I whispered to Asahina-san who was standing besides me,
“Do you have anyone that you like?”
“Um,”
Asahina-san said looking despondent,
“Even if I did fall for someone here, we would have to part when it’s time for me to go back to the future. That would be too painful for me…”
Such an impeccable way of thinking, there was no way I could argue against that. Yet even when faced with such a perfect argument, I was still hesitant on whether to accept this fate.
“Then don’t go back,” I said, “This time period isn’t that bad, is it? You can always go back to the future anytime, only you will have made your new home here.”
“Hee hee, thanks,”
Asahina-san smiled gently, I was really tempted to kiss those pink lips of hers, which were like a flower that had just blossomed.
“It’s just that this period isn’t the period where I was born, my home is in the future. I mean, as this is technically my past, I’m simply a visitor here. The future is where my present and where my home belongs. Someday I would have to go back.”
22 Kaguya-Hime is a 10th century Japanese folk tale about a mysterious girl, Princess Kaguya. The full narrative is available on the Wikipedia article.
She is like the Kaguya-Hime[22], nothing can be done to stop her from leaving the mortal world when the fated time arrives, since she doesn’t belong here after all, or at least that’s what I truly think. If I were to go back a few hundred years into the past, at first I would be feeling curious about the new environment I was in, but after a while, I would begin to miss the advanced tools and machines, the crisp display of a video game, the microwaved boxed lunch from the local convenience store, and trying to write a meaningless text message or make a phone call that transcends time with my cell phone. In any case, nothing beats being able to sleep in a nice warm bed in your own room.
Even if she could do all the same stuff in this time period, Asahina-san would probably still feel out of place here. She is, after all, just a visitor, and I guess if a person is in a place that doesn’t feel like home, she would probably feel unsettled as well.
“Oh, b… but…”
Asahina-san frantically waved her hands and explained,
“This doesn’t mean I’m unhappy here. I’ve found staying here to be quite meaningful, allowing me to work hard to become even better. Actually I’m grateful that you have always been by my side, Kyon-kun.”
I was very delighted to hear her say that, so I decided to try something to see how she really feels,
“All right then, when the time comes for you to return to the future… Why don’t you take me along?”
Though Haruhi’s not going to keep quiet about it if that were to happen.
“Then we could have an SOS Brigade tour of the future. We’ll bring Haruhi, Nagato, and Koizumi as well, I can guarantee there’ll be no complaints from them. Hmm, now that I think about it, it wouldn’t be too bad moving to the future either.”
“Eh!?”
The fairy-like round eyes now widened in astonishment,
“N-No, you mustn’t! That sort of action is absolutely forbidden…”
The fear in Asahina-san’s face stayed for a while, but then she noticed my expression. She quickly shut her mouth and her shoulders began to move gently,
“Hee hee, really, stop making such serious jokes. You gave me a scare.”
“Sorry.”
Yup, it was obviously a joke. The time period where I must exist is here in the present, though I have gone through lots of hardship, including having to travel to and from three to four years in the past; yet right now, the SOS Brigade club room is still the place where I would go. It’s still less than a year in high school, Haruhi still has plenty of peculiar ideas waiting to be explored, and it’s likely she won’t give up so easily. So it’s still a bit early to think about leaving everything behind and escaping to the future.
There will come a day when Asahina-san would return to the future, but at least for now she is still with us, and that is enough. If all the happy moments were to be joined up together like beads in a necklace, the future would probably become interesting as well. Asahina-san once described the various time planes as a series of still images in a cartoon. In that case, if every page consists of comedy, then it’s simply impossible for the last page to contain any horror elements. I’ll never allow that to happen, I mean, who would?
I once lost Haruhi and my friends from the SOS Brigade for a brief while, but now they’re back within my embrace. I’ll never forget that determination I had then. No matter what difficulties I’ll face, how many times I fall, I’ll never stop going forward. I’m not the sort of bridge-burning expert that would so easily abandon a decision I made just two months ago. I only ask that the exclamation “yare yare” be reserved exclusively for me.
In other words, no matter how cheap one’s self esteem is, the price would still be too high to be able to sell it in a flea market auction. Even if one were to sigh “yare yare”, it’ll be fine as long as he’s willing to give it his best. Nobody cares about the dialog anyway, whether it’s “Haruhi, you idiot,” or “Take me with you,” it’s fine if you keep as quiet as Nagato as well. In a three-legged race, everyone’s foot is strapped with their companion, as it’s impossible to run a three-legged race by tying one’s own legs together, and it’s even more fun running with five people in a six-legged race.
After the events of the past week, I came up with the above realizations.
It’s been quite some time, starting with the ritual of meeting in front of the station to coming back to call it a day here. All this time today Haruhi has turned her face away, she didn’t even bother talking with her back turned to me. As Our Excellency the Commander then walks away in great strides, I wonder just what sort of expression she would appear with in the classroom tomorrow?
