Someday—. Someday far in the future. Maybe in Fujiwara’s time. In a time when boats float using something other than simple buoyancy.
“Hey, Kuyoh—” My voice never reached its target, and merely scattered into empty space.
Kuyoh’s abnormally dark form had disappeared as though she’d vanished into thin air. As though she’d fallen into some invisible crack in the ground.
I wasn’t particularly impressed, since I was well aware that Nagato, Asakura, and Kimidori were capable of similar feats. But somehow Sasaki wasn’t much moved either, and she regarded the space Kuyoh had once occupied with a pleasant smile.
“That’s an alien for you, I guess,” she said, as though she were looking at nothing more remarkable than an airplane’s contrail.
C’mon, was that really her only reaction? I asked.
“Another word, then,” said Sasaki, shifting her glance. “I’m fascinated to see what she’ll do next,” she said.
My graceful former classmate’s face was not the least bit perturbed. I’d never seen anything like it. It brought to me a calm I couldn’t explain.
“Kyon, you needn’t overestimate her. Just as we can’t understand Kuyoh, it’s hard to imagine that she can accurately understand us. We may be sad, limited creatures, bound by gravity, but we still have enough value to draw her to Earth. And it’s difficult to be certain that we won’t evolve further, physically and psychologically. As for me… I suppose I’m counting on the blind watchmaker.”
I didn’t really understand what she was talking about, but she seemed to be trying to offer some encouragement.
“See you later,” Sasaki said to me, her eyes reflecting the streetlights’ radiance there amid the hustle and bustle of the station. “I’ll think things over. The answers to all of this might have fallen by the wayside somewhere. I wouldn’t be too optimistic, but if we don’t at least do what we can, we won’t be able to avoid accusations of irresponsibility. Fear is often greater than the danger, after all. Farewell for now, Kyon.”
I gazed at Sasaki as she gave a casual, cool wave, some strange feeling welling up within me.
Compared with being stuck in the cave-in of my own thoughts, getting dragged around all of creation by the melancholic Miss Haruhi was a pleasure like unto a beam of light streaking through the center of the galaxy.
I was certain that Haruhi would return. Her homing instinct was one of her virtues.
Of course, it wasn’t exclusive to her. Everyone in the SOS Brigade, from the lieutenant brigade chief on down to the menial chore boy, had a place to return to, as fixed as the Earth’s tectonic plate would be if the moon disappeared—the first headquarters of the SOS Brigade, where Nagato waited, where Haruhi had broken in, and where Asahina and Koizumi had been forcibly dragged.
My cerebral cortex lit up with impulses that signified my desire to get everybody in the clubroom and play stupid games to pass the time.
That’s right, Sasaki. I was on their side, and I couldn’t ever leave it. A new SOS Brigade? The nerve of them. It wasn’t something you could just run off copies of. It was a brigade made of us. We would soldier on, our membership changing, not leaving a single one behind. That had been Haruhi’s very first wish. But I realized that it hadn’t taken long for that to be a wish that Asahina, Nagato, Koizumi, and I all held as well. We were like the accretion disc held in place by the tidal forces of the small black hole of the brigade chief. We could neither fall in nor escape the orbit; we could but remain. That is, until the mysterious gravity that held us disappeared.
Afterward, I headed home, totally absentminded. I was surprised I managed to remember to bring my bike home. When was the last time I was so fatigued that I heard every rattle and squeak of my bike? It was all I could do stay conscious.
Somehow I managed to finish eating dinner, despite feeling as if I couldn’t move the chopsticks. I collapsed onto my bed without even turning the light off, lacking so much as the energy to play with Shamisen and my sister. Mentally, I was a tattered rag.
Just before I blacked out, I remember thinking that I’d feel bad when I woke up if I went to sleep like that. To the best of my knowledge, I did not dream. Of course, in that state, anything short of the most beautiful dream imaginable would’ve been forgotten the instant I woke up.
