The corners of Koizumi’s mouth turned upwards. If he expressed assent, I’d have to treat him as an enemy.
“I’ll pass. I’m scared of what will happen afterward.”
He set his bag on the table and took one of the chairs propped against the wall and unfolded it.
“May I sit in and observe?”
He sat down and crossed his legs, looking at me with an amused face.
“Don’t mind me. Please continue.”
You’ve got it wrong. I’m helping her, not assaulting her.
Confusion over with, I managed to get between Haruhi and Asahina. As Asahina weakly collapsed backward, I hurried over to support her. I was surprised by how light she was as I guided her to a chair. The sight of Asahina exhausted in her disheveled maid outfit was, quite honestly, extremely hot.
“Oh, well. We already took a bunch of pictures.”
Haruhi removed the glasses from the beautiful face of Asahina, her body slouched back with her eyes closed, and returned them to Nagato.
Nagato took the glasses and placed them back on her face wordlessly. As though her long speech yesterday was some kind of lie. Maybe it was just a lie. Some kind of elaborate joke.
“Now, let’s commence the first SOS Brigade meeting!”
Haruhi loudly proclaimed that out of the blue while standing atop the brigade chief chair. Where’d that come from?
“We’ve done a lot to make it this far. We passed out flyers, and we even made a homepage. The celebrity of the SOS Brigade in this school has skyrocketed. The first stage can be considered a huge success.”
How can you call emotionally scarring Asahina a huge success?
“However, not a single tale of mysterious happenings has reached our brigade’s e-mail inbox, and not a single student has come in for consultation regarding bizarre troubles.”
That’s ’cause fame isn’t enough to do it. Nobody has a clue as to what this club does yet. Most importantly, the school doesn’t even recognize us as a club.
“Someone once said, ‘Good things come to those who wait.’ However, we live in the modern world now. You have to find good things for yourself, even if it means digging them out of the ground. That’s why we’re going to go search!”
Nobody else was interjecting, so I did. “… For what?”
“The mysteries of this world! If we search every corner of the city, at least one mysterious phenomenon is bound to pop out!”
I would say that your mind is the far bigger mystery.
Completely ignoring the disbelief on my face, the enigmatic smile suggesting little consideration on Koizumi’s face, the absence of emotion on Nagato’s face, and the helpless look of resignation to what fate might bring on Asahina’s face, Haruhi waved her arms around and shouted.
“This Saturday! In other words, tomorrow! Meet at 9 am in front of Kitaguchi Station. Don’t be late. If you don’t show, heads will roll!”
Heads will roll, huh?
If you’re wondering what Haruhi planned on doing with the pictures of Asahina in a maid outfit, it was revealed that the damn girl was going to put the pictures in that digital camera on my half-assed Web site.
I noticed this after Haruhi had finished placing a dozen of those pictures in a row on the top page, all set to greet visitors, mere seconds before she was going to upload them into cyberspace.
This would jump the dead access counter up to five digits in a flash.
Are you an idiot?
I had to draw the line here as I desperately stopped Haruhi and deleted the pictures. If Asahina found out that those unbecoming pictures of her in the maid costume in knockout poses had been spread around the world, she’d definitely faint on the spot.
Oddly enough, Haruhi quietly looked at me as I fervently lectured her, but I can’t be sure if she understood what I meant by the dangers of putting personal information that may reveal your identity on the Internet.
“I get it,” she said sullenly before consenting to delete them. In this case, I probably should have deleted all the pictures, but that would be a waste. I created a hidden folder on the hard drive, stored the pictures there, and set a password instead.
I’ll save them for my private viewing pleasure.