“Right!” said Tsuruya, satisfied. “Thanks, Mikuru—the tea was tasty! I’ll be counting on you this year again!” she said with gusto, and left the room. She was like a speedy, small-scale typhoon. Just when you thought she’d arrived, she was already long gone.

You couldn’t deny that Tsuruya was a genius at brightening a room. But something about her bothered me. I couldn’t conceive of what her face would look like if she were crying. She’s something else, that’s for sure.

Haruhi continued slurping her tea. “Well, that’s one more thing to do over Golden Week. Hmm, yeah, we should all compose short poems while looking at the blossoms. Ones good enough to put in a compilation and pass on through the ages.”

Apparently bored with typing, Haruhi gazed at the invitation Tsuruya left behind as though it were some sort of historical artifact. Just when I was about to ask her to let us compose jokey haiku instead, she seemed to suddenly remember something.

“Be that as it may, I’ve got to present what we’re doing tomorrow.” Haruhi jumped up on her desk, straddling it triumphantly. “I now pronounce the SOS Brigade’s first meeting of the new school year open!” she cried with a first-rate smile.

Like me, Haruhi seemed to have neither memory nor record of the total number of meetings we’d had, so she was happy to reset it and continue on to the rest of her agenda.

“This Saturday—that’s tomorrow!—we’re all meeting in front of the station at 9:00 AM. Don’t you think it’s about time for the mysteries of the world to show up already? We’ve been doing setup work for a long time now, and I get the feeling they’re ready to answer our efforts! And it’s springtime! The weather’s warming up, so we’ll catch them while they’re napping!”

This wasn’t exactly the retired-from-active-duty Shamisen we were talking about, and anyway, you couldn’t even catch a stray cat that way, I pointed out.

“Listen up, Kyon. Pretty soon it’s going to be a year since I started the club. The deadline’s approaching. So far, we’ve got exactly zero to show for our efforts.”

To show whom?

“Ourselves! You can afford to be kind to other people, but you have to be hard on yourself, or you’ll never amount to anything! What’s the phrase again? ‘Small profits, big sales’? No… ‘self-sufficiency’? That’s not it…‘Trials and tribulations’? No… Mikuru, do you know it?”

“Huh?” Asahina, suddenly called upon, put her index finger to her chin. “Umm, ‘self-insurance’?”

“Perhaps you mean ‘reward the good, punish the bad,’ ” suggested Koizumi as he gazed at a black stone he held between his fingers. Just as I was trying to think of the right word—

“No compound term describing that concept exists,” said Nagato flatly, and I happily abandoned my turn to say something. Haruhi would have to invent her own term. Maybe something like, “Love thy neighbor, criticize thyself.”

Haruhi turned not to me, but to Nagato. “Really? I could’ve sworn there was one.” This seemed to satisfy our brigade chief, who normally gave us no more credence than she would an ill-fitting wooden door. “Okay, then, that’s it for the meeting. You’re free until it’s time to go home!”

She flopped down into her chair and started fussing with the computer again.

When the chime rang to drive away what students remained on school grounds, Nagato closed her book, and with that as our signal, we brought our day to a close. In a way, it was similar to how cicadas measured and signaled time with their buzzing.

After we were done waiting for Asahina to change, we put the clubroom behind us. The sun was on the verge of setting, and the air still had a chill to it.

As we descended the slope that began the route home from school, a gap naturally opened up between the boys and girls. Haruhi and Asahina walked side-by-side ahead, with Nagato stepping along silently behind them.

A few meters back, Koizumi and I quietly took in the sight of the three girls ahead of us. It was a good chance, so I went ahead and asked.

“So, how’re you doing lately?”

“Today’s the same as yesterday. Currently no change,” Koizumi answered with a brittle, dry-noodle smile. “I may be worrying over nothing. From Nagato’s and Asahina’s reactions, they don’t seem to have taken any special notice of Sasaki. Hopefully the recent incidences of closed space are merely a fluke.”

A bit of time had passed since the new semester started, but neither Nagato nor Asahina had made mention of my former classmate. Of course they hadn’t. I’d have a nervous breakdown if I had to be so careful every time I wanted to talk to an old acquaintance, I said.

