CHAPTER 6

α—9

The next day, Wednesday.

I didn’t know whether it was temporary or would continue to increase, but the day’s sunshine was leaps and bounds beyond what you’d expect from spring, and felt more like early summer. I seemed to recall the previous year was like this too. Evidently the Earth really was warming up, and if it really was humanity’s fault, we’d better do something quick; otherwise the mailboxes of power plants the world over were going to start filling with letters of protest from polar bears and penguins.

Thus it was that my shirt was quickly made sticky with sweat as I contented myself with the hike up the hill to school. The verdant green of a neighbor’s grass caught my eye, but did nothing to assuage the deep resentment I felt for schools with air conditioning. I was going to have some words for the student council president the next time I saw him. Whether or not it was practical given the budget, I was sure that Kimidori’s alien powers would make the instantaneous installation of twenty or thirty air conditioning units no problem at all.

Incidentally, I expected that Koizumi would have informed the student council president of Kimidori’s true nature by now. Although given the president, he probably wouldn’t care whether his secretary girl was an extraterrestrial or not.

I hugged my light schoolbag over my shoulder, gazing at the backs of the many North High students climbing the hill. I felt refreshed, and was making unusually good time as I went—wait, what?

I stopped, cocking my head. It was a meaningless performance, and I had no idea why I felt the way I did.

The spring was at its beautiful height, and with the monsoon season still far off and the humidity nothing to complain about; it was some of the most pleasant weather there was, a time that came only twice a year, in fall and spring, and you didn’t have to be Haruhi to just relax, free of doubt—and yet something bothered me.

I groped around in the darkness of my mind, and by the time I’d climbed the hill I’d arrived at something like an answer.

“It’s too peaceful.”

I honestly don’t know why I felt the need to murmur those words aloud.

Haruhi was in benignly high spirits as she continued with her recruitment, Asahina was devoting herself to practicing the art of tea service after school, Nagato had thrown her duties as literature club president into the garbage and was absorbed in reading, and Koizumi just smiled the days away.

I’d prepared myself for the appearance of Sasaki, Kuyoh, and Kyoko Tachibana to be a harbinger of a series of abnormal events, but since their appearance, there’d been nothing. Not even from that nameless time-traveler guy, although that might well just have been foreshadowing for his being revealed later. I felt as if sooner would be better, though I would be grateful if it were put off for later, and whoever could put him on indefinite hold would get a letter of appreciation from me—but the question was, who could I expect to do that? Nagato, or my dear not-quite-good friend, Sasaki?

I thought back on the words and actions of my middle school classmate. It had mostly been about entrance exams or stuff that wasn’t any help at all when it came to living my life. And yet that was probably why she was able to run rings around aliens and time travelers. It would probably be a good idea to give her a call and check in on the situation. The time traveler was especially worrisome.

Absentmindedly heading for the freshman classrooms was something that only happened the first few days of the new semester. Mechanically I changed into my school slippers and wandered over to classroom 2-5 to take my seat. There was nothing to do besides wait for the days when I could stop fanning myself with my pencil board, which wouldn’t happen until fall came.

As I was sitting there, Haruhi entered the classroom just before the bell, like a racehorse vying with Mr. Okabe for the early lead. She wound up beating the PE teacher by two lengths.

“You certainly took your time. Still have more preparation to do on the brigade entrance exams?” In the few minutes before homeroom ended and first period began, I took the opportunity to talk to her.

“Mm…” A noncommittal reply issued from Haruhi’s lips. “I made myself lunch. For some reason I woke up early today, so I thought it might be nice, for once.”

Huh. What strange wind was blowing today? Haruhi was behaving like a normal high school girl.

“Must’ve taken a while. Did you pack it in a cute box or something?”

“I got so into trying to make sure it was nutritionally balanced that I was late leaving the house. But it’s really tasty. I’m excited to eat it at lunch.” Haruhi pouted, not quite like a duck, but more than an owl. “Hmm. It was weird, though. I just got this feeling like I needed to do some cooking. Maybe I had a dream about it or something. I don’t really remember, but it was like I had to cook for somebody else. Oh, and just so you know, I didn’t make extra. I’m going to eat it all myself.”

She didn’t have to point that out. If she gave me some of her handmade lunch, just where on the campus was I supposed to be able to eat it? I sure as hell wouldn’t be able to eat it in the classroom. “Anyway, you hardly ever bring your lunch. Is there some kind of reason for that? Like your mom’s a terrible cook or something?”

Haruhi was silent for a moment. “How did you know? Yeah… it’s hard to say, but I don’t really want to admit it, but… you’re right. Mom—er, my mother’s sense of taste is a little different than normal people’s.”

So in other words, she was a terrible cook.

“When I was little I thought it was like that at everybody’s house. A normal family goes to a restaurant every once in a while, right? It was so delicious I almost cried, and I thought it was like that because it was a restaurant. But when I started elementary school, I started thinking it was a little strange. Depending on the menu, sometimes there was stuff the other kids didn’t like, but I shoveled it all in, no matter what. I’d eat all the stuff my friends left on their plates.”

She looked out the window, her eyes distant as she reminisced.

“So then I tried my hand at it. I just tried to copy what I’d seen—I think it was beef and potato stew. The first dish I ever made myself. And how do you think it tasted? Just like something from a restaurant. It was like a fish scale fell out of my eye and everything was suddenly clear. It hit the ground with a pop and rolled away.”

That was one big fish scale, I said.

“It was like something from an arowana or arapaima. But ever since then, I tried not to eat at my house too much.”

“Huh.”

I had a strange feeling. Something in what Haruhi had said nagged at me.

Was it her lunch…? No. Did restaurant menus have beef and potato stew? Was it her mention of a scale from Amazonian freshwater fish?

Just as I was silent, having gotten the very last word in the crossword puzzle as far as my throat but no further—

“By the way, Kyon,” said Haruhi, suddenly changing the subject as she looked at me from slightly downturned eyes. “About the first annual brigade membership exam.”

Hm? Oh yes. That certainly was the most obviously pending issue.

Haruhi switched suddenly away from her family’s dining habits—or rather, seemed eager to sweep that topic of conversation away. “It’s a pain to have them over several days, so I was thinking of collecting ’em all together and just finishing them up. What do you think?”

I was stunned that she would solicit the opinion of a lowly brigade member on the matter. I had assumed that arbitration would lie solely with the highest-ranking member. Looks like my judgment had been rather hasty.

“Hmm… I guess that depends on the contents of the exam,” I said, fishing for the first idea that came to mind. “I assume you’re not going to do a race to catch a hundred and one hamsters or anything like that.”

Haruhi froze as though she’d caught a face-on glimpse of Medusa, looking at me as though she were a criminal who’d blurted out an important piece of evidence. “… How’d you know? Right down to the number, even.”

I felt as if her thought processes were slowly poisoning me. To think I’d guess perfectly the very first time. Horrified at my own notion, I had to ask. “Just where do you think you’re going to get that many hamsters?”

“Okay, we’ll change it to a contest of catching Shamisen’s fleas.”

He’d been a house cat for some time now, and my sister regularly bathed him. He didn’t have any fleas, I pointed out.

“Then a cooking contest using only grass found on school grounds!”

Sure, so long as she was willing to be the judge.

“How about a contest to see who can wave a plastic bag full of flour in front of the police station and get arrested first?”

I’d feel bad for the beat cop on duty. And they might not get the joke either.

Haruhi made the special patented combination of crocodile eyes and duck mouth that she made whenever she was irritated. “Okay, so what kind of contest should it be, then?”

That wasn’t something I should have to answer. Anyway, why was she so fixated on contests, I wanted to know. This was an entrance examination. It didn’t have to be a big event. Although speaking of events, I’d be happy with a takoyaki contest. If we went to a utensil store we could probably get the stuff cheap.

Haruhi let my banter flow away like a babbling brook. “Kyon, this is not the only year we’re going to have an entrance exam. Obviously we’ll have to do one next year too. Since it’s going to be an annual tradition, of course it’s got to be a big event. That’s what an event is!”

But this wasn’t some ancient religious ceremony, nor was it some long-held festival tradition. Think about the Olympics, or the World Cup. They’d get boring if we did them every year.

“Think about this, Haruhi,” I said, trying to make my case. “Did Nagato or Asahina take a test? I mean, Koizumi got in just because he was a transfer student. There wasn’t anything like a test last year.”

Come to that, the biggest mystery of all was my own inclusion in the SOS Brigade, but I let that pass unmentioned.

Haruhi scrunched her lips up in a clever impression. “Geez. Do you want new members, or don’t you?”

If she was asking how I really felt, the truth was: Not really. If there was a slider from another world among the freshmen, in Haruhi’s eyes they wouldn’t be new members so much as intruders. The fact that there had been no such indications meant that there was nobody like that among the new students. The tragedy of a normal person made to abandon their normalcy was already in the process of being performed by me, and definitely didn’t need to become a trend. There was no sense in repeating a tragedy. Well over two millennia had passed since the beginning of recorded history, and one hopes humanity would have learned a few lessons. And that depended on one tiny corner of humanity (me) having carved said lessons on his heart.

Haruhi continued to mutter away, evidently still thinking about what to fill the blank of “———competition” with. I decided to pray to the god of rodents or something that she didn’t settle on a hundred and one hamsters.

Maybe Daikokuten, god of wealth and friend of mice, would be okay?

And soon enough classes were over, and I continued what had become my habit over the past several days, which was receiving study assistance from grandmaster Suzumiya. It goes without saying that I did not enjoy this. Although if you were to ask why I said something that supposedly goes without saying, I wouldn’t have a good reply.

“Tests are so stupid. I mean, no matter how great my answer is, the best score I can get is one hundred. I hate anything that has restrictions like that on it. If I’m going to be stuck within bounds I can’t escape, forget about it. I mean, just think about it, Kyon. If the test-taker’s ability exceeds the test-maker’s and they think of an answer that requires a greater mental leap than the question required, but then makes a careless mistake on another question, they won’t get a perfect score. Don’t you think that’s weird? If it were me, I’d give two hundred points, or even one thousand, for a truly great or elegant answer. That’s what I don’t like.”

Haruhi flipped sloppily through the textbook as she spoke.

“Also, tests just make you memorize what’s written in the textbooks. Totally boring! There’s nothing like mechanical repetition to make you lose your humanity. It’s corrupt! Corrupt!”

Whether or not she was being helpful, at the very least her words weren’t going to help me get a better grade on my English test. Unless she became a politician and reformed the Japanese educational system, that is.

“Comprehension is more important than rote memorization!” Just when I thought she was going to denounce the entire examination system, she continued. “You’ve got to memorize it as a story. If you remember what someone was thinking, then what they did will come up like pulling up a whole row of potatoes. Kyon, listen—once you understand the basic concepts, the next step is seeing what the test-maker was thinking. There’s no way of telling what people in ancient times thought, but it’s not hard at all to guess what modern humans are thinking. You’re not trying to guess what’s going to be written on the test—you’re understanding what the person who wrote it was thinking about. Once you do that, there are all sorts of hidden possibilities.”

From the perspective of the test-taker, isn’t it easier to just fill in the correct answer, instead of trying to figure out the hidden angles? Why did she always have to exceed expectations?

“Because it gives you moral superiority. We’re mere students, but that’s only a matter of age. Enlightening the complacent teaching class is our great privilege as students. We’ve got to use our youth as a weapon. I guess it’s obvious, but this is the only time we’re going to have that weapon. We don’t have much time left to use it on the greatest battlefield of all—high school.”

I sort of understood, and sort of didn’t care, but at the moment I was exhausted just trying to lead my normal high school life, and I couldn’t hear any more of these words heavy with implications. You could say that a sparrow couldn’t understand the philosophy of a falcon—the level of their DNA was too different. Sitting on top of power lines trilling birdsong seemed as though it fit me pretty well. I’d leave the rest to people with burning ambition, like Haruhi or good old Julien from The Red and the Black. My biggest ambitions of late seemed to be a desire for sleep, so what else could I do?

“That’s a pathetic declaration of intent.” Haruhi shook her head sadly, looking at me as though I were a cowardly samurai who always wore a sword but never had the courage to draw it. Her lips curled up. “Anyway, I’m not here to critique your life philosophy. Still,” she said, her voice strengthening. “In school, class, and tests, that might be good enough for you, but it’s not good enough for the SOS Brigade. In there, what I say goes. I have extraterritoriality. Whether it’s Japanese law, common sense, traditions, social rules, presidential orders, or the decisions of the Supreme Court, none of that matters in the brigade. Got it? Any problems with that?”

