“Whew.”

I wrote that much, then my fingers stopped.

Only Koizumi and Nagato were in the clubroom with me. Haruhi was running around like usual, and Asahina had gone to the art club for the final check on her illustrations.

I had scrolled through the entirety of the text I’d written when I saw Koizumi’s face seep into the corner of my vision.

“Did you write through to the end? Already?”

“Hard to say…,” I answered, but truth be told I felt like I could end it here. When I thought about it, what was the point in being so diligent about it? For the literature club’s sake, and by extension for Nagato’s sake—to that extent, I could see being enthusiastic, but really this was to help the SOS Brigade stay in the room and to keep Haruhi from getting bored. Koizumi was pulling the strings behind the scenes, and the president was just a guy abusing his power as Koizumi’s puppet. When you got right down to it, this was one big roundabout scam.

Still, I felt like I wanted to avoid the second-stage confrontation with the student council that Koizumi was anticipating so much. Nagato was at the center of this, after all. I wanted her to be able to enjoy as peaceful a school life as possible. I wanted to believe I wasn’t the only one whose heart was put at ease by seeing Nagato quietly reading her book in the corner.

“I guess this’ll do.” I gave Koizumi a nod. “I want to get your opinion before I show it to Haruhi. Read it, willya?”

“I’ll be more than happy to.”

I glanced at Koizumi’s deeply interested face, then manipulated the trackpad.

The laptops in the room were networked to the desktop machine, which acted as a server. With a little bit of clicking, the printer in the corner started up and began to spit out printed pages.

Some minutes later.

Koizumi, having finished reading, smiled and offered the following comment: “I thought I was the one doing a mystery.”

So he’d noticed, eh?

“What’re you talking about?” I feigned ignorance. “I didn’t try to write a mystery.”

Koizumi’s smile widened. “And there’s another problem. Where’s the love story in this?”

In that case, what did he think I’d written, I asked him.

“This is just bragging. ‘I went on a date with a cute girl.’ That’s all.”

That’s what you’d normally think, yes. However, Koizumi had noticed something else, I was pretty sure. Where were his suspicions roused, I wondered?

“From the very beginning. It’s rather obvious. It would be harder not to notice it.”

Koizumi put the manuscript’s pages in order, then took out a ballpoint pen and wrote marks on a few of the sheets. They were asterisks—the very asterisks you may have noticed in the manuscript yourself. He wrote those.

“You’re a very considerate writer. You included a series of clues, after all. Even the most oblivious reader would have an inkling by the fourth asterisk.”

I clucked my tongue, still pretending to not know what he was talking about, and glanced sideways. Seeing Nagato’s unmoving figure there made me feel at ease. The sight of her did me good, but Koizumi’s words were trying to corner me.

“But as it is, there’s no punch line, no climax. Why not add a line or two? Just to show all your cards, so to speak. I doubt it would take much time.”

Maybe I did need to add something.

I wasn’t thrilled about following any advice from Koizumi, but I got the feeling that he was worth listening to this one time. Psychoanalyzing Haruhi was his specialty, after all.

But, wait a second—why should I have to worry about Haruhi’s reaction? She was the one who’d gone and suggested a “love story,” but I was the one who had to actually write the thing—the same was true for Asahina and Nagato. If we were assigning fault, it belonged with the person who’d forcibly occupied the editor in chief’s seat: Haruhi.

As I stared at the liquid crystal display, Koizumi chuckled. “I doubt you have anything to worry about. If your story’s meaning is something I recognize, then I very much doubt that Suzumiya will fail to do likewise. Now, before you get cross-examined… Ah, whoops—”

Koizumi reached into his blazer’s pocket. There was a faint buzzing sound.

“If you’ll excuse me.” He pulled out his cell phone and took a look at the screen. “I seem to have some minor business to attend to. I’ll be out for just a moment. No, don’t worry—I just have to make a short report. It’s not one of those cases.”

With those words, Koizumi stepped out of the room, smiling all the while. I wondered if he was going to meet up with some girl on the sly. The guy was so sneaky, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out he was somehow managing to live a normal life with none of us the wiser.

Which left only Nagato in the room, still absorbed in her book.

She did not look up. I thought about saying something, but I was still thinking about my own problem—whether or not to add those last couple of superfluous lines.

