Be all that as it may, Haruhi sat at her brigade chief’s desk and was quiet for a time. At first she used the computer—doing some web surfing was part of her routine. Of course, the first thing she did upon opening the browser was to load up the SOS Brigade’s crappy site, thereby increasing the hit counter by one. She considered this one of her duties. She’d then browse through paranormal activity sites, occasionally installing random pieces of freeware she found, such that I had no idea what was or was not on the computer anymore. Occasionally she’d run into a problem, and it was inevitably the computer club president who’d be called in to help. I guess it was nice to have the right man for the job.
The lovely, pre-spring afternoon, with everybody assembled and relaxing, just a little bit tired from the sports tournament—it felt pretty nice.
My Othello game was going well, and Asahina’s tea was delicious. I would be able to pass the rest of the day uneventfully and go home without incident.
—Or at least, that would’ve been nice, but such peaceful days do not last forever.
Back to the beginning.
Yes, that was what I found myself wanting to mutter when the client came right into the SOS Brigade.
That’s right, a client. It wasn’t somebody we’d arranged to have come, nor was it the result of one of Haruhi’s unplanned fancies.
After knocking, the client timidly entered the room, like a tiny deer invited to a bear’s den, then said something calculated to delight Haruhi.
There was a place near her house where ghosts were rumored to emerge, she said. She wanted to know if we could look into it.
“Ghosts?!” Haruhi parroted, her eyes shining. “Emerging, you say?”
“Yes,” said Sakanaka, nodding seriously. “It’s a rumor in my neighborhood. That there are ghosts.”
Sakanaka… I couldn’t remember her first name, but she was a classmate of Haruhi’s and mine in Class 5. Sakanaka sat down on the folding chair we used for guests, accepting some tea from Asahina, her face clouded as she explained.
“It’s only recently that the story started. Maybe three days ago. I’d been thinking something weird was happening…”
She tilted the guest-use-only teacup to her lips, looking bemusedly around the room—particularly at the clothing rack containing all of Asahina’s costumes.
I thought back to Haruhi’s volleyball matches. On the girls’ A team there had been a particular setter who’d supported Haruhi the attacker very well—it was this girl, Sakanaka.
To be perfectly honest, she’d never made much of an impression on me in class. Or rather, the most impression-leaving person in Class 5 had been Asakura, but she’s gone now, and nobody had really risen up to take her place. I wasn’t even sure who our class rep was. When I thought about it that way, Taniguchi and Kunikida were closer to Haruhi than the rest of our class was. To put it in terms of distance from Earth, they were Mars, but she was Uranus.
However, Haruhi didn’t care about details like intra-class distance one bit.
“I’d just love to hear the details. Ghosts… yes, ghosts. Sakanaka, are you absolutely sure there are ghosts? If so, it is no overstatement to say that the SOS Brigade must unquestionably spring into action!”
She looked ready to slap on an armband that said, “Paranormal Investigator,” head to the scene, and start stringing up black-and-yellow DO NOT ENTER tape.
“Wait. Please, Suzumiya—wait!” said Sakanaka hastily, waving her hands. “I’m not positive there are ghosts. It just seems… ghost-ish, I guess? Something like that. It’s only a rumor. But I do think that spot is strange…”
Sakanaka was now the focus of everyone else in the room, including Nagato. Suddenly realizing our collective gaze was on her, she shrank back.
“Um… maybe I shouldn’t have said anything…?”
“No, you totally should have, Sakanaka!” shouted Haruhi. “Whether they be demons or vengeful spirits, suicides or playful ghosts, I don’t care! If it means I can meet a ghost, I’ll buy a ticket anywhere. Anyway, I can’t hear a story like that and then just sit around doing nothing.”
Of course, she pretty much never sat around doing nothing, I pointed out.
“Kyon, I’ll ask you to keep your smart-aleck mouth shut for once. We’re talking about ghosts here! Don’t you want to see one? Have you ever seen one?”
I had not. And I wanted to continue that forever, I said.
With the energy of a kindergartener who’d woken up from her afternoon nap only half an hour earlier, Haruhi said, “But if one happened to appear in front of me, I’d really want to talk to it a little!”
Sorry. I wouldn’t.
I looked away from Haruhi’s burning gaze, turning my eyes to Sakanaka, who seemed like she wanted to say something, then kept suddenly closing her mouth.
Why had Sakanaka brought this ghost case to us all of a sudden, right here at the very end of the school year? She was only our second client. After Kimidori… after Kimidori had come to us for the consultation session that led to the cave-cricket incident, I’d torn down our “clients wanted” poster and thrown it in the garbage, which seemed to have worked, since we hadn’t had another student coming and mistaking us for a general-purpose troubleshooting agency. Had Sakanaka seen the poster while it was up on the bulletin board and remembered it all this time? If so, she should probably have been using that excellent memory to remember something a little more worthwhile.
