… How shall I put it—it was very Asahina-like, an allegorical tale that was a jumble of fairy tales and war stories. More than anything else, the sense of desperation in it was very clear. It was surely adequate. As to which parts were the results of Haruhi’s meddling, I’ll leave that to your imagination.
Now, then, enough about Asahina’s worries—my real problem was that I still hadn’t touched my own assignment. Just asking me to write a story of any kind was unreasonable enough; making it a love story went right past “unreasonable” into the universe of totally foreign experiences. What could I possibly do?
On the other hand, Haruhi was engaging in surprisingly editor-like activities.
Haruhi asserted that the number of pages the four of us had produced was insufficient, and moreover lacked variety, and she resorted to recruiting outside writers.
Her first victims were Taniguchi and Kunikida, then Tsuruya and the computer club president, all of whom were given deadlines that Haruhi had determined.
By Haruhi logic they were auxiliary brigade members, despite their being totally unrelated to the literature club.
But I had no time to be sympathetic to their plight—quite the contrary, I would’ve been much happier if my own writing responsibility had just disappeared. Although I doubted Haruhi would tolerate such literary laziness.
The deadline set for us by the evil student council president drew nearer. One morning while waiting for the morning homeroom period to start, my ears were assaulted by the sound of Taniguchi’s bitter grumbling (“Why the hell do I have to write ‘a fascinating slice-of-life essay’ in the first place?”) and Kunikida’s easygoing reply (“C’mon, that’s not as bad as the ‘twelve-subject study-guide column’ I’ve got to write”).
Haruhi had gotten to school later than me that day. She thrust a sheet of copier paper at me without so much as a “good morning.”
“What’s this?”
“The manuscript Yuki turned in before she went home yesterday.” Haruhi made a face as though she’d swallowed a filling while brushing her teeth. “I gave it a good read after I got home. It’s kind of a weird story. It’s got a fantasy feel to it, and I guess you could call it horror. I’m not sure what to make of it. Length-wise, it’s barely a short story. Here, read it.”
I was interested in reading anything Nagato wrote, whether or not Haruhi ordered me to.
I took the paper from Haruhi, and my eyes began following the text printed upon it.