Chapter 1

Natsuki Takaya's first chapter launches the entire Fruits Basket manga and lays out its central premise. Tohru Honda, a kind and hardworking teenager, has been quietly living alone in a tent in the woods since her mother's death that spring. Through a string of accidents she crosses paths with three members of the Sohma family, and by the chapter's close she stumbles onto the curse that binds them when a simple hug turns one of them into an animal.

Tohru leaves her makeshift tent each morning after greeting a photograph of her late mother, Kyoko, whose fatal car accident left her orphaned. Walking the woods, she discovers a handsome two-story house decorated with Chinese Zodiac figures, and its owner, Shigure Sohma, finds her admiring them. She recognizes the animals from a legend her mother once told her: God summoned every creature to a grand banquet, but the cunning Rat tricked the Cat into believing it fell a day later, then rode in on the Ox to arrive first, leaving the Cat forever shut out. As a girl, Tohru had cried and wished to be born under the Cat's sign rather than the Dog.

Her classmate Yuki Sohma turns up and reveals that the two are cousins, catching Tohru off guard. At school she is cornered by the Prince Yuki Fan Club, who resent her closeness to Yuki until her friends Arisa Uotani and Saki Hanajima drive them off. Across the day the reader learns Tohru hides her homelessness even from these two, holds down a cleaning job, and cooks well. Yuki speaks oddly about the Cat never being welcome among the Zodiac and dodges her questions with a cryptic smile.

That night Yuki and Shigure spot Tohru in the woods and realize she has been living on Sohma land. A landslide then buries her tent while she is inside their home, and the two men take her in. As she rests with a fever, Tohru explains that her mother pushed her to finish the schooling she herself never got to complete, and confesses her guilt over never saying goodbye before the accident. Impressed by her independence, Yuki quietly retrieves her belongings overnight, hinting at an unnatural method involving a swarm of rats. The next morning the Sohmas invite her to stay in exchange for cooking and cleaning. When a red-haired boy, Kyo, crashes through the ceiling to fight Yuki, Tohru trips into him, and to everyone's shock he transforms into an orange cat in her arms.

The chapter first ran in the July 1998 issue of Hana to Yume. It is bookended by two short one-shot strips. Shigure's fault... is set before Tohru's arrival and shows how filthy the house is under its lazy occupants, while This is where your charm is (maybe). follows the reveal that Kyo will attend the same school, with Yuki teasing him for not simply failing the entrance exam.