Yes, ma’am. No, ma’am. There was no need for her to restate what I already knew perfectly well. I knew better than anyone else why she’d caught the attention of intelligence from beyond the galaxy. So it’s all up to you, Haruhi. Any decision to be made within the SOS Brigade is all yours.

But Nagato and Koizumi, as well as Asahina the Elder, all felt the same way I did. You’ll forgive me that much, won’t you, Haruhi?

However Haruhi might have interpreted my sighs, she closed the textbook, seemingly satisfied, and began to put her notebook back in her bag. It was the signal that the day’s after-school tutoring plus deliberate ploy to arrive late for the brigade meeting was concluded.

It was only ten minutes, but the time was a precious break for me, like halftime at a game—and yet what was the psychological source of that sense of relief? It introduced only a bit of lag into the process of assembling in the clubroom, and even delayed the time until I could sample Asahina’s tea, and yet for some reason these days I was aware that I was trying to avoid the clubroom.

Why was that? Maybe I just couldn’t face all those bright-eyed freshman applicants, and perhaps I’d fallen victim to an irrational disquiet, a baseless dread, but whatever it was, a halo of light still awaited me in the clubroom, thanks to Nagato (whose sense of self had been nice and strong after Haruhi’s disappearance), Koizumi (who still took delight in solving any problem), and Asahina (who was as lovely as ever).

So long as all of us were together, we were effectively invincible within the school, and yet I felt a strange unease, like trace amounts of helium seeping into the corners of my lungs.

What was it about?

Although the random encounter with Sasaki, Kyoko Tachibana, and Kuyoh definitely worried me, I didn’t get the sense that they were planning anything. Given that Sasaki was on their side, and would thus befuddle them more than Haruhi could, I figured she’d give them a fair amount of trouble—that much wasn’t hard to imagine with even my paltry deductive abilities. I knew Sasaki well. Just like Haruhi, she was a hard person to influence—although the vectors were different, of course. Haruhi wouldn’t listen to anyone, ever. Sasaki would listen, then deliver an eloquent rebuttal. Her identity was extremely solid, and not even an edict from Zeus or Cronos could make her betray it. Although she might listen to Prometheus or Cassandra.

Anyway, even if that crowd were to appear before me as home tutors, I doubted they would be able to make things as easily understandable as Haruhi did. Objective analysis based on hindsight suggested that historical understanding was the most profitable source of information. Although this would never happen, if my name went down in history, I would have no reason to complain about their analyses. I’d be a ghost by then, and the dead do not speak, and only the people of the future have any right to cite people who are dead and buried.

And if someone near me happened to die, I had about a cat’s flea’s egg’s worth of desire to write a eulogy for them. So nobody better die on me. Disappearing without a trace was also right out. So long as Haruhi and I were here, nobody involved with the SOS Brigade was allowed to leave. The membership could grow, sure. But shrink? No. The status quo was maintained, and would continue to be. It was one of the SOS Brigade’s most important rules, and while it may not have been written anywhere, it was still common knowledge.

As I turned all this over in my head, Haruhi’s special tutoring session ended, Haruhi turning her back to the vague smiles of the students who’d pulled cleaning duty and striding purposefully out into the hallway like a young member of the Nazi party off to attend a national convention of the Hitler Youth.

With the remainder of Haruhi’s Special Review Course put off until the next day, I enjoyed a few moments of peace, but as we walked side by side and reached the dim hallway that led to our final destination, the clubroom, I couldn’t very well forget the lingering doubts I felt. While I found them deeply befuddling, Haruhi seemed not to notice in the least.

I wondered which was more important to her—improving my test scores or examining new members. As we walked down the hallway, her footsteps nearly sounded like tap dancing, and I realized she enjoyed all sorts of things. I wondered if the new freshman candidates looked like so many hamsters to her.

I hoped the applicants had the animalistic nonchalance of the feline order, rather than the quick reflexes of the rodents. It would be a lot better for their long-term prospects to relax and curl up into a ball than it would be to become the animal subjects of Haruhi’s psychological experiments. There was only one person with enough doglike, tail-wagging loyalty for Haruhi, and that was Koizumi. The kind of person most likely to blend into the clubroom would have the inscrutable empty-headedness of an iguana, but from what I’d seen the odds were slim that any of the new applicants were like that.

It was likely that Haruhi was thinking the same thing—that instead of dragging out the examination process, quickly and decisively sorting things out would be better for both the SOS Brigade and the fresh-faced new students.

And just as I’d expected, the number of provisional new members—or hamsters, from Haruhi’s point of view—was indeed slightly reduced. There was a full house in the clubroom: three boys and two girls. That was one down from the previous day, but it still seemed like quite a few remaining. I really wanted to ask them all individually just what it was about the SOS Brigade that they found intriguing, but unfortunately that was Haruhi’s job, and when the highest-ranking brigade member, in whom resided all rights of supervision and control, entered the room, she made a loud-voiced proclamation.

“The SOS Brigade admission examination has begun!”

Asahina was already in the room, and her hand froze in the middle of pouring tea as she blinked, while Koizumi, who’d been ruminating alone over a children’s shogi board, spread his hands helplessly. Nagato sat in the corner, turning the pages of a used book, giving no reaction whatsoever. After ten seconds of silence, I finally spoke up.

“So this is the end, already?”

“Yup,” said Haruhi haughtily. “It’ll just make everybody’s lives difficult if we take too much time. Plus I’ve already gathered more than enough data. All I need to see now is guts! Friendship, effort, and success aren’t necessary at all. I mean, you haven’t been around us long enough to foster feelings of friendships, and ‘effort’ is just an excuse people who can’t deliver results use. And as for success, what’s important is triumphing over something, not someone. In this case, if you can’t beat me, you haven’t achieved anything at all.”

Haruhi looked over the assembled five freshmen with a weather eye, then nodded.

“Well done, everybody. You all listened to what I said and brought your gym clothes. All right, change into them.”

The group of freshmen sitting in folding chairs looked each other over. Well, of course they did. They’d been told to change, but where exactly were they supposed to do it? Still, while I had no idea when they’d been informed of the required equipment, I was impressed that they’d each brought bags containing their gym clothes. It was the time of year—everything was new to them. They had to be wondering why this club, which was about as far away from a sports team as it was possible to get, required gym clothes, but this year’s freshmen still dutifully complied with the orders of our tyrannical brigade chief.

“Ah, yes.” “Yes, ma’am.”

Such things they murmured, standing and taking their uniforms in hand.

But standing was all they did. Evidently here in this mixed-sex room, their feelings of embarrassment were strong enough that coed clothes-changing was a bit too much for them.

Koizumi, Asahina, and Nagato made no move to leave the room, seemingly implying “Don’t mind us, go right ahead.” Koizumi grinned (he was being awfully quiet), while Asahina went with the flow of things, looking for enough teacups to serve everyone. There in the corner, Nagato kept her head down, as though she were reading the minutes of a student council meeting.

It seemed the only person remaining to lend a hand to the dubious-faced freshmen was me. Just when I took a deep breath and braced myself for impact—

“Right, current members all have to leave the room. You too, Yuki! You can read your book in the hallway.” Haruhi was showing surprising initiative. “Girls change first. Boys wait in the hallway, and change once the girls are done. I believe in gender equality, but in my view you’ve got to account for physical differences. Hurry, now—out, out!”

You would never have guessed that she was once a girl who would start changing clothes in the middle of classroom 1-5, paying no mind to the boys’ gazes. But maybe that was just my imagination; maybe Haruhi’s smile had slowed down my thinking a certain amount.

But there was one thing I did have to ask her.

“Just what are you going to make them do?” I assumed it would be something athletic.

“Didn’t I tell you? A marathon!” said Haruhi, folding her arms and looking as though what she’d just said was totally reasonable. “A long, boring series of tests just isn’t my style. But deciding quickly, like this, will give a nice decisive result. Anyway, the trial club membership period is ending soon, and I have to be considerate to the students who don’t make it, because they might have other clubs they want to try. So I started thinking. To be really decisive in times like this, it’s gotta be a test of strength! Of energy! And what’s better for that than an endurance run?”

As I wondered whether the SOS Brigade had ever done anything that tested our endurance, I spoke. “Hey, c’mon now.” I thought about not saying anything, but there didn’t appear to be anyone else in this small room that would protest Haruhi’s rampancy. “What about the stuff you’ve done so far? You’re just gonna toss all that out and decide things with a marathon? You should’ve done that from the beginning!”

“Tsk tsk tsk!” Haruhi clicked her tongue disapprovingly, like an examiner who’s just received a question she’d expected all along. She continued, her attitude like an elder monk enlightening a young apprentice who was repeating secondhand information. “You’re not thinking this through, Kyon. Listen, the other tests and interviews were certainly not wasted effort. I have a good eye for people. I’ve got as much perception and concentration as an eagle on the wing, hunting for mice hiding between the crags below.”

Yeah, and pretty soon one of those poor little mice was going to be caught and served up on a plate back at your nest.

“The reason I’ve been constantly talking about tests all the time is, um, like… the MacGuffin in a suspense movie!”

“Wouldn’t that be more like a red herring, then?” Koizumi calmly stepped in, but I kept silent, not knowing what herring and pound cake had to do with each other. Haruhi seemed not to know either.

“Whatever, who cares. The point is, any measure of aptitude worth being called a ‘test’ is… umm… well, it’s based on human observation, which I’ve been doing. I’ve been testing them. The nature of the tests wasn’t important. It was all just to filter out the new recruits who didn’t make it this far, that’s all. And so…” Haruhi extended her index finger and gestured across the noses of the assembled five students. “You’ve all successfully crossed the hurdle. Congratulations. You’ve gained the right to undertake the final challenge. Rejoice! While you still can. But the real test is just beginning. I’ll just say now that it’s going to be a lot tougher than what you’ve done so far. You’ll need strength, guts, courage, and the most important skill humans possess—the persistence never to give up! Beyond this challenge awaits the ultimate victory!”

It felt as though she was just trying to say sort of generically inspiring things, but I couldn’t claim that they didn’t fit the occasion. Haruhi Suzumiya played things by ear, every time. If she couldn’t manage that this time, then who in the world could have?

I couldn’t help letting slip a pained smile. It was because Haruhi was like this that I sometimes…

With effort, I stamped the thought out. Dangerous—too dangerous. Even if the words had only existed in my mind, never to be vocalized, only ever heard by me, the very fact of them being so meant I couldn’t pretend not to have heard them.

Language was cognition. And if I became conscious of that, there was a real possibility that I could become aware of a notion that would pose mortal danger to a life I hoped would be a long one. It might have been cheeky of me, but at the moment I was determined to remain free of all ideologies or policies.

Consequently, I immediately canceled my train of thought, and decided to think about happier things—like the flower viewing party at Tsuruya’s villa, or my anticipation of a sequel to a video game I’d beaten.

“…”

Perhaps having caught me trying to hide something away in my mind, Nagato lifted her face smoothly up, then dropped her eyes back to the book.

“Aw…”

It was fine. It didn’t matter who knew—so long as it wasn’t Haruhi, the world would remain at peace. Still, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to let her know a little bit… or at least the thought occurred to me for a moment—sorry, I took leave of my senses for a second there. No, seriously. Seriously.

Sigh. Needing to make yourself listen to your own excuses would only result in years of agonizing experiences. The human brain is an ill-made thing, letting you remember with perfect clarity only those things you most want to forget. I hoped someone was nearing completion of the human felinization project—cats didn’t seem to worry much about the future at all.

Haruhi must have concluded that going to the locker room was a waste.

She oversaw the alternate clothes-changing of the boys and girls in the clubroom, and as a matter of course Koizumi, Asahina, and I all withdrew to cool our heels in the hallway. But even when it was the boys’ turn to go and change and Haruhi ordered Nagato matter-of-factly out of the room, Nagato remained nose-in-book, not moving a muscle. And yes, I did think about asking Nagato to give a little consideration to these poor little freshmen who would have to change in front of an older girl, but honestly the three boys didn’t seem too worried about what she might see at this point, plus this might have been part of Haruhi’s exam. It then occurred to me that if that was so, I should’ve been allowed to stay in the room when the girls changed, at which point the freshmen had all finished changing and we were heading for the field.

I wasn’t too upset about it, if I’m honest. It wasn’t something that was in either my nature or my ethics to do, plus what would Asahina have thought?

