“Anyway, this should get you through tomorrow’s quiz. If you can’t solve at least half of them, as brigade chief I’ll have to take remedial measures. And if it comes to that, I’ll be forced to make up practice drills for you, so don’t make me waste my time on that.”
Haruhi strode back over to her own desk and picked up her bag.
“Don’t just stare off into space like that. Let’s go. Mikuru and the others will be sick of waiting.”
I doubted there was anyone else whose ability to patiently wait rivaled those three, but that had been my intention from the start.
Haruhi’s quick stride made her hair brush against the tops of her shoulders as I followed after her. If I were being perfectly honest, it wasn’t as though I’d banished tomorrow’s quiz to the depths of forgetfulness. I’d just been planning to ask Kunikida for some pointers in the break before math class.
But then that had happened today, and the person switched to Haruhi, so yeah, I guess that can be classified as something I don’t really care about one way or another.
Catching up with Haruhi as she made for the end of the hallway took ten big strides.
Haruhi walked like the wind, with her usual pointlessly authoritative stride, almost like Shamisen when he heard a can of cat food being opened, and in order to synchronize with her speedy steps, I had to order my leg muscles to operate at full speed.
Thanks to that, we arrived at the clubroom very quickly, and Haruhi pushed the door open without knocking, coming to a stop only once she’d stepped into the room.
“Oh, Suzumiya, Kyon!”
Asahina ran pitter-patter up to us, wearing not her maid outfit, for some reason, but her normal school uniform.
The girl from the future had a troubled look on her face, and she spoke in a fleeting and uncertain voice.
“I’ve been waiting for you—actually I was just about to go get you. Um, I mean, actually it wasn’t me who was waiting, er…”
Haruhi wasn’t moving, so I craned my neck to look past the shoulder of her uniform.
“Ugh!” I couldn’t help blurting out.
Nagato was reading a book in a corner, and Koizumi was sitting at the table smiling his usual smile—all of this was normal and fine, but something totally unexpected was happening.
“Everyone’s been waiting. I didn’t have enough teacups to serve tea, so about half an hour ago I started serving them one by one… I… I just didn’t know what to do…”
I understood her troubled expression perfectly well.
I didn’t even have to check the color of their school slippers. The sense that they would be the same color we’d worn last year suffused the room. I suppose it would be unduly conventional to call the ambience “fresh.”
New first-year boys and girls were packed into the literature club room.
There had to be around ten of them.
They all looked at Haruhi and me with weird smiles on their faces.
There in the tense atmosphere, Haruhi finally spoke.
“… Are you guys by any chance prospective new members?”
Preceding Asahina’s and Koizumi’s replies, the chorus of ten boys and girls replied with a harmonious “Yes!”
Hearing their youthful voices full of unfounded hopes, I replied with a single inharmonious line.
“Oh, boy…”
Monday. Morning.
Thanks to everything that had happened the previous day, I was filled with complicated feelings, but I couldn’t let that complexity show on my face. Given that this was Haruhi, whose powers of perception were as sharp as an all-purpose kitchen knife, she could probably twist my ill feelings around, rotate them 360 degrees, and arrive at the right answer.
So I had to keep the mask on good and tight.
For better or for worse, Haruhi had arrived at school before me and had draped herself over her desk lethargically, looking exhausted.
It wasn’t like she would’ve been tired out by the daily hike up the hill, so I wondered if she was short on sleep because she’d stayed up watching a late-night movie or something.
It was convenient, though. I was only too happy to enjoy a bit of peace courtesy of an exhausted brigade chief, so I took my seat as quietly as possible and set my bag carefully down beside my desk.
I heard the rustle of fabric and hair that accompanied Haruhi raising her head slightly as I stared at the blackboard, which was as yet untainted by chalk.
Until the bell rang and Mr. Okabe entered the classroom in top form, I just kept doing that.
As far as sleep deprivation went, the truth was I was short on sleep too. Thanks to being forcibly transported by weirdos to another dimension for the first time in quite a while, head-clearing sleep had been hard to come by.
Also, I kept lying awake wondering if the phone was going to ring.
Maybe that was why.
I started to drift off in the middle of second period classical literature. The spring sunlight streaming into the classroom only exacerbated the irresistible sleepiness. I could hear Haruhi’s sleeping breath behind me, and surely the sleep-study researchers wouldn’t mind having one more patient…
… No, it was no good. The sandman that was assaulting me was a particularly high-level one.
Sadly, I fell into the hands of a short nap, and actually even started to have a dream.
A dream of something that had actually happened to me.
Memories of a certain day… in my third year of middle school.
…
…
…
At times in the ten-odd years of peace and limitless tedium, occasionally I would find myself thinking truly disturbing things and be shocked at this discovery.
For example, wondering if a military somewhere might have a missile misfire, which would then come falling down, or wondering if a satellite might fail to burn up in the atmosphere and instead land somewhere in Japan, or wondering if a meteor might crash into the Earth causing unprecedented chaos—not because I wished for a catastrophe that would throw my life into disarray, but just because I happened to ponder these things.
When I’d tell my friend Sasaki about these things, she would say, “Kyon, that’s the modern entertainment syndrome. You’re reading too many manga and novels,” she explained with her usual courteous smile.
It was a term I’d never heard before. Obviously, I asked about it—what was she talking about?
“It’s not surprising you’ve never heard it before. I just now made it up,” she began. “Reality is not constructed the way your favorite movies, TV shows, novels, or comics are. And it’s unsatisfying. The protagonists in the world of entertainment suddenly find themselves caught up in fantastic phenomena, sense trouble, and get stuck in situations that are hardly convenient. In many cases, the protagonists will develop wisdom, courage, a hidden talent, or pure strength of will to overcome their circumstances. But those are things that can only happen in fiction. And because they’re fictional, they make for good entertainment. If the same things that happen in movies, TV shows, novels, and comics happened in everyday life, they would no longer be entertainment but mere documentaries.”
