The sound of the clubroom door opening again brought me back to myself.
“…”
Whoever it was seemed to be standing there without saying anything. The door didn’t close.
“Oh, Nagato,” I heard Asahina say in her clear voice. “Wait just a moment, and I’ll put the tea on.”
I craned my neck around again.
Through the door’s slit I only caught the hem of her maid outfit’s skirt as it whirled around. I was left to imagine the now-changed Asahina quickly lighting the portable burner.
“…”
I didn’t hear any more sound from Nagato. While she’s certainly capable of moving quietly, the door certainly cannot close without making noise, so I inferred that she was still standing at the room’s entrance.
“Um… is something the matter?” came Asahina’s uncertain voice. Again my imagination: Nagato held her bag in one hand, with the other holding the doorknob as she stared, I was certain, at the broom closet.
“…”
“Er—”
“We need to talk.” Nagato’s voice.
“Huh?” Asahina sounded surprised.
“Come with me.”
“Wha—?” said Asahina, her surprise growing. “G-go where? I… wha…?”
“Anywhere, as long as it is not this room.”
“B-but, what do you want to talk about…? Why can’t we do it here?”
“We cannot speak here,” said Nagato shortly.
“And… you really want to talk to me? Really?”
“Yes.”
“Wha—? Wait, Nagato, don’t—you don’t have to drag me like that—!”
There were no further words. I heard Asahina’s tottering footsteps, followed by the sound of the door closing. The two girls disappeared down the hallway beyond the door.
Thanks, Nagato.
I clattered out of the broom closet, its door slamming open; Asahina tumbled after me.
“Fwaa—!” On her knees, Asahina cried out in a voice that could’ve been either relief or total fatigue. “Gosh, what a shock!”
I doubted she was more shocked than I was. “Asahina,” I said. “Just what is going on here? When did you come from?”
Asahina lifted her head up from its lowered position to look at me, blinking as she replied. “Huh? You don’t know, Kyon?”
Know what, I wondered. Just what was it that I was supposed to know?
“I mean”—Asahina continued, her expression like a passenger aboard a sinking ocean liner who’d just gotten to a lifeboat only to discover that it had a hole in it—“you were the one who told me to go to this time, weren’t you?”
Now wait just a minute.
I racked my brain. I had said something like that. Definitely. It was on January second, when I’d needed to return to December eighteenth the previous year. We’d gone back, then returned to our time.
But that had wrapped things up, hadn’t it? At the very least, I had no memory of telling Asahina anything about a jump into the future. I hadn’t even considered the notion.
Which meant…
The future. This Asahina had come from the future.
“When did you come from?”
“Uh…” Asahina went blank for a moment, then looked down and checked her wristwatch. “Um… A week and a day, so… four fifteen PM, eight days from now.”
“For what reason?”
“I don’t know.”
She’d just up and admitted it.
“I really don’t know,” she continued. “I just did what you told me to do. And I want to ask you something: why are your requests always so quickly approved?”
Asahina pouted, looking a bit like Haruhi. It was cute, but this was no time to be thinking about things like that. I purposefully turned toward the clubroom door. “I told you to do this? The me of eight days from now did?”
“Yes. You seemed kind of nervous, and you told me that if I went, I’d understand why. And you said to say ‘Hi’ to the you of the past.”
What the hell had the eight-days-later-me been thinking?
I struggled to understand. What had he sent Asahina into the past to do? “Say ‘Hi’ to me?” That didn’t tell me anything.
No, wait—something else was strange. This Asahina said she’d come from eight days in the future. Meanwhile, the Asahina who was wearing her maid outfit—the Asahina of this time—had been dragged away by Nagato.
So… what? There were two Asahinas. One was here in the clubroom. Nagato had taken the other one somewhere else in the school and hopefully wasn’t giving her too hard of a time.
“She took me to the emergency stairs and said all kinds of strange things,” said Asahina, cocking her head to one side. “Like how to use number theory to prove the existence of God, asking me how to conceptually refute that… or something. Nagato did all the talking, and I didn’t understand a thing. What was that all about? Oh—” There Asahina cut herself off. “I see.”
Just as Asahina seemed to figure things out, the Color Timer in my head began to flash an alarmed shade of red. At this rate, we were headed for big trouble.
As I silently prayed for Nagato’s crazy-talk to drag on, I said, “Asahina, you didn’t meet your future self anytime in the past week, right?”
“Er, no…” She shook her head meekly, looking flustered. In that case, we’d have to hurry.
I couldn’t let this Asahina meet her counterpart.
Nagato had realized this. She’d sensed Asahina and me in the broom closet and had taken steps to buy us some time. The reason she’d dragged maid-Asahina out of the clubroom was to give this Asahina and me a chance to escape.
Haruhi and Koizumi would be here before long. SOS Brigade members were like salmon returning to spawn—they always came back to the same place. I should know; I was the same way. And if Haruhi were to see the fissioned Asahinas, it wasn’t hard for me to guess how likely it was that she’d buy the explanation that they were twins.
