CHAPTER TWO

The next day, the first thing waiting for me when I arrived at school was an envelope in my shoe locker.

“I knew it.”

I quickly stuffed it into my pocket before anybody else noticed, then hurried to the bathroom after changing into my school slippers. That’s right, I was the walking cliché of the guy who opens a secret letter in a bathroom stall.

I opened the envelope and took out the folded sheets within—there were two.

The first was obviously written by her, and on it was written the following:

That was as far as I could read. At the end of the note, there were some symbols I’d never seen before, but I had no idea what they meant. I wondered if they were a signature of some kind, but in any case the letter was completely incomprehensible, and I tilted my head in confusion.

“What kind of orders are these, anyway?”

The moment I looked at the second sheet, things only got worse.

“What the hell?”

The bizarre thing came with a diagram. Even if I flattered it by calling it “simplified,” it was well outside the range of “good.” The intersection was marked with an x, and the diagram beside that x had to be a joke.

“I don’t get any of this, Asahina.”

Did she really want me to put this stuff on the spot indicated within three minutes of 6:12 this evening?

What would be the point?

I reread the letter several times until I’d memorized it, then shoved it down into the depths of my bag. I absolutely could not let Haruhi see it. This was one thing I’d never be able to think up a good excuse for.

I left the bathroom and ascended the stairs, deep in thought.

This much was becoming clear: Asahina had been sent back from eight days in the future because of this. There was something she needed to do in this time period, and it’s something that the current Asahina, the one here at school right now, could not do. But why couldn’t she do it?

As I arrived at my classroom, still wrestling with the endless questions, there was Haruhi, looking vaguely subdued as usual.

Haruhi glanced up at me. “How’s Shamisen?”

“Ah—” That’s right, that had been my excuse. “He’s okay.”

“Huh.”

I sat down in my cold chair and discreetly took in Haruhi’s profile.

She didn’t seem to have noticed anything. She held her chin in her hands, looking bored, her mouth closed. Recently she’d been spending a lot of time like this. I didn’t know what she was thinking about, and I didn’t have time to give it much thought.

“Hey, Haruhi.”

“What?”

“About Shamisen—I have to take him to the vet again today. It looks like I’ll have to do that a lot, actually. So I don’t think I can make it to the clubroom. Sorry, but…”

I was positive she was going to stare daggers at me, but no.

“Fine, whatever.” Haruhi looked at my stunned expression. “I don’t want people ditching for no reason, but if you’ve got a good excuse, I’m an understanding chief, and I won’t give you a hard time about it.”

I searched my memory for a version of Haruhi that was “understanding” and “wouldn’t give you a hard time,” and concluded that this was the first time I’d ever seen such a thing.

“I’ll come and visit him sometime soon, so tell him I said to get well soon, okay? But I guess Shamisen’s got your sister to pamper him to death too.”

She didn’t seem like she really cared that much; her chin moved around, still cupped between her hands. It was definitely strange to see her so listless, but at the moment I was grateful for it. I still had to figure out the Asahina Problem.

Still, what was this mood? Having the person behind me quietly stare out the window was both nostalgic and strangely novel. If only Haruhi would be like this even half of her waking time…

“Morning, class!”

The morning bell hadn’t even finished ringing when Mr. Okabe came striding gallantly into the room.

I understood.

I understood that Haruhi’s melancholy would not last long. When I thought about it, this was the first concrete prediction that the time traveler had made. According to Asahina, Haruhi would drag us all into a treasure hunt, and we’d wind up walking all over the place. I’d be fine if Haruhi was like that the other half of her waking hours.

For good or ill, that was enough to make me feel at ease.

At lunch, I bolted down my food and hurried to the clubroom.

If she wasn’t in her classroom, she’d be here, I reasoned, and sure enough—there was Nagato sitting at her usual spot at the table, absorbed in reading.

“Nagato, how’s Asahina?”

I was the one who had made her stay at Nagato’s place, so I thought I should make sure everything was okay.

“…”

Nagato turned her lowered gaze up to me, silent as though contemplating the meaning of my question.

“What do you mean by ‘how’?”

“She’s not causing you any trouble, is she?”

“No.”

Thank goodness for that, I thought. I imagined Nagato and Asahina having a pajama party. My heart swelled.

“However,” Nagato said in an even voice, “she is uneasy when she is with me.”

Her glossy eyes dropped once again to the hardcover in front of her.

I looked at Nagato silently, searching for some kind of expression on her pale face. Regret, or loneliness, say—but no such feelings were evident.

I could understand Asahina’s unease. Most people would probably find being shut up in a room with Nagato hard to handle. I could handle it, as could Haruhi and Koizumi, and Tsuruya would probably be fine, but that wasn’t the point.

Nagato had understood Asahina’s fear and had expressed it to me thus, so there had to be something more.

“It’s because Asahina and I both are constantly in your debt. She’s being considerate.”

“It’s mutual,” said Nagato, not looking up. “I have also relied on you.”

But Nagato was always the one who could do something. She’d saved my life time and time again, I told her. When something happened, she was pretty much the only reliable one. I wouldn’t say Koizumi and Asahina were worthless, but if she hadn’t been around, there would’ve been many more times when we’d all have been helpless, I said.

“I was also the cause of many problems.”

