EPILOGUE

When the new week started, the world was again a peaceful one.

Nagato had recovered as though nothing had ever been wrong, and returned to school. I still had both sets of memories in my head—one of her felled by the fever, and another where she sat silently reading in the SOS Brigade clubroom while the entrance examinations took place. No matter how much I rethink them, there are no discrepancies between them, and the sensation of those overlapping memories remains a strange one.

As for me, both histories are part of reality, so it’s not the case that one of them is true and one is false. They cover the same time, and both actually happened.

When I actually think back over the week Koizumi calls the α version, I have no trouble seeing Yasumi and everyone else’s faces, and in the β version, my exchanges with Sasaki and her group are perfectly clear in my mind. And the two layers of memory aren’t confused at all. When I think of one, that’s all I’m conscious of, and when I think of the other, the actions I took in the first don’t come to mind at all.

If I calm myself down and really focus, I can manage to connect the two weeks as I recall them. It’s something like the non-intersection of a double-helix staircase. I ascend two sets of stairs that feel as though they should cross each other, but they never do, despite having the same start and end points—that’s how the experience feels.

A new Monday succeeded that busy, eventful week. Nothing about my pilgrimage up the hill to school had changed, and while time might have gone kind of crazy, spatially speaking it felt exactly the same, and as I cooled myself off in the spring breeze that blew through the open window next to my seat, and as the chime signaling the beginning of class sounded, the blissfully unaware source of all this commotion barely made it into the classroom.

With a strange half-smiling, half-disappointed look on her face, Haruhi adroitly kept her composure as she took her seat behind me.

As I looked at her face, the grammatically complex sentence “This Haruhi is not yet the Haruhi that I already have met a month from now” forced itself through my head. The tenses of the statement were quite confusing, but it was the truth nonetheless. At this point, Haruhi didn’t have the slightest idea that I was going to appear in her bedroom in the middle of the night.

… So why did she have such a strange expression on her face? I asked.

“Yeah, about that.” Haruhi put her elbows on her desk and rested her chin in the palms of her hands. “Yesterday Yasumi came by my house.”

… Oh ho.

“And she said she was really sorry, but that she had to decline her brigade membership.”

Oh?

“I was really surprised. Turns out she was still in middle school.”

… Oh, so that explained it.

“She goes to a nearby middle school, and her sister graduated from North High, so Yasumi borrowed her uniform and snuck into the school, she said. She just had to join the SOS Brigade, so she was only sneaking in after class ended. She’ll probably be able to get admitted to North High without any trouble, but she said she just couldn’t stand to wait. Can you believe she was such a prankster?”

So that’s why she hadn’t been in the classrooms when I’d gone all over the school looking for her during lunch. She hadn’t even been a North High student, so no wonder I couldn’t find her.

Haruhi laid her head down on her desk and stared vaguely out the window. “But Yuki’s better now, and the brigade entrance examinations were fun, and the weather’s nice today, so I guess I can’t complain. She was such a promising girl, but there’s no way she could keep posing as a high school student.”

I didn’t know if Yasumi had actually gone to meet Haruhi. It was entirely possible that had never happened. But Haruhi said so, so that’s how it was.

“Won’t she be properly entering high school next year, though? Just readmit her to the brigade without another exam, then.”

“I forgot to ask what year she is in middle school. It might take two or three years, honestly.” Haruhi sounded a little lonely, but then she suddenly looked up, and got right up in my face. “Hey, by the way—you’re not hiding anything from me, are you? Did you meet with anyone this Saturday? Or, like, make some kind of strange plan behind my back…”

She was getting more and more perceptive with age. The truth was she was exactly right, but—

“I didn’t do anything. I slept for half of Saturday and took Shamisen in for immunizations on Sunday, that’s all.”

Haruhi fixed me in her gorgon-like stare, and it took several seconds before she released me. “I see. Well, fine, then.”

“Hey, Haruhi.” I wonder if I spoke up because as she turned sideways and looked out the window, her face was illuminated by the rays of sun in a way that made her look much more grown-up.

“What?”

“Suppose someone invents a time machine not too far in the future. If the you from a few years in the future met your current self, what do you think your future self would say?”

“Huh?” Haruhi scowled dubiously. “I guess in a few years I’ll be a college student. So if that person met me now… hmm. I think I’d probably look at my future self and tell her she hasn’t changed at all. Because, I mean, I’m pretty confident that my values aren’t going to change in just two, three, or even five years. But what makes you ask?”

“I was just wondering. I got to thinking about what kind of person my future self is going to grow up into.”

“Well, don’t worry. You’ll probably be the same as you are now. Or, what, do you want to think you psychologically matured enough to be able to lecture your middle school self?”

There wasn’t room for even a vague grumble in objection to that.

But, Haruhi—when my just-barely second-year high school student self travels through time and meets the future you, I hope you’ll be nice to me. I hope you’ll give me the gentle smile I remember seeing.

That goes for my future self too.

Haruhi opened her mouth as though to further talk at me, but with perfect timing I was saved by the bell, which rang just as Mr. Okabe strode jauntily into the room. Thanks, bell. Ditto to our hot-blooded instructor.

So, then.

My memories of each person in the split world had been fused such that there weren’t any inconsistencies. Both existed in my mind, and having two sets of memories meant that they’d been unconsciously arranged in a system such that when I was accessing one, the other one didn’t come to mind.

So I had the memories of Haruhi nursing the downed Nagato, but also the memories of Yasumi.

Of course, most parts of each world, which Koizumi had termed α and β, were the same, so the only places where significant differences arose between them, not counting things related to the SOS Brigade, involved Taniguchi, Kunikida, Sasaki, Kyoko Tachibana, and so on.

We ended up with zero new club members, which settled things nicely.

Incidentally, just as the ever-perceptive Haruhi had guessed, I had hosted Koizumi and Nagato on Sunday.

Or rather, I called them over. Unsurprisingly I had no energy whatsoever to leave my house, so I had them come to me. And at the time I had a pile of questions I wanted to ask them—for example, about what happened after I’d fallen holding Haruhi into the palm of the <Celestial’s> hand and gotten sent into the future.

What had happened in the clubroom after that? How had the two worlds been reconnected? What happened to Fujiwara and Kuyoh and Tachibana? And just who was Yasumi Watahashi?

Not counting Haruhi, the month-later versions of everyone else in the SOS Brigade had had distinctly knowing looks on their faces, which meant their counterparts here and now had to know.

When the intercom buzzer rang right on schedule, I went to greet them, accompanied, for some reason, by my sister and Shamisen. Koizumi was dressed in street clothes as if he was about to go on a date or something, and he gave a chagrined smile. Nagato returned my look as though she were a marble statue, her dark eyes clear as ever.

