She bowed deeply.
Yasumi Watahashi. Despite her slight lisp, she had such volume that I wondered if maybe she wouldn’t have been better off joining the choir, and her face shone like Venus just before the dawn. At the very least, I could conclude that she had energy levels to match Haruhi’s.
“Well… nice to meet you too, I guess.”
My halfhearted reply didn’t seem to bother Yasumi in the slightest. Her head popped up from her bow. “Yes! You guess right! I’m gonna give it my all!” Her honest, open gaze was like a particle cannon, and it felt as though if I kept looking directly at her energetic smile, it would overload my retinas, so I casually averted my eyes, looking elsewhere in the room for help.
The usual suspects were all there. Asahina had already changed into her maid outfit and was putting the kettle on the burner, and Koizumi was sitting at the table, setting out playing pieces on a game board that was neither shogi nor go. As for Nagato, she was at her usual spot, absorbed in the pages of some hardcover book, ignoring the rest of the universe.
Haruhi seemed pointlessly satisfied, and plopped herself down at the brigade chief’s seat. “Now, then!” she began, her voice full of grandiosity as though she were Pope Gregory VII meeting Emperor Henry IV at Canossa, “I’m sure you all know, but I’ll introduce her again. Having passed a series of fair and public examinations, this is our new member, Yasumi Watahashi. It’s our duty to thoroughly educate her in the lessons that we of the SOS Brigade have learned in the past year—sometimes harshly, sometimes indulgently, like giving cotton candy to a child. She needs to be drilled good and hard in order to become the cornerstone of the next generation of the SOS Brigade!”
“Drilled…?” Asahina looked to Yasumi, then surveyed her own jurisdiction, where the tea implements were, her face like Sen Rikyu wondering how to teach the true meaning of tea ceremony to a general from the provinces. This wasn’t the tea ceremony club, so it didn’t seem as though such careful tea preparation was called for, but compared with the perfunctory stuff Haruhi brewed, Asahina’s fine product was like sweet honeydew melon, so it was worth teaching the Mikuru Asahina school of tea to the new member in order to pass it on to the next generation.
In fact, maybe she could teach Haruhi too. Haruhi’s tea was mostly tasteless, being nothing more than hot leaf juice.
“Yes! Tea, tea, I’ll brew it, I’ll serve it! Please, Asahina, despite my limited ability I hope you’ll see fit to instruct me in your ways!” Yasumi seemed to acknowledge Asahina as her master on the spot, immediately advancing into her territory. Asahina seemed flustered for a moment, but seemed to take Yasumi at her word.
“Er, well, this is Suzumiya’s cup, and this is Kyon’s. Oh, and remember everybody has different temperatures they like. The tea leaves are up here on the shelf. I choose them based on the day’s temperature and humidity. What I’m researching right now is this tea here—”
Yasumi watched and nodded, her eyes shining as she followed Asahina’s every move like telephoto lenses, not missing a single second.
“Also, I want to wear a maid uniform! And a nurse one! Oh, please let me! Please, please!”
What was the source of Yasumi’s energy, that she seemed so like a 100,000-horsepower robot? Was it nuclear fusion, or solar power? Surely not photosynthesis. And the first thing we teach her is how to make tea? What was she, a new employee at a firm somewhere?
But speaking up would be pointless. To be perfectly honest, there was nothing else to learn in this brigade. I put my bag down on the floor and sat across from Koizumi.
“How about a game?” Koizumi was watching Yasumi with interest, but he suddenly turned away from her and pushed the game board toward me.
“What’s this?”
Strange, round pieces were on the board. They gave no hint as to how they were to be moved, with Chinese characters carved on them that said things like general, elephant, and cannon. That Koizumi—had he finally gotten tired of losing at Othello, go, and shogi, and brought in a game he thought he could win?
“It’s Chinese chess. It’s called xiàngqí. Once you understand the rules, anyone can play. It’s really not difficult. At the very least, games are shorter than in shogi.”
Those “rules” were the problem. Until I memorized them, wasn’t it obvious that I would be the one racking up the losses? Couldn’t we play with hanafuda cards instead? I asked. I had a decent amount of experience with oichokabu or koi koi thanks to playing with my mom’s family in the countryside.
