I stayed as silent as a radio that’d been unplugged.
“It is better if you do not know.”
That was certainly a terrifying statement—those were just about the least comforting words in the world, I said.
“… Do not worry.” Her voice had a hesitant tone to it, as though she wasn’t sure whether she should say anything but had decided that she wanted me not to worry. And then it came to me.
“Haruhi told you not to say anything, didn’t she?”
“Yes.”
Which meant Haruhi was up to something weird again, and she was trying to involve Nagato in it.
And whatever it was, it was a secret from me. I didn’t know what it was, but based on Nagato’s tone, it had to be something big. Like round two of the treasure hunt or something.
This week sure was turning out to be a busy one—like having final exams in math, physics, and world history all on the same day.
“Dammit, Haruhi, what’re you gonna make us do this time…?”
At this rate, Koizumi was going to wind up being my only true comrade. Haruhi, Nagato, and Asahina were all engaged in activities beyond my influence. Oh, and Tsuruya too. I wondered why it was that no matter the life-form, females always seemed to outmatch the males. The double-X chromosome was a terrifying thing. Explain it to me, please.
I lay down on the floor and spread my arms wide, praying that I’d be able to pass the following week in peace.
CHAPTER FIVE
The next day—Saturday morning.
My upper body ached all over thanks to all the unpaid manual labor I’d done the day before. At least I’d slept well and hadn’t had any weird dreams.
I put envelope #3 into my coat pocket as I went out the front door, then got my bike out, whose tire pressure was on the low side as I headed out onto the street through the cold, dry wind.
I didn’t want to park illegally and get my bike hauled off by a local merchant, so I paid to park in the new bike parking structure in front of the station, then headed on foot to the meeting place, where as usual I was the last to arrive.
Asahina looked like some new adorable species of pet as she came up to greet me in a warm-looking outfit, while Koizumi was his usual self, handsome enough to get one in five high school girls to turn around and take another look. Nagato wore a hooded duffle coat over her school uniform, standing stock still and looking vaguely like a Jawa.
Wearing a peacoat and a muffler, Haruhi pointed right at me. “We’ve been waiting, Kyon! Thirty whole seconds!”
It had been a close thing. If I’d just left my bike nearby, I could’ve been the second-to-last arrival for round one of the Citywide Mysterious Phenomena Search. I would’ve liked to see Haruhi treat everybody, just once, I said.
“Oh, I’d treat you, all right, if I actually ever arrived last. But let me just say that I hate words like ‘last place’ and ‘runner-up’ more than anything. If I think I might oversleep and be late, I’ll just arrive the night before and stay all night!”
Haruhi smiled fearlessly. She seriously seemed like she was ready to take on any and all comers. We should’ve done something like this back when she was depressed. And speaking of the past, I wondered which kind of regret was worse—regretting something you’d done, or something you hadn’t done?
As I thought it over fruitlessly, Haruhi dragged us all over to the café.
“We didn’t find anything yesterday,” she said as she drank her hot coffee, “but when I think about it, the purpose of the SOS Brigade isn’t to search for lost inheritances, but stuff that’s way more mysterious than that. I mean, like… something futuristic, or top secret, or something. There’s gotta be at least one thing like that in this city. There’s a lot of space in it, after all.”
It wasn’t a question of land area. The important elements were things like economic prosperity and population density—“Aw, forget it.”
I gave up. Prosperity and population don’t have anything to do with it, do they, Haruhi? Mysterious phenomena exist right in front of you, and you have no idea. And because you have no idea, they can go about their business without anyone being the wiser.
In my case, I hadn’t noticed them so much as I’d been made to notice them, but I was glad to know. And because you sat right behind me, that was your fault too—or should I say it was thanks to you?
Haruhi marked toothpicks with a ballpoint pen as I silently monologued to myself, then she held them out such that we could all draw one.
“This is how we’ll split up into teams. Two of the toothpicks have marks and three don’t.”
