CHAPTER FOUR

I was awakened the next morning by my little sister, who came in to shut off the alarm clock that was ringing next to my pillow.

“That sure is noisy, isn’t it, Shami?”

Shamisen was curled into a ball at the foot of my bed; my sister picked the furball up, then shoved him up against my nose.

“Are you gonna have breakfast? Hmm?” Her tone-deaf sing-song voice penetrated my head way more sharply than the alarm.

“Yeah.”

My sister was moving Shamisen’s paws around like he was a puppet; I brushed them aside and sat up, taking Shamisen out of my sister’s arms and putting him on the floor. The cat sniffed in irritation, then climbed back up on my bed.

As I was getting dressed, my sister started pinching Shamisen’s furry cheeks, then escalated to grabbing at his angrily twitching tail. Finally he let out a “Nrryaaow” of protest and ran out of the room, my sister chasing closely behind him. I wished they wouldn’t start fighting in my room first thing in the morning—although they had gotten me out of bed, I had to admit.

I was on my way to the bathroom when I encountered them again, my sister this time having draped Shamisen around the back of her neck—“Kitty scarf!”—but I ignored them entirely.

I glared at my tense face in the bathroom mirror as I brushed my teeth, wondering just what holiday it was today—not that it mattered. I cursed the cold wind that whistled by outside and wondered when spring would finally get here. I wished I could keep being a freshman whose face nobody knew—without repeating a year, that is—but I was sick of the cold weather. Both treasure-hunting and random city excursions would’ve been a lot more inviting in a warmer season, but it was February. Freakin’ February!

But no matter the month, once Haruhi said we were doing something, we were doing it, one way or another. We were just lucky she hadn’t decided she wanted to salvage an ancient shipwreck at the bottom of the ocean. Had to stay positive.

Once I finished eating breakfast, I put on a jacket, given that I would be going hiking soon, then headed out for the local train station on foot. I didn’t bring my bike, since the only way to get to Tsuruya’s mountain from the station was to take a bus. It would’ve been faster if we’d just met up at the mountain, and the only reason we were meeting up at the station was out of a sense of tradition that wasn’t even worth mocking.

I buried my face in my muffler; the north wind was so bad it felt like it had a bet with the sun it was determined not to lose. I wasn’t walking particularly quickly, but this wasn’t because I’d left myself plenty of time. No, rather it was that no matter how punctual I was, I’d still be the last to arrive. This was another stupid tradition. There’d only been that one time when I’d gotten to wait for somebody else.

It was about five minutes to nine when I arrived at the station, where I found all the familiar faces of the SOS Brigade already waiting.

Haruhi wore an expression that looked like it had been handed down by Old Man Winter’s grouchy boss. “Why are you always the late one, huh? Everybody else was already waiting for me when I got here. Don’t you feel bad, making your brigade chief wait?”

Oh, Haruhi was definitely the one who made me feel bad. For one thing, the reason the other three members arrived before she did was to make her treat everybody, and the only reason she didn’t have to was because of me. So I wished she’d feel a little bad, for once, I told her.

“What’re you talking about? You’re the one who was late,” said Haruhi, grinning. “What’s your problem? You seem like you’re worried about something. Is something up?”

It wasn’t just “something.” We finally get a holiday, but here we are out in the freezing cold, looking for treasure we’re never gonna find, so I was just lamenting my own misfortune, I said.

“Well, cheer up! Or did Shamisen’s sickness come back?”

“No,” I said, tucking my chin down and looking sideways. “It’s just cold.”

Haruhi chuckled and held her hands out, as though explaining something she thought was obvious. “You’ve just gotta adapt to the environment. So today, that means switching to winter mountain-climbing mode. Easy, right?”

I wasn’t a plastic model, so I couldn’t just swap out parts like that. Humans didn’t have mode switches anywhere on them—although I couldn’t be sure about the all-weather Haruhi.

While Haruhi and I were exchanging our morning greetings, the other three members stood there in observation mode.

Koizumi, Asahina, and Nagato were dressed in casual, basic, and natural outfits, respectively. Nagato’s natural look consisted of a duffle coat over her school uniform, and while there was nothing to say about what part of that was suitable for hiking, I suddenly had the random thought that if I were to take Nagato over to Tsuruya’s place and leave her there, Tsuruya would probably dress her up in her hand-me-downs. I’d have to give that a try sometime.

I wanted to ask Koizumi just what catalog he’d jumped out of; his winter jacket looked so sharp on him that you could’ve swapped him out for a department store mannequin—if you left out the part where he was holding two heavy-duty shovels.

Asahina wore an inoffensive pair of pants along with an inoffensive down jacket. It occurred to me that outside of her school uniform, I’d never seen Asahina wear the same outfit twice.

“I made lunches for everyone.” Maybe because she’d totally gotten in the picnicking spirit, Asahina’s face was 100 percent charming as she held a large basket. I wanted to pretend I’d come along just to eat her homemade lunch.

And yet it was hard to believe that this Asahina would be half ordered by me to travel into the past. Had the other Asahina really been telling the truth?

“Is something wrong?” Asahina looked up at me, her face uncertain.

“No, no,” I answered casually. “I was just thinking I’m looking forward to lunchtime.”