“I didn’t consider card games. I’m sure I’ll bring some eventually. As for xiàngqí, once you understand that it’s a zero-sum game like go and shogi, that’s quite sufficient. I’m sure you’ll get the rules down in short order. If you can glance at a go board and immediately see who’s winning, then you’ll have no trouble at all. As a board game, it has no real elements of chance, so I think you’ll enjoy it quite a bit.” He flashed an easygoing smile. “Let’s play a practice game, shall we? It won’t count toward your win-loss tally. So, about this ‘soldier’ piece—it moves like so…”
He launched into a casual explanation. Didn’t he have any thoughts about Yasumi? She was a girl of such exceptional talent that she’d passed Haruhi’s gauntlet with comparatively little difficulty. She might well become the next brigade chief! Assuming Haruhi didn’t have some kind of blind spot, how about it, Koizumi? What do you think? I was assuming the two blue gems stuck in his face weren’t made of lapis lazuli.
Koizumi grinned as he lined the pieces up. It kind of freaked me out—it was the smile of the rank-and-file operative whose shadowy boss often called upon him, and you couldn’t tell how comfortable he was with that.
He made as though to start lining the pieces up on my side, leaning toward me. Koizumi whispered, “I am not worried. Far from it, I’m actually quite relieved. No matter what happens now, it won’t be bad for us. Given that, I would suggest you relax, hmm?”
I had no such confidence, thanks to my rebellious nature. Thus far, were there any examples of new characters appearing only to retreat without doing anything? And even if so, there was the suggestive appearance of that weird new group with Sasaki, Tachibana, Kuyoh, and the nameless time traveler. They didn’t seem to be doing anything at the moment, but that in and of itself was strange, and it raised the question of why they’d appeared in the first place. If it was a foreshadowing device, it was a damned clumsy one. All they’d done was show up and say “hi,” I said.
If I were reading a mystery novel with a setup like that, I wouldn’t just put it down, I’d throw it at the wall as soon as the detective started making deductions.
“That’s not very serene of you. Books should be read with a generous heart. Even the trashiest of stories can later become food for the mind. You know how the saying goes—the best teacher is a contrarian one.”
That was the first I’d heard of it.
“I’ll bet. I just now invented that saying, after all. But I don’t think it’s terribly incorrect.”
“… Hegel was a genius,” I muttered, at which Koizumi favored me with a smirk.
“Exactly. For people living their lives in society, he was the philosopher who left behind the best advice. Anybody can put his ideas into practice.”
I didn’t really think the Hegelian dialectic had anything to do with winning or losing this game of Chinese shogi.
I set out the pieces as instructed by Koizumi, and listened to the explanations of how each one moved. It was similar to shogi, but the details were quite a bit different. Still, I was getting bored with chess and Othello, so throwing a new board game into the mix wasn’t a bad idea.
As Koizumi and I were concentrating on the xiàngqí board, I stole glances at the other brigade members in the room.
Nagato was reading her book. Quietly. Whether or not it had occurred to her that adding a new brigade member might also give the literature club new clout, her demeanor in this room over the past year had been as unchanging as the permafrost in
Iceland. The pages of the book in her lap were slightly brown, and I wondered if it were a rare volume she’d dug up out of a used-book store. Had she expanded her operations beyond the city library? As I imagined Nagato’s trotting footsteps on the way to some used-book store, I found myself calming down.
Just when my battle with Koizumi on the game board was heating up—
“Sorry to keep you waiting!” came Yasumi’s voice, as clear and high as a piccolo, and she popped into my field of view from the side holding a tea tray with cups on it. Behind her was Asahina the maid, who was unable to hide her nervous fussiness as she watched us carefully.
“This is rooibos tea! It’s caffeine-free, good for your digestion, and very healthy! Please, try some!”
I guess we didn’t have a spare maid uniform. Yasumi was still in her slightly overlarge uniform as she set the steaming cups down on the table in front of Koizumi and me.
The cups had “Kyon” and “Koizumi” written on them in Haruhi’s bold brushstroke handwriting. Given that the writing was magic marker on mass-produced cups, they had no sense of wabi or sabi about them, but given that I didn’t really care about the aesthetics of tea ceremony, it didn’t much matter to me.