“For anyone else, you needn’t be so careful. This is a problem because of Sasaki specifically.”

She was just a slightly eccentric girl, and I just happened to run into her, I told him.

“Hey, I wholly agree with you. I’m confident you’re right. From our perspective, that’s that, with no further reasoning necessary. What I’m worried about is other people misunderstanding—and those who would deliberately abuse that misunderstanding.”

“The heck are you talking about?” I couldn’t believe Kunikida or Nakagawa had anything to gain from that.

“Within your circle of friends, those two are harmless. However—” Koizumi said to my doubts, carefully re-shouldering his bag and shrugging. “No, never mind. If my worries are baseless, then so much the better. Oh, you can relax on one count, though. Sasaki will not be subject to any additional harm. The Agency will do no such thing. There is no reason to.”

Of course there wasn’t. What was he talking about?

“My apologies. I was merely attempting to dispel your anxieties, but please forget it. It was unnecessary.”

Wearing a sad, sad smile that would probably melt the heart of any obliging freshman girl, Koizumi faced forward. He was looking ahead past Nagato’s head to Asahina’s and Haruhi’s profiles as they happily chatted.

Later that day.

The usual walking-home-from-school scene played out, and we all went our separate ways in front of the Koyo Park train station.

“See you tomorrow.” Haruhi gave me a look that seemed to say, Try to show up before me for once, though I wasn’t sure. She turned her back and walked away, her school uniform’s ribbon and skirt hem fluttering. Asahina waved and followed the brigade chief. When I thought to look for her, Nagato was already receding into the distance toward her apartment.

“I hope nothing happens tomorrow,” monologued Koizumi quietly, and I thought that was exactly what would happen.

—However.

Koizumi was naive. And I was naive too.

Things were already happening. It was just that nobody had noticed, but things had already started. Starting with me, all of us had long since been tossed into the maelstrom. It wasn’t just the SOS Brigade, it was everyone—Kunikida, Taniguchi, Nakagawa, Sudoh, regardless of whether I knew them or not.

But days would pass before I would realize what was really happening. The next day? Hardly. But something that seemed like an omen would happen the next day.

Was it merely foreshadowing, was it a fated coincidence, or had someone arranged it…?

Saturday morning, 9:00 AM. I reunited with two individuals, was introduced to someone I’d never met before, and was told that someone else I knew was hiding nearby…

That morning, I somehow woke up ahead of both my alarm clock and my sister, and went about my morning routine of putting Shamisen—who slept with his head on my pillow—on the floor, then sitting up properly.

The refreshing awakening was cheer itself, and one I had not experienced on a weekend morning in some time. My feet were so light it felt like my body weight had been halved. Maybe the secret to good health was waking naturally, instead of relying on my sister or the alarm clock.

I stepped lightly out of my room and enjoyed my first sister-free breakfast in quite some time, then changed clothes, got on my bike, and headed off. So early! The clock hadn’t yet struck eight. At this rate, I had a chance to beat Haruhi. Or maybe Koizumi would’ve caught my drift and taken the trouble to show up last. Not that it would’ve been unreasonable to have Haruhi treat us all for once, but no doubt the Agency’s wallet was deeper than a high school student’s. I bet Koizumi made good money at his “part-time job.”

As I pedaled happily along, I saw a confetti-scattering of pink out of the corner of my eye. All it would take was one more good rain shower to bring this year’s cherry blossom display to an end.

Once I rode my bike to the entrance of the parking lot in front of the station, I took a look around.

I had the premonition that Sasaki was going to pop out of nowhere, but it goes without saying that my self-proclaimed middle school “really good friend” was nowhere to be seen. For Koizumi’s sake, I was relieved. Not for my sake.

A look at my watch told me that I still had half an hour before the arranged meeting time. I had time to kill.

Humming as I left my bike in a paid parking space, I made my way calmly toward the rendezvous point and saw that nobody from the SOS Brigade was there.

But I was unable to enjoy a satisfied smile. Quite the contrary—I felt as though clouds had suddenly obscured the once-bright rays of the sun.

I stopped dead in my tracks, stunned.

