The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya

by Nagaru Tanigawa

  “Is this really a good idea, Haruhi?”

  “Is what a good idea?”

  “Bringing in a new member.”

  “Yes, well,” said Haruhi, finishing her tea and placing it loudly on her desk. “To be honest, I wasn’t expecting any of them to make it. That’s why I made the final test a marathon. But for one of the freshmen to actually be able to keep up with me, that’s like an exclamation mark and a question mark right next to each other. Like this.” Haruhi air-scrawled an exclamation point and a question mark.

  So she really hadn’t intended on letting anybody in. All of this business about an entrance exam had just been Haruhi playing around.

  “But I was really surprised to find out that there was a freshman with enough stamina to keep up with me. That’s really not an everyday occurrence. It’s quite a phenomenon, really. If she joined the track club she could definitely be their strongest middle-long distance runner, and go all the way to nationals.”

  If that were so, maybe we should tie a ribbon on her and give her to the track team, I pointed out.

  “That’d be such a waste! Of course the track team would be happy; they haven’t won anything at any of their meets lately. The other clubs would do anything to get their hands on her, but I’m not just going to let her slip through my fingers. She knocked on the SOS Brigade’s door. What would it say for the health of our educational system if we just ignored her wishes like that? It’s not worthy of a democracy.”

  Despite having no interest whatsoever in ideologies like “the health of our educational system,” Haruhi was happy to espouse them when it was convenient.

  I could only assume that being the object of the other clubs’ envy was something she found highly pleasurable. But this wasn’t the era of the Three Kingdoms in China—there were no rival warlords vying for territory—so she didn’t have to go around assembling personnel like she was Cao Cao.

  “And that’s not all.” Haruhi rummaged around in one of the drawers of the brigade chief’s desk, pulling out a sheet of copier paper she must have stowed in there earlier. “Take a look at this.”

  I took it and looked, and saw that it was the written portion of the brigade entrance exam—more like a survey—that Haruhi had had the assembled applicants take.

  “I incinerated everybody else’s, so hers is the only one left. It’s got the spirit of a new brigade member on it. I figured you had a right to see it too.”

  I was certainly interested. This was crucial data left behind by the new member who’d managed to ace Haruhi’s capriciously created test. I looked over it immediately. Her neat pencil handwriting filled the spaces underneath the questions, which I’d seen before.

  Here is what they said.

  1. Explain the reasoning behind your ambition to join the SOS Brigade.

  Resolve creates luck. I’m already in love with it.

  2. If you are admitted, in what way can you contribute?

  Anything I’m allowed to do, I will try.

  3. Of aliens, time travelers, sliders, and espers, which do you think is best?

  I’d want to talk to an alien the most. I’d most want to be friends with a time traveler. An esper seems like they’d be the most profitable. A slider seems like they would open up the most possibilities.

  4. Why?

  I wrote my reasoning as part of my previous answer. Sorry.

  5. Explain any mysterious phenomena you have experienced. I haven’t experienced any. Sorry.

  6. What’s your favorite pithy phrase? “Unprecedented and unbeatable”

  7. If you could do anything, what would you do? Build a city on Mars and name it after myself. Like “Washington, D.C.” Heh.

  8. Final question: Express your enthusiasm. If I absolutely had to, I’d purposely mess up my vision and wear glasses.

  9. If you can bring along anything really interesting, you get extra credit. Please try to find something. Understood. I’ll bring something soon.

  … I was pretty sure President Washington hadn’t built Washington, D.C., himself, or given it his name. And what did the “D.C.” stand for, anyway? I said.

  “I don’t know, ‘Direct Control’? Something like that, anyway,” said Haruhi irresponsibly.

  “…”

  I wasn’t sure if she had been listening, but Nagato’s bangs only twitched slightly, and she did not offer a correction.

  She probably thought correcting us would be a waste of information. Something about her silence said “just look it up yourself.”

