Volume 3 - The Boredom of Suzumiya Haruhi

by Tanigawa Nagaru

  “Look at this for a sec.”

  Haruhi said, pointing to the display of the computer that she had plundered from another club some time ago.

  There was no avoiding it, so I looked. The graphics-editing software was showing an incomprehensible scrawl. It looked like a drunken tapeworm rolling around in its drink in the middle of a circle; I had no idea what kind of drawing it was supposed to be. I didn’t know what else to think, other than that it was something drawn by a kindergartener.

  “What is it?”

  I said frankly.

  Immediately, Haruhi responded with her mouth looking like a duck’s,

  “Can’t you tell?”

  Kyon: “I can’t. I don’t get it at all. Today’s Modern Japanese exam was easier to understand than this.”

  “I can’t. I don’t get it at all. Today’s Modern Japanese exam was easier to understand than this.”

  “What are you talking about? That test was so simple even your little sister could’ve gotten a perfect score.”

  Her words were really starting to annoy me,

  “This is my SOS Brigade emblem!”

  She answered, her face glowing with pride, like she had just accomplished some wonderful thing.

  “Emblem?” I said.

  “Yes. Emblem.” said Haruhi.

  “This? Nobody but a permanent candidate for chief clerk, who pulls all-nighters through holidays for two straight months, and retraces his footsteps while taking the hair of the dog, can see that.”

  “Look at it closely. See, it says ‘SOS Brigade’ in the middle, right?”

  Now that you mention it, it’s not that I don’t feel like it seems like it looks like it, but I would hesitate to say it out loud that it’s not that I can’t see it. Well then, how many negatives did I string together? I don’t feel like doing it myself, so if somebody’s free, tally it up for me.

  “You’re the one with the most free time! And you’re not going to be doing any cramming, anyway.”

  I was actually brimming with eagerness until just a moment ago. But, now that I think about it, you’re absolutely correct.

  “I’m thinking about putting this on the SOS Brigade’s top page.”

  Speaking of which, we do have such a thing. But it’s a miserable site that doesn’t have anything other than a top page.

  “We’re not getting any more visitors. How disgraceful! And we haven’t received any mysterious e-mail at all. It’s because you got in my way! I thought we could’ve used Mikuru-chan’s erotic pictures to pull in customers.”

  Asahina-san’s passionate maid pictures are all mine, and I don’t intend to share them with anyone. This is certainly one of those things in this world that cannot be bought with mere money.

  “You may have made this site, but it’s reeeaaaally boring, don’t you agree? There’s totally nothing there to liven it up with. So I thought, ‘How about putting up something like an SOS Brigade symbol?’”

  Just hurry up and remove it from the net. I feel bad for those people who visit this stupid homepage by mistake. Since there were no contents, there’s nothing to update. All it has is an image saying “Welcome to the SOS Brigade Website!”, an e-mail address, and an access counter. That counter hasn’t even reached three digits, and ninety percent of those hits seemed to be Haruhi’s.

  While I watched as the handmade website appeared in the browser window that Haruhi had launched, I asked,

  “Why don’t you write a journal? Isn’t it the chief’s job to put up a task log? Even the captain of a spaceship handles the ship’s log.”

  “No way, what a pain!”

  It’d be a pain for me, too. To describe a day here, the only things you could write about would be stuff like what kind of book Nagato was reading, how Koizumi won at Gomoku Narabe, how Asahina-san was cute today as well, and how Haruhi was sitting quietly with her mouth closed. Having written such unexciting things, I couldn’t think that reading them would be any more fun. Therefore, I won’t do something that would be far from entertaining anyone.

  “Okay, Kyon. Make this symbol show at the top of the site.”

  “Do it yourself.”

  “I don’t know how!”

  “So look it up. You’ll never learn if you keep depending on others.”

  “I’m the chief! The chief’s job is to direct. Besides, if I do everything then you guys won’t have any work to do, will you? You should use your head a little, too. You won’t become a better person if you only do as you’re told.”

