That’s right. I don’t know where Asahina lives. Though I’ve been to Nagato’s place a number of times….

“I can understand how Asahina feels.”

Koizumi had moved to stand next to me when I wasn’t paying attention. Tsuruya was with the joker combo from my class saying stuff like “Hey, it’s been a while” as they bowed and fawned over her. Koizumi smiled as he watched them.

“After all, there’s an impression that she may actually become a real transforming heroine at this rate. Anyway, the laser rays were definitely over the top.”

“What wouldn’t be over the top?”

“Let’s see. Something on the level of breathing fire from her mouth would be simple to set up.”

“Asahina isn’t supposed to be a monster, performer, or evil wrestler. What if her lovely lips get burned? Nobody could possibly shoulder the responsibility for that. Don’t tell me you’re already planning on taking responsibility for her.”

“Not at all. The only time I would ever feel responsibility would be if I were to allow the Celestials to run wild. Fortunately, that has never happened… ah, it happened once, didn’t it? I must thank you for your actions during that time. Your help allowed us to get through the incident.”

Half a year ago, the world had been on the verge of being destroyed. Thanks to excruciating physical effort and exhausting mental exertion on my part, the world was able to hang on by a thread. I figured it wouldn’t be odd to expect world leaders to send me thank-you letters, but I have yet to hear from any embassy staff. Well, it’d be a problem if they actually did show up, so I’m not really hoping for anything. I received a reward last time in the form of an embrace from a sobbing Asahina, and when I thought about it, that was more than enough. It wasn’t like Koizumi saying thanks was going to make me happy.

“About Mikuru Asahina…”

“Don’t use her first name. It gives me an unpleasant feeling.”

“Excuse me. About Asahina, it appears that we will be able to avoid having her emit odd rays.”

“How’d you manage that? Are you just being really optimistic and assuming that Haruhi didn’t prepare a spare color contact?”

“No, it’s already been taken care of. Nagato was very cooperative.”

I looked over at the unmoving girl staring at shops in front of the station before looking back at Koizumi. “What’d you do to Asahina?”

“There’s no need to look angry. We merely eliminated any exposure to laser. I don’t entirely understand it myself. Nagato, unlike the other TFEI terminals, speaks very little. I simply requested for her to remove any risk of danger.”

“What’s TFEI?”

“An abbreviation we arbitrarily assigned. It’s not exactly vital information. However, I believe that Nagato stands out, even when compared with the rest of them. I believe that she may serve another purpose beyond a mere interface.”

What else would the tight-mouthed bookworm do besides observe Haruhi? Ryoko Asakura would be missed by more people. Not that I miss her, though.

After thirty minutes, the taxi Haruhi had taken returned. Waitress Asahina was in tow, looking as glum as she did yesterday. Haruhi was getting a receipt from the driver. Maybe she intended to write off the taxi fee as an expense.

Taniguchi and Kunikida were holding some kind of discussion as they watched.

“The other night, I’d gone to the convenience store and was on my way back when I passed a taxi.”

“Huh.”

“And then I noticed that the Taxi sign on the roof looked like it said Love.

“Wowzers.”

“But the taxi sped off before I could get another look. That’s when I realized. Love is what I’m missing right now.”

“Maybe it really did say Love. It must have been a private taxi.”

To think that we have to ask two idiots engaged in such a ridiculous conversation for help. We must really be scraping the bottom of the personnel barrel. If I were to compare Taniguchi and Kunikida to nickel alloy, then Tsuruya would be platinum. They’re about as different as fireworks and Apollo 11.

“Hey, hey. Mikuru, who do you think you are to come by taxi?”

Tsuruya was pretty psyched up, but it was at a mild level. Nowhere near Haruhi’s crazy natural high. You could say that Tsuruya was still grounded within the realm of the normal world.

“Wow, amazing! Sexy! Mikuru, what’s the place you’re working at? Must not allow anyone under eighteen inside. Huh? Aren’t you only seventeen? Oh, right. You’re not a customer so it’s okay.”

Asahina’s eyes, puffy from crying, were their natural color. Looks like they’re out of color contacts.

Haruhi dragged the petite waitress out front.

“You’re not going to get away with pretending to be sick! We’re going to keep on filming! Mikuru, this will be your time to shine. Everything is for the SOS Brigade! The spirit of self-sacrifice will always move the audience, no matter what world you live in!”

You be the sacrifice.

“There can only be one heroine in this world. It really should be me, but I’m giving up the seat this time as a special service. At least, until the cultural festival’s over!”

Nobody in this world accepts you as the heroine.

Tsuruya was slapping Asahina on the shoulder as she talked.

“What’s this? Race queen? Some kind of character? Oh, that’s it. Let’s use this for the yakisoba café at the cultural festival! A bunch of customers will come!”

I can understand why Asahina wanted to coop herself up in her room. No pitcher’s going to stand on the mound when he knows a rally is about to start.

