CHAPTER FIVE

The next day—Saturday morning.

My upper body ached all over thanks to all the unpaid manual labor I’d done the day before. At least I’d slept well and hadn’t had any weird dreams.

I put envelope #3 into my coat pocket as I went out the front door, then got my bike out, whose tire pressure was on the low side as I headed out onto the street through the cold, dry wind.

I didn’t want to park illegally and get my bike hauled off by a local merchant, so I paid to park in the new bike parking structure in front of the station, then headed on foot to the meeting place, where as usual I was the last to arrive.

Asahina looked like some new adorable species of pet as she came up to greet me in a warm-looking outfit, while Koizumi was his usual self, handsome enough to get one in five high school girls to turn around and take another look. Nagato wore a hooded duffle coat over her school uniform, standing stock still and looking vaguely like a Jawa.

Wearing a peacoat and a muffler, Haruhi pointed right at me. “We’ve been waiting, Kyon! Thirty whole seconds!”

It had been a close thing. If I’d just left my bike nearby, I could’ve been the second-to-last arrival for round one of the Citywide Mysterious Phenomena Search. I would’ve liked to see Haruhi treat everybody, just once, I said.

“Oh, I’d treat you, all right, if I actually ever arrived last. But let me just say that I hate words like ‘last place’ and ‘runner-up’ more than anything. If I think I might oversleep and be late, I’ll just arrive the night before and stay all night!”

Haruhi smiled fearlessly. She seriously seemed like she was ready to take on any and all comers. We should’ve done something like this back when she was depressed. And speaking of the past, I wondered which kind of regret was worse—regretting something you’d done, or something you hadn’t done?

As I thought it over fruitlessly, Haruhi dragged us all over to the café.

“We didn’t find anything yesterday,” she said as she drank her hot coffee, “but when I think about it, the purpose of the SOS Brigade isn’t to search for lost inheritances, but stuff that’s way more mysterious than that. I mean, like… something futuristic, or top secret, or something. There’s gotta be at least one thing like that in this city. There’s a lot of space in it, after all.”

It wasn’t a question of land area. The important elements were things like economic prosperity and population density—“Aw, forget it.”

I gave up. Prosperity and population don’t have anything to do with it, do they, Haruhi? Mysterious phenomena exist right in front of you, and you have no idea. And because you have no idea, they can go about their business without anyone being the wiser.

In my case, I hadn’t noticed them so much as I’d been made to notice them, but I was glad to know. And because you sat right behind me, that was your fault too—or should I say it was thanks to you?

Haruhi marked toothpicks with a ballpoint pen as I silently monologued to myself, then she held them out such that we could all draw one.

“This is how we’ll split up into teams. Two of the toothpicks have marks and three don’t.”

I reflexively glanced at Nagato. Whoops—too soon. There was no need for me to be forcibly paired up with her this morning. What had Asahina said about that? That’s right; it had been Koizumi and me.

“What’s wrong? Hurry up and draw.” Haruhi thrust the fist containing the five toothpicks at me. “Do you actually care about what the teams are? Oh ho, is there someone in particular you want to pair up with? You’re such a baby.”

I didn’t like the patronizing way she smiled at me. But no matter how much I thought about it, I got nowhere. When she’d delivered her future prediction, Asahina had told me that Koizumi and I would get paired up. I couldn’t just pick any toothpick and get the same outcome. The chances of picking a marked one were two in five, so under normal circumstances, there were better odds of getting an unmarked one—but what happened if I did that? Would things still work out even if events diverged from Asahina’s memory?

My overthinking went too far. As I silently agonized, Haruhi pulled the toothpicks away from me and had the three other brigade members each draw one. When she got back to me, there were only two left.

I hastily checked Koizumi. The toothpick he elegantly held between his fingertips was indeed marked.

This left just Haruhi and me to draw the remaining two, and since Haruhi’s habit was to always save the last lot for herself, the groups would be decided by my draw.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, focusing my concentration for ten full seconds on Haruhi’s hand.

“What’re you doing? Isn’t that a bit much?” said Haruhi, irritated, but it was an important step for me. If I couldn’t make events match up here, things were only going to get more complicated.

“The hell with it!” I said, moving my right hand quickly. I was going to just randomly grab the first one I touched, but it didn’t go the way I’d planned. It was too random. I knocked both toothpicks out of Haruhi’s hand, and as I realized my mistake one fell to the table while Haruhi grabbed the other one out of midair. The toothpick that had fallen to the table had a spot on one end.

“That’s no fun,” said Haruhi, her lip twisting. “We’re divided into all girls and all boys. How boring.”

I’d gotten all worked up for nothing. The morning groupings weren’t important to the timeline; if I’d drawn the unmarked toothpick I would’ve had the double bonus of both Asahina and Nagato, which was a lot better than spending my precious day off with Koizumi, and when I thought about it like that, I realized that small changes to the past probably didn’t matter. I shouldn’t have worried about it.

After idling around for a little while longer, we left the café. I paid, of course. Force of habit can be a terrible thing, and I hated myself for naturally picking up the check without being forced into it.

“Um, I’m sorry, Kyon. Thank you,” said Asahina apologetically—she was the only one who made me feel better about having to pay. Koizumi also apologized, but somehow his pleasant smile didn’t help my mood.

“If you’re concerned about the status of your wallet, I can recommend a good part-time job,” said Koizumi quietly, walking alongside me as we exited the café. “It’s a very simple job, and once you get used to it, it’s very easy. I can guarantee the compensation is good too.”

“No thanks.”

I had a vision of a demon hiding behind a sweet smile. If I blithely signed the strange contract he gave me, I’d wind up getting whisked away to some terrible laboratory and spread out on an operating table—it didn’t bear thinking about. What if they decided to turn me into a part-time esper? I had no desire to go battle against Haruhi’s stress level within the confines of that strange, gray dimension, I told him.

“I would handle that. What you would do would be to make sure that I don’t have to battle her stress level.”

He could do that himself, I told him.

“You’re the only one who can do it, it seems. At the moment, anyway.”

I didn’t recall having any supernatural abilities.

“I suppose not.” Koizumi pursed the corners of his lips into a smile. “If you ever change your mind, let me know. I’ll be happy to explain the job to you. Though for my part I feel I’ve already told you most of it.”

Koizumi sounded uncharacteristically vague, but I didn’t pursue the matter. I suspected he’d tell me something I didn’t want to hear. If I made some smart remark, he might turn the tables on me, and then I’d wish I hadn’t said anything. Sometimes caution was necessary. If you wanted to trap someone, you had to start on the defensive.

