On the second sheet, there was a random address that was some distance away, along with a picture of what seemed to be the storage device. It was reminiscent of a memory stick, but I couldn’t be sure. I mean, it wasn’t a great picture, to be honest.
Next, #4:
“In the row of sakura trees that line the river, there is a bench that you and Asahina should know well. On Sunday, go there by 10:45 AM, and by 10:50 AM, throw a turtle into the river. Any species is fine. A smaller turtle will be more convenient.”
This note also had a second sheet. On it was a cute little illustration of a turtle, with a speech bubble saying, “Take good care of me!”
Both letters had the same postscript: “P.S. Bring Mikuru Asahina and no one else with you,” followed by a single line of the symbols only she could read.
Asahina read the letters with a serious face, and after finishing the second one, she sighed. “I just don’t understand. A turtle…?”
It would’ve been stranger if she had understood why now, in the middle of freezing winter, we were throwing a turtle into the river. The only part I understood was the bench the second letter referred to—it was the same bench on which, last year, Asahina had confessed her true identity as a time traveler to me.
“But we must do it.” Asahina traced her finger over the code on the letter, looking up with resolve. “We may not understand the reasons yet, but there is definitely a purpose for all of this. Otherwise…”
Asahina’s eyes trembled in sadness for a moment.
I could guess what she was thinking. Otherwise—there wasn’t any purpose in her being here. And even less purpose for there being two of her.
I suddenly wanted to hug her close, but I didn’t. I’d been warned off by Tsuruya, for one thing. And I couldn’t just ignore my conscience.
“Anyway, Asahina.” I attempted an attitude adjustment. “You said we were on city patrol Saturday and Sunday, right? Doesn’t that conflict with these directions?”
The Saturday directions were vague, only saying “by dusk,” but about Sunday it was very clear: ten forty-five AM. It would be difficult for any SOS Brigade member to pull that off—and I couldn’t just sneak off alone either.
“Did you make some kind of excuse for being absent?” I asked.
“No. You were there, Kyon,” said Asahina, returning the letters to their envelopes like they were precious things. “But we drew straws to split up into groups, like we always do. I was thinking about it before… on Saturday morning I was with Suzumiya and Nagato, and you were with Koizumi, and then in the afternoon it was Suzumiya, Koizumi, and me, and you were with Nagato…” Asahina nodded slightly as though confirming the contents of her memory. “Yes, I’m sure. Then on Sunday morning it was Suzumiya, Koizumi, and me together, and you and Nagato. Then in the afternoon we were dismissed… wait, what?”
She seemed to realize something mid-sentence—probably the same thing I’d realized myself.
That was an awfully convenient coincidence.
For me to be able to carry out these instructions with this Asahina, I would need to be paired up with Nagato. With five people, one of the groups was always going to be a pair, so what were the odds of that pair being the same two people, in two tries out of three? I wasn’t going to bother doing the math, but I was sure they were pretty low.
And Nagato already knew the situation. I was sure that rigging the outcome of the straw-drawing would be child’s play for her, even now. She’d do it if I asked. And this was the outcome.
“I wonder,” said Asahina, uncertain. “But it has to go the way I remember, doesn’t it? Did Nagato cooperate with us?”
It was a troubling thought. The pairings in Asahina’s memory were fixed. Her memories weren’t even a week old, so they had to be correct. So would I naturally be paired up with Nagato, or did we need to rig it?
I didn’t agonize over it for very long.
“We’ll get Nagato to help,” I said. “I know it feels like cheating, but we’ll be in real trouble if things don’t work out properly. She’ll understand.”
“I agree,” said Asahina readily. “You seemed a little off during the patrol, so that must have been it—I think it was because you asked Nagato to fix the lottery.”
So how was I supposed to look? “Off?” What did that mean? I asked.
“That’s… um… well, just kinda off,” Asahina mumbled. It would’ve been nice if she could’ve given me a concrete example of the offness, I told her.
