“And to you too, Sasaki. I apologize for forcing the issue.”
“Sure,” said Sasaki shortly, looking up to me. “Kyon, you don’t have to look so scary. Just listen to what she has to say. I respect your judgment. You’ve got far more experience with this sort of thing than I do. My intuition and analysis are not particularly good, so I have to rely on precedent and experience. That’s why it’s so reassuring that you’re here. I’ve got no reference for any of this, you see.”
I took my gaze off of Asahina’s counterpart; watching him wasn’t doing my eyes any favors. “Let’s keep this short.”
I tried to sound as serious as I could, but the reaction from the time traveler was a sneering laugh. It bugged me.
“Let’s start with your name.” If he remained the anonymous time traveling jerk, my impression of him could only get worse.
In the face of my latest disdainful glare, the sarcastic face’s owner spoke; it was the first time in two months I’d heard his voice.
“Names are merely identifiers of convenience.” His scornful tone was just as I remembered it. He shifted uneasily. “Call me whatever you like. I don’t care. It’s meaningless. Just as meaningless as you calling Mikuru Asahina Mikuru Asahina. Absurd.”
He sure liked the negative. I should’ve approved my sister’s request and let her come along. A few words from this guy were all it took to depress me. And just what part of Asahina was meaningless?
“Yes, well, still,” said Sasaki. “In this day and age, it’s still useful to have a name to call someone, whether or not it’s his real name. It can be a government rank or position. ‘Magistrate’ is fine; just give Kyon something to call you, please?”
“Fujiwara,” he said with surprising readiness. “That is what you may call me.”
“You heard him,” said Sasaki after she heard the name, which was almost certainly fake. She shrugged. “So now you’ve been introduced to everybody.”
I knew their names, anyway. But I was pretty sure that wasn’t why I was here. It was easy enough to refer to them as Time Traveler Guy, Kidnapper Lady, and Heavenly Canopy Dominion Alien.
“Yes,” said Kyoko Tachibana. “Now we’ll get to business.”
The probable esper girl cleared her throat and, flanked by the time traveler and alien, smiled like a door-to-door saleslady beginning her pitch.
“We believe that the true divine being is Sasaki, and not Haruhi Suzumiya.”
Suddenly, a bomb dropped.
I’d put the glass of ice water to my lips, and the thought of doing a spit-take crossed my mind, but I banished it immediately, swallowing as I set the glass back on the table and spoke. “What’d you say?”
“I mean exactly what I said. Is there something about it you don’t understand?” Kyoko Tachibana said brightly, then sighed in relief. “Whew, I finally said it. I’ve wanted to tell you for ages, but there just wasn’t a chance, and it’s bothered me for a long time. It would’ve been easier if Koizumi hadn’t been around. I even planned to transfer into your school this spring, but I was too afraid of him. The incident earlier only confirmed that. I definitely don’t want to see Miss Mori ever again.”
She giggled in a satisfied way, just like a normal high school girl.
“Yes. Just as Koizumi has been tasked with protecting Suzumiya, we must watch over Sasaki. But because the alien and the time traveler both went to Suzumiya’s side, I was just so incredibly worried about it. It was unbearable.”
She looked at her two counterparts, then continued. “In order to avoid identity collapse, I had no other choice. Koizumi had Mikuru Asahina and Yuki Nagato, but I did not, so I needed others. And now I’ve finally assembled them.”
This was not something to be trusted lightly. If Haruhi wasn’t the pseudo-god Koizumi said she was, then what had I been doing for the past year? Nearly getting stabbed by Asakura, actually getting stabbed by Asakura, spending summer vacation in a time loop, traveling through time, traveling back through time, following directions from the future, and above all having to play along with Haruhi’s impulses, and then there was that time Nagato rewrote the universe… If Haruhi wasn’t a walking mystery zone, then none of these things could have happened, I said.
“That is one way of looking at things. One reality. But reality is not limited to the singular. The surface can be a lie, obscuring the truth behind it—that’s standard procedure in mystery novels.”
