Meanwhile, either Asahina had natural talent for skiing or Tsuruya was a brilliant instructor, since Asahina was able to master the art after thirty minutes.
“Whoa, whoa! This is fun. Wow, it’s amazing.”
A description of Asahina as she skied with a smile on her face against the white backdrop would probably drag, so I’ll try to summarize. It was like watching the descendant of a stylish snow woman suddenly appear in the modern world. An artistic masterpiece that was satisfying enough for me to make a U-turn and head home this very second. I would need to take a picture first, though.
Haruhi continued to direct sideways glances at Koizumi and me as we trained on our own, while she stared pensively at my sister, who was failing to make any progress at all. The look on her face clearly said that she was in a hurry to run up to the top of the mountain and race down, but she couldn’t take this fifth grader along for the ride.
Tsuruya must have been thinking the same thing.
“Harls, you guys can go ahead and ride the lift to the top!”
Tsuruya was helping up my sister, who was cheerfully waving her arms around after falling on her face again.
“I’ll take responsibility for looking after this girl! We can make a snowman if she likes! Sledding would also work! We can probably borrow one somewhere!”
“Are you sure?”
Haruhi watched as Tsuruya and my sister jostled with each other.
“Thanks. Sorry about this.”
“It’s no biggie! Well, little sister! Do you want a skiing lesson, a snowman session, or a sled ride?”
“Snowman!”
My sister gave her answer in a loud voice as Tsuruya laughed and began to remove her skis.
“Okay, snowman it is. We’re going to make a huge one. A huge one!”
The two of them immediately began to make a snowman while Asahina watched enviously.
“A snowman, huh? Ah, I might want to join them…”
“No.”
Haruhi swiftly placed a firm lock on Asahina’s arm before smiling at her.
“Our destination is the peak. We can all race. The first person to reach the foot of the slope will be granted the title General Winter. Let’s all try our best.”
I had a feeling that she wouldn’t let us stop until she won. That I could live with, but the idea of heading straight for the peak of the slope was a little scary. We should take this step by step.
Haruhi just snorted.
“Pathetic. It’s more fun to face these challenges head-on.”
And yet she actually decided to go with my idea, for once. First we would try the intermediate course, and save the main event, the expert course, for the very end.
“Let’s get on the lift. Yuki! We’re going now! Come back!”
Nagato had been gliding in wide arcs around us, but as soon as she heard Haruhi’s voice she turned back and made a perfect stop right next to me, shaving off a layer of snow in the process.
“We’ll be racing one another, okay? I got enough free lift passes for everybody, so we can go until the sun sets…no! We can keep going after the sun sets. Come now, everybody follow me.”
Don’t need you ordering us through every single action we take. And if I were to request permission to join the snowman team, I would probably be denied. Koizumi aside, if I left Nagato and Asahina alone with Haruhi when she went on a rampage, we’d instantly go from blizzard to ice age. There needed to be an objective supervisor around at all times. Not that I would claim to be a particularly objective person. Well, I wasn’t entirely sure what I was saying, and Koizumi would probably have an easy time picking apart my reasoning, so I gave up on that line of thought. After all, I stopped caring about that crap a long time ago.
All the members were safely here in one piece, the snow was nice and powdery so there weren’t any complaints in that department,
and the sky was clear and blue as far as the eye could see. Our brigade chief extended one arm with a smile that was as sunny as said sky.
“These lifts only seat two each. To be fair, we’ll use rock, paper, scissors to decide.”
Now then.
Nothing significant happened after that point. Leaving Tsuruya and my sister behind, the official SOS Brigade members took the lift up the slopes and enjoyed the experience of skiing without incident. The snowman was closer to completion every time we reached the bottom of the slope, and Tsuruya and my sister were joking around with each other like they were the same age while they placed a bucket on the snowman’s head and added eyes and a nose. They were certainly enjoying themselves. In fact, they even started working on a second snowman, which would be my most recent memory of them.
And perhaps, my last memory of them.
I’m not sure how many times we raced down that slope.
After safely making our way to the bottom, we discovered that out of nowhere…I mean, we literally had no idea where it came from, but all of a sudden, we were in the middle of a blizzard. Whiteout conditions. Couldn’t see anything beyond a yard or so.
The howling winds sent the snow pounding against our bodies. The pain from that relentless barrage was actually worse than the bitter cold. I could feel my exposed face begin to freeze and I was forced to keep my face down when I tried to breathe. This was one crazy blizzard.
And it came without any warning.
Haruhi had been in the lead when she came to a stop and Nagato, close behind, also came to a sudden halt. By the time Asahina and I, who were skiing along at a leisurely pace, and Koizumi, bringing up the rear, caught up to them—
The blizzard was already here.
As if it had been summoned by someone.
…
……
………
That concludes my flashback. I hope that you now understand why we’re trudging around this snowy mountain.
