“Hey, Kyon. For starters, you gotta introduce me to a girl.”
And now he was an idiot again.
“From what Kunikida told me, this Sasaki girl’s quite the cutie, right? And you’re not gonna do anything with her, are you? It’s not like you’re some jerk that’s gonna ditch Suzumiya and go playing around with other chicks. So c’mon, man!”
I told Taniguchi to shut up. If he wanted something, he could go get it himself. Especially if it was the only thing he’d thought about from the big bang up until this moment. Anyway, I said, Sasaki wasn’t his type. Did I need to remind him how terribly he’d been dumped by Kuyoh? Where should I write it—his forehead, maybe?
Taniguchi made a clumsy gesture of dissatisfaction. “Hey. Not only do I not have any worthwhile girls around me, there aren’t even any decent guys. If I ever make nice-nice with an idol pop band, I ain’t gonna introduce ’em to you, Kyon. Remember that. And you’ll think back on what you said and cry.”
Oh, I’d cry, all right. I’d be laughing so hard tears would come out of my eyes, I said.
“Sure, go on. If you spend all of high school babysitting Suzumiya, you’re gonna get to graduation day and wonder, ‘Why, oh why, did I waste my youth so?’ But then it’s gonna be too late for regrets!”
I thanked Taniguchi ever so much for his kind warning. I’d be sure to take care. But at the moment I was too busy enjoying the height of my high school life. He could do whatever he wanted, so long as he didn’t date any more aliens. That could cause problems.
Perhaps sick of hearing Taniguchi’s idiocy, Kunikida cut into the conversation. His expression was comparatively serious.
“Hey, Kyon. It’s pretty common for people with similar characteristics to repel each other. It’s actually true that opposites attract. The proof is in nature, right? For example, a magnet’s north and south pole, or a positive or negative charge.”
This was a little more serious of a lecture than I wanted when I was walking around. It seemed like a review of a physics lesson, I said.
“But—and this is going to get into some physics—if we go even lower, to the world of molecules and atoms and even smaller things, we see the existence of a force even closer than electromagnetism. Aside from hydrogen, every atom’s nucleus has protons and neutrons in it. Since neutrons have no charge, by the electromagnetic charges of the protons, they should repel each other. So why is it that these protons actually wind up sticking together and getting along inside the nucleus of an atom?”
I don’t know.
“If your name was Hideki Yukawa, you’d understand. He was Japan’s first Nobel Prize winner. He predicted that there was an even smaller particle mutually binding one proton to another. His hypothesis stated that the force was far stronger than electromagnetism or gravitation, and in the following years, his theory was proven true. This won Professor Yukawa the Nobel Prize, and set physics on the road toward the discovery of the quark and hadron.”
So how did this biography of Hideki Yukawa have anything to do with the current situation? I asked.
“Kyon, from my perspective you and Suzumiya are very similar. You both have a positive charge. Normally that would mean that you would mutually repel, and I assumed that your relationship would collapse. Because you’re too similar, you see. That’s still the impression I get, really. You’re too like each other, so it’s obvious that you’ll repel. But far from it, you and Suzumiya have become inseparable. This is where the nuclear force Professor Yukawa discovered comes in. The strong force that keeps protons that should go flying apart from doing just that is the same thing keeping you and her together. That’s all I can figure. Of course, it’s not any of the four elementary forces we’ve discovered so far—not the strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, electromagnetism, or gravity. It has nothing to do with the natural forces we know of.”
So what was he saying it was? I asked.
“How am I supposed to know? Maybe it’s something new, some fifth element. But that’s just wishful scientific thinking. Considering it from the standpoint of human relationships, I think the people around you are very important for the bond between you and Suzumiya. Koizumi, Asahina, and Nagato are definitely fulfilling some kind of role, but it would be irresponsible of me to speculate about its nature. I get the feeling the SOS Brigade is structured like an atom. On the large scale it moves around, sticking to some things and bouncing off others, but internally it’s very cohesive and stable, and nearly impossible to split. In order to disrupt the balance, all you can do is impact each mutually reinforcing element, but I don’t think there are very many people in the world capable of that. Tsuruya could probably do it, but even if she knows that, she’s probably chosen not to.”