If I didn’t get Asahina out of here and fast, I had the feeling things could turn ugly very soon.
“Asahina, let’s go.”
I grabbed my own bag, opened the door slightly, and checked the hallway. Nobody was there. I beckoned Asahina to come over, which she did, looking tremulously out into the hallway. The countdown had already begun. There were two conditions. One: not letting the two versions of Asahina meet each other, and two: not letting Haruhi witness two Asahinas in one place. I thought about putting her in some kind of disguise, but a glance at the hanger rack in the clubroom revealed nothing but costumes that would’ve stuck out, so I gave up on that idea. Fortunately this Asahina was wearing her school uniform. Like the saying goes: the best way to hide in a forest is to be a leaf.
I took Asahina’s arm and hurried out of the room.
“You’re sure you came from eight days in the future, right?” I asked as we strolled briskly along.
“Yes, because you told me to go back eight days, to three forty-five PM.”
Asahina’s stride was longer than usual as we descended the steps two at a time. I prayed that Mr. Okabe’s lecturing of Haruhi would run long.
“So you know what’s going to happen for the next week?”
We reached the bottom floor, and I hesitated for a moment before picking a route that took us across the courtyard. If we had taken the covered pathways back to the main school building, there was the possibility of a direct encounter with Haruhi, and this path would get us to the shoe lockers more quickly.
Breathing a bit heavily, Asahina answered: “I guess so…”
“So was there some incident that made you have to travel into the past?”
“No, it wasn’t anything I could think of. You just dragged me over to that broom closet and pushed me in.”
So I’d pushed her in and ordered her to go to this time, today. That was strange, even for me. What the hell had I been thinking? I should’ve come with her. I would’ve saved myself the trouble of figuring all
this out.
We’d just made it to the shoe lockers without meeting anyone we knew when I suddenly stopped short.
“Where should we go?” I asked.
We obviously had to get away from the school, but I had no idea where to hide Asahina after that.
So what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t very well do nothing and just have her return to eight days in the future, could I—? I asked.
“You can’t,” said Asahina, her upturned gaze sad. “I thought the same thing and asked about it, but they said no. The time when I’m allowed to go back is also classified, and I don’t know it myself.”
Which meant that this Asahina from eight days in the future had something she had to do today, or tomorrow, or soon. I’d just assume that much.
So?
So the number one thing I wanted to know was what that was. Why had my eight-days-later self sent her back without so much as a single note?
As I hurled curses at my future self, Asahina trotted over to the second-year students’ shoe lockers, and just as I was changing from my school slippers into my sneakers—
“Asahina!” I hurriedly looked around for the time traveler’s form. She was reaching up to her own shoe locker, which was located on a high row.
“Yes?” she replied, looking over her shoulder as she reached up. “What is it?”
I couldn’t believe she was asking me that. “Those shoes belong to your past self! The one in this time!”
“Ah—r-right…” she said, closing the door to the locker. “If I put these on, then my other self would have a hard time getting home. And I don’t remember my shoes going missing, so…”
That wasn’t all. She would’ve put her own school shoes back in the locker, and then what would’ve happened? The other Asahina would come back, open the locker, and find shoes precisely identical to the ones she was already wearing already inside.
“R-right,” said Asahina, flustered. “But, um, how am I going to get home?”
She’d just have to wear her school slippers, I thought. It might be a little embarrassing, but there was no other way. She couldn’t very well borrow another student’s shoes. And at the moment, I was more worried about where she was going to go home, rather than how.
I returned to my own shoe locker, opening it as my heart banged away in my chest.
And there, nostalgically enough, I found a message from the future.
“… Good job, Asahina. You’re always prepared.”
There atop my dirty, worn-out sneakers sat a fancy little envelope.
A cold wind stabbed at Asahina and me as we walked down the street, away from the school.
There was a scattering of other students from North High around, and I wondered if the feeling I had that they were all glancing at Asahina’s strange state—carrying no school bag and wearing her school slippers—was just my imagination.
Asahina was to my right, her chestnut-brown hair swaying softly. Her expression was far from soft, though—it was as dark as the clouds before a snowstorm.
And there was no doubt my own face was hardly untroubled. After all, I’d been forced to flee the clubroom, and my skipping club activities (actually, it was a brigade, so brigade activities) without notice would put the Chief in a bad mood, and unless I thought of a funny enough excuse or a good enough reason, I’d become fodder for one of her special punishments.
Nevertheless, leaving Asahina alone was risky in several ways. Seeing her wander aimlessly under the freezing night sky would make anyone want to help her. But seeing as how there was no guarantee that such helpers would be persons of good repute, I would have to do it myself.
“I’m sorry,” she said in an adorably sad voice. “Causing you trouble again, I—”
“No, not at all,” I answered quickly before she could finish. “I’m the one who sent you here in the first place, right? Future me’s the one at fault here.”
He and Asahina the Elder both. For being our future selves, they sure weren’t very nice to us. Did people from the future just hate the past, or what?
I grabbed the envelope I’d shoved into my pocket.