For mysteries I suggested she see Koizumi, and for literature, consult with Nagato.
“Sasaki,” I said. “Do you believe any of this?”
Sasaki, flipping the menu over and regarding its back, looked up. “To be honest, I find it all very puzzling. I’m not especially interested in myself, and my desires are on the weak side. I think I’d prefer not to be elevated or worshipped. I tend to take a back seat in team sports, and I usually try to live my life so as not to cause other people trouble. What I hate most of all are self-centered, pushy people, but I also hate myself when I let that kind of person get to me.”
Sasaki raised her hand in order to get the waitress’s attention.
“By the way, since we haven’t ordered yet, have you all decided?”
Her mischievous smile was just like it had been in middle school.
The only person who spoke to the waitress, who wore a simple apron over her street clothes, was Sasaki, who said, “Four hot coffees.”
Fujiwara the time traveler and Kuyoh the alien took no action, the former only sniffing and the latter giving the impression of being immersed in an eternal silence, which was enough to make me wonder what kind of impression we were giving off. Even being optimistic, it seemed unlikely that we were being seen as a group of regular high school students and their friend. Compared to them, the SOS Brigade was practically normal.
It was Kyoko Tachibana who’d taken the first initiative to speak, and she again broke the silence. “So, that is how it is. You’ve heard the story from Koizumi, right? That about four years ago, Suzumiya probably created the world. She has strange power but is completely unaware of it, and she subconsciously creates closed space. Koizumi and his kind awoke, created the Agency, and have continued until now. Suzumiya continued granting her own wishes, summoning aliens and time travelers. But I, along with my friends, believe that this power truly belongs with Sasaki.”
She was free to believe whatever she wanted. There were no limits to the mind, after all. However, turning those ideas into reality was another matter entirely. This was a country with laws, and kidnapping was a crime.
I told them as much, and Kyoko Tachibana bowed her head.
“I apologize for that. But it was clear from the beginning that it would not work, since it involved forceful intervention from the future. I just wanted to try. I had no intention of succeeding. And yet I don’t feel it was a waste, since it conveyed our existence to you. That was a big step.”
If I were the moon, I’d probably have wondered why they were leaving weird footprints all over me.
“Four years ago,” said Kyoko Tachibana, as though she were recapping a TV show from the previous day to a friend, “I suddenly realized that I possessed some kind of power. I’d never felt that way before. It just came to me. I didn’t know the reason, and I didn’t know why it was me and not somebody else. What I did know was that I wasn’t alone, that there were others like me, and that the cause was a single person.”
Her shining eyes glanced next to me.
“And that was Sasaki. Before I even thought about it, I knew you were the one who gave this to me. I immediately started searching for you, and in the process met my comrades. All of whom had the same duty as me.”
I remembered the group of kidnappers that got out of the minivan.
“As we were debating whether to make contact with Sasaki, and if so, how to do it, we suddenly thought, ‘Huh?’—because another organization seemed to have been formed, one very similar to ours. And yet they seemed to be concentrating on another person instead of Sasaki.”
And that would be the Agency, eh?
“Yes. The ones who believe Suzumiya to be a god. We were conflicted. We thought they were mistaken. In order to correct their mistake, we met several times. But they said we were wrong, and they refused to listen to us. We could not accept that, and of course they couldn’t either. Communication broke down…” Kyoko Tachibana looked off into the distance but soon brought her gaze back to the present. “And has never been reestablished.”
“So?” I said. What else could I say? “What do you want to do?”
The representative of the Agency’s rival organization took a deep breath.
“We believe the power Haruhi Suzumiya currently has rightfully belongs to Sasaki. Somehow there was a mistake, and they became different people. We want them restored. It would set the world moving in a better direction.”
She looked right at me.
“And I want your cooperation.”
“Sasaki,” I said, breaking from Kyoko Tachibana’s gaze. “So that’s what she says, but what do you think?”
