The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya

by Nagaru Tanigawa

  To put it simply, I felt—not thought, but felt—that Yasumi was a foreign body in our previously stable club. I just found it hard to imagine the duties that Yasumi would perform within the club, and that Haruhi would accept that.

  The phone call I’d received from her in the bath also nagged at me. Even if I could chalk that up to her overeagerness to join the club, why would she call me? Although I supposed there wouldn’t have been any point in calling Nagato, Asahina, or Koizumi. Those three had special responsibilities behind the scenes. But still, there wasn’t any real reason to call me either. And at the time, Yasumi hadn’t even bothered to introduce herself properly before hanging up. Honestly, she was just as opaque as Haruhi was.

  The point was, Yasumi was now in this room, which was why I wanted to escape. To that end, my excuse for leaving was a game of catch. That was one game that definitely wasn’t possible in the clubroom.

  “So, anyway,” I said, addressing Haruhi as she watched over Yasumi’s computer work, along with Asahina, who’d started researching new tea, and Nagato, who was still absorbed in her book. “We’re going out for a bit. Koizumi and I can’t really teach her anything, so we’d just be in the way. We’ll leave the education of the new member to you.”

  Koizumi was already carrying the two gloves, the pleasant smile on his face directed at no one in particular. “Indeed. Things will proceed more smoothly if we simply let the girls of the club act unhindered. We boys would only be in the way, so we’ll take our leave for the moment.”

  The lieutenant brigade chief was second to none at backing people up.

  Haruhi shot me a sharp glance. “Sure, why not? I want to teach Yasumi about the club duties Kyon’s had so far. Listen up, Yasumi, and I’ll tell you why this guy’s the only one in the club without an official rank. Honestly, he’s just useless. You should do the opposite of whatever he does. Our brigade practices absolute participation, so I’m sure you’ll leave Kyon in the dust.”

  Oh yeah? Well, so long as she thought so, I was relieved. I hoped to graduate without achieving any of her bizarre ranks.

  I gave Koizumi a look. Koizumi seemed to understand what I was trying to communicate with my eyes, and tossed me a glove. “In that case, we’ll take our leave. We’ll come back when we’re done.” He gave me a wink that was so broad I was surprised it didn’t come with a ting! sound, and patted me on the back. “It’ll be nice to have some guy time for once.”

  Before leaving the room I looked back and saw that Nagato was continuing to practice the art of book absorption, while Asahina was pondering the art of tea—“I wonder if I should blend this with something else?” she was saying to herself. Haruhi stood behind Yasumi as Yasumi adroitly used the computer. She had a look on her face as if she understood what Yasumi was doing, but the truth was she didn’t.

  With the addition of just a single new member, the mood in the room had changed quite a bit.

  Having left the clubroom’s building, Koizumi and I made for the courtyard and started playing catch.

  To anyone else, we wouldn’t have looked like anything more than two students killing time.

  The courtyard between the clubroom building and the classroom building had a lawn, and was easily visible from the open window of the literature club’s room on the third floor. From where we were, it was easy to look up and see if anyone in the room was watching us.

  “Having another girl in the club certainly brightens things up,” said Koizumi, lobbing the ball to me in an easy arc.

  “What, you would’ve preferred a guy?”

  Koizumi caught my slow overhand toss. “It’s all about balance. Don’t you think we’re at a bit of a disadvantage with only two boys, but four girls? Our right to speech was already bad enough.”

  It was sad, but true. To be honest, our problem was that Haruhi’s speech was like a powerful subwoofer that drowned out everybody else.

  “I don’t think that girl’s going to be easy to handle either.” Koizumi threw the ball with more force.

  “Are you saying Yasumi’s got some kind of strange background?” I caught the yellow ball in my glove with a smack sound.

  “No,” said Koizumi with a strange smile. “You can relax on that count. There’s no strange organization behind her. She’s totally innocent. Not attached to anything, not directed by anyone. She has her own will, nothing more or less. That’s why she’s so interesting.”