C’mon, those couldn’t be helped, I told her. If she wanted to assign blame, she ought to start with the Data Overmind and me. It wasn’t something she could blame herself for. Plus it was thanks to that whole incident that I learned to really appreciate this reality. I got to see Haruhi in a ponytail. When I’d been able to change something, the experience had meant a lot to me.

“I see,” murmured Nagato, turning the page. The cold winter wind blew, rattling the glass of the clubroom’s windows.

I turned on the electric heater. “What about your boss? They’ve suppressed the extremist faction, right?”

“The Data Overmind does not have complete consensus. But the main faction still leads.”

Interesting. Even pure thought entities had internal disagreements.

“And you’re connected to the main faction, right?”

“Yes.”

Asakura had been a vanguard of the extremist faction. Wait—were there just two factions? Were there others? I asked.

“So far as I am aware, there is the Moderate, the Revolutionary, the Compromise, and the Contemplative.”

And they were all different. Asakura had tried to kill me in order to provoke Haruhi, but Nagato had destroyed her. But the higher-ups were still arguing about it, apparently.

Just as I was visualizing the interactions of all those gods in the sky, Nagato spoke.

“I cannot transmit the thoughts of other factions.” She slowly brought her gaze up from the page. “But I am here.”

Her voice was perfectly steady, the very sound of trustworthiness.

“I won’t let them do as they please.”

On the way back from the clubroom, I ran into two familiar faces.

“Heya, Kyon!” Tsuruya waved her hand rapidly.

“Is your kitty okay?” said the person beside her in a worried voice. “I heard he had to go to the vet.”

It was Asahina. The normal, native-to-this-time Asahina. She didn’t seem to know she’d soon be headed into the past.

“Is he taking medicine?”

Oh, of course—Haruhi had called from the clubroom, and since Asahina had been there, she knew what we’d talked about.

“It’s not very serious, but it seems like he’ll need some time to recuperate.” I shook my head lightly, a bit confused. Obviously, this Asahina looked no different from the other one. If I wasn’t careful, I’d fool myself into thinking that Asahina was the one who was supposed to be at Nagato’s place right now, and I wouldn’t even notice it had happened, unless Asahina herself said something.

“Hard to believe Shamisen could get stressed out about anything!” said Tsuruya with a smile. “But I guess that’s better than catching some weird disease. I bet he’s not getting enough exercise! No mice at your house, right, Kyon? Sometimes we get mice in our garden—you should totally bring Shamisen over. I bet it’d do him some good!”

“Sure, once he’s better, I’ll do that.”

I wasn’t going to take him outside while it was still this cold, but once spring came, Shamisen would probably love that. Once the cherry blossoms bloomed, Haruhi would definitely want to do some kind of flower-viewing garden party, anyway.

“Kyon, will you be coming to the clubroom today?” asked Asahina a bit forlornly.

“I have to take Shamisen to the vet again today,” I said, wishing I’d asked the other Asahina what my day was going to contain. “I already told Haruhi.”

“Oh, really?” She sounded like she really cared about the cat. “I hope he gets well soon.”

It pained me, but I gave a serious nod. “Come by sometime and pet him. It’ll help him get better. He’s a male too, after all.”

The two girls left to get juice for their lunches, and I returned to my classroom. Not having a heater, it was colder than the clubroom I’d just been in. The only source of heat was the breath and warmth of the students in the room, and the most efficient heat source, Haruhi herself, was gone.

I walked toward Taniguchi and Kunikida and joined in their conversation.

Then, after class was over—

I put the school behind me as soon as I could. I had plenty of time until the time given in the letter, but I was worried about Asahina being left by herself, and if I was going to follow Asahina the Elder’s instructions, there were some tools I had to assemble.

First I stopped by my house and got a hammer and some nails from the garage, which I threw in my bag, then grabbed my bike and sprinted over to Nagato’s apartment building. The winter day was cold enough to make my ears sting, but when I thought about Asahina waiting all by herself, I didn’t care. Plus it was practically guaranteed that something fun would be waiting for me. It was the arrival of a scene I’d been hoping for ever since summer vacation.

My strangely high spirits were the lingering results of my talk with Nagato in the clubroom.

Come what may, Nagato would protect Asahina and me, and I wanted to protect them too. Haruhi treated us brigade members like her property, and if anybody messed with us, she’d flip out and turn them right around—plus Koizumi, at least, could probably take care of himself. It was hard to imagine him getting tired, and if he were to falter, I can’t say I wouldn’t give him a hand. Haruhi would probably order me to, without regard for whether it was convenient for me or not. Not that I cared. I’d been a brigade member for just under a year, and I hadn’t been ground down so much that I’d fold now, of all times.

“Whoops.”

I skidded the bike to a stop, letting the rear wheel drift out a bit for no real reason, then headed for the console in the apartment foyer. I pushed the button for Nagato’s unit.

“… Yes?” I was relieved to hear Asahina’s voice.

“It’s me. Did anything happen? I hope not.”

“Um… no, nothing happened. Ah, I’ll be right down, so just wait there, please!”

I’d wanted to come up to Nagato’s room and relax for a bit, but Asahina cut off the intercom immediately.

I stood there idly for about five minutes, whereupon Asahina showed up in the foyer, still wearing her school uniform. She held school slippers in one hand.

She looked at me with an expression of relief, but then suddenly turned serious, shivering in the cold as she trotted over to me.

“I borrowed shoes from Nagato. Also, here’s the apartment key.”

Asahina held a small key in her hand.

“Could you return it to Nagato for me?”