Outside the café, Haruhi had waited for me to pay. “We’ll meet back up at noon on the dot.” Haruhi had her right arm around Nagato’s waist and her left around Asahina’s, as she grinned as brightly as a tropical flower. “Until then, look for anything mysterious—a manhole that wasn’t there yesterday, an extra stripe in the crosswalk, anything! If you keep your eyes peeled you should be able to find something. No—expect to find something. If you don’t, you’ll never find anything!”

There she was, squeezing herself between the ultimate combination of an alien and a time traveler like they were human-size body warmers, and—ah, forget it. If I’d had to find “something mysterious” in a scavenger hunt, I’d grab Haruhi herself and drag her straight to the finish line, but that wasn’t the point either. The biggest mystery of all was how I’d wound up being part of this bizarre group, but I couldn’t very well lump them all together and show them to Haruhi. Just as she instinctually sought out mysteries, I just wanted to keep living my life. That was the simple truth.

Haruhi proclaimed that they were heading “that way, across the train tracks,” so I saw Asahina and Nagato off as they crossed, then retied my muffler.

“Got any idea where we should go?” I asked my companion for the next two hours.

Koizumi managed good cheer despite looking as though the cold was about to freeze him solid. “Even if I did, I very much doubt you’d be willing to follow me. Let’s just enjoy a nice walk.”

Surprisingly, once we started walking, Koizumi didn’t start saying his usual nonsensical things. We watched the silhouettes of the big carp in the canal, impressed at their vigor. We went into a convenience store and browsed the magazines. Basically we acted like two bored high school students.

We talked about the upcoming final exams, what had been on TV the night before—until I suddenly realized that having such a normal conversation with him doubled my suspicion, and I said as much.

“I’m an esper who appears to be a normal high school student. Outward appearances like this are very important,” said Koizumi as he crossed the street, appearing to count the stripes on the crosswalk. “It’s not as though I want to be an esper forever. If I could pass my powers to someone else, I sometimes feel like I’d happily do so.” He smiled at me, as though that were supposed to make me feel better. “Only sometimes. If I had to choose, I’d choose the way I am now. Being able to interact with time travelers and non-terrestrial life-forms is an incredibly rare opportunity. Though I can’t compare with you.”

From my perspective, he was just as rare as the two people he was talking about, I told him.

“While I don’t know when the title of ‘esper’ might be taken from me, I do know that I’ll only be a high school student for a certain amount of time—so long as Suzumiya doesn’t repeat a grade. So I’ve got to make the most of being a high school student, while I still can.”

I thought back on the insane events of the past year. “Well, from where I’m standing it looks like you’re doing just fine. Especially during the summer and winter trips,” I said.

“Those were both because I’m a member of the Agency. Soon it will be four years since I joined, but if I’d never received the strange powers I have, I would never have transferred to North High, and I would’ve lived a life totally unconcerned with little things like the fate of the entire world.”

“So what?” I said as I walked, looking up at the flashing pedestrian signal. “I don’t know anything about supernatural powers, but I do know that it’s thanks to those powers that you’re here. Don’t blame them. Or are you just frustrated because you wound up in a stupid club like the SOS Brigade? Go ahead and write a resignation letter. Give it a try. I’ll even give it to Haruhi for you.”

Koizumi’s mouth curled into a forced smile. “No thanks,” he said after a moment. Then, in an amused tone: “Just as you’ve now found a certain defiance, I’ve come to hold Suzumiya, you, and the rest of the brigade in a regard I would’ve found unimaginable when I first met you. I’m the lieutenant brigade chief and all… but now, there’s no need to use that title. Do you remember what I said to you during the snowy mountain incident?”

Of course I did. I’d never forget it. And if he ever went back on the promise he made then, I’d join with Haruhi and come up with a punishment the likes of which he’d never seen, I said.

“That’s a relief. If I ever suffer from amnesia, things will be all right—you’ll remember for me.” Koizumi smiled pleasantly, exhaling white vapor. “While I don’t want to think that Nagato will easily find herself in such a predicament very often, I will always do what I can.”

I wished he’d express such determination on behalf of the rest of his friends, I said.

“I should think that would go without saying. Asahina’s always been the sort of person you want to protect. You just want to take care of her, somehow. That’s something of a supernatural ability in and of itself.”

Having made it across the crosswalk, Koizumi suddenly stopped and checked his watch, which prompted me to do the same. We’d done quite a bit of wandering around. It would be time to meet back up soon.

Just as I was beginning to head back to the station, I heard Koizumi’s quiet voice from about three steps behind me.

“The current Asahina is someone both the Agency and I wish to protect. But please be careful. The same may not be true for the other Asahina, the one with a different outfit from your Asahina.”

Asahina the Elder’s silhouette flashed across my retinas. I kept walking, not looking back, and Koizumi’s voice became more distant.

“There’s no guarantee she’ll bring us—the SOS Brigade—only good fortune.”

Maybe not. But you said this too.

“If so,” I said, “we just have to change that future. Starting now.”

The three girls were waiting for us when Koizumi and I returned to the station.

“Did you find anything?” Haruhi asked us.

But you can’t find what you’re not looking for. “No,” was my honest answer. “Did you find anything interesting? If you didn’t, you can’t complain about us.”

“Yeah, we didn’t really find anything very mysterious,” said Ha-ruhi, seeming neither depressed nor irritated. Her smile was actually rather alarming. “But! We went to the department store and ate a bunch of free samples in the supermarket. That was fun, right?”

Haruhi smiled encouragingly at Asahina.

“O-oh, yes, it was,” said Asahina, rapidly nodding her head. Her soft chestnut hair fluttered about like butterflies in a garden. “It was nice seeing all the different things. I bought some new tea too.”

The happily smiling Asahina seemed to have really gotten in the shopping mood. And when I looked more carefully, I saw that Nagato was holding a bag from the bookstore. Just what “mysterious phenomena” had these three gone in search of, if they’d wound up at the grocery store and the bookstore? I suppose if you wanted mysterious stories, the bookstore was the place to go.

“I don’t see what the problem is,” said Haruhi nonchalantly. “If you get hasty, you’ll just wind up regretting it later. It’s when you’re in a hurry that you’ve got to be careful. It’s just like driving a car. If you’re going too fast, that’s gonna be the difference between getting in an accident and avoiding it. It’ll happen because you were sure it wasn’t going to happen.”