I reflexively glanced at Nagato. Whoops—too soon. There was no need for me to be forcibly paired up with her this morning. What had Asahina said about that? That’s right; it had been Koizumi and me.
“What’s wrong? Hurry up and draw.” Haruhi thrust the fist containing the five toothpicks at me. “Do you actually care about what the teams are? Oh ho, is there someone in particular you want to pair up with? You’re such a baby.”
I didn’t like the patronizing way she smiled at me. But no matter how much I thought about it, I got nowhere. When she’d delivered her future prediction, Asahina had told me that Koizumi and I would get paired up. I couldn’t just pick any toothpick and get the same outcome. The chances of picking a marked one were two in five, so under normal circumstances, there were better odds of getting an unmarked one—but what happened if I did that? Would things still work out even if events diverged from Asahina’s memory?
My overthinking went too far. As I silently agonized, Haruhi pulled the toothpicks away from me and had the three other brigade members each draw one. When she got back to me, there were only two left.
I hastily checked Koizumi. The toothpick he elegantly held between his fingertips was indeed marked.
This left just Haruhi and me to draw the remaining two, and since Haruhi’s habit was to always save the last lot for herself, the groups would be decided by my draw.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, focusing my concentration for ten full seconds on Haruhi’s hand.
“What’re you doing? Isn’t that a bit much?” said Haruhi, irritated, but it was an important step for me. If I couldn’t make events match up here, things were only going to get more complicated.
“The hell with it!” I said, moving my right hand quickly. I was going to just randomly grab the first one I touched, but it didn’t go the way I’d planned. It was too random. I knocked both toothpicks out of Haruhi’s hand, and as I realized my mistake one fell to the table while Haruhi grabbed the other one out of midair. The toothpick that had fallen to the table had a spot on one end.
“That’s no fun,” said Haruhi, her lip twisting. “We’re divided into all girls and all boys. How boring.”
I’d gotten all worked up for nothing. The morning groupings weren’t important to the timeline; if I’d drawn the unmarked toothpick I would’ve had the double bonus of both Asahina and Nagato, which was a lot better than spending my precious day off with Koizumi, and when I thought about it like that, I realized that small changes to the past probably didn’t matter. I shouldn’t have worried about it.
After idling around for a little while longer, we left the café. I paid, of course. Force of habit can be a terrible thing, and I hated myself for naturally picking up the check without being forced into it.
“Um, I’m sorry, Kyon. Thank you,” said Asahina apologetically—she was the only one who made me feel better about having to pay. Koizumi also apologized, but somehow his pleasant smile didn’t help my mood.
“If you’re concerned about the status of your wallet, I can recommend a good part-time job,” said Koizumi quietly, walking alongside me as we exited the café. “It’s a very simple job, and once you get used to it, it’s very easy. I can guarantee the compensation is good too.”
“No thanks.”
I had a vision of a demon hiding behind a sweet smile. If I blithely signed the strange contract h
e gave me, I’d wind up getting whisked away to some terrible laboratory and spread out on an operating table—it didn’t bear thinking about. What if they decided to turn me into a part-time esper? I had no desire to go battle against Haruhi’s stress level within the confines of that strange, gray dimension, I told him.
“I would handle that. What you would do would be to make sure that I don’t have to battle her stress level.”
He could do that himself, I told him.
“You’re the only one who can do it, it seems. At the moment, anyway.”
I didn’t recall having any supernatural abilities.
“I suppose not.” Koizumi pursed the corners of his lips into a smile. “If you ever change your mind, let me know. I’ll be happy to explain the job to you. Though for my part I feel I’ve already told you most of it.”
Koizumi sounded uncharacteristically vague, but I didn’t pursue the matter. I suspected he’d tell me something I didn’t want to hear. If I made some smart remark, he might turn the tables on me, and then I’d wish I hadn’t said anything. Sometimes caution was necessary. If you wanted to trap someone, you had to start on the defensive.
