Volume 1
The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi
Prologue
When did I stop believing in Santa Claus? In truth, this sort of silly question holds no real significance for me. However, if you were to ask me when I stopped believing that the old man wearing the red costume was Santa, then I can confidently say: I have never believed in Santa, ever. I knew that the Santa who appeared at my preschool Christmas party was a fraud, and now that I think about it, every one of my classmates shared the same look of disbelief watching our teacher pretend to be Santa. Although I had never seen Mommy kissing Santa Claus, I was already wise enough to be suspicious about the existence of an old man who worked only on Christmas Eve.
However, it took me quite a bit longer to realize that the aliens, time-travelers, ghosts, monsters and espers in those effects-filled “good guys versus evil organization” cartoons didn’t actually exist either. No, wait, I probably did realize, I just didn’t want to admit it. Deep inside my heart I still wanted those aliens, time-travelers, ghosts, monsters, espers and evil organizations to suddenly appear. Compared to this boring, normal life of mine, the world of those flashy shows was much more exciting; I wanted to live in that world too!
I wanted to be the one who saved the girl kidnapped by aliens and imprisoned in a bowl-like fortress. I wanted to be the one who used my courage, intelligence and trusty laser gun to fight against villains from the future trying to change history for their own gain. I wanted to be someone who could banish demons and monsters with a single spell, battle against mutants or psychics from evil organizations, and engage in telepathic fights!
But wait, calm down. If I really were ever attacked by aliens or whatever, how could I ever possibly fight against them? I don’t even have any special powers!
Well then, how about this: one day, a mysterious new student transfers to my class. Except he’s really an alien or from the future, and he has telepathic abilities. When he gets into a fight with the bad guys, all I need to do is find a way to get involved in his war. He’ll handle all the fighting and I can just be his flunky sidekick. Oh my god, this is great, I am so clever!
Or maybe, if that doesn’t work, how about this: one day, a mysterious power inside me awakens, something like a telekinetic or psychic ability. I discover that a lot of other people in this world also have similar powers, and then some sort of paranormal society recruits me. I’ll become part of this organization and protect the world against evil mutants.
Unfortunately, reality is surprisingly cruel… No one got transferred to my class. I’ve never seen a UFO. When I went to places that were rumored to be haunted, nothing showed up. Two hours of intense staring didn’t make my pencil move a single millimeter, and glaring at my classmate’s head didn’t reveal his thoughts to me either. I couldn’t help but get depressed at how normal the laws of physics were. I began to stop watching for UFOs and paying attention to paranormal TV shows because I finally convinced myself it was impossible. I even reached a point where I only had a sense of nostalgia for those things.
1 Alpha Centauri is the closest star system beside our own Sun, 4.39 light-years away.
After junior high, I completely grew out of that fantasy world and became utterly grounded in reality. Nothing happened in 1999, even though I kept hoping, just a bit, that something would; mankind hadn’t returned to the moon or gone beyond it. I suppose, from the way things are looking, that I’ll be long dead before you can book a round trip from Earth to Alpha Centauri[1].
With those sorts of pedestrian thoughts in my mind, I became a normal, carefree senior high student. That is, until the day I met Suzumiya Haruhi.
Chapter 1
And so, I entered the senior high school in my area. At first, I regretted this decision as my new school sat on top of a very high hill. Even during spring, students would become hot and sweaty just from climbing the steep road—clearly, my intention of “going to school leisurely” was not going to work. Every time I remembered this, along with the fact that I would have to repeat the same procedure every day for the next three years, I became tired and depressed. I overslept a bit today. Perhaps that’s why I walked so much faster, and perhaps that was why I was so tired then. I could have woken up ten minutes earlier, but, as all of you know, you sleep best right before it’s time to get up. I didn’t want to waste that precious 10 minutes, so I gave up on the thought, which meant that I would need to repeat this early exercise for the next three years. This was just too depressing.
That was the reason for my lone grim face in the time-wasting entrance ceremony. Everyone else had the “starting a new journey” look on their face; you know, the unique “hopeful, yet filled with uncertainty” look that every new student wears when they enter a new school. For me, this was not the case — a lot of old classmates from my old junior high school were also coming to this school. To cap it off, a few of my friends were also here. Thus, I didn’t look as worried, or excited, as other people.
The guys were wearing sport jackets, and the girls were wearing the sailor uniform. Wow, that’s a pretty weird combination. Maybe the snore-inducing principal giving a speech on the stage had some sort of fetish for sailor uniforms. As I was thinking about these useless things, the idiotic ceremony finally ended. I, along with my not-so-willing new classmates, entered the 1-5 classroom.
Our homeroom teacher, Okabe-sensei, with his practiced-for-an-hour-in-front-of-a-mirror smile, walked to the front of the class and gave a self-introduction. He first said that he was a PE teacher, and was the managing teacher for the handball team. Then he moved on to stuff like how, back when he was in university, he used to play on the handball team, and even won the championship, and that this school seriously lacked handball players, so whoever entered the team would become a regular instantly. And then he said stuff like how handball was the most interesting sport in the world and what-have-you. Just when I thought that he would never finish, he suddenly blurted out:
“Now, let’s introduce ourselves!”