I half understood and half did not, so I honestly said so. Sasaki chuckled throatily.
“In other words, reality is built upon hard-and-fast laws. No matter how long you wait, aliens are not going to attack, nor are ancient gods going to rise out of the oceans.”
But how could she know that? Was she saying that there were things in this world that absolutely could not happen? At the very least, the possibility of a giant meteor hitting the Earth wasn’t zero.
“Probability, you say? Look, Kyon—if we’re going to talk about probability, then nothing is totally impossible. For example.” Sasaki pointed to the wall. “If you charged directly at that wall, the probability that you would pass right through it and on into the next room is not technically zero. Ah, but you’re about to tell me there’s no way you can pass through a wall. But that’s not quite true. At the quantum level, despite the presence of an insulator that should never let an electron pass through it, it happens that electrons sometimes do pass through such objects and appear in a different place. It’s called the tunneling effect. If you consider that, given that the elements that make up your body are made up at the lowest level of particles like electrons, it’s not impossible, in principle, that you could pass through the wall without making a hole in it. However, the probability is so low that if you tried to do it once every second, you’d still never do it in fifteen billion years. So isn’t it reasonable to say it’s impossible?”
What the hell were we talking about now? As I listened to Sasaki talk, my own thoughts became less and less clear, and the conversation would end with my feeling sort of tricked.
A serene smile spread over Sasaki’s face, and she looked directly at me.
“About that, Kyon. If you were thrown into such an unrealistic story-world, it’s extremely doubtful that you’d be able to conveniently act like a protagonist. The reason they can wield wisdom, courage, talent, and secret abilities to triumph over adversity is because they’ve been created that way. But where is your creator?”
I remember not making a sound.
This all happened two years ago on a day in June, during a conversation between Sasaki and me in our third-year classroom in middle school. Sasaki had first become my classmate that spring, but we got along pretty well and thus wound up talking about all kinds of random stuff. Sasaki was the only person I knew who was reading the Ellery Queen series in its entirety. Incidentally, I was not reading it. I only knew about it from Sasaki’s amusing recaps of what she’d read.
Sasaki happened to go to the same after-school cram classes I was forced to attend, so if I explained that our friendship was roughly at the level where you eat lunch together at school, you’d probably get the idea. I was the type of guy who basically liked reading manga magazines alone while I ate, but I was happy to eat with her. But we had no contact outside of school. So if I were asked whether I considered her a close friend, I’d probably have said no.
Sasaki leaned over from the next seat and put her elbow on my desk. Her glittering black eyes stood out from her other features. If she would have eased up on the roundabout logic and conversation, I think she probably would’ve been pretty popular with boys.
I decided to try saying exactly what I thought, for once, so I told her so.
“You sure say interesting things!” Sasaki made a face like she’d stifled an explosion of laughter. “I don’t understand why someone would question whether or not she’s attractive. I always want to be rational and logical, no matter the time or place. To accept reality as it is, emotional or sentimental thinking is nothing more than an obstruction. I can’t help but think of sentiment as a crude shelter that inhibits humanity’s progress toward autonomy. Particularly feelings of love, which are practically a kind of mental illness.”
“There was a person a long time ago who said so. It was a very evocative phrase, so I remember it even now. I’ll bet you want to say something crazy like without romantic love, there would be no marriage and no children.”
I was silent. What did I want to say?
“Just look at wild animals. Some of them certainly seem to be affectionate to their children, to protect them, to raise them. But that’s not love.”
Sasaki quirked her lips, trying to seem more evil than she was. She seemed to want me to ask her, so I did.
“What is it, then?”
“Instinct,” said Sasaki.
Then she made me listen to a one-sided exposition on whether instinct and emotion were separate things or were they unified, and if they were unified could they be differentiated, which at some point shifted to a rhetorical analysis of whether human nature was fundamentally good or evil, at which point the shadow of a third party fell across my desk. It was Okamoto, a member of the beautification committee attached to our section, bringing guidance counseling application paperwork…
…
…
…
The chime sounded lightly, such that all I heard was its following echo.
I woke up before I remembered Okamoto’s face. I immediately confirmed my location. It was classroom 2-5 at North High. At some point it must’ve become break time. Haruhi seemed to still be busy dreaming. I could hear her quiet, regular breathing.
It was shocking that two people in a row had gotten away with sleeping in class. Close to a miracle. It might have been that the teacher had simply given up on us entirely, which might make Haruhi happy but for someone as academically lackluster as I was, this wasn’t something to be pleased about. Despite appearances, I did hope to go to college, or at least my parents hoped I would.
I’d used my open textbook as a pillow, so I felt my face to make sure there weren’t any marks on it, by which time whatever I’d been dreaming about had been mostly erased from my memory. Huh? I felt like there had been an important line somewhere in there. I knew Sasaki had been in it but couldn’t clearly remember the contents of our conversation.
I flicked myself on the temple. It hurt.
So this was reality, and that had been a dream. It was easy to say, “Sure, obviously.” But sometimes I found myself needing to confirm that what I was currently experiencing was indeed real. I had to get some life into my retrospection-tending subconscious.
Sasaki, Kuyoh, Kyoko Tachibana—they were all real, as far as that went, but my position was not with them; it was here. Here with the slumber-craving brigade chief who was right behind me.
I could not let myself forget this reality, nor would I.
If it were ever threatened with destruction, I would restore it, no matter what that took. I was utterly determined.
It wasn’t because anybody told me to or for anybody’s sake. I didn’t want anyone to call me a hero or a philanthropist. It was entirely for myself. That’s what I’d decided, around Santa-day last year.