Asahina slowly raised her head and looked at me with the eyes of a martyr, begging for salvation, before quickly looking away. She let loose a soft sigh before offering a wan smile and dragging her feet over to me.

“Sorry I’m late.”

I was looking at the top of Asahina’s head as she bowed down.

“Nah, I don’t really mind.”

“I guess I’ll have to pay for everyone’s lunch….”

“No way, don’t sweat it.”

“I’m sorry about yesterday. It looks like I fired some kind optical weapon without realizing it….”

“No sweat, I was perfectly fine….”

I took a quick peek. Nagato was standing around absentmindedly with the star-tipped antenna in her hand. Noticing my reaction, Asahina lowered her already soft and fine voice.

“I was bitten.”

She rubbed her left wrist.

“Bitten by what?”

“Nagato. She said something about injecting nanomachines…. But it looks like my eyes will no longer emit anything. What a relief.”

Which means I don’t have to worry about getting sliced up, huh? Still, it’s hard to picture Nagato biting Asahina. So, what exactly did she inject?

“It was last night. She came with Koizumi to my home….”

Koizumi, in charge of keeping an eye on the equipment, was talking with Haruhi about something. I would have loved to have come along. Invite me to these kinds of things. I’d much rather be invited on a visit to Asahina’s home instead of closed space.

“Whatcha whispering about?”

Tsuruya wrapped her flexible arm around Asahina’s neck.

“Mikuru sure is cute. I’d love to keep her at my place. Kyon, are you guys getting along?”

Absolutely.

Taniguchi and Kunikida, the hack combo, were admiring Asahina, who had her mouth half open. Don’t stare. What if you damage her looks? That was when Haruhi shouted.

“We’ve decided on a place!”

“For what?”

“Filming.”

Oh, yeah. I’d almost forgotten that we were shooting a movie here. Actually, I want to forget. It feels more like we’re producing a cheap idol DVD, oddly enough.

“There’s a large pond near Koizumi’s house. We’ll start filming there today!”

Haruhi was already out in front, carrying a vinyl flag with the words Film Crew written on it and leading the way.

I called over Taniguchi and Kunikida, who were still staring inappropriately at Asahina, and we shared the bags and packs among us.

After thirty minutes of walking, we reached the bank of the pond. It was located within some hills in approximately the center of the residential district. It was pretty big for a pond. Big enough for migratory birds to drop by during winter, and according to Koizumi, it was the time of year when ducks and geese started showing up.

There was a metal fence surrounding the pond area, barring entry. There was an issue of common sense first, though. Or maybe a problem with how kids are being raised. Either way, you’re not going to find grade-schoolers playing around in a place like this these days, unless they’re really dumb.

“What are you doing? Hurry up and jump over.”

I’d forgotten that this girl was, in fact, really dumb. Haruhi the director had her foot on the fence and was beckoning to the rest of us. Asahina had a look of despair on her face as she held down her short skirt. Tsuruya was cackling next to her.

“What? What are we doing here? Wa-ha-ha! Is Mikuru going to swim?”

With a shake of her head, Asahina eyed the green surface as though if it were a lake of blood. Sigh.

“The fence is a tad high to climb. Don’t you agree?”

Koizumi was talking to Nagato, not me. It was pretty futile to try to hold a conversation with her. She either gave you a simple yes or no or went into a long spiel nobody could understand.

“…”

However, while Nagato remained silent, she showed a curious reaction. She put her fingers on a metal pole supporting the fence and pulled it to the side. What was supposed to be an iron pole bent as easily as caramel under a burning sun, and eventually came to a rest in a bent state.

As skillful as always. I quickly turned to look at the other people, though it was probably unnecessary.

“Huh, it must be old,” Kunikida said with a knowledgeable look on his face.

“So what am I supposed to do? Am I a kappa?” Taniguchi muttered to himself as he squeezed through an opening in the fence and headed to the bank of the pond.

“I live in the area. There didn’t used to be a fence here. I spent a lot of time here.”

Tsuruya followed, leading Asahina by the hand, looking very reluctant, toward the edge of the pond where Haruhi was waiting.

The three extras weren’t concerning themselves with any small details. That’s a big help.

Koizumi smiled equally at both Nagato and me before he slipped through the fence. Nagato, looking like a black mage, passed in front of me like a ghost.

Not like I have a choice. I just have to get this filming over with and get out of here. Before anybody starts asking any questions about destruction of public property.

Asahina and Nagato stood facing each other again. Looks like another battle scene. Is Haruhi actually trying to come up with a story here? When is Koizumi going to make an appearance? Koizumi, in his uniform, was once again standing behind me on lighting duty.

After placing her director’s chair on the muddy ground, Haruhi began furiously scribbling what I would assume was the dialogue in a sketchbook.

“In this scene, Mikuru finally finds herself in a dire situation. Because her blue eye beam has been sealed by Yuki.”

The felt pen came to a halt as she looked up with a self-satisfied look on her face.

“Yeah, that sounds good. You there. Hold this up while standing.”