“I don’t want this strange power,” said Sasaki clearly. “If you’ll pardon my saying so, on top of being an introvert, I’m a below-average individual. If I were given these fantastic, incomprehensible powers, they would only wither. It would definitely cause me mental instability. Yes, I very much wish to abstain.”
“You heard her,” I said. “The girl herself just said it. You might as well give up.”
“Are you really okay with that?” pressed Kyoko Tachibana. “Do you want to let Haruhi Suzumiya have that power? Forever? Do you want to be constantly manipulated by her? Do you understand that this is not just about you? The entire world will be under her control.”
That persuasive, urgent gaze remained on Sasaki.
“I want to say this to you too, Sasaki. You are more qualified than Suzumiya. This much is certain. This is not something you need to worry about. You need only remain as you are, living as you always have. I know this. You would never warp the world. And I know people who can.”
Sasaki’s gaze fell upon me. “Is that true?” she asked, a subtle smile on her face—the same smile I’d seen countless times in middle school.
My head was starting to hurt. I knew that Kyoko Tachibana was being entirely sincere. I understood all too well what she was trying to say.
Haruhi was like a time bomb without a countdown display, set to a random amount of time such that nobody could predict when it would explode. The explosion’s power, too, was unpredictable. The idea that such a person would possess the power to remake the world according to her whim—without the forbearance of Christ or the Buddha, no one could ever approve of such a thing.
But this was only if you didn’t know Haruhi well.
I knew her, and Koizumi, Nagato, and Asahina knew her too. But these people did not. That was all there was to it. It was a simple thing to explain.
I faced Kyoko Tachibana again.
“I understand what you’re saying, but what do you propose to do? No matter how you think about it, Haruhi has the ability to ignore probability—which can be troublesome, but in any case it’s clear enough that she has the ability to make her wishes into reality. Like making cherry blossoms bloom in autumn. But Sasaki doesn’t, right? So isn’t that a stalemate? No matter how much you insist that Sasaki is the true deity, that doesn’t change reality.”
Haruhi didn’t let her mind drift too close to the borderline, generally. You could call it a kind of common sense. The most she did was fix the lotteries to make sure I always wound up in the lowliest brigade position. She seemed to like the world the way it was, and she wasn’t going to pointlessly destroy it. As far as closed space and <Celestials> went, they were a nice way for Koizumi to earn some pocket change but nothing to worry about past that.
“I suppose so,” said Kyoko Tachibana with a sad expression. “I suppose so, but I can’t help feeling that Sasaki is more suitable. You may know Suzumiya, but the same is true for Sasaki. And you’ve spent about the same amount of time with each of them.”
It was true that my last year of middle school and my first year of high school represented similar lengths of time. But the density was different. I hadn’t formed a ridiculous brigade with Sasaki and gone around killing time outside of school, and as far as the amount of conversation we’d exchanged, Haruhi won in a knockout. She was always behind me in class and had bossed me around in the literature club room every day since the brigade’s founding. Furthermore, during the year I’d spent with Haruhi and the SOS Brigade, I’d had no contact with Sasaki. No matter how much I valued my friendship with my old classmate, I couldn’t just throw away my current circle. It wasn’t just Haruhi—I’d come to rely on Nagato, Asahina, and Koizumi as well, and I had done them favors too. For their sakes, I couldn’t switch allegiances from Haruhi to someone else, nor did I want to.
The last thing I thought of was that even if Haruhi was a walking indeterminate time bomb, I wasn’t going to abandon her. I hadn’t even played my trump card on her yet. What could possibly be cooler than a dire situation?
“That puts Sasaki in a bad position too,” I said. “You should back off for your own good. Forget about Koizumi—if you do something to make Nagato angry, you could set off a chain reaction that puts Haruhi into a rage. And then who knows what will happen?”
“That’s why we must. I want to make sure that Haruhi never uses her transformative powers—then you’d never have anything to worry about either.”
Kyoko Tachibana clasped her hands together as though praying.
