Koizumi and I placed the folding chairs all around the table, and just as I was going to say something considerate to the still-standing freshmen—
“Everybody be seated.” The brigade chief snatched the opportunity away.
The ten-odd freshmen all started trying to offer one another chairs, but I finally saw them start to sit of their own accord, with Koizumi moving a chair into position against a wall and taking a seat, looking like a test proctor’s assistant. I was about to do the same thing, when I realized there was no handy folding chair for me to sit in.
“Huh?”
Originally the room had chairs enough for all the members plus one visitor. We’d borrowed ten chairs, which should’ve been exactly enough for the applicants that were here. So why were we short?
I did another head count.
The number of freshmen here was… huh? Twelve? Had I counted wrong? I thought there were eleven in the hallway, but now there were seven boys and… five girls. I looked closely but couldn’t figure out who I’d left out. I got the feeling they’d all been out there, but on the other hand, if one of them hadn’t been, I doubted I would have noticed. One thing was certain—I did not have a photographic memory.
As I stood there helplessly, Asahina started to flail.
“Ah—there aren’t enough teacups. Um… I was going to make tea, but… oh, what should I do…”
It would’ve been easy to go swipe some plastic cups from the cafeteria, but as I was pondering the merits of serving tea to prospective freshmen members—
“There are paper cups in the cupboard. Just use those.”
Haruhi gave her decision, and Asahina quickly opened the package of cups and got them out but was immediately anxious again. “Oh—I’m sorry, there’s not enough water. I’ll go fetch some more—”
“Kyon, water. On the double.”
Desperately happy to receive orders from Her Majesty Haruhi, I made an exaggerated grimace as I ran to the water fountain, carrying the kettle in both hands.
As I returned, panting, all that greeted me was Asahina’s apologetically happy face. She rewarded me with a “Thank you so much, Kyon!” which was more than enough.
The suddenly even dozen students watched Asahina’s maid-clad form closely as she put the kettle on the burner.
“As you can see, our SOS Brigade has an excellent errand boy and maid. Look all over the country if you like. The only brigade that has a maid that will serve you tea for free is right here!”
“Er, ah—yes…” said a bashful Asahina.
“Whoa!” said the freshmen.
What were they, stupid? It wasn’t something to be impressed with. For one thing, this wasn’t a place anyone should be going out of his or her way to visit.
“Also!” said Haruhi with a triumphantly haughty smile. “Mikuru’s tea skills are constantly improving. The ‘brigade tea’ she made earlier had a bizarre, fascinating taste. I like the name too.”
“Ah, that was… yes. I was being a bit ambitious with that. I’m so glad you liked it…,” said Asahina, like a dog praised by her owner.
“Whoa!” said the freshmen.
This was no time for whoas. It was time for an immediate about-face. That whatever-tea had tasted positively medicinal, and despite Asahina’s adjustments, could not be scored at all highly and certainly couldn’t be recommended to anyone save Haruhi, who downed tea in one gulp every time.
As Asahina happily went about her tea preparations, Nagato continued to sit in the corner and read, as though none of this was any of her concern. Koizumi had transformed into an observer. I stood beside the door like some sort of guardian as I was forced to listen to Haruhi’s speech.
“Now then, everybody. Aspiring to enter the SOS Brigade requires admirable courage. Thanks to the meddling of the student council, we haven’t been able to do any proper advertising, but still I knew. I knew that freshmen with pluck and guts had to be out there. That you’ve come of your own accord is critical. To be perfectly honest, I surveyed all your classes, and they all looked the same to me. But you are superior to all your freshman classmates who are not here. You should take pride in that! I guarantee it. But that’s not enough. This brigade, my brigade, is entirely different than other clubs, and so its members must also be. However! You have come here because you understand what it is that the SOS Brigade is doing, do you not?”
What were they supposed to say in response to an interrogative like that? I didn’t really know how to answer it myself.
“Do you have anything you want to ask?” Haruhi pressed.
Perhaps it was unsurprising. One of the freshmen, a tall, short-haired boy, raised his hand. “I have a question.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“I’m not really sure what this club does. It just seemed interesting, so I came by. There was a rumor back in junior high that there was a weird club somewhere, and when I finally came to North High I found out that it really existed, so here I am. That might be a strange motivation, but is it all right?”
Haruhi stood straight and gave the boy an affectionately sad smile as she walked over to him. “All right, that’s as far as you go.”
“Huh?”
She grabbed the stunned boy’s collar and, with the power of a miniature crane, dragged him away, opening the door and releasing him into the hallway.
“Unfortunately you failed to pass the first test of brigade membership. Good try, though. Polish your skills and try again another time.”
Closing the door in the poor freshman’s face, she turned around. “Tsk, tsk. He shouldn’t have underestimated me. I, you see, as the chief of the SOS Brigade, carry the burden of overloading the world with fun. It’s no overstatement to say I think of nothing else. Thus I cannot afford to compromise, even when it comes to new brigade members. If we don’t progress year by year, we’ll start to decay.”
