CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 6
Shari shari.
I could hear a crisp sound.
As I began to regain consciousness in the darkness, a corner of my mind was thinking in a daze.
It might have been a dream. You know how when you wake up from an incredible dream, you’re all like, wow, for the next five minutes or so, but the details become hazy when you get to brushing your teeth, and by the time you’re eating breakfast you’ve forgotten them entirely. Next thing you know, the impression of an incredible dream is the only thing left. I’ve experienced that a number of times.
And there were a number of instances in which I could clearly remember every last detail of an incredibly dull dream. Or a dreamlike experience. Like the night when I was stuck in closed space with Haruhi, a memory of an experience that had actually happened before it had been negated.
That was the first thing that came to my mind when I woke up.
I could see a white ceiling. This wasn’t my room. It was either morning or dusk, based on the translucent orange glow to the white ceiling and walls.
“Oh!”
That voice sounded as soothing to my still-groggy mind as church bells to devout believers.
“You’re finally awake? You seemed to be sound asleep.”
I turned my head to look for the person talking. That person was sitting in a chair, next to where I was lying horizontally, peeling an apple with a fruit knife. Shari shari. A long piece of red skin dangled without snapping.
“I suppose I should say good morning. Although it’s actually evening.”
Itsuki Koizumi was sitting there with a gentle smile on his face.
As I watched, Koizumi finished peeling the entire apple and placed it on a plate, which he set down on a side table. Then he drew a second apple from a paper bag before smiling at me.
“It’s a good thing you woke up. I was at my wits’ end, to be honest. Oh… You seem to be spaced out. Do you recognize me?”
“What about you? Do you know who I am?”
“That’s an odd question. Of course I do.”
I could tell which Koizumi this was by looking at him.
The dark-blue-blazer school uniform. Not the black traditional one.
It was the North High uniform.
I drew one arm from the blanket covering me. There was an IV drip hooked up to my arm. I stared at it.
“What time is it? What day is it?” I asked.
Koizumi had a look of surprise on his face, or whatever passed as a look of surprise for him.
“That’s the first question you have to ask upon waking up? It’s almost as if you’re aware of your current situation. In any case, the answer would be a little past five PM on December twenty-first.”
“The twenty-first, huh…?”
“Yes, three days have passed since you fell unconscious.”
Three days? Unconscious?
“Where are we?”
“A private hospital.”
I looked at my surroundings. A fancy-looking single room. I was lying on the bed. I was given a private room? I didn’t know my family had the money.
“The director of this hospital happens to be an acquaintance of my uncle, so you were provided with special service—that’s the story.”
Which means it isn’t true.
“Yes. I asked the Agency to pull some strings. You’ll be able to stay here for an entire year at a cheap price. Having said that, I’m very relieved that you recovered in three days. No, not because of money. My superiors were on my case for letting something happen to you. I had to write up a report.”
Three days before the twenty-first would be the eighteenth. What happened to me on that day…? Oh, I see. I almost died from losing too much blood, so they took me to the hospital… no, wait. Something’s wrong.
I nervously lifted the hospital gown I was wearing and touched the right side of my body.
Nothing. It didn’t hurt or itch at all. That wasn’t the kind of wound to heal in three days. Not unless somebody patched me up good.
“Why am I here? You said I was unconscious?”
“So you don’t remember? I suppose that’s to be expected. You hit your head pretty hard.”
I put my hand on my head. I could only feel hair. No bandages or hospital mesh hat.
“That’s right. Oddly enough, there wasn’t any external sign of injury. No internal bleeding either. And no sign of anything wrong with your brain functions. The doctor couldn’t determine what was wrong with you.”
Koizumi continued. “However, we all saw you fall down the stairs. That was a dreadful sight. To be honest, it was terrifying to watch. We weren’t sure if you’d ever wake up again after hearing you hit the floor so hard. Would you like me to tell you how it happened?”
“Shoot.”
