CHAPTER 7

α—10

The next day, Thursday.

The day with its routine of regular classes crawled along, until the end of homeroom freed Haruhi and me from Class 5’s room.

Evidently my personalized instruction with Haruhi was only meant to run until the previous day, which brought an end to the strange tutoring that the students on cleaning duty had been able to watch, and so we just left the classroom. And let me just say that our honorable brigade chief was dragging me by the arm, so this was more or less compulsory. I’d like that much to be clear. Although I’ll admit I was overjoyed not to be subjected to any further after-school academics.

And just as the route that we took side by side to the literature club room was the same as it always was, so too was the spring atmosphere of the school totally normal. By mid-April, we were entirely used to the season. Not for nothing was it that the faithful, unasked-for reappearance of the seasons controlled life on Earth, I suppose.

But one couldn’t resist the constant march of time. Since spring of the previous year, even the SOS Brigade had undergone changes that were impossible to ignore.

Waiting for us was someone who could act as a perfect Exhibit A for that should we need to present evidence at court.

She stood up from her folding chair as though having waited for the precise timing when Haruhi and I would open the door.

“Ready and waiting, ma’am!” shouted the sole freshman to pass Haruhi’s absurdly difficult entrance examinations, her voice high like a swallow chick greeting its mother upon the latter’s return to the nest. Her hair was a wild tangle, like a failed perm, and to it was affixed that same smiley-face barrette. Her eyes shone like Christmas lights as she looked to us expectantly. “As of today, I’m a member of the SOS Brigade! It’s very nice to meet you!”

She bowed deeply.

Yasumi Watahashi. Despite her slight lisp, she had such volume that I wondered if maybe she wouldn’t have been better off joining the choir, and her face shone like Venus just before the dawn. At the very least, I could conclude that she had energy levels to match Haruhi’s.

“Well… nice to meet you too, I guess.”

My halfhearted reply didn’t seem to bother Yasumi in the slightest. Her head popped up from her bow. “Yes! You guess right! I’m gonna give it my all!” Her honest, open gaze was like a particle cannon, and it felt as though if I kept looking directly at her energetic smile, it would overload my retinas, so I casually averted my eyes, looking elsewhere in the room for help.

The usual suspects were all there. Asahina had already changed into her maid outfit and was putting the kettle on the burner, and Koizumi was sitting at the table, setting out playing pieces on a game board that was neither shogi nor go. As for Nagato, she was at her usual spot, absorbed in the pages of some hardcover book, ignoring the rest of the universe.

Haruhi seemed pointlessly satisfied, and plopped herself down at the brigade chief’s seat. “Now, then!” she began, her voice full of grandiosity as though she were Pope Gregory VII meeting Emperor Henry IV at Canossa, “I’m sure you all know, but I’ll introduce her again. Having passed a series of fair and public examinations, this is our new member, Yasumi Watahashi. It’s our duty to thoroughly educate her in the lessons that we of the SOS Brigade have learned in the past year—sometimes harshly, sometimes indulgently, like giving cotton candy to a child. She needs to be drilled good and hard in order to become the cornerstone of the next generation of the SOS Brigade!”

“Drilled…?” Asahina looked to Yasumi, then surveyed her own jurisdiction, where the tea implements were, her face like Sen Rikyu wondering how to teach the true meaning of tea ceremony to a general from the provinces. This wasn’t the tea ceremony club, so it didn’t seem as though such careful tea preparation was called for, but compared with the perfunctory stuff Haruhi brewed, Asahina’s fine product was like sweet honeydew melon, so it was worth teaching the Mikuru Asahina school of tea to the new member in order to pass it on to the next generation.

In fact, maybe she could teach Haruhi too. Haruhi’s tea was mostly tasteless, being nothing more than hot leaf juice.

“Yes! Tea, tea, I’ll brew it, I’ll serve it! Please, Asahina, despite my limited ability I hope you’ll see fit to instruct me in your ways!” Yasumi seemed to acknowledge Asahina as her master on the spot, immediately advancing into her territory. Asahina seemed flustered for a moment, but seemed to take Yasumi at her word.

“Er, well, this is Suzumiya’s cup, and this is Kyon’s. Oh, and remember everybody has different temperatures they like. The tea leaves are up here on the shelf. I choose them based on the day’s temperature and humidity. What I’m researching right now is this tea here—”

Yasumi watched and nodded, her eyes shining as she followed Asahina’s every move like telephoto lenses, not missing a single second.

“Also, I want to wear a maid uniform! And a nurse one! Oh, please let me! Please, please!”

What was the source of Yasumi’s energy, that she seemed so like a 100,000-horsepower robot? Was it nuclear fusion, or solar power? Surely not photosynthesis. And the first thing we teach her is how to make tea? What was she, a new employee at a firm somewhere?

But speaking up would be pointless. To be perfectly honest, there was nothing else to learn in this brigade. I put my bag down on the floor and sat across from Koizumi.

“How about a game?” Koizumi was watching Yasumi with interest, but he suddenly turned away from her and pushed the game board toward me.

“What’s this?”

Strange, round pieces were on the board. They gave no hint as to how they were to be moved, with Chinese characters carved on them that said things like general, elephant, and cannon. That Koizumi—had he finally gotten tired of losing at Othello, go, and shogi, and brought in a game he thought he could win?

“It’s Chinese chess. It’s called xiàngqí. Once you understand the rules, anyone can play. It’s really not difficult. At the very least, games are shorter than in shogi.”

Those “rules” were the problem. Until I memorized them, wasn’t it obvious that I would be the one racking up the losses? Couldn’t we play with hanafuda cards instead? I asked. I had a decent amount of experience with oichokabu or koi koi thanks to playing with my mom’s family in the countryside.

“I didn’t consider card games. I’m sure I’ll bring some eventually. As for xiàngqí, once you understand that it’s a zero-sum game like go and shogi, that’s quite sufficient. I’m sure you’ll get the rules down in short order. If you can glance at a go board and immediately see who’s winning, then you’ll have no trouble at all. As a board game, it has no real elements of chance, so I think you’ll enjoy it quite a bit.” He flashed an easygoing smile. “Let’s play a practice game, shall we? It won’t count toward your win-loss tally. So, about this ‘soldier’ piece—it moves like so…”

He launched into a casual explanation. Didn’t he have any thoughts about Yasumi? She was a girl of such exceptional talent that she’d passed Haruhi’s gauntlet with comparatively little difficulty. She might well become the next brigade chief! Assuming Haruhi didn’t have some kind of blind spot, how about it, Koizumi? What do you think? I was assuming the two blue gems stuck in his face weren’t made of lapis lazuli.

Koizumi grinned as he lined the pieces up. It kind of freaked me out—it was the smile of the rank-and-file operative whose shadowy boss often called upon him, and you couldn’t tell how comfortable he was with that.

He made as though to start lining the pieces up on my side, leaning toward me. Koizumi whispered, “I am not worried. Far from it, I’m actually quite relieved. No matter what happens now, it won’t be bad for us. Given that, I would suggest you relax, hmm?”

I had no such confidence, thanks to my rebellious nature. Thus far, were there any examples of new characters appearing only to retreat without doing anything? And even if so, there was the suggestive appearance of that weird new group with Sasaki, Tachibana, Kuyoh, and the nameless time traveler. They didn’t seem to be doing anything at the moment, but that in and of itself was strange, and it raised the question of why they’d appeared in the first place. If it was a foreshadowing device, it was a damned clumsy one. All they’d done was show up and say “hi,” I said.

If I were reading a mystery novel with a setup like that, I wouldn’t just put it down, I’d throw it at the wall as soon as the detective started making deductions.

“That’s not very serene of you. Books should be read with a generous heart. Even the trashiest of stories can later become food for the mind. You know how the saying goes—the best teacher is a contrarian one.”

That was the first I’d heard of it.

“I’ll bet. I just now invented that saying, after all. But I don’t think it’s terribly incorrect.”

“… Hegel was a genius,” I muttered, at which Koizumi favored me with a smirk.

“Exactly. For people living their lives in society, he was the philosopher who left behind the best advice. Anybody can put his ideas into practice.”

I didn’t really think the Hegelian dialectic had anything to do with winning or losing this game of Chinese shogi.

I set out the pieces as instructed by Koizumi, and listened to the explanations of how each one moved. It was similar to shogi, but the details were quite a bit different. Still, I was getting bored with chess and Othello, so throwing a new board game into the mix wasn’t a bad idea.

As Koizumi and I were concentrating on the xiàngqí board, I stole glances at the other brigade members in the room.