Come the lunch break, Haruhi vacated the classroom, and I pushed my desk up against Taniguchi’s and Kunikida’s to enjoy my lunch.
The reason I hung out with people I already knew was not because I found adding names to my list of friends difficult, but because I was already pretty good friends with these two and saw no reason to distance myself from them. Responsibility for this lay with the school administration, which had failed to properly move students around classrooms—so given that, I was just gonna keep being friends with the people I was already friends with.
“Hey, Kyon, can I ask you something?” asked Kunikida with an absent expression as he carefully peeled the skin from his broiled salmon.
“What?”
“Have you seen Sasaki recently?”
I nearly swallowed the pickled plum I was about to eat, pit and all. “… Why?” Surely Sudoh’s middle school contact network hadn’t reached Kunikida yet.
“Earlier, around the beginning of April,” said Kunikida, putting down his chopsticks, “I took the national mock exams at cram school. I saw her there. We didn’t talk, though, and I don’t think she noticed me.”
Why was he asking about her now, of all times? I asked. The new semester started a while ago.
“Because I got the exam results yesterday. Complete with rankings. When I was looking for my own name, I found hers ahead of mine. Sure enough, her composite score was better than mine.”
Kunikida started moving his chopsticks again.
“And so then I started thinking that next time I want to score higher than her. Just as a rough goal. She’ll be my temporary rival. I doubt her score will change much, so if I can get my name higher than hers it would confirm my own ability. So I thought you might know which college she’s aiming for.”
“No idea.”
I needed to end this conversation and move it along as quickly as I could. Otherwise—
“Hey, now, I can’t let that one go.” Taniguchi grinned. “Sasaki, you said? You mean the girl who got along so well with Kyon in middle school?”
I knew it—the persistent guy had swallowed the bait, hook and all.
I immediately exercised my veto rights, taking a vow of silence and continuing to eat my lunch, but Taniguchi had the brazen curiosity of a cat. “What kind of girl is she?”
“She’s very cute. Smart, too. And sort of strange, honestly, but… in a strangely purposeful way, like it’s a performance. Yes, she’s an odd one.”
Sasaki had said Kunikida was weird too, I said. How appropriate.
“Is that so? I think there’s a difference in nuance, though. Sasaki is very self-aware, but when people call me strange, I don’t understand it. But she does understand, and she fits herself into that frame. I get the sense that she’s very careful not to go past its edges.”
It was true that her way of speaking was strangely formal.
“I was wondering if she’s still like that now. Because, I mean, didn’t she get into a famous prep school? Most of the students there are going to be guys. If she keeps forcing herself into that mold, I worry she’s going to get tired.”
Kunikida didn’t sound particularly worried as he said it.
Taniguchi popped a piece of broccoli into his mouth and replied. “She’s outta my area of operation, that’s for sure. I’ve had enough of weird chicks. Take Suzumiya—well, no, I never had anything to do with her. But look, why don’t I have any connections with nice, normal, cute girls? I mean, I’m running outta time. Gotta do something about that before summer’s here.”
All I could tell Taniguchi in response to his sudden rapid-fire speech was that he should do whatever he wanted. But I’d met Sasaki just the previous day for a meeting with three other bizarre creatures, and suddenly my appetite was gone. While it was obviously a coincidence that Sasaki and Kunikida had some kind of random connection, hearing her name with such strange timing gave me a very unscientific feeling of foreboding—an eerie unease as though someone were summarizing this story and telling me not to forget someone.
Was it a warning? Going by yesterday’s meeting, it didn’t feel like Fujiwara or Kyoko Tachibana had been giving off any particular threat or pressure, to say nothing of Sasaki. Ditto Kuyoh. And while she was plenty eerie in her own right, I had Nagato, and even Kimidori had been at the café. All of which made me feel like I had room to maneuver.
Just thinking about it, it was obvious that no matter what happened, the SOS Brigade would stay united. But the same was not necessarily true of their side. Their esper did not seem as powerful as ours, and their time traveler was more self-centered than Asahina the Elder, and their newly minted alien didn’t know the first thing about life on Earth, so the bond among the three was just as weak as it seemed. And the girl whose apotheosis they wanted to aid—Sasaki—wasn’t interested.
It didn’t seem like a cast of characters capable of taking out Haruhi. They should’ve done some more maneuvering, but even then they’d be half-cocked. What were they thinking? If they thought I’d be talked over to their side like some kind of weak-minded politician, they’d better think again.
I continued eating my lunch, despite the vague fogginess in my head, which felt like when you slept well but too long.
Taniguchi had shifted topics to whether there were any AAA-ranked girls among the freshmen, which for the moment was outside my scope of interest. It wasn’t like there were going to be any new applicants to the SOS Brigade.
Because word of Haruhi Suzumiya and her brigade’s heroic deeds had already spread throughout the region. According to Sasaki.
After class that day, just as homeroom ended and Mr. Okabe vacated the teacher’s desk, Haruhi and I stood and put the classroom behind us.
Just as I was wondering whether we were going to the clubroom per the usual routine—
“Kyon, will you go on ahead? I’ve got to stop by somewhere.”
Haruhi tossed her bag to me, then strode off like a curling stone sliding along the ice.
Could it be she had keener eyes than Taniguchi and had discovered an AAA-ranked freshman, whom she was now going to abduct? Surely not, I thought, but even if she had, there was nothing that could be done about it. I had long since developed the perspective that it was best to let Haruhi do as she liked.
It seemed the freshmen who joined sports clubs were starting their practices, and the former third-year middle school students now sporting freshman colors could be seen on the grounds and in the hallways—a refreshing sight indeed. “Fresh” seems a cliché word to use, but there really is no other.