I had been going down the stairs in the clubhouse when I either slipped or missed a step. Then I tumbled headfirst with the back of my head hitting the floor with a loud wham, and I stopped moving.
That was what had happened, according to Koizumi’s explanation.
“It was horrible. We had to call an ambulance and accompany your limp body to the hospital. I’d never seen Suzumiya look so pale before. Oh, Nagato was the one who called for an ambulance. Her ability to keep a cool head may have saved your life.”
“How did Asahina react?”
Koizumi shrugged.
“The way you would expect her to react. She was in tears as she clung to your body and cried out your name.”
“What time on the eighteenth did it happen? Which floor was I on?”
I fired off questions in rapid succession. The eighteenth would be the first day after the world had changed and left me running around in a panic.
“You don’t remember? It was a little after noon. The five of us had just finished an SOS Brigade meeting and were about to go shopping.”
Shopping?
“You’ve lost your memory of that as well? I assume you aren’t pretending that you can’t remember.”
“Just talk.”
Koizumi’s lips curved into a smile.
“The topic of the meeting that day was, let’s see, there will be a party for the children in Suzumiya’s neighborhood on the twenty-fifth, Christmas Day, and the SOS Brigade is supposed to make a guest appearance. A way to put Asahina’s Santa outfit to good use, I believe. A heartwarming event where she plays Santa and hands out presents to the children. Suzumiya set everything up.”
Deciding everything on her own, just as always.
“However, it wouldn’t be very realistic if Santa showed up alone, so Suzumiya came up with the idea of Asahina’s riding in on somebody in a reindeer costume. We drew lots to determine who would play that role. Well? Are you starting to remember?”
Can’t remember a thing. If a guy was able to remember a memory that didn’t exist, he’d make a fine swindler. He’d need to check into a different kind of hospital. But there wasn’t any point in telling Koizumi this.
“Well, you ended up being picked. So we needed to put together a reindeer costume and we were heading down the stairs of the clubhouse on our way to go buy materials when you fell.”
“Sounds dumb.”
That drew a frown from Koizumi.
“You were walking at the back of the group. That’s why nobody saw what happened. You just came tumbling down,” Koizumi said as he dropped the apple from his right hand before catching it in his left, “and flew right past us. However…”
Koizumi returned to peeling the apple.
“After we raced over to your still body, Suzumiya said that she thought she saw someone at the top of the stairs. That she caught a skirt flutter for a moment before it disappeared beyond the corner of the landing. I was curious, so I asked around, but we were the only ones in the clubhouse at the time, and Nagato also shook her head. A phantom girl. We were waiting for you to tell us if you were pushed off or not…”
Don’t remember. That would be the best response. Just an accident. An unfortunate accident brought about by my carelessness. I’ll go with that.
“Are you the only one who’s come to visit?”
“What about Haruhi?” would have been the next words out of my mouth, but I stopped myself. However, Koizumi still chuckled.
“You keep glancing around. Are you looking for someone in particular? There’s no need to worry. We’ve been taking turns watching over you so there would be someone around when you woke up. Asahina should be coming soon.”
Koizumi gave me a funny look. The look you’d give a friend who completely fell for an April Fools’ joke, while laughing at him on the inside. What was that look for?
“No, I was just feeling a bit jealous. Or envious, if you please.”
Kind of odd for you to feel that way, considering the circumstances.
“The brigade members have been rotating shifts, but it’s apparently part of the brigade chief’s job to worry about the health of her subordinates.”
Koizumi began methodically slicing the peeled apples and shaping the slices into rabbits before placing them on a plate on the table.
“Suzumiya has been here the entire time. The entire three days.”
I looked in the direction he was pointing. The side of the bed opposite Koizumi. On the floor.
“…”
Haruhi was sleeping snugly in a sleeping bag with her mouth in an upside-down V.
“We were very worried. Both she and I.”
He was laying it on thick with the mournful tone.
“Suzumiya was especially upset… well, I can tell you about that at a later date. In any case, you have something else to do first, right?”