Huh? What was going on? Since she was staying for a while, couldn’t she borrow both the shoes and the key?

“About that…” Asahina tucked her chin down, her eyes upturned and looking at me. “I don’t think I should stay at Nagato’s place.”

Why not? I asked.

“How should I put this…” The winter wind tried to disturb her chestnut brown hair; Asahina smoothed it down with her hand. “When I’m alone with Nagato, she just can’t calm down.”

I’d gotten the same line from Nagato. But no, forget that—I couldn’t imagine what Nagato would do that would indicate anxiousness to Asahina, I said.

“Um, well,” said Asahina, as though explaining something to a small child. “It’s just a feeling, really. When I’m sleeping at night… I mean, we’re in separate rooms, I’m sleeping in the spare room, but it’s like she’s standing right beside my bed, staring down at me…”

C’mon, she’s not like a ghost, I said.

“… It’s just a feeling, but it’s like she’s conscious of me.” Asahina exhaled whitely, staring at my chest. “I don’t feel it when we’re all in the clubroom, but it’s really strong when it’s just the two of us at her place. It happened last month too. When we returned from the past, I woke up and you were gone, and I just had the feeling that she’d been staring at me the whole time I was asleep.”

What was that supposed to imply? I couldn’t imagine Nagato ever doing anything to hurt Asahina, I said.

“I know. That’s not what she’s thinking. It’s just an impression I get… but I know. It’s like she’s hung up on me somehow.”

This was completely incoherent. I certainly didn’t understand it.

Asahina looked at me accusingly. With a lonely tone to her voice, she said, “It’s like… she wants to be like me.”

“…?” was my only reply.

“Like doing all kinds of crazy stuff with you, Kyon. I’m always doing stuff like that, right? But Nagato just watches. It was like that on Tanabata and during the endless summer too.”

The seal of the SOS Brigade was all over my memories of the previous year. One of them was that Nagato was always the hardest-working member.

“I wonder if that’s part of why she changed the past. She’s always watching over us, instead of always getting saved, like me.”

Asahina breathed into the palm of her hand, then nodded decisively.

“When I think about it like that, it makes sense. What I feel from Nagato, I mean. She might want to become like me, in a way…”

My mind went on a wild flight of fancy. I couldn’t help imagining going into the clubroom as usual and encountering a maid-outfit-wearing Nagato there, cheerfully serving me tea. She would smile as she poured out the hot water, then, holding the tray, ask me how it tasted…

If Nagato were to become like that, I couldn’t really complain. But what would happen to the Nagato who sat at the corner of the table, reading?

“I think Nagato knows this herself too. That’s why I don’t think I should be here. It just makes things difficult for her.”

Asahina’s eyes were serious. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to be in Nagato’s home, it was that she was being considerate of Nagato. We already knew what could happen when too many bugs turned up in Nagato’s system, and we knew what caused them to accumulate. As a result, she’d restricted herself. No more synchronization. She was trying to avoid bugs of her own free will. Was Asahina really Nagato’s ideal? A person who, unlike herself, takes action without knowledge? A time traveler—her perfect opposite.

It was the ultimate irony. Asahina suffered from her own ignorance, while Nagato knew too much.

I looked up at Nagato’s place. “Yeah…”

Asahina might have been right. When I thought about it, the most perceptive people I’d known had all been female—although Haruhi and Tsuruya were a little too perceptive.

Nagato had her own virtues, and they were virtues enough. But when she herself didn’t realize that, it made things difficult. If pressed about it, she’d just feign ignorance.

It was also possible that Asahina was overthinking this. Nagato might be just fine as she was. She might just occasionally run out of books to read and stare at Asahina without any particular intent. But if Asahina was worried, I would just ignore her concerns.

“I understand. I’ll tell Nagato for you. We’ll figure out where you’re going to stay later.”

She could stay at my place as a last resort, but it wasn’t like there weren’t any alternatives.

“Anyway, there’s something else I wanted you to look at. I got another letter in my shoe locker.”

Asahina looked at the letter I gave her as though it were a crib sheet for a test she was about to take. “Oh, this is”—she pointed to the very end of the directions—“an order code. The very highest priority.”

I hadn’t been able to figure out whether the line was a code or a signature of some kind. I asked if it was some kind of future language.

“No, it’s not a word… um, it’s a code. One that has a special priority for us. It means no matter what the order is, it must be carried out.”

“You mean… this?” I asked, thinking about the contents of the letter. “What point could there possibly be in a prank like this?”

“That’s…” Asahina began, her head cocked, confusion on her face. “I… have no idea.”

“What would happen if we ignore this and do nothing?”

“We cannot ignore it,” said Asahina flatly. “Having seen that code, I must take action to ensure its execution.” She looked at me uncertainly. “And you’ll do it too, won’t you, Kyon?”

We did as the letter said and proceeded to the location in question. Our method of transportation was a bicycle; it should go without saying that Asahina rode behind me on the luggage rack. In any case, although our target was within the city, it was still some distance on a bicycle.

We killed some time wandering around; by my watch it was now just ten minutes past six. The letter had directed me to set up the materials I now carried between 6:12 and 6:15.

I felt a little lonely, and not just because the sun had already set. The road was a bit removed from the local residences and didn’t see much traffic. Then there was a little side path that branched off it, which was unpaved. It didn’t seem like a private drive, but neither was it a shortcut to anywhere in particular, which made one wonder why anybody would go to the trouble of using it. The x on the hand-drawn map was just at the intersection of that little path and the road, a few centimeters away from the edge of the asphalt.