And just like that, Taniguchi was on cue-card duty. The two actresses looked to the hands of the sulking Taniguchi.

“Th-th-this won’t be enough to discourage me! E-e-evil alien Yuki! Quietly leave Earth at once… Um… I’m sorry.”

In response to Mikuru Asahina’s unexpected apology, the evil alien mage Yuki Nagato opened her mouth.

“… I see.”

She nodded without any sign that she had taken offense. She then read her lines in a deadpan voice per Haruhi’s instructions.

“You should be the one to vanish from this time. He will fall into our hands. That is how much he is worth. He has yet to realize his own power, but it is a valuable thing. Consequently, we will start by invading Earth.”

Haruhi waved her megaphone around like a conductor, and Nagato pointed the star-tipped antenna at Asahina’s face in a similar motion.

“I-I-I won’t let you have your way! Even if it costs me my life!”

“Then we shall take your life.”

Asahina shook noticeably in response to Nagato’s flat words.

“Cut!” yelled Haruhi as she stood up. She ran over between the two of them.

“You’re starting to get the feel of it. Yep, that’s the spirit. But no ad-libbing, okay? And Mikuru, come over here.”

The director and leading actress turned their backs on the rest of us. I lowered the video camera and stretched out my neck. I wondered what they were discussing.

After about a second, Tsuruya was no longer able to hold herself back and began cackling in a loud voice.

“What’s this movie about? Or is it even a movie? Wa-ha-ha. It’s absolutely hysterical!”

Except the only other person able to enjoy this movie besides you would be Haruhi.

Taniguchi and Kunikida were lounging around with looks on their faces that said, Why were we called here? Nagato was playing dumb by herself. Koizumi was gazing across the pond as though he’d become one with nature. I removed the almost-filled tape and unwrapped a new DV cassette. It felt like I was just creating more garbage.

Tsuruya was looking at my hands with great interest.

“Hmm. This is what videos look like these days? A bunch of Mikuru pictures are on here? Can you show me later? It’ll probably be great for laughs.”

It’s not a laughing matter. Passing out flyers in a bunny-girl outfit had been a one-day affair, but this stupid filming could potentially go on until the day before the cultural festival. Asahina could go from refusing to stand in front of a camera to refusing to go to school. That would hurt me the hardest. Since I would no longer be able to drink her marvelous tea. Nagato’s tea has no taste, and Haruhi’s is bad on a fundamental level. Koizumi’s is out of the question. If I end up in a situation where I have to make my own tea, I’d rather drink tap water.

“Sorry for the wait!”

Yeah, you kept us waiting. Waiting and waiting. About time to go home, I’d say. We wouldn’t want to trample too much pondside foliage.

“We’re just getting to the good stuff. Here, look at this!”

Haruhi shoved Asahina out in front with a push. Look, you say? Don’t need you to tell me that. I stare at her every day. See, it’s the usual, same beautiful, adorable, and fair Asahina…

“Ah?”

One of her eyes was a different color. The right eye this time. A silver eye looked apologetically between the ground and me.

“Come on, Mikuru. Use that Miracle Mikuru Eye-R to fire something, anything fantastic, and attack!”

I didn’t even have time to tell her to stop. Even if there had been enough time, I would still have gotten sliced and diced. At any rate, it was all too sudden. Haruhi delivering the dangerous command, Asahina blinking in surprise, and also—

The dark figure of Nagato pushing down Asahina by the pond.

A re-creation of the scene from yesterday. It was like watching a replay. Nagato had used her special teleportation again.

In an instant only her hat remained where she had been standing, and it softly floated to the ground. The person who had been wearing that hat had, in the blink of an eye (probably around 0.2 seconds), traveled a number of meters to ride Asahina. Iron claw to the temples.

Everyone watched dumbfounded as the two actresses began wrestling on the damp ground.

“Na-Na-Nagato… Hee!”

The wordless and expressionless Nagato paid her screaming no heed and straddled Asahina with just a slight ruffle of her short hair.

“Hey!” Haruhi quickly recovered.

“Yuki! You’re a mage! You’re supposed to be bad at physical combat! This isn’t the time to be mud wrestling—”

However, Haruhi shut her mouth mid-sentence and spent three seconds thinking.

“Well, this works too. Since it’ll probably sell. Kyon! Make sure you’re filming! Let’s not waste Yuki’s idea.”

This isn’t by design. She’s reacting to the situation. Some kind of defensive measure to deal with the contact lens. I’m sure Asahina understands that, but she’s so scared that all she can do is cry out softly and kick her legs. Tantalizing. No, I mean, now’s not the time to be aiming for a fan-service shot.

That was when a rattle made everyone besides those two look behind us.

The fence around the pond that Haruhi had climbed and the rest of us had squeezed through. The space it had occupied was now empty. The fence, cut in a V-shape, was now lying on the road, as though it had been hit by an invisible laser.

After a moment, I looked back to find Nagato biting into Asahina’s wrist like an anemic vampire.

