“What Nagato performed was a form of animal therapy.” Koizumi’s explanation was almost painful to listen to, but between his cheerful smile and pleasant tone, everybody seemed to be buying it. “The candle and the incense both had aromatics in them, which dogs are even more sensitive to than humans, thanks to their excellent noses. We chose the music for its relaxing qualities.”
There had to be a limit to such nonsense, but I supposed all was well, since Rousseau and Mike had actually recovered. Sakanaka’s and Higuchi’s happiness was total, and Mrs. Sakanaka was very grateful that both her dog’s and her daughter’s health had been restored, and she baked a mountain of the choux à la crème Haruhi loved so much.
Sakanaka was even happier than her mother. “It’s just incredible, Nagato! You knew stuff even the veterinarian didn’t know!”
“That’s our Yuki. She’s the SOS Brigade’s number one all-rounder,” bragged Haruhi. Nagato was busy devouring choux à la crème. “She’s read a million books, knows all kinds of things, plays the guitar, and she’s a great cook too. She’s even national level at sports!”
“It’s a good thing that folk cure was in an old book Nagato read,” said Sakanaka.
Koizumi elegantly sipped his tea, then followed that up. “There are treatments in Chinese medicine whose effectiveness science can’t explain. It seems one can’t dismiss folk remedies out of hand,” he said. I couldn’t help but think he was laying it on pretty thick.
Having served their purpose, the incense and candles were back in the bag. Shamisen, who’d likewise been used as a tool for this treatment, was in his carrier. I wanted to let him out to wander around a bit, but if he decided to sharpen his claws on any of the house’s fine furniture, a simple scolding wasn’t going to fix things, so I left him where he was. Ever since Nagato had stepped away, he’d been rattling around in the carrier meowing, but if I left him alone, I figured he’d give up and go to sleep.
The truth was that Shamisen was the one who deserved a medal; the other “tools” had been mere window dressing, though only Nagato, Koizumi, and I knew that little fact.
All Nagato had needed to do was freeze the data life-form element. That was all.
She could have frozen it within the two dogs that had contracted the “disease.” It was the simplest and most direct method, but it could also cause problems. Higuchi’s little Mike or Sakanaka’s beloved Rousseau might reach the end of his natural life, but after he passed away, the frozen data life-form would remain. We couldn’t ignore the possibility that it would then escape its frozen state and go on to cause more trouble. So we decided it would be better to place it in a form we could continuously monitor. Any organic life-form would suffice as a host—even Haruhi or me—but Nagato identified Shamisen as the one least likely to experience problems. This was a male calico that once in a while gained the ability to speak human language. I didn’t think storing a frozen cosmic life-form or two inside him was going to cause him any difficulty, and if there were any problems, I would notice immediately… so that was the plan.
As an alternative to the sigh I wanted to heave, I popped a choux à la crème into my mouth.
While Sakanaka had certainly suffered misfortune, the source of that misfortune had now been transferred into my cat. I wondered if anyone would bother feeling sorry for me.
Nagato’s apartment did allow pets, so I could leave Shamisen there with her, but convincing my sister to agree to that would take no small amount of effort, and I’d grown fond of the cat myself. You go right ahead, Shamisen. Live long enough to turn into a ghost cat yourself.
By the time we were leaving Sakanaka’s house, Rousseau and Mike had gotten so much of their energy back it was unbelievable. This delighted both Asahina and Haruhi, and they each hugged both of the dogs in turn, smiling hugely.
Before we left, Mrs. Sakanaka made us take all sorts of goodies—including all the leftover choux à la crème. The bag thrust into Nagato’s hands was especially large, and it was a good feeling to see the person who deserved the most thanks be treated so well. In the course of chatting, Higuchi (who did attend a ladies’ college) also expressed a desire to thank us materially, but Haruhi shut her down.
“It’s fine, it’s fine! We took this case on for free from the beginning. Just getting to hold Mikey here is plenty. My SOS Brigade isn’t a for-profit establishment anyway, and we don’t need money or goods to get along. The feeling we get seeing J.J. and Mikey healthy is more than enough compensation. Right, Yuki?”
Nagato said nothing, but nodded minutely.
Always maintaining his cool, Koizumi spoke to Sakanaka. “If any other dogs fall ill in a similar manner to Rousseau, please notify us. It is unlikely, but just in case.”
“I will. I’ll ask around next time I take Rousseau on a walk.” Sakanaka nodded firmly.
We parted ways with our classmate, saying we’d meet again at school. Haruhi started walking, her spirits high. Behind her, something occurred to me.
If Haruhi and Sakanaka happened to be in the same class next year, that would be an extremely good thing.