This kind of thing was pretty common, though, so I wasn’t surprised.
One by one, the people on the left side of the class started to introduce themselves. They raised their hand, then announced their name, the name of their old school, and other trivial stuff, such as a hobby or favorite food. Some people mumbled their way through it, a few had some pretty interesting introductions, while some tried to tell lame jokes that lowered the room’s temperature by a substantial degree. As the different people introduced themselves, my turn was approaching. I’m starting to get nervous! Everyone should understand how I’m feeling right now, right?
After I managed to finish my carefully thought-out, minimal-length introduction without stumbling over my words too much, I sat down, feeling the relief you get after having finished something unpleasant but necessary. The person behind me stood up for her turn and―ah, I probably won’t forget this for the rest of my life―said the words that would be the topic of conversation for a long time.
“My name is Suzumiya Haruhi. I graduated from East Junior High.”
Up to this point the introduction was still normal, so I didn’t even bother turning around to look at her. I just stared at the front and listened to her crisp voice.
“Normal humans don’t interest me. If anyone here is an alien, a time traveler, slider, or an esper, then come find me! That is all.”
Upon hearing that, I couldn’t help but turn around.
She had long and slender black hair. Her cute face was filled with daring and challenge as the rest of the class stared at her. Her seriousness and determination shone through her glinting eyes and lo
ng eyebrows. Her small lips were tightly pursed. This was my first impression of this girl.
I still remember how gleaming her white throat was— standing there was an astounding beauty.
Haruhi, with her provocative eyes, scanned the class slowly, stopped to glare at me (I had my mouth wide open), and then sat down without so much as a smile.
Was this a gag?
At that moment I believe everyone’s mind was filled with question marks, and that everyone was confused as to what their reaction should be. “Should I laugh?” No one knew.
Well, judging by the conclusion, it wasn’t a gag nor a laughing matter, as Haruhi never said any joke.
She is always serious.
This is based on hindsight—it can’t be wrong.
After the fairies of silence danced around the classroom for thirty-something seconds, the homeroom teacher, with some hesitation, signaled the next person to continue, and the tense atmosphere lifted.
That is how we met.
How unforgettable. I really want to believe that this was all a coincidence.
After she grabbed everyone’s attention on the first day, Haruhi reverted to being an innocent high school girl.
This was the calm before the storm! I finally understand it all now.
Anyway, everyone in this school came from one of the four junior high schools in the city— people with average grades. This, of course, includes East Junior High; therefore there should be people in the class who graduated with Haruhi, who knew what her silence symbolized. Unfortunately, I did not know any former East Junior High students, thus no one could explain to me how serious the situation was. Consequently, a few days after that explosive introduction, I did something I would never forget—I tried to talk to her before class.
My dominoes of misfortune had begun to fall, and I was the person who pushed the first block!
You see, when Haruhi sits quietly in her seat, she looks just like a normal, cute girl, so I planned to sit right in front of her to get close to her. I actually thought this would work. How naive of me. Someone please beat some sense into me.
Of course, I started the conversation with that incident.
“Hey.”
I casually turned my head around, with that airy smile all over my face.
“The stuff you said in your intro, how much of it was serious?”
With her arm crossed on her chest, lips sealed together, Suzumiya Haruhi kept her posture, then stared right into my eyes.
“What ‘stuff in my intro’?”
“The stuff about the aliens and all that.”
“Are you an alien?”
She looked very serious.
“… No, but—”
“If you are not, then what do you want?”
“…No, nothing.”
“Then don’t talk to me. You are wasting my time.”
Her glare was so cold that I found myself stuttering “sorry” before realizing it. Suzumiya Haruhi then removed her glare from me disdainfully, and started to frown at the blackboard.
I was going to whip back a line or two, but I couldn’t think of anything good to say. Thankfully, at that moment the homeroom teacher came into the classroom and saved me.
I turned my head back to my desk damply, and noticed that a few people were looking at me with a look of great interest on their face. This, of course, made me feel very annoyed. After I stared back at them, however, I noticed that they all had the same feeble expression on their faces. Some even nodded at me with sympathy.
As I said, at first I felt very irritated, but later on I learned that all those people graduated from East Junior High.
Given that my first contact with Haruhi had ended horribly, I figured that I should keep my distance from her for now, for safety’s sake. With that in mind, a week passed by.
But, just as I was still part of this class, there were always people who wanted to talk to the eyebrow-locking scowling-mouthed Haruhi.
Most of the people were those fussy girls; the second they see that a fellow female classmate is becoming isolated they try to be kind and help the girl. This is a good thing, but they should at least check their target beforehand!
“Hi, did you see that tv show last night? The 9 o’clock one.”
“No.”
