CHAPTER 5

α—8

The next day, Tuesday.

Thanks to the rare fact of my awakening before my alarm clock’s ring, I got to take my time climbing Heartbreak Hill up to school. There was nothing particularly novel about the unchanging scenery of the climb, but at the sight of all the new freshmen so seriously making the climb I couldn’t help being reminded of myself from a year earlier. I might as well enjoy the climb while I could; in another month I’d be totally sick of it.

I yawned hugely and stopped walking, for no particular reason.

It was strange. The day was starting out totally ordinarily, and yet something felt odd.

I hadn’t had any contact with Sasaki since our suspicious encounter—but it had only been the previous Saturday, so there wasn’t any rush, and yet that was the source of my worry. Knowing for certain that they would eventually set some kind of trap for me, but not knowing when—it was an uncomfortable feeling. Kuyoh Suoh and that nameless time-traveler guy seemed especially likely to try something, even more than Kyoko Tachibana, the friendly kidnapper. When I’d first met them all, the time-traveling jerk seemed particularly reluctant to show his face, which was another thing to worry about. From the way Sasaki was talking, it was clear enough that he was back in this time period. But was he really content not to take action for a while? Who could fathom the minds of time travelers, Asahina the Elder included? Last time he’d looked on as Kyoko Tachibana attempted a kidnapping, so would he have Kuyoh do his dirty work next time?

“Hmph.”

I did my best impression of the student council president. Thinking about it wasn’t going to get me anywhere. First I had to get to the classroom. Then maybe I’d pay my respects to the brigade chief. School didn’t really start until I’d done so, after all. When had this become my lot in life?

Just as I was about to resume my trudge up the hill, someone patted my shoulder.

“Good morning.”

It was Koizumi.

Was this the first time I’d run into him on the way to school?

“Hey.”

As I returned the greeting, Koizumi pulled alongside me. He had a serene smile on his face, as though he were a crew member on a starship who’d just awoken from cryogenic sleep to find his destination planet right in front of him. “You seem like someone who has something on his mind. Did something happen?”

I always looked like this when I had to face a climb like this first thing in the morning, I said. A better question was why he looked so overwhelmingly pleased. Wasn’t he usually the biggest victim of Haruhi’s emotional volatility?

“Yes, about that,” said the picture-perfect handsome boy, brushing a lock of hair from his face. “Closed space incidents were once frequent, but they’ve suddenly stopped. This comes as quite a relief to me. It seems Suzumiya is so occupied with the many issues surrounding the recruitment of new freshmen that she’s temporarily forgotten to manifest her subconscious stress.”

I shook my head helplessly. Haruhi really was a simple girl, I said.

“She may seem simple, but she’s quite complex. We can’t control her, after all. Suzumiya herself can’t control things, and she’s the one at the helm—so it’s certainly impossible for mere passengers like us. I never would have anticipated so many applicants to join the SOS Brigade.”

I felt bad for the eleven new students. After all, it wasn’t as if they’d gotten into the school just to become Haruhi’s playthings, but they were the perfect diversion for her.

“It would be nice if she remained thusly diverted, but it will last a week at the outside. It will be very interesting to see how many of the students that visited yesterday knock on our door again today.”

Did he want to bet? I said. I guessed that maybe six of them would come back. At that rate, they’d all have stopped coming by the end of the week.

“A perfectly valid figure. I’ll bet on five or fewer, then.”

Sounded good to me. Loser buys the winner a drink.

As we passed through the school’s gate and the entrance came into sight, the stuff I’d been thinking about came back to the front of my mind.

“By the way, Koizumi—is it really a good idea to just leave that crowd alone? I mean Kuyoh, Kyoko Tachibana, and that nameless time-traveler guy.”

“And Sasaki as well, yes?” Koizumi’s smile was as pleasant as a clear day in May. “I’m not sure. From what I am aware of, they have not taken action yet. We haven’t witnessed them having a functional coalition, so at the moment careful observation is all we can do.”

As we prepared to go our separate ways in front of the shoe lockers, Koizumi pointed in the direction I was heading.

“It’s likely the key figure is the time traveler. The Agency will deal with Kyoko Tachibana, and there’s nothing wrong with their alien doing some sightseeing on Earth. But if our opponent is from the future, we cannot afford to be careless. Their goals are neither so clear as Kyoko Tachibana’s, nor as unfathomable as the alien’s—their half-formed nature makes them hard to read. You can probably find them out more quickly than I could.”

Standing around talking wasn’t my favorite thing to do, so I told Koizumi I’d see him after class, and he hurried to put on his school slippers, ready to preserve his perfect punctuality and attendance record.

I arrived at my own shoe locker and, sweeping aside the hesitation I felt, opened it.

All it contained were my dingy school slippers; there was nothing in the way of letters from the future.

For once I would’ve been happy to have someone telling me what to do, but Asahina the Elder apparently wasn’t feeling generous. I wondered if the first thing she said the next time I saw her would again be “It’s been quite a while.”

During class that day, Haruhi was so restless that it seemed as though she would float away if she hadn’t been tied down. And she wasn’t the only one who was so distracted; I was right there with her. I had my bet with Koizumi, after all. So how many of the freshmen that had come by yesterday were crazy enough to return after hearing Haruhi’s speechifying?

The one that worried me was the girl in an overlarge uniform, which both drooped from her shoulders and looked as though it had just gotten back from the cleaners. Given her reaction the previous day, she was the only one I figured would come back. There was nothing particularly special about her, save for her smiley-face barrette. Despite her youthful, childish demeanor (which seemed somehow different than Asahina’s) she’d stayed totally calm in the den of thieves that was the clubroom. That might have been the only reason I remembered her. What other freshmen had come? I couldn’t remember any of their faces, but that only proved that there hadn’t been anything particularly notable about any of them.

Our school wasn’t especially strict, but there weren’t usually many freshmen who broke the uniform code. Occasionally someone would wear garish red socks or make some kind of prohibited alteration to their uniform, but that didn’t last long once the student council’s conduct enforcement squads got moving. Haruhi wouldn’t give the time of day to students who went that far, considering them beneath her contempt, and turning up her nose at anyone who decided to even halfheartedly imitate them.

What Haruhi was on the lookout for wasn’t students who were participating in some kind of Batesian mimicry, but rather those whose innate qualities shone through. It was an internal attribute. Asahina seemed like an exception, but even she was no mere mortal, and proved that Haruhi’s ability to see a person’s true nature bordered on the godlike. I was sure she’d had a look over the entering freshmen once the new school year started, and having failed to find a single one who piqued her interest, that meant there would be no Haruhi abductees this term, which gave me a comfortable, pleasant feeling.

Even if there was someone who could pass the entrance examinations Haruhi was administering, it was clear that they would be 100 percent normal in every way. So essentially they’d be just like me, and a freshman to boot, which meant there’d be a new member on whom I could foist all the menial labor that Haruhi made me do.

And yet the truth was I still wasn’t really looking forward to it.

Incidentally, as far as the math quiz went, I nailed it—thanks, I should say, to Haruhi. While it was frustrating to have to ascribe the first time I’d felt confident on a test in quite a while to knowledge received directly from the brigade chief, it was too late to quibble. I just hoped Haruhi took care to avoid suffering the fate of Prometheus’s latter years after he taught humans the secrets of fire.

Of course, I’d like to see any god try to chain Haruhi up.

I don’t know what strange wind it was that was blowing, but when the chime that ended class hours sounded, Haruhi didn’t immediately dash off to the clubroom, instead remaining seated in the classroom. She then headed up to the teacher’s lectern to avoid getting in the way of the other students on cleaning duty, and called me over.

What’s up? I asked. There wasn’t supposed to be a test tomorrow, but did she have information about a pop quiz or something?

“I’m waiting for the new students to assemble in the clubroom,” said Haruhi with a grin. “A good performer always shows up late. Or doesn’t show up at all. There’s something wrong with the idea of me sitting there as freshmen trickle in. So I’ll burst in at the last moment, making the kind of grand entrance a brigade chief should make. And in the process, I can fail anyone who shows up later than me.”

Had this been her plan all along? Just how late did she plan on showing up, I wanted to know. Was she going to use Pink Floyd’s “One of These Days” as her entrance music?

“I don’t normally care about that kind of stuff, but that’s actually a pretty good idea. Too bad; I should’ve brought a cassette player from the clubroom.”

Good thing I hadn’t shot my mouth off earlier during lunch. Just the thought of having to follow Haruhi around lugging a boom box with me was enough to make me cry. I wasn’t a pro wrestler’s evil manager, and I definitely wasn’t going to take orders like an obedient luchador.

I tried to look as tired as I felt, and Haruhi looked up at the clock. “I think being thirty minutes late is about right. Having to wait is part of the test. Although making the brigade chief wait definitely deserves a severe punishment. Are you listening, Kyon? I’m talking about you, you know.”

Yeah, I knew—that was why I was constantly getting fined, I told her. Fully half of my allowance went straight into her and Asahina’s stomachs.

“That’s what you get. Time is money. All it takes is five minutes to look back and speculate over hundreds of years of history, so you’re getting off cheap!”

Seemingly having reminded herself of something, Haruhi reached into her bag and produced her world history textbook.

“What are you choosing for your humanities elective? I decided to do world history, so you should do the same. It’s better to decide these things early. World history’s great, you know. You learn way better words there than in Japanese history. I mean, doesn’t ‘Treaty of Westphalia’ sound way better than ‘Laws for the Military Houses?’ ” she said, continuing on in a manner unbefitting a Japanese citizen. “While we’re killing time, I’ll go over the stuff we learned last year. Oh c’mon, don’t make that face. Since you’re a brigade member, I’ll even waive my tutoring fee.”

Given how crazy she was for thinking someone would want to be subjected to a course they hadn’t even asked for, I thought my expression was pretty reasonable. The phrase “with extreme reluctance” comes to mind—and it was indeed with extreme reluctance that I pulled out my history textbook, opened it to the page Haruhi rattled off, and set my mental clock to the Mesopotamian era.

“It’s easy; all you have to do is memorize it. And you don’t really have to remember the exact years. You’ll be doing great if you just get the basic time line in your head so you know what certain historical figures were thinking and doing and when. Take the pyramids, for example—they were either built because ancient people had way too much time on their hands, or because they wanted to leave their descendants with something to attract tourists.”

I supposed that no matter what era you were in there were charismatic people who were just going to say and do whatever they wanted without asking the people around them, I said. From the perspective of modern history, there was such a person in front of me at that very moment.

“I’d never build anything that got in the way that much. But now that you mention it, I would like to leave some sign of the SOS Brigade’s existence somewhere on the school grounds. I better start thinking about the design. Maybe some kind of stone somewhere. Marble, do you think? Or granite?”

It seemed as if she wanted the SOS Brigade’s name to endure through history. Maybe that’s what the pyramids were for too. Were the ancient Egyptians so desperate to leave some trace of their existence behind that they went to such efforts to carry and place those great stones? I wondered.

“That’s it, Kyon!” Haruhi’s eyes sparkled as though facing a particularly bright student. “That kind of thinking is why history’s important. It’s way better for your brain than just cramming for tests. That’s also part of how you remember stuff. You get it, don’t you? Thanks to me, of course.”

Fine, fine. I admitted she was a good teacher. She’d really helped me out during last year’s finals. That little glasses-wearing kid was going to be pretty smart indeed. Smart enough to invent a time machine.

I had no doubt as to whether he was taking good care of that turtle, and that he wouldn’t say anything about it to Haruhi. I kind of wanted to know what name he’d given it, but I couldn’t really ask Haruhi. Maybe I’d have a chance to ask him directly.

Whether or not it was her pride as brigade chief and concern for her subordinates that motivated Haruhi to help me, the least studious of the SOS Brigade members, in any case she seemed more insistent than Mr. Okabe that I not stray from the path of academic study. This was why an academics-obsessed PE instructor wasn’t much use as a homeroom teacher.

Still, doing overtime history study in the classroom as it was being cleaned up—even going to the length of standing and facing the lectern—it was certainly an odd study style. I endured Haruhi’s unilateral lecturing, circling proper nouns in the textbook with a red pen, meekly and powerlessly accepting everything I was told as pure fact.

In the face of such a potent opponent’s active assault, the poor victim could only let itself be swallowed into the whale’s belly along with all that water. Eventually I would be digested in Haruhi’s stomach.

At the moment I didn’t particularly want to pass through her digestive tract and become part of her body, so I would need to step up and pack some world history knowledge into myself, for my own sake.

“The people and places that show up on the tests are basically fixed, so just memorize these. If you just get so you’re able to remember and write down names you have a vague recollection of, you’ll do all right on tests. The best thing is to really get so you love history, but I don’t expect you to do that. You’re pretty much terrible at memorizing anything connected to studying, after all. Maybe you should ask Yuki for help next time. I bet she can recommend some good historical novels.”

Did she even have any historical fiction on her shelves? I seemed to remember she at least had some mythology, I told Haruhi.

“That’s a good enough place to start. It’s natural to want to know more about something you’re interested in. Doesn’t matter what, having the wisdom to stick your chest out and say proudly ‘This is my obsession!’ is the important thing. Got that? This is the most important time in your life, because whatever your passions lead you to learn now will be with you for the rest of your life. Somebody said that, long ago. And it’ll determine your path in life. Your brain cells are most active in your mid-teens, you know. If you don’t explore a bunch of different interests while you can, you’ll regret it later.”

Haruhi spoke as though she were an adult ten years older, looking back on her past experiences, then launched into her world history lecturing. The facts she was interested in were more trivial than anything covered in class, but they were far more interesting than the conveyor-belt lectures the teachers delivered, and the fact that the contents were so readily carved into my brain was a testament to Haruhi’s ability to deliver wisdom to total ignorants.

She had the authority of a commanding officer. The title of brigade chief was no mere show. Her mental acuity was better than that of any prime minister in history. Although I’ll admit she wasn’t very democratic.

I spent half an hour there at the lectern listening to Haruhi’s lecture, and our fearless brigade chief only put down her red pen once she felt that the appointed hour had drawn nigh. Classroom cleanup was long over, and the only people left in the classroom were Haruhi and me.

“That should be enough,” Haruhi said, putting the textbook back in her bag. “The freshmen should be in the clubroom now. C’mon, Kyon—time to go make a grand entrance and get a look at the faces of whoever’s got enough pluck and guts to show up. My intuition tells me maybe six people will be left. I made yesterday’s test pretty easy, so losing five people sounds about right.”