Koizumi notwithstanding, I was deeply relieved to see Nagato standing there, her usual expressionless self.

The pair removed their shoes in the entryway, and Shamisen came over and rubbed his face on both of them. This seemed less as though he was trying to be a good host and greet his guests, and more like feline instinct, reacting to the scent of people to whom he was connected. He seemed especially eager to rub against Nagato’s ankles, purring loudly as he did so, perhaps because of the something-or-other life form that had been sealed within him.

Meanwhile, my sister greeted our guests.

“Yuki! Koizumi! Welcome!” She followed them around with a smile like a blast furnace, and I had to send her to the kitchen so I could bring them to my room.

Somewhere along the line Nagato had picked Shamisen up, so I wound up temporarily housing two people and one cat in my room. Well, it wasn’t as if it mattered if the cat overheard our conversation.

“So, where shall I begin?” Koizumi sat cross-legged on my bed. “But first, I’d like to hear your side of the story. You and Suzumiya both disappeared right in front of us. I knew instantly where Suzumiya had gone, but…”

What conclusion was he leaping to now? I asked.

“She was in her house. Both α and β returned there like normal. Just like that. She might have remembered feeling faintly uneasy, but that’s not a problem.”

Nagato sat on the floor and silently put Shamisen in her lap, and began to rub his belly. Shamisen purred loudly. He seemed to have taken quite a shine to her.

When it came to what had happened in that crazy, mixed-up closed space, there was something I wanted to know more than anything else.

“Nagato.”

“…” Nagato ceased her gentle massaging of Shamisen and looked at me.

“Has your fever gone down?”

Nagato only nodded as she poked at Shamisen’s paw-pads.

“Did you manage to complete any, uh… high-level communication or whatever, with the Heavenly Canopy Dominion?”

“That has been temporarily aborted.” Shamisen rolled over on his back, and Nagato stroked his throat. “Both the Data Overmind and the Heavenly Canopy Dominion determined that each had received the minimum necessary amount of information. My ability to relay information has been recognized as insufficiently accurate for the task. Thus I have been relieved of that duty, and given new orders—to passively observe and report on Haruhi Suzumiya and Kuyoh Suoh.”

So Nagato’s restoration was because the Heavenly Canopy Dominion had temporarily ceased interfering with her. I was just happy she was back to normal, I said.

“Not necessarily,” said Nagato without any trace of disappointment. “We have moved on to phase two of a plan to achieve mutual understanding. I was merely judged insufficient for the task of conducting communication for phase one. I have not been informed which individual will be succeeding me, but they will undoubtedly perform better than I did.”

They should’ve just let Kimidori handle it from the beginning.

“Wait a second.” Did that mean Kuyoh was still in this world? I asked.

Nagato tugged on Shamisen’s whiskers. “She had not disappeared. She is currently attending Koyoen Academy, where she will remain as a student. Her primary goal is to achieve autonomy, which will take some time.”

“And Fujiwara?” I addressed this question to Koizumi.

“I doubt we’ll see him again. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that he’ll never be able to travel back to our present again. It seems that his future time line was severed. Just as that which prevents Asahina and her comrades from traveling further back than four years ago, Suzumiya created a new time fault—or so Asahina the Elder explained to me.”

So she’d had time to explain things, then? I asked.

“Immediately after you and Suzumiya disappeared, the <Celestial> started to disintegrate. It was a rather familiar scene, for me. After that, the closed space completely collapsed. Not only Suzumiya’s, but Sasaki’s too. The world returned to a peaceful state. In that moment, it was just the adult Asahina and myself—and Kyoko Tachibana, I suppose. Fujiwara and Kuyoh Suoh were nowhere to be seen.”

And neither was Yasumi Watahashi, I guessed.

“Did you talk with Asahina the Elder at all?”

“A bit. She seemed very sad about what happened with Fujiwara, but that’s just a guess based on how she looked. But she did say that his actions were half-impulsive, and that he had probably been used to protect the time line he was attached to. There isn’t enough information to understand all the details, so that’s about all I can say.”

I wondered what had changed from when Fujiwara planned to kill Haruhi and install Sasaki as the new god. Was that somehow a problem for Asahina the Elder’s future?

“Still,” said Koizumi, gazing at Shamisen’s twitching tail, “Asahina did let slip that even if the space-time continuum were completely overwritten from this time plane onto her own future, it would all end up converging anyway. And she sounded sincere.”

Huh. And then?

“She gave me a sad smile and left the room. I followed right after her, but she was gone. I assume she returned to the future.”

I wondered how much of this I should believe. Both of Koizumi’s statements, and Asahina the Elder’s words. “What about Kyoko Tachibana?”

“Once the two worlds were fused, she was stunned. She stayed there for a while, holding her head and moaning, but eventually calmed down and just slumped there. She seemed deeply disappointed.”

I’ll bet she was, I said.

“She returned home, totally depressed. I suppose her burden was quite heavy.” Koizumi then took out his cell phone. “But before we parted ways, I exchanged numbers and addresses with her.”

After all that confusion, he was always so clever. Koizumi the ladies’ man.

“She sent me a text right away. In it…”

Apparently for a variety of reasons, Kyoko Tachibana had decided to withdraw from all of this. She saw all too keenly that she couldn’t keep up with these aliens and time travelers. Though apparently she was still holding on to the hope that she would be able find something she could do.

Koizumi snapped his phone shut. “Don’t worry. If she appears again we’ll take the necessary measures.”

He didn’t have to sound so happy about it.

“Based on her postscript, she plans to be reclusive for a while. Her comrades have all gone underground, and she’s simply going to try to remain Sasaki’s friend. I wonder how that will go.”

I was quite confident that Sasaki would not be sweet-talked by Kyoko Tachibana any time soon.

As Koizumi and I talked, it seemed as though Nagato had become Shamisen’s personal masseuse, and was focused entirely on petting his fur. Perhaps she had no interest in our conversation, or perhaps the entity that had been transferred into Shamisen was simply more interesting.

“Kyon! Yuki!” My sister opened the door and bounced her way into the room. “Yuki! Let’s play! C’mon, with Shami too! We’ve got all sorts of kitty toys downstairs, so let’s play!”

“…”

Nagato took Shamisen and quietly stood, allowing herself to be pulled out of the room by my excited sister. Perhaps she’d read the situation, or perhaps playing with a cat and a girl was more interesting than hearing a recap of events she’d already experienced.

In any case, thanks to her Koizumi and I could now speak one-on-one, so I was grateful to her.

“So I know that that was Sasaki’s closed space back there. Hers was extremely stable, after all. But why did Haruhi’s closed space also appear?” I got confused just thinking about the swirling jumble of dark and light back there.