Nagato was reading her book. Quietly. Whether or not it had occurred to her that adding a new brigade member might also give the literature club new clout, her demeanor in this room over the past year had been as unchanging as the permafrost in Iceland. The pages of the book in her lap were slightly brown, and I wondered if it were a rare volume she’d dug up out of a used-book store. Had she expanded her operations beyond the city library? As I imagined Nagato’s trotting footsteps on the way to some used-book store, I found myself calming down.

Just when my battle with Koizumi on the game board was heating up—

“Sorry to keep you waiting!” came Yasumi’s voice, as clear and high as a piccolo, and she popped into my field of view from the side holding a tea tray with cups on it. Behind her was Asahina the maid, who was unable to hide her nervous fussiness as she watched us carefully.

“This is rooibos tea! It’s caffeine-free, good for your digestion, and very healthy! Please, try some!”

I guess we didn’t have a spare maid uniform. Yasumi was still in her slightly overlarge uniform as she set the steaming cups down on the table in front of Koizumi and me.

The cups had “Kyon” and “Koizumi” written on them in Haruhi’s bold brushstroke handwriting. Given that the writing was magic marker on mass-produced cups, they had no sense of wabi or sabi about them, but given that I didn’t really care about the aesthetics of tea ceremony, it didn’t much matter to me.

I did my best not to meet Yasumi’s glittering eyes as I brought the red-brown liquid to my lips, and a few seconds later I looked to Koizumi, who was doing the same thing.

“… What a curious flavor.” Koizumi offered his opinion with a faint, wry smile; my opinion, incidentally, was identical. It was certainly not bad. Yet neither was it particularly tasty. Rather it was an odd sort of flavor. Which meant that I should’ve been more than happy to gulp down some green or barley tea instead, but to be honest I was too much of a coward to do so.

“It’s, um… well… I’ve never had tea quite like it. I can, uh, definitely tell that it’s good for me. It certainly feels healthy.”

“Wow!” cried Yasumi happily as she floated over to place the designated cup in front of Nagato.

“…”

Nagato gave the cup on which Haruhi decided to write “Yuki” a brief glance.

“…”

She returned her attention to her book as though having looked at dried seaweed that had yet to be rehydrated.

This was nothing unusual, so none of us took much notice of it, but when I looked to Yasumi to check her reaction, she seemed totally unconcerned, skipping back over to Asahina.

“Hey, wait.” It was the absolute ruler of this space who raised her voice. “Where’s my tea?” Haruhi’s irritated face looked out from behind the computer’s display. “Shouldn’t you serve the brigade chief first, in times like these? What’s the idea, serving me last? Mikuru, you’ve gotta keep educating her, okay?”

“Oh… I’m so sorry!” Asahina said frantically. Beside her, Yasumi giggled.

“Sorry! I forgot. I was probably just nervous. I’ll make you a special cup now, so please wait just a moment.”

She didn’t seem the least bit concerned with Haruhi’s crocodile eyes. Yasumi flitted around like some kind of winged fairy, efficiently bringing Haruhi a steaming-hot cup of tea. As usual, Haruhi gulped down the near-boiling drink in a single swig. Her eyes rolled and she panted like a dog for a moment before speaking.

“Make sure you remember next time! It’s a pretty important rule. Mikuru, you’re the teacher, so you’ve got to educate our new recruit properly.”

When had Asahina become responsible for Yasumi’s education?

“Anyway, I guess this tea is good enough for now.” Haruhi’s mood sure changed quickly. I doubted she’d even had time to taste the tea. “Yasumi Watahashi, was it? Hey, are you good with computers?”

“Only a little, but yes! Yup, definitely!”

“Really? Well, then…”

The monitor that sat on the the brigade chief’s desk had been procured from the computer club, and on it was currently displayed the SOS Brigade’s web page, in exactly the same state it had been in when I’d first made it. It had the same cheap layout and half-assed content it always had, with the only meaningful text being an e-mail address. In the world of the ever-advancing network, our home page could only be described as hopelessly out-of-date. It was the embodiment of the digital divide. Blog? What’s that?

Haruhi had always had designs on updating it, but the responsibility of doing so fell entirely to me, and I had no interest whatsoever in actually doing it, and had thus constantly come up with reasons to procrastinate. The truth was that putting the SOS Brigade’s name on the Net did not seem likely to have any particular benefits whatsoever, given what had happened the previous year with the computer club president. I was hoping Haruhi would just forget about the whole thing, but it seemed she hadn’t yet abandoned her desire for more page views and Internet fame. Of course, she didn’t know Nagato had doctored the logo she designed.

“I want to make our site more eye-catching. Think you can do it?” Haruhi pointed at the monitor, which had been left turned on. “Kyon made the SOS Brigade’s main site, but it’s totally bare-bones and we’ve never done anything with it. It’s not pretty to look at either. The world is full of sites that are stylishly designed and full of useful information, but ours just makes the Internet cry.”

Geez, sorry.

“So, Yasumi, can you just get on that computer and whip up something better for us? Oh, this is part of our training regimen for new members. If you think your trials were over with the entrance tests, you better think again! The road to full brigade membership is a harsh one!”

“Yes! I’ll do it, I’ll do it! Please, let me!” Yasumi answered immediately, whether or not she understood the import of Haruhi’s words. “I want to try. I’ll give it a shot. Just let me take a crack at it!” she said, and as the echo of her cries reverberated, I found myself surprised at her overtly positive reaction. And I couldn’t help asking—

“Hey, have you ever even made a website before?”

“I have not!” she said, smiling like my sister did upon receiving an animal-themed chess set. “But, but! I’m confident I can, because I really want to be useful to you all! So if it’s just one computer, I’ll train it up right!”

Computers were just boxes that did calculations; it didn’t matter how much you “trained it up,” they weren’t all-purpose tools that would do whatever you said, like a hunting dog or something.

But before I could stop her, Yasumi brushed the sitting Haruhi aside, pulled the keyboard out, grabbed the wireless mouse, and immediately started typing and clicking away like some veteran career woman at an office somewhere.

After surveying the contents of the hard drive, she spoke.

“There’s a pretty comprehensive set of tools here. But, if you have apps like these, I’d think you would’ve been able to make a flashier site. This one’s filled with useless tags—who made it? Wow, it’s pretty much text-only. Totally retro. The table layout is awful too… let’s see, view source. Oh man. What do these font tags even mean? Augh, you didn’t even use style sheets! Any slightly geeky middle school student could’ve done better than this.”

Haruhi had just then made it clear that I was the one who’d done the site. This Yasumi Watahashi certainly didn’t seem to mind being rude when offering opinions. I wasn’t going to forget her name.

“Okay, I’m gonna make some tweaks here!” she announced brightly, then began manipulating the computer. Yasumi was cheery enough to be humming a tune, and when I listened more closely, I realized it was the tune Haruhi had sung during last year’s school festival when she’d acted as a substitute vocalist. Obviously Yasumi would’ve been in middle school then, so she must have happened to wander by at that moment.

Even I couldn’t deny that Haruhi had really shone, then. Of course, having awakened to the idea of band-related activities, she then dragged the club into a bunch of superfluous, miscalculated effort, but still.

Haruhi stood behind Yasumi, a second cup of tea in her hand as she radiated a sense of satisfaction. She seemed every bit the midlevel manager pleased to finally have found a competent subordinate. The determination to assign all random tasks and irritating chores to Yasumi from now on practically wafted off of her like so many fungal spores.

While I indulged in the beautiful dream that I would be finally released from handling such tasks myself, this was Haruhi we were talking about—a more contrary, unreasonable, impetuous person you would never find. Winding up even lower than Yasumi was all I could expect. Getting passed by an underclassman in a single day made my tenuous reason for existence even more tenuous. Not that I was particularly worried about it.

As Koizumi’s and my xiàngqí face-off was reaching its climax, the cup Yasumi had brought over was just about empty. Naturally I won the game, but since it didn’t feel like much of a victory and it was a game I wasn’t used to yet, I was a bit tired.

“Another game?”

I ignored Koizumi’s attempt at getting revenge and stretched, when for no particular reason my eyes happened upon a cardboard box. It sat on the shelf, and contained the SOS Brigade’s war spoils thus far—I suppose you could call it our arsenal.

Sticking out of it was the aluminum baseball bat and gloves we’d used in our baseball game the previous year.

I felt a little awkward, given that this was the club’s first new member. I was a little wary of this Yasumi Watahashi—there was that strange phone call to consider—so maybe that explains why before I knew it, I spoke up.

“Hey, Koizumi. Wanna play some catch?” It was a bizarre suggestion, I admit.

“Oh?” Koizumi met my eyes for a second, then grinned hugely. “Certainly. Without activity, our bodies will deteriorate, and moderate exercise is good for both mental and physical acuity.”