“I’m sorry; I don’t know how to explain it…”
She didn’t have to apologize, I said—it wasn’t like it was that important.
“But… oh, right. On Sunday, when Suzumiya, Koizumi, and I were at the bookstore—” Asahina put her finger to her head, as though having remembered something. “Suzumiya got a prank call on her phone.”
Who from? I asked.
“From you.”
Me? I would go to the trouble of prank-calling Haruhi now, of all times?
“Yes, that’s what she said. She said she got a weird phone call from you. That your joke wasn’t funny at all. Then she hung up right away. I think it might have been right around eleven, maybe?”
So now I had another mysterious prediction I had to fulfill. After I threw the turtle into the river, apparently I had to call up Haruhi and tell her a bad joke.
“Did she say anything about what I said?”
“No, not to me. But then at lunch when we all met back up, you apologized to her.”
That went beyond mysterious and right on into absurd. Why the hell would I apologize to her? I asked.
“You said you were sorry for telling a bad joke.”
More absurdity. Me, bowing my head in a sincere apology to Haruhi? Let’s just say it didn’t happen very often.
When I pressed for more information, Asahina just said she didn’t know. My exchange with Haruhi had apparently only involved a couple of statements before it was over and we’d moved on to the next subject.
The more I knew about my future actions, the less sense they made. If anybody could interpret them, they were welcome to try. I’d given up, myself.
“Anyway, about that turtle,” I said, holding up the #4 envelope. “We’re not going to just find a turtle wandering around this time of year, so we’re going to have to find one ahead of time.”
I didn’t have the heart to try to just dig up a hibernating turtle. For one thing, come Sunday I would have done plenty of digging already, thanks to the treasure hunt. Wait—don’t tell me the punch line of all this was that we would dig up a turtle while searching for treasure.
“No, we didn’t find treasure or a turtle.”
Right. I’d already heard that our so-called treasure hunt would amount to no more than a hiking trip. Either way, I couldn’t imagine that we’d dig up anything lucky. “I guess it can’t be helped. We’ll have to buy one.”
There was a home improvement store in the neighborhood that had a pet corner. I’d go there to buy boxes of canned food for Shamisen, and they also had an aquarium with a bunch of pond turtles moseying around. That was the ticket. I’d pick one up on my way home. I couldn’t very well bring it along on Sunday’s SOS Brigade activities, so I’d leave it in the care of this Asahina.
The plans were really piling up. So much for enjoying a nice, relaxing weekend.
Asahina and I worked out plans for where we’d meet and what we’d do on Saturday, whereupon I stood up.
She saw me to the apartment’s front door; upon opening it, I saw a cold-looking Tsuruya, who’d changed from her school uniform into regular clothes.
“Well, well, well, you two certainly took your time! Are you sure you didn’t do anything, Kyon?”
Her grinning face was suspicious. I wondered if she’d sneaked a peek through the door’s crack. Good thing I hadn’t actually done anything. Getting the crap beaten out of me by a nice upperclassman like Tsuruya wasn’t my idea of a good time.
I made some vag
ue excuses and took my leave of the Tsuruya estate, the image of Asahina’s reddening cheeks seared into my retinas.
CHAPTER FOUR
I was awakened the next morning by my little sister, who came in to shut off the alarm clock that was ringing next to my pillow.
“That sure is noisy, isn’t it, Shami?”
Shamisen was curled into a ball at the foot of my bed; my sister picked the furball up, then shoved him up against my nose.
“Are you gonna have breakfast? Hmm?” Her tone-deaf sing-song voice penetrated my head way more sharply than the alarm.
“Yeah.”
My sister was moving Shamisen’s paws around like he was a puppet; I brushed them aside and sat up, taking Shamisen out of my sister’s arms and putting him on the floor. The cat sniffed in irritation, then climbed back up on my bed.
As I was getting dressed, my sister started pinching Shamisen’s furry cheeks, then escalated to grabbing at his angrily twitching tail. Finally he let out a “Nrryaaow” of protest and ran out of the room, my sister chasing closely behind him. I wished they wouldn’t start fighting in my room first thing in the morning—although they had gotten me out of bed, I had to admit.
