The Boredom of Haruhi Suzumiya (21 page)

“I was planning on exploring the island, but we’ll have to cancel that,” Haruhi said in a bitter voice. “Can’t do anything about that. Let’s find something we can do indoors.”

I guess that Haruhi had completely forgotten the purpose of this trip since her focus had shifted to having fun. I appreciated the change, since I didn’t want to cross over to the other side of the island to find the carcass of some huge organism washed up against the cliff.

Koizumi offered his opinion.

“I believe there is a game room. I’ll ask Keiichi to let us use it.
Would you prefer mahjong or billiards? I’m sure they could also prepare a Ping-Pong table if we asked.”

Haruhi approved.

“Then we’ll have a Ping-Pong tournament. A round-robin tournament to determine the first SOS Brigade Ping-Pong champion. The loser has to buy juice for everyone on the ferry ride back. You’re not allowed to hold yourself back.”

The game room was in the basement. It was a spacious hall with mahjong and billiard tables in addition to a roulette wheel and baccarat table. Were Koizumi’s relatives running a casino on the side? This seemed to be a prime spot for gambling.

“Who knows?” Koizumi said with an innocent smile on his face. He was sliding a folded-up Ping-Pong table over from the wall.

Incidentally, Haruhi won the Ping-Pong tournament after a fiercely contested match with me. We then moved onto a mahjong tournament. However, Koizumi was the only SOS Brigade member who knew the rules, so it turned into a game of learn as we go. The Tamaru brothers joined in halfway through, which made the mahjong session a lot more animated. Haruhi distorted the rules to make up her own winning hands that didn’t make any sense, like “Two Color One Void” and “Pseudo-Outside Hand” and “Permanently Two Away,” and declare victory after victory. It was amusing so we let her have her fun. Plus we weren’t playing for money.

“
Ron!
Probably around ten thousand points!”

“Suzumiya, that’s capped at eight thousand.”

I surreptitiously released a sigh of relief. I should have adopted a more optimistic mind-set. It would be best to enjoy this trip in a normal fashion. At this rate, there wouldn’t be any fishy sea monsters popping out of the ocean or any aboriginals storming out of
the forest. After all, we were on a remote island in the middle of the ocean. Nothing weird would be able to come from the outside.

With that in mind, I decided to relax. Keiichi Tamaru and Yutaka along with the Arakawa-Mori servant combo appeared quite normal for acquaintances of Koizumi. We would need a few more characters before anything strange could happen.

That’s what I wanted to believe.

But as they say, it ain’t over till the fat lady sings. I don’t know exactly which fat lady is doing the singing or where she’s planning on doing her singing, but once I find out where she is, I’d love to put her out of commission for a whole year.

The trouble came on the morning of the third day.

We spent the second day having fun and gorging ourselves, and the weather got even worse that night as we held a banquet so similar to the previous night it was like a replay. On the third day, I woke up with a killer headache. If Koizumi hadn’t woken us up, Haruhi, Asahina, and I would probably have kept on sleeping.

I opened the curtains. The storm was still pouring down on us on the morning of the third day.

“I wonder if we’ll be able to go home tomorrow.”

I splashed cold water on my face to clear my head until I could walk in a straight line and carefully walked downstairs, making sure I didn’t trip.

The other members were already sitting at the table in the dining hall. Haruhi and Asahina looked about as bad as I did while Nagato and Koizumi looked the same as always.

The brothers Keiichi Tamaru and Yutaka weren’t here yet. They might have reached their limit after consecutive hangovers. I recalled Haruhi turning the bottle upside down over their glasses. Haruhi was arrogant enough under normal circumstances, but alcohol only served to power her up to unrivaled levels of recklessness, which only made my head hurt more. I resolved to never drink alcohol again with such reckless abandon.

“I’m going to stop drinking wine.”

It appeared that Haruhi had learned her lesson yesterday as she made her declaration with a grimace on her face.

“For some reason, I have no memory of what happened after dinner. Isn’t that an incredible waste? It’s like I lost that time. Yeah, I’m never going to get drunk again. We’re going alcohol-free tonight.”