CHAPTER 6
α—9
The next day, Wednesday.
I didn’t know whether it was temporary or would continue to increase, but the day’s sunshine was leaps and bounds beyond what you’d expect from spring, and felt more like early summer. I seemed to recall the previous year was like this too. Evidently the Earth really was warming up, and if it really was humanity’s fault, we’d better do something quick; otherwise the mailboxes of power plants the world over were going to start filling with letters of protest from polar bears and penguins.
Thus it was that my shirt was quickly made sticky with sweat as I contented myself with the hike up the hill to school. The verdant green of a neighbor’s grass caught my eye, but did nothing to assuage the deep resentment I felt for schools with air conditioning. I was going to have some words for the student council president the next time I saw him. Whether or not it was practical given the budget, I was sure that Kimidori’s alien powers would make the instantaneous installation of twenty or thirty air conditioning units no problem at all.
Incidentally, I expected that Koizumi would have informed the student council president of Kimidori’s true nature by now. Although given the president, he probably wouldn’t care whether his secretary girl was an extraterrestrial or not.
I hugged my light schoolbag over my shoulder, gazing at the backs of the many North High students climbing the hill. I felt refreshed, and was making unusually good time as I went—wait, what?
I stopped, cocking my head. It was a meaningless performance, and I had no idea why I felt the way I did.
The spring was at its beautiful height, and with the monsoon season still far off and the humidity nothing to complain about; it was some of the most pleasant weather there was, a time that came only twice a year, in fall and spring, and you didn’t have to be Haruhi to just relax, free of doubt—and yet something bothered me.
I groped around in the darkness of my mind, and by the time I’d climbed the hill I’d arrived at something like an answer.
“It’s too peaceful.”
I honestly don’t know why I felt the need to murmur those words aloud.
Haruhi was in benignly high spirits as she continued with her recruitment, Asahina was devoting herself to practicing the art of tea service after school, Nagato had thrown her duties as literature club president into the garbage and was absorbed in reading, and Koizumi just smiled the days away.
I’d prepared myself for the appearance of Sasaki, Kuyoh, and Kyoko Tachibana to be a harbinger of a series of abnormal events, but since their appearance, there’d been nothing. Not even from that nameless time-traveler guy, although that might well just have been foreshadowing for his being revealed later. I felt as if sooner would be better, though I would be grateful if it were put off for later, and whoever could put him on indefinite hold would get a letter of appreciation from me—but the question was, who could I expect to do that? Nagato, or my dear not-quite-good friend, Sasaki?
I thought back on the words and actions of my middle school classmate. It had mostly been about entrance exams or stuff that wasn’t any help at all when it came to living my life. And yet that was probably why she was able to run rings around aliens and time travelers. It would probably be a good idea to give her a call and check in on the situation. The time traveler was especially worrisome.
Absentmindedly heading for the freshman classrooms was something that only happened the first few days of the new semester. Mechanically I changed into my school slippers and wandered over to classroom 2-5 to take my seat. There was nothing to do besides wait for the days when I could stop fanning myself with my pencil board, which wouldn’t happen until fall ca
me.
As I was sitting there, Haruhi entered the classroom just before the bell, like a racehorse vying with Mr. Okabe for the early lead. She wound up beating the PE teacher by two lengths.
“You certainly took your time. Still have more preparation to do on the brigade entrance exams?” In the few minutes before homeroom ended and first period began, I took the opportunity to talk to her.
“Mm…” A noncommittal reply issued from Haruhi’s lips. “I made myself lunch. For some reason I woke up early today, so I thought it might be nice, for once.”
Huh. What strange wind was blowing today? Haruhi was behaving like a normal high school girl.
“Must’ve taken a while. Did you pack it in a cute box or something?”