We were lucky there weren’t any pedestrians around. What we were about to do was not exactly upstanding behavior—to put it bluntly, it was a practical joke.

All I needed were three things: a hammer, some nails, and a steel can. You can probably guess what I did.

“All right, I’d better get to it,” I said.

“Yes,” nodded Asahina.

I’d been hiding behind a telephone pole; I jumped out, ran for the spot, and began pounding nails into the ground. The ground was pretty hard. I had to pound them really hard to get them even halfway in—but I couldn’t risk making a lot of noise and possibly catching the eye of a passerby.

I was in a hurry, so I don’t think it took me more than thirty seconds, all told.

I covered the nails with the can, then hurried back to the telephone pole, where Asahina awaited. We then found a darker place a bit farther away in which to hide.

So what was going to happen? I was really interested to see what effect this prank was supposed to have.

I didn’t have to wait long. It was 6:14.

Opposite the street from where we hid, a male-looking silhouette came walking along at a leisurely pace. I could tell he was wearing a long coat and carrying a shoulder bag. He didn’t seem to notice us.

He seemed to be looking down as he walked. He didn’t seem particularly cheerful. Suddenly, he stopped. He was looking directly at the empty can.

“Haah…”

I heard a sigh. Just when I was wondering if he were the type to take offense at litter, he lined up a kick (with perfect form) and directed it with all his strength at the can.

Of course, the can did not go sailing between a pair of notional goal posts; in fact, it didn’t move from its position at all—

“Gah—?! Aaaaugh!”

The man clutched his foot and fell to the ground.

“What the hell?! Ugh, it hurts!”

He was literally rolling around on the ground, apparently in intense agony.

“Crap, who—who did this? Owwww…”

Asahina and I looked at each other.

Had this been the objective?

Who knew?

We had a silent exchange of glances, then nodded in unison and emerged from the darkness, walking along the path as though just happening to pass by.

“Are you all right?” Asahina asked of the man, who lay face up, holding his foot in his hands. I casually stood next to Asahina, looking down at the man, who continued to groan.

“Huh?”

The face was distorted with pain, and I didn’t recognize it; he was a slender man in his twenties. Underneath his long coat, he wore a suit and tie, and he looked like a regular working stiff.

“Do you need a hand?” I said, my conscience torturing itself.

“Uh… yeah, thanks.” The man took my hand and stood, wincing as he stood on his other foot. “Crap, who would pull a childish prank like this?”

“Yeah, terrible, huh?” I squatted down and picked up the can. It had a huge dent in it. The nails had been knocked diagonal too. The guy had really taken a serious shot. “Geez, that’s dangerous.”

I tried to sound plausible as I pulled the nails out of the ground. Thanks to the man’s kick, they came out pretty easily. I slipped the nails in my pocket to conceal the evidence.

The man raised a lowered leg several times, each time wincing and clucking his tongue. “What a pain. Doesn’t seem like it’s broken, though… maybe I twisted my ankle?”

“Um,” said Asahina. “Maybe you should go to the hospital?”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

The man hopped toward the edge of the automotive-traffic-bearing road, teetering dangerously as he approached.

“Here, lean on my shoulder,” I said, coming alongside him so he wouldn’t fall over. “Shall we call an ambulance?”

“Oh, no, that’s okay. I’ll call a cab. Don’t want to make too big a deal out of this. I hate to ask, but could you help me over to the main road?”

“Sure, of course.” No matter the reason, this was my fault, after all. I really wanted to apologize.

The man held on to my shoulder as he hopped along. From what I could tell by the light of the streetlights, he seemed pretty good-looking.

“I’m kind of at a dead end at my job,” he said apologetically, as we were midway through crossing the street. “It’s my own fault for thinking that kicking a can would help me clear my head. I got what I deserve.”

“No, I really think it’s the fault of whatever jerk set the prank up.”

“Yeah, I guess. What kind of nasty little kid still does that kind of thing?”

He looked back and forth between Asahina and me, who was tottering along behind us, and smiled slightly. “Is she your girlfriend?”

After being at a loss for how to answer for a couple of seconds, I replied, “Uh… kinda…” I lied—hey, why not.

“Ah,” said the man simply, before his face returned to its pained expression.

We reached the intersection and had the good luck to be able to quickly wave down a passing taxicab, helping the man (who’d broken into a cold sweat, despite the temperature) into the backseat.

“Thanks, you two. And sorry again.”

It really was us who should’ve been apologizing—but this Asahina was completely innocent, so if he ever found out the truth and came to settle the score, I hoped he’d take it up with Asahina the Elder.

As we bowed and backed away from the car, Asahina asked me a question.

“Is that all we have to do?”

“Mmm…”

Asahina hugged herself and sighed, discomfited.

It was half past six.

There was an important restriction on us.

It was this: I could not allow Haruhi and this time’s Asahina to see future Asahina and me together. If it were just Haruhi, I could probably figure out some kind of excuse, but it was hard to imagine that present-Asahina would write off seeing an identical copy of herself as a mere look-alike. And if we happened to bump into the entire SOS Brigade on its way home from school, that would be a total disaster.

But according to future-Asahina, she’d never seen her doppelganger during her last eight days, so it stood to reason that we’d be able to walk around without worrying about it—but there was no way to know whether something might go wrong, and if my hard work in the present was being reflected in the future, then I’d still have to make a special effort now to ensure that future, so I couldn’t afford not to take the situation seriously… could I?

