The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya

by Nagaru Tanigawa

  Her faint voice seemed only distantly related to the movement of her diaphragm. “I cannot say anything. Not right now.”

  Why not? Wasn’t this the first time that Nagato had ever expressed reservations?

  Then she added, “The determination is that this is the best course of action.”

  “What?” I shot back, despite myself. It was a lousy comeback, I know. But I was fully capable of understanding things like context and nuance, and I hadn’t come here to chat with Nagato just for the fun of it. What surprised me was only one thing.

  Nagato was refusing. She was refusing me.

  This—surely this foretold calamity.

  “So, you not being able to tell me something right now—who decided this? Was it the Data Overmind?”

  “The reasoning that it will result in a higher probability of a favorable outcome is mine. Depending on time and circumstances, operating in restricted space, the possibility exists that acting in ignorance can be more effective.”

  For some reason I didn’t feel as if I was being complimented. Just as my discomfort level was nearing its limit as I wondered whether this was payback for something I’d done before, salvation came in the form of something I’d left in my pocket.

  That, of course, was nothing less than the non-love letter from Yasumi Watahashi.

  “So, about this letter…”

  I felt a little bad showing it to someone else without asking Yasumi, but I didn’t owe her that much obligation quite yet.

  Nagato glanced at the paper without much interest. “You may go,” she said vaguely.

  Really? Well, then.

  “She means you no harm. On the contrary—it can be inferred that she wishes to be of use to you.”

  I couldn’t help groaning. Now that she’d said it, I realized I’d sort of guessed as much.

  This was the spirited, light-stepping freshman who’d passed Haruhi’s unreasonable entrance examinations as though they were nothing. Clad in her oversized uniform, she happily did everything from menial chores in the clubroom to redesigning the brigade’s web page, always running around with her unruly hair and her childish features—such charm she had that it was impossible to feel any other way about her. She was like the platonic ideal of the junior member. Any suspicion my brain conjured up had to be mistaken.

  Save one condition—the fact that she’d left a note in my shoe locker.

  After that, I could get nothing out of Nagato except for “yes” and “no,” so I took my leave and returned to my classroom. Immediately thereafter, the bell signaling the end of lunch rang, and with that I’d lost my chance to eat. I’d have to take my lunch in the clubroom after school.

  Fortunately, the post-homeroom Haruhi-led study session was canceled on account of our new member. Side by side, Haruhi and I made for the ex-literature club room like flies sticking themselves to flypaper. Our routine was almost getting boring, but thanks to the new participant, my mind was starting to waver a bit.

  But when Haruhi slammed the door open the way she always did, beyond it were only the old standbys of Asahina in her maid outfit and Nagato, who hadn’t moved so much as a millimeter from where she was earlier that day. I wasn’t much worried about the two girls, nor the sole other male brigade member, Koizumi—he’d probably been made class rep of his class or something and was enjoying some pillow talk with whoever the female class rep was. He was a good-looking boy, and if it hadn’t been for the SOS Brigade probably would’ve been a lot more popular, and even if he were managing to conduct some kind of high-school-dating-sim-style life behind our backs, he was probably smart enough not to get caught—the guy was so canny he was probably the sharpest one out of the whole brigade.

  I realized I was distracting myself.

  “Is the new member not here yet?”

  Yasumi’s petite form was nowhere to be seen. She might have been on her way here from her real school, but Her Excellency Brigade Chief Haruhi was very strict when it came to delaying marches.

  “Ah…” Asahina clasped her hands together as though apologizing for her own failings. “She’s not coming today. She came right after class, said she had to take care of something that was desperately important for her life, and went home.”

  I’m not sure how she took the twitch of my eyebrow, but Asahina continued, speaking with an awful lot of emotion in her voice for a defense attorney.

  “She seemed like she was in a terrible hurry. She bowed over and over, and seemed very, very sorry, talking about how missing two days in a row made her a failure as a person, and I just watched her with my eyes full of tears… ah… it’s just…”

  A flushed Asahina started to hug herself yet again. Evidently Yasumi had just been too cute to bear.