If that was true, then Koizumi was going to lose the bet, and I wondered if things would go so well. If half the original lot showing back up was a success, then anything less than that would suggest that there weren’t very many eccentrics in this year’s freshman class. And from what I saw, the number of freshmen who would come back out with a straight face out of nothing more than a sense of curiosity was close to zero. And if it was zero, I could stop worrying about all this stuff and return to my normal, everyday life.

Haruhi shooed me out of the classroom and dragged me to the clubroom, where I saw Nagato listlessly absorbed in a book, Asahina in her school uniform rather than her maid outfit, pouring tea into paper cups, and Koizumi amusing himself with a game of solitaire—

—Along with the out-of-place figures of exactly six students.

Three boys, and three girls.

It was no time to rejoice over having won my bet with Koizumi. Was this for real? If there were really so many students intrepid enough to want to join the SOS Brigade, this was going to be complicated.

In any case, the brigade chief puffed her chest out in satisfaction, then spoke in a voice as strident as any trombone in the brass band club.

“Very well! I underestimated you. I was sure only one in ten would come back, but it seems that’s not the case. This year’s freshmen are promising indeed! Now, then—” Haruhi tossed her bag at me, heading directly for the brigade chief’s desk. “I now proclaim the second phase of the SOS Brigade entrance examination open!” she declared, producing a “Chief Examiner” armband from within her desk.

“It’s a written test. No, don’t worry about it too much. It’s more of a personality test or survey. It won’t directly affect your acceptance, but it will be used for reference. I’ll be responsible for handling all personal information, so don’t worry—it will never be shared with the faculty or student council. Not even the other brigade members.”

Haruhi’s eyes were like a boiling undersea volcano. She really did act just like a geyser.

“So, Kyon, Koizumi, and Mikuru, you should all leave the room for a bit. Oh, Yuki can stay. Hurry, get to it! Freshmen, sit evenly around the table. Oh, I guess we’re short on chairs. Kyon, go get some more.”

I had to do as I was told. Dictators are dictators because their orders are always followed without dissent. Haruhi had treated the literature club room as her own private property for nearly a year now. I hoped the student council would push back a little to stop her from putting a sign up proclaiming it hers even after she graduated.

Then Koizumi, Asahina, and I headed into the hallway and stared at the closed door to the clubroom with a variety of expressions. If Nagato was allowed to remain in the room, Haruhi must’ve decided she wasn’t going to get in the way. Did Haruhi just think of Nagato as SOS Brigade furniture?

“I’ll go get some water,” said Asahina, holding the kettle as though it were a precious thing and trotting off, the pitter-patter of her school shoes fading away down the staircase. I watched her go off on her errand, then to buy a little bit of time I tossed my bag back into the clubroom before heading off to do exactly what I’d done the previous day—namely, asking other clubs to lend us folding chairs. If I’d known I was going to have to do it again, I wouldn’t have returned them.

Anyway, I figured I’d hit up the computer club first, but Koizumi raised a light hand. “If you’re looking for chairs, I’ve already collected some. There was quite a bit of time before you and Suzumiya arrived, after all. I made the rounds and collected what I could. They’re over there; you didn’t seem to notice.”

I ignored his teasing tone and calmly looked, and indeed, leaning up against the wall of the old school building were five folded chairs.

“You should’ve said something about them before we got kicked out of the room, Koizumi. We almost wasted a bunch of time.”

Koizumi’s face came close alongside mine. “We waited for a full half hour before you showed up. Just what did you and Suzumiya use that time for? I have to admit I’m rather interested.”

His face made it seem as though he thought it was an incredibly rare event, like the orbits of Mars and Earth were overlapping for the first time in tens of thousands of years. We didn’t do anything. Haruhi never did anything for such superficial reasons.

I coughed. “She seems to think that being able to make other people wait is a form of status. She was purposely waiting for the freshmen to arrive. All I did was go along with her.”

“And yet the fraction of times she’s been late to our train station rendezvous point is exceedingly low. It’s as though she’s pouring out her heart just to be able to wait for you. One can’t help but imagine that while she might make other people wait, she’ll never make you wait.”

He was sure being stubborn. The one time I’d managed to get there first, the three of them didn’t show up. That was the only time. And even then I’d wound up paying the check. I was pretty sure she never planned on spending any money on me.

“I’m not sure you can confidently state that. When it’s just the two of you, even Suzumiya won’t just make you pay for everything. Worst case, you’ll just split the check. I don’t know what she was like before, but as far as the current Suzumiya goes, that’s the truth. Why don’t you just give it a try?”

What did he mean by “try,” I wanted to know.

“It’s quite simple. Pick a day and give Suzumiya a call. All you’ll have to do is ask if she’s free on Sunday and if so, if she wants to go out with you. You’re welcome to ignore Asahina, Nagato, and myself. Why don’t you go somewhere, just the two of you?”

I thought about it for a moment.

“Are you trying to get me to ask Haruhi out on a date? Are you crazy in the head?”

“Goodness, I don’t seem to recall saying anything like the word ‘date.’ But if that’s how you feel about it, I’m certainly fine with that. And why not? Why not take the brigade chief to a movie and get to know her better? No, even better—distance yourselves from the SOS Brigade entirely and just do something fun as two normal high school students? You might discover something new.”

Annoyingly, Koizumi looked at me like a mother bird watching her fledgling about to leave the nest, so naturally I had to put him in his place.

“If I actually did anything like that, it would be a major symptom. Honestly, I’d want you to tell me. Even if the Earth stopped spinning on its axis, I would never do such a thing. If I did, it would mean there was something wrong with me and I just hadn’t noticed it yet. If that ever happens, I’m counting on you. You’ll have to get me back to normal. I’d want you to do whatever you had to.”

“As you wish. Although I must say that would be the exact opposite of what I would wish for…”

Just when Koizumi was getting a nasty smile on his face as though he were going to add something to that—

“Kyon! Do you have the chairs yet or what?!”

Haruhi’s raucous voice echoed from inside the clubroom, at which Koizumi and I both slumped like identical twin mimes, then headed for the folding chairs that had been left in the hall.

Just as I was leaving the clubroom entrance, I heard the sound of the printer whirring and spitting out sheets of paper. What was she printing?

I soon found out.

 

1. Explain the reasoning behind your ambition to join the SOS Brigade.

2. If you are admitted, in what way can you contribute?

3. Of aliens, time travelers, sliders, and espers, which do you think is best?

4. Why?

5. Explain any mysterious phenomena you have experienced.

6. What’s your favorite pithy phrase?

7. If you could do anything, what would you do?

8. Final question: Express your enthusiasm.

9. If you can bring along anything really interesting, you get extra credit. Please try to find something.

 

The printer was nearly out of ink, so it labored mightily to print the above letters onto its copier paper, but that’s definitely what they spelled out. Written test, indeed.

Koizumi and I finished setting up the folding chairs, and once the freshmen were all settled and ready, Haruhi passed out the brigade entrance examination.

“The time limit is thirty minutes. There’s no limit on length. You can write on the back if you like. If you’re caught looking at anybody else’s test, you’re instantly disqualified, so make sure to use your own head.”

She then made a flourish with her pointer.

“Begin!”

Haruhi and Nagato were the only ones allowed to watch the freshmen hastily follow her directions, so once again Koizumi and I were exiled into the hallway. I grabbed an extra copy of the written text that had been printed.

“Put this on the door,” said Haruhi, her tone indicating that she would brook no argument, and left me with a piece of paper with KEEP OUT scribbled on it before slamming the door closed. Helplessly, I tacked the warning up and stood still there in the hallway.

I gave the test I’d picked up to Koizumi. “What kind of exam questions are these, anyway?”

“Indeed.” Koizumi gave the paper the once-over and stroked his chin. “This isn’t all that different from a real examination. The questions themselves aren’t terribly difficult, so answering them should be easy. It won’t require much thought to get a good score.” He flicked the printout, amused. “This is a cognition test. Suzumiya wants to know how the examinees think and answer questions. Given those answers, she can determine the examinee’s capacity for speculation. It’s a kind of psychological evaluation. Of course, she probably intends to use this as an entirely serious examination.”

It ought to be serious, given how much time she’d spent coming up with the questions.

I took the paper back from Koizumi. “But if you want to kiss up to Haruhi, how would you answer? I’d have no idea. What does a person’s favorite proverb tell you about them?”

“I’m rather more interested in question three. Which would be your pick?”

—Of aliens, time travelers, sliders, and espers, which do you think is best?

“That’s way too abstract.” I turned my face away from Koizumi’s pleasant inquiry. “What does ‘best’ mean? They’re all totally different. Now, if you want to know which one is the most useful, that I can answer.”

“Oh, and which would that be? I’m fascinated to hear.”

Since that depended on the circumstances, I couldn’t really be definitive. My usual answer would obviously be Nagato, but Nagato aside, there was no telling what aliens as a group were thinking. Being able to freely manipulate time would let you amass vast wealth, but having access to easily understandable forecasts and insights along with teleportation like Koizumi had seemed as though it would be pretty interesting too. They all had their advantages and drawbacks. The only one I could easily rule out was sliders, who didn’t seem particularly convenient in any way.

As I was staring at the Haruhi-made entrance exam to kill time, Asahina returned, carrying the heavy-looking kettle like some kind of spring-water fairy.

“Oh, can we not go back in?”

“Looks that way.”

I took the kettle from Asahina’s hands, and since standing there holding the heavy thing made me feel like some dope who was being punished, I set it down on the floor by the wall.

“I thought I’d make tea for everyone, but I wonder if there’s going to be time to boil water…” Asahina gazed at the clubroom door as she worried about the freshmen. How charming she was! I would’ve liked to have kept gazing at the beautiful senior who always wanted to make sure there was fresh tea for her friends, but standing guard out there for half an hour was going to be boring, so I tried to figure out what to do.

“Perhaps we should go to the cafeteria. The food line is probably closed, but I can at least treat you to some coffee from the vending machines.”

Since Koizumi had primed the pump, both Asahina and I nodded our agreement. That was an awfully reasonable suggestion. The last half of his proposal was particularly attractive.

Koizumi gave me a light wink. “I did lose that bet, after all.”

Which was true, now that he mentioned it.

The three of us first headed to the vending machines installed along the outside wall of the cafeteria, and once we’d all obtained drinks in paper cups, we sat at the round tables out on the terrace.

The cherry blossoms that were spring’s main event were fading in favor of the deepening green of the season. It occurred to me that a year earlier, I would never have imagined I’d be sitting here with these particular people.

I savored the sweet au lait as I drank it.

“Kyon, what kind of entrance examination is she using?” Asahina asked, her hands wrapped around her cup of black tea as though to keep them warm. I gave her the exam sheet I’d folded up and slipped into my pocket.

“It was this thing. Honestly, I have no idea what kind of person she’s actually looking for.”

“Hmm.” Asahina looked intently at the paper, like a grade schooler trying to memorize the sevens column of her multiplication tables. It was adorably heartwarming.

“Still, this is a rare event,” said Koizumi, his cup seeming like Meissen porcelain as he inclined it to his lips. “This combination of the three of us, I mean. We should appreciate these thirty uninterrupted minutes we have.” He smiled still more charmingly. “Don’t you agree?”

The thought had occurred to me. With all the time-travel craziness, I’d spent a lot of time together with Asahina and Nagato, which for various reasons meant Koizumi was relegated to a mere supporting character. There wasn’t a lot of opportunity for an esper to play the hero, save the occasional cave cricket–type incident. Although I did have the Agency to thank for their handling of our kidnapping problem.

Just when I thought I’d try to get some kind of consensus from Asahina the time traveler on what kind of things might be happening with Haruhi next, I instead wound up making small talk with Koizumi. Asahina made small sounds of agreement as she took tiny sips of her black tea.

The topics of Haruhi’s strange powers, what they might mean for the world, and our enemies’ capabilities were not spoken of at all as we chatted about things happening at school—our amusing classmates, jokes our teachers had made, what board games to buy next. This must be what they mean by “small talk.”

Asahina smiled happily or nodded her head in interest, and from the outside it would have looked as though she were an ordinary senior enjoying a pleasant chat with some younger students. And given that we were just trying to pass the time, maybe this was the best way to do it.

With a time traveler, or an esper—

No, none of that mattered. We were just fellow club members occupied in some unofficial activities, that was all.

The moment was all the more precious for its ordinariness, I suppose. In that one moment I was free of all obstacles. There was no new time traveler or alien causing me trouble, and while leaving Haruhi alone was always risky, it was only for half an hour.

I thought about it, and I really couldn’t imagine the SOS Brigade gaining a sixth member. My mind just couldn’t picture another member in addition to Nagato, Koizumi, and Asahina, never mind the idea of losing one of them.

Who was it that had said change was the only constant? I felt as if I wanted to argue the point with them. There were things in the world that never changed. My memories of the past, for example. Even if it wasn’t in any photo album, the memory of me, then, with Haruhi and everyone else—that would always remain.

My mind busied itself filing away the image of Asahina’s happy smile, and I couldn’t help feeling rather sad. In only a year, the seniors would be graduating.

But here and now, this single page of memory would live on within me and Asahina and Koizumi.

That was the way it should be, I mused to myself, sipping my hot au lait. It wasn’t especially tasty, and so I didn’t feel particularly thankful to Koizumi for having treated me.

But it was its own pleasure, in a way.

In that moment, I could still take the time to enjoy the small things in life.

Ten minutes after the prescribed half-hour exam time, we returned to the clubroom to see that the only two people there were a satisfied brigade chief flipping through the completed tests, and a silent Nagato more invisible than any Invisible Man.

“Where’d the freshmen go?” I asked, and Haruhi told me.

“They went home. This is it for the written exam, and regardless of whether they passed or failed I told them all to come back here tomorrow, so I bet the really motivated ones will stay.”

“How are you deciding whether they passed or not?”

Haruhi tapped the stack of tests against the desk to even them up. “I have no intention of making a hasty decision just based on this test. I mean, there weren’t any ‘correct’ answers to the questions, but if they came up with interesting things to say, I’ll take that into account.”

It seemed as though she just wanted to make them take a test. I could accept that going along with the brigade chief’s crazy ideas was part of our responsibility as brigade members, but it seemed unfair to make the poor freshmen do it too.

“That’s stupid—obviously I’m thinking about this. Taking the test is itself part of the test. I’m testing their endurance. The unmotivated ones just won’t come back tomorrow, don’t you get it?”