I had no idea. Why did things always have to be so complicated? If the Asahina that had traveled back from the future had only been Asahina the Elder, instead of the one from eight days in the future, things probably would’ve gone more smoothly.

I regarded the small upperclassman at my side.

Her North High uniform–clad body looked stiffened by the cold. It probably wasn’t much fun braving a windy February night without so much as a jacket. Like her, all I was wearing was my school uniform, and I was freezing.

“Shall we go?” I said, gesturing toward my parked bicycle.

Asahina nodded, replying, “But where? To your house?”

I desperately wanted to do exactly that, but somewhere with fewer tattletales would be better. As her older brother, I knew better than anybody that my sister’s mouth could open faster than a grandma’s wallet when said grandma was trying to spoil her grandson.

“We’ll go to someone else who’ll let you stay with her, someone besides Nagato. I doubt she’ll ask any questions, if I know her.”

I got on the bike and gestured to a confused Asahina to do likewise, whereupon she sat sidesaddle on the luggage rack and off I went, carrying my light schoolmate behind me.

The spot where I stopped my bike would have been familiar to any SOS Brigade member.

Including Asahina.

“This… this isn’t—”

She hopped off the bike and looked up at the gate in front of the residence.

I flipped down the bike’s kickstand and locked it up. “This person will absolutely help you out. She’d never fail to come to your rescue.”

“B-but, we can’t let her know—”

“You just leave that to me.”

Beside the gigantic traditional-style gate there was a single modern touch—an intercom. But before I pushed the button on it, I had to work something out.

“Asahina, your ear.”

“O-okay…”

She obediently tilted her head, brushing her hair back to reveal her perfect ear. I couldn’t help but remember when Haruhi bit down on this same ear. I wanted to do the same thing, but I knew full well that this was neither the time nor the place.

“Right, so, this is what I’m thinking of doing…”

Asahina’s eyes went wide at my whispered explanation. “Eh, b-but, I don’t think I can do that kind of acting!” she protested with a quivering voice. “That’s too hard…”

Indeed it would be. If she really had to act, that is.

But I knew there’d be no need for that. All Asahina had to do was be herself. Nobody would ever notice.

“Anyway, just do that. It’ll work out fine; trust me.”

I smiled optimistically, then hit the intercom button.

“…”

“…”

Asahina and I silently waited for a reply. There was only a slim chance that the person I was trying to reach would reply personally, so I rehearsed the exchange over in my head. I was on my third run-through, and had waited close to a minute, when I started to darkly suspect that—surely not!—nobody was home. Just then—

“Hey now, wait there!”

An energetic voice echoed from beyond the gate, followed quickly by a clunk. The great wooden door creaked open.

“Hey! Kyon, Mikuru! What’re you doing out here at this hour? Is it just the two of you? My, don’t you make a couple! I’m practically jealous!” said Tsuruya with a broad smile.

Tsuruya’s clothing was rather different from her usual school outfit.

She wore a casual kimono with a traditional short jacket, her long hair tied artlessly back in a bun. It matched the old-fashioned Japanese garden perfectly.

Letting us onto the Tsuruya estate grounds, she then replaced the square timber that kept the great gate locked.

“Still, this is really rare! Kyon and Mikuru out for a hike in the freezing cold? Without Haru-nyan, even?”

“There are some extenuating circumstances… actually, Tsuruya—how did you know it was us at the gate?”

I’d heard only silence from the intercom, after all.

“Oh, yeah, there’s a security camera above the gate. It’s super easy to tell who’s there! When I looked I saw you two, so I figured I’d better come out to see ya. Was that okay?” Tsuruya’s wooden sandals clacked against the ground as we walked along the shrine-like path that led to the main wing of the house. She smiled. “Hm? Mikuru? You don’t look well—are you all right?”

“Actually, about that,” I said, clearing my throat and preparing the lines I’d rehearsed. “We’ve got a favor to ask you. Could you let Asahina stay at your place for a few days?”

“Wha? I mean, sure, but—” Tsuruya chuckled as though something had occurred to her. She peered at Asahina’s face. “You are Mikuru… right?”

Asahina looked surprised, at which Tsuruya narrowed her bright eyes. Had we been found out?

“Anyway, it’s fine. Is there some kinda problem? Like one that’s stopping Mikuru from going to her own house, I mean?”

The conversation was moving right along, thankfully.

“How long does she need to stay, d’you think?”

“Eight days at the most,” I said. Eight days from now, Asahina would revert to being the only Asahina in the timeline. “Will that be okay?”

“Sure, I don’t mind. Oh, right—she can just use the apartment. It’s a separate building, kinda like what we have at the mountain villa. No one’s living there right now. It’s just a little studio—sometimes I go there to think about stuff, ’cause it’s so nice and quiet.”

I looked around the grounds that surrounded us, which you could pretty much just call a forest. Who knew what was hidden in the expanse? I’d heard there was even an old-fashioned storehouse somewhere in the area.

As I felt a strange combination of admiration and envy, Tsuruya’s mouth curved into a perfect half circle. “So anyway, Mikuru—what’s up? You don’t have to be so scaredy-like.” Tsuruya poked at Mikuru’s chin with her finger. “It’s not like you.”

Before the silent Asahina could say anything, I quickly cut in.