She was not making a lot of sense, I told her.

“It’s very simple, Kyon. Look—” Haruhi said haughtily. “It’s like playing Red Light, Green Light. People move when you’re not looking, but as soon as you turn around, they freeze. Mysterious phenomena are the same way. But if you never turn around at all, they’ll just sneak right by you, so you gotta seize the right moment. It’s all about timing, Kyon—timing.”

That was even less comprehensible. I suppose it was all consistent in Haruhi’s head, but she was talking as though the metaphorical Lady Luck were an actual lady, which was not helpful. Only people receiving strange transmissions on unknown wavelengths had any hope of catching an incorporeal concept.

“Anyway, where do you want to go for lunch?”

Apparently my doubts were unimportant.

“There’s a new Italian place across from the bank. I heard they’ve got a good lunch menu, so I made a reservation for the five of us.”

Evidently Haruhi was now in full-on city-girl mode. Once she’d made up her mind like this, a monk whispering sutras into the ear of a horse would have a better chance of changing its mind than I would of Haruhi’s. At least the monk would be racking up good karma.

“Fine with me,” I said. “What about you, Koizumi?”

I wondered what would happen if he said something ridiculous like, “No thanks, I can’t stand tomato sauce,” but Koizumi would never oppose any plan of Haruhi’s. “Sure,” he said with a smile.

“It’s decided, then.” Haruhi reaffirmed the decision she’d obviously already made, then we double-timed it straight over to the Italian place just in time for the lunch rush. By the time we got there my muscles were all aching afresh.

Haruhi was no different from a cat—and there was such a thing as being too mischievous. When she was depressed I’d feel like it was better if she were her usual too-energetic self, but part of me wondered if the day when she was on an even keel would ever come.

I finished the ice water the waiter brought me in about three seconds, and when I looked to see if I’d be able to get a refill—yeah, it looked like it would take about the same amount of time it would take for Asahina the Younger to become Asahina the Elder.

After finishing her reasonably priced lunch—the doria special of the day—Haruhi took out her toothpicks and reshuffled them.

We were approaching the climax of the day. It was a little confusing, since there was Asahina, right in front of me, but the reason I had to worry about what happened here was because of the other Asahina, Michiru Asahina. I hoped she’d be waiting for me.

I looked askance at Nagato, who’d inhaled her lunch and spent the rest of the time silently rereading the menu. Nagato was now watching the five toothpicks dispassionately. I couldn’t imagine she’d forgotten my request, so I calmed myself and immediately drew a toothpick.

It had a mark on it.

Nagato was the next to reach out, and she immediately drew the other marked toothpick, then set it carefully on the table.

“Oh, I guess we don’t have to keep drawing,” said Haruhi.

If she had used some kind of trick, Nagato wasn’t so clumsy as to let Haruhi notice. Haruhi flicked the remaining three toothpicks into the ashtray and stood, our meal check in hand. Which is not to say she treated us—no, we split the check evenly, down to the last yen.

We finished paying and reemerged into the cold wind, again to wander aimlessly across the city like migrating fish. But I would leave that to Haruhi, Asahina, and Koizumi. Nagato and I had a different path to walk—along with another Asahina, from three days in the future.

Whenever I walk alone with Nagato, I can’t help but remember that first spring day. She’d still been wearing her glasses then, her expression as cold as an ice factory. Come to think of it, that’s when Nakagawa had first seen us too.

Nagato followed silently about two steps behind me. She was so quiet that I was constantly checking behind me to make sure she was keeping up. There she was, staring at my muffler, her face as cold and impassive as melting snow.

It was an emotional moment, thanks to our destination. The city library. Nagato went there quite often now, but I was the one who’d first taken her there, back when she’d still had glasses, so it was a memorable place for both of us.

And just like that first time, we’d taken our leave from Haruhi and the others, and I’d brought her here. The only difference was that this time, she already had a library card. And no glasses.

We walked down the street that led to the library, neither of us speaking. It’s rare to have someone you can enjoy such silences with. If Haruhi or Koizumi had been that quiet, I would’ve wondered what they were up to. But with Nagato, it was just the way she was.

Enjoying the companionable silence, I entered the library and surveyed the interior. As though to save me the trouble of looking, a short figure who’d been sitting on one of the couches came trotting over to me.

The figure was wrapped in a long coat and shawl that looked like something Tsuruya would wear, along with a knit cap and white flu mask—her disguise, presumably.

But (Michiru) Asahina couldn’t hide her large eyes, which blinked rapidly.

“Kyon… oh, and Nagato…”

It was the library, so we had to keep quiet. Asahina put her hand in front of her mouth in a “shhh” gesture, so I took the cue from her and spoke quietly. “Tsuruya isn’t here?”

“No.” Asahina hesitantly looked over my shoulder. She really didn’t have anything to be afraid of, but still. “She said she had important plans today, so she didn’t come along. Oh, but”—Asahina waved her hands—“she had a car take me from her house to here. She told me to take a taxi back and gave me the fare…”

I was a little worried about what Tsuruya’s “important plans” were, but Asahina’s saucer-wide eyes were my immediate problem. I looked behind me, just to make sure there wasn’t a ghost of some kind behind me, in addition to Nagato.

“…”

Nagato regarded Asahina with her unwaveringly expressionless gaze. I suddenly remembered that the night before, I’d only asked her to rig the outcome of the toothpick drawing.

I hadn’t told her why.

“Oh, uh, Nagato—”

“…”

Asahina’s disguise would barely fool a normal person, to say nothing of Nagato.

“This is the other Asahina,” I said.

“I know,” came Nagato’s reply, which was hard to follow up.

“Ah, oh, right. You met her a few days ago.”

“…”

“Yeah… that’s right.”

“…”

“I-I’m sorry.”

As I stood there between the inexplicably apologetic Asahina and the inverted icicle of Nagato, the librarian behind the circulation counter stared at me like I was a sleeping panda—I wouldn’t forget her glare for days.

However, Nagato was Nagato. After hearing ten seconds of explanation, she intoned, “I see,” nodding microscopically even as she stood stock-still.

Incidentally, my explanation consisted of me saying, “I have to go do something with Asahina now, so I’m really sorry, but could you wait here until we get back?” Nagato seemed to have understood everything by the time I got to the “could you wait” part.

She walked off toward a bookshelf filled with gigantic science books, not even glancing as Asahina, who took Nagato’s place behind me.