“There’s no room for doubt there. Suzumiya intentionally made that happen, such that I could be allowed in, and such that a <Celestial> could be created.”

That was weird. At the time, Haruhi had been outside the school, and she hadn’t been conscious of what was happening with us, I pointed out.

“What if I told you that she was fully aware?” Koizumi smiled like a nasty cram school teacher, looking at me as if I was giving myself fits trying to answer a question even though the solution was right in front of me. “Have you forgotten that there was someone else besides us in that space? She just suddenly appeared, and she wasn’t an alien, time traveler, or esper. Despite us never really understanding her true nature, at some point she stabilized her position there, and summoned both you and me to the clubroom. Yes—our α versions.”

Yasumi Watahashi, huh?

What was she? I asked.

Koizumi answered immediately. “Her true form is Haruhi Suzumiya. She is an alternate self created by Suzumiya.”

By this point I had sort of gotten that feeling, but I wanted to hear the details. When had Koizumi figured that out? I asked.

“It was explained to us from the very beginning. Quite simply, actually. Can I borrow a notebook and pen?”

I handed them over as asked, and looked on as in a graceful hand he first wrote the words “Yasumizu Watahashi” on the paper.

“It’s a very simple anagram. It can be solved without any hints at all, so none were given to us. Reading this as it is should make the solution quite obvious.”

I told him to cut the chatter and get on with it.

“The reading of the kanji for ‘Yasumizu’ as ‘Yasumi’ was misdirection. This should be pronounced as ‘Yasumizu.’ If we write it out phonetically in the alphabet, it turns out like so—”

—ya-su-mi-zu wa-ta-ha-shi

“Then, if we rearrange the letters—”

—wa-ta-shi-ha su-zu-mi-ya

Watashi ha, Suzumiya.

I am Suzumiya.

Koizumi dropped the pencil on the notebook as though having proved his point.

“Suzumiya unconsciously used her abilities. As a precaution, you see. That’s why the world was split. One was the world as it originally was. The other was a world that didn’t exist. Despite being unaware of it, she sensed the danger, and protected the world. If she hadn’t split reality, our enemies would’ve been able to do with you as they pleased. Essentially, she saved both you and Nagato.”

So this was what it felt like to be at a loss for words.

“As for when it began, I can only speculate. The last day of spring vacation and the first day of the semester both seem likely. At that point Suzumiya guessed what was going to happen. Subconsciously, of course. This was some kind of miracle. I suppose you could call it an unconscious prediction.”

So far as I could remember, the world had been continuous until, still in the bath, I put the phone receiver my sister brought me to my ear.

And then the world split—into one where Sasaki spoke to me, and one where Yasumi did.

“Suzumiya was aware that a future awaited in which both you and Nagato were in danger. So that’s where she made her move. That’s what I’m calling the α route, where her other self appeared. Not only does she not know about her own power, she may not even want to know, to say nothing of whether the knowledge is accessible to her in the first place.”

Koizumi’s face looked somehow terrified.

“Yasumi Watahashi was Suzumiya’s unconscious instantiation. I say ‘unconscious’ because she represents actions taken literally outside the realm of her own awareness. Furthermore, even if Yasumi Watahashi did not disappear but instead was reintegrated into Suzumiya, Suzumiya herself has no knowledge of that. She is no more than a dream that disappears upon awakening. And who knows, she may well have been an actual dream. We may have been in an illusory world created by Suzumiya. It’s possible that we came perilously close to non-being becoming reality.”

Don’t make me remember that again. Could Haruhi do anything?

“It’s a mind-boggling thought. I’ve always taken a skeptical approach to the Haruhi-as-god theory, but I may have to revise my opinion.”

I doubted she particularly wanted his worship, though.

“When I said that Suzumiya was gradually losing her power, that may well have been a wrong guess. She is evolving. The possibility has emerged that she will be able to consciously control the manifestation of her emotional power. The deliberate actions of the <Celestial> speak of that possibility. Although she does still remain unaware. That’s precisely why it’s so awe-inspiring. If you sit down at a keyboard and randomly mash on the keys, the odds of you writing a sentence with meaning are so faint they’re near zero. But if you press them consciously, it’s trivial, is it not? She can do this without even being aware of it. She can completely ignore probabilities. She’s transcended godhood.”

So there’s nothing more we can do, then, I said.

“It’s just a guess. Psychoanalysis of Suzumiya is beyond my abilities—all the more so if she’s undergone some kind of apotheosis. Go read up on your mythology. The will and words of the gods are always mysterious and capricious. Sometimes even unreasonable. But it’s not the case that they have no affection for humanity. If there’s one thing we can learn from the strangely human faults they sometimes show, it’s that myths were written by humans. So what would be a god, to a god?”

I had no idea either, I said, but it didn’t much matter either way.

I asked about the relationship between Asahina the Elder and Fujiwara—or more to the point, about the time travelers’ theory of time.

“We know from personal experience that it’s possible to split the time line. So long as it overwrote space-time, neither you nor I could notice it. Just like that last somewhere that we repeated how many tens of thousands of times. The fact that we have memories of two separate routes is paradoxical proof.”

And?

“The bifurcation that we experienced was thanks to Suzumiya’s manual alteration of space-time. However, we don’t know how that affected Asahina and Fujiwara’s future. They could have been from the same future, or individuals from different realities, or one of them could have been lying, or the possibility even exists that both of them were presenting false testimony. There’s no way to know for sure.”

It didn’t seem like “classified information” was the only reason why time travelers didn’t talk about their true feelings, I said.

“Indeed. This is only my intuition, but I feel that be it thanks to either natural phenomena or deliberate action, the future is split into many different paths. But the diverging routes to those destinations are limited, and they will eventually reconverge to a single path. And we’ve become conscious of one such divergence, then reconvergence—that is my guess. If I were to draw a diagram—”

Koizumi picked the pencil back up, and started doodling lines in my notebook.

“As I just mentioned, the path we were originally supposed to take was the β route. But then Suzumiya forcibly intervened and created the α route, which is what led us to where we are now. Who’s to say what would’ve happened without the α version of you and me, along with Yasumi Watahashi.”

“On the other hand, if Asahina and Fujiwara’s futures are separate, then we can postulate it would look something like this, diverging thanks to some event, then converging again.”

“There is also the possibility that there are futures that do not converge, remaining fragmented and unchanging. Asahina may have come back in order to prevent her own world from tapering off—to guide the flow of time such that it leads to her future.”

Good grief. I couldn’t keep up with this. I wondered if Nagato could offer an alternate explanation… and as I was thinking about it, something totally different occurred to me.

“This is changing the subject, but you and Mori… and Arakawa too, come to think of it—what’s your relationship? I just assumed that Mori was your boss.”