So she was separating the wheat from the chaff. Well, it was a pretty coarse screen, if you asked me.

“I was thinking it would be nice to make tea for everybody,” said Asahina, sympathizing with the freshmen. “Have they all left already? That’s too bad.”

I couldn’t help feeling bad for them, having not gotten a second chance to drink Asahina’s tea.

I watched Asahina as she set about boiling some water.

“You should be thankful, Kyon—you got into the brigade without having to take any tests.” Haruhi sat in her seat and folded her arms. “If you’re not careful, you might get passed by an up-and-coming member. If anybody manages to pass the final stage of the exam, they’re going to be a person to be reckoned with. Although I’m planning an interview for the last stage.”

Haruhi busied herself marking up the tests she’d received with a red pencil.

“Hey, do you want to give the interview a try? Depending on your answers, I’ll consider giving you a promotion. It’s good practice for job interviews too.”

That didn’t sound as though it was going to have any practical relevance to any industry I could think of. If Haruhi were the company president and were directly conducting interviews, it wasn’t as if normal answers would get you the job. The idea of anyone learning interviewing habits from her crazy brigade interviews, thereby wrecking their own future prospects, was too terrible to consider.

“I’ll pass.”

“Fine.” Haruhi didn’t seem the least bit concerned as she happily returned to the tests. Honestly, even I was sort of interested in seeing them.

“Hey, Haruhi, let me see those. I want to see what kind of answers those little freshmen came up with.”

“Absolutely not,” said Haruhi flatly. “That would be a betrayal of confidence. They contain personal information, so I can’t just go flashing them around. I’m the one making the decision, anyway, so there’s no point in showing them to you.” She glared at me with large, shining eyes. “Curiosity’s an especially bad reason. Choosing brigade members is the brigade chief’s job.”

I slumped. Good grief. If the chief was the sole arbiter of new member selection, then it looked as if she was just going to ignore anything we happened to say. Aside from Nagato and me, who’d essentially been drafted on her whim, Asahina and Koizumi were both Haruhi-designated appointees.

But still, I wondered how many of today’s six applicants would reach Haruhi’s final stage.

“Hm?” I was watching Asahina from behind as she poured water into the teapot when something occurred to me. Had all six of today’s freshmen been in yesterday’s group of eleven? One of them might have come for the first time today. There wasn’t any guarantee that all of the interested freshmen would come on the same day, so it was possible that the dropout rate was more than fifty percent.

I tried to connect the memories.

Wait—had that girl been here today? The one from yesterday who’d caught my eye—she’d seemed so familiar. If I hadn’t been shoved out of the clubroom so quickly, I could’ve taken the opportunity of the exam process to get a better look at the six faces.

Something bothered me.

Koizumi produced a set of Uno cards and started shuffling them. I didn’t have to look twice to know that watching his face as he dealt the cards wasn’t going to give me any answers. Even after Asahina finished setting cups of richly fragrant tea in front of each member and the three of us (having nothing better to do) started playing a game, unease weighed heavily on my mind. It felt as if I had thirty seconds left to finish a test, and couldn’t figure out a question that should’ve been obvious—but why?

I gave Nagato a casual glance.

The still-reading literature club member had no reaction, and had not moved a single millimeter from her chair. I had no trouble imagining her exactly this way during the test, still as a bronze statue, but the fact that Nagato was neither moving nor talking meant that nothing was happening. At the very least, none of the new freshmen were from the Heavenly Canopy Dominion, like the embarrassingly named Kuyoh.

“…”

In the space of an eighth-note rest, Nagato turned the page, her finger stopping as though she’d spotted a misprint, then looked up mere millimeters.

With eyes like a stone tablet just wiped clean she gazed at me, then, as though nothing had happened, returned to her book.

That was all it took to set me at ease. So long as Nagato was in the clubroom absorbed in a book, the world wouldn’t be thrown into a poisonous mandrake soup of a crisis. Haruhi was absorbed in grading the tests, and Koizumi, Asahina, and I were passing the time by playing a card game.

I had to feel sorry for the poor freshmen who’d come by the SOS Brigade out of random curiosity, but it was nice of them to amuse Haruhi for a while.

If it were possible, it would be nice if three of them returned tomorrow. We’d probably lose a fair number of them given the dropout rate, but it wouldn’t be any fun for Haruhi if they all left at once. I hoped they lasted until the weekend.

β—8

The next day, Tuesday.

You’ve got to admire the construction of the human brain. Despite finding it terribly difficult to fall asleep, my body was too anxious to let me enjoy a few more minutes of sleep, so thanks to my eyes snapping open before my alarm clock went off, I was able to take my time trudging up the brutal hill to school. But I didn’t feel remotely good about any of it, and as I melted into the utterly clichéd scene of freshmen walking to school, my feet took me through the school gates a bit earlier than normal.

At this rate I was only going to feel more depressed. The best course of action would be to unload my sorrows, and the first step in that would be articulating to Haruhi just how un-merry I felt.

When I got to the classroom, Haruhi’s seat was empty, and I realized I must have arrived before she did. There were all sorts of things I wanted to say, and the fact that the number of things I could actually tell her was so small had nothing to do with my vocabulary. I knew all too well how Asahina must have felt. How are you supposed to communicate things you can’t say with words? Body language? Should I draw a picture?

No to both, I think. Let’s just leave it that some things shouldn’t be explained. So long as Nagato returns to being a part of our daily lives, everything will be fine. And the sooner that day came, the better, because the longer Nagato was afflicted by her fever, the more suspicious Haruhi would be. Who knows what lengths Haruhi would go to in order to cure Nagato?

For example, it wouldn’t surprise me if she reset everything back to the day of our freshman entrance ceremony. I really didn’t want to go back to the beginning now that I’d spent so much effort to get this far. I wasn’t confident I’d be able to play my cards very well, and considering everything I was rather attached to our current situation. We’d come this far—like hell I was gonna let the whole year go to waste. I’d make sure we would break the tape at the finish line together.

“Oh, so that’s it.”

I sat down on the hard desk chair and my brain immediately arrived at the answer. I’d realized just why I was so anxious, and felt rather proud of myself for achieving this feat of self-analysis. In short, I was afraid that someone close to me was going to disappear. When I thought back on it, it was obvious. Even if I left out the incident with Haruhi disappearing and the world changing around her, when I’d seen Asahina kidnapped before my very eyes, or when Nagato had missed school, my heart had immediately started hammering. Even if it were just circumstantial evidence, it was seriously convincing.

The same reasoning applied. Just turn time back a year and see what happened. If I had to listen to Haruhi’s crazy self-introduction again, I’d say the odds were no better than fifty-fifty that youthful capriciousness would lead me to talk to her, so that encounter leading to actual events was no more than a coincidence, and I could just as easily have wound up without spending any of my time in classroom 1-5 with Haruhi Suzumiya or her old acquaintance Taniguchi, never getting dragged to the literature club room, never meeting Nagato and seeing the glasses disappear from her face, never seeing Asahina kidnapped and returned. Koizumi would never have transferred into North High, and we never would’ve had a fake island murder mystery or shot that stupid movie, and swept along by ceaseless time, nothing would have happened. There was a possibility I would have sought tranquility and idleness, and moved normally into my second year of high school.

And yet that was only a possibility, and here in the present with the results already in, it was a meaningless eventuality, with a 0 percent chance of happening. Reality was that which did not change no matter how you looked at it.

Don’t ask me which I would have preferred. I didn’t have time to hesitate over answers that should have been obvious.

So I had to take responsibility. I wasn’t going to rely on anyone else to do something that only I could do, and I’d let others do what I couldn’t. That’s what I’d done so far, and I was going to keep doing it. Even without Koizumi’s eloquent explanations, I could reason that much.

When Nagato had fainted last year at Tsuruya’s ski villa, Koizumi’s capable mind had come into play. This time, though, he had his hands full with other things. If it had been in his power to do something about the irregular extraterrestrial life form Kuyoh, he would’ve long since done it.

And thanks to the directives the Data Overmind had given Nagato, Haruhi and I were both in a situation that made neither of us very happy. And when it came to people who could do anything about it, once you left Haruhi out there was just me.

I owed Nagato quite a bit so far. If I didn’t pay her back now, it would reflect badly on all of humanity. No, I would not help either the knife-wielding maniac Asakura or the mysteriously disappearing and reappearing Kimidori. And neither would my old middle school friend Sasaki, who while eccentric was still the most normal-seeming of all the involved parties. It didn’t matter what sweet words they whispered in her ear; I knew Sasaki wouldn’t do anything. I’d spent enough time with her to know she was trustworthy. She was odd enough for even Haruhi to say so, and I felt roughly the same way about my old middle school friend. The fact that we were boy and girl had nothing to do with it at all. I had absolutely no biologically derived feelings for her, and I was certain she felt the same about me.

I was glad I’d remembered to mail her a New Year’s card. I’m sure we were both looking forward to having a good time at this year’s reunion. Sasaki had enough acting ability that she’d be able to make all these problems go away and take us back to our middle school days. On that count I could trust her more than anyone.

Only now did I realize how true it was—Sasaki, you really are a good friend. Good enough that even a decade from now she’d be able to come up to me and say, “Hey, Kyon,” which was a rare thing. She was smart enough not to let Kyoko Tachibana or Fujiwara trick her into doing anything; she’d keep her feet firmly planted on the ground.

Kyoko Tachibana was Koizumi’s enemy. Fujiwara was Asahina’s enemy. Kuyoh was Nagato’s enemy. But Sasaki was not my enemy. She was my old friend, my middle school classmate, and nothing else. Kyoko Tachibana, Fujiwara, Kuyoh—you picked the wrong target. The Sasaki I know isn’t some meek Earthling easily swayed by sweet words. She’s harder to deal with than me, but has more common sense than Haruhi.

Settling that much was enough to restore some measure of calm to my mind, so all that was left to do was wait for Haruhi.

When the first bell rang, she still hadn’t arrived. I fixed my eyes on the blackboard, feeling her lack of presence behind me; she was on the verge of being late for class, which was very rare.

The day did not begin when my eyes opened; it began now. My usual routine was to consider the day begun when I turned around to face Haruhi in the seat behind me, and it had been so for quite a while.

And by that schedule, today was shaping up to be the longest day ever.

Hold on, Nagato. We’ll do something about your sickness. The one opponent we absolutely have to strike at is definitely Kuyoh Suoh, the supposed platform of the supposed Heavenly Canopy Dominion. We could deal with the time traveler after that.

Just as I was feeling uncharacteristically resolved, the bell indicating the beginning of homeroom period rang, and Haruhi finally appeared in the classroom, cutting it very close—she entered almost exactly the same time that Okabe did. Unlike the teacher, she entered quietly through the classroom’s rear door, and also unlike the teacher, her expression was not very lively.

Just as Haruhi was about to reach her seat, she noticed my gaze on her and returned it. Producing a key from the pocket of her uniform, she jingled it around and then quickly put it away. That was enough explanation, but she went ahead and said it aloud anyway.

“I went to go check on Yuki,” Haruhi explained in the short break between homeroom and first period. “I thought I’d make her breakfast, so I let myself in.”

“How was she?”

“Yuki? She was sleeping. When I peeked into her room, she opened her eyes and looked at me for a second. I guess she felt better after that, because she closed them again and went back to sleep. I didn’t want to wake her again, so I made breakfast and headed back out. Her fever didn’t seem too bad. I guess getting plenty of rest is still the best thing to do.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Haruhi sighed softly. “When I look at Yuki sleeping, I just wanna, like…” She hesitated for a moment, then lowered her voice. “I mean, don’t take this the wrong way, but I just want to gather her up and hug her. It feels like if I don’t, she’ll just disappear. I know that’s not true, but still…”

Haruhi propped her head up with her hand. She didn’t look uneasy so much as vaguely irritated, and I felt as though I could see what she was feeling so clearly that I felt it a little bit myself. It was almost certainly in my imagination, though. And even if it wasn’t, it went without saying that there was no way I was going to give Haruhi a hug.

But whatever the root cause, it was clear that Haruhi and I were of one mind. Koizumi and Asahina too.

A healthy Nagato… something about the phrase is strange, but I didn’t want to see her bedridden and weak for any longer. She belonged in the literature club room. She could sleep in there if she wanted, honestly. The place was well enough equipped for it, after all. The literature club room without Nagato was like a Last Supper scene without Christ.

In any case, there was something I absolutely had to tell Haruhi. It was something that might well have made her eyes bug out of her head, but just as I was about to say it, the biology teacher arrived and interrupted me.

The next ten-minute break between classes seemed as if it would bring a likely opportunity. The single line weighed heavily on my mind in direct proportion to its importance.

Immediately after the class (which I cared nothing for and of which nothing stuck in my head) ended, I turned around to inquire of the views of the brigade chief.

“We need to talk.”

“What?” Haruhi’s eyebrows shot up, but the eyes that regarded my expression widened only slightly. “Can you ask here? If it’s a secret we can go to the roof or the emergency exit stairs.”

“Nothing like that. Look, are you going to Nagato’s place again tonight?”

“Of course.”

“About that—it doesn’t look like I can make it. Something else came up. I’m worried about Nagato, but…”

I was inwardly chilled as I wondered what sort of reaction awaited me, but Haruhi’s eyebrows and eyes merely resumed their previous levels. “Huh, oh yeah?” She rubbed her chin as she seemed to think something over. “So what is it? Is Shamisen going bald again?”

I gulped. “No, nothing like that. Just a thing I have to take care of. It’s kinda…” I stumbled over my words, lacking any sort of ability to make stuff up on the spot.

“Sure, whatever. It’s pretty much the same whether you’re there or not, and it’s no fun for Yuki if everybody keeps making a big deal about it. Mikuru and I can take care of dinner—or just me, if it comes to that.” She considered the matter a bit more deeply. “Hmm, yes. I guess that’s something to consider too… yeah, definitely.”

It seemed I’d pushed a button that had set her on a different track entirely.

“We can’t really neglect either one, can we?” murmured Haruhi, having evidently come to some kind of internal conclusion. She nodded firmly and leaned close. “You shouldn’t come today. Koizumi either. Mikuru and I will go to Yuki’s place—I bet she hasn’t been bathing, and having boys around while we’re cleaning her up would just be a hassle. Don’t worry about it. It’s just a little cold, so lots of rest is the best thing for her, anyway.”