  Are you telling me to do it, or not to do it? Which is it? Speak proper Japanese.

  “Just do it, already! You can’t trick me with that sort of wordplay. You should be thankful that you have as much free time as the Greeks did Before Common Era. Come on, hurry up!”

  The longer I had to listen to Haruhi’s voice, which was like a crow singing noisily at the break of dawn, the more my ears would hurt, so I reluctantly opened the HTML editor, took Master Artist Haruhi’s illustration, which seemed like it had been drawn by a child who had some time to waste, reduced it to an appropriate size, pasted it into the file, and uploaded it without changing anything else.

  I clicked reload on the browser to verify the change. It seemed like the unnecessary SOS Brigade emblem had left its footprint on the internet world properly. I took a quick look at the access counter, and as expected, the number was still at two digits. It’d be fine if no one but Haruhi would ever see the site. I don’t want it to be known that the one who had made such an awful website was me.

  By the end of the day, as the first term somehow comes to a close, so do the days that have drawn out my melancholy, coming to a momentary rest that will begin from tomorrow. That rest’s name is said to be the exam break. This preparatory period will last until summer vacation, and is the time when the teachers will probably mark my test papers wrong.

  Damn, how annoying.

  Feeling both depressed and annoyed, my feet took me to the Literature-Club-Room-Turned-SOS-Brigade-Hideout. At least I could stare at Asahina-san to achieve some peace of mind.

  Nagato silently reading a book, Koizumi smiling while solving a Shogi problem by himself, Asahina-san waiting on us in her maid costume, Haruhi saying, chattering, screaming, or shouting something incomprehensible, and me having to listen to those tedious words; this composition has been the pattern these days.

  Nothing has been happening recently as well, but I have felt like this since the beginning.

  With a sinking feeling, I knocked on the door. Hoping to hear a “Yes~?” in Asahina’s lilting voice, what came out from the room instead was,

  “Come in!”

  It was Haruhi’s careless voice, and when I entered, Haruhi was the only one I saw. With her elbows on the chief’s desk, she was doing something on the PC that she had forcefully acquired from the Computer Studies group.

  “Oh, it’s just you?”

  “Yuki’s here, too, you know.”

  Certainly, Nagato was in the corner of the table with an open book, seeming like she had become a figurine as she usually did. She’s like an attachment for this room, so there’s no need to include her in the count. She hasn’t committed to entering the SOS Brigade, and is officially a member of the Literature Club. But I guess I should still correct myself.

  “Oh, it’s just you and Nagato?”

  “That’s true, do you have any complaints about it? If you do, I’d like to hear them, I’m the chief here, after all.”

  If I were to list my complaints about you, it would completely fill up both sides of an A4 note.

  “I’m the one who should be disappointed. Because you knocked like that, I thought a client must have certainly come. Don’t confuse me by acting like one, okay?”

  I’m taking care so that I don’t accidentally witness Asahina-san changing her clothes live. That charmingly careless person can’t quite remember to lock the door.

  And what was that about clients? Tell me what kind of customer would v
isit this room.

  After that, Haruhi looked at me with disdain on her face.

  “You don’t remember?”

  A thought startled me. She couldn’t be talking about what happened three years ago after Tanabata, could she?

  “You’re the one who did it! And without getting my permission.”

  Whatever could that be…?

  “You put up that poster on the clubroom building’s bulletin board.”

  Oh, that. I let out a sigh of relief.

  To get the student council to somehow approve the SOS brigade, I made up some fictitious activity plans. After concluding that a mystery-hunting brigade wouldn’t even make it to discussions, we could appeal to the student council to let the SOS Brigade continue by acting as a consultation office for miscellaneous problems. If I had said such a stupid thing to the executive board, we would have been shut down in an instant.