On the note, which had no indication of recipient or sender, there was simply written: Please take care of the Mikuru Asahina beside you.
That was all. I’d seen the careful handwriting before. The previous spring, I’d visited the clubroom during lunch in response to a similar missive, where I met the curvaceous form of Asahina the Elder before she told me where her mole was, in addition to more important hints. She was definitely the sender.
But still—even if I was supposed to “take care” of this Asahina, what did that mean? What could I do? Hadn’t Asahina the Elder told me I could even kiss her, if I wanted to?
Incidentally, I’d already shown the letter to the Asahina who was right here. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with that. She could understand what “Please take care of Mikuru Asahina” meant. If this message had been meant for my eyes only, that part would’ve said “me” instead of “Mikuru Asahina.”
“What could this mean…?” murmured Asahina, as she held the letter, staring intently at it. She seemed not to realize that she was the one who would end up writing it.
She would probably gradually come to that realization, though. During the second visit to December eighteenth, she’d noticed a fourth person, someone besides me, Nagato, and Asakura. She’d been put immediately to sleep, but because she’d been put to sleep, she must have sensed the other woman’s presence.
And the previous month, when I’d saved that kid in glasses from being hit by a minivan near Haruhi’s house, and Asahina had been so depressed that I’d clumsily tried to cheer her up—surely she’d gotten some information from me then. I didn’t know how much she’d figured out by now, but Koizumi was right: the members of the SOS Brigade were gradually changing.
According to Koizumi, the rate at which Haruhi created closed space was decreasing.
Also according to Koizumi, Nagato’s alienness was lessening.
And Koizumi himself, he’d changed a bit too. Isn’t that right, Mister Lieutenant Brigade Chief?
From what I could tell, although it was gradual, Haruhi was starting to engage with the people around her more. She’d been a substitute vocalist during the school festival, and when you compared activities like her game battle against the computer club and the winter training camp with her isolated state at the beginning of the year, she was like a different person now, smiling, happy, and able to reach mutual understandings with complete strangers.
—If there are any aliens, time travelers, sliders, or espers, come join me!
—We’re going to search for aliens, time travelers, and espers, and have fun with them!
It was like she knew it had come true.
I wanted to think that all of these things were signs of her growth as a person.
As to my own growth, I had no idea.
A half hour later, it was into my own home that I wound up escorting Asahina.
“Oh, I see!” she said as she entered, taking off her shoes. “This is why you weren’t in the clubroom today.”
Her carefree voice had an admiring tone.
Since I couldn’t very well let her go back to her own home, and in lieu of any better options, I’d asked if there were any other people from her era that she could possibly stay with.
“There might well be, but I haven’t been informed of them,” she told me, her face looking like a greyhound’s right after a grueling dog race.
I’d had no choice but to invite her over. Asahina’s sorrow was deep, and the situation was completely mystifying. I had no idea what was going to happen, and I didn’t really want to know. And then, my sister, who had nothing to do with our current troubles, jumped out at Asahina.
“Hey, it’s Mikuru!”
My sister had been trying to drag Shamisen the cat out from under my bed, but no sooner did we open the door to my room than she slammed into Asahina, causing the b
eautiful object of every male North High student’s desire to stumble backward.
“S-sorry to disturb you!”
“Hey, wait—it’s just Kyon and Mikuru? Where’s Haruhi?”
My little sister looked up at Asahina with shining eyes before I grabbed the eleven-year-old fifth grader by her collar.
“Haruhi’s still at school. And I told you not to go into my room uninvited.”
I knew it was pointless no matter how many times I told her. Which meant finding hiding places for things I didn’t want found was a huge pain.
“But Shami wouldn’t come out!” My sister clung to Asahina’s skirt, giggling. “Where’s Yuki? And Koizumi? And Tsuruya? Aren’t they coming too?”
She tended to call everybody by the names she heard other people call them, which was obviously why she’d started calling me “Kyon.” An elementary school kid with no concept of respect for her elders—that was my little sister. All I wanted was for somebody to call me “big brother” once in a while. Was that so much to ask?
“Oh! Is this a date? Hey—”
I kicked her out of my room and shut the door before she got any further.
“Well then,” I said, sitting down and facing Asahina. “Can you give me an idea of what happens this week?”
“Hmm.” Asahina puzzled over it. “Eight days ago… which would be today, I went back to the clubroom and noticed that the heater was on, even though nobody was in the room.”
I’d seen that happen.
“And then when I was changing, Nagato came in, and then she took me over to the bottom of the emergency stairs.”
I’d seen the first half of that.
“When I came back to the clubroom, your bag was gone, and Koizumi was there.”
Which meant we’d escaped in the nick of time.
“About half an hour later, Suzumiya came.”
Her guidance counseling must have run long. I needn’t have worried about running into her, apparently.
“She seemed kind of angry.”
Maybe she’d gotten into some kind of argument during counseling. There weren’t exactly application forms for the kind of careers she probably had in mind. And if there were, I wanted one too.
The Intrigues of Haruhi Suzumiya Page 5