CHAPTER 8

α—11

It was already Friday.

I felt as though the past week had been unrelentingly busy. With Haruhi’s brigade entrance examinations, and the establishment of Yasumi as the club’s sole new member, it somehow felt as if I’d lived two weeks’ worth of life. But after coincidentally running into that time-traveler guy, Kyoko Tachibana, that Heavenly Canopy Dominion terminal named Kuyoh Suoh, and to top it all off, Sasaki, no wonder I was feeling restless.

But it was strange. Given our storybook encounter, it seemed odd that I hadn’t heard from them again at all. Normally you’d think the usual scurrying around would ensue, but there’d been no contact at all, which baffled me.

Perhaps unbeknownst to me, they were struggling with Nagato, Koizumi, or Asahina. It wouldn’t be strange if the three of them had decided to cooperate in the service of preserving Haruhi’s peaceful life, but why wouldn’t they mention it to me? After all this, was I still an unconcerned party? Although I supposed if I got involved, not only would I not be of much use, I could easily be taken hostage.

Such thoughts occupied me as I arrived at the entrance to North High, and mechanically proceeded to the shoe lockers, opening mine.

“Bwuh?”

On top of my school slippers lay an object I hadn’t seen in some time.

It was a colorful envelope printed with some licensed character or another. It was addressed to me. And on the back was written the sender’s unmistakable name.

Yasumi Watahashi.

I read.

A flood of memories washed over me. How many times had something like this happened to me? First with Asakura—and her goal had been my murder. Next had been Asahina, but the adult version of Asahina, who’d given me an important hint, then disappeared. After that it was Asahina the Elder again, and in the course of following her incomprehensible directions, I’d encountered another time traveler, who’d hurled some bitter invective at me before things were over.

Given my experiences, I was well aware that an analog message waiting for me in my shoe locker was not a ticket to paradise.

And yet it felt as if circumstances were different this time. After all, it was from our brigade’s new freshman member, who was a harmless-seeming, cheerfully active girl, whose height and build made it hard to believe she was even an innocent freshman. Given her house call yesterday, she was quite assertive.

“Did she…”

Was my dream of so many years about to come true? Was this truly a love letter? Had the spring of my youth finally arrived?

—I fell in love with you the moment we met, and I knew that I had to get into the SOS Brigade no matter what.—

“What am I, stupid?” I murmured to myself, unable to think of a single reason why such a cheerful, energetic freshman would make a pass at me.

Plus, every time I got a message like this, it was always the beginning of some crazy, unprecedented development. Two faces came to mind. So which would it be this time? Encroaching danger, or that perfect smile?

“All right—”

There was no telling who might spot me if I just kept standing stupidly in front of my shoe locker. If Haruhi or Taniguchi saw me, explaining the letter would be annoying.

I quickly hid myself away in a bathroom, and opened the envelope. A playing card–like slip of paper was contained therein, on which the following had been hurriedly scribbled:

“I’ll meet you in the clubroom at 6 PM. Please come, okay?”

It was hard to know how to react. If I had to sum up my feelings in a single word, that word would be “suspicious.”

I couldn’t help recalling the incident with Asakura almost nostalgically. But my danger sense wasn’t tingling at all, and no alarms were going off. My senses had not been particularly sharpened by the morning hike, but from what I could tell this was closer to the invitation I’d received from Asahina the Elder. I didn’t fundamentally trust my own instincts, but maybe it wouldn’t kill me to heed my intuition once in a while.

That said, there wasn’t any danger in being careful.

It was just before homeroom started.

“By the way, Haruhi.”

“What?”

“Say you’ve got a problem that you’re not sure how to approach.”

“Is this about study?”

“You could say that.”

“Looks like you’ve kindled a bit of inclination toward academics. As brigade chief, I’m pleased that one of my members is upping their motivation. I assume you’ve given whatever your problem is a certain amount of thought on your own, yes?”

“Of course.”

“If it’s something you can solve by looking up, you should look it up.”

“It’s not a question of content.”

“Huh? So what is it, then, math? In that case, you’ve gotta know how to solve the problem. What’s the formula?”

“No, it’s not math. And incidentally, I don’t care about how to solve it; I just want to know the answer.”

“You’re not some grade schooler copying over the answers to your summer homework, and anyway, that’s no way to learn something.”

“Who cares? I thought as long as you could understand the thinking of the test-maker, that was good enough.”

“Oh, so it’s modern lit. You should’ve just said so. So the question’s something like ‘What was the writer thinking when they wrote this sentence,’ right?”

“I guess that’s closest, yeah.”

“What a stupid question. This is true for novels and essays too, but when it comes to the question of what’s written in a sentence, how would the test-maker know what the original writer was thinking? Even if you get the ‘right’ answer, that’s just because whoever’s grading the test happens to agree with you. So here’s how I think problems like that should go: What was I thinking when I read this sentence? That’d be a lot easier for me to accept.”

“I don’t really need to go that far. In this case, the person who wrote it and the person asking the question are the same.”

“Oh, that’s easy, then.”

“By all means, tell me.”

“All you have to do,” said Haruhi, leaning in and getting right up in my face, her overwhelming smile making me think of some kind of radiation, “is just ask whoever wrote it!”

And so come lunchtime, I left my bento box with Taniguchi and Kunikida and took action.

It was just as Haruhi said. If I didn’t understand, going and asking someone who did understand was a lot better than flailing around in ignorance. Especially when that someone was the only person who knew her own intentions. All I had to do was ask her, and everything would be cleared up. I’d have to get her to talk, but so long as I didn’t get into a scuffle with her, I expected it wouldn’t be too much trouble. I mean, she was just a nice little freshman.

So it was that I wandered around the building that contained the freshman classrooms, in search of Yasumi.

It might’ve been bad manners to ignore the note’s order to come at six o’clock, but I would just have to make her understand that I was too curious to help myself. And so long as there was even the remote possibility of my getting knifed again, I had every intention of flushing as much of my intuition down the toilet as I wanted to.

Thus resolved, despite my high spirits, I stopped dead in my tracks.

“Wait, which class was she in, again?”

She’d written it on her answer sheet for the brigade entrance examination, but I couldn’t remember it. My attention had been focused on her name and her strange answers at the time.

“Guess I shouldn’t have come during lunch.”