Normally, high school students shouldn’t be drinking anyway, so I suppose I should praise Haruhi for a relatively decent proposal. But yeah, Asahina in a drunken daze was pretty damn sexy so I couldn’t say that we should get rid of alcohol altogether.

“Let’s do that then.”

Koizumi immediately agreed with her like a sycophant as Mori came in with the cart that had our breakfast.

“Could you refrain from serving alcohol tonight? Soft drinks only, please.”

“Understood.”

Mori bowed respectfully as she set plates of bacon and eggs on the table.

The Tamaru brothers had yet to show up in the dining hall by the time we’d finished eating. We knew that Keiichi had an extremely hard time getting up in the morning, but Yutaka’s absence was somewhat odd.

“Everyone.”

Arakawa and Mori appeared before us. I could sense that
Arakawa’s composed face was slightly disturbed. I had a really bad feeling.

“What is it?” Koizumi asked him. “Is there something wrong?”

“Yes,” said Arakawa. “Something that could be considered a problem may have happened. A short while ago, Mori went to check Master Yutaka’s room.”

Mori slowly nodded before she picked up where the butler had left off.

“The room wasn’t locked so I went inside, but Master Yutaka was nowhere to be found.”

She spoke in a voice that sounded like bells ringing. Mori stared at the tablecloth as she spoke.

“The room was completely empty. There were no signs that the bed had been slept in.”

“And then I tried to reach the master over the intercom. However, there was no response.”

Arakawa’s words made Haruhi drop the glass of orange juice in her hand.

“What’s that? So Yutaka is missing and Keiichi isn’t responding?”

“To be frank, that would be correct,” said Arakawa.

“You can’t get into Keiichi’s room? Isn’t there an extra key?”

“I hold the spare keys for the other rooms, but the master’s room is an exception. The master holds the only spare key. It’s a precaution since there are documents concerning his work inside.”

The bad feeling gnawing at my gut had expanded into a dark cloud covering a third of my spirit. The master of the manor who wouldn’t wake up. The younger brother who had disappeared.

Arakawa bowed ever so slightly.

“I intend to proceed to the master’s room now. If possible, I’d like everyone to accompany me. I sense a sort of unrest. Though I hope my worries are for naught.”

Haruhi shot me a quick look. Is she trying to tell me something?

“We should go take a look.”

Koizumi immediately stood up.

“He could be ill or in some other condition which is preventing him from getting up. It may be necessary to break the door down.”

Haruhi hopped out of her seat.

“Kyon, let’s go. I’ve got a bad feeling about this. Come on, Yuki and Mikuru too!”

The look on Haruhi’s face was extraordinarily serious.

I’ll make this quick.

We knocked on the door to Keiichi’s bedroom on the third floor but there wasn’t any response. Koizumi turned the knob but the solid oak door wouldn’t open and stood like a wall that impeded our progress.

We’d checked Yutaka Tamaru’s room on the way there, but just as Mori said, the bedsheets were untouched, making it highly unlikely that anybody had spent the night in that room. Where had he gone? Were he and Keiichi both cooped up in Keiichi’s room?

“If the door is locked from the inside, that means there must be someone in the room.”

Koizumi stroked his chin as he put on a thinking face before speaking in an unusually terse voice.

“We have no choice. We must break down the door. Time could become a critical factor, depending on the situation.”

And so we bunched together and repeatedly slammed into the door. We being Koizumi, Arakawa, and myself. Nagato could probably pick the lock or something, but we couldn’t let her use her funky magic in front of all these people. The three female members of the SOS Brigade and Mori the maid watched from
the side as we three males slammed into the door again and again. My shoulder blade was on the verge of screaming in pain when—

The door finally sprang open.

The momentum carried Koizumi, Arakawa, and me into the room, where we fell down, and then—

Yes, we have now returned to the opening scene. Finally returned to the present. Back to telling the story in real time.

………

……

…

And once that flashback had concluded, I lifted myself off the floor. I looked away from Keiichi, who lay with a knife stuck in him, to scrutinize the door with the busted lock. I marveled at the sturdiness of the newly built mansion; even the doors were shiny… or yeah, I’m trying to escape reality here.

Arakawa kneeled next to his master’s body and placed his fingertips against Keiichi’s neck. He then looked up at us.

“He has passed on,” he said in a composed voice, perhaps because he was a professional.

