The next issue is what I’m truly frightened about.
Who am I?
I shrugged in an imitation of Koizumi. He’s the one who says, “Good grief.” I’m the one who’s most aware of what my own role is. In short, I serve as the SOS Brigade’s conscience. That has to be it. Deep down, I’m different from the other three brigade members. I’m in the SOS Brigade to persuade Haruhi to spend her time in high school in a normal fashion. It’s my duty to make her give up and disband this illegal club. Now that I think about it, this would be the fastest path to a peaceful world. No, it’s the only path.
It’s a lot easier to change Haruhi’s concept of the world than to turn the world into the kind of place Haruhi wants. Plus, it doesn’t impose on anybody else.
Of course, the SOS Brigade may never have existed if I hadn’t given Haruhi some bizarre inspiration. Well, you know, we should judge these things on a case-by-case basis. I’ll work this out somehow. Though I don’t know how long it’ll take or why I’m the one that has to do this.
Let’s just move on.
“So what was that cave cricket anyway?”
I figured that I needed to get that question answered before this ordeal would end. Nagato answered in a tone that was like exhaling carbon dioxide.
“A data life form.”
“A relative of your patron?”
“Their origin was similar. However, they branched down a different evolutionary path and became extinct.”
Except there ended up being a survivor. It didn’t have to hibernate on Earth of all places. It could have gone to sleep somewhere around Neptune.
To think that the development of the Internet would become a breeding ground for pseudo-evil gods. That’s when I thought of something. I turned to the petite upperclassman who was collapsed on the floor.
“Asahina, how advanced are the computers in the future?”
“Huh…”
Asahina opened her mouth before shutting it again. I hadn’t really been expecting an answer since it was probably classified, but someone else responded.
“Such a primitive form of data network should no longer be in use,” Nagato said as she ruined the mood and pointed to the computer.
“It is simple to create a system that does not rely on storage media, even for organisms such as terrestrial humans.”
Nagato turned to the side to look at Asahina, who visibly paled.
“Really?”
“That’s… um…”
Asahina mumbled as she hung her head.
“I can’t say…” she said in a quivering voice. “I don’t have the authority to confirm or deny that. I’m sorry.”
It’s totally fine. There’s no need to apologize, seriously. I wasn’t that interested in finding out—hey, Koizumi. How dare you have such a disappointed look on your face?
I attempted to change the subject to save Asahina. Uh, what was there to talk about again? That’s right.
“There’s still something odd.”
I waited for everybody to turn their attention to me.
“I was with Haruhi when she was viewing the stupid picture, and nothing happened. Besides, shouldn’t that thing have shown up the second Haruhi finished her drawing?”
Koizumi gave the response.
“That club room had been transformed into alternate space long ago. A variety of elements and force fields battled and negated one another, leaving the room relatively normal. You could say that it’s in a saturated state. The room is already filled to capacity with various things so there is no room for further assimilation.”
What kind of logic is that? And when had the club room been turned into a den of evil? I never noticed.
“Ordinary people aren’t equipped with unnecessary sensory capabilities. Yes, it’s safe to assume it to be harmless. Most likely.”
Good grief. I wouldn’t mind the temperature of the room being lowered a bit during summer, but if it gets to the point where I start searching for a hanging rope, I’m out.
“You shouldn’t have to worry about that. Nagato, Asahina, and I are working hard to prevent that.”
“Are you sure this isn’t the result of your hard work?”
Koizumi smiled and said, “Who knows?” as he tilted his head and spread his arms with his palms facing upward.
I turned back to the computer screen. As I stared at the corrupted SOS Brigade symbol, I noticed something. I scrolled down to the bottom of the page.
“Bah.”
The access counter was showing. For some reason, it was the only normal part of the website as it displayed the number of visitors. The access counter hadn’t even been three figures the last time I checked. At the moment, the counter for the SOS Brigade website was at ten, a hundred, a thousand… Whoa, it was almost up to three thousand. Who’s looking at this thing?
“Hyperlinks have been placed in various places,” Nagato said in a quiet voice.
“That is how this data life form multiplies. Very immature. Its data is copied into the brains of the humans who see the signs, leading to the creation of restricted space. A large number of people are required.”
“Which means everybody who saw this… Almost three thousand other people are in the same predicament as the president was?”
“Not exactly. The data for the summoning emblem is damaged. Only a few people browsed the correct data source.”
Probably a server error. Either way, that’s a big help.
“So how many idiots out there clicked the suspicious link and saw the real thing?”
“Eight. Five are students at North High.”
Then those eight people are also trapped in that ocher space-time. That space controlled by a metaphor that might not necessarily be a cave cricket. We should help—or yeah, we have to go save them. Koizumi was asking Nagato for their addresses (It doesn’t surprise me that Nagato knows this information) and Asahina appeared to intend to go along with them. That means I have to go too. Most of the blame goes to Haruhi, but I was the one who put this magic circle-like thing on the Internet, so I should help clean up the mess.
So I can sleep soundly at night.