Having thus decided, Koizumi moved quickly, and without needing to stretch he pulled the cardboard box down and took out two battered gloves and a tennis ball. Good old Koizumi—he’d read my mind.

The SOS Brigade had gotten along for a year with five members. As we’d moved up, this new freshman had slid in to become our first junior member, and while there didn’t seem to be a place to include her, I could do enough self-analysis to realize that maybe thanks to all the various occult and scientific happenings we’d endured as a five-person club, the idea of changing our pentagram to a hexagram inspired a strange sense of unease in me.

To put it simply, I felt—not thought, but felt—that Yasumi was a foreign body in our previously stable club. I just found it hard to imagine the duties that Yasumi would perform within the club, and that Haruhi would accept that.

The phone call I’d received from her in the bath also nagged at me. Even if I could chalk that up to her overeagerness to join the club, why would she call me? Although I supposed there wouldn’t have been any point in calling Nagato, Asahina, or Koizumi. Those three had special responsibilities behind the scenes. But still, there wasn’t any real reason to call me either. And at the time, Yasumi hadn’t even bothered to introduce herself properly before hanging up. Honestly, she was just as opaque as Haruhi was.

The point was, Yasumi was now in this room, which was why I wanted to escape. To that end, my excuse for leaving was a game of catch. That was one game that definitely wasn’t possible in the clubroom.

“So, anyway,” I said, addressing Haruhi as she watched over Yasumi’s computer work, along with Asahina, who’d started researching new tea, and Nagato, who was still absorbed in her book. “We’re going out for a bit. Koizumi and I can’t really teach her anything, so we’d just be in the way. We’ll leave the education of the new member to you.”

Koizumi was already carrying the two gloves, the pleasant smile on his face directed at no one in particular. “Indeed. Things will proceed more smoothly if we simply let the girls of the club act unhindered. We boys would only be in the way, so we’ll take our leave for the moment.”

The lieutenant brigade chief was second to none at backing people up.

Haruhi shot me a sharp glance. “Sure, why not? I want to teach Yasumi about the club duties Kyon’s had so far. Listen up, Yasumi, and I’ll tell you why this guy’s the only one in the club without an official rank. Honestly, he’s just useless. You should do the opposite of whatever he does. Our brigade practices absolute participation, so I’m sure you’ll leave Kyon in the dust.”

Oh yeah? Well, so long as she thought so, I was relieved. I hoped to graduate without achieving any of her bizarre ranks.

I gave Koizumi a look. Koizumi seemed to understand what I was trying to communicate with my eyes, and tossed me a glove. “In that case, we’ll take our leave. We’ll come back when we’re done.” He gave me a wink that was so broad I was surprised it didn’t come with a ting! sound, and patted me on the back. “It’ll be nice to have some guy time for once.”

Before leaving the room I looked back and saw that Nagato was continuing to practice the art of book absorption, while Asahina was pondering the art of tea—“I wonder if I should blend this with something else?” she was saying to herself. Haruhi stood behind Yasumi as Yasumi adroitly used the computer. She had a look on her face as if she understood what Yasumi was doing, but the truth was she didn’t.

With the addition of just a single new member, the mood in the room had changed quite a bit.

Having left the clubroom’s building, Koizumi and I made for the courtyard and started playing catch.

To anyone else, we wouldn’t have looked like anything more than two students killing time.

The courtyard between the clubroom building and the classroom building had a lawn, and was easily visible from the open window of the literature club’s room on the third floor. From where we were, it was easy to look up and see if anyone in the room was watching us.

“Having another girl in the club certainly brightens things up,” said Koizumi, lobbing the ball to me in an easy arc.

“What, you would’ve preferred a guy?”

Koizumi caught my slow overhand toss. “It’s all about balance. Don’t you think we’re at a bit of a disadvantage with only two boys, but four girls? Our right to speech was already bad enough.”

It was sad, but true. To be honest, our problem was that Haruhi’s speech was like a powerful subwoofer that drowned out everybody else.

“I don’t think that girl’s going to be easy to handle either.” Koizumi threw the ball with more force.

“Are you saying Yasumi’s got some kind of strange background?” I caught the yellow ball in my glove with a smack sound.

“No,” said Koizumi with a strange smile. “You can relax on that count. There’s no strange organization behind her. She’s totally innocent. Not attached to anything, not directed by anyone. She has her own will, nothing more or less. That’s why she’s so interesting.”

I grabbed the ball, staring at it as if it were a fresh-picked lemon.

“Quit being so roundabout, Koizumi. If you know something, spit it out. Why did Yasumi Watahashi worm her way into the SOS Brigade?”

“I don’t know her reason,” said Koizumi with his hands raised in surrender. “I know—or rather, can guess at—only one thing.” He easily caught the ball I’d thrown at him with a wind-up motion. “It’s because Suzumiya wished it so.”

That reason, again.

“It was inevitable that Yasumi Watahashi would be a member of the SOS Brigade. That’s because Suzumiya chose it, wished for it. She was accepted because of Suzumiya’s firm belief that she’s a necessary person. She probably manipulated reality without being conscious of it.”

Koizumi gave me a meaningful look, as though he was changing the subject.

“Why did you decide to come out and play catch? An invitation from you is a rare thing indeed.”

I didn’t know myself. Why had I gotten the feeling that I had to use these baseball implements? Maybe I didn’t want to leave them to sit there so long they developed self-awareness, I said.

“Is that so?” Koizumi seemed to immediately accept my explanation. “If the items in the clubroom gained awareness, it would certainly complete the transformation of the clubroom into an alternate reality. However, I can understand how you feel. I also wanted to play catch, for some reason. No—I felt compelled by a strange compulsion to do so.”

Koizumi intercepted my throw, then dropped the ball. He scooped it back up.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I don’t know. But the possibility exists that it was inevitable—perhaps we had to come out here and play catch. A predetermined event, as the time travelers would say.”

I didn’t get it. If that were the case, I should’ve gotten some kind of roundabout message from Asahina or Asahina the Elder. But I hadn’t. And anyway, what would this fake game of baseball have to do with the future? I asked.

“I would suggest putting that question to Asahina, but…” He looked up at the room on the third floor, and sighed softly. “I doubt she is aware of anything, and moreover we did this voluntarily. It’s more likely that we’re simply being suspicious. If we start doubting things like this, we’ll just play more and more into the time travelers’ hands. As a past-dweller, I don’t want to lose to the time travelers. This doesn’t have anything to do with being an esper or in the Agency. It’s just a matter of pride as an inhabitant of the present.”

That sounded awfully sincere, for Koizumi. He seemed to sense my skepticism.

“There’s nothing wrong with being looked down on. Our opponents have a greater organization than us, and with more power. But personally, I loathe the idea of resigning myself to such disdain. The stronger the opponent, the more one desires to rebel against them—wouldn’t you say that’s a classic pattern, no matter the era?”

He sounded like a hero from some weekly comic magazine. But if there were such a thing as instant training or hidden powers that would conveniently awaken such that Kuyoh and the others could be dealt with in one fell swoop, then there’d be no need for me to do anything.

“That particular role,” said Koizumi, throwing me a change-up, “is well suited to you. With Suzumiya backing you up, and you backing her up, there’s nothing in the universe the two of you couldn’t accomplish.”

He grinned, and continued.

“I’ve said it before, but you could start over as Adam and Eve. Or perhaps since we’re Japanese, Izanagi and Izanami. So long as you are fruitful and multiply, the world will come to be filled with people like you and Suzumiya. A pleasant scene, if surreal, don’t you think?”

That was well inside the range of a ridiculous joke. Well, in this absurd proposition, I had no intention of leaving any descendants. And if they were all of Haruhi’s descent, I doubted history would even get as far as Noah’s ark. If the captain had any sense at all, he’d have to be prepared to refuse to get on the boat.

Even for the sake of scholarship, I rejected that proposal—rejected it, I say! But go ahead and dig up the frozen soil of Mount Ararat. You might find a wooden spaceship.

“More’s the pity.” Koizumi held the ball in his hand and swung his arm about like a windmill. “And yet I’m relieved. I’d like to be able to see you all for a while longer. Nagato and Asahina, as well. As a human, the only species on Earth born with both imagination and intellectual curiosity, it’s my desire to see all this through to the end.”

Koizumi then changed the subject abruptly.

“So is your after-school study with Suzumiya progressing well?”

So he knew about that, eh? I managed to keep my cool. “Not bad, which is nice. Although it’s not so much me being taught as it is her enjoying teaching.”

“That’s good. I’m sure you and Suzumiya are both bound for college. If you could possibly manage to attend the same university, it would certainly make my life easier. Please put forth your best effort during the entrance examinations.”