“Don’t get too excited about it, please. I really don’t know if it will be tasty or not…”

Her shyness was adorable, but my admiration was interrupted by the usual suspect.

“Lunches are well and good,” said Haruhi, breaking into my field of vision, “but don’t forget today’s objective. We’re not here to play around. This is a treasure hunt! We’re not taking a lunch break until we’ve put in enough effort to deserve one!”

As Haruhi spoke, her smile was like the sun outshining the north wind or a child just about to go out and play. I wanted to tell her she needed to keep that smile on ready alert—but I stopped myself.

When I thought about it, I realized that I’d stopped myself because that was Haruhi’s usual expression. I’d been deceived by the bad mood she’d been in since the beginning of February. As to why I felt deceived—I had no idea.

For once, the brigade didn’t proceed to make a trip to the café at my expense. The trip wasn’t canceled, though—just postponed. Haruhi informed me of this as she stood at the bus stop rotary in front of the train station, adding that at the next brigade function, I’d be treating everybody no matter who was the last to arrive.

Perhaps she was worried that if we didn’t start looking for treasure immediately, somebody would beat us to it. Whatever the reason, she wanted to get to the mountain as soon as possible. Holding the shovel I’d been handed, I boarded the mountain-bound bus, standing beside Koizumi, who held on to a hanging strap. The two of us definitely stood out, holding shovels like that, but it couldn’t be helped. The single saving grace was the fact that there weren’t many passengers bound for the mountains that day.

We rattled around the bus for about half an hour. At our stop, Haruhi ordered us off the bus, and we found ourselves so surrounded by nature that the busy train station seemed like a dream. It was hard to believe that we were still in the same city, but thanks to the many field trips I’d taken to this area in elementary and middle school, I was used to the scenery and wasn’t actually all that surprised. If we headed north from here, we really would be climbing a mountain. Fortunately, Tsuruya’s family’s mountain was smaller than that, although it was still surprising that such a place was someone’s private property. That explained why I’d never climbed this particular mountain, even during a field trip.

“Seems like it’ll be easier to climb from this side,” said Haruhi, map in hand as she led the way. I exhaled white vapor as I looked up at the peak of Mt. Tsuruya—okay, so I didn’t know its real name, but let’s stick with Mt. Tsuruya.

We were exactly opposite the face I’d climbed the day before yesterday with Asahina. As to which route was the “back way,” it seemed like my earlier path was the likely candidate for that. The way Haruhi was now following was a narrow path that zigzagged from the base of the mountain up to the summit. It would make for an easier hike. Right…?

“Kyon, this is no time to be staring up at the sky! Hurry up and walk!”

Haruhi’s voice rang out, and I started to move my feet. Something had been nagging at me, but it now faded away. “I know, I know.”

I hefted the shovel and caught back up to the brigade. Aside from Haruhi, who was acting like a rabbit suddenly returning to the forest, there was Asahina, who seemed just like an elementary school student on a hiking field trip; Nagato, who was exactly the same as she always was; and Koizumi, wearing a vaguely chagrined smile. I had major doubts as to how many of these individuals were actually serious about finding treasure. I knew for a fact I wasn’t serious, which explained my lack of energy. The fact that we’d dig and find nothing was already written in the personalized future schedule I’d gotten from (Michiru) Asahina. Under normal circumstances, since this was Haruhi we were talking about, there was every possibility we’d actually dig up treasure, but Asahina would never tell a stupid lie about the past, so it was certain that we weren’t going to find the secret treasure of Tsuruya’s ancestor.

“Whatever is the matter?” Koizumi walked alongside me, forcing a pleasant smile. “You look as though you believe that everything we’re doing is a complete waste of time.”

I stayed silent. I had nothing to say to this guy.

Koizumi looked like he believed exactly the same thing—like he knew that this was his job, whether we actually dug something up or not.

He also seemed like he knew there was another Asahina in this time period, in which case I wanted him to come out and say it. Was he waiting for me to come and ask him for advice? If so, he was just gonna have to keep waiting. Now that I had Tsuruya for an accomplice, I didn’t need his help. And I didn’t feel like giving him any information either. People won’t move the way you want them to if you just wait around. If you’re not straight with them, they’ll just get sick of you.

Whatever he thought of my lack of an answer, Koizumi hefted his shovel and looked ahead. His kept his smile, out of either tolerance or stoicism—either way, he was the same old Koizumi. I found myself relieved for some reason, but in any case I had to focus on mountain climbing now.

Haruhi pushed through a thicket and pointed to the summit. “First we’ll head to the peak. If I were going to bury treasure, I’d dig at the easiest spot to find. Tsuruya’s ancestor was a human too, after all—he’d obviously bury it somewhere easy to spot.”

If he’d wanted it to be easy to spot, why bury it at all? But Haruhi wanted to head to the top. That’s why she was the SOS Brigade chief. She was the master and commander of aliens, time travelers, and espers, and she wanted to go to the top.

Asahina was bent over and panting as she climbed; I wanted to give her a push from behind, but with Haruhi in the lead there was no chance for me to do so. After about half an hour of that, we arrived at the peak. That seemed like longer than it should’ve taken, but the path seemed to have been made to require a minimum of effort on the part of its climbers, and without being conscious of any particularly steep slopes, we’d managed to conquer this small mountain.

