The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

by Nagaru Tanigawa

“I see that it has begun. Please look behind you.”

  I looked.

  I could see, standing far in the distance between skyscrapers, a shining blue giant.

  It was a head taller than a thirty-story commercial building. It looked like its body was glowing from within. Was its slim, dull cobalt-blue body made from some kind of irradiant substance? It had no distinct outline. And nothing you could consider facial features. The places where eyes and mouth would go appeared darker, but the rest of the face was completely blank.

  What is that?

  The giant raised and shook one arm like it was waving before bringing it down like a hatchet.

  It smashed a nearby building in half as it waved its arm. Debris from the concrete and reinforcing bars fell in slow motion and rained down upon the asphalt below with a thunderous roar.

  “We believe this to be the manifestation of Suzumiya’s irritation. It seems that when the pent-up negative feelings in her pass a certain point, these giants appear and start wrecking their surroundings to relieve her stress. Of course, we can’t allow them to run loose in the real world as it would turn into a huge disaster. That is why closed space is created and the destruction only transpires within. Quite a rational method, don’t you think?”

  Every time the shining blue giant waved an arm, a building would split in half and collapse. The giant would step forward, crushing what was left of the building. I could hear the dull sound of structures being crushed, but oddly enough, I couldn’t hear the footsteps of the giant.

  “The laws of physics dictate that the legs of a humanoid of such proportions would be unable to support its own weight. The giant is behaving like it is weightless. Its ability to destroy buildings would suggest that it has mass but it would appear that it is not bound by logic. Mobilizing an army wouldn’t be enough to stop it.”

  “So you just let it rampage around?”

  “No. That is why I am here. Please watch.”

  Koizumi pointed his finger at the giant. I squinted. A number of red dots that hadn’t been there before were circling around the creature. Compared to the blue giant, who could probably touch the clouds with its skyscraper-level height, the tiny spherical red lights looked like sesame seeds. I counted up to five of them, but they moved so fast that my eyes couldn’t keep up. The red dots, orbiting the giant-like satellites, looked like they were trying to obstruct its path.

  “My colleagues. Like myself, they were granted power by Suzumiya. We are giant hunters.”

  The specks of red light skillfully evaded the waving arms of the blue giant impassively wrecking the city. They then abruptly altered their course and charged at the giant’s body, which seemed like it was made of vapor. They easily penetrated it.

  But the giant apparently paid no attention to the red spheres flying around its face. It ignored their attacks and, almost dutifully, swung its arm down in a karate chop to smash a department store.

  Even when the numerous red lights charged together, the giant didn’t even flinch. The red lights were so fast that they resembled a cluster of lasers penetrating the giant’s body. From this far away, I had absolutely no idea how much damage it had taken. I didn’t see a single hole on its body.

  “I must join them.”

  Koizumi’s body began glowing red. This would be what you call an aura of visible light. Koizumi’s glowing body was eventually engulfed in a sphere of red light. What was before me was no longer human, just a big ball of light.

  This is just ridiculous, man.

  The sphere of red light softly floated up. It shook left and right two to three times as if waving, before it took off so fast there weren’t even any afterimages and flew straight for the giant.

  Since the swarm of red lights Koizumi joined never stood still for a second, I couldn’t bring myself to count them, but I doubt their number reached double digits. And their valiant use of their bodies to attack merely served to carry them through and didn’t seem to have any actual effect. At least, that’s my opinion as an observer. But then, one of the red spheres approached the blue giant’s arm, attached itself near the elbow, and circled it once.

  And with a whoosh, the giant’s arm was severed near its elbow. The arm, now without an owner, fell to the ground. At least that’s what I expected, but then the blue light sparkled like a mosaic. The arm began to thin and melted like a snowflake bathing in sunlight. Blue vaporous smoke began slowly dripping from the severed elbow. Was that the giant’s blood? The scene had definitely entered the realm of fantasy.