Thus, after much ado, Haruhi finally introduced her long-awaited SOS Brigade Final Entrance Examination, which was all well and good, but for some strange reason she had also changed into her gym clothes, which worried me. Also worrying was the inner state of the girl who strode unhesitatingly along, taking great bouncing strides like some sort of street hip-hop performer about to improvise a lyric. But the biggest outstanding issue was the fact that we were currently heading to the school’s sports field.

No exposition is required to explain that the grounds were the site of fierce competition among the sports clubs, and here at a prefectural school where no special facilities were apportioned to any of the sports teams, such competition was a daily occurrence. At the moment, major players like track and field, soccer, and baseball, along with more minor sports, were constantly pushing for more territory, like tiny nation-states making shows of strength along their borders, always trying to expand.

The track and field team had a legitimate claim to the four-hundred-meter track, but Haruhi strode spiritedly toward them, her five freshmen in tow. Her lack of restraint made her seem like the leader of a school of baitfish leading a charge.

Though I’d come along this far owing to circumstances, I decided to hold position at the top of the stairs that led down onto the field, given that I participated in no athletic activities save PE class and the daily uphill trudge to school. Koizumi and Asahina did likewise. They both had been hanging around Haruhi long enough to have a good idea of what she was planning to do next. Nagato had been disinclined to observe the proceedings all along, and at that very moment was probably enjoying a book in the clubroom. It goes without saying that she had excellent judgment.

Essentially, the three existing SOS Brigade members—us minus Nagato—had chosen to act as mere rubberneckers. I would brook no clumsy attempts to get us to participate further.

As I watched, Haruhi started by taking issue with somebody on the track and field team, and taking no notice of the increasingly irritated aura of the team as a whole, lined up the brigade candidates at the starting line.

“C’mon, we’re at least allowed to run! The track and field team’s not good at anything else, anyway, and we’re running in service of a higher goal. It’ll only be for today, and we’re not even really in the way, and as North High students we have as much right as anyone to use the field. Any objections?”

About a tenth of a second after she finished her rapid-fire questioning—

“No? Good. Well, then—”

The assembled track team didn’t even have time to reply before Haruhi gave the signal to her would-be minions. It was very simple.

“Ready, go!” she said as she went flying off, leaving behind the stunned freshmen, who hadn’t even been told what they had to do.

“What are you doing? Hurry up and follow me!” Haruhi’s strident voice jolted them from their petrification, and they started chasing down her gym-uniform-clad form as she headed down the track. Going by Haruhi’s pace, this wasn’t going to be a sprint—oh right, it was a marathon.

But just how many thousands of meters was she going to make them run? She hadn’t even brought a stopwatch.

That said, it was a good thing the final test was a simple marathon.

“I’m just glad I didn’t have to find a hundred and one hamsters,” I murmured, sitting down at the top of the steps and looking down at the field. Haruhi shouted to encourage the flagging freshmen, winging her way ahead like some kind of sheepdog.

Koizumi narrowed his eyes and watched, gracing me with a response. “It wouldn’t be impossible, but I doubt they’re a particularly significant object in Suzumiya’s mind.”

“What would you have done if Haruhi really had wanted that to happen?”

Koizumi held his palms facing upward, as though feeling the weight of some object. “Of course I would have done everything in my power to collect them. I’d call up all the shops in the chain of pet stores my associate runs. They’re charming little creatures, hamsters are.”

Yeah, as long as you didn’t pack a hundred and one of them into a box. We weren’t practicing kodoku magic, here.

“By the way, Koizumi.”

“Yes?”

“About the students in that ridiculous marathon—are they all, you know, clean?”

“But of course. So far as our investigations can tell, there is nothing to worry about. Not one of them is an alien, time traveler, or any other category of person that would differ from standard modern humans.” Koizumi then put a finger to his chin. “However…”

“However?”

“If you’re asking if there’s a student among them that worries me, there is. That they’re a normal human is clear enough, so this is nothing more than my intuition. Or perhaps you could call it a premonition. It would hardly be surprising for Suzumiya to decide that having everyone fail the test would be boring, so one student will pass. So who will remain? I feel as though I know already, though it’s only a very slight feeling, with nothing whatsoever to back it up.”

I got the feeling it was the same person—the same girl—I’d noticed.

“Her background’s normal, right?”

“Yes. We checked. Although she was a slightly special case…”

Special? Special how? Tell me. Now, I told him.

Koizumi chuckled, an amused smile on his face. “I’ll have to leave that a secret for now. It’s a trivial thing, really. We’ve concluded it’s nothing that could possibly harm us. Indeed, she may even help us.”

His implication-heavy answer bothered me, but if Koizumi said so, I believed him. When it came to Haruhi-related matters, Koizumi was even more nervous than I was.

“Still…”

There was more? I asked.

“Yes. It’s just, lately I’ve been feeling an extremely difficult-to-explain sense of unease—shallow though that may be. It doesn’t have anything to do with the new candidates. It’s solely regarding myself.”

I told Koizumi I was happy to listen to his problems, so long as they weren’t romantic in nature.

“I don’t have the sense it’s the sort of problem that’s helped by talking about it,” Koizumi said, gazing at the daisies that were in bloom alongside the stairway. “The truth is, I’ve started to feel like I’m getting fainter. How can I explain this…”

From what I could see, his face was the same half-smiling iron mask it always was, I said.

“I don’t mean externally. It’s more like wondering whether what I’m experiencing right now is really my own volition, or whether it’s some unreal dream world another version of myself is dreaming. I’ve been thinking about it a little bit, that’s all.”

So the grave robber of Haruhi’s subconscious had finally run into a mummy, eh? I suggested he go visit a mental clinic. If it was a serotonin problem they could probably write him a prescription.

“I’ll seriously consider it. I hope this is just a personal problem of mine. I’m sure it is. Suzumiya is having lots of fun, and I doubt the Agency will need to take action for a while.”

I looked down at the grounds as I took in Koizumi’s words.

“I wonder if they’ll be thirsty after they run. I’ll go make some tea.”

Asahina was still in her maid outfit; her considerate words echoed in my ears.

Surprisingly, the pace Haruhi set was abnormally fast for a distance race, and she seemed content to just keep circling the track. She wasn’t even bothering to measure time, so it wasn’t a time-limited event, and there didn’t seem to be a set number of laps after which the race would end either.

Having figured out that much, I finally understood Haruhi’s intentions, and felt a deep sympathy for the poor freshmen.

Haruhi actually intended to run until every last one of them had collapsed. The ones who couldn’t keep up would be left to fail by the side of the track, and she’d probably just say some vaguely nice words to the last one to fall before wrapping things up.

It seemed as though she hadn’t been able to think of a selection criterion more interesting than the hamster-catching contest. So instead, she was just going to finish things up with a marathon. It made me want to ask why she’d bothered with that written exam, but honestly this was all you could expect from someone who got bored as easily as Haruhi did. Or maybe she’d actually cared quite a bit about the freshmen who’d played along with her for so long.

But the most likely possibility is that she hadn’t actually wanted any new members at all.

The final test—an endurance run of indeterminate length.

By the time Haruhi stopped running, there wouldn’t be a single freshman remaining behind her, I was sure. Haruhi was a high-speed comet of a girl who couldn’t abide anyone being able to keep up with her.

As though to validate my thinking, after a few laps the freshmen began to lag. Anyone could’ve predicted the outcome, given that not even in the entirety of the assembled track and field club was there a single person would could keep up with Haruhi’s fleet feet—and yet there were still a few in what could be called the chase group who were devoting their entire beings to keeping up with the lead group—composed solely of Haruhi.

Normally an endurance race had either a set distance or time, but Haruhi had thought of neither. She was just running. And she would run until she was satisfied. The finish line had no existence in either time or space, so for the freshmen behind her, this was no more than physical and psychological torture.

What was worse, the source of Haruhi’s mysterious energy would let her run happily on and on till the break of dawn. Were the mitochondria in her body really of this Earth? Even if her cells did have some unexplained way of generating ATP, I couldn’t even stay surprised at every little thing she did, having gone past shock straight into frank admiration at her full-throttle performance.

I’m not sure how much time passed as I watched the freshmen be worked over like new naval recruits.

Ready to acknowledge their service regardless of whether they passed or not, Asahina had returned to the clubroom to prepare tea, leaving Koizumi and me as the sole observers. Well, no—there were others. Most of the other clubs that used the field to practice had started watching this strange race. That’s how good Haruhi’s running form was, like an antelope on the plain.

Well, that was Haruhi for you. She was always like that.

But.

Not long after that, the scene on the grounds could only be described as a field of carnage.

Here and there on the track lay freshmen felled by Haruhi’s endless marathon, an exercise of such psychological intensity that it had no place at North High, which wasn’t particularly sporty to begin with. I sympathized deeply with them. If Haruhi had held an exam like this a year ago, there was no way Asahina or I would have passed. Whether or not that would have been a good thing didn’t bear thinking about, but I won’t hesitate in saying that I was thankful for Haruhi’s caprice in that particular regard.

Naturally, I didn’t hold any illusions that a single freshman would pass this endurance test, but eventually the compulsory exhaustion would reach its end—and that would be when even Haruhi’s breath ran ragged enough to blow up a dust storm, and she stopped.

The scene before me was shocking enough to make me lose confidence in what little life experience I’d accumulated thus far.

The prospective brigade members had collapsed around the track, and had been dragged off of it by track and field members, who seemed to regard them as mere obstacles. The half-zombified freshmen surely wanted nothing more than oxygen and some freshly brewed tea.

However—

Just one freshman remained, having stuck with Haruhi for the entire race and crossing the finish line only moments after Haruhi did herself and declared the ordeal over.

She was gasping for breath and soaked with sweat, but she’d done it. And yes, by “her” I mean that same freshman girl from before.

Her baggy uniform did not fit her petite frame well, and as she tried to fix her sweat-matted hair, her childish efforts only made it look more like a bird’s nest. The thing that stuck out the most was that same smiley-face barrette.

“You…” said Haruhi, subtle surprise coloring her voice, “… did very well. Managing to keep up with me… were you on the track team before?” Haruhi’s own breath was fairly ragged.

“Nope,” said the girl immediately. “I’ve stayed a free agent in all my club activities. What I’ve been aiming for—whew—is the SOS Brigade. I worked really hard! I knew I’d do whatever I had to do to get in, so I’ve been preparing for this day!”

Regardless of the who-knew-how-many kilometers she’d just run, her voice was full of energy. She had more than enough left over to keep a smile on her sweat-soaked face.

That answer seemed to satisfy Haruhi, who, even as she continued to catch her own breath, replied, “You’re the only one to pass. Still, this was only the first aptitude test, so the testing might continue. Are you ready?”

“I’ll do anything you tell me I have to do! Even if you tell me to catch the moon’s reflection in the water, I’ll do it!”

Koizumi and I watched the exchange from safe ground, our mouths agape with shock.

There was someone whose strength and lung capacity matched Haruhi’s, and she was a freshman. The track club wasn’t going to let this opportunity slip away. After they regarded these proceedings with irritated disgust, the eyes of the track club members were already turning aggressive. They were the eyes possessed of utter determination to catch that promising-looking freshman.

Haruhi was a lost cause, but a brand-new student might well be persuaded to convert—they were like Portuguese missionaries who had found a warlord eager to distance himself from the influence of Buddhism. It was an entirely understandable avarice, give the aptitude for distance running she’d shown. I felt the same way, honestly.

The girl wiped sweat off of her satisfied face as she looked up and met my gaze. As she narrowed her eyes and curved her lips in a smile, I was struck by an intense, inexplicable feeling of déjà vu.

Did she know? Was she a powerful being that had somehow slipped past both Nagato and Koizumi, part of the mysterious other group, the fourth power… the thought crossed my mind, but Sasaki aside, she didn’t have the scent of Kuyoh, Kyoko Tachibana, or that time-traveler guy.

Surely she wasn’t a fifth power—?

C’mon, that couldn’t be. Just how many people did I have to deal with here? Despite being assaulted by the irritation of the idea, I didn’t feel any instinctive danger from her at all. She was just an eccentric freshman. It wasn’t hard to imagine Haruhi wanting just one new member candidate. This probably didn’t mean anything more than that. It had been a long time since Haruhi had declared her desire to associate with aliens, time travelers, and espers—a year, by now. And during that time, all of her crazy wishes had come true, albeit without the knowledge of the wisher.

Her latest wish was for a promising new member, and since it probably didn’t matter if they were some kind of special being or just an ordinary homo sapiens, Haruhi had desired a second conveniently normal person—a second version of me. If so, the girl who’d passed Haruhi’s crazy test would probably become an NPC-like errand girl, or possibly the new mascot who would take over once Asahina graduated.

