CHAPTER 4

α—7

It was Monday, the first weekday, and though nothing particularly notable happened, perhaps it was Sunday’s lingering lethargy that made the walk home seem longer, and seem to take longer, than usual.

Having Haruhi and the others along for the first part of the walk was nice and distracting, but once we parted ways and I was on my own, I started to feel rather lonely—as though being surrounded by the familiar faces of the SOS Brigade had become my natural state. I wasn’t sure what to make of myself, having failed to pay close attention and gotten so thoroughly tainted. It was as if I’d poked a sleeping dog with a stick only to realize the stick was me.

“Oh well.”

I stopped walking, and looked back without any real intention. The road to the school was brighter than usual in the springtime light. That might’ve been thanks to the innocence of the new freshmen who had visited the club after school, or maybe it was just an effect of the increased isolation.

“Not that it matters.”

My comment itself was also pointless. Sometimes I wonder whether saying something when there’s nobody around to hear it has any meaning at all. Words that convey nothing to another person are no more than pronunciation practice, after all. And I don’t make it a habit to talk to myself, so the words I’d just spoken were meant as a kind of self-reminder.

The truth was, if Haruhi tainted people, then I’d been thoroughly contaminated for a long time, and even if I could dump paint over myself to cover it up, I had less than a Golgi body’s diameter’s worth of inclination to do so.

Such were my thoughts as my homing instinct led me back to my house, pushing thoughts of the irregular factors like Sasaki and Kuyoh that had recently forced their way into prominence to the corner of my mind, greeting the evening and bringing the day to a close in my bedroom. It become my natural schedule to do so, and today was no different.

Thus—

Nothing worth any particular mention had happened today.

Theoretically.

β—7

While it would’ve been exaggerating to say she had the force of a rock falling from a cliff, Haruhi’s speed down the hill would’ve been a solid challenge for any world-class athlete.

Descending the road from school behind her, as though being dragged by an invisible rope, were Koizumi and I along with Asahina, and by the time we reached the level ground in front of Koyoen Station, I was thoroughly winded. Suffice it to say that even Koizumi, who normally looked like something straight out of a deodorant commercial, was wiping sweat from his brow. Asahina gasped for breath, bent over with her hands on her knees.

But Haruhi, who had to be hiding a radioactive power source somewhere in her body, seemed perfectly fine. “What’re you guys lazing around for? We’ve come this far, so let’s finish with a run!”

She took off at a sprint, heading for Nagato’s apartment.

This too was at Olympic speed, and it would’ve taken an athlete at the top of their career to keep up with her. I sent Koizumi ahead while taking the slower Asahina’s bag and following at the best pace I could manage.

“Haaah… hah…”

Minding Asahina with her tangled legs, I arrived late; Haruhi had been waiting for me at the apartment’s entrance, but the moment she confirmed everyone’s presence, she started pushing buttons on the intercom. 7, 0, 8, call.

The answer came immediately. As though she’d been waiting.

“…”

“Yuki, it’s me. Everybody’s here to check in on you.”

“…”

The intercom clicked off, and the automatic doors slowly slid open.

We entered the elevator that was stopped on the first floor, and Haruhi hit the button marked “7F.” I can’t say it was particularly roomy, and with all four of us in the elevator it was pretty cramped. The sound of Asahina’s breathing was very clear in my ear. Along with the faint sound of machinery.

The box ascended slowly as though under human power, and Haruhi’s lips were pursed the whole way. It wasn’t as though her mood was particularly poor, though—it was just that whenever she didn’t know exactly what expression to make, she defaulted to irritation.

She breezed impatiently through the doors once they finally opened to the seventh floor, pushing the air audibly aside as she marched along, finally hitting the door buzzer for 708 several times.

The door unlocked so quickly it seemed as though the room’s occupant must have been waiting just on the other side, and the metal door slowly swung open. Backlit by the warm interior lighting, the shadow of a human silhouette fell across the entryway.

“…”

There in the rectangular space created by the open door was Yuki Nagato, in her pajamas.

“Should you really be up?”

In response to Haruhi’s question Nagato only nodded, her eyes deep and unfathomable, then made for her closet to bring out indoor slippers for her guests.

“Aw, forget about that stuff.”

Haruhi kicked off her own shoes and stopped Nagato, taking her by the shoulders and marching her back inside to the bedroom. Asahina and I weren’t the only ones who’d visited Nagato’s place—everyone had been here several times, so even Haruhi had a sense of the room layout. I’d never ventured into Nagato’s bedroom, though—the living room and guest room were the extent of my exploration. Not that any of that mattered.

Before bothering to reflect on the strange sensation of entering the uncharted territory of Nagato’s bedroom for the first time—a bed was its only furnishing—I took a good look at Nagato, whom Haruhi was busy forcing back into bed.

“…”

Nagato’s pale face was unmoved as it contemplated the ceiling, and she didn’t look particularly feverish. If I had to identify something that was out of the ordinary, I suppose she had a little bit of bed-head, but that was it. My vision informed me that her eyelids were two millimeters more closed than normal, but she didn’t seem to be in any pain. Those unsexy pajamas, though…

Having regained some of my composure, I realized just how much of it I’d lost.

Haruhi put her hand to Nagato’s head. “Yuki, did you eat dinner? Does your head hurt?”

Her head still resting on the pillow, Nagato shook it side to side.

“You’ve gotta eat. I figured you might not have, since you live alone and all. Hmm”—Haruhi put her other hand to her own forehead—“you do have a bit of a fever. Do you have an ice pack anywhere?”

Nagato indicated in the negative.

“Well, whatever. I’ll buy you one later. First, dinner. I’m borrowing your kitchen and fridge, Yuki, okay?”

Haruhi didn’t wait for Nagato’s response, standing while simultaneously grabbing Asahina’s arm.

“I’m gonna make you my special rice porridge. Or would my special udon and veggie stew be better? Either one is great for when you have a cold. Mikuru, give me a hand.”

“Um… okay—!”

Asahina had been gazing worriedly at Nagato with her arms full of slippers, but perhaps spurred into action, she nodded several times and accompanied Haruhi. But just before they left the room, Haruhi stopped short and spoke to Koizumi and me, who were still standing there like idiots.

“Out of the room, you two. You can’t just stare at a girl while she’s sleeping.”

“In that case,” said Koizumi, “let me take care of the shopping. We need an ice pack and some cold medicine, correct?”

“Hang on a sec. I gotta make dinner, and that depends on what’s in the fridge. I wonder if she’s got any onion. Yeah, I’m gonna make a list. Come with me, Koizumi.”

“As you wish.”

Koizumi patted my shoulder as he smoothly breezed out of the room, giving me a strange look.

Left behind were me, who stood there with nothing to do, and Nagato, who lay neatly on her back.

I could hear fragments of the orders Haruhi was hurling at Koizumi and Asahina in the kitchen. “There’s nothing but canned goods! That’s hardly a balanced diet. Her body’s all messed up because she’s not eating any tasty vegetables. Mikuru, wash some rice and get the rice cooker ready—oh, and that pot too. And Koizumi, some eggs, spinach, scallions, and…”

Haruhi was good at stuff like this. She might claim it’s her duty as brigade chief, but it was in things that had nothing to do with the SOS Brigade where she really shone. And I knew from experience she was a good cook.

