“Hmph,” I sniffed, looking carefully around before I sat down, trying to make sure there were no apron-clad classmates of mine in the area. At the very least, she didn’t seem to be within my field of view. If she hadn’t turned invisible, maybe she’d been taken off the shift. No, that couldn’t be. She had to be there. I was in the middle of yet another unbalanced meeting. There was no way she wouldn’t be observing.
Which was fine with me. Give me Kimidori’s irrepressible smile over Asakura any day of the week. It was like the difference between a flashbang grenade and a wire-guided antitank missile. To the extent that she never came at me with a deadly weapon, the pleasant senior was far more prudent than my former classmate. I really didn’t want to get sucked into another alien battlefield.
“Over here!” said Kyoko Tachibana, waving casually and pointing to the seats across the table from them. “You can sit there. Thank you so much for coming. I appreciate it.” And then, to Sasaki, “Thank you, Sasaki, for bringing him along. You have my gratitude.”
“Don’t need it,” said Sasaki as she sat down in the far seat. “Perhaps it’s better to say ‘we refuse’ instead of ‘we’ll pass.’ Even if I hadn’t called him, we would have held several meetings with Kyon eventually anyway. Otherwise, our lives would have continued on perfectly parallel tracks. Am I wrong?”
The last question seemed to be aimed at Fujiwara. But that errand boy from the future sniffed, as though mocking me. “That may be. Still, both of you”—he said, sweeping his gaze across my face—“would do well not to think too much of yourselves. This isn’t advice—hah. It’s a warning. These meetings are a waste of time from my perspective. There’s too great a difference in knowledge and understanding between you and me.”
I felt curiosity before anger caught up with it. Why was he constantly trying to rile me up so much? What was the point of that? If he wanted to get me on his side, wouldn’t a different method be better? Fujiwara’s manner was too blunt, too honest. The lack of difference between his thoughts and speech was almost Asahina-like. Were all time travelers like this?
As the question rose up in my mind—
“Now, then, what are you going to do next? What does it feel like to lose your most powerful shield? The alien terminal who’d do whatever you told her is out of commission. So how will you protect yourselves? That’s what I want to know. What will happen to the harbor without its seawall now that the typhoon has arrived?”
I was furious at Fujiwara’s irritating questions. Did that bastard really want to pick a fight? Because I’d be happy to take him at face value, if he did. Just as I was reflexively loosening my nonexistent gloves in preparation to challenge him to a duel—
“Now, Kyon. Let’s sit, first. That sense of justice is very like you, but I can’t just sit by and let you get violent. That goes for everyone else here too, by the way. I’m fairly mild-tempered myself—I only get angry about once every two years—but when I do, I scare even myself. The last time I lost my temper was just about two years ago, and I’m getting close to breaking my own record, so I’d like to avoid resetting all my progress.”
She had the same mild tone she always did, but I did as Sasaki said.
I had never seen an angry Sasaki—nor a crying or frustrated Sasaki—and I didn’t want to. Haruhi and Asahina weren’t the only ones who looked their best when they were smiling. Koizumi, on the other hand, could have stood to restrain his smiling a little bit, while Nagato by contrast needed to relax her frozen features. And it was true that getting into a fight with Fujiwara here and now wouldn’t do anything to improve her condition, so if I just had to throw down, my target needed to be not the time traveler, but the alien.
Such thoughts occupied my mind as I glared at her.
“—” Kuyoh only stared five meters past me, her gaze totally empty of anything like a challenge. I couldn’t help doubting my optic nerve. Kuyoh Suoh was far from harmless to the SOS Brigade. I tried to get hold of myself.
This was her fault.
I stared at Kuyoh as though she were the Flying Dutchman. She stood out here in the café—a high school girl in her school uniform with far too much hair. Hell, she would’ve stood out anywhere.
And yet she seemed insubstantial, like a hologram, like a late-night local TV commercial frozen, as irritating as any mosquito. Nagato was bedridden, and yet Kuyoh was fine and dandy. As far as I was concerned it was a failure of justice. If they were both afflicted, that would’ve been one thing, but this alien didn’t understand the meaning of restraint. I still didn’t fully understand what sort of beings the Data Overmind’s humanoid interfaces were, but at least Nagato, Asakura, and Kimidori each had things about them that seemed—human.
