The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya (8 page)

“Do you believe me capable of such an incredible task? I, a mere actor, could not possibly bring myself to speak to the producer who is also the director. After all, Suzumiya’s orders are absolute. I don’t even want to imagine the sort of chastisement she would deliver if I were to disobey her.”

Neither do I. Isn’t that why I’m being her cameraman? And I’m not even shooting a movie. Just a local commercial film for a private store. The concept of being a good neighbor only goes so far.

The usual frenzied scene was probably occurring in the back of the store right then. The scene of Haruhi stripping a resisting Asahina as she pleased. I didn’t know what costume she was putting her in, but she could just wear it herself. She could probably give Asahina a run for her money in the looks department. Did she never consider making herself the star of the movie?

“Sorry for the wait!”

Of the pair walking back out, Haruhi was naturally still in her uniform. The other person’s appearance triggered a slide show of images in my mind. Yeah, it’s already been six months. Time sure flies. A lot sure has happened in the past six months. Baseball, a remote island, and all kinds of stuff. They’re all such fond memories now… Like hell they are.

The nostalgic original Mikuru Asahina costume, which Haruhi also wore at the school front gate. The overly revealing costume that became the talk of the school and left Asahina emotionally scarred.

The perfectly flawless bunny girl with flushed cheeks and moist eyes stood wobbling next to Haruhi, bunny ears swaying.

“Yep, absolutely perfect. Guess a bunny girl really is best for promoting merchandise,” Haruhi said incomprehensibly as she looked Asahina up and down with a satisfied smile. Asahina seemed completely miserable, as if her spirit were escaping through her half-opened mouth.

“Come on, Mikuru. Do it over from the top. I’m assuming that you’ve learned your lines by now. Kyon, rewind it to the very beginning.”

At this rate, nobody’s going to be listening to anything being said. I’m positive that everyone will have their eyes glued to Asahina in her bunny outfit. I hope they don’t burn a hole in the screen.

“And take two!” Haruhi shouted with a smack of her megaphone.

The electronics store commercial featuring a half-crying, half-smiling Asahina being completely manipulated by Haruhi was finally finished. It was like watching a foreign wrestler being manipulated by an evil manager.

But then, remember that we’d visited another sponsor earlier. No need to remember, I guess. Haruhi had been planning on another commercial for that sponsor to begin with.

Haruhi was walking through the center of the shopping district as she dragged along the bunny Asahina, who was releasing cute little squeaks and squeals. Trailing behind her like a ghost was Nagato, trudging along expressionlessly in her witch getup. Koizumi and I followed in suit.

My blazer was wrapped around Asahina’s shoulders in a feeble attempt to comfort her. It might be making her stand out more, though. This world is full of people with strange tastes. Not that I’m interested in this kind of thing by any means.

We reached the second stop, the model shop, and went through a repetition of the earlier proceedings. With all eyes on her, Asahina turned her teary eyes to me—in other words, the camera—and spoke.

“Th-this model shop was apparently opened last year after Keiji Yamatsuchi, twenty-eight, escaped his life as a white-collar worker. It coincided with his hobby… so he just kinda went for it…. Sure enough, he hasn’t experienced the sales growth he’d like. Growth rate for this year’s first term is about eighty percent of what it was for last year’s first term. The sales line graph is moving down and right… apparently! Everyone be sure to stop by!”

The trembling of Asahina’s voice made it sound like she didn’t mean a thing she was saying. At any rate, did Yamatsuchi, the manager, even okay this little speech? I’d expect this to just depress him. Who would want to be judged like that by a high school student?

The bunny girl was pointing the assault rifle that had been forced into her hands in an upward direction.

“You mustn’t fire this at people. Settle for shooting empty cans or something!”

Nagato was standing behind her holding a placard that read
Yamatsuchi Model Shop
with an unreadable expression on her face. It was a surreal sight. Since Ryoko Asakura looked like a normal person with emotions, I assumed that not all alien-made artificial humans acted like robots. Was Nagato’s lack of emotion by design?

Asahina then proceeded to point the rifle at some empty cans on the ground and opened fire.

