The Intrigues of Haruhi Suzumiya (7 page)

“Yes?” she replied, looking over her shoulder as she reached up. “What is it?”

I couldn’t believe she was asking me that. “Those shoes belong to your past self! The one in
this
time!”

“Ah—r-right…” she said, closing the door to the locker. “If I put these on, then my other self would have a hard time getting home. And I don’t remember my shoes going missing, so…”

That wasn’t all. She would’ve put her own school shoes back in the locker, and then what would’ve happened? The other Asahina would come back, open the locker, and find shoes precisely identical to the ones she was already wearing already inside.

“R-right,” said Asahina, flustered. “But, um, how am I going to get home?”

She’d just have to wear her school slippers, I thought. It might be a little embarrassing, but there was no other way. She couldn’t very well borrow another student’s shoes. And at the moment, I was more worried about
where
she was going to go home, rather than
how
.

I returned to my own shoe locker, opening it as my heart banged away in my chest.

And there, nostalgically enough, I found a message from the future.

“… Good job, Asahina. You’re always prepared.”

There atop my dirty, worn-out sneakers sat a fancy little envelope.

A cold wind stabbed at Asahina and me as we walked down the street, away from the school.

There was a scattering of other students from North High around, and I wondered if the feeling I had that they were all glancing at Asahina’s strange state—carrying no school bag and wearing her school slippers—was just my imagination.

Asahina was to my right, her chestnut-brown hair swaying softly. Her expression was far from soft, though—it was as dark as the clouds before a snowstorm.

And there was no doubt my own face was hardly untroubled. After all, I’d been forced to flee the clubroom, and my skipping
club activities (actually, it was a brigade, so brigade activities) without notice would put the Chief in a bad mood, and unless I thought of a funny enough excuse or a good enough reason, I’d become fodder for one of her special punishments.

Nevertheless, leaving Asahina alone was risky in several ways. Seeing her wander aimlessly under the freezing night sky would make anyone want to help her. But seeing as how there was no guarantee that such helpers would be persons of good repute, I would have to do it myself.

“I’m sorry,” she said in an adorably sad voice. “Causing you trouble again, I—”

“No, not at all,” I answered quickly before she could finish. “I’m the one who sent you here in the first place, right? Future me’s the one at fault here.”

He and Asahina the Elder both. For being our future selves, they sure weren’t very nice to us. Did people from the future just hate the past, or what?

I grabbed the envelope I’d shoved into my pocket.

On the note, which had no indication of recipient or sender, there was simply written: Please take care of the Mikuru Asahina beside you.

That was all. I’d seen the careful handwriting before. The previous spring, I’d visited the clubroom during lunch in response to a similar missive, where I met the curvaceous form of Asahina the Elder before she told me where her mole was, in addition to more important hints. She was definitely the sender.

But still—even if I was supposed to “take care” of this Asahina, what did that mean? What could I do? Hadn’t Asahina the Elder told me I could even kiss her, if I wanted to?

Incidentally, I’d already shown the letter to the Asahina who was right here. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with that. She could understand what “Please take care of Mikuru Asahina” meant. If this message had been meant for my eyes only, that part would’ve said “me” instead of “Mikuru Asahina.”

“What could this mean…?” murmured Asahina, as she held the letter, staring intently at it. She seemed not to realize that she was the one who would end up writing it.

She would probably gradually come to that realization, though. During the second visit to December eighteenth, she’d noticed a fourth person, someone besides me, Nagato, and Asakura. She’d been put immediately to sleep, but
because
she’d been put to sleep, she must have sensed the other woman’s presence.

And the previous month, when I’d saved that kid in glasses from being hit by a minivan near Haruhi’s house, and Asahina had been so depressed that I’d clumsily tried to cheer her up—surely she’d gotten some information from me then. I didn’t know how much she’d figured out by now, but Koizumi was right: the members of the SOS Brigade were gradually changing.

According to Koizumi, the rate at which Haruhi created closed space was decreasing.

Also according to Koizumi, Nagato’s alienness was lessening.

And Koizumi himself, he’d changed a bit too.
Isn’t that right, Mister Lieutenant Brigade Chief?