Enough already. It was bad enough having my mom constantly worrying about my academic future. Fortunately I still had almost two years to go, so I didn’t have to panic and start carrying around practice quizzes with me all the time yet. I had more important things to do at the moment, I said.

“Oh? Such as?”

… For example a new video game I hadn’t gotten around to buying yet, or the games I’d heard were good that were starting to pile up.

Koizumi only smiled faintly. He was in the same year as me, so why did his easy, slightly exasperated smile rattle my nerves so much? Son of a—. Sometimes I wanted to be able to smile like that and mystify the people around me too.

“So then, what should I throw next? I’ve got a cutter, knuckleball, slider, and a few others I know.”

I asked for something I could catch. Unfortunately I had no experience as a catcher. Just call me the eternal second player.

Koizumi’s next throw was a fastball straight down the middle. It was probably some kind of declaration of intent. It had enough heat on it that I never would’ve imagined such a throw could come from his arm. If he was that good at baseball, he should’ve been standing on the mound as a reliever last year during the baseball tournament. If he had any other hidden talents, I hoped he’d reveal them soon.

I continued to play catch with Koizumi for a while, silently. I don’t have any special interest in baseball, so I was starting to get bored, when—

“Hmm?” said Koizumi, looking up, which prompted me to do likewise, following his gaze to its end.

It was a paper airplane.

The simple glider looked as if it had been hastily, perfunctorily folded as it banked around the courtyard. There was no wind to speak of, so it gently descended, tracing a path like a high-jumper making a bad landing, eventually falling at my feet. I looked and saw that it appeared to me made out of the same copier paper we had in the clubroom.

I picked it up.

On the wings was a single word hurriedly written in black marker. “OPEN!”

Quickly, before Koizumi could come over and see, I unfolded the glider into a simple piece of paper, and for a moment, I froze. In the same marker was scribbled a short message that despite its brevity was deeply shocking.

“I found the MIKURU folder!”

I looked reflexively up—at the clubroom window, naturally.

Depending on who was standing there, I was preparing myself for the impeachment proceedings that would surely follow, and my heart pounded, but—

There looking down from the open third-floor window was none other than the petite form of Yasumi Watahashi. After making sure I’d received her primitive airmail, she put her index finger to her lips, then disappeared from the window like an actress exiting stage left.

It seemed Yasumi’s IT skills were not to be underestimated. I’d let my guard down, having gotten used to Asahina, who was useless with computers, and Haruhi, who used such precision instruments in only the most haphazard of fashions. Nagato probably already knew, but her mouth was shut and locked with hands of iron, so that wasn’t a problem.

Still, I was impressed she’d found and opened the hidden, password-protected folder. It seemed I was going to need to tighten security. Maybe I’d talk to the computer club president.

“Is something the matter? Is something written on there—?” Koizumi turned his greedy gaze toward the former paper airplane in my hands.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s just Asahina’s and my little secret. Pointless information that will have no influence on your life, I guarantee it.”

Koizumi did not reply, only grinning and shrugging. I ignored his pointed look.

Then I looked back up to the clubroom. Drawn in from the side, the curtain fluttered in the breeze, which prevented me from seeing what was going on in the room.

I’d felt this way for a little while, but I couldn’t help expressing my opinion of Yasumi again.

“Weird girl,” I murmured.

A little while later we returned to the clubroom. In front of the computer, Haruhi seemed ecstatic.

“Kyon, look! Behold this beautiful, gorgeous page!”

I let Koizumi handle the baseball stuff, and went over to Haruhi, who was moving the mouse around like a kitten playing with a piece of string.

“Whoa,” I said, letting a sort of exclamation mark escape my lips at the sight that greeted me. “This is the SOS Brigade’s site?”

“Can’t you tell by looking? It’s written in huge letters!”

It was true that the logo was there, but nothing else remained of the perfunctory site I’d set up before. Everything from the background to the fonts to the index had been redone, and all the letters sparkled and danced, while the page colors themselves were totally gaudy. If the site I’d made before was an Adamski UFO, this one was more like a chandelier type. But wasn’t it going a little overboard, I wondered?

“This is is more eye-catching and attention-grabbing,” said Haruhi enthusiastically, as though she’d made it herself. “Plus, time on the Internet moves in dog years. If we don’t put these technologies to use, what’s the point? I had Yasumi use all the resources available. See, if you click here—”

Some obviously free music started playing. To be honest, it was irritating.

I regarded the site skeptically; it was a textbook example of what not to do.

“What do you have for content?”

“An e-mail form.”

That was all?

“That was all I could think of!” Haruhi said, her lip twisting. “We had a bunch of pictures of our club activities, but you stopped me from using them!”

Ah, right, the pictures of Asahina. Haruhi had a good memory.

“But I do have this.” Haruhi moved the mouse cursor, stopping on a section labeled “games.” She clicked on it, and the display changed. The background was now a starry sky, and it seemed to be the menu screen of some kind of video game. I read the title, which was written in a pointlessly heavy font.

“ ‘The Day of Sagittarius… 5’?”

“I got it from the computer club!”

She said it as if it was no big deal.

“I guess they made an improved, online version of the game we played before. Apparently now you can battle with anyone anywhere in the world. I don’t really get it, but it’s better for us to have it on our site, right? Obviously you can play for free.”

Who’d want to pay for this? Although if they’d gotten all the way to version five, it probably had its appeal for the people that cared about this kind of thing. That’s how much of an effect their loss to us had had. Well, they’d gotten what they deserved.

“By the way, I’ve asked the computer club to do some more game development for us. This one isn’t very SOS Brigade–like. I want something more, like, arcade-y!”

I wondered if she’d confused “asked” with “ordered.” I contemplated the computer club’s likely bewilderment at being told to create an SOS Brigade–like game, then realized something.

“Hey, where’d Yasumi go?”

She was nowhere to be seen in the room. The only people there were Nagato, who was still reading in the corner, Koizumi, who, having finished putting the gloves and ball away, had returned to his seat, and Asahina, who was serving tea. As she set out the cups, Asahina answered me.

“She went home, just a moment ago.”

“Huh?” She’d left early on her first real day as a club member?

“She said there was something she absolutely had to attend to, and apologized over and over again before running off.”

Asahina served me tea, a larger than usual smile blooming on her face. I asked her why she was so happy.

“She’s just so cute!” she replied, sounding totally charmed. “Her voice, her attitude, the way she does things, her expressions, the way she bows… it’s all just so cute I can’t take it!”

Asahina clutched the tea tray to herself and squirmed, looking rather cute herself. To think that such a charming older student could herself be so stricken—Yasumi Watahashi was a force to be reckoned with, indeed.

“I don’t really see it, but whatever,” said Haruhi, looking slightly exasperated with Asahina’s antics. “She’s like a baby chick, scampering all over the place. But she certainly seems to have hit the bull’s-eye with Mikuru. She seems to be interested in all sorts of things, so I guess she won’t get bored easily. It’s only the first day, but I think that’s enough time to get a sense of her capabilities.”

Asahina was still wiggling around in adoration. “She even glommed on to Nagato. She must be good at making friends!”

Seemingly coming back to her senses, or possibly having noticed the conspicuously silent Koizumi as he gazed at the table, she returned to the kettle and began filling the lieutenant brigade chief’s cup. I looked at Nagato, trying to imagine what technique Yasumi could’ve employed to foster instant trust.

Nagato seemed to have guessed my thoughts correctly; she slowly emerged from her sea of words.

“I lent her a book,” she murmured in a too-controlled voice. Then, evidently feeling that further detail was necessary, added, “She asked me to.”

This seemed to satisfy her. She looked back down.

“The book had a name like some kind of satellite, or maybe a Greek myth,” said Haruhi casually. I choked down my anxiousness like a piece of dry ice. But Nagato did not respond to Haruhi, so I had to maintain my poker face.

Thankfully, Haruhi seemed not to care much about the matter. She made no further references to Nagato’s library, instead clicking the browser closed and turning off the computer. It was a clear indication that the day’s club activities would soon be over.

“Having a new member join us bodes well for the new school year. The SOS Brigade must not neglect the education of the next generation. We have to show such spirit that even if the entire school were destroyed, the SOS Brigade would remain. And we are the very foundation of that spirit—or rather, we must become it!”

Still standing, I sipped my tea. “If you say so, I guess that’s how it’ll be.”

Yasumi’s face floated up in my mind as I delivered my halfhearted reply. I owed her a large debt of gratitude for keeping quiet about my special Asahina folder, but it still bothered me. I glanced at Nagato and saw that, as usual, she hadn’t looked up from the hardback she was reading. As she served tea to Koizumi, Asahina’s affect was the same as before. But there was just no way the new brigade member Haruhi had picked was a regular person. It might not be obvious, but there had to be something about her.