  I grabbed the ball, staring at it as if it were a fresh-picked lemon.

  “Quit being so roundabout, Koizumi. If you know something, spit it out. Why did Yasumi Watahashi worm her way into the SOS Brigade?”

  “I don’t know her reason,” said Koizumi with his hands raised in surrender. “I know—or rather, can guess at—only one thing.” He easily caught the ball I’d thrown at him with a wind-up motion. “It’s because Suzumiya wished it so.”

  That reason, again.

  “It was inevitable that Yasumi Watahashi would be a member of the SOS Brigade. That’s because Suzumiya chose it, wished for it. She was accepted because of Suzumiya’s firm belief that she’s a necessary person. She probably manipulated reality without being conscious of it.”

  Koizumi gave me a meaningful look, as though he was changing the subject.

  “Why did you decide to come out and play catch? An invitation from you is a rare thing indeed.”

  I didn’t know myself. Why had I gotten the feeling that I had to use these baseball implements? Maybe I didn’t want to leave them to sit there so long they developed self-awareness, I said.

  “Is that so?” Koizumi seemed to immediately accept my explanation. “If the items in the clubroom gained awareness, it would certainly complete the transformation of the clubroom into an alternate reality. However, I can understand how you feel. I also wanted to play catch, for some reason. No—I felt compelled by a strange compulsion to do so.”

  Koizumi intercepted my throw, then dropped the ball. He scooped it back up.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “I don’t know. But the possibility exists that it was inevitable—perhaps we had to come out here and play catch. A predetermined event, as the time travelers would say.”

  I didn’t get it. If that were the case, I should’ve gotten some kind of roundabout message from Asahina or Asahina the Elder. But I hadn’t. And anyway, what would this fake game of baseball have to do with the future? I asked.

  “I would suggest putting that question to Asahina, but…” He looked up at the room on the third floor, and sighed softly. “I doubt she is aware of anything, and moreover we did this voluntarily. It’s more likely that we’re simply being suspicious. If we start doubting things like this, we’ll just play more and more into the time travelers’ hands. As a past-dweller, I don’t want to lose to the time travelers. This doesn’t have anything to do with being an esper or in the Agency. It’s just a matter of pride as an inhabitant of the present.”

  That sounded awfully sincere, for Koizumi. He seemed to sense my skepticism.

  “There’s nothing wrong with being looked down on. Our opponents have a greater organization than us, and with more power. But personally, I loathe the idea of resigning myself to such disdain. The stronger the opponent, the more one desires to rebel against them—wouldn’t you say that’s a classic pattern, no matter the era?”

  He sounded like a hero from some weekly comic magazine. But if there were such a thing as instant training or hidden powers that would conveniently awaken such that Kuyoh and the others could be dealt with in one fell swoop, then there’d be no need for me to do anything.

  “That particular role,” said Koizumi, throwing me a change-up, “is well suited to you. With Suzumiya backing you up, and you backing her up, there’s nothing in the universe the two of you couldn’t accomplish.”

  He grinned, and continued.

  “I’ve said it before, but you could start over as Adam and Eve. Or perhaps since we’re Japanese, Izanagi and Izanami. So long
as you are fruitful and multiply, the world will come to be filled with people like you and Suzumiya. A pleasant scene, if surreal, don’t you think?”

  That was well inside the range of a ridiculous joke. Well, in this absurd proposition, I had no intention of leaving any descendants. And if they were all of Haruhi’s descent, I doubted history would even get as far as Noah’s ark. If the captain had any sense at all, he’d have to be prepared to refuse to get on the boat.

  Even for the sake of scholarship, I rejected that proposal—rejected it, I say! But go ahead and dig up the frozen soil of Mount Ararat. You might find a wooden spaceship.

