Yet anyone who genuinely believes that is a fool, and I had no intention of being a fool. If I was smiling, I had a reason for it. Yes, indeed—and I realized what it was.
I’d already dealt with a series of incredible events, and more seemed likely to come my way—yet I was not even slightly disturbed. Whoever or whatever might come, I didn’t care.
I wasn’t the least bit afraid of them. If they were going to come, bring it on. I’d face anything. But I wouldn’t be alone. When the time came, I’d have Nagato beside me, and Koizumi, and Asahina. In front of me might be Haruhi herself, standing tall; perhaps Tsuruya would be behind me, giggling away. If the mysterious forces of the universe wanted to face all that—then let them come! Be they foe, ally, neutral party, or sharer of some common goal—I didn’t care.
I put the lid back on the lunch box that Haruhi returned to me, then wrapped it in a napkin before putting it in my bag.
I might have looked weird, but Haruhi’s expression as she regarded me was still weirder. Did I really look that strong?
“Hey, Haruhi.”
“What?” Haruhi furrowed her brow.
“You better take care of the SOS Brigade.”
Haruhi’s mouth hung open for a moment. “Of course I will.” The corners of her eyes and mouth curled up in her characteristic smile as she shouted, “I mean, it’s my brigade, after all!”
After school, I had to arrange for the two Asahinas to switch places, but that wasn’t all I had to do—there was still Ha-ruhi’s plan. It wasn’t that I’d forgotten; Haruhi just hadn’t told me she’d planned to raise such a commotion.
I’d been informed that Haruhi would be holding a lottery, with Asahina presenting the prize while wearing a shrine maiden outfit. What I hadn’t realized was that the lottery prize would be this:
“The SOS Brigade presents: Mikuru Asahina’s Handmade Belated Valentine’s Day Chocolate Amidakuji! Five hundred yen to enter!”
… proclaimed Haruhi, wielding a megaphone as I cursed my naiveté at not anticipating this eventuality.
For the Mikuru Asahina’s Handmade Belated Valentine’s Day Chocolate Amidakuji, we wound up needing a huge amount of paper for the entries, and even with an entry cost of five hundred yen, people were fighting with one another to pay up. It looked like we’d reach five digits of earnings. If it had been the chocolate cake she’d given me, I never would’ve let it near this accursed market, but Asahina seemed to have made one extra piece in addition to what she’d made for Koizumi and me.
“Actually, it was mostly Nagato who made it…” said Asahina apologetically. The shrine maiden costume she’d been forced to wear was so perfect that if she were teleported to a shrine, she would fit right in. Haruhi had gotten the costume somewhere, and the instant homeroom was over she dragged Asahina off to the clubroom and forced her to change into it. It looked like she took what I said at Setsubun quite seriously.
At Haruhi’s behest, Koizumi and I brought the table down from the clubroom into the courtyard while Haruhi ran around with the megaphone. Nagato handled cashier duties.
Male students started to swarm the courtyard like zombies in search of fresh meat, fomenting a terrible atmosphere that made you wonder where this country was headed. I saw Kunikida and Taniguchi in the crowd, and I began to worry for the future of my classmates.
Haruhi gave instructions to the many male and few female students in the crowd. “The cashier is this way! Line up in front of Yuki! Once you’ve paid your five hundred yen, you’ll receive a numbered ticket. Take it to Koizumi, and he’ll write it in whatever slot you want. You can draw one horizontal line, wherever you like!”
Nagato was handling the line quite efficiently, and beside her Koizumi was frantically drawing vertical lines on B4 copier paper. It looked like entries would reach three digits, which meant two or three sheets of paper weren’t going to be close to enough.
As the number of sheets Koizumi taped together increased, so, too, did the number of times I checked my watch. This was very, very bad. I wasn’t going to make it in time.
(Michiru) Asahina would be getting back at four sixteen. I had to send this Asahina back in time by four fifteen, and I’d need time to get her changed out of her shrine maiden outfit before.
It had just passed four o’clock, and Nagato and Koizumi still hadn’t finished taking the entries and setting up the grid.