  “She looked at me with those eyes, like a little baby animal… She was so… cute…”

  As I watched Asahina deliver her pathos-filled monologue, I thought about what was happening.

  I was positive that Yasumi’s “something important” was her meeting with me here, at six o’clock. What did she want with me? And where did she plan to stay until then? Was she hiding somewhere on school grounds? Could she not even participate in the most perfunctory of club activities? The actions of Yasumi the mystery girl were indeed mysterious.

  Just as I was hoping that it wouldn’t invite Haruhi’s displeasure—

  “I heard over lunch. On my way to the cafeteria.” Haruhi plopped down in her brigade chief’s chair and lazily dropped her bag on the floor.

  So what did she hear? I asked.

  “That she was going to skip club activities today. ‘I’m so sorry, you made me a full brigade member and I go and do something silly like this,’ she was saying, bowing like a little flower, on the verge of tears.”

  I imagined the cheerful girl’s form as she apparently humbled herself, wondering to myself that despite my long walkabout in search of her, there was a route that would have led me right here.

  “Did you ask her why?”

  “Look, Kyon. I’m not that much of a busybody—I’m not some Peeping Tom that’s going to pry into every detail. And it didn’t seem like she was regretting joining the SOS Brigade and trying to sneak out or something. I’m sure she really did just happen to have something unavoidable come up. You might be surprised to know that it’s my policy to show my subordinates tolerance and forgiveness.”

  And yet somehow I doubted she’d apply that motto to me at all.

  Realizing that further conversation was going to be fruitless, I put my bag on the table and went to sit in my usual chair, whereupon I noticed for the first time a sense of unease in the clubroom’s atmosphere.

  It was because there was something left by the window behind the brigade chief’s desk.

  When Asahina noticed my gaze, she spoke up with a voice as soft as fresh-made mochi rice cake. “Yasumi brought it over earlier, as an apology for missing the meeting.”

  Earlier? I was surprised we hadn’t run into her on the way over, then. Oh well, whatever.

  It was a small-mouthed ceramic vase, holding a single elegant flower.

  Haruhi turned around and gave the flower a long, hard look. “I haven’t seen that kind of flower before. Yasumi brought this?”

  “Yes, yes.” Asahina nodded. “She said she thought it was interesting, so she brought it over. She said she found it yesterday in the mountains nearby, and that it had to be pretty rare, so she thought it would make a nice decoration for the room. She gave it to me like it was some kind of treasure…”

  Yesterday, huh? By the time I got home, Yasumi was already there. If she went to the mountains after that, it would’ve been getting pretty dark. And if by “mountains” she meant the Tsuruya family mountain (which was really the only one in the immediate area), then she’d been wandering around alone in a place unlit by artificial light. That seemed rather dangerous for a girl who’d only just started high school.

  “… Mmm—” Haruhi folded her arms and regarded the flower. “
Well, fine. I’m the one who asked her to bring something interesting; who knows, maybe for Yasumi this flower’s really interesting. Indeed! Such decisive follow-up means that she’s got the heart of a true brigade member. My brigade entrance exam didn’t lie! Looks like it definitely identified her attributes, anyway. It’s no overstatement to say that if we preserve that format, we won’t have to worry about the brigade finding good personnel even after we graduate!”

  I wondered about that. Would the Haruhi-style SOS Brigade test really be applied once we graduated? At the moment, club admission was determined by being able to endure Haruhi’s demerit system, and it seemed as though Haruhi didn’t actually want many rookie members. If the real truth of her heart were laid bare, I really didn’t think Haruhi was welcoming Yasumi with open arms. I’d been through quite a lot with Haruhi. I’d gotten so I could see where she was looking just by the angle of her eyebrows. And she was the kind of person who wore her heart on her sleeve, which made her easy to read, so my Haruhi observational skills yielded a single answer, which was that she was confused.