If she happened not to be a standard human, presumably she would approach me soon. I could afford to wait to worry about it until that actually happened. I was used to dealing with weirdos.

The girl was bent over, hands on knees, as she recovered her breath. There was absolutely nothing superhuman about her, nor anachronistic, nor alien.

She was a human. I didn’t need advice or warnings from anyone. I’d come to this certainty on my own. Just as humanity had evolved from some indeterminate protozoa through unfathomable stages, so truly had I arrived at this undeniable truth.

Even I came to correct conclusions once in a while.

Thus, at the incontrovertible decision of the brigade chief, the final decisive SOS Brigade entrance exam came to an end.

Of course, I still had a few misgivings. I felt as though I’d seen the freshman girl who passed somewhere before, and there was the fact that she’d caught my eye even the first time I’d met her. Koizumi had determined there was nothing particularly special about her, but the fact that she’d passed Haruhi’s entrance exam and attracted her attention alone meant that she was no ordinary person.

But in what way was she out of the ordinary? Someone like Tsuruya was still a human resident of this Earth, but if she were in the alien/time traveler/esper category, then it would be as if I’d been given a problem from an entirely new problem set.

“Mmm.”

I didn’t realize I was groaning until Koizumi patted my back.

“There’s nothing to worry about. There won’t be any problems with her. If we’re talking about high school students with stamina roughly the same as Haruhi’s, I’m sure there are many of them if you bother to look. I would’ve thought you’d welcome the arrival of a cute junior member. She seems like she’ll be quite adept at errand-running.”

Evidently that was how he really felt. Koizumi’s face never lost its soft, unconcerned smile.

But I just couldn’t rid myself of that strange sense of déjà vu, like I’d met her somewhere before.

I had no memory of her, and yet it still bothered me, though it was quite clear we had just recently met—indeed, we obviously had no connection at all, so why did I feel as though I knew her? The questions rose up within me like puffs of smoke from a fire, and there was nothing I could do about it.

“Wait.”

Maybe this wasn’t a problem with her—maybe it was a problem with my own mind. Despite my tendency to worry about things, I found this hard to believe. She was just one freshman girl, and at a glance she was cute in an ordinary way, without health problems, the sort of petite girl who was loved by all, so why would I find her so disturbing?

By then Haruhi and the sole freshman to become a new brigade member should have made it back to the clubroom and finished changing. The door opened from the inside, and the girl leapt out, nearly dealing me a glancing body blow, but twirling aside like a butterfly on a spring wind.

“I’ll be going home for today, then! See you tomorrow!”

Her smile was like a summer flower in full bloom. Her ill-fitting uniform clearly hadn’t been made to measure, she had that strange hairpin, and yet she radiated health like one half of a binary star system—along with a youthful smile.

Koizumi was standing next to me, posing like a male model, but the girl didn’t even glance at him, instead looking dead at me for a moment, before giggling.

“Seeya!” she said like a robin who’d just remembered where it was going, and heading for the stairs, she disappeared.

We were speechless for a moment.

“She seems to like you,” said Koizumi, perhaps thinking his grinning tone was appropriate. He continued, quietly. “My, but she’s charming. Just as a freshman, but all the more so as a junior member of our club. She seems quite a cheerful girl. What do you make of her?”

I didn’t make anything of her. I hadn’t actually thought Haruhi would bring in a new member, so mostly I was just astonished. She’d obviously be aiming to fail everybody with that marathon race of hers, so I was busy being impressed with the girl’s determination at being able to break through that challenge, and doubting my own athletic ability.

“Although distance running isn’t particularly related to athletic ability. It’s understood to have more to do with heredity. But no matter. Let’s just leave it at that.”

Koizumi was being strangely easygoing. Did he know something I didn’t?

Koizumi just shrugged me off with a smile. Just then, there was a shout from inside the clubroom, which brought an end to my investigation.

“You can come in! I’m done changing!” Haruhi’s voice, in high spirits.

Haruhi sat in her usual spot at the brigade chief’s desk, sipping hot tea from her personal cup. Asahina was busily picking up and folding the gym clothes that had been scattered on the floor. She really did seem like the head maid of the Suzumiya family staff. And the family’s selfish daughter insisted on bringing her personal maid to school with her—was this not a reasonable way to describe the scene?

“Is this really a good idea, Haruhi?”

“Is what a good idea?”

“Bringing in a new member.”

“Yes, well,” said Haruhi, finishing her tea and placing it loudly on her desk. “To be honest, I wasn’t expecting any of them to make it. That’s why I made the final test a marathon. But for one of the freshmen to actually be able to keep up with me, that’s like an exclamation mark and a question mark right next to each other. Like this.” Haruhi air-scrawled an exclamation point and a question mark.

So she really hadn’t intended on letting anybody in. All of this business about an entrance exam had just been Haruhi playing around.

“But I was really surprised to find out that there was a freshman with enough stamina to keep up with me. That’s really not an everyday occurrence. It’s quite a phenomenon, really. If she joined the track club she could definitely be their strongest middle-long distance runner, and go all the way to nationals.”

If that were so, maybe we should tie a ribbon on her and give her to the track team, I pointed out.

“That’d be such a waste! Of course the track team would be happy; they haven’t won anything at any of their meets lately. The other clubs would do anything to get their hands on her, but I’m not just going to let her slip through my fingers. She knocked on the SOS Brigade’s door. What would it say for the health of our educational system if we just ignored her wishes like that? It’s not worthy of a democracy.”

Despite having no interest whatsoever in ideologies like “the health of our educational system,” Haruhi was happy to espouse them when it was convenient.

I could only assume that being the object of the other clubs’ envy was something she found highly pleasurable. But this wasn’t the era of the Three Kingdoms in China—there were no rival warlords vying for territory—so she didn’t have to go around assembling personnel like she was Cao Cao.

“And that’s not all.” Haruhi rummaged around in one of the drawers of the brigade chief’s desk, pulling out a sheet of copier paper she must have stowed in there earlier. “Take a look at this.”

I took it and looked, and saw that it was the written portion of the brigade entrance exam—more like a survey—that Haruhi had had the assembled applicants take.

“I incinerated everybody else’s, so hers is the only one left. It’s got the spirit of a new brigade member on it. I figured you had a right to see it too.”

I was certainly interested. This was crucial data left behind by the new member who’d managed to ace Haruhi’s capriciously created test. I looked over it immediately. Her neat pencil handwriting filled the spaces underneath the questions, which I’d seen before.

Here is what they said.

 

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

Resolve creates luck. I’m already in love with it.

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

Anything I’m allowed to do, I will try.

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

I’d want to talk to an alien the most. I’d most want to be friends with a time traveler. An esper seems like they’d be the most profitable. A slider seems like they would open up the most possibilities.

4. Why?

I wrote my reasoning as part of my previous answer. Sorry.

5. Explain any mysterious phenomena you have experienced. I haven’t experienced any. Sorry.

6. What’s your favorite pithy phrase? “Unprecedented and unbeatable”

7. If you could do anything, what would you do? Build a city on Mars and name it after myself. Like “Washington, D.C.” Heh.

8. Final question: Express your enthusiasm. If I absolutely had to, I’d purposely mess up my vision and wear glasses.

9. If you can bring along anything really interesting, you get extra credit. Please try to find something. Understood. I’ll bring something soon.

 

… I was pretty sure President Washington hadn’t built Washington, D.C., himself, or given it his name. And what did the “D.C.” stand for, anyway? I said.

“I don’t know, ‘Direct Control’? Something like that, anyway,” said Haruhi irresponsibly.

“…”

I wasn’t sure if she had been listening, but Nagato’s bangs only twitched slightly, and she did not offer a correction.

She probably thought correcting us would be a waste of information. Something about her silence said “just look it up yourself.”

“Mm,” I muttered, noncommittally.

Suddenly I realized that I hadn’t yet heard the name of this girl who’d gotten herself unofficially admitted to the brigade. I casually turned the test sheet over, and looked for her name. For some reason her class and seat number weren’t written, but—

Yasumi Watahashi

Her full name was written there in neat ink letters. But…

“How is that pronounced? Taimizu Wataribashi? No, that can’t be it… Yasumizu… maybe?”

“Yasumi Watahashi, she said,” said Haruhi in response to my question. As though it were nothing. As nonchalantly as though it were just a regular name.

“…”

Yet something about it tripped me up. I felt somehow like a tiny fish who’d been swept away in the current, then scooped up alone in a net. But who was it who’d been scooped up, really? Was it me, or this Watahashi girl?

“Huh…?”

Again with the déjà vu. I knew this name. My faint memory insisted it was so. Yes, I’d definitely heard it somewhere.

Watahashi. Watahashi. I didn’t remember the name, and I didn’t remember the letters, but the sound of it was familiar.

Watahashi—

“…!”

The rusty gears of my brain snapped suddenly into place. I had a vision of un-lubricated, seized clockwork springing into motion as the memory came back sharply, as though viewed through clear water.

“It’s me. M-E, me.” Atashi wa, watashi.

I’d answered the phone in the echo-prone bathroom, but what I’d heard was definitely a girl’s voice. A girl my sister said she didn’t know.

Atashi wa, watashi. It’s me.

She hadn’t been posing some kind of riddle. The girl on the phone had just been saying her name.

So—

“Atashi wa, watahashi.” It’s me, Watahashi.

I was only able to enjoy the feeling of a mystery solved for a brief moment before doubt anew swirled within me.

Yasumi Watahashi…

… What was she? Even if I was allowing for that call to have been a random prank, her trying out for the SOS Brigade and actually passing Haruhi’s absurd test such that she’d be a full brigade member tomorrow wasn’t something an ordinary freshman would do. There was no way.

And while her motivation was unknown, it was troublesome that she had enough chutzpah to call me up personally ahead of time. She was a complete and perfect question mark, and she’d waltzed right into the SOS Brigade.

What was her true nature? Did she work for the other secret organization, was she an agent of the Heavenly Canopy Dominion, or was she part of the anti-Asahina faction of time travelers?

And yet in spite of all that, while Asahina, Nagato, and Koizumi had all been surprised at the fact that Watahashi had remained, none of them were particularly concerned about her. If she’d been an esper, Koizumi should have said something—same for Nagato, if she were something like Kuyoh, and Asahina, if she were a time traveler. But they all merely looked a bit surprised, and Asahina even seemed happy. There was always the possibility that Asahina (as usual) simply didn’t know anything, but it would’ve been nice to find a letter from Asahina the Elder in my shoe locker.

What did this resolution mean? Was it just a coincidence? Did the only girl with enough physical stamina to match Haruhi just happen to be compatible with the unauthorized student organization known as the SOS Brigade—was that all there was to it?

I was not so naive as to think that this was simply happenstance.

I mean, what had that phone call been about?

My sister had brought the receiver to me in the bathroom, where I’d heard that short comment and been curtly hung up on. What did that mean?

“Ugh.”

I’d thought things were going to be peaceful for a while, but if I wanted to protect that peace, I was going to have to learn more about about the freshman Yasumi Watahashi.

Still, “Yasumi Watahashi,” huh?

Haruhi flipped the survey paper over, and read the writing in the “notes” section.

“ ‘Please call me “Yasumi,” if you would, and try to pronounce it using katakana,’ it says.”

The pronunciation would be the same in katakana or kanji, I pointed out.

“I can’t agree with that view, Kyon. Hiragana, katakana, and kanji all have their own meanings and intonations. They’re all different. I mean, just say my name in hiragana and see how it sounds.”

It might have felt a little softer. Haruhi () as opposed to Haruhi () or Haruhi (). But that aside—

Yasumi () instead of Yasumi (), eh?

I thought about it. After about thirty seconds of quiet contemplation, I came to the unambiguous conclusion that her name was nowhere in my recollection. Even taking into consideration the fact that she was in the academic class under mine, the snowy plain of my memory remained unsullied by the footsteps of her name. I was certain of it.

I did not know this girl.

And yet my brain stewed in the contradictory sense of unease I felt, that somewhere, somehow I had met her, or known of her.

Haruhi seemed completely unworried.

“I wonder what we should make the new recruit do? We hunted for mysterious phenomena last year, and it’s probably too soon to make her the lead in our next movie… I should’ve asked if she plays an instrument!”

Evidently the only things Haruhi was worried about were the morale activities she was going to put our promising new member through.

Was I the only one who felt something amiss in this strange disharmony? This strange unease, like a petite bomb had fallen to disrupt our peaceful days?

Yasumi Watahashi’s secret.

What was it? Was it something that merited investigation?

