CHAPTER SEVEN

At the station front, Haruhi spotted Nagato and me and waved her hands hugely, like a cheerleader with a great flag. Asahina was there, right next to her, with Koizumi a bit removed. Haruhi was in fine form, Asahina had a happier-than-usual smile, and Koizumi made eye contact with me but said nothing, only brushing aside his bangs with a finger.

“Kyon, Yuki, you guys sure took your time. Where did you end up?” asked Haruhi, entwining her arm around Nagato’s. “Don’t tell me you spent the whole time at the library keeping warm. I guess that’d be okay if there were any mysterious spots around there, though. So were there?”

“Hell no,” I said.

There were no books that would suck you into their world upon opening them, nor were there books whose characters would leap from their pages into the real world. Maybe in the stacks of a bigger or older library—but not there, I told her.

“Good point; we’ll have to try to find a place like that next time, an antique bookstore or something. I’d love to rummage through Tsuruya’s family-only storehouse, but there’s probably nothing but her ancestors’ last testaments.”

Haruhi started walking without explaining where she was going. Maybe Asahina and Koizumi already knew; they happily followed her. As did Nagato and I.

I was well aware that putting to Haruhi the question of where she was headed would be pointless. She’d keep walking even if the destination were totally unknown, eventually stopping and pointing at her feet, proudly declaring, “We’re here!” The SS SOS Brigade had Captain Suzumiya at the tiller, and if it were really a seagoing vessel, we’d probably end up in Bermuda. As it was, Haruhi took us to the same Italian restaurant we’d visited the previous day.

I gazed at Asahina as I ate lunch, full of complicated emotions. She was placidly eating her seafood carbonara with a knife and spoon. It was a calming scene, but soon she’d be heading back in time to flail around for me for days. I wanted to tell her—at the very least, about the kidnapping part.

As I agonized over it, an irritated Haruhi prodded my plate with her fork.

“Kyon, what’re you so spaced out about? Got something on your mind? Tell me all about it, and I’ll give you some good advice, as your brigade chief.” Her eyes shone with energy, the eyes of someone happily taken in by even the most childish April Fool’s prank. “Also, about that phone call. Did you forget? The prank call. What was that?”

“Oh, that was—” I took a drink of water to buy myself some time. “It was just a stupid joke. I just felt like making a prank call, I guess. I really shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.”

I glanced briefly at Asahina; Haruhi did likewise. Asahina made a confused expression, her utensils freezing in place halfway to bringing a bite of pasta to her mouth. The next moment, Haruhi’s and my eyes met again.

“I guess it’s okay,” said Haruhi generously. “Just make it a better prank next time, okay? You’ll get bonus points if it makes me laugh. If you get enough, you can trade ’em in for a special prize from me. But if the joke’s stupid, I’ll dock points without mercy! Remember that!”

It felt like Haruhi’s roundabout way of asking me to prank-call her. As I was agonizing over having to think of jokes every time I called her, Haruhi and Asahina giggled conspiratorially.

Once lunchtime was over, Haruhi was happy to call it a day. I’d known this would happen, thanks to (Michiru) Asahina, but it was still impressive to see how after two consecutive days of patrolling, even Haruhi would get tired, though her face remained as energetic as always.

Asahina hid her smiling mouth with her hand as she nodded to me in parting. Nagato wore her standard lack of expression, and Koizumi had the same pleasant smile I was sick of, as we all went our separate ways.

After a short while, I caught up with Koizumi.

“I should thank you.”

Koizumi smiled as though it were nothing. “You’re quite welcome. The idea is to avoid such things before they happen, so I can’t say this was a total success. The car chase was a bit much.”

The Tamaru brothers had driven the police car—had they been the real thing? I asked. I doubted if they were even really brothers.

“Let’s leave it that they’re my colleagues, who sometimes assume the identity of the master of a mansion and his younger brother, sometimes a venture capitalist and his younger brother, and sometimes a pair of police officers.”

And what about Mori and Arakawa? I’d become particularly suspicious of Mori’s true identity.

“Is your organization working with Asahina’s and Nagato’s bosses?”

“Not directly, no. However, we seem to have come to a tacit understanding, and there are even times when we unwittingly work toward the same goal. I myself no longer fully understand this world, and the Agency itself is far from united.” Koizumi shrugged as we walked down the alleyway. “One extreme viewpoint is that there are no aliens or time travelers. That Nagato and Asahina are just pitiful, deluded girls.”