The halls that I had become so accustomed to the previous year were now filled with new students, and felt like another world. Even though the color of my school slippers was the only thing that was different, I couldn’t help feeling nervous when I peered into the classroom of a different year. On top of that, the freshmen didn’t seem to particularly enjoy an unfamiliar junior looking into each of their rooms as though they were some rare animal species.

As soon as I found Yasumi, I was going to call her over and take her someplace without any other people. That would probably seem a little suspicious, but I figured it would be all right since we were both in the same club. Still—

“… Where is she?”

The girl in question was nowhere to be found. I was hoping that her small frame would make her easy to pick out, but if anything it seemed to make her harder to spot. Wondering if she bought her lunch at school, I headed over to the cafeteria, but no dice. With all the wandering around I was reaching the limits of my own hunger. I’d made a good show of proving my endurance by wandering all over the school, but it had been wasted effort, and I cast my gaze upward. I was in the courtyard, and my eye just happened to land on the window of the literature club’s room.

Surely not.

I headed straight for the room. I found it hard to believe anyone would go all the way over there just to eat their lunch, but there was always the possibility. Honestly, I should’ve brought my own lunch with me.

I opened the door that Haruhi and I would doubtless open again after school, and there was Nagato. And only Nagato. Taking in this all-too-ordinary sight, I waved briefly to her before considering turning around and getting my lunch—but I soon thought better of it.

Right here in front of me was the best person in the world for answering questions I couldn’t answer myself.

“…”

Sitting in her usual corner with a book on her lap, Nagato didn’t so much as twitch an eyebrow at my intrusion, which told me definitively that things were as they ever were, here in this room. If I hadn’t known she was an extraterrestrial life-form, the peaceful mood set by the girl silently reading her book here would’ve struck me as completely normal.

But I knew things weren’t normal, and forgetting about the contents of my lunch box momentarily, I spoke to Nagato.

“Nagato.”

“What?”

First things first. “What is she?”

“She is nothing.”

Good old Nagato, she’d known instantly who my question referred to. But that said—

“That’s going too far. Isn’t the girl known as Yasumi Watahashi just a normal student?”

“No student with such a name exists in this school.”

That answer made me take a step back—not physically, but mentally. About half a step.

She didn’t exist? Which meant… My brain started multitasking.

Oh right.

“So it’s an alias. Someone’s posing as a North High student and sneaking in just for after-school activities.”

“That recognition computes.”

Good grief. So Yasumi Watahashi’s background was going to make her hard to deal with. I supposed I’d always known as much. She was obviously weird, after all. Her convenient appearance was an obvious plot twist from a silly novel.

So, who was controlling her? If I had to take a guess, it’d be—

An alien? I asked.

“No.”

Time traveler?

“No.”

Not an esper. She didn’t seem like the type.

“Indeed. She is not. Nor is she from another world.”

It wasn’t like Nagato to offer information unasked for. Before I could get hung up on that, my ignorance-born curiosity got the better of me, and I opened my mouth.

“So Yasumi’s just a strange girl with a slightly odd approach, then? And she’s just posing as a North High student?”

Nagato looked up from the printed page, and returned my gaze for the first time. I couldn’t help feeling sucked into her eyes, which were like toffee sprinkled with gold.

Her faint voice seemed only distantly related to the movement of her diaphragm. “I cannot say anything. Not right now.”

Why not? Wasn’t this the first time that Nagato had ever expressed reservations?

Then she added, “The determination is that this is the best course of action.”

“What?” I shot back, despite myself. It was a lousy comeback, I know. But I was fully capable of understanding things like context and nuance, and I hadn’t come here to chat with Nagato just for the fun of it. What surprised me was only one thing.

Nagato was refusing. She was refusing me.

This—surely this foretold calamity.

“So, you not being able to tell me something right now—who decided this? Was it the Data Overmind?”

“The reasoning that it will result in a higher probability of a favorable outcome is mine. Depending on time and circumstances, operating in restricted space, the possibility exists that acting in ignorance can be more effective.”

For some reason I didn’t feel as if I was being complimented. Just as my discomfort level was nearing its limit as I wondered whether this was payback for something I’d done before, salvation came in the form of something I’d left in my pocket.

That, of course, was nothing less than the non-love letter from Yasumi Watahashi.

“So, about this letter…”

I felt a little bad showing it to someone else without asking Yasumi, but I didn’t owe her that much obligation quite yet.

Nagato glanced at the paper without much interest. “You may go,” she said vaguely.

Really? Well, then.

“She means you no harm. On the contrary—it can be inferred that she wishes to be of use to you.”

I couldn’t help groaning. Now that she’d said it, I realized I’d sort of guessed as much.

This was the spirited, light-stepping freshman who’d passed Haruhi’s unreasonable entrance examinations as though they were nothing. Clad in her oversized uniform, she happily did everything from menial chores in the clubroom to redesigning the brigade’s web page, always running around with her unruly hair and her childish features—such charm she had that it was impossible to feel any other way about her. She was like the platonic ideal of the junior member. Any suspicion my brain conjured up had to be mistaken.

Save one condition—the fact that she’d left a note in my shoe locker.

After that, I could get nothing out of Nagato except for “yes” and “no,” so I took my leave and returned to my classroom. Immediately thereafter, the bell signaling the end of lunch rang, and with that I’d lost my chance to eat. I’d have to take my lunch in the clubroom after school.

Fortunately, the post-homeroom Haruhi-led study session was canceled on account of our new member. Side by side, Haruhi and I made for the ex-literature club room like flies sticking themselves to flypaper. Our routine was almost getting boring, but thanks to the new participant, my mind was starting to waver a bit.

But when Haruhi slammed the door open the way she always did, beyond it were only the old standbys of Asahina in her maid outfit and Nagato, who hadn’t moved so much as a millimeter from where she was earlier that day. I wasn’t much worried about the two girls, nor the sole other male brigade member, Koizumi—he’d probably been made class rep of his class or something and was enjoying some pillow talk with whoever the female class rep was. He was a good-looking boy, and if it hadn’t been for the SOS Brigade probably would’ve been a lot more popular, and even if he were managing to conduct some kind of high-school-dating-sim-style life behind our backs, he was probably smart enough not to get caught—the guy was so canny he was probably the sharpest one out of the whole brigade.

I realized I was distracting myself.

“Is the new member not here yet?”

