Koizumi chuckled softly. “You seem to be up to something interesting again, but I suppose I haven’t won the participation lottery.”
I chose to sigh, exhaling whitely. “This is my and Asahina’s problem. It’s got nothing to do with you. You should just run along and hunt those celestials of yours.”
“These days they never call, they never write. Sometimes a man just needs to get out and take a walk.”
The only people who were out at this hour without a dog to walk were writers stuck for ideas, I said—and I knew for certain running into him was no coincidence.
“If this were a coincidence, one could hardly be blamed for thinking it was just a little too perfect.”
“What do you want?” I asked, but immediately changed subjects. “No, never mind—that much I can guess, more or less. How much do you know?”
“You mean about there being two Asahinas?” Koizumi casually mentioned the crucial point. “How did you manage to explain that to Tsuruya? Twins, I suppose? Surely you didn’t tell her the truth.”
“Not that it would’ve mattered.”
“Maybe not. It is Tsuruya, after all.”
He said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Just what kind of person was Tsuruya, anyway? Our cheerful schoolmate seemed to know everything about us, yet was still keeping her distance.
“My superiors have warned me not to interfere with Tsuruya.” Koizumi’s face became slightly more serious. “She’s actually not related to this. Originally, we weren’t supposed to encounter her at all, but there was a mistake somewhere and we wound up coming into contact. That’s Suzumiya for you, I suppose.”
What mistake, where? Was he talking about Tsuruya being in Asahina’s class? I asked. Or her being a substitute player on our sandlot baseball team?
“We do not interfere with her, and in exchange, she is no more involved with us than necessary. Those are the rules by which the Agency and the Tsuruya clan conduct their relationship.”
He shouldn’t just mention an absurd inside story like that, I told him.
Koizumi chuckled. “To be clearer, the Tsuruya clan is among the many sponsors of the Agency. However, our activities may be irrelevant to them; they are entirely indifferent to everything we do. Which is fine, since it’s frankly more convenient for us that way, but Miss Tsuruya is the successor to the entire clan.”
Tsuruya, you… I thought. To think we’d been just casually hanging out with a person like that. Now I really wanted to know—what was she? I asked.
“She’s an ordinary high school student. She’s a second-year student at the same public school we attend; she just commutes from a bigger house. Meanwhile, she might be fighting the forces of evil somewhere, or she might have solved some intractable problem, but none of that has anything to do with us.”
The words Tsuruya had just recently spoken now were clear in my memory. She’d said she was happy not being too involved with us. Maybe the same was true of us, for her. It would definitely be best to just keep relating to her the way we always had. Whatever she was, whatever she was doing, none of that was important. Just as Haruhi was Haruhi, Tsuruya was Tsuruya. She was Asahina’s cheerful, happy, over-perceptive friend. The SOS Brigade’s faithful advisor. That was the best way to think about it.
But how much of a coincidence had her meeting Asahina been? Were there parts of the past that were mysterious even to time travelers, in the same way that Haruhi was a mystery to them?
And then I remembered.
“Koizumi, earlier you said things with Asahina would work out just fine. What did you mean by that?”
“I meant that the future can be changed.” Then, as though he’d predicted my next question, he continued. “You might be thinking that people from the future regard the past as freely changeable and consider the future to be superior to the past, but the future is actually quite a fuzzy thing.”
If you knew past history and could travel back, you could change the future however you wanted to. I’d done it myself—I’d gone back in time with Nagato to fix the world after it had gone all wrong.
Koizumi smiled. “You could also have done the same thing from the past. If you’d known the future in advance, you could’ve changed it right at that point and time.”
“How can you possibly know the future? That’s impossible.”
“Do you really think so?”
Koizumi’s smile turned a bit devilish, surely on purpose. The guy really could be pointlessly nasty sometimes.
“I am an esper—though my abilities and range are a bit limited. But can you be sure that I am the only one? I don’t mean anti-Celestials like me. How can we say for certain that there aren’t more straightforward superhumans with, for example, the power to see the future, perhaps even attached to the Agency?” His smile returned to its previous pleasant state. “I don’t recall ever telling you that such individuals don’t exist.”
Why you son of a—
“Of course, I never told you they did exist either.”
Well, which was it? I asked, adding that he’d better not tell me that it could go either way.
“To be completely honest, I don’t know. As I said before, I’m an underling. I don’t know everything. Asahina’s the same way.”
That much I could believe. Never had an agent been so deserving of pity as Asahina.
“There’s a purpose to her ignorance, of course. If a time traveler from the future knows they are acting with a defined intention, they can simply analyze those actions, and they’ll never take actions that would jeopardize their own future. The reason Asahina seems so careless, despite being from the future, is because she doesn’t know anything. You could even say she hasn’t been allowed to know anything. That’s the future’s countermeasure to stop us in the past from analyzing their intentions. Her presence is required in this time period, but if we were to infer the future from her presence, that puts the future in danger. In a way, you could say she’s a perfect time resident. I don’t feel any threat from her at the moment, and when push comes to shove I’m sure she’ll follow her orders exactly.”
Koizumi performed his specialty: the shrug.
