How did he know that? Wasn’t it possible that she just wanted to get in one last incident before spring break came and she had too much free time on her hands? And that in thinking that, it happened? I said.
“Haven’t I said it before? Suzumiya’s psyche is becoming more and more stable. Almost anticlimactically so. And that’s the problem.”
I stayed quiet, letting him continue. Koizumi put a finger to his lips thoughtfully.
“There’s something out there that finds a stable Suzumiya to be less interesting. Be it a data flare, a time-quake, or closed space, whatever the form—there’s something out there that wants to provoke Suzumiya’s inexplicable power into action.”
Koizumi’s smile was gradually changing. It was starting to look like Ryoko Asakura’s.
“This incident may be only an omen of something else.”
Like what? If everything were an omen, then even I could call myself a prophet and set up shop as Nostradamus II, I said.
Koizumi smirked cynically. “The timing of these extraterrestrial visits cannot be explained by coincidence. You must know. These aliens, these intelligences that hide among us—they are not limited to humanoid interfaces to the Data Overmind.”
“Tch.”
I didn’t want to do anything dramatic, but I sneered and clicked my tongue. Koizumi sometimes seemed like he wanted to cast things in the worst possible light, but I wasn’t having it. If he wanted to call Nagato a humanoid interface, fine. It was the truth.
“I’m more worried about these other aliens you’re hinting at.”
“The Agency has a variety of information sources, which keeps me aware of a variety of things. I can’t say everything, but, well, yes.” Koizumi’s smile finally returned to normal mode. “I’ll leave the other aliens to Nagato. My role is to work against the Agency’s rival organization. I have a feeling they’ll be trying something again, soon. Likewise, I’ll let Asahina do something about the other faction of time travelers.”
From Koizumi’s expression, I could tell that he wasn’t serious about that last part, but I was. The only difference was that I wasn’t thinking of our Asahina; I was thinking of the older one.
No worrying was necessary in the case of Nagato. I was entirely confident that there wasn’t a being anywhere whose willpower was greater than hers. And you, Koizumi—if it comes down to it, you’ll be running around with me. I’ll say it as many times as I have to. I won’t let you forget the promise you made on that snowy mountain.
“I remember it, of course. And even if I did forget, I’m quite certain that you’d remind me. Wouldn’t you?” He smiled pleasantly and gestured. “When the time comes.”
“Welcome home!”
When I got back to my room, my sister was sprawled out on my bed, reading my comics.
“Hey, where’d you take Shami to?”
Not answering, I let Shamisen out of the carrier. The calico immediately jumped up onto the bed, walked onto my sister’s back, and started kneading it with his paws, as though giving her a massage. She laughed, ticklish, and kicked her feet about.
“Kyon, get Shami off me! I can’t get up!”
I picked up the cat, and my sister sat up. She was a fifth grader, eleven years old, but soon she’d be in the final year of elementary school. She tossed the comic book aside and started petting Shamisen like crazy, as he curled up on the bed. She sniffed at him.
“He smells sorta sweet! What is it?”
I gave her the choux à la crème Mrs. Sakanaka had given us. Keeping an eye on my sister as she delightedly devoured them, I picked up a hardcover book that was lying on my desk.
It had been about a week earlier. I’d borrowed it from Nagato’s bookshelf as a way to cool down as final exams were wrapping up. “Got any good books that might fit my mood?” I’d asked Nagato, and after standing stiffly in front of her bookshelf for about five minutes, she’d slowly thrust this at me. I’d only gotten halfway through it, but it was just the story of a romance between a boy and girl as they go from high school to college, with no SF or mystery or fantasy elements, just an ordinary world—and in many ways, both then and now, it suited me just fine. When she grew up, Nagato shouldn’t go into aromatherapy or fortune-telling or veterinary work—she should be a librarian.
I flopped down on the bed and started reading as my sister went to the kitchen to look for something to drink, holding her second crème in hand.
I wonder how much time passed.
I’d been absorbed in the book, and when I came to, Shamisen was scratching at the door, which was his way of telling me he wanted me to open it and let him out. I normally leave it half open so he can come and go as he pleases, but my sister had closed it when she’d left.
Sticking a bookmark in the book, I opened the door for the cat. Shamisen slunk out into the hallway, pausing to turn and meow at me by way of thanks. But then he kept looking, staring at something behind me. I followed his gaze and looked back.
It was the corner of the ceiling. There was nothing. Nothing was there.
Shamisen’s wide-eyed gaze at the ceiling’s corner began, slowly, to move. The object of his stare was now the exterior wall. It was as though something invisible had been on the ceiling, but had slid across and down the wall.
“Hey.”
But Shamisen was only thus occupied for a few seconds. The only part of him that heard my call was the tip of his tail. I heard his quiet footfalls recede as he headed away, perhaps down to the kitchen after my sister to see if he could arrange for some dinner.