“Eek—! I’m pretty sure it’ll hurt a lot if you get hit. Eek—!”

She even performed a demonstration by fearfully discharging the weapon, riddling the aluminum cans into beehives, which caused a stir among the peanut gallery. Her accuracy was only around ten percent though.

I was feeling pretty guilty about recording this kind of a scene onto a DV cassette tape. I felt like I should apologize to both Asahina and the person who’d developed this technology. He sure didn’t invent the video camera to record this crap.

And so we were done for the day once the stupid commercials were finished.

We returned to the school momentarily and lounged around the club room while Haruhi informed us of the schedule for the next stage of filming.

“Tomorrow’s Saturday and we have the day off, so we’re meeting up in the morning. Be in front of Kitaguchi station at nine. Got it?”

Incidentally, the commercials already ate up fifteen minutes of time. How long would the actual film be? If you screened some three-hour-long epic at a cultural festival, nobody would stick around to the very end. I doubt there’d be much of a turnout either.

I mulled this over in my mind as I watched a discouraged-looking Asahina. She’d been in a waitress outfit for the trip there, and then she’d been forced to wear her bunny-girl outfit on the train for the ride back before finally being allowed to change back into her uniform. She lifelessly collapsed onto the floor. At this rate, we’ll have to watch out for the lead actress falling asleep during filming.

I finished off the tea Koizumi had brewed in place of the exhausted Asahina.

“Hey, Haruhi. Can’t we do something about Asahina’s outfit? There’s gotta be something that looks more like something she could actually fight in. Like a combat uniform or camouflage fatigues?” I asked.

Haruhi waved the star-adorned antenna pointer in a reproachful fashion.

“That would kill the surprise when she starts fighting. A waitress doing the fighting gets you the wow factor. Grabbing the audience’s attention is key. It’s all about concept. Concept!”

Does she even know what “concept” means? I could only sigh.

“Yeah… I guess that works, but what’s the point in making her come from the future? Would it really matter if she wasn’t a time traveler?”

Asahina’s shoulders gave a violent shudder where she sprawled. Haruhi didn’t even notice or miss a step.

“We can work that all out later on. Just have to come up with an answer when someone brings it up.”

Didn’t I just bring it up? Give me an answer.

“If you can’t come up with an answer, just ignore them! Not like it even matters. It just has to be entertaining!”

“If it’s entertaining, sure. And what are the chances that this film you’re making will be entertaining? There’s no point in filming something that only entertains the director. Are you aiming for a Golden Raspberry nomination in the amateur category?”

“What’s that? I’m only after one thing. First place in the cultural festival best-event poll! And if possible, a Golden Globe. Which is why we need Mikuru to dress appropriately or else people will complain!”

I doubted anybody was going to complain. At any rate, from the look on Haruhi’s face, it would seem that the film that had left her enraged had obviously managed to win a Golden Globe at some point in time.

I sighed again and looked to my side. Clad in black, Nagato had parked herself in a corner of the room to engage in her usual reading. Yeah, is she going to die if she doesn’t read when she’s in this room or something?

“Wait.”

I realized something as I watched the book-loving alien.

“Hey, we haven’t gotten the script yet.”

Actually, we don’t even know what the story is yet. All we know is that Asahina is a waitress from the future, Koizumi is a boy esper, and Nagato is an evil alien mage.

“Don’t worry.”

I had no idea what Haruhi was trying to do, but she suddenly closed her eyes and thrust the tip of the star-adorned pointer at her temple.

“Everything’s in here. The script and storyboard are all worked out. You don’t have to do any thinking at all. I’ll plan out the camera work for you.”

Strong words. You’re the one who should refrain from thinking and just mindlessly stare out the window. If you had a more reasonable expression on your face, you could trade places with Asahina.

“Tomorrow’s the day. Tomorrow! Everyone get psyched up. The first step to winning glory is spiritual fortitude. That’s the fastest way to obtaining victory without spending money. Once your soul breaks free of its worldly bonds, latent abilities you never knew about will awaken and release incredible power. That’s right!”