I made sure the boxes were still in my pocket as I thanked both Asahina-san and Nagato. Asahina-san even bowed apologetically, “I’m sorry for hiding this from you, because Suzumiya-san had forbidden us to say anything…” What’s really amazing is that Haruhi had managed to keep Nagato’s mouth shut as well. Anyway, it was understandable, since even I had completely forgotten such an important day. After going through so much stuff, the arrival of Valentine’s Day was the last thing I could think of then and it had quietly slipped past my consciousness.
I entered my room and hurriedly opened the three small boxes, but I did not intend to have them as my dinner as Haruhi had asked me to. Inside the transparent plastic box was a cake coated with a chocolate layer.
Haruhi’s cake was round, while Asahina-san’s was heart-shaped, and Nagato’s was star-shaped. On top of every cake were some words written using white chocolate cream.
Haruhi simply wrote the description of the cake “CHOCOLATE”; Nagato’s cake was written in very proper handwriting “COURTESY”; while Asahina-san’s was written “OBLIGATION CHOCOLATE”, just when I was thinking this doesn’t sound like her style, I noticed there was more to it. Under her box was the corner of a handkerchief, with a message that read “Suzumiya-san asked me to write it like that,” It seems to have been written in a hurry. I imagined how the three of them worked their hats off in Nagato’s kitchen, and then placed the three present boxes into the refrigerator. That reminds me, I gotta remind my sister not to nick those cakes as well.
As the sun began to set, I got on my bike and began pedaling.
The final checkpoint was near Nagato’s apartment complex, the long bench inside the park.
Inside the dim, empty park, the bench that was brightly illuminated by the street lamps was empty. Even after parking my bike and walking into the park, there was not a single person in sight.
I sat on the icy-cold bench and said towards the air,
“Are you there, Asahina-san?”
A rustling noise was heard from the bushes behind the bench, and the person I was waiting for walk
ed around the bench and made her appearance,
“Is it okay for me to sit down?”
Of course it is, we may even chat for a long while.
“Hee hee, I’m afraid I might have to make things brief.”
Asahina-san’s (big) elegantly beautiful figure was now sitting on the empty space beside me. Wearing winter attire, Asahina-san was no different from anyone else, save that frost-melting beauty of hers.
After inhaling the cold air of winter, I breathed out some white vapors and said,
“Can you explain everything now?”
“Now where should I start?”
“You can start from the first prank which the little Asahina-san and I had to carry out like an errand.”
The prank where a poor man had to go to hospital for getting his foot injured after kicking a can that was nailed to the ground. It now felt like ages ago when I mentioned it again.
“Was that really necessary?”
Asahina-san tilted her head and smiled softly,
“Kyon-kun, please think carefully. Whether it be a few years ago or a few decades ago, if you could go back to the past…”
She carefully chose her words,
“And witness history in the making. Yet when that history is different from what you remember, what would you do?”
“What do you mean by ‘different?’” I didn’t understand what she was getting at.
“Let’s say if you went back to one year ago today, what were you doing then?”
Probably shut up in my room playing video games. I don’t remember getting giddy over someone sending me chocolates then.
Asahina-san nodded her head slightly,
“Now try to imagine a situation that’s different from that version of the past. When you travel back to your home one year ago, but find that you weren’t living there. Instead of your sister or your parents, the place was now occupied by another family. Even your relatives have become different from the ones which you knew, living a totally different life in another place…”
How is that possible?
“When, after traveling to the past we find out that history is slightly different than it was as we knew it, do you know what we from the future would think? If every moment in history depended on interference from the future, then our future would never be able to exist if we did not interfere, and everything would change…”
Asahina-san’s voice began to stray away, as though feeling nostalgic about something.
“A past where someone dies when they’re supposed to live; or where two people have never even seen each other when they’re supposed to be good friends; if we leave these situations alone, then our future would never arrive…”
Her lonely smile was now cast in a lonely shroud,
“I’ll get to the point. The person who got injured kicking the empty can that you placed will meet a certain lady in the hospital. Afterwards, they get married and have children, and pass the torch to the next generation. This was all because he went to the hospital that day, otherwise those two would never have met in their whole lives.”
An image of the man smiling uncomfortably while looking up at me and Asahina-san flashed before my eyes.
“The memory device was the same, it was necessary to deliver the data in that condition. Someone may have stumbled on similar data by coincidence, only this coincidence didn’t exist in the past, perhaps it was erased. That was why we had to deliver the data ourselves, and try our best to make it look like a coincidence.”
“Someone picks up a memory device from a flower bed, and just happens to send it to someone else at the right address.” - She continued to explain.
I didn’t know how to respond. That sure wasn’t coincidental, not to mention the freak that appeared then, and handed the memory device to us. If he had decided to create trouble, then how would things turn out?
“He wouldn’t dare, that piece of data means everything to the existence of his future as well. That was why he came to this time period,”
Asahina-san elaborated in simple terms.
