CHAPTER 9

α—12

After a while, I heard someone knock at the door. It was slightly too forceful a knock to be considered reserved, which said something about the interpersonal skills of the person on the other side of the door.

Reflexively I looked toward Yasumi, and saw a strangely satisfied smile upon the face of the mysterious freshman girl, as though she were the foreman of a large construction project that she knew was in no danger of falling behind schedule.

… Just who was she, anyway?

Did she know someone was going to follow after me? Or had she summoned someone? Did she know who was there?

… But I didn’t have time for such questions.

As no reply was forthcoming from inside the room, the doorknob turned with a click. The door started to open, and soon the room’s rectangular entrance was clear.

The light of the setting sun in the west streamed through the clubroom window and illuminated three figures in the doorway.

In a flash, the possibility that Haruhi had returned with Asahina and Koizumi vanished.

The three figures had faces I knew. You could say that’s why I was so surprised. My astonishment at the three people was so profound that it brought about sudden-onset aphasia.

“Wha…?!” was all I could say before my mouth froze open. If I’d had a mirror, I could’ve seen that the face I was making would probably have ranked in the top three all-time dumbest faces.

But there was no need to go to the trouble of bringing a mirror.

After all—.

β—12

Led on by Fujiwara, we came to the door to the literature club room.

I didn’t feel any kind of premonition. It didn’t seem as though I was going to be able to do anything here in this Sasaki-less, Sasaki-brand closed space, and the only person around who possibly could do anything was Kyoko Tachibana, and she was on Fujiwara’s side. Even if her weak-seeming self was more honest than I reckoned, I very much doubted she’d become my ally here and now.

I mean, if she had been on my side, I wouldn’t have wound up completely trapped in this space.

Fujiwara didn’t even bother looking at me as he roughly knocked on the door. The loud banging made it clear he didn’t think of the people within the room as his superiors, or even his equals.

Without waiting for a response from inside the room, Fujiwara wrenched the doorknob and pushed the door open.

The light coming in through the clubroom’s window was bright. I couldn’t easily make out the features of the people in the room, backlit as they were.

But I could tell there were two people in there, and from their silhouettes I knew it was a boy and a girl, wearing North High uniforms.

… But… wait…

“Uh…?”

The shocked mumbles came in stereo, from both sides of the room.

“… What is this…?” Fujiwara said in a strangled voice.

“… What is going on here…?” Kyoko Tachibana expressed her astonishment more honestly.

Fujiwara continued, expressing emotion in a way I’d never heard him do before. “Where’s Kuyoh Suoh? Both of you—no, you, who are you…?”

I was the one who wanted to know what this meant. What was happening here?

Why did he want to know where Kuyoh was? Wasn’t this Fujiwara’s and Kyoko Tachibana’s plan?

Wait.

The setting sun?

This place was supposed to be suffused with the same faint light that permeated all closed space. So why was the sun putting on a grand display of a sunset as though seeing us off for the weekend? The light that streamed through the glass of the clubroom’s window was a brilliant orange. Had this room alone changed?

But such questions went flying out of my head the instant I recognized the people in the room.

Because, there—.

α—13

I wasn’t the only one to turn speechless upon the entry of the trio.

The three visitors all stood there with three different expressions of shock on their faces.

“… What is this…?”

“… What is going on here…?”

One of the people whose voices I heard in a mismatched, crazy stereo was that time-traveling bastard whose name I still didn’t know.

Around this last February, he appeared in front of (Michiru) Asahina and me, and just when I thought all he was going to do was spout off a bunch of arrogant nonsense, he’d been the last one to climb out of the car that had carried the kidnapped (Michiru) Asahina, before disappearing like some kind of magic trip. I definitely wasn’t senile enough yet to forget this delicate-featured bastard.

The other one was a small-framed girl whose face I knew; this was the third time I’d met her. I’m pretty sure she’d introduced herself as Kyoko Tachibana. She was the perpetrator behind the kidnapping of (Michiru) Asahina, and worked for an organization that opposed Koizumi’s Agency. She seemed to be an acquaintance of my old friend Sasaki.

She’d been one of the ones we’d happened to run into at the SOS Brigade’s usual meeting spot. The time traveler hadn’t been there then, but in her place had been a strange-haired alien girl. But that alien didn’t seem to be here. Naturally I didn’t want that alien girl here any more than I wanted to see bedbug corpses being left behind when I was drying my futon. But anyway—none of that mattered.

What did matter was—.

“… Who are you?”

To be honest, I wasn’t sure exactly who said that line. The moment I said it, I heard the words in my ears, and I was certain there wasn’t any discrepancy.