But this was no time to let myself get distracted by background chatter.

I had to ask.

“Nagato.”

“…”

“Are you all right? Do you feel about the same as you look?”

“…”

“Can you not talk?”

“I can.” Nagato had been still vaguely gazing at the ceiling, but then sat slowly up, the comforter still covering her upper body. Even a self-righting doll would have wobbled more than she did. She looked like The Undertaker.

“Is it because of Kuyoh that you’re like this?”

“I cannot say that for certain.” Nagato regarded me with eyes like polished quartz.

“You don’t think she did this? I mean—”

The incident last winter at the mansion where Nagato had collapsed—what had been behind that? We’d wandered in the mountain blizzard for hours, and the source of light we’d found turned out to be an inescapable mountain, wherein Nagato lost her usual lucidity. Could that have been…?

“Under load,” murmured Nagato in a near-whisper, her eyes dropping vaguely to the bed.

Had her body always been so small? She’d only been absent a day, and yet she seemed awfully thin and insubstantial now.

Then a sudden revelation struck me.

“When did this start?” I thought back on the events of the previous day. “When did the fever that forced you into bed begin?”

“Saturday evening.”

That was the day of our first citywide mysterious phenomenon patrol. There certainly hadn’t been anything wrong with Nagato then.

Surely this hadn’t started right when I’d gotten that phone call from Sasaki in the bath.

“…” Nagato didn’t answer, her vague, unfocused gaze falling on my chest.

Now that I thought about it, it was strange. Yesterday, Sunday. At Sasaki’s behest I’d gone out and met Kyoko Tachibana, Kuyoh Suoh, and Fujiwara, but there’d been a surprising intruder.

Emiri Kimidori. She was a year above us, and was another of the Data Overmind’s interfaces, along with Nagato and Asakura. The organic humanoid had hidden in either Nagato’s or the student council president’s shadow thus far. But the idea that she had a part-time job at that café and just happened to be there the same day as the rest of us was absurd. Kimidori was observing Kuyoh, I was positive. But why? Maybe to make sure that Kuyoh didn’t pull any crafty alien tricks on me. But usually that was Nagato’s job. And Nagato hadn’t been there.

A wave of anger hit me, and I wanted to put a cross-counterpunch through my own temple.

How stupid could I be? I should’ve known—should’ve noticed.

Kimidori had come because Nagato wasn’t able to. Nagato’s backup, Ryoko Asakura, was out of the picture. Kimidori, despite being from a different faction, was the only other one nearby. Hence her presence at the café, where she was disguised as a waitress, neither too close to us nor too far away.

Nagato’s eyes were duller than they’d ever been. Their shine was like that of an ancient coin dug up from the ground, seeming to lack any liveliness. They had lost their former sharpened-pencil gleam.

Without any air-conditioning, the bedroom stayed at a mild room temperature—yet I felt a chill run across my skin. It wasn’t physical, instead emphasizing the cold worry in my mind.

“How can I make you better?”

This was something that neither over-the-counter medicine nor Haruhi’s home cooking could cure. It was an alien pathogen. The only one who could come up with a vaccine or a drug to treat it was Nagato, and Yuki Nagato was the one lying here incapacitated.

“…” Her pale lips were closed for ten seconds, after which Nagato finally moved them. “I cannot recover from my current state of my own will. The Data Overmind will determine it.”

Her dimwitted boss, eh? He ought to try showing his face in front of me, I said. We’d have a nice, frank chat.

“Impossible. The Data Overmind…” Nagato’s eyes drooped another couple of millimeters. “… cannot communicate directly with organic beings… that is why it made me.”

Her head fell drowsily back onto the pillow.

“Hey—”

“I am fine.”

I checked again. This was no ordinary fever. Whatever it was that was afflicting Nagato, it was something that not even a dream team of the world’s greatest doctors could solve.

It was an information attack from the cosmic horror known as the Heavenly Canopy Dominion. They were shutting down her incredible powers by placing this heavy load on her.

“Could we fix this if we talked to Kuyoh?”

I couldn’t think of anything else. Just as Nagato was a representative of the Data Overmind, Kuyoh was an agent of the Heavenly Canopy Dominion. While it might not be as easy as it was with Nagato, communication with Kuyoh was possible—I’d learned that much from Sasaki and Kyoko Tachibana. She could speak Japanese, even if it was at a very low level. Which meant she ought to be able to understand the words I would say.

“Words…” Nagato spoke in a thin voice, barely above a sigh. “Words are difficult. I am not currently able to conduct discourse with another organic interface. My verbal communication facility is insufficient.”

I’d known that much from the beginning. But her silent nature was an important part of who she was—both for me and for Haruhi, I said.

“I…” she began, her expressionless face transparently biting back the frustration she felt. “If as an individual I had been given social capabilities…”

Her pale expression was infinitesimally close to blank.

“The possibility of my gaining tools like Ryoko Asakura’s was not zero. I was not made that way. I cannot change my predefined index. Until I cease functioning, I will be… as… I am.”

Nagato’s eyes were closed about three millimeters as they gazed up at the featureless ceiling.

I was out of words to offer.

How would things have been if Nagato’s and Asakura’s positions had been switched? If the silent, unapproachable, book-loving one had been the class representative, while the smiling, sociable busybody had been the sole literature club member?

It was an obvious mismatch—honestly, I couldn’t even imagine it. I hadn’t been stabbed by Nagato, then gone on to be saved by Asakura. There was no doubt in my mind that I was glad for the way things were, with Asakura there and Nagato here. Sorry, Asakura. I hope you never come back from Canada or wherever. Nagato’s enough for me. The trio of Nagato, Haruhi, and Asahina is more than enough to fill my cup to overflowing.

“Nagato, please, tell me”—I leaned forward, coming closer to her mussed bangs—“What should I do? How can I get you back to normal?”

“…”

No answer was forthcoming.

Nagato took her time and fixed me in her gaze, and the reply she finally gave me was very short indeed.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? You can’t—” I said, leaning forward.

“Hey, Kyon! What’re you doing with Yuki?!” Haruhi’s eyes were isosceles triangles of rage as she stood there, rice paddle in hand and apron tied on over her school uniform. “Get in here and help me! Koizumi’s already gone out shopping, so you could at least try to make yourself useful. Honestly, you’re the one who should be working hardest—menial physical labor is your responsibility, after all! Set out the plates, wash the chopsticks, and that’s just for starters. Now c’mon!”

I found myself being hauled by my neck and plunked down in the kitchen like a sandbag placed to protect against flooding.

Which was fine. I’d help with anything. If it would help Nagato recover, I’d make any dish. That’s right, here and now, if there was any possibility it could help. Whatever revitalizing dish Haruhi made would probably be enough to make even an extraterrestrial life-form turn green and sprint out of the house barefoot. The nastier, the better.

