The Intrigues of Haruhi Suzumiya (21 page)

I didn’t care what era the treasure was from; I was finished with maps. You can tell
that
to Tsuruya—that whatever happened, she shouldn’t give Haruhi anything else.

But as I watched Haruhi’s form recede along the road, bouncing merrily, two shovels in hand, I didn’t say the nasty things I was thinking. I didn’t know whether or not her strange silence in the classroom had been my imagination or not, but in any case, I was glad she was happy. When she got weirdly quiet like that, it just made me nervous that her internal power gauge was building up to an explosion. Huh? Why did it suddenly seem like I was monologuing to myself?

Once we emerged onto the road that led to North High, we walked as a group for a little while. Eventually we got to the usual spot where we parted ways, whereupon Haruhi turned around, as though having suddenly remembered something.

“Oh, that’s right! We’re gonna meet up at the station tomorrow too. Same time as today. Got it?”

If I said I couldn’t, would she reschedule? I asked.

Haruhi looked at me with a grin. What was up with that grin?

“We’re gonna search the city for mysterious phenomena. We haven’t done it in a while, after all,” said Haruhi, not answering my question at all. She looked at everybody as though checking them out. “You guys got that? And don’t be late. Tardiness…”

She drew a deep breath of cold air, then finished her statement the same way she always did.

“… equals punishment!”

The first things I did upon returning to my room were turning on the heater and getting out my cell phone.

By this time it had become part of my normal routine to call—where else?—the Tsuruya house. By now I was well used to the voice of the polite female servant who answered, as well as the
smooth transfer to Asahina. By this point, I’d called Tsuruya more often than I’d ever called Koizumi.

“It’s me.”

“Ah, hello. It’s me—Michiru… I mean, Mikuru.”

“Is Tsuruya at the house?”

“No… she seems to be out today. She said her family was attending a memorial service.”

I got the feeling that it was best not to pry too much into what Tsuruya was doing and where.

“Asahina, we went and did it.”

“You mean the treasure hunt…?”

“We didn’t find anything, though.”

I could hear Asahina let a little sigh slip past her lips. “Thank goodness it turned out the way I remember. If it had been different, I don’t know what I would’ve done.”

The phone still pressed to my ear, I furrowed my brow. “Is there any way that could possibly have happened? Isn’t the past always the same, no matter where you go?”

“Uh… er, that’s, that’s true, but…”

I could practically see Asahina holding the receiver as she wavered.

“It’s extremely rare, but sometimes things change… er… I don’t really understand it myself, but—”

I remembered something as I listened to the hesitant voice. The double loop Koizumi explained, when I told him about the December eighteenth date I’d visited so many times.

When I thought about it, I was the same, insofar as even now I didn’t know from when to when the period of fixed events extended. When Nagato had changed an entire year, how had she managed that? According to Koizumi’s theory, there were two Decembers the eighteenth. It was too much trouble to have multiple timelines, so this timeline—the one we’d corrected—was the “right” one, I was pretty sure…

So what had that other thing been? Last month, I’d saved a little
boy from being killed in a traffic accident. That little glasses-wearing guy living longer must have been a fixed, required event. But what about that car? What if someone had been trying to run that boy down in an effort to manually interfere?

That would mean that there were people trying to destroy the timeline, as well as time travelers from the future like Asahina who were trying to protect it. What if the former were also from the future? Who could oppose them? Only fellow time travelers.

I was starting to see what Asahina the Elder was up to. What she was trying to get me to do.

“I’m sorry, Kyon,” said Asahina, dejected. “I’m restricted from telling you the things I want to tell you, and I don’t know anything useful… Kyon, I just…”

I could tell she was about to cry. “Anyway, about tomorrow,” I said frantically.

Exactly according to the plans Asahina had related to me, Ha-ruhi had said we were doing a city patrol tomorrow. Since Asahina and I had to carry out the instructions of the #3 envelope, we’d need to decide on a place to meet up—someplace where Haruhi and the other Asahina wouldn’t spot us.

“Asahina, do you think you could wear a disguise?”

“A disguise?” She sounded confused, and she sniffled. I could picture it very clearly.