Asahina stood and held the decoratively wrapped prize, her smile looking a bit forced for a mascot. It was too chilly to be dressed as a shrine maiden, but this really wasn’t the time to be thinking about details like that. As I was mentally calculating how long it would take her to get out of this outfit and into her school uniform, the amidakuji setup was finally completed. As I expected, if you’d rolled up the series of papers, you’d have a decent-size scroll.
Haruhi casually picked up a pen and chose one of the dozens of vertical lines, at the bottom of which she drew a heart. Then as an afterthought, she added several more horizontal bars, just to mix things up.
“Now, then! Whoever reaches this heart will receive Asahina’s chocolate! The winner will surely rejoice! We’ll start from… the right side!”
If she’d only start from the heart mark and work backward, this could all be done in one go. Why did she have to waste so much time? I understood her desire to rile up the audience by gradually building tension, but it was incredibly inconvenient for me.
Haruhi had no inkling of my impatience; she set a CD player down on the table and hit the play button. An energetic classical theme began to fill the space. It was the “Infernal Galop” from Orpheus in the Underworld. What was this supposed to be, sports day?
I’d have to resort to my trump card. Fortunately, I was sitting next to the goddess of lotteries.
“Sorry, Nagato.” Pretending to look at the pile of bills and coins collecting in the rice cracker tin, I whispered into the ear of the cashier sitting motionless in a folding chair. “I need this to be over after a single draw. There’s no time.”
“…”
Nagato was gazing at the shrine maiden, who shivered from a combination of cold and nervousness. Her eyes moved to regard me, and then without so much as a word, she stood. Just before Haruhi began tracing lines down with a red pen, Nagato reached her hand out and added a single horizontal segment.
Ten minutes later, I had Asahina’s hand in mine and was running with her to the clubroom.
“W-wah—Kyon, wait…! It hurts! Wh-what’s the matter?” she cried as I dragged her to keep up with me, but I didn’t have time to be considerate. There were barely five minutes left.
“I’ll explain later. Right now, we have to hurry.”
I carried my petite schoolmate up the stairs three steps at a time.
As far as the amidakuji went, Nagato made my wish come true. The very first student won, which left both Haruhi and the rest of the onlookers feeling let down—but hey, somebody had to win. Haruhi was determined to keep the energy level high, so she switched the background music to “See the Conquering Hero Comes,” dragging the student with the winning ticket (number 56) up to stand in front of Asahina. Incidentally, the winner was a curly-haired freshman girl, whose embarrassed fidgeting left an impression on me. Amid the strangely warm atmosphere, Asahina awkwardly handed the prize to the girl, then shook hands with her at Haruhi’s behest, at which point everybody inexplicably applauded. I endured it, watching Haruhi produce a Polaroid camera from somewhere and take a snapshot of the two girls, but that was my limit.
I took Asahina’s hand without waiting for discussion, and I dragged her off before I’d even had time to think of an excuse. We reached the clubroom.
“Eeek, um… what is… uh, Kyon…?”
Asahina’s suspicion was understandable. I quickly pulled her into the room.
“Hurry, change!” Her uniform was hanging on the clothes rack; I thrust it at her. “You’ve got three minutes! Hurry!”
I don’t know if I was intense or simpl
y scary, but either way Asahina nodded but made no move to actually change her clothes. I was just about ready to start removing them myself, when she pointed at the door with a pale fingertip.
“Er…”
“What?!”
“Please wait outside!”
I was out in a single second. I stood in front of the door, glaring at my watch. Twelve minutes, thirty-three seconds.
“Asahina, are you done?”
“… Wait, please!”
There was no time to allow my imagination to run wild with the sounds of rustling fabric. I was anxious enough just worrying about Haruhi following me back to the clubroom.
“Asahina!”
“Just a bit more…”
It was four fourteen. I couldn’t wait any longer. I barged back into the room.
“Wah, Kyon! I’m not—Kyon, wha—?”
Asahina froze, her hands at the fastener of her school uniform’s blouse. The red trousers and white jacket of her shrine maiden costume were scattered on the floor—proof that she really had been hurrying. I’d pick them up later.