That obviously wasn’t true, I said. I’d sign a testament if they wanted me to.

“Ah, but what if Nagato’s magic and Asahina’s time travel are all the actions of Suzumiya, and the girls are mistaken in believing they are the source of such things?”

If that was the reasoning, you could explain anything that way, I said.

“Or it might be that it’s not Suzumiya who possesses this godlike power, but someone else.”

Koizumi was probably trying to add some sarcasm to his smile, but all I saw was his usual handsome face.

“The eye of the hurricane is calm, but all around it rages a terrible storm. There may be someone who looks in on the center from outside. Are you not the one who’s kept so busy by all these events? If you were the screenwriter, would you cast yourself in such a tiring role?”

This kind of vague explanation was Koizumi’s specialty. But I owed him one, so I decided to listen, for once, although it was doubtful that I’d be able to remember everything he said. If I had that kind of memory, my grades would’ve been a little better than they were.

“If I may speak frankly, my current problem is that I seem to be in the minority. If asked which side I belong to, the SOS Brigade comes to mind, first and foremost. My feelings tend toward it, rather than toward the Agency. So this is what I think. If the Agency gave me an order that ran counter to the interests of the SOS Brigade, I might well find myself upon the horns of a dilemma.”

I had prepared myself to listen to another lengthy speech from Koizumi, but just this once, his digression was a brief one. He gave me an easy way and walked away.

I returned home and sat down on the floor of my room, which contained Shamisen and Shamisen’s scattered fur.

My activities with (Michiru) Asahina were finished. Asa-hina the Younger was next. Which meant that I still had work to do.

In my hand was future letter #6.

Since #5 had instructed me to return (Michiru) Asahina to her previous time plane, all that remained was to follow the instructions in #6. But still…

Would everything really be over then? I couldn’t help but feel like there was still something else, though I had no idea why. It was like a tiny sardine bone stuck in my mind.

But no matter how I turned it over in my head, without any new input there would be no new answers, so I reread all the letters I’d gotten from Asahina the Elder. Even now they were still completely incomprehensible, the presumed merits of our actions utterly baffling. Or so they had been.

I was looking at the instructions on the third letter.

This was the only one that was linked with Haruhi’s activities. This was the only place where the entire SOS Brigade had been involved. The fruitless treasure hunt. We’d found nothing, as I had known we would…

I felt like I was on the verge of figuring something out when my sister came barging in to inform me that dinner was ready, and I wound up leaving my room with a nagging feeling. I took a bath after dinner, and midway through washing my hair I’d pretty much forgotten whatever I’d nearly hit upon. By the time I got into the bath proper and submerged myself up to my chin in hot water, the only thought in my mind was that of an early bedtime.

But then, right at the end of the day, one last order came in. It wasn’t from a time traveler; it was from Haruhi, and it didn’t come via a note in my shoe locker, but instead through my sister, carrying the phone.

“Kyon, phone! It’s Haru-nyan!” she said, barging right into the bathroom and giving me the handset. I waved my hands and shooed her out of the room, then put the receiver to my ear.

“Hello?”

“Hey. Are you in the bath?”

Haruhi’s voice echoed off the walls of the bathroom. I was in the bathroom, but she’d better not get any weird ideas, I told her.

“Like I’d ever do that, stupid. Anyway, we’re meeting up at the station tomorrow.”

Why was she calling me at this hour? She should’ve just told me about this before we split up this afternoon, I said.

“Aw, c’mon. I’ve got my own circumstances, you know.”

Did she ever think about anybody’s circumstances but her own? I asked.

“Oh, whatever! Anyway, we should meet up in the afternoon. Let’s say two o’clock. You don’t need to bring anything.”

And what about her?

“That’s my business. Tomorrow at two. Got it? If you don’t come, rest assured you will regret it. Punctuality above all!”

Haruhi-style phone etiquette involved delivering rapid-fire instructions, then hanging up immediately. I emerged from the bathtub, handset in hand, and thought it over as I toweled myself dry.

So there was something left, after all. What was it this time? So far this February, Haruhi had started out in ennui mode, then done Setsubun, a treasure hunt, and a two-day search for mysterious phenomena. Would this be the last?