But while I might be driven to tears of gratitude by Haruhi’s cooking, my tongue had never rejected it. I will be frank. With all apologies to the mother who raised me, Haruhi’s meals were better.

I could hardly imagine her raising children, but there was no danger of Haruhi’s immediate descendants developing any taste disorders.

There in the kitchen, Haruhi left Asahina to tend the simmering earthen pot, and after taking a moment to gulp water directly from the tap, spoke.

“Well, that’s a bit of a relief. I’d never thought Yuki would miss school, so I was worried this was going to be a worse cold. But she doesn’t have too much of a fever, and once she’s had a nice, easy meal and gotten some sleep, she should be fine.”

“It doesn’t seem she’ll need to go to the hospital,” Koizumi casually interjected. Everybody other than Haruhi knew perfectly well a regular doctor wasn’t going to do Nagato any good, but now that he mentioned it, it would’ve been strange for the possibility not to come up. “I know a fine doctor, so if it comes to that, I’ll have him prescribe some excellent medicine.”

Haruhi wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “Medicine only makes you think you’re getting better. What really cures you is spirit.” She’d started lecturing. “The reason medicine tastes bad is to make the viruses or bacteria think, ‘Hey, if they’re gonna start putting nasty stuff like this in here, I better beat it.’ ”

“I-is that true?”

“You bet it is.”

I wanted her to stop brazenly lying in front of Asahina—what would happen if she believed it?

But I kept my comments to myself, sitting at the powerless kotatsu table in the living room with Koizumi and idly passing time.

Once he’d returned from his shopping, Koizumi had immediately been relieved of duty, and since I’d never been given any particular responsibilities to begin with, I was off the hook once I’d gotten a few utensils out of the cupboard and rinsed them clean, at which point all we could do was watch Haruhi and her assistant Asahina set busily about the cooking proper.

I’d known she was good, but watching her like this, Haruhi put a professional homemaker to shame. From her skill at slicing vegetables to her ability at making the broth, I was impressed with how easily she was pulling it off.

“Anyone can do this kind of thing once they get used to it,” said Haruhi, tasting the pot’s contents with a small dish. “I’ve been cooking since I was a grade schooler. I’m better at it than anyone else in my family too. Oh, Mikuru—get some soy sauce.”

“Here you are!”

Now that I thought about it, I realized Haruhi hardly ever brought her lunch from home. Did her mother not make lunches for her? I wondered.

“If I asked her to, she would. Sometimes she wants to, but I turn her down. When I need a lunch, I make it myself.” Haruhi got a slightly complicated expression on her face. “I probably shouldn’t say this, but Mom… I mean, my mother doesn’t have the best taste. There’s something wrong with her tongue. And worse, she always eyeballs spice amounts, and just guesses at cooking times, so even when she makes the same dish, it always turns out differently. When I was a kid I thought that was normal, and I thought that school lunches were the tastiest thing ever. But when I tried making food myself, it was just so delicious. Ah, Mikuru, get the rice vinegar.”

“Here you go!”

“So nowadays I make dinner about half the time. Since my mother works, we just try to help each other out. It’s true what they say, that there’s no substitute for experience. In cooking or anything else, you’ve got to apply yourself to it every day. I didn’t put any special work in, but the more I did it the more I got the hang of it. Mikuru, taste this. Is it good?”

“Sure… oh, it’s delicious!”

“Isn’t it? It’s my original vegetable soup. It’s chock-full of vitamins from A to Z, and great for your stamina. The stuff’ll banish fatigue and dizziness to the rings of Saturn!”

Haruhi rattled off her generic ad copy as she poured the soup into bowls, then turned off the flame under the earthenware pot and covered it. My stomach immediately growled. The fragrance definitely got my appetite going.

“This is Yuki’s rice porridge. Kyon, stop staring so greedily. You can’t have any. Help me bring it to her room. You won’t be punished for doing that much.”

She didn’t have to tell me; at the moment, I was ready to wholly devote myself to public service. In fact, I felt pretty pathetic for this being the only thing I could do.

I set the porridge and vegetable soup that Haruhi had ladled into bowls onto a tray, and carefully prepared to bring it to Nagato’s bedside. Asahina followed, carrying the teapot and cup. Koizumi was next, bringing the herbal medicine that Haruhi had specified along with some water, and Haruhi was at the lead. She opened the door to Nagato’s room.

“All done, Yuki! Sorry to keep you waiting!”

“…”

Nagato sat slowly up, and she regarded us with silent eyes.

“First, drink this medicine. You’re supposed to take it before a meal. In my experience, this stuff works the best. Then, food. There’s plenty, so eat as much as you like. You missed lunch, right?”

Haruhi’s positive energy was something to behold. It was easy to imagine a cold virus packing up and skipping town when confronted with this power, if it had any sense of self-preservation at all.

“…”

Nagato started to try to get out of bed, but Haruhi stopped her. Koizumi handed over the sachet of medicine and the cup, and after gazing at it as though dubious of its efficacy for a moment, Nagato dutifully drank it.

Haruhi looked as though she would have preferred to feed Nagato, but Nagato refused, taking the soup bowl and spoon in hand. She filled the spoon, sipped, and swallowed.

“…”

Nagato was barely chewing at all as she swallowed the spoonfuls of porridge under Haruhi’s intense gaze. It wasn’t just Haruhi staring either—Asahina, Koizumi, and I were all watching.

“…”

Nagato looked down at the bowl in her hand as though watching for a color change in a starch that had been touched with an iodine solution, and yet—“Delicious,” she said in a small voice.

“Really? Great. Eat more. Eat it all up! Here, have some vegetable soup. I would’ve liked to simmer it longer, but it should be flavorful enough as it is.”

Nagato took the bowl that Haruhi thrust so energetically upon her, and from it she drank.

“Delicious.”

“Isn’t it?” Haruhi seemed extremely happy as she watched Nagato eat her meal.

Nagato continued to pick steadily away at her food. It wasn’t clear whether she was particularly moved by Haruhi’s home cooking; she did seem to be savoring more than she did her usual huge servings of pre-made curry, though she might just have been forcibly repressing her lack of appetite. She would eat anything put in front of her, even if she didn’t need to.

The whole situation was hard for me to watch.

Maybe because Nagato was still in bed, still wearing her pajamas, or maybe because she was eating Haruhi’s food in total silence, or possibly because though she was close enough to touch, something about her aura seemed especially diluted.

“Sorry,” I excused myself to no one in particular. “I’m gonna use the bathroom.”

I left the bedroom and headed for the bathroom without waiting for a reply. I wasn’t letting it show, but if I looked at Nagato any longer I was going to be overcome by a directionless rage.

I sat down on the neat little toilet seat cover and chewed the inside of my lip. And I thought.

My salvation was the fact that I knew exactly who it was I needed to interrogate, and fast. It wasn’t clear what I would have to do, but whatever I did, I couldn’t let this go.

I had to do something about that Kuyoh girl. The fact that Nagato had collapsed while she was totally healthy was completely unfair. Some balance somewhere had been upset. It was unforgivable. First I’d contact Sasaki—

“Wah—!”