From what I could tell, although it was gradual, Haruhi was starting to engage with the people around her more. She’d been a substitute vocalist during the school festival, and when you compared activities like her game battle against the computer club and the winter training camp with her isolated state at the beginning of the year, she was like a different person now, smiling, happy, and able to reach mutual understandings with complete strangers.

—If there are any aliens, time travelers, sliders, or espers, come join me!

—We’re going to search for aliens, time travelers, and espers, and have fun with them!

It was like she knew it had come true.

I wanted to think that all of these things were signs of her growth as a person.

As to my own growth, I had no idea.

A half hour later, it was into my own home that I wound up escorting Asahina.

“Oh, I see!” she said as she entered, taking off her shoes. “This is why you weren’t in the clubroom today.”

Her carefree voice had an admiring tone.

Since I couldn’t very well let her go back to her own home, and in lieu of any better options, I’d asked if there were any other people from her era that she could possibly stay with.

“There might well be, but I haven’t been informed of them,” she told me, her face looking like a greyhound’s right after a grueling dog race.

I’d had no choice but to invite her over. Asahina’s sorrow was deep, and the situation was completely mystifying. I had no idea what was going to happen, and I didn’t really want to know. And then, my sister, who had nothing to do with our current troubles, jumped out at Asahina.

“Hey, it’s Mikuru!”

My sister had been trying to drag Shamisen the cat out from under my bed, but no sooner did we open the door to my room than she slammed into Asahina, causing the beautiful object of every male North High student’s desire to stumble backward.

“S-sorry to disturb you!”

“Hey, wait—it’s just Kyon and Mikuru? Where’s Haruhi?”

My little sister looked up at Asahina with shining eyes before I grabbed the eleven-year-old fifth grader by her collar.

“Haruhi’s still at school. And I told you not to go into my room uninvited.”

I knew it was pointless no matter how many times I told her. Which meant finding hiding places for things I didn’t want found was a huge pain.

“But Shami wouldn’t come out!” My sister clung to Asahina’s
skirt, giggling. “Where’s Yuki? And Koizumi? And Tsuruya? Aren’t they coming too?”

She tended to call everybody by the names she heard other people call them, which was obviously why she’d started calling me “Kyon.” An elementary school kid with no concept of respect for her elders—that was my little sister. All I wanted was for somebody to call me “big brother” once in a while. Was that so much to ask?

“Oh! Is this a date? Hey—”

I kicked her out of my room and shut the door before she got any further.

“Well then,” I said, sitting down and facing Asahina. “Can you give me an idea of what happens this week?”

“Hmm.” Asahina puzzled over it. “Eight days ago… which would be today, I went back to the clubroom and noticed that the heater was on, even though nobody was in the room.”

I’d seen that happen.

“And then when I was changing, Nagato came in, and then she took me over to the bottom of the emergency stairs.”

I’d seen the first half of that.

“When I came back to the clubroom, your bag was gone, and Koizumi was there.”

Which meant we’d escaped in the nick of time.

“About half an hour later, Suzumiya came.”

Her guidance counseling must have run long. I needn’t have worried about running into her, apparently.

“She seemed kind of angry.”

Maybe she’d gotten into some kind of argument during counseling. There weren’t exactly application forms for the kind of careers she probably had in mind. And if there were, I wanted one too.

“She just glared out the window with a scary look on her face and drank three cups of tea in a—oh!”

Asahina’s eyes went wide, as though she’d caught a glimpse of a ghost in the corner of the room.

“Suzumiya realized you weren’t there and…”

Realized?

“… And she called you—”

The instant Asahina said those words, my phone rang.

Crap.

When I really thought about it, what Asahina was talking about was prerecorded, but for me it was a live broadcast. I didn’t have time to listen to her dithering recollections. I still hadn’t come up with a good excuse for skipping out on the brigade meeting. I should’ve left my phone on vibrate. If I didn’t answer, it would only seem more suspicious to Haruhi. But before I answered, I had to ask something.

“Asahina, do you remember if I answered?”

“Um, yes, it seemed like you did.”

I guessed I’d better answer.

“Hello?”