Yasumi’s petite form was nowhere to be seen. She might have been on her way here from her real school, but Her Excellency Brigade Chief Haruhi was very strict when it came to delaying marches.

“Ah…” Asahina clasped her hands together as though apologizing for her own failings. “She’s not coming today. She came right after class, said she had to take care of something that was desperately important for her life, and went home.”

I’m not sure how she took the twitch of my eyebrow, but Asahina continued, speaking with an awful lot of emotion in her voice for a defense attorney.

“She seemed like she was in a terrible hurry. She bowed over and over, and seemed very, very sorry, talking about how missing two days in a row made her a failure as a person, and I just watched her with my eyes full of tears… ah… it’s just…”

A flushed Asahina started to hug herself yet again. Evidently Yasumi had just been too cute to bear.

“She looked at me with those eyes, like a little baby animal… She was so… cute…”

As I watched Asahina deliver her pathos-filled monologue, I thought about what was happening.

I was positive that Yasumi’s “something important” was her meeting with me here, at six o’clock. What did she want with me? And where did she plan to stay until then? Was she hiding somewhere on school grounds? Could she not even participate in the most perfunctory of club activities? The actions of Yasumi the mystery girl were indeed mysterious.

Just as I was hoping that it wouldn’t invite Haruhi’s displeasure—

“I heard over lunch. On my way to the cafeteria.” Haruhi plopped down in her brigade chief’s chair and lazily dropped her bag on the floor.

So what did she hear? I asked.

“That she was going to skip club activities today. ‘I’m so sorry, you made me a full brigade member and I go and do something silly like this,’ she was saying, bowing like a little flower, on the verge of tears.”

I imagined the cheerful girl’s form as she apparently humbled herself, wondering to myself that despite my long walkabout in search of her, there was a route that would have led me right here.

“Did you ask her why?”

“Look, Kyon. I’m not that much of a busybody—I’m not some Peeping Tom that’s going to pry into every detail. And it didn’t seem like she was regretting joining the SOS Brigade and trying to sneak out or something. I’m sure she really did just happen to have something unavoidable come up. You might be surprised to know that it’s my policy to show my subordinates tolerance and forgiveness.”

And yet somehow I doubted she’d apply that motto to me at all.

Realizing that further conversation was going to be fruitless, I put my bag on the table and went to sit in my usual chair, whereupon I noticed for the first time a sense of unease in the clubroom’s atmosphere.

It was because there was something left by the window behind the brigade chief’s desk.

When Asahina noticed my gaze, she spoke up with a voice as soft as fresh-made mochi rice cake. “Yasumi brought it over earlier, as an apology for missing the meeting.”

Earlier? I was surprised we hadn’t run into her on the way over, then. Oh well, whatever.

It was a small-mouthed ceramic vase, holding a single elegant flower.

Haruhi turned around and gave the flower a long, hard look. “I haven’t seen that kind of flower before. Yasumi brought this?”

“Yes, yes.” Asahina nodded. “She said she thought it was interesting, so she brought it over. She said she found it yesterday in the mountains nearby, and that it had to be pretty rare, so she thought it would make a nice decoration for the room. She gave it to me like it was some kind of treasure…”

Yesterday, huh? By the time I got home, Yasumi was already there. If she went to the mountains after that, it would’ve been getting pretty dark. And if by “mountains” she meant the Tsuruya family mountain (which was really the only one in the immediate area), then she’d been wandering around alone in a place unlit by artificial light. That seemed rather dangerous for a girl who’d only just started high school.

“… Mmm—” Haruhi folded her arms and regarded the flower. “Well, fine. I’m the one who asked her to bring something interesting; who knows, maybe for Yasumi this flower’s really interesting. Indeed! Such decisive follow-up means that she’s got the heart of a true brigade member. My brigade entrance exam didn’t lie! Looks like it definitely identified her attributes, anyway. It’s no overstatement to say that if we preserve that format, we won’t have to worry about the brigade finding good personnel even after we graduate!”

I wondered about that. Would the Haruhi-style SOS Brigade test really be applied once we graduated? At the moment, club admission was determined by being able to endure Haruhi’s demerit system, and it seemed as though Haruhi didn’t actually want many rookie members. If the real truth of her heart were laid bare, I really didn’t think Haruhi was welcoming Yasumi with open arms. I’d been through quite a lot with Haruhi. I’d gotten so I could see where she was looking just by the angle of her eyebrows. And she was the kind of person who wore her heart on her sleeve, which made her easy to read, so my Haruhi observational skills yielded a single answer, which was that she was confused.

Essentially, Haruhi’s evaluation of Yasumi was a complicated one, and she had not yet come up with a satisfactory answer. I imagined she felt something from the younger girl; Yasumi wasn’t straightforward the way Asahina was.

The truth was I felt the same way. With the note she’d written me in my pocket, I wondered what her intentions toward the SOS Brigade were—it was a sort of mystery.

On the other hand, Asahina was in rare high spirits, her footsteps seeming lighter than normal as she went about making tea. I guess she just couldn’t help how much happier having a new female junior member made her.

When I thought about it, I couldn’t really say that Haruhi and I—to say nothing of Nagato and Koizumi—were exactly great underclassmen for Asahina. No way could I say that. Surrounded as she was by Haruhi the tyrant, the silent, stone-faced Nagato, and the stiflingly polite Koizumi, she probably didn’t feel like anyone’s senior. And I was not better—I was constantly forgetting that Asahina was now in the highest year of school. Given that her charm made her seem like a middle schooler, Yasumi seemed even younger, so it was no wonder she felt so fondly toward the girl two years her junior. As I watched Asahina excitedly fuss over which tea-brewing method to teach Yasumi tomorrow, I felt the heaviness that had settled in my heart lighten, but unfortunately there was a reason why I couldn’t just keep staring at the SOS Brigade’s mascot girl.

I sipped whatever herbal tea Asahina’d made that day, and glanced at my watch.

I still had time until six o’clock. Just as I was trying to figure out how I was going to get back to the clubroom after the day’s activities were over—

“Hello, everyone—sorry I’m late.” And there, smiling pleasantly like someone out of an acne medication commercial, appeared Koizumi. “There’s just so much to do at the beginning of spring. The student council president is quite motivated this year, and negotiations with faculty are not what I’d call rare. I wish I could ignore them, but given that they concern consolidation and elimination of various clubs, I can’t very well fail to attend.”