The phone call I’d gotten in the bath, the strange unease that had plagued me for the past few days—these things made everything feel fuzzy. Even if you chalked that up to the unresolved problem of Sasaki, Kuyoh, the nameless time traveler, and Kyoko Tachibana, then why was this feeling of tension in my chest directed so specifically at Yasumi? And why did it feel almost optimistic, of all things?

Yasumi wasn’t obviously an enemy or an ally. That would’ve been too easy. The feeling I got from her was nothing like the way I felt about Asahina and Nagato, or about Kuyoh and Kyoko Tachibana. If anything, she seemed more like—

I glanced at Haruhi, who hummed merrily away as she packed up to head home.

She wasn’t an alien, time traveler, or esper. The feeling I got from Yasumi Watahashi was like what I felt from Haruhi and Sasaki.

But I had no idea why.

The uncertainty was like the moment after having mistaken chikuwabu for chikuwa and having popped a piece in my mouth, and I held on to this bright unease all the way home, until I opened the door to my room and was stunned.

“Welcome home, Kyon!”

The fact that my sister beamed at me like a friendly cat while Shamisen glared at me like an irritated human as the two of them rolled around on my bed was not particularly surprising—it was pretty much normal, really.

What froze me in my tracks with my mouth hanging open was the fact that in addition to them, there was a face I’d seen not long before; the person sat opposite my sister, but immediately jumped to their feet like a pencil rocket.

“Hi, Kyon! Sorry to bother you at home!” she cried out in a clear, high voice, then bowed deeply. She had very good manners.

“Wha…”

I couldn’t begin to comprehend what was happening.

Yasumi Watahashi was in my room. There was no way I could convince myself that this was a hallucination. It was impossible.

She’d left the clubroom because of some kind of urgent business, so what was it, and why was she here?

No, wait. Let’s be rational. Given all the absurd events I’d been wrapped up in up to this point, I should have been used to this kind of thing, however unwillingly. Compared with Haruhi’s disappearance or the many time jumps I’d done, having a new brigade member waiting for me in my room was a perfectly ordinary occurrence. It was like a mystery novel where the culprit’s motives went unexplained until the end. All right. I was calm. I’d try to get an explanation from the people at hand.

Yasumi clasped her hands in front of her chest, looking at me with eyes aglitter. “I really wanted to come yesterday, but things took longer than I expected. I shouldn’t have hesitated.”

I did not understand what she was saying. Expected? Hesitated? What the hell? Whatever. I’d figure that stuff out later. I grabbed my smiling, carefree sister by the collar. “Did you bring her in?”

“But, ’cause—” She squirmed ticklishly. “She said she was your friend!”

There was such a thing as being too nice. It was one thing when they were people you recognized, but I was going to have to teach her not to just trust the word of complete strangers. It was my duty as her older brother.

But Yasumi came to her rescue before I could draft a proper lecture.

“When I met her at the front door I knew right away that she was your little sister. Heehee, she’s such a good girl! I wish I had a sister like her. I just want to pick her up and take a nap with her. Also, that kitty! What a wonderful calico. He seems super smart—I’m really impressed.” After rattling all this off at a quick tempo, Yasumi seemed slightly gloomy. “But I can’t have any pets. It’s too bad… still! I love playing with other people’s pets when I visit their homes!”

Feeling physically overwhelmed by her voice, I flinched slightly away. “I thought… I thought you said you had to leave early, that you had something to do. Don’t tell me…”

“Yes. I wanted to come over at least once—you know, to your place. Heh,” said Yasumi casually, without a trace of anything suspicious in her voice or manner. Her trademark barrette moved slightly as she bowed.

“Hey, hey.” My sister tugged at Yasumi’s sleeve. “So, um, I was just saying, I really want that barrette. You can’t buy ’em anymore, right? Can I have it?”

“Sorry.” Yasumi bent down so she was at my sister’s level and looked straight into her big, round eyes. “This is a treasure I’ve had since I was little. So I can’t give it to you now. But I might come around to it eventually. We’re both little boats floating on the river of the world. So I might wind up floating back here, sometime. Or maybe even just this barrette. Eventually, someday.”

I got the feeling that the smiley-faced hair ornament didn’t just keep her wild hair in order, it served as proof of her identity—but such speculation was trivial. What was far more important was that as I was pondering such things, Yasumi had walked over to my bed, peered under it, and pulled Shamisen out from under it by his ear. “This cat is great! Super great, really.”

After offering said comment, she leapt over to my sister and hugged her, then resumed her still posture right in front of me, speaking her intentions in a clear tone.

“I’m going home.”

I see, was all I could manage in reply, which felt pathetic. I should’ve had better vocabulary installed, but frustratingly, I just couldn’t put what I wanted to say into words.

Yasumi looked up at me penetratingly, but then her expression suddenly turned almost nostalgic.

“I always dreamed that when I went to a new school, there’d be some interesting club, and some kind of coincidence would suck me into it, and I’d wind up joining. That I’d keep quiet and they’d approach me. Isn’t that how it is? The narrators of every good story always have something like that happen. And the club is full of fascinating older students, and I’d wind up getting close to one of them—that’s the kind of protagonist I wanted to be.”

I felt as if I had heard someone say something like this before. But before I could search my memory for the reference, Yasumi lowered her head quickly, then bent her body as if it was spring-loaded.

“Just kidding! Actually I just wanted to see your room. Sorry for intruding! But I’m totally satisfied now. I won’t come again.”

The smile that Yasumi directed at me made me understand why Asahina had found herself so helplessly charmed by the girl; it was like that of a baby animal looking up at its caretaker with total trust, enveloped in some kind of soft light. Surely no pet shop customer could ever walk away empty-handed after being gazed at in such a fashion.

“Now, may we meet again! Kyon, please don’t hate me!” No sooner had she spoken than Yasumi patted my both my sister’s and Shamisen’s head affectionately, then dashed away with all the energy of spring’s first storm. There wasn’t even enough time to tell her to wait up. Before I knew it, the brigade’s newest member had disappeared from my house.

My sister forcibly picked up the yawning Shamisen. “Who was she?”

No one wanted the answer to that question more than I did.

“Ah—” Suddenly I remembered something I’d forgotten to ask. I was positive that Yasumi was the one who’d called while I was in the middle of taking a bath.

But why me? She’d only given me her name. Had she already been confident that she would be the only one to pass Haruhi’s gauntlet of tests? It was as though she was precognitive, but according to Koizumi there was no reason to think that. Which meant she was just a regular student who just happened to come to North High, and just happened to get tangled up with the SOS Brigade—but that was just too many perfect coincidences.

—Nothing in this world is coincidence. Everything is predetermined. Humans merely refer to predetermined events that they don’t understand as “coincidence.”

Someone had told me this—or wait, maybe it had been in a novel someone had lent me.

I mulled it over vaguely as I took Shamisen away from my sister and brought his nose up to mine. As usual, he turned away, looking annoyed.

“What do you think of Yasumi?” I was well aware that it was no more than me talking to myself, but somehow it felt as if I was pouring out my soul to someone.

“Her name’s Yasumi? Is she friends with Haru-nyan and Tsuru-nyan?” asked my sister with eyes even rounder than the calico cat, whose face showed his patience was at an end, so I put the irritated Shamisen down. He ran out the room, and fortunately my sister chased after him, so I was finally left in peace.

No matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t put the pieces together. It felt as if I’d been told to solve the “four fours” puzzle up through infinity without using the log operator.

She was Yasumi Watahashi, a freshman at North High and the first new member to be admitted by Haruhi into the SOS Brigade.

But who was she?

β—10

Thursday.

I had so much to think about that I had no idea where to start.

If you were going to count up the number of things I could actually do, you would only get as far as the index finger on your right hand. In the end, all I could do was go to school like usual, and absentmindedly attend class, like usual.

Somehow, Haruhi seemed to be in the same state as I was. Even before classes started, her attention was elsewhere, her mind seemingly back in Nagato’s room.

“Hey, Kyon.” No sooner had first period ended and the short break begun than Haruhi poked me in the middle of my back with her mechanical pencil. “About Yuki—do you think maybe it would be good to force her to go to the hospital?”

Her expression was very serious, like that of a small dog who’d lived with a family for a long time but had just been denied a walk.

“It’s just a spring cold, right? That’s going too far for something like that.”

It hurt me to shut her down like that, but I was well aware that her condition wasn’t something that antibiotics or dietary adjustments were going to improve.

“But still. I’m just worried,” said Haruhi, clicking the end of her pencil. It was probably an unconscious tic. I gazed at the gradually extending lead at its tip and replied.