I said as much, and much to my surprise, Sakanaka shook her head.
“No, that’s not it. I remembered something else. Someone had handed it to me, and I hadn’t thrown it away; I just put it in a drawer in my house. That was what reminded me…”
Sakanaka produced a single piece of paper from her book bag. It was old and crumpled, and when Asahina saw what it was, she backed away from it like a vampire from a cross.
“Th-that’s…”
It was the source of Asahina’s trauma and the fruit of the SOS Brigade’s very first activity, despite being a simple flyer produced by wasting school copier resources.
It contained the SOS Brigade’s declaration of founding.
This was what I was sure was written on the flyer:
“We, the SOS Brigade, are searching for the world’s mysteries. People who’ve experienced mysterious phenomena in the past, are currently experiencing mysterious phenomena, or plan to experience mysterious phenomena in the future should come to us for a consultation. We will help you find resolution. It’s true.”
Two bunny girls had stood at the school gate to pass out that flyer as part of Haruhi’s effort to seize the world’s mysteries.
This was ridiculous. To think the seed she planted with that flyer would eventually bear fruit.
And just when the school year was about to end without incident too. Who had wished for this curtain call? We didn’t have an encore prepared. This was no time to be going back to the beginning.
As though she’d picked up on Asahina’s and my feelings, Sakanaka sounded uneasy. “… This is the SOS Brigade, right? It’s pretty famous now… That’s what you and your friends do, right, Suzumiya? Like in horror movies and stuff.”
Sorry, Sakanaka. We didn’t have anybody who specialized in horror. All we had was an alien bookworm, a mystery-loving esper, and a time traveler who was pretty easy on the eyes. If we had a genre, it was probably sci-fi. And even that much would be beyond me.
I’d fallen into silence. Haruhi spoke up against me, more and more excited. “See, Kyon! People are paying attention. It wasn’t a waste at all. I knew those flyers were a good idea.”
I wondered about that. I had a suspicion that Haruhi herself had forgotten she’d made them until now.
“Cheer up, Sakanaka! You’re a classmate, so we’ll take on this case for free.”
To be completely truthful, no matter who came to us with a case, Haruhi would never ask for money. For her, the greatest reward was the fact of having a mystery to solve at all. She was satisfied as soon as the client walked in the door. I knew that perfectly well thanks to the cave-cricket incident last year.
“Ghosts, huh?” Haruhi smiled lazily. “The last thing we’ll do is banish them, but before we do that we’ll need to hear everything about them. We’re gonna need a camera for documentation and a video camera for interviews.”
She was getting really into it, totally ignoring me and the other brigade members. This was bad. At this rate, ghosts might actually start appearing. Except what about Sakanaka’s story?
Ghost sightings were the result of people’s easily confused sense of vision being mistaken, or hearing something that was just actually dry grass under a willow tree rustling. If a real ghost actually showed up, it’d mean the upending of all of humanity’s accumulated scientific knowledge.
Even Sakanaka wasn’t sure. “Please, just wait a minute,” she said. “I don’t know for sure that it’s a ghost. I might be wrong. I just can’t think of anything else…” Her resolve was starting to sound half-baked.
“Hey, Haruhi,” I interrupted hastily, since Haruhi had already started hurrying toward the equipment closet. “Calm down, okay? Let’s listen to what Sakanaka has to say. The situation isn’t that simple.”
“Don’t get in my way,” grumbled Haruhi, but she returned to her desk and folded her arms. Neither Sakanaka nor I could hide our relief. Now I finally had time to check Nagato’s and Koizumi’s expressions.
I probably shouldn’t have looked.
Neither of them looked any different from normal. In other words, Koizumi had his usual meaningless smile, and Nagato’s expression was totally blank. Like always.
However, both of them were watching Sakanaka, apparently keenly interested in her. For some reason I got the sense that matching words were written on both their faces.
—Ghosts? What is this person talking about?
Or something along those lines.
Now then, while I’m giving my views on things, I should say that I don’t believe in ghosts. I’m firmly convinced that those “paranormal documentaries” you see on TV are nothing more than well-crafted entertainment.
Of course, this conviction is like a house built in the sand, given that I’d found myself stuck in a group with an alien, a time traveler, and an esper, and spent a lot of time getting involved in all sorts of supernatural nonsense.
So somewhere in my mind I felt it was entirely possible that a ghost, phantom, or wraith might decide to pop out of somewhere if it got the notion to do so. But just as I’ve never met a person from another dimension, I’ve never so much as said hello to a ghost, and since there’s no point in worrying about a being you’ve never met, I sprinted away from such concerns. If they were going to come, then let them come! But I wasn’t going to go looking for them. Does my lot in life make any more sense now?