“I got so into trying to make sure it was nutritionally balanced that I was late leaving the house. But it’s really tasty. I’m excited to eat it at lunch.” Haruhi pouted, not quite like a duck, but more than an owl. “Hmm. It was weird, though. I just got this feeling like I needed to do some cooking. Maybe I had a dream about it or something. I don’t really remember, but it was like I had to cook for somebody else. Oh, and just so you know, I didn’t make extra. I’m going to eat it all myself.”
She didn’t have to point that out. If she gave me some of her handmade lunch, just where on the campus was I supposed to be able to eat it? I sure as hell wouldn’t be able to eat it in the classroom. “Anyway, you hardly ever bring your lunch. Is there some kind of reason for that? Like your mom’s a terrible cook or something?”
Haruhi was silent for a moment. “How did you know? Yeah… it’s hard to say, but I don’t really want to admit it, but… you’re right. Mom—er, my mother’s sense of taste is a little different than normal people’s.”
So in other words, she was a terrible cook.
“When I was little I thought it was like that at everybody’s house. A normal family goes to a restaurant every once in a while, right? It was so delicious I almost cried, and I thought it was like that because it was a restaurant. But when I started elementary school, I started thinking it was a little strange. Depending on the menu, sometimes there was stuff the other kids didn’t like, but I shoveled it all in, no matter what. I’d eat all the stuff my friends left on their plates.”
She looked out the window, her eyes distant as she reminisced.
“So then I tried my hand at it. I just tried to copy what I’d seen—I think it was beef and potato stew. The first dish I ever made myself. And how do you think it tasted? Just like something from a restaurant. It was like a fish scale fell out of my eye and everything was suddenly clear. It hit the ground with a pop and rolled away.”
That was one big fish scale, I said.
“It was like something from an arowana or arapaima. But ever since then, I tried not to eat at my house too much.”
“Huh.”
I had a strange feeling. Something in what Haruhi had said nagged at me.
Was it her lunch…? No. Did restaurant menus have beef and potato stew? Was it her mention of a scale from Amazonian freshwater fish?
Just as I was silent, having gotten the very last word in the crossword puzzle as far as my throat but no further—
“By the way, Kyon,” said Haruhi, suddenly changing the subject as she looked at me from slightly downturned eyes. “About the first annual brigade membership exam.”
Hm? Oh yes. That certainly was the most obviously pending issue.
Haruhi switched suddenly away from her family’s dining habits—or rather, seemed eager to sweep that topic of conversation away. “It’s a pain to have them over several days, so I was thinking of collecting ’em all together and just finishing them up. What do you think?”
I was stunned that she would solicit the opinion of a lowly brigade member on the matter. I had assumed that arbitration would lie solely with the highest-ranking member. Looks like my judgment had been rather hasty.
“Hmm… I guess that depends on the contents of the exam,” I said, fishing for the first idea that came to mind. “I assume you’re not going to do a race to catch a hundred and one hamsters or anything like that.”
Haruhi froze as though she’d caught a face-on glimpse of Medusa, looking at me as though she were a criminal who’d blurted out an important piece of evidence. “… How’d you know? Right down to the number, even.”
I felt as if her thought processes were slowly poisoning me. To think I’d guess perfectly the very first time. Horrified at my own notion, I had to ask. “Just where do you think you’re going to get that many hamsters?”
“Okay, we’ll change it to a contest of catching Shamisen’s fleas.”
He’d been a house cat for some time now, and my sister regularly bathed him. He didn’t have any fleas, I pointed out.
“Then a cooking contest using only grass found on school grounds!”
Sure, so long as she was willing to be the judge.
“How about a contest to see who can wave a plastic bag full of flour in front of the police station and get arrested first?”
I’d feel bad for the beat cop on duty. And they might not get the joke either.
Haruhi made the special patented combination of crocodile eyes and duck mouth that she made whenever she was irritated. “Okay, so what kind of contest should it be, then?”
That wasn’t something I should have to answer. Anyway, why was she so fixated on contests, I wanted to know. This was an entrance examination. It didn’t have to be a big event. Although speaking of events, I’d be happy with a takoyaki contest. If we went to a utensil store we could probably get the stuff cheap.