Even I knew that much, I said.
“Tsuruya’s actually really perceptive and smart. Her being a North High student is actually the only reason I came here.”
… Really? I was getting a lot of shocking revelations today.
“It’s a little embarrassing. You’re the only person I’ve told.” Kunikida glanced at Taniguchi; our excitable classmate was ogling a group of freshman girls on their way to school. Having confirmed Taniguchi’s attention was elsewhere, Kunikida continued in a low voice.
“Don’t tell Taniguchi, okay? As far as I can tell, Tsuruya’s an honest-to-goodness genius. I just wanted to be close to her, but thanks to you and Suzumiya, I’ve actually been able to be friends with her, for which I’m really grateful. I’ve gotten to know just how unfathomably smart she is. But it’s a little depressing—knowing a genius has made me realize I’m not a genius myself. That much I’m sure of.”
The fact that he understood all that stuff was impressive enough, I told him.
“Not at all. I’m far from being a genius, and well within the realms of the very smart. To reach such heights the only thing I can do is study as hard as I can, but when I think about how much further I have to go before I reach her level, it makes me dizzy. But it’s not like I’m going to give up. I’m going to where she is, no matter how many years it takes. Of course, by that time she will have gone even higher. And then I’ll just have to aim for that place. It’s like Achilles and the tortoise. Yeah, I feel pretty good right now. The person I’ve set as my goal is charging on ahead, and I’m gonna have to work hard to keep up. I get excited just thinking about it. This probably sounds pretty weird to you.”
It didn’t sound strange at all. He had a wonderful aspiration, I said. And incidentally, I’d never known he was so talkative. I guess you can never tell about some people.
Even Koizumi had decided Tsuruya wasn’t worth trying to keep up with, which meant she didn’t just look down on all of North High; she gazed out over all humanity. I bet Kunikida could get to a pretty good place. Tsuruya being Tsuruya, she’d probably like someone who’d forced himself to be smart. The best I could probably hope for was being treated like a much younger brother. Or maybe a nephew.
When I got to the classroom, Haruhi had already taken her seat, and she glared up at me.
“We’re back to normal operation today. Come straight to the clubroom after class.”
Sure, sure.
After putting my bag on my desk, I turned around. “Hey, Haruhi.”
“What?”
“Why’d you come to North High?”
Perhaps suspicious of the sudden question, Haruhi glared at me as though she were a crocodile in an oasis eyeing an approaching group of water buffalo. “I just felt like it. I could’ve gone to a private school, but I got the feeling this place would have at least one interesting club.”
Huh.
“What’s with that grin? I know what you want to say. You’re gonna tell me that my intuition was bad, because there weren’t any good clubs after all.”
Not at all, I said. But her idea of an interesting club wasn’t anything that existed yet. And anyway, would a club that hung up a huge sign saying something like COOL CLUB ACTIVITIES HERE have passed her test? I aske
d.
“I guess not. I just hoped there would be a club that didn’t seem like it did much, but actually did all kinds of stuff in secret. But there wasn’t at all. And when I say ‘secret’ I mean it spelled out in hiragana, otherwise it’s not a s-e-c-r-e-t.”
Watching Haruhi’s lips as she pronounced the words in that childish way, I nodded.
Your wish really did come true, Haruhi. The secret organization you founded was rooted in this school and didn’t seem likely to be shaken anytime soon. At least not given how silly it had made certain time travelers and extraterrestrial life-forms look.
Haruhi continued to glare at me, but finally folded her arms on her desk, laid her head down, exhaled a sigh, and for some reason, she recited a poem by Sugawara no Michizane.
“In this moment, with no offering to bring, see, O Tamuke Mountain! Here are brocades of red maple, as a tribute to the gods.”