Outside the café, Haruhi had waited for me to pay. “We’ll meet back up at noon on the dot.” Haruhi had her right arm around Nagato’s waist and her left around Asahina’s, as she grinned as brightly as a tropical flower. “Until then, look for anything mysterious—a manhole that wasn’t there yesterday, an extra stripe in the crosswalk, anything! If you keep your eyes peeled you should be able to find something. No—expect to find something. If you don’t, you’ll never find anything!”
There she was, squeezing herself between the ultimate combination of an alien and a time traveler like they were human-size body warmers, and—ah, forget it. If I’d had to find “something mysterious” in a scavenger hunt, I’d grab Haruhi herself and drag her straight to the finish line, but that wasn’t the point either. The biggest mystery of all was how I’d wound up being part of this bizarre group, but I couldn’t very well lump them all together and show them to Haruhi. Just as she instinctually sought out mysteries, I just wanted to keep living my life. That was the simple truth.
Haruhi proclaimed that they were heading “that way, across the train tracks,” so I saw Asahina and Nagato off as they crossed, then retied my muffler.
“Got any idea where we should go?” I asked my companion for the next two hours.
Koizumi managed good cheer despite looking as though the cold was about to freeze him solid. “Even if I did, I very much doubt you’d be willing to follow me. Let’s just enjoy a nice walk.”
Surprisingly, once we started walking, Koizumi didn’t start saying his usual nonsensical things. We watched the silhouettes of the big carp in the canal, impressed at their vigor. We went into a convenience store and browsed the magazines. Basically we acted like two bored high school students.
We talked about the upcoming final exams, what had been on TV the night before—until I suddenly realized that having such a normal conversation with him doubled my suspicion, and I said as much.
“I’m an esper who appears to be a normal high school student. Outward appearances like this are very important,” said Koizumi as he crossed the street, appearing to count the stripes on the crosswalk. “It’s not as though I want to be an esper forever. If I could pass my powers to someone else, I sometimes feel like I’d happily do so.” He smiled at me, as though that were supposed to make me feel better. “Only sometimes. If I had to choose, I’d choose the way I am now. Being able to interact with time travelers and non-terrestrial life-forms is an incredibly rare opportunity. Though I can’t compare with you.”
From my perspective, he was just as rare as the two people he was talking about, I told him.
“While I don’t know when the title of ‘esper’ might be taken from me, I do know that I’ll only be a high school student for a certain amount of time—so long as Suzumiya doesn’t repeat a grade. So I’ve got to make the most of being a high school student, while I still can.”
I thought back on the insane events of the past year. “Well, from where I’m standing it looks like you’re doing just fine. Especially during the summer and winter trips,” I said.
“Those were both because I’m a member of the Agency. Soon it will be four years since I joined, but if I’d never received the strange powers I have, I would never have transferred to North High, and I would’ve lived a life totally unconcerned with little things like the fate of the entire world.”
“So what?” I said as I walked, looking up at the flashing pedestrian signal. “I don’t know anything about supernatural powers, but I do know that it’s thanks to those powers that you’re here. Don’t blame them. Or are you just frustrated because you wound up in a stupid club like the SOS Brigade? Go ahead and write a resignation letter. Give it a try. I’ll even give it to Haruhi for you.”
Koizumi’s mouth curled into a forced smile. “No thanks,” he said after a moment. Then, in an amused tone: “Just as you’ve now found a certain defiance, I’ve come to hold Suzumiya, you, and the rest of the brigade in a regard I would’ve found unimaginable when I first met you. I’m the lieutenant brigade chief and all… but now, there’s no need to use that title. Do you remember what I said to you during the snowy mountain incident?”
Of course I did. I’d never forget it. And if he ever went back on the promise he made then, I’d join with Haruhi and come up with a punishment the likes of which he’d never seen, I said.