“Eh, why?”
“I don’t know.”
“You should try it. Even if you started in the middle you wouldn’t be lost. Do you need me to go over the previous story for you?”
“You are annoying!”
That’s how it went.
It would be much better if she could just answer no with her poker face. But no, she had to show her impatience in both her expression and her voice. This just made her victim believe that they did something wrong. At the end he/she could only say “I see… then I’ll just…”, and ask themselves “What did I say wrong?” and whimper away.
Don’t be so sad; you didn’t say anything wrong. The problem is with Suzumiya Haruhi’s brain, not yours.
Even though I didn’t mind eating alone, I didn’t want others to think that I was a loner when everyone else was happily eating their lunch with their friends. That’s why, even though I didn’t care if others misunderstood, I ate my lunch together with my junior high school classmate Kunikida and an East Junior High graduate named Taniguchi, who sat close to me.
We started to talk about Haruhi.
“Did you try to talk to Suzumiya?” Taniguchi asked innocently. I nodded.
“And then she said some weird stuff and you didn’t know how to react?”
“That’s right!”
Taniguchi put his sliced boiled egg into his mouth, chewed, and said:
“If you’re interested in her, I won’t mince words. All I can advise you is to give up! You should know by now that she’s not normal.”
“I was in her class three years in a row; I know how she is.”
He used this line as the beginning of his speech.
“She always does incredibly baffling things. I thought she would at least try to control herself after she got into senior high; apparently she hasn’t. You heard her introduction speech, right?”
“You mean the alien stuff?”
Kunikida, who was busy picking bones out of his fried fish, had butted in.
“Yeah that. Even back in junior high she always said and did lots of weird stuff. For example there was this school vandalization incident!”
“What happened?”
“You know that one tool where you use plaster dust to draw field lines, right? What’s it called… Anyway, she sneaked into school at night and, with that thing, drew a huge huge symbol in the middle of the field.”
Taniguchi had a mischievous smile on his face— he was probably remembering the incident.
“That was so shocking. I went to school early that morning, and all I saw were big circles and triangles. I couldn’t figure out what they were supposed to be, so I went up to the fourth floor to get a bird’s eye view. That didn’t help— I still didn’t know what that symbol was.”
“Ah, I think I saw that before. Didn’t the newspaper have a story on it? It even had a helicopter view of it! The symbol looked like a broken Nazca pictogram,” Kunikida said.
I don’t remember hearing about that before.
“I saw the article, I saw it. The headline was something like ‘Mystery Vandal Strikes Junior High At Night,’ right? Well, care to guess who pulled that stunt?”
“Don’t tell me it’s her.”
“She admitted it herself. There’s no mistaking it. Naturally, she got called into the principal’s office. Every teacher was there, questioning her on why she did it.”
“Why did she do it, then?”
“I don’t know,” Taniguchi answered flatly, as he tried to swallow a mouthful of rice.
“I heard she refused to say anything. Of course, when you’re getting glared at by her, you tend to give up on whatever you’re planning. Someone said that she drew the
symbol to call out to UFOs, others said that it was a magic symbol and was used in summoning monsters, or that she was trying to open a portal to different worlds, et cetera… There were many speculations, but as long as the perpetrator refuses to talk, we may never know if those rumors are true or not. To this day it’s still a mystery.”
For some reason, the picture of Haruhi, with her no-nonsense look, busy laying the lines in the middle of the school field at night, floated into my mind. She definitely prepared the drawing tools and the limestone powders beforehand in the storage room; maybe she even bought a flashlight! Under its dim yellow light Suzumiya Haruhi looked very sober and tragic… OK, this was just my imagination.
But truth be told Suzumiya Haruhi was probably really doing it to summon UFOs or monsters, or even a dimensional portal. She probably worked on it the whole night in the field, but nothing showed up, and all she was left with was that beat down feeling, I thought to myself.
“That’s not the only thing she did!”
Taniguchi continued to finish his lunch.
2 An O-fuda (お札) is a Shinto talisman where an inscription is made on a piece of paper, wood or metal. Such charms are used to bring good luck, ward off or contain evil spirits, or for protection from illness.
“Once I came to the classroom in the morning and discovered that all the desks were moved out to the corridor, or that there were printed stars on the school roof. Another time she was going around the school putting O-fuda[2] all over the place… you know, those Chinese ones where you put the paper talisman on a vampire’s forehead. I just can’t understand her.”
That’s right, Suzumiya Haruhi was not inside the classroom right then, or else we wouldn’t have been having this conversation. But then again, even if she did hear us, she probably wouldn’t have cared. Usually, Suzumiya Haruhi left the classroom immediately after fourth period, then came back right before the fifth period. She didn’t carry a lunch box, so I had assumed that she went to the cafeteria to enjoy her lunch; but it doesn’t take the whole hour to eat lunch, does it? Furthermore, at the end of every period, she disappeared. Where did she go anyway…?
Volume 1 - The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi Page 1