There in the silence, I closed the file that contained my pseudo-story, and I opened up a new text file. The monitor was filled with a blank white document.

Might as well write something. Like Koizumi said, just a couple of lines to end it.

My fingers clicked on the keys. The addition was short enough not to need any revision, so I just printed it out on the spot.

As I stared at the single page that emerged from the printer, I started to want to just trash the entire story. It was no good. Even given how long ago it had happened, it was too embarrassing.

I folded up that last page and slipped it into the pocket of my blazer.

Then, that moment—

“Taniguchi’s run off somewhere again. I gotta get him to write something tomorrow, even if I have to tie him to the chair. Kyon, that goes for you too. If you don’t finish soon, your editor in chief’s gonna be mad!”

Haruhi had entered the room.

And her eyes alighted upon my manuscript, which Koizumi had left on the table.

My pleas for her to stop were in vain, as Haruhi swiftly snatched up the printout. She sat at her desk and began a leisurely read.

I was split between indignation and resignation as I watched the all-powerful editor in chief’s face.

Haruhi had been grinning at first, but somewhere in the middle, her grin faded into expressionlessness. When she finished reading the last page, her expression changed again.

How strange. It was a rare thing to see Haruhi so stunned.

“This is the end?”

I nodded quietly. Nagato said nothing and continued reading the page to which her book was opened. Asahina was still out. Koizumi had left on some pretense. There was no one here who could give Haruhi any unnecessary information.

And then—

Haruhi set my manuscript on the desk, then faced me again.

And then she smirked. Just like Koizumi.

“Where’s the punch line?”

“What punch line?” I decided to play dumb.

Haruhi smiled beatifically; it was unsettling. “Surely you wouldn’t just end it there. What happened to this Miyokichi girl?”

“I guess she went on to live happily ever after, somewhere.”

“Yeah, right. C’mon, you know, don’t you?”

Haruhi’s hands were on the desk, but then she jumped clear over it, right at me. Before I could react, she grabbed my tie. Her ridiculous power was making it hard to breathe.

“If you want me to let you go, you better start talking. And it better be the truth.”

“What do you mean, the truth? It’s a story! It’s fiction! The ‘I’ in the story isn’t me; it’s the first-person narrator of the story! Same for Miyokichi!”

Haruhi’s smile got closer and closer as her strength constricted my throat. This was bad—I could really suffocate.

“Sure, keep lying,” she said sweetly. “I never for a second believed you could write a totally made-up story. At the very least, you’d have to write something that you’d heard from somebody you knew. No, my intuition tells me that no matter how you read this, it’s a true story. And it’s your true story.” Haruhi’s eyes shone crazily. “Who’s Miyokichi? What kind of relationship did she have with you?”

My tie constricted my throat more and more, and I finally confessed the truth.

“She sometimes comes over to my house for dinner, then goes home.”

“That’s all? Are you sure you’re not leaving anything out?”

Reflexively, I touched the pocket of my blazer. That was enough for Haruhi.

“Ah-ha! That’s where you’ve been hiding the rest of the manuscript, eh? Give it here.”

She was way too perceptive for her own good. I couldn’t help but be impressed. But before I could say so, Haruhi had resorted to force.

Haruhi thrust her right leg between my thighs and performed a perfect inside-leg trip, sumo-style. Where’d she learn that?

“Whoa,” I yelled.

With Haruhi leaning on me, I fell to the floor. She straddled me like I was a horse, trying to reach into my blazer to get into the inside pocket. I tried to resist.

“Hey, knock it off!”

I looked desperately to Nagato, but when her subtle, near-expressionless gaze met mine, she too seemed to be unsure what to do.

Somewhere along the line, she had opened up her own laptop.

When had that been? She’d been able to hack into and rewrite the computer club’s game program, so peeking into the contents of my laptop would be child’s play for her. Had she seen it?

“…”

Nagato watched Haruhi and me wrestle on the ground, giving assistance to neither of us.

And then—

“I’m back—Wha?!”

Enter Asahina. She sure did have an incredible sense of timing. Stunned, she looked at me on the ground, with Haruhi on top of me and evidently in the midst of some kind of sexual harassment. Who knew what was going through her head?

“I-I’m sorry! I didn’t see a thing, honest! Really!” she shouted, running away, having gotten the entirely wrong idea.

“…”

Nagato silently regarded us.