I was on my way to the bathroom when I encountered them again, my sister this time having draped Shamisen around the back of her neck—“Kitty scarf!”—but I ignored them entirely.
I glared at my tense face in the bathroom mirror as I brushed my teeth, wondering just what holiday it was today—not that it mattered. I cursed the cold wind that whistled by outside and wondered when spring would finally get here. I wished I could keep being a freshman whose face nobody knew—without repeating a year, that is—but I was sick of the cold weather. Both treasure-hunting and random city excursions would’ve been a lot more inviting in a warmer season, but it was February. Freakin’ February!
But no matter the month, once Haruhi said we were doing something, we were doing it, one way or another. We were just lucky she hadn’t decided she wanted to salvage an ancient shipwreck at the bottom of the ocean. Had to stay positive.
Once I finished eating breakfast, I put on a jacket, given that I would be going hiking soon, then headed out for the local train station on foot. I didn’t bring my bike, since the only way to get to Tsuruya’s mountain from the station was to take a bus. It would’ve been faster if we’d just met up at the mountain, and the only reason we were meeting up at the station was out of a sense of tradition that wasn’t even worth mocking.
I buried my face in my muffler; the north wind was so bad it felt like it had a bet with the sun it was determined not to lose. I wasn’t walking particularly quickly, but this wasn’t because I’d left myself plenty of time. No, rather it was that no matter how punctual I was, I’d still be the last to arrive. This was another stupid tradition. There’d only been that one time when I’d gotten to wait for somebody else.
It was about five minutes to nine when I arrived at the station, where I found all the familiar faces of the SOS Brigade already waiting.
Haruhi wore an expression that looked like it had been handed down by Old Man Winter’s grouchy boss. “Why are you always the late one, huh? Everybody else was already waiting for me when I got here. Don’t you feel bad, making your brigade chief wait?”
Oh, Haruhi was definitely the one who made me feel bad. For one thing, the reason the other three members arrived before she did was to make her treat everybody, and the only reason she didn’t have to was because of me. So I wished she’d feel a little bad, for once, I told her.
“What’re you talking about? You’re the one who was late,” said Haruhi, grinning. “What’s your problem? You seem like you’re worried about something. Is something up?”
It wasn’t just “something.” We finally get a holiday, but here we are out in the freezing cold, looking for treasure we’re never gonna find, so I was just lamenting my own misfortune, I said.
“Well, cheer up! Or did Shamisen’s sickness come back?”
“No,” I said, tucking my chin down and looking sideways. “It’s just cold.”
Haruhi chuckled and held her hands out, as though explaining something she thought was obvious. “You’ve just gotta adapt to the environment. So today, that means switching to winter mountain-climbing mode. Easy, right?”
I wasn’t a plastic model, so I couldn’t just swap out parts like that. Humans didn’t have mode switches anywhere on them—although I couldn’t be sure about the all-weather Haruhi.
While Haruhi and I were exchanging our morning greetings, the other three members stood there in observation mode.
Koizumi, Asahina, and Nagato were dressed in casual, basic, and natural outfits, respectively. Nagato’s natural look consisted of a duffle coat over her school uniform, and while there was nothing to say about what part of that was suitable for hiking, I suddenly had the random thought that if I were to take Nagato over to Tsuruya’s place and leave her there, Tsuruya would probably dress her up in her hand-me-downs. I’d have to give that a try sometime.
I wanted to ask Koizumi just what catalog he’d jumped out of; his winter jacket looked so sharp on him that you could’ve swapped him out for a department store mannequin—if you left out the part where he was holding two heavy-duty shovels.
Asahina wore an inoffensive pair of pants along with an inoffensive down jacket. It occurred to me that outside of her school uniform, I’d never seen Asahina wear the same outfit twice.