  The red spheres switched from head-on to piecemeal attacks. They gathered around the giant the way fleas would swarm around a dog and began hacking away at the blue creature. Red lines slashed across the giant’s face as its head slid off. Its shoulders collapsed, and before long, its upper torso turned into some kind of weird-looking lump. The severed parts turned to mosaics before disappearing.

  Since the blue light was standing in an area of deserted land without anything serving as cover, I was able to observe the entire sequence of events. Once the giant had lost over half of its body, it broke down. It disintegrated into specks smaller than dust. Only the piles of debris remained.

  The red dots circling above waited until they were sure it was over before scattering in all directions. Over half of them immediately disappeared out of sight, but one came flying straight toward me. It made a soft landing on the rooftop, went from police-siren red to a shade more akin to a space heater, and began dimming. Once the glow had vanished, all that remained was Koizumi brushing his hair pompously with a smile on his face.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

  He wasn’t even short of breath.

  “There is one last sight for you to see.”

  He pointed to the sky. I wondered what else there could possibly be as I looked up at the dark gray sky, and then I saw it.

  There was a crack in the sky near where I had first seen the giant. It looked like a hatching chick trying to break out of its egg. The crack began extending in the shape of a spider web.

  “Once the blue monster is defeated, the closed space is destroyed. It’s quite the spectacle.”

  While Koizumi was finishing or not finishing his explanation, the cracks covered the entire world. It looked like someone had covered the sky with a huge metal sieve and forgotten about it. The spaces in between the cracks grew smaller and eventually became little more than black curves.

  Crash!

  There wasn’t an audible sound. But I could feel the sound of glass shattering inside my head. A spot of light appeared at the zenith and instantly began widening in a circle. I thought it was raining light, but I was mistaken. It was more like one of those retractable roofs on a dome stadium opening in mere seconds. Except with the entire stadium opening, not just the roof.

  Piercing noise rang through my eardrums, and I reflexively covered my ears. But that was just a hallucination after having spent time in a silent world. It was the sound of the hustle and bustle of everyday life.

  The world had regained its former state.

  The crumbled skyscrapers, gray sky, and flying red lights were nowhere to be found. The road was covered with cars and people again. The familiar orange light of the sun shone between buildings and cast long shadows on all objects blessed by its warmth.

  There was a gentle breeze.

  “Do you understand now?” Koizumi asked once we were safely in the taxi, which, with unbelievable timing, had pulled up before us after we left the multipurpose building. The driver looked familiar.

  “Nope,” I responded. I meant it.

  “Thought you would say that,” came Koizumi’s cheerful response. “Those blue monsters—we call them Celestials—are, as I already mentioned, linked to Suzumiya’s emotional state. As are we in the Agency. Only when closed space is created, when Celestials are created, am I able to use my paranormal powers. And those powers can only be used within closed space. For instance, I currently have no power.”

  I
silently stared at the back of the driver’s head.

  “It is unknown why we are the only ones with such powers, but I would assume that any person would have sufficed. It was like winning the lottery. The probability is extremely low, but someone is bound to win. They just happened to have called my number.

  “An unfortunate tale,” Koizumi finished with an ironic smile on his face. I kept my mouth shut. I had no idea what I should say.

  “We cannot leave the actions of the Celestials unchecked. For the greater the extent of destruction the Celestials wreak, the more closed space will expand. The space you just saw was one of the smaller ones. If we leave it alone, it will continue to expand, eventually covering all of Japan, or even the entire world. And in the end, that gray space will take the place of our world.”

  I finally opened my mouth. “Why do you know this?”

  “As I said, I just ended up with this knowledge. The same goes for everyone in the Agency. One day, we suddenly became aware of the fact that we possessed knowledge concerning Suzumiya, the effect she has on the world, and the strange powers we now possessed. As well as the result of leaving closed space untended. It’s only natural to do whatever you can once you’ve learned the consequences. For if we do not act, the world will surely be destroyed.

