The Intrigues of Haruhi Suzumiya
Page 27
“You could have shared some of that burden with me, you know. Cleaning up after messes is my specialty,” said Koizumi quietly enough that only I could hear as he removed the wrapping on a booster pack of trading cards. “I believe I’ve come to understand a bit of Haruhi’s plan.”
I looked up to see Koizumi scrutinizing his cards and smiling; our eyes met. “I wonder which hairstyle would go the best with this outfit,” I heard Haruhi say; she’d sat Asahina down in a chair and was playing around with her hair. As I watched, Asahina narrowed her eyes like a cat whose fur is being brushed.
“Didn’t you say something about Haruhi’s behavior not being any different than usual?”
“That’s exactly what I mean. Treasure hunting and city patrols are the kinds of things Suzumiya would do. Or rather, she was deliberately trying to appear as though she was simply doing her usual activities. Nobody would’ve thought you’d actually forgotten Valentine’s Day—not even Suzumiya. It’s a day every high school boy worries about, whether or not he has someone likely to give him a present. The two consecutive days of patrolling were the embodiment of that. It was designed to make you agonize over whether or not you’d actually get anything.”
She could’ve just put the chocolates in my shoe locker or something. It wasn’t only a post office box for time travelers, after all.
“Suzumiya simply hates conventionality. No doubt she thought that wouldn’t be very interesting. But toiling to dig up buried treasure makes it that much more rewarding when you finally find it.”
Koizumi continued to rearrange the cards in his hand.
“I was very pleased, myself. Were you not?”
What was that, some kind of leading question?
Just as I was trying to think of an effective rebuttal—
“Hey, Kyon and Koizumi! No more private chatter! Break time’s over!”
Asahina started at the sudden exclamation, which got both Koizumi’s and my attention. Haruhi removed her hands from the chignon into which she’d arranged Asahina’s hair.
“Now, it’s time for a lecture!” She tapped the whiteboard. “Kyon and Koizumi especially, you guys better listen up.”
A strategist’s smile flickered across the brigade chief’s face, and she spoke like a cram school instructor addressing a group of pleasant but less-than-bright students.
“We’re going to discuss activities for the month of March.”
I thought about the March calendar. “Oh, like Hinamatsuri?”
Haruhi was silent for a moment. “… Yes, good point. There’s that too.”
So she’d forgotten about it, I said.
“I remembered it. If you want to enjoy new experiences, it’s important to learn from the past, so obviously I’d never forget something like that. So on March third, yes, we’ll scatter hina-arare down from the top floor balcony!”
That was the first time I’d heard of that particular Hinamatsuri tradition.
“Be that as it may, there’s another March event we can’t forget.” Haruhi’s smile was as brilliant as the heart of the Milky Way galaxy as seen through a powerful telescope. “And today I want you and Koizumi alone to carve that day in your brains.”
So what was it that she was so excitedly lecturing us about?
“I’m talking about White Day! March fourteenth! You’ve got to pay back every single girl who gave you anything on Valentine’s Day with a reward thirty times greater!”
Normally she was like a blinkered horse charging madly ahead, so why did she always have to choose the most inconvenient times to turn suddenly conventional? I supposed the “thirty times” figure was the Haruhi inflation factor at work.
“Yuki and Mikuru, you should ask for whatever you want! These two”—Haruhi pointed to Koizumi and me—“will pay you back with anything you ask for. The days of crane spirits repaying their debts are long gone; nowadays humans do it too. And with better stuff than fabric too!”
Haruhi grinned hugely.
“I’ve thought of many examples of stuff I might want, but I’m still thinking about them. I’ll reveal them soon, though. And don’t worry; I’ll make sure it’s something you can get within a month.”
She certainly had no compunctions. She’d probably be just as bad as Kaguya-hime in “The Bamboo-Cutter’s Tale,” who sent all her poor suitors on impossible tasks. I just prayed it wouldn’t be something totally impossible, like “finding the kingdom of Atlantis” or “discovering the Fountain of Youth.”
“Okay, but we’re going to take into account the amount of effort we wasted on all that treasure hunting,” I said. By the time I realized my retort was going to backfire, it was too late.
“Of course!” said Haruhi, her eyes shining as though the entire Pleiades was concentrated within them. “I look forward to that. If you’re going to give me what I want, I’ll go anywhere to get it—even Mars. Right, Mikuru, Yuki? You’re with me, aren’t you?”
Asahina and Nagato both nodded, though Asahina reluctantly, and Nagato without looking up from her book. At this I could only shrug, along with Koizumi, our timing perfectly in sync.
AFTERWORD
We don’t know in advance what we’re going to do in the future, but the truth is we often don’t even know what we were thinking in the past.
Saying “I don’t remember what I was thinking then” might be more accurate than “I don’t know,” which is why we supposedly make notes—to avoid forgetting. But then there are times when we forget what the note was even talking about. For example—
… So that’s how I was going to start this afterword. But when I pulled out an old notebook to prove it, the contents were so incomprehensible that it wasn’t a question of having forgotten what I meant—it was more like my past self had been receiving mysterious signals and gone into an automatic writing trance. Looking at titles like “The Million Strands of Ginger” or “Pavlov’s Tadpole,” I found myself totally bewildered; I couldn’t even begin to interpret them.
At the time I was no doubt brimming with confidence in the power of my memory, thinking that if I just wrote down those few words, I’d be able to read them later and remember all the related details. Looking back at them now, not only do I not remember what I was thinking about, I don’t even care. I’m sure they were stupid ideas, and if by some miracle they were good ones, I’d just be annoyed at having been bested by my past self. So I’d rather not know.
In any case, nowadays when I make notes, I’ve learned to write down as many details as I can. Of course, it’s all well and good to write something down, but it often happens that I forget the plain fact that I ever wrote anything at all. I suppose that’s a different problem…
Incidentally, this volume wound up being the longest in the series.
The long winter that began in The Disappearance finally ends, and from here on out we’ll be getting into spring. I should say that my very favorite time of year is early summer, when you can hear frogs’ tranquil voices along with cicadas’ busy cries. Just knowing that it won’t be cold again for a good long while is enough to make me happy. Plus it’s a lot easier to walk over to the corner store in the middle of the night.
All that aside, it’s thanks to the support of many people that I’ve managed to get this far. When I look back, it truly seems like the blink of an eye since the very first volume, which fills me with a combination of surprise and frustration—has the trip been a good one?
Even as I thank you again for your support, I hope that you will enjoy the next volume.
Until we meet again.
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Contents
WELCOME
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER TH
REE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
EPILOGUE
AFTERWORD
NEWSLETTERS
COLOR INSERT
COPYRIGHT
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Suzumiya Haruhi No Inbou copyright © Nagaru TANIGAWA 2005
Illustrations by Noizi Ito
First published in Japan in 2005 by Kadokawa Shoten Publishing Co., LTD., Tokyo. English hardcover/paperback translation rights arranged with Kadokawa Shoten Publishing Co., LTD., Tokyo, through Tuttle-Mori Agency, Inc., Tokyo.
English translation by Paul Starr
English translation copyright © 2012 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First e-book edition: September 2012
ISBN: 978-0-316-22868-8