“I was careless.”

Surprisingly, Nagato was criticizing herself.

“The laser was configured to disperse and become harmless. This time, it was a hyper-oscillatory particle cutter,” she murmured in a tone that suggested she wasn’t breathing.

Koizumi, picking up the black hat and offering it to her, opened his mouth. “Something like monofilament, I presume. But if the particle cutter isn’t visible to the eye, it must have no mass?”

Nagato took the hat and casually put it on her head.

“I perceived a trace amount of mass. Approximately equivalent to one over ten to the forty-first power grams.”

“Less than a neutrino?”

Nagato remained silent as she stared into Asahina’s eyes. The waitress’s right eye was still silver.

“Um…”

Asahina wiggled around as she rubbed her bitten wrist.

“What did you, um, inject into me this, this time…?”

The tip of the pointy hat moved about five millimeters. I took that as a sign of confusion. She must have been fretting over how to word her response. And just as expected, Nagato responded.

“A force field was established on the surface with the ability to phase-shift dimensional oscillatory cycles and transform them into gravitational waves.”

She delivered that baffling sentence in a strained voice. I had no idea how that would eliminate the killer wire, but for some reason beyond my comprehension the other two people appeared to accept the explanation. Koizumi was saying irrelevant things like “I see. Incidentally, gravity manifests itself in waves?” Nagato probably also thought his question was irrelevant. Since she didn’t give him an answer.

Koizumi shrugged like it was some kind of signature pose.

“However, we certainly were careless. This was also my responsibility. I was only expecting laser beams to shoot from her eyes. Fire something, anything fantastic, were her words I believe. It seems other people aren’t allowed to follow Suzumiya’s train of thought. She’s an amazing person.”

Follow her train of thought? More like she’s already lapped the rest of humanity multiple times. A whole three laps even. And you can feel the pressure as she creeps up from behind. It’s so intense that at first glance, a person in the stands might be confused and assume you were on the same lap. That’s something only people racing on the circuit would know, and Haruhi isn’t going to ease on the pedal, be it an S-curve, a Degner curve, or a crisscrossing one. And on top of all that, she’s the only one with a Bussard ramjet engine, which allows her keep going forever. She’s set up the rules so that nobody could keep up with her, even if they wanted to. And she has no idea that this whole thing is fixed. When matters are this serious, you can’t just laugh it all off because she happens to be clueless.

“Well, fortunately,” said Koizumi, “everyone appears to have accepted that the fence had deteriorated due to poor maintenance by the local government. I’m glad the matter didn’t get out of hand.”

I glanced at the pale face hidden under the hat. Yuki’d shown us her palm, which looked like it’d been sliced up by a whirlwind. A picture gruesome enough to scare people who can’t stand pain. Except it was healing so fast, it was as if it’d never happened.

I looked over at the second group, standing some distance away. Haruhi and the haphazard trio of extras were watching the video on the camera and shouting in a melodic voice… or that was just Tsuruya.

“What do we do?” I asked. “I feel like there’s going to be a disaster if we keep filming.”

“However, we cannot simply call off the movie,” Koizumi replied. “What do you think will happen if we force Suzumiya to stop filming this movie?”

“She’ll probably go berserk.”

“Most assuredly. Even if she didn’t personally go around wreaking havoc, we can rest assured that Celestials would be rampaging within closed space.”

Don’t remind me. I never want to go there again. I never want to do that again.

“Most likely, Suzumiya is having too much fun in the current situation. She’s able to freely engage her imagination and create her own movie. Almost like playing God. As you already know, she is usually irritated by how reality doesn’t work the way she desires. That’s actually not true, but since she hasn’t realized it, the result is the same. However, in this movie, the story progresses according to her wishes. Anything is possible. Suzumiya is using this movie as a medium to reconstruct a world.”

She’s as selfish as ever. You can’t have what you want unless you’re extremely rich or powerful. Go become a politician or something.

As my face cycled through a variety of grimaces and frowns, Koizumi continued talking with a smile on his face.

“Of course, Suzumiya is not aware of that. She believes that she is creating a fictional world within the movie. Her earnest passion is focused on the production of this film. I would presume that her passion is so great that she’s unconsciously affected the real world.

“It’s like rolling a die that only has negative numbers on it. We can’t just continue filming and let Haruhi’s delusions run wild. We can’t stop filming and put her in a bad mood. Both choices lead straight to bad endings.

“Nonetheless, if we must choose between the two, I would prefer to continue.”

“Give me a good reason why,” I asked.

“I’ve grown tired of hunting Celestials…. I’m just kidding. Sorry about that. Let’s see, the reason is basically as follows. Allowing a few alterations to the world would appear more conducive to our survival than letting the entire world be reset.”

So we just allow Asahina to become Superwoman in the real world?

“This time, the alterations to reality are quite modest when compared with Celestials. After all, Nagato is able to effectively utilize protective revisions. When compared with the prospect of starting the world over from scratch, wouldn’t you agree that dealing with supernormal phenomena case by case sounds vastly preferable?”

