The Intrigues of Haruhi Suzumiya (22 page)

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, focusing my concentration for ten full seconds on Haruhi’s hand.

“What’re you doing? Isn’t that a bit much?” said Haruhi, irritated, but it was an important step for me. If I couldn’t make
events match up here, things were only going to get more complicated.

“The hell with it!” I said, moving my right hand quickly. I was going to just randomly grab the first one I touched, but it didn’t go the way I’d planned. It was
too
random. I knocked both toothpicks out of Haruhi’s hand, and as I realized my mistake one fell to the table while Haruhi grabbed the other one out of midair. The toothpick that had fallen to the table had a spot on one end.

“That’s no fun,” said Haruhi, her lip twisting. “We’re divided into all girls and all boys. How boring.”

I’d gotten all worked up for nothing. The morning groupings weren’t important to the timeline; if I’d drawn the unmarked toothpick I would’ve had the double bonus of both Asahina
and
Nagato, which was a lot better than spending my precious day off with Koizumi, and when I thought about it like that, I realized that small changes to the past probably didn’t matter. I shouldn’t have worried about it.

After idling around for a little while longer, we left the café. I paid, of course. Force of habit can be a terrible thing, and I hated myself for naturally picking up the check without being forced into it.

“Um, I’m sorry, Kyon. Thank you,” said Asahina apologetically—she was the only one who made me feel better about having to pay. Koizumi also apologized, but somehow his pleasant smile didn’t help my mood.

“If you’re concerned about the status of your wallet, I can recommend a good part-time job,” said Koizumi quietly, walking alongside me as we exited the café. “It’s a very simple job, and once you get used to it, it’s very easy. I can guarantee the compensation is good too.”

“No thanks.”

I had a vision of a demon hiding behind a sweet smile. If I blithely signed the strange contract he gave me, I’d wind up getting whisked away to some terrible laboratory and spread out on
an operating table—it didn’t bear thinking about. What if they decided to turn me into a part-time esper? I had no desire to go battle against Haruhi’s stress level within the confines of that strange, gray dimension, I told him.

“I would handle that. What you would do would be to make sure that I don’t
have
to battle her stress level.”

He could do that himself, I told him.

“You’re the only one who can do it, it seems. At the moment, anyway.”

I didn’t recall having any supernatural abilities.

“I suppose not.” Koizumi pursed the corners of his lips into a smile. “If you ever change your mind, let me know. I’ll be happy to explain the job to you. Though for my part I feel I’ve already told you most of it.”

Koizumi sounded uncharacteristically vague, but I didn’t pursue the matter. I suspected he’d tell me something I didn’t want to hear. If I made some smart remark, he might turn the tables on me, and then I’d wish I hadn’t said anything. Sometimes caution was necessary. If you wanted to trap someone, you had to start on the defensive.

Outside the café, Haruhi had waited for me to pay. “We’ll meet back up at noon on the dot.” Haruhi had her right arm around Nagato’s waist and her left around Asahina’s, as she grinned as brightly as a tropical flower. “Until then, look for anything mysterious—a manhole that wasn’t there yesterday, an extra stripe in the crosswalk, anything! If you keep your eyes peeled you should be able to find something. No—
expect
to find something. If you don’t, you’ll never find anything!”

There she was, squeezing herself between the ultimate combination of an alien and a time traveler like they were human-size body warmers, and—ah, forget it. If I’d had to find “something mysterious” in a scavenger hunt, I’d grab Haruhi herself and drag her straight to the finish line, but that wasn’t the point either. The biggest mystery of all was how I’d wound up being
part of this bizarre group, but I couldn’t very well lump them all together and show them to Haruhi. Just as she instinctually sought out mysteries, I just wanted to keep living my life. That was the simple truth.

Haruhi proclaimed that they were heading “that way, across the train tracks,” so I saw Asahina and Nagato off as they crossed, then retied my muffler.

“Got any idea where we should go?” I asked my companion for the next two hours.

Koizumi managed good cheer despite looking as though the cold was about to freeze him solid. “Even if I did, I very much doubt you’d be willing to follow me. Let’s just enjoy a nice walk.”

