Yuki notices the error at eight forty-five in the morning. She is sitting on the edge of her bed, going through her welcome packet with a highlighter, when she sees the line that says NATIONALITÉ and reads, in small dark letters, what someone has typed there.
Chinoise.
Yuki is not Chinese. Yuki is Japanese. She knows this, her passport knows this, her parents know this, and the Tokyo magazine that is paying for her six-month assignment in Paris definitely knows this. But the school does not know this. Or rather, the school used to know this — she filled in the form herself in February — but somewhere between February and May, someone has retyped the form, and that person has made a mistake.
Yuki does not know, yet, that this small error is going to be the reason the four of them finally start being friends.
She walks into the classroom at nine. She is, for once, not on time — she is two minutes late, because she stopped to read the form three times to make sure she was not the one who was wrong. The other three look up.
— Yuki, ça va ?
It is Amara who asks. Yuki sits down. She holds up the form.
— Il y a un problème.
She explains. Mateo, who has been waiting for something dramatic to happen all week, listens with his entire body. Wei looks concerned. Amara nods slowly.
— Tu dois aller au secrétariat.
— Oui. Mais je suis nerveuse.
— On vient avec toi.
It is decided in three seconds. At the eleven o'clock break, all four of them walk together down the corridor to the secretariat — Yuki holding her form, Amara walking on her left, Wei walking on her right, and Mateo a few steps behind, narrating the situation to nobody in particular.
— C'est un drame. C'est un vrai drame administratif. Yuki, tu es très courageuse.
— Mateo, tais-toi.
— D'accord.
They reach the door of the secretariat. Yuki takes a breath. She knocks. Inside, a woman looks up from her computer.
It is the first time the four of them have done anything together. Yuki, holding her form, walks in alone — but she walks in knowing that three people are waiting for her in the corridor.
The secretariat trip went well. Of course it did. The form was reprinted; Yuki signed it; the woman behind the desk smiled and said — slowly, kindly, the way Madame Benali says things — that these mistakes happen, that Yuki was right to come, that her French was very clear. Yuki walked back into the corridor with the new form in her hand and three people waiting for her, and she did not cry, but she came close.
Now it is two in the afternoon. The four of them are sitting in the small courtyard of the school, on a stone bench, in the May sun. The instructor has given them a task: invent a Francophone identity. Make up a person. Give them a name, a nationality, a profession, an age. Present them to the class.
Mateo, naturally, has gone first.
— Il s'appelle Pablo Cinéma.
— Mateo, ce n'est pas un nom.
— Si. Maintenant oui. Pablo Cinéma. Il est québécois. Il est réalisateur. Il a quarante ans. Il a deux chats.
— Mateo, on n'a pas appris « chats » encore.
— Justement.
Amara goes next. She has invented a woman called Awa, a doctor from Dakar who works in Marseille. The story is small and complete. Wei thinks Amara's invented woman is more real than her own actual self.
Yuki has invented a Belgian journalist with a cat. (Mateo applauds the cat.) When it is Wei's turn, she opens her mouth, and what comes out surprises her.
— Elle s'appelle Marie. Elle est française. Elle est photographe. Elle a vingt-cinq ans. Elle aime Paris.
It is, in fact, the kind of person Wei thought she would become if she ever moved to Paris. The other three nod approvingly. None of them know — Wei does not even know herself, fully — that she has just described a small bolder version of who she would like to be.
At the end of the afternoon, walking out of the school, the four of them discover something that none of them had realised.
They have been comparing addresses. Wei lives at number twelve, rue des Cinq-Diamants, third floor. Yuki lives at number twelve, rue des Cinq-Diamants, second floor. Mateo lives at number twelve, rue des Cinq-Diamants, fourth floor. Amara lives at number twelve, rue des Cinq-Diamants, first floor — directly above Madame Benali's boulangerie.
They have been living in the same building for a week. They have passed each other on the stairs, in the courtyard, at the front door. None of them have recognised each other.
Mateo is the first to laugh. Then Amara. Then Wei. Yuki stands very still for a moment, processing the data, and then begins to laugh too.
Amara puts her hand on Wei's shoulder.
— Bon. Alors lundi matin, on se voit à la boulangerie. Sept heures et demie. D'accord ?
— D'accord.
Episode 1 ends here, on the rue des Cinq-Diamants, on a Friday afternoon in May, with four people who realised they have been neighbours all along.