I closed the door most of the way but left it open wide enough so that the cat could get back in, and I thought about what I’d just seen. Shamisen’s actions weren’t especially rare. Animals often reacted to small movements that humans ignored, their ears pricking at minute sounds coming in from outside.
But. What if.
What if there had been something there, invisible to humans, that Shamisen could see. What if that invisible whatever-it-was had been stuck to my ceiling, then crawled over and down my wall. What then?
—Do souls exist?
—That is classified.
What if millions, or tens of millions of years ago, data life-forms had fallen to Earth and chose not dogs as their hosts, but humans? Was there a non-zero possibility that a human would not fall ill as Rousseau had, but instead would coexist with it? Was it too much of a leap to wonder if that was the source of early humans’ great leap in intelligence?
If that were so, then perhaps the organic life-forms that so intrigued Nagato’s boss could begin to amass knowledge. Not on their own, but with the unwitting help of extraterrestrials.
It would’ve been very strange if I’d figured something out that the Data Overmind had overlooked, but just as mitochondria had once been independent organisms, what if these spiritual symbionts had improved the mental capacity of ancient apes, and had been passed down through to present day? The logic made sense—
“Sure, whatever.”
It was totally unlike me to be thinking about this stuff. Humans couldn’t imagine stuff that was beyond their own abilities, after all. Especially not me. I’d leave pondering difficult problems to Koizumi. Just like he left dealing with aliens to Nagato, I’d stay in the listener’s position when it came to this stuff. I understood, too, the nature of the condescending promise he’d made. If it comes to that, I may switch sides, he’d said. Consider it a warning. The many times he’d said such things seemed like nothing more than him carefully building an alibi.
Sorry, Koizumi, but alibis are doomed to be destroyed. Cheap, shallow excuses aren’t gonna fly with me. Or with Haruhi.
And anyway. Even if Koizumi’s ability to move was ended by whatever intrigues the Agency got up to, I still had other options. If nothing else, I could prostrate myself before the all-knowing, all-powerful Tsuruya. If that brilliant, cheerful upperclassman devoted her grinning shrewdness to covert maneuvering, even the Agency’s top brass would be in real trouble.<
br />
How I would do such things, or having done such things, what would happen—I hadn’t devoted so much as a millisecond of brain power to that. I’d worry about that later.
“… Worrying about those things really isn’t my specialty.”
But whatever. I couldn’t be anybody besides myself, and my consciousness was mine alone. Mine! All mine!
And if somebody wanted it back, well, tough—the statute of limitations had long since passed on that one.
As I was pondering such pointless nonsense, my cell phone, which I’d left on my desk, began to vibrate. I picked it up, wondering if the call was going to be delivering some kind of future warning—but it was just Haruhi.
“What’s up?”
“Hey, Kyon. I forgot something important,” said Haruhi, getting right to the point of her phone call without any preamble. “It’s great that we cured J.J. and Mike, but why do you think they caught that weird sickness in the first place? What I think is that the two of them really did see a ghost, and the shock made them sick!”
See, Koizumi? Do you see why I was worrying about the post-incident cleanup? It’s because she thinks about stuff like this.
“I bet it was there on that path we walked until about a week ago. My guess is that it still hasn’t cut its ties with the mortal world. It’s probably turned into a wandering spirit, just going all over the place!”
“I don’t know anything about ghosts, but you should just let it go to Heaven already.”
“That’s why we’re having an all-hands meeting tomorrow! This time we’re definitely gonna get a picture with that ghost.”
“And just how are you gonna line up with a ghost, huh?”
“We can’t do it during the day, I bet. We’ll do it at night. We’ll find a place where ghosts probably congregate, and we’ll take a bunch of pictures. They’ll have to show up on at least one or two of ’em, right?”
Haruhi unilaterally informed me of the meeting time and hung up before bothering to ask if I had plans on Sunday. I had no doubt that seconds later, she was contacting the other brigade members. Apparently tomorrow’s mysterious phenomena patrol would take the form of searching for haunted spots in the dead of night.
I put my phone down and gazed again at the corner of my room.
Sakanaka’s ghost problem had, via her dog’s illness, ended up in Nagato’s jurisdiction. I knew very well that a ghost hadn’t been involved at all, as did Koizumi. But the notion had evidently lingered in Haruhi’s head, such that a few hours later, she remembered it. Our esteemed brigade chief was now hoping not for alien whatever-based life-forms from space, but bona fide ghosts.
In any case, I’d entrust Koizumi with the job of putting marks on the city map. If we actually managed to take a real spectral photograph, I’d let him come up with a pseudo-scientific excuse too. I planned to take on the weighty job of walking through the night air with Asahina, letting her cling to me at every little noise.
Our bizarre brigade, walking all over creation snapping pictures in the dark. Any outsider would think we were the strange ones, wandering around trying to take pictures of invisible ghosts. Nevertheless, the weather would soon be turning warmer, and we could probably explain away our behavior by citing spring fever. In the worst-case scenario, we could always get Asahina to dress up as a shrine maiden and chant the Heart Sutra. It’d be an exorcism Haruhi-style.