Hold on—why hadn’t (Michiru) Asahina told me about this? She had never said anything about a station-front rendezvous on Monday. Perhaps she wasn’t involved. Perhaps she hadn’t told me because she’d never known herself—or perhaps she did know and had said nothing.

I just didn’t want to hear that this part of history never existed.

Showing up at a specified time, in a specified place was fast becoming a conditioned response for me, and arriving five minutes before two and seeing the rest of the club assembled and waiting for me was more normal than spring following winter.

For once Haruhi didn’t berate me for tardiness, nor did she head for the café. Instead we went to the bus terminal, where Haruhi herded me onto a northbound bus.

Asahina, I noticed, was constantly yawning, then hurrying to hide her mouth. When I looked more closely, I saw that Haruhi was rubbing her eyes as though shortchanged on sleep herself. When she noticed me watching her, she gave me a glare and looked out the window as the green of the scenery turned deeper.

Our bus was bound for the mountains, along the same route we’d taken the other day to reach Mt. Tsuruya.

The bus stop we got out at was the same too. And just when it looked like we were going to climb to the summit using the same route—

“If we go this way, it’s the long way around. It was the back way originally. We’re going to go around to the south side and climb from there.”

Haruhi started striding along, followed by Asahina and Nagato, who evidently had no problem with another hiking session. Koizumi scratched his chin for a moment.

“Well, shall we go? We’ve gotten this far, so neither of us can back out now—we’re alike in that way,” he said inexplicably, chuckling like a pigeon.

Haruhi circled the base of the mountain, making for the south side. I started to get an idea of where she wanted to go. I’d been there a couple of times myself recently. Two days in a row, in fact.

The only things around us other than mountains were dry fields. The first time I’d been here, I’d been climbing up with (Michiru) Asahina. The second time, I’d been descending the mountain with the SOS Brigade.

Haruhi took the lead up the animal path that led to the spot with the gourd-shaped rock.

“Of course, no wonder…”

The day we’d moved the rock, I’d noticed that Asahina seemed to know the way very well. I now saw that it was because she’d been there twice before.

Asahina ascended rather perilously, being forcibly dragged behind Haruhi, Nagato guarding her from tumbling back down.

We soon reached the spot. As soon as Haruhi emerged into the flat clearing on the mountainside, she sat down on the gourd-shaped rock as though it were a favorite chair.

“Kyon, Koizumi, this is treasure hunt round two! When you think about it, giving up after just one day of digging doesn’t show much dedication. Treasure hunting is about keeping at it until you find something!”

Haruhi smiled brilliantly and produced two garden spades from within her coat, offering them to Koizumi and me.

“To be honest, I wanted to use big shovels and dig up every corner like last time, but I’ll let you off the hook this time. You can use those spades and just dig right here.”

Haruhi indicated the spot right in front of her—in other words, directly beside the gourd rock. It was the same spot Koizumi and I had dug fully two meters down. But before I could complain that we’d already dug there—

“It’s pretty common to find lost items in places you think you’ve already looked, right? Well, treasure’s the same way. You’ve got to look over and over again in the same place for it. And if I say there’s treasure, there’s treasure.”

Haruhi sounded more confident than the dog in “Hanasaka Jiisan,” like she was sure we were bound to meet wealth and good fortune. For whatever reason, Asahina just nodded happily in agreement, with Nagato being the only one whose expression was unchanged. There with the spade in my hand for no particular reason, I finally began to understand the meaning of Koizumi’s smile.

The digging didn’t take much time or effort. The soil had already been dug up and replaced once, so it was soft enough that our spades were more than adequate for the task. We hadn’t dug very deeply when our spades’ tips bumped into the edge of something hard.

As Haruhi grinned down from above, I dug the object loose and pulled it out of the ground. The rectangular box did not, it must be said, look like something from the Genroku era. It was more like a tin that cookies or rice crackers would come in. It hadn’t been here three days earlier, when Koizumi and I had been searching. Someone had to have come up here since then and bury it, I was sure of it—no points for guessing who.

“Open it,” said Haruhi, looking like the “Tongue-Cut Sparrow” watching the old man pick the smaller basket. The folktale was about greed and how the smaller basket was filled with treasure instead of monsters, so in this case, she was definitely thinking this was treasure.

I took the tin in hand and popped off the lid.