Everybody likes to boss me around. Asahina (Big), Koizumi… But I’m not going to say anything about that. I didn’t care whom those extra peeled apples were for.
“Right,” I said.
Draw on her face… or no. I can do that some other time. There’ll be plenty of chances for that.
I stretched my arm out from its position on the bed and touched her angry-looking face with my fingertips.
Hair that wasn’t long enough for a ponytail. A painfully familiar sight. Her black hair shook in a teasing way.
Haruhi opened her eyes.
“… Uh?”
Haruhi peered at me with bleary eyes as she groaned before finally realizing who was pinching her cheek.
“Ah!”
She apparently forgot that she was in a sleeping bag. Her attempt to spring up failed as she fell down and wriggled around like an inchworm before somehow managing to stand up and stab a finger in my face while shouting.
“Stupid Kyon! If you’re awake, then tell me that you’re awake before waking me up! I have to prepare myself!”
Don’t be ridiculous. Still, your loud voice is better than any medicine right now.
“What!?”
“Wipe your drool.”
Haruhi rubbed at her mouth as her lips and eyebrows twitched. She rubbed her entire face while glaring at me.
“You didn’t draw on my face, did you?”
I was tempted.
“Hmph. So, don’t you have anything else to say to me?”
I gave her the reply she wanted.
“I guess I gave you all a scare. Sorry about that.”
“A-as long as you understand. Of course. It’s part of the brigade chief’s job to worry about brigade members!”
Haruhi’s yelling was sweet music to my ears. I heard a soft knock on the door. Koizumi stood up tactfully and pulled the sliding door open.
There stood the third visitor, who took one look at me and lost her calm.
“Ah. Ah, ah…”
The short and lovely North High upperclassman, a miraculous fusion of soft hair and doll face, stood in the entrance carrying a vase.
“Hey… Asahina. Hi there.”
I wasn’t exactly sure how long it’d been since we last met.
“Wah…”
Tears began to trickle down Asahina’s face.
“Thank heaven… Really… I’m so glad…”
I would have loved for her to throw herself into my arms again, and Asahina seemed ready to do just that, but she had forgotten to set the vase down, so she just stood there and cried.
“You’re overreacting. He just hit his head and passed out. I knew all along that Kyon would wake up eventually.”
Haruhi sounded a little jittery as she spoke without looking at me.
“Because I already decided that the SOS Brigade runs year-round without any breaks. Every one of us has to be on the job. A hard knock to the head or a coma won’t be an acceptable excuse. Understand? Kyon, going AWOL for three days comes with a heavy price. You get a penalty! A penalty! Plus interest!”
Koizumi was smiling pleasantly as Asahina continued to rain large teardrops onto the floor and Haruhi looked away from me in a huff.
I looked across all of them before nodding and shrugging.
“I know. So, with interest, how much do I owe you?”
Haruhi glared at me before bursting into a surreal smile. She’s so simpleminded.
I was told that I’d be paying for everybody at the café for three days. I’ll probably have to withdraw my savings.
“And…”
There’s more?
“Yep, you have to pay separately for the emotional stress you caused everyone. That’s right, Kyon. At the Christmas party, you have to wear the reindeer costume and perform something for us. You’ll have to keep going until you’ve managed to thoroughly entertain every one of us. I’ll kick you into another dimension if it’s boring! And you’ll have to perform for the children too. Understood!?”
Haruhi’s eyes were shining like prisms as she stabbed her finger at me again.
I’d managed to regain consciousness, but I couldn’t be discharged from the hospital right away. After a doctor raced over to ask me some questions, I was taken to an examination room and put through all kinds of machines. It was so bad that I was wondering if they were trying to turn me into a cyborg. And since they blew the entire day running checkups and various tests, I had to spend another night in the hospital. Though it was really the first night for me and I’d never been hospitalized before, so this was an interesting experience.