“We’re not doing this for our own benefit. Just look at Koizumi—keeping up with Suzumiya is extremely difficult. But with Sasaki, all that would go away. It’s what I wish for with all of my heart—for stability in the world.”
“Even so…” Sasaki sighed softly, then looked in the direction of the counter. “Our hot coffee sure is taking a while.” She nudged her glass of water with a finger. “Hey, Kyon, I was just thinking. How come with the words ‘elementary school student,’ ‘middle school student,’ ‘high school student,’ and ‘college student,’ only ‘high school student’ is written differently in Japanese? It seems like something worth thinking about.”
“Sasaki!” Kyoko Tachibana raised her voice impatiently, then soon looked down, embarrassed at her own outburst. She looked genuinely disheartened, and I could sympathize a bit. It wasn’t her fault. Maybe I shouldn’t be the one to say this, but Sasaki was a really solid person, despite being one of my friends. She wasn’t enough of a fool to jump at the chance to become a god.
Hey, I was starting to feel relaxed.
So long as Sasaki was Sasaki, no matter what enemies confronted her, she would not give in. Kyoko Tachibana had chosen the wrong person. Sasaki just wasn’t the type.
I pointed at the other two who’d thus far only listened—Fujiwara and Kuyoh. “What do these two think? I know you’ve got Sasaki made out as some kind of god, but what about your pals? Have you reached a consensus?”
Naturally the reason I asked this way is because from the look on the two weirdos’ faces, Kyoko Tachibana’s reasoning hadn’t really gotten to them. Fujiwara was just staring, annoyed, at his chilled cup, while Kuyoh gazed out into space at nothing in particular.
The despondent Kyoko Tachibana peered out from between the gaps in her hair, and seeing the unmoved alien and time traveler, slumped even farther.
“You’re right. This is another bottleneck. They’re not the least bit cooperative.”
Fujiwara sniffed derisively at Kyoko Tachibana’s sad tone. “Of course not. Cooperation? I haven’t fallen so far as to have to cooperate with commoners from the past. I came here thinking there might be something to be gained, but it looks like not.”
He continued in a voice that made me feel like if Kyoko Tachibana were to get angry, I’d be on her side. “It doesn’t matter who it is. Whether it be Suzumiya or Sasaki, if we think of them as natural phenomena, they’re the same. There’s not much value in an individual human. The power to warp time, the power to change space—that’s all we need to observe. So long as the power exists, it doesn’t matter whose it is.” Fujiwara’s gaze landed on Kuyoh. “You think so too, right?”
Kuyoh gave the time traveler no reaction. Her voluminous hair did not so much as stir in reaction to the café’s air conditioning, and she was simply, incredibly still and unresponsive. I got the sense that she had no idea where she was. Or rather—was she even really in front of me? Even though she was right there before my eyes, her sense of substance was so rarefied as to be near zero. She had no thickness—even a plywood cutout would’ve had more life in it.
Just as silence was once again descending over the table—
“Hmph! Honestly!” Kyoko Tachibana looked up and spoke suddenly. “Give me your hand,” she said, her eyes serious. “It’ll be faster if I just let you experience it instead of trying to explain it. Then you’ll understand what I’m trying to say. Just for a moment, give me your hand.”
She stretched her flawless hands out to mine, as though she were offering to read my palms. Just as I was wondering whether I should take them, given that I wasn’t drowning, Sasaki elbowed me. “Kyon, just do what Tachibana asks, will you?”
I held out my right hand. Kyoko Tachibana’s soft fingers grasped my palm, and she made another request. “Please close your eyes. This will only take a moment.”
Feeling a sense of déjà vu, I did as I was told. My lightly closed eyes could still detect ambient light, and thanks to the lack of visual information, my ears were more sensitive, picking up the easy-listening classical music in the café. I think it might have been Brahms.
But—
“You can open your eyes now.”
Kyoko Tachibana’s signal corresponded exactly to the sudden disappearance of the background music.
I opened my eyes.