I wasn’t especially tired, since the mountain itself wasn’t more than a glorified hill. My walking endurance had been naturally increased from trudging up the hill to school every day. Unfortunately, what we were about to do would definitely tire me out.

In other words, it was time to dig for treasure. Haruhi was now in her element.

“It should be somewhere around here, right?”

We started digging in the vague area Haruhi’d gestured at. It seemed too obvious a spot to be hiding gold or treasure, even given that I knew there was nothing there. After digging about two meters down, no shovel had impacted wood or stone or anything hard.

And thanks to the discriminatory practice of delegating all excavation duties to males, the only ones digging were Koizumi and me. The three girls simply enjoyed a picnic, with Asahina being the only one who could be relied upon to cheer us on.

Haruhi simply ordered us around—“Next, over there!”—and Nagato had the same Buddha face she always had. It seemed likely that if I prayed to her, she’d tell me where treasure could actually be found, but it would be very strange to strike gold on the first try, so I refrained from Nagato-directed entreaties. And anyway, it wouldn’t be good if we actually found something. Plus, no matter how incredible Haruhi’s ability to ignore reality was, even she would have to find it a bit strange to dig up hidden treasure without any hard work at all. The problem was that only Koizumi and I were actually doing the hard work, and because Koizumi’s pleasant expression seemed permanently carved on his face, I was the only one actually suffering.

It was enough to make me want to try and talk Taniguchi and Kunikida into helping, but Haruhi put the kibosh on that.

“Listen, we’re looking for buried treasure. Everybody has to get a share. I’m a fair brigade chief, so I’m going to divide it up evenly. If we brought those jokers in, we’d have to split the treasure seven ways. I am not gonna let it go to waste like that, got it?”

If we were actually going to find Genroku-era gold coins, I would’ve agreed. But this map had come out of the depths of Tsuruya’s family’s storehouse. The Tsuruya clan had thrived for hundreds of years, so it had definitely weathered some tough times. If an ancestor had buried treasure here, wouldn’t their descendants have dug it up and used it at some point? This so-called treasure map had to be the scribbling left behind by one of the clan’s heads, or else a grand prank at the expense of his descendants. My guess was that if we dug up anything at all, it’d be a piece of paper containing only the words “Thou hast lost.” For some reason, I got the feeling that Tsuruya’s ancestor had a lot of free time on his hands. Tsuruya herself had said as much. That’s why she’d been happy to give Haruhi the map. I bet Tsuruya would have done the same thing herself, if she were in her ancestor’s position, cackling all the while as she imagined people in the future going to all this trouble because of her joke. She was definitely the type to get people all excited at first, then laugh at how exhausted they were.

I wanted to warn them off, but I managed to restrain my own desire, instead silently plunging my shovel into the earth.

Our mountain wasn’t a large one, so there wasn’t much space at the peak. As we kept digging, the area became full of holes. Koizumi and I labored mightily at Haruhi’s urging, and unlike Koizumi (who was happy to play at being a mole man), I began to feel more and more oppressed. It was dangerous to just leave the holes we dug, so we also had the doubly pointless work of shoveling the dug-up earth back into the holes. I started to feel as though I’d been thrown into some kind of inhuman labor camp.

“Stop complaining and focus on the treasure!”

Haruhi sat cross-legged on a rolled-out mat, giving directions with a triumphant smile, like some grand general addressing her army. To her right side knelt Nagato, looking like a faithful page as she read her paperback, while to Haruhi’s right sat Asahina, who huddled close to Haruhi as though trying to stay warm.

“Kyon, you’re working up enough of a sweat that you might think it’s warm, but as you can see it’s pretty cold up here. If you don’t hurry up and find something, we’re gonna freeze. Are you sure you’re digging right?”

I was just digging where she told me to. If she wanted to move around, she could do some digging of her own, I told her.

Her arms around Haruhi, Asahina spoke in a tremulous voice. “Um… should I help?”

“No, don’t bother,” interrupted Haruhi before I could reply. “This is for Kyon’s sake too. It’s good practice for construction work. If he doesn’t get experience now, he’s gonna have a hard time later.”

I wasn’t exactly grateful to receive career counseling from someone my own age, I said.

“The day’s gonna come when you’ll be glad you did this. That’s how the world works. People should do everything they can.”

You do it, then.

“Hey, Haruhi,” I said, wiping sweat off my forehead. “We’re not gonna find anything just digging random holes. I assume you’re not planning to try to level the entire mountain. For one thing, we’re not even sure if the treasure exists.”

“Yeah, and how do you know it doesn’t? We might just not have found it yet.”

“Yeah, we haven’t found it yet because it’s not here. Let’s first prove it exists, then start digging.”

Haruhi pursed her lips, though her eyes were smiling. “This is that proof.” In her hand she held Tsuruya’s ancestral treasure map. “It says it’s buried somewhere on this mountain, so it’s got to be here. I trust Tsuruya’s ancestor that much. It’s got to be here!”

Haruhi’s face brimmed with eccentric confidence as she explained her strange reasoning. Her certainty made it sound like she’d seen the spot old Fusauemon Tsuruya had buried his treasure.