My cell phone vibrated in my blazer pocket, and I nearly fell right off the seat.

I looked at my phone’s display wondering who could be calling me with such suspiciously good timing, and I saw that it wasn’t an incoming call, but rather a text message.

“Huh?”

The sender’s address was completely scrambled. Who the heck was this? I opened my inbox.

“Wha?”

My screen suddenly went dark. Surely it wasn’t a virus of some kind? Crap. It’d be a real hassle if I lost the data I’d put in my phone.

In the midst of my panic, I saw a white cursor begin to blink at the top left of my phone’s screen, and I felt a wave of nostalgia that almost made me dizzy. Somewhere along the line I’d seen a computer monitor look very much like this.

After a few seconds, the cursor began to move smoothly across the screen, leaving characters behind it. I’d seen this kind of smoothly inputted text before too.

Nagato… it was Nagato.

It was just like when I’d been trapped in closed space with Haruhi. Which meant I should be able to respond in kind. I pressed keys frantically. Was she telling me not to worry? That was crazy. I had to reply. I futzed with the tiny keys, painstakingly composing it.

“Your fever is because of those Heavenly Canopy jerks, right?”

Immediately after I sent it, the reply came.

All I could think of was how careless I’d been, and I wanted to freeze my head in liquid nitrogen and shatter it with a bat. I’d seen the doll-like Kuyoh lined up harmlessly with Kyoko Tachibana and assumed she was harmless. It was my own fault for jumping to conclusions. I’d been so sure they were only interested in me and Haruhi.

I’d figured they wanted to do something about Haruhi’s power, and that was all they cared about when they contacted me. I was the emperor of unwarranted, careless assumptions. Just as Koizumi had said, Nagato was the greatest bulwark the SOS Brigade possessed—how could I not have seen that our enemies would strike at her first?

I mashed buttons in frustration.

Who cared about me or Haruhi? We could handle ourselves, and were in perfectly good health at the moment. Nagato was the one they were harming. And she had to make them stop, I typed.

Send. Then, the immediate response:

The characters abruptly stopped.

What’s wrong? I typed.

The few meters that separated Nagato’s bedroom from her cozy bathroom suddenly seemed terribly distant, and the few seconds before her reply felt like an eternity.

I wondered if my phone was broken. I hoped it was.

I broke out in a cold sweat. It was totally unprecedented for Nagato to send me genuine nonsense. Was she that bad? What if she couldn’t be cured…?

My vision dimmed. It would’ve been easy for my hand to slip and drop the phone in the toilet, and I could hardly blame it if it did.

But before I could turn my phone into a useless object, another line of characters appeared on the display.

The short sentence appeared briefly, then faded out as though melting. The message was simplicity itself—very Nagato-like.

I’ll say it again: How could she expect me not to worry? How the hell could I do anything else? Sorry, Nagato, I’m not that good of a person. You overestimated me.

I dashed out of the bathroom and ran straight back into the bedroom.

“Nagato!”

Haruhi took one look at my crazed state and was momentarily shocked. “Kyon, be quiet! Yuki just fell asleep.” She glared at me with a severe look. “She fell over as soon as she was done eating, and went to sleep on the spot.”

Just as Haruhi said, Nagato was still, her eyes closed. She was like a frozen princess; you couldn’t even tell she was breathing.

“I’m sure she feels better. It’s times like this when living alone’s no good. You’ve gotta have other people around. Even if you sleep alone, having the feeling of other people moving around in the house is really important. It’s just pleasant, y’know? No matter who it is, just having someone nearby is—”

I turned my back on Haruhi’s entirely reasonable explanation. I wanted to listen, but at the moment I just didn’t feel like it. My body moved on its own, without my head’s input.

“Kyon, where are you—”

I dashed out of the bedroom and picked up speed as I headed for the front door. I didn’t feel like waiting for the elevator to take me to the ground floor, so I took the stairs. Passing through the entrance, I left the apartment building at a flat run.

I had no idea where Kuyoh would be at this hour. But she’d been wearing a Koyoen Academy uniform. If she was anything like Nagato, she’d be very careful about attending school every day, so she’d have to be there. I didn’t care what the security guards tried to do to stop me; I’d get past them by hook or by crook. Even if I managed to get into the staff room, there was no telling whether her address would be on the student roster. I’d just have to cross that bridge when I got to it.

The one thing my body wouldn’t let me do was sit still and do nothing.

Eventually my stride started to feel unsteady, as though I were wearing winged shoes bestowed upon me by a goddess—this had to be thanks to my good-for-nothing cardiopulmonary system, which resulted in my running out of breath right in front of a rail crossing.

It had been close to a year ago. Right around here, I’d listened to Haruhi deliver a long monologue.

I focused on breathing in an effort to recover, and happened to look across the rails—at which point both my gaze and my feet froze in place.

Kuyoh Suoh.

Nagato’s enemy and mine stood directly opposite me across the tracks. As though she’d been there all along.

“—”

The black uniform, the wide fall of hair. And the transcendently blank expression.

The crossing gate’s warning lights started to flash. Simultaneously, the bell that announced an approaching train began to ring, and the crossing gate started its reluctant arc down.

Why was she here? It was like… it was like she was waiting for me…

Kuyoh did not move. She maintained her distance from me, so rooted to the spot that a cardboard robot cutout would’ve had more visible humanity.

Ding, ding, ding—

The gate had completely lowered, and the rumbling tracks and rushing air heralded a train’s approach. I stared at Kuyoh, with no idea what it was she was looking at. This timing was impossible. This was not a coincidence. She…

She had to be waiting for me.

With a gust of wind the train rushed past, hiding Kuyoh behind it. Though the train did not have so very many cars, it seemed as though time had come to a stop. I had the terrible illusion that I could look at the peering faces of every one of the train’s passengers, which then led to a powerful premonition.

I was as sure as though I’d already seen it that once the train had passed, Kuyoh would be gone. And she would be standing behind me, her ghostly white hands reaching out…

A terrible hallucination.

When the train passed and the red warning lights stopped flashing, their duty complete, Kuyoh’s dark form was still across the tracks. Was she being strangely cooperative, or was this some sort of performance? Or were such notions too human for her to even conceive?

As I waited for the yellow and black bars to squeakily rise, Kuyoh started to move, as though walking through water. She was coming toward me. I wanted to know how she managed to walk without disturbing either her hair or her skirt.

Like some insubstantial hologram, her form stopped a few meters away from me.

My hands hung at my sides; I balled them into fists. “What did you do to Nagato?”

Kuyoh’s huge, marble-like eyes stared through me. My instincts warned me not to meet her gaze. She’d suck my soul out with those eyes. That’s what it felt like.

“I wanted to learn about humans… No”—though we were still separated, her voice sounded like a whisper next to my ear—“no, that is wrong. What I wanted to learn about…”

She cocked her head. The strangely human gesture tripped me up.

“… Was you…”

What?

“Will you… come with me…?”

What was she saying?

“I don’t mind…” She reached her hand out to me.

The alien.