“Have you told Koizumi? If it comes down to it, you can probably forcibly get her admitted.” I took a deep breath and prepared myself for what I was about to say. “But Nagato herself said she was fine. Has she ever been wrong about anything in the past?”

“That’s… true, but still…” The clouds of doubt did not clear from Haruhi’s face; it was like a dawn so misty that Venus couldn’t be seen. “It really bothers me. It’s not just Yuki either, it’s like… I don’t know how to say it, but it’s like there’s something strange going on on a bigger scale, or something.”

Something like a mysterious space-borne illness spreading throughout the Earth, like something out of an old SF movie? I asked. I remembered there being a lot of movies like that on TV when I was a kid.

“Nothing so crazy as that. That kind of old-fashioned worldview doesn’t work in the modern world. Nowadays scenarios like Mars attacking or some biological weapon threatening humanity only make people think you’re so dissatisfied with your life that you’ve got a death wish and enjoy fantasizing about catastrophes. But people like that don’t even have the courage to commit suicide, so they just enjoy imagining all of humanity dying. They’re naive! Naive!”

Haruhi’s comment would surely have made the masters of science fiction grimace. She sniffed.

“I shouldn’t have bothered asking you. I knew you’d just make some tasteless joke; I must be going senile or something. Listen, Kyon: just forget it. No, I order you to forget it. My ideas are my own, and it was obviously a mistake to share them with anybody. I guess I have to acknowledge that much.”

I see. Well, I was fully aware that I lacked the ability to construct a creative fake story, so having that pointed out by Haruhi now didn’t exactly pain me. Calling someone an idiot when they already know they’re an idiot will only earn you a derisive laugh. And idiot described me in that moment.

After that conversation, Haruhi remained preoccupied, and she continued to space out until afternoon classes were over, her body seeming like a cast-off skin, her mind having flown off somewhere far away, as unresponsive as a Buddhist priest in meditation, until at the final chime she came suddenly awake, as though it were her alarm clock.

She hurriedly put her bag over her shoulder. “I’m going to Yuki’s with Mikuru. You don’t have to come. Just stay in the clubroom.”

I pointed out that without Nagato or Asahina in the room, there wasn’t any reason to be there.

Haruhi’s eyes angled slightly up at me. “New. Club. Members!”

Her mouth made her look just like an irritated waterfowl.

“They might come, so I need you to follow up with them. Plus, Koizumi aside, you’re totally useless when it comes to taking care of Yuki.” Haruhi seemed to hesitate for a moment, then seemed to decide to plunge ahead regardless. “My guess is you’d even make her worse. You’re like a god of pestilence, Kyon. Plus it’s cowardly for a guy to bust into a girl’s room, especially when she’s sick. So you and Koizumi don’t need to come. Just watch over the room. It’s your job as a brigade member.”

Thus I was given a direct order by the Brigade Chief to watch over the room. Was there anything else I could do?

I tried to think about it. The person I needed to face down next was Kuyoh. She and her boss were the cause of Nagato’s illness, and if we didn’t do something about the problem, the situation wasn’t going to change.

The other thing to keep in mind was Fujiwara. So far all I’d heard from him was obfuscating cynicism, but I couldn’t afford to doubt that the self-proclaimed time traveler and Kuyoh had some kind of connection, or possibly even an alliance. From what I could tell, they were just using Kyoko Tachibana. She couldn’t really go toe-to-toe with our Koizumi either. Kyoko Tachibana didn’t really have what it took to deal with aliens and time travelers. I’d gotten that sense ever since she’d run out of resolve at the end of Asahina’s kidnapping ordeal. I felt bad for her, but she was no match for Koizumi. She was a minor character at best. But our roles are assigned to us without concern for our feelings. Disrespect was forbidden, but let’s just say Kyoko Tachibana wasn’t overly impressed with whoever it was that handed out those roles.

“… so it’s gotta be Sasaki,” I murmured to myself, quietly.

“Did you say something?” Haruhi’s sharp ears caught my muttering.

I decided her apparent irritation was due to her worry over Nagato, so I lightly raised both hands. “Like you said, I’ll stay in the room today. If any freshmen show up, I’ll do what I can for them, so don’t worry about that. I figure it’ll probably be more inviting without you around, anyway.”

Haruhi sniffed. “Well, thanks. Call me if anything happens. I’ll call you too. If I feel like it. Bye!”

Then Haruhi, whose motto was “do everything swiftly,” nearly flew out of the room, like a piece of cat fur swept up by a broom.

She really was deeply worried about Nagato, in her own way. And so was I.

But the method and objective of our worry were very different. We were both doing our very best by Nagato—Haruhi in her way, and me in mine. Neither of us was right. The correct solution didn’t exist.

But both of us were trying to find some kind of answer. And at the moment, one of us was closer to the heart of the matter—and that was me.

I’d wanted to start running to Nagato a long time ago. But at the moment I left that duty to Haruhi. So what was it that I would do?

I would wait. It would come to me eventually. And not in the distant future either. Kuyoh’s attack, Asakura’s revival, Kimidori’s interruption…

These were all hints. For three aliens who didn’t understand the idea of time very well, it was impossible that they’d all appeared in the same moment by coincidence. It was an omen. A strange message that only I could understand.

Very soon, things would start to move. Even if they didn’t, I would. And then I’d make them move.

I was sure that Sasaki was thinking the same thing. These premonitions had moved on from being vague notions into being palpable feelings within me.

Nagato probably couldn’t do anything.

But I had Haruhi, and Sasaki.

While their nature was unknown and unconfirmed, there existed two people that all involved parties insisted were on a godlike level. So long as those two bastions of humanity existed, no alien terminal, no miscreant time traveler, no worthless esper could lay a hand on us. Of course, there was the possibility that any one of them had prepared a trap for us. And no matter how high that possibility, Haruhi would laugh it off as though it were nothing, while no matter how low, Sasaki would discuss the notion thoroughly.

My own sudden thought terrified me. The idea seeped into my chest like methane hydrate. Haruhi and Sasaki—if those two joined forces, they really could control the universe. But now, such a situation would never come to pass. Haruhi would never wish for that. And Sasaki would laugh and start lecturing. I could picture both girls’ expressions with perfect clarity.

“Welp—” Just as I hefted my minimally packed schoolbag over my shoulder and started to make for the clubroom, I caught sight of Taniguchi, the eternal slacker, getting ready to head straight home.

Though he wasn’t someone who was any use to me in my current predicament, I raised my voice and asked him the question that came to mind anyway.

“Hey, Taniguchi.”

“Yeah?” He turned around, looking put-upon. He was giving off a distinct sense of wanting-to-be-left-alone-ness, and I would’ve liked to do just that, but he was an important data point, though he himself didn’t know it—he didn’t know that he’d spent more time with a certain extraterrestrial humanoid interface than anyone else.

“I’ve got something I want to ask you about Kuyoh.”

The instant I said it, all expression disappeared from Taniguchi’s face, the life draining from him, a weary aura surrounding him so thoroughly that it seemed as if even the living dead would’ve had a little more vitality.

“Kyon, buddy. I just want you to forget about her, and I don’t want to remember her myself. Something was wrong with me back then. When I think back on it, it makes me want to die—but I don’t even remember very much, probably because my own memory can’t handle how stupid I was. So please, don’t bring her name up in front of me. Just consider that if I throw myself out of the classroom window tomorrow, it’ll be your fault.”

I had plenty of sympathy for Taniguchi, whose dark face was a mix of foolish heroism and wasted effort, and yet I couldn’t help pressing him. Sometimes you had to harden your heart for the sake of information. And anyway, Koizumi was in the dumps at the moment, but I didn’t have to consult the Akashic Records to be quite certain that before long he’d be back to his usual bad-influence self soon.

“What kinds of things did you do with Kuyoh after Christmas? You at least went on dates, right?”

“I guess.” I couldn’t meet Taniguchi’s gaze—it swam as he wandered through his memories. “I told you she was the one that approached me. It was just before Christmas. Like I said, she was really quiet and blank, and I never really understood what kind of girl she was, but man—she was hot.”

I thought back, and that sounded right, although her eerie aura was so off-putting that I hadn’t really noticed her looks.

“So then,” Taniguchi continued, “the old year turned into the new year, and we went all over the place. Mostly to places a healthy high school couple would go. Mostly it was me inviting her, but sometimes she would suggest places to go too.”

I wondered what sort of destinations an artificial extraterrestrial life-form would want to visit. In Nagato’s case, I’d accidentally discovered that she loved the library, but would a different alien have different tastes?

Taniguchi had no idea of the academic questions that occupied me. “You know, the usual spots. We went to movies, or out to eat. Suoh… well, she was a little weird. She always wanted to go to fast-food places. I’m pretty broke, so that suited me just fine, but I thought it was a little weird.”