“…”

I saw neither jewels nor gold coins—but I doubted anyone would dispute me were I to call it “treasure,” nonetheless.

There were six small boxes delicately wrapped in beautiful wrapping paper—and tied up with ribbon, obviously.

Finally—finally, was all I could say.

I remembered what day it was. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say I realized. It was a day even more important than July seventh, Tanabata—at least it was for high school guys.

Today was February fourteenth.

In other words: Valentine’s Day.

“They’re handmade,” explained Haruhi, looking askance. “We worked from noon to nightfall to make them. Mikuru, Yuki, and I pulled a late shift for you guys! A late shift! Originally I wanted to make them from pure cacao, but then it was like, ‘Let’s not get too crazy.’ So we went with chocolate cake.”

Each of the three girls had written our names on the labels that adorned the wrapped packages—both of us got a cake from each of them.

Koizumi put down his spade, and after carefully brushing off his hands, he picked up one of the packages. “To Koizumi, from Mikuru,” it said. Asahina had made treasures just for us.

“You bet she did!” Haruhi fired off like a machine gun. “We all did! It was pretty fun, and we really gave it our all! But whatever, I was just worried that everything was going to get out of hand, and it was making me space out all the time, and to be honest I was sort of worried I was just falling into society’s trap, but so what? It’s such a broadly accepted tradition; I feel bad for the people who think it’s just a conspiracy by candy companies! It’s fine! Yuki and Mikuru and I had fun; that’s what’s important. We were thinking of putting hot peppers into them, but—Hey, Kyon, what’s that look?”

It was nothing. I was just—grateful. It was true. I’d forgotten entirely that today was that day that made men the world over nervous. If I’d remembered, maybe I would’ve prepared an appropriate reaction, but having weathered this surprise attack, I had nothing to say to the three brigade girls. It was hard to ad-lib clever words to hide your embarrassment. I doubted I had enough life experience to pull it off.

The strength drained from my body. All the riddles had been solved. Haruhi’s strange mood and behavior starting in February. Asahina traveling back in time but finding it difficult to talk about the treasure hunt. Taniguchi’s sulking and insistence that he envied me.

Haruhi had been thinking about this all along—how to give us chocolates on Valentine’s Day. She seriously couldn’t get over herself, not even a little. How twisted did someone have to be to make us go on this treasure hunt, dig all these holes, then fill them back up again, instead of just giving chocolate to us in the clubroom? Wait, that meant—ah ha. Tsuruya was in on it too. The treasure map had been a pack of lies. The reason Haruhi had given up on the treasure hunt was because she already knew there was no treasure. The treasure Haruhi had in mind had yet to be buried at that point—the chocolate cake of which Koizumi and I now each had three pieces. That had been the cause of the weeks of uncertainty on Haruhi’s part. Nagato and Asahina had gotten dragged into it as well.

What fools we were—both Haruhi, for coming up with such a plan, and me, for not seeing through it.

“These are just friendly chocolates, though! Just friendly. I don’t actually want to have to say stuff like ‘just friendly,’ though. And chocolate cake counts as chocolate, right?”

Haruhi’s voice echoing in my head like insects chirping in a thicket, I summoned my strength and looked up.

Haruhi glared at me with an angry face. Asahina wore a gently teasing smile, and Nagato regarded me expressionlessly.

“Thank you very much. I will savor every bite.”

Koizumi beat me to the punch.

Haruhi’s lips twisted into a smirk. “I recommend eating them as soon as you get home. Just gobble ’em down in one go—don’t leave them on the family shrine for your ancestors to eat, got that?” She turned her head away hurriedly, then stood. “Okay then, let’s go home. The event’s over, and if we don’t leave right away, we’ll get stuck in traffic. I’m sleepy. We worked on those until sunrise, I’ll have you know! And then we came up here in the morning and buried them, and I only caught a couple of hours of sleep at Yuki’s place. The same goes for Mikuru and Yuki!”

We were on our way home. As we stood waiting at the bus stop, Haruhi stood as far away from me as possible, gazing off in the distance, avoiding my eyes. Oh, brother.

I whispered to Asahina, who stood next to me.

“You didn’t give chocolate to someone you have a crush on? Just friends?”