Asahina wasn’t the only one who was stunned—I, along with all the freshmen, was too. When had the brigade membership test started? That poor kid had some rotten luck. Even if it was in a paper cup, he’d barely tasted Asahina’s tea before getting ejected.
“Let me just say that I am very strict regarding laughter. Dirty jokes are categorically forbidden. Any sort of extreme behavior to elicit laughter is out too. Make your point with talking—just conversation. Here’s why I think—I think the reason why people laugh is—”
Why were we now being subjected to Haruhi’s theory of humor?
“Haruhi.” Since members beneath the lieutenant brigade chief were useless in times like this, process of elimination led me to speak up. “What was that exchange just now? What’s this brigade membership test? Are you kicking out anybody who says something you don’t like?”
“I’m not that self-centered. I’m just trying to find out how enthusiastic they are. It’s easy to only answer questions. You just apply your mind relative to the question’s difficulty. So someone’s level is revealed when they ask a question.”
“So what was that just now?” I said, jerking my thumb at the door. “Was his question too low-level?”
“To be frank, yes.” Haruhi returned to the brigade chief’s seat nonchalantly and gave a generous smile to the now-one-person-smaller group of freshmen, as though she were the nicest big sister classmate in the world. “So, any other questions?”
It goes without saying that nobody opened his or her mouth.
Even once Asahina’s hand-brewed tea had been distributed to every one of them, the assembled freshmen had already been cowed, and they sat there in silence.
The only one talking was Haruhi, who recounted the history of the SOS Brigade like a storyteller telling the tale of the Ten Heroes of Sanada. She was exaggerating quite a bit, so I was only half listening.
Now that we were down one person, there was an open seat, which I dragged over next to Koizumi. The silent lieutenant brigade chief regarded the eleven freshmen—so there really were eleven now—with a wry smile, as though evaluating them.
I gave it a try myself. Given that Haruhi evidently saw no need for self-introductions, she’d asked neither their names, nor their classes, nor even what middle schools they came from. I was looking at them, figuring I might as well give them nicknames based on their outward appearances, when my gaze stopped on one of them.
Let me just first explain so I don’t have a guilty conscience. It was a girl.
Of all the freshmen taking in Haruhi’s one-woman show, hers was the only one whose face seemed composed or relaxed.
She let out a quiet cheer at the story of the series of home runs during the baseball game, covered her mouth at the murder story of the mysterious island before smiling at its conclusion, nodded repeatedly at the tale of the game battle against the computer club, and smiled happily at the story of the Sakanaka family dog.
This freshman was being awfully honest.
Given the height of the top of her head, she seemed to be about the same height as Nagato, and maybe a little lighter. Her hair was curly, as though permed but not blow-dried, and arranged with a smiley-face barrette that was arranged diagonally; it seemed sort of like her trademark. It seemed like her uniform size might have been a bit off, since its baggy fit was obvious with a close look. It wasn’t broken in at all, though.
The more I looked, the more I got the sense that I’d seen this girl somewhere before. At the same time, I was absolutely positive that I’d never met her before. Far from it—I had no memory of seeing this younger girl in my memories at all. As I played them back in a montage, I straightened her hair, lengthened it, shortened it—but I couldn’t remember her at all. Was she someone’s sister, and thus I was remembering her resemblance to a brother? But I couldn’t remember this hypothetical brother’s face either. It was maddeningly elusive, like having a mouthful of hot vegetable soup but not being able to swallow because it was too hot.
My gaze couldn’t have been very polite, but the girl didn’t notice, instead absorbed in Haruhi’s storytelling. It was fun watching her expression change. She was the perfect listener, seemingly ready to believe any lie.
“—So, that’s how it was. The SOS Brigade thwarted the student council president’s cunning plan and ensured the continued existence of the literature club. They may well be like cartoon bad guys that never learn their lesson, always finding another dirty trick to try, but they’ll always lose in the end. Neither I nor the SOS Brigade will fall by the wayside. We haven’t so far, nor will we ever!”
That seemed to be her concluding remark, and Haruhi thrust one hand into the air and was still for a moment.
Just as I was thinking of looking for a place to set down the now-lukewarm cup of tea, Haruhi gave me a very strange look, even winking at me. Was her jerking chin supposed to be some kind of sign?
Just as I was trying to figure out how to reply to Haruhi’s incomprehensible eye contact, I heard the sound of quiet clapping. The sound coming from palms that could be described as “compact” was a hesitant one, and the palms’ owner was the freshman girl I’d noticed before.
The sound of the girl’s clapping brought the rest of the freshmen to their senses, and they all started a sitting ovation. Asahina looked frantically left and right, then started hastily clapping as well.
Haruhi gave a satisfied nod, then incidentally directed a critical glance my way. Well, it was her fault for not setting things up with me ahead of time. She should’ve said something earlier.
Haruhi waved her hand to quiet the applause. “So, that’s how it is. That should give you an idea of the SOS Brigade’s mission. I would have liked to move on to the second phase of the membership test, but I imagine you all have preparations to make, so that will be all for today. Those of you with guts enough to try, come again tomorrow! That is all!” she said.
For the first time I noticed that Haruhi’s armband read not BRIGADE CHIEF but EXAMINER.