“I’d have to say that neither scenario sounds very good. What if we whack Haruhi from behind and knock her out until the cultural festival’s over?”

“What a frightful notion. But if you take full responsibility, I won’t stop you.”

“I can’t shoulder the entire world.”

And with that reply, I turned to look at Asahina, who was picking dirt off the waitress costume with her fingers. She looked like she’d pretty much given up hope. Upon noticing my gaze, she quickly opened her mouth.

“D-don’t worry about me. I’ll get through this somehow….”

So sweet. Her face looks pretty pale, though. Well yeah, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t want to be bitten by Nagato every time something comes up. Even if the tooth marks do disappear shortly, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s creepy. After all, if I were to give Nagato a long-handled sickle, she’d look like Death-girl from the thirteenth tarot card or an ageless space vampire. Either way, she’s going to be sending you to the beyond.

Of course, in Asahina’s case, it was injecting instead of sucking. Still, even if you attribute this all to carelessness, Asahina seems to have a weak sense of danger for someone from the future. Maybe it’s because I don’t know how she really feels. Since it involves a bunch of classified information.

Well, I’m sure she’ll tell me one of these days. And of course, we should all be alone in a confined space when it happens.

It was finally time for Taniguchi and Kunikida, along with Tsuruya.

When Haruhi revealed their roles in the movie, we learned that they would play nameless bit characters. Their roles were listed as “Normal people being manipulated as slave puppets by evil alien Yuki.”

“In other words,” Haruhi explained with an unpleasant grin on her face, “Mikuru fights for justice so she can’t harm normal people. Yuki is taking advantage of that weakness. She’s using hypnotic magic to control normal humans. Mikuru, unable to fight against ordinary civilians, gets all beat up.”

Asahina’s pretty beaten up already. What more do you intend to do to her? By the time I finished that thought, Haruhi was already talking again.

“Start by throwing Mikuru into the pond.”

“What!”

Asahina was the only one reacting with surprise. Tsuruya was guffawing to the side. Taniguchi and Kunikida looked at each other before turning to Asahina’s bewildered face.

“Hey, now,” Taniguchi said with a strange half smile on his face. “The pond? The water might be warm, but it’s fall already. Even the most generous fool in the world wouldn’t call this water clean.”

“Su-Su-Suzumiya, at least use a warm-water pool….”

Asahina was presenting her earnest objection, on the verge of tears. Even Kunikida was defending her.

“That’s right. What if it’s a bottomless bog? She’ll never float back up again. Look, there’s a bunch of black bass.”

Don’t say stuff that’ll make Asahina faint. Also, it’s already been proven that the more you resist, the more stubborn Haruhi gets. True to form, her lips were puckered like a duck’s bill.

“Shut up. Okay? Sacrifices must be made for the sake of realism. I wanted to use Loch Ness or the Great Salt Lake for this scene. But we don’t have the time or money for that. It is our duty as humans to do the best we can in the limited time we are given. Which means we have to use this pond.”

What kind of logic is that? And this conversation seems to assume that Asahina has to suffer water torture. You could just switch the background you know. Why can’t you use your mind that way?

As I was pondering whether I should stop her, someone tapped my shoulder from behind. I turned back to see damn Koizumi with a thin smile on his face, wordlessly shaking his head. I know. Tamper with Haruhi the wrong way and weird stuff will start happening. If Asahina starts shooting plasma fireballs from her mouth, we might have the Japan Self-Defense Forces coming after us.

“Ah, I’ll do it!” Asahina announced in a bitter voice.

She must be heartbroken. Here’s a poor girl sacrificing herself for world peace. An incredibly cliché development that would probably be the climax of the making-of video. Except the camera isn’t rolling.

Haruhi was simply thrilled.

“Mikuru, that’s great! You look divine right now! That’s what I would expect from one of my handpicked brigade members! You’ve really grown!”

It’s more like she’s learned rather than grown, I’d say.

“Then the two of you each take one of Mikuru’s arms, and Tsuru can hold her legs. When I say ready, go. Once I’ve said it, toss her into the pond.”

The following scene played out under Haruhi’s direction.

The three extras started by standing in a line in front of Nagato with their heads hanging as the black-garbed mage waved the antenna pointer. It almost looked like some kind of Shinto exorcism ceremony. As I watched Nagato’s blank face while she moved the pointer, she did have a sort of shrine-maiden feel to her.

Afterward, having received Nagato’s command to target Asahina, the three of them moved toward the heroine, walking stiffly like zombies seeking fresh meat.

“Mikuru! Sorry. I really don’t want to do this, but I’m being mind-controlled and stuff. Really, I’m sorry.”

Tsuruya, who looked like she was having the absolute time of her life, crept toward the waitress with a smile reminiscent of a cat-shaped bus. Taniguchi, always timid in a pinch, pretended to hesitate while Kunikida scratched at his head as they both approached Asahina, who turned pale, then red.