“But you’ve got a point,” she said, putting a finger to her chin. “It was hasty to assume it was buried on the peak. It would’ve been a pain to climb all the way to the top, so maybe it’s on a lower spot. Yeah, I definitely want it to be buried in a more interesting spot than this.” Haruhi extracted herself from Asahina’s arms and stood, putting her shoes back on. “We need to look for a likelier spot. Until then, Kyon—dig over there.”

Upon issuing my new orders, Haruhi headed off into the brush, making a rustling sound as she proceeded in roughly the opposite direction from which we’d climbed.

Silently, I watched her go. Assuming my sense of direction wasn’t mistaken, if she kept going, she’d come across the flat spot halfway down the mountainside, where she’d find the gourd-shaped stone—a marker that practically shouted, “Dig here!”

It was all well and good to do as I was told and dig, but eventually I got sick of it and tossed the shovel aside, leaving Koizumi to fill the hole back up as I sat down on the mat.

“Here,” said Asahina, offering me a paper cup of hot tea. It was the most nutritious thing I could imagine. It was sweet, a sweetness that suited Asahina herself perfectly.

Asahina held her silver thermos carefully and smiled as she watched me tentatively sip at the brown liquid. “It’s lovely weather today, isn’t it? And such a nice view.”

Her eyes looked far off into the distance—to the south, where the world spread out before us. Our far-off city was hazy with distance, and beyond that was the sea.

The mountain wind whistled fiercely, and Asahina shivered. “It would’ve been nicer to come in the springtime. February’s so cold,” she said in a lonely voice, even as she kept her soft smile, looking down on the dreary view. “This would be a nicer place if the flowers were blooming.”

“We’ll come then,” I told her. “To see the blossoms. Give it a couple more months, and this cold air mass will have warmed right up.”

“Oh, that would be lovely. Blossom watching! I’d love to try that.” Asahina held her knees. “That would be in April… I’ll be a senior by then.”

That was true. In all likelihood, I’d be a junior, and Asahina would be a senior if she advanced—she wasn’t going to repeat a year, right? I asked her.

“No, I’ll be fine,” she said with a sigh. “But… sometimes I think it would be nice to just do my junior year over, because then I’d be the same year as Kyon and everybody else. Right now I’m the only one who’s ahead, but I don’t feel like an upperclassman at all…”

She had absolutely no reason to worry about that. It had been Haruhi who said we needed a baby-faced, petite, sexy mascot and forced her into the club, and Haruhi who’d brook no complaint on the matter. If she’d wanted Asahina to be in the same year, she would’ve totally ignored any protest from Asahina and forced her to repeat a year or fail a class or something. For my part, I told her, I was satisfied if she just kept being the SOS Brigade’s maid.

Asahina giggled. “Thank you.” Possibly taking notice of Nagato reading nearby, she lowered her voice. “I hope I can be a little more worthwhile this year…”

Just as I was experiencing a spastic desire to run my mouth about the other Asahina, the sound of rustling underbrush announced Haruhi’s return.

“What, you’re taking a break already?”

I didn’t want to hear any complaints, I said—I’d already been working for nearly two hours.

“Heh, fine. I’m getting pretty hungry myself.” Haruhi seemed happy about something as she trotted over. “C’mon, Mikuru, let’s have lunch.”

“Uh, okay.”

The sight of Asahina opening the picnic basket was a fine one indeed. The handmade sandwiches, rice balls, and side dishes she took out were the real treasure, as far as I was concerned. It wasn’t an overstatement to say this was the reason I’d come along.

“…”

Nagato silently closed the book she was reading and looked intently at Asahina’s handiwork. Koizumi stuck the shovel into the soft earth of the hole he’d just filled and walked over.

“That looks truly delicious,” he said by way of his initial impression.

“Of course it looks delicious. You’ve been exercising,” Haruhi butted in, filling her own paper cup from the thermos, then raising the cup into the air. “Well, then, here’s to our hopes for successful treasure hunting!”

Now our trip seemed like a real picnic—if you ignored Koizumi’s and my dirty clothes, that was.

I looked sideways as I stuffed my face with a seaweed rice ball. From what I could tell, Haruhi was enjoying her lunch with such gusto that it seemed like she’d forgotten all about the treasure hunt. I would’ve expected her to have gotten frustrated with Koizumi’s and my failure to dig up anything interesting, grabbed a shovel, and started digging around herself, but she had been strangely happy all day. Almost as if going on a hike and eating lunch under the blue sky had been her goal all along.

Haruhi’s actions lately had been just as incomprehensible as Asahina the Elder’s future transmissions. She’d turned suddenly melancholy, then decided it was time for bean-tossing, then just when I thought she’d calmed down again, here we were on a treasure hunt…

It was fine, though. Compared with getting sucked into some stupid dimension filled with Celestials, or having cherry blossoms bloom in autumn, it was like the difference between taking a trip to the moon or the Andromeda nebula. Give me the moon any day of the week. One was a heavenly body on which humans had actually walked, and the other was an undiscovered frontier you’d have to use the galactic railroad to get to—there was a huge difference. Of course, I’d already experienced both closed space and unidentified falling blossoms…

Enjoying lunch in the mountains with all five of us was actually very nice. Nagato wasn’t hesitating to dig right in, I noticed with relief, and she seemed very much herself. Haruhi seemed brimming with energy, and Koizumi was the usual Koizumi. Asahina was fine too, although when it came to her I knew there was another version holed up at Tsuruya’s place, which made it hard for me to feel really at ease.