“Shall we go, Asahina?” I said as I watched Nagato’s duffle coat disappear behind the bookshelf. The library’s wall clock indicated two o’clock in the afternoon.

“… Um, Kyon?” said Asahina in a stiff-sounding tone. “Did you bring Nagato here without explaining anything to her?”

“Uh, yeah, it just slipped my mind.”

“That’s not—you can’t just—” Asahina shook her head. “Even Nagato would be angry at that.”

I felt bad. I mean, Asahina seemed like she was angry at me. Not that I thought it was okay if Nagato was angry—

A sigh was directed my way. “I’m… okay. But you should give Nagato a proper apology. Okay?”

Asahina had her older-student vibe at full blast as she turned aside and walked out of the library. For quite some time she stared out at the opposite lane of the street; I didn’t know what to do.

After ten minutes of walking in the winter wind, maybe it was because I’d gotten so cold, or maybe it was the fact that without anyone to talk to I’d resorted to reading the number plates on the telephone poles we passed, but in any case the tense mood between Asahina and me faded.

I opened the letter one last time, making sure that we were on the right path, then we stopped in front of a row of flower boxes that were placed alongside the walk.

“Wow, they’re really blooming.”

The flowers had some serious guts. I wondered if the box that ran along the sidewalk of this north-south prefectural road had been placed by the city government or the prefecture. I was impressed at the blossoms’ resistance to the cold of winter and the passing cars’ exhaust, but they seemed to be blooming a little too much. Having to search for a lost item among the flower boxes that extended for a good ten meters made it feel like it was my fate to continue the previous day.

I looked over the two sheets, careful not to let them blow away in the wind.

“So we’ve got to find it somewhere around here…”

It seemed like it would take quite a while to search every corner of the flower box. I hadn’t taken that into account.

“I don’t think it will take too long,” said Asahina, pointing at the box. “Look, the only place pansies are blooming is that corner.”

Cursing the fact that I hadn’t paid any attention thus far to flower variety, I looked where Asahina was pointing. There grew some small, pale blue flowers, which fluttered in the wind.

“Those over there are pheasant’s-eyes, and those other flowers are cyclamen. Next to them are… I think they’re violas?”

I had no idea she knew so much about flowers, I told her.

Asahina giggled. “I learned all kinds of things after I came here. Including about plants.”

Thank goodness. She’d saved me from having to go on another needle-in-a-haystack-type treasure hunt. All I had to do now was look near the pansies.

“Oh, please don’t step on the flowers.”

I tried to heed the seriousness in Asahina’s words as I put my foot on the edge of the flower box and looked down through the pansies; she cared very deeply for the flowers.

The object I was looking for was some kind of data medium. I had no idea why something like that would wind up in a place like this, but I decided to ignore those doubts for the moment. A time traveler had told me it had been dropped here, so it had been dropped here. Otherwise this menial errand wasn’t even that.

As Asahina watched over me, I squatted down and gently brushed aside the pansies’ stems, and as their leaves parted, I searched the corner of the flower box. I wanted to get this done as soon as I could. This wasn’t a spot where there was a lot of passing automotive or pedestrian traffic, but I wouldn’t blame anybody for thinking I was vandalizing the flowers. I poked around amid the roots of the pansies, praying a random police car didn’t pass by.

After about thirty minutes of that, I wiped the dirt off of one hand against my pants while I wiped my forehead with the other.

It was strange.

I couldn’t find anything. I’d searched everywhere in the corner with the pansies, with more concentration than I’d ever managed on the sentences for English reading classes. I even gave other groups of flowers the same treatment, searching among the cyclamen and violas as well.

But I didn’t find anything more man-made than a rock, to say nothing of a data storage device.

Asahina had joined me midsearch, but even with her carefully double-checking the spots I’d looked at, the two of us toiled in vain.

“What could this mean…?”

If there wasn’t anything here, there was no way Asahina the Elder wouldn’t know about it. The girl that was kneeling down and hunting around under the flowers, (Michiru) Asahina, was Asahina the Elder’s former self. I couldn’t imagine her telling us to do something that was doomed from the start.

“What should we do, Kyon?” Asahina asked, on the verge of tears. “If we don’t find it, we’re gonna be in big trouble. The coded message said I absolutely had to. If I don’t do what it says, I’ll…”

She hadn’t noticed that her flu mask had come loose and was dangling from one ear. Asahina’s composure had been rattled when we’d met up with Nagato earlier, but now she looked seriously upset. And to be honest, so was I. But just as I’d talked myself into digging up the entire flower bed—

“Is this what you’re looking for?”

I heard an unfamiliar voice behind me. It didn’t belong to anyone I knew, and something about it made me instinctively rise to my feet. There was no hesitation; my body moved without thought.

I spread my arms out to protect Asahina, and I faced the sidewalk.

About five steps away, there stood a man about my age. I’d never seen him before. This was definitely the first time I’d met him—yet something about him made me instantly loathe him. There was something unmistakably negative about his facial expression.

Between his fingers he held a small stick-like object, which he held up as though it were something filthy. It resembled the black data storage device from the letter.

“What a boring scene this is. Rummaging around in the flowers for half an hour—I’m seriously impressed. I’d never be able to do it.” He twisted his cruel lips into a thin sneer—I may be insensitive, but I could tell this guy was mocking me.

“You’re quite commendable.” He gazed at me as though looking down at something very small. “Doing these filthy chores without even knowing why; you just live your obedient little life. I certainly couldn’t do it. Don’t you have anything better to do?”

The past year of crazy events had instilled in me an instinctive sense for dangerous situations, and it was getting into the yellow zone. But there was no point in just knowing when you were in danger—it was only by actually avoiding it that you could later tell the story and say, “Man, that was a close one.” When the danger you expected actually showed up, it could still wind up being the end of you, so you couldn’t take it easy just because you’d expected it. Once you’d perceived the unwelcome arrival of your demise, you had to do something about it—and this was that moment.

“Where’d you get that?” I asked, at which the bastard just grinned.

“Right out of that flower bed. I made sure to grab it just before you two showed up. It was easy, really.”

---

---

“Hand it over.” I tried to sound as forceful as I could, but the guy just snickered through his nose.

“It’s not yours, is it, so why should I? Lost items should be turned over to the police.”

“I’ll give it to them. Or better yet, I’ll give it to its owner. That’s faster than giving it to the police.”

