The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (12 page)

“Not exactly… But why are you telling me this?”

“Because you are the person chosen by Suzumiya.”

Asahina turned her whole upper body toward me.

“The details are classified so I can’t explain any further. However, you are probably an important person to Suzumiya. Every action she performs has a reason behind it.”

“Nagato and Koizumi are…”

“Those people are extremely similar to me. I never would have expected Suzumiya to assemble us in such a precise fashion.”

“Do you know what they are, Asahina?”

“That’s classified information.”

“What happens if Haruhi is just left alone?”

“That’s classified.”

“And wait, if you’re from the future, you should know what’s going to happen.”

“That’s classified.”

“What will happen if I tell Haruhi everything?”

“That’s classified.”

“…”

“I’m sorry. I can’t tell you. Especially since I don’t have enough authority right now.” Asahina looked apologetic with a downcast look on her face. “It’s OK if you don’t believe me. I just wanted to let you know.”

I just heard something similar a few days ago. In that empty, silent apartment room.

“I’m sorry….”

Perhaps seeing my silence and worried about what I was thinking, Asahina’s eyes became clouded.

“… About suddenly telling you all this.”

“I don’t really mind….”

First, there was someone telling me she was an artificial human of alien creation, now a time traveler shows up? How am I supposed to believe all of this? Feel free to let me know.

As I placed my hand on the bench, I happened to touch Asahina’s hand. Our pinkies barely touched yet she tore her hand away like she’d been shocked. She looked down again.

We continued to watch the river in silence.

An unknown amount of time passed.

“Asahina.”

“Yes…?”

“Can we put this all on hold? Just set the matter of whether or not I believe you aside and put this on hold.”

“OK.”

Asahina smiled. A brilliant smile.

“That’s fine. For now. Please continue to act normally around me. I’m counting on you.”

Asahina placed three fingers on the bench and bowed deeply. That’s a bit excessive.

“May I ask one thing?”

“What is it?”

“Please tell me your real age.”

“That’s classified information.”

She smiled mischievously.

Afterward, we just meandered around town. Haruhi had firmly reminded me that this wasn’t a date, but I really couldn’t care less after what I had just heard. We window shopped around some trendy boutiques, bought some soft serve to eat as we walked, browsed through stalls with used women’s accessories…. In other words, we spent the time doing things a normal couple would do.

If we had held hands on top of that, I could have died and gone to heaven.

My cell phone rang. The caller was Haruhi.

“Reassemble at noon in front of the station like earlier.”

She hung up. I checked my watch. 11:50. We couldn’t make it in time.

“Suzumiya? What did she say?”

“We’re supposed to reassemble, apparently. We’d best hurry.”

I wondered how Haruhi would react if we showed up arm in arm. She’d probably be pissed.

Asahina buttoned up her cardigan as she curiously looked up at me.

“Results?”

After we got there ten minutes late, this was the first thing out of Haruhi’s mouth. She looked to be in a bad mood.

“Anything?”

“Nothing.”

“Were you even looking? Are you sure you weren’t just wandering around? Mikuru?”

Asahina shook her head.

“What about you? Did you find anything?”

Haruhi fell silent. Behind her, Koizumi had a cool look on his face and Nagato stood blankly.

“Let’s have lunch and plan for the afternoon.”

You want to keep going?

As we were eating lunch at a hamburger place, Haruhi told us to split into groups again. She pulled out the five toothpicks she had taken from the café. Resourceful gal.

Koizumi quickly drew his.

“I drew unmarked again.”

Sickeningly white teeth. I got the feeling he never stopped smiling.

“Me too.”

Asahina showed me the toothpick she drew.

“What about you, Kyon?”

“Marked, unfortunately.”

Haruhi directed Nagato to draw a toothpick with an increasingly irritated expression on her face.

As a result of the drawing, I ended up with Nagato and the other three were together.

“…”

Haruhi glared at her unmarked toothpick the way you would glare at a bitter enemy. She then looked at me, then Nagato, munching away at a cheeseburger, and puckered her lips like a pelican’s bill.

What is she trying to say?

“Meet in front of the station at four. You had better find something this time.”

She noisily slurped down the rest of her shake.

This time, we split up searching north and south. Nagato and I were responsible for the south side. Asahina waved her small hand at me before she went on her way. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

And so there I was, standing amidst the early afternoon bustle in front of the station.

“What do we do?”

“…”

Nagato was silent.

“Want to get going?”

Once I started walking, she followed suit. I was starting to grow accustomed to how to deal with her.

“Nagato, about what you said the other day…”

“What?”

“I’ve started to feel a little like I can believe you.”

“I see.”

“Yeah.”

“…”

We continued to walk around the station in silence with a hollow atmosphere in pursuit.

“Don’t you have any normal clothes?”

“…”

“What do you usually do on days off?”

“…”

“Are you having fun right now?”

“…”

Well, that’s pretty much how it went.

This pointless walking around was starting to get on my nerves, so I took Nagato to the library. The main library was closer to the seashore, but there was a new library near the station that had been constructed on land developed during a government expansion project. I don’t really borrow books so I’ve never been inside.

I was planning on sitting down for a break if there was a sofa or something, but while there were sofas, they were all taken. Damn bored people. Don’t you have somewhere else to go?

As I looked around the library, discouraged, Nagato floated toward the bookshelves like a sleepwalker. I’ll leave her alone.

I used to read a lot. In my early elementary school days, I would read every children’s book my mother borrowed from the library from front to back. The books were of varying genres, but I recall that I found them all interesting. Yet I don’t remember any of them in detail.