Koizumi peered at me, an intrigued look on his face. “Now, why would you have thought something like that? Do you have any problem with the Agency?”

“Mori always calls you by your name, but I was wondering what she calls you when we’re not around.”

He seemed momentarily taken aback, but Koizumi soon recovered his amused smile. “We’re all colleagues with the same goal. As such, we don’t have the kind of hierarchy that exists in a corporation. There are no superiors—everyone is the same. There’s no hierarchy among comrades. Mori is simply Mori. And she’s free to call me whatever she wishes.”

Huh.

Well, I’d leave it at that for now, I decided. I didn’t particularly want to know, and it was rude to pry.

“Ah, there is one other thing. This is a trivial matter, but I thought I would let you know. It’s about the flower that Yasumi brought to decorate the room. I sent a photo of it to be analyzed, and it turns out that it’s a completely new variety—we could even assign fresh Latin taxonomy to it. She kept her promise—she was told to bring something interesting to the brigade, and she faithfully did exactly that. Despite being Haruhi’s alter ego, she might just be a little more charming than the original… though I suppose that’s a bit rude to say. In any case, I hope we can meet her again somehow.”

Koizumi stood with a slightly bashful smile, and thus did my weekend meeting conclude.

Incidentally, when I escorted him back downstairs, I should add that we encountered Nagato and my sister ignoring Shamisen in favor of a game of animal shogi. According to what I heard later, my sister had beaten her alien opponent several games in a row. I wonder about that.

I still think about it sometimes.

—What if.

What if I had chosen Sasaki? What if I had switched sides from Haruhi to Sasaki, and joined up with that fake SOS Brigade? What if I had traded Koizumi for Kyoko Tachibana, gotten Kuyoh Suoh in exchange for Nagato, and discarded Asahina in favor of Fujiwara, finally siding with Sasaki?

I might have been killed. Probably by none other than Ryoko Asakura. Third time’s the charm. Kimidori probably wouldn’t have stopped her. And there was no telling what Nagato would do in response. It was probably overestimating my own importance to imagine that Nagato would’ve really rebelled against the Overmind.

Anyway, I hadn’t done it. I couldn’t have.

I was far too deeply involved with the SOS Brigade. I could no more extricate myself than I could swim out of the deepest part of a swamp without scuba gear.

That’s why I stayed in the shallows. Here at the edge of a long, shallow beach, where I could stay with my friends, never growing tired of gazing at the far-off horizon.

I didn’t feel like asking some other unspecified person. I wanted to stay like this. I didn’t need anyone’s opinion. Haruhi and Asahina and Koizumi and Nagato. Their view was my view, and there was no doubt that my thoughts were in concert with theirs.

So I just wanted to go on like this. As far as we wanted to. We could jump over as many bent rails as we had to, building our own tracks as we went.

On until the end of time.

On Monday, after class ended, some sudden caprice compelled our brigade chief to declare club activities for the day canceled and leave school immediately, and feeling fortunate, several of us brigade members—including Asahina and Koizumi—went our separate ways home.

I felt as though I wanted a little bit more time on my own to think things through, and I was grateful for the opportunity to do so.

Only Nagato remained in the clubroom, absorbed in reading, perhaps out of some sense of obligation as the president of the literature club. I could only pray no hopeful literature club members-to-be dared to set foot in that cursed location. I wondered if Nagato would do some kind of sneaky data manipulation to prevent that from happening.

After school ended I got my bike out from the bike parking lot in front of the station, and passing by the road home, pedaled on down a different route.

My goal was the SOS Brigade’s “usual spot,” the square in front of a certain train station. Although come to think of it, lately I’d been running into Sasaki, Kuyoh, and Kyoko Tachibana there quite a bit.

Of course I didn’t have any arrangements to meet up with anyone. I just had the idea that if I went there, I might be able to anyway. Just like flipping a coin, I figured the odds were about fifty-fifty, but it seemed that my guess had been anticipated.

“Hey.”

Sasaki stood in front of the square and waved.

“I thought you might come here,” she said. “It’s not very scientific, but sometimes it’s not a bad idea to trust your instincts. Although betting everything on gut feelings or prophetic dreams is just bad reasoning.”

I illegally parked my bike and walked over to Sasaki.

She was calmly watching the people come and go, and as I approached she invited me to sit on a nearby wooden bench.

For a while we were silent, watching the students heading home after being spit out by their schools, and the many other people coming and going like so many freshwater fish in a river.

It was Sasaki who finally spoke up.

“Good work the other day. I mean, I suppose in the end it didn’t wind up being involved at all, and getting ditched in front of the school like that totally threw me for a loop. So that was the closed space I’ve been hearing so much about?”

What had happened to her back then? I asked.

“I didn’t have anything to do, and it seemed like if I hung around the area I’d only get in the way, so I just retreated. You go up and down that steep hill every day, huh? To be honest, I’m impressed.”

It wasn’t that big of a deal. Once you got used to it, it was easier than walking around underground shopping districts in the city.

“I heard most of the details from Tachibana.” Sasaki kept her gaze fixed on her dangling loafers. “I feel bad for Fujiwara, but it sounds like things worked out all right. For me too. I’ve been released from god duty, apparently.”

I could tell from her tone that Sasaki was being sincere. Not for nothing had I spent so much time with her in middle school. There was just one thing—

“There’s something I want to ask you,” I said.

“What might that be? What could there possibly be for you to ask me, apart from academics? I seem to recall you doing that all the time in middle school.”

“When you came to my house, you said there was another reason for it, besides the stuff going on with Fujiwara and the rest. What was it?”

Sasaki’s eyes widened considerably. “Oh that? I’m surprised you remember. I’d meant to say it casually enough that you’d forget it right away. I suppose I shouldn’t have underestimated your memory.”

Sasaki chuckled under her breath and looked up at the sky.

“It happened about two weeks ago. Someone confessed his feelings to me.”

In that moment, every comment that came to mind was sealed away, and I found myself forced into total silence. It was as if every word of Japanese had gone flying out of my head, and I couldn’t say anything.

“It’s a boy from my school. At the time I couldn’t help but feel like, wow, there’s no accounting for taste, and I wasn’t quick enough to be able to reply right away. It felt like such a sneak attack. So I’ve kept putting it off.”

When I thought about it, Haruhi and Sasaki were alike in some ways. So long as they didn’t open their mouths, their looks would draw an above-average amount of attention from the opposite sex, but if they just stood there silently, their eyes would chase those same guys away.

“In other words, I came for advice on my love life. Did you ever imagine I would come over with less than a single strand of messenger RNA’s worth of business? But at least I had the good fortune to be able to meet your sister.”

Well… I felt bad that I hadn’t been useful, I said.