“That might very well be the aim of the future group—to make the people in the past think that. Which is why the Agency doesn’t get involved. It’d be awfully irritating to just play into their hands, after all. We don’t want to be puppets of the future.”
So what, did they oppose Asahina? I asked.
“I wouldn’t go that far. If I had to sum it up, I’d say we’re at a standstill.”
A chill ran through my body. Literally.
“Let me make an analogy. Suppose there are two nations, A and B. They oppose each other but have not engaged in direct conflict. Now suppose there appears power C, which opposes A, and power D, which opposes B. From A’s perspective, coexistence with C is impossible; they are a direct threat. The same goes for B and D. C and D then join forces and begin cooperating. If one nation was intolerable, the two joined are now all the more so. Now, as the old saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, so A and B build a grudging and unsteady alliance—which is where we are.”
Koizumi regarded me uncertainly.
“Are you listening?”
“Oh, sorry,” I said, throwing my leg over my bike seat. “I stopped listening when you started talking about D or whatever. I can remember the first three, but after that it was too much.”
“I know it was audible. Your brain chose to listen and process, or not.”
He didn’t have to answer so seriously. I was just messing with him. Would it kill him to play along with my joke, for once? He’d never be popular with the ladies without a sense of humor, no matter how good-looking he was.
Koizumi grinned. I wondered how many different smiles he had.
“I change my expressions and statements to match the situation and the individual, just like anybody else does. But when I’m talking to you, it always turns into this kind of
conversation.”
It must be hard to be him, I said.
“I feel the same way, but I think I’ll stay like this for a while.” Koizumi looked off into the distance for some reason. “I hope the day comes when we’ll be friends on a perfectly equal footing, and we’ll be able to laugh about the past—just as people, when things like ‘mission’ and ‘duty’ no longer matter.” He seemed satisfied by that. “Well then, I’ll see you in the clubroom.”
He raised his hand in a sort of salute, then strolled off into the darkness, as though lazily continuing his evening walk.
Upon returning home, I wolfed down my dinner and immediately shut myself up in my room.
The first thing I did was to phone Nagato. I had to tell her that I’d moved Asahina to Tsuruya’s place. Knowing Nagato, she might well already know. Even Koizumi had figured it out, after all.
After three rings, Nagato picked up. She didn’t even bother saying hello, proof that she already knew who was calling.
“…”
“Nagato, it’s me. I’ll make this short. It’s about Asahina.”
I gave her the highlights of what Asahina had told me. Nagato listened to my explanation with her usual silence.
“Understood,” she said, without any particular regret, adding, “That is for the best.”
“Really? That’s a relief.”
“Why?”
Why? Even I had misgivings about relying on Nagato too much. And this time we’d unilaterally decided to impose upon her, then unilaterally left—it was really selfish of us.
“Needless worry,” said Nagato, her voice calm. “I can understand her position.” Then, after a short pause: “I do not wish to become like her. However, sentiment to that effect is valid.”
Valid how? I wanted to know.
“If I were in her position, I might have come to the same conclusion.”
So, uh, that meant that Nagato could imagine being in Asahina’s place, and worrying about Nagato in the way that Asahina currently was? I asked.
There was silence for a while. Then: “I think so.”
Her fine voice reached my ears. It was such a pleasant sound that I wished I would’ve turned on the phone’s recording function.
We exchanged a few more words, whereupon I hung up. It seemed that there was no need for me to worry: the alien and the time traveler had come to a mutual understanding. Probably more than either of them realized.
For some reason I grinned and looked to my side. Shamisen was sleeping on my bed. His head was on my pillow as though he were human, his breathing deep and even. Just as I was wondering whether I should shave a patch of his fur off in case Haruhi did happen to turn up, something else occurred to me.
“How long do I have to lie about Shamisen’s recuperation?”
I’d forgotten to ask. Asahina should have been able to tell me how many days I skipped club activities for, and when I’d started coming back. If I knew that much, I’d be able to set up a tentative schedule for this week. But the Asahina from a week in the future didn’t have a cell phone. If I wanted to call Asahina, I’d have to call Tsuruya, but thanks to that conversation I’d had with Koizumi, I hesitated to contact her. I didn’t know how much of what he’d said was true. Since it was Koizumi we were talking about, he might have just made up something plausible-sounding to see the look on my face. Hell, I’d rather that were the case.
I aimed the air conditioner’s remote control at the cooler, reclining back onto my bed.
Tomorrow, I’d check the contents of my shoe locker and figure out the day’s plan.
As I regarded the calico cat, whose eyes were shut as he smacked his lips, I wound up drifting off to sleep myself, only to be awakened by my sister, who’d just gotten out of the bath.
CHAPTER THREE
The next day.
“Go to the mountains. There you will see an oddly shaped rock. Move it approximately three meters west. Your Mikuru Asahina will know the place. It will be very dark after nightfall, so try to finish during the daylight.”
A glance at the contents of another envelope torn open in a bathroom stall revealed the preceding message. And just as before, a second sheet contained a crudely drawn gourd-like picture, with a label that went out of its way to say “rock.”