  “More’s the pity.” Koizumi held the ball in his hand and swung his arm about like a windmill. “And yet I’m relieved. I’d like to be able to see you all for a while longer. Nagato and Asahina, as well. As a human, the only species on Earth born with both imagination and intellectual curiosity, it’s my desire to see all this through to the end.”

  Koizumi then changed the subject abruptly.

  “So is your after-school study with Suzumiya progressing well?”

  So he knew about that, eh? I managed to keep my cool. “Not bad, which is nice. Although it’s not so much me being taught as it is her enjoying teaching.”

  “That’s good. I’m sure you and Suzumiya are both bound for college. If you could possibly manage to attend the same university, it would certainly make my life easier. Please put forth your best effort during the entrance examinations.”

  Enough already. It was bad enough having my mom constantly worrying about my academic future. Fortunately I still had almost two years to go, so I didn’t have to panic and start carrying around practice quizzes with me all the time yet. I had more important things to do at the moment, I said.

  “Oh? Such as?”

  … For example a new video game I hadn’t gotten around to buying yet, or the games I’d heard were good that were starting to pile up.

  Koizumi only smiled faintly. He was in the same year as me, so why did his easy, slightly exasperated smile rattle my nerves so much? Son of a—. Sometimes I wanted to be able to smile like that and mystify the people around me too.

  “So then, what should I throw next? I’ve got a cutter, knuckleball, slider, and a few others I know.”

  I asked for something I could catch. Unfortunately I had no experience as a catcher. Just call me the eternal second player.

  Koizumi’s next throw was a fastball straight down the middle. It was probably some kind of declaration of intent. It had enough heat on it that I never would’ve imagined such a throw could come from his arm. If he was that good at baseball, he should’ve been standing on the mound as a reliever last year during the baseball tournament. If he had any other hidden talents, I hoped he’d reveal them soon.

  I continued to play catch with Koizumi for a while, silently. I don’t have any special interest in baseball, so I was starting to get bored, when—

  “Hmm?” said Koizumi, looking up, which prompted me to do likewise, following his gaze to its end.

  It was a paper airplane.

  The simple glider looked as if it had been hastily, perfunctorily folded as it banked around the courtyard. There was no wind to speak of, so it gently descended, tracing a path like a high-jumper making a bad landing, eventually falling at my feet. I looked and saw that it appeared to me made out of the same copier paper we had in the clubroom.

  I picked it up.

  On the wings was a single word hurriedly written in black marker. “OPEN!”

  Quickly, before Koizumi could come over and see, I unfolded the glider into a simple piece of paper, and for a moment, I froze. In the same marker was scribbled a short message that despite its brevity was deeply shocking.

  “I found the MIKURU folder!”

  I looked reflexively up—at the clubroom window, naturally.

  Depending on who was standing there, I was preparing myself for the impeachment proceedings that would surely follow, and my heart pounded, but—

  There looking down from the open third-floor window was none other than the petite form of Yasumi Watahashi. After making sure I’d received her primitive airmail, she put her index finger to her lips, then disappeared from the window like an actress exiting stage left.

  It seemed Yasumi’s IT skills were not to be underestimated. I’d let my guard down, having gotten used to Asahina, who was useless with computers, and Haruhi, who used such precision instruments in only the most haphazard of fashions. Nagato probably already knew, but her mouth was shut and locked with hands of iron, so that wasn’t a problem.

  Still, I was impressed she’d found and opened the hidden, password-protected folder. It seemed I was going to need to tighten security. Maybe I’d talk to the computer club president.

  “Is something the matter? Is something written on there—?” Koizumi turned his greedy gaze toward the former paper airplane in my hands.

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s just Asahina’s and my little secret. Pointless information that will have no influence on your life, I guarantee it.”

  Koizumi did not reply, only grinning and shrugging. I ignored his pointed look.

  Then I looked back up to the clubroom. Drawn in from the side, the curtain fluttered in the breeze, which prevented me from seeing what was going on in the room.

  I’d felt this way for a little while, but I couldn’t help expressing my opinion of Yasumi again.