  Essentially, Haruhi’s evaluation of Yasumi was a complicated one, and she had not yet come up with a satisfactory answer. I imagined she felt something from the younger girl; Yasumi wasn’t straightforward the way Asahina was.

  The truth was I felt the same way. With the note she’d written me in my pocket, I wondered what her intentions toward the SOS Brigade were—it was a sort of mystery.

  On the other hand, Asahina was in rare high spirits, her footsteps seeming lighter than normal as she went about making tea. I guess she just couldn’t help how much happier having a new female junior member made her.

  When I thought about it, I couldn’t really say that Haruhi and I—to say nothing of Nagato and Koizumi—were exactly great underclassmen for Asahina. No way could I say that. Surrounded as she was by Haruhi the tyrant, the silent, stone-faced Nagato, and the stiflingly polite Koizumi, she probably didn’t feel like anyone’s senior. And I was not better—I was constantly forgetting that Asahina was now in the highest year of school. Given that her charm made her seem like a middle schooler, Yasumi seemed even younger, so it was no wonder she felt so fondly toward the girl two years her junior. As I watched Asahina excitedly fuss over which tea-brewing method to teach Yasumi tomorrow, I felt the heaviness that had settled in my heart lighten, but unfortunately there was a reason why I couldn’t just keep staring at the SOS Brigade’s mascot girl.

  I sipped whatever herbal tea Asahina’d made that day, and glanced at my watch.

  I still had time until six o’clock. Just as I was trying to figure out how I was going to get back to the clubroom after the day’s activities were over—

  “Hello, everyone—sorry I’m late.” And there, smiling pleasantly like someone out of an acne medication commercial, appeared Koizumi. “There’s just so much to do at the beginning of spring. The student council president is quite motivated this year, and negotiations with faculty are not what I’d call rare. I wish I could ignore them, but given that they concern consolidation and elimination of various clubs, I can’t very well fail to attend.”

  As he entered the room, Koizumi casually explained his troubles, though no one had asked him to. He set his bag down on the desk, and paying the Chinese shogi set on the table no mind, walked over to the windowsill.

  “Ah, what do we have here?” He peered in interest at the flower Yasumi had left behind. “Who is this flower a present from?”

  “From Yasumi, I guess,” answered Haruhi, poking at her empty teacup. Asahina noticed this and hurried to prepare more tea. I hoped it would be regular green tea this time.

  Koizumi stroked his chin and regarded the slim vase as though he were looking at a triffid.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” he said, taking his cell phone out of his blazer pocket and positioning it to take a picture of the flower. He snapped several pictures, and once he was satisfied, fiddled with his phone for a few moments, as though he were sending the pictures somewhere.

  “What’re you doing, Koizumi?” I asked. “Don’t tell me that’s wolfsbane or foxglove.”

  “Not at all.” Koizumi slid his phone back into his pocket and flashed a reassuring smile. “It’s not poisonous. I just thought it might be an orchid I’d seen somewhere else, that’s all. I’m probably off the mark, but I thought I’d check to be sure, that’s all.”

  After that, Nagato continued reading the lengthy nonfiction book she was reading, proceeding from the first volume to the second, while Asahina served us yet more mysterious-tasting tea that she’d obtained somewhere, as Haruhi fiddled with the SOS Brigade website. Incidentally, Haruhi’s first Internet task was clicking through every spam URL on every forum she could find, which constantly crashed the browser.

  Around the time I’d managed to install some free anti-malware software, that good old easy-listening music started to play over the school PA system.

  Which meant it was about five thirty.

  With excellent timing, Nagato snapped her book shut, and taking that as a sign, we all started getting ready to leave—although in my case, it was mostly fake, in service of my alibi. But if I didn’t get everybody out of the clubroom, I couldn’t start my meeting with Yasumi.

  We had all passed through the school gate and started along the road that led alongside the school and down the hill. I prepared myself for the biggest role of my acting career, and while I was well aware it would seem pretty forced, I hadn’t been able to think of a better line.

  “Oh! Damn!” I said.