Haruhi, along with Koizumi and Asahina, apparently just missed my mother and sister on their way out. I suppose they were trying to be considerate, in which case I’d be amazed by the fact that Haruhi knew how to be considerate.
While my sister and mother chatted, I pondered the recent events.
What would have happened if I had left everything the way it was? Nagato, Asahina, and Koizumi would be ordinary humans without any supernatural identities. Nagato would be a reticent book-loving literary club member, Asahina would be an upperclassman out of reach, and Koizumi would be a normal transfer student at a different school.
And Haruhi would just be a girl in high school with a slightly twisted personality.
That could have been the beginning of a new story. A story about an everyday life that had nothing to do with facing reality or how the world was supposed to be.
I probably wouldn’t have any role to play in that story. I would go through high school without any incident and graduate without any incident.
Which world would I be happier with?
I already knew the answer.
The “present” was more fun. Otherwise, my near-death experience would have been for nothing, right?
Here’s a question. Which would you choose? The answer should be obvious. Or am I the only one who feels this way?
Eventually my family left, and it was time to turn off the lights in my hospital room. I had nothing to do as I stared at the ceiling, so I closed my eyes and sought darkness.
My past three days. In this world, I’d been asleep for the past three days, apparently.
In that case—
The world had to be altered for that to be true.
This world had been altered twice. The other Nagato’s twisted world had been retransformed into the original world, the one I was in now. So who was responsible for the second retransformation?
It wasn’t Haruhi. The Haruhi from those three days had no power and this Haruhi didn’t know that the world had been changed.
So who did it?
The person who stopped Asakura’s flashing knife bare-handed, someone capable of such a thing, someone willing to do such a thing—
It could only be Nagato.
And I had seen two Asahinas before I lost consciousness. The Asahina who wasn’t grown-up. That had been my Asahina, the one in this world. The lovely upperclassman from the future who I knew so well.
And there was one more person, the one who had spoken. The one who talked to me at the end in a strangely familiar voice.
I struggled to place that voice before I soon realized that there wasn’t any need.
That was my voice.
—I see. That’s what happened.
I would have to go back to that time again. I would have to travel through time and arrive early in the morning on December eighteenth. With the Asahina and Nagato from this time.
That would restore the world to its current state.
Asahina’s role would be to take Nagato and me to that time. Nagato’s role would be to normalize the crazed three-day period and crazed Nagato. Though I didn’t know if she would be borrowing Haruhi’s power again or if the Data Overmind would handle it.
And I also had a role to play.
I mean, right? I heard my own voice at the time. That was part of the reason why I’m here right now. I needed to go back to the past and say something to myself so I could exist.
“Sorry. There’s a reason we couldn’t save you from that. But don’t worry about it. It was a painful experience for me too. Well, we’ll manage to take care of the rest. Or yeah, I already know that we’re going to take care of the rest. You’ll understand soon enough. Just sleep for now.”
I practiced my lines. Pretty sure that was how it went. Not sure if I got every word right, but it was probably close enough.
It would be my job to use the injector in place of the me who had been felled by an assassin’s dagger.
I could also understand why nobody had saved me from the psycho Asakura. Judging from my voice, I hadn’t raced over to myself because I’d been hiding somewhere nearby. I, along with Asahina and Nagato, had been waiting for the right time to show ourselves. We didn’t want to be too early or too late. I had to be stabbed by Asakura. Because for the other me there at that time, it was something that had already happened in his past. Or, as Asahina would put it—
“Established information.”
It was getting late in the night, but I still didn’t feel like going to sleep.
I was waiting. Waiting for what? That should be obvious. There was one more person who was supposed to show up but hadn’t. Someone who was a guaranteed lock to come.
I lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. My patience wasn’t rewarded until the dead of night. Long past visiting hours.
The door to my room slowly slid open as the shadow of a small figure in the hallway extended across the floor.
The last person to visit me that day was Yuki Nagato in her sailor uniform.