When was it? That I stopped reading. Lost interest in reading?

I drew from the bookshelf whichever book my eyes happened to fall upon and flipped through the pages before placing it back on the shelf and repeating the process. I didn’t think that with so many books it would be so hard to find one that looked interesting without having prior knowledge about it. And with such thoughts in mind, I wandered the shelves for a book.

When I looked for Nagato, I spotted her standing in front of a bookshelf near the wall reading a book so thick it could serve as a dumbbell. She must really love thick books.

I spotted some old guy who had been flipping through the sports page getting up from a sofa, so I slipped into the open spot with a randomly selected novel in hand.

It’s pretty futile to try to read a book you don’t actually want to read, and I soon found myself battling an inevitable onslaught of drowsiness. I quickly fell against the overwhelming waves of enemy attacks and drifted off.

My back pocket vibrated.

“Wha—?”

I jumped up. When the other people looked pointedly at me, I recalled that I was in a library. I wiped the drool off my chin and jogged outside.

I placed the cell phone with its vibration mode in full action to my ear.

“Do you realize what time it is now, you moron?!”

A deafening voice pierced my eardrums. That cleared up my head.

“Sorry, I just woke up.”

“What? You lazy bum!”

You’re the one person I don’t want calling me a dumbass.

I checked my watch. 4:30. We were supposed to meet up at four, I think.

“Get your ass back here! Within thirty seconds!”

Don’t be ridiculous.

After she rudely hung up on me, I put my cell phone back in my pocket and walked back into the library. Nagato was easy to find. She was standing still in front of the first bookshelf I spotted, reading some encyclopedia-like book.

This was when the struggle began. In order to move Nagato, who when reading is apparently rooted to the floor, I had to get her a library card so she could borrow the book. All the while ignoring the flood of calls from Haruhi.

When Nagato (carefully holding a philosophy book penned by somebody with a complicated name) and I got back to the station, we were met by three people with three different reactions.

Asahina, looking exhausted, sighed a smile at us. Koizumi shrugged in an exaggerated motion. Haruhi looked like she had just chugged a bottle of Tabasco sauce.

“Late. Penalty.” she said.

My treat again, huh?

In the end, after yielding no results or satisfaction and wasting time and money like no one’s business, today’s outdoor activity came to a close.

“I’m exhausted. Suzumiya walked really fast. It was all I could do to keep up,” Asahina said before taking a breath, just as we were splitting up. She then got on her tiptoes and whispered into my ear.

“Thank you for listening to what I had to say today.”

She quickly backed off and smiled shyly. Does everybody in the future smile so gracefully?

With a cute “bye” by way of farewell, Asahina walked off. Koizumi lightly patted my shoulder.

“Today was quite fun. Indeed, Suzumiya is every bit the interesting person I expected. I regret that I was unable to be in a group with you today. Perhaps another time.”

Koizumi also left with that aggravating, easy smile of his. Nagato had vanished long ago.

Which left Haruhi, glaring at me.

“What exactly were you doing today?”

“Beats me. What exactly was I doing?”

“That kind of mindset won’t do!”

It looks like she’s seriously pissed.

“Then what about you? Did you discover anything interesting?”

Haruhi bit her lower lip with a light grunt. She might have bitten her lip off if I hadn’t said something.

“Well, they’re not careless enough to let you find them in one day.”

Haruhi glanced at me after my follow-up before quickly turning away.

“The day after tomorrow, we’ll hold a review of today’s behavior.”

She then turned around and walked off without looking back once, quickly blending into the crowd.

I figured I should also get going and headed to the bank, only to find that my bike wasn’t there. Instead, there was a sign saying
YOUR ILLEGALLY PARKED BICYCLE HAS BEEN CONFISCATED
on a nearby lamppost.

A new week began. We’d reached the point where the humidity of the rainy season left us sweating early in the morning. If some guy runs for office on the platform of installing an escalator on this hill, I’d be willing to vote for him—once I’m old enough to vote.

I was sitting in the classroom using a pencil board to fan my neck when oddly enough, Haruhi showed up right before the bell rang.

She dropped her bag on her desk with a plop.

“Fan me too.”

“Fan yourself.”

Haruhi was jutting her lips out with the same sour look on her face she had when I last saw her two days ago. And I had just been thinking about how her expressions had started to look normal, but instead, she went back to the way she was.

“Look here, Suzumiya. Have you ever heard the song ‘Bluebird of Happiness’?”

“What about it?”

“Nothing really.”

“Then shut your mouth.”

Haruhi glared in some upward sideways direction, I turned to the front of the room, and teacher-man Okabe walked in and started homeroom.

I spent the class period being pressured from behind by Haruhi’s depressing aura of displeasure. Man, the bell signaling the end of class had never sounded so divine. Like a field mouse sensing an impending bushfire, I scurried to the safety of the club room.

The sight of Nagato reading in the club room had become the default backdrop. It was like she was an irremovable fixture in the room.

Which is why I spoke to Koizumi, who had arrived just before me.

“Don’t you also have something to tell me concerning Suzumiya?”

Only three people are in the room. Haruhi’s on cleaning duty this week and Asahina hasn’t showed up yet.

“Oh? The ‘also’ would imply that the other two ladies have already approached you.”

Koizumi took a glance at Nagato, who had her head buried in the book she borrowed from the library. I really can’t stand how he sounds like he knows everything.

“Let’s move to a different location. We wouldn’t want Suzumiya to walk in on us.”