“No,” she replied, sounding a bit desolate. “Even if I did have a crush on someone here, I’ll eventually have to return to the future. Our separation would be inevitable. It would be so sad…”

It was an extremely honest view to hold. I couldn’t think of a single rebuttal. And yet it was the position’s obvious correctness that made me hesitate to agree with it.

“You could just stay here,” I said. “This time period’s not so bad. You could visit the future from time to time, but just keep your home here.”

---

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Asahina giggled. “Thanks.” Her lips formed a soft smile that made me want to steal a kiss. “But I wasn’t born in this time. My home is there, in the future. No—to me, this is the past. I’m just a visitor. The future is my present, my home. I must return someday.”

Just like the princess from “The Bamboo-Cutter’s Tale.” No matter what measures were taken to stop her, when the time came she had to leave Earth. It wasn’t where she belonged. I guess I agreed with Asahina. If I jumped a hundred years into the past, I might find it interesting at first, but I’m sure I would miss the culture and technology of home. I’d want to play video games with ridiculous graphics, heat convenience-store chicken bowls in the microwave, and send stupid text messages with my cell phone. More than anything else, I’d want to nap in my own room and enjoy my own time at my own pace.

Even if she could do all of the same things, Asahina would always be aware that this wasn’t her time. She was in the past. It was an unnatural place for her to be in, and I could imagine that she might never really feel comfortable.

“Oh, but—!” she began hastily, waving her hands. “It’s not that I don’t like being here! It’s very important, and I really have to do my best. I’m just really glad you’re here with me, Kyon.”

It certainly made me happy to hear her say so. I thought I’d try something out.

“So when you go back to the future, how about you take me along?” Not that Haruhi would keep quiet if something like that happened. “We could take everyone on a trip to the future. Ha-ruhi and Nagato and Koizumi too. I wouldn’t complain. Heck, I’m starting to think that moving to the future wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

“Wha—?” Her fairy-like eyes widened; she was totally taken aback. “N-no, definitely not! That is completely forbidden. It’s just…”

Asahina’s face looked surprised for a while, but eventually she noticed my own expression. She closed her mouth, and the tension drained from her tensed shoulders.

She giggled. “Gosh, Kyon. If you’re going to tell a joke, make sure it’s jokier next time. You really surprised me!”

“Sorry.”

Yes, of course it was a joke. This was my time, my era. I’d encountered terrible challenges, especially the repeated time travel to three and four years ago, but I always came back to this time and place, in the SOS Brigade’s clubroom. I hadn’t even been a high school student for a year yet, and I was sure Haruhi had a lot of things she still wanted to do here and now. I wondered if the day would ever come when she would finish it all. It was a bit too early to be planning an escape to the future.

The day would come when Asahina had to return to her own time. But for the moment, she was here. That was enough. So long as we kept having fun here, the future would surely become a fun place too. She had once compared different time planes to pages in a flip-book, and if I thought about it that way, if all the pages were full of gags, the last page couldn’t possibly be horror. I’d never accept that. I mean, who would?

I’d once lost my friends in the SOS Brigade and gotten them back. I’d never forget the determination I had then. Whatever happened from here on out, whether I stumbled or was defeated, I’d always face ahead. I wasn’t such a lightweight that I’d easily go back on a decision I’d made only two months before. But leave me my “Oh, brother.” That’s special.

In other words, no matter how cheap my pride was, it would have to be a little cheaper before I’d sell it off completely. As long as I faced forward, I could say, “Oh, brother,” if I wanted to. They were just words, after all. The same went for, “Haruhi, you idiot,” “Take me with you,” or even saying nothing, Nagato-style. In a three-legged race, you had to tie your leg to your partner’s leg. It was easier for five people to run a six-legged race than it was for one person to do three.

If there was one thing I’d learned this week, that was it.

I’d spent the last several days going back and forth between my house and the train station. I would probably enjoy a respite from that for a while. Haruhi continued to ignore me, her back turned, not so much as giving me a proper goodnight. Our honorable brigade chief took large, resolute steps, but I wondered what sort of expression she would wear tomorrow at school.

I gave my thanks to Asahina and Nagato as I reassured myself of the weight of their packages in my pocket. “I’m really sorry I couldn’t tell you. Suzumiya made us promise not to say anything,” said Asahina, looking particularly regretful, her head bowed. I was impressed that Haruhi had the ability to silence even Nagato. Although I suppose it wasn’t that difficult, since it was me who’d forgotten such an important day in the first place. Although things had been complicated for a while, it was as though I’d simply dropped the concept of Valentine’s Day entirely.