As far as Nagato goes, I don’t think I need to explain more than I already have. Asakura was every bit the normal high school girl, perfectly suited to being class rep, aside from her habit of waving knives around all the time. And while I didn’t know very much about Kimidori, she was at least capable of conducting a normal high school life. The two of them did manage to put some effort into pretending to be human.
Kuyoh had none of that. There was no sense whatsoever that she understood what Homo sapiens really was. She had less presence than the Invisible Man. It made me wonder if the high school girl form she wore was completely empty inside. It felt less as if she was wearing clothes and more as if her head and limbs were simply growing out of the holes. I was probably the only person that thought so. Not that I cared.
The point is she made me feel uneasy. If her reactions had ever fallen within the domain of the human I could’ve dealt with that, but she was a human-shaped puppet controlled by an entity that even Nagato couldn’t communicate with, and nothing was harder to manage than a person whose motivations you didn’t understand. Now that it had come to this, the fact of the matter was that her actions were even harder to predict than Haruhi’s.
Whether or not she sensed the hostility I was radiating, Kuyoh slowly fixed her gaze on me like some prehistoric fossil, a Naumann’s elephant about to be put into deep freeze. Her fossil-like lips parted slightly.
“—Yesterday…—Thank you—” she said in a voice like a beetle pupa. “—These…—words of gratitude…—” she added.
Totally unprepared to be thanked, I was stunned into silence. Fujiwara was resolutely uninterested, Kyoko Tachibana seemed surprised, and Sasaki had an amused smile, though none of the three said a word. Our awkwardly silent little corner of the café remained so. All I could hear was the classical music playing over the café’s speakers, and the coughing murmur of the other customers.
What to do?
Before I had much time to worry about it, Kyoko Tachibana seemed to decide that nothing would come of just sitting there. “So,” she said, taking on the role of facilitator. “Kuyoh, did something happen yesterday? Ah well, it doesn’t matter. I’ll hear about it later.”
Kyoko Tachibana sat up straight and regarded me confidently like a well-bred young lady. “Thank you for coming today. I’m sorry to impose, but this meeting is quite necessary, and isn’t something that can be put off.”
I was the one that had called the meeting, I said. She didn’t need to tell me how necessary it was.
“That’s true,” said Kyoko Tachibana, not hiding the seriousness of her tone. “This would have happened sooner or later. Indeed, from our perspective this is later than we would’ve liked. We would have liked to move sooner, but we lacked the power necessary to oppose Koizumi and his group,” she said, looking to Kuyoh and Fujiwara with a satisfied nod.
“I’ve finally assembled the power—the power to move the world. You may not regard me as a comrade, but you can cooperate with me and fight by my side nonetheless… can’t you?… Right?”
Fujiwara did not answer, and Kuyoh may as well have been submerged in a sea of silence. Kyoko Tachibana sighed and closed her mouth as our waitress appeared, bringing ice water for Sasaki and me.
“Two coffees. Hot,”
said Sasaki quickly without bothering to consult me. I took a look at the waitress, who looked like a high school student working a part-time job, just to make sure she wasn’t Kimidori. She probably thought I was being weird, and her stride on her way back to the counter was notably quickened. Something occurred to me, and I checked the space in front of the three people across the table from me. Kyoko Tachibana and Kuyoh had both ordered parfaits, of all things. It was a completely unremarkable scene, and it made me feel as if I was trying to find the last detail in a “spot the differences” game. Kyoko Tachibana had eaten roughly half of hers, which was now mostly melted, while Kuyoh’s was not only untouched, it hadn’t melted at all. If it was because of some strange alien trick, I had no idea how that was accomplished. Fujiwara was fingering an empty cup that had contained some kind of liquid at some point, which I likewise didn’t want to know about.
Kyoko Tachibana restarted the discussion. “So, then. To put things in order—the reason we’ve assembled today,” she began, smiling at me, “is that through Sasaki, we’ve heard your proposal. You have something to say to us, don’t you? Let’s begin, then. Please, go ahead.”