“Hey, Kyon, if we do find treasure, what’re you gonna do with your share?” asked Haruhi, her mouth full of cutlet sandwich. I had fantasies like that all the time, so it was an easy question to answer.

“I’m gonna cash it in and buy a new game system with all the games I’ve wanted to play, then go to the used bookstore and buy back all the manga my mom made me sell off, then save the rest.”

“You make it sound like it’s your allowance. You gotta dream bigger than that!” Haruhi gulped down the sandwich in a flash and regarded me with a pitying smile.

So what would she do? I demanded.

“I don’t really care about money, so even if we find the kind of treasure we’d be able to sell off, I don’t think I’d do it. I mean, we went to all that trouble to get it, right? I’d lock it up for a while, then bury it again somewhere. Don’t you think leaving a treasure map for your own descendants would be worth more than plain old money?”

Sure, a childish treasure hunt was fun and all, but I wasn’t so overflowing with allowance I’d use it that way. If we found something useful, I’d happily keep it for myself, but if I didn’t need it, I’d rather just throw it away than take the trouble to bury it, I said.

“Oh, you’re no fun,” said Haruhi, her lips pursed in exasperation. But then she smiled. “I guess if you’re just going to blow it on pointless stuff like that, I hope we find something you can’t exchange for money. Right, Mikuru?”

“Eh?” Interrupted midbite, Asahina looked back and forth hesitantly as she simultaneously tried to set down her half-eaten lunch and cover her chewing mouth politely with her hand. “Er… y-yes, I guess—wait, no… um, I mean, maybe that would make everybody happier, or…” She trailed off as her eyes met Haruhi’s and mine in turn. She waved her hands frantically. “I mean, I just hope we find some! Treasure, I mean.”

“Oh, we’ll find some treasure. I know these things.”

Haruhi made her usual baseless assertions as she stuffed her face with a sandwich.

Nagato sat on the mat’s corner, demolishing her lunch as though wanting to best Haruhi; beside her was Koizumi, down on one knee like a pop idol posing for a teenybopper magazine. He noticed my gaze and tipped his cup slightly, smiling wordlessly as Asahina watched the lunch she’d prepared get taken care of by Haruhi and Nagato.

For just a moment, I wasn’t thinking about the letters from the future or the other Asahina hiding out at Tsuruya’s house. I was just enjoying having a fun picnic lunch with everybody. Despite the unseasonal hike and the pointless treasure hunt, looking at the high-spirited Haruhi, the thankfully normal Nagato, along with Asahina and Koizumi being their usual selves, for a little while I felt like everything was going to be okay.

No… everything had to be okay.

Which made me remember the future that lay before me—there were things I had to do tomorrow and the next day in order to keep everything okay.

The pleasant lunch ended, after which Haruhi and I bickered for a bit just to settle our stomachs, though there was no point in relating the details. Finally she clapped and stood. I braced myself; the time had finally come.

“Well, then, time to start the afternoon treasure hunt!” Haruhi picked up the lunch boxes and thermoses and gave Asahina a sidelong glance. “I headed down the mountainside over there. There are so many trees on this mountain that there aren’t many places to dig. Which means the treasure must be buried somewhere without trees. You can’t dig holes on top of trees, after all.”

I picked up my shovel.

“But I found an open space that looks pretty likely,” said Ha-ruhi. “Let’s head that way. Plus, we can head straight down from there, so it’ll be quicker to go home. We shouldn’t have bothered to take the bus, really.”

I looked and saw that Koizumi had already shouldered his shovel and was heading down the mountain. Nagato rolled up the mat we’d sat on, and Asahina carefully held on to the picnic basket, nodding meekly at Haruhi’s pronouncement.

Haruhi bounded down the tree-filled, rock-strewn slope like an antelope. Though we weren’t particularly in a hurry, Nagato followed smoothly after.

“Wah—eek!”

Asahina nearly tripped and fell several times, but each time Nagato came to her rescue—Koizumi and I were encumbered with the heavy shovels, and we couldn’t help. I wanted to just toss the stupid shovel aside and assist Asahina, but for now I’d leave it to Nagato. Asahina bowed her head every time—You’re reading too much into it, Asahina, I wanted to say.

Thanks to the nearly straight route we followed down the mountain, it took almost no time to arrive at our destination, especially compared with how long it’d taken to climb up.

“This is the place. Isn’t it strangely flat here? See?”

Haruhi stopped and indicated what she meant. There was no mistaking it. This was the same spot (Michiru) Asahina and I had visited the day before yesterday. This was the place. It was surrounded by tall trees, which kept it gloomy even at midday, and the memory of the crescent-shaped clearing and the fallen leaves that littered the ground was all too familiar to me.

The gourd-shaped rock stood there. It wasn’t quite as brilliantly white as it had been before, but that was because of the rain. Having been coated in moisture, it was uniformly faded. The water had also washed off some of the dirt that had clung to it, so that if you didn’t look too closely, the difference between the two sides wasn’t apparent.