  “Mm,” I muttered, noncommittally.

  Suddenly I realized that I hadn’t yet heard the name of this girl who’d gotten herself unofficially admitted to the brigade. I casually turned the test sheet over, and looked for her name. For some reason her class and seat number weren’t written, but—

  Yasumi Watahashi

  Her full name was written there in neat ink letters. But…

  “How is that pronounced? Taimizu Wataribashi? No, that can’t be it… Yasumizu… maybe?”

  “Yasumi Watahashi, she said,” said Haruhi in response to my question. As though it were nothing. As nonchalantly as though it were just a regular name.

  “…”

  Yet something about it tripped me up. I felt somehow like a tiny fish who’d been swept away in the current, then scooped up alone in a net. But who was it who’d been scooped up, really? Was it me, or this Watahashi girl?

  “Huh…?”

  Again with the déjà vu. I knew this name. My faint memory insisted it was so. Yes, I’d definitely heard it somewhere.

  Watahashi. Watahashi. I didn’t remember the name, and I didn’t remember the letters, but the sound of it was familiar.

  Watahashi—

  “…!”

  The rusty gears of my brain snapped suddenly into place. I had a vision of un-lubricated, seized clockwork springing into motion as the memory came back sharply, as though viewed through clear water.

  “It’s me. M-E, me.” Atashi wa, watashi.

  I’d answered the phone in the echo-prone bathroom, but what I’d heard was definitely a girl’s voice. A girl my sister said she didn’t know.

  Atashi wa, watashi. It’s me.

  She hadn’t been posing some kind of riddle. The girl on the phone had just been saying her name.

  So—

  “Atashi wa, watahashi.” It’s me, Watahashi.

  I was only able to enjoy the feeling of a mystery solved for a brief moment before doubt anew swirled within me.

  Yasumi Watahashi…

  … What was she? Even if I was allowing for that call to have been a random prank, her trying out for the SOS Brigade and actually passing Haruhi’s absurd test such that she’d be a full brigade member tomorrow wasn’t something an ordinary freshman would do. There was no way.

  And while her motivation was unknown, it was troublesome that she had enough chutzpah to call me up personally ahead of time. She was a complete and perfect question mark, and she’d waltzed right into the SOS Brigade.

  What was her true nature? Did she work for the other secret organization, was she an agent of the Heavenly Canopy Dominion, or was she part of the anti-Asahina faction of time travelers?

  And yet in spite of all that, while Asahina, Nagato, and Koizumi had all been surprised at the fact that Watahashi had remained, none of them were particularly concerned about her. If she’d been an esper, Koizumi should have said something—same for Nagato, if she were something like Kuyoh, and Asahina, if she were a time traveler. But they all merely looked a bit surprised, and Asahina even seemed happy. There was always the possibility that Asahina (as usual) simply didn’t know anything, but it would’ve been nice to find a letter from Asahina the Elder in my shoe locker.

  What did this resolution mean? Was it just a coincidence? Did the only girl with enough physical stamina to match Haruhi just happen to be compatible with the unauthorized student organization known as the SOS Brigade—was that all there was to it?

&nb
sp; I was not so naive as to think that this was simply happenstance.

  I mean, what had that phone call been about?

  My sister had brought the receiver to me in the bathroom, where I’d heard that short comment and been curtly hung up on. What did that mean?

  “Ugh.”

  I’d thought things were going to be peaceful for a while, but if I wanted to protect that peace, I was going to have to learn more about about the freshman Yasumi Watahashi.

  Still, “Yasumi Watahashi,” huh?

  Haruhi flipped the survey paper over, and read the writing in the “notes” section.

  “ ‘Please call me “Yasumi,” if you would, and try to pronounce it using katakana,’ it says.”

  The pronunciation would be the same in katakana or kanji, I pointed out.

  “I can’t agree with that view, Kyon. Hiragana, katakana, and kanji all have their own meanings and intonations. They’re all different. I mean, just say my name in hiragana and see how it sounds.”

