No to both, I think. Let’s just leave it that some things shouldn’t be explained. So long as Nagato returns to being a part of our daily lives, everything will be fine. And the sooner that day came, the better, because the longer Nagato was afflicted by her fever, the more suspicious Haruhi would be. Who knows what lengths Haruhi would go to in order to cure Nagato?
For example, it wouldn’t surprise me if she reset everything back to the day of our freshman entrance ceremony. I really didn’t want to go back to the beginning now that I’d spent so much effort to get this far. I wasn’t confident I’d be able to play my cards very well, and considering everything I was rather attached to our current situation. We’d come this far—like hell I was gonna let the whole year go to waste. I’d make sure we would break the tape at the finish line together.
“Oh, so that’s it.”
I sat down on the hard desk chair and my brain immediately arrived at the answer. I’d realized just why I was so anxious, and felt rather proud of myself for achieving this feat of self-analysis. In short, I was afraid that someone close to me was going to disappear. When I thought back on it, it was obvious. Even if I left out the incident with Haruhi disappearing and the world changing around her, when I’d seen Asahina kidnapped before my very eyes, or when Nagato had missed school, my heart had immediately started hammering. Even if it were just circumstantial evidence, it was seriously convincing.
The same reasoning applied. Just turn time back a year and see what happened. If I had to listen to Haruhi’s crazy self-introduction again, I’d say the odds were no better than fifty-fifty that youthful capriciousness would lead me to talk to her, so that encounter leading to actual events was no more than a coincidence, and I could just as easily have wound up without spending any of my time in classroom 1-5 with Haruhi Suzumiya or her old acquaintance Taniguchi, never getting dragged to the literature club room, never meeting Nagato and seeing the glasses disappear from her face, never seeing Asahina kidnapped and returned. Koizumi would never have transferred into North High, and we never would’ve had a fake island murder mystery or shot that stupid movie, and swept along by ceaseless time, nothing would have happened. There was a possibility I would have sought tranquility and idleness, and moved normally into my second year of high school.
And yet that was only a possibility, and here in the present with the results already in, it was a meaningless eventuality, with a 0 percent chance of happening. Reality was that which did not change no matter how you looked at it.
Don’t ask me which I would have preferred. I didn’t have time to hesitate over answers that should have been obvious.
So I had to take responsibility. I wasn’t going to rely on anyone else to do something that only I could do, and I’d let others do what I couldn’t. That’s what I’d done so far, and I was going to keep doing it. Even without Koizumi’s eloquent explanations, I could reason that much.
When Nagato had fainted last year at Tsuruya’s ski villa, Koizumi’s capable mind had come into play. This time, though, he had his hands full with other things. If it had been in his power to do something about the irregular extraterrestrial life form Kuyoh, he would’ve long since done it.
And thanks to the directives the Data Overmind had given Nagato, Haruhi and I were both in a situation that made neither of us very happy. And when it came to people who could do anything about it, once you left Haruhi out there was just me.
I owed Nagato quite a bit so far. If I didn’t pay her back now, it would reflect badly on all of humanity. No, I would not help either the knife-wielding maniac Asakura or the mysteriously disappearing and reappearing Kimidori. And neither would my old middle school friend Sasaki, who while eccentric was still the most normal-seeming of all the involved parties. It didn’t matter what sweet words they whispered in her ear; I knew Sasaki wouldn’t do anything. I’d spent enough time with her to know she was trustworthy. She was odd enough for even Haruhi to say so, and I felt roughly the same way about my old middle school friend. The fact that we were boy and girl had nothing to do with it at all. I had absolutely no biologically derived feelings for her, and I was certain she felt the same about me.
I was glad I’d remembered to mail her a New Year’s card. I’m sure we were both looking forward to having a good time at this year’s reunion. Sasaki had enough acting ability that she’d be able to make all these problems go away and take us back to our middle school days. On that count I could trust her more than anyone.