But really, all I could do was act aloof. And as for the other members—
“Ghosts, you say? How interesting.” Koizumi put a finger to his chin, apparently deep in thought.
“Um… is that, er…?” Asahina looked imploringly at the client with questioning eyes.
Nagato, as usual:
“…”
It seemed that, save Haruhi, the entire brigade felt the same way I did—neither Nagato, Koizumi, nor Asahina really had much of a serious expression on their faces upon hearing the word “ghost.” Asahina in particular looked as if she barely had any conception of what the term meant. Perhaps traditions like religion and ancestor worship don’t exist in the future. I’d have to ask about that later. Not that she would tell me.
I might not have been the most outgoing person in the world, but it wasn’t like the only people in Class 5 I talked to were Haruhi, Taniguchi, and Kunikida; I exchanged small talk with plenty of my other classmates, although admittedly the range of communication I used was somewhat more constricted when that classmate was a girl.
Groping around the inside of my brain, I could find no memories of having talked to Sakanaka, so it was hard to be sure, but I had the feeling that she wasn’t exactly a conversationalist.
So I’ll just relate the highlights of the conversation.
“Um, the first time I noticed something was strange was with Rousseau,” said Sakanaka, facing Haruhi.
“Rousseau?” said Haruhi, brows knitting.
“Yes. Rousseau is my family’s dog.”
That dog sure had a hell of a name.
“I take him for a walk every morning and evening. When I first got him, I used to take him on all sorts of different routes, but now I do the same walk every time. I’ve just totally gotten used to it—”
That wasn’t really important, I pointed out.
“Sorry. But it might be important.”
Which part, I wanted to know.
“Shut up, Kyon,” said Haruhi. “Sakanaka, please continue.”
“I was on the same route as always, and Rousseau was happily walking along, but th-then…” She stumbled over her words, speaking quietly. Was she performing a ghost story now?
“About a week ago, Rousseau started hating that path. He’d pull on the leash, like this—”
Sakanaka made a pose like an animal clinging to the ground. It looked just like Shamisen did when he didn’t want to move from a warm spot.
“He’d get like this, and he wouldn’t budge. He’d be fine halfway but then suddenly stop. It seemed so strange. And it was always like that. So I changed the route I used.”
Having gotten that far in her story, Sakanaka sipped some tea.
So her dog with the philosopher’s name had suddenly started hating the route by which he was walked. So where did ghosts enter the story?
My question was Haruhi’s question, evidently.
“What about the ghosts?”
“Like I said.” Sakanaka set down her teacup. “I don’t know if there are ghosts. It’s just a rumor.”
I told her we’d like to hear the source of the rumor.
“There are many. Lots of people have dogs in my neighborhood. I often chat with them when I’m out walking Rousseau, and he’s happy to see his friends, so I’ve gotten to know a lot of people in the area. The first was Mrs. Anan with her two shelties. She said the same thing, that when she walks them, she doesn’t even try to go down that street. Because her dogs started refusing to go.”
But humans could walk by without feeling anything? I asked.
“That’s right. I didn’t feel anything weird.”
We were getting off topic, I said. What was important was the notion of ghosts.
“Right, yes.” Sakanaka’s face clouded. “Since that day, none of the neighborhood dogs will approach that area. All the owners are talking about it. There used to be some stray cats there too, but they’ve all disappeared…”
Haruhi was listening carefully. She had a pen and paper as though to take notes, but when I sneaked a look, all she’d drawn were some scrawled dogs and cats. Then, she seemed to seize upon the rough logical progression.
“So what you’re saying is that there’s a ghost in the area, which is why animals won’t go near it? That only cats and dogs can see it, and it’s invisible to humans?”
“Yes. That’s the story that’s going around.” Sakanaka nodded firmly. “There’s another thing that bothers me. There’s a girl named Higuchi, and she has a bunch of dogs. Her puppies are friends with my dog.” She sounded terrified as she continued. “But one of them has gotten sick recently. He wasn’t out for a walk this morning. I didn’t have time to hear the details, but apparently he’s been taken to an animal hospital.” Sakanaka implored Haruhi with serious eyes. “Don’t you think that sounds like a ghost, Suzumiya?”
“Hmm, well…” Haruhi rested her chin on her folded arms, narrowing her eyes as she thought about it. She seemed to be thinking that there wasn’t much to this story, and that it would be a lot more interesting if there were ghosts involved. “At the present, I can’t be sure.”
It was a surprisingly prudent answer coming from Haruhi, but then the corner of her mouth quirked.