After all, we couldn’t see a thing out here. There might be a cliff a few yards ahead that we could walk straight off without knowing. There shouldn’t be any cliffs around here, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see one pop up in a place where nothing was on the map. I had no intention of trying large-hill ski jumping without a ramp. I guess that my example of cliffs was a little exaggerated, but there was a realistic chance of one of us crashing into a snow-covered tree that was impossible to see and breaking a nose or something.
“Where are we right now?”
Times like this are when we can depend on Nagato. I was reluctant to rely on her, but our lives were on the line here. Yet we were still lost after hours of following Nagato’s exact navigation, as I mentioned in the beginning.
“That’s odd.”
Haruhi’s muttering was beginning to carry a tone of suspicion.
“What’s going on here? It makes no sense that we haven’t seen a single person yet. How long have we been walking around?”
Her gaze was directed at Nagato, who led the way. She was questioning if Nagato had gone the wrong way. The only logical conclusion that could be drawn in this situation. We were walking through a ski resort, not some unexplored wilderness. If we continued to walk in a direction that took us down the slope, we would inevitably reach the bottom, or else something was clearly wrong.
“I guess we don’t really have a choice, so let’s build an igloo and take shelter. Until the blizzard dies down.”
“Wait.”
I stopped Haruhi as I struggled through the whipping snow to reach Nagato’s side.
“What’s going on?”
The girl with no expression on her face slowly looked up at me, her short hair frozen stiff.
“An indeterminate phenomenon.”
Her voice was soft. Her black eyes were staring at me earnestly.
“If the spatial coordinates I have identified for our position are correct, we have already passed the starting point.”
What the hell? Wouldn’t that mean that we should have spotted some sign of civilization by now? I mean, we haven’t even spotted any lift cables
or a lodge of any kind.
“The situation has transcended my capacity for spatial perception.”
I sucked in a deep breath when I heard Nagato’s calm voice. I could feel crystals of snow evaporate as they touched the tip of my tongue, along with any words I could have said.
A situation that’s beyond Nagato’s abilities?
Was this what that vague premonition had been hinting at?
“Who’s responsible this time?”
“…”
Nagato fell silent, as if deep in thought, while she stared at the frenzied dance of snowflakes without batting an eye.
None of us had brought a watch or cell phone when we hit the slopes, so we didn’t even know the current time. I think that we left the Tsuruya family vacation home around 3 pm. And it’d been a few hours since then. The cloudy sky was still illuminated by a faint glimmer of light. Still, the thick clouds and howling blizzard prevented us from determining how high the sun was in the sky. After all, the lighting was about as dim as that of a cave with luminous moss, and a strange rusty taste seeped out from my wisdom teeth, followed by a slight pain.
A wall of snow blocked us in every direction and we were blanketed by a canopy of gray.
This scene seemed a little too similar to another experience.
Don’t tell me that—
“Ah!”
Haruhi yelled at the top of her lungs right next to my ears, which scared me so much that my heart almost shattered my rib cage and jumped out of my chest.
“Hey, don’t scare me like that. Stop screaming in my ear.”
“Kyon, look over there.”
Haruhi pointed, her finger standing firm against the wind—
And there was a faint light in the distance.
“What?”
I squinted. The blustering snow made it seem like the light was flickering, but that wasn’t the case. The glow was about as dim as a firefly’s after mating.
“It’s coming from a window.”
Haruhi’s voice was filled with excitement.
“There’s a building over there. We can ask them for shelter. Or else we’re going to freeze to death at this rate.”
Her prediction would soon become reality if we didn’t do something. But a building? Out here in the middle of nowhere?
“This way! Mikuru, Koizumi. Follow my lead.”
Haruhi was like a human plow as she clawed open a path before us. The cold, anxiety, and fatigue must have gotten to Asahina, as her body was visibly shaking while Koizumi shielded her and the two of them trailed after Haruhi. As Koizumi passed me, he whispered something to me that sent a chill through my heart.
“The light is clearly artificial. However, it wasn’t there a moment ago. I am sure of this, as I have been paying close attention to our surroundings.”
“…”
Nagato and I remained silent as we watched Haruhi use her skis to kick away snow and open a path.
“Hurry, hurry! Kyon, Yuki! Don’t fall behind!”
There was no other option. I would rather gamble on a slim chance for survival than freeze to death and show up in the news a hundred years later. It didn’t matter if this was a trap, since we really didn’t have a choice at this point.
I steered Nagato before me as we set off on the path through the snow that Haruhi had made.
As we approached the light, its identity became clear. I was forced to grudgingly admit that Haruhi’s superhuman vision was worthy of praise. The light was plainly coming from the window of a building.
“It’s a mansion. And a huge one to boot…”
Haruhi paused for a moment as she looked straight up at the structure and gave us her impression before she set off again.