“Heya, Kyon,” Sasaki greeted me with the grin of someone who’s successfully fooled another. “We meet again. I’m genuinely pleased. You might not be, but I definitely see a bit of fun in this situation. Although I must say it’s a bit more interesting than it is exciting.”

I stood there like a dead tree.

Sasaki was not alone. Two other girls attended her, one on each side. One of them had a face I’d never forget. It was carved into a wanted poster in my mind. The only reason I didn’t slug her right on the spot was the self-control I’d built up over the past year.

“You…!” How dare she be so nonchalant.

“Hello.” She ducked her head and smiled. “It has been a while. How is your little time traveler, Asahina? Hee hee, don’t make such a face. We’ve pulled back from such methods.”

The incident from months earlier, in mid-February, went running through my mind.

Asahina had come back from eight days in the future. I’d called her Michiru Asahina. She and I had run around together, accomplishing various goals as directed by letters from Asahina the Elder. We’d played a prank by nailing an empty can to the ground, placed the gourd-shaped rock on the Tsuruya family mountain, dealt with the turtle and the boy—and then there was the thing with the mysterious data chip and the nasty rival time travelers…

And finally, Asahina’s kidnapping.

At the end of a long car chase, one of the kidnappers who’d appeared with that other new time traveler guy was now standing right in front of me. She’d seemed like their leader. The girl who’d faced down Miss Mori’s terrifying smile without even flinching.

She was now standing next to Sasaki, right before my very eyes.

Whether she knew about the history between the girl and me or not, Sasaki cut in with one arm. “I’ll introduce you, Kyon. This is Kyoko Tachibana, my… well, let’s call her my acquaintance. I’ve just come to know her and haven’t shared enough discourse to call her a friend yet. Though some of what Tachibana says is very interesting indeed.” Sasaki chuckled throatily. “By your face, I’d guess you’ve already met her somewhere. And that it wasn’t a very happy meeting. I expected that, though.”

“Sasaki…” I said in a hoarse, ancient-sounding voice. “Stop hanging around with jerks like her. She’s—”

—our enemy.

“It certainly looks that way,” said Sasaki, unconcerned. “But she doesn’t seem to be my enemy. It’s very interesting, actually. She’s told me some truly unbelievable things. They’re hard for me to understand, but just thinking about them is a nice diversion. Like mental aerobics. Concepts I can’t accept, but which I can recognize.”

The kidnapper—Kyoko Tachibana—smiled, her lip twisting slightly. “Oh, but Sasaki, I want you to accept them, by all means. Otherwise”—she looked at me with eyes like a caged puppy’s at the front of a pet shop—“he doesn’t seem like he’ll listen. You won’t hear even three seconds of what I have to say. Am I wrong?”

She wasn’t wrong. She was dead right. Anyone who would dare to kidnap Asahina should be sent off to a courtroom to be judged, without a lawyer. Why wasn’t Koizumi here yet? What about Miss Mori and Mr. Arakawa, or the Tamaru brothers?

“Kyon, are you listening?”

I told Sasaki to wait. I was in the middle of looking around for someone, anyone I could trust.

“Sorry about that. But there’s one more person I feel it would be good to introduce you to. Could you let me have the initiative to do that?”

Who was it, I wanted to know. If it was that nasty time traveler guy, then I didn’t need any introductions.

“I think I have an idea of who you’re talking about, but that is not who I’m talking about at the moment.” Sasaki gestured with her hand to the person standing opposite Kyoko Tachibana. “She told me she wished to occupy a shared space of a radius of two meters with you. So I figured why not introduce you, since she gave me the sense that if we let her be, she’d become even more of a problem for you. I guess I’d describe her as being more queer than strange, somehow.”

I looked where Sasaki indicated I should.

At first I didn’t know what I was seeing.

Like a drop of black ink plopped into water, a dark and hazy fog… that was my first impression, and it took a few seconds for my brain to recognize that the image received by my retinas was that of a girl—a girl wearing the black uniform of Koyo Academy.

Yet the moment of recognition came with the sense that this girl had been standing stock still, right here, for a century. What could this aura be, I wondered.

She stood out in a crowd—it was a tired old phrase, but I’d never seen anybody in my life more deserving of it.

“Wha…?”