If the literature club had gotten a new member, Nagato would’ve been able to show her upperclassman side a bit. She was, after all, a humanoid interface that enjoyed reading human literature to the tune of around three hundred books a year. I doubted that Nagato would appear particularly pleased if she gained some club underlings, given her always-on transparent force field, but surely having reading pals to exchange impressions and swap books with was more convenient than silently seeking out reading material on one’s own. I had no skill at discussing books I’d read, and while I’d borrowed books, I’d never lent them. Maybe I should send her a library card as a gift or something.
As always, I did not neglect to knock on the clubroom door before entering, to confirm whether someone was there or not. Silence was the only response. I opened the door and saw that the room was empty. I was first, for once.
I tossed my bag onto the table and sat on a folding chair. I felt a tinge of loneliness, and as I thought about why that would be, the answer suddenly came to me.
Of course. Nagato was so reliably here that she was like an installation, but today she was gone.
I guessed even Nagato pulled classroom cleaning duty or had her homeroom period run long. Or maybe she was visiting the computer club.
As I waited for the other four brigade members, I picked up the hardback book that Nagato had evidently been reading and had left on the table, opened it to a random page, and scanned it. It seemed to be a story about a piece of equipment eternally searching for its original home.
After freezing for a moment, Haruhi gave her first order, which was to chase everyone save Asahina and Nagato from the room. The reason was simple.
“Mikuru, you need to get changed. Into your maid outfit, of course. The cheongsam… It’s frustrating, but I don’t think the size works for you, unfortunately. I’ll work something out later, so just hang in there until then.”
“Wha… change now?” Asahina held her own shoulders unsteadily as she watched the group of boys and girls obediently filing out of the room. “I…”
She cocked her head like a parakeet. Haruhi immediately held up a chiding finger. “Mikuru, what do you think you are to the SOS Brigade? I should think you’d be well aware by now, but just in case, let’s hear you say it.”
“Er… um… what am I? Um… what was it again…”
In contrast to the tremulous Asahina, our damned brigade chief seemed filled with the confidence of a mad cult leader as she thrust her finger at Asahina’s nose and spoke in a haughty voice.
“You’re our mascot! If you’re not playing a sexy character, what’s the point? Of course, that’s not all you do. But those elements are what you’re founded on. And that extends to receiving new prospective applicants. If you don’t, it’ll confuse our new brigade members. First impressions are critical. I guarantee it. You have a gift, Mikuru. So put on that outfit and become our maid character! Got it?”
Haruhi grinned, making it obvious that she was planning something.
“Just wait a bit. And don’t let them leave! We’re going to hold an introductory SOS Brigade meeting. If anybody tries to escape, hit ’em with a tranquilizer shot and tie ’em up!” she said, then closed the door.
From inside the clubroom-turned-dressing-room, we could hear the suggestive sounds of cloth rustling along with Asahina’s half laughs, half cries. “Waah—Suzumiya, that tickles… yaaah!” Neither Koizumi nor I could see anything obvious to do, so we just stood there in the hall with the group of freshmen, watching them as ordered.
They should’ve escaped while they had the chance, but the tenish freshmen stayed right there just as Haruhi had told them to, eyes shining with curiosity and anticipation. When I counted, I saw that there were actually eleven of them. There were seven boys and four girls, and the green stripes on their school slippers proved that they’d been high school students for just shy of a month.
I wondered if I should say something—give them some kind of warning as someone with more life experience.
I glanced at Koizumi and saw that the lieutenant brigade chief in name only had his usual bland smile and relaxed posture. From what I could tell from his eyes, which radiated ease, it didn’t seem as though any of these students were plants from his organization. This was the same scene that played out at every other school: prospective members visiting a clubroom. Didn’t they know that the SOS Brigade was an unauthorized student organization? I asked Koizumi.
“Surely they do,” Koizumi murmured in my ear. “So far as I’m aware, the young students here are entirely sincere. It’s clear that they genuinely wish to join the brigade as new members. At the very least, there are no aliens, time travelers, or espers among them.”
I hoped he had a reason to actually believe that, I said. Now that Kyoko Tachibana, that time traveler jerk, and Kuyoh Suoh had appeared, it wouldn’t have surprised me if some of their confederates had infiltrated North High and were trying to sneak into the SOS Brigade.
“We’ve investigated the background of all entering freshmen,” said Koizumi mildly. “And Kyoko Tachibana’s faction would hardly come here. The Agency has been monitoring them closely. Likewise, if an interface like Kuyoh were here, Nagato would hardly be unaware of it. And if there were any time travelers among them, that would actually be quite convenient. We could capture them and learn their true intentions. But I’m sad to report that among this group, there are zero potential time travelers.”
He glanced over the assembled students, his pleasant smile never wavering. “There are no problematic individuals here. As for what problems remain”—Koizumi lowered his voice even more, to a whisper, such that only I could hear—“it will come only from those people who Suzumiya admits as new members. She certainly won’t groundlessly bring them all in as members, so the problem is who—and how—she will choose. It would be nice if she left even one of them out. I can’t help but feel bad for those poor, naively courageous freshmen. They want to play with us, but they’re all just normal students.”
If some amateur were going to jump into the lion’s cage, I’d try to stop him or her, but if I couldn’t make it in time, it wasn’t my problem.
I took a quick glance, and from what I could tell of the ten-and-change students, they didn’t have any particularly outstanding characteristics. They just seemed very normal and young, but maybe I was biased, given that they’d been middle school students just a month earlier. Some grinned as though trying to hide their embarrassment, while two of the girls listened carefully, giggling. I got the sense that the girls in the group were looking at Koizumi and me and weighing us against each other, but my inferiority complex might have been making me think that.
I just stood there silently.
“Hey, all done!” The door burst open with enough energy to give the illusion of a blast of hot wind, and Haruhi gestured inward. “Everybody can come back in now! Also, Kyon, we don’t have enough chairs, so go borrow some more—the computer club or one of the other clubs should have enough.”