Ding, ding, ding—

The crossing signals started to ring again. The red lights started their alternating flashing. These were the indications of an approaching train, but for me it felt like a warning of something far more terrible than being struck by a runaway locomotive. It felt like an emergency. What was this? What was going on? There wasn’t enough coherence to this story. What was this sudden transformation, as though a witch had magically brought a lead figure to life?

Kuyoh’s hand continued to approach. It came closer, closer, this thing that looked like a human but was not.

This being with which mutual comprehension was impossible, which had come from a place beyond the galaxy and beyond human knowledge, whose visible form was inconceivable. This girl with hair like fluttering wings…

Her eyes black as a new moon. No, don’t look. The world would go dark.

Stop—I wanted to say, but my mouth wouldn’t move. It was pathetic. To come all this way, and…

“Stop right there.”

The voice that stopped Kuyoh’s hand was not mine.

And again I found myself stunned.

I heard the voice directly behind me, and it brimmed with imposing confidence and an obvious cheer. It was a girl’s voice, one I hadn’t heard in quite some time, and I can’t say I’d ever hoped to hear it again.

“I won’t allow you to approach any closer. After all”—the voice laughed sparklingly, right at the nape of my neck—“this human is my prey. If your kind means to have me turn him over, I’d rather do this.”

An arm reached out over my shoulder. It was clad in a long-sleeved North High uniform, and its hand grasped an object I was rather familiar with—a razor-sharp knife, its blade flashing wickedly.

The combat knife was held in a reverse grip, its tip pointed directly at my throat.

“Either way, it doesn’t much matter to me,” she said with a pleasant laugh, which made the hair on the back of my head stand up. A sweet, narcotic scent reached me as it wafted faintly through the air.

“You’re…” I finally forced the words out. “Asakura.”

“I certainly am. Who else would I be?”

From behind me echoed the unmistakable voice of my former Class 5 classmate, Ryoko Asakura.

“Nagato is resting at the moment, isn’t she? Hence my appearance. Does that bother you for some reason?”

I couldn’t turn around. I couldn’t help feeling that if I turned and witnessed Ryoko Asakura’s form behind me, something terrible would happen. As Nagato’s former backup and member of the Data Overmind’s radical faction, she’d tried to kill me twice, and the second time I’d very nearly died. Both times it had been Nagato who’d saved me, but Nagato was not here. Instead, Kuyoh was here. Ridiculous. The tiger or the wolf—it was hard to imagine either of them was on my side. What kind of absurd dilemma was this?

“We detected an emergency. That’s why I’ve appeared. Is it really so mysterious?” she said sweetly. “I mean, I am Nagato’s backup, after all. She can’t act, so I’m up next. That’s how things work, you know.”

Nagato couldn’t act—.

This was an extraordinary situation. So much so that the once-deleted Ryoko Asakura had been revived. So much so that I had no choice but to seek aid from a killer.

“How rude. I’m not a killer, you know. I mean, look—I haven’t killed anyone at all yet, have I?”

Well, then, maybe she could point that knife somewhere else. I couldn’t even swallow.

“Now that I can’t do. So long as she’s over there, I must carry out my duties.” Her index finger uncurled from around the knife’s handle and pointed to the stock-still Kuyoh. “So you’re a humanoid terminal for what we’re calling the Heavenly Canopy Dominion, are you? How interesting. If you die here, I wonder how she would react.”

Asakura said the most chilling things as though she were chatting about the weather. She hadn’t changed at all from when she’d been the class rep. Was there anyone else in the world like Ryoko Asakura?

I was as still as a dried fish left in the middle of a desert. I couldn’t even tell whether it was hot or cold. All I knew was the dull, chilling glint of the knife’s blade, and Kuyoh’s eyes, quiet as a fourth sub-basement room.

It was too quiet.

The realization hit me. What had happened to the crossing signal’s flashing lights? Where had the raucous clang of the warning bell gone? Why hadn’t the train come?

I looked up. The red signal light was frozen on. The guard bar jutted out diagonally, stopped halfway through its downward arc. There was absolutely no wind. Not a single person walked the path along the road, and there were no cars.

The world had come to a halt.

The clouds in the sky were completely still, and shockingly, when I spotted a crow frozen in mid-flight, I finally realized what had happened.

Space had been frozen.

“What is going on here…?”

Asakura giggled. “I didn’t want anyone interfering. This way no one can observe us, can they? Manipulation of spatial information is my specialty. No one can escape.”

A trap, then. But for whom?

“Now, then, Miss Kuyoh,” continued Asakura happily. “Shall we talk? Or shall we fight? I would love to see just what your kind is capable of. That’s part of my job too.”

Kuyoh remained motionless and expressionless, but she spoke. “… Release that human. The danger is significant… your intent to kill is genuine…”

After she blinked slowly, I saw light in her eyes for the first time.

“It is not you. I have no interest in you. You are not important,” said Kuyoh with the faintest trace of emotion.

“Well, that’s not a very nice thing to say. But, fine, if that’s how you feel—”

The hand holding the knife moved, leaving behind only an afterimage. The movement was instantaneous; it was hardly surprising that my eye couldn’t track the motion. I already knew this from my previous experience with Asakura’s extra-dimensional battle against Nagato in the Class 5 classroom. From what I could see, Asakura threw the knife with but a flick of her wrist, sending the weapon flying at Kuyoh at nearly the speed of light, but it took several seconds for my brain to process what I’d seen.

“… Threat level increased two levels,” murmured Kuyoh, stopping the knife by grabbing its hilt. The blade very nearly touched her nose, but she showed no sign of fear whatsoever, and though from my perspective it looked as though she were about to stab herself in the face, it was just the opposite. “… And still rising.”

Both the knife and the slender arm that restrained it were trembling slightly. My god—despite being intercepted by Kuyoh, the projectile Asakura had thrown was still trying to pierce her. Kuyoh’s monstrous ability to stop the ultra-high-speed attack was bad enough, but Asakura was even more horrifying. Just how much kinetic energy had she imbued the knife with? I didn’t want to think about it.

“Not bad,” said Asakura, impressed. “That was just a probe, but it did exceed your estimated capacity. This will be interesting.”

The air behind me began to stir. I was sure that if I looked back I would see the locks of Asakura’s hair begin to float up like so many snakes, but I didn’t dare check to be sure. I couldn’t cover my ears, though.

“Expanding range of data control. Commencing deployment of offensive data. Shifting to termination mode. Requesting authorization of limited-space combat simulation for analysis of target.”

Just as I was putting together the contents of Asakura’s rapid-fire speech, the surrounding scenery shattered and collapsed. It was like a jigsaw puzzle landscape coming to pieces, falling away and revealing what lay behind them. And for a second time I witnessed the mad geometry of Asakura’s data jurisdiction space.

“… Threat level stabilized.” Kuyoh’s pale face was starting to become flushed. Her voice was changing too. “Move away from that human.” Despite the knife still directly in front of her face, her voice betrayed no concern. “You are irrelevant.”

Her statements were now far more comprehensible. Very slowly, as though calming a wild horse, Kuyoh moved the knife aside. As soon as she reached a distance such that the blade would not pass through her hair, she cocked her head and let it go.