“Dismissed!”
After the freshmen quickly filed out, Haruhi hummed to herself as she turned the computer on, clicking away on the mouse, clearly in high spirits.
Koizumi and I split up and went to return the borrowed folding chairs, so Haruhi was already well into her computer usage by the time I said anything to her.
“Just what are you planning?” I demanded of Haruhi’s hair-banded head as I unfolded my usual chair to sit in.
Haruhi glanced up at me winningly, which was weirdly irritating.
“Those freshmen applicants came here expecting to join the brigade. But nothing you did is going to encourage them to actually do it. They’ll probably never come back.”
“Probably not,” said Haruhi, continuing to touch-type. “But that’s fine with me. If that’s enough to intimidate them, I don’t want them in my brigade. I only want members with courage. And not just courage from desperation. I’ve no use for any freshman who can’t pass the brigade membership test I made. The hurdle course is long, and the hurdles themselves are high. The SOS Brigade isn’t so desperate for members that I’m going to let in any mundane joker just looking for something to gawk at.”
Given that this club had zero reason for existing in the school, it had never needed more members at all, and I doubted the student council wanted to offer up any of the freshmen as human sacrifices on our altar. I certainly wanted to avoid increasing the population of this room. Asahina’s tea was not infinite, after all. Mobilizing the kettle and pot already took enough time and trouble as it was.
“Are you actually serious about getting new members?” I asked Haruhi as she sniffed Asahina’s freshly brewed tea. “Nagato and Asahina, and Koizumi too, you forced them all into the brigade. So did you actually spot any of the new freshmen to whom you want to do the same thing?”
She was probably still pursuing her break-time school-wide patrols, since she was rarely in the classroom outside of class itself.
“At the very least, I haven’t spotted anyone who’s got what it takes to be a mascot. But I think there might be some people who possess other attributes—ones entirely new that I’ve never dreamed of. Not people like you see every day, but totally new and unique individuals. I mean, how boring would it be if they’re all just normals, all going in the usual direction? Like girls with glasses working in the library and boyish, short-haired girls joining sports clubs.”
But who cared about that? It was better than having a pointlessly weird character deficit, I said. I, for one, would welcome anyone.
“Not me, not at all. There might be nearly infinite combinations, but you’ve got to think about how they match up first. This is the proof that the power of human imagination is getting worse over time!”
There was no point in her worrying about that kind of thing, I said. These didn’t sound like the words of the girl who’d first dragged Asahina in here.
“Mikuru turned out to be a totally unique person, so it’s fine!”
And anyway, I said, humanity had managed to get this far somehow. So we’d keep managing. It beat the heck out of making some strange leap of imagination and blowing the whole Earth away.
Haruhi showed her teeth, as though she were going to bite the edge of the teacup off. “I just want to find more interesting, eccentric people! Freshmen whose way of thinking is totally different from mine, who’ll bring a breath of fresh air to the brigade. That’s what the examination is for. It’ll probably be a process of elimination. Otherwise, I’d be able to tell right away that someone has the special psychological makeup I’m looking for.”
Haruhi set down her cup, and her hand returned to the mouse.
“What I’m doing now is creating the written portion of the brigade entrance examination. I was working on it last night at home too. Being brigade chief carries a heavy responsibility. While you were screwing around not even studying for the quiz, I was toiling to bring about a new future. Kyon, people in the old days had it right—we can improve ourselves by looking to others. What this means is to not look down, but rather up to where our hand can’t yet reach! Without the will to g
et there, we’ll only continue to fall!”
I had no interest in her clichéd lecturing. Besides, wasn’t reaching for the sky what caused Icarus to fall to his death? Moderation in all things, that was the way to go. How did the old saying go? Eat only eight-tenths your fill, wasn’t it?
Asahina’s keen eye noticed that my teacup was empty, and she brought the serving teapot over.
She was now a maid from head to toe, and I couldn’t help thinking that if she were to work at an actual café, her hourly wage would skyrocket. Come to think of it, what did she do for money? Was she funded by other time travelers?
Thanks to the room’s lowered population, the room had regained its usual state, and I could finally relax. Aside from Nagato, whose reading posture never changed no matter what happened, and Haruhi, whose raucous lecturing had for the moment ended, everyone else seemed more at ease and had returned to their usual positions.
Koizumi sat opposite me, and he set a new game on the table. “How about a round?”
It was some old game called Renju or something. Since I was already here, I might as well play. Sure, why not—it’d be good mental exercise. I told him to tell me the rules.
“It’s similar to five-in-a-row. It’s simple once you learn it.”
I placed stones on the board as directed by Koizumi, more or less figuring out the rules of play by example.
We continued playing until it was time to go home, and I’d racked up a streak of wins against Koizumi. I wasn’t sure whether I was quick to catch on or Koizumi was simply bad at it, but in any case this time-killing activity that did nothing to improve my academics continued for a while, but as evening arrived Nagato closed her book, which was the SOS Brigade’s signal to wrap up. We all stood, and after waiting for Asahina to change clothes, left school.
The Dissociation of Haruhi Suzumiya Page 16