It was absolutely the first time I’d met her. Even a glance at this girl would’ve been unforgettable.

But what was this wintry, snow-covered-mountain chill that I felt? It seemed like I’d felt it before—

She slowly raised her head, and the moment her face and eyes were revealed, every hair on my body stood up. She had to be a ghost. She wasn’t a person. She was no human.

“—”

Her face was an inorganic white, with eyes like black crystal, and she had dark hair, so dark it seemed sprayed with a matte finish. Her hair was long enough to extend past her waist, and it was wavy to boot—in its volume and length it was like a great mop. It spread out left and right as much as it fell down, such that you could say most of her surface area was comprised of hair. It was like nothing I’d seen before, and it wouldn’t have surprised me if she’d flapped her hair like wings and flown up into the sky. It was inescapably prominent, but I hadn’t even noticed it until Sasaki had introduced her, which was deeply strange.

A quick look around me revealed that, indeed, while passersby were noticing Sasaki and Kyoko Tachibana, they were not looking at her at all.

“Who are you?”

“—”

She stood there, not so much as making a sound or blinking, staring at me as if she were trying to identify a single pigeon among a flock at a shrine. It was a more mechanical gaze than any machine. Even the cheapest digital camera’s lens had more emotion than her eyes.

“—”

Her expressionlessness was similar to Nagato’s, but of a different type. The manufacturer and designer were different. If Nagato was like an icicle in a field, this girl was like dry ice. She wouldn’t melt; she would just sublimate and disappear.

Her pale lips moved out of obligation. “—Ah…” Her mouth opened and from it emerged, surprisingly enough, not white smoke but a regular human voice. Contrary to what I expected, I must confess that I was taken aback.

“I am—an observer. The time—in this place… moves very… slowly. The temperature—tiresome.”

The quality of her voice made her sound so drowsy she was on the verge of death. If voices could have a color, hers was the monochrome sepia of old film.

Not taking her eyes off me, she continued. “—This time… there is—no mistake—you are… him,” she said incomprehensibly.

Her appearance being what it was, it overlapped with my impression of what was going on here. Still, what was this unease? This feeling of déjà vu?

“—I am—” she said, very slowly, then continued. “Kuyoh—”

“Kuyoh?” The instant I was going to ask what characters she used for that surname, she continued.

“Suoh—”

“Huh?” So it was Kuyoh Suoh, then?

“…—Suoh—Kuyoh—”

What? Which was it? Having two surnames was strange enough, but now it sounded like she was short a gear or five in her head.

Sasaki chuckled quietly, which brought me back to reality. “Kyon, she’s always like that. Interesting, isn’t she? I call her Kuyoh, but what she’s lacking isn’t gears, but a sense of concrete individuality. She doesn’t fully understand the notion of being an individual. No, no—she’s not sick. That’s just the way she is. I can’t explain it any other way.”

Whatever her problem was, trying to talk to this Kuyoh girl was way harder than conversing with Nagato, even back when I’d first met her. Wait—Nagato?

—Could she be somewhere nearby?

—It was possible.

The SOS Brigade’s winter trip. The blizzard on the ski slope. The phantom mansion that had appeared in the snow. Nagato collapsed with a fever there, and with her hint, Haruhi’s intuition, and Koizumi’s quick wits, we escaped, and now the whole episode seemed like a daydream.

Extraterrestrial beings unrelated to the Data Overmind—the Macro-Spacial Cosmic Entity.

“I see.” I burned the image of her face into my brain cells so I’d never forget it. “So it’s you. The other aliens, not like Nagato.”

“—Aliens…—? What—is that…”

“Don’t play games with me.” It was immediately obvious, even to me, what was going on here. The kidnapper, Kyoko Tachibana, was in opposition to Koizumi’s Agency. That nasty guy from the future was Asahina’s counterpart, no question. So by elimination, the answer was clear. The one dealing with Nagato was this Kuyoh Suoh girl—bingo. I was assaulted by the urge to yell, Tallyho!

A conversation I’d had with Koizumi on the way back from the Tsuruya mansion suddenly came back to me.