“Don’t worry about it. It would’ve been better for you if I’d come for advice like that, given the circumstances. I thought about it and decided that it really was the sort of problem I needed to solve myself. It wouldn’t have been very considerate of me to just add noise to your life.”

We fell silent again. I thought about making some kind of stupid joke, but nothing came to mind. Pathetically, it seemed as though I needed to brush up on my vocabulary. I’d have to ask Librarian Nagato if she had any recommendations.

The stagnation surrounded us like a jelly, and it was Sasaki again who finally broke it, with yet another shocking revelation.

“Suzumiya and I went to the same elementary school. We were always in different classes, but even I could tell how much she stood out. She was like the sun. Even in a different class, I could feel the light she gave off.”

That had to be some kind of joke. There was no way Haruhi had met Sasaki before I did.

“I was always thinking how nice it would be to be in the same class with her, but it never happened. So when it turned out we were going to different middle schools, I felt kind of complicated about it. I was sort of lonely, but also relieved… It’s true, if you stare at the sun too long you’ll injure your eyes. But if the sun disappears, we lose the warmth of its light… or so I guess you could say. Does this make any sense, Kyon?”

Yeah, more or less, I said.

“Thanks to some family issues, my last name changed when I started middle school. That’s why Suzumiya didn’t recognize me when you introduced me as Sasaki. My appearance has changed quite a bit too. I’d grown my hair out to try to look more like her, but then I cut it. It’s for the best, though. If she noticed me now, I feel like it would just make me self-conscious. So keep it a secret, would you? This particular confession is pretty embarrassing for me.”

I’m pretty sure I exhaled.

I felt a renewed sense of just how many human connections happened without my knowledge. It felt obvious in retrospect. There are billions of people in the world, and each one of them encounters many others—there are meetings, partings, and reunions. Countless little dramas playing out, all the time.

And in the end I could only be aware of the relationships in my immediate surroundings. No matter what incidents, what romances might happen, there was no way for me to ever recognize such unknowable things as real, I said.

“That’s not true, Kyon,” said Sasaki, having regained her bright smile. “Are you saying the only reality is that which is reported on? It’s true that as humans, our knowledge is finite. What exists at the edge of the universe, what is there beyond the universe, and what is the universe, anyway—for me, these truths are still out of reach. But just because you can’t recognize something doesn’t mean the answer doesn’t exist. This is what I think—even if humanity as a species heads for extinction, so long as there’s some life form somewhere ready to observe things we can’t understand, then we could call that being a god.”

I definitely didn’t understand anymore, now that she’d brought things out to the cosmic scale, I said.

“We humans have been given the power of imagination. That’s the one thing humans can brag about to the natural world. We can compete with godlike beings. It’s our one weapon, our single arrow.” Sasaki chuckled, and continued. “If you like, Kyon, I’ll stand in for Suzumiya whenever you want—or so I’d say, but I know you’d never wish for even a tiny bit of that. And I’m sure you know what my wish is. In any case, that possibility is now too tiny to be expressed in digits. It would be presumptuous to describe it even as ‘zero.’ It does not exist.”

She really was always right, I said.

“And in the end, I didn’t do anything. I’m really not built for this god stuff.”

Given this world full of people doing all sorts of things that were better off left undone, Sasaki herself should have been well aware just how beautiful it was to hear someone say they weren’t going to do something that they shouldn’t have been doing, I said.

“Yeah. I didn’t want to just become a simple bad guy. I didn’t want that kind of price on my head. My plan is to avoid being close enough to ruin that I have to take on that kind of work. It’s like an actor playing a cheap trickster even though they have an order of magnitude more talent than that—but that’s where the nuance comes from. But I’m not an actress, and I don’t belong onstage. For good or ill, I can’t act.”

The only person I know who seemed as if they’d make a decent actor was Koizumi. Definitely not me. I was pretty confident I’d have a lot of complaints for the screenwriter who wrote the script too.

“It just means that I can’t be anyone besides me, and you can’t be anyone besides you. No one can pretend to be Suzumiya. She probably couldn’t even consciously do it herself. There’s no room for conscious intervention there. No matter how wise or capable you are.”

These riddles are serving their purpose, I told Sasaki. Just how long was she planning to continue this pseudo-philosophical conversation?

“How rude. Well, I’m done.” Sasaki’s face turned suddenly serious. “You seem to have steadily increased the number of lovely friends to whom you’re connected and discovered quite a bit of pleasure there, but I’ve been thinking. I want to focus on my studies. I really don’t have the luxury of slacking through my classes and enjoying myself the way we did in middle school. I’m not even paying much attention to how I talk. My school was boys-only until a few years ago, and girls are still a minority, so it’s not an environment I find particularly enjoyable. But I suppose being so lazy before means it’s about all I can expect to come slamming into a wall. That’s why, Kyon—it’s only ever been you. Those times we put our desks together and ate lunch are more precious to me than anything now. I wanted to say something but after thinking about it, I won’t. Yet there’s only one boy in the world who both kept his distance but also paid attention to me, and afterward treated me totally normally, and that’s you.”

She giggled again.

“Gosh, it really sounds like I’m confessing to you, doesn’t it? It really wasn’t my intention to be misunderstood, though.”

Nobody’s misunderstood anything. There’s something screwy in the head with anyone who got the wrong idea, I said. Kunikida’s brain specialized in academics, so he had a strange ability to remember stuff like this.

“That’s true. The things you don’t really want to remember get forgotten the instant you don’t need them anymore. I’ve already forgotten all the knowledge and techniques I memorized to pass my high school entrance exams. I’m sure the memories I have now will be gone after three years,” said Sasaki sunnily. “But that’s fine. I’ll remember other things—the things I want to remember.”

Sasaki hopped to her feet as though freed from something.

“Well, I’ve got to get to cram school. I’m glad we could talk, Kyon.”

Sasaki started walking, heading for the station’s turnstile without looking back.

I called out to her slender form with as much energy as I could muster. “Good-bye, old friend! I’ll see you at the next reunion!”

I don’t know whether she heard me or not, but she didn’t raise her hand. No matter how many years it would be until our next meeting, something about the way she walked away made me think she’d already decided upon the words she’d say. “Hey, friend.”

Thus did Sasaki and I begin our walk down opposite paths. I wasn’t sure if I should hurry, or if I should take my time—I felt sort of ambivalent about it, but the question was whether a month was enough time in which to come to a conclusion about something. I suppose it depends on the something.

In any case, the direction I was walking in would lead me toward days during which I would have to decide what present to get Haruhi.

If anyone had any ideas, I would’ve loved to get a text message or letter about them. I had the feeling it would make a good reference for me to make the best possible choice I could.

The next day, Tuesday.