“Ah, ahhh…”

Asahina’s legs had given out and she was sitting out in the hallway. I suppose that was only natural. I felt like doing the same. Nagato’s expressionless face was feeling like a real blessing right about now.

“It appears that we’re in quite a predicament.”

Koizumi circled around Keiichi to the side opposite Arakawa. Koizumi crouched down, carefully reached out, and gingerly touched the jacket of Keiichi’s suit.

His white shirt was stained by a dark red liquid blot of irregular shape.

“Oh?” Koizumi said in a dubious voice.

I looked over. There was a notepad in Keiichi’s shirt pocket. The knife had gone through the suit and pierced the notepad before entering his body. The person who committed this act of violence must have been fairly strong. It doesn’t appear that the ladies here would have been capable of such an act. Though I suppose Haruhi and her ridiculous strength could have pulled it off.

Koizumi spoke in a pensive voice.

“Our first priority is to preserve the scene of the crime. For now, let’s leave the room.”

“Mikuru, are you okay?”

It wasn’t that surprising for Haruhi to sound concerned since Asahina had apparently fainted. She was sitting on the floor with her eyes closed and leaning against Nagato’s thin legs.

“Yuki, we’ll carry Mikuru to my room. You take that arm.”

I suppose that Haruhi talking like a person with common sense could be considered a sign of how upset she was. Nagato and Haruhi each grabbed one of Asahina’s arms and dragged her off toward the stairs.

Once I was sure they were gone, I turned to survey my surroundings.

Arakawa’s hands were clasped in prayer over his master and he had a grieved expression on his face. Mori stood to the side, looking down in sorrow. And Yutaka Tamaru was still nowhere to be found. It was storming outside.

“Well, then,” Koizumi said to me with a thin smile back on his face. “Have you noticed? This situation is exactly what you would call a closed circle.”

I already knew that.

“And at first glance, it would appear that we have a murder on our hands.”

Since this doesn’t look like a suicide.

“Furthermore, it happened in a sealed room.”

I turned to look at the locked windows.

“How could the culprit commit the crime in this inaccessible room and make his escape?”

Ask the culprit.

“Indeed,” Koizumi concurred. “We’ll need to ask Yutaka about this matter.”

Koizumi instructed Arakawa to call the police, then he turned back to me.

“Please go on ahead to Suzumiya’s room. I’ll be there shortly.”

That seemed like a good idea. There wasn’t anything I could do here.

I knocked on the door.

“Who is it?”

“It’s me.”

The door opened a crack and Haruhi peeked out. She invited me in with a strained look on her face.

“Where’s Koizumi?”

“He should be here soon.”

Asahina was sleeping on one of the two beds. You didn’t have to be a prince passing by to want to kiss that sleeping face, but she had a pained expression and she was still unconscious, so I couldn’t do anything about it.

Nagato was sitting in a chair next to her like someone keeping watch over a tomb. Keep it up. Don’t leave Asahina’s side.

“Say, what do you think?”

Haruhi’s question appeared to be directed at me.

“What do you mean?”

“Keiichi. Is this a murder case?”

If one views one’s current situation from an objective standpoint, one should be able to derive the answer. I gave it a try. We broke down the locked door to find the master of the manor lying completely still on the floor with the handle of a knife sticking out of his chest. A murder in a sealed room on a remote island in the middle of a storm. Too perfect.

“Looks like it.”

After a few seconds of time lag, Haruhi sighed in response to my answer.

“Hmm…”

Haruhi lifted one hand to her forehead as she plopped down on her bed.

“Unbelievable. I never expected something like this to happen.”

Her murmured words were also hard to believe. Weren’t you talking about how badly you wanted something to happen?

“That’s ’cause I wasn’t expecting something to actually happen.”

Haruhi grimaced before quickly changing her expression. She appeared to be worrying about what to do in her own way. I was relieved that she wasn’t celebrating. Since I wouldn’t want to end up playing the role of the second victim.

I looked at the upperclassman sleeping with the face of an angel.

“How’s Asahina doing?”

“She should be fine. She just fainted. I have to admire her meek reaction. It’s just like Mikuru to faint. Though at least she didn’t go into hysterics.”