37.5 degrees Celsius is the highest temperature permitted for a child to attend daycare. But children do run fevers, and when that happens, what can you do? Parents can’t simply leave their sick children at home while they go off to work. But they also must work. Enter the “sick child” caregiver to lend a helping hand to parents in a fix. Problem solved. But is leaving a sick child in someone else’s care considered “bad parenting”? What truly defines parental affection, family and parenting? Find out through the daily adventures of Momoko, a child caregiver who, though clumsy in work and love, embraces a host of challenges and difficulties with an honest passion. 37.5-degree Tears examines the different forms that love and parenting take, and is sure to tug at the heartstrings of all parents.

Full-time homemaker, Serina, is madly in love with her elite securities manager husband, Takefumi. But ever since they got married two years ago as two incurably infatuated lovers, her husband has changed. He has begun to find her unmitigated affection towards him to be “over the top” and “irksome.” As a result, he has begun to avoid her. Then one evening returning from a dinner party, Serina finds herself caught up in a little incident where she encounters a private detective named Haruki. She ends up taking a job working at his office. Though somewhat clumsy and wielding no particular talent to speak of, Serina gradually realizes that she was made for detective work. And in the process of striving for the affection of the husband she loves, she too finds herself changing and growing into a beautifully strong and independent woman.

Satoko Ogata is a brilliant psychiatrist, 39 and single. She loves her work and has a good social life with her friends, but as she nears 40 her best friend of many years tells her, “If you want children you have to get married soon” prodding her to actively seek “happiness as a woman.” One day, Satoko meets Keitaro Okamura, a man whose devotion to ecology borders on the eccentric. As one of the “around 40 generation” who blazed a trail for the women of today, how will she deal with the situation?

Hina, a student at Nikko High School, goes out one evening with Beniko, a girl from her year. They get split up and Hina ends up in a strange meeting with a man named Ikumi in a game arcade. The next day, Ikumi turns up as the new teacher at her school. Ikumi doesn’t seem to recognize Hina but the wheels of fate are slowly moving to reunite them in what is a passionate story of forbidden love.

Even though he failed his entrance examination, Shumpei scouts out the entrance ceremony of Waseda University and determines in his mind that he will devote the next year studying to get into the university. As he is leaving the campus, Momoko, an energetic freshman, suddenly drafts Shumpei against his will to help her sell school maps to fellow freshmen. Although annoyed by her overbearing persistence, Shumpei eventually befriends Momoko; but her doctor-boyfriend and his hang-ups about his former high school sweetheart keep them from getting any closer.