Haruhi sat back down in her chair, then thought better of it and stood back up. “We’ll have to tell Koizumi about this. I feel a little bad leaving responsibility to the lieutenant brigade chief, but this is the right thing to do. I really can’t just ignore the situation,” said Haruhi cryptically.

She got that smile she gets whenever she thinks of something, and sprinted out of the room. The speed she went from thought to action was right in line with the velocity of a subatomic particle.

I watched her speed away like a bottlenose dolphin cutting through a school of sardines, and sighed, and when my gaze returned to the classroom it fell directly on Taniguchi, who was grinning at me.

“Heya, Kyon. What’re you whispering about so seriously with Haruhi, there? Finally gonna start filing jointly, eh? You traitor!”

I had no idea what he was talking about. The only tax I paid was sales tax.

There was no way he could’ve failed to see my dismissive hand wave as I shooed him off, but he just sniggered like some strange bird.

“You’re about the only guy in the world who could go out with Suzumiya for an entire year. You’re constantly breaking the world record, easy! Who knows how you could last, eh? Kyon, you’ve got a real talent with weirdos. I know these things.”

His notions were constantly off the mark, I pointed out. Any quiz sheet from any class told the story perfectly well.

“Hey, you’re no better! Anyway, academics aren’t the only place to show talent.”

That was the kind of line that a person with actual talent should have been delivering, I said. You had to have results. When people like us who hadn’t accomplished anything yet said stuff like that, it just sounded as if we were detached from reality.

“Maybe.” Taniguchi draped his arm over my shoulder, as overfamiliar as ever. “But there are things that’re obvious even to me. And you’re perfect for Suzumiya. Nothing like with Asahina. Shall we leave it at that? Hmm?”

“Hmm,” my foot.

I picked up Taniguchi’s hand from my shoulder. “So what about you, huh? Are there any new girls you’re gonna make a pass at?”

“All in due time, my friend. There’s plenty of time until summer. First comes golden week. I’m gonna pick up a part-time job and see if I can make something happen that way. Nothing ventured, nothing gained!” Taniguchi stretched his other arm idiotically toward the sky.

“Moron.” My comeback was entirely appropriate. There wasn’t any other word for it. Hadn’t he said the same thing last year? And how’d that gone? If my memory was correct, it was a long line of perfect zeros.

But whatever. I was glad to be in the same class with him again, and he hadn’t added to my feeling of being a frontline commander surrounded by mechanized infantry, with only a shovel to dig entrenchments. It was hard to explain just how important having a friend like Taniguchi I could have idiotic conversations like this with was for my peace of mind. Words didn’t do it justice. He was a friend on my own level. Even if we each regarded the other as the biggest idiot ever to live, that was fine—we were each the only ones who knew just how ridiculous we had been in the past.

And if there was someone who didn’t know that, they were either a genius of unprecedented ability, or an organism whose vanity formed such incredible armor they were like unto some giant tortoise.

I found out what Haruhi had said to Koizumi at lunch.

I finished my box lunch and headed for the washroom, when who did I find leaning against the wall waiting for me but the SOS Brigade’s lieutenant brigade chief. No sooner did our eyes meet than he started to speak.

“I have two things to report,” he said, arms crossed. He stuck two fingers out, eyes as clear as those of a meteorologist reporting a 0 percent chance of precipitation. “The first is good news, and the second is neither good news nor bad.”

I told him to start with the second one.

“Suzumiya’s ordered me to remain on alert in the clubroom.”

I couldn’t see the reason Haruhi would have for giving him a sentence like that, I said. Unless he’d gotten involved in a bloody sword fight in some castle somewhere.

Koizumi let the joke slide. “To put it simply, I’m room-sitting. She just wants me to spend a certain amount of time in the clubroom after school. Apparently she doesn’t want to leave it unoccupied.”

Why not? Neither the original resident, Nagato, nor Haruhi the brigade chief, nor Asahina the maid would be there. The utility value of the room wasn’t even worth a single cicada shell.

“Oh my, have you forgotten? The posting that says we’re recruiting new members is still up and has yet to be removed.”

… I had in fact forgotten that.

“We can’t be sure that sharp-eyed students with strange tastes won’t consider the SOS Brigade. In fact, Suzumiya is hoping for exactly that. ‘If you’re not interested, don’t come; you’d only drag us down’—something like that. But at the moment, she’s not even thinking about that; it seems to be lower on her priority list.”

With Nagato the way she was, Haruhi was concerned enough to let herself into the apartment this morning to check on her, so she really wasn’t thinking about new brigade members.

“Indeed she was not. Yet she hasn’t entirely abandoned the idea that we might yet recruit some freshmen. She’s showing excellent leadership qualities as a brigade chief. She’s much calmer than you are.”

If he was being sarcastic, he needed to be more obvious about it, I said.

“I’m merely stating my impressions, but yes, you’re right in your own way. In fact, you might be too right—might you be considered self-righteous? Unfortunately, anyone who opposes your beliefs is labeled an enemy or a tool of one. And this is because you feel you’re right.”

Given that these words were coming from Koizumi’s bland smile, I got the sense that I wasn’t being complimented.

I glared at Koizumi like a hungry spectacled caiman, which he ignored. He spoke in a smooth, cello-like tone. “I’ll move on to the good news. Regarding the closed space and <Celestials> that Haruhi has been creating every night—they have stopped appearing entirely. From our statistical analysis, we feel we can state that they will remain dormant for some time. This is a significant load off my shoulders. Despite the continuing hazard pay, I was constantly sleep-deprived, so this should be treated as welcome progress. At least in my opinion.”

Haruhi had started creating closed space again after the day she’d met Sasaki. The fact that they’d stopped was probably because Haruhi had found something she was more worried about than Sasaki.

“Naturally,” said Koizumi officiously. “The problem with Nagato. The abnormality of Nagato missing school has focused all of Haruhi’s attention.”

Maybe it wasn’t so bad if <Celestials> rampaged a little more. I couldn’t imagine that Haruhi would care more about Sasaki than she did about Nagato.

Koizumi seized the opportunity to agree. “Individually speaking, Haruhi is concerned about Nagato, but she’s not irritated. So long as you don’t involve yourself with Sasaki any more than is necessary, Haruhi will simply think of her as an old acquaintance of yours. While Nagato has been and will continue to be an important member of the SOS Brigade. Their relative importance is barely worth comparing.”

I knew that already. Haruhi was quite fond of Nagato. That had been made perfectly clear last winter on the ski slopes.

I went back through my memories, thinking of the strange western house that had appeared in the blizzard. Haruhi had been more concerned than anyone else at Nagato’s collapse. Was that because she considered it her duty as brigade chief? Absurd. That was just the kind of person Haruhi was. She couldn’t just leave someone by the wayside, especially not a good friend she’d spent so much time with.

What pulled me out of my retrospection was Koizumi’s voice, speaking as though sentimentality was something for other people.

“I didn’t plan on this, but there’s another thing I personally think I should say. To be perfectly honest, you are being too considerate of Nagato. It’s been especially noticeable since winter vacation.”

Yeah, and did he have some kinda problem with that? I asked.

“Not at all. Nagato is clearly worthy of that level of trust. I’m sure it’s difficult for you to accept that she’s fallen into a state of malfunction. But if you worry about her to the exclusion of your surroundings, you’re misplacing your priorities.”

He better not be implying that Nagato was a minor detail.

“Indeed I am not. Please, think about this. An unknown interaction with another extraterrestrial life form is what’s causing Nagato’s present condition. Neither the time traveler’s nor the esper’s groups are involved, and indeed they couldn’t do anything even if they wanted to. But this kind of conflict can be manipulated by a third party.”

This didn’t seem like the kind of conversation we should be having outside the bathroom, but Koizumi smoothly continued.

“Logically, people from the future should have knowledge of the past. So Asahina is not an ordinary time traveler. And that’s what makes her unique. It’s not clear what her position of ignorance implies, but it’s also not impossible to guess. From the perspective of people further in the future than Asahina, she’s the perfect decoy for us in the past.”

He’d said something like that before.

“Consider this: Given that there must be people who knew in advance that Nagato would be forcibly deactivated, they would be able to move with that timing. She’s the SOS Brigade’s most powerful asset, and she’s won your trust above all others. And you’ve gained hers. And since you now surely regard Asahina’s enemies as your own, that means Nagato does too. What a time traveler least wants to see intervening is a humanoid interface from the Data Overmind, especially Nagato, who happens to be our beloved comrade.”

So now that Nagato was out of commission, that time-traveling bastard Fujiwara or whatever his name was… this was his best chance.

But what was he planning? I asked.

“That I do not know.” Koizumi gave a hopeful smile. “I was vaguely hoping you would be able to shed some light on that.”

Fine, then. It looked as if his hopes rested on my efforts. Fine, then, Koizumi—you just stay in the clubroom and wait. Haruhi and Asahina’s job was to nurse Nagato back to health.

And I’d go do my job.

“Finally, this isn’t a report so much as it is a low-probability conjecture on my part, but…” Koizumi seemed to hesitate, not sure whether he should continue or not. Noticing his serious face, I jerked my chin up, motioning for him to continue.

“As I said before, <Celestials> have stopped appearing, which is curious. One possible interpretation is that Suzumiya’s attention has been diverted—but we may have seriously misunderstood the situation.”

So what was that supposed to mean? Those jolly blue giants are just trying to trick us into thinking they’ve disappeared, when they’ve actually gone off to train?

“Something like that, yes. I can’t rid myself of the suspicion that the <Celestials> have gone off to build up their energy reserves in anticipation of something else they expect to face. This may be no more than ungrounded worry on my part, but it is something I’m worried about.”

So they were saving up their power? Surely not, I said. I couldn’t imagine those glowing blue monsters were capable of that kind of forethought. They weren’t in the training montage of some shonen manga, after all.

“Indeed, I may be overthinking the situation. In any case, should the <Celestials> reappear we will also be summoned, so we’ll know about it immediately.” Koizumi smiled, and brushed his hair aside as though it was his signature pose.

Not wanting to chat in front of the boys’ washroom any more than I had to, I took my leave of Koizumi and headed merrily back to my classroom.

And then I realized I’d forgotten my original reason for heading for the washroom, so I turned around and went back. What of it? Go ahead and call me an airhead; I don’t mind.

Even someone like me has enough time to go to the bathroom during lunch.

When I didn’t have time was after school, when I met up with Sasaki and the rest of her crowd.

The chime rang out over the school PA system, signaling the end of the day’s classes—roughly simultaneously with that, Haruhi took her bag and flew out of the classroom. I imagined she was heading for the senior classroom where Asahina was stationed.

I could’ve walked with Haruhi all the way to Nagato’s apartment before I split up with her, but there wasn’t any reason for me to. The only thing on Haruhi’s mind was the image of a sick, bedridden Nagato.

One could hardly doubt Haruhi’s skill at cooking, and I’d personally experienced her fixation on nursing, and she and Asahina made a fetching pair, so I had no qualms leaving Nagato’s daily care to the brigade chief. At the very least, Nagato wouldn’t go hungry. And the fact that the cause of the problem wasn’t within Nagato at all meant the burden of actually solving it fell to me.

So who was I going to have to lean on? Both the Data Overmind and the Heavenly Canopy Dominion were well out of my grasp. I had to rely on Pascal’s law. If I applied pressure to one area, that pressure would be transmitted elsewhere.

Now, then—where to poke?

As I walked down the hill from school alone for the first time in quite a while, I tried hard to stay cool and focus my resolve. I couldn’t communicate with the alien. Trying to have an honest conversation with the time traveler seemed impossible. That left Kyoko Tachibana, if I could get to her through Sasaki.

I drifted through the groups of students heading home, but my thoughts were on the clubroom. Right about then, Koizumi was probably killing time there, playing his role as doorman. Or maybe he was chatting with a freshman who’d popped in after having seen one of Haruhi’s flyers…

That was the place where the brigade members would all eventually meet back up, even if they’d gone their separate ways. Our lieutenant brigade chief had better watch over it. If any new member hopefuls came by, I hoped he’d send them politely on their way. We had to avoid wrecking the lives of the youth, after all.

The path I silently trod seemed long. Subjectively, it felt as if it took twice as long as usual to reach my beloved bicycle, which I mounted, pedaling myself toward the station. I had plenty of time until my meeting with Sasaki, but I just couldn’t relax, and hurried myself along for no good reason. Why couldn’t I save up time to use later? I couldn’t help thinking that if I’d been able to move this block back to this morning, the whole day would’ve been more meaningful.

Of course, I didn’t hold my time as precious as Haruhi did. She was eccentric enough to want to fill every single day with fun memories that would last forever, but unlike her I wasn’t so abnormal, and thus killed time by riding aimlessly around the predetermined spot, stopping in front of the station at the scheduled meeting time of four thirty PM. Sorry, city officials—I had to leave my bike there for a little while. But at that hour I doubted any would be coming to check.

I waited for a while, and eventually in the flow of people leaving the station I spotted my former classmate wearing a school uniform that was relatively uncommon in this area, along with a pleasant smile. Something about her smooth stride made me feel better. Something about her appearance gave off the sense of being a pleasant person, and I knew from experience that it was true. Sasaki was about a million times better of a person than I was.

It almost made me feel bad that she considered me a good friend.

“Heya, Kyon. Did you wait?”

Not too long, I said. The minute hand had several minutes to go before it pointed straight down. And one girl who’d levy a fine for early arrival was more than enough.

Sasaki chuckled, her eyes and mouth curving beautifully. “I made you wait, didn’t I? Well, the time you spent is equivalent to my subjective time, so let’s just call it even.”

What was that supposed to mean?

“It’s simple. I was actually on a train that arrived here about half an hour ago. School just happened to get out a little early, you see. And while it’s nice to arrive a bit early, half an hour would just make me look bad—but it’s still not much time. But there’s no fun in just waiting for that long, I was thinking, and just then I saw you ride by on your bike. You had this look on your face like you were thinking really hard about something, so instead of calling out I just watched you. I was impressed how long you rode around without getting bored. Do you really enjoy cycling so much?”

How could I hate it? This bike was my beloved partner of many years. And my brain worked better when I was moving around than when I was standing still. The reason my test scores were so bad was probably because I had to crouch over a desk the whole time, I said.