“Heh.” His laugh was infuriating. “So you think the name and address that’s on that letter is the person who dropped this? Who told you that? Was it the alien?”

That bastard! So he knew about Nagato? No, wait—how did he know about the letter? I’d only showed it to Asahina.

Which meant he was a…

Asahina held my arm, trembling. “Do you know this guy?” I asked her, my voice a mix of surprise and confusion.

“No!” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t know him. He’s not in my… um… he’s not one of the people I know.”

“It doesn’t matter who I am. It’s not like I’m going to just eat you guys up right now. I just thought this would be a nice opportunity.”

He blew on the object he held as though blowing dust off of it, then grinned a loathsome grin. It was the kind of smile an evil version of Koizumi might use. His fine features made it seem even more threatening.

So, what to do? If I went in to slug him, could I get the data storage device back? But if he were some kind of aberration, our chances of victory were slim, even two-on-one. Damn—I should’ve brought Nagato with me.

I agonized over whether to clench my fists in a fighting pose or try to reach my pocketed cell phone.

“Hmph.” He sniffed as though having lost interest, and he snapped his fingers. The small object arced through the air and toward the earth in front of me. I reached out to catch it before it hit the ground. “You can have it. Those’re my orders, anyway. You just keep doing as you’re told—being past puppets for your future masters.”

I looked at the object in my hands. It looked like a memory card for a digital camera, but it was a variety I’d never seen before—I wasn’t an expert, so it was hard to be sure. It was slightly dirty, probably from having been dropped in the flower bed.

We’d gotten what we came for, which, no matter the method, was a good thing. What wasn’t good was the man standing in front of us.

“Who are you? And how did you know we were coming?”

“Hm.” The man’s thin lips became still thinner. “Isn’t there something you should be asking before that? Why did you come here? Why is that? Don’t you need to know that first?”

Being lectured sanctimoniously by a guy my age really ticked me off. But I had to take the long view. I wouldn’t let my feelings get the best of me.

And I had to think of Asahina, who directed a terrified gaze at the stranger.

“I’m not the one you should be cross-examining,” he said, his dangerous eyes slipping from me to her. “Isn’t that right, Mikuru Asahina?”

Asahina flinched, her grip suddenly tightening. “Wha—what are you talking about? I don’t know you. Have we…?” she said, clinging to my coat.

The guy’s lips curled into a sneer. “That’s about it. We’ll just leave it that this is the first time you’ve said hello to me. You pass—very good. But I’ll be saying a different sort of hello to you. Do you understand what I’m saying, Mikuru Asahina?”

It would’ve been hard to forgive even a fraction of this, but now he’d definitely crossed the line. There was nothing but malice in his eyes for Asahina. He was her enemy.

It might not have been relevant, but he definitely seemed human to me. It had been a long time since I’d met someone so obviously hostile. He hadn’t even pretended to be nice—he hadn’t tried to hide anything. Everything he said was just as nasty as he was. At least it saved time. Both Haruhi and I hated that kind of sneakiness.

“If you’ve got something to say, just say it.” I always found myself feeling bolder when shady characters showed up. I had enough vague double-talk with Koizumi around. I put a little bit more power into my voice. “If it’s business with me, then I’m listening. Or should I pass a message on to Haruhi? Hell, I’ll introduce you to her for free.”

“No thanks. Haruhi Suzumiya? I’ve no need to see her.”

Now that was unexpected. I’d been sure he was a member of some mysterious organization obsessed with Haruhi.

“I’m not like Mikuru Asahina.” He narrowed his eyes, glaring at the SOS Brigade’s token time traveler who peeked out from behind me, then directing the same glare at me. “You shouldn’t just blindly follow her directions. There’s not just one single reality. Of course, I’ve been under the same restrictions. That memory device is very important for the future. Whether you pick it up or someone gives it to you, the outcome won’t change. You have it. Isn’t that right?”

It wasn’t even close to right. My instructions never said a single word about a guy like him showing up, I said.

“You fool. Don’t you understand that the fact I came here makes no significant difference? Why do you think you’re even here?”

“How the hell would I know?” I said without thinking. I had an appointment with a brigade member who did that kind of thinking for me. If he wanted to ponder Zen riddles, he should’ve been bothering our lieutenant chief, I told him.

“I have no such plans. I’ll pass,” said the stranger, backing up as though blown by the wind. “Today was simply for introductions. Just a bit of fun. I have my own instructions to follow, you see. Though I don’t know if that was part of your little time traveler’s plans. And beyond that—heh—it’s classified.”

He turned on his heel and strolled off. The way he’d just showed up and said his piece without bothering to introduce himself made me want to teach him some manners, and for a moment I thought about following after him, but in the end I just watched him go.

That was because Asahina was standing as still as a bronze statue, still clinging to my arm. Rooted to the ground, the terrified girl watched the disagreeable bastard recede, and it wasn’t until he finally turned a corner that she fully relaxed.

“Whew…” said the petite upperclassman, the strength finally going out of her clenched hands as she slumped and leaned against me. I felt the warmth Haruhi was so fond of grabbing onto against my hand, but this was no time to be enjoying such things.

“You didn’t even recognize him a little bit, Asahina?”

Asahina somehow managed to straighten, and she spoke in a very small voice. “… I don’t know for sure, but… he’s probably from the future…”

That much I figured. His wording matched up with Asahina’s. My limited deductive capacity could get that far. But what had he come for? Showing up ahead of time and finding the object before we could get to it couldn’t be a good thing. He definitely hadn’t done it just to watch Asahina and me crawl around in the dirt for half an hour.

Another time traveler. And he was Asahina’s enemy.

I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold winter wind. So, just like there was a rival faction of cosmic entities, there were also people from the future with different priorities. Come to think of it, even Koizumi had alluded to organizations that were rivals to his Agency. I didn’t know what they’d been doing all this time, but it seemed like they were starting to show themselves.

“Looks like there are all kinds of people in the future.”

“Yes. Er…” Asahina began to respond to my plaintive-sounding statement, but after opening and closing her mouth she just looked away. “It’s classified information—I tried to say it, but I can’t.”

It was enough. I told her that I wouldn’t worry about it, so she shouldn’t worry either.

“But this is definitely important. I knew we’d meet someone like him eventually. But… this is such an unstable time, so…”

“Unstable?”

“Yes. Because the original ‘me’ is with Suzumiya right now.”

That might actually be why this other guy was here.