Its meaning aside, I knew at least that it wasn’t a poem for spring.
After school.
“Yo,” I said as I opened the clubroom door and was greeted by the sight of all the usual suspects save Haruhi, who had remained in the classroom on cleaning duty.
Asahina had already changed into her maid outfit, Nagato was sitting in the corner reading, and Koizumi was staring at the Chinese shogi board he’d set up.
Nagato did not look up, while Koizumi greeted me only with a glance, and surprisingly, even Asahina did not turn around, remaining with her back to me by the windowsill.
I looked more closely.
“Ahh…” Asahina sighed as she changed the water in the vase Yasumi had brought.
She finally turned around to face me. “She was just so, so cute! It’s really such a shame… I just wanted her to look up to me…”
As soon as she said it, I realized I’d never really treated Asahina like a senior. She just looked younger than me, so it was hard to treat her as if she was older. But that was all right. Asahina was Asahina, and I couldn’t even be sure of her true age.
“I guess she was really a middle schooler all along… no wonder I kept thinking she seemed like a younger sister.”
It looked as though, as far as Asahina was concerned, Yasumi’s situation was exactly as Haruhi had explained it.
“I wish I could’ve gotten to talk with her more.”
I realized something as I gazed at the maid-clad Asahina, she in turn staring out the window with eyes misty.
This Asahina right here would somehow eventually become the adult version of herself. At the moment, Asahina the Younger hardly knew anything. If I were to tell her everything I knew thanks to my repeated encounters with Asahina the Elder and Fujiwara, there was a real possibility it could affect the future. At the very least, it would probably cause some change in Asahina the Elder’s actions, wouldn’t it…?
As I busied myself with estimations, Asahina came tottering over. “This got left in the clubroom.”
I took the item she offered me, and it was a barrette I had seen before. No close inspection was necessary to tell that it was the smiley face that Yasumi had worn in her hair.
Had she left it here on purpose, or had it been an accident?
Asahina touched a petal of the orchid Yasumi had left in the room. “I wonder if we’ll ever see her again. Next year I’ll be…”
By all rights, as a senior, Asahina would be graduating in a year. Which meant she wouldn’t be able to stay here anymore. Would her last year be cut short by some time traveler–related incident? I wondered if that was why Asahina was a year ahead of us, instead of being in the same school year.
How was I supposed to know?
I didn’t really care, though. The time travelers could take care of the future however they liked. I was a person of this time; the past and the future had nothing to do with me. There were any number of things I could do, but as far as ten or twenty years in the future went, that depended on my future self. If they had something to say to me, they could tell it to him. I doubt I will have changed very much, if I do say so myself. My future self will probably still be doing what has to be done and not bothering with stuff that doesn’t seem important. As to whether that was the right thing to do, I’d let my future self worry about that. That was life, after all. And it’s probably not just high school students that think so.
Just as I was starting to sink complacently into uncharacteristic philosophizing—
“Sorry I’m late!”
Haruhi came bursting through the door, with that smiling face of hers that always gives me a bad feeling.
I had to assume she’d gotten some crazy idea into her head during cleaning duty, as she beamed like a sunflower at the height of summer.
She ignored my immediately guarded posture and headed straight for the brigade chief’s desk, but stopped halfway there and peered at the contents of my hand.
“Huh?” She snatched the hair accessory away, and gave it a good hard look for several seconds. “Oh this. I used to have one just like it. Now I remember. I knew I’d seen it somewhere before. I used it in elementary school, but I lost it when I started middle school. So she used one too, huh?”
Haruhi’s voice sounded quite affected, and she held on to the item in her hand as she passed by me.
Seeing her from behind, I immediately thought of the future Haruhi I’d seen in my vision.
Who had that Haruhi called out to, I wonder.
Was the person she’d turned around to face someone I knew? Or was it some third party I’d never met in my life?
If so, that hadn’t been a very nice vision—but when I realized what I was thinking, I forgot to feign shock, and simply accepted it. I couldn’t pretend otherwise, now.