Evidently she wanted to treat me like an errand boy.
“What, don’t just stand there, hurry and go! What’re the freshmen supposed to do in the clubroom? Hurry, hurry!” Haruhi gave me a rapid-fire sequence of abstract directions.
“I’ll go along too. One trip won’t be enough to bring chairs enough for ten people. Ten chairs are too much for him to carry in one trip.”
Koizumi straightened from the wall against which he was leaning, and I helplessly nodded to Haruhi, quickly scanning the room.
Asahina was in her maid outfit and standing next to the table. Perhaps because of the sudden shift of the boy-girl ratio of the room’s occupants, she was blushing like a shy young lady from a well-to-do family, her shoulders drawn inward. On the other hand, there was no change at all in Nagato’s positioning or activity level.
After knocking on doors all over the place, Koizumi and I managed to return with enough folding chairs to seat everybody, whereupon we saw the freshmen all lined up as though preparing for an inspection.
Haruhi was reclining in the brigade chief’s chair, Nagato was in her usual spot, and Asahina stood still as though she were unsure what to do, an obvious expression of relief passing over her face when she looked at me. Given that the normally low population density of the literature clubroom had suddenly been tripled, even glancing at all the people felt unnatural. You didn’t have to be Asahina to feel uneasy about it all.
Koizumi and I placed the folding chairs all around the table, and just as I was going to say something considerate to the still-standing freshmen—
“Everybody be seated.” The brigade chief snatched the opportunity away.
The ten-odd freshmen all started trying to offer one another chairs, but I finally saw them start to sit of their own accord, with Koizumi moving a chair into position against a wall and taking a seat, looking like a test proctor’s assistant. I was about to do the same thing, when I realized there was no handy folding chair for me to sit in.
“Huh?”
Originally the room had chairs enough for all the members plus one visitor. We’d borrowed ten chairs, which should’ve been exactly enough for the applicants that were here. So why were we short?
I did another head count.
The number of freshmen here was… huh? Twelve? Had I counted wrong? I thought there were eleven in the hallway, but now there were seven boys and… five girls. I looked closely but couldn’t figure out who I’d left out. I got the feeling they’d all been out there, but on the other hand, if one of them hadn’t been, I doubted I would have noticed. One thing was certain—I did not have a photographic memory.
As I stood there helplessly, Asahina started to flail.
“Ah—there aren’t enough teacups. Um… I was going to make tea, but… oh, what should I do…”
It would’ve been easy to go swipe some plastic cups from the cafeteria, but as I was pondering the merits of serving tea to prospective freshmen members—
“There are paper cups in the cupboard. Just use those.”
Haruhi gave her decision, and Asahina quickly opened the package of cups and got them out but was immediately anxious again. “Oh—I’m sorry, there’s not enough water. I’ll go fetch some more—”
“Kyon, water. On the double.”
Desperately happy to receive orders from Her Majesty Haruhi, I made an exaggerated grimace as I ran to the water fountain, carrying the kettle in both hands.
As I returned, panting, all that greeted me was Asahina’s apologetically happy face. She rewarded me with a “Thank you so much, Kyon!” which was more than enough.
The suddenly even dozen students watched Asahina’s maid-clad form closely as she put the kettle on the burner.
“As you can see, our SOS Brigade has an excellent errand boy and maid. Look all over the country if you like. The only brigade that has a maid that will serve you tea for free is right here!”
“Er, ah—yes…” said a bashful Asahina.
“Whoa!” said the freshmen.
What were they, stupid? It wasn’t something to be impressed with. For one thing, this wasn’t a place anyone should be going out of his or her way to visit.
“Also!” said Haruhi with a triumphantly haughty smile. “Mikuru’s tea skills are constantly improving. The ‘brigade tea’ she made earlier had a bizarre, fascinating taste. I like the name too.”
“Ah, that was… yes. I was being a bit ambitious with that. I’m so glad you liked it…,” said Asahina, like a dog praised by her owner.
“Whoa!” said the freshmen.
This was no time for whoas. It was time for an immediate about-face. That whatever-tea had tasted positively medicinal, and despite Asahina’s adjustments, could not be scored at all highly and certainly couldn’t be recommended to anyone save Haruhi, who downed tea in one gulp every time.
As Asahina happily went about her tea preparations, Nagato continued to sit in the corner and read, as though none of this was any of her concern. Koizumi had transformed into an observer. I stood beside the door like some sort of guardian as I was forced to listen to Haruhi’s speech.
“Now then, everybody. Aspiring to enter the SOS Brigade requires admirable courage. Thanks to the meddling of the student council, we haven’t been able to do any proper advertising, but still I knew. I knew that freshmen with pluck and guts had to be out there. That you’ve come of your own accord is critical. To be perfectly honest, I surveyed all your classes, and they all looked the same to me. But you are superior to all your freshman classmates who are not here. You should take pride in that! I guarantee it. But that’s not enough. This brigade, my brigade, is entirely different than other clubs, and so its members must also be. However! You have come here because you understand what it is that the SOS Brigade is doing, do you not?”
What were they supposed to say in response to an interrogative like that? I didn’t really know how to answer it myself.
“Do you have anything you want to ask?” Haruhi pressed.
Perhaps it was unsurprising. One of the freshmen, a tall, short-haired boy, raised his hand. “I have a question.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“I’m not really sure what this club does. It just seemed interesting, so I came by. There was a rumor back in junior high that there was a weird club somewhere, and when I finally came to North High I found out that it really existed, so here I am. That might be a strange motivation, but is it all right?”
Haruhi stood straight and gave the boy an affectionately sad smile as she walked over to him. “All right, that’s as far as you go.”
“Huh?”