I did my best not to meet Yasumi’s glittering eyes as I brought the red-brown liquid to my lips, and a few seconds later I looked to Koizumi, who was doing the same thing.
“… What a curious flavor.” Koizumi offered his opinion with a faint, wry smile; my opinion, incidentally, was identical. It was certainly not bad. Yet neither was it particularly tasty. Rather it was an odd sort of flavor. Which meant that I should’ve been more than happy to gulp down some green or barley tea instead, but to be honest I was too much of a coward to do so.
“It’s, um… well… I’ve never had tea quite like it. I can, uh, definitely tell that it’s good for me. It certainly feels healthy.”
“Wow!” cried Yasumi happily as she floated over to place the designated cup in front of Nagato.
“…”
Nagato gave the cup on which Haruhi decided to write “Yuki” a brief glance.
“…”
She returned her attention to her book as though having looked at dried seaweed that had yet to be rehydrated.
This was nothing unusual, so none of us took much notice of it, but when I looked to Yasumi to check her reaction, she seemed totally unconcerned, skipping back over to Asahina.
“Hey, wait.” It was the absolute ruler of this space who raised her voice. “Where’s my tea?” Haruhi’s irritated face looked out from behind the computer’s display. “Shouldn’t you serve the brigade chief first, in times like these? What’s the idea, serving me last? Mikuru, you’ve gotta keep educating her, okay?”
“Oh… I’m so sorry!” Asahina said frantically. Beside her, Yasumi giggled.
“Sorry! I forgot. I was probably just nervous. I’ll make you a special cup now, so please wait just a moment.”
She didn’t seem the least bit concerned with Haruhi’s crocodile eyes. Yasumi flitted around like some kind of winged fairy, efficiently bringing Haruhi a steaming-hot cup of tea. As usual, Haruhi gulped down the near-boiling drink in a single swig. Her eyes rolled and she panted like a dog for a moment before speaking.
“Make sure you remember next time! It’s a pretty important rule. Mikuru, you’re the teacher, so you’ve got to educate our new recruit properly.”
When had Asahina become responsible for Yasumi’s education?
“Anyway, I guess this tea is good enough for now.” Haruhi’s mood sure changed quickly. I doubted she’d even had time to taste the tea. “Yasumi Watahashi, was it? Hey, are you good with computers?”
“Only a little, but yes! Yup, definitely!”
“Really? Well, then…”
The monitor that sat on the the brigade chief’s desk had been procured from the computer club, and on it was currently displayed the SOS Brigade’s web page, in exactly the same state it had been in when I’d first made it. It had the same cheap layout and half-assed content it always had, with the only meaningful text being an e-mail address. In the world of the ever-advancing network, our home page could only be described as hopelessly out-of-date. It was the embodiment of the digital divide. Blog? What’s that?
Haruhi had always had designs on updating it, but the responsibility of doing so fell entirely to me, and I had no interest whatsoever in actually doing it, and had thus constantly come up with reasons to procrastinate. The truth was that putting the SOS Brigade’s name on the Net did not seem likely to have any particular benefits whatsoever, given what had happened the previous year with the computer club president. I was hoping Haruhi would just forget about the whole thing, but it seemed she hadn’t yet abandoned her desire for more page views and Internet fame. Of course, she didn’t know Nagato had doctored the logo she designed.
“I want to make our site more eye-catching. Think you can do it?” Haruhi pointed at the monitor, which had been left turned on. “Kyon made the SOS Brigade’s main site, but it’s totally bare-bones and we’ve never done anything with it. It’s not pretty to look at either. The world is full of sites that are stylishly designed and full of useful information, but ours just makes the Internet cry.”
Geez, sorry.
“So, Yasumi, can you just get on that computer and whip up something better for us? Oh, this is part of our training regimen for new members. If you think your trials were over with the entrance tests, you better think again! The road to full brigade membership is a harsh one!”