“But there’s a large possibility it is! They do say that dogs and cats can see things humans can’t. And maybe Mr. Whatever’s dog saw a ghost and got sick, then passed out from the shock.”
I couldn’t exactly raise my hand and shout, “Objection!” to this. After all, I saw Shamisen staring intently at a corner of the room with nothing in it all the time. I’m pretty sure most cat owners would agree with me, but who knows. But unlike dogs, even if a cat did see a ghost, it wouldn’t fall ill from the shock. The cat owners out there know what I’m talking about.
As I was summoning the memory of the calico cat at my house, Haruhi jumped out of her chair. “I’ve got the gist of things.”
The only “gist” I had was that there was an area that cats and dogs refused to enter, I said.
“That’s more than enough. There’s nothing more to be gained in hypothesizing. We should head immediately to the scene. There must be something there that’s making animals sense danger—like a ghost, ghoul, or demon.”
Or something even worse. Imagining the formless monsters that roamed communistically around nineteenth century Europe gave me a chill. Depending on how we communicated with it, we might be able to lead a ghost to enlightenment, whereas with a ghoul or a demon we might need to find a Ghostbuster or a demon postbox. But what if some unnameable cosmic horror emerged to possess us—what then?
I naturally looked toward Nagato when the thought occurred to me.
Our last client had been Kimidori, the student council secretary, and she’d been connected to Nagato. Perhaps Sakanaka was too…
But I quickly abandoned this notion, because Nagato was looking up from her book, her interest surprisingly drawn by Sakanaka’s story. On her pale white face was an expression only I could read—I was quite proud of myself for this. Her expression was shifted one micron toward looking contemplative. Which meant that the story Sakanaka was sharing with us was an irregularity, from Nagato’s perspective.
I took the opportunity to check Koizumi’s expression. When I caught his eye, he shrugged minutely and smirked. Annoyingly, he seemed to have discerned exactly what I wanted to say. This isn’t my doing, his posture conveyed, and I hated myself for knowing Koizumi well enough to read his body language so well.
As for the third party’s state, it went without saying. Everything about Asahina broadcasted the fact that she had nothing to do with this—she could barely keep up with the conversation. Even if the source of the ghost-whatever had something to do with time travel, Asahina wasn’t involved—excluding Asahina the Elder, of course.
“All right, everyone,” Haruhi said spiritedly. “We’re heading out! Bring the camera, and… well, I guess we don’t have any ghost-capturing equipment. I wish we had some paper talismans with Tangut writing on them.”
“What we need is a city map,” added Koizumi, aiming his smile at Sakanaka. “I’d like to do some interviewing. Can I ask for the cooperation of your dog, Rousseau?”
It looked like Koizumi was on board. We hadn’t found any mysterious phenomena during our citywide patrols, but now we had a specific spot that we could jump straight into.
“Sure.” Sakanaka nodded at Koizumi’s handsome face. “If it’s during one of Rousseau’s walks.”
Asahina blinked her eyes in surprise. “Oh, um, I had better get changed.” She hastily smoothed her maid outfit. Asahina seemed to be worried that if she didn’t hurry and change, she’d get dragged out wearing what she had on, and Haruhi was certainly capable of doing so.
“Good point, Mikuru. You do need to change. That outfit’s not suited to this at all,” said Haruhi reasonably.
“N-no, it’s not,” said Asahina, sounding relieved as she reached up to take the kerchief off her head.
Which meant that it was time for Koizumi and me to make ourselves scarce. Whether or not I got to, I definitely wasn’t going to let Koizumi get a free peek.
I was turning to leave the room when Haruhi said something unexpected.
“But you’re not going to change into your school uniform.”
“Wha?” Asahina made a noise of confusion as I walked past her, as Haruhi strode over to the hanger rack. She cheerily selected an outfit and pulled it out. “Here, this one! This is perfect for dealing with ghosts, right?”
The outfit that Haruhi had produced involved a white robe and scarlet hakama trousers. It was one of the classic costumes of old Japan.
Asahina couldn’t help backing away.
“Um… that is…”
“It’s a shrine maiden!” Haruhi smiled the special smile she reserved for when she’d had a really great idea, pushing the outfit against Asahina. “This is perfect for exorcisms! I don’t have any priest robes, and even if I did I’d have to shave your head to make you look right in ’em, and I’d feel kinda bad about that. What do you think, Kyon? I don’t pick costumes without thinking about it! Look, this is gonna come in handy!”
I wondered whether a maid or a shrine maiden would draw more attention leaving the school, but before I could voice my reaction, Koizumi and I were shooed out of the clubroom door and into the hallway.