Despite having trudged up this hill for an entire year, its irritation never seemed to abate, so yet again I found myself climbing it in silence.

“Heya there, Kyon ol’ buddy!” I felt a whack on my back as if someone was trying to kill a cockroach there, and stumbled forward without any intention of exaggerating the impact.

I turned around and there in front of my face, gleaming like a laminated rare card, was none other than the great Tsuruya.

“Ah, Tsuruya. Good morning.”

“Hey, Kyon! Lookin’ nice and clear today, eh?”

I looked up at the sky to confirm that it was indeed cloudy, then back at Tsuruya, who cackled.

“I’m not talking about the weather! I’m talking about you, boy, you! You’ve got a nice pleasant look on your face, like something that’s been bothering you for a whole week has finally cleared up—that’s what your face looks like!” she said, as though having seen the entire sequence of events herself.

In a way, Tsuruya had even sharper instincts than Haruhi herself. I didn’t even find it strange that she’d been able to read so much from my face, although I was surprised at how normal that felt. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you, Tsuruya.”

“What might that be?” she said, falling in step with me.

“What kind of guy do you think I am? I mean from your perspective.”

“Huh? Did something happen? My impression’s not gonna do you any good!”

“I want to hear your honest opinion on the matter. Not only can I not get a straight answer out of Koizumi or Nagato, but they just spout off intellectual nonsense that I can’t understand.”

Tsuruya laughed. “I guess you can’t really ask Mikuru either. She’d pretty much only flatter you.” Then Tsuruya suddenly peered at my face. “Hmm, well, Kyon… you’re… like a well-liked minor character. You’re not particularly easy to talk to, but when someone does say something, you always come back with just the right response. You don’t really laugh when someone says something funny, but you also don’t get irritated when someone’s being boring. There really aren’t very many people who will just give you a straight answer like that. That’s you, Kyon!”

I asked if she didn’t have anything a little more, well, flattering.

“I guess you’re a decently cute guy.”

Unsurprisingly, Tsuruya’s visual acuity was about as good as a military Landsat bird. Go on, I said.

“But not that cute.”

The nice feeling I’d been experiencing popped like a balloon.

Tsuruya cackled again. “But I don’t think you’re on the wrong track! You just gotta trust in that. You don’t seem like you tease Mikuru too much, after all! You’re just living out your high school life here, normal as can be!”

Nothing about life in the SOS Brigade was normal, I said.

“I wonder,” said Tsuruya, light shining in her eyes. “It seems like it’s kinda become normal to you! You’ve got Haru-nyan, and Mikuru, and Nagatocchi, and Koizumi. Who else do you need?”

Nothing, I could immediately say. I’d had more than enough of new brigade recruits.

“Nyahaha, I’ll bet!” Tsuruya skipped a step and pulled ahead of me. But then, turning around, she continued. “Don’t forget the blossom-viewing party at the end of the month! I’ve got all kinds of stuff planned, so if you don’t come we’ll bring the cherry blossoms to you!” Then, finally: “Just let me know when you need that weird toy you left at my house! Bye!”

With a light tone and a wink, she left me behind and tripped her way up the hill. In her receding figure, I saw someone who was going to take life by the horns and wring every bit of fun out of it.

I was no match for Tsuruya. I probably never would be, not in my whole life. But that sense of inferiority only kindled a strangely warm sensation in my heart.

Just as Tsuruya’s form was shrinking in the distance, a different acquaintance of mine slapped my back. When I turned, I saw lined up there the two people with whom I mysteriously always ended up in the same class—Taniguchi and Kunikida.

“Yo!” said Taniguchi, who from what I could tell of his complexion, had finally recovered from his encounter with Kuyoh Suoh. Ever since that random encounter, I’d had a strangely hard time looking at him, but Taniguchi the Ladies’ Man seemed to have bounced back quickly.

“Hey, Kyon. For starters, you gotta introduce me to a girl.”

And now he was an idiot again.

“From what Kunikida told me, this Sasaki girl’s quite the cutie, right? And you’re not gonna do anything with her, are you? It’s not like you’re some jerk that’s gonna ditch Suzumiya and go playing around with other chicks. So c’mon, man!”

I told Taniguchi to shut up. If he wanted something, he could go get it himself. Especially if it was the only thing he’d thought about from the big bang up until this moment. Anyway, I said, Sasaki wasn’t his type. Did I need to remind him how terribly he’d been dumped by Kuyoh? Where should I write it—his forehead, maybe?

Taniguchi made a clumsy gesture of dissatisfaction. “Hey. Not only do I not have any worthwhile girls around me, there aren’t even any decent guys. If I ever make nice-nice with an idol pop band, I ain’t gonna introduce ’em to you, Kyon. Remember that. And you’ll think back on what you said and cry.”

Oh, I’d cry, all right. I’d be laughing so hard tears would come out of my eyes, I said.

“Sure, go on. If you spend all of high school babysitting Suzumiya, you’re gonna get to graduation day and wonder, ‘Why, oh why, did I waste my youth so?’ But then it’s gonna be too late for regrets!”

I thanked Taniguchi ever so much for his kind warning. I’d be sure to take care. But at the moment I was too busy enjoying the height of my high school life. He could do whatever he wanted, so long as he didn’t date any more aliens. That could cause problems.

Perhaps sick of hearing Taniguchi’s idiocy, Kunikida cut into the conversation. His expression was comparatively serious.

“Hey, Kyon. It’s pretty common for people with similar characteristics to repel each other. It’s actually true that opposites attract. The proof is in nature, right? For example, a magnet’s north and south pole, or a positive or negative charge.”

This was a little more serious of a lecture than I wanted when I was walking around. It seemed like a review of a physics lesson, I said.

“But—and this is going to get into some physics—if we go even lower, to the world of molecules and atoms and even smaller things, we see the existence of a force even closer than electromagnetism. Aside from hydrogen, every atom’s nucleus has protons and neutrons in it. Since neutrons have no charge, by the electromagnetic charges of the protons, they should repel each other. So why is it that these protons actually wind up sticking together and getting along inside the nucleus of an atom?”

I don’t know.

“If your name was Hideki Yukawa, you’d understand. He was Japan’s first Nobel Prize winner. He predicted that there was an even smaller particle mutually binding one proton to another. His hypothesis stated that the force was far stronger than electromagnetism or gravitation, and in the following years, his theory was proven true. This won Professor Yukawa the Nobel Prize, and set physics on the road toward the discovery of the quark and hadron.”

So how did this biography of Hideki Yukawa have anything to do with the current situation? I asked.

