Boys Be...

Aki tells her friends about a cute boy she met on her way to school who might become her new love, but neither Yumi nor Chiharu are impressed by her story. Later, Chiharu visits the place of her childhood friend Kyouichi, and her behavior (as well as a little teasing by Makoto`s older sister Sayaka) almost turns the boy`s head. After a little incident with Chiharu`s skirt, Sayaka orders Kyouichi to walk Chiharu home, and suddenly the boy has to face a strange question.

Watching a kissing scene in TV while cooking for his mother`s restaurant (and destroying the frying pan in the process), watching a cute girl while driving back on his scooter with the freshly purchased replacement pan - only to awake in hospital... you can say this just wasn`t Makoto`s day: His hand-held is broken and his girls` database is gone as well. In the hospital Makoto gets interested in the cute nurse apprentice Mizuki and starts to hit on her, with the help of a young girl named Lisa-chan, a patient like himself who knows the nurse quite well already. But the present he gives to Mizuki backfires completely.

At the baseball training the coaches are talking about talented but lazy Yoshihiko who might have become the leader of the team long ago if he even cared. Yoshihiko`s next hit is a major foul, driving the ball into an open window of the school library. While searching the library for the lost ball he knocks against some ladder, and the girl standing on it, just trying to put a book back onto the uppermost shelf, is falling down ... but Yoshihiko manages to catch her before she can hit the ground. And just moments later he`s rewarded with a kiss!

The girls are talking about "friendship and beyond", browsing Aki`s middle school photo album. On one photo Aki looked particularly angry but she won`t tell her friends what happened back then, and insists on going to the karaoke box instead. On their way through the rain they meet a boy taking photographs of flowers; Aki is surprised to meet him there. "Ueno - my ex-boyfriend", she explains to her friends later. Which brings back memories of the time when they had to make the middle school graduation album together and he fell in love with the rain, right when she was falling in love with him.

Makoto and Kyouichi are on their way to the sea for a holiday job at the Marine House Nitta, run by Chiharu`s older cousin Daisuke. At the inn they are welcomed by a shy but beautiful girl who turns out to be Chiharu`s cousin Nao. Makoto is trying to have a go on her, only to learn how jealous Daisuke can become. Burning hanabi at night, Aki and Yumi tell the boys about Nao`s frail health - that`s why she is always alone and hiding from the sun. On the next day Nao walks to the beach with her parasol - and Yumi and Aki meet her just in time to see her fainting.

Yoshihiko spends his time in the arcade instead of practicing, much to the annoyance of his baseball coach. Brought back to the sports field by the assistant coach, Yoshihiko suddenly faces a challenge by his exact counterpart, female team manager Horikawa who prefers baseball practice over a third meal every day. It`s just that no one had the guts so far to tell Horikawa that the finals at the Koushien stadium will be nothing but a dream for her as female players aren`t allowed in the league.

During her summer training camp for track&field Chiharu loses her way in the forest. Right when a giant beetle settles down on her back, a young man collecting beetles frees her from the unwanted guest and shows her the way back to her camp. But Chiharu can`t stand the pushy behavior of this show-off cabriolet driver, introducing himself as Okasagi Yuki. Aki and Yumi visit Chiharu at the camp, telling her how comfortable their holidays at the sea together with Makoto and Kyouichi had been. Which brings back uncomfortable memories for Chiharu about her argument with Kyouichi... and during her next training race she loses concentration, stumbles - and falls.

Kyouichi and Makoto notice their classmate Sayama Shouko listening to music (via headset) at class and getting very upset when the teacher confiscates her music player. When Kyouichi is able to help an irate Shouko getting a drink from the school`s malfunctioning vending machine they start talking about music and some band whose singer retired and Shouko mulls over applying for the position. Shouko invites Kyouichi to join a concert of her own band tonight, and later on a special nightly excursion.

Makoto is updating his database of "girls specifications" as his new "secret weapon" software will allow him to find the best match for himself. In fact the machine spits out the name of "Erika", the girl voted most popular attendee at the school festival. But Yumi tells him he`s absolutely not Erika`s type as the two girls have been friends since junior high. Yumi`s specification is missing in Makoto`s database - he wouldn`t waste time to collect data about girls below "B rank". When Yumi detects hentai pictures on this hand-held the machine`s life span turns out to be surprisingly short. Now Yumi has to make up for the damage she caused, by arranging a date between Erika and Makoto.

At night Kyouichi has strange dreams and wonders whether they indicate his loneliness. Makoto has a simpler name for this feeling: "need girlfriend syndrome". At his school`s arts club Kyouichi meets Yokota-senpai who just completed a marvelous drawing of an inconspicuous female classmate whom he obviously adores. Suddenly Kyouichi becomes aware that they are colleagues at his part-time job at a video shop. The two young artists start to talk; Yokota confesses he never even had a girlfriend before, and Makoto tells Yokota about Kyouichi just having been dumped. Soon Kyouichi and Yokota are spending a lot of time together, alienating Makoto formidably: Are these two boys starting a weird romance?

Yoshihiko decides to go shopping alone - and he`s run over by a beautiful woman in a Santa dress! Everyone but Yoshihiko would have recognized her as the famous idol Morio Junna; as to escape the crowd immediately formed about these two, "Mori-Jun" addresses Yoshihiko as her manager and drags him away with her. Mori-Jun can`t believe the boy never heard of her before. They grab a bite at a fast-food restaurant, but then one of Mori-Jun`s commercials is shown there on the screen. Mori-Jun asks Yoshihiko to accompany her but he`s still unimpressed about "dating an idol". Then Mori-Jun runs away with Yoshihiko`s jacket.

Two days before the millennium is coming to an end, the boys are talking about how Nostradamus` prophecies were totally off the year before, and how much has happened since then. Meanwhile, lots of rumors are spreading, such as: "If you`re together with the one you love at the end of the millennium then your love will grow." which is what Natsue read in a magazine and tells Yoshihiko. At the same time, Makoto and Yumi look up a rumor in the Internet claiming that "If you`re together with the one you love at the end of the millennium then you two will eventually part." And Aki happens to read that Nostradamus foretold the collapse of the world on December 31st, 2000.

While Chiharu is cramming for her university application, Kyouichi has traveled to Hokkaido in his summer holidays. Right after his arrival he literally runs into an attractive blond girl who offers him to take him along on her motorbike. Kyouichi soon learns this girl is creating and selling wooden carvings. She constantly teases the naive boy, inventing ever new stories about her former boyfriend, and inviting Kyouichi to stay at her studio. But at the same time she can understand him very well, being a fellow artist - and she can read his drawings in a way Kyouichi couldn`t do by himself. And her name is "Chiharu".