Haruhi let my banter flow away like a babbling brook. “Kyon, this is not the only year we’re going to have an entrance exam. Obviously we’ll have to do one next year too. Since it’s going to be an annual tradition, of course it’s got to be a big event. That’s what an event is!”
But this wasn’t some ancient religious ceremony, nor was it some long-held festival tradition. Think about the Olympics, or the World Cup. They’d get boring if we did them every year.
“Think about this, Haruhi,” I said, trying to make my case. “Did Nagato or Asahina take a test? I mean, Koizumi got in just because he was a transfer student. There wasn’t anything like a test last year.”
Come to that, the biggest mystery of all was my own inclusion in the SOS Brigade, but I let that pass unmentioned.
Haruhi scrunched her lips up in a clever impression. “Geez. Do you want new members, or don’t you?”
If she was asking how I really felt, the truth was: Not really. If there was a slider from another world among the freshmen, in Haruhi’s eyes they wouldn’t be new members so much as intruders. The fact that there had been no such indications meant that there was nobody like that among the new students. The tragedy of a normal person made to abandon their normalcy was already in the process of being performed by me, and definitely didn’t need to become a trend. There was no sense in repeating a tragedy. Well over two millennia had passed since the beginning of recorded history, and one hopes humanity would have learned a few lessons. And that depended on one tiny corner of humanity (me) having carved said lessons on his heart.
Haruhi continued to mutter away, evidently still thinking about what to fill the blank of “———competition” with. I decided to pray to the god of rodents or something that she didn’t settle on a hundred and one hamsters.
Maybe Daikokuten, god of wealth and friend of mice, would be okay?
And soon enough classes were over, and I continued what had become my habit over the past several days, which was receiving study assistance from grandmaster Suzumiya. It goes without saying that I did not enjoy this. Although if you were to ask why I said something that supposedly goes without saying, I wouldn’t have a good reply.
“Tests are so stupid. I mean, no matter how great my answer is, the best score I can get is one hundred. I hate anything that has restrictions like that on it. If I’m going to be stuck within b
ounds I can’t escape, forget about it. I mean, just think about it, Kyon. If the test-taker’s ability exceeds the test-maker’s and they think of an answer that requires a greater mental leap than the question required, but then makes a careless mistake on another question, they won’t get a perfect score. Don’t you think that’s weird? If it were me, I’d give two hundred points, or even one thousand, for a truly great or elegant answer. That’s what I don’t like.”
Haruhi flipped sloppily through the textbook as she spoke.
“Also, tests just make you memorize what’s written in the textbooks. Totally boring! There’s nothing like mechanical repetition to make you lose your humanity. It’s corrupt! Corrupt!”
Whether or not she was being helpful, at the very least her words weren’t going to help me get a better grade on my English test. Unless she became a politician and reformed the Japanese educational system, that is.
“Comprehension is more important than rote memorization!” Just when I thought she was going to denounce the entire examination system, she continued. “You’ve got to memorize it as a story. If you remember what someone was thinking, then what they did will come up like pulling up a whole row of potatoes. Kyon, listen—once you understand the basic concepts, the next step is seeing what the test-maker was thinking. There’s no way of telling what people in ancient times thought, but it’s not hard at all to guess what modern humans are thinking. You’re not trying to guess what’s going to be written on the test—you’re understanding what the person who wrote it was thinking about. Once you do that, there are all sorts of hidden possibilities.”
From the perspective of the test-taker, isn’t it easier to just fill in the correct answer, instead of trying to figure out the hidden angles? Why did she always have to exceed expectations?
“Because it gives you moral superiority. We’re mere students, but that’s only a matter of age. Enlightening the complacent teaching class is our great privilege as students. We’ve got to use our youth as a weapon. I guess it’s obvious, but this is the only time we’re going to have that weapon. We don’t have much time left to use it on the greatest battlefield of all—high school.”
The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya Page 12