“Who are you?” I said it again. And across from me, with exactly the same timing and pronunciation, the same intonation and words, the question was put to me. There was no mismatch, no lengthening or shortening, no difference at all. It was perfect unison, the single voice too closely matched to even be considered stereo, resonating through the space.

The last person to enter the room where Yasumi and I waited was—

—Me.

There was another me there, and he stared at me in total shock.

β—13

It was me.

“Who are you?” was all I could manage to say before losing my words, and the first thing that occurred to me was to wonder if I’d done another time jump.

It was an obvious thing to wonder, since by that point I’d traveled back in time several times. As far as Fujiwara and Kyoko Tachibana went, they seemed to be very surprised, and hadn’t yet recovered from their ill-posed statue states. Given that even Fujiwara was that way, this must have been a genuinely unexpected event.

But wait. Wasn’t there something wrong with that?

I was quite certain that I didn’t have so much as a scrap of memory in which I met my past self here in the clubroom. Which meant that if this was the result of time travel, I’d just met a version of myself from the future. So long as I hadn’t conveniently blown away my memories of the past, then I hadn’t yet experienced the reality of meeting myself face-to-face like this.

But if that were so, the other “me” was acting strangely.

If that “me” had really come from the future, there was no reason for him to appear so obviously, openly shocked upon meeting his past self. Because from his perspective, it was a fixed event. Back when Haruhi had disappeared, I’d traveled back in time with Nagato and Asahina, and saved the buggy Nagato myself. If that “me” was really my future self, he would have been ready for this. If he wasn’t, then was he some kind of impostor?

“Ah…” said the other me.

Given this voice and expression, he’d just gone through the same thought process I had. Apparently he really, truly was me. He hadn’t come from the past, nor from the future. Which meant this wasn’t time travel. This was something else, some other phenomenon.

Though I was speechless, my eyes went over to the girl beside “me.” Who was she? She was small, wearing a uniform that was too big for her, and had a childish smiley-face barrette in her hair… wait. Where had I—?

In that moment, I felt something like electricity shoot down my back. The mysterious girl I’d encountered in my room the previous day and the image of the single flower she’d left behind thundered through my head like an express train.

When I looked, I saw that same flower on the windowsill behind Haruhi’s brigade chief desk.

They were connected.

This world and the world I’d been in until now were not completely separate places. But if this wasn’t time travel or space-time alteration, then what was it?

“Heehee.”

Even in this moment, the girl smiled more softly and gently than the flower behind her ever could.

She was an anomaly, this girl… Who was she?

Did the other “me” know the answer?

α—14

I didn’t take my eyes off the other “me.”

He was me. Myself. And he hadn’t come from the past or the future. He didn’t differ from my current self by a single second. He was exactly the same as me.

He seemed to have come to the same conclusion. I could see perfectly well that he’d fallen down the same double spiral of shock and doubt. Just as I had.

Which meant this was what he had to be thinking.

—What the hell is going on here?

And also this.

—Who the hell is that Yasumi girl next to me?

I could tell that much from a single glance at “me.” After all, he was me.

The almost hilarious deadlock continued. Everyone was stunned. The still-unnamed time traveler, Kyoko Tachibana, me, and “me.”

Everyone seemed to have lost sight of what they were trying to do. Except for one.

“Kyon!” Yasumi hopped forward. With that childish face of hers she looked back and forth between me and “me,” then smiled again.

“Yasumi,” I said in a hoarse voice. “Who… are you?”

Yasumi giggled in a childish voice, then stood up and took my hand as I stood there uselessly.

Next, she reached her other hand out to the other “me,” who looked just as helpless as I did.

“I” raised “my” hand as though it was sucked up, and Yasumi continued to hold onto mine. As though it were the most natural thing in the world.

Yasumi pulled me and “me” close.

And then—

“I am Watahashi,” she said, and gently forced my hand onto “my” hand.

And then I understood everything.

β—14

It was as though everything had frozen, as though time itself had stopped, and the only one moving was the mysterious girl.

“Kyon!”

The girl hopped forward. With her childish features, she looked happily between me and “me,” then laughed again.

“Yasumi,” said my doppelgänger in a hoarse, strangled voice. “Who… are you?”

Evidently my other self only knew the name of this mysterious individual.

The girl named Yasumi giggled a childish giggle, and offered her hand to the other “me,” who stood there uselessly.

Next she reached her other hand out to me, who was only able to muster about the same reaction as “me.” Come, now—I almost heard those words, so natural was her welcoming gesture.

I raised my arm up as though it was pulled, and Yasumi the high school girl took it.

The soft, warm sensation of her fingers reminded me of something I knew.

Yasumi pulled me and “me” close.

And then—

“I am me,” she said, and gently forced “my” hand onto my hand.

She was Watahashi. And then I understood everything.