“How practical of you. Although you may be suited to scholarship too. You’re quite right. The reason we think of things so easily while bathing or walking is because our brains find mechanical action boring, which gives them the capacity to consider other topics. Bathing, exercising—these are things we’re accustomed to. There’s no particular need for conscious thought, so they get done without it. That might be a better way to think, as opposed to just racking our brains. It’s true that routine work is never fun, but by getting on a train with a set destination, we’re free to appreciate the scenery along the way. Depending on the person, there are some who would consider that a waste of time, but I don’t think there’s much potential for happiness in that kind of time-is-money attitude.”

I wasn’t going to check her references, but the argument seemed sound.

“Similarly, Kyon, I always make sure to leave an escape route for myself. That way, regardless of how difficult the situation might be, I always know there’s something I can do. And that, in turn, lets me be a little adventurous. It’s like a horror movie or a roller coaster. They always end. Regardless of their form, nothing in this world lasts forever.”

At the moment, I wasn’t particularly hoping anything would last forever, so I was only half-listening to what Sasaki said. If this conversation went on like this much longer, I was going to lose track of the reason I’d skipped Nagato’s apartment to come here.

I looked around and confirmed that there was no sign of Sasaki’s minions—with all due respect, I couldn’t think of a better term for them. “So where are they?”

“They’ve already arrived. Half an hour ago I contacted them and told them to wait in the café,” she said as though she were saying hi to the neighbor lady, then picked up her light-seeming bag and slung it over her shoulder. She gave me a furtive, upturned glance, and then in a voice like she was heading out to cheer on her school’s baseball team from the bleachers during a championship game, said, “Shall we go?”

But of course. That was why I was there.

I was facing a battle on whose outcome rested my own right to exist. This was for world stability. This was to ease Haruhi’s subconscious stress level, to reduce the amount of the Agency’s covert activity (and also let Koizumi catch up on his sleep), to lower Asahina’s internal anguish, and to restore Nagato to health.

It all depended on my ability to smooth-talk—the organization that opposed the Agency and mistakenly revered Sasaki as a god. The Heavenly Blah Blah Dominion, those super-stupid aliens who despite their lack of any clear goal had put Nagato out of commission. That time-traveling clown who’d come all the way back from the future just to snicker at us behind his mask, his face a conceited sneer as though he really was a descendant of the noble Fujiwara lineage.

I was fully aware that this was the decisive battle—my Tennozan, my Red Cliffs, my Sekigahara. It was as though I were in currents of history. If I could’ve split into two, I could’ve divided my forces like the Sanada clan did, but unfortunately I possessed but one physical body. I would have to be ready.

I could ask no one for help. Koizumi was keeping watch in the clubroom, Haruhi had returned to Nagato’s apartment, and this was no place for Asahina. I hadn’t gotten any secret messages from her older self recently, which meant this was a historical event that not even the goddess Asahina the Elder could change. Should Kimidori happen to wander by, or Asakura be revived yet again, I was fully ready to tell them “no need.” And I’d repeated it as much as necessary.

This was Earth, and Earth belonged to the Earthlings.

That authority did not rest with any single person. Not with the secretary general of the United Nations, much less with Haruhi.

Haruhi had but one title, and that was brigade chief of the SOS Brigade, an unauthorized student organization at North Prefectural High School—no more and no less.

That was the greatest evidence in a database that hadn’t changed since the beginning of her first year of high school. Like Haruhi had once said…

—In times like this, whoever strikes first wins!

The thought struck me afresh. Haruhi, you’re amazing. You said you were going to form a brigade before you had any idea what shape it would take. And to think it came together exactly the way you’d envisioned it would—no wonder Koizumi’s passively stated thesis that “Suzumiya = God” had managed to transfix me so.

Of course, whether or not I actually believed it was a different matter.

If we were just talking about faith, I’d never given confession or been baptized, but even so I sometimes wanted to cling to the idea of God. Or to the dingy shrine whose offering box I sometimes tossed coins into. Or even the priests who’d come during the Bon festival to chant sutras, even though I had no idea what sect they were from.

If a little worship was all it took to make things work out, that would be the easiest thing in the world, and in the entirety of my experience, doing so had not resulted in even the smallest lessening of my difficulties, so I recommended just saying a prayer in front of a little roadside kasajizo Buddha and leaving it at that. On top of the fact that relying on a higher power to realize your hopes was pointless, it wouldn’t do you any good either. Better to just pick away at a problem yourself, just like the guy in Onshu no Kanata ni. If he can dig through a mountain by hand, then so can I.

Now for the first step. With Nagato sick, it wasn’t just Kuyoh I had to worry about; Asakura and Kimidori had shown themselves as well. They were all using the Earth as a stage for some kind of martial arts skit, minus the audience. The only person watching the performance was me, and having seen it I couldn’t just stay silent.

It fell to me to resolve all of this peacefully before Haruhi couldn’t take it anymore—and this was doubly true given Nagato’s illness.

Kyoko Tachibana had claimed that Sasaki was the one who should hold true power.

Fujiwara had said that it didn’t matter who had the power.

Kuyoh Suoh had said that what she was interested in was neither me nor Haruhi, but the Data Overmind’s interface.

What a mess.

If only I had a little more time. Maybe that fake SOS Brigade had enough time on their hands that they could wander the land as if they thought they were the Crepe Seller of Echigo. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the Edo era, it was the Information Age, and the Tokugawa crest didn’t carry any authority here.

On top of that, no matter where I looked, it was hard to imagine that any of the non-normal human players were on my side. Asakura and her knife had been revived. Regardless of what Kimidori’s leanings were, her only job was to report back to her boss. Kuyoh was a mechanical doll who didn’t seem to care much whether I lived or died, and whatever it was that Fujiwara knew about this time period, he couldn’t keep that derisive sneer off his face. The only one who seemed to feel any urgency at all was Kyoko Tachibana, and from what I could tell she was the least powerful. About all she seemed capable of doing was getting manipulated by Koizumi’s Agency.

So she was the one I’d have to deal with.

To Koizumi: a mysterious being. To Asahina the Elder: a temporal junction. To Nagato: the key to the possibility of self-evolution.

In other words: me. And I myself had no idea what I was. I could admit that I was living a somewhat unusual life for a high schooler, but that didn’t mean there was anything particularly special about me. Up until the day Haruhi grabbed me by the collar and slammed the back of my head down onto the desk behind me, I’d been a totally normal, unremarkable, generic student at a prefectural high school.

What did I have to do to get things to turn out the way I wanted them to? In what direction did I need to go? Should I continue along with Haruhi, or would I need to try to foment a change in doctrine?

I wondered if those questions would be settled at the familiar café to which Sasaki and I were headed.

So here are some questions for you. If you’ve already forged a path for yourself and decided to pursue it, but then discovered an easier parallel path, which do you choose?

Do you stick to your original intentions despite the difficulties, or take the less burdensome path?

It was exactly that choice that I was being confronted with.

There in the same old café, against the wall sat three figures, with three different expressions on their faces.

Though it might have been an act, only Kyoko Tachibana seemed pleasant; Fujiwara was as cynical and derisive as ever, and Kuyoh didn’t so much as twitch an eyebrow. I don’t know whether the fact that she could sit there as still as a stop-motion puppet despite yesterday’s big dust-up with Asakura and Kimidori was because she was just that gutsy, or rather because her psychology simply didn’t account for such context.

“Hmph,” I sniffed, looking carefully around before I sat down, trying to make sure there were no apron-clad classmates of mine in the area. At the very least, she didn’t seem to be within my field of view. If she hadn’t turned invisible, maybe she’d been taken off the shift. No, that couldn’t be. She had to be there. I was in the middle of yet another unbalanced meeting. There was no way she wouldn’t be observing.

Which was fine with me. Give me Kimidori’s irrepressible smile over Asakura any day of the week. It was like the difference between a flashbang grenade and a wire-guided antitank missile. To the extent that she never came at me with a deadly weapon, the pleasant senior was far more prudent than my former classmate. I really didn’t want to get sucked into another alien battlefield.

“Over here!” said Kyoko Tachibana, waving casually and pointing to the seats across the table from them. “You can sit there. Thank you so much for coming. I appreciate it.” And then, to Sasaki, “Thank you, Sasaki, for bringing him along. You have my gratitude.”

“Don’t need it,” said Sasaki as she sat down in the far seat. “Perhaps it’s better to say ‘we refuse’ instead of ‘we’ll pass.’ Even if I hadn’t called him, we would have held several meetings with Kyon eventually anyway. Otherwise, our lives would have continued on perfectly parallel tracks. Am I wrong?”

The last question seemed to be aimed at Fujiwara. But that errand boy from the future sniffed, as though mocking me. “That may be. Still, both of you”—he said, sweeping his gaze across my face—“would do well not to think too much of yourselves. This isn’t advice—hah. It’s a warning. These meetings are a waste of time from my perspective. There’s too great a difference in knowledge and understanding between you and me.”

I felt curiosity before anger caught up with it. Why was he constantly trying to rile me up so much? What was the point of that? If he wanted to get me on his side, wouldn’t a different method be better? Fujiwara’s manner was too blunt, too honest. The lack of difference between his thoughts and speech was almost Asahina-like. Were all time travelers like this?

As the question rose up in my mind—

“Now, then, what are you going to do next? What does it feel like to lose your most powerful shield? The alien terminal who’d do whatever you told her is out of commission. So how will you protect yourselves? That’s what I want to know. What will happen to the harbor without its seawall now that the typhoon has arrived?”

I was furious at Fujiwara’s irritating questions. Did that bastard really want to pick a fight? Because I’d be happy to take him at face value, if he did. Just as I was reflexively loosening my nonexistent gloves in preparation to challenge him to a duel—

“Now, Kyon. Let’s sit, first. That sense of justice is very like you, but I can’t just sit by and let you get violent. That goes for everyone else here too, by the way. I’m fairly mild-tempered myself—I only get angry about once every two years—but when I do, I scare even myself. The last time I lost my temper was just about two years ago, and I’m getting close to breaking my own record, so I’d like to avoid resetting all my progress.”

She had the same mild tone she always did, but I did as Sasaki said.

I had never seen an angry Sasaki—nor a crying or frustrated Sasaki—and I didn’t want to. Haruhi and Asahina weren’t the only ones who looked their best when they were smiling. Koizumi, on the other hand, could have stood to restrain his smiling a little bit, while Nagato by contrast needed to relax her frozen features. And it was true that getting into a fight with Fujiwara here and now wouldn’t do anything to improve her condition, so if I just had to throw down, my target needed to be not the time traveler, but the alien.

Such thoughts occupied my mind as I glared at her.

“—” Kuyoh only stared five meters past me, her gaze totally empty of anything like a challenge. I couldn’t help doubting my optic nerve. Kuyoh Suoh was far from harmless to the SOS Brigade. I tried to get hold of myself.

This was her fault.

I stared at Kuyoh as though she were the Flying Dutchman. She stood out here in the café—a high school girl in her school uniform with far too much hair. Hell, she would’ve stood out anywhere.

And yet she seemed insubstantial, like a hologram, like a late-night local TV commercial frozen, as irritating as any mosquito. Nagato was bedridden, and yet Kuyoh was fine and dandy. As far as I was concerned it was a failure of justice. If they were both afflicted, that would’ve been one thing, but this alien didn’t understand the meaning of restraint. I still didn’t fully understand what sort of beings the Data Overmind’s humanoid interfaces were, but at least Nagato, Asakura, and Kimidori each had things about them that seemed—human.

As far as Nagato goes, I don’t think I need to explain more than I already have. Asakura was every bit the normal high school girl, perfectly suited to being class rep, aside from her habit of waving knives around all the time. And while I didn’t know very much about Kimidori, she was at least capable of conducting a normal high school life. The two of them did manage to put some effort into pretending to be human.

Kuyoh had none of that. There was no sense whatsoever that she understood what Homo sapiens really was. She had less presence than the Invisible Man. It made me wonder if the high school girl form she wore was completely empty inside. It felt less as if she was wearing clothes and more as if her head and limbs were simply growing out of the holes. I was probably the only person that thought so. Not that I cared.

The point is she made me feel uneasy. If her reactions had ever fallen within the domain of the human I could’ve dealt with that, but she was a human-shaped puppet controlled by an entity that even Nagato couldn’t communicate with, and nothing was harder to manage than a person whose motivations you didn’t understand. Now that it had come to this, the fact of the matter was that her actions were even harder to predict than Haruhi’s.

Whether or not she sensed the hostility I was radiating, Kuyoh slowly fixed her gaze on me like some prehistoric fossil, a Naumann’s elephant about to be put into deep freeze. Her fossil-like lips parted slightly.

“—Yesterday…—Thank you—” she said in a voice like a beetle pupa. “—These…—words of gratitude…—” she added.

Totally unprepared to be thanked, I was stunned into silence. Fujiwara was resolutely uninterested, Kyoko Tachibana seemed surprised, and Sasaki had an amused smile, though none of the three said a word. Our awkwardly silent little corner of the café remained so. All I could hear was the classical music playing over the café’s speakers, and the coughing murmur of the other customers.

What to do?

Before I had much time to worry about it, Kyoko Tachibana seemed to decide that nothing would come of just sitting there. “So,” she said, taking on the role of facilitator. “Kuyoh, did something happen yesterday? Ah well, it doesn’t matter. I’ll hear about it later.”

Kyoko Tachibana sat up straight and regarded me confidently like a well-bred young lady. “Thank you for coming today. I’m sorry to impose, but this meeting is quite necessary, and isn’t something that can be put off.”

I was the one that had called the meeting, I said. She didn’t need to tell me how necessary it was.

“That’s true,” said Kyoko Tachibana, not hiding the seriousness of her tone. “This would have happened sooner or later. Indeed, from our perspective this is later than we would’ve liked. We would have liked to move sooner, but we lacked the power necessary to oppose Koizumi and his group,” she said, looking to Kuyoh and Fujiwara with a satisfied nod.

“I’ve finally assembled the power—the power to move the world. You may not regard me as a comrade, but you can cooperate with me and fight by my side nonetheless… can’t you?… Right?”

Fujiwara did not answer, and Kuyoh may as well have been submerged in a sea of silence. Kyoko Tachibana sighed and closed her mouth as our waitress appeared, bringing ice water for Sasaki and me.