From inside the room, I heard the familiar sound of Haruhi’s delight at making Asahina change, mingled with Asahina’s adorable cries of dismay at the same.
I figured I might as well take the opportunity to ask.
“Koizumi.”
“Yes? I’ll just say up front that there’s nothing obvious that comes to mind when I hear the word ‘ghost.’ ” Koizumi brushed his hair aside with a finger, smiling placidly.
“So what the hell is it?”
“I can’t say anything for certain at the moment. It would be pure conjecture.”
Conjecture’s fine, I told him. Just give it to me.
“The situation is that all the neighborhood dogs have started avoiding a certain location. So here’s a quiz for you: what is it that animals, and dogs in particular, are much better at than humans?”
“Sense of smell.”
“Exactly. There is a possibility that somewhere along the course where Sakanaka used to walk her dog, something that gives off a scent that dogs hate is buried.” Koizumi pushed a wisp of hair behind his ear and continued, his smile never wavering. “One possibility is that there’s some kind of chemical weapon in the area. It might have fallen there while being transported by a paramilitary organization.”
That was ridiculous. They wouldn’t carry chemical weapons on the back of a little truck where it could easily fall off, I pointed out.
“Another possibility would be radiation. Of course, I’m not sure how sensitive animals are to atomic radiation.”
Forget all this talk about chemical weapons. An unexploded bomb seemed more likely to me, I said.
“Indeed, that is also possible. Or if we’re speaking more realistically, perhaps a bear came down out of the mountains and is hibernating in the area, and the dogs can sense that it’s about to awaken…”
No way. There might be wild boars in the mountains around town, but there weren’t any bears, I said.
“Essentially,” Koizumi said, folding his arms elegantly, “given the vague information we have now, we can think of any number of possibilities. The one and only way to see through to the truth will be a combination of gathering all the evidence, using logical inference and lateral thinking, and adding a little bit of gut instinct to direct our actions. The most important one of those is having definite information. Have we gotten all the clues available? Being sure of that is no easy task.”
If he wanted to give a lecture on mystery-solving methods, he should’ve been doing it at the mystery club. We weren’t going to figure anything out by just thinking about it. With something like this, it was just as Haruhi said—we were going to have to go to the scene and look for anything strange. It’d be obvious once we got there. If she decided to start digging, we might wind up excavating ancient coins from back when Himiko was the first empress of Japan, which would bring archaeologists from miles around—I didn’t really want to think about that, but anyway, if he wanted to do another mystery plot, he should wait until our next club trip, I told him.
“Revealing the truth via pure deduction is the epitome of the mystery genre. There’s no fun in an incident whose cause is obvious upon quick investigation.”
As he was speaking incomprehensibly, Koizumi removed himself from leaning on the door to the clubroom and stepped aside.
At the same time, the door opened, and through it bravely strode our brigade chief, dragging Asahina behind her.
“Preparations complete! You look great, Mikuru! You’ll be able to banish any spirit you like with this on!”
“Mmn…”
Out came Shrine Maiden Asahina, timidly looking down as she stepped forth. I hadn’t seen this event since the hinamatsuri event on March 3.
I didn’t know when it had been made, but wearing that priestess outfit, Asahina was even carrying a ceremonial staff. If she waved it around and chanted the appropriate prayers, unquiet spirits weren’t the only things that would be sent to heaven. She was adorable.
Behind them followed Sakanaka, shaking her head as if to say, “You didn’t have to go to these lengths,” and then Nagato, herself walking like a ghost that happened not to be transparent. Our preparations to depart the school were complete.
I wanted to think that there wouldn’t be any actual exorcisms, mostly because of the person on whom we’d foisted the duty. If the part-time shrine maiden cosplayer waved her staff around and actually pulled it off, I’d feel like we’d owe the actual sorcerers and diviners of the Heian period an apology.
Heck, spring was here. This time of year could drive cats and dogs a little crazy. Who’s to say humans were any different?
At least, that’s what I would’ve liked to think.
Unfortunately, when Haruhi gets that look of anticipation on her face, the odds of us getting wrapped up in something totally bizarre are very good. On top of that, lately Koizumi, Asahina, and Nagato had been bringing their own incidents to the fore, and it was enough to make me think that maybe I should be causing some trouble of my own.
Of course, such thoughts were folly, as I was the only member of the brigade without ties to some crazy organization.
As I thought about today’s events, I considered that the girl who’d brought this case to us seemed like a totally normal, dog-loving girl no matter how I looked at her, and I simply couldn’t imagine her dreaming up a prank where she led us to a haunted street, so there was no way an actual ghost would show up. If there really were obvious spirits that Asahina could banish wandering around the city, I got the feeling that they would’ve made it to the clubroom long ago. And for one thing, this was the wrong season for ghosts, anyway; the Bon Festival wouldn’t happen for another few months.