She gestured to me as though passing me a mic, though her hands contained nothing. I didn’t play along with the motion.
“This is about Nagato,” I said, looking at Kuyoh. “I don’t know what it is that you’re doing. And you don’t have to tell me. What I want is for you to stop it immediately. Stop this ridiculous attack on Nagato. I’m not going to repeat it forever. If you aliens want to fight, go do it on the fringes of the galaxy.”
“—Fringes.” Kuyoh moved her lips as though she were an ancient insect trapped in amber. “—Of…—galaxy.—Is here. Stars…—in this area… are—sparse…”
She spoke in a voice that was like the fog that rolls out of an opened freezer. Was she making fun of me? If she hated this season that was warm enough to make Shamisen shed his winter coat so much, she should just dive right into the center of the sun, I told her.
“—May do so…—when business concluded.”
Well, then let’s conclude it. Right here, right now.
“—”
Kuyoh cocked her head slightly and blinked.
It seemed like a signal, somehow.
“Heh.” Fujiwara let a snicker escape, and he regarded me disparagingly. “Yes, let us. That is your proposal, after all. Or going by how you spoke to Kuyoh, it’s more like an order. You’ve got enough nerve to pick a fight with an extraterrestrial intelligence, so I feel like I have to praise you for that, even if your bravery is born of ignorance. I’d love to research just what part of your brain makes you support that organic probe—what was her name, Yuki Nagato?—but I’ll restrain my curiosity.”
Taking advantage of Sasaki’s and my quiet, he continued.
“In any case, I see you won’t allow that doll of yours to malfunction. If so, that makes things simple. Listen to me now: I can stop the Heavenly Canopy Dominion from interfering with the Data Overmind’s terminal.”
If a mirror had been placed in front of me, I would’ve been able to see the expression someone makes when they suspect someone else of fraud.
“You don’t believe me? Well, it’s the truth, and has been all along. The Heavenly Canopy Dominion is far easier to control than the Data Overmind. They accepted our proposal quite readily. Oh, and by the way—Kyoko Tachibana agreed to this as well. So what I’m about to say is the consensus of the three of us here. To keep things short, let me just explain what we’re ordering you to do.”
He looked at Kuyoh for a split second, then spoke the following line past crooked and sneering lips.
“Transfer all of Haruhi Suzumiya’s power to Sasaki. Agree to this. Your only choice is to say ‘yes.’ ”
Only Kyoko Tachibana nodded her head up and down in agreement. Kuyoh remained still, eyes fixed on the wafer still stuck in her green tea parfait. Fujiwara watched us with his infuriating derision. Then, after a moment—
“Hmm,” said Sasaki, touching her index finger to her cheek. “That’s what Kyoko proposed the other day, isn’t it, Fujiwara? At the time didn’t you say you didn’t care who had the power? I’d like to know what changed your mind.”
“I still don’t care who has the power.” Fujiwara turned his narrowed eyes aside. “The situation is the same now as it was in the past. But depending upon the values of the person observing the situation, the path to its conclusion differs. Even if the goal is the same, if the path to it is different, the ensuing developments also change. One times one is the same as one divided by one, even though the operations are completely opposite.”
“That’s just sophistry,” shot back Sasaki. “That just sounds like an excuse to me. Or if it’s not, this is no more than an act. Isn’t it true that it would be inconvenient for you if Suzumiya retains her power? It is. Yes… claiming that you don’t care is a lie.”
She stroked her chin with her slender fingers and put her thoughts into words.
“I see… it doesn’t have to be me. And it could be anyone—but not Suzumiya. Fujiwara, isn’t it true that you want to take Suzumiya’s mysterious power from her? There must be some reason she can’t be allowed to have it. It’s just a coincidence that I’m here…” Sasaki’s eyes glittered. “… But some things can’t be mere coincidence. Like the fact that I was Kyon’s friend in the past. So, Mister Time Traveler, how much of this is a fixed event?”