As he entered the room, Koizumi casually explained his troubles, though no one had asked him to. He set his bag down on the desk, and paying the Chinese shogi set on the table no mind, walked over to the windowsill.

“Ah, what do we have here?” He peered in interest at the flower Yasumi had left behind. “Who is this flower a present from?”

“From Yasumi, I guess,” answered Haruhi, poking at her empty teacup. Asahina noticed this and hurried to prepare more tea. I hoped it would be regular green tea this time.

Koizumi stroked his chin and regarded the slim vase as though he were looking at a triffid.

“If you’ll excuse me,” he said, taking his cell phone out of his blazer pocket and positioning it to take a picture of the flower. He snapped several pictures, and once he was satisfied, fiddled with his phone for a few moments, as though he were sending the pictures somewhere.

“What’re you doing, Koizumi?” I asked. “Don’t tell me that’s wolfsbane or foxglove.”

“Not at all.” Koizumi slid his phone back into his pocket and flashed a reassuring smile. “It’s not poisonous. I just thought it might be an orchid I’d seen somewhere else, that’s all. I’m probably off the mark, but I thought I’d check to be sure, that’s all.”

After that, Nagato continued reading the lengthy nonfiction book she was reading, proceeding from the first volume to the second, while Asahina served us yet more mysterious-tasting tea that she’d obtained somewhere, as Haruhi fiddled with the SOS Brigade website. Incidentally, Haruhi’s first Internet task was clicking through every spam URL on every forum she could find, which constantly crashed the browser.

Around the time I’d managed to install some free anti-malware software, that good old easy-listening music started to play over the school PA system.

Which meant it was about five thirty.

With excellent timing, Nagato snapped her book shut, and taking that as a sign, we all started getting ready to leave—although in my case, it was mostly fake, in service of my alibi. But if I didn’t get everybody out of the clubroom, I couldn’t start my meeting with Yasumi.

We had all passed through the school gate and started along the road that led alongside the school and down the hill. I prepared myself for the biggest role of my acting career, and while I was well aware it would seem pretty forced, I hadn’t been able to think of a better line.

“Oh! Damn!” I said.

Haruhi and Asahina were a bit ahead, and stopped to turn around, wondering what the problem was. Nagato and Koizumi stopped at exactly the same time as each other, which I guess didn’t surprise me.

“I left something in the classroom. I’ve got to go get it!”

I can’t deny that my line-read sounded a little forced.

“Huh?” said Haruhi nonetheless. “You never bring your textbooks home with you anyway—what could you have possibly forgotten in the room?”

Normally she would have been right, and in fact she was right, but I needed a reason that Haruhi would believe.

“Uh, actually,” I said, repeating the line I’d memorized. “I just remembered I borrowed a dirty magazine from Taniguchi. And I left it in my desk.”

“Huh?” said Haruhi, her eyebrows instantly contorting.

“It’s probably fine, but if anybody finds it I’ll be in trouble. So—I’m just gonna go get it. You guys go on ahead! This is, like, a super-valuable porno mag. It’s already been banned and gone out of print, so it’s really rare. If it gets confiscated, I’ll have to prostrate myself in front of Taniguchi. If I don’t go get it now, he’ll make me his errand boy forever!”

Next to Haruhi’s astounded face, Koizumi’s grin, and Asahina’s stunned expression, I met Nagato’s gaze. I got the feeling that she nodded ever so faintly at me, but insofar as she was agreeing with me, it was on the micron scale.

I felt bad. If only I’d been able to come up with a better excuse.

“So, I’m heading back to the classroom. It’ll probably take me a while, so you guys don’t have to wait up,” I said, then turned to go. As I started to climb back up the hill, Haruhi’s voice came at me from behind.

“Don’t talk about dirty books in front of maidens! Stupid Kyon!”

Maidens? Yeah, right. Although I’d have to apologize to Asahina the next day. Yeah, definitely.

In the no-man’s-land between sunset and early evening, there was no trace of anyone in the school or on the field, so I was able to return to the clubroom without passing a single person. I opened the door.

“Thank you so much for coming.” There in the room, tinted orange by the setting sun, Yasumi was waiting for me.

The girl I’d looked so hard for during lunch, with no success—the girl Nagato claimed was not a student here. Her charm held Asahina captive, and yet Haruhi found our newest brigade member somehow difficult to handle.

Her mischievous face smiled a smile as warm and soft as a freshly roasted marshmallow as Yasumi happily continued. “I knew you’d come. I believed it—that things would turn out this way. And I want to believe in what’s going to happen.”

I decided the best policy was to ignore mysterious statements I didn’t understand.

“What business do you have with me?” I said, for starters. She had remained all the way through to the end of Haruhi’s brigade member selection procedure. Anyone who could do that was not someone to be trifled with, I was quite sure. “What’s going to happen next?”

Yasumi’s answer came in a softly laughing voice. “I don’t know myself.”

What?

“But we’ll know soon.”

Yasumi brushed aside her soft hair. The grin on her smiley-face barrette seemed larger than usual; it must have been a trick of the angle.

Yasumi continued to look at me, and I didn’t take my eyes off her face.

How much time passed like that, I wonder?

I heard someone knock at the door.

β—11

Friday.

My enthusiasm had fallen asleep; apparently that was all there was.

I wondered if my sister’s flying body press method of awakening me was the result of her calculating the worst possible way to do so. Having been forcibly awakened from a dream wherein I knew what my goal was but no matter where I ran I couldn’t reach it made my body feel already fatigued, despite having gotten plenty of sleep. It didn’t feel as if I’d rested up at all. It just made me feel even more tired than when I’d started.

I wished that sister of mine could at least have waited until the dream was over.

“… Ah…”

My eyes still half-closed, I sat up, whereupon Shamisen, who had been lying next to me, put his head on my pillow and started purring. If he’d been either in or on the futon, he would’ve fallen prey to my sister as well. This was not a place where there was any cause for shame at humanity’s failure to keep up with cats, so I got out of bed, still wearing my pajamas.

I was grateful for the weekend’s approach, but what happened after school that day would decide not only my fate, but the entire SOS Brigade’s. Despite having awoken so sleepy-headed, I could remember that much.