  Haruhi and Asahina were a bit ahead, and stopped to turn around, wondering what the problem was. Nagato and Koizumi stopped at exactly the same time as each other, which I guess didn’t surprise me.

  “I left something in the classroom. I’ve got to go get it!”

  I can’t deny that my line-read sounded a little forced.

  “Huh?” said Haruhi nonetheless. “You never bring your textbooks home with you anyway—what could you have possibly forgotten in the room?”

  Normally she would have been right, and in fact she was right, but I needed a reason that Haruhi would believe.

  “Uh, actually,” I said, repeating the line I’d memorized. “I just remembered I borrowed a dirty magazine from Taniguchi. And I left it in my desk.”

  “Huh?” said Haruhi, her eyebrows instantly contorting.

  “It’s probably fine, but if anybody finds it I’ll be in trouble. So—I’m just gonna go get it. You guys go on ahead! This is, like, a super-valuable porno mag. It’s already been banned and gone out of print, so it’s really rare. If it gets confiscated, I’ll have to prostrate myself in front of Taniguchi. If I don’t go get it now, he’ll make me his errand boy forever!”

  Next to Haruhi’s astounded face, Koizumi’s grin, and Asahina’s stunned expression, I met Nagato’s gaze. I got the feeling that she nodded ever so faintly at me, but insofar as she was agreeing with me, it was on the micron scale.

  I felt bad. If only I’d been able to come up with a better excuse.

  “So, I’m heading back to the classroom. It’ll probably take me a while, so you guys don’t have to wait up,” I said, then turned to go. As I started to climb back up the hill, Haruhi’s voice came at me from behind.

  “Don’t talk about dirty books in front of maidens! Stupid Kyon!”

  Maidens? Yeah, right. Although I’d have to apologize to Asahina the next day. Yeah, definitely.

  In the no-man’s-land between sunset and early evening, there was no trace of anyone in the school or on the field, so I was able to return to the clubroom without passing a single person. I opened the door.

  “Thank you so much for coming.” There in the room, tinted orange by the setting sun, Yasumi was waiting for me.

  The girl I’d looked so hard for during lunch, with no success—the girl Nagato claimed was not a student here. Her charm held Asahina captive, and yet Haruhi found our newest brigade member somehow difficult to handle.
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br />   Her mischievous face smiled a smile as warm and soft as a freshly roasted marshmallow as Yasumi happily continued. “I knew you’d come. I believed it—that things would turn out this way. And I want to believe in what’s going to happen.”

  I decided the best policy was to ignore mysterious statements I didn’t understand.

  “What business do you have with me?” I said, for starters. She had remained all the way through to the end of Haruhi’s brigade member selection procedure. Anyone who could do that was not someone to be trifled with, I was quite sure. “What’s going to happen next?”

  Yasumi’s answer came in a softly laughing voice. “I don’t know myself.”

  What?

  “But we’ll know soon.”

  Yasumi brushed aside her soft hair. The grin on her smiley-face barrette seemed larger than usual; it must have been a trick of the angle.

  Yasumi continued to look at me, and I didn’t take my eyes off her face.

  How much time passed like that, I wonder?

  I heard someone knock at the door.

  β—11

  Friday.

  My enthusiasm had fallen asleep; apparently that was all there was.

  I wondered if my sister’s flying body press method of awakening me was the result of her calculating the worst possible way to do so. Having been forcibly awakened from a dream wherein I knew what my goal was but no matter where I ran I couldn’t reach it made my body feel already fatigued, despite having gotten plenty of sleep. It didn’t feel as if I’d rested up at all. It just made me feel even more tired than when I’d started.

  I wished that sister of mine could at least have waited until the dream was over.

  “… Ah…”

  My eyes still half-closed, I sat up, whereupon Shamisen, who had been lying next to me, put his head on my pillow and started purring. If he’d been either in or on the futon, he would’ve fallen prey to my sister as well. This was not a place where there was any cause for shame at humanity’s failure to keep up with cats, so I got out of bed, still wearing my pajamas.