Well, I can see that happening when the course of a battle is reversed through some unexpected turn of events in one of those fighting comics, but I’m pretty sure that no matter how much you talk about spiritual fortitude and nationalism, we’re a long way from witnessing the Japanese soccer team win the World Cup.

“Then that’s it for today! Look forward to tomorrow! Kyon, don’t forget about the camera, props, costumes, and other stuff. Make sure you’re on time!”

And with that said, Haruhi departed, swinging her bag heroically. As I listened to the
Rocky
theme fade off into the hallway, I bitterly glared at the pile of crap. I wondered which guild I was supposed to report this director’s oppression to.

Fact of the matter is, our school life up until this day had consisted of ordinary everyday happenings, with the exception of Haruhi’s abnormal passion for filmmaking being on the excessive side. If you went through every single school in the country, you could probably find another group of people doing something similar. Or to put it simply, this was “normal.”

No attacks by Nagato’s kind. No time traveling with Asahina. No glowing blue mold-like giants showing up. No murders leading to delayed revelations.

This was totally normal school life.

As the countdown to the approaching cultural festival progressed, Haruhi was on a high, riding a steady stream of adrenaline and racing like a pet hamster getting whipped into running Mach 1 on a wheel.

In other words, business as usual.

—Until this day, that is.

In retrospect, I’d have to say that Haruhi was still holding back. I realized that we had yet to shoot a single frame of the movie. The only footage recorded on the digital videotape was of bunny-girl Asahina promoting the electronics store and plastic model shop in the local shopping district, which only served to get sponsors. Not a glimmer of light had been shed on the film that would be produced, directed, and supervised by Haruhi. We didn’t even know the story line yet.

I guess we would have been better off not knowing.

I could have lived with a video of Asahina reporting on the local shopping district. Actually, wouldn’t that bring in a bigger audience? It’d also promote the local area. That’d be killing two birds with one stone. Yeah, why don’t we just turn it into a Mikuru Asahina promotional video. That’d make me a lot happier. Considering that’s my true motive as the cameraman.

Still, I knew that Haruhi would never be satisfied by that. She always carried through on her word. If she said she was gonna do it, she’d do it. She never gave up halfway through. A troublesome case of keeping one’s word.

And so, beginning the following day, we would once again find ourselves caught up in some bizarre business. Yeah, seriously. I’m at a loss for words. What was it that Haruhi said again?

Once your soul breaks free of its worldly bonds, latent abilities you never knew about will awaken and release incredible power
—or something like that.

I see.

Haruhi?

Why did you have to be the one to one to experience that awakening?

And without you even realizing it.

Saturday. The day of.

We assembled in front of the station. I stuffed an assortment of junk into the largest backpack I could find in our house and walked all the way to the station to find the other four lined up waiting for me.

From a distance, my eyes were drawn to Haruhi in casual dress and Asahina in feminine clothing next to her. Like two sisters who didn’t resemble each other the least bit. Asahina was supposed to be the upperclassman here, yet she looked like the younger sister. Only her clothes appeared to be more mature.

Asahina, surrounded by the trio of weirdos, spotted me and waved her hand in a somewhat relieved fashion by way of greeting. Hmm.

“You’re late!” Haruhi was yelling, but she looked to be in high spirits again today. She was standing empty-handed because her megaphone and folding director’s chair were among my burden of assorted junk.

“It isn’t nine o’clock yet,” I said sourly as I looked left and right at Nagato’s porcelain face and Koizumi’s easy smile. “Anyway, Nagato always wears her uniform when we don’t have school so that’s normal, but why is Koizumi also wearing his uniform?”

“It would appear that this is my costume for the movie.”

That was his response.

“That is what I was told yesterday. My role will be that of an esper disguised as an ordinary high school student.”

Isn’t that exactly what you are?

As I dropped the bag stuffed with the camera and props and wiped off my forehead, Haruhi grinned like a grade-schooler about to go on a field trip.

“Kyon, you were the last to show up so you’ll be fined. But not yet. We’re taking the bus now. I’ll cover the bus fare. Call it a necessary expense. You buy lunch for everyone.”