But to be fully serious, I would need to be more awake, both physically and mentally. As I wondered whether the uphill walk to school was as good as a morning aerobics workout, I thought about how I’d go and do the radio calisthenics routine over summer break in elementary school, getting my stamp for it and everything before coming home to take a nap, which I supposed was fairly healthy so long as I didn’t take too long a break from it. Why had I applied to this high school? There was a decent municipal high school in the neighborhood, and it made me want to go back and interrogate my homeroom teacher for the last year of middle school. All that talk about college acceptance rates had totally fooled me.

“Kyon!”

My early-to-bed, early-to-rise sister was in fine form. She carried Shamisen’s sleepy, slack, morning-hating form around. He somehow reminded me of someone.

“You said you’ve got something important to do today, right? You told me to wake you up early today. You said if I didn’t you’d never play video games with me again! I don’t want that!”

I had no memory of any of that, but it was true that today seemed as if it was going to be a very important day for me. Not for school, or for my activities with the SOS Brigade—after classes I would leave the school, and a rendezvous with Sasaki and her rotten friends awaited me.

“Yeah…”

I looked at the face of my little sister, who seemed impossibly young for a sixth grader, as she held Shamisen, who yawned. My consciousness gradually cleared. The outline of the previous night’s phone conversation with Sasaki had gotten sorted out during my sleep, and it started to come back to me.

I had to settle things with Fujiwara.

Why had he come back to the past and teamed up with Kuyoh and Kyoko Tachibana?

I had to settle things with Kuyoh.

For what purpose had the extraterrestrial forced Nagato into bed rest?

I had to settle things with Kyoko Tachibana.

After trying to kidnap Asahina, did the harmless-seeming fake esper who respected Koizumi so much really want to install Sasaki as the true god?

My pathetic little brain was tormented by other questions too.

Was Kimidori really nothing more than an observer? Would she just neutrally watch if the Heavenly Canopy Dominion tried to take over the Data Overmind?

Was the temporarily revived Asakura going to sit back and do nothing in such a case?

After she’d invited me into the past so many times, would I ever see Asahina the Elder again?

What about Koizumi’s power? What about the Tamaru brothers, Mori, and Arakawa?

“Beats me,” I said pointlessly, in a hoarsely rattling voice.

Something would definitely happen today. There was no doubt that something huge was waiting for me after school. It would be nice if I got answers to most of those questions. I wanted to be able to take a bath tonight while singing some vaguely remembered western song. No, I had to.

If I didn’t end things here, my worries would only persist, and I’d begin my life as a high school junior by continuing to wait in the clubroom for visitors who would never come—that’s the feeling I had.

I wouldn’t stand by while the place where I belonged was taken from me.

Ever since that fateful day during my first year of high school when sitting behind me, Haruhi had chosen me, the resulting loose gear wound up matching hers perfectly. Fate? You might as well throw that word into a neutron star. Haruhi wished for it, and I wished for it. And this time, this here and now was the result.

I didn’t know anything about the future or past, but what I knew I had to protect was the present, not the notions of hypothetical aliens or time travelers. If anybody had a problem with that, they could tell me directly, or send me a text message or a letter. If they had any better ideas, I’d gladly refer to them.

But this much I couldn’t forget: Everything would come down to me. No matter how clever a thesis was put forth, no matter how bright the genius whose view I was given, if I said no, the answer was no.

The only people who could convince me would have to be as smooth-talking as Koizumi, as trustworthy as Nagato, and as charismatic as Haruhi.

If there was someone who believed themselves to be the world’s greatest, then let them show themselves.

I just wanted to say this much. If you had that much confidence in yourself, you’d better think about your own story first. Because you never knew for sure whether or not there were actually aliens, time travelers, espers, or even sliders all around you.

Before you worry about other people, you better pay attention to your own surroundings first. This is just my own little piece of irresponsible advice; in the end, it’s all up to you.

I went to school and took my seat in the classroom to wait for the bell, no differently from any other day. The entire day fit into the category of “ordinary.”

All except for the owner of the seat behind me fidgeting nervously all day thanks to Nagato’s absence.

Not even the preview for a rerun of some anime was cause for as much suspense for Haruhi as Nagato’s illness, and she clicked her mechanical pencil noisily all throughout class, and when called on by the teacher to answer a question on the blackboard, wrote unintelligible questions and then seemed to expect someone to go get a Rosetta stone just to translate them. Her lack of concentration made it seem as though her mind was somewhere out on the astral plane, but that was more or less how Haruhi always was, so our classmates seemed happy to let it slide. Haruhi being her Haruhi-ish self did come in handy sometimes. For better or for worse, the results spoke for themselves.

After class, Haruhi gave me only the most perfunctory of remarks before flying out of the classroom. I imagined she was going to grab Asahina and make for Nagato’s apartment as if she was training for the downhill section of a cross-country race.

Such was the effect her absence was having. So long as she wasn’t sitting in her usual corner, her small form absorbed in quiet reading, it wasn’t going to feel like the SOS Brigade. We weren’t complete unless all of us were there. That’s how it worked with us. All I had to do was look back over the past year. When Asahina and Nagato and I had gotten tangled up in strange happenings, it was all well and good. And even when it came to the only one for whom that wasn’t true—Haruhi—it still strengthened her friendship. Why? That, I don’t know.

Or then there was the baseball tournament. Or the trip to the lonely island, or the summer break when we did all kinds of things, or the game against the computer club, or the filming of that ridiculous movie when she’d felt a sense of togetherness, of connectedness—or maybe when she’d helped out the rock band, or when I’d been hospitalized before Christmas, or when we’d had that trouble on the snowy mountain, or when it had been the literature club versus the student council—

Or it was all of that. Somewhere along the line, Haruhi had changed significantly from her self of a year earlier. I’m remaining adamantly silent on the subject of her physical development, but mentally she was leaving her attitude from earlier behind, and ever so gradually, step by step, she was progressing, although even I had enough observational ability to tell it was happening slower than a sprinting Galapagos tortoise.

She still had more than enough energy to drag me around by my hand or necktie, but that was a far cry from her previous undiscriminating assaults, which went off like a hedgehog launching its rocket-powered quills in every direction.

It made me feel a little sad.

But that was probably only going to last as long as Nagato was sick.

In which case—.

I thought.

I wanted to finish this quickly, and release Nagato from this ridiculous burden. That was the best possible medicine I could formulate—for her, and for Haruhi.

“Hey.”