Both on the way to the station and on the train itself, Haruhi seemed to have forgotten a certain something as she happily talked about the dogs with Asahina. It would make things a lot easier for me if she didn’t remember, so I was careful not to say anything foolish.
We ended up gradually going our separate ways before arriving at the station where we usually met up. Haruhi, Nagato, and Asahina all got off one stop before there, since it was closer to their homes. And though it was barely afternoon, I was already stuffed with crème, and I also had the cat with me, so I took a pass on going into a restaurant. So the SOS Brigade’s day came to an end.
Koizumi got off at the same station as me, walking through the same turnstile.
He matched my stride, walking alongside me as I headed home. So he’d lived in this area all along, eh?
Now that the boisterous, outgoing ladies of the SOS Brigade had gone their separate ways, I walked alone with the esper, and the quiet was unnerving.
“Good work today,” said Koizumi.
I couldn’t help hearing that as a mere pleasantry, I said.
“Well, the source of the problem was extremely… problematic. We even had to enlist Shamisen’s help. Still, Nagato certainly has been useful, hasn’t she? As I recall, there was a similar problem last year. Kimidori came to us for help, and we had to save the computer club president from a data life-form. Doesn’t it seem that the clients who’ve approached us are all connected to Nagato?”
“What’re you trying to say?”
“Nagato’s membership in the SOS Brigade has become a total necessity, though that’s merely my opinion. I’d venture that you’re the one who has more things he wants to say.”
I wasn’t really doing that much thinking. My only thought was to wonder why all these things—the cave cricket, the guy we’d just dealt with—kept being attracted to Earth, like a magnet attracting iron. What explained that? Come to think of it, Nagato was the same way. But Nagato was only here to watch Haruhi—
I stopped dead in my tracks.
Haruhi.
Was that the answer? Haruhi had created the data explosion that caused the Data Overmind to send Nagato here. But that had been an active, deliberate response. But the thing that had happened with the computer club president’s room and this weird virus thing falling to Earth in a silicon lump—surely their aim wasn’t Haruhi as well. The former had come to Earth millions of years ago, for one thing.
If Haruhi were unconsciously reaching back in time and manipulating things, then that meant things had well and truly gotten out of hand. But if Asahina… if time travelers had come to this time period, then that meant—
I was trying to think about it seriously when Koizumi butted in, his timing so perfect that he must’ve either heard me muttering to myself or wanted to deliberately interrupt my train of thought.
“Do you think it’s a coincidence?” he said, repeating the unpleasant question like a waiter reading a customer’s order back to him.
I felt like I knew what he was going to say. “Just spit it out. I’ve got no intention of playing mind games with you.”
“Of all the places it could have fallen, this cosmic life-form landed here in our town and just happened to attach itself to a dog owned by a student of North High, Sakanaka, who just happened to come to the SOS Brigade for help, and we… that is to say, Nagato just happened to realize the truth and take action. If this is all the product of a series of coincidences, then the probability of it happening just so is astronomically tiny.”
It was in my nature to want to disagree with him. It wasn’t that I was on Haruhi’s side.
“It was astronomical, all right! We had to intervene with two different alien-things. If it wasn’t a coincidence, then what was it? Are you saying that Nagato set them up, just like you orchestrated those mysteries?”
“Surely not. If it were scripted, then it would either be the Data Overmind or some other alien of which we are yet unaware. What’s certain is that this did not happen because Haruhi wished it so.”
How did he know that? Wasn’t it possible that she just wanted to get in one last incident before spring break came and she had too much free time on her hands? And that in thinking that, it happened? I said.
“Haven’t I said it before? Suzumiya’s psyche is becoming more and more stable. Almost anticlimactically so. And that’s the problem.”
I stayed quiet, letting him continue. Koizumi put a finger to his lips thoughtfully.
“There’s something out there that finds a stable Suzumiya to be less interesting. Be it a data flare, a time-quake, or closed space, whatever the form—there’s something out there that wants to provoke Suzumiya’s inexplicable power into action.”
Koizumi’s smile was gradually changing. It was starting to look like Ryoko Asakura’s.
“This incident may be only an omen of something else.”
Like what? If everything were an omen, then even I could call myself a prophet and set up shop as Nostradamus II, I said.
Koizumi smirked cynically. “The timing of these extraterrestrial visits cannot be explained by coincidence. You must know. These aliens, these intelligences that hide among us—they are not limited to humanoid interfaces to the Data Overmind.”
“Tch.”
I didn’t want to do anything dramatic, but I sneered and clicked my tongue. Koizumi sometimes seemed like he wanted to cast things in the worst possible light, but I wasn’t having it. If he wanted to call Nagato a humanoid interface, fine. It was the truth.