I looked to Koizumi.

But the SOS Brigade’s lieutenant brigade chief only sipped at the buckwheat tea Asahina had prepared, and didn’t so much as blink at the eye contact I so generously spared him.

Hmph.

… Well, fine. If he wasn’t going to worry about it, then I didn’t need to worry about it either. Isn’t that right, Koizumi?

β—9

The next day, Wednesday.

A day containing hardly anything, leaving me free to ruminate.

After being forcibly awakened by my sister, who came to roll around on the bed with Shamisen, my first conscious thought was only, Ah, now I have more time to spend agonizing over everything. I had too much to think about, and no idea how or with what to start.

Naturally, waking up this way wasn’t very pleasant, and as soon as I awoke I was plunged into melancholy. Sometimes you have occasion to remember just how pleasant being unconscious is. Sleep can be the perfect getaway. But it’s also a perfect way to procrastinate, and a perfect waste of time.

The fact that I watched my sister carrying Shamisen innocently around by the scruff of his neck and felt not indulgent happiness but frank envy probably pointed to a character flaw on my part as her older brother. I should’ve been just as innocent and childish a few years ago as she was now, but I had no memory of it at all. On the contrary, all I had were memories I wanted to forget. Despite that we shared the same DNA, my path and my sister’s were totally divergent. Was it because of our differing sexes, or birth years? Or was it because our blood types were different? I didn’t believe in either blood type personality analysis or horoscopes; such superstitions were absurd, but perhaps it was true that one’s personality could easily be shaped by the surrounding people, particularly friends.

I’d grown up as a cynic; my sister was straightforward and honest, and there’d been little change in this pattern for several years. As her older brother, I couldn’t help hoping that she wouldn’t turn totally rebellious upon the change of environment that would come with middle school and its pressures. I wanted her to be able to stay carefree, like Tsuruya had. Maybe just sending her to the Tsuruya household to stay as an adopted daughter would be a good idea. Tsuruya would certainly enjoy educating a little girl, and would probably snicker all the while as she accomplished the task of mingling their assembled interests. Although the notion of a Tsuruya number 2 appearing did give me pause.

Incidentally, Tsuruya was the most trustworthy normal person I knew. Sometimes I wondered if she would end up being the one who took decisive action to solve the SOS Brigade’s problems, especially the ones related to Haruhi and Asahina. One way or another, she just didn’t seem like a completely unconcerned party. Isn’t that right, Tsuruya?

There was, after all, the out-of-place artifact she’d been entrusted with—that object and message we’d excavated from the mountain, left behind by the Tsuruya ancestor ages ago. I was sure we’d need it eventually. There was no way it was just some cultural relic. It was another trump card in my hand. Whether it was an item that could be used against time travelers somehow, or a weapon capable of finishing off an alien, while its purpose was unknown I was certain the day would come when I would need it. Although of course I was also prepared for the possibility that it was a useless piece of scrap from the Genroku era.

But you could never have too many jokers. Even if they were like red fives, ura dora, or open riichi in mah-jongg.

Like always, the routine work of having to climb the hill to school was no more than a bullet point on the day’s outline.

My gait was at about its usual pace, although I sped up a little bit to avoid that heartless gate closing on me just as I approached it. As usual, the reason I couldn’t give myself a little leeway in going to school was because the time I left my house was basically fixed, and if I think back, the truth is because there hadn’t been much change in the time I awoke between last year and this one. Having managed to get to school on time once, I would assume I could wake up at the same time the next day and do the same thing—this was the result of accumulated human experience. Students who made it a point to get to school early despite no need to do so must’ve just had an unhealthy fetish for our dingy campus buildings.

On this day in particular, as I gasped my way up the hill during the depressing commute to school that I’d nonetheless been making for over a year, an unexpected voice called out to me from behind.

“Kyon!”

It was Kunikida. He must’ve hurried to catch me, because his breath was ragged, and he was looking bewildered in a way I’d never seen.

“You’re every bit the person I’ve always known. You haven’t changed a bit,” he said suddenly, going completely off the script of morning greetings.

What was this? And moreover, why did he feel the need to inform me of his feelings about me at this exact moment?

Kunikida came alongside me, and I slowed my stride a bit. Once his breathing became calmer, he continued, ignoring my confused expression.

“Sasaki’s the same. She’s just like she was in middle school. My impression of her hasn’t changed at all.”

What of it? Why was Sasaki’s name coming out of his mouth, with this particular timing? I asked.

“I’m saying, you, me, and Sasaki have all become high school students. But when I first met Kuyoh, she felt different somehow. I feel bad for Taniguchi, saying this, but I got the sense that I didn’t want to get too close to her. I still feel that way.”

You couldn’t exactly call that perceptive. I can’t imagine any reasonable person who wouldn’t look at Kuyoh and feel something suspicious. Kunikida’s impression was completely normal and understandable.

“She’s just not a normal, regular, average human. I can’t tell if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. But I definitely wouldn’t go out with her. I guess Taniguchi would. Oh, also—” Kunikida lowered his voice and brought his head closer to mine. “I feel bad saying it, but I get the same feeling about Asahina and Nagato. I think it might be my imagination, but there’s something different about them. But since Tsuruya hangs out with you guys pretty regularly, I figure there’s nothing to worry about. Sorry, Kyon—don’t worry about it, okay? I just wanted to say something. If the SOS Brigade ever needs my assistance, I want you to let me know.”

We talked about trivialities after that, until reaching our classroom and concluding our conversation. It was as though having gotten it off his chest, he was no longer worried about anything at all, so we chattered about our worries about the upcoming midterms, complained about the two-thousand-meter run in gym class, and other such magnificently normal topics of small talk.

Did he just want to provide me with a little bit of advice? I couldn’t help noting that while it was a little vague, his mention of Tsuruya was quite insightful.

So it seemed that I had a friend that was a little worried about us, despite the fact that he didn’t know much. Although he was about the only classmate of mine who knew about Sasaki. It wouldn’t be surprising if he’d sensed something of the strange relationship that existed between me and her. I supposed I was happy to have a friend who was so perceptive on my behalf. He’d helped me out before tests, and we’d known each other since middle school, and it was quite possible that soon he’d be elevated above “random classmate A” status in Haruhi’s mind. I hoped Taniguchi, on the other hand, would be left out. He was more suited to remaining an eternal one-man comedy act.

I was sure Kunikida felt the same way, which was probably why he’d chosen the time he did, when it was just the two of us, to approach me.

Somehow my instincts seemed to be getting sharper than those of the normal people around me. Whose doing was this?

Morning and afternoon classes passed without incident, and I dozed my way through about half of my classes before I realized the chime signaling the end of school was ringing.

After school, as she’d said she would, Haruhi went straight to Nagato’s place to take care of her, taking Asahina with her, leaving Koizumi and me alone in the clubroom. Without the three regular female members, the clubroom was a desolate place indeed. And of course not a single freshman member had appeared. I didn’t particularly mind that—honestly, I was grateful. If anybody did come with things as they were, it would be as if they’d shown up for a part-time job interview while the manager was on vacation.

“Hm?”

Suddenly I realized something. The simple fact was that without Haruhi there was no SOS Brigade. Nothing would be accomplished without her presence; we couldn’t even do an informational presentation. It was like a passenger train without an engine; it had no locomotive ability, and could only sit motionless on the tracks.

As I sat there, glumly silent, Koizumi spoke up.

“What shall we do? We’ve played all the board games out, so shall we get some exercise?” he said. The artificiality of his suggestion was totally obvious.

“Sure, why not.” I figured some physical activity would help my mood.

Koizumi got a cardboard box down from up on the shelf, and showed me its contents.

Inside was the dented aluminum bat and battered baseball glove that had previously shown up when we’d played in the city baseball tournament. Haruhi had swiped them from the school’s baseball team and never bothered to give them back, obstinately keeping them here. She really was a hamster that just hoarded things in her nest. I hoped she wasn’t planning on entering another baseball tournament this year. Entering was one thing, but using a magical bat that hit only home runs two years in a row would certainly be frowned on—and for my part, I didn’t want to stand on the pitcher’s mound a second time. Give me backyard soccer any day.

I peered in the cardboard box, but found no baseballs of any kind. Instead was a tennis ball that Haruhi had picked up somewhere. If we were playing in a courtyard, that’d definitely be safer.

Thus Koizumi and I took the worn-out glove and shaggy fluorescent yellow tennis ball, and left the room, which seemed unlikely to host a visitor any time soon.

The courtyard was completely free of occupants. Those students who went home after school had done so, and the art and culture clubs were in their various rooms conducting their various activities. The only thing I could hear was the clumsy trumpeting of the brass band club, almost drowning out the faint sounds of shouting that came from the athletic clubs on the field.

None of the students who came to the courtyard to eat their lunches were around, so the only things stopping us from playing catch were the cherry trees that were planted here and there. Hardly any petals remained; green was spreading such that I was sure the basket worms would be overjoyed.

“I’ll start, then,” said Koizumi pleasantly, then lobbed the ball to me.

There was hardly any sound as the ball landed in my glove. It was obvious he was taking it easy. I grabbed the tennis ball and chucked it back to him, sidearm.

“Nice throw,” said Koizumi, giving his standard hollow compliment. He tossed it back to me like an infielder catching a grounder and throwing it to first for an easy out.

After Koizumi and I had killed some time silently tossing the ball back and forth for a while, I couldn’t help remembering the words Tachibana had said—words that I thought I’d forgotten, indeed, had wanted to forget.

—I can’t help but respect him.

There weren’t many people who revered the ceremonial lieutenant brigade chief of the SOS Brigade. Especially leaving out his popularity among the girls in his class owing to his looks and affability.

“Koizumi.”

“Yes?”

“Uh…” I stumbled over my words, and hated myself for it. Koizumi himself was the leader of an organization of espers, and Mori, Arakawa, and the Tamaru brothers were all his subordinates? I wasn’t so naive as to just buy that. “Never mind.”

Koizumi didn’t show a hint of suspicion at my sudden silence, and instead replied as though he was already aware of what I was going to say. “Can I ask you a question, then?” he asked back at me. “Have you ever heard the term ‘Gnosticism’?”

“Never. I don’t know a thing about politics. I don’t even understand the difference between communism and socialism.”

“It’s something I think you should understand. For your future reference, let’s say,” said Koizumi with a rueful grin, adding that he meant Gnosticism. “You can think of it as a philosophy, or perhaps a religion. It would be difficult for a polytheistic nation like ours to simply embrace it. Simply put, it’s considered heretical even among those who believe in a single omnipotent God. To find its origins you must go back quite a ways—while it’s thought of as heresy now, it was well established by the time Christianity was created.”

Unfortunately I tended to sleep through social studies, so I had no idea what he was talking about, I said.

“In that case, maybe I should give you a brief overview of Gnosticism. If you’ll allow me to summarize it, that is.”

I had no objections, so long as he could summarize it such that a grade school kid could understand it.

“Ancient people felt that the world was filled with wickedness. If the world had been created by an omnipotent, infallible creator, then that creator surely wouldn’t have made something so full of pointless suffering. Surely He would have created a more perfect utopia. But societal conflicts spread injustice far and wide, and the wicked rose to power and tormented the weak. Why would God create such a terrible place, and then leave it alone?”

He probably realized his game was on the path to the bad ending, so he got bored and left, I said.

“Quite possibly,” said Koizumi, tossing the ball straight up in the air, then catching it. “However, couldn’t we think about it this way? The world was not created by a benevolent creator, but rather by a malicious one.”

It amounted to the same thing, didn’t it? Whether or not the carpenter was malicious, if he followed bad building plans, the building was going to be flawed. Let the courts settle the question.

“And if God is malicious, it makes sense for Him to overlook evil acts, because He Himself is evil. But humanity is not entirely wicked. We also possess a sense of righteousness. The fact that we can recognize evil for what it is is proof that we can resist it with good. If the world were entirely evil without any good anywhere, we wouldn’t even be able to have the concept of goodness.”

Koizumi rotated the ball around in his fingertips.

“And so the ancients believed that the world was created by a false god, and believed that their ability to recognize that fact was the single ray of light that shone in from none other than the true God, who still existed somewhere. In other words, God doesn’t exist within the world, but watches over it from outside.”

Well, they’d have to think so. Otherwise what would the point be?

“Indeed. And because this tradition holds the creator of the world to be a demon, the adherents of other religions quite understandably tried to suppress it. Have you learned about the Albigensian Crusade in world history class yet?”

I wasn’t sure, but I said I’d ask Haruhi later.