The knife Asakura had thrown immediately accelerated to its impossible speed, flying off like a missile, when—

“—!”

I was stunned for a third time. It was starting to get a little tiresome.

A third figure was visible behind Kuyoh—and just as my brain managed to process that fact, Asakura’s knife sped for the figure at hypersonic velocity, and in a carbon copy of what Kuyoh had just done a moment before, the figure caught it right in front of her face. And who should the owner of such acrobatic knife-catching skill be but—

“Miss Kimidori,” said Asakura. “What brings you to a place like this?”

The school uniform–clad Kimidori floated strangely through the geometry of our surroundings. She wore the same calm smile she’d had when she stood beside the student council president. It was such an ordinary expression that it seemed all the stranger given the incomprehensible circumstances. Sorry—I just can’t put this stuff into proper words anymore.

Kimidori turned the hand with which she’d caught the knife, pointing the blade at Asakura. “I’ve come to stop your deviant activities. Your actions are not founded on the consensus of the Data Overmind.”

“Oh? Is that so?”

“Yes. I cannot authorize them.”

“Oh really? That’s fine,” replied Asakura with unnerving agreeableness. “Would you give that back?”

Kimidori opened her hand, and the knife flew back through the air, this time at a speed even my eyes could track—but no sooner had I noticed this than Asakura murmured a brief phrase.

The knife suddenly accelerated, heading straight for the back of Kuyoh’s head, and not at a speed that could be dodged. It was like a laser beam.

“?”

I doubted what my eyes saw.

Kuyoh’s figure seemed to turn two-dimensional, and in the next instant had disappeared.

It was as though she’d suddenly become a flat plane, then disappeared by turning sideways. The sight distracted me such that I only reacquired the position of the knife because it was again in Asakura’s hand, this time held in an overhand grip, its point again at my neck as though she were again readying to slit my throat.

As soon as I comprehended this, a cold sweat broke out on my head.

If Asakura hadn’t stopped it, the blade would’ve gone right through my windpipe. I could barely stand from the terror.

“Did she escape,” said Asakura, uncertainty in her voice.

What, no comment on what had nearly just happened to me?

“No,” said Kimidori, shaking her head, then tilting her head up. “She is here.”

Kuyoh descended directly before my eyes.

Her form came down as though lowered onto a stage from above, and she grabbed Asakura’s knife-holding hand at the wrist, readying her other hand for an open-palmed strike, then unleashing it in a blur of non-motion. At what?

At my face.

“?!”

The situation was fluctuating so rapidly I was completely exhausted. Yet there was not a single thing I could do about it. I was only understanding things well after they’d happened—and this was happening now.

A wind that felt like a solid object hit my hair, and I flinched my eyes closed in spite of myself. I hastily reopened them, and was met by the following scene.

Kuyoh’s hand was stopped just a few millimeters from my forehead, only because Asakura had reached out and grabbed its black-school-uniformed wrist. The hand that wielded the deadly blade had been stopped, just as the hand that was a deadly blade had been stopped. And between the two girls who looked human but were monsters within stood my idiotic self. I’ll say it again: Pathetic.

Was this now twice that Asakura had saved my life? Now wait just a minute—how much sense did that make?

“Miss Kuyoh,” said Asakura teasingly. “What do you want to do with this human? Kill him? Or let him live?”

Kuyoh’s gaze stabbed through me as though I were nothing more than a sandbag, but it then shifted to somewhere past the side of my head, presumably where Asakura’s face was.

“—Query meaning unclear. Define ‘human.’ Define ‘kill.’ Define ‘live.’ ” Her voice seemed to come from some sort of speaker rather than human vocal cords.

“—Define ‘Data Overmind.’ Provide information.”

She spoke as though talking to herself, her expression shifting—well, let’s say it shifted dramatically.

She smiled.

It was a terrifyingly cold, beautiful smile.

While it seemed more like a perfectly executed high-level simulation of a smile than an actual expression of affection, even the most stoic man would find himself stricken with affection upon encountering it. I was about the only one who could withstand it. Someone like Taniguchi who didn’t understand the circumstances would’ve fallen for her in an instant. I was at a total loss for words as Asahina started to speak with bold nonchalance.

“What lovely features you have, Miss Kuyoh. But let’s end this now, shall we? I will not yield a single thing to the Heavenly Canopy Dominion, including the life of this human.”

Their hands bound in mutual deadlock, Kuyoh and Asakura conversed.

—Just what the hell are they talking about?!

I was getting more and more angry.

Incidentally, let me just say this: I am fundamentally a nice person. How nice, you ask? There was the time my sister thought it would be funny to wrap Shamisen up in my favorite muffler, to which he instinctively reacted by converting it to mere wool with his teeth and claws. I let them each off the hook with no more than a poke in the forehead; that’s how nice I am.

And yet this whole situation was starting to really piss me off.

Yeah, yeah, I know.

Anyone who’d stand in the middle of this ridiculous situation was screwy. If you need proof, remember that the three other people there were all extraterrestrials.

I was the only normal one. Hence my abject terror. Got a problem with that?

“—Define ‘Heavenly Canopy Dominion.’ ”

Completely ignoring the chat-bot-like query that came from Kuyoh’s exquisite smile, Asakura spoke. “Commencing offensive data strike.”

The ground at my feet started to bubble. The burbling, boiling sound made it feel as if we were in some poisoned swamp. Next, Asakura’s knife sublimated into nothingness, like so much crystal sand. Kuyoh’s wrist where Asakura gripped it was wrapped in a blue-white mosaic. The pattern of hexagons traveled up her arm with startling speed, but no sooner had I witnessed this than Kuyoh’s form seemed to again turn two-dimensional, and in an instant she was no more than a line.

Gooonnngg!

“Hngh—?!”

A loud metallic clang echoed through my ears, as though some kind of colossal tuning fork had been struck. But the sound did not linger, and a sudden silence descended, as though some giant’s hand had simply wiped all sound from the air.

“…”

Ever so hesitantly, I opened my eyes, and saw that Kuyoh was nowhere to be found. The only person in front of me was Kimidori. Behind me still lingered the presence of the other, more terrifying girl.

The harsh-looking geometric background was swept away, and the scenery returned to its previous setting beside the rail crossing, bringing my surroundings closer to normal, though at this point I was no longer surprised by such changes.

“Did she actually escape this time?” From behind me Asakura put the question to Kimidori.

“The data protection field you erected was penetrated by an unknown form of focused data. I am currently tracking the target and repairing local space.”

“A shift in the physical dimensionality of her corporeal data… clearly she’s a very different sort of terminal than we are. She has no need for authorization.”

“She does not seem to have been created to communicate with humans. In fact, I would surmise she was constructed as an interpretation platform for discourse with us. We could even deduce that her interest in Haruhi Suzumiya comes from conclusions derived from observing the Data Overmind.”

“It’s hard to imagine she’s a mere terminal. She broke my data offensive without needing to decode it.”

“Given that their logical foundation is so different, inflicting fatal damage will require analysis of the algorithms of the domain to which she is connected.”