“That’s a relief. If I ever suffer from amnesia, things will be all right—you’ll remember for me.” Koizumi smiled pleasantly, exhaling white vapor. “While I don’t want to think that Nagato will easily find herself in such a predicament very often, I will always do what I can.”
I wished he’d express such determination on behalf of the rest of his friends, I said.
“I should think that would go without saying. Asahina’s always been the sort of person you want to protect. You just want to take care of her, somehow. That’s something of a supernatural ability in and of itself.”
Having made it across the crosswalk, Koizumi suddenly stopped and checked his watch, which prompted me to do the same. We’d done quite a bit of wandering around. It would be time to meet back up soon.
Just as I was beginning to head back to the station, I heard Koizumi’s quiet voice from about three steps behind me.
“The current Asahina is someone both the Agency and I wish to protect. But please be careful. The same may not be true for the other Asahina, the one with a different outfit from your Asahina.”
Asahina the Elder’s silhouette flashed across my retinas. I kept walking, not looking back, and Koizumi’s voice became more distant.
“There’s no guarantee she’ll bring us—the SOS Brigade—only good fortune.”
Maybe not. But you said this too.
“If so,” I said, “we just have to change that future. Starting now.”
The three girls were waiting for us when Koizumi and I returned to the station.
“Did you find anything?” Haruhi asked us.
But you can’t find what you’re not looking for. “No,” was my honest answer. “Did you find anything interesting? If you didn’t, you can’t complain about us.”
“Yeah, we didn’t really find anything very mysterious,” said Ha-ruhi, seeming neither depressed nor irritated. Her smile was actually rather alarming. “But! We went to the department store and ate a bunch of free samples in the supermarket. That was fun, right?”
Haruhi smiled encouragingly at Asahina.
“O-oh, yes, it was,” said Asahina, rapidly nodding her head. Her soft chestnut hair fluttered about like butterflies in a garden. “It was nice seeing all the different things. I bought some new tea too.”
The happily smiling Asahina seemed to have really gotten in the shopping mood. And when I looked more carefully, I saw that Nagato was holding a bag from the bookstore. Just what “mysteriou
s phenomena” had these three gone in search of, if they’d wound up at the grocery store and the bookstore? I suppose if you wanted mysterious stories, the bookstore was the place to go.
“I don’t see what the problem is,” said Haruhi nonchalantly. “If you get hasty, you’ll just wind up regretting it later. It’s when you’re in a hurry that you’ve got to be careful. It’s just like driving a car. If you’re going too fast, that’s gonna be the difference between getting in an accident and avoiding it. It’ll happen because you were sure it wasn’t going to happen.”
She was not making a lot of sense, I told her.
“It’s very simple, Kyon. Look—” Haruhi said haughtily. “It’s like playing Red Light, Green Light. People move when you’re not looking, but as soon as you turn around, they freeze. Mysterious phenomena are the same way. But if you never turn around at all, they’ll just sneak right by you, so you gotta seize the right moment. It’s all about timing, Kyon—timing.”
That was even less comprehensible. I suppose it was all consistent in Haruhi’s head, but she was talking as though the metaphorical Lady Luck were an actual lady, which was not helpful. Only people receiving strange transmissions on unknown wavelengths had any hope of catching an incorporeal concept.
“Anyway, where do you want to go for lunch?”
Apparently my doubts were unimportant.
“There’s a new Italian place across from the bank. I heard they’ve got a good lunch menu, so I made a reservation for the five of us.”
Evidently Haruhi was now in full-on city-girl mode. Once she’d made up her mind like this, a monk whispering sutras into the ear of a horse would have a better chance of changing its mind than I would of Haruhi’s. At least the monk would be racking up good karma.
“Fine with me,” I said. “What about you, Koizumi?”
I wondered what would happen if he said something ridiculous like, “No thanks, I can’t stand tomato sauce,” but Koizumi would never oppose any plan of Haruhi’s. “Sure,” he said with a smile.
The Intrigues of Haruhi Suzumiya Page 17