“Two coffees. Hot,” said Sasaki quickly without bothering to consult me. I took a look at the waitress, who looked like a high school student working a part-time job, just to make sure she wasn’t Kimidori. She probably thought I was being weird, and her stride on her way back to the counter was notably quickened. Something occurred to me, and I checked the space in front of the three people across the table from me. Kyoko Tachibana and Kuyoh had both ordered parfaits, of all things. It was a completely unremarkable scene, and it made me feel as if I was trying to find the last detail in a “spot the differences” game. Kyoko Tachibana had eaten roughly half of hers, which was now mostly melted, while Kuyoh’s was not only untouched, it hadn’t melted at all. If it was because of some strange alien trick, I had no idea how that was accomplished. Fujiwara was fingering an empty cup that had contained some kind of liquid at some point, which I likewise didn’t want to know about.

Kyoko Tachibana restarted the discussion. “So, then. To put things in order—the reason we’ve assembled today,” she began, smiling at me, “is that through Sasaki, we’ve heard your proposal. You have something to say to us, don’t you? Let’s begin, then. Please, go ahead.”

She gestured to me as though passing me a mic, though her hands contained nothing. I didn’t play along with the motion.

“This is about Nagato,” I said, looking at Kuyoh. “I don’t know what it is that you’re doing. And you don’t have to tell me. What I want is for you to stop it immediately. Stop this ridiculous attack on Nagato. I’m not going to repeat it forever. If you aliens want to fight, go do it on the fringes of the galaxy.”

“—Fringes.” Kuyoh moved her lips as though she were an ancient insect trapped in amber. “—Of…—galaxy.—Is here. Stars…—in this area… are—sparse…”

She spoke in a voice that was like the fog that rolls out of an opened freezer. Was she making fun of me? If she hated this season that was warm enough to make Shamisen shed his winter coat so much, she should just dive right into the center of the sun, I told her.

“—May do so…—when business concluded.”

Well, then let’s conclude it. Right here, right now.

“—”

Kuyoh cocked her head slightly and blinked.

It seemed like a signal, somehow.

“Heh.” Fujiwara let a snicker escape, and he regarded me disparagingly. “Yes, let us. That is your proposal, after all. Or going by how you spoke to Kuyoh, it’s more like an order. You’ve got enough nerve to pick a fight with an extraterrestrial intelligence, so I feel like I have to praise you for that, even if your bravery is born of ignorance. I’d love to research just what part of your brain makes you support that organic probe—what was her name, Yuki Nagato?—but I’ll restrain my curiosity.”

Taking advantage of Sasaki’s and my quiet, he continued.

“In any case, I see you won’t allow that doll of yours to malfunction. If so, that makes things simple. Listen to me now: I can stop the Heavenly Canopy Dominion from interfering with the Data Overmind’s terminal.”

If a mirror had been placed in front of me, I would’ve been able to see the expression someone makes when they suspect someone else of fraud.

“You don’t believe me? Well, it’s the truth, and has been all along. The Heavenly Canopy Dominion is far easier to control than the Data Overmind. They accepted our proposal quite readily. Oh, and by the way—Kyoko Tachibana agreed to this as well. So what I’m about to say is the consensus of the three of us here. To keep things short, let me just explain what we’re ordering you to do.”

He looked at Kuyoh for a split second, then spoke the following line past crooked and sneering lips.

“Transfer all of Haruhi Suzumiya’s power to Sasaki. Agree to this. Your only choice is to say ‘yes.’ ”

Only Kyoko Tachibana nodded her head up and down in agreement. Kuyoh remained still, eyes fixed on the wafer still stuck in her green tea parfait. Fujiwara watched us with his infuriating derision. Then, after a moment—

“Hmm,” said Sasaki, touching her index finger to her cheek. “That’s what Kyoko proposed the other day, isn’t it, Fujiwara? At the time didn’t you say you didn’t care who had the power? I’d like to know what changed your mind.”

“I still don’t care who has the power.” Fujiwara turned his narrowed eyes aside. “The situation is the same now as it was in the past. But depending upon the values of the person observing the situation, the path to its conclusion differs. Even if the goal is the same, if the path to it is different, the ensuing developments also change. One times one is the same as one divided by one, even though the operations are completely opposite.”

“That’s just sophistry,” shot back Sasaki. “That just sounds like an excuse to me. Or if it’s not, this is no more than an act. Isn’t it true that it would be inconvenient for you if Suzumiya retains her power? It is. Yes… claiming that you don’t care is a lie.”

She stroked her chin with her slender fingers and put her thoughts into words.

“I see… it doesn’t have to be me. And it could be anyone—but not Suzumiya. Fujiwara, isn’t it true that you want to take Suzumiya’s mysterious power from her? There must be some reason she can’t be allowed to have it. It’s just a coincidence that I’m here…” Sasaki’s eyes glittered. “… But some things can’t be mere coincidence. Like the fact that I was Kyon’s friend in the past. So, Mister Time Traveler, how much of this is a fixed event?”

I was speechless at the speed of her thought. Sasaki was about the only person I knew who could face down a time traveler like that. And she wasn’t even in some kind of crazy organization the way Koizumi was.

Fujiwara’s face was an expressionless mask in that instant, but he soon regained his chilly smile. “Am I supposed to feel chastised? I don’t care how quick your wit is, it’s still pointless. I’m not lying. I’m simply trying to help things progress smoothly. Isn’t that right, Kyoko Tachibana?”

“Er, yes,” said the named girl hastily. “That’s right, this is at my request. I thought it would be best to cooperate. I begged him.”

The silent alien and evil time traveler were apparently manipulating the esper, and it was hard to look at her serious face. I turned back to Fujiwara.

“Now wait a just a second. Kuyoh there is the one responsible for Nagato’s condition, right? Are you saying you’re the one that put her up to it?”

Fujiwara’s eyes made him look like the villain in some old stage play. “That doesn’t matter. Whether it was at my behest or she simply took advantage of an opportunity, the result is the same. Whether or not I had anything to do with that opportunity, I knew about it. If it was going to happen, I would have let it, and if it wasn’t, I would have brought it about. Fixed past events, when viewed from the future, have nothing more than archaeological value.”

What the hell was this guy talking about? Just who was the real mastermind? Was it the time traveler faction that opposed Asahina, the Heavenly Canopy Dominion, or was it Kyoko Tachibana that was pulling the strings?

I was starting to feel as though none of them could be trusted. I wanted at least a few seconds to think it all over, but Fujiwara wasn’t going to allow that.

“Just how dense are you? You said it yourself—you want Yuki Nagato to recover. I told you I can do that. I can order Kuyoh here to cease her interference with your precious little puppet.”

He certainly did cut to the chase. Fine, then, as the SOS Brigade’s representative, I’d take him on. I was sure my question was one Koizumi would want to ask too.

“Why do you have that power, exactly? I thought they were some kind of extra-whatever life-form that communication was impossible with.”

Fujiwara dismissed my question. “Let’s just say that’s classified information.”

“You gotta be freaking kidding me.”

“If you want to take it that way, sure. I’m doing you a favor to even tell you that much.”

Like I was going to believe that.

Just then, Kuyoh’s crystalline lips quivered.

“—I will execute order.”

She spoke with a suddenness, like a piece of taxidermy come to life.

“—Will cancel interference and seek alternate method… that is also a possible branch.” Kuyoh’s eyes, like some kind of dark matter, focused on my brow. “—Direct contact impossible. Indirect vocal contact with terminals was noise. Mutual concept transmission overloaded. Waste of energy. Failing to instantly stop equivalent to eternity.”

Okay, somebody needed to translate that.

“What she means,” Sasaki said, resting her finger beside her eye, “is that Nagato’s condition is her fault, but she’s determined that the action she’s taking is ineffective. If Fujiwara says the word, she’ll stop immediately. But that’s conditional on transferring Suzumiya’s powers to me. And Tachibana, you feel the same way?”

“Yes,” said Kyoko Tachibana, narrowing her shoulders. “Though the nuances of my position are a bit different than Fujiwara’s. But in the final calculation those differences are—”

“You shut your mouth.” Fujiwara’s cold words stopped Kyoko Tachibana in her tracks, and her mouth froze, half open. “So that’s how it is,” he took the opportunity to say. “We want to see the situation change in a way that benefits everyone here. Tachibana wants to worship Sasaki as a god, apparently.”

“No, er, that’s not exactly—”

Fujiwara ignored Kyoko Tachibana’s protest entirely. “Kuyoh’s faction wishes to study Haruhi Suzumiya, but that’s impossible with the Data Overmind present. She’s protected by two or three layers of defense. But there is a way to break through. The important thing is that unknown power. We need only transfer it to a third party.”

And who in this world is capable of doing that? I asked.

“Kuyoh will do it,” said Fujiwara casually. He then continued with mocking pity, “Hey, c’mon, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten. Her powers have been used by a third party before. Are you telling me you don’t remember when her abilities were used to transform the world? It was a short-lived past, but you of all people should remember it.”

Nagato—.

What I remembered was Haruhi disappearing from classroom 1-5, and Koizumi along with the rest of Class 9 being gone as well. Tsuruya twisting my arm around, and the pain on my face when Asahina slapped me. And alone in the clubroom, a pale-faced, bespectacled Yuki Nagato, tugging on my sleeve with her fingertips.

It was just about jingle bell season last year when I’d run into a serious problem. I’d discovered some things I never wanted to lose again, as well as others I hoped never to lose in the first place.

These bastards—.

I glared at Fujiwara and Kuyoh by turns.

They were right. Nagato had done it. A mundane human like me could hardly say what these information life-forms were and were not capable of. Both the Data Overmind and the Heavenly Canopy Dominion were far more advanced than mere humans, with abilities to match. My intuition told me that while it might be for a different reason, Kuyoh was no better at lying than Nagato.

“So you’re going to hold Nagato hostage, then?” I demanded, my voice resonating with 120 percent pure rage. “If I want to save Nagato, I have to hand over Haruhi’s power?”

Did they actually think that such blatant coercion was going to work? Never mind that it was a total cheap shot. They actually thought that if they used Nagato as a shield we’d just obediently follow along with whatever they told us. Naturally I wanted Nagato’s mind and body immediately restored to all-green status, but that was a separate matter.

And anyway, Sasaki was my good friend.

“I dunno,” said Sasaki, shaking her head twice. “I don’t really want that power. I wish you guys would consider my opinion, given that I’m the interested party here.”

I should’ve welcomed this cover-up, but I was so furious that it only served to kindle a bit of doubt in the corner of my mind. Well, no—“doubt” is going too far. It was just a simple question.

I turned to look at her profile—she was no more than moderately troubled. “This is a world-changing superpower we’re talking about. Doesn’t that move you at all, even for just a moment?”

Sasaki faced me with glittering eyes. A faint smile played about her lips as she spoke. “Kyon, I don’t particularly want to change the world. If I do it wrong, I could easily wind up changing myself in the process of changing the world. And I myself wouldn’t even realize I’d been changed. Don’t you see? I’m of this world; I’m one of the components that makes it up. If I change the world, then whether I like it or not I’m changing myself. In such a case, even though I was the one whose will changed the world, I would never realize that the world I lived in was the result of changes I’d personally made. I’d lose those memories, because I’d change myself along with the world. Which brings me to a dilemma—I would have amazing powers, but I would never be conscious of the effects of those powers.”

It was a little hard to understand, I said.

“People have two reactions when they encounter something they don’t understand. They deny it, or they try to understand it. Neither is particularly correct. Everyone has their own individual system of values, and they have no obligation to twist them around in the name of understanding—and yet it’s impossible for that system to remain unchanged their whole life. People need to ask themselves why it is they can’t understand something, and come up with a satisfying answer to that question. If you could simply control the whole world, you’d never encounter anything odd, or have to interpret anything.”

Sasaki faced the three people sitting across from us.

“I do not understand you. I don’t particularly want to explain why. The answer is within me, and I have no intention of releasing it. If I did, it would be improper, because it’s rather embarrassing, you see.”

“I don’t give a damn what you’re thinking,” said Fujiwara bitterly. “All you need to do is shut up and nod your head.”

“Ah, in the end,” said Sasaki, not shutting up, “people can’t create anything that lets them exceed their abilities, not even if they’re pretending they can. It’s just so much smoke and mirrors.”

It was like the second stage of a three-stage rocket had been ignited. I felt the load on my back lessen by an order of magnitude.

“Even Sasaki is saying so. And I’m sure as hell not going to accept such an unfair proposal.”

I nearly added you should’ve come two days ago, but then I remembered he’d done just that. It wasn’t a line you could really use on a time traveler.

“Anyway, even if I did have the power to change the world or whatever, I doubt I’d have many opportunities to use it,” said Sasaki, patting my shoulder. “And if I did, it would probably be for stuff like finding change left behind in vending machines. Stuff like that, more or less. I just don’t have many complaints with this world. To be frank, I’ve given up on it. The world with all its contradictions is the result of events that have been accumulating ever since the emergence of humanity. No insignificant amount of individualism can change that. And even if I did have that power, I couldn’t begin to guarantee that I’d be able to change the world for the better—I don’t have even two bytes’ worth of that kind of confidence. I’m not being humble. I don’t think anyone else could do it either. Humanity hasn’t advanced far enough for that. We’re just passengers on spaceship Earth on its voyage through space. But if this spaceship somehow became aware of itself, it might conclude that things would go better if it just ejected this mysterious species of primate into space. So long as humans live as humans, we can’t become gods—because gods are an idea created by humans. And in all of recorded history, no gods have ever appeared. They were never there to begin with. I have not the slightest desire to become the manifestation of an abstract concept. Before God died, He was never born. Maybe ‘zero’ is the very essence of God.”

Just as Sasaki finished her speech, Kuyoh started suddenly laughing, as though she’d been scheduled somehow. Her voice was both high and low, and the sound made me think there was something wrong with my ears.

“—Ha—ha ha—ha ha ha—hah… how absurd—hah…”

What the hell was her problem? She could laugh at me, but laughing at Sasaki made my blood boil.

“I’ll explain it for you,” said Fujiwara in place of the still-laughing Kuyoh. “What is it that makes you so certain you even have the right to choose? We’re not listening to your opinion because we think it’s useful. Don’t get the wrong idea.”

The tiny amount of hope that had bloomed within me disappeared.

“I’m not Kuyoh, but it still makes me want to laugh. You think a bit too highly of yourself, I’d say. Do you believe you have the right to decide all this? That you have the right to choose the world’s fate? Hah—who do you think you are? Do you fancy yourself a player in some foolish game? Heh. That’s not even good comedy. I feel so sorry for you I can’t laugh. Listen to me: No choice has been given to you. You’re merely a puppet. I’ll admit you move well, but that just makes you a very well-made, easy-to-control puppet. Your actions have nothing to do with your own volition.”