  “Weird girl,” I murmured.

  A little while later we returned to the clubroom. In front of the computer, Haruhi seemed ecstatic.

  “Kyon, look! Behold this beautiful, gorgeous page!”

  I let Koizumi handle the baseball stuff, and went over to Haruhi, who was moving the mouse around like a kitten playing with a piece of string.

  “Whoa,” I said, letting a sort of exclamation mark escape my lips at the sight that greeted me. “This is the SOS Brigade’s site?”

  “Can’t you tell by looking? It’s written in huge letters!”

  It was true that the logo was there, but nothing else remained of the perfunctory site I’d set up before. Everything from the background to the fonts to the index had been redone, and all the letters sparkled and danced, while the page colors themselves were totally gaudy. If the site I’d made before was an Adamski UFO, this one was more like a chandelier type. But wasn’t it going a little overboard, I wondered?

  “This is is more eye-catching and attention-grabbing,” said Haruhi enthusiastically, as though she’d made it herself. “Plus, time on the Internet moves in dog years. If we don’t put these technologies to use, what’s the point? I had Yasumi use all the resources available. See, if you click here—”

  Some obviously free music started playing. To be honest, it was irritating.

  I regarded the site skeptically; it was a textbook example of what not to do.

  “What do you have for content?”

  “An e-mail form.”

  That was all?

  “That was all I could think of!” Haruhi said, her lip twisting. “We had a bunch of pictures of our club activities, but you stopped me from using them!”

  Ah, right, the pictures of Asahina. Haruhi had a good memory.

  “But I do have this.” Haruhi moved the mouse cursor, stopping on a section labeled “games.” She clicked on it, and the display changed. The background was now a starry sky, and it seemed to be the menu screen of some kind of video game. I read the title, which was written in a pointlessly heavy font.

  “ ‘The Day of Sagittarius… 5’?”

  “I got it from the computer club!”

  She said it as if it was no big deal.

  “I guess they made an improved, online version of the game we played before. Apparently now you can battle with anyone anywhere in the world. I don’t really get it, but it’s better for us to have it on our site, right? Obviously you can play for free.”

  Who’d want to pay for this? Although if they’d gotten all the way to versio
n five, it probably had its appeal for the people that cared about this kind of thing. That’s how much of an effect their loss to us had had. Well, they’d gotten what they deserved.

  “By the way, I’ve asked the computer club to do some more game development for us. This one isn’t very SOS Brigade–like. I want something more, like, arcade-y!”

  I wondered if she’d confused “asked” with “ordered.” I contemplated the computer club’s likely bewilderment at being told to create an SOS Brigade–like game, then realized something.

  “Hey, where’d Yasumi go?”

  She was nowhere to be seen in the room. The only people there were Nagato, who was still reading in the corner, Koizumi, who, having finished putting the gloves and ball away, had returned to his seat, and Asahina, who was serving tea. As she set out the cups, Asahina answered me.

  “She went home, just a moment ago.”

  “Huh?” She’d left early on her first real day as a club member?

  “She said there was something she absolutely had to attend to, and apologized over and over again before running off.”

  Asahina served me tea, a larger than usual smile blooming on her face. I asked her why she was so happy.

  “She’s just so cute!” she replied, sounding totally charmed. “Her voice, her attitude, the way she does things, her expressions, the way she bows… it’s all just so cute I can’t take it!”

  Asahina clutched the tea tray to herself and squirmed, looking rather cute herself. To think that such a charming older student could herself be so stricken—Yasumi Watahashi was a force to be reckoned with, indeed.

  “I don’t really see it, but whatever,” said Haruhi, looking slightly exasperated with Asahina’s antics. “She’s like a baby chick, scampering all over the place. But she certainly seems to have hit the bull’s-eye with Mikuru. She seems to be interested in all sorts of things, so I guess she won’t get bored easily. It’s only the first day, but I think that’s enough time to get a sense of her capabilities.”