Nagato was stone-faced as always.
“All responsibility lies with me.”
It was very reassuring to hear her flat voice for what felt like the first time in ages.
“Punitive measures are being evaluated.”
I lifted my head.
“By who?”
“The Data Overmind.”
Nagato continued in her flat voice, as though none of this concerned her:
Naturally, Nagato knew what she had done in the early morning of December eighteenth because the grown-up Asahina and I had gone to visit Nagato three years ago. She had known what would happen and done her best to avoid this outcome. But she couldn’t. There are times when you can know what’s going to happen in the future and still be unable to avoid it. No, if that were the case…
I suddenly recalled how Nagato seemed to be acting differently after the summer.
“In that case,” I interjected, “you would have known three years ago that you were going to bug out. In that case, you could have told me about this at any time, right? After the cultural festival or before the baseball game, even. I would have been able to act faster on December eighteenth then. Assemble all the members and go three years back in time.”
Nagato’s face was grim, as though incapable of smiling.
“Even if I were to have communicated that information to you beforehand, I would have erased all corresponding memories upon malfunctioning and proceeded to alter the world. Again, there is no guarantee that the above did not happen. I could only manage to preserve your original state when the eighteenth arrived.”
“You also left the escape program, right? That was enough.”
As I thanked her, I began to feel irritated. Not because of Nagato. Not because of me either.
Her flat voice echoed softly in the hospital room.
“There is no guarantee that I will not malfunction again. As long as I continue to exist, internal errors will continue to accumulate. The possibility remains. A significant risk.”
“Tell them to go suck it.”
Nagato responded to that curse by silently lowering her head two millimeters. Her eyes blinked.
I reached out with my arm to take her thin and pale hand. Nagato didn’t resist.
“Tell your boss. If you leave or disappear, okay? I’ll go crazy. I’ll do anything to take you back. I don’t personally have any special powers, but I’m able to set Haruhi loose.”
I happen to hold the key for doing that. All I have to do is say, “I’m John Smith,” and that’s that.
Yeah, that’s right. I have as much power as a loofah. However, Haruhi has as much power as a giant oak tree. If Nagato were to disappear, I’d tell her everything and convince her to believe me. And then we would head out to find Nagato. It wouldn’t matter what Nagato’s boss had done to hide or eliminate her. Haruhi would find a way. I would make it happen. And I might as well get Koizumi and Asahina involved. Who cares about some discarnate data entity that’s off somewhere in the universe? Screw that.
Nagato was one of us. And Haruhi would be the last person to ever give up if someone in the SOS Brigade were to go missing. This wasn’t limited to Nagato. If Koizumi, Asahina, or I were to run off, even if we were to go willingly, she would never accept that. I guarantee that she would do whatever it took to bring us back. That’s how Haruhi Suzumiya was. Our selfish and self-centered troublemaking brigade chief who couldn’t be bothered to consider other people.
I gave Nagato a hard look.
“If any of you try to argue, I’ll join Haruhi in remaking the world. Into a world like the one I just spent three days in, where your Data Overmind no longer exists. That’ll leave you all in despair. So much for observing. How do you like that?”
I was starting to get really pissed.
I didn’t care about how advanced the Data Overmind was. Probably had plenty of brains. Enough to calculate pi to the trillionth digit within a couple of seconds. Probably capable of all sorts of fancy tricks.
So then, my point was:
You could have given Yuki Nagato an actual personality. You could have made her into something like pre-homicidal-maniac Asakura, someone cheerful and sociable who was popular with classmates and goes shopping with friends at the mall on weekends. Why did you turn her into a gloomy girl who spent her time cooped up inside and reading all alone? Because that was expected from a member of the literary club? Whose idea was it?
I came to my senses as I realized that I was tightly gripping Nagato’s hand. However, the book-loving organic android didn’t say anything.
Nagato simply stared at me before slowly nodding.
“I will tell them.”
Her voice was still flat as she murmured, “Thank you.”