—Let us suppose, hypothetically, that there are Nations A and B, who (redacted) are opposed by nations C and D, respectively, whereupon C and D ally themselves—

So it had finally happened. If Nagato’s Data Overmind were F, then this girl was the adversary of F.

I stood there on my guard, and she looked at me like I were a bronze bell in a temple somewhere.

“—Your—” she said, in a voice that wavered like an old cassette tape. “—Eyes—very—beautiful…”

It was a perfectly meaningless line.

Conclusion: she was an interface far cruder than Nagato, Kimidori, or even the late Ryoko Asakura. Trying to uncover her true intentions was nothing more than a waste of time. And I didn’t want to know, anyway. I had no intention of getting to know her, I said.

“That’s what you would say, Kyon,” said Sasaki, holding her stomach to keep from bursting out laughing. “But they’re all I have. Nobody else would get close to me. Is there a wide variety of interesting people like Kuyoh at North High? That seems quite nice, but unfortunately I’m not a North High student. I might complain about it, but I have to spend two more years where I am. If I can manage to get into the college I’m aiming for, I have every intention of enjoying it to death.”

“Sasaki,” I said to my former friend. “Do you know what these people really are?”

“They made me listen, so yes, I know. It’s a rather incredible story. If you want to know whether I believe it or not, I wasn’t sure.” Sasaki’s eyes crinkled as she smiled. “But I can tell by your reaction—they’re the real thing.” She cast her gaze over Kuyoh and Kyoko Tachibana. “An extraterrestrial humanoid interface and a limited superhuman. And a time traveler, was it? Seems closer to triple trouble than it does to three of a kind.”

Knock it off, Sasaki. Don’t give me this pointless chatter. You’ll only repeat my mistake. Damn—Kuyoh the ghost was one thing, but I probably would’ve treated Kyoko Tachibana differently if this had been our first meeting. But since I already knew her smug, indifferent face, I couldn’t help but have an attitude. But Sasaki had a sharp mind and sharp eyes. Even if I tried to sway her now, my arguments wouldn’t have any teeth.

Kyoko Tachibana the ringleader still had that warm smile of hers on; you’d never guess she was a criminal. Had her actions back in February just been a deliberate setup for her performance now? Which meant the same was true for that smug time-traveling bastard. Where the hell was he, anyway?

I was looking around suspiciously when Kyoko Tachibana spoke up.

“He said he was going to skip this ‘ridiculous errand.’ He’s around somewhere, but he won’t be showing up today.”

She emphasized the word “today,” making it clear that she was delivering the word from him.

Well, the feeling was mutual—I didn’t want to see his face either. In fact, I wanted to decline acquaintance with the two mysterious girls in front of me too, I said.

“Well, we can’t have that. No matter how much we might delay it, it would always come to this eventually. And we’ve waited quite some time. Hasn’t it been long enough?” She closed her mouth and laughed a voiceless laugh. “I’m sure he feels the same way. That which must come, will come. The quicker wound is the lighter one, isn’t it?”

She stressed the word “he,” and I thought she was still referring to the time-traveler guy, but I was wrong.

Kyoko Tachibana’s gaze passed through me as though I were invisible and looked behind me. A chill of terror ran up my spine. It’s often occurred to me that you see words like “chill” or “terror” or “indescribable” all the time, but the experiences they actually describe are very rare—as rare as seeing a spider carrying a piece of mochi or onion on its back.

All was lost. I knew that now. I felt the chill of an indescribable terror.

I looked behind me.

Koizumi was standing there. He must’ve come from the ticket booth and was dressed in a casual but completely flawless outfit, hands in his pockets as though he’d been waiting for me to notice him.

And if it had been just Koizumi, that would’ve been great. He was the only North High student I could count on to debate the trio of opponents I faced.

“Uh…” I said, feeling a drop of nervous sweat.

In what could only be thought of as the worst possible situation, next to Koizumi stood the wielder of absolute power over the SOS Brigade, Haruhi Suzumiya, regarding me as though she were a powerful feudal lord returning to punish a corrupt magistrate. Nagato stood diagonally behind her, and even Asahina was there.

In other words, the members of the SOS Brigade had, at some point, assembled at the rendezvous point. And worse, they now formed a wall, like defenders trying to stop a free kick, keeping Sasaki and me out.