“I’m more worried about these other aliens you’re hinting at.”
“The Agency has a variety of information sources, which keeps me aware of a variety of things. I can’t say everything, but, well, yes.” Koizumi’s smile finally returned to normal mode. “I’ll leave the other aliens to Nagato. My role is to work against the Agency’s rival organization. I have a feeling they’ll be trying something again, soon. Likewise, I’ll let Asahina do something about the other faction of time travelers.”
From Koizumi’s expression, I could tell that he wasn’t serious about that last part, but I was. The only difference was that I wasn’t thinking of our Asahina; I was thinking of the older one.
No worrying was necessary in the case of Nagato. I was entirely confident that there wasn’t a being anywhere whose willpower was greater than hers. And you, Koizumi—if it comes down to it, you’ll be running around with me. I’ll say it as many times as I have to. I won’t let you forget the promise you made on that snowy mountain.
“I remember it, of course. And even if I did forget, I’m quite certain that you’d remind me. Wouldn’t you?” He smiled pleasantly and gestured. “When the time comes.”
“Welcome home!”
When I got back to my room, my sister was sprawled out on my bed, reading my comics.
“Hey, where’d you take Shami to?”
Not answering, I let Shamisen out of the carrier. The calico immediately jumped up onto the bed, walked onto my sister’s back, and started kneading it with his paws, as though giving her a massage. She laughed, ticklish, and kicked her feet about.
“Kyon, get Shami off me! I can’t get up!”
I picked up the cat, and my sister sat up. She was a fifth grader, eleven years old, but soon she’d be in the final year of elementary school. She tossed the comic book aside and started petting Shamisen like crazy, as he curled up on the bed. She sniffed at him.
“He smells sorta sweet! What is it?”
I gave her the choux à la crème Mrs. Sakanaka had given us. Keeping an eye on my sister as she delightedly devoured them, I picked up a hardcover book that was lying on my desk.
It had been about a week earlier. I’d borrowed it from Nagato’s bookshelf as a way to cool down as final exams were wrapping up. “Got any good books that might fit my mood?” I’d asked Nagato, and after standing stiffly in front of her bookshelf for about five minutes, she’d slowly thrust this at me. I’d only gotten halfway through it, but it was just the story of a romance between a boy and girl as they go from high school to college, with no SF or mystery or fantasy elements, just an ordinary world—and in many ways, both then and now, it suited me just fine. When she grew up, Nagato shouldn’t go into aromatherapy or fortune-telling or veterinary work—she should be a librarian.
I flopped down on the bed and started reading as my sister went to the kitchen to look for something to drink, holding her second crème in hand.
I wonder how much time passed.
I’d been absorbed in the book, and when I came to, Shamisen was scratching at the door, which was his way of telling me he wanted me to open it and let him out. I normally leave it half open so he can come and go as he pleases, but my sister had closed it when she’d left.
Sticking a bookmark in the book, I opened the door for the cat. Shamisen slunk out into the hallway, pausing to turn and meow at me by way of thanks. But then he kept looking, staring at something behind me. I followed his gaze and looked back.
It was the corner of the ceiling. There was nothing. Nothing was there.
Shamisen’s wide-eyed gaze at the ceiling’s corner began, slowly, to move. The object of his stare was now the exterior wall. It was as though something invisible had been on the ceiling, but had slid across and down the wall.
“Hey.”
But Shamisen was only thus occupied for a few seconds. The only part of him that heard my call was the tip of his tail. I heard his quiet footfalls recede as he headed away, perhaps down to the kitchen after my sister to see if he could arrange for some dinner.
I closed the door most of the way but left it open wide enough so that the cat could get back in, and I thought about what I’d just seen. Shamisen’s actions weren’t especially rare. Animals often reacted to small movements that humans ignored, their ears pricking at minute sounds coming in from outside.
But. What if.
What if there had been something there, invisible to humans, that Shamisen could see. What if that invisible whatever-it-was had been stuck to my ceiling, then crawled over and down my wall. What then?
—Do souls exist?
—That is classified.
What if millions, or tens of millions of years ago, data life-forms had fallen to Earth and chose not dogs as their hosts, but humans? Was there a non-zero possibility that a human would not fall ill as Rousseau had, but instead would coexist with it? Was it too much of a leap to wonder if that was the source of early humans’ great leap in intelligence?
If that were so, then perhaps the organic life-forms that so intrigued Nagato’s boss could begin to amass knowledge. Not on their own, but with the unwitting help of extraterrestrials.
