What about our…I mean, everybody’s memories?
“Those are also reset, as if the two weeks leading up to that point never happened. Everybody starts over from the beginning.”
Somebody must really love to screw with time. Though I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised when there’s a time traveler among us.
“No, Asahina has nothing to do with this incident. The situation is not as simple as you have deemed.”
How do you know?
“Only Suzumiya would be capable of such a feat. Or did you have somebody else in mind?”
You’d have to be delusional or a chronic daydreamer to have a list of potential psychopaths on hand.
“What am I supposed to do?”
“The matter will be as good as solved when we figure that out.”
Koizumi appeared to be enjoying himself. He certainly didn’t seem to be very worried. Why?
“I finally know the source of the strange sensation I’ve been experiencing the past few days.”
Koizumi revealed the reason why.
“You must have felt the same way. Starting from the day we went to the public pool, there have been intermittent, intense flashes of déjà vu. In retrospect, I would say that they were remnants of the memories from previous loops—for lack of a better way to describe it. We were sensing the parts left over from the reset.”
Could the whole world be feeling the same way?
“I doubt that. You and I are the exceptions. People who are close to Suzumiya appear to have a higher chance of noticing the anomaly.”
“What about Haruhi? Is she aware of what’s going on?”
“It seems that she’s utterly clueless. Though you could say that it’s better this way…”
Koizumi gave Nagato a sideways glance before casually posing a question.
“So then, how many times have we repeated the last two weeks of August?”
Nagato answered with a calm expression on her face.
* * *
“This would be the fifteen thousand four hundred ninety-eighth incarnation.”
I felt faint for a moment there.
Fifteen thousand four hundred ninety-eight. That’s over thirty characters written out, while 15,498 feels considerably smaller. Yay for Arabic numerals. I feel like offering a prayer of thanks to whoever it was who came up with the idea. This derailment only serves to show how disturbed I was.
“We have repeated the same two weeks over ten thousand times. If an ordinary person were to be aware of this loop and retain the memories from each incarnation, he would experience a mental breakdown. I believe that Suzumiya’s memories have been completely wiped clean, cleaner than ours,” Koizumi explained.
This is when you turn to the most knowledgeable person around. I checked with Nagato.
“Are you serious about this?”
“Yes.”
Nagato nodded.
So wait, we’ve already done the stuff scheduled for tomorrow in the past? Along with the Bon Dance and goldfish scooping?
“That is not necessarily the case.”
Nagato’s voice wasn’t showing much emotion either.
“Haruhi Suzumiya has not followed the same course of action in each of the previous fifteen thousand four hundred ninety-seven incarnations.”
Nagato gave me an unconcerned look as she spoke in that unconcerned tone.
“Over the course of the previous fifteen thousand four hundred ninety-seven loops, there were two instances without a trip to the Bon Dance. There were four hundred and thirty-seven instances where the trip occurred without goldfish scooping. At the moment, every loop has included a visit to the public pool. There were nine thousand twenty-five instances of working part-time, but there have been six different variations. Aside from distributing balloons, we have also been carrying objects, manning cash registers, passing out flyers, working a call center, and modeling for a photo shoot. Of those, there were six thousand eleven instances of balloon distribution and three hundred sixty instances of two or more jobs performed. The incarnations with multiple jobs can be divided into—”
“Yeah, that’s enough.”
I silenced the alien-made artificial human before putting my thinking cap on.
We’d been through the back half of August fifteen thousand four—oh screw it—15,498 times. Everything was reset on August thirty-first, and we started over from August seventeenth. I had no recollection of this happening, but Nagato did—why?
“Because Nagato, or the Data Overmind, to be precise, is an existence that transcends space-time.”
Koizumi’s smug smirk seemed a bit forced, or maybe it was just the light.
Or whatever, doesn’t matter. Moving on. I understand that Nagato and her boss are capable of such a feat. But that wasn’t my concern. This all meant that…
“So, Nagato. You’ve actually experienced this two-week period fifteen thousand four hundred ninety-seven times?”
“Yes.”
Nagato nodded like it wasn’t a big deal. Yes? Don’t you have anything else to say? Not that I can think of anything else to say. But still…
“Well, you see…”
Hold on. Fifteen thousand four hundred ninety-eight times. Multiplied by two weeks. That comes out to 216,972 days. Uh, around 594 years. She’s gone through centuries, loop after loop, just standing there and watching us impassively? How could anyone not be sick and tired of that? I mean, after 15,498 visits to the public pool?
“Man…”
My mouth remained open as my voice trailed off. Nagato cocked her head like a small bird as she stared at me.
I recalled that feeling I’d had when I saw Nagato sitting by the pool. Guess I might have been correct when I thought that she looked bored. I’d assume that even Nagato would get sick of all that repetition. She never says anything, but she might have clicked her tongue or something while no one was looking—and that was when a sudden thought hit me. I more or less understood the phenomenon we were dealing with, but I didn’t know why this was happening.
“Why is Haruhi doing this?”
“This is merely speculation.”
Koizumi gave a little disclaimer.