I put the letter back in the outside pocket of my coat. Assuming that Asahina’s and my encounter with that guy was a predetermined event, it would’ve been impossible, given that Asahina the Younger was now with Koizumi and Haruhi. The only thing that made it possible was the fact that (Michiru) Asahina had come back from eight days in the future to work with me.

I suddenly became aware of the memory device, still clasped in my sweaty hand. It was the object of today’s mission, but now I was more worried about another matter entirely. I put it in the same pocket with the letter, feeling a fresh surge of anger at the recently departed stranger. I wouldn’t forgive anyone who gave Asahina a hard time, be they from the past, present, or future. Neither would Tsuruya. Come to think of it, neither would Ha-ruhi, and I doubted Nagato or Koizumi would let it slide either.

“I get the feeling we’re gonna see him again.”

“Probably.” Asahina nodded surprisingly readily. Her fearful expression was shifting into confusion, as though she was thinking about something. Happily, she didn’t seem to have noticed she was still clinging to my arm as she said, “He also said something about a predetermined event. He’s probably not much different from me. And—”

She cut herself off. More classified information? I asked.

“No,” said Asahina, finally detaching herself from me. “He didn’t seem like that bad of a person to me. What did you think, Kyon?”

What did I think? I thought that anybody who would talk to Asahina and me like that was the worst. There were only a few people who could get away with that, and a mouthy jerk I’d just met for the first time definitely wasn’t one of them.

Of course, I wouldn’t have been exactly pleased if he’d used my nickname either.

We’d wasted a lot of time mucking around in the flower box, then being sidetracked by the mysterious stranger. We had to meet back up with Haruhi in front of the station at four o’clock, and it was already past three. There was enough time to go to the library and drag Nagato away from the bookshelves, then go to the station, but I couldn’t very well leave Asahina on her own. Even if I called her a cab, there was no guarantee the driver wouldn’t be one of our enemies, and the cold smile of the stranger only worsened my worry.

It would destroy my wallet, but there was no other way—I’d ride in the taxi with Asahina to Tsuruya’s place, then continue on to the library.

I hailed a passing cab and got in with Asahina, closing the door behind me.

“Do you remember Tsuruya’s address?”

“Oh—um, I don’t really know,” she said. “What ward was it again…?”

“You mean the big Tsuruya mansion? If that’s what you’re talking about, I know the place,” the middle-aged cab driver interjected affably.

The talkative driver wanted to know what school year we were in, how high school was going, and was furthermore happy to tell us about his own son, who was in elementary school, and by the time he’d told us he was thinking of sending said son to a nice private middle school, we had arrived at the front gate of the Tsuruya estate.

Getting out of the car, Asahina thanked both the driver and me profusely before disappearing behind the gate. I could breathe a sigh of relief. No new time traveler would be able to mess with her in there. It was good to have classmates you could count on.

“The library, and step on it,” I said, leaning back in the seat and feeling some of the tension finally drain out of me.

When I got back to the library, I saw Nagato there, still standing and reading. I was impressed at her ability to hold a big hardback book for so long.

“Sorry I kept you waiting.”

“It’s fine.”

Nagato closed the book—it looked like a dictionary—with a thwap, then replaced it on the shelf in front of her. She kept pace with me as we strode toward the exit.

“Nagato, do you know what this is?”

Outside the exit, Nagato slowly turned her head to face me, still walking as she looked at the object I held up.

“It was like this—” I started to tell her the story as we headed north to the station. I didn’t have to keep any secrets from Nagato. I told her everything, from the letters in my shoe locker to the events that had just transpired.

“… I see.” Nagato nodded expressionlessly as she answered in her usual flat voice. “There is damaged data recorded on that device,” she said, staring at the small chip as though she were performing a CT scan with her eyes. “Over half the data has been destroyed. In its current form, it cannot be interpreted.”

What kind of data? I asked.

“Insufficient information. The degree of damage is too high, the omitted portions too numerous.”

So it had something on it even Nagato couldn’t make sense of. That had to mean that no normal human would be able to interpret it either, but that I was going to have to send it to someone who could.

“If a restoration process were applied, it is possible that entirely different data would result.” Nagato looked away from the chip, as though having read the entirety of its contents. “A conjecture is possible.”

The hood of the duffle coat shook slightly with each step she took.

“There are two hundred and eighteen sectors of the damaged data where a variant input method was used, and if read on a different device than was intended for that storage medium, it would be possible to extract the fundamental principles underlying a new technology.”

Before I could even ask what that meant, Nagato faced me and continued.

“The time travel technology utilized by Mikuru Asahina.”

However—Nagato explained to me.

Even if someone were able to obtain that data, human science and technology were at present insufficient to interpret it, and it would not lead to the immediate development of a time machine. But it was still crucial data. Without it, a time machine would never be built, and humanity would never unlock the secrets of time travel. Asahina’s method of time travel depended on thousands of accidental discoveries and developments. And at the root of them all was—

“—This? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes.”

Her flat expression seemed disinterested, and Nagato didn’t even slacken her pace. I couldn’t help but slow down, though. The fate of the future lay in the palm of my hand, and having been entrusted with it I felt an indescribable pressure.

“It could also be a dummy,” said Nagato, unwittingly throwing cold water on my emotions. “It is unlikely that is the only copy of the data. It would be natural to have several backups.”

That made sense. That’s how it always went—when something really valuable was being transported, there would be an original and a dummy, and each would take separate routes. A vision of Asahina the Elder appeared in my mind; she winked and put her finger to her lips, smiling softly. But even she had a weak subject—and it was standing right in front of me.

“Oh, that’s right, Nagato—” I said to the back of the rapidly advancing girl. “Sorry about today.”

Nagato’s progress slowed, and she looked over her shoulder with a blankly questioning expression.

“No, I mean, yesterday I didn’t tell you I was going to bring Asahina along today, right? I just asked you for a favor with no explanation, which was kinda… yeah.”

“…”

Nagato continued walking while looking at me. After ten seconds under her searching gaze, I finally cracked.

“Asahina told me I should apologize. Anyway, I’m sorry.”

“… I see.”

She finally looked ahead. Nagato kept walking, speaking again after about five seconds.

“I see.”

In front of the station, Haruhi and Asahina leaned on each other like puppies exhausted after a day of playing, while beside them Koizumi stood, a beatific smile on his face.

