The Boredom of Haruhi Suzumiya (11 page)

Asahina was nowhere to be seen. The only other people here were Yuki Nagato and Koizumi, who was playing chess with me. I’d given in to Koizumi’s enthusiasm and allowed him to at least teach me how each piece was supposed to move.

It would seem that I’d been too quick to assume that he’d brought the chessboard because he was bad at Othello.

Koizumi was as bad at chess as he was at Othello.

As I took Koizumi’s pawn with my knight, I glanced at the poker-faced Nagato, who was staring at the board with interest.

“Hey, Nagato. I can’t really tell, but Asahina is actually from the future, right?”

Nagato slowly tilted her head.

“Yes.”

“Still, the whole process of going to the past and coming back to the future didn’t seem very consistent…”

Yeah. If time has no continuity—if we traveled three years into the past and then slept until the present time, the “present” we’re in right now would be a different world from the “yesterday” we departed from. But in the end, I had given Haruhi unnecessary information and there was a possibility… that information had brought Haruhi to North High to search for nonhuman life… So it’s possible that none of this would have happened if I hadn’t gone three years into the past. Which means that there is continuity between the past and the future. That would contradict the explanation I’d heard from Asahina. I could at least figure that out by myself.

“Axiomatic set theory cannot prove the antinomies within itself without antinomies,” Nagato said flatly.

I suppose you could say that she was showing emotion from a
relative standpoint. You may consider that an adequate explanation, but I have no idea what you just said.

Nagato exposed her pale throat as she looked up at me.

“You will understand eventually.”

And with that, she returned to her usual position and began reading again. Koizumi started to speak in her place.

“It’s like this. My king is currently in check by your rook. What a quandary. Where should it escape?”

As Koizumi spoke, he lifted his king and dropped it into his shirt pocket. Then he spread his arms like a magician.

“Well, was there anything inconsistent about my actions?”

I stroked a white rook as I considered his words. I had no intention of going along with his stupid Zen philosophy crap or abstract bull for the sake of compliments to satisfy my own vanity. So I didn’t respond.

In any case—There’s no doubt that Haruhi is made up of paradoxes. Same goes for this world.

“Of course, in our case, the king holds little value. What matters is the queen.”

I placed the white rook on the square where the king had been. Queen’s Knight 8.

“I have no idea what’s going to be happening, but next time, I’d prefer to not have to use my head so much,” Koizumi continued.

Nagato didn’t respond and Koizumi merely smiled.

“I personally believe that some peace and quiet would be best, but would you prefer that something happen?”

I snorted as I marked a win under my name on the scorecard.

As expected, Haruhi had recovered from her state of melancholy and returned to doing whatever she wanted by the time term exams came around. As for me, I was totally depressed, as though Haruhi had passed the blue-colored baton of melancholy on to me. And I only felt worse every time a test was passed out. The only person who shared my melancholy was Taniguchi, probably. He’d been my buddy during midterms when we flew as close to the ground as possible while barely avoiding a lock from the radar called a failing grade. Humans are creatures who always want to be around people dumber than them. It makes you feel better, relatively. Of course, from an absolute standpoint, I didn’t really have time to be feeling good about myself.

Haruhi, taking her test in the seat behind mine, somehow always finished with time to spare and could usually be found sleeping on her desk thirty minutes before time was up.

So annoying.

All clubs were on hiatus during term exams, so under normal circumstances, today would be the day clubs started meeting again, but for some reason, the SOS Brigade was in business year round and we’d met up yesterday and the day before that.
It appears that school policy doesn’t apply to SOS Brigade activities. Obviously, since this whole thing has been wrong from the very beginning. This enigma of a brigade wasn’t a club per se, so it didn’t matter. That’s Haruhi logic for you.

Like the other day. I’d finally gotten myself all psyched up to study, when at that very moment, Haruhi grabbed me by the sleeve and dragged me to the club room.

“Take a look at this.”

Haruhi was pointing to the computer monitor she’d stolen from that other club a while back.

I had no choice but to look. A drawing program was open with some kind of scribble displayed. A circle around some letters that looked like drunken tapeworms. I couldn’t tell if it was a picture or writing or both. This is what I would expect from a kid in preschool.

“What is this?”

I just spoke my mind.

Haruhi immediately puckered her lips like a duckbill.

“Can’t you tell?”

“I have no idea. No idea at all. This thing makes yesterday’s Modern Japanese test look easy.”

“What are you talking about? The Modern Japanese test was really easy. Your little sister could have aced that thing.”

That statement really pissed me off.

“This is the SOS Brigade emblem,” she answered with a triumphant look on her face, as though she’d just accomplished something amazing.

“Emblem?” I asked.

“Yes. Emblem,” Haruhi said.

“This is? It looks like something left by a drunken businessman, permanently stuck in a middle management position, who’s on his way home from an all-nighter after working weekends for two straight months.”

“Look closer. See? It says SOS Brigade in the center, right?”

When you put it that way, I can’t say that I don’t get the feeling that it does or doesn’t, yet I wouldn’t be confident enough not to refrain from voicing agreement. How many negatives did I just string together? I don’t feel like counting, so if someone’s free, tally them up for me.

“You’re the one with the most free time. You probably won’t even bother to study.”

“I was fully intent on studying just a moment ago, but now that you mention it, it’s true that I don’t feel like bothering now.”

“I’m thinking about putting this on the front page of the SOS Brigade’s website.”

Oh, yeah. We had a website. The worthless thing that only has a front page.