“She’s Asahina’s younger twin sister, Michiru.”

“Twin? Michiru?”

“That’s… that’s right! They were separated at birth, you see…”

“Wow!”

---

---

“And there were some difficult circumstances, and… Asahina… what I mean is, Mikuru doesn’t know she has a younger twin.”

“Ooh! So why is Michiru here wearing a North High uniform, then?”

Crap. I hadn’t thought of that.

“How should I put this… Michiru, here, wanted to sneak into North High to catch a glimpse of her sister. So she got a uniform, but then she wound up not being able to pull off her plan. Then she happened to bump into me, and I got her to tell me the story, and after that…”

Tsuruya patted my shoulder. “Don’t worry about it!” she said with a pleased grin. “No need to explain any more. If she’s Mikuru’s sister, she’s practically Mikuru. She only needs a place to stay?”

“Also, you’ve got to keep her a secret from Asahina.”

“But of course!”

“Um…” said Asahina, as though afraid of being left out of the conversation. “Is it really okay?”

“Sure, it’s mega-okay! Right, Michiru, come this way! I’ll show you the apartment.”

Tsuruya took Asahina’s hand and dragged her off through the garden. As she went, Tsuruya looked over her shoulder and shot me a broad wink that just about killed me dead.

The apartment was very similar to the mountain villa we’d been invited to earlier. According to Tsuruya’s explanation, the villa had been built using this apartment as a model; this was the original. It was a pleasant Japanese-style one-floor building.

Asahina sat politely on the tatami-mat floor, like a pretty French doll placed in a simple house.

The room was warming up, thanks to Tsuruya having turned the heater on, and strangely I didn’t really want to leave.

After explaining the hanging scroll that hung in the alcove and telling us where the closet with the futon and sheets was, Tsuruya made herself scarce, saying “I’ll bring some nice hot tea.”

“Looks like this will work out,” I said to Asahina.

“Yes, thank goodness. We’ll need to properly thank Tsuruya,” agreed Asahina Michiru. “Michiru, was it? That’s a nice name.” She finally smiled.

I stretched my legs out on the tatami mat and looked at the heater, thinking about Asahina’s name.

Until Tsuruya returned, carrying a basket filled with a kettle, some teacups, and some clothes.

Tsuruya invited me to stay for dinner, but if I were away from home for two nights running, my mom would probably get irritated, so I instead expressed my sadness at having to go home. Thanks to finally having found a place for Asahina to stay, I was suddenly tired. If I dithered around anymore, I’d wind up deciding to spend the night.

“Hmm, she’s like Mikuru and yet not Mikuru. Or, like, she’s not Mikuru but she seems Mikuru-ish.”

I told Tsuruya I thought I’d already explained she was a twin.

“Ha ha ha! That’s true. We’ll just leave it at that.”

Walking about a step and a half ahead of me, Tsuruya headed for the huge gate.

As I watched her loose bun of hair gently sway, a question occurred to me.

“Tsuruya.”

“Yeah?”

“How much do you know? You said before that Asahina and Nagato—that the members of the SOS Brigade weren’t normal.”

“Yeah, I guess.” My long-haired schoolmate bounced slightly as she turned around. Her smiling face was as bright as a star. “I really don’t know that much, Kyon. Just that they seem kinda different. At the very least, they’re not normal normal like you and me.”

Even if that was all she knew, that was more than enough. Yet she still hadn’t asked any inconvenient questions, and she hadn’t tried to figure out what Asahina really was.

“How do you know?”

Tsuruya tucked her hands into her kimono sleeves and laughed broadly. “I just really like watching people have fun. Like when someone gobbles down a delicious meal I made for them, or when I just get to watch someone I’ve never met having a great time—I really love that. Yeah, so when I watch Haru-nyan, it makes me really happy. It’s like, I don’t know, she’s just having so much fun, y’know?”

Didn’t she want to join in herself? I asked. Wasn’t it lonely just watching?

“Mm, yeah, y’know—I think movies are super cool, but I don’t really want to make movies myself. Just watching is enough. Or like when I watch the World Series or the Super Bowl, it’s really fun to cheer and stuff, but I don’t start thinking, ‘Gosh, I should totally get out there myself and play!’ Watching the players out there, giving it their best shot, is the best part. I mean, I wouldn’t be any good at it. So I do other stuff, stuff I can do.”

In a way, she was the exact opposite of Haruhi. When Haruhi saw something she thought was interesting, she just had to butt in and give it a try.

Tsuruya’s big eyes cast about. “The SOS Brigade is just like the baseball game! I get a kick out of watching you, Haruhi, Nagato, and Koizumi, whatever it is you’re doing!”

Her smile and voice were completely genuine. She was speaking words of truth. I started to feel cheered up just by standing next to her.

“So I really like the position I’m in. I think Haru-nyan understands too. After all, she doesn’t try to drag me into things, y’know? Five people is just the right number.”

She turned back around with another bounce, facing the gate once again.

“It’s totally impossible to figure out everything, y’know? My hands are already full!” She looked over her shoulder at me. “Hang in there, Kyon! The future of humanity’s riding on your shoulders!”

The corner of her mouth twitched a couple of times, and she regarded me for a moment, but soon she was unable to keep herself from breaking into giggles. The guileless, childlike laughter made me feel like my merry upperclassman’s words were a simple joke.