  It might have felt a little softer. Haruhi () as opposed to Haruhi () or Haruhi (). But that aside—

  Yasumi () instead of Yasumi (), eh?

  I thought about it. After about thirty seconds of quiet contemplation, I came to the unambiguous conclusion that her name was nowhere in my recollection. Even taking into consideration the fact that she was in the academic class under mine, the snowy plain of my memory remained unsullied by the footsteps of her name. I was certain of it.

  I did not know this girl.

  And yet my brain stewed in the contradictory sense of unease I felt, that somewhere, somehow I had met her, or known of her.

  Haruhi seemed completely unworried.

  “I wonder what we should make the new recruit do? We hunted for mysterious phenomena last year, and it’s probably too soon to make her the lead in our next movie… I should’ve asked if she plays an instrument!”

  Evidently the only things Haruhi was worried about were the morale activities she was going to put our promising new member through.

  Was I the only one who felt something amiss in this strange disharmony? This strange unease, like a petite bomb had fallen to disrupt our peaceful days?

  Yasumi Watahashi’s secret.

  What was it? Was it something that merited investigation?

  I looked to Koizumi.

  But the SOS Brigade’s lieutenant brigade chief only sipped at the buckwheat tea Asahina had prepared, and didn’t so much as blink at the eye contact I so generously spared him.

  Hmph.

  … Well, fine. If he wasn’t going to worry about it, then I didn’t need to worry about it either. Isn’t that right, Koizumi?

  β—9

  The next day, Wednesday.

  A day containing hardly anything, leaving me free to ruminate.

  After being forcibly awakened by my sister, who came to roll around on the bed with Shamisen, my first conscious thought was only, Ah, now I have more time to spend agonizing over everything. I had too much to think about, and no idea how or with what to start.

  Naturally, waking up this way wasn’t very pleasant, and as soon as I awoke I was plunged into melancholy. Sometimes you have occasion to remember just how pleasant being unconscious is. Sleep can be the perfect getaway. But it’s also a perfect way to procrastinate, and a perfect waste of time.

  The fact that I watched my sister carrying Shamisen innocently around by the scruff of his neck and felt not indulgent happiness but frank envy probably pointed to a character flaw on my part as her older brother. I should’ve been just as innocent and childish a few years ago as she was now, but I had no memory of it at all. On the contrary, all I had were memories I wanted to forget. Despite that we shared the same DNA, my path and my sister’s were totally divergent. Was it because of our differing sexes, or birth years? Or was it because our blood types were different? I didn’t believe in either blood type personality analysis or horoscopes; such superstitions were absurd, but perhaps it was true that one’s personality could easily be shaped by the surrounding people, particularly friends.

  I’d grown up as a cynic; my sister was straightforward and honest, and there’d been little change in this pattern for several years. As her older brother, I couldn’t help hoping that she wouldn’t turn totally rebellious upon the change of environment that would come with middle school and its pressures. I wanted her to be able to stay carefree, like Tsuruya had. Maybe just sending her to the Tsuruya household to stay as an adopted daughter would be a good idea. Tsuruya would certainly enjoy educating a little girl, and would probably snicker all the while as she accomplished the task of mingling their assembled interests. Although the notion of a Tsuruya number 2 appearing did give me pause.

  Incidentally, Tsuruya was the most trustworthy normal person I knew. Sometimes I wondered if she would end up being the one who took decisive action to solve the SOS Brigade’s problems, especially the ones related to Haruhi and Asahina. One way or another, she just didn’t seem like a completely unconcerned party. Isn’t that right, Tsuruya?

  There was, after all, the out-of-place artifact she’d been entrusted with—that object and message we’d excavated from the mountain, left behind by the Tsuruya ancestor ages ago. I was sure we’d need it eventually. There was no way it was just some cultural relic. It was another trump card in my hand. Whether it was an item that could be used against time travelers somehow, or a weapon capable of finishing off an alien, while its purpose was unknown I was certain the day would come when I would need it. Although of course I was also prepared for the possibility that it was a useless piece of scrap from the Genroku era.