The victims at North High wouldn’t be a problem, but it appeared that we’d have to ride the train to save the other three people.
Anyway.
The post-exam break was over with. All that remained was to sit in the club room and wait for summer vacation.
I told Haruhi that the president had come back to school.
“Hmph. I see.”
And with that, she zipped out of the classroom. She was probably stuffing herself in the cafeteria by now. Koizumi and Asahina hadn’t shown up yet.
By the way, Nagato had redone Haruhi’s SOS Brigade symbol and I stuck it on the page. I managed to safely upload it this time. I wonder why? I hope that people concentrate when they look at this thing. The difference was ever so slight, but if you paid attention, you’d find that the drawing said ZOZ Brigade now. That tiny change was apparently the difference between weird stuff showing up or not.
I’d be inclined to say that the moral of this whole spiel would be, “Don’t click on links you don’t recognize.” What do you think?
As I considered the matter, I looked at Nagato, who was sitting at the end of the table reading a numbered set of technical books.
As I watched Nagato’s face, I suddenly thought of something. I don’t know when she noticed Haruhi’s summoning picture, but maybe she had been the one who destroyed the data?
And there was the person who brought this matter to our attention, Kimidori. I had just visited the computer society’s club room and been told that the president didn’t have a girlfriend. By the president himself, who appeared perfectly fine besides the fact that he didn’t have any memory of the past few days. It didn’t seem like he was lying as he gave me a clueless look when I mentioned Kimidori’s name. The president isn’t that good of an actor.
I became suspicious.
Had Kimidori real
ly come here to request our help? The timing had been too perfect. Haruhi scribbled her drawing and I put it on the website. A number of people saw it and were taken by that data life form thing to an alternate dimension. That was when Kimidori came to us and told us her story and we went to the president’s home. And then we exterminated it.
A perfectly scripted scenario and Nagato was always at the center of it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the omnipotent alien terminal had gone so far as to manipulate Kimidori into bringing us this case.
She may have come up with the idea of a fake client to ease away some of Haruhi’s boredom. If that were the case, Nagato could have dealt with it by herself without getting us involved. Is that what usually happens? She secretly prevents weird stuff from happening without saying a word, in silence, from the shadows.
A breeze came in through the window and ruffled Nagato’s hair and the pages of her book. Her pale fingers gripped the edges of the book and her pale face was perfectly still as her eyes followed the text.
Or perhaps, Nagato brought us in because she wanted to? An alien-made organic android living for years in a totally empty room. Though she appeared to feel no emotion on the outside, perhaps she could.
Perhaps she still felt lonely when she was all by herself.
REMOTE ISLAND SYNDROME
I was so dumbfounded I forgot about the pain in my shoulder.
At the moment, I was lying on my belly, unable to stand as I couldn’t help being astonished by the sight before my eyes. I was unable to move because of an excess amount of weight on my back that refused to budge. But that wasn’t my concern at the moment. Koizumi, draped over me in the aftermath of breaking down the door, was also stunned by the scene in the room before us. Get off me already—but my mind wasn’t clear enough to channel that thought. That’s how shocked I was.
That which could never possibly happen had happened. It had actually happened. This could no longer be laughed off as a joke. What are we supposed to do?
There was a flash outside the window. A few seconds later, the rumbling of thunder reached my stomach. Just like yesterday, a full-blown storm was covering the entire island.
“It can’t be,” someone murmured.
It was Arakawa, who had been slamming against the door with Koizumi and me and fallen to the floor when it opened.
Koizumi finally got off me so I rolled over and sat up.
And then I took another look at the unbelievable sight before my eyes.
On the carpet near the door lay a man sprawled on the floor the way I was a moment ago. A resident of this manor who hadn’t come down to the dining room this morning and also happened to be our host, a man in his prime. I could immediately identify him because he’d been wearing the same clothes when he’d left us in the living room last night and headed upstairs. He was the only one wearing a formal suit in this hot weather on an island when there was no need for it. He was also the employer of Arakawa, who had been murmuring a moment ago, and the owner of this island and manor…
Mr. Keiichi Tamaru.
Keiichi was lying on the floor with a look of astonishment on his face. He wasn’t moving a single muscle. Of course he wasn’t. Since it appeared that he was already dead.
How did I know? It was obvious. The item protruding from his chest looked familiar. It was the handle of the fruit knife that had been included with the bountiful fruit basket we had been served during dinner.
I’m willing to bet that you’d find a metal blade on the other side of that handle. Or else, it wouldn’t be sticking out of the chest of an unmoving human who had his eyes and mouth wide open. Which meant that the knife was stuck in Keiichi’s chest.
I’m pretty sure that most people would die if they had a knife through their heart.
And that would describe Keiichi’s current state.
“Eek…”
I heard a soft shriek of terror from the other side of the busted door. I turned around. Asahina stood with her hands over her mouth. She staggered backward but Nagato was there to support her from behind. Nagato turned to me with her permanently blank face and lifted her head as if deep in thought.