Only now did I realize how true it was—Sasaki, you really are a good friend. Good enough that even a decade from now she’d be able to come up to me and say, “Hey, Kyon,” which was a rare thing. She was smart enough not to let Kyoko Tachibana or Fujiwara trick her into doing anything; she’d keep her feet firmly planted on the ground.
Kyoko Tachibana was Koizumi’s enemy. Fujiwara was Asahina’s enemy. Kuyoh was Nagato’s enemy. But Sasaki was not my enemy. She was my old friend, my middle school classmate, and nothing else. Kyoko Tachibana, Fujiwara, Kuyoh—you picked the wrong target. The Sasaki I know isn’t some meek Earthling easily swayed by sweet words. She’s harder to deal with than me, but has more common sense than Haruhi.
Settling that much was enough to restore some measure of calm to my mind, so all that was left to do was wait for Haruhi.
When the first bell rang, she still hadn’t arrived. I fixed my eyes on the blackboard, feeling her lack of presence behind me; she was on the verge of being late for class, which was very rare.
The day did not begin when my eyes opened; it began now. My usual routine was to consider the day begun when I turned around to face Haruhi in the seat behind me, and it had been so for quite a while.
And by that schedule, today was shaping up to be the longest day ever.
Hold on, Nagato. We’ll do something about your sickness. The one opponent we absolutely have to strike at is definitely Kuyoh Suoh, the supposed platform of the supposed Heavenly Canopy Dominion. We could deal with the time traveler after that.
Just as I was feeling uncharacteristically resolved, the bell indicating the beginning of homeroom period rang, and Haruhi finally appeared in the classroom, cutting it very close—she entered almost exactly the same time that Okabe did. Unlike the teacher, she entered quietly through the classroom’s rear door, and also unlike the teacher, her expression was not very lively.
Just as Haruhi was about to reach her seat, she noticed my gaze on her and returned it. Producing a key from the pocket of her uniform, she jingled it around and then quickly put it away. That was enough explanation, but she went ahead and said it aloud anyway.
“I went to go check on Yuki,” Haruhi explained in the short break between homeroom and first period. “I thought I’d make her breakfast, so I let myself in.”
“How was she?”
“Yuki? She was sleeping. When I peeked into her room, she opened her eyes and looked at me for a second. I guess she felt better after that, because she closed them again and went back to sleep. I didn’t want to wake her again, so I made breakfast and headed back out. Her fever didn’t seem too bad. I guess getting plenty of rest is still the best thing to do.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Haruhi sighed softly. “When I look at Yuki sleeping, I just wanna, like…” She hesitated for a moment, then lowered her voice. “I mean, don’t take this the wrong way, but I just want to gather her up and hug her. It feels like if I don’t, she’ll just disappear. I know that’s not true, but still…”
Haruhi propped her head up with her hand. She didn’t look uneasy so much as vaguely irritated, and I felt as though I could see what she was feeling so clearly that I felt it a little bit myself. It was almost certainly in my imagination, though. And even if it wasn’t, it went without saying that there was no way I was going to give Haruhi a hug.
But whatever the root cause, it was clear that Haruhi and I were of one mind. Koizumi and Asahina too.
A healthy Nagato… something about the phr
ase is strange, but I didn’t want to see her bedridden and weak for any longer. She belonged in the literature club room. She could sleep in there if she wanted, honestly. The place was well enough equipped for it, after all. The literature club room without Nagato was like a Last Supper scene without Christ.
In any case, there was something I absolutely had to tell Haruhi. It was something that might well have made her eyes bug out of her head, but just as I was about to say it, the biology teacher arrived and interrupted me.
The next ten-minute break between classes seemed as if it would bring a likely opportunity. The single line weighed heavily on my mind in direct proportion to its importance.
Immediately after the class (which I cared nothing for and of which nothing stuck in my head) ended, I turned around to inquire of the views of the brigade chief.
“We need to talk.”
“What?” Haruhi’s eyebrows shot up, but the eyes that regarded my expression widened only slightly. “Can you ask here? If it’s a secret we can go to the roof or the emergency exit stairs.”