Yet when Haruhi strolled up to the rock, a chill ran through me. She was too damn perceptive, and I hoped she didn’t sense anything amiss. Just then, she put her foot on the rock and casually kicked it over. Paying it no further mind, she sat down upon it.

“Kyon, Koizumi—time for phase two. Just start digging somewhere around there, okay?”

She smiled impishly. Koizumi immediately replied with a crisp “Understood” and immediately set to digging, but I had something else I was worried about.

The spot where the rock had originally been—(Michiru) Asahina and I had disguised it a bit, but close inspection would reveal that it had been disturbed. But when I looked—

“…”

Nagato had unrolled the mat on that very spot. I caught a quick glimpse of her expressionless eyes behind her hair. She didn’t give me anything that seemed like a signal or a sign. I watched her silently sit on the mat and open her book, Buddha-like.

The corner-loving alien left a large space open on the mat, so Asahina hesitantly sat down as well. The two very different but nonetheless beautiful goddesses sitting in a pair like that made for quite a spectacle. Whoever sat between them would seem like a significant person indeed.

“Hey! Kyon, quit spacing out! Go help Koizumi!”

That “significant person” yelled like a construction foreman making sure nobody was slacking off. She sure did enjoy bossing people around. If some boss somewhere had Haruhi for their subordinate, they’d probably stop coming to work because of the stress. I picked up my shovel, reflecting on the fact that I’d probably never have that problem, and hurried over to Koizumi’s side, where he had already started digging into the wet earth.

Let’s just skip to the results.

As expected, no matter how much we dug we found not so much as a single fragment of pottery, to say nothing of treasure. That was exactly what (Michiru) Asahina had said would happen, so I wasn’t a bit surprised. My shoulders slacked in a complicated feeling of relief, since I’d been constantly worried that by some mistake we would turn something up. This was all fine, but hadn’t it been a bit too easy? I wondered.

“We’re just not finding any buried treasure, are we?” said Ha-ruhi, her head cocked. She noisily ate a chocolate cookie she’d gotten out as she sat on the gourd-shaped rock.

I took a break from shoveling dirt back into the holes and looked around the area. The once-undisturbed ground had been ravaged. Thanks to the constant excavating and reburying, it looked like a field that had just been plowed. It really would have been better to just leave nature alone.

“Oh well,” said Haruhi with uncharacteristic perspective. “I don’t really see anywhere else to dig, so we’ll wrap things up right here.”

She then finished by pointing right at her feet, directly in front of the gourd-rock on which she sat.

Koizumi and I dug as ordered. It was another hole that revealed nothing. We then shoved the soil back into the hole.

All we’d done was make the hard earth a nicer place for earthworms to live.

Just as I was wondering how Haruhi was going to react to not finding any treasure—

“Well, let’s go home. The sun’s getting low, and if we’re up here any longer we’re gonna freeze. We’ll just go down this way. It comes right out near the road that leads to North High.”

Koizumi and I gathered up our supplies, and after taking a moment to rest and have some Asahina Tea, we complied with the order to descend the mountain. It didn’t seem like any of the bodies descending the narrow animal trail had any particular attachment to the treasure or the mountain. C’mon, really? I thought. So we just went on a picnic and dug a bunch of holes?

Koizumi’s hand came to rest on my discouraged shoulder. “Come now, it’s all right, isn’t it?”

I didn’t want him to lecture me. He reminded me of the way my mom was when I got angry, I said.

“Apologies. However, I’m quite tired myself, but I do think it would be best to leave the area promptly, before Haruhi spies another spot to excavate.”

I agreed with him on that. Asahina and Nagato—who was carrying only the rolled-up mat—were both preparing to leave. I’d just been trying to figure out what was the point of everything I’d just done, I told Koizumi.

“The point?” Koizumi was behind me as I started walking, and I heard a smile creep into his voice. “Why not simply accept that Suzumiya is a capricious girl. Isn’t that always so?”

Haruhi strode ahead, her attachment to the idea of treasure totally gone. Behind her walked Asahina, Nagato, and a bit farther, Koizumi and me.

There in the middle of the animal trail, Koizumi lowered his voice and continued. “However, it does seem a bit strange that there really was no treasure.”

It was the kind of thing he’d say. For some reason I felt the same way.

“You can be sure of this: if Suzumiya truly believed that something was there, it would not matter whether Tsuruya’s long-dead ancestor Fusauemon had actually buried something—we would have found something. Suzumiya has that kind of power.”

Apparently so, if the stuff he said was true.

“Nevertheless, we were unable to find anything. This is rather mysterious. Do you know why?”

Because Haruhi herself hadn’t really believed it, I guessed. A worthless treasure map like that? It had to be a prank from old man Fusauemon, I said.

Koizumi nodded quietly. “I see you understand the way of it. Suzumiya did not truly want to find Genroku-era treasure. That’s the only possibility. We can conclude that all she wanted was to go on a picnic.”

She could’ve just said so, instead of going to all the trouble of this treasure-hunting nonsense. Even I would’ve been on board for a picnic.

“Who can fathom a maiden’s heart? She’s been stable ever since winter vacation—too stable. Most likely she grew bored.”