“Incidentally, it’s reasonable to say that gnostic beliefs are broadly in accord with modern thinking. That said, human psychology has not changed appreciably since ancient times. What we can conceive of now, earlier people could as well. No matter how much our technology and precision of observation improve, the biological limits on our intelligence will not change dramatically. We’ve reached a dead end in our evolution, and not just recently either. It’s been a condition throughout human history.”

I felt as if he was making some logical leaps, but I wasn’t particularly adept at academic witticisms, so I stayed strategically silent. Making dumb remarks that prolonged the conversation was against my principles.

“So, now, to put our current situation in context—”

So all this lengthy explanation was just a preamble? How very like Koizumi.

“Tachibana’s faction regards Suzumiya as a false god. She may well be the creator of this world. But she lack self-awareness, and they feel that lack of awareness proves their thesis, that she is not the true God. In which case, there must be a true God somewhere in which they can put their confidence. And they’ve found her. Although it’s also possible that they only think they’ve found her.”

And that was Sasaki. My strange middle school classmate and self-proclaimed “good friend.”

“There is also the matter of closed space,” said Koizumi as though making small talk. “Suzumiya’s closed space is filled with the will to destroy. For a creator, she’s not very interesting in creating. It’s not as though her space is going to attract any public enterprise,” he said, tossing out a bad joke before continuing. “On the other hand there’s Sasaki, whose closed spaces are, I’ve heard, very stable, almost like the steady-state theory of the universe. Apparently they’re eternally peaceful. It’s likely that more people would prefer such a world. There are no <Celestials>. Only quiet and tranquility.”

I thought back. I remembered the deserted street, suffused in light. For being totally unpopulated, it gave off a soft, gentle feeling. It was a place that gave you a glimpse of peacefulness. Stressed-out students trying to find a quiet place to study for exams would probably seek permission to visit there in droves.

“To go even further,” continued Koizumi, “if closed space like Sasaki’s kept being created, there would probably be fewer problems. That said, Suzumiya does possess a reasonable mind, and she doesn’t immediately explode just because she didn’t get her way; she’s capable of calming down. The situation is like a lit fuse. If it’s put out along the way, nothing will happen, but if we let things accumulate, the fire will reach the powder stores.”

So she’s the Balkan Peninsula in the twentieth century, then?

“Boom,” said Koizumi, spreading his arms. “This is how closed space is created; <Celestials> accelerate the process.”

Koizumi stroked his chin, as though he were a famous detective about to present the results of his trademark deduction.

“On the other hand, Sasaki constantly creates a fixed amount of closed space, and doesn’t allow them to run rampant. Maybe that’s their reasoning.”

So which was the right way? Irregular releases of pent-up pressure, or a steady dribble—which was better for the most people?

“As far as that goes, I don’t know,” said Koizumi, evading an answer while flicking the ball with his thumb. “Since I’m on Suzumiya’s side, my decision can hardly be said to be unbiased. Even if an objective decision is possible, I certainly can’t make it. I can only play out my part. I’m confident that I won’t overstep my own role. While she is technically my specialty, my vision when it comes to Suzumiya is rather clouded. I would rather leave the decision up to someone who knows both Suzumiya and Sasaki equally well.”

Whoever could he have meant.

“There’s one more thing I’d like to say,” said Koizumi, his words as pleasant as a spring skylark. “At this moment, the SOS Brigade enjoys the greatest unity it’s ever had. Whether it’s our alien, our time traveler from a future Earth, or a limited esper who sympathizes with Suzumiya, there are essentially no barriers between us. Our desires and goals are all the same. And at the center, there’s Suzumiya. And—”

Koizumi paused like some stage director had told him to. With an exaggerated gesture, he finished his statement.

“—there’s you.”

There was no point in trying to feign ignorance, so I pointlessly punched my mitt. C’mon, lemme have it.

“This is the problem facing everyone in the SOS Brigade. We’re all involved. Nagato and Kuyoh, Asahina and Fujiwara, my Agency and Tachibana’s faction. You and Sasaki. We’re all connected by a thread, all heading toward a single point at which, no matter how the action there resolves, there will be a conclusion. This may no longer be just your problem.”

“So what am I supposed to do? Crack jokes? Watch from the side? Try to record events as best I can for the sake of future historians?”

“You can do whatever you like.” Koizumi rotated the ball in his hand like a pitcher trying to decide between a two-seam and a four-seam fastball. “I expect you’ll know what to do when the time comes. You may not be able to help it, honestly. You need only act according to your own will. You probably don’t have to think about it. Humans are generally capable of taking the best available action, so long as their judgment hasn’t been affected. And so far your actions have all been right. I’m half convinced the next time will turn out the same way, and half looking forward to seeing it.”

He said all that, and seemed to be finished talking. Koizumi threw the ball again. It was a straight throw with a lot of heat on it. As I felt my glove close around it, I decided I didn’t have anything else to ask.

It was true—.

It wouldn’t be Koizumi, or Asahina, or Nagato. And it certainly wouldn’t be Haruhi.

The duty of finishing this had been passed to me. It had always been that way. Usually I’d mutter it off saying something like “Oh brother,” but now probably wasn’t the time to unseal that particular line.

I’d felt that way all along. I’d always known. Naturally I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, but I knew that I would do it. The image of a prone Nagato, along with Haruhi and Asahina’s worried faces, flickered in my brain. And here I was playing catch with Koizumi?

This was not what I was supposed to be doing. The SOS Brigade’s operations didn’t include anything this stupid. Not so far, and not starting now.

“Hmph.”

I raised my arms in a proper windup, and threw the ball at Koizumi’s glove with all my strength.

“Nice curveball,” he complimented me, though I’d been meaning to throw a fastball.

“Ah, whatever.” However reluctantly, I could admit that it was a result that was very like me. So long as the batter was confused, right?

Time for another pitch. Though I wasn’t sure exactly who the batter was.

I threw my best breaking ball.

The ball hit Koizumi’s glove with a pleasantly dry thwack.

“If I could transform into Superman, or someone else out of American superhero comics…” I knew it was an impossible absurdity, and yet I still said it out loud. “If I just had the power to set the whole world straight in one go—if that happened, I wouldn’t be a good guy. I’d just beat up everybody I didn’t like.”

Koizumi was about to toss the ball back to me, but froze his motion, and looked at me like a biologist in the deep jungle who’s discovered a rare organism of some kind. He chuckled with that faint smile of his. “That’s not impossible. All that needs to happen is for Suzumiya to wish for it. If she believed you had powers you were keeping hidden, and were constantly battling your enemies in secret—if you could get her to truly believe in that setting, then you really could become a superhero. I won’t withhold my assistance, but… do you really prefer that kind of battle? To defeat the alien with a punch, to scatter the plans of the time traveler with a shout? I’ll say it again, but depending on Suzumiya, that’s not impossible.”

I didn’t even need time to think about it. That was not my role. Suddenly becoming a superhero and beating the crap out of my enemies? I mean, really—solving my problems with force?

What was this, some kind of kid’s show from who-knew-what era? Hadn’t this kind of thing died out like thirty years ago? For something like that to happen these days, it would be conclusive proof that human culture was mired in nostalgia, and wasn’t moving forward at all. I preferred to be connected to modern narratives, thank you very much.

After all, I was kind of a cynic, sorry to say. Old-school stereotypes like that were worth about as much to me as toilet paper.

I caught what was either a low lob or a slow curve from Koizumi, and gave thought to the manner of just what devilish spin I would put on this tennis ball to trick the batter, before remembering the saying that a bad idea was worse than no idea at all.

Having bored of playing catch, Koizumi and I returned to the clubroom. Unsurprisingly, no one was there. There was neither hide nor hair of anything resembling a new applicant, which I found a bit surprising. Out of so many new freshmen, you’d think at least one of them would have a gear loose upstairs, but maybe my thinking so was proof that my brain had been contaminated by Haruhi.

There was no news from Haruhi or Asahina, who were probably living it up over at Nagato’s place. No news was good news. Haruhi doubtless still thought Nagato was simply suffering from a cold, and planned to cure her with a combination of folk remedies and sheer will. Asahina was probably helping out quite a bit, despite her wariness of Nagato—no doubt her concern for a fallen comrade would take precedence over whatever ideology she held. Future Asahina aside, this Asahina was a good person through and through. Just so long as Nurse Asahina wasn’t actually wearing a nurse outfit…

Though we returned to the clubroom, we had about as much to do as a rookie starting pitcher who wound up getting pulled after the first inning.

So after we finished playing catch, we put the equipment away, made sure nobody had turned the PC on, locked the room up, and put the school behind us. It was a good opportunity to go home and meditate again to summon my resolve for the task to come.

I stopped my beloved bike at the front door, and opened the unlocked door, only to be met by the sight of my sister’s colorful shoes scattered about the entryway, along with a pair of black loafers with which I was unfamiliar. Given the size, they probably belonged to a girl. I went inside, thinking little of it other than assuming that Miyokichi was probably visiting again, and when I headed upstairs to my room and walked in, I nearly backflipped, so freaked-out was I by the sight that greeted me.

I no longer found the sight of my smiling sister trespassing in my room particularly surprising, but seeing her playmate gave me a shock like being smacked in the forehead by a giant dragonfly out on a countryside road.

The girl had Shamisen on her lap and was stroking him indulgently. She looked up and narrowed her eyes at me in a friendly smile.

“What a nice cat. I read it in an essay somewhere, but cat personalities are hit-or-miss completely irrespective of breed or lineage. Apparently it has more to do with the owner’s qualities. So far as I can tell, you really nailed it with Shamisen here. You’re not just lucky for owning a male calico. How do I put this: It’s like he’s got a certain cleverness about him, but also retained a certain wildness, such that it makes you wonder if he doesn’t understand humans better than even a human child would.”

“I get the feeling he doesn’t even think of himself as a cat. Sometimes he definitely acts superior to humans.”

“Kyon, you’ve got it backward. Cats think of humans as being like them—in other words, cats. They think of humans as just being slightly larger cats. That’s why they don’t show us any deference, since from their perspective, we’re less agile and we can’t even catch our own food. We’re just clumsy animals who are only good at sitting. That’s where they’re different from dogs. Dogs have had to fit themselves into human society for ages. And because humans and dogs are both creatures that have to live in groups, it’s easy for them to get along. Dogs probably think of themselves as being the same species as humans. That’s how they can be so loyal to their owner or leader.”

“Sasaki,” I said in a hoarse voice, forgetting to even put my bag down. I then finally faced my sister. “Where’s Mom?”

“She went to get groceries for dinner!” said my sister, totally oblivious.

“I see. Well, no matter. Anyway, get out.”

“Whaa?” She puffed her cheeks out. “I’ve been having fun with Sasaki! Kyon, you meanie!”

She did her best to tilt her head and look cute, but I was having none of it. “No way. I have important stuff to talk about with Sasaki. Also, were you the one who let her in? I thought you knew better than to let strangers into the house when you’re alone.”

“She’s not a stranger! Sasaki used to come over with you all the time. I mean, at least to the front door. I used to see you together on your bikes all the time. Right?”

My sister turned her pleading face to Sasaki for backup, and Sasaki nodded with a chagrined smile. “I’m happy you remember. Kids sure do grow up quickly, though. I barely recognized her. I guess it’s a little rude to say ‘kid.’ You’re a lovely girl.”

Really? From where I was standing, her appearance and personality had hardly changed since then, I said.

“That’s how siblings always are. You’ve always been together, so she’s just a part of your everyday scenery. You’re watching her maturation in real time, so you can’t see its precise result; it’s like an analog clock to you. On the other hand, I have a digital snapshot of her, so the change for me is really significant.”

I supposed that made sense, but Sasaki hadn’t come to my house to talk about my sister growing up, I pointed out.

“True enough. I’m not controlled by my emotions to the extent that I take such random actions.”

I picked the purring Shamisen up off of Sasaki’s lap, and passed him to my sister, whom I then pushed out of the room.

“Meow!”

I ignored Shamisen’s cry of protest. “Just go play downstairs. We have something just the two of us need to discuss. It wouldn’t even be interesting to you, and we’re not playing. Go put some of the catnip spray on the scratching post in the living room. And he’d be thrilled if you clean the litter box and brush his fur.”

“Whaa? But I want to talk with Sasaki too! I wanna know what you’re gonna say!” Holding Shamisen, my sister made a full-body protest, but I forced her out. For a while I could hear the grade schooler and the cat grumbling on the other side of the door, whining and meowing respectively, but eventually I heard them go downstairs, and finally calm returned to me from its place high above the clouds.