“Nothing like that. Look, are you going to Nagato’s place again tonight?”
“Of course.”
“About that—it doesn’t look like I can make it. Something else came up. I’m worried about Nagato, but…”
I was inwardly chilled as I wondered what sort of reaction awaited me, but Haruhi’s eyebrows and eyes merely resumed their previous levels. “Huh, oh yeah?” She rubbed her chin as she seemed to think something over. “So what is it? Is Shamisen going bald again?”
I gulped. “No, nothing like that. Just a thing I have to take care of. It’s kinda…” I stumbled over my words, lacking any sort of ability to make stuff up on the spot.
“Sure, whatever. It’s pretty much the same whether you’re there or not, and it’s no fun for Yuki if everybody keeps making a big deal about it. Mikuru and I can take care of dinner—or just me, if it comes to that.” She considered the matter a bit more deeply. “Hmm, yes. I guess that’s something to consider too… yeah, definitely.”
It seemed I’d pushed a button that had set her on a different track entirely.
“We can’t really neglect either one, can we?” murmured Haruhi, having evidently come to some kind of internal conclusion. She nodded firmly and leaned close. “You shouldn’t come today. Koizumi either. Mikuru and I will go to Yuki’s place—I bet she hasn’t been bathing, and having boys around while we’re cleaning her up would just be a hassle. Don’t worry about it. It’s just a little cold, so lots of rest is the best thing for her, anyway.”
Haruhi sat back down in her chair, then thought better of it and stood back up. “We’ll have to tell Koizumi about this. I feel a little bad leaving responsibility to the lieutenant brigade chief, but this is the right thing to do. I really can’t just ignore the situation,” said Haruhi cryptically.
She got that smile she gets whenever she thinks of something, and sprinted out of the room. The speed she went from thought to action was right in line with the velocity of a subatomic particle.
I watched her speed away like a bottlenose dolphin cutting through a school of sardines, and sighed, and when my gaze returned to the classroom it fell directly on Taniguchi, who was grinning at me.
“Heya, Kyon. What’re you whispering about so seriously with Haruhi, there? Finally gonna start filing jointly, eh? You traitor!”
I had no idea what he was talking about. The only tax I paid was sales tax.
There was no way he could’ve failed to see my dismissive hand wave as I shooed him off, but he just sniggered like some strange bird.
“You’re about the only guy in the world who could go out with Suzumiya for an entire year. You’re constantly breaking the world record, easy! Who knows how you could last, eh? Kyon, you’ve got a real talent with weirdos. I know these things.”
His notions were constantly off the mark, I pointed out. Any quiz sheet from any class told the story perfectly well.
“Hey, you’re no better! Anyway, academics aren’t the only place to show talent.”
That was the kind of line that a person with actual talent should have been delivering, I said. You had to have results. When people like us who hadn’t accomplished anything yet said stuff like that, it just sounded as if we were detached from reality.
“Maybe.” Taniguchi draped his arm over my shoulder, as overfamiliar as ever. “But there are things that’re obvious even to me. And you’re perfect for Suzumiya. Nothing like with Asahina. Shall we leave it at that? Hmm?”
“Hmm,” my foot.
I picked up Taniguchi’s hand from my shoulder. “So what about you, huh? Are there any new girls you’re gonna make a pass at?”
“All in due time, my friend. There’s plenty of time until summer. First comes golden week. I’m gonna pick up a part-time job and see if I can make something happen that way. Nothing ventured, nothing gained!” Taniguchi stretched his other arm idiotically toward the sky.
“Moron.” My comeback was entirely appropriate. There wasn’t any other word for it. Hadn’t he said the same thing last year? And how’d that gone? If my memory was correct, it was a long line of perfect zeros.