It would’ve been very strange if I’d figured something out that the Data Overmind had overlooked, but just as mitochondria had once been independent organisms, what if these spiritual symbionts had improved the mental capacity of ancient apes, and had been passed down through to present day? The logic made sense—
“Sure, whatever.”
It was totally unlike me to be thinking about this stuff. Humans couldn’t imagine stuff that was beyond their own abilities, after all. Especially not me. I’d leave pondering difficult problems to Koizumi. Just like he left dealing with aliens to Nagato, I’d stay in the listener’s position when it came to this stuff. I understood, too, the nature of the condescending promise he’d made. If it comes to that, I may switch sides, he’d said. Consider it a warning. The many times he’d said such things seemed like nothing more than him carefully building an alibi.
Sorry, Koizumi, but alibis are doomed to be destroyed. Cheap, shallow excuses aren’t gonna fly with me. Or with Haruhi.
And anyway. Even if Koizumi’s ability to move was ended by whatever intrigues the Agency got up to, I still had other options. If nothing else, I could prostrate myself before the all-knowing, all-powerful Tsuruya. If that brilliant, cheerful upperclassman devoted her grinning shrewdness to covert maneuvering, even the Agency’s top brass would be in real trouble.
How I would do such things, or having done such things, what would happen—I hadn’t devoted so much as a millisecond of brain power to that. I’d worry about that later.
“… Worrying about those things really isn’t my specialty.”
But whatever. I couldn’t be anybody besides myself, and my consciousness was mine alone. Mine! All mine!
And if somebody wanted it back, well, tough—the statute of limitations had long since passed on that one.
As I was pondering such pointless nonsense, my cell phone, which I’d left on my desk, began to vibrate. I picked it up, wondering if the call was going to be delivering some kind of future warning—but it was just Haruhi.
“What’s up?”
“Hey, Kyon. I forgot something important,” said Haruhi, getting right to the point of her phone call without any preamble. “It’s great that we cured J.J. and Mike, but why do you think they caught that weird sickness in the first place? What I think is that the two of them really did see a ghost, and the shock made them sick!”
See, Koizumi? Do you see why I was worrying about the post-incident cleanup? It’s because she thinks about stuff like this.
“I bet it was there on that path we walked until about a week ago. My guess is that it still hasn’t cut its ties with the mortal world. It’s probably turned into a wandering spirit, just going all over the place!”
“I don’t know anything about ghosts, but you should just let it go to Heaven already.”
“That’s why we’re having an all-hands meeting tomorrow! This time we’re definitely gonna get a picture with that ghost.”
“And just how are you gonna line up with a ghost, huh?”
“We can’t do it during the day, I bet. We’ll do it at night. We’ll find a place where ghosts probably congregate, and we’ll take a bunch of pictures. They’ll have to show up on at least one or two of ’em, right?”
Haruhi unilaterally informed me of the meeting time and hung up before bothering to ask if I had plans on Sunday. I had no doubt that seconds later, she was contacting the other brigade members. Apparently tomorrow’s mysterious phenomena patrol would take the form of searching for haunted spots in the dead of night.
I put my phone down and gazed again at the corner of my room.
Sakanaka’s ghost problem had, via her dog’s illness, ended up in Nagato’s jurisdiction. I knew very well that a ghost hadn’t been involved at all, as did Koizumi. But the notion had evidently lingered in Haruhi’s head, such that a few hours later, she remembered it. Our esteemed brigade chief was now hoping not for alien whatever-based life-forms from space, but bona fide ghosts.
In any case, I’d entrust Koizumi with the job of putting marks on the city map. If we actually managed to take a real spectral photograph, I’d let him come up with a pseudo-scientific excuse too. I planned to take on the weighty job of walking through the night air with Asahina, letting her cling to me at every little noise.
Our bizarre brigade, walking all over creation snapping pictures in the dark. Any outsider would think we were the strange ones, wandering around trying to take pictures of invisible ghosts. Nevertheless, the weather would soon be turning warmer, and we could probably explain away our behavior by citing spring fever. In the worst-case scenario, we could always get Asahina to dress up as a shrine maiden and chant the Heart Sutra. It’d be an exorcism Haruhi-style.
Even if ghosts did exist, I doubted they would be swarming around such that you could run into them just by walking around. It wasn’t like Haruhi actually wanted to meet one.
Having watched her for close to a year, I was sure of that much. What she liked best was not ghosts, but the action of searching for ghosts with her friends.
And for my part, well—
“I guess I wouldn’t mind if one showed up,” I muttered to the place on the ceiling where Shamisen had looked, then went back to reading my book. The reality portrayed in that book was far more ordinary than the one that surrounded me.
But that didn’t mean I was jealous of the more realistic reality.
Not now, anyway.