“I’ll leave that to you, Miss Kimidori. You managed to collect a little data in all of this, didn’t you? Wouldn’t it be a good idea to pick up all the fragments and analyze the greater structure of the platform?”

“Independent action is not authorized.”

“You sound like Miss Nagato. But I think at the moment she would be inclined to agree with me.”

“I will suspend you. The Data Overmind has not authorized this.”

“Goodness,” said Asakura, affecting surprise. “And just when did you become the Data Overmind’s representative?”

“The interface designated Yuki Nagato transferred a subset of her autonomous judgment heuristics to me. She proposed the transfer, which was approved by the central consciousness of the Data Overmind. My actions are consistent with the general consensus of the Overmind.”

“Did you say ‘consensus’? You mean those lazy conservatives desperate to maintain the status quo? Or are you just trying to call me the minority?”

“Both.”

Asakura laughed in her perfect-student voice. “My behavior patterns are unchanged from their previous alignment, and have still not been overwritten.”

“You are a backup resource to be deployed only in emergencies. Yuki Nagato and I have acknowledged only that your abilities are necessary in a limited capacity. Your utility is only slightly greater than the risks you pose.”

“I suppose I should thank you, then. I was revived because of you.”

“I have been given the authority to cancel your data integration.”

“So I can’t beat you, then. Fine. All I plan to do is take action according to my own will. I learned that from Miss Nagato—where the potential for self-evolution lies. Don’t you know, Miss Kimidori? She’s no longer a mere terminal. Given that, don’t you think we can do the same thing?”

No, I didn’t. One Nagato was more than enough for me. I had to thank Asakura for stopping Kuyoh’s attack. But I had to say it again:

Nagato was enough for me. As for you, Asakura? I don’t need you.

“How cruel you are!” said Asakura, obviously amused.

I wanted to say another thing, I told them. Why were they having a philosophical debate with me right here between them? Would it kill them to put themselves in my shoes a little and think about how this absurd conversation sounded to me?

“You heard the boy, Miss Kimidori.”

And another thing—if Asakura had time to be pointing a knife at my throat, she could damned well go and make Nagato some food or something, I said. That was the kind of person she used to be, anyway.

“Is that the way you talk to the person who saved you from the evil alien?” said Asakura happily, her feelings seemingly not hurt in the slightest. “Unfortunately, I can’t maintain this form for long periods of time. If you’ve got complaints on that count, talk to our illustrious upperclassman and the majority faction of the Data Overmind. Or try asking Nagato? If she agrees, I might even be able to come back from Canada.”

No thanks. I couldn’t see any way Haruhi would accept such a development. Asakura could just stay an exchange student for as long as she liked, I said.

“Oh? That’s too bad.” Asakura laughed like a little ripple. “Well, it looks like my limited activities are about to end. Call me again sometime. I’ll always come out. So long as the scary girl over there doesn’t stop me, that is.”

Given that I had no memory of summoning her in the first place, I kept my mouth shut, at which Asakura’s voice came still closer.

“Miss Nagato and I are like opposite sides of a mirror. Do you understand that, I wonder? I’m much closer to Nagato than Miss Kimidori is. The interface in front of you won’t help you one bit. Her job is only to observe.”

I could feel her breath on my ear.

“Why won’t you turn around? Won’t you look at me even to say good-bye?”

Not if I had any say in the matter. One look at her class-rep smile and my terror might vanish, I said. I could be totally taken in by that smile. But as far as I was concerned she was as bad as Kuyoh.

“Rude to the very end, I see. Well, that’s fine. Good-bye, then. See you again.”

Her voice faded away and her presence behind me vanished, but I still didn’t move. At this point it was a waiting game.

Kimidori regarded me wordlessly. As soon as I noticed her skirt and sleeves start to flutter in the wind, the rail crossing bell started back up, which made me jump five millimeters off the ground. The red warning light flashed and the bar descended. The distant clouds above us began to move, and the crow resumed its flight through the sky.

The ambient sounds had returned to normal, somewhere along the line. Time was moving.

Kimidori started to slowly walk, stopping at exactly the right distance from me. I was certain she was going to explain everything to me, but no matter how I waited, her lips never changed from that little student council secretary smile of hers.

I gave up waiting.

“Kimidori.”

“Yes?”

“That… Kuyoh. What is she? I just can’t figure her out at all. Her actions make no sense at all—is it because she’s not human?”

“The behavioral principles of the Heavenly Canopy Dominion defy comprehension. We have yet to determine whether it even possesses an independent consciousness. It is not even clear whether or not it can be properly classified as life.”

… Uh, okay. That was a problem, then. Well, I had my own problems. But anyway, there was something else that bore mentioning here.

“Can’t you do something about Nagato’s fever?”

“Nagato has been given a special duty—establishing high-level communication with the Heavenly Canopy Dominion itself.”

“Nagato is in bed, unable to move. What part of that is her ‘duty’?”

Kimidori smiled at me, but her eyes were distant. “I am referring to such a high level of communication that it does not involve words. Hers is a mission that would be fundamentally impossible for a human. We have established physical contact with them for the first time. While indirect, it is a huge leap forward from our previous mutual incomprehension. Miss Nagato serves as a relay between us and them. She does so even now. Please watch over her.”

“But that’s no reason to force all of this off on her alone.” It was all I could do not to end the sentence with an exclamation point. I glared at Kimidori’s serene face, calm as a dandelion swaying in a spring breeze. “Why can’t you or Asakura do it?”

“Miss Nagato was the one with whom they first established contact. She is also the interface closest to Miss Suzumiya. I would consider her the obvious choice.”

Her calm, rational answer was starting to seriously make my head hurt.

So she was really telling me to just leave Nagato alone? These Data Overmind people were a bunch of assholes. It was something like a miracle that Nagato had been the one dispatched here, and thus been the first to meet Haruhi. If Asakura and Nagato’s positions were switched, or if it had been Kimidori in the literature club, this present moment would never have come. This was all thanks to Nagato. I’d be perfectly happy to leave the word “interface” somewhere in the orbit of Neptune. It was enough to make me think that what Haruhi had wished for was not just any alien, but Yuki Nagato specifically. The majority faction, the radical faction—let’s just see them show themselves to Haruhi. Let them weigh themselves against Nagato. I was sure Haruhi would pick Nagato every time, I said.

“Please forgive me.” Kimidori bowed with ridiculous politeness. “There is not very much I can do. My directives prevent any deviation. If there is anything else you need, please let me know.”

The pleasant older girl walked past me and headed for the train station, giving me another small bow as she did so. I knew there was no point in following her. I understood that these aliens were involved in things my brain couldn’t hope to comprehend, but there was still one thing I wanted to say.

“Look, this is Earth. It’s not some playground for aliens.”

My voice mingled with a gust of wind and was gone, by which time Kimidori had disappeared.

Yet—

—An amusing joke… indeed.

I couldn’t tell who it was that said it. I wasn’t even sure if it was Kuyoh, Asakura, Kimidori, or someone else.

But I’m quite sure that my brain didn’t just create words out of the sound of the wind blowing across my ears.