“Suzumiya doesn’t want summer vacation to end on a subconscious level. That is why our summer vacation won’t end.”
Because she’s acting like a little brat who doesn’t want to go back to school?
Koizumi absently traced his finger around the rim of his can of coffee.
“I would presume that she feels there still is something left to be done during summer vacation. She can’t begin the new term until that’s been done, or else she’ll have lingering regrets. And when she falls asleep on the night of August thirty-first with that gnawing regret…”
She wakes up to find that the clock has been turned back two weeks. Yeah, I’m just about ready to give up on her. I knew she was capable of doing just about anything, but this takes her lack of common sense to a whole new level.
“What will it take to satisfy her?”
“I haven’t the slightest. Do you know, Nagato?”
“I do not.”
Didn’t take her long to respond. You realize you’re the only one we can depend on here. I attempted to voice that thought.
“Why didn’t you tell us? That we’ve been engaged in an endless two-week-long waltz.”
After a few seconds of silence, Nagato’s thin lips parted.
“My job is to observe.”
“…I see.”
I already knew that, more or less. Nagato had yet to actively involve herself in any of our activities. But she got involved, in the end, almost every time. However, she’s only initiated contact once, when she invited me to her apartment. Barring that exception, Nagato’s merely accompanied us in her extremely vital position.
How could I forget? Yuki Nagato was a humanoid interface created by the Data Overmind. An organic android dispatched to observe Haruhi. There might be a safety mechanism on her ability to feel emot
ion.
“But none of that matters.”
What mattered was that I considered Yuki Nagato, the book-loving, reticent, petite, and ever-so-reliable classmate, one of us.
If you looked at the SOS Brigade members, Nagato had the most knowledge as well as the ability to apply that knowledge. So I had a few more questions for her.
“When did we first realize this?”
I asked this question on a whim, but Nagato answered as though she’d been expecting it.
“The eight thousand seven hundred sixty-ninth loop. Revelation has become more frequent as of late.”
“Since we are consistently finding ourselves disoriented by déjà vu.”
Koizumi seemed to agree.
“However, during those past sequences, we were unable to correct the flow of time after realizing our situation.”
“Yes,” said Nagato.
Which explained why Asahina was crying right now. Because she now knew the truth. And then, two weeks’ worth of memories, experience, and growth would be reset…and she’d find herself crying after learning the truth again.
And once again, I find myself with the same reaction I’ve had more times than I care to remember since meeting Haruhi back in spring. The same reaction I’ve had every time Haruhi created some kind of godforsaken mess. The same reaction I have right now.
What the hell.
And I’ve had that reaction 8,769 times in the past two weeks.
Seriously…
Chalk up another ridiculous conversation.
We went stargazing the next day.
The location was the roof of Nagato’s apartment. Koizumi brought a bulky telescope that he mounted on a tripod. It was around eight PM.
The sky was dark, and so was Asahina’s mood. She just stood there in a dazed stupor. This really wasn’t the time to be looking at the stars. I wasn’t in much better shape myself.
Koizumi, who seemed to have recovered his composure, busied himself with setting up the telescope with a smile on his face.
“This was a hobby of mine when I was young. I was deeply moved when I saw the moons of Jupiter for the first time.”
Nagato was the same as always, just standing there on the roof.
I looked up at the night sky, but there were only a handful of stars. The polluted air made them difficult to see. You could even say that there was no sky to see. Come winter, the atmosphere would clear and Orion would be visible, at the very least.
The telescope was pointed at Earth’s neighbor. Haruhi was peering through the finder.
“I wonder if any exist.”
“Any what?”
“Martians.”
I’d rather they didn’t. I pictured a bunch of octopus-like monsters wriggling around as they plotted world domination, and it certainly didn’t sound entertaining in the slightest.
“Why? They could be a friendly bunch. Look, there’s nobody on the surface. I’m sure they’re just a really reserved race who live in underground caverns. They’re trying to avoid scaring us Earthlings.”
The Martians in Haruhi’s head sound like residents of Hollow Earth. Can’t you make up your mind? Are we talking Pellucidar or Mars Attacks!? You’ll only make things more complicated if you combine them. Think simple, simple.
“I’m sure they have a plan to pop out and welcome us when the first manned spacecraft lands on Mars. They’ll be like, ‘Welcome to Mars, neighbors, denizens of our neighboring planet!’ I’m sure of it.”
That’d be a bigger scare. Practically an ambush. I have no idea who’s going to be the first to step on Martian soil, but we should probably warn that person. Do I address the letter to NASA?
Time passed as we took turns using the telescope to observe the patterns of Mars and lunar craters. I suddenly noticed that someone was missing and began glancing around before I found Asahina sitting against the rooftop railing and hugging her knees. She had her head bowed down and her eyes were shut. Doubt she got much sleep last night, so I’ll let her rest for now.
Haruhi had apparently grown tired of a night sky that showed no signs of dramatic change.
“Let’s look for UFOs. They’re probably targeting Earth. There must be alien scouts standing by in orbit.”