“I made lunches for everyone.” Maybe because she’d totally gotten in the picnicking spirit, Asahina’s face was 100 percent charming as she held a large basket. I wanted to pretend I’d come along just to eat her homemade lunch.
And yet it was hard to believe that this Asahina would be half ordered by me to travel into the past. Had the other Asahina really been telling the truth?
“Is something wrong?” Asahina looked up at me, her face uncertain.
“No, no,” I answered casually. “I was just thinking I’m looking forward to lunchtime.”
“Don’t get too excited about it, please. I really don’t know if it will be tasty or not…”
Her shyness was adorable, but my admiration was interrupted by the usual suspect.
“Lunches are well and good,” said Haruhi, breaking into my field of vision, “but don’t forget today’s objective. We’re not here to play around. This is a treasure hunt! We’re not taking a lunch break until we’ve put in enough effort to deserve one!”
As Haruhi spoke, her smile was like the sun outshining the north wind or a child just about to go out and play. I wanted to tell her she needed to keep that smile on ready alert—but I stopped myself.
When I thought about it, I realized that I’d stopped myself because that was Haruhi’s usual expression. I’d been deceived by the bad mood she’d been in since the beginning of February. As to why I felt deceived—I had no idea.
For once, the brigade didn’t proceed to make a trip to the café at my expense. The trip wasn’t canceled, though—just postponed. Haruhi informed me of this as she stood at the bus stop rotary in front of the train station, adding that at the next brigade function, I’d be treating everybody no matter who was the last to arrive.
Perhaps she was worried that if we didn’t start looking for treasure immediately, somebody would beat us to it. Whatever the reason, she wanted to get to the mountain as soon as possible. Holding the shovel I’d been handed, I boarded the mountain-bound bus, standing beside Koizumi, who held on to a hanging strap. The two of us definitely stood out, holding shovels like that, but it couldn’t be helped. The single saving grace was the fact that there weren’t many passengers bound for the mountains that day.
We rattled around the bus for about half an hour. At our stop, Haruhi ordered us off the bus, and we found ourselves so surrounded by nature that the busy train station seemed like a dream. It was hard to believe that we were still in the same city, but thanks to the many field trips I’d taken to this area in elementary and middle
school, I was used to the scenery and wasn’t actually all that surprised. If we headed north from here, we really would be climbing a mountain. Fortunately, Tsuruya’s family’s mountain was smaller than that, although it was still surprising that such a place was someone’s private property. That explained why I’d never climbed this particular mountain, even during a field trip.
“Seems like it’ll be easier to climb from this side,” said Haruhi, map in hand as she led the way. I exhaled white vapor as I looked up at the peak of Mt. Tsuruya—okay, so I didn’t know its real name, but let’s stick with Mt. Tsuruya.
We were exactly opposite the face I’d climbed the day before yesterday with Asahina. As to which route was the “back way,” it seemed like my earlier path was the likely candidate for that. The way Haruhi was now following was a narrow path that zigzagged from the base of the mountain up to the summit. It would make for an easier hike. Right…?
“Kyon, this is no time to be staring up at the sky! Hurry up and walk!”
Haruhi’s voice rang out, and I started to move my feet. Something had been nagging at me, but it now faded away. “I know, I know.”
I hefted the shovel and caught back up to the brigade. Aside from Haruhi, who was acting like a rabbit suddenly returning to the forest, there was Asahina, who seemed just like an elementary school student on a hiking field trip; Nagato, who was exactly the same as she always was; and Koizumi, wearing a vaguely chagrined smile. I had major doubts as to how many of these individuals were actually serious about finding treasure. I knew for a fact I wasn’t serious, which explained my lack of energy. The fact that we’d dig and find nothing was already written in the personalized future schedule I’d gotten from (Michiru) Asahina. Under normal circumstances, since this was Haruhi we were talking about, there was every possibility we’d actually dig up treasure, but Asahina would never tell a stupid lie about the past, so it was certain that we weren’t going to find the secret treasure of Tsuruya’s ancestor.
The Intrigues of Haruhi Suzumiya Page 14