Such were my thoughts as I rested my eyes by gazing at Asahina in her shrine-maiden costume.
Man.
I never thought for one second that something even harder to explain than a ghost would appear in front of us.
To get to Sakanaka’s house, we walked down the hill from school to the local train stop, got on the train, switched to a main line, and took it another stop to her neighborhood. It was the opposite direction from the station the SOS Brigade used as its usual meeting point, so I wasn’t familiar with the area, but as I recalled, it was a pretty high-class residential district.
Even people who didn’t live there knew the place’s name was famous for having a lot of celebrities and so on, from what I’d heard, and it proved that Sakanaka was a real high-class girl. Her father was an executive at some construction or architecture firm, and her brother was studying medicine at a big-name university, and it was hard for me to believe I was learning this about a classmate of mine so late in the term.
“It’s really not that big of a deal!” said Sakanaka on the train, waving her hands humbly. “The company where my dad works isn’t that big, and my big brother’s at a public university.”
That just said to me he was smart enough not to waste his money. But anyway—
Sakanaka’s brother got called “big brother” by his younger sister. It made me feel pleasantly nostalgic, hearing those words.
I thought of my little sister’s giggling face and looked around the train.
Since we were all on our way to Sakanaka’s home, we were traveling in a group. I got the feeling that our group—the entire SOS Brigade plus one classmate—was just a bit too big for people to think we were just friends heading home, but we still didn’t stick out too badly on the train. For one thing, the train was filled with other students commuting home. Students from Koyoen Academy were especially numerous—honestly, the train was packed with ’em—and we North High students were forced into a corner by their private-school girl powers and their curious gazes.
“Umm…”
The reason for the stares was Asahina, who was on the verge of tears as she hung on to a strap in the train car.
To be fair, there was no way a shrine maiden on a crowded train car wasn’t gonna get stared at, and when you consider that even a real shrine maiden doesn’t commute in the white kimono and crimson trousers, it would’ve been weirder if she weren’t getting any attention.
Of course, Asahina had ridden a train and run around a shopping area wearing a bunny-girl costume in the past, and I hoped she found the lack of exposed skin at least some consolation.
Of course, the culprit responsible for forcing Asahina into the shrine-maiden clothing, Haruhi, was totally ignorant of the curious gazes of her fellow train riders.
“Mikuru, spells or chants to use on evil spirits will probably come in handy—do you know any?”
“… N-no, I don’t…” Asahina answered quietly, curling in on herself even more.
“I guess I’m not surprised,” said Haruhi, who in contrast to the humiliated Asahina was totally cheerful. She turned to Nagato. “Have you read anything about demon-banishing or exorcism in those books of yours?”
“…”
Nagato had been staring out the window at the passing scenery, but she slowly inclined her head. She moved it back, taking about two seconds to do so.
I felt like I understood what she was trying to say, and so did Haruhi.
“Huh. Okay,” Haruhi said agreeably. “I guess it’s no surprise you don’t remember those kinds of details. But don’t worry; I know one, so I’ll just have you chant that one, okay, Mikuru?”
What was she gonna make Mikuru chant? If it wound up summoning something weird, she’d better be the one to take responsibility for it and not Mikuru, I said.
“That’s stupid,” said Haruhi delightedly. “If I knew something that awesome, I would’ve used it a long time ago! No, actually I tried it in middle school. I bought a book of black magic and did just what it said. But nothing happened. In my experience, everything written in books you can get via the usual distribution channels is worthless. Oh, I’ve got a great idea.”
For just a moment, I thought I saw a lightbulb flicker on in the air above Haruhi’s head. Apparently she’d thought of another terrible idea.
“Next time we go on a city patrol, we should visit some used bookstores and antique shops. We’ll target dingy old shops with suspicious owners and look for real magic books or ceremonial artifacts. Like the kind where a genie appears when you rub it!”
That’d be all well and good if it were the kind that just grants your three wishes, then disappears politely back into its bottle, but knowing Haruhi, we’d release some kind of dark god that would try to plunge the world into terror. Somehow all this talk of banishing evil spirits had turned into the precise opposite of that, and all I could do was quietly hope that all the vintage bookstores and antique shops in the city would close before she discovered them.
Standing next to me, Koizumi chuckled as though he’d read my mind. Since both his hands were full—one with his own book bag and one with Asahina’s—he wasn’t able to hold on to a strap, and thus swayed with the train’s movement. Incidentally I also carried an extra bag over my shoulder; it contained Asahina’s school uniform. I wanted her to at least be able to change into it before she went home. If she’d left it in the clubroom, she’d be forced to either come to school tomorrow wearing the shrine-maiden costume or skip school entirely. And if she skipped school, who was going to make tea in the clubroom?