I checked my watch and saw that I still had fifteen minutes before nine o’clock. I didn’t know how long they’d been there, but it looked like despite my not being late, I was still going to be last to arrive.

But this was not the time to be worrying about such trivialities.

Haruhi met my gaze and immediately started striding over. Behind her trailed the rest, like three ladies in waiting. Koizumi was dressed impeccably—it must be tiring, keeping that up—while Nagato, it went without saying, was wearing her school uniform, and Asahina wore a conservatively fashionable spring outfit.

I felt like an air traffic controller who was watching huge clouds and a low-pressure front closing in on the radar screen.

Haruhi stopped like an airport drug-sniffing dog having caught the scent of cannabis. “I was about to compliment you for managing to arrive early, but what’s this? A prior engagement?”

“It’s just a coincidence,” answered Sasaki—but looking at me, not Haruhi. “If you live around here, this is the obvious place to meet up. I promised to meet with some friends here. Kyon, just like you, I have some friends I’ve made who are unbeknownst to you. We’ve now met up, and we’ll be leaving.”

That was a relief. Sorry, but I wanted them gone as soon as possible. And could she do me the favor of not going to the café nearby? I asked. That’s where we were headed next. We’d be in trouble if there weren’t enough seats.

“Very well. I’ll consider that. It would be awkward if we met up again just after parting ways. I think we’ll be getting on the train and going elsewhere,” Sasaki answered, understanding my intention, then bowed to Haruhi. “Suzumiya, I’ll leave Kyon in your hands. No doubt even in high school he doesn’t put much effort into studying or club activities, does he? If he doesn’t do something before his mother’s patience runs out, he’ll be forced to go to cram school, just like he had been in middle school. I imagine that’ll happen around summer vacation.”

“Uh. Er. Yeah.” Haruhi mumbled some vague words in order to avoid being totally speechless; her eyes were round like a kid who found a bug she’d never seen before in the mountains.

If it had been someone’s goal to shake me up, these two were more than enough. But I was well aware that there was more going on.

On a weekend in front of a busy train station, there was nothing particularly noticeable about a group of high school students.

But on that corner, powerful forces had collided with each other—somehow I could hear the impossible sound of their grating.

Just as Sasaki showed Haruhi a smile, Kyoko Tachibana and Kuyoh were looking in different directions. In Kyoko Tachibana’s eyes I saw the reflection of our stylishly dressed lieutenant brigade chief.

They did not greet each other. Koizumi’s smiling poker face did not change. He seemed somehow annoyed, but I think I was the only one who noticed. On the other hand, Kyoko Tachibana had the satisfied smile of the young actress finally being on the big stage for the first time.

But they were not the source of the discordant sound. Two opposing humans could never produce such a thunder.

It was like a continental plate colliding with an ocean shelf, and it inspired a psychologically unsettling sensation—

“…”

“—”

The two forms of Nagato and Kuyoh stared at each other, unmoving.

Now that I thought about it, I’d borne witness to Nagato’s anger a few times. The challenge against the computer club, and when the student council president had threatened to dissolve the literature club. I hadn’t had the time to take note of her expression when she’d fought Ryoko Asakura, and it’s possible she hadn’t yet developed that emotion at the time.

But now, I finally understood.

My ability to detect changes in Nagato’s emotional state, that ability I was so proud of, was still only at a middling level.

“…”

Nagato’s clear, honest eyes and intently expressionless face were radiating a terrifying emptiness. In her transparent eyes was reflected the form of Kuyoh Suoh, the alien pseudo-human representative of some other intelligence.

The bustling noise of the people passing by us seemed to come from somewhere far, far away from where we were. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the earth split and a giant cave cricket emerged.

The sense of unreality made it feel as though we were trapped in some alternate dimension.

“Um, excuse me…”

The feeling was dispelled by a fairy who had descended to Earth, a figure who engaged both my optic nerve and my protective instincts.

“Er, Kyon… what’s wrong? You don’t look well…” said Asahina, looking up at me worriedly. “Have you caught a cold? Oh—you’re sweating. Let me get a handkerchief…”

She reached into her purse and retrieved a flower-patterned handkerchief, which she offered to me.