Cell phones seem to ring when you least expect them. This time was no different.

I was trudging heavily back to Nagato’s apartment when a call from Haruhi stopped me short.

“Geez! Where’d you go, anyway? Did some evil god summon you away? You really freaked Mikuru out, disappearing like that!”

“Uh… sorry. I’m not far, so I’ll be back soon.”

“Explain yourself!”

“… Uh, I realized I hadn’t brought Nagato a get-well present. I was thinking I’d get her some canned peaches or something.”

“What year do you think this is? Get her a fruit basket. Or, well, I guess we don’t need to make a big production out of it; it’s not like she’s in the hospital or something. Just get some orange juice. The one-hundred-twenty-percent-pure-fruit-juice kind.”

I told her to tell me exactly where to find that kind of juice.

“Fine, make it one hundred percent. And get back here within three minutes, got it? Okay, bye!”

I wasn’t irritated at her unilateral hanging up. She did that all the time. Her straightforward, one-way method of doing things was improving my spirits a little bit. Never change, Haruhi Suzumiya. If she weren’t the way she was, she’d never be able to lead a ridiculous group like the SOS Brigade.

I went into a supermarket near the station and sleepwalked through the aisles, and once I’d purchased the one-hundred-percent-pure California orange juice Haruhi had directed me to buy, I walked rather sullenly back to Nagato’s apartment. I got to the front entrance’s automatic doors and dialed Nagato’s apartment, whereupon Haruhi answered and let me in.

By the time I got back to Nagato’s room I’d exceeded Haruhi’s stated time limit by a couple of minutes, but our fearless brigade chief said nothing, and taking the juice bottle I offered her, she passed it straight to Asahina, who was sitting right next to her.

“Put this in the fridge, will you, Mikuru?”

“Sure!” Asahina, by now completely used to taking orders, trotted off to the kitchen. She certainly was cute. Definitely in the top three people that I wanted to protect no matter what.

“How’s Nagato?”

“She opened her eyes a little bit a while ago, but then went back to sleep. So don’t go in her bedroom. It’s creepy to stare at other people when they’re sleeping.”

Haruhi pursed her lips, but seemed hesitant, and it was only after a four-minute pause that she spoke.

“Something like this happened before, didn’t it? Yuki had a fever, and we were taking care of her. I know it was a hallucination, but it seems so real now.”

That was because it was real. That nonsense about group hypnosis or whatever was a pack of lies from Koizumi. Of course, I couldn’t very well say that to Haruhi, so I held my tongue.

Haruhi continued, murmuring almost reverently. “This is the same as then, isn’t it? We were at Tsuruya’s villa, and Yuki got better right away. She’d just caught a chill on the ski slopes. We’re on the verge of spring right now, and people often get sick when the seasons change. This could be no more than seasonal allergies,” she said, as though trying to convince herself. “That’s right, this is no big deal. She’ll be better within three days.”

I wanted to get snarky and ask just who’d said that, but unfortunately the answer would be “me.” I was envious of Koizumi’s way with words. No matter how crazy the situation, he could always come up with some kind of absurd explanation for it. I was sure he’d wind up serving the Prince of Lies in hell one day.

It almost felt as though there were KEEP OUT tape strung across the door to Nagato’s room, so I passed obediently by it and went into the living room.

Koizumi had his long legs nestled under the kotatsu table there, and he gave me a look as I entered the room.

“Where’d you go?”

“A place just as boxed-up as one of your closed spaces.”

“So it seems.” Koizumi rested his elbows on the table. “There were reports that both Kuyoh Suoh and Miss Kimidori were sighted.” He indicated his cell phone, which he’d left on the floor beside him. “They were seen only for a moment, but looking at the expression on your face I’m guessing it was no mere chance encounter.”

“Yeah.”

It had gotten so that I didn’t know who was an enemy and who was on my side. Whatever those aliens’ goals were was a mystery to me. Kuyoh, Asakura, Kimidori, all of them—they might have looked like humans, but they were monsters. Humans might do unbelievable stuff from time to time, but you could at least guess at what they were thinking. But who knew what went on in a monster’s mind? Their behavior patterns were too erratic, like crappy NPCs in an RPG—made worse by the fact that their stats were totally game-breaking.

“Do you really have no plan at all?”

“I’ll do everything that I can. Prodding Kyoko Tachibana might produce some kind of reaction, but from what I can deduce the chances are slim. There is essentially no connection between her faction and Nagato’s current condition. They have chosen the wrong allies. Kuyoh Suoh is not someone who can be communicated with. The idea that humans could understand an entity that even the Data Overmind cannot comprehend is absurd.”

So what about the time travelers? That jerk Fujiwara or whatever his name was didn’t seem scared of Kuyoh at all. Ugh, I couldn’t stand the thought of owing him for something. Plus his goals were totally opaque, I pointed out.

“It’s certainly true that his aim is not merely observation of Suzumiya. That’s true of both time traveler factions. Though our Asahina may not have been told as much.”

Koizumi’s eyes moved horizontally to take in the sight of Asahina doing dishes in the kitchen. Haruhi was there too, moving busily around—pouring the soup from its pot into smaller bowls and packing up excess ingredients into plastic containers.

“I’ve decided. I’m going to keep making dinners for Yuki until she gets better. I’m doing it, and that’s that. I don’t care if she says no; I’m still coming over.”

It was a strangely loud statement given that she was just talking to herself, and that she asked for nobody’s approval.

She was probably the most selfish girl in the galaxy. I hoped she never changed.

Haruhi produced a spare door key from who-knew-where, locked the door to Nagato’s apartment, then slipped the key into her skirt pocket as though it were a grain of gold dust. We put unit 708, in which Nagato slept, behind us, and split up in front of her apartment building.

“I’m suspending SOS Brigade activities for a while.” Haruhi looked up at the apartment, anger in her eyes at the twilight-dyed sky. “Until Yuki starts coming to school again, nobody should bother coming to the clubroom. We’ll come here instead. I’m counting on you tomorrow, Mikuru.”

“Yes, of course!”

I nearly shed a tear at Asahina’s earnestness. Damn.

It looked like Haruhi and Asahina were prepared to take charge of Nagato’s bedside care. It seemed somehow Haruhi-like that she didn’t add any excuses about how this was only her duty as brigade chief.

There was something I could do as well. No—something only I could do.

I had to get home as fast as I could. There was someone I had to contact.

The only person among my new acquaintances whose phone number I knew.

“Sorry it took me so long to reply, Kyon. I was in the middle of cram school, so my phone was turned off. I got your message. Tomorrow afternoon after school, right? I don’t have cram school tomorrow, so yeah, I can probably be at the station’s north entrance by 4:30 or so. I’ll call the other three too, of course. I’m willing to bet they’ll come. I daresay they’ve been waiting for you to contact me. I can tell you’re pretty mad about something, Kyon, but I’m thinking it would be best if you tried to calm down a little—your anger is probably part of whatever they’re planning. I mean, I have no idea. But it’s what I’d do if I were in their position. Okay, well, see you tomorrow. Good night, my friend.”