But whatever. I was glad to be in the same class with him again, and he hadn’t added to my feeling of being a frontline commander surrounded by mechanized infantry, with only a shovel to dig entrenchments. It was hard to explain just how important having a friend like Taniguchi I could have idiotic conversations like this with was for my peace of mind. Words didn’t do it justice. He was a friend on my own level. Even if we each regarded the other as the biggest idiot ever to live, that was fine—we were each the only ones who knew just how ridiculous we had been in the past.
And if there was someone who didn’t know that, they were either a genius of unprecedented ability, or an organism whose vanity formed such incredible armor they were like unto some giant tortoise.
I found out what Haruhi had said to Koizumi at lunch.
I finished my box lunch and headed for the washroom, when who did I find leaning against the wall waiting for me but the SOS Brigade’s lieutenant brigade chief. No sooner did our eyes meet than he started to speak.
“I have two things to report,” he said, arms crossed. He stuck two fingers out, eyes as clear as those of a meteorologist reporting a 0 percent chance of precipitation. “The first is good news, and the second is neither good news nor bad.”
I told him to start with the second one.
“Suzumiya’s ordered me to remain on alert in the clubroom.”
I couldn’t see the reason Haruhi would have for giving him a sentence like that, I said. Unless he’d gotten involved in a bloody sword fight in some castle somewhere.
Koizumi let the joke slide. “To put it simply, I’m room-sitting. She just wants me to spend a certain amount of time in the clubroom after school. Apparently she doesn’t want to leave it unoccupied.”
Why not? Neither the original resident, Nagato, nor Haruhi the brigade chief, nor Asahina the maid would be there. The utility value of the room wasn’t even worth a single cicada shell.
“Oh my, have you forgotten? The posting that says we’re recruiting new members is still up and has yet to be removed.”
… I had in fact forgotten that.
“We can’t be sure that sharp-eyed students with strange tastes won’t consider the SOS Brigade. In fact, Suzumiya is hoping for exactly that. ‘If you’re not interested, don’t come; you’d only drag us down’—something like that. But at the moment, she’s not even thinking about that; it seems to be lower on her priority list.”
With Nagato the way she was, Haruhi was concerned enough to let herself into the apartment this morning to check on her, so she really wasn’t thinking about new brigade members.
“Indeed she was not. Yet she hasn’t entirely abandoned the idea that we might yet recruit some freshmen. She’s showing excellent leadership qualities as a brigade chief. She’s much calmer than you are.”
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If he was being sarcastic, he needed to be more obvious about it, I said.
“I’m merely stating my impressions, but yes, you’re right in your own way. In fact, you might be too right—might you be considered self-righteous? Unfortunately, anyone who opposes your beliefs is labeled an enemy or a tool of one. And this is because you feel you’re right.”
Given that these words were coming from Koizumi’s bland smile, I got the sense that I wasn’t being complimented.
I glared at Koizumi like a hungry spectacled caiman, which he ignored. He spoke in a smooth, cello-like tone. “I’ll move on to the good news. Regarding the closed space and
Haruhi had started creating closed space again after the day she’d met Sasaki. The fact that they’d stopped was probably because Haruhi had found something she was more worried about than Sasaki.
“Naturally,” said Koizumi officiously. “The problem with Nagato. The abnormality of Nagato missing school has focused all of Haruhi’s attention.”
Maybe it wasn’t so bad if
Koizumi seized the opportunity to agree. “Individually speaking, Haruhi is concerned about Nagato, but she’s not irritated. So long as you don’t involve yourself with Sasaki any more than is necessary, Haruhi will simply think of her as an old acquaintance of yours. While Nagato has been and will continue to be an important member of the SOS Brigade. Their relative importance is barely worth comparing.”
I knew that already. Haruhi was quite fond of Nagato. That had been made perfectly clear last winter on the ski slopes.
I went back through my memories, thinking of the strange western house that had appeared in the blizzard. Haruhi had been more concerned than anyone else at Nagato’s collapse. Was that because she considered it her duty as brigade chief? Absurd. That was just the kind of person Haruhi was. She couldn’t just leave someone by the wayside, especially not a good friend she’d spent so much time with.
The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya Page 7