When I got back to my room, I immediately opened the three packages, though I did not intend to eat them in lieu of dinner as Haruhi had suggested. Inside were plastic cases containing chocolate-coated pieces of cake.

Haruhi’s was round, Asahina’s was heart-shaped, and Nagato’s was in the shape of a star. Each one sported white chocolate lettering on it.

Smack-dab in the middle of Haruhi’s was a simple, blunt, “chocolate,” while Nagato’s sported “Gift” in a neat serif font. Asahina’s said “Just Friends” on it, which seemed a bit uncharacteristically blunt to me until I noted another message hidden in the bottom of the cake’s plastic case, hurriedly scrawled out on the corner of a paper towel. “Suzumiya made me write that,” it said. I imagined the scene of the three of them having a lively time making the cakes in Nagato’s kitchen. I put the three cakes in the refrigerator. I couldn’t forget to tell my sister not to go and eat them.

Once the sun was down, I got on my bike and started to pedal.

The last checkpoint was a certain bench in a certain park near Nagato’s apartment.

The park was dark and deserted, and there sat the bench, unoccupied, beneath the streetlight. I stopped my bike, and as I pushed it into the park, I still did not see a soul.

I sat on the chilly bench and raised my voice to the empty space.

“I know you’re there, Asahina.”

The evergreen shrubs behind the bench rustled, and slowly around the bench came the person I was waiting for.

“May I sit?”

But of course. I expected this to be a long talk, I told her.

She giggled. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to tell you much.”

I confirmed that it was Asahina the Elder’s elegant form on the bench beside me. The winter-wardrobe version of adult Asahina didn’t look any different from a random person on the street—assuming you didn’t count her heart-melting beauty.

I breathed in the winter air, then spoke. “But you’ll explain things, won’t you?”

“Where shall I start?”

“The first errand Asahina and I ran—the prank.”

We’d pounded nails into the ground, then covered them with a can, and thereby sent a man to the hospital. It seemed like ages ago.

“There was a reason you had to do that.” Asahina’s face had a faintly visible smile that I could see from an oblique angle. “Kyon, I want you to imagine something. If you could go back into the past, years or even decades”—she sounded serious—“imagine that you could go back and witness history. But what if that history wasn’t the history you knew? What if it were different?”

“What do you mean, different?” I didn’t understand.

“For example, suppose you traveled exactly one year into the past. What were you doing then?”

Probably playing video games in my room, I told her. I certainly didn’t have any memories of getting chocolate from anyone.

Asahina nodded slightly. “Think about if that were different. If you went to your house of a year ago, but you weren’t living there. What would you do? Neither you, nor your sister, nor your parents are there. Strangers you’ve never met live in your house. And your family doesn’t live in the house you know, but instead live a totally different life, somewhere far away.”

That was absurd.

“When we come to the past and find that the history we’re expecting is subtly different, can you see what we in the future would think? Assuming that the past is constantly subject to intervention from the future. Assuming that if left alone, our future will never come to be, and instead a different future will happen.”

Asahina’s voice sounded distant. As though she were lost in thought.

“A past where a person dies when they were meant to keep on living. A past where two people who were supposed to meet never do. If we knew that, left alone, that past would never lead to our future.”

A shadow fell over her already lonely-sounding voice.

“I’ll get to the point. The man who injured himself kicking the can you placed will meet a certain woman at the hospital. They will get married, have children, and those children will have children. That is all because he went to the hospital. There is no other point in history where they can meet.”

My mind flashed back to the image of the man smiling pleasantly as he looked up at Asahina and me.

“That memory device was the same. The data on it needed to be sent in that form. The person you sent it to ends up accidentally discovering the same data. But in this past, that coincidence wasn’t going to happen. Perhaps it was deleted. So we had to send it to him. In as coincidental a form as possible.”

Someone picks up the device after it’s been dropped in a flower bed and happens to send it to a random address—his address, Asahina explained.

I didn’t know what to say. There was no way something like that could be a coincidence. Plus that jerk had shown up and handed us the data. What had been the point of his interference? I wanted to know.