Naturally, she could always be found where we were.
“Kyon, could it be that… this person is…”
Haruhi also looked surprised. Her head was sticking into the room next to Asahina as she stared at Keiichi in eternal repose with catlike eyes in the darkness.
“Dead?”
Her voice was unusually soft and even slightly nervous, which was very peculiar. I turned around to try to say something. Koizumi’s usual smile was nowhere to be found as he had a somber expression on his face. The maid, Mori, was also standing out in the hallway.
Only one person who’d been in the manor yesterday was missing from this scene.
Keiichi’s younger brother, Yutaka Tamaru, wasn’t here.
We broke into the room to find one silenced owner of the manor and one person who happened to be suspiciously absent. What might that mean?
“Hey, Kyon…”
Haruhi spoke again. It almost looked as though she were going to cling to me any second. She had an unfamiliar look of anxiety on her face.
Another flash of lightning lit up the room. The storm had peaked yesterday. The sound of thunder accompanied the crashing of waves in an array of goose bump–inducing sounds.
This was a remote island. And there was a storm. And the master of the manor was lying before us in what had been a sealed room, with a knife in his chest.
I couldn’t help wondering.
Hey, Haruhi.
Were you the one who made this happen?
I flashbacked to the reason the SOS Brigade members ended up in this place.
Back one day before summer vacation had started…
………
……
…
It was mid-July in the dead of summer. The weather was so intensely hot that I wanted to give the sun a paid vacation.
As always, I was in the literary club room, which served as our hideout, drinking Asahina’s trademark hot tea. I was attempting to recover from the term exam results we had just received, but when I thought about how I’d have to take supplementary classes, I couldn’t really relax. This is when people start wanting to escape reality.
I spontaneously came up with a number of potential reasons for why reality was just a big lie and began mulling over which one to use.
“Um, is something the matter?”
I snapped myself out of the fake story where a bunch of evil aliens from the dark side of the moon would land and destroy the Diet building on the day before makeup exams.
“You have a strained look on your face… Does the tea taste bad?”
“Of course not.”
It was as sweet as always. Though it was made using cheap tea leaves.
“That’s a relief.”
Asahina breathed a soft sigh as she stood in her summer maid outfit. I responded to her relieved smile with a smile of my own. Your happiness is my happiness. You could send Xu Fu from China to the mountain gods of Mount Penglai in a quest for a miracle cure and not find a panacea stronger than Asahina’s smile. My heart currently felt clearer than the surface of Lake Mashu, and I swear that I could almost envision messengers from heaven blowing on their horns…
And I was in the middle of delivering an impassioned speech like Saint Francis of Assisi preaching to the birds but I stopped. Not because I got sick of chaining modifiers, but because someone showed up to interfere with his needlessly melodic voice.
“Hello, everyone. How did you do on your finals?”
Koizumi rolled the dice on the Monopoly board on the table as he asked the question he really didn’t need to ask. Thanks to him, my mind was warping to the dark side of the moon again and was in satellite orbit before I could calm myself down. Why don’t you just play Monopoly by yourself over there? Learn a thing or two from Nagato, who’s sitting in the corner of the room and quietly reading a book
.
Nagato had what looked to be a hardcover encyclopedia open as she sat in a metal folding chair in her summer sailor uniform with a face like a glass mask that didn’t seem to breathe and her eyes focused on the pages. I wonder if there’s a reason she enjoys acquiring data through analog methods when she’s more of a digital entity.
“…”
In any case, everybody had too much free time.
Today was a short day and school had officially been out before noon, so why were we all gathered in this place? That question was also directed at myself, but I had a legitimate reason. I have to drink one cup of Asahina’s tea every day or I’ll become a living corpse. Which is why I suffer from withdrawal on Saturdays and Sundays.
That was just a joke. That should go without saying, but I’ve learned since entering high school that some people have to be told that something’s a joke. In fact, that’s the only thing I’ve learned over the past few months so it has to be right. You should draw a clear line between jest and earnestness. Or else you’ll run the risk of suffering an unpleasant experience.
The way I am now.
I opened my bag and took out the ham sandwich I’d redeemed from the school vendor to eat with my tea.
It was the time of year when everybody was counting down the days to summer vacation, so there was a reason all of us were lounging around in the club room like cats—or not. I’m fairly confident that there wasn’t. After all, the SOS Brigade started up for no real reason, so there had never been an explanation for our presence here in the first place. I suppose that the lack of a reason would be the closest thing to a reason for any of this. Considering how stupid everything we do is, I’ll have less of a headache if there isn’t any meaning either. Since I won’t have to do any thinking.
“I’ll also take this chance to eat lunch.”
After happily pouring herself some tea, Asahina took out an adorable-looking lunch box and sat down at the table across from me.
“Don’t mind me. I ate in the cafeteria before coming here.”
Koizumi spoke in a cheerful voice in response to a question nobody had asked. Nagato appeared to be more interested in reading than eating.
The Boredom of Haruhi Suzumiya Page 11