[wikipedia]

Protagonist of the series. She tends to be a little air-headed and easygoing. When her grandfather suffered a stroke her dad decided to move out to the countryside and take over the farm. Since Nao still had a semester of high school to finish, she convinced her parents to let her rent an apartment and live by herself, at least temporarily. Then she finds out with surprise that someone else had rented the same flat: Hisashi Uehara. The landlady suggests that Nao and Hisashi can just live together; this way, rent will even be cheaper, and so they do. At first, she didn't notice that she liked Hisashi until she got a little counseling from her friends. She starts to date Hisashi later in the story. In the end of the manga, she and Uehara move into different apartments because the landlady of their previous apartment had a son who came back from America and had wanted to rent out a room for him and his girlfriend. When Nao agrees, she looks for other apartments for two and learns that Uehara wishes to live alone to become independent. Although at first shocked and upset, she respects his decision only to find out that the two now live next door to each other because of the help of the landlady of their previous apartment and Nakatsugawa.