  However, I had already gone so far as making a poster by hand. I don’t really remember what I wrote, but I think it had something like, “We accept all consultations.” Since I’d gone to the trouble, I stuck it on a bulletin board I had happened to see. Even if someone did see it, in any case, I presumed that there would be no one deranged enough to come to the SOS Brigade for advice about their problems. This seems to be the correct answer, as we presently have no clients, which suits me just fine.

  Still, as Haruhi had remembered such a thing, was she waiting for clients to actually come? It was time to go home for the day, but perhaps it was better to get myself unstuck from here. If a student with a truly strange problem came, things would get complicated.

  I was deciding in a corner of my mind, and while Haruhi was moving the mouse round and round, she said,

  “Anyway, look at this. Something’s strange. I wonder if the PC’s broken.”

  I looked through the side of Haruhi’s hair. What the display was unwillingly projecting was our SOS Brigade homepage. However, it was subtly different from what I had made. The emblem that had been clumsily scribbled by Haruhi’s hand was distorted as if it had been concentrated, and the counter and title logo had just been blown off. I tried reloading, but it didn’t change. It was like abnormal data completely covered it like a mosaic.

  “It’s not the PC. It looks like the file on the server is corrupt.”

  I don’t understand the internet very well, but I know that much. By chance, I had thought of keeping a local copy of the site to view in the browser, so we could still make it display properly.

  “Since when has it been like this?”

  “Who knows? I’ve only been checking the mail these past few days, so I haven’t seen the site. It was like this when I looked at it today. Where should I file a complaint?”

  There’s no need to file a complaint. The fix is simple. I snatched the mouse away from Haruhi, and then sent the stored top page files to the server, overwriting the data with the same name. I tried redisplaying.

  “Hmm?”

  The site remained crashed. I repeated it many times, but the result was the same. It seemed like I had somehow contracted a can’t-control-the-computer disorder.

  “Isn’t this strange? Maybe it’s that thing, those rumors I hear about hackers or crackers that people talk about?”

  “Can’t be.” I denied. It’s hard to think that there are people with so much free time that they would go cracking a site that wasn’t linked to from anywhere and that nobody looks at. It’s probably some kind of error.

  “How irritating! Maybe someone’s committing cyber-terrorism on the SOS Brigade! Who could it be? If I find that person, I’ll sentence him to thirty days of community service without having a trial!”

  Taking my eyes off of the steaming Haruhi, I turned to look at Nagato who seemed to be wearing opacity optical camouflage. Couldn’t this person have done it somehow? I thought. Although I could internally form an image of Nagato arbitrarily having detailed knowledge of computers, I have never seen her doing anything with the PC. To be more precise, I should say that there’s hardly any scene other than her reading a book.

  There was the sound of knocking.

  “Come in!”

  The door opened during Haruhi’s reply; it was Koizumi. With his usual, excessively fresh smile,

  “My, how unusual. Asahina-san hasn’t arrived yet?”

  “The second years have more exams, don’t they?”

  It was the last day of the term for us first years, and we only had three periods. It should’ve been okay if we had quickly gone home, so why were we all gathering in such a place? Did I have so few friends? And Haruhi, why didn’t you do a counter tsukkomi on Koizumi for knocking?

  Koizumi left his bag lying on the table, brought out a Diamond Game board from the cupboard, and turned to me with inviting eyes. I shook my head; Koizumi shrugged and started a single player diamond. I really couldn’t wait for Asahina-san’s tea.

  Knock knock.

  It was the sound of knocking again. This time, I was sitting in front of the chief’s desk grappling with the FTP software. Behind me was Haruhi, throwing misguided and out-of-nowhere requests this way and that, and making me answer those unreasonable demands.

  So that knock was the ringing sound of salvation for me.

  “Come in!”

  Haruhi again said in a big voice, and the door opened. Judging from the sequence of things, it was probably Asahina-san who had come.

  “Ah, sorry I’m late!”

  Giving a humble apology as she came into sight, a wingless angel, it couldn’t have been anyone but Asahina-san.