Struck by comprehension of the meaning of his words, I felt a chill run up my spine.

Kuyoh was still laughing.

The thought occurred to me once again. Just as I’d realized when Haruhi had disappeared—Nagato was full of humanity.

But these things—.

They didn’t care about us—about humans.

Kuyoh didn’t, and I was sure Asakura and Kimidori didn’t either.

That was why they all wanted to hear my opinions. No matter what I said, they could smash it with ease. That’s all I was to them. Kuyoh’s smile made her look like a girl who’d been given a new toy. But they all shared the resplendent innocence of a child who crushes an ant with her foot just because it’s there.

And as for my good and faithful friend Sasaki—her brow darkened.

“Hearing that, do you really expect me to cooperate? Such things will only have the opposite effect. I’ve been friends with Kyon far longer than I’ve known any of you.”

“Your preference is unimportant to me. How many times are you going to make me say it?” Fujiwara snickered again.

“Ah.” Kyoko Tachibana shrank even more. “Everything is spoiled now. This is terrible.” She sighed, and I suppose the fact that she avoided appearing obviously depressed was commendable. Unsurprisingly, she looked at me like a missionary about to deliver her message.

“Please, just think about it. I know you care about Suzumiya and the SOS Brigade a lot, but try to think about it this way—so long as Suzumiya has her powers, Nagato’s condition will continue to be poor, and you’ll still be getting constantly sucked into strange events.”

What was she trying to say?

“Even if Suzumiya loses her power, it’s not as though she’ll become an ordinary person and break up the SOS Brigade, right? Nothing will change. Koizumi will still be a representative of the Agency, Nagato will still be an alien, and Asahina will still be from the future. But you won’t have to worry about Suzumiya’s actions. Everyone will still get along as they always have, and you’ll be able to have fun with your brigade chief just like usual.”

We’d barely qualify as even an interest group anymore, I said.

“Exactly. That’s what I wanted to say. Don’t you think that would be nice? And if you still wanted to experience the kinds of mysterious events you’ve endured thus far, you have usefulness. Kuyoh is an alien, and Fujiwara is a time traveler. And although I don’t really want to admit to being an esper, I suppose it’s true. All you have to do is think of them as extracurricular activities with Sasaki. I’m sure all sorts of things could happen.”

I was dumbstruck. She was inviting us to organize a second SOS Brigade—to remove Haruhi from her place as the spirit of the SOS Brigade, and install Sasaki as the leader of the newly reborn brigade…

“Also,” said Kyoko Tachibana, “I’d like to lighten the heavy burden poor Koizumi’s had to shoulder for so long.”

“Huh?” What did she care about Koizumi’s burden?

“I’m sure he’d be quite grateful. I mean,” said Kyoko Tachibana as though it were the most obvious thing in the world, “didn’t you know? Koizumi created the Agency from the ground up. He’s been the leader from the very beginning. He’s the number-one guy. He may not see eye-to-eye with me, but I can’t help but respect him.”

“—”

Her words placed a considerable load on my mental faculties, but I remained mutely expressionless. For that reason, I didn’t want to say anything. I didn’t know how much of what she was saying was true, and she might have simply believed it to be true. I didn’t know how much truth might have been hiding in the many long-winded explanations I’d heard from Koizumi so far, and the same was now true for Kyoko Tachibana. Trying to decide which I trusted was just laughable. Still, there was no reason for her to just make something like this up—but wait, maybe there was. If she was just trying to get me confused, this was certainly an obvious way to do it. And yet her face was tinged with what looked like simple, honest respect.

…

I give up. It was time to hit the emergency shutdown on this line of thinking. At the moment, it didn’t matter what the organizational structure of Koizumi’s Agency was.

Fujiwara snickered his nasty snicker again. “Let me tell you something else you may find interesting. Special treatment, let’s say. This is information you could only get here and now, in this precise location. Whatever could that be, you ask? I’ll tell you. An explanation of something you’ve been totally ignorant of until now—the TPDD.”

Anyone who launches into bizarre backstory explanations without having been asked can’t be a very worthwhile person. Fujiwara was a perfect example, I was sure.

“There’s a bit of a problem with the way Asahina and I travel through time. Because of the method we use, it’s impossible to avoid penetrating the time plane. In other words, we travel by poking holes in time. Don’t worry; a single one is too small to cause any real changes. It’s easy to fix. Of course, the lengthier the time jump becomes, the more numerous the damages to the time plane are. Also, the more a particular point in time is used as a destination, the more holes there are. Do you understand so far?”

I wanted to plug my ears. I didn’t care if he wanted to tell me, but he didn’t have to tell Sasaki all these secrets. If someone was going to find themselves drawn and quartered by this stuff, I wanted it to be me.

“The point is that use of the TPDD is accompanied by the risk of destroying existing time. The holes must be filled. It’s like how a neglected leak in a roof can lead to the house’s frame rotting. The consequences can echo into the future. The main duty of temporal field agents is to repair those distortions. Mikuru Asahina is an exception. She doesn’t know it herself, but she’s been given a special mission. Heh, poor girl. It’s such a carefully guarded secret that even she wasn’t told of it.”

Fujiwara’s words came to a stop. But just as I was sure he was done with his speech—

“For example, what if all of what I just told you was actually information that you were never supposed to have? It would mean I’d just changed your personal history. Shall we make this even more interesting?”

If it got any more interesting, there was a real chance I would die laughing.

“Now that you’ve heard me, you can’t help being influenced by what I’ve said. That is my advantage over you poor people in the past.” Fujiwara’s tone finally improved. “You just think about that. I’ll decide what to do once I see whether your primitive brain comes up with any answers. If you manage to change what’s already been established, I might actually have some fun.”

Just when I thought he was finally done, he kept going.

“I’ll be waiting. I’ll say that you should remember well what you’ve heard at this meeting today. Although it doesn’t much matter if you forget. I’ll fulfill my mission either way. Whether Haruhi Suzumiya continues along the path to her destruction, or is rendered harmless—that much you’re free to choose.”

I wanted to ask him whether he knew the day and time when I’d give him my answer. He should, since he was a time traveler. This guy wasn’t like Asahina. I wondered how long Fujiwara would stick to the script. Was there any room to escape it? I saw Asahina’s face in my mind. The maid version and the young teacher version flashed in my head like a pedestrian crossing signal.

“Why are you giving me that time?” It was a pretty reasonable question, coming from me.

“Would you believe me if I told you it was a fixed event? You don’t have to. Anyway, happy hour’s over. No more freebies.” Fujiwara adroitly uncrossed his legs and stood. “It’s the height of idiocy to be constrained by time, but if the flow has already been set, there is nothing to be done about it. But swimming against the flow is possible—just ask any ancient deep-sea fish left behind by the march of evolution.”

After leaving us with that final afterthought, he turned around and left the table.

I watched his tall form head for the door; he hadn’t left behind any money at all. As his miasma lingered in my nostrils, Kyoko Tachibana casually picked up the receipt.

“And if you’ll excuse me, I must get going too. You need time to think, don’t you? Though I don’t recommend you think too much…”

Kyoko Tachibana’s slim frame seemed tired, perhaps thanks to the toxic miasma Fujiwara had given off. I couldn’t help feeling some sympathy for her plight—having to deal with him would take a toll on anyone.

“I’ll want to confer with Sasaki. Sasaki, I’ll call you. Regardless of how this turns out, I’d like us to remain friends.”

“That would be nice,” said Sasaki. The corner of her mouth quirked up. “I’d very much like for us to simply be friends.”

Kyoko Tachibana did not answer, only sighing as her gaze went worriedly to Kuyoh (who sat there like a very polite doll) before heading for the register. Once she settled up the bill, she gave us a wave and left the café, while Kuyoh remained motionless.

It was only after I finished drinking my entire glass of water that I realized the two hot coffees that Sasaki had ordered for us had never arrived.

Despite all this, progress did not seem very likely.

Once the waitress (who, thankfully, was not Kimidori) brought our coffee, I added quite a bit of cream and sugar to it, which didn’t seem to lessen the bitterness at all. Right about when I finished my cup, something occurred to me as I stared at the creepily motionless Kuyoh, who was eerier than an abandoned doll found in some countryside attic.

Why wasn’t she moving? Fujiwara had disappeared, Kyoko Tachibana had left; so was the fact that she was still sitting there staring at us some kind of alien signal that she had something yet to say?

Trying to interpret alien nonverbal communication was totally beyond me.

As I watched Kuyoh, Sasaki set down her empty cup, a smile appearing on her face. “Kyon, we should get going. I’m not Fujiwara, but what we need now is time to deliberate. It was rushed and unpleasant as meetings go, but I’m not ready to call it pointless. Going by how he was talking, there’s still a bit of room left.”

I hoped so, I said, but my problem was that I didn’t know what to deliberate.

“Good point. It seems we don’t have the ability to choose, so I have no idea how to make them give up. But there should be something we can do.”

This was not a fun situation. Give Haruhi’s god powers to Sasaki? It was a question of choosing between a difficult, stubborn god with no self-awareness, or a reasonable god with full knowledge of her own powers. If someone asked me which I thought was better, I’d have to admit it seemed as if Sasaki would be.

And yet.

It just didn’t sit right with me.

How can I explain it? I didn’t want Sasaki to have these bizarre godlike powers. I wanted my normal friend to stay normal. Haruhi was already Haruhi, so what did it matter? The gods of mythology were always being selfish and unreasonable. Compared with them, ours wasn’t so bad—at least we could talk to her. You didn’t see shrines changing which deity they were dedicated to—but wait, what was I thinking? Haruhi already had one defense attorney, Koizumi, so she didn’t need me. I must’ve been more disturbed by all of this than I’d realized.

But of course I was. Asakura back, Kimidori observing, and now that time traveler had managed to join up with Kuyoh just to bully us—this stuff had been going on since last night and on into today, and I wasn’t born with enough of the Buddha essence to keep a cool head with all of that. I still had a ways to go until reaching enlightenment.

“Also, Kyon. Don’t you have someone besides me you can talk to? To be honest, I have no idea what I should do. If we can get someone to tell us what’s going to happen, that would be very welcome.”

The first person I thought of was Itsuki Koizumi and his above-average face. There was nobody else. The bedridden, horizontal Nagato was out of the question. Asahina the Elder seemed fairly reliable, but so far she had not shown her face. Was this event outside the purview of her fixed events? If so, things weren’t going to work out the way they had on that Tanabata. In which case, game over.

“Kuyoh, do you want to leave with us? Or do you want to finish your parfait? Tachibana paid the bill already, so you can take your time.”

The dark form of the enemy alien did not answer or even move a muscle, her eyes affixed on empty air.

“Are you awake, Kuyoh?” Sasaki waved her hand in front of Kuyoh’s nose.

“—I am not asleep,” she said as though fighting off intense sleepiness.

I couldn’t help letting irritation slip into my tone. “The last part. Were you listening?”

“—Comprehension complete. Execution concluded.”

What did that mean? It would be nice if she meant she had immediately canceled her assault on Nagato.

At Sasaki’s urging I left the table. I was a little worried about leaving that strange nonhuman behind by herself, but my worries were unfounded. Surprisingly, Kuyoh also stood up, and for some reason followed us out. I assumed she would quickly vanish, but she held her position behind me, following a short distance back.

Once Sasaki and I left the café, she kept following us, which was enough to make me rather nervous. On top of that, the sky was mostly dark.

“Is there something you want to say?” Sasaki looked back and saved me the trouble of saying it. But the alien, apparently ignorant of manners, did not answer, her eyes seeming to stare off into the future. I got the sense that she had no interest in humanity, or that our wavelengths were just incompatible. I’d say her personality was unreadable, but I honestly wasn’t sure whether or not she even had a personality. There didn’t seem to be any connection between the version of her that had smiled during yesterday’s battle with Asakura, and this version. Did she have multiple personalities?

I was so focused on what was going on behind me that I didn’t notice what was up ahead. My own fault.

“Hey, Kyon.”

When the familiar voice from up ahead hit my eardrums, I nearly tripped on the perfectly flat asphalt.

Sasaki stopped and I followed suit. Kuyoh did likewise.

“Man, it’s weird running into you here.” It was none other than my classmate Kunikida, wearing his uniform and carrying his bag, obviously on his way home from school.

Kunikida was not looking at me. He was looking at the person next to me, my old middle school pal.

“It’s been quite a while, Sasaki,” he said.

“Has it?” Sasaki chuckled throatily, looking Kunikida over as she spoke. “I feel like I saw you at the national mock exams, but maybe that was just a lookalike?”

Kunikida smiled softly. I think it was the first time I’d ever seen him smile like that. “So you did notice me. I was sure you’d notice the fact that I noticed you.”

“That’s true. I’m hypersensitive to the gazes of others,” said Sasaki in a businesslike tone. “Normally I don’t get very much attention, so when I do the pain receptors on my face go crazy.”

“You never change, do you?” Kunikida nodded as though relieved, when from the side a hand reached out and patted him on the shoulder, accompanied by a grinning face that would’ve made anyone think Why did I have to run into you, of all people.

“Kyon, you cunning son of a—! I just can’t turn my back on you. So this is the girl, eh? Kyon’s mysterious former you-know-what.”

… Taniguchi. I really had no desire to know why he was wandering around with Kunikida in front of the station like this, but all of that aside, I was begging him—please, just go home. With three rocket boosters strapped to his back, if possible. Lift off! Heck, if he’d be willing to go into orbit, I’d get the astronomy club to help with the calculations, I said.

“Aw, don’t be like that, Kyon. Why not make the most of this coincidental meeting?” Taniguchi grinned lazily, his gaze flicking back and forth between me and Sasaki. “Seriously, look at this guy. He’s already surrounded by so many babes, and yet it’s not enough? C’mon!”

I knew perfectly well what he was trying to say, which made me hate myself a little bit. Just as I was getting ready to assume a crouch in preparation for a high-speed sprint escape, Taniguchi finally calmed down.

“So are you gonna introduce me? I’m your pal, aren’t I? Just say what’s on your mind.”

“This is Sasaki. We went to the same middle school.”

Although it wasn’t as if he couldn’t stand to watch it any longer, Kunikida took the baton from me anyway. “Sasaki, this is Taniguchi. We’ve been Kyon’s classmates since our freshman year.”