“Do not worry,” said Koizumi easily. “While I might not be able to make tea, Asahina’s school commute is simple. I can simply send a car to take her to and from,” he continued, shutting me up.
I imagined the “car” he mentioned would be something connected with the Agency. If it were just Arakawa, that would be fine, but I got a strange feeling from Mori, whose age I’d never been able to determine. It was enough to make me wonder if she were actually Koizumi’s superior. And I’d feel even less comfortable if it were someone besides those two. And while I still owed the Agency for helping out when Asahina’d been kidnapped, I didn’t want to owe them any more, I said.
Koizumi chuckled again. “I’ll make sure to tell Mori about that. I’m sure it will make her grin.”
The train bumped and swayed, and then began to slow. Our station would be coming up soon.
Now was not the time to be worrying about the organizational map of the Agency, nor the agenda of Haruhi’s next citywide patrol.
I wondered what we would find on Sakanaka’s dog’s walking route.
Once we disembarked from the train, we wound up heading back toward the hills, led by Sakanaka. However, unlike the road that led to North High, it was a comparatively less steep city street, and everybody we saw walking on it was somehow fashionable. Fortunately, our group with its shrine maiden did not have to answer any unpleasant questions from an overzealous police officer as we made our way to Sakanaka’s house, which took about fifteen minutes.
“Here we are.”
Looking at the building to which Sakanaka pointed so easily was enough to make me mutter a few choice words regarding the unfortunate circumstances of my own birth—that’s how grand of a house it was. Everything about the three-story building exuded an aura of “a wealthy person lives here,” from the outer walls to the entryway to the open, grassy lawn.
While it didn’t have the magnitude of sheer area that Tsuruya’s purely Japanese-style mansion has, even a common high school student like me could feel its modern grandeur. There was a security company’s label next to the family nameplate, and two very nice domestic cars were parked under a roofed garage, with space left over for a third. I wondered how many good deeds I would have to perform to be reborn into a place like this.
As I was standing there feeling sort of discouraged, Sakanaka pushed open the front gate and beckoned Haruhi inside. Haruhi being Haruhi, she strode on in as if she belonged there, with Nagato, Koizumi, and Asahina following. I brought up the rear.
“Wait just a moment.” Sakanaka produced a key from her book bag, slotting it into the keyhole of the door to the house’s entryway. The door had three separate locks. “It’s kind of a pain,” said Sakanaka as she unlocked them with practiced ease. I wondered if nobody was home, but no—evidently her mother was in. I guess they just tended to keep the doors locked.
Haruhi looked out over the yard. “Where’s the dog?”
“Mmm, he’ll be here in a second.”
No sooner had Sakanaka opened the door—
“Arf!” cried the white ball of fur that came bounding out the front door. He wagged his short tail like crazy as he jumped up at Sakanaka’s skirt.
“Wah… He’s so cute…” Asahina squatted down, her eyes shining. The white dog put his paw in her offered hand, then ran circles around the shrine maiden, round eyes gleaming. I had no doubt that there was a certificate somewhere of his purebred lineage.
“Rousseau, sit.”
The well-trained dog sat immediately upon hearing his master’s command. Asahina rubbed Rousseau’s head. “Um, can I hold him?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
Asahina clumsily picked up the little dog, and little Rousseau whiffled while licking this new person’s face. If I could be reborn as a dog like this in my next life, being a dog wouldn’t be so bad.
“This is Rousseau? He’s like a little battery-powered toy! What kind of dog is he?” asked Haruhi, petting the head of the well-bred and well-mannered dog that Asahina held.
“He’s a West Highland White Terrier, I believe,” said Koizumi, beating Sakanaka to the tongue-twisting breed name in a shameless attempt to pander to her.
“You know quite a bit,” said Sakanaka, looking down fondly at the little guy Asahina held. “Isn’t he cute?”
He was pretty cute. With his curly white fur and partially hidden black eyes, he looked like a stuffed animal. In breeding and social caste, he was far removed indeed from the former alley cat that wandered around my house these days. Although Shamisen did have his virtues, as a cat.
Nagato stared intently at the white terrier for around ten seconds, as though she herself were Shamisen, but eventually seemed to lose interest in him and turned her gaze elsewhere. Hmm, it seemed that the number of things in which she was interested was low, and this dog was not among them.
“C’mon, Mikuru, how long are you going to hog him for? I wanna play with him too!”
At Haruhi’s words, Asahina reluctantly handed over Rousseau, who seemed to be excited at the prospect of so many new people, and he leaped into Haruhi’s arms. Her way of holding him was rather clumsy too, but he seemed not to care, wagging his tail anyway.