She grabbed the stunned boy’s collar and, with the power of a miniature crane, dragged him away, opening the door and releasing him into the hallway.
“Unfortunately you failed to pass the first test of brigade membership. Good try, though. Polish your skills and try again another time.”
Closing the door in the poor freshman’s face, she turned around. “Tsk, tsk. He shouldn’t have underestimated me. I, you see, as the chief of the SOS Brigade, carry the burden of overloading the world with fun. It’s no overstatement to say I think of nothing else. Thus I cannot afford to compromise, even when it comes to new brigade members. If we don’t progress year by year, we’ll start to decay.”
Asahina wasn’t the only one who was stunned—I, along with all the freshmen, was too. When had the brigade membership test started? That poor kid had some rotten luck. Even if it was in a paper cup, he’d barely tasted Asahina’s tea before getting ejected.
“Let me just say that I am very strict regarding laughter. Dirty jokes are categorically forbidden. Any sort of extreme behavior to elicit laughter is out too. Make your point with talking—just conversation. Here’s why I think—I think the reason why people laugh is—”
Why were we now being subjected to Haruhi’s theory of humor?
“Haruhi.” Since members beneath the lieutenant brigade chief were useless in times like this, process of elimination led me to speak up. “What was that exchange just now? What’s this brigade membership test? Are you kicking out anybody who says something you don’t like?”
“I’m not that self-centered. I’m just trying to find out how enthusiastic they are. It’s easy to only answer questions. You just apply your mind relative to the question’s difficulty. So someone’s level is revealed when they ask a question.”
“So what was that just now?” I said, jerking my thumb at the door. “Was his question too low-level?”
“To be frank, yes.” Haruhi returned to the brigade chief’s seat nonchalantly and gave a generous smile to the now-one-person-smaller group of freshmen, as though she were the nicest big sister classmate in the world. “So, any other questions?”
It goes without saying that nobody opened his or her mouth.
Even once Asahina’s hand-brewed tea had been distributed to every one of them, the assembled freshmen had already been cowed, and they sat there in silence.
The only one talking was Haruhi, who recounted the history of the SOS Brigade like a storyteller telling the tale of the Ten Heroes of Sanada. She was exaggerating quite a bit, so I was only half listening.
Now that we were down one person, there was an open seat, which I dragged over next to Koizumi. The silent lieutenant brigade chief regarded the eleven freshmen—so there really were eleven now—with a wry smile, as though evaluating them. I gave it a try myself. Given that Haruhi evidently saw no need for self-introductions, she’d asked neither their names, nor their classes, nor even what middle schools they came from. I was looking at them, figuring I might as well give them nicknames based on their outward appearances, when my gaze stopped on one of them.
Let me just first explain so I don’t have a guilty conscience. It was a girl.
Of all the freshmen taking in Haruhi’s one-woman show, hers was the only one whose face seemed composed or relaxed.
She let out a quiet cheer at the story of the series of home runs during the baseball game, covered her mouth at the murder story of the mysterious island before smiling at its conclusion, nodded repeatedly at the tale of the game battle against the computer club, and smiled happily at the story of the Sakanaka family dog.
This freshman was being awfully honest.
Given the height of the top of her head, she seemed to be about the same height as Nagato, and maybe a little lighter. Her hair was curly, as though permed but not blow-dried, and arranged with a smiley-face barrette that was arranged diagonally; it seemed sort of like her trademark. It seemed like her uniform size might have been a bit off, since its baggy fit was obvious with a close look. It wasn’t broken in at all, though.
The more I looked, the more I got the sense that I’d seen this girl somewhere before. At the same time, I was absolutely positive that I’d never met her before. Far from it—I had no memory of seeing this younger girl in my memories at all. As I played them back in a montage, I straightened her hair, lengthened it, shortened it—but I couldn’t remember her at all. Was she someone’s sister, and thus I was remembering her resemblance to a brother? But I couldn’t remember this hypothetical brother’s face either. It was maddeningly elusive, like having a mouthful of hot vegetable soup but not being able to swallow because it was too hot.
My gaze couldn’t have been very polite, but the girl didn’t notice, instead absorbed in Haruhi’s storytelling. It was fun watching her expression change. She was the perfect listener, seemingly ready to believe any lie.
“—So, that’s how it was. The SOS Brigade thwarted the student council president’s cunning plan and ensured the continued existence of the literature club. They may well be like cartoon bad guys that never learn their lesson, always finding another dirty trick to try, but they’ll always lose in the end. Neither I nor the SOS Brigade will fall by the wayside. We haven’t so far, nor will we ever!”
That seemed to be her concluding remark, and Haruhi thrust one hand into the air and was still for a moment.
Just as I was thinking of looking for a place to set down the now-lukewarm cup of tea, Haruhi gave me a very strange look, even winking at me. Was her jerking chin supposed to be some kind of sign?
Just as I was trying to figure out how to reply to Haruhi’s incomprehensible eye contact, I heard the sound of quiet clapping. The sound coming from palms that could be described as “compact” was a hesitant one, and the palms’ owner was the freshman girl I’d noticed before.
The sound of the girl’s clapping brought the rest of the freshmen to their senses, and they all started a sitting ovation. Asahina looked frantically left and right, then started hastily clapping as well.
Haruhi gave a satisfied nod, then incidentally directed a critical glance my way. Well, it was her fault for not setting things up with me ahead of time. She should’ve said something earlier.
Haruhi waved her hand to quiet the applause. “So, that’s how it is. That should give you an idea of the SOS Brigade’s mission. I would have liked to move on to the second phase of the membership test, but I imagine you all have preparations to make, so that will be all for today. Those of you with guts enough to try, come again tomorrow! That is all!” she said.
For the first time I noticed that Haruhi’s armband read not BRIGADE CHIEF but EXAMINER.