Kyoko Tachibana was holding my hands and smiling. Only Kyoko Tachibana.
I was surrounded by an overwhelming stillness. Sasaki, Kuyoh, and Fujiwara were gone. The other customers and café staff had disappeared. Like they’d been spirited away en masse, like the crew of the Mary Celeste, in the blink of an eye everyone was gone.
Kyoko Tachibana and I sat at the same table for a few moments, our hands still joined.
“Wha…”
My eyes roamed. The café with its soft ambient lighting was a mere husk of itself, with only us left behind. Before I could ask what was going on, I felt a sensation I’d felt before and remembered exactly what it was. A different place, but one that felt similar—also with no people.
“That’s what Koizumi calls it, yes.” Kyoko Tachibana let go of my hands, then stood. “There’s not much to see, but would you like to take a look outside?”
Like a fish given water, Kyoko Tachibana took a graceful step and invited me up.
Nothing would happen so long as I kept sitting there. It had been quite a while since I’d visited closed space, and now that I thought about it, I’d only done it twice before—the first time with Koizumi and the second time with Haruhi. This was my third visit, and it felt similar to that cab ride with Koizumi.
I stood next to Kyoko Tachibana and watched the automatic door slide open. This was the same as before. For whatever reason, electricity seemed to work in this world.
Once outside, the first thing I did was look up at the sky. The rain had stopped. No—there weren’t any clouds. The sky was a sepia monotone. There did not seem to be a sun. The sky itself was the source of the light. The whole world was suffused with a sleepy glow.
“Let’s walk for a bit.” Kyoko Tachibana started walking, and I followed obediently along.
The town was a perfect no-man’s-land. Despite being shown this ghost town, I wasn’t particularly shocked. It was all exactly as Koizumi had previously explained to me.
The difference was—
The space I’d been drawn into twice before was completely gray-toned. Perhaps because it was nighttime, but I remember the dark, gloomy scenery quite vividly.
But the colors here were different. The world was lit in the soft, warm tones of oxford white and cream, seemingly brighter than the closed space of my memory.
There was another big difference. I moved my gaze through a full 360-degree rotation, and there was something I failed to see. Even though there was no way one could miss those giant, eerie forms.
“Heh,” said Kyoko Tachibana, looking back at me. “That’s right. We don’t have those here. We never have. That’s the best part about this place. It’s quite nice, don’t you think?”
The blue-white giants, the masses of destructive energy, the instruments of Haruhi’s subconscious.
There were no <Celestials>. There was no sign that they would appear either. My five senses told me that much. In this closed space, there was nothing to threaten the world.
“Is this not closed space?”
“Oh, it is. The same kind you know,” said Kyoko Tachibana, seemingly pleased to be able to tell me. “But a different person made it. This is not a world constructed by Haruhi Suzumiya.”
Who besides her could create something like this…? Wait, not—
“That’s right. Sasaki. This is Sasaki’s closed space. Although it doesn’t feel closed to us at all. It’s like different people making the same dish. The flavor is a reflection of the individual.” She sounded like a real-estate agent introducing a property. “I feel calm when I’m here. It’s very peaceful and has a gentle atmosphere, doesn’t it? What do you think? Which closed space makes you feel safer?”
“Now wait just a minute.” If we were talking about which place I’d rather live in, the answer was neither. “You said Sasaki created this place? For what reason? When? Why aren’t there any <Celestials>? What does this world exist for?”
“There is no reason,” she said casually. “This world isn’t a temporary container or model. It’s always like this and has been from the beginning. Yes, for four years now. The reason there are no <Celestials> is because there’s no need for them. There’s no need to destroy anything.”
No matter how much I looked, I couldn’t see any birds in the sky. The silence was so keen it almost hurt my ears.
“That’s a huge difference. Sasaki has no desire to destroy or remake the world. She is, both subconsciously and consciously, totally stable. She’s ideal. She’ll never flip the world upside down because she doesn’t like it anymore. Everything will stay as it is.”