“Kyon, from my perspective you and Suzumiya are very similar. You both have a positive charge. Normally that would mean that you would mutually repel, and I assumed that your relationship would collapse. Because you’re too similar, you see. That’s still the impression I get, really. You’re too like each other, so it’s obvious that you’ll repel. But far from it, you and Suzumiya have become inseparable. This is where the nuclear force Professor Yukawa discovered comes in. The strong force that keeps protons that should go flying apart from doing just that is the same thing keeping you and her together. That’s all I can figure. Of course, it’s not any of the four elementary forces we’ve discovered so far—not the strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, electromagnetism, or gravity. It has nothing to do with the natural forces we know of.”

So what was he saying it was? I asked.

“How am I supposed to know? Maybe it’s something new, some fifth element. But that’s just wishful scientific thinking. Considering it from the standpoint of human relationships, I think the people around you are very important for the bond between you and Suzumiya. Koizumi, Asahina, and Nagato are definitely fulfilling some kind of role, but it would be irresponsible of me to speculate about its nature. I get the feeling the SOS Brigade is structured like an atom. On the large scale it moves around, sticking to some things and bouncing off others, but internally it’s very cohesive and stable, and nearly impossible to split. In order to disrupt the balance, all you can do is impact each mutually reinforcing element, but I don’t think there are very many people in the world capable of that. Tsuruya could probably do it, but even if she knows that, she’s probably chosen not to.”

Even I knew that much, I said.

“Tsuruya’s actually really perceptive and smart. Her being a North High student is actually the only reason I came here.”

… Really? I was getting a lot of shocking revelations today.

“It’s a little embarrassing. You’re the only person I’ve told.” Kunikida glanced at Taniguchi; our excitable classmate was ogling a group of freshman girls on their way to school. Having confirmed Taniguchi’s attention was elsewhere, Kunikida continued in a low voice.

“Don’t tell Taniguchi, okay? As far as I can tell, Tsuruya’s an honest-to-goodness genius. I just wanted to be close to her, but thanks to you and Suzumiya, I’ve actually been able to be friends with her, for which I’m really grateful. I’ve gotten to know just how unfathomably smart she is. But it’s a little depressing—knowing a genius has made me realize I’m not a genius myself. That much I’m sure of.”

The fact that he understood all that stuff was impressive enough, I told him.

“Not at all. I’m far from being a genius, and well within the realms of the very smart. To reach such heights the only thing I can do is study as hard as I can, but when I think about how much further I have to go before I reach her level, it makes me dizzy. But it’s not like I’m going to give up. I’m going to where she is, no matter how many years it takes. Of course, by that time she will have gone even higher. And then I’ll just have to aim for that place. It’s like Achilles and the tortoise. Yeah, I feel pretty good right now. The person I’ve set as my goal is charging on ahead, and I’m gonna have to work hard to keep up. I get excited just thinking about it. This probably sounds pretty weird to you.”

It didn’t sound strange at all. He had a wonderful aspiration, I said. And incidentally, I’d never known he was so talkative. I guess you can never tell about some people.

Even Koizumi had decided Tsuruya wasn’t worth trying to keep up with, which meant she didn’t just look down on all of North High; she gazed out over all humanity. I bet Kunikida could get to a pretty good place. Tsuruya being Tsuruya, she’d probably like someone who’d forced himself to be smart. The best I could probably hope for was being treated like a much younger brother. Or maybe a nephew.

When I got to the classroom, Haruhi had already taken her seat, and she glared up at me.

“We’re back to normal operation today. Come straight to the clubroom after class.”

Sure, sure.

After putting my bag on my desk, I turned around. “Hey, Haruhi.”

“What?”

“Why’d you come to North High?”

Perhaps suspicious of the sudden question, Haruhi glared at me as though she were a crocodile in an oasis eyeing an approaching group of water buffalo. “I just felt like it. I could’ve gone to a private school, but I got the feeling this place would have at least one interesting club.”

Huh.

“What’s with that grin? I know what you want to say. You’re gonna tell me that my intuition was bad, because there weren’t any good clubs after all.”

Not at all, I said. But her idea of an interesting club wasn’t anything that existed yet. And anyway, would a club that hung up a huge sign saying something like COOL CLUB ACTIVITIES HERE have passed her test? I asked.

“I guess not. I just hoped there would be a club that didn’t seem like it did much, but actually did all kinds of stuff in secret. But there wasn’t at all. And when I say ‘secret’ I mean it spelled out in hiragana, otherwise it’s not a s-e-c-r-e-t.”

Watching Haruhi’s lips as she pronounced the words in that childish way, I nodded.

Your wish really did come true, Haruhi. The secret organization you founded was rooted in this school and didn’t seem likely to be shaken anytime soon. At least not given how silly it had made certain time travelers and extraterrestrial life-forms look.

Haruhi continued to glare at me, but finally folded her arms on her desk, laid her head down, exhaled a sigh, and for some reason, she recited a poem by Sugawara no Michizane.

“In this moment, with no offering to bring, see, O Tamuke Mountain! Here are brocades of red maple, as a tribute to the gods.”

Its meaning aside, I knew at least that it wasn’t a poem for spring.

After school.

“Yo,” I said as I opened the clubroom door and was greeted by the sight of all the usual suspects save Haruhi, who had remained in the classroom on cleaning duty.

Asahina had already changed into her maid outfit, Nagato was sitting in the corner reading, and Koizumi was staring at the Chinese shogi board he’d set up.

Nagato did not look up, while Koizumi greeted me only with a glance, and surprisingly, even Asahina did not turn around, remaining with her back to me by the windowsill.

I looked more closely.

“Ahh…” Asahina sighed as she changed the water in the vase Yasumi had brought.

She finally turned around to face me. “She was just so, so cute! It’s really such a shame… I just wanted her to look up to me…”

As soon as she said it, I realized I’d never really treated Asahina like a senior. She just looked younger than me, so it was hard to treat her as if she was older. But that was all right. Asahina was Asahina, and I couldn’t even be sure of her true age.

“I guess she was really a middle schooler all along… no wonder I kept thinking she seemed like a younger sister.”

It looked as though, as far as Asahina was concerned, Yasumi’s situation was exactly as Haruhi had explained it.

“I wish I could’ve gotten to talk with her more.”

I realized something as I gazed at the maid-clad Asahina, she in turn staring out the window with eyes misty.

This Asahina right here would somehow eventually become the adult version of herself. At the moment, Asahina the Younger hardly knew anything. If I were to tell her everything I knew thanks to my repeated encounters with Asahina the Elder and Fujiwara, there was a real possibility it could affect the future. At the very least, it would probably cause some change in Asahina the Elder’s actions, wouldn’t it…?

As I busied myself with estimations, Asahina came tottering over. “This got left in the clubroom.”