  “Quite a quandary,” Koizumi sighed before falling silent.

  We just stared at the roadside through the car windows for the rest of the ride to my house.

  The car came to a stop and I got out.

  “Please be mindful of any trends in Suzumiya’s behavior. Her emotional state has been stable for a while now, but recently, there have been signs of agitation. Today’s duties were the first in a long time.”

  “Even if I’m mindful, what’s that going to accomplish?”

  “Well, you never know. Personally, I would prefer to leave everything in your hands. There are those among us with complicated intentions.” Koizumi said all this with his body sticking out through the half-opened door. He then ducked his head back in the car before I could say anything. The door shut. I dumbly watched the car depart like some legendary ghost taxi. I then went into my house.

  CHAPTER 7

  A self-proclaimed alien-made, artificial human. A self-proclaimed time traveling girl. A self-proclaimed squad of esper boys. Each one had shown me honest proof of their identity. Apparently the three of them, each for their own reasons, had been focusing on Haruhi Suzumiya. Okay, I could live with that. Or no, like hell I could live with that, but even if I accepted everything that had happened and been said, there was still one thing I just didn’t get.

  Why me?

  According to Koizumi, aliens, time travelers, and the esper boys were swarming around Haruhi because she wished for it to happen.

  Then what about me?

  Why was I dragged into this bizarre mess? I’m a one hundred percent genuine normal human being. I never once woke up suddenly with memories of a weird past life. I haven’t done anything worth putting on a résumé. I don’t have any super powers or anything. I’m just an ordinary high school student.

  Who came up with this scenario?

  Or did someone make me inhale some weird drugs and this was all a hallucination? Was I just in some tripped-out fantasy? Who was pulling the strings?

  Is it you, Haruhi?

  Yeah, right.

  It’s no concern of mine.

  Why should I have to worry about this crap? It looked like everything was Haruhi’s fault. In that case, she should be the one worrying about this, not me. There was no reason for me to be mixed up in all this. None. Absolutely none at all, I say. I had made up my mind. As for Nagato, Koizumi, and Asahina, if they were going to bother revealing their secrets to me, why not just tell everything directly to Haruhi? Whatever happened to the world afterward would be Haruhi’s responsibility. It had nothing to do with me.

  Run around all you want. Just don’t get me involved.

  Summer must have been accelerating its arrival. As I walked up the hill dripping sweat, I took off my blazer to wipe away the perspiration from my brow before undoing my necktie and unbuttoning the top three buttons of my shirt, all at a very slow pace. If it was this hot already, I didn’t want to imagine what it’d be like at noon. As I reflected upon the lack of meaning in this trek to school that had evolved into a natural hiking course, someone smacked me on the back.

  Don’t touch me. It’ll make me even hotter. I turned around to find Taniguchi’s grinning face.

  “Yo!”

  Taniguchi, walking next to me, was also drenched in sweat. He sounded quite cheerful as he spouted nonsense. “What a pain. Spent all that time to get my hair just right and now it’s soaking wet.”

  “Taniguchi.”

  I interrupted him as he began going on about his dog, a subject I couldn’t care less about, to voice my query.

  “I’m a normal high school student, right?”

  “Huh?”

  Taniguchi had a forced expression of amusement like he just heard some funny joke for the first time.

  “Define normal first. We can talk after that.”

  I shouldn’t have asked him.

  “Kidding, kidding. Just a joke. Are you normal? Now look here. A normal high school student wouldn’t push down a girl in an empty classroom.”

  I should have known better, but apparently he hadn’t forgotten about that.

  “I’m also a man. I have enough judgment and pride to refrain from prying the whole story out of you. But you know, yeah?”

  Not a clue.

  “How did you get so close all of a sudden? And Yuki Nagato, an A—by my ranking.”

  She’s an A—, huh?

  Moving on….