“For us future time-travelers, that is a predetermined event; but for you and the recipient of the data, it’s a coincidence. That’s how time works,”
“…”
I feel a bit dizzy, maybe it’s because the dialog had broken through the boundaries of my comprehension with so much ease.
“It was also coincidence that the boy had seen the turtle. He will always remember the little turtle he obtained from a young man and young woman, as well as the ripples caused by the young man dropping the turtle into the water, and how the ripples slowly disappear as they dispersed from the center. As turtles live very long lives, every time he picks up the turtle he would always think of the scene he saw then. Though there were many other factors, but it all came from this event, which would inspire him to formulate a set of basic theories.”
Could it be… while feeling dizzy, my imagination began to go wild. Perhaps that boy would one day become the inventor of the time machine, and the one who inspired him to think about the turtle turns out to be me, causing changes in the future. Thanks to my unconscious interference, that boy and the future of this world has…
A memory from a corner of my brain was suddenly awoken. It was a few days before the school festival, something that Nagato said to me at a time when I was mightily busy while shooting the climax of the movie,
In order to stabilize the future, it is necessary to input the correct value. Asahina Mikuru’s mission is to adjust that variable to an acceptable value.
Now was not the time to be feeling giddy about how good my memory was. The ambiguous phrase “in order to stabilize the future”… “There could only be one future, whether it was stable or not, right?” I had long since abandoned that idea.
Could the future be unstable?
In other words, could there exist other futures apart from Asahina-san’s future?
It would make sense if that’s the case, but only a little. If the future really diverged into many different branches, then there once existed two futures where the boy survives in one and is now dead in the other, it’s just that I’ve killed off the possibility of the latter from ever happening.
That means thanks to my help, I had destroyed one future completely.
I didn’t know if that was the correct answer. Even though this deduction was so weak that if I were to say “Here’s a problem for our readers to discuss”, I’d probably be condemned as an idiot; but it wasn’t easy trying to dispel a wild thought that I had just formulated. When I thought about this, I just didn’t know what to say. Was there more?
“The divergence points are mostly concentrated in this time period, though a lot would end up the same, anyway; but the things that you have done the past few days, if not done, would create divergences that would lead to all sorts of futures…”
Asahina-san’s charming voice began to grow weak,
“Very soon you will be faced with a great divergence, a choice that would cause a great change to the future… If you chose the other side, then it… um… it wouldn’t be good for our future.”
I suddenly felt stiff for no reason, and I had wanted to turn and face Asahina-san. Damn, why can’t I turn my face!?
“But it doesn’t matter, because I can trust you, right?”
My consciousness began to blur, a familiar image begins to form in my dizzy mind, two curvy lines criss-crossing each other. The figure on the white board rotated in my mind, and in this whirlpool I saw two spots marked “X”. There were two X’s, that’s what Koizumi said.
The past can never be completely erased. After being amended, history would simply be rewritten over its original time-space.
This triggered another memory - we had experienced being in that never-ending two weeks of summer vacation for thousands of times already.
Except for Nagato, the rest of us only remembered what happened in the final two weeks, the previous thousands of times were as though they ne
ver existed. Then the answer became obvious.
The past can be erased, in fact it wasn’t a question of whether it existed or not. Even if it did, it’s as good as non-existent if no one had noticed it. So in order to achieve that…
One would need to erase all memories of that past.
If all my memories of my experience between December 18th and 21st, as well as leaping back three years ago and getting stabbed by Asakura were all erased, what would have happened to me when I woke up in the hospital bed? I would probably have believed what Koizumi had told me - that I merely tripped down the stairs and knocked my head, then lain unconscious for three days.
Nagato the Literature Club member, Asahina-san the Calligraphy Club member, Haruhi with her surprisingly fitting ponytail, and Koizumi as a completely normal person. If my memories of these people were each erased, then one would not have to worry about any time loops or traveling back in time to fix history.
Yet, things just wouldn’t fit that way.
In the early morning of the 18th, after being attacked by Asakura, as I came close to death, I saw myself from the future. I realized then that I had to go back to that time. The only person who could provide a remedy to the astray Nagato was Nagato from three years ago, and the person to execute that remedy was the Nagato from January 2nd. Only these were essential.
After that, time was rewritten…
I felt myself shivering. Haruhi knew absolutely nothing about this, neither did Taniguchi or Kunikida. The only ones who knew about this were me, Nagato, Asahina-san, and Koizumi who had heard about it.
If that’s the case, it’s not impossible that I could already be in Haruhi’s position. I might or might not be aware that history was being rewritten; if I did not possess the original memories, then the “truth” would never exist.
Besides, it’s possible that while I was worrying about all these considerations in the present, my past could be rewritten in another time period. My present self would cease to exist, my past self would move towards another future, and this was all because of the alteration in that time period.
Volume 7 - The Intrigues of Suzumiya Haruhi Page 27