Sasaki greeted me with a wave of her hand when I arrived at the square in front of the station after having illegally parked my bike. She smiled the same calm smile she’d had the other day, which made her look as though she’d overcome some kind of cynicism—a Sasaki-brand original expression that made you wish she’d just keep quiet and smile. There was definitely a whiff of something Haruhi-like about that.

There was a time when, as a guy, I would’ve wished both Haruhi and Sasaki were a little more approachable—but that was ancient history now, as both of them gave off a strangely inexplicable attraction that transcended gender, and it had pulled me in like a fly to a bug zapper.

Ever since Haruhi had dragged me off to the clubroom where only Nagato had been, I felt as if my eyes had seen different scenery than other people saw. I don’t want to think that my tastes had changed, but I honestly just don’t understand myself. I’d leave that kind of analysis to Koizumi or Kunikida. Later.

Now, the important thing was the fact that Sasaki was flanked by two people, one on each side.

The boy and girl were Kyoko Tachibana with her small, unassuming form, and Fujiwara, who despite his height kept his gaze low and his face blank. The self-proclaimed esper Kyoko Tachibana, and the time traveler Fujiwara. With Sasaki, that made three, and apparently I’d made them wait.

“Kuyoh’s not here.”

Given Nagato’s condition, Kuyoh was the one I had the most pressing business with. Or was she merely invisible, and standing right there? Apparently suspicion was written all over my face, as Sasaki answered.

“We couldn’t contact Kuyoh. Her whereabouts are unknown at the moment. Of course, that’s normally how she is, so even if we keep waiting, there’s no telling when she might show up. But in any case, when she’s needed, she’ll appear. I guarantee it.”

“Is that so?” I prodded Fujiwara.

“… Yeah.” His face was as scornful as always, but there was something rigid in his expression. Almost serious—no, that wasn’t it. As though he was nervous, or unsure, and trying to hide it by making little jabs at other people. “She’ll come.” Fujiwara spat the words out like they were solid objects. “When it’s necessary, she’ll appear. It doesn’t matter who might wish it. Must be nice to be an alien and have that kind of freedom, honestly. It’s enough to make me wish I never had to deal with her again. Earth doesn’t belong to aliens, nor does it belong to the people of the past. For us, you all have about as much value as common fossils. We’re running out of space to throw you away.”

… It was nice that I could count on him to always try to piss me off more. I could hate him as much as I wanted to.

“Uh, er—” Kyoko Tachibana stuck her face in from one side, blocking the murderous gazes that Fujiwara and I were directing at each other. “I’ve prepared a taxi. Shall we depart? Oh, and thank you so much for coming today.”

I gazed at her hair as it bobbed in a quick little bow, and I just couldn’t find it in myself to resent her. Her organization just lacked any sort of PR discipline. Actually, from a certain perspective, wouldn’t she have been perfect for the job?

Well, it would take two years for me to start to doubt her. And given that Sasaki was here too, I decided to mark only Fujiwara as an enemy. Kuyoh’s absence was something of a relief, since it meant Asakura wouldn’t make a surprise reappearance. Or would it be a re-reappearance?

“This way, please.” Kyoko Tachibana made an awkward gesture like some kind of bus tour guide, and led us on.

She seemed to be pretty nervous herself, tapping clumsily on the door of a cab that was stopped at the taxi stand. Surprisingly, it really did seem to be a public taxi waiting for passengers, with the driver dozing off in front of the open sports section of a newspaper. After several knocks the old cab driver opened both his eyes and the back door, and Sasaki, Fujiwara, and I climbed in. Kyoko Tachibana took shotgun.

“Where to?” asked the cab driver, stifling a yawn.

“North Prefectural High School, please.”

With Kyoko Tachibana’s words, I finally knew the day’s destination. “Geez, right back where I came from?” I muttered to myself as the taxi started moving, making the four of us into traveling companions as we headed for the end of the journey. If I’d been told ahead of time, I could’ve just waited at North High.

“That’s what I thought too.” Fujiwara’s words. “We probably didn’t need to go to such trouble in today’s course of events. Still, hmph. This too was a fixed event. There’s no need to turn such a triviality into an adventure.”

“Mm,” said Sasaki, stroking her chin. “A fixed event, eh? So the four of us getting in a taxi and going to North High is, from the perspective of the future, an unchangeable matter of historical fact?”

“Yes.” Fujiwara’s answer was brusque. His face made it clear he didn’t want to be questioned further.

Just then, Kyoko Tachibana turned around from where she sat in the passenger’s seat. “You want to end this, don’t you? This is a fixed event, so it’s only logical to go along with it.” She looked at me. “Heh, you’ve been rather abused by the ‘fixed events’ of various time travelers, haven’t you? Well, this is just one more of those.”

I opened my mouth to talk back, but surprisingly it was Fujiwara who took the initiative.

“Shut up,” he said in a low, quiet voice that strangely resonated in my gut. It seemed to have an immediate effect on Kyoko Tachibana, whose face went pale as she sat back down in her seat.

Despite the suddenly leaden atmosphere within it, the taxi kept moving, and evidently our driver wasn’t particularly attuned to subtleties. “So, you guys in high school? Nice to be young!” he said, unprompted. “Yeah, my kid just started sixth grade this spring. He’s so into studying it’s hard for me to believe he’s my boy!”

“Ah.”

Evidently Kyoko Tachibana felt it was her responsibility to be the driver’s conversation partner, and so the talkative driver continued, pleased at having found someone to talk to.

—My sixth-grade son is really into science and chemistry, and is always talking about these crazy things. We’ve tried sending him to cram school, but he stopped going, saying something about the level being too low. We just didn’t know what to do with him. For now we’ve hired a neighborhood high schooler to come and tutor him, but his grades still aren’t going up. Still, the boy himself can’t get his fill of study, and if he’s got a notebook he’s always writing figures and equations in it, but I wonder if it ain’t just scribbling. The tutor kinda takes a hands-off approach, and I just don’t know what to do—

At the appropriate times, Kyoko Tachibana would respond with “Oh,” or “Ah,” or “I see.” I couldn’t help thinking that our having gotten such a chatty driver was either good or bad luck. Given that she had arranged for the car, I assumed she was paying for it herself, which I admit was surprising, though unlike Koizumi’s Agency her financial situation might not be especially rosy. She’d gotten a receipt at the café, after all. Anyway, I felt as though I’d heard the cab driver’s tone of voice somewhere, but trying to place it would have been a pain, so I busied myself concentrating on the individuals sitting on either side of me.