That clinched it. Today I’d be a member of the going-home club.
“Which is fine, I guess…”
But what was with these vague instructions? Rocks in the mountains? Which rock, in which mountains? If it was a mountain that Asahina knew about, that meant…
Plop, a pebble tumbled through my mind.
“Oh, right. The treasure hunt.”
According to (Michiru) Asahina, we’d be using our next day off school to go on a treasure hunt. That was the day after tomorrow. She’d said it was on a mountain that belonged to the Tsuruya clan. Which meant another Tsuruya appearance. Tsuruya had swallowed the story of the two Asahinas without complaint, and she would probably just smile when confronted by Haruhi and me, but at this rate I was going to become emotionally unstable myself. It would be a problem for Koizumi too—but hold on.
“So this means Haruhi’s gonna be back to her usual self soon,” I predicted as I headed to the classroom. Tsuruya would bring the treasure map and we’d put it to use the day after tomorrow—so that meant Haruhi would definitely have it in her hands either today or tomorrow. Probably tomorrow. I hadn’t gotten a whiff of excitement off of Tsuruya the previous night, after all, which meant she probably hadn’t found the map in the storehouse yet. If she had, she would’ve tried to force it on me to give to Haruhi.
“Hey, Haruhi.”
Just as I suspected. She was already in the classroom, taking a page out of Nagato’s book and running in low-energy mode as she played the part of the gloomy high school girl.
“How’s Shamisen?” she asked without looking at me, the window fogging up with her breath.
“Ah, yeah, he’s doing okay, I guess.”
“That’s good.”
She doodled a face in the white condensation on the window.
So strange. Having a regular conversation with Haruhi was rarer than seeing Nagato doing something besides reading in the clubroom. It made me even more worried—no, more like uncertain. I wondered if there were Celestials going crazy somewhere.
“What’s wrong? You’ve been so gloomy lately.”
Haruhi sniffed. “What’re you talking about? I’m the same as I always am. I’ve just got stuff on my mind, and tomorr—” She was about to continue, but cut herself off mid-sentence. “What about you? Are you coming to the clubroom today?”
Her expression made it seem like she didn’t care one way or the other, which from my perspective was the most convenient expression possible.
“Shamisen’s still pretty lonely. I can’t just leave him to my little sister, and he has to visit the vet again tomorrow.”
“Yeah, that’s probably best.”
What was strange, though, was Haruhi seemed to think it was convenient too.
“You get lonely when you get sick. Make sure to stay with him until he’s fully recovered. I want to play with him when he’s well again.”
It seemed like Haruhi thought of Shamisen as a brigade member too, in her own way. The part where she told me to take care of him while he was sick, then bring him over to play once he was better was definitely like her, anyway. I ought to just lend him to her for a week, I told her.
“I’ll think about it.” Haruhi nodded absentmindedly, her breath condensing on the window again.
Nothing makes the passage of time feel slower than sitting there wishing for class to end.
Thus, I gritted my teeth and silently prayed that the teacher wouldn’t ask me any questions, aimlessly copying down the contents of the blackboard, passing the time without remembering a single thing from class, which now that I think about it is what I usually do, realizing anew that this sort of thing was why my grades hadn’t risen one bit, though I found some
consolation in telling myself that it was all the fault of having too much SOS Brigade stuff to think about. Yes, definitely. Please ignore the fact that Taniguchi’s grades are just as bad as mine, but he’s a member of the go-home-and-do-nothing club.
Thanks to having shoved my good-for-nothing textbooks into my desk, my bag was nice and light as I picked it up and headed out of the classroom—whereupon Taniguchi (whose turn it was to clean the classroom) called out to me, a broom over his shoulder.
“Yo, Kyon.”
His eyes seemed kind of flat. I didn’t know why, but I didn’t have time to find out. Asahina was waiting for me. It was just like in Run, Melos!, with Selinuntius waiting for Melos’s return to save him from certain death. I had to make haste.
But Taniguchi blocked my way, pointing his broom’s handle at me.
“I envy you, Kyon.”
There was a note of bitterness in his voice. What could he possibly envy? I could only think of about a dozen things, I told him.
“That many? No, there are three, at best,” replied Taniguchi irritably. He sighed.
I half wondered whether Haruhi’s melancholy had gone airborne and infected Taniguchi.
“Oh, about Taniguchi—” Kunikida’s face popped out, and he began to explain, gesturing with a dustpan he held. “Turns out he and his girlfriend just split up. So that’s why he’s down. Guess it makes sense.”
“That’s too bad,” I said, half smiling as I patted Taniguchi’s back. I guess the girlfriend in question must have been the one he’d gotten just before Christmas. I’ll bet he felt good and sorry for me, since my own Christmas Eve had been spent enjoying a Haruhi Hot Pot Special.
“Ha ha. With that face, you must’ve been the one who got dumped. I see how it is.”
“Shut up,” he said. The friend I should’ve had sympathy for pretended to brandish his broom, then held it limply at his side. “Just go home already. I’ve gotta clean the classroom and you’re in the way.”
The Intrigues of Haruhi Suzumiya Page 10