Well, that just made his job easier, then. It wasn’t like the paycheck from his part-time job got lower when those blue giants appeared.

“No, wait.” I raised my hand and searched for the words. “You said Haruhi’s mental state has been stable? Ever since the beginning of February?”

“Yes. There have been subtle fluctuations, but nothing trending to the negative. If anything, her mood’s been elevated.”

So what had the vaguely depressed aura I’d felt from Haruhi all this time been? My imagination? I asked.

“Is that what you felt?” Koizumi asked with mild surprise. “She seemed like her usual self to me.”

Wasn’t he supposed to be the expert on Haruhi’s psychology? How come he hadn’t picked up on something I’d noticed? Was he planning on quitting his amateur analyst racket? I asked.

“That would be nice,” he said, his usual smile returning as he regarded me. “If you’re truly better at interpreting Suzumiya’s mind than I am, I’ll gladly hand over my role—including fighting the Celestials in closed space. You haven’t visited that world in a while, after all.”

Forget that. I had no desire to go back. All things considered, I preferred it here, I said.

“That’s a shame. That said, I haven’t been in a while myself.”

It must be frustrating to be an esper and never get to use your powers. Why not put together a closed space tour package? I bet all kinds of weirdos would love to see the place, I said.

“I’ll take that under advisement. Although it will take a significant amount of courage to deliver such a proposal to my superiors.”

As Koizumi and I played verbal catch, we came to the same field-dividing footpath I’d visited the day before yesterday. Having descended ahead of us, Haruhi, along with Nagato and Asahina, was waiting there. The three of them standing there in the golden light of sunset beside the fallow rice field—if an impressionist painter had seen them, he probably would’ve started painting right away. But before I could take the time to appreciate the view—

“There’s no need to head all the way back to the train station. We’ll just be dismissed right here.” Haruhi collected my shovel and smiled, satisfied. “That was fun. It’s good to get out in nature sometimes. We didn’t find any treasure, but that’s no reason to be depressed. I’m sure we’ll find it eventually. And the time will come when we’re glad we got this experience. We’ll have to tell Tsuruya too. Maybe next time we’ll find a Muromachi-era map!”

I didn’t care what era the treasure was from; I was finished with maps. You can tell that to Tsuruya—that whatever happened, she shouldn’t give Haruhi anything else.

But as I watched Haruhi’s form recede along the road, bouncing merrily, two shovels in hand, I didn’t say the nasty things I was thinking. I didn’t know whether or not her strange silence in the classroom had been my imagination or not, but in any case, I was glad she was happy. When she got weirdly quiet like that, it just made me nervous that her internal power gauge was building up to an explosion. Huh? Why did it suddenly seem like I was monologuing to myself?

Once we emerged onto the road that led to North High, we walked as a group for a little while. Eventually we got to the usual spot where we parted ways, whereupon Haruhi turned around, as though having suddenly remembered something.

“Oh, that’s right! We’re gonna meet up at the station tomorrow too. Same time as today. Got it?”

If I said I couldn’t, would she reschedule? I asked.

Haruhi looked at me with a grin. What was up with that grin?

“We’re gonna search the city for mysterious phenomena. We haven’t done it in a while, after all,” said Haruhi, not answering my question at all. She looked at everybody as though checking them out. “You guys got that? And don’t be late. Tardiness…”

She drew a deep breath of cold air, then finished her statement the same way she always did.

“… equals punishment!”

The first things I did upon returning to my room were turning on the heater and getting out my cell phone.

By this time it had become part of my normal routine to call—where else?—the Tsuruya house. By now I was well used to the voice of the polite female servant who answered, as well as the smooth transfer to Asahina. By this point, I’d called Tsuruya more often than I’d ever called Koizumi.

“It’s me.”

“Ah, hello. It’s me—Michiru… I mean, Mikuru.”

“Is Tsuruya at the house?”

“No… she seems to be out today. She said her family was attending a memorial service.”

I got the feeling that it was best not to pry too much into what Tsuruya was doing and where.

“Asahina, we went and did it.”

“You mean the treasure hunt…?”

“We didn’t find anything, though.”

I could hear Asahina let a little sigh slip past her lips. “Thank goodness it turned out the way I remember. If it had been different, I don’t know what I would’ve done.”

The phone still pressed to my ear, I furrowed my brow. “Is there any way that could possibly have happened? Isn’t the past always the same, no matter where you go?”

“Uh… er, that’s, that’s true, but…”

I could practically see Asahina holding the receiver as she wavered.

“It’s extremely rare, but sometimes things change… er… I don’t really understand it myself, but—”

I remembered something as I listened to the hesitant voice. The double loop Koizumi explained, when I told him about the December eighteenth date I’d visited so many times.

When I thought about it, I was the same, insofar as even now I didn’t know from when to when the period of fixed events extended. When Nagato had changed an entire year, how had she managed that? According to Koizumi’s theory, there were two Decembers the eighteenth. It was too much trouble to have multiple timelines, so this timeline—the one we’d corrected—was the “right” one, I was pretty sure…

So what had that other thing been? Last month, I’d saved a little boy from being killed in a traffic accident. That little glasses-wearing guy living longer must have been a fixed, required event. But what about that car? What if someone had been trying to run that boy down in an effort to manually interfere?