“He wasn’t interfering. That data was necessary for his future too. That’s how he was able to come back to this time.” Asahina spoke very clearly. “For us in the future, that was a predetermined event. But for you, and the person who will receive the data, it was a mere coincidence. That’s just how time works.”

“…”

I felt dizzy, possibly because the limits of my imagination had been so easily shattered.

“The turtle and that boy—that was also a coincidence. The boy always remembered getting the turtle from the man and woman at the river. He remembered the ripples in the river when the man threw the turtle into the water, and how he flowed lazily along with the current. Turtles live long lives, and every time he looks at his turtle, he remembers that scene. That gives rise to… a kind of fundamental theory. Though it was the result of many other elements as well.”

Could it be—the possibility made me dizzy even as my imagination leaped forward. Was that boy going to be the inventor of the time machine? The near-miss traffic accident, the turtle. Had I changed the future—the future of that boy, and the future of the world? All because of a few insignificant things I had done…

Suddenly a different memory came back to me. A few days before the school festival, when I was in agony trying to finish our film’s climax, Nagato had said something to me.

“In order to stabilize the future, the correct values must be input. Asahina Mikuru’s job is inputting those values.”

My memory was pretty good, but this was not the time to relish it. No, what I was concerned about now was the phrase “in order to stabilize the future.” I could no longer assume that there was but one future.

Probably. I wasn’t sure, so I couldn’t speak with confidence. What understanding I had had gotten me as far as the following, though my mind was wild with question marks.

Was the future not a stable thing?

Were there other futures besides the one from which Asahina came?

I could admit the possibility. But just barely. If the future diverged into separate branches—that could mean there was a future in which that glasses-wearing boy lived and one where he died. Except that I’d erased the possibility of the latter.

Which meant I had single-handedly obliterated an entire future.

I didn’t know if that were really true. The basis for the conjecture was so shaky that I would be an idiot to suggest that the proof was “left as an exercise for the reader,” yet I could not easily dismiss the wild notion. I was mute, struck dumb. How else could I react?

“The divergence points were concentrated in this time period. While most paths would lead to the same future, everything you did in the past few days was connected to a divergence point—a path that would lead to a different future…”

Her lovely voice got quieter.

“There will soon come an even larger divergence point. There is a very powerful future… if you should choose it, it… it would not be good for our future.”

My body felt heavy and sluggish somehow. I tried to look over at Asahina, but my head was strangely stiff.

“But it will be okay. I trust you, after all. Right?”

My consciousness began to blur. A familiar diagram emerged from within the mist. The writing from the whiteboard danced through my mind. I saw two Xs in the whirl. Koizumi’s explanation. There were two Xs.

It was impossible to completely erase the past. Once modified, history would simply be rewritten over the original time line.

And I had another memory. The loop during summer vacation. We’d repeated the same two weeks tens of thousands of times over.

But no one save Nagato could remember. It was as though those tens of thousands of repetitions had never happened. So the answer was clear.

The past could be negated. In fact, it wasn’t a question of whether a certain past had or had not existed. Even if something had happened, if nobody remembered it, it didn’t matter. Which was why—

You just had to erase the memories of the past.

If my memories of the period from December seventeenth to December twenty-first were erased—my memories of all that running around, of jumping back three years into the past and being stabbed by Asakura—and I’d simply woken on that hospital bed, what then? I would have simply believed Koizumi’s explanation, that I’d fallen down the stairs, hit my head, and lost three days of memory.

Nagato the literature club girl, Asahina from the calligraphy club, Haruhi the girl from another school who looked alarmingly good in a ponytail, and Koizumi the normal guy—if my memories of them were erased, I wouldn’t have to worry about jumping back to preserve the integrity of the time loop.

But no, that wasn’t right.

On the morning of the eighteenth, on the verge of death after being attacked by Asakura, I saw future-us, and so I knew that I would go to that time again. The only one who could repair Nagato was her three-years-previous self, and it was Nagato from this last January second who’d put that repair into action. That much was necessary.

And time was rewritten—

I felt a chill. Haruhi had no idea. Neither did Taniguchi or Kunikida. The only ones who knew were Nagato, Asahina, and me, plus—after hearing my report—Koizumi.

Which meant there was no guarantee I wasn’t in the same position as Haruhi. If history had been changed somewhere, even if I had once known of it, without any memory of it, it would be as though it had never happened.