The only thing I could hear was the girl’s polite voice.
“So I will ask you again: which is better? A god who could carelessly destroy the world, or a person with common sense who won’t do anything rash?”
Unreasonably, I wanted to defend her. Haruhi had common sense too. She might seem to have a screw loose sometimes, but closer inspection showed that she was just an ordinary girl. I don’t know about the past, but the current Haruhi was getting closer and closer to reality. She still sometimes got a little out of hand, but she wasn’t going to make UFOs rain from the sky or anything.
The one thing I could say for certain was that she wasn’t going to remake the world ever again.
“You sound quite confident. I don’t think anyone knows what Haruhi’s subconscious is doing. Not Koizumi, and not the time traveler.”
Clasping her hands behind her, Kyoko Tachibana turned on her heel and looked me in the eye.
“I don’t know either, which is why I’m worried. But Sasaki is safe. You can tell just by looking around, can’t you? There’s nothing unstable about this place.” Her cheerful smile included a generous helping of charm. “That’s why I think Sasaki is the rightful owner of this power. I think it was meant to be hers. I think Suzumiya only became the way she is because of some kind of mistake.”
Haruhi’s still unexplained transformative power. It allowed Koizumi to become a scarlet ball of energy, attracted the attention of cosmic consciousnesses, and according to Asahina was at the center of a severe time-quake.
And if it had been given to Sasaki? What would have become of the SOS Brigade?
I couldn’t imagine it.
I shook my head to clear it of the pointless notion.
“So,” I said, my voice finally recovered, “what do you want me to do about it? Transfer Haruhi’s power to Sasaki? That’s totally impossible.”
Kyoko Tachibana looked at me seriously for a while, then giggled. “Not necessarily. If you cooperate, it can be done. If you and Sasaki both say you’ll do it. That’s all we want. Simple, isn’t it?”
She hopped one step backward.
“Let’s go back to the café. My business here is done, since I expect you’ll want some time to think.”
Come to think of it, what had happened to us? We were sitting in the café but had gotten up and left—what would that look like to Sasaki and the others?
I was going to ask, but Kyoko Tachibana was already striding back to where we’d come from. Upon reflection, a guy and a girl alone together in a world with no one else was a bit of a problem. This was no time to be thinking about that, though, and I didn’t want to stay here very long. It was too quiet. If there were some <Celestials> around, the movement would provide a bit of a distraction from the quiet. What was I thinking? Was I actually getting nostalgic about those things? What was wrong with me?
A few seconds after the girl’s form was swallowed by the café’s automatic door, mine was likewise absorbed.
“Hurry, sit.” Kyoko Tachibana sat at her original space in the center of the trio and placed her hands on the table. I sat back down in my seat, where my body heat still lingered.
“Close your eyes and put your hands out.”
I wondered what I would see if I left my eyes open, but I closed them and put my hands over hers. I listened carefully.
Kyoko Tachibana put a slight degree of strength in her grip—
—and then suddenly pulled her hands away. That instant, my sense of hearing returned. No—rather the world around me had been restored.
The Brahms Muzak, the quiet sound of the falling rain, the scent of roasted coffee beans, and the feeling of people all around me—these things all flooded my five senses. I opened my eyes.
Sasaki raised one eyebrow. “Hey. Welcome back… I guess?”
When I looked, I saw Fujiwara feigning ignorance, supporting his chin with both elbows on the table, with Kuyoh’s dazed face showing no reaction at all. Between them was Kyoko Tachibana, who was in the middle of quenching her thirst with some ice water. I hit Sasaki with my question.
“What was I doing just now?”
“Nothing in particular,” she said, glancing at the small watch she wore on her wrist. “You had your eyes closed and were touching Tachibana for maybe ten seconds.” She put her finger to her lips thoughtfully. “So, did you see it? My supposed interior world?”