That would mean that there were people trying to destroy the timeline, as well as time travelers from the future like Asahina who were trying to protect it. What if the former were also from the future? Who could oppose them? Only fellow time travelers.

I was starting to see what Asahina the Elder was up to. What she was trying to get me to do.

“I’m sorry, Kyon,” said Asahina, dejected. “I’m restricted from telling you the things I want to tell you, and I don’t know anything useful… Kyon, I just…”

I could tell she was about to cry. “Anyway, about tomorrow,” I said frantically.

Exactly according to the plans Asahina had related to me, Ha-ruhi had said we were doing a city patrol tomorrow. Since Asahina and I had to carry out the instructions of the #3 envelope, we’d need to decide on a place to meet up—someplace where Haruhi and the other Asahina wouldn’t spot us.

“Asahina, do you think you could wear a disguise?”

“A disguise?” She sounded confused, and she sniffled. I could picture it very clearly.

“Like sunglasses?… No, I guess that’d be weird. It wouldn’t be strange to wear a flu mask this time of year, though, right? Could you do that?”

“Oh, sure. I’ll ask Tsuruya for one.”

“So about the time. About when did we finish up tomorrow?”

“Umm…” Asahina took only a moment to remember. “It was at five o’clock. We met up at three, then we all went to the café.”

I took the #3 envelope out of my desk and opened the contents. The place it indicated was about a ten-minute walk from the train station where the brigade would meet up. Even if it took fifteen minutes, that was still only a half-hour round-trip.

It would be best to have Asahina lay low at Tsuruya’s place in the morning, then rendezvous with her a little while after the city patrol started.

Having asked her the details of the day’s schedule, I explained where and when we’d meet up.

“Okay then, see you tomorrow. Try to dress as unobtrusively as you can. Oh, also”—I felt a tinge of foreboding in my chest—“if you can, can you get Tsuruya to come along? Tell her I asked her to. Or… well, no, I shouldn’t get her involved in this. Don’t worry about it. It would be good if she could see you off and meet you when we’re done, though.”

Asahina would have to go from Tsuruya’s house to the rendezvous point on her own. Maybe I was overthinking it, but my danger sense was tingling. I didn’t want to make her walk alone.

“O-okay. I’ll tell her.”

Tsuruya was smart—she’d see through my request in an instant. I could count on it.

I hung up, then immediately called Nagato. Here I was, asking another favor of her.

However.

“Huh?”

To my great surprise, her line was busy.

Who could Nagato possibly be talking to? I couldn’t think of anybody short of a hard-sell telemarketer. I put down my phone and changed clothes, feeling sympathy for the headset jockey who’d been unlucky enough to wind up talking to Nagato. I threw my muddy pants into the washing machine, then came back to my room and tried again.

This time, she picked up.

“It’s me.”

“…”

Nagato’s familiar silence.

“I’ve got a favor to ask you. It’s about tomorrow. You know how we always split up the patrols by drawing straws? Tomorrow and the day after, I want you to rig them.”

“I see,” answered the cool, clear, high voice.

“Yeah. Tomorrow’s afternoon patrol, and the next day’s morning one—both of those times, I need to be paired up with you. Can you do it?”

“…” There was a slightly long-seeming silence, then, “I see.”

I was pretty sure that was the affirmative, but I thought I’d make sure.

“So you’ll do it, then?”

“Understood.”

“Thanks, Nagato.”

“It’s fine.”

“By the way, when I called a second ago, the line was busy. Who were you talking to?”

There was another silence, as though time itself had stopped. Just as I was starting to wonder if she was having some kind of side story with somebody I didn’t know—

“Haruhi Suzumiya.”

Now I wished it had been somebody I didn’t know. “She called you?”

“Yes.”

“What the heck did she want with you?”

“…” A third silence. I strained to hear and was starting to pick up a sense of anxiety over the receiver when Nagato finally replied.

“I cannot say.”

Nagato sure had been full of surprises these past few days. To think she’d be using that line on me, of all people.

I stayed as silent as a radio that’d been unplugged.

“It is better if you do not know.”

That was certainly a terrifying statement—those were just about the least comforting words in the world, I said.

“… Do not worry.” Her voice had a hesitant tone to it, as though she wasn’t sure whether she should say anything but had decided that she wanted me not to worry. And then it came to me.

“Haruhi told you not to say anything, didn’t she?”

“Yes.”

Which meant Haruhi was up to something weird again, and she was trying to involve Nagato in it.

And whatever it was, it was a secret from me. I didn’t know what it was, but based on Nagato’s tone, it had to be something big. Like round two of the treasure hunt or something.

This week sure was turning out to be a busy one—like having final exams in math, physics, and world history all on the same day.

“Dammit, Haruhi, what’re you gonna make us do this time…?”

At this rate, Koizumi was going to wind up being my only true comrade. Haruhi, Nagato, and Asahina were all engaged in activities beyond my influence. Oh, and Tsuruya too. I wondered why it was that no matter the life-form, females always seemed to outmatch the males. The double-X chromosome was a terrifying thing. Explain it to me, please.

I lay down on the floor and spread my arms wide, praying that I’d be able to pass the following week in peace.