It’s also possible that Sasaki’s chuckling had something to do with returning me to my normal state.

“She’s very, very cute. You don’t have to talk with her much to know she’s your sister. You’re her closest relative, and she thinks of you as being almost magical. Just when she was thinking she wanted a cat, you happened to bring that calico home. She really respects you quite a bit.”

Funny, I never detected a bit of respect from her. Up until two or three years ago she was a helpless crybaby. How many times did I fantasize about shoving a gag in her mouth? But I knew from experience that there were people whose families didn’t include a little sister, and so the word calls to mind a certain image, so I suppose I could see how it would look that way from the outside. But none of that mattered.

Or so I thought, but Sasaki pressed her attack.

“By the way, this is totally unrelated, but why do you think cats prefer drinking used bathwater instead of fresh water?”

What was she talking about?

Sasaki chuckled. “Like I said, it’s totally unrelated.”

“And?” My bag was still hanging over my shoulder; I finally set it down on the bed, then sat myself down cross-legged in front of Sasaki, regarding my old classmate’s pleasantly smiling face. “So what is it you came to talk to me about? I very much hope it’s not ‘unrelated.’ ”

“All sorts of things.” Sasaki’s gaze was as pleasant as a cherry blossom tree in full bloom. “I was thinking you must be getting pretty close to your limit. Our last meeting had too many interruptions, in more than one sense of the word. For my part, I’ve been hoping to get to talk to you alone. I was so sure you would have some kind of plan that I stayed up all night waiting for your call. I actually thought it was a bit of a joke that there was no ringing at all.”

Surely it wasn’t that big of a deal. I was totally at a loss myself. How was I supposed to deal with that alien, for example? It wasn’t as if I could just look up the dispatcher for the galactic cops in the yellow pages.

Sasaki gave me a mischievous look as though she knew where all of my traps were hidden. “How cruel! Ah well, no matter. I’m used to you. I’ve no compunctions about engaging the spirit of forgiveness. So, moving on to the topic at hand.”

I was still a little vague on what the topic at hand was supposed to be, but I went ahead and nodded anyway. If she was going to tell me, the least I could do was hear Sasaki out. She’d gone to the trouble of making a house call, after all. Whatever she was going to say would be worth hearing.

“First, I’ll tell what I’ve learned about Kuyoh Suoh after much trial and error.”

That was definitely one of the things I wanted more information about. I’d turn my ear to her until it was at about the level of a dachshund, if I had to.

Sasaki picked off some fur Shamisen had left behind on her legs, and gazing at it, continued. “Ever since I was a kid, I’ve imagined what extraterrestrial life would look like, if it existed. In manga and novels, we’re often able to observe them optically, and being able to communicate with them is something of a prerequisite. For example, establishing if they understand things like prime numbers. Items like universal translation devices were also not uncommon.”

The number of space novels that began with such premises were too numerous to count. Thanks to Nagato’s influence, even I’d started reading tricky foreign SF novels. You can learn a lot from fiction, I said.

“Well, leaving that aside,” said Sasaki, twirling Shamisen’s fur about in her fingers, “Nagato’s Data Overmind and Kuyoh’s Heavenly Canopy Dominion are fundamentally different from the easily understood aliens humans have created in their stories.”

I wanted the old SF authors who wrote about humanoid aliens on Mars or Mercury to hear that sentence. It might have motivated them to write more interesting stories at the time.

“Good point. And that’s not just limited to SF either. If John Dickson Carr had lived in this era, he could’ve used modern technology to create even more amazing locked-room mysteries, which I would have been totally addicted to. I wonder if we could bring Carr back into the current era. Would you ask Asahina about that for me? I’m being serious.”

Unfortunately, even I had found traveling into the past to be traumatizing enough, and I’d never been to the future. Thanks to all that classified information stuff, I guessed taking someone ahead into the future was probably against the rules.

“That’s just a digression, though.”

The bit of calico fluff fell from Sasaki’s slender fingers.

Her clear gaze took in my face. It was the sign that the small talk was over.

“What I think is that Nagato and Kuyoh are unable to understand human reasoning and values. They’ve forced themselves down from a higher dimension of existence to be among humans, so even if they understand what we’re saying, they don’t understand why we’re saying it. Or maybe they don’t understand why we would need to say such things. If out of the five W’s and one H, you only understand ‘who’ and ‘where,’ and find the other four completely incomprehensible, do you think you’d be able to have a conversation with a being like that?”

I did not. I could barely understand what Nagato said, so when it came to Kuyoh it was hard to know even what role she played in this particular whodunit.

But Sasaki continued. “This issue of incomplete communication is not actually a very complicated problem. For example, can you understand the values of a water flea or a paramecium? Do you imagine having a conversation with the whooping cough bacteria, or a mycoplasma?”

I allowed as how that would be difficult, at my intelligence level.

“Even if single-celled organisms or bacteria had human-level intelligence, I’m sure they’d feel the same way. They’d wonder what those bipedal mammals were thinking when they did what they did. What do humans want out of life, they’d wonder. They’d probably be totally shocked after they asked what humans wanted to do with this planet, this universe.”

I wasn’t even sure myself what my purpose in life was, or what I wanted to do. And in that regard, I was pretty sure I was in the huge majority of humans.

“For example, Kyon—what’s the most precious thing in the world to you?”

How was I supposed to answer a question like that on the spot? I asked.

“I couldn’t do it either. In this society of complex, rapid information, no one ever quantifies their value systems.” There was no change in Sasaki’s tone or expression. “For example, for one person it might be money, for others it might be knowledge. For still others it would be relationships. Each person’s values are so different that it’s impossible to use only your own to try to judge everything in the world—as you and I are well aware. Which is why we can’t answer that question quickly.”

I supposed that was true.

“But I don’t think people in the past would’ve had to think so much about that question.”

I supposed that was true.

Right now, people could access almost any information they wanted to. But just a hundred years ago, or even a few dozen years ago, the information you could access was much more limited. If you went back to the Sengoku era or the Heian era, would they hesitate over what to choose in life more than people did today? Their choices were surely more limited.

Even if you say that freedom of choice has greatly increased, if you consider it to be instead an increase in the worry over what to choose, an increasing number of options would actually be a bad thing. When you have to choose without any information, people choose according to the majority. But that’s putting the cart before the horse. Far from diversification, that led to concentration and homogenization.

“Seems like the aliens have privileged the evolution of homogeneity,” said Sasaki calmly. “But they’re showing signs of having realized there’s another side, and my guess is that meeting Suzumiya and you was the trigger for that.”

Sure, Haruhi, definitely. I could see her getting a bunch of Martians to elect her president. But me? I didn’t have that kind of vitality.

“No, no, the truth is you’re quite impressive. You managed to pull off a tense negotiation with an extraterrestrial you could barely communicate with. That’s not something just anybody could imitate. No one would even think of it. It’s thanks to your experience, I’d say. I envy you, Kyon. From what I’ve heard, Nagato is a charming being. I really do want to talk with her about her favorite books someday. Kuyoh hardly ever talks in front of me.”

She was joking around, but I could tell that Sasaki was at least half-serious.

“So what should I do?” I asked.

“Well, let’s think about that. Fortunately, Fujiwara and Kyoko, and even Kuyoh, can all understand our language. This is our biggest weapon. Kyon, think about it; we just need to pin them with our words. I won’t claim it’ll be easy, but I’m sure you can do it. So can I. After all, thinking and explaining your thoughts to others are abilities every human is born with.”

I would love to know just what I could do with a high school–junior level of education and reasoning. Wasn’t this a problem better suited to a Nobel prize–winning physicist? I didn’t even know if Ganymede was bigger than Triton or not. The only person I knew who was assuredly less academically inclined than me was Taniguchi.

“If that’s the extent of your problems, then those aren’t problems at all. Because, you see, these matters revolve around Haruhi Suzumiya. Her consciousness is the basis of everything. All the factions have her actions and cognition as their fundamental underpinnings. And that’s the weakness we can use.”

Sasaki gave a smile that seemed as if she’d grown up ten years in an instant.

“On the other hand, I think adults would only get in our way. They’d want to analyze, break down, figure out a plan of attack… it would all be a waste of time. All of it. Listen, Kyon—this story belongs to you and me. And I think the plot should be about you and me doing something about it.”

I couldn’t help feeling sorry I’d gotten her mixed up in all of this, I said.

“There’s no need to apologize. I’ve never had so much fun. Honestly, I feel like I haven’t thanked you enough, so my plan is to listen to whatever requests you might make,” Sasaki said in a tone that I couldn’t tell whether it was joking or not. “Also, I think we have a good chance of winning. We’re one planet of a backwater star, but we’re the stage for this grand galactic-scale conflict, and so long as the aliens with their magic-like powers are here, they have no choice but to move on an Earth-scale level. I’m sure the Data Overmind and the Heavenly Canopy Dominion have either restrictions or unwritten agreements like that between them. Otherwise, there’d be no reason for them to battle covertly the way they are. The same is true of the time travelers. I don’t really understand them, but they seem to be operating under certain restrictions. And I’m thinking that’s our opening to returning the situation to normal.”

But if Sasaki was right and taking action was the right thing to do, how could we know that for sure? I asked.

Sasaki chuckled her distinctive chuckle, like a young girl who was quite sure that Santa would be coming down the chimney to leave her the present she wanted.

“We’ll be able to do something soon. I’m sure of it. You can’t possibly want the current situation. I doubt Suzumiya does either. And naturally neither do I. With everyone in agreement like this, I can’t imagine the situation will develop in the wrong direction.”

Seeing Sasaki in her school uniform and looking somehow very pleased gave me a strange feeling of déjà vu, and I realized it reminded me of Haruhi’s smile the day she’d formed the SOS Brigade. If Haruhi at the time was like a sunflower, Sasaki now was like a morning glory.

“So—”

So, what had she actually come here to tell me?

“I just wanted to have a face-to-face talk. That’s all. Just the two of us, nobody else. Telephone conversations and text messages are no good. The walls have ears, you know?”

In that moment I imagined my sister with her ear pressed up against the door, and something occurred to me. Was Sasaki really worried about eavesdropping? I was sure that wiretapping a phone was a trivial task for even a moderately sized organization. Certainly Koizumi. Mori and Arakawa… or Kyoko Tachibana’s and Fujiwara’s respective organizations. If she’d wanted to subtly convey that to me, that would explain this surprise visit.

“Another thing. Fujiwara wants to settle things quickly, is my feeling. Tachibana is easygoing and who knows what Kuyoh is up to, but our time traveler has been very clear about his willingness to pursue his goals. I get the feeling that if it doesn’t matter whether a thing is done sooner or later, he’d rather do it sooner. So I think it’s very likely he’ll take action as soon as tomorrow.”

If I could travel back in time to the Yamataikoku era, I’d want to go and find out how much of Chen Shou’s writing was accurate. Fujiwara, too, could afford to take his time and do some sightseeing, but he just had to speed things along. Or was he saying there was nothing of even archaeological value in this era?

“But you’d prefer that yourself, wouldn’t you?”

What I wanted was to resolve this vague situation and bring Nagato’s fever down, I said.

“This is a total guess on my part,” prefaced Sasaki, “but the problem that we’re facing may be just showing our reason for existence. It’s possible that everyone is working so hard just because they’re trying to make their raison d’etre into a reality. This isn’t a matter of being an alien, time traveler, or esper. Each of them must exist, and try to get another being to acknowledge their existence—and they’re all taking action with that single goal in mind. I mean, Kyon, have you acknowledged that Kuyoh, Tachibana, and Fujiwara all exist here and now? I mean just to the extent that you wouldn’t forget them, even if they all just disappeared. They were here, in this place, in this time. Perhaps their wish is but a single plaintive sentiment—‘Don’t forget us.’ ”

I didn’t get it. If that was it, they didn’t have to do it in this particular era, right in front of me. I mean, I didn’t doubt that I would remember their forms and actions until I died, but so what? I wasn’t the clerk responsible for keeping court records, nor the editor of a historical textbook. They should’ve just gone back to the time of Tacitus and Herodotus and caused trouble there. Or at least found some people with similar interests in this era.

As I thought Sasaki’s words over, my former middle school and cram school classmate started rubbing her cheeks with her fists for some reason, her eyes narrowing as she did so. What was this? Facial calisthenics? I asked.

“Nope,” said Sasaki, putting her hands down. “It’s just that when I talk with you I always wind up with my face stuck in a smile, so my facial muscles were getting tight. We’re talking about serious stuff, though, so I wanted to see if I could change my expression. What do you think?”