I grabbed both of her shoulders and pushed her against the door of the broom closet.
“Eek, K-Kyo—”
I heard her cries as I pushed her recklessly back, which wasn’t a great idea. Her foot slipped, and the force of my pushing made me push her right over, and I fell onto her.
“Wha—! No, don’t—”
What the hell was I doing? There was no time to gaze at her weakly shaking head as she was laid out on the floor. I picked up the school-uniformed girl, slammed the steel door of the broom closet open, and shoved her inside.
“Asahina, listen to me. Listen very carefully. Right now, you must travel eight days back in time. Do you understand? Just do it.”
Asahina was stunned, tears still in the corners of her eyes. “… B-but, without authorization—”
“Just do it! Right now!”
“Eight days back? Um, what time?”
Crap, I had to remember. What time had it been? What had Asahina said? Kyon, you told me to go eight days back, to—
“Three forty-five PM. And hurry!”
“O-okay… huh?” Asahina looked up at me like a small, frightened animal, then placed one hand to her head. “I haven’t even made the request yet, and authorization’s already come. Space-time coordinates… eight days ago, February seventh, three forty-five PM… to right here? Wha—top priority code…?”
“You’ll understand when you get there. I’ll be waiting for you. I’ll take care of you somehow. And tell him I said hi.”
Ten seconds until four fifteen.
I gave the shocked Asahina a nod as I closed the broom closet’s door. I heard no breathing from within the steel enclosure.
There’s an old saying: what goes around, comes around. If you do something for somebody else, eventually it will come back around to you—and for better or for worse, I’d never felt the truth of that statement more than I did at that moment. The person responsible for my panicked state at this moment was none other than myself, who two days earlier had given Asahina the return time of four sixteen PM. When I’d chosen that time, I never imagined that I’d be cutting things so close. Either way, it was my own fault.
“Asahina?”
I spoke to the closet. There was no answer. I knew it was pointless. I couldn’t give any warnings to my past self. I knew, because I hadn’t myself heard any such warnings, and Asahina hadn’t said anything about them to me. I wanted to say something, but I was out of time.
My watch’s display now indicated three seconds past four fifteen.
It was extremely quiet. All I could hear was the sound of the breeze and the noise that rode in on it, that of the chattering in the courtyard. Were they still at it out there?
I stood in front of the broom closet and continued to wait.
Clunk—
That wasn’t the sound, exactly, but there was a sound from within the closet. Something that was not a broom.
I couldn’t hear breathing, but I sensed someone. At exactly four sixteen, the plain old steel closet felt somehow more like a piece of antique furniture.
I opened the door and said the line I’d prepared especially for the occasion.
“Welcome home, Asahina.”
She was wearing the long coat and shawl I hadn’t seen in two days—the clothes she’d borrowed from Tsuruya.
“Oh… um…”
Asahina looked down, bashful, then slowly lifted her face back up. Her crystal eyes hesitantly rose to meet mine, then stopped. Finally her faintly smiling lips bloomed into a voice.
“I’m back.”
It would have been nice to savor the moment for a while, but the circumstances Asahina and I found ourselves in would not allow that. I had to have her change out of the street clothes she was wearing, but I hadn’t gotten her school uniform back from Tsuruya yet.
With no other option, I wound up having Asahina change back into her shrine maiden clothing, as I stood in the hall, slumped against the clubroom door.
Haruhi and the others were sure taking their sweet time. It was convenient for me, sure, but I worried that it was a little too convenient. Meanwhile, along came a person carrying a paper bag in her hand, a person whose arrival would have saved me some trouble if it had been a bit sooner.
“Yoo-hoo! Kyon, apologies! Here, I got Mikuru’s uniform and her school shoes. I was gonna give ’em to you during lunch, but I forgot.” Tsuruya closed the distance between us with a few steps. “So! Haru-nyan and the others are up to something in the courtyard, but where’s Mikuru?”