“Dismissed!”
After the freshmen quickly filed out, Haruhi hummed to herself as she turned the computer on, clicking away on the mouse, clearly in high spirits.
Koizumi and I split up and went to return the borrowed folding chairs, so Haruhi was already well into her computer usage by the time I said anything to her.
“Just what are you planning?” I demanded of Haruhi’s hair-banded head as I unfolded my usual chair to sit in.
Haruhi glanced up at me winningly, which was weirdly irritating.
“Those freshmen applicants came here expecting to join the brigade. But nothing you did is going to encourage them to actually do it. They’ll probably never come back.”
“Probably not,” said Haruhi, continuing to touch-type. “But that’s fine with me. If that’s enough to intimidate them, I don’t want them in my brigade. I only want members with courage. And not just courage from desperation. I’ve no use for any freshman who can’t pass the brigade membership test I made. The hurdle course is long, and the hurdles themselves are high. The SOS Brigade isn’t so desperate for members that I’m going to let in any mundane joker just looking for something to gawk at.”
Given that this club had zero reason for existing in the school, it had never needed more members at all, and I doubted the student council wanted to offer up any of the freshmen as human sacrifices on our altar. I certainly wanted to avoid increasing the population of this room. Asahina’s tea was not infinite, after all. Mobilizing the kettle and pot already took enough time and trouble as it was.
“Are you actually serious about getting new members?” I asked Haruhi as she sniffed Asahina’s freshly brewed tea. “Nagato and Asahina, and Koizumi too, you forced them all into the brigade. So did you actually spot any of the new freshmen to whom you want to do the same thing?”
She was probably still pursuing her break-time school-wide patrols, since she was rarely in the classroom outside of class itself.
“At the very least, I haven’t spotted anyone who’s got what it takes to be a mascot. But I think there might be some people who possess other attributes—ones entirely new that I’ve never dreamed of. Not people like you see every day, but totally new and unique individuals. I mean, how boring would it be if they’re all just normals, all going in the usual direction? Like girls with glasses working in the library and boyish, short-haired girls joining sports clubs.”
But who cared about that? It was better than having a pointlessly weird character deficit, I said. I, for one, would welcome anyone.
“Not me, not at all. There might be nearly infinite combinations, but you’ve got to think about how they match up first. This is the proof that the power of human imagination is getting worse over time!”
There was no point in her worrying about that kind of thing, I said. These didn’t sound like the words of the girl who’d first dragged Asahina in here.
“Mikuru turned out to be a totally unique person, so it’s fine!”
And anyway, I said, humanity had managed to get this far somehow. So we’d keep managing. It beat the heck out of making some strange leap of imagination and blowing the whole Earth away.
Haruhi showed her teeth, as though she were going to bite the edge of the teacup off. “I just want to find more interesting, eccentric people! Freshmen whose way of thinking is totally different from mine, who’ll bring a breath of fresh air to the brigade. That’s what the examination is for. It’ll probably be a process of elimination. Otherwise, I’d be able to tell right away that someone has the special psychological makeup I’m looking for.”
Haruhi set down her cup, and her hand returned to the mouse.
“What I’m doing now is creating the written portion of the brigade entrance examination. I was working on it last night at home too. Being brigade chief carries a heavy responsibility. While you were screwing around not even studying for the quiz, I was toiling to bring about a new future. Kyon, people in the old days had it right—we can improve ourselves by looking to others. What this means is to not look down, but rather up to where our hand can’t yet reach! Without the will to get there, we’ll only continue to fall!”
I had no interest in her clichéd lecturing. Besides, wasn’t reaching for the sky what caused Icarus to fall to his death? Moderation in all things, that was the way to go. How did the old saying go? Eat only eight-tenths your fill, wasn’t it?
Asahina’s keen eye noticed that my teacup was empty, and she brought the serving teapot over.
She was now a maid from head to toe, and I couldn’t help thinking that if she were to work at an actual café, her hourly wage would skyrocket. Come to think of it, what did she do for money? Was she funded by other time travelers?
Thanks to the room’s lowered population, the room had regained its usual state, and I could finally relax. Aside from Nagato, whose reading posture never changed no matter what happened, and Haruhi, whose raucous lecturing had for the moment ended, everyone else seemed more at ease and had returned to their usual positions.
Koizumi sat opposite me, and he set a new game on the table. “How about a round?”
It was some old game called Renju or something. Since I was already here, I might as well play. Sure, why not—it’d be good mental exercise. I told him to tell me the rules.
“It’s similar to five-in-a-row. It’s simple once you learn it.”
I placed stones on the board as directed by Koizumi, more or less figuring out the rules of play by example.
We continued playing until it was time to go home, and I’d racked up a streak of wins against Koizumi. I wasn’t sure whether I was quick to catch on or Koizumi was simply bad at it, but in any case this time-killing activity that did nothing to improve my academics continued for a while, but as evening arrived Nagato closed her book, which was the SOS Brigade’s signal to wrap up. We all stood, and after waiting for Asahina to change clothes, left school.
I wondered how many freshmen would come knocking on our door again tomorrow.
No one came to the clubroom. Haruhi was off somewhere else, which was all well and good, but it was rare for Nagato to be late. Maybe she was over with the computer club. Given that Koizumi was in the special academics course, he probably had a lot more to do now that he was in his second year of high school. It was a lousy class to be in. I’d heard that class 9’s instructor was more interested in raising his students’ academic achievement level than he was in actual education. Koizumi had to be angling for a good college—otherwise, he would never have chosen to transfer into such an exhausting class. The Agency probably could’ve helped him get in anywhere he wanted, and he’d probably just go wherever Haruhi went, anyway. As for me, I was putting off thinking about any of that stuff. After a year and a half or so, I’d probably know my limits better. If we were comparing entrance exams, the chance of my achieving the same academic level as Koizumi was lower than an anthill. As for Haruhi—well, how should I know? She should go somewhere where she could make the most of her abilities.