  But you could never have too many jokers. Even if they were like red fives, ura dora, or open riichi in mah-jongg.

  Like always, the routine work of having to climb the hill to school was no more than a bullet point on the day’s outline.

  My gait was at about its usual pace, although I sped up a little bit to avoid that heartless gate closing on me just as I approached it. As usual, the reason I couldn’t give myself a little leeway in going to school was because the time I left my house was basically fixed, and if I think back, the truth is because there hadn’t been much change in the time I awoke between last year and this one. Having managed to get to school on time once, I would assume I could wake up at the same time the next day and do the same thing—this was the result of accumulated human experience. Students who made it a point to get to school early despite no need to do so must’ve just had an unhealthy fetish for our dingy campus buildings.

  On this day in particular, as I gasped my way up the hill during the depressing commute to school that I’d nonetheless been making for over a year, an unexpected voice called out to me from behind.

  “Kyon!”

  It was Kunikida. He must’ve hurried to catch me, because his breath was ragged, and he was looking bewildered in a way I’d never seen.

  “You’re every bit the person I’ve always known. You haven’t changed a bit,” he said suddenly, going completely off the script of morning greetings.

  What was this? And moreover, why did he feel the need to inform me of his feelings about me at this exact moment?

  Kunikida came alongside me, and I slowed my stride a bit. Once his breathing became calmer, he continued, ignoring my confused expression.

  “Sasaki’s the same. She’s just like she was in middle school. My impression of her hasn’t changed at all.”

  What of it? Why was Sasaki’s name coming out of his mouth, with this particular timing? I asked.

  “I’m saying, you, me, and Sasaki have all become high school students. But when I first met Kuyoh, she felt different somehow. I feel bad for Taniguchi, saying this, but I got the sense that I didn’t want to get too close to her. I still feel that way.”

  You couldn’t exactly call that perceptive. I can’t imagine any reasonable person who wouldn’t look at Kuyoh and feel something suspicious. Kunikida’s impression was completely normal and understandab
le.

  “She’s just not a normal, regular, average human. I can’t tell if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. But I definitely wouldn’t go out with her. I guess Taniguchi would. Oh, also—” Kunikida lowered his voice and brought his head closer to mine. “I feel bad saying it, but I get the same feeling about Asahina and Nagato. I think it might be my imagination, but there’s something different about them. But since Tsuruya hangs out with you guys pretty regularly, I figure there’s nothing to worry about. Sorry, Kyon—don’t worry about it, okay? I just wanted to say something. If the SOS Brigade ever needs my assistance, I want you to let me know.”

  We talked about trivialities after that, until reaching our classroom and concluding our conversation. It was as though having gotten it off his chest, he was no longer worried about anything at all, so we chattered about our worries about the upcoming midterms, complained about the two-thousand-meter run in gym class, and other such magnificently normal topics of small talk.

  Did he just want to provide me with a little bit of advice? I couldn’t help noting that while it was a little vague, his mention of Tsuruya was quite insightful.

  So it seemed that I had a friend that was a little worried about us, despite the fact that he didn’t know much. Although he was about the only classmate of mine who knew about Sasaki. It wouldn’t be surprising if he’d sensed something of the strange relationship that existed between me and her. I supposed I was happy to have a friend who was so perceptive on my behalf. He’d helped me out before tests, and we’d known each other since middle school, and it was quite possible that soon he’d be elevated above “random classmate A” status in Haruhi’s mind. I hoped Taniguchi, on the other hand, would be left out. He was more suited to remaining an eternal one-man comedy act.

  I was sure Kunikida felt the same way, which was probably why he’d chosen the time he did, when it was just the two of us, to approach me.