  “I had tests until fourth period……”

  As she was saying the excuse that didn’t need to be said, she lingered near the door, seeming hesitant. She wouldn’t move to enter for some reason, and timidly continued,

  “Well, that is… you see.”

  All our eyes were focused on Asahina-san. When she noticed that Nagato was looking at her, Asahina-san drew back flinchingly, and then, seeming resigned, began to speak.

  “Uh, um… I brought a client.”

  That client was named Kimidori Emiri-san, a second year student who gave an impression of being timid and neat.

  Presently, with her eyes fixed on the surface of the tea that Asahina-san had poured, she was sitting without raising her face. Beside her was Asahina-san, who was seated on an adjacent chair like an escort. She hadn’t changed into her maid costume like I was anticipating. It was a bit disappointing.

  “So, as for you.” Haruhi said, making a face like an interviewer’s and twirling a ball pen. Occupying the space in front of the two second-year students, she continued in an arrogant tone,

  “What you’re saying is that you want our SOS Brigade to look for your missing boyfriend?”

  Holding the pen with the top of her lips, Haruhi crossed her arms.

  Holding the pen with the top of her lips, Haruhi crossed her arms. Although she was acting as if she were thinking about something, I knew better. She was just holding back and could burst into laughter at any moment.

  How could this be? Even though I was optimistic that no one would come, our first counselee had arrived. It would be typical of Haruhi to probably want to jump for joy in this situation.

  “Yes.” Kimidori-san said, talking toward her teacup.

  Nagato, Koizumi, and I were watching the situation from the sidelines. Before the pair of second year students, Haruhi went,

  “Hmm.”

  She hummed artificially and gave me a look.

  I was becoming thoroughly resentful of myself. I never should have made such a poster! What could I have written, accepting consultations for the problems you couldn’t tell other people… Was that it? All the same, it never occurred to me that there was a student who would take it seriously; wasn’t I thinking normally?

  Whether or not she took it seriously, Kimidori-san saw the poster about the SOS Brigade’s activity objectives, and seems to have mistaken it to mean that we were a counseling office for gener
al problems or a service business that does odd jobs. Certainly, that would be the case if you had interpreted it literally. Ah I finally remembered; the contents of my fabricated activities were “students’ school life problems discussions, consulting duties, and progressive participation in community service activities.” Presently, not one of those could be related to the SOS Brigade. Aside from disturbing a grass-lot baseball tournament, we haven’t done a thing.

  However, having seen the poster I had written by chance, Kimidori-san had discovered our existence, called out to Asahina-san, who was in the same year, after worrying over it, and came here together with her; this seems about right.

  So, what could be troubling you?

  “He hasn’t come to school for many days now.”

  Kimidori-san wouldn’t meet anyone’s eyes, and looked intently at the teacup’s rim as she spoke.

  “Although he’s rarely absent, he didn’t even come in on a test day, which was strange.”

  “Have you tried calling him?” Asked Haruhi. Her mouth stopped looking like it was going to burst out laughing, and she started biting on the bottom of her ball pen.

  “Yes. He doesn’t answer his mobile or house phone. I tried going to his home, but it was locked. Nobody came to get the door.”

  “Hu-hu-humm.”

  A person who delights in other people’s misfortune is a real good-for-nothing, but Haruhi was emitting such a cheerful aura that she seemed she might break out into a song at any moment. In short, this person wasn’t even a bum. End of discussion.

  “And your boyfriend’s family?”

  Kimidori-san was talking to her tea. It seems it wasn’t in this person’s nature to be able to talk to others while meeting their eyes.

  “I heard from before that his parents had gone to another country. I don’t know their contact address.”

  “Ehhh? Could that country be Canada?” Haruhi asked.

  “No. If I remember correctly, I think it was Honduras.”

  “Ho-ho~. Honduras, huh. I see.”

  What is it you’re seeing? I doubt you even know where that country is. Um… was it somewhere below Mexico?