“We aren’t getting any visitors. That’s unacceptable. We haven’t gotten any e-mails about mysterious happenings either. It’s all because you got in my way. I was going to attract visitors with sexy pictures of Mikuru.”

All pictures of Asahina as an earnest maid belong to me and I have no intention of letting anyone else see them. Some things in this world can’t be bought with money.

“About the site you made, it’s a lost cause. There totally isn’t anything flashy on there. That’s why I came up with this idea. To add a symbol of the SOS Brigade.”

Delete that thing off the Internet already. I feel bad for anybody who accidentally visits such a stupid homepage. There are no contents so there’s nothing to update. The whole site consists of the “Welcome to the SOS Brigade’s website” image, a link to our e-mail address, and an access counter. And the access counter hasn’t even reached three digits, and 90 percent of those hits came from Haruhi.

I watched as Haruhi opened a browser and loaded our amateur website.

“Why don’t you write a journal or something? It’s the job of the brigade chief to keep a log, right? The captain of a ship has to maintain a ship’s log.”

“No way. That sounds like a pain.”

It’d be a pain for me too. If I were to attempt to describe a day in this place, I could only write about stuff like what book Nagato was reading or how I beat Koizumi at Five in a Row or how cute Asahina looked today or how Haruhi should sit down and keep her mouth shut. It wouldn’t be fun to write and I doubt it’d be fun to read. Which is why I refuse to do something that wouldn’t entertain a single person.

“Come on, Kyon. Put this symbol at the top of the page.”

“Do it yourself.”

“I don’t know how.”

“Look it up then. You’re never going to learn anything if you turn to someone else every time you don’t know something.”

“I’m the brigade chief. The brigade chief’s job is to give orders. Besides, if I do everything, you guys won’t have any work to do. Try to use your head once in a while. You won’t become a better person if you just do what you’re told.”

Are you telling me to do it or not to do it? Learn how to argue properly.

“Just do it already. I won’t be fooled by your sophistry. Only bored Greeks during the BC era would appreciate that. Hurry it up!”

I really didn’t want my ears to suffer any more of Haruhi’s cawing like a crow at dawn, so I reluctantly opened the HTML editor and shrank master artist Haruhi’s illustration, which looked something like a bored kid’s scribbling, to an adequate size, pasted it onto the file, and uploaded the whole thing.

I refreshed the page to make sure it had worked. It appeared that the unwarranted SOS Brigade emblem had left its footprint on the Internet. A glance at the access counter told me that we
were still in the double digits. I’m hoping that Haruhi’s the only person checking this website. Since I don’t want people to know that I was the one who made such a stupid site.

And with that side note, the first stage of my melancholy days comes to a close as a brief break begins tomorrow. This break is known as a post-exam vacation. A preparatory period for summer vacation during which teachers mark my test answers wrong.

Damn, this is annoying.

There was no point in feeling depressed about it, so I headed to the literary-club-room-turned-SOS-Brigade-hideout. At least I can ogle Asahina for some peace of mind.

Nagato would be reading in silence. Koizumi would be grinning as he solved shogi problems. Asahina would be waiting on everyone in her maid outfit. Haruhi would be talking and yelling and shouting about who knows what. My recent routine included having to listen to her bellowing.

I guess I shouldn’t say recent when I suspect it’s been like this since the beginning.

As I knocked on the door today, I started to get a sinking feeling. I was expecting a “Yes?” in Asahina’s muffled voice, but I got something else instead.

“Come in!”

The greeting was delivered by Haruhi’s casual voice, and I entered the room to find that she was the only one there. She had her elbows propped up on the brigade chief’s desk as she fiddled with the computer she’d extorted from the computer society.

“Oh. It’s just you.”

“Yuki’s also here.”

Nagato was, in fact, sitting at the corner of the table with an
open book, like a statue as always. She’s like an accessory for this room so you don’t have to include her. She never committed to joining the SOS Brigade either, and she’s officially a member of the literary club. But I should still correct myself.

“Oh. It’s just you and Nagato.”

“Yeah, you have a complaint about it? I’m willing to hear you out. After all, I am the brigade chief.”

“If I were to list out my complaints concerning you, I’d end up completely covering both sides of a sheet of legal-sized paper.”

“I’m the one who feels disappointed. Knocking on the door made me think that a visitor had come to see us, you know. Don’t confuse me like that.”

I was taking extreme care so I didn’t end up accidentally witnessing Asahina changing her clothes in the flesh. That lovable and careless person has been having a hard time remembering to lock the door.

And what do you mean by a visitor? Who’s going to visit this place?

Haruhi turned to glare at me.

“Don’t you remember?”

That made me jump. She couldn’t be talking about what happened on Tanabata three years ago, right?

“You’re the one who did it. Without obtaining my permission.”

“What might you be talking about?”

“The poster you put up on the bulletin board in the clubhouse.”

Oh, that. I breathed a sigh of relief.

She was talking about the fake club policy I’d made up to try to get the student council to accept the SOS Brigade. After concluding that a brigade which ran around looking for mysterious phenomena wouldn’t have a chance, I indicated to the student council that the SOS Brigade should be allowed to continue as a sort of counseling group for all students. The executive committee called me an idiot and that was the end of that.

But I’d already made a poster. I don’t really remember what I put on it, but it was probably something along the lines of “We’ll listen to your problems.” Since I’d already bothered making the thing, I stuck it up on a bulletin board that happened to catch my eye. After all, I assumed that it didn’t really matter who saw this thing when there weren’t any psychopaths who would seek counseling from the SOS Brigade. And it appeared I was right since we hadn’t seen a single client yet, which was a very good thing.