Tsuruya gasped for air, holding her stomach. “Anyway, make sure you always watch Mikuru’s back! But no funny business, you got that? That’s the one thing that’s not allowed. If you’re gonna play tricks, play ’em on Haru-nyan. I’m sure she’ll forgive you, totally.”

These words, I was sure, were meant sincerely. I don’t know why I thought as much—I just did. Not that I’d had any intention of doing anything.

I said goodnight to Tsuruya and pedaled off on my bike, but it wasn’t long before I found myself applying the brakes.

“Good evening.”

My path was blocked by someone standing alone in the gloom of the street.

“You’re certainly working hard. For my part, I can’t say I agree with involving Tsuruya, although that’s surely the safest place she could possibly be.”

I hadn’t seen Koizumi’s handsome, pleasant smile in two days.

“Hey. What a coincidence, meeting you here.”

“You could say that, yes. You could also say that the coincidences started when you and I first met. No, even earlier than that—when you met Haruhi.”

Koizumi raised his hand in greeting and began to approach me. How long had he been skulking around in the night streets waiting for me? I asked. He wouldn’t have any cause to complain if someone mistook him for a pervert and called the cops on him.

Koizumi chuckled softly. “You seem to be up to something interesting again, but I suppose I haven’t won the participation lottery.”

I chose to sigh, exhaling whitely. “This is my and Asahina’s problem. It’s got nothing to do with you. You should just run along and hunt those celestials of yours.”

“These days they never call, they never write. Sometimes a man just needs to get out and take a walk.”

The only people who were out at this hour without a dog to walk were writers stuck for ideas, I said—and I knew for certain running into him was no coincidence.

“If this were a coincidence, one could hardly be blamed for thinking it was just a little too perfect.”

“What do you want?” I asked, but immediately changed subjects. “No, never mind—that much I can guess, more or less. How much do you know?”

“You mean about there being two Asahinas?” Koizumi casually mentioned the crucial point. “How did you manage to explain that to Tsuruya? Twins, I suppose? Surely you didn’t tell her the truth.”

“Not that it would’ve mattered.”

“Maybe not. It is Tsuruya, after all.”

He said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Just what kind of person was Tsuruya, anyway? Our cheerful schoolmate seemed to know everything about us, yet was still keeping her distance.

“My superiors have warned me not to interfere with Tsuruya.” Koizumi’s face became slightly more serious. “She’s actually not related to this. Originally, we weren’t supposed to encounter her at all, but there was a mistake somewhere and we wound up coming into contact. That’s Suzumiya for you, I suppose.”

What mistake, where? Was he talking about Tsuruya being in Asahina’s class? I asked. Or her being a substitute player on our sandlot baseball team?

“We do not interfere with her, and in exchange, she is no more involved with us than necessary. Those are the rules by which the Agency and the Tsuruya clan conduct their relationship.”

He shouldn’t just mention an absurd inside story like that, I told him.

Koizumi chuckled. “To be clearer, the Tsuruya clan is among the many sponsors of the Agency. However, our activities may be irrelevant to them; they are entirely indifferent to everything we do. Which is fine, since it’s frankly more convenient for us that way, but Miss Tsuruya is the successor to the entire clan.”

Tsuruya, you… I thought. To think we’d been just casually hanging out with a person like that. Now I really wanted to know—what was she? I asked.

“She’s an ordinary high school student. She’s a second-year student at the same public school we attend; she just commutes from a bigger house. Meanwhile, she might be fighting the forces of evil somewhere, or she might have solved some intractable problem, but none of that has anything to do with us.”

The words Tsuruya had just recently spoken now were clear in my memory. She’d said she was happy not being too involved with us. Maybe the same was true of us, for her. It would definitely be best to just keep relating to her the way we always had. Whatever she was, whatever she was doing, none of that was important. Just as Haruhi was Haruhi, Tsuruya was Tsuruya. She was Asahina’s cheerful, happy, over-perceptive friend. The SOS Brigade’s faithful advisor. That was the best way to think about it.

But how much of a coincidence had her meeting Asahina been? Were there parts of the past that were mysterious even to time travelers, in the same way that Haruhi was a mystery to them?

And then I remembered.

“Koizumi, earlier you said things with Asahina would work out just fine. What did you mean by that?”

“I meant that the future can be changed.” Then, as though he’d predicted my next question, he continued. “You might be thinking that people from the future regard the past as freely changeable and consider the future to be superior to the past, but the future is actually quite a fuzzy thing.”

If you knew past history and could travel back, you could change the future however you wanted to. I’d done it myself—I’d gone back in time with Nagato to fix the world after it had gone all wrong.

Koizumi smiled. “You could also have done the same thing from the past. If you’d known the future in advance, you could’ve changed it right at that point and time.”

“How can you possibly know the future? That’s impossible.”

“Do you really think so?”

Koizumi’s smile turned a bit devilish, surely on purpose. The guy really could be pointlessly nasty sometimes.

“I am an esper—though my abilities and range are a bit limited. But can you be sure that I am the only one? I don’t mean anti-Celestials like me. How can we say for certain that there aren’t more straightforward superhumans with, for example, the power to see the future, perhaps even attached to the Agency?” His smile returned to its previous pleasant state. “I don’t recall ever telling you that such individuals don’t exist.”

Why you son of a—

“Of course, I never told you they did exist either.”

Well, which was it? I asked, adding that he’d better not tell me that it could go either way.

“To be completely honest, I don’t know. As I said before, I’m an underling. I don’t know everything. Asahina’s the same way.”