I looked with concentration fit to tell the difference between a seven-spotted ladybug and a twenty-eight-spotted one, but all I could say was that I didn’t see much change. She was sort of grinning, or smiling… come to think of it, I wasn’t sure I’d seen an expression other than some kind of smile on Sasaki’s face since middle school.

As I gazed at her face, something occurred to me.

“So what’s your reason for existing?”

She answered immediately, as though she’d predicted this question in advance. “Speaking as a single human, it’s to pass on my genes, of course. To have children and send the elements of your composition down into the future. This is the nature of all living things. Or at least of all living things on this earth.”

I wasn’t asking about her views on evolutionary theory. I mean from our perspective, even if we knew how we were going to pass our genes on, what then? And anyway, for the moment such questions were not exactly relevant to us.

“Good grief. Questions like why are we born, why do we live… these are no more than Zen riddles. You might think they contain some intellectual value, but in reality they’re meaningless. But given that, if I were to answer again, I would say that my first reason for existence is ‘to think,’ and my second is ‘to think some more.’ I’ll only stop thinking when I’m dead, and likewise, not thinking seems equal to death to me. The individual called ‘I’ would disappear, leaving only an animalistic being.”

Sasaki chuckled her low chuckle.

“I want to keep thinking. About the whole of the universe. Until I die.”

And what remained at the end of all that thinking? I wanted to know. Other than childbearing.

“That’s an excellent question, Kyon. An extremely human question. If you’re going to leave behind something that will endure in this world other than your genes, then there’s no need to be too concerned about twin helices made of amino acids. Since the beginning of history, we humans have left behind all kinds of things—from huge, possibly futile monuments to small but epoch-defining tools, technological innovations, nationally sponsored works of cultural art, or completely new theories that take us into the future…”

From Sasaki’s expression, I could tell that in her mind she was crossing through the eras of history as she considered the issue.

“All the great figures we’ve learned about in world history have left their mark by doing something worthy of the term ‘greatness.’ My mind and body can only be considered small and weak. But if I use my ability to think as the first step, I might well come up with some new idea that endures into the future. To be honest, that’s what I want—to create something, raise it up, and leave it to endure. Something besides my own DNA.”

That was a grandiose ambition, I said.

“I’m fine just leaving behind a word or an idea. If we’re talking about ambition, that’s my only one. But I want to do it on my own power. I don’t want any help from aliens, time travelers, or espers. My thoughts are mine and mine alone, and I don’t want any interference. My reason for existing, as I’ve defined it, is arriving at conclusions on my own. I want to create my own original ideas or words. So they’re an obstacle—Kuyoh and Fujiwara are. As for Tachibana… I feel like we could become good, close friends. She’s that group’s sole redeeming member.”

I was pretty sure I’d never heard Sasaki speak so passionately about something. Or so honestly. Okay, fine, I’d match her candor with some of my own.

“Sasaki. If you had power like Haruhi has, you could make all of this come true.”

“You think so, Kyon? I’m still a regular person, you know. I have all sorts of conflicting desires and emotions. Sometimes I just wish so-and-so would die. But if my wishing for it made that person actually die, I’d be deeply affected and would never forgive myself. I’d have to prohibit myself from ever thinking certain things, even a little bit. I could never be like Suzumiya. If she really does have godlike omnipotent power, then it’s a miracle she’s able to live a normal life in the world. I mean, her very being is essentially equivalent to a miracle.”

Sasaki curled her lips into their usual sardonic smirk, and looked straight at me.

“Of course, I was on the side of those who rejected the notion of a godlike being. Even if such a being existed, they were not in this world, much less unaware of their own powers. Think about it. Would you jump into a goldfish bowl of your own free will? Would you smash the glass at an aquarium or jump the fence into a zoo, to join the fish or the caged animals?”

I felt as if she was dodging the question. This was why I avoided having intense one-on-one conversations with smart people. It would’ve been nice to get some backup from Koizumi.

“What I mean is, a higher being would fall into a lower plane of existence. There’s no difference between gods and humans in that sense. That’s what I think.” Sasaki waved her hand exaggeratedly, and half-jokingly continued. “Suzumiya is supposed to be something like a god. And somehow, people think that’s true of me too. If she and I, both demigods, are directing affection to you, then it’s hardly the case that you can’t do anything. If something happens, you’ll be the one to do it. You’re the one who’s going to lower the curtain and raise it on the next scene. Wake up, Kyon! You are the fulcrum—you hold the master key in your hand.”

I was the key figure when Haruhi disappeared, but this time I wasn’t so confident.

“You will end up resolving this matter. That’s a little prophecy I can make in this moment.” Sasaki laughed, and it sounded like the cry of a dove in the morning. “I’ve put the whole of my trust in you, Kyon. You’re my dearest, dearest friend.”

No matter how much she massaged her face, all I could see in it was that soft smile.

“I know you can do it. In fact, I think you’re the only one who can. So you should. If it’s impossible for Suzumiya the god, Nagato the extraterrestrial, Koizumi the esper, then it falls to you, the representative of the normal. It’s your nature, and it’s also your great advantage. Kyon, you didn’t meet them and us for no reason. You have a role you’re meant to play. I’d bet the beloved stuffed cat I’ve kept since childhood on it.”

As though that were some kind of ending signal, Sasaki glanced around my room, then stood. “I should be going,” she said, smiling at me. And then almost as an afterthought, added, “No need to see me out. You’ve already improved my mood. Give my best to your lovely little sister and that magnificent cat. I hope to play with them more the next time I come by.”

There was a strange pause.

Standing, Sasaki fixed me in her gaze. Not knowing what to do, I didn’t react at all, and eventually Sasaki spoke, this time with a hesitation in her voice I’d not heard before. “Actually, Kyon, I had another reason I came today. It’s nothing particularly deep. It doesn’t have anything to do with Fujiwara, Tachibana, or Kuyoh. It’s just about my school life. I just thought I’d talk to you about it a little bit…”

I didn’t think I was a good enough student to give Sasaki any kind of advice about her own life—I wasn’t going to be able to figure out anything that had already stumped her. But maybe Sasaki agreed, because she continued.

“No, forget it. I’m glad I got to talk with you like this. I feel a lot better. I get it now. In the end, you have to solve your own problems. I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s my own weakness, I guess. I shouldn’t have talked about something that wouldn’t have been helped by talking about it, much less started to ask your advice. I presumed too much. My apologies.”

Saying you wanted somebody’s advice on something, then suddenly going back on it, was like handing someone a blank test sheet, then immediately snatching it back. Since I would have been unable to give any useful advice to whatever problem Sasaki had considered bringing to me, maybe I should have been grateful that my pride was spared.

“Still,” Sasaki said, quirking one corner of her mouth up in that distinctive smirk of hers, “I’m glad I could come see you and chat. I feel like my mind’s made up now.”

I saw her off as far as the front door, accompanied by my sister holding Shamisen. She had what looked like a sleeper hold on him, and Shamisen looked rather put out by the position.

“Come again!” called my sister, her face full of joy.

Sasaki smiled and waved to the two humans and one animal, then walked energetically off, not turning around.

From the front door I watched her go until she rounded the corner and was out of sight. She really didn’t look back once. I didn’t know what it was that she’d wanted to ask me about, but—.

It was a very clean, very Sasaki-like exit.

It wasn’t until evening, when I was in the bath, that I started to really wonder what it was she’d come to do.

I was staring at a plastic Takkong figure that bobbed in the bathwater; my sister had left it here. I’d been in the bath for a good while, so my circulation was good, but the answer simply wasn’t jumping out of the depths of my mind. In the end all I knew for sure was that the final matter that she’d brought up but refused to ask me about wasn’t the main issue, but her just shelving the question left a bad taste in my mouth.

Also, I had the feeling that there was a word during my conversation with Sasaki that I’d somehow skipped over and forgotten, but what had it been? It was as if I’d mistyped a computer command and erased that sector of the hard drive. Seemed like a hint that my mental storage was getting overloaded. Maybe it was time to buy a heat sink to cool things down if I wanted to be able to think properly. That said, taking a bath and getting my blood moving wasn’t going to chill anything, but it was my habit never to skip a bath or a tooth-brushing, and there wasn’t a thing wrong with that. I wasn’t some kind of neat freak, but I felt gross if I missed a day, and I know I’m not the only person in the world like that. Right?

Anyway, thanks to Sasaki coming by today I have to confess that I felt relieved. Having talked with her, I understood—she really was trustworthy. Her way of talking and thinking was a little eccentric, but she really was a normal high school girl, and hadn’t changed a bit from when I’d known her in middle school. If Sasaki hadn’t gone to that prep school, and instead come to North High, I wonder what would’ve happened? Maybe Koizumi and Tachibana would’ve transferred in at the same time, making my first year of high school even crazier. But there was no point in dwelling on what-ifs. I had other things to think about.

“Still—” I said to myself with a sigh. “All that said…”

My voice echoed off the walls of the bathroom. To be honest, it was pathetic that I couldn’t think of anything.

“At this rate, I might as well go to sleep and ask for some divine inspiration in my dreams.”

I murmured what amounted to wishful thinking, then climbed out of the bathtub. I slid the folding door open, whereupon Shamisen, who’d been waiting impatiently on the bathmat, bolted into the bathroom and began drinking from the sink basin, his tongue lapping noisily for a while. Eventually he looked up at me.

“Myar!”

He said, more or less. It was as if he was speaking cat-ese to point out the error of my thinking. Before I had the chance to interrogate him, his cat claws scratched against the floor as he hurried away and up the stairs. Not that it mattered—I knew he was heading for my bed.

Maybe I’d bring him along the next time I met Kuyoh. Maybe the whatever-they-were life-forms in his head could be of some use with her. It was a faint hope, but one never knew—

And yet.

“Better not.”

I’d abandoned the doctrine of depending on others for aid. I’d have to get this done on my own. I needed to think less about whether or not I could do something, and instead just give it a try. That’s what Sasaki had suggested, and anyway, putting my hopes in a life-form stupid enough to blunder into Earth and wind up stuck to a dog by accident would itself be pretty stupid. Why not prove that the natives of this solar system had the home-court advantage over any Andromeda Strain virus?

That’s right, it was time to prove to Kuyoh and Fujiwara that they couldn’t just walk all over modern-day humanity. I probably should’ve entrusted this task to someone whose position, name, and IQ all exceeded my own by several ranks, but I could hardly expect some random stranger to handle all the crazy things that happened around Haruhi Suzumiya. I didn’t think anybody would want that job, and honestly, I didn’t want to give it to them. This pop quiz had fallen to the SOS Brigade to solve, so we had to be the ones to do it.

And somehow I’d been assigned the central role in all of this, and was the one who would have to do the most running around. I was the only one who’d heard the sickened Nagato’s true wishes. Whether or not she herself was aware of it, Nagato was depending on me. If I couldn’t save the few members of a tiny organization like the SOS Brigade, then just what could I save? All I’d be good for was helping my sister with her homework and stopping my mom from shaving Shamisen’s fur. If I was stuck in the flow of events like this, I might as well try to swim upstream like a salmon heading home.

My ultimate goal was very simple: to get Nagato back to normal.

I felt energized.

My willpower spiraled into the heavens. If I could have directed that kind of energy to my studies, my mother would’ve wept with joy. But that had nothing to do with this—sorry, Mom. Anyway, there were no intelligent life-forms on or off the Earth that could stop my determination. That’s right—had the quality of a heroic protagonist begun to bloom within me? If I hadn’t just gotten out of the bath and been stark naked, I would’ve raised my right fist into the air in a display of how pointlessly energized I was.

There was no inaccuracy in saying that there was no one who could dampen my spirits. I was sure that Sasaki had come by to give me a smack on the head, given that even a glum snail being rained on in the height of the monsoon season would’ve laughed at me. In the process of talking about all that unrelated stuff, she guided the listener’s mind to a new place—she was actually quite the psychologist. It was a little scary.

“Might as well go for it. I’ve got an alien, time traveler, and esper to smack out of my line of sight.”

It went without saying that Asahina the Younger, Nagato, and also Koizumi weren’t part of this. And what about Mori and Kimidori…?

I felt like I was drunk on optimism, but as I talked a big game, in the corner of my mind there lurked my coolly sarcastic other self, cynically deriding me. If I’m honest, that other self was more like the real me. Even I can’t deny that superego, who always threw cold water on me at the most crucial moments.

And that other me said this:

Wasn’t there someone besides me who could take up the role of the transcendent hero?

It was none other than—had to be—her.

It had to be her.

Or something.