Not just that—there was even the possibility that the version of myself who was thinking these things could be overwritten by another version from another timeline. A timeline in which my present self would cease to exist, and a different me would continue into the future.

I thought of what Nagato had said in the hospital room.

—Erasure of all your relevant memories.

—No guarantee such erasure has not taken place.

The Asahina who had come from one week in the future told me she had not met her other self. Which was why I’d gone to such lengths to make sure they never did meet. But even if they had, it might not have been such a problem.

The current Asahina’s memories of such an encounter could simply be erased. If she were then sent back in time after such erasure, it wouldn’t much matter whether or not she encountered herself.

A dark feeling rumbled in the pit of my stomach—the same feeling I’d had toward the Data Overmind as I lay in the hospital bed last month. Only this time the emotion was directed at Asahina the Elder.

She was simply using her former self, Asahina the Younger, forcing her to constantly play the confused, unreliable-but-cute classmate. Oh, sure, I knew she had no choice but to do so. I understood that she had to retrace the history that she herself remembered experiencing. “The future’s countermeasures against the past,” Koizumi had said. But wasn’t there some other way?

My neck’s curse on my head was finally broken. It felt like it had taken an hour just to look sideways. But when I went to speak the words that came to mind, I realized no one was sitting there.

Asahina had disappeared. I was the only one sitting on the bench in the faint glow of the streetlight. In her place, there had been placed a small box.

A small, square, ribbon-wrapped box.

There was a message card attached to it. I held it up to the light. It carried a single greeting: “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

The chocolates inside were completely normal. There was nothing futuristic about their flavors or shapes. Either the chocolatiers of Asahina’s world had not changed their recipes much, or they’d matched chocolate to its destination era.

“But still, Asahina…”

I didn’t want to think that I would concede so easily. Yes, today she’d deviated and provided me with information, but it still wasn’t enough. I’d even accept her reasons for not telling me about her kidnapping. But she’d deliberately refrained from saying anything about Haruhi’s Valentine’s Day plans or the truth of the treasure hunt and gourd stone. That was totally meaningless, even now. Haruhi could have buried those chocolates anywhere. There was no reason it had to be next to that particular rock. And there was no reason for me to move said rock.

Or was this part of your plan too, Asahina the Elder? Were the things I was thinking and doing right now among your predetermined events?

“When everything is over…”

It seemed like that was not today. I’d eventually come here again. And maybe I’d bring the rest of the SOS Brigade along. I’d love to see her try to explain all this to Haruhi and Koizumi. All I was good for was playing the observer.

I placed a phone call from the park.

“Hello? Ah, Tsuruya? It’s me. Yeah, about Michiru. She’s gone home. I really appreciate everything you did for her, and I’ll definitely get your clothes back to you—huh? Oh, really? Oh, also, listen—when you see the Asahina you know tomorrow, she might randomly start apologizing to you, but just let it slide. And there should be a North High uniform she left in your apartment, so could you bring that to school tomorrow? Yeah, to me. Before the end of class.”

So far, so good. I listened to Tsuruya’s cheerful “Okay!” and took a deep breath.

“There’s one more thing, and this is the important one. It’s about your family’s mountain—the one from the treasure map. Yeah, that one. Haruhi used it in this crazy roundabout scheme of hers to… yes. Yes, I got them. Four—I mean, three. It was a lot of fun.”

I continued talking over the sound of Tsuruya’s laughter. “It’s about that treasure map. Did you know there’s a trail that leads from the fields at the base straight up the south side? Oh, good, that will make this faster. If you follow it, you’ll come to a flat, open area. Oh, you know that too? There’s a rock there—if you go about three meters east and dig, you might find something interesting.”

Tsuruya’s response sounded doubtful.

“I don’t have any proof myself, so it’s not a one-hundred percent guarantee. But I get the feeling there might be something.”

If I hadn’t moved the rock, Haruhi would have taken it for a marker the moment she laid eyes on it, and we would’ve wound up digging right next to it. And we might well have found something. Something we should never have found.

Three meters west. That was how far I’d traveled after picking up the rock. Just that far.

I gave Tsuruya some vague responses, then hung up.

There’s your piece of defiance from me, Asahina. I’m not trying to outwit you or your future, but sometimes a guy just wants to give something a try.

After all, I wasn’t nearly as audacious as Haruhi.