“Hey, you two morons! Be serious about this!”

You’re the moron. But I swallowed that comment and continued looking through the camera. Asahina, knees buckling, slowly backed up to the edge of the pond.

“Prepare yourself!” Tsuruya said brightly as she shoved Asahina down and hoisted an exposed thigh under each arm. What should I say? This is getting dangerous.

“He… hee!”

Asahina was seriously scared. Taniguchi and Kunikida each grabbed an arm.

“W-w-wait, actually I… i-i-is this really necessary?”

Paying no heed to Asahina’s painful cries, Haruhi nodded solemnly.

“It’s to make this scene better, in other words, for the sake of art!”

A common expression, but I have to wonder where the art is in this half-assed amateur film.

Haruhi barked the order.

“Now! Ready, go!”

Splash. A large amount of water sprayed out as the aquatic inhabitants of the pond had their lives disturbed.

“Ah, hel… wah…!”

Really good job of acting like you’re drowning, Asahina… or I’m getting a feeling that she’s really drowning. Who knows.

“My feet… won’t reach… Ah!”

Good thing we weren’t in the Amazon region. If she were splashing around like this down there, she’d make an easy target for the piranhas. I wondered if black bass attacked people—as I looked through the viewfinder, when I discovered that Asahina wasn’t the only one splashing around.

“Crap! I swallowed water!”

Taniguchi was drowning. Apparently, the momentum from throwing Asahina had carried him into the water. We didn’t need to worry about him.

“What’s that idiot doing?”

Haruhi apparently agreed and ignored the moron as she pointed the megaphone at Koizumi.

“Okay, Koizumi. It’s your turn! Go save Mikuru.”

The leading actor, who had been stuck on lighting duty, smiled elegantly as he handed the reflector board to Nagato and ran over to the edge of the pond, extending his hand.

“Please grab on. Calm down. Try not to drag me in as well.”

Asahina clung to Koizumi’s arm like a shipwreck victim clinging to a piece of driftwood. Koizumi gently lifted the soaked time-traveling combat waitress and held her close to his body. Hey, that’s too close.

“Are you all right?”

“… Ugh… it was cold…”

Her already tight costume, now soaked, was practically transparent. If I were a member of the Motion Picture Code of Ethics Committee, I would ban anyone under fifteen from watching this movie without any hesitation. To be honest, this feels worse than full nudity. It feels like we might get arrested.

“Yep, perfect!”

Haruhi was whacking the megaphone as she shouted triumphantly. I ignored Taniguchi, still splashing away in the pond, and hit the stop button on the video camera.

We had enough crap to open up a vending stall, yet we didn’t have a single towel?

Asahina’s eyes remained shut tight as she wiped her face with Tsuruya’s handkerchief. I stood next to Haruhi, breathing silently, as she diligently checked the video.

“Yeah, not bad.”

Haruhi nodded after playing back Asahina’s drowning scene three times.

“The scene of their meeting was adequate. You can feel how Itsuki and Mikuru are still awkward around each other at this point. Yep, yep.”

Really? Koizumi looked the same as always.

“The second step is next. Itsuki, after saving Mikuru, decides to hide her in his own home. That’s where the next scene will start.”

“Er, wait. That doesn’t flow at all. Where did Nagato, the one controlling Taniguchi and the others, go off to? And Team Taniguchi, what about them? How were they stopped? Even underlings need a proper portrayal or the audience isn’t going buy it.”

“You sure are annoying. People will understand what happened without us filming it. You can just skip the boring parts!”

Freak. You just wanted to throw Asahina into the pond, huh?

As I grew enraged, Tsuruya raised her hand and spoke.

“Heya. My house is close by. Mikuru looks like she’s about to catch a cold so can I get her a change of clothes?”

“That’s perfect!” Haruhi cried as her shining eyes focused on Tsuruya.

“Can we borrow your room, Tsuruya? I want to film Itsuki and Mikuru getting friendly there. What a smooth turn of events. This movie will definitely be a success!”

For Haruhi, whose main theme in life is apparently opportunism, that’s probably a convenient proposal, yeah. I can’t get rid of the gnawing suspicion that Tsuruya only brought it up because Haruhi wished it to be so. Except that Haruhi accepted Tsuruya as an underling, so she should be just as ordinary as me.

“Uh, what about us?”

Kunikida raised that question. Taniguchi stood next to him wringing out his shirt.

“You guys can go home,” Haruhi said heartlessly. “Good work. Bye, so long. We may never meet again.”

The names of those two classmates must have been erased from Haruhi’s mind at that point. Without another look at Kunikida, with a shocked look on his face, or Taniguchi, shaking water from his hair like a dog, Haruhi dubbed Tsuruya our guide and walked off. Lucky for you guys. Your job is done. Apparently, you’re worth as much as expended BBs as far as Haruhi’s concerned. That’s actually something to be happy about.