She grinned as I pointed wordlessly at the clubroom door, then turned the doorknob as though she were casually opening her own refrigerator.
“Heya, Mikuru! Getting changed? Hey, perfect timing. I’ll just take those clothes home with me!” Tsuruya winked at me, then went into the room. Staring discreetly at the opposite wall in the hallway, I couldn’t see into the room, but it was still easy for me to imagine Asahina’s surprised face. I’d seen it many times before, after all.
“Here, lemme help. Time to change, time to change! Was today free shrine maiden day or something?”
I sat down in the hallway, listening to Asahina’s frantic cries and Tsuruya’s childish laughter. Tsuruya probably didn’t care why Asahina was wearing the clothes Tsuruya had supposedly lent to her long-lost sister. Both she and I knew that trying to explain it was pointless. Tsuruya’s greatness lay in the fact that she wasn’t worried about it. I doubted I would ever reach her level in my lifetime.
I smiled ruefully, just as Haruhi returned with Nagato and Koizumi in tow, the latter carrying the folding table on his back. She strode toward me, proudly rattling the tin full of money, as though she were a fisherman and it was her big haul.
“Why’d you drag Mikuru away? We got booed!”
I’d been afraid she would catch a cold if she were outside in those flimsy clothes any longer, I told her. Besides, it was a waste not to charge at least five hundred yen for the aesthetic appeal of that costume.
“Yeah, good point. I see what you’re saying. We’ve gotta go all out in times like this. People will stop appreciating us, otherwise,” Haruhi readily agreed. Perhaps she’d already started the second phase of her plan. “Anyway, Kyon, I was really surprised! Yuki started giving out consolation prizes!” She patted the girl on her slender shoulders. “You know those bargain-size bags of chocolates? The kind with the letters of the alphabet and stuff on ’em? Yuki passed one out to everybody who lost the game! I was really surprised she did that kind of preparation. Yuki, you were really thinking ahead. But it’s a good idea. We’ll have a consolation prize next time we do something like this, and it’ll definitely loosen people’s wallets!”
I was sure they only wanted to get close to Nagato, but I was deeply moved by her quick thinking. She’d bought me time that I’d desperately needed.
“…”
Nagato moved slightly, as though
indicating that she wanted to get inside the room and start reading. It was an expression only I could read.
Just then, the door opened from the inside.
“Oh, Tsuruya, you’re here. What’s up with those clothes?”
“Heya, Haru-nyan! I lent these to Mikuru—just comin’ to get them back, so I won’t get in your way!” Tsuruya draped the coat over her shoulder, putting the remaining clothes in the bag and spinning a shoe around on the tip of her finger. “See ya, Haru-nyan!”
“Sure, see you later, Tsuruya.”
After exchanging a high five with Haruhi, Tsuruya disappeared down the hallway, having not even once so much as indicated that anything strange was going on—as though it were a totally ordinary day. I’d never be that good of an actor. She was a person to be reckoned with. The Tsuruya clan would prosper so long as she was around.
“…”
Nagato drifted into the room, artlessly taking a book down from the shelf, opening a folding chair, and immediately sitting down to read.
Watching out of the corner of her eye as I helped Koizumi bring the table in, Haruhi didn’t seem to notice that Asahina, in her shrine maiden outfit, was looking a bit nostalgic. “Mikuru, next time you buy tea, go ahead and get the expensive stuff. Our war chest is pretty full now, thanks to you! Be happy, Mikuru! These grades mean I’m promoting you to second lieutenant brigade chief!”
Watching Haruhi sit at the brigade chief’s desk looking immensely pleased with herself, I secured a seat at the edge of the table and collapsed on it, exhausted.
I was seriously tired. I now understood all too well what it was like to tamper with time in order to make events match up. Even if I’d wanted to blame someone, I’d been the one to do it all, so the responsibility target would be painted squarely on me. Were things always this hard for time travelers? If so, I’d have to be careful not to tell Asahina anything for a while. She was carrying a heavy psychological load, and she might roll into a ball like a pill bug at the slightest prod.
The Intrigues of Haruhi Suzumiya Page 26