I also looked up at the towering building as my mood darkened. The mansion stood against the white snow and gray sky like a silhouette. I wasn’t about to solely attribute the ominous aura I felt to its outward appearance. And the building was more castle than mansion, considering the spires (whose purpose was unknown) that protruded from the roof, and the inadequate lighting, or what would be considered dark décor in general. And this structure was in the middle of some snowy mountains. If this wasn’t suspect, you would have to round up every dictionary in the country and rewrite the definition of that word.
A blizzard on a snowy mountain. Where we were stranded. When we happened to spot a faint light as we had completely lost our sense of direction. And then we arrived at an odd-looking mansion of Western make—
With so many conditions met, the next step would be the arrival of the suspicious-looking owner of this mansion, or perhaps some kind of grotesque monster? So, is this story going to be mystery or horror?
“Excuse me!”
Haruhi was already yelling at the entrance. There wasn’t an intercom or door knocker to speak of. Haruhi was beating on the rustic door with her fist.
“Is anybody home?!”
I looked up at the mansion again from my position behind Haruhi as she pounded away.
In any case, this situation, setting, and stage felt a little too convenient for my tastes. I could tell that this wasn’t Koizumi’s doing. Though it would certainly be great if the door were to open and reveal Arakawa and Mori bowing deeply…But that obviously wasn’t going to happen after Nagato had attested that the circumstances were beyond her own capabilities. I doubt that Koizumi could ever upstage Nagato, and even if Nagato happened to be in on the prank, she would never lie to me.
Haruhi continued to shriek in an ear-piercing voice that held its own against the howling blizzard.
“We’re lost! Could you let us rest for a bit?! We’re going to die if we have to keep standing out here in the snow!”
I looked back to make sure that everybody was here. Nagato was staring at Haruhi’s back, doing her typical bisque-doll impression. Asahina was hugging herself with a terrified look on her face. Koizumi had dropped his usual smile as he stood with his arms crossed, his head cocked, and an expression on his face like he had just eaten something bitter. He was about as indecisive as Hamlet as he visibly wondered if we should open the door or not.
Haruhi was starting to make enough noise to be considered guilty of disturbing the peace, at least in my neighborhood. Despite that, there had been no response from the inside.
“Nobody’s home?”
Haruhi removed her gloves and breathed warm air onto her hands with a bitter expression on her face.
“I thought there’d be somebody around, since the lights are on…What do we do, Kyon?”
It’d be rather difficult for me to give you an immediate answer to that question. The job of rushing headlong into an obvious trap belonged to your typical emotional and hotheaded superhero.
“We just need a place to shelter us from the snow and wind…Is there a shed or something nearby?”
However, Haruhi disregarded my suggestion to search the vicinity. I watched as she put her gloves back on and grabbed the doorknob that was covered by snow and ice. From the side, it almost looked like she was praying as she exhaled. And with a serious look on her face, Haruhi slowly turned the doorknob.
I probably should have stopped her. Or at the very least I should have asked for Nagato’s advice before making a decision. But it was too late now—
It almost felt like the mansion was opening its gaping maw.
As the door opened.
Artificial light fell across our faces.
“It wasn’t locked. You’d think that somebody would answer the door if they’re home.”
Haruhi set her skis and poles against the wall before stomping in ahead of the rest of us.
“Hello?! Anybody home?! We’re coming in!”
Beggars can’t be choosers. We followed our brigade chief ’s lead. Koizumi was the last one in as he shut the door, and we were finally able to bid a temporary farewell to the biting cold and deafening wind that had plagued us for the past few hours. A momentary sigh of relief.
“Whew…”
&nbs
p; Asahina plunked herself down on the floor.
“Hey, nobody around?!”
As I listened to Haruhi’s ear-piercing voice, I could feel the light and warmth seep into my bones. The same feeling you would get when sinking into a warm bath after standing outside in the middle of winter. The snow on my head and skiwear was melting and dripping water onto the floor. The heat was definitely on.
But there was no sign of human life. By now some aggravated person should have come storming in to kick Haruhi out, but nobody was responding.
“This better not be a haunted house.”
I muttered to myself as I looked around the interior of the mansion. The entrance led directly into a large room. The best comparison I can make is to the lobby of a fancy hotel. The atrium-shaped ceiling was awfully high up there, with an awfully massive chandelier that provided flickering light. The floor was covered by a carpet of deep crimson. The structure may have appeared to be some kind of bizarre castle from the outside, but the interior was pretty modern. The middle of the room was occupied by an extensive staircase that connected to the second floor. All we needed was a checkroom to complete this phony hotel experience.
“I’m going to take a look around.”
Haruhi was already sick of waiting for the mansion owner, who had yet to appear. She squirmed out of her soggy skiwear in a way that could only be described as “molting” and kicked off her ski boots.
“I doubt that anyone will blame us for coming in without permission, since this is an emergency, but I wouldn’t want them to make a fuss about it later. I’ll go see if anybody’s here. You guys can wait here.”
The Rampage of Haruhi Suzumiya Page 14