After meeting up, we found ourselves piling back into the café in order to report our findings. Of course, nothing I could report to Haruhi had happened since the last time we’d done this, and I wasn’t going to tell her about the weird guy who’d shown up either. Fortunately, when I reported “We found nothing mysterious or mysterious-seeming,” Haruhi’s mood didn’t take an instant turn for the worse, unlike last year.

“Oh, well—you win some, you lose some.”

Had we ever won some?

Haruhi was in surprisingly good spirits as she sipped her cappuccino. “Let’s meet up again tomorrow. Those mysterious phenomena won’t expect us to be on the lookout two days running! We gotta preserve the element of surprise, then grab ’em by the tail. They’ll probably pop out from the strangest places. We might just run right into ’em!”

Yeah, like a voice suddenly calling out to you from behind. Just remembering it made me angry. Just the thought of him smirking as he watched Asahina and me toil away was enough to make my café au lait taste like black coffee. He’d better be ready, the next time I saw him. I’d grab him by the scruff of the neck and make him kneel in front of Haruhi or Nagato—that’d show him.

My irritation must’ve shown on my face, because Haruhi peered at me curiously. But in the end she let it pass with no comment, then smiled an inexplicable smile.

“Oh, well. We’ve got tomorrow. A new day brings new possibilities! It wouldn’t be any fun to just repeat the same day over and over, would it? My guess is that Sunday is the best target, anyway. It just feels the laziest and most laid-back, right? Like it doesn’t get along with Monday, that’s what I think.”

As I listened to Haruhi anthropomorphize the days of the week, I realized that Monday was a vacation day too, and just as I was suddenly afraid I’d wind up looking for mysterious phenomena three days running, I remembered that (Michiru) Asahina hadn’t said anything about that—and anyway, the sight of Asahina the Younger’s bashful laugher at Haruhi’s affable chatter did my heart good.

“So that’ll wrap things up for today,” said Haruhi, dismissing us.

Just as I’d been told, it was exactly five o’clock.

Man, oh man. Today had certainly given me a lot to think about.

Riding my bike into the wind, I reflected on the day’s events—Koizumi’s words before lunch, the two Asahinas, the nameless jerk and his boasting, Nagato’s unwavering face, and Haruhi’s unexpected good spirits. I didn’t even want to think about anything else happening, but things weren’t done yet. I wasn’t so forgetful that I’d just trudge home empty-handed, I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t seen the object in my pocket—and there was tomorrow to think about.

So it was that I stopped by the convenience store and bought a stamp and envelope, then headed over to the home center.

Once there, I wandered over to the pet corner. I found myself rather taken with the dogs and cats there, which, unlike Shamisen, were purebred. Pushing the temptation aside, I found the aquarium tank, inside of which was a clump of pond turtles and green turtles; they seemed to be getting along well. I wished I’d had Asahina with me. I would’ve loved to see her face as she exclaimed at the American shorthairs and shelties in the display. I’d seen my sister do it one too many times.

I looked into the turtle tank.

“All right, then, which one should I get?”

I began my evaluation. The small turtles were mostly unmoving and sat very still upon the rocks, like they were in a diorama. Which was sort of charming, in and of itself. I could understand why one would be a turtle fancier. It seemed a little rude to keep them cooped up like this, but it was winter, so I guessed that couldn’t be helped. On the other hand, I was going to toss one of them into a freezing-cold river tomorrow, which wasn’t much of an improvement. Which one would a turtle enjoy more? Which had more appeal—a cozy life in an aquarium, or returning to the harsh freedom of nature?

Perhaps sensing my intent gaze, one of the pond turtles craned his neck around to look up at me. Losing his balance, he fell off the rock and plopped into the water, and after drifting about in the bubbles that frothed out of the tank’s filter, finally managed to climb back onto the backs of his comrades—perhaps the water was cold. Yup, I’d found my turtle.

I flagged down a shop attendant to pull out the little guy for me, indicating to the young man—maybe a college student working a part-time job—which turtle I wished to purchase. He happily took out a wide variety of turtle-care-type items. For my part I would’ve been fine with just a paper bag to put the turtle in, but it would’ve been awkward to explain that no, I didn’t plan to keep it as a pet, I was just going to throw it in the river—he’d want to know why, and the fact was, I wanted to know why myself.

In the end, as I was trying to mumble that I didn’t have cash on me to cover all this, he’d already covered the bottom of a small plastic tank with gravel and filled it with water, then carefully picked up my turtle and placed it inside, then handed it over to me along with a box of feed. “This comes free with the turtle,” he said with a big smile as he led me to the register.

It seemed like this shop attendant really liked turtles.

“If you’ve ever got any questions about turtles, just ask,” he said, ringing it up at the register and paying for the case and feed out of his own wallet. I wanted to apologize, since this turtle was going straight into the river tomorrow.

Feeling a bit guilty, I carried the now-turtle-filled case out of the home center, putting it and the feed in my bicycle’s basket and setting off once again.

The sky was now well and truly dark, but I still couldn’t head home. There was one more thing I had to take care of—one more thing to do.

“Heya! Kyon! I figured you’d be back! Evenin’!”

My destination was none other than the Tsuruya mansion, where a certain cheerful girl dressed in a perfect traditional Japanese-style outfit let me and my bike through the gate, beneath the starry sky.

“Huh? What’s that? A souvenir?” said Tsuruya, peering into the bike basket. “Aw, a pond turtle. Thanks, but our garden’s pond is already lousy with the things. They just multiplied like crazy. If you put a little guy like that back there, they’d just beat up on him.”

Sorry, Tsuruya—this wasn’t a present for her. I’d actually gotten it for Asahina, sort of, I told her.

“Oh, too bad! Also, Kyon, I’m sorry I couldn’t take Michiru to the library today. I just couldn’t skip out on my thing.”

I leaned my bike up in the corner of the absurdly large garden, then walked alongside Tsuruya, carrying the turtle case with me.

“Did you have plans?” I asked.

“It was a memorial service. The whole family gets together to remember our ancestors. It was my dad’s grandfather this time—he actually had a really interesting life. With so many crazy episodes, his memorial was really busy!” Tsuruya chattered like she was a hare racing a tortoise and had just decided to take the race seriously. “But are you really that worried about Michiru? Do you want to sleep in the same room with her? I’d sleep next to her too, but if you don’t feel like it, that’s fine.”

Tsuruya smiled at me cheerfully. She sounded just like a fairy godmother bringing Cinderella a fancy ball gown, but I knew that if I naively took her up on her offer, she’d really give me an earful. I wouldn’t fall into such an obvious trap. Tsuruya knew that too, which was why she’d laid it in the first place.