That much I could believe. Never had an agent been so deserving of pity as Asahina.

“There’s a purpose to her ignorance, of course. If a time traveler from the future knows they are acting with a defined intention, they can simply analyze those actions, and they’ll never take actions that would jeopardize their own future. The reason Asahina seems so careless, despite being from the future, is because she doesn’t know anything. You could even say she hasn’t been allowed to know anything. That’s the future’s countermeasure to stop us in the past from analyzing their intentions. Her presence is required in this time period, but if we were to infer the future from her presence, that puts the future in danger. In a way, you could say she’s a perfect time resident. I don’t feel any threat from her at the moment, and when push comes to shove I’m sure she’ll follow her orders exactly.”

Koizumi performed his specialty: the shrug.

“That might very well be the aim of the future group—to make the people in the past think that. Which is why the Agency doesn’t get involved. It’d be awfully irritating to just play into their hands, after all. We don’t want to be puppets of the future.”

So what, did they oppose Asahina? I asked.

“I wouldn’t go that far. If I had to sum it up, I’d say we’re at a standstill.”

A chill ran through my body. Literally.

“Let me make an analogy. Suppose there are two nations, A and B. They oppose each other but have not engaged in direct conflict. Now suppose there appears power C, which opposes A, and power D, which opposes B. From A’s perspective, coexistence with C is impossible; they are a direct threat. The same goes for B and D. C and D then join forces and begin cooperating. If one nation was intolerable, the two joined are now all the more so. Now, as the old saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, so A and B build a grudging and unsteady alliance—which is where we are.”

Koizumi regarded me uncertainly.

“Are you listening?”

“Oh, sorry,” I said, throwing my leg over my bike seat. “I stopped listening when you started talking about D or whatever. I can remember the first three, but after that it was too much.”

“I know it was audible. Your brain chose to listen and process, or not.”

He didn’t have to answer so seriously. I was just messing with him. Would it kill him to play along with my joke, for once? He’d never be popular with the ladies without a sense of humor, no matter how good-looking he was.

Koizumi grinned. I wondered how many different smiles he had.

“I change my expressions and statements to match the situation and the individual, just like anybody else does. But when I’m talking to you, it always turns into this kind of conversation.”

It must be hard to be him, I said.

“I feel the same way, but I think I’ll stay like this for a while.” Koizumi looked off into the distance for some reason. “I hope the day comes when we’ll be friends on a perfectly equal footing, and we’ll be able to laugh about the past—just as people, when things like ‘mission’ and ‘duty’ no longer matter.” He seemed satisfied by that. “Well then, I’ll see you in the clubroom.”

He raised his hand in a sort of salute, then strolled off into the darkness, as though lazily continuing his evening walk.

Upon returning home, I wolfed down my dinner and immediately shut myself up in my room.

The first thing I did was to phone Nagato. I had to tell her that I’d moved Asahina to Tsuruya’s place. Knowing Nagato, she might well already know. Even Koizumi had figured it out, after all.

After three rings, Nagato picked up. She didn’t even bother saying hello, proof that she already knew who was calling.

“…”

“Nagato, it’s me. I’ll make this short. It’s about Asahina.”

I gave her the highlights of what Asahina had told me. Nagato listened to my explanation with her usual silence.

“Understood,” she said, without any particular regret, adding, “That is for the best.”

“Really? That’s a relief.”

“Why?”

Why? Even I had misgivings about relying on Nagato too much. And this time we’d unilaterally decided to impose upon her, then unilaterally left—it was really selfish of us.

“Needless worry,” said Nagato, her voice calm. “I can understand her position.” Then, after a short pause: “I do not wish to become like her. However, sentiment to that effect is valid.”

Valid how? I wanted to know.

“If I were in her position, I might have come to the same conclusion.”

So, uh, that meant that Nagato could imagine being in Asahina’s place, and worrying about Nagato in the way that Asahina currently was? I asked.

There was silence for a while. Then: “I think so.”

Her fine voice reached my ears. It was such a pleasant sound that I wished I would’ve turned on the phone’s recording function.

We exchanged a few more words, whereupon I hung up. It seemed that there was no need for me to worry: the alien and the time traveler had come to a mutual understanding. Probably more than either of them realized.

For some reason I grinned and looked to my side. Shamisen was sleeping on my bed. His head was on my pillow as though he were human, his breathing deep and even. Just as I was wondering whether I should shave a patch of his fur off in case Haruhi did happen to turn up, something else occurred to me.

“How long do I have to lie about Shamisen’s recuperation?”

I’d forgotten to ask. Asahina should have been able to tell me how many days I skipped club activities for, and when I’d started coming back. If I knew that much, I’d be able to set up a tentative schedule for this week. But the Asahina from a week in the future didn’t have a cell phone. If I wanted to call Asahina, I’d have to call Tsuruya, but thanks to that conversation I’d had with Koizumi, I hesitated to contact her. I didn’t know how much of what he’d said was true. Since it was Koizumi we were talking about, he might have just made up something plausible-sounding to see the look on my face. Hell, I’d rather that were the case.

I aimed the air conditioner’s remote control at the cooler, reclining back onto my bed.

Tomorrow, I’d check the contents of my shoe locker and figure out the day’s plan.

As I regarded the calico cat, whose eyes were shut as he smacked his lips, I wound up drifting off to sleep myself, only to be awakened by my sister, who’d just gotten out of the bath.