“Like sunglasses?… No, I guess that’d be weird. It wouldn’t be strange to wear a flu mask this time of year, though, right? Could you do that?”

“Oh, sure. I’ll ask Tsuruya for one.”

“So about the time. About when did we finish up tomorrow?”

“Umm…” Asahina took only a moment to remember. “It was at five o’clock. We met up at three, then we all went to the café.”

I took the #3 envelope out of my desk and opened the contents. The place it indicated was about a ten-minute walk from the
train station where the brigade would meet up. Even if it took fifteen minutes, that was still only a half-hour round-trip.

It would be best to have Asahina lay low at Tsuruya’s place in the morning, then rendezvous with her a little while after the city patrol started.

Having asked her the details of the day’s schedule, I explained where and when we’d meet up.

“Okay then, see you tomorrow. Try to dress as unobtrusively as you can. Oh, also”—I felt a tinge of foreboding in my chest—“if you can, can you get Tsuruya to come along? Tell her I asked her to. Or… well, no, I shouldn’t get her involved in this. Don’t worry about it. It would be good if she could see you off and meet you when we’re done, though.”

Asahina would have to go from Tsuruya’s house to the rendezvous point on her own. Maybe I was overthinking it, but my danger sense was tingling. I didn’t want to make her walk alone.

“O-okay. I’ll tell her.”

Tsuruya was smart—she’d see through my request in an instant. I could count on it.

I hung up, then immediately called Nagato. Here I was, asking another favor of her.

However.

“Huh?”

To my great surprise, her line was busy.

Who could Nagato possibly be talking to? I couldn’t think of anybody short of a hard-sell telemarketer. I put down my phone and changed clothes, feeling sympathy for the headset jockey who’d been unlucky enough to wind up talking to Nagato. I threw my muddy pants into the washing machine, then came back to my room and tried again.

This time, she picked up.

“It’s me.”

“…”

Nagato’s familiar silence.

“I’ve got a favor to ask you. It’s about tomorrow. You know how we always split up the patrols by drawing straws? Tomorrow and the day after, I want you to rig them.”

“I see,” answered the cool, clear, high voice.

“Yeah. Tomorrow’s afternoon patrol, and the next day’s morning one—both of those times, I need to be paired up with you. Can you do it?”

“…” There was a slightly long-seeming silence, then, “I see.”

I was pretty sure that was the affirmative, but I thought I’d make sure.

“So you’ll do it, then?”

“Understood.”

“Thanks, Nagato.”

“It’s fine.”

“By the way, when I called a second ago, the line was busy. Who were you talking to?”

There was another silence, as though time itself had stopped. Just as I was starting to wonder if she was having some kind of side story with somebody I didn’t know—

“Haruhi Suzumiya.”

Now I
wished
it had been somebody I didn’t know. “She called you?”

“Yes.”

“What the heck did she want with you?”

“…” A third silence. I strained to hear and was starting to pick up a sense of anxiety over the receiver when Nagato finally replied.

“I cannot say.”

Nagato sure had been full of surprises these past few days. To think she’d be using that line on
me
, of all people.

I stayed as silent as a radio that’d been unplugged.

“It is better if you do not know.”

That was certainly a terrifying statement—those were just about the least comforting words in the world, I said.

“… Do not worry.” Her voice had a hesitant tone to it, as though she wasn’t sure whether she should say anything but had decided that she wanted me not to worry. And then it came to me.

“Haruhi told you not to say anything, didn’t she?”

“Yes.”

Which meant Haruhi was up to something weird again, and she was trying to involve Nagato in it.

And whatever it was, it was a secret from me. I didn’t know what it was, but based on Nagato’s tone, it had to be something big. Like round two of the treasure hunt or something.

This week sure was turning out to be a busy one—like having final exams in math, physics, and world history all on the same day.

“Dammit, Haruhi, what’re you gonna make us do
this
time…?”

At this rate, Koizumi was going to wind up being my only true comrade. Haruhi, Nagato, and Asahina were all engaged in activities beyond my influence. Oh, and Tsuruya too. I wondered why it was that no matter the life-form, females always seemed to outmatch the males. The double-X chromosome was a terrifying thing. Explain it to me, please.