Tsuruya was also pumped up for some reason as she talked happily.

“Okay. Everybody, it’s this way!”

She stood at the head waving the flag around.

It’s not like Haruhi’s arbitrary behavior was anything new. She’d probably been born with it. In five hundred years, they’ll probably have a story going around about how she was proclaiming that the universe belonged to her the second she came out of the womb, just one of the many legends in the Haruhi Suzumiya chronicles. Well, who cares about that.

Haruhi and Tsuruya, walking at the front of the group, had hit it off at some point and were singing the chorus of Bryan Adams’s “18 Til I Die” over and over in ridiculously loud voices. It was excruciatingly embarrassing to be an acquaintance walking behind them.

I’m amazed the silent black Nagato and reflector-board-carrying star Koizumi can tag along without bothering to keep their distance. You should learn from Asahina, walking along with her shoulders slumped and head down. And you should help share the load of stuff I’m carrying. We’ve been going uphill for quite a while now. I’m starting to understand how it feels to be a racing horse training by running uphill.

“Okay. We’re here. This is my house,” Tsuruya shouted as she stopped and stood in front of a house. Her voice was big, and her house was big too. Well, I assumed it was big. Since I couldn’t actually see the house from the gate. But there was more than enough to support the notion. If you can’t see the house from the gate, that must mean it’s a great distance away, and if you look to the left and right, you find a wall looking like something from a samurai residence stretching as far as the eye can see. I wonder what kind of crimes you’d have to commit to live in a place like this.

“Here. Come on in.”

Haruhi and Nagato must not have known what the word “restraint” meant, seeing as how they just barged on in as if it were their own home. Asahina appeared to have been here before, since there was no sign of surprise on her face when Tsuruya pushed her in.

“An old family that follows old customs. You can feel the refinement in the mysterious bearing of the place. You can feel its age,” Koizumi said in a voice that didn’t exactly sound filled with admiration. Are you some kind of extravagance reporter?

After crossing space large enough for a baseball triangle, we finally reached the entrance. Tsuruya took Asahina to the bathroom before leading us to her room.

This made my own bedroom look like something a cat would sleep in. A spacious, traditional Japanese-style room that was so big you wouldn’t know where to sit. Except that I was apparently the only one troubled by any of this. Haruhi entered the room without a care, followed by Nagato and Koizumi.

“Nice room. This is good enough to film in. That’s it. We’ll say this is Koizumi’s room. We’ll shoot some scenes of him getting close with Mikuru here.”

Haruhi was sitting on a cushion and looking through a rectangle formed by her fingers. Tsuruya’s room was a simple tatami affair with a tea table as the only furniture.

I was attempting to copy Nagato, sitting next to me, by kneeling on the floor with my back straight, but after three minutes my legs couldn’t take it anymore. Haruhi had been sitting cross-legged to begin with as she whispered something into Tsuruya’s ear.

“Gaha! Hey, that sounds fun! Hold on a sec!”

And with that, Tsuruya, laughing cheerfully, zipped out of the room.

I put my thinking cap on. Is Tsuruya really a normal person? It’s a widely held opinion that anyone able to get along with Haruhi is either abnormal or not human. It could just be that they happen to be on the same wavelength.

After a few minutes of waiting, Tsuruya returned. She brought Asahina as a gift. And it wasn’t the usual Asahina, but an Asahina who had just gotten out of the bath. She was wearing a loose T-shirt that was probably borrowed from Tsuruya. Actually, the T-shirt was the only thing she was wearing.

“Ah… S-sorry to keep everyone waiting….”

Asahina, with her hair still damp and skin flushed, hid behind Tsuruya as she entered the room before kneeling down straight and hunching up. The sleeves and shirt were too long for Asahina, which resulted in the T-shirt looking more like a one-piece dress—quite a wonderful effect. She’d forgotten to remove the contact, which meant her right eye was still silver, which would have been dangerous, but the fact that neither beams nor sharp wires would be shooting out meant I could breathe easy. It almost made me want to run to some shrine and worship Nagato, who still hadn’t removed her hat.

“Here you go. Drink up.”

The tray Tsuruya set on the floor was filled with enough glasses of orange-colored liquid for everyone in the room. In a flash Asahina drank half of the glass of orange juice handed to her by Tsuruya. She’d been the most active today, so she was probably pretty dehydrated.

As I also gratefully savored my juice, Haruhi had already downed hers in a single gulp and was crunching away at the remaining ice.

“Okay. We might as well film in this room while we’re here.”

After barely any rest, we were already starting to film the next scene.

Koizumi carried Asahina, pretending to be unconscious, into the room. For some reason, a futon was already spread on the floor. Koizumi laid Asahina down on the futon and stared at her sleeping face.

Asahina’s face was fairly flushed, and her eyelashes were twitching. Koizumi placed a blanket over her defenseless body, crossed his arms, and sat down at her side.

“Unh…,” Asahina pretended to mumble in her sleep. Koizumi continued to watch her with a smile on his face.