Just as I was attempting to read one of Nagato’s books, the individual capable of transforming the room’s dingy palette into lovely pastels entered.
“Oh, Kyon.”
The living negative ion known as Asahina carefully closed the door, then set her bag down like a field mouse returning to its burrow to store the acorns it gathered.
“I thought I was running a bit late, but it’s strange that no one else has arrived yet. Where’s Suzumiya?”
“She ran off somewhere as soon as class ended. It’s spring, though, so maybe she just decided she had to run around.”
Just like flowers that had saved up their energy over winter. Or camellia seeds. I mean, I could definitely understand wanting to run around. Winter had seemed really long.
Just as I stood to excuse myself from the room to give Asahina a chance to change, I looked back over my shoulder.
“Asahina.”
“Yes?”
There was something pure about Asahina’s eyes as she looked at me curiously, her hand reaching for the maid outfit where it hung on the costume rack. I didn’t want to trouble those pure, transparent eyes, but my concern was a significant one, and we didn’t get many chances to talk alone, so I went ahead.
“It’s about that time traveler we met in February.”
Perhaps detecting something in my tone, Asahina pulled her hand away from the outfit. “Yes, I remember.”
I made a serious face and chose my words carefully. “What are they planning, coming back to this time? I got the feeling that it wasn’t just about observing Haruhi for them, but I have no idea what they’re actually after,” I said, feeling anxious. I wondered if it would be all right to tell her that the time traveler Fujiwara was back again. I wondered if I should tell her his name, or about Sasaki. Which of those were fixed events? Should I say something—or nothing?
“Um…” Asahina said, putting a finger to her lips. “Their goal is… well… I wasn’t told. But I don’t think they came here to do something bad. That’s just what I think, but that’s probably why I haven’t been given any orders to do anything about them.”
It seemed like it was difficult to say, probably because she was trying to avoid touching on classified information.
I thought about Asahina the Elder’s face in profile as I spoke. “Did they come from a time that’s connected to ours?” That was what I was most interested in.
“They are definitely connected,” said Asahina, as though putting her thoughts in order. “Just like us, they used the same… er, method, to come to this time. Time travel using the TPDD, it… leaves traces in the time plane, so…”
She caught herself with a gasp.
“Wait, why…? This should be classified, but I was able to say it. Why?”
I’d been the one who’d asked, but I had an idea.
“Asahina, what does TPDD stand for?”
“Time Plane Destroid Device… Huh?” She put her hand to her mouth, her eyes wide. “How…? That’s classified, but—”
They were words I knew, because I’d heard them from Asahina the Elder the night of Tanabata, four years ago. They must’ve stopped being forbidden terminology by that time.
“That sounds pretty dangerous, but what does it mean?”
“It means that when we cross the surface of the time plane, we…”
Asahina’s mouth opened and closed like a fish’s.
“… It’s no good. I can’t say it. It looks like not all the restrictions have been lifted.”
She sounded almost relieved. I felt the same way. Too much knowledge beyond normal human wisdom could never be a good thing. It was a popular theory that if someone happened to hear the kind of classified secret that could throw a nation into chaos, he’d be hunted down just to keep him quiet.
I shrugged, and Asahina gave me a small smile. “I’m sorry, Kyon. That’s all I can tell you right now. But I’ll tell you more soon. The fact that the restrictions were lifted even a little is proof that I’ve managed to accomplish something so far.” She smiled like a dandelion that had managed to bloom, and said it again. “Really. I’ll tell you more soon.”
That was exactly the smile I wanted to monopolize by locking the room. Could I get someone to capture it in a photograph? I wanted to preserve this moment for eternity.
But instead of readying a camera or barring the door, I just returned her wordless smile.
I believe you, Asahina. I know all your hard work will be rewarded. And I know you’ll mature so much it’ll make me wonder just how much hard work you must’ve put in. I don’t know how many years it will take for you to bloom into Asahina the Elder, but for my part, I hope she doesn’t rush it.
The closer this young-looking senior got to Asahina the Elder, the nearer our time of parting drew.
Which meant that it wasn’t purely self-interest that made me wish for her to stay like this. Everyone would miss her. Especially Haruhi. On cold days without anyone to hug, there was no way she would be anything but sad.
As I stood guard in the hallway while reading Nagato’s book, the female brigade chief whose power could be felt with your fingertips came walking up, her tall, lanky lieutenant brigade chief alongside her like an unpaid bodyguard.
Seeing Koizumi with his sincere, refreshing smile made me think only one thing: he had rotten timing. If he’d come alone we would’ve been able to have a private conversation there in the hall, but with Haruhi along for the ride that was now a non-starter. I’d been inclined to tell him about what happened with Kyoko Tachibana the previous day, but knowing him he probably already had the information. He might not have even been surprised to learn about Kimidori’s job. I doubted there was anyone else in the world as hard to surprise as him.
“Is Mikuru changing?” I didn’t know where she’d been running around, but Haruhi didn’t seem to be out of breath as she walked happily up to me, brushing me out of the way and pushing the clubroom door open without so much as knocking.
“Wah, ah, I’m not—wait—!” cried Asahina in her adorable voice.
“All you’ve got left to do is the fastener. That’s barely worth worrying about!”
I entered the room, dragged forcefully in by my sleeve. Fortunately, Asahina was exactly as Haruhi had described her, her apron dress on, back facing the window, frozen in place with arms reaching behind her—that was all I saw.
Haruhi flew past Asahina like a soccer ball kicked past the line of defenders, circling behind her to complete the final stage of dressing. Which is all just to say that she zipped the dress up and placed the hair band on her head.