There was about two months’ worth of time between Christmas and Valentine’s Day, so I asked what kind of conversation they’d filled the time with. I doubted Kuyoh would ever initiate conversation, though.

“That’s not true,” said Taniguchi, surprisingly. “She was quiet, sure, but sometimes she’d talk like someone had flipped a switch. I mean, like, she’d be the one to speak up and everything.”

Kuyoh volunteered conversation? I asked.

“Yeah. The truth is I don’t really remember it very well. She said something about wanting to have a cat. She insisted that cats were more advanced life-forms than humans, and went on for two hours about the ways cats were superior to humans. I damn near fell asleep halfway through. She just seemed to like the most annoying topics. I mean, what would you say if you were asked what you thought about human progress? And I mean on the scale of hundreds of millions of years.”

I tried imagining Kuyoh chatting away. It was impossible. Maybe it was the capriciousness of the Heavenly Canopy Dominion, or maybe her interior had been swapped out before I’d met her.

“But you just kept going out with her, in spite of all that?”

“You bet I did. That was the first time a girl had tried hitting on me. And… I mean… she was pretty hot…”

So that’s what it came down to. I guess there were both men and women who only cared about looks. I suppose there was room to forgive his airheadedness. Just as I was despairing over seeing just what youth valued most in romance—

“And then our relationship was over in a flash.” Taniguchi looked skyward, as plaintively as any tragic hero on the stage. “I rushed to meet her at the promised time, and she was waiting there to tell me ‘I was mistaken.’ I didn’t even have time to ask what the hell she meant. By the time I realized what had happened, she was gone. Just like that. She’s ignored every message from me, and there’s been precisely zero contact from her side. I agonized about it for a while, like an idiot. But I’ve been dumped. Even I know that much.”

And right before Valentine’s Day too. This last February. That whole winter incident, when Koizumi and I had dug holes all over that mountain, and there was all that fuss about (Michiru) Asahina, and my first encounter with Kyoko Tachibana and Fujiwara. To think that whole time, Taniguchi had been making conversation with Kuyoh.

But in listening to Taniguchi talk about her, I realized that Kuyoh Suoh was actually quite foolish.

If Kuyoh had made contact with me before Haruhi’s Christmas party, it was quite possible that the incident with Haruhi’s disappearance and all the crazy stuff around Nagato would’ve been much more of a pain to deal with. It was a lucky thing that Kuyoh had mistaken Taniguchi for me. I’d more or less used up all my resolve traveling four years into the past toward disaster. I would have to thank Taniguchi for keeping Kuyoh occupied for so long.

“So, you’re done talking?”

I’d sunk into a thoughtful silence, so Taniguchi slung his bag over his shoulder and positioned himself for an immediate retreat. “Yeah.”

I replied with a sunny expression. “Taniguchi.”

“What’s with the creepy face?”

“You might not realize it, but you’re actually a pretty amazing guy. I guarantee it.”

“Wha?” He might have been worried about my mental state. His voice had a note of pity in it. “Coming from you, that doesn’t really make me happy. Have you taken one too many roundhouse kicks from Haruhi or something? Or—did you finally do it, huh?”

Taniguchi turned his face aside in irritation, but his expression soon returned to normal, and he grinned like his good old bad-influence self.

“Anyway, same goes for you, pal. You’re serious business, Kyon. You lasted a whole year in that crazy club. I’m counting on you to keep babysitting Suzumiya until graduation. I mean, you’re the only one for her.”

Just as I was thinking that Taniguchi didn’t usually say stuff like that, he dashed out of the room, as though needing to get away before he looked embarrassed or awkward.

Assuming we progressed through school together, we’d probably be singing “Aogeba Totoshi” or some similar graduation song together. Hopefully by that time we’d each have settled on our post–high school plans.

I didn’t really think I wanted to go to the same college as him, though. It didn’t seem as though dragging your old acquaintances with you into higher education would do anything other than get in the way of making new friends. In a new environment, you had to have new relationships. I wasn’t sure whether it would be good in later life, but in any case it was what I thought. And it didn’t seem as though there was much to be gained from hanging around in the same group all the time.

But I wondered if Haruhi felt the same way.

Haruhi, our brigade leader, who was like unto a god.

Having finished a peaceful, yet odd conversation with Taniguchi, I proceeded as usual to the clubroom.

My motivation for doing so was low, knowing as I did that only Koizumi would be there to greet me, but the brigade chief’s orders could not be disobeyed. And on the off chance that a potential new member actually showed up, it would be a big deal. I obviously didn’t want any to come, since it seemed like a new brigade member would be an enormous hassle, but the day when Haruhi found out I’d let her prey escape would far surpass the term “hassle” and go right on into pure violence, which would pointlessly increase the number of wounds I took from the neck up.

There was something I’d heard from someone—your chances of winning the lottery were lower than your chances of being in a plane crash. And I was sure that the odds of a new applicant to the SOS Brigade appearing were even lower. This high school was neither a casino nor an airport.

Holding on to that certainty, I opened the door to the clubroom, and when I saw the form of the person who occupied it, I momentarily lost my footing.

“Huh?”

The interrogative utterance did not come from my mouth. Someone had spoken up before I could, and arrived at the room before I did.

A petite girl stood by the window and turned quickly to face me. She was a freshman I’d never seen before, wearing a baggy, ill-fitting uniform, and a smiley-face barrette clipped to her wavy, permed-looking hair. I could tell her class year from the color of her school slippers. Rather, for some reason I was absolutely sure that she was younger than me—somehow that impression wedged itself into my mind. It was an incredibly vivid sensation, even stronger than when I’d first met Asahina, though why I should feel that way upon encountering her for the first time, I had no idea.

“Huh?” was my idiotic reaction. Hopefully I’d be allowed such a three-letter vocalization, given that there was a girl I’d never seen before here in a room that normally contained only the usual suspects.

Just as I was thinking the silence was getting awkward, the girl reacted and broke it.

“Oh, it’s you!” she said with a cheerful smile. I had no clue why she seemed to recognize me.

But then the girl straightened herself and bowed politely, and when she looked back up, she stuck her tongue out cutely and beamed. “It looks like I got mixed up.”

Mixed up? Mixed up how? Mixed up the rooms for the club you want to join? If she was looking for the literature club, she wasn’t mixed up at all—she’d hit the bull’s-eye, I told her. Unfortunately, Nagato wasn’t here.

“No, that’s not what I mean. This is the SOS Brigade, right? That much is correct.” Before I could respond, she continued, rapid-fire. “I’d planned to come here, but I got off track. I guess this is my first time meeting this you, isn’t it? Heehee, that’s okay. This isn’t that big of a mistake. You can remember meeting me or forget me, either way’s fine. They amount to the same thing. Gosh, I really was careless! This whole thing is such a hassle. I hope you’ll forgive me—these things happen, you know? You’ll understand soon enough. I mean, there’s no way you won’t, after all! But if something weird tries to stop you, you have to promise not to freak out or be swayed by emotion, okay? You gotta promise me that much. It’s a deal, right? Good!”

It didn’t matter how “good” she said “it” was, I couldn’t do anything besides stand there, dumbstruck.

The possibility that she was actually a cross-dressing Koizumi seemed remote. It wasn’t Haruhi, nor Asahina, and certainly not Nagato. So what reason would any of the freshman girls have to be in the literature club room? On top of that, she was advancing on me with her incomprehensible assertions like Edward the Black Prince and his longbow army invading France, and all I could do was try to defend myself. And yet the strength of her advance reminded me of a certain someone—.

As I mulled it over, the girl with the baggy sleeves whirled around and flew toward the still-open door.

I would’ve liked the chance to tell her to wait up, but she was one step ahead of me.

“Well, then—” she said, turning and bowing a crisp, naval bow. “Until we meet again! Good-bye!”

Leaving behind only a pleasant smile, she breezed through the door. Strangely I don’t remember hearing any footsteps. It was as though the moment she entered the hall, she vanished like morning dew.

“…”

For how many seconds did I stand there, stunned? Or was it minutes?

When I finally came to my senses, I noticed there was a small, narrow-mouthed flower vase on the windowsill. There was a single flower placed in the ceramic piece, which hadn’t been there yesterday.

It was a pretty flower, of a kind I’d never seen before. There was no doubt that the mystery girl from a moment ago had brought it. Asahina wouldn’t have done it. I wanted to know what was up with the flower, but more importantly—who was that girl?

She’s acted awfully familiar to me, peppering me with rapid-fire chatter before suddenly retreating like the first storm of spring—all of which suggested she’d been confident that neither Haruhi, nor Asahina, nor Nagato would come to the room.