Even if ghosts did exist, I doubted they would be swarming around such that you could run into them just by walking around. It wasn’t like Haruhi actually wanted to meet one.
Having watched her for close to a year, I was sure of that much. What she liked best was not ghosts, but the action of searching for ghosts with her friends.
And for my part, well—
“I guess I wouldn’t mind if one showed up,” I muttered to the place on the ceiling where Shamisen had looked, then went back to reading my book. The reality portrayed in that book was far more ordinary than the one that surrounded me.
But that didn’t mean I was jealous of the more realistic reality.
Not now, anyway.
AFTERWORD
About books.
The other day, for no particular reason, I hauled a cardboard box out of the back of my closet. Inside were all the books I’d bought and read when I was younger.
Incidentally, I tend to be quite a packrat, and I’ll keep stuff around unless it’s obviously garbage. Fortunately, I’m also someone who thinks really hard before buying anything, so the number of boxes around my house stays manageable, but when my eyes alight on the cover of a book I haven’t seen in a decade, it’s enough to make me want to say, “Argh, how dare you!”
And when I really thought about it, it occurred to me that the collected memories of reading all these books must have really shaped my thinking patterns. Of course, it’s not like I remembered every little detail of every book, but it’s definitely true that some of those memories did not evaporate, but rather sank into my mind where they quiver even now.
What impressed me most of all, and what is indeed a very important point, is the idea of timing. The fact that I read certain books when I did is what allowed them to leave such a deep impression on me; if I were to read them for the first time now, the impression would be quite different.
You could say that the sum of all the writing I read in the past is the distant ancestor to the writing I do now—and the writing I’ll do in the future. It might be the case that if I’d missed even one of those books, you might not even be reading this afterword.
So it was that I closed up the cardboard box with a feeling of deep gratitude, putting it back in the closet as I promised myself I would reread every one of those books someday, hoping that the new writing I read in the future will likewise become elements of my future self.
About cats.
I get cold very easily, and I sometimes wonder if I wear a winter jacket more days out of the year than anyone else in the world. People tease me about it all the time, and all I can think to do is answer, “Maybe I was a cat in a former life.” The truth or falsity of reincarnation aside, if I am a reincarnated cat, then that cat also had its own former life—and if in its former life it had been a polar bear, would the cat prefer warm weather or cold? And what about if that cat were then reincarnated as a penguin? Or is reincarnation specific to humans? There was that TV show with the person who did pet fortune-telling based on the pets’ past lives, so I figure if they can do it, I can do it. I spent an entire day thinking about it.
About “Editor in Chief, Full Speed Ahead!”
I’ve been wondering since the beginning what would happen if the SOS Brigade had to do some kind of activity as the literature club. Quite some time ago, I wrote down a short note that said “literary anthology/literature club activities” along with an untitled short piece about Yuki Nagato, but while I remember writing it, I have no idea where on my hard drive it might be, and finding it would be a pain.
Other notes I jotted down around the same time include “the student council finally makes its move,” “counseling/computer club/shut-in,” “Haruhi’s disappearance,” and “baseball tournament.” It all seems so nostalgic now. There were many others, but they’re either spoilers or meaningless details, so I reluctantly omitted them, then spent the rest of the day clicking my way through the ocean of data looking for other fragments. Can I get someone else to do my searching for me, I wonder?
About “Wandering Shadow”
I always agonize over book titles and even chapter titles, and when I get really desperate I’ll just write some random English word. In this case, I translated the temporary title that had just hit me—“samayou kage”—into English. No desperation required!
Come to think of it, I didn’t think about the title The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya much at all. I’m pretty sure it took me about ten seconds to decide on it. I couldn’t think of anything better. I always start writing before I think of a title and only add the title once I�
�m done, but because I have accepted the reality of my unfortunate lack of copywriting sense, I’m always very slapdash about it. Maybe somebody else should do this for me. Please?
Thus it is that this suddenly strangely titled series has come to the conclusion of its eighth volume. This is thanks to the many professionals involved in the publication and circulation of the book, in addition to the readers who so kindly pick it up. Thank you so much. My thanks also goes to the many people who’ve supported this title in media other than prose. I shall see you again.
Farewell.
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CONTENTS
WELCOME
EDITOR IN CHIEF, FULL SPEED AHEAD!
WANDERING SHADOW
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 Fungai copyright © Nagaru TANIGAWA 2006
Illustration by Noizi Ito
First published in Japan in 2006 by Kadokawa Shoten Co., LTD., Tokyo. English hardcover/paperback translation rights arranged with Kadokawa Shoten Co., LTD., Tokyo, through Tuttle-Mori Agency, Inc., Tokyo.
English translation by Paul Starr
English translation copyright © 2012 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The Indignation of Haruhi Suzumiya Page 18