Surprisingly, once we started walking, Koizumi didn’t start saying his usual nonsensical things. We watched the silhouettes of the big carp in the canal, impressed at their vigor. We went into a convenience store and browsed the magazines. Basically we acted like two bored high school students.

We talked about the upcoming final exams, what had been on TV the night before—until I suddenly realized that having such a normal conversation with him doubled my suspicion, and I said as much.

“I’m an esper who appears to be a normal high school student. Outward appearances like this are very important,” said Koizumi as he crossed the street, appearing to count the stripes on the crosswalk. “It’s not as though I want to be an esper forever. If I could pass my powers to someone else, I sometimes feel like I’d happily do so.” He smiled at me, as though that were supposed to make me feel better. “Only sometimes. If I had to choose, I’d choose the way I am now. Being able to interact with time travelers and non-terrestrial life-forms is an incredibly rare opportunity. Though I can’t compare with you.”

From my perspective, he was just as rare as the two people he was talking about, I told him.

“While I don’t know when the title of ‘esper’ might be taken from me, I do know that I’ll only be a high school student for a certain amount of time—so long as Suzumiya doesn’t repeat a grade. So I’ve got to make the most of being a high school student, while I still can.”

I thought back on the insane events of the past year. “Well, from where I’m standing it looks like you’re doing just fine. Especially during the summer and winter trips,” I said.

“Those were both because I’m a member of the Agency. Soon it will be four years since I joined, but if I’d never received the strange powers I have, I would never have transferred to North High, and I would’ve lived a life totally unconcerned with little things like the fate of the entire world.”

“So what?” I said as I walked, looking up at the flashing pedestrian signal. “I don’t know anything about supernatural powers, but I
do
know that it’s thanks to those powers that you’re here. Don’t blame them. Or are you just frustrated because you wound up in a stupid club like the SOS Brigade? Go ahead and write a resignation letter. Give it a try. I’ll even give it to Haruhi for you.”

Koizumi’s mouth curled into a forced smile. “No thanks,” he said after a moment. Then, in an amused tone: “Just as you’ve now found a certain defiance, I’ve come to hold Suzumiya, you, and the rest of the brigade in a regard I would’ve found unimaginable when I first met you. I’m the lieutenant brigade chief and all… but now, there’s no need to use that title. Do you remember what I said to you during the snowy mountain incident?”

Of course I did. I’d never forget it. And if he ever went back on the promise he made then, I’d join with Haruhi and come up with a punishment the likes of which he’d never seen, I said.

“That’s a relief. If I ever suffer from amnesia, things will be all right—you’ll remember for me.” Koizumi smiled pleasantly, exhaling white vapor. “While I don’t want to think that Nagato
will easily find herself in such a predicament very often, I will always do what I can.”

I wished he’d express such determination on behalf of the rest of his friends, I said.

“I should think that would go without saying. Asahina’s always been the sort of person you want to protect. You just want to take care of her, somehow. That’s something of a supernatural ability in and of itself.”

Having made it across the crosswalk, Koizumi suddenly stopped and checked his watch, which prompted me to do the same. We’d done quite a bit of wandering around. It would be time to meet back up soon.

Just as I was beginning to head back to the station, I heard Koizumi’s quiet voice from about three steps behind me.

“The current Asahina is someone both the Agency and I wish to protect. But please be careful. The same may not be true for the other Asahina, the one with a different outfit from your Asahina.”

Asahina the Elder’s silhouette flashed across my retinas. I kept walking, not looking back, and Koizumi’s voice became more distant.

“There’s no guarantee she’ll bring us—the SOS Brigade—only good fortune.”

Maybe not. But you said this too.

“If so,” I said, “we just have to change that future. Starting now.”

The three girls were waiting for us when Koizumi and I returned to the station.

“Did you find anything?” Haruhi asked us.

But you can’t find what you’re not looking for. “No,” was my honest answer. “Did you find anything interesting? If you didn’t, you can’t complain about us.”

“Yeah, we didn’t really find anything very mysterious,” said Ha-ruhi, seeming neither depressed nor irritated. Her smile was actually rather alarming. “But! We went to the department store and ate a bunch of free samples in the supermarket. That was fun, right?”