I lay down on the floor and spread my arms wide, praying that I’d be able to pass the following week in peace.

The next day—Saturday morning.

My upper body ached all over thanks to all the unpaid manual labor I’d done the day before. At least I’d slept well and hadn’t had any weird dreams.

I put envelope #3 into my coat pocket as I went out the front door, then got my bike out, whose tire pressure was on the low side as I headed out onto the street through the cold, dry wind.

I didn’t want to park illegally and get my bike hauled off by a local merchant, so I paid to park in the new bike parking structure in front of the station, then headed on foot to the meeting place, where as usual I was the last to arrive.

Asahina looked like some new adorable species of pet as she came up to greet me in a warm-looking outfit, while Koizumi was his usual self, handsome enough to get one in five high school girls to turn around and take another look. Nagato wore a hooded duffle coat over her school uniform, standing stock still and looking vaguely like a Jawa.

Wearing a peacoat and a muffler, Haruhi pointed right at me. “We’ve been waiting, Kyon! Thirty whole seconds!”

It had been a close thing. If I’d just left my bike nearby, I
could’ve been the second-to-last arrival for round one of the Citywide Mysterious Phenomena Search. I would’ve liked to see Haruhi treat everybody, just once, I said.

“Oh, I’d treat you, all right, if I actually ever arrived last. But let me just say that I hate words like ‘last place’ and ‘runner-up’ more than anything. If I think I might oversleep and be late, I’ll just arrive the night before and stay all night!”

Haruhi smiled fearlessly. She seriously seemed like she was ready to take on any and all comers. We should’ve done something like this back when she was depressed. And speaking of the past, I wondered which kind of regret was worse—regretting something you’d done, or something you
hadn’t
done?

As I thought it over fruitlessly, Haruhi dragged us all over to the café.

“We didn’t find anything yesterday,” she said as she drank her hot coffee, “but when I think about it, the purpose of the SOS Brigade isn’t to search for lost inheritances, but stuff that’s way more mysterious than that. I mean, like… something futuristic, or top secret, or something. There’s gotta be at least one thing like that in this city. There’s a lot of space in it, after all.”

It wasn’t a question of land area. The important elements were things like economic prosperity and population density—“Aw, forget it.”

I gave up. Prosperity and population don’t have anything to do with it, do they, Haruhi? Mysterious phenomena exist right in front of you, and you have no idea. And
because
you have no idea, they can go about their business without anyone being the wiser.

In my case, I hadn’t noticed them so much as I’d been
made
to notice them, but I was glad to know. And because you sat right behind me, that was your fault too—or should I say it was thanks to you?

Haruhi marked toothpicks with a ballpoint pen as I silently
monologued to myself, then she held them out such that we could all draw one.

“This is how we’ll split up into teams. Two of the toothpicks have marks and three don’t.”

I reflexively glanced at Nagato. Whoops—too soon. There was no need for me to be forcibly paired up with her this morning. What had Asahina said about that? That’s right; it had been Koizumi and me.

“What’s wrong? Hurry up and draw.” Haruhi thrust the fist containing the five toothpicks at me. “Do you actually care about what the teams are? Oh ho, is there someone in particular you want to pair up with? You’re such a baby.”

I didn’t like the patronizing way she smiled at me. But no matter how much I thought about it, I got nowhere. When she’d delivered her future prediction, Asahina had told me that Koizumi and I would get paired up. I couldn’t just pick any toothpick and get the same outcome. The chances of picking a marked one were two in five, so under normal circumstances, there were better odds of getting an unmarked one—but what happened if I did that? Would things still work out even if events diverged from Asahina’s memory?

My overthinking went too far. As I silently agonized, Haruhi pulled the toothpicks away from me and had the three other brigade members each draw one. When she got back to me, there were only two left.

I hastily checked Koizumi. The toothpick he elegantly held between his fingertips was indeed marked.

This left just Haruhi and me to draw the remaining two, and since Haruhi’s habit was to always save the last lot for herself, the groups would be decided by my draw.