“Is this some kind of trap?” I asked Fujiwara, whose attention was focused straight ahead.

After a moment of hesitation, he replied. “It’s not a trap. We just have to confirm something. I don’t know what it means either. I just know what we have to do. This is both the plan and the result.”

Why did we have to go to North High? And where in the school were we going? Even if we went straight to the literature club, there wasn’t going to be anyone there, I said.

“I’ll bet not.”

Did Sasaki have to come too? I asked.

“She is here, so yes.”

What about Kuyoh? I thought she’d been the guy’s most useful companion.

“I’m sure she’ll show. When the time comes.”

After delivering his brief answers, Fujiwara fell as silent as a wooden statue. If he hadn’t been drawing breath he would’ve looked like one too.

“Those are perfectly reasonable questions, Fujiwara. I’m starting to wonder if you just don’t like riding in cars very much.”

Fujiwara was silent.

“I can only guess at what your future world is like. But I’ll bet you’re not used to riding around in petroleum-based-internal-combustion-engine-powered vehicles like this one, are you?”

Fujiwara’s cheek twitched.

“So, what of it?”

“There’s nothing to say.”

Sasaki brightened. “Scientific development is one of my very favorite things. Naturally there are things I hope will happen in the future. The world has all sorts of problems in this age. My hope is that in your future, you will have left behind the folly of the past. Humans are a species that should learn, and keep learning. I want to believe that a higher level of scientific understanding will eliminate the destructive ideas and technologies that still plague us. How about it, Fujiwara? Don’t you think people in the past can be forgiven for embracing such hopes?”

“Hope what you like. Wish for what you like.” Fujiwara stared daggers at Sasaki. “That hope of yours made the future. Along with your recklessly misplaced confidence. Beyond that… heh, I suppose it’s classified. And even if it weren’t, I’m not so generous as to explain it the likes of you.”

“Classified information… I don’t think so,” replied Sasaki. “You said this was a fixed event, didn’t you? But, Fujiwara, you don’t know what that means. All you know is that it’s been specified in advance that you have to go to North High at a certain time today. You don’t know who you’re going to meet there, or what’s going to happen. All you’ve been given is the reasoning that it’s established history. So how could you even answer?”

Fujiwara snickered. “Impressive. If you were otherwise, you wouldn’t be qualified to act as our instrument. Sasaki, you’ve proven yet again that you have that capacity. You’re the only other key to this universe besides Suzumiya. I’m sure you’ll realize it soon. Although—you may not have that luxury.”

Sasaki furrowed her brows and glared at Fujiwara’s profile, but the time traveler ignored her completely. I realized the atmosphere had turned bad.

“What do you mean, instrument? This is the first I’ve heard of that,” I asked.

“You’ll understand soon enough,” Fujiwara said to me brusquely. “Originally you were totally useless. But it’s not in our best interests to oppose fixed events. For my part, I’d like to keep that to an absolute minimum. So that’s why we called you along too. I suggest you sit back and enjoy your role as the sole bystander from this era.”

How dare he look down on me like that. I wasn’t going to let that go unanswered.

“Hey, Fujiwara. Are you trying to change the future you’re from?”

Silence.

“If so, that’s impossible.” I thought back to what I’d heard on my very first mysterious phenomenon–searching date with Asahina. “Time is like a flip-book animation. No matter whether someone from the future interferes, it only amounts to scribbling on a single page of recorded time. It won’t change anything about the future, will it?”

Silence.

“Honestly, I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but since you’re talking about fixed events all over the place, I know that much. So just what do you think messing with this era is going to—”

“Shut up.” The harsh voice stabbed into my ears. His gaze came with concealed malice. “Just shut up, you relic. If you shoot off your mouth any more, ‘classified information’ won’t be enough to protect you.”

His cold voice made me shiver. Fujiwara wasn’t kidding. Evidently I’d stepped on one of his land mines.

Pathetically, my frozen heart warned me of the danger.

Sasaki casually tugged at my sleeve, and if she hadn’t given me that wordless sign I might’ve just let things go at Fujiwara’s pace. Thanks for telling me, Sasaki.

If the driver heard the conversation of the trio in the cab’s backseat, it seemed that worries about whether troublesome questions from a third party were forthcoming were unfounded. The driver was fully engaged in talking about his son to Kyoko Tachibana, enjoying his one-sided conversation with the girl who had so readily agreed to listen to him.

I felt a pang of sympathy for her, but reminded myself that Kyoko Tachibana and the SOS Brigade were antagonists. She was feeling less and less like an enemy, but that wasn’t because I was being convinced; it was just that spending time with her was helping me understand her personality. And above all, Sasaki didn’t seem to think she was dangerous. Sasaki was smarter and more perceptive than I, and I reckoned she had a good eye for people. So long as Sasaki was next to me, it was unlikely that things would turn in an unfavorable direction.

I was sure that was true.

The taxi stopped at North High’s front gate, and the back door opened. Kyoko Tachibana paid the driver.

“Ah, I’d like a receipt, please,” she said in her reserved voice, while I stood in front of the school’s always-open iron gate for the second time that day.

The sky was already darkening, but I could hear the faint voices of the athletic clubs, which were evidently still wrapping up the day’s activities.

“C’mon, let’s go.” Fujiwara took the lead and entered the school’s grounds. Timidly Kyoko Tachibana made herself set foot on what was to her a foreign school. I myself looked up at the all-too-familiar school buildings as I entered the grounds—but stopped after a few steps.

“What… what? What’s this?!” My eyes and mouth were wide open as I groaned the words.

The sky—

The sky was dyed a faint, cream-colored sepia.

The twilight sky with Venus’s faint twinkle of just a few seconds earlier had disappeared, and was now filled with a light that was no natural phenomenon. It was a soft, gentle glow, a plain illumination that lit everything.

I knew this light.

It was the world Kyoko Tachibana had invited me into, after Sasaki had called me out to the café.

This closed space was the precise opposite of Haruhi’s, and no one, not a soul, existed here.

“!”

I whirled around instantly, my reaction time not to be underestimated. And yet.

It was pointless.