“Yes! I’ll do it, I’ll do it! Please, let me!” Yasumi answered immediately, whether or not she understood the import of Haruhi’s words. “I want to try. I’ll give it a shot. Just let me take a crack at it!” she said, and as the echo of her cries reverberated, I found myself surprised at her overtly positive reaction. And I couldn’t help asking—
“Hey, have you ever even made a website before?”
“I have not!” she said, smiling like my sister did upon receiving an animal-themed chess set. “But, but! I’m confident I can, because I really want to be useful to you all! So if it’s just one computer, I’ll train it up right!”
Computers were just boxes that did calculations; it didn’t matter how much you “trained it up,” they weren’t all-purpose tools that would do whatever you said, like a hunting dog or something.
But before I could stop her, Yasumi brushed the sitting Haruhi aside, pulled the keyboard out, grabbed the wireless mouse, and immediately started typing and clicking away like some veteran career woman at an office somewhere.
After surveying the contents of the hard drive, she spoke.
“There’s a pretty comprehensive set of tools here. But, if you have apps like these, I’d think you would’ve been able to make a flashier site. This one’s filled with useless tags—who made it? Wow, it’s pretty much text-only. Totally retro. The table layout is awful too… let’s see, view source. Oh man. What do these font tags even mean? Augh, you didn’t even use style sheets! Any slightly geeky middle school student could’ve done better than this.”
Haruhi had just then made it clear that I was the one who’d done the site. This Yasumi Watahashi certainly didn’t seem to mind being rude when offering opinions. I wasn’t going to forget her name.
“Okay, I’m gonna make some tweaks here!” she announced brightly, then began manipulating the computer. Yasumi was cheery enough to be humming a tune, and when I listened more closely, I realized it was the tune Haruhi had sung during last year’s school festival when she’d acted as a substitute vocalist. Obviously Yasumi would’ve been in middle school then, so she must have happened to wander by at that moment.
Even I couldn’t deny that Haruhi had really shone, then. Of course, having awakened to the idea of band-related activities, she then dragged the club into a bunch of superfluous, miscalculated effort, but still.
Haruhi stood behind Yasumi, a second cup of tea in her hand as she radiated a sense of satisfaction
. She seemed every bit the midlevel manager pleased to finally have found a competent subordinate. The determination to assign all random tasks and irritating chores to Yasumi from now on practically wafted off of her like so many fungal spores.
While I indulged in the beautiful dream that I would be finally released from handling such tasks myself, this was Haruhi we were talking about—a more contrary, unreasonable, impetuous person you would never find. Winding up even lower than Yasumi was all I could expect. Getting passed by an underclassman in a single day made my tenuous reason for existence even more tenuous. Not that I was particularly worried about it.
As Koizumi’s and my xiàngqí face-off was reaching its climax, the cup Yasumi had brought over was just about empty. Naturally I won the game, but since it didn’t feel like much of a victory and it was a game I wasn’t used to yet, I was a bit tired.
“Another game?”
I ignored Koizumi’s attempt at getting revenge and stretched, when for no particular reason my eyes happened upon a cardboard box. It sat on the shelf, and contained the SOS Brigade’s war spoils thus far—I suppose you could call it our arsenal.
Sticking out of it was the aluminum baseball bat and gloves we’d used in our baseball game the previous year.
I felt a little awkward, given that this was the club’s first new member. I was a little wary of this Yasumi Watahashi—there was that strange phone call to consider—so maybe that explains why before I knew it, I spoke up.
“Hey, Koizumi. Wanna play some catch?” It was a bizarre suggestion, I admit.
“Oh?” Koizumi met my eyes for a second, then grinned hugely. “Certainly. Without activity, our bodies will deteriorate, and moderate exercise is good for both mental and physical acuity.”
Having thus decided, Koizumi moved quickly, and without needing to stretch he pulled the cardboard box down and took out two battered gloves and a tennis ball. Good old Koizumi—he’d read my mind.
The SOS Brigade had gotten along for a year with five members. As we’d moved up, this new freshman had slid in to become our first junior member, and while there didn’t seem to be a place to include her, I could do enough self-analysis to realize that maybe thanks to all the various occult and scientific happenings we’d endured as a five-person club, the idea of changing our pentagram to a hexagram inspired a strange sense of unease in me.
The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya Page 19