It was a textbook introduction.

“Nice to meet you,” said Sasaki, bowing smoothly. “You seem like fine friends. Though it doesn’t look like Kyon causes you too much trouble.”

Ignoring her candid observation entirely, Taniguchi flashed his white teeth at me and pressed his attack. “Still, man, I gotta give you credit—you’ve got an eye for looks. Must be nice. Can’t imagine you have any complaints about your life. Kinda pisses me off, really… Kyon… K-Kyo—?!”

What was his problem? Was that his impression of the call of some tropical bird? Was this kind of teasing popular now?

Half–fed up with Taniguchi, I was considering staring him to death with my patented thousand-yard stare, but—what was this? Taniguchi wasn’t looking at me. Nor was he looking at Sasaki.

“… Wha?!”

Taniguchi jumped back, and froze in place awkwardly as though halfway through a stick-up. His eyes were wide in surprise, his expression stiff with something like terror. I didn’t have to guess what it was that was inspiring Taniguchi’s face to look even stupider than it usually did. My beloved classmate’s gaze was taking in the sleepy catlike face of the person standing behind us—Kuyoh Suoh.

So far normal people had completely ignored her, and even I forgot about her existence occasionally. So why could Taniguchi see her?

“—”

Now this was even more surprising. Kuyoh had reacted to Taniguchi. The school uniform–clad girl raised her left arm, turning her hand to reveal her pale wrist. I realized for the first time that around it was fastened a strangely stylish watch. Even more shockingly, it was cute, and analog.

“—I thank you. I—… will not return it.”

Huh?

“Aw, it’s fine. It wasn’t expensive, so if you don’t like it you can just pawn it or throw it away. I mean, please do.”

Taniguchi and Kuyoh were having an actual conversation. Although Taniguchi was sweating way out of proportion to the season, his arms and legs fidgeting weirdly in a suspicious way that would catch the attention of any officer who happened to be on patrol. And yet—this was some kind of miracle.

“He said he sent her a Christmas present.”

Hearing Kunikida’s explanation did nothing to dispel my astonishment. On the contrary, it doubled. A watch? Kuyoh thanking him? Christmas? What the hell was going on here? Was I dreaming?

After casually tossing me and my surprise-dislocated jaw into a lake of question marks, Kunikida turned his attention to Sasaki.

“Can I ask you one thing? What’re you doing with Kyon, after all this time?”

After all this time? That was full of strange implications… but no, this was hardly the time for that. Taniguchi and Kuyoh were far stranger than Sasaki and I.

But Sasaki seemed to ascribe significant weight to Kunikida’s question. “It’s a long story, and I don’t have any intention of shortening it. When you’ve got time, ask Kyon about it.”

“I don’t think I care quite that much, so I’ll pass. Still, it’s a small world indeed, meeting both you and Kuyoh at the same time.”

“You know her too, Kunikida? I would never have guessed. I’m sure I’m more surprised than you are. How did you meet Kuyoh?”

I was rather interested in knowing that myself.

“Kuyoh… you mean, Suoh? It was over winter vacation. This guy here—wait, where’d he go…?”

Taniguchi, eh? He seemed to have done his best impression of the failed hit-and-run strategy of General Takeda during the Battles of Kawanakajima. He’d run off. I had to admit, the speed of his escape was impressive.

“Anyway, Taniguchi, who was here up until a moment ago, introduced me to her. He said she was his girlfriend. Isn’t that right, Suoh?”

“—Yes,” answered Kuyoh, though it was hard to distinguish from a breath or a sigh. “—My memory supports your accuracy.”

“And you broke up about a month ago?”

“—Confirmed.”

Ugh. What the hell.

So the girlfriend Taniguchi had mentioned last December was Kuyoh? The one he’d split up with just before Valentine’s Day? That had been Kuyoh all along? Now wait just a second.

Stunned, I spoke. “Which means, before Naga—… I mean, before that thing happened to her, you were already here on Ear—I mean, you were already here?”

“—I was. I cannot find any problems with that sequence of events.”

I didn’t know whether I was angry or just flabbergasted.

“… Why were you dating Taniguchi?”

“—It was a mistake,” she answered readily.

“What?”

“That’s what Taniguchi said she said. That’s what she told him when they broke up,” said Kunikida simply. “When did you meet Suoh, Kyon? Did you already know her?”

Nope, I’d just met her.

At a loss for words, I looked sideways, and saw Sasaki chuckling.

“I met Kuyoh just recently. As luck would have it, Kyon met her through me.”

“And she’s Taniguchi’s ex on top of all that. What an amazing coincidence. I wonder what the percentage would be?” said Kunikida, cocking his neck curiously.

“Are you talking about probability theory? If we assume that synchronicity happens constantly, then any improbable event, no matter how hard to believe it might be, can be described in terms of its probability. But in this case…” Sasaki smiled mischievously, tilting her head slightly. “… Perhaps we should ascribe it to an omnipotent, omniscient deity in the sky.”

“That doesn’t really sound like the kind of thing you’d say, Sasaki.”

I had to agree. Wasn’t God on vacation somewhere?

Kunikida shrugged, at a loss. “Kyon, Sasaki is saying that all of us meeting here at this moment is a coincidence—she’s just being really roundabout, is all. It’s nothing to get worked up about.”

What part of that wasn’t worth getting worked up about? One or two events like this could be written off as coincidence, but three or four made me suspect that someone had a rope around my neck and was pulling me around. It was a pain unique to me, given how much stuff I’d been dragged through. Even though I knew that seriously agonizing over it was a waste of time.

Somehow Kunikida seemed to notice that I was whirling helplessly in a vortex of silence. “There’s a book I’ve ordered from the bookstore in front of the station. I came to pick it up after school. Taniguchi was free, so he came along. And since we were already here, we thought we’d come by the café.” He looked back in the direction of the escaped Taniguchi, then shook his head. “But he’s gone now, so…”

Maybe this whole thing should be called Taniguchi the Coward’s Magnificent Retreat.

“Anyway, I’d feel bad if I messed up your plans, so I’ll be heading home.”

Just as Kunikida turned his back to go, Sasaki spoke up. “Kunikida, should we meet again somewhere; please don’t hesitate to speak up. Reminiscing about the shared experiences of the past is one of life’s great pleasures, after all.”

“How like you to say that.”

I couldn’t begin to keep up when clever people talked, each one of them planning three moves ahead.

“Yup. So long,” said Kunikida by way of parting words, evidently satisfied with his discourse with Sasaki, and without asking anything further about Kuyoh—he didn’t seem to think much of her one way or another.

I watched his form shrink as he receded into the distance, then decided to stop worrying about the Kunikida/Taniguchi combo. I doubted either of them would say anything about the encounter to Haruhi. Kuyoh had apparently traumatized Taniguchi, and Kunikida was the kind of guy who understood the nuances of these situations.

“Kuyoh.” I turned to face the mop-topped girl who stood there motionless, like a chick that had fallen from its next. “You had already come to Earth last December, right? And then you got close to Taniguchi.” I had a mountain of questions I wanted to ask, but this was the first thing I wanted to get straight. “Did you approach Taniguchi because you wanted to get close to Haruhi and me?”

“It was a mistake—” She sounded like a talking scrub brush as she delivered the short reply.

“What was a mistake?”

“—Mistook him for you.”

“You…”

So Kuyoh had mistaken Taniguchi for me, and started dating him? Hey, hey, c’mon, why did I have to be confused with Taniguchi, of all people? That was a hell of a way to destroy a guy’s confidence in himself.

“It seems that data was confused somewhere. The possibility of jamming by some party also…” said Kuyoh softly, “… exists.”

At the very least, it didn’t seem as if Nagato would’ve had a chance to do that.

“When Nagato screwed up the world, what happened to you?”

“I was not changed.” Kuyoh lifted her head up. There was a bit more color in her lips, which spoke, whose movement made it seem as though I were looking at a frame-by-frame playback. “You all were in illusory space. It made us feel a novel surprise. Overlapping worlds. A world that had formerly existed, but currently did not. Exclusive action. Localized alterations. Fascinating.”

What the hell was she talking about? And why had her tone changed again? It was as though she really did have multiple personalities. I remembered her smile from the previous day.

“—Today has no tomorrow—yesterday has no today—tomorrow has no yesterday—it was there.”

Uh, what?

Sasaki raised an eyebrow. “She sounds more like a fanatic than a lunatic. I would’ve liked to hear more about such things back in the café, not just standing here. And maybe with a notebook handy.” Sasaki glanced at Kuyoh’s wrist and continued, teasingly. “In any case, if you’re still wearing the watch he gave you, you must still have a bit of lingering affection for that interesting fellow.”

Kuyoh’s gaze fell to the analog watch (surely bought on discount) like drops of india ink.

“—I said… I wanted it.”

I was getting tired of being stunned.

“—Time is not a unidirectional, irreversible phenomenon. To engage in biological activities on this planet’s surface it is necessary to stabilize pseudo-objective time flow.”

Hence the watch? But it was just made of tiny springs and gears. A watch doesn’t dictate the flow of time. It’s just a convenient way of numbering the progression of people’s activity in the day, I said.

“—Time is randomly generated. It is not continuous.”

I rubbed my eyes. Just what was this alien talking about?

Sasaki’s innate curiosity had evidently been aroused. “So how do you interpret past and future, then, Kuyoh? Or are you saying that Akashic Records exist?”

“—Time is finite.”

“So what does that mean? Show me proof by infinite descent. How much time is there between one second and the next?”

“None. However, there is no danger in thinking otherwise.”

This seemed to be a debate Sasaki could really get her teeth into.

“Hmm, so what about this—if there are parallel worlds, can’t they be infinite in number? As Hugh Everett would have said.”

“—Nothing unobservable can exist.”

“Really?” Sasaki had the look of a budding young scientist who’d just witnessed a new phenomenon.

“—Already recorded—questions… pointless.”

“I see.” Sasaki stroked her chin, seemingly understanding all of this. I couldn’t stop myself from shooting my mouth off.

“ ‘You see’?! Why don’t you finish digesting what you ‘see’ so you can explain it to me, huh? Make sure a complete idiot could understand.”

“Yeah, hmm. Listen, Kyon, that’s impossible. All I’ve understood is that Kuyoh and whoever made her are fundamentally different from us humans, that they possess a totally different way of thinking. So I believe that true understanding is impossible, no matter what.”

So no matter what happens, things would be the same? I asked.

“Not necessarily. Discovering that language is a poor method of communication of our intentions is a big step forward. Here and now, her words are basically noise. But what if a more effective translation device could be invented? Human ingenuity may make such a device possible someday. Humans have already accomplished many feats that pessimists would have called impossible.”

Someday—. Someday far in the future. Maybe in Fujiwara’s time. In a time when boats float using something other than simple buoyancy.

“Hey, Kuyoh—” My voice never reached its target, and merely scattered into empty space.

Kuyoh’s abnormally dark form had disappeared as though she’d vanished into thin air. As though she’d fallen into some invisible crack in the ground.

I wasn’t particularly impressed, since I was well aware that Nagato, Asakura, and Kimidori were capable of similar feats. But somehow Sasaki wasn’t much moved either, and she regarded the space Kuyoh had once occupied with a pleasant smile.

“That’s an alien for you, I guess,” she said, as though she were looking at nothing more remarkable than an airplane’s contrail.

C’mon, was that really her only reaction? I asked.

“Another word, then,” said Sasaki, shifting her glance. “I’m fascinated to see what she’ll do next,” she said.

My graceful former classmate’s face was not the least bit perturbed. I’d never seen anything like it. It brought to me a calm I couldn’t explain.

“Kyon, you needn’t overestimate her. Just as we can’t understand Kuyoh, it’s hard to imagine that she can accurately understand us. We may be sad, limited creatures, bound by gravity, but we still have enough value to draw her to Earth. And it’s difficult to be certain that we won’t evolve further, physically and psychologically. As for me… I suppose I’m counting on the blind watchmaker.”

I didn’t really understand what she was talking about, but she seemed to be trying to offer some encouragement.

“See you later,” Sasaki said to me, her eyes reflecting the streetlights’ radiance there amid the hustle and bustle of the station. “I’ll think things over. The answers to all of this might have fallen by the wayside somewhere. I wouldn’t be too optimistic, but if we don’t at least do what we can, we won’t be able to avoid accusations of irresponsibility. Fear is often greater than the danger, after all. Farewell for now, Kyon.”

I gazed at Sasaki as she gave a casual, cool wave, some strange feeling welling up within me.

Compared with being stuck in the cave-in of my own thoughts, getting dragged around all of creation by the melancholic Miss Haruhi was a pleasure like unto a beam of light streaking through the center of the galaxy.

I was certain that Haruhi would return. Her homing instinct was one of her virtues.

Of course, it wasn’t exclusive to her. Everyone in the SOS Brigade, from the lieutenant brigade chief on down to the menial chore boy, had a place to return to, as fixed as the Earth’s tectonic plate would be if the moon disappeared—the first headquarters of the SOS Brigade, where Nagato waited, where Haruhi had broken in, and where Asahina and Koizumi had been forcibly dragged.

My cerebral cortex lit up with impulses that signified my desire to get everybody in the clubroom and play stupid games to pass the time.

That’s right, Sasaki. I was on their side, and I couldn’t ever leave it. A new SOS Brigade? The nerve of them. It wasn’t something you could just run off copies of. It was a brigade made of us. We would soldier on, our membership changing, not leaving a single one behind. That had been Haruhi’s very first wish. But I realized that it hadn’t taken long for that to be a wish that Asahina, Nagato, Koizumi, and I all held as well. We were like the accretion disc held in place by the tidal forces of the small black hole of the brigade chief. We could neither fall in nor escape the orbit; we could but remain. That is, until the mysterious gravity that held us disappeared.

Afterward, I headed home, totally absentminded. I was surprised I managed to remember to bring my bike home. When was the last time I was so fatigued that I heard every rattle and squeak of my bike? It was all I could do stay conscious.

Somehow I managed to finish eating dinner, despite feeling as if I couldn’t move the chopsticks. I collapsed onto my bed without even turning the light off, lacking so much as the energy to play with Shamisen and my sister. Mentally, I was a tattered rag.

Just before I blacked out, I remember thinking that I’d feel bad when I woke up if I went to sleep like that. To the best of my knowledge, I did not dream. Of course, in that state, anything short of the most beautiful dream imaginable would’ve been forgotten the instant I woke up.