Sasaki had gotten out of the taxi behind me, but she was nowhere to be seen. Nor was the cab itself.

Separated by only a few dozen centimeters on either side of the school gate, we were now in separate worlds.

The world I stood in was a world without sound. The echoes of the athletics teams I’d heard only a moment ago were gone. As were the cries of the birds, the sound of the wind over the hills—and any other sound in this space.

The only thing I saw was the sight of the unchanged school, and the all-suffusing sepia light that came down from the sky.

I made a dash for the school gate, but was gently pushed back.

“What—”

Just as when Haruhi had closed us off on the school grounds, a soft wall stood in my way. That could mean only one thing—I wasn’t going to be able to easily escape this place.

“Do you understand your position now?” A voice reached me from behind. “This is no longer your world. Your reality, your sense of how the world works—such things do not apply here.”

I craned my neck around to look behind me, and there was Fujiwara’s glumly hostile face. If beside him hadn’t been standing an anxious Kyoko Tachibana, I probably would’ve slugged him right in the face. He ought to thank me for having such immense self-control.

“If I thank you, would you be satisfied?” he said.

“… Is this a trap?” I complained mightily.

“I wonder,” said Fujiwara, dodging the question as he turned his back to me. “We still haven’t arrived at our final destination. Won’t you come with me? To finally settle all of this? For the sake of our future?” I saw only his profile, which was twisted into a sneer. “I’ll have to thank Sasaki. She’s the reason we succeeded in bringing you all the way here. Although I doubt she knows she was being manipulated into doing that. Come, don’t be so angry. We’ll need her to work for us after this. Once that’s taken care of, you’ll be free to go. You can flirt with her all you want after that.”

Just as I was deciding I really was going to hit him, he continued as though heading me off.

“Shall we go, then?”

Where? I asked. Where could we possibly go within this closed space?

Fujiwara looked up. “To that shabby little room you call your home base.”

I didn’t have to look to know that at the end of his gaze was the literature club room.

But why? What was in that room? I asked.

“I figured you would know.” I heard his voice as though it were at point-blank range. “The source of everything is in that room. It’s the key to the future, a place where each power has met, combined, and influenced each other. Or perhaps you could call it a wedge. Within it exists every possibility, as well as the ability to end every possibility. The processes of both progress and stagnation are simultaneously extant there. I suppose it might be hard for an archaic human like you to understand.”

Yeah, I didn’t understand it. I didn’t even want to.

But why was everyone so fixated on our clubroom? Like Nagato, the sole member of the nearly extinct literature club. And then Haruhi. And it had been the final destination at which I’d arrived after the world had been changed just before Christmas. And where the bookmark had slipped out of the slightest gap. And the old computer. The found keys. The “enter” key.

And the words Koizumi had once said to me.

—That room has long-since been transformed into another dimension. Any number of elements are battling to cancel each other out there, such that it seems almost normal. Perhaps one could say it’s reached the saturation point—.

So that had been true, had it?

“Tachibana.” I finally remembered there was someone here other than Fujiwara.

“Ah… er, yes?”

“You knew this, and you brought me here?”

“… No, I—”

I knew better than to expect a proper answer from her. At this moment Kyoko Tachibana was just as mystified by the current situation as I was. I could tell that much from the way she held both hands up and waved them side to side.

Which meant this was Fujiwara’s scenario. And in all likelihood, Kuyoh was backing him.

Fujiwara calmly continued walking, striding directly into the school grounds as though he was playing some kind of RPG as he made his way toward the main entrance. He opened the glass door without even bothering to check whether it was locked. I followed him as he proceed into the school without even bothering to take his shoes off, and found myself seized by an irrational rage.

It was true that I’d cursed this school’s name many times before. In addition to the long hill leading from the station, the old classrooms were so shabby that I had to assume they were built on a tight budget. There was no air conditioning and the rooms were drafty, hot in the summer and cold in winter, and pretty much the only nice thing about the place was that it was surrounded by mountain greenery, and that come nightfall you could get a nice view of the city lights from up on the hill. And yet it was North High, my alma mater.

This was the space where, along with Haruhi, Asahina, Nagato, Koizumi, Taniguchi, and Kunikida, I spent the greater part of my waking time. Seeing this outsider trample all over my territory like this was not something I could peacefully abide.

Worse, Fujiwara was our enemy. Why did I have to let a guy like that lead me around? I knew it was the logical thing to do, but my irritation was spiking right off the charts.

The most pathetic part of this was having to do everything the guy said. At that moment, I didn’t know what else to do. If unloading on him actually would have changed anything, I would’ve done it. But it seemed as if that time had passed.

Without knowing what Fujiwara was going to do, I had no choice but to go along with it, whether it was a trap or not.

This was Sasaki’s closed space. Koizumi couldn’t enter. Nagato was out of commission. The notion of Haruhi and Asahina abandoning their nursing of Nagato to burst onto the scene and help me was absurd. And worst of all, Sasaki wasn’t with me. I knew full well from the earlier incident at the café that she couldn’t touch the inside of her own closed space.

Fujiwara, Kyoko Tachibana, and I were the only three people that existed within Sasaki’s closed space. Kuyoh Suoh’s absence did not come as any solace to me either. I might not have been able to see her, but I was sure she was around. The intuition I’d gained after so much time spent dealing with crazy supernatural phenomena was telling me so. I was sure she was somewhere on the palely lit school grounds, waiting for the worst possible moment to appear.

—In other words.

I was beset by enemies on all sides, and could see no way to fight back.

With a gaze as though he were looking at a vanquished opponent, Fujiwara looked over his shoulder at me. “Shall we go, then? Or would you rather just crouch down with your hands over your ears? If so, I’ll carry you in on my back. Free of charge.”

“Shut your mouth.”

I’d go. And I’d teach him to underestimate the literature club room, the SOS Brigade room. That was our spot. If I could just get there, I could do something about this.

Nagato wasn’t there, but maybe there was a key hidden there anyway, or maybe I’d notice something I overlooked before—.

Fujiwara and Kyoko Tachibana had already started walking toward the school. They didn’t seem to care whether I followed or not. The hell with them. I wouldn’t be ignored. That room was ours. It was where Haruhi, Nagato, Asahina, Koizumi, and I all belonged. I wouldn’t stand by while enemies invaded.

I smiled faintly as my willpower filled my legs with strength anew, and I followed after the two of them.