Nagato, who apparently didn’t have a part in this scene, was still drinking her orange juice behind Tsuruya and me. I zoomed in on Asahina’s sleeping face as I gazed through the viewfinder. Haruhi didn’t provide any instructions, so I was free to follow my own preferences. However, Haruhi continued issuing real-time instructions to the two leading stars.

“Mikuru, it’s about time for you to wake up. Say your lines exactly the way I told you to.”

“… Unh—”

Asahina gradually opened her eyes and looked up at Koizumi in a daze.

“Are you awake?” asked Koizumi.

“Yes… Um, where am I…”

“My room.”

Asahina sat up slowly. She looked like she had a fever, and her eyes couldn’t seem to focus. She’s behaving awfully sexy; is she acting?

“Th… thank you very much.”

Haruhi immediately relayed the next instruction.

“Now, you two! Get your faces closer together! And then Mikuru closes her eyes and Koizumi puts his arm around her shoulder. Or just shove her down and kiss her!”

“Huh…”

For some reason, Asahina’s mouth was half open in a stupor. Koizumi put his arm around Asahina’s shoulder as instructed, which was when I could no longer hold myself back.

“Hold it. You’re doing way too much abridging. And wait, why is there even a scene like this? What’s going on here?”

“It’s romantic moment. A love scene. You have to include stuff like this when you’re doing a multiple time-slot program.”

Moron. Is this supposed to be a two-hour drama that airs at 9 pm? And you, Koizumi. Why do you look like you’re ready to act? If something like this gets screened, you’ll find hundreds of curses in your shoe locker. Use your head.

The sound of cackling laughter made me turn around. Tsuruya was bent over with her nails digging into the tatami mat, laughing her head off.

“Haha—Mikuru’s acting so funny!”

It’s not funny…. At least, that’s what I wanted to say, but it was clear that Asahina wasn’t acting normally. She couldn’t even hold up her head straight, her eyes were dazed, and her cheeks were flushed. And she wasn’t even resisting Koizumi’s arm around her shoulder. Not amusing at all.

“Uh… Koizumi, my head feels heavy… Ah.”

As she said things that made me want to offer flowers to a certain mouse, Asahina was lurching around. I was wondering if she had been drugged when I realized something. My eyes went to her empty glass as Tsuruya laughed.

“Sorry. I mixed tequila into Mikuru’s juice. I was told that some alcohol might help her acting get better.”

Haruhi’s sinister idea, huh? I was more angry than shocked. Don’t secretly mix that kind of stuff in.

“Who cares. Mikuru looks really sexy right now. Makes for a better scene,” said Haruhi.

You couldn’t call this acting anymore. Asahina was staggering around. Her cheeks were flushed red below her closed eyes. I don’t mind her looking sexy but I’m not too happy about her leaning up against Koizumi.

“Koizumi, just kiss her already. Of course, I mean on the lips!”

Hell no. You shouldn’t be doing that to someone who can’t even tell left from right in her current condition.

“Cut it out, Koizumi.”

Koizumi appeared to ponder whether he should listen to the director or the cameraman. I’m gonna smack you. Either way, I lowered the camera. I don’t intend to film such a scene and I don’t intend to let such a scene be filmed.

Koizumi smiled as though to reassure me and moved away from the staggering leading lady.

“Director, this is too much for me to handle. And Asahina seems to have reached her limit.”

“… I’m perfectly fine, though…,” Asahina said while looking anything but perfectly fine.

“Honestly. I guess it can’t be helped.”

Haruhi puckered her lips like a duck’s bill and approached the inebriated girl.

“Oh, you’re still wearing the contact? That should have been off for this scene.”

She whacked the back of Asahina’s head.

“O… ouch,” said Asahina as she held her head.

“That’s no good, Mikuru! The contact’s supposed to pop out when I whack your head. Let’s try it again. Practice.”

Whack.

“Ow.”

Whack.

“… Ugh,” Asahina whimpered as she squeezed her eyes shut.

“Cut it out, stupid,” I said as I grabbed Haruhi’s arm. “How is this practice? What does this have to do with acting? How is any of this fun?”

“What is it? Don’t stop me. I’m merely following convention.”

“What convention? This isn’t amusing at all. It’s dumb. Asahina isn’t your toy.”

“I’ve decided that she is. Mikuru’s my toy!”

The second I heard that, blood rushed to my head. It felt like I was seeing red. I seriously snapped. For a second, impulse overcame reason and my body was reacting unconsciously.

Somebody grabbed my wrist. Koizumi was shaking his head at me with narrowed eyes. I saw that Koizumi had stopped my right arm, which was when I noticed that my right hand was balled up in a fist. My right fist had been on the verge of punching Haruhi.

“What are you…!”

Haruhi glared at me with a glint in her eye as bright as the Pleiades.

“What do you have a problem with? You should just do as I say! I’m the brigade chief and director and… Anyway, I won’t allow you to go against me!”