She cheerfully began turning the telescope this way and that but soon lost interest again. She sat down next to Asahina and leaned against her slender shoulder before falling asleep.
Koizumi turned to me and spoke in a soft voice.
“She must have worn herself out.”
“I don’t see how she would be more tired than the rest of us.”
Haruhi was sound asleep. I was tempted to draw on her face. Still, she looked her best when she was asleep, yeah? If only she would keep her mouth shut. If she swapped personalities with Nagato, that would be perfect. Well, a subdued Haruhi is one thing, but I can’t even begin to imagine a talkative Nagato whose moods swing all over the place.
A night breeze blew by as I watched Haruhi and Asahina sleeping side by side. Haruhi wasn’t surrendering anything to Asahina in terms of looks at the moment. Some might even rank her above. I guarantee it.
“What does she want to do?”
I sighed to myself.
“Have fun with her friends? Something like that.”
“I would assume that is the case. And we would be the friends you mentioned.”
Koizumi looked off into the night sky.
“So then, which fun activity are we supposed to engage in? This won’t end until we figure that out. We will be forced to repeat this two-week period until we determine what Suzumiya desires, which she herself does not know, and grant her wish. I suppose we should be grateful that our memories are being reset. Or else we would have suffered mental breakdowns long ago.”
Fifteen thousand four hundred ninety-eight times.
Seriously? Isn’t Nagato just trying to fool us? Quite frankly, I find
this hard to believe. Still, I could certainly see Haruhi doing something like this, since I’ve seen her power, still an unsolved mystery, do some blockheaded things without her knowing. Doesn’t matter if she’s doing something consciously or unconsciously. The end result can only mean trouble for everybody else.
And since we continue to faithfully stick with Haruhi, you have to wonder if we’re some kind of overly nice goodwill organization. The SOS Brigade has some really good-tempered members. Though you know that the world’s gone off its rocker when I have a say in its fate.
Besides, people like to assume that the world should be a certain way to which we absolutely must adhere, but in reality, that’s just a bunch of bull that ends up tailored to different ideologies. And since they don’t realize this, we find ourselves with people who blindly force their own ideals on other people. You might want to consider how future generations will view your actions in a thousand years or so.
I was going off on a nice little tangent when Koizumi suddenly interrupted me.
“I don’t know what Suzumiya’s looking for, but why don’t we try this? Embrace her from behind without warning and whisper, ‘I love you’ into her ear.”
“Who’s supposed to do that?”
“Would anyone be more suited for the role than you?”
“I’m vetoing that idea. I pass.”
“Shall I give it a try instead?”
I had no way of seeing the look on my face at that moment, since I didn’t have a mirror handy. However, Koizumi could.
“I merely jest. I wouldn’t be able to fulfill the role. It would only serve to confuse Suzumiya.”
And with that, he began to chuckle in a grating tone.
I fell silent again as I stared up at the radiant moon, the only visible light in a hazy summer sky.
The silver disk, surrounded by engulfing darkness, almost seemed to beckon to me as it reflected brilliant sunlight. Beckon me where? Who knows?
That was all I could think about as I watched Nagato stand perfectly still and look up into the sky.
&n
bsp; Summer wasn’t quite over yet, but our summer vacation was about to end. And yet, we couldn’t be entirely sure if it would ever end. Give me a break—seriously.
We might find ourselves going back to August seventeenth. How are we supposed to figure out what’s still “left to be done” in Haruhi’s mind?
What’s left? I haven’t touched the stack of homework that I’m supposed to do over summer vacation, but that shouldn’t have anything to do with Haruhi. Hell, she already finished her homework.
“Where are we headed next?”
“Let’s go to the batting center.”
Haruhi was carrying an aluminum bat. The same beat-up bat she’d swiped from the baseball team way back when. The really old-looking one that seemed more suited for beating people to death than for hitting baseballs. Didn’t realize she still had it.
Our brigade chief tossed back her hair as she flashed a million-dollar smile at all of us and led us to the batting center along the railroad tracks. I’m guessing that the inspiration for this came from watching high school baseball.
I’m also guessing that the brigade members are taking turns being melancholic. Right now we have Asahina, who’s either blue or looking blue. Bad news for me, unfortunately. Guess she still wants to return to her original time.
Nagato and Koizumi were more or less back to their usual selves, Noh-mask girl and smiley-face boy, as they walked behind me. They’re acting like this isn’t any of their responsibility. Could you at least pretend to look serious?
“Sigh.”
I exhaled and focused my eyes ahead on Haruhi’s black hair as it bounced around.
Ever since I met her, ever since the SOS Brigade was formed, someone had decided that it would be my job to babysit Haruhi. No idea who it was, so I’ll have to control my urge to vent, but let me say this at least.
Don’t overestimate me. I’m just your typical average Joe.
Hollow words at this point.
Asahina was a confused mess. Koizumi only ever smiled. Nagato only ever observed.
So I had to do something about Haruhi.
But what was I supposed to do?
Only Haruhi would know the answer, but she didn’t even realize there was a problem.
The Rampage of Haruhi Suzumiya Page 4