“Where are you?” Haruhi’s voice already sounded highly irritated. I answered truthfully.

“I’m at home in my room.”

“What, you’re ditching?”

“Something came up.” Here’s where I would have to start lying.

“What do you mean, ‘something came up’?”

“Uh…” Just then, my eyes lit upon Shamisen crawling out from under my bed. “Y’know, Shamisen got sick, so I took him to the vet.”

“
You
did?”

“Yeah, my sister’s the only other one at home right now. She called me.”

“Huh. What’s he sick with?”

“Uh… alopecia areata. Y’know, fur loss.”

Hearing my half-assed answer, for some reason Asahina clamped her hand over her mouth.

“Shamisen’s losing his fur?”

“Yeah. The vet said it was stress-related, so he’s resting at home now.”

“Do cats even
have
stress problems? And doesn’t Shamisen always ‘rest at home’?”

“Well, yeah, but my sister messes around with him too much, apparently. So my room’s been turned into a Shamisen preserve, and my sister’s not allowed to come in.”

“Huh.” Whether or not she bought it, Haruhi sniffed and fell silent before continuing. “Are you with anybody else now?”

“…”

I took the phone away from my ear and stared at the call-time display on the screen.

How did she know? Asahina hadn’t said a word and had even covered her mouth so as to avoid carelessly letting anything slip.

“No, nobody’s here.”

“Oh yeah? Something was weird about your voice, so I was sure somebody was there.”

Her intuition was as sharp as ever.

“It’s just Shamisen. You want to talk to him?”

“Not really. Just tell him I hope he gets better soon. Bye.”

She hung up surprisingly briskly.

I tossed my cell phone onto the bed and looked at the calico cat as it rubbed up against Asahina’s leg. I wondered where I should shave a circular patch of hair off the feline—if Haruhi decided to come visit him, God forbid, I’d be in trouble otherwise.

“So what did Haruhi do after that?”

Asahina made a face as she tried to remember, absentmindedly scratching Shamisen behind the ears. “Umm, we were in the room until after five o’clock, and then we all went home. Suzumiya… seemed kind of quiet. All she’d done in the clubroom was read some magazines…”

It seemed that even Asahina was starting to pick up on Ha-ruhi’s strangely subdued behavior lately.

I wondered about the others. Nagato had surely sensed it.

Drawn in by her scratching, Shamisen put his front paws on Asahina’s skirted lap and purred. Asahina stroked his back as he occupied her lap.

“There wasn’t anything really out of the ordinary… I’m sorry. I don’t remember very well.”

It couldn’t be helped, I guessed. I wouldn’t have been able to tell you about Koizumi’s facial expressions a week ago, myself. If I’d been asked, all I could’ve said was that he seemed normal.

“Was there anything else? Tomorrow or the day after?”

Her eyes downcast, Asahina held the purring Shamisen’s tail lightly. “How far ahead should I go?”

I told her to just give me my future schedule, and I’d do my best to make it happen just like she remembered.

“Um, well, the next day is a holiday, so we all go on a treasure hunt.”

A treasure hunt? I asked.

“Yes. Suzumiya brings a treasure map, and we all go digging.”

Digging? Seriously? I asked.

“Yes. Suzumiya got the map from Tsuruya. She said that when they were organizing things in the family storehouse, this weird map that one of her ancestors had drawn just popped up. Like”—Asahina fluttered her fingers like tiny fish swimming through the air—“A weird old map drawn in ink.”

Tsuruya. She’d gone and given Haruhi another thing we’d all pay for. And really, digging for treasure? It wasn’t like we were in a Heian-era archaeological dig. Where did we go digging, I wanted to know.

“The mountains.” Asahina’s answer was straightforward. “There’s a mountain on Tsuruya’s estate. The round one you can see from the road that goes down the hill on the way home from school.”

Just thinking about it was exhausting. This wasn’t
Onshu no Kanata
, and doing a bunch of exhausting excavation
after
climbing a mountain made about as much sense as going on a long
hike to stave off the cold in this freezing February weather. I should say that it came as no surprise that Tsuruya’s family owned their own mountain. Their villa had its own ski slope, so surely they had resources enough to furnish their home with a mountain or two.