki tells him to. As Nobuyuki sets off to meet Rod for lunch, he muses that there is still a lot he doesn't know about his best friend--particularly about his time in the army--but he wants to get to know Sidney better little by little.

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