But the future was not set. I hadn’t forgotten the new information, however vague, that I’d gleaned from Fujiwara and Asahina the Elder’s conversation. I didn’t know anything about changing history or diverging world-paths, but I knew that the future was something that split up, stuck back together, and changed.
I’d seen myself—if only for a moment, I’d been able to catch a glimpse of the future. I planned to remember it, and I would aim to be in that place.
To do that, I still had a lot of things to accomplish. Like taking advantage of Haruhi’s tutoring services. My high school life still had two years left in it. During that time, I doubted that Nagato, Asakura, and Kimidori’s boss would stay quiet, to say nothing of Kuyoh and the Heavenly Canopy Dominion. Or maybe some other mysterious organization besides Tachibana’s would show up to play the part of the mid-boss before the final boss.
Oh well. I’d figure something out.
Fortunately, I wasn’t alone. I had Nagato and Koizumi and my Asahina as well. I even had that idiot Taniguchi, the always-calm Kunikida, and the flawless Tsuruya. Thanks to all the running around we’d done, I’d gained the not-insignificant knowledge that my friends were the key. And Sasaki too. She’d waved good-bye, but I didn’t buy it. Her sentimental little parting gesture didn’t fool me for a second. She’d show up again. After all, I really wanted her to.
But right then, I couldn’t worry about whether or not stuff was going to happen in the future—I had something right in front of me I had to take care of. The SOS Brigade’s First Anniversary and the attendant surprise for its brigade chief, for example. It was a few weeks away, so I didn’t have to start panicking yet, but before then I had Tsuruya’s cherry blossom–viewing party, and it was by no means certain that Haruhi had given up on recruiting new members yet, so it was going to be a busy month.
With the five of us all working together, we could do anything.
No matter who we faced.
But that was not my biggest problem.
The greatest matter of concern currently facing me was what in blazes to get the brigade chief as a present—or rather, what had I gotten her? I didn’t have the faintest idea of what to do. I wished I could consult an expert of some kind.
As I’d been standing there monologuing to myself, Haruhi
had put the barrette away in one of the brigade chief’s desk drawers, then whirled around and approached the whiteboard.
Wordlessly she took out a pen and wrote out a phrase, then turned back around. As I looked at her, her smile was so bright I thought I could feel my retinas burning.
“Kyon, read it!”
She was the brigade chief, and orders were orders, so I did as I was told.
“ ‘Second Annual New Year’s SOS Brigade Meeting’… wait. We’re having a meeting today? First I’ve heard of it.”
“I told everyone and nobody had any problems. Didn’t I tell you? Well, sorry. I guess I forgot. But now you know, so it’s fine!”
I started to look around for a stinkbug—if I could find one I’d put it in my mouth and bite down good and hard so I could taste its rotten juices, which would just about match my rotten expression. But for better or for worse, no stinkbug was forthcoming, and I avoided eating such a nasty morsel.
“So, just what is this supposed meeting about, huh?”
Haruhi rapped the whiteboard with the back of her fist. “Isn’t it obvious? We’ve been invited to Tsuruya’s blossom-viewing party. But it would be a shame to just eat and drink—the SOS Brigade’s spirit of service and my sense of pride won’t allow that! So, Kyon, Koizumi, Mikuru, Yuki—”
Koizumi grinned, Nagato remained blank, and Asahina covered her mouth with both hands—and each of them looked right at me.
A very bad premonition closed in on me as if it was falling down a descending escalator.
“We’re gonna put on a sideshow! A show that’ll get everybody there applauding like crazy!”
“Now, wait just a minute. The Tsuruya family blossom party is a big deal, you know? All kinds of local celebrities and important people come to this thing.”
“The quality of the audience will be—what, you say? High? Laughter knows no bounds! What kind of show would it be if it can’t make a few politicians and captains of industry laugh? We’re going to entertain young and old, men and women, regardless of race or nationality! Such is the very heart of the stage!”
The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya Page 34