“I think I’ll pass; thanks.”

Tsuruya was smart enough to get my drift. And even if somehow it’d become a reality, if I were to sleep between two older schoolmates like that, I’d be way too nervous to sleep even a little bit. I’d only wind up more exhausted.

Maybe because of the cold, the little pond turtle had retreated into his shell in one corner of the case, and he stayed there, unmoving. I felt like it would’ve been kinder to leave him in the Tsuruya family’s pond, but I couldn’t very well go against Asahina the Elder’s instructions, though the dilemma still nagged at me.

“Oh, Kyon?”

I was let into the apartment, at which point I was greeted by (Michiru) Asahina’s surprised voice. She probably hadn’t expected to see me again so soon after we’d parted ways, but she’d forgotten about the turtle. I presented her with the case.

“Could you bring this tomorrow?” I asked.

Consider, if you will, the contents of letter #4: “On Sunday, by 10:50 AM, throw a turtle into the river.” That was going to be the last action Asahina and I would carry out. Since we’d be doing another city patrol tomorrow, it made the most sense to leave the turtle with this Asahina now, since I’d have to meet up with Ha-ruhi and the rest at nine AM, and we’d lose around an hour to eating at the café and drawing lots. If I showed up with a turtle, there’d be no end of questions to answer from Haruhi.

“Oh, yes. That’s right,” answered Asahina. “You didn’t bring anything to the patrol, I remember.”

Ahem. I heard a deliberate-sounding cough. It was Tsuruya, preparing tea on the tea table. She closed one eye in a half wink. “Should I take Michiru somewhere else tomorrow?”

“Would you mind?” I asked.

Tsuruya smiled. “About that—I’m swamped tomorrow too. I’ve got to show up at this family meeting. But don’t you worry! I’ll have someone from the house drive her. About what time?”

I asked her to take Asahina to the riverside cherry blossom grove at ten forty-five. Asahina would know the exact place—not even she has such a lousy sense of direction that she’d forget that fateful park bench.

“Okay, gotcha. Leave it to me! Just use a taxi for the way back, ’kay?” Tsuruya smacked her chest smartly. “I understand why you’re worried, Kyon. I walk around the shopping streets with Mikuru all the time, y’know? She gets hit on every couple hundred meters. Such a pain! I guess it’s her superpower.”

I figured Tsuruya’s superpower might also have something to do with that.

“Mikuru just looks so defenseless, though. That’s what worries me. I’d feel a little better if she had a nice boyfriend.”

That wouldn’t make me feel better at all. I’d spend my days imagining things I didn’t want to imagine, I told her.

“Ha ha! So what would make you feel better, Kyon m’boy?”

“Kyon m’boy” couldn’t think of anything that would make him feel better, but Asahina had turned beet red at Tsuruya’s words and was frantically waving her hands. Her strangely ineffable expression must have come from the fact that she was trying to preserve the fiction that she was not Mikuru Asahina, but rather Michiru Asahina. I didn’t really care about that now, and I doubted Tsuruya did either, but Asahina might as well keep her secret. I’d told her to, after all.

The preparations for tomorrow were pretty much settled. I drank some of the bitter tea Tsuruya had brewed, looking at Asahina. I couldn’t help but smile as she looked at the little turtle, tapping lightly on his case. I wondered how long I should keep her here. At this rate, this Asahina would come to replace Asahina the Younger in this timeline, but was that really safe? Or did I need to find a way to return her to eight days—no, three days now—in the future?

I thought about the numbers on the letters I’d gotten: #3, #4, and #6. Assuming that counting systems hadn’t changed in the future such that six came after four, that meant letter #5 was still out there somewhere. It just hadn’t reached me yet.

I’d kept the contents of #6 a secret from this Asahina. There was really nothing I could say about it. It was this:

“When everything is over, come to the park bench where you and I met on Tanabata.”

The tea at Tsuruya’s house was fancier than what we usually drank in the clubroom. I was grateful to Tsuruya for not asking unnecessary questions about the turtle I’d brought with me. I watched my two older schoolmates peer into the case as my mind wandered.

When everything is over— In other words, Asahina traveling eight days into the past was a predetermined event from the perspective of Asahina the Elder. This would all be concluded after not too long.

You and I—“I” had to mean Asahina the Elder, and not the Younger or Michiru. And Tanabata referred to the Tanabata of four years ago. I’d met the same person there, two different times.

I pursed my lips, wondering if I should just tell Asahina everything—tell her that it was the future version of her who was leaving these letters in my shoe locker. How far ahead had Asahina the Elder read? Would this all become a predetermined event?

And how much had this Asahina realized, from the instructions from the future, and from my following them? I’d done nothing but prevaricate. Had that been the right thing to do…?

I shook my head slightly.

This wasn’t good. If all I was going to do was come up with bad ideas, I might as well be asleep. This was all thanks to the stuff that jerk had said to Asahina and me. There was no point trying to figure out who was right. That was one of the things Nagato had taught me.

Nothing could come from agonizing about the future. Your present self was responsible for your future self. That’s why you’d wind up cursing at your past self. At the moment, I was just trying to avoid being cursed by my eventual future self. I didn’t have time to think about it.

I just had to move.

Eventually I took my leave of the Tsuruya house and returned home. Shamisen was asleep on my bed, his face the image of serenity. If he was so unconcerned about the world, then the world must be okay. And no matter what happened, I couldn’t imagine him getting insomnia over it.

“Guess it all happens tomorrow…”

I’d put an end to all this tomorrow. On day two of Haruhi’s citywide investigation, I’d leave the turtle in the river. That was all I had to do. There wasn’t anything particularly difficult about it. I wouldn’t be digging holes in search of treasure I’d never find, nor taking perfect strangers to the hospital, nor moving random rocks, nor retrieving data storage devices—oh, wait. I still had to deal with that before I forgot about it again.

I wrote the name and address from letter #3 on the envelope I’d bought at the convenience store, then put the memory chip inside it. I stuck enough stamps on the envelope to get it anywhere in the world, then stashed it back in my coat pocket. Naturally, I didn’t include a return address.

After I’d dropped it in a post office mailbox, I prayed there wouldn’t be an accident. There was a limit to what I could plan for—I hoped Asahina the Elder realized that.

I was sure my hopes would be answered. I’d definitely ask her about that—on that Tanabata bench, when everything was over.