“Yeah,” I said reluctantly. Assuming it hadn’t been an illusion, I could say I’d been there and back. Although how that had happened in the space of ten seconds with neither Tachibana nor me disappearing from Sasaki’s view was a total mystery to me.
“Any thoughts?”
“Nope.”
“I thought not,” said Sasaki, chuckling. “It’s so embarrassing, like you looked into my mind.”
“Please, Sasaki,” said Kyoko Tachibana, setting down her glass. “The truth is you really are the best-suited person for this. Won’t you please try to think positively about it?”
“Hmm. I wonder.” Sasaki cocked her head slightly, then looked aside to me. “Kyon, what do you think? Is this weird power something I should have?”
This wasn’t the kind of thing you made a list of pros and cons to decide, and anyway, why was she asking me?
If I had to just make a guess based on my impression, even if she had that bizarre cosmic power, she probably would use it just because she was upset about the score of a baseball game, or make the events of a movie transpire in real life, or make August repeat endlessly, or have us dig up paranormal artifacts. At the same time, she probably wouldn’t put on a bunny suit and perform onstage in a rock band in place of an injured upperclassman.
But no, none of that mattered. It wasn’t a matter of what Sasaki would or wouldn’t do.
I feigned nonchalance and looked across the table.
Fujiwara the time traveler. And the other two.
The idea of getting along with them—well, let’s just say that even jokes have limits. The time traveler had spit on Asahina’s name, another had kidnapped her, and the third had trapped us all on a snowy mountain and caused Nagato to faint.
I wasn’t even going to consider it. As much as I wanted to stay friends with Sasaki, if I teamed up with them, my body would immediately exhaust its supply of tranquility and would plunge right into negative numbers.
Just as I took a deep breath in order to make that totally clear—
“Sorry to keep you waiting.” The waitress approached our table with four cups, just as I was about to speak.
I paused my statement, and the rest of the people at the table did likewise. This sort of pause happened during normal conversations too, but I definitely didn’t want anyone overhearing what we were talking about and thinking I was flat-out crazy.
In the oppressive silence, the sound of cups rattling against saucers as they were set down was strangely prominent. One was placed in front of Sasaki, then me, then Kyoko Tachibana, then Kuyoh—
Snap!
Before my very eyes there transpired a startling development.
Kuyoh had been motionless up until that moment, when she grabbed the waitress by the wrist.
I didn’t even catch her arm movement; I didn’t even detect any hint of motion, but she held the waitress’s wrist firmly, preventing her from setting the saucer and cup down on the table.
Kuyoh was still motionless and facing forward; no part of her body save her arm had moved.
Even more surprising was that the waitress should have spilled the cup she was holding, but she’d managed not to slosh even a drop out of it. Given the rather impressive force that resulted from the initial wrist-grab, there had definitely been enough impact to spill the coffee.
So why—?
I soon understood.
“May I help you?” The waitress smiled mildly; she didn’t seem the least bit troubled. If anybody else had happened to see it, they’d think her smile was perfectly normal. But it gave me a terrible chill down my spine, and not for no reason. I knew the waitress’s face quite well.
“Kimidori…” I murmured in spite of myself. “What are you doing here?”
“Hello.”
Emiri Kimidori greeted me with a smile as though she were an upperclassman who’d just happened to run into one of her younger classmates—which was exactly what had happened. Her unfazed tone was completely unlike the reality of the situation, which was that a mysterious alien was currently grabbing the wrist of a humanoid interface. I didn’t particularly want to experience Kuyoh’s grip strength for myself, but it appeared stronger than average. Kuyoh paid the stunned Sasaki and Kyoko Tachibana no mind, and with superhuman precision was utterly still—school uniform included.
Displaying an unreal level of calm, Kimidori spoke. “Excuse me, miss,” she said to the silent Kuyoh-object, “might I ask you to let me go? I cannot finish serving your order.”
“—”
The unblinking, goldfish-like eyes were, to be frank, not looking anywhere.
“Miss,” said Kimidori in a serene voice. “If you please. You understand, don’t you, what I am saying…”