“He’s so fluffy! Aren’t you, Jean-Jacques?”
C’mon, Haruhi, don’t go giving other people’s dogs nicknames, I wanted to say, but before I could—
“Ha ha! Suzumiya, that’s the same nickname my dad uses on him.”
Somehow Haruhi had managed to have the same sense of humor as Sakanaka’s father, and she unconcernedly lifted the dog-with-a-philosopher’s-name above her head. “So, Jean-Jacques here sniffed something out along his walking route, did he? Is that right?”
She was addressing the dog, but of course he didn’t answer and instead merely wagged his tail. His owner nodded.
“Yes. Well, but I don’t know if it’s anything mysterious or not. It’s not just Rousseau, though, it’s other dogs too, and it freaks me out. Which is where the ghost rumor came from.”
It seemed to me that Sakanaka and her various dog-owning acquaintances were jumping to conclusions, but since I knew of the existence of beings just as mysterious as ghosts—aliens, time travelers, and espers, for example—maybe that’s just what you’d expect me to think. But Nagato, Asahina, and Koizumi were all physical beings that you could see with your eyes. What was invisible, yet caused dogs to freak out? A genuine unquiet spirit? Surely not.
After that, Sakanaka invited us into her house to have some tea, but Haruhi turned the invitation down, wanting to head to the mysterious place in question as soon as possible, and when Sakanaka went inside to change, she passed by her mother, who’d come out into the entryway. No matter how I looked at her, Sakanaka’s mother seemed more like a beautiful older sister in her speech, dress, and manner. Astonishing.
Sakanaka’s stunning mother regarded Asahina’s shrine-maiden-outfit-clad form curiously, laughing musically as she heard what occasioned our visit, and suggested that her daughter tended to spoil little Rousseau a bit too much. Haruhi, true to form, had no problem dealing with such an impressive lady, whereas I stood there stunned, feeling as though I should apologize for dirtying her beautiful home’s entryway with my filthy feet.
Mrs. Sakanaka informed us that we would all be welcome to come inside when we returned, and somehow just at the right moment, Sakanaka herself emerged, having changed into normal clothes.
“Sorry to keep you waiting!”
I supposed one had to get dressed up for early spring walks around the neighborhood.
We left our things at the Sakanaka residence, and the six of us plus one dog left the house. Was I the only one who felt a little relieved? I wondered.
For some reason, it was Haruhi who wound up at the vanguard, holding Rousseau’s leash as she headed straight out into the street.
“Okay, J.J., let’s go!”
Just as I was feeling irritated at her persistent use of the nickname, she started trotting ahead. J.J. Rousseau seemed unworried by the fact that he’d only just met the person holding his leash, which made me wonder about dogs’ reputations as humanity’s constant watchful companions through the ages.
“Ah, Suzumiya, not that way! This is the route we walk, over here!”
Sakanaka was behind them, scoop and doggy bag in hand, and she stopped and waited for the smiling Haruhi to return. I was beginning to think these two made a good team.
Barring sickness or eccentricity, dogs generally love walks, and Rousseau had indeed inherited that proclivity. The little white dog trotted along, and trotting happily along behind him was Asahina, whose look alone made the scene seem like something out of a fantasy story.
Incidentally, since with Haruhi holding the leash she wouldn’t have any idea where to go, somewhere along the way she handed it off to Sakanaka, behind whom the SOS Brigade formed up as we walked leisurely along.
“Which way is it? J.J., can’t you run any faster? C’mon!” Haruhi tried to come alongside Rousseau and urge him along.
“It’s too far for that, Suzumiya. We’re going on a walk, not a run,” answered Sakanaka mildly as Rousseau tugged on the leash.
Aside from Haruhi and her desire to run ahead and Asahina trailing single-mindedly behind the dog, Nagato was totally silent, and Koizumi had unfolded a city map.
I peered over at it. “What’re you doing, looking at that? Are there sightseeing points around here or something?
When asked, Koizumi took a pen out of his pocket. “I was thinking of investigating places that are difficult for dogs to approach. Even if we can’t walk to every single corner, once we have a vague idea of the territory, we should be able to figure out its shape on the map.”
I decided to leave that to the diagram-lover here. Whether or not there actually was an area dogs refused to approach, just looking at the Sakanaka family dog’s cheerful demeanor was enough to make me feel like I was out on an ordinary walk. I sort of wanted a dog of my own now. It didn’t have to be one as fancy as this guy, though. I would be happy with a mutt. I looked at Haruhi, and it seemed like she, too, had totally forgotten about all the ghost talk. She was just jumping around like a bunny, playing with Rousseau.