Haruhi smiled encouragingly at Asahina.

“O-oh, yes, it was,” said Asahina, rapidly nodding her head. Her soft chestnut hair fluttered about like butterflies in a garden. “It was nice seeing all the different things. I bought some new tea too.”

The happily smiling Asahina seemed to have really gotten in the shopping mood. And when I looked more carefully, I saw that Nagato was holding a bag from the bookstore. Just what “mysterious phenomena” had these three gone in search of, if they’d wound up at the grocery store and the bookstore? I suppose if you wanted mysterious stories, the bookstore was the place to go.

“I don’t see what the problem is,” said Haruhi nonchalantly. “If you get hasty, you’ll just wind up regretting it later. It’s when you’re in a hurry that you’ve got to be careful. It’s just like driving a car. If you’re going too fast, that’s gonna be the difference between getting in an accident and avoiding it. It’ll happen
because
you were sure it wasn’t going to happen.”

She was not making a lot of sense, I told her.

“It’s very simple, Kyon. Look—” Haruhi said haughtily. “It’s like playing Red Light, Green Light. People move when you’re not looking, but as soon as you turn around, they freeze. Mysterious phenomena are the same way. But if you never turn around at all, they’ll just sneak right by you, so you gotta seize the right moment. It’s all about timing, Kyon—
timing.
”

That was even less comprehensible. I suppose it was all consistent in Haruhi’s head, but she was talking as though the metaphorical Lady Luck were an
actual lady
, which was not helpful. Only people receiving strange transmissions on unknown wavelengths had any hope of catching an incorporeal concept.

“Anyway, where do you want to go for lunch?”

Apparently my doubts were unimportant.

“There’s a new Italian place across from the bank. I heard they’ve got a good lunch menu, so I made a reservation for the five of us.”

Evidently Haruhi was now in full-on city-girl mode. Once she’d made up her mind like this, a monk whispering sutras into the ear of a horse would have a better chance of changing its mind than I would of Haruhi’s. At least the monk would be racking up good karma.

“Fine with me,” I said. “What about you, Koizumi?”

I wondered what would happen if he said something ridiculous like, “No thanks, I can’t stand tomato sauce,” but Koizumi would never oppose any plan of Haruhi’s. “Sure,” he said with a smile.

“It’s decided, then.” Haruhi reaffirmed the decision she’d obviously already made, then we double-timed it straight over to the Italian place just in time for the lunch rush. By the time we got there my muscles were all aching afresh.

Haruhi was no different from a cat—and there was such a thing as being too mischievous. When she was depressed I’d feel like it was better if she were her usual too-energetic self, but part of me wondered if the day when she was on an even keel would ever come.

I finished the ice water the waiter brought me in about three seconds, and when I looked to see if I’d be able to get a refill—yeah, it looked like it would take about the same amount of time it would take for Asahina the Younger to become Asahina the Elder.

After finishing her reasonably priced lunch—the doria special of the day—Haruhi took out her toothpicks and reshuffled them.

We were approaching the climax of the day. It was a little confusing, since there was Asahina, right in front of me, but the reason I had to worry about what happened here was because of the other Asahina, Michiru Asahina. I hoped she’d be waiting for me.

I looked askance at Nagato, who’d inhaled her lunch and spent the rest of the time silently rereading the menu. Nagato was now watching the five toothpicks dispassionately. I couldn’t imagine she’d forgotten my request, so I calmed myself and immediately drew a toothpick.

It had a mark on it.

Nagato was the next to reach out, and she immediately drew the other marked toothpick, then set it carefully on the table.

“Oh, I guess we don’t have to keep drawing,” said Haruhi.

If she had used some kind of trick, Nagato wasn’t so clumsy as to let Haruhi notice. Haruhi flicked the remaining three toothpicks into the ashtray and stood, our meal check in hand. Which is not to say she treated us—no, we split the check evenly, down to the last yen.

We finished paying and reemerged into the cold wind, again to wander aimlessly across the city like migrating fish. But I would leave that to Haruhi, Asahina, and Koizumi. Nagato and I had a different path to walk—along with another Asahina, from three days in the future.