The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya

by Nagaru Tanigawa

  Sasaki furrowed her brows and glared at Fujiwara’s profile, but the time traveler ignored her completely. I realized the atmosphere had turned bad.

  “What do you mean, instrument? This is the first I’ve heard of that,” I asked.

  “You’ll understand soon enough,” Fujiwara said to me brusquely. “Originally you were totally useless. But it’s not in our best interests to oppose fixed events. For my part, I’d like to keep that to an absolute minimum. So that’s why we called you along too. I suggest you sit back and enjoy your role as the sole bystander from this era.”

  How dare he look down on me like that. I wasn’t going to let that go unanswered.

  “Hey, Fujiwara. Are you trying to change the future you’re from?”

  Silence.

  “If so, that’s impossible.” I thought back to what I’d heard on my very first mysterious phenomenon–searching date with Asahina. “Time is like a flip-book animation. No matter whether someone from the future interferes, it only amounts to scribbling on a single page of recorded time. It won’t change anything about the future, will it?”

  Silence.

  “Honestly, I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but since you’re talking about fixed events all over the place, I know that much. So just what do you think messing with this era is going to—”

  “Shut up.” The harsh voice stabbed into my ears. His gaze came with concealed malice. “Just shut up, you relic. If you shoot off your mouth any more, ‘classified information’ won’t be enough to protect you.”

  His cold voice made me shiver. Fujiwara wasn’t kidding. Evidently I’d stepped on one of his land mines.

  Pathetically, my frozen heart warned me of the danger.

  Sasaki casually tugged at my sleeve, and if she hadn’t given me that wordless sign I might’ve just let things go at Fujiwara’s pace. Thanks for telling me, Sasaki.

  If the driver heard the conversation of the trio in the cab’s backseat, it seemed that worries about whether troublesome questions from a third party were forthcoming were unfounded. The driver was fully engaged in talking about his son to Kyoko Tachibana, enjoying his one-sided conversation with the girl who had so readily agreed to listen to him.

  I felt a pang of sympathy for her, but reminded myself that Kyoko Tachibana and the SOS Brigade were antagonists. She was feeling less and less like an enemy, but that wasn’t because I was being convinced; it was just that spending time with her was helping me understand her personality. And above all, Sasaki didn’t seem to think she was dangerous. Sasaki was smarter and more perceptive than I, and I reckoned she had a good eye for people. So long as Sasaki was next to me, it was unlikely that things would turn in an unfavorable direction.

  I was sure that was true.

  The taxi stopped at North High’s front gate, and the back door opened. Kyoko Tachibana paid the driver.

  “Ah, I’d like a receipt, please,” she said in her reserved voice, while I stood in front of the school’s always-open iron gate for the second time that day.

  The sky was already darkening, but I could hear the faint voices of the athletic clubs, which were evidently still wrapping up the day’s activities.

  “C’mon, let’s go.” Fujiwara took the lead and entered the school’s grounds. Timidly Kyoko Tachibana made herself set foot on what was to her a foreign school. I myself looked up at the all-too-familiar school buildings as I entered the grounds—but stopped after a few steps.

  “What… what? What’s this?!” My eyes and mouth were wide open as I groaned the words.

  The sky—

  The sky was dyed a faint, cream-colored sepia.

  The twilight sky with Venus’s faint twinkle of just a few seconds earlier had disappeared, and was now filled with a light that was no natural phenomenon. It was a soft, gentle glow, a plain illumination that lit everything.

  I knew this light.

  It was the world Kyoko Tachibana had invited me into, after Sasaki had called me out to the café.

  This closed space was the precise opposite of Haruhi’s, and no one, not a soul, existed here.

  “!”

  I whirled around instantly, my reaction time not to be underestimated. And yet.

  It was pointless.

  Sasaki had gotten out of the taxi behind me, but she was nowhere to be seen. Nor was the cab itself.

  Separated by only a few dozen centimeters on either side of the school gate, we were now in separate worlds.

  The world I stood in was a world without sound. The echoes of the athletics teams I’d heard only a moment ago were gone. As were the cries of the birds, the sound of the wind over the hills—and any other sound in this space.

  The only thing I saw was the sight of the unchanged school, and the all-suffusing sepia light that came down from the sky.

  I made a dash for the school gate, but was gently pushed back.

  “What—”

  Just as when Haruhi had closed us off on the school grounds, a soft wall stood in my way. That could mean only one thing—I wasn’t going to be able to easily escape this place.

  “Do you understand your position now?” A voice reached me from behind. “This is no longer your world. Your reality, your sense of how the world works—such things do not apply here.”

  I craned my neck around to look behind me, and there was Fujiwara’s glumly hostile face. If beside him hadn’t been standing an anxious Kyoko Tachibana, I probably would’ve slugged him right in the face. He ought to thank me for having such immense self-control.

  “If I thank you, would you be satisfied?” he said.

  “… Is this a trap?” I complained mightily.

  “I wonder,” said Fujiwara, dodging the question as he turned his back to me. “We still haven’t arrived at our final destination. Won’t you come with me? To finally settle all of this? For the sake of our future?” I saw only his profile, which was twisted into a sneer. “I’ll have to thank Sasaki. She’s the reason we succeeded in bringing you all the way here. Although I doubt she knows she was being manipulated into doing that. Come, don’t be so angry. We’ll need her to work for us after this. Once that’s taken care of, you’ll be free to go. You can flirt with her all you want after that.”

  Just as I was deciding I really was going to hit him, he continued as though heading me off.

  “Shall we go, then?”

  Where? I asked. Where could we possibly go within this closed space?

  Fujiwara looked up. “To that shabby little room you call your home base.”

  I didn’t have to look to know that at the end of his gaze was the literature club room.

  But why? What was in that room? I asked.

  “I figured you would know.” I heard his voice as though it were at point-blank range. “The source of everything is in that room. It’s the key to the future, a place where each power has met, combined, and influenced each other. Or perhaps you could call it a wedge. Within it exists every possibility, as well as the ability to end every possibility. The processes of both progress and stagnation are simultaneously extant there. I suppose it might be hard for an archaic human like you to understand.”

  Yeah, I didn’t understand it. I didn’t even want to.

  But why was everyone so fixated on our clubroom? Like Nagato, the sole member of the nearly extinct literature club. And then Haruhi. And it had been the final destination at which I’d arrived after the world had been changed just before Christmas. And where the bookmark had slipped out of the slightest gap. And the old computer. The found keys. The “enter” key.

  And the words Koizumi had once said to me.

  —That room has long-since been transformed into another dimension. Any number of elements are battling to cancel each other out there, such that it seems almost normal. Perhaps one could say it’s reached the saturation point—.

  So that had been true, had it?

  “Tachibana.” I finally remembered there was someone here other than Fujiwara.
<
br />   “Ah… er, yes?”

  “You knew this, and you brought me here?”

  “… No, I—”

  I knew better than to expect a proper answer from her. At this moment Kyoko Tachibana was just as mystified by the current situation as I was. I could tell that much from the way she held both hands up and waved them side to side.

  Which meant this was Fujiwara’s scenario. And in all likelihood, Kuyoh was backing him.

  Fujiwara calmly continued walking, striding directly into the school grounds as though he was playing some kind of RPG as he made his way toward the main entrance. He opened the glass door without even bothering to check whether it was locked. I followed him as he proceed into the school without even bothering to take his shoes off, and found myself seized by an irrational rage.

  It was true that I’d cursed this school’s name many times before. In addition to the long hill leading from the station, the old classrooms were so shabby that I had to assume they were