  “That was just…”

  I explained. “The story going through your mind is delusional, and completely misguided. Nagato was the unfortunate victim when her club room was turned into Haruhi’s base. She had been troubled by the fact that she was unable to engage in literary club activities so she came to me for help. She wanted to know if there was a way to get Suzumiya to withdraw from the room. I sympathized with her, so I felt I should help out the poor girl. We decided to discuss remedial measures somewhere out of Haruhi’s sight, so I had the idea of meeting in the classroom once Haruhi had gone home. Then Nagato’s chronic anemia kicked in and she fainted, so I quickly put myself between her and the floor. That’s when you happened to barge in, Taniguchi. Indeed, once the truth has been brought to light, it seems like such a trivial thing.”

  “Liar.”

  Instantly rejected. Damn it. I figured my assorted mix of truth and fiction had created the perfect story.

  “Even if I believe your lies, the fact that an antisocial girl like Yuki Nagato would come to you for help already makes you not normal.”

  Nagato is that well-known, huh?

  “Plus, you’re one of Suzumiya’s people. If you can be considered a normal high school student, then I’m as normal as a water flea.”

  Guess I might as well ask.

  “Can you use ESP?”

  “Huh?”

  The dumb look on his face got even dumber. You look like you just found out the beautiful girl you picked up was a solicitor for some dangerous religious group, Taniguchi.

  “… I see. You’ve finally been infected by Suzumiya’s poison…. Wasn’t very long, but it was nice knowing you. Stay away from me or I’ll be infected by Suzumiya.”

  I shoved Taniguchi, and he sputtered, breaking down into laughter. If he’s an esper, I’m the UN Secretary-General.

  As we walked across the paved stone between the front gate and the school, I suppose I felt somewhat grateful. At the very least, I forgot about the heat for a while.

  Not even Haruhi could bear the heat, apparently. She lay sprawled on her desk looking listlessly at the mountains in the distance.

  “Kyon, I’m hot.”

  “Yeah. So am I.”

  “Fan me?”

  “If I’m going to fan anyo
ne, I’ll fan myself. I don’t have enough energy to be wasting any on you this early in the morning.”

  Haruhi leaned forward without any sign of having made that speech yesterday.

  “What should we have Mikuru wear next?”

  After bunny and maid, the next would be… Wait, there’s more?

  “Kitty ears? A nurse outfit? Or perhaps a queen?”

  I pictured Asahina’s petite frame dressed in each outfit, cheeks flushed. It made me light-headed. She’s so cute.

  As I began deliberating the matter, Haruhi narrowed her eyebrows, glared at me, and tucked her hair behind her ear.

  “Dumb face.”

  That was how she labeled how I looked. You’re the one who brought up the subject. Well, it’s probably an accurate description, so I can’t really protest. As she fanned her chest with her book…

  “Seriously, it’s so boring.”

  Haruhi’s mouth looked just like an upside-down V. She looked like a character out of a manga series.

  The afternoon gym class from hell, being barbequed in the radiation of the sun, came to an end. With disgruntled mutterings of “Okabe, don’t make us run for hours, you idiot!” and other assorted cursing, we headed into classroom 1-6 to change out of our uniforms, now soaked rags. We then returned to classroom 1-5.

  The girls had gotten out of gym class early and were already finished changing, but since the last period was homeroom, a few people who had sports team practices right after remained in their gym uniforms. For some reason, Haruhi, who wasn’t a member of any such teams, was also wearing her gym uniform.

  “Because it’s hot.”

  That’s why.

  “Who cares. I’ll have to change again once I get to the club room anyway. And I’m on cleaning duty this week. It’s easier to move in this.”

  Haruhi rested her oval face in her hands as she stared out the window, following the huge towers of clouds.

  “Guess that makes sense,” I admitted.

  We could go with this for Asahina’s next costume. Though it wouldn’t really count as a costume.

  “You’re probably fantasizing about something, right?”