So did she have some kind of business with me? I seriously doubted she’d infiltrated the clubroom just to put that flower vase on the windowsill.

No, wait a minute—could she seriously have been a prospective new member? She did look like a freshman…

Even so, she was an affable girl, not at all shy. I wished I could’ve kept her here until Koizumi showed up.

“Wait…”

Maybe she’d disappeared so quickly because she was trying to avoid seeing Koizumi.

If so, she must’ve had business with me, specifically.

—Until we meet again! Good-bye!

But what business? Where and when might I meet that girl again?

“Beats me.”

I already had my hands full with Nagato and the Heavenly Canopy Dominion, Kuyoh and Sasaki, that good-for-nothing time traveler Fujiwara and Ryoko Asakura, and their anti–SOS Brigade association. I didn’t have time for another mysterious person to show up.

I wished for another self. I could leave trivial stuff to him while I dealt with the challenge that had been given me. Even considering that if things got really bad I could ask Koizumi for help, not even his Agency backup was going to help him when it came to aliens and time travelers. The same reasoning ruled out Tsuruya. Kuyoh was just too awful. The only ones who could oppose her now were Kimidori and Asakura, but they weren’t worth placing any trust in, since unlike Nagato they were from other factions within the Data Overmind. If we were to fail horribly, they might well either just quietly watch, or smirk and say “Told you so.” I can’t be the only one who would find that annoying, right?

Tossing my schoolbag lazily onto the table, I sat down in a folding chair.

On the table there was neatly arranged shogi-like game board along with its playing pieces, which Koizumi had presumably put there.

As I was gazing at the game, of whose rules I had not the faintest notion, twilight began to fall, and the “Silk Road” theme signaling the end of extracurricular activities rang out over the school PA system.

I was the only one who engaged in SOS Brigade activities that day. It was hard to believe even Koizumi had been absent. That didn’t bode well, but obviously a student’s true duty was to academics, and not some sketchy club. Koizumi was probably going to start seriously thinking about his academic future soon. Given that it was him, he’d probably keep following Haruhi around even after graduation. So where was Haruhi going to go for college?

But even before that happened, what was going to become of Asahina, who would graduate a year ahead of us? Would we get a younger student to replace our charming upperclassman maid, and would she also be a time traveler?

“This is no good. Thinking about the people getting left behind next year is nothing to laugh about.”

Forlorn, I shouldered my bag and quietly put the clubroom behind me.

Being alone there made it feel like a room in an abandoned countryside hospital somewhere, or something.

This was probably the first time since entering high school I’d felt so sentimental. It wasn’t like me. Maybe it was normal for a regular high school guy, but I’d gotten used to being an SOS Brigade member, which meant constant buzzing activity, like the cicadas whose cries rang out every summer.

“Crap,” I uttered, as a matter of course. It felt as though someone had taken over my soul, somehow.

That night I got a call from Sasaki.

“We’ll meet in front of the station again tomorrow. Fujiwara said to.”

So it had come to this, eh?

Sasaki’s voice was different; it sounded decisive. If it was obvious enough for even me to notice, she had to have been long-since aware of it.

This was a good time for the decisive battle to happen. No—honestly, it was overdue. I knew all too well that more long-winded talk at the café wouldn’t improve anything. Not even when our opponent was an alien or a time traveler. When I thought about it, I realized we’d been wasting our time. But now we could finally settle everything.

“By the way, Kyon,” said Sasaki, her tone full of concern for me. “Fujiwara’s serious this time. There’s not going to be a curtain call after this is over. He means to finish things. He tried to keep it from me again, as usual, but misdirection doesn’t work on me. I’m pretty good at seeing through people, if I do say so myself.”

She was. I’d never met anyone, man or woman, young or old, who could get the drop on Sasaki. Maybe Tsuruya, who so rapidly embodied her own sincerity. She had the swiftness to act before someone read her intentions.

“Still, Kyon, whether they’re going to try to eliminate me or use me is an unknown factor. At the moment, I’m an uncertain element. The one certain thing is you, Kyon. You and your decisions are the key to everything.” Sasaki’s trademark chuckle came over the phone. “But you don’t have to worry about it too much. I can be certain that neither you nor I can affect the world as it is. What will change is the future. This is probably a very important moment for Fujiwara and Asahina, but we here in the present don’t have anything to worry about.”

I didn’t know what Asahina the Elder’s intentions were. But I didn’t want to have to see this Asahina cry.

“I think the future can be anything, Kyon.” Sasaki spoke like a sparrow perched on a power line, talking about the weather. “From their perspective, we’re people from the past. But to us, they’re nothing more than people from a future adjacent to our present. So the most important thing for us is the fact that this world is the present. That’s our biggest advantage against them. You’ve got to remember that, Kyon. I’m sure you’ll figure something out. After all—”

Sasaki let slip a little chuckle.

“—You’re the sole ordinary person Suzumiya chose.”

I didn’t feel like anything close to the chosen one. Sasaki sounded full of confidence, but her words only baffled me. I wanted to ask what all this nonsense about “choosing” or “being chosen” meant. I wanted to scream it. I knew that Nagato, Koizumi, and Asahina all saw me as special, and I’d done my best to be ready. I’d prepared myself for the worst last Christmas Eve. Even now it had sunk into my mind like fresh-made tofu. But while it pained me to do so, I couldn’t help acknowledging that my current predicament was the result of Haruhi’s subconscious—and still, Sasaki, you had to choose me too?

Haruhi was entirely unaware of this, but Sasaki wasn’t. She was entirely aware that she was a godlike being. So if she understood, she should tell me, I said.

Tell me, why me?

“Heh. Heehee, Kyon. Your thickheadedness has always given me fits, but I’m shocked you’d take it this far.” She wasn’t mocking me; she was genuinely taken aback. “Let’s speak hypothetically. It could be anything, but let’s say you’ve bought a lottery ticket.”

I never had before, but sure.

“The winning lottery number is drawn at random, then presented. The odds that your number matches the winning one are significantly worse than one in many tens of thousands.”

Which meant you shouldn’t count on it bringing in all the money you need to buy your dreams, I said.

“Speaking probabilistically, no. Only the house makes money with gambling, and nearly all gamblers end up with a loss. But someone has to win. The odds of your purchased ticket matching the selected number are not zero. Do you understand? In this case, Suzumiya and I are the house, and you’re someone holding a ticket.”

Sasaki stopped talking for a moment, and I got the feeling that on the other end of the phone, she was taking a deep breath.

“And surprisingly, the numbers Suzumiya and I chose at random are the same, save for the last two digits. And your ticket matches too. Except you don’t yet know what the last two digits you’re holding are. No, indeed—they’re being hidden from you. You can’t see them yet.”

What the hell kind of lottery was this, anyway?

“The digits are always changing. For now. But don’t worry. I’m sure they’ll settle soon. But the only reason you’ll know what those digits are is because they’ll be fixed. And to fix them, you have to observe them. If you just leave it unaltered in the back of your desk, the redemption date will pass, and the ticket will be no more than an ordinary scrap of paper. And then it won’t even be a question of who you’ll choose. It will all have been for naught.”

Even I wasn’t that stupid, I said. There was a lot of money on the line, after all.

“That’s right, Kyon. That’s why. You’ve got to fix the last digits. Will they be mine, or Suzumiya’s? You’re the only one who can decide. Not Fujiwara or Kuyoh. This is something they can’t do. It’s not possible for anyone in this world, nor anyone from the future, nor any extraterrestrial life form. That’s why they’re so fixated on you. Everything depends on you.”

“…”

“Heehee. That’s a very annoyed silence I’m hearing. You’re so honest, Kyon.”

If she knew that much, why wouldn’t she switch places with me, and take on the task I’d been left?

“I don’t want it either. But I… huh, how to put it? Ah, yes—I trust you; that’s what I wanted to to say. The path you’re on is the correct one. And that, Kyon, is something you’ve long-since realized, isn’t it?”

Sasaki’s tone was pleasant, as though she was just making small talk, and it had the effect of calming me down. She wasn’t trying to lecture me. She wasn’t trying to influence or instruct me either. My so-called close friend from middle school, whom Kunikida had labeled a “strange girl,” had simply called to convey to me her true thoughts.

“All right, Sasaki. I get it,” I said, gripping the receiver tightly. “Leave it to me. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

After a moment of silence, Sasaki chuckled. “Right. I’ll look forward to it. My trust in you is deeper than the crushing depth of a newly launched submarine. Go ahead and push the down-trim as much as you want. I don’t mind a bit. See you, old friend.”

I remember hanging up the phone at exactly the same time as her, with no lag whatsoever.