I was speechless at the speed of her thought. Sasaki was about the only person I knew who could face down a time traveler like that. And she wasn’t even in some kind of crazy organization the way Koizumi was.
Fujiwara’s face was an expressionless mask in that instant, but he soon regained his chilly smile. “Am I supposed to feel chastised? I don’t care how quick your wit is, it’s still pointless. I’m not lying. I’m simply trying to help things progress smoothly. Isn’t that right, Kyoko Tachibana?”
“Er, yes,” said the named girl hastily. “That’s right, this is at my request. I thought it would be best to cooperate. I begged him.”
The silent alien and evil time traveler were apparently manipulating the esper, and it was hard to look at her serious face. I turned back to Fujiwara.
“Now wait a just a second. Kuyoh there is the one responsible for Nagato’s condition, right? Are you saying you’re the one that put her up to it?”
Fujiwara’s eyes made him look like the villain in some old stage play. “That doesn’t matter. Whether it was at my behest or she simply took advantage of an opportunity, the result is the same. Whether or not I had anything to do with that opportunity, I knew about it. If it was going to happen, I would have let it, and if it wasn’t, I would have brought it about. Fixed past events, when viewed from the future, have nothing more than archaeological value.”
What the hell was this guy talking about? Just who was the real mastermind? Was it the time traveler faction that opposed Asahina, the Heavenly Canopy Dominion, or was it Kyoko Tachibana that was pulling the strings?
I was starting to feel as though none of them could be trusted. I wanted at least a few seconds to think it all over, but Fujiwara wasn’t going to allow that.
“Just how dense are you? You said it yourself—you want Yuki Nagato to recover. I told you I can do that. I can order Kuyoh here to cease her interference with your precious little puppet.”
He certainly did cut to the chase. Fine, then, as the SOS Brigade’s representative, I’d take him on. I was sure my question was one Koizumi would want to ask too.
“Why do you have that power, exactly? I thought they were some kind of extra-whatever life-form that communication was impossible with.”
Fujiwara dismissed my question. “Let’s just say that’s classified information.”
“You gotta be freaking kidding me.”
“If you want to take it that way, sure. I’m doing you a favor to even tell you that much.”
Like I was going to believe that.
Jus
t then, Kuyoh’s crystalline lips quivered.
“—I will execute order.”
She spoke with a suddenness, like a piece of taxidermy come to life.
“—Will cancel interference and seek alternate method… that is also a possible branch.” Kuyoh’s eyes, like some kind of dark matter, focused on my brow. “—Direct contact impossible. Indirect vocal contact with terminals was noise. Mutual concept transmission overloaded. Waste of energy. Failing to instantly stop equivalent to eternity.”
Okay, somebody needed to translate that.
“What she means,” Sasaki said, resting her finger beside her eye, “is that Nagato’s condition is her fault, but she’s determined that the action she’s taking is ineffective. If Fujiwara says the word, she’ll stop immediately. But that’s conditional on transferring Suzumiya’s powers to me. And Tachibana, you feel the same way?”
“Yes,” said Kyoko Tachibana, narrowing her shoulders. “Though the nuances of my position are a bit different than Fujiwara’s. But in the final calculation those differences are—”
“You shut your mouth.” Fujiwara’s cold words stopped Kyoko Tachibana in her tracks, and her mouth froze, half open. “So that’s how it is,” he took the opportunity to say. “We want to see the situation change in a way that benefits everyone here. Tachibana wants to worship Sasaki as a god, apparently.”
“No, er, that’s not exactly—”
Fujiwara ignored Kyoko Tachibana’s protest entirely. “Kuyoh’s faction wishes to study Haruhi Suzumiya, but that’s impossible with the Data Overmind present. She’s protected by two or three layers of defense. But there is a way to break through. The important thing is that unknown power. We need only transfer it to a third party.”
And who in this world is capable of doing that? I asked.
“Kuyoh will do it,” said Fujiwara casually. He then continued with mocking pity, “Hey, c’mon, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten. Her powers have been used by a third party before. Are you telling me you don’t remember when her abilities were used to transform the world? It was a short-lived past, but you of all people should remember it.”
The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya Page 9