I took the item she offered me, and it was a barrette I had seen before. No close inspection was necessary to tell that it was the smiley face that Yasumi had worn in her hair.

Had she left it here on purpose, or had it been an accident?

Asahina touched a petal of the orchid Yasumi had left in the room. “I wonder if we’ll ever see her again. Next year I’ll be…”

By all rights, as a senior, Asahina would be graduating in a year. Which meant she wouldn’t be able to stay here anymore. Would her last year be cut short by some time traveler–related incident? I wondered if that was why Asahina was a year ahead of us, instead of being in the same school year.

How was I supposed to know?

I didn’t really care, though. The time travelers could take care of the future however they liked. I was a person of this time; the past and the future had nothing to do with me. There were any number of things I could do, but as far as ten or twenty years in the future went, that depended on my future self. If they had something to say to me, they could tell it to him. I doubt I will have changed very much, if I do say so myself. My future self will probably still be doing what has to be done and not bothering with stuff that doesn’t seem important. As to whether that was the right thing to do, I’d let my future self worry about that. That was life, after all. And it’s probably not just high school students that think so.

Just as I was starting to sink complacently into uncharacteristic philosophizing—

“Sorry I’m late!”

Haruhi came bursting through the door, with that smiling face of hers that always gives me a bad feeling.

I had to assume she’d gotten some crazy idea into her head during cleaning duty, as she beamed like a sunflower at the height of summer.

She ignored my immediately guarded posture and headed straight for the brigade chief’s desk, but stopped halfway there and peered at the contents of my hand.

“Huh?” She snatched the hair accessory away, and gave it a good hard look for several seconds. “Oh this. I used to have one just like it. Now I remember. I knew I’d seen it somewhere before. I used it in elementary school, but I lost it when I started middle school. So she used one too, huh?”

Haruhi’s voice sounded quite affected, and she held on to the item in her hand as she passed by me.

Seeing her from behind, I immediately thought of the future Haruhi I’d seen in my vision.

Who had that Haruhi called out to, I wonder.

Was the person she’d turned around to face someone I knew? Or was it some third party I’d never met in my life?

If so, that hadn’t been a very nice vision—but when I realized what I was thinking, I forgot to feign shock, and simply accepted it. I couldn’t pretend otherwise, now.

But the future was not set. I hadn’t forgotten the new information, however vague, that I’d gleaned from Fujiwara and Asahina the Elder’s conversation. I didn’t know anything about changing history or diverging world-paths, but I knew that the future was something that split up, stuck back together, and changed.

I’d seen myself—if only for a moment, I’d been able to catch a glimpse of the future. I planned to remember it, and I would aim to be in that place.

To do that, I still had a lot of things to accomplish. Like taking advantage of Haruhi’s tutoring services. My high school life still had two years left in it. During that time, I doubted that Nagato, Asakura, and Kimidori’s boss would stay quiet, to say nothing of Kuyoh and the Heavenly Canopy Dominion. Or maybe some other mysterious organization besides Tachibana’s would show up to play the part of the mid-boss before the final boss.

Oh well. I’d figure something out.

Fortunately, I wasn’t alone. I had Nagato and Koizumi and my Asahina as well. I even had that idiot Taniguchi, the always-calm Kunikida, and the flawless Tsuruya. Thanks to all the running around we’d done, I’d gained the not-insignificant knowledge that my friends were the key. And Sasaki too. She’d waved good-bye, but I didn’t buy it. Her sentimental little parting gesture didn’t fool me for a second. She’d show up again. After all, I really wanted her to.

But right then, I couldn’t worry about whether or not stuff was going to happen in the future—I had something right in front of me I had to take care of. The SOS Brigade’s First Anniversary and the attendant surprise for its brigade chief, for example. It was a few weeks away, so I didn’t have to start panicking yet, but before then I had Tsuruya’s cherry blossom–viewing party, and it was by no means certain that Haruhi had given up on recruiting new members yet, so it was going to be a busy month.

With the five of us all working together, we could do anything.

No matter who we faced.

But that was not my biggest problem.

The greatest matter of concern currently facing me was what in blazes to get the brigade chief as a present—or rather, what had I gotten her? I didn’t have the faintest idea of what to do. I wished I could consult an expert of some kind.

As I’d been standing there monologuing to myself, Haruhi had put the barrette away in one of the brigade chief’s desk drawers, then whirled around and approached the whiteboard.

Wordlessly she took out a pen and wrote out a phrase, then turned back around. As I looked at her, her smile was so bright I thought I could feel my retinas burning.

“Kyon, read it!”

She was the brigade chief, and orders were orders, so I did as I was told.

“ ‘Second Annual New Year’s SOS Brigade Meeting’… wait. We’re having a meeting today? First I’ve heard of it.”

“I told everyone and nobody had any problems. Didn’t I tell you? Well, sorry. I guess I forgot. But now you know, so it’s fine!”

I started to look around for a stinkbug—if I could find one I’d put it in my mouth and bite down good and hard so I could taste its rotten juices, which would just about match my rotten expression. But for better or for worse, no stinkbug was forthcoming, and I avoided eating such a nasty morsel.

“So, just what is this supposed meeting about, huh?”

Haruhi rapped the whiteboard with the back of her fist. “Isn’t it obvious? We’ve been invited to Tsuruya’s blossom-viewing party. But it would be a shame to just eat and drink—the SOS Brigade’s spirit of service and my sense of pride won’t allow that! So, Kyon, Koizumi, Mikuru, Yuki—”

Koizumi grinned, Nagato remained blank, and Asahina covered her mouth with both hands—and each of them looked right at me.

A very bad premonition closed in on me as if it was falling down a descending escalator.

“We’re gonna put on a sideshow! A show that’ll get everybody there applauding like crazy!”

“Now, wait just a minute. The Tsuruya family blossom party is a big deal, you know? All kinds of local celebrities and important people come to this thing.”

“The quality of the audience will be—what, you say? High? Laughter knows no bounds! What kind of show would it be if it can’t make a few politicians and captains of industry laugh? We’re going to entertain young and old, men and women, regardless of race or nationality! Such is the very heart of the stage!”

It was all very well and good for her to be excited, but exactly where in the neologism section of the thesaurus can I find the joke I assume she was making? I was willing to bet it wasn’t in the Britannica. Cracks were already starting to appear in my heart of glass.

“We’re gonna do this sideshow! No—maybe we should just call it the main event. The SOS Brigade presents The Greatest Laughs on Earth, a fresh new entertainment experience that will bring peace to the entire planet!”

Haruhi’s smile could’ve compressed the entire Taurus open star cluster—.

Her mouth opened so wide she could’ve swallowed the entire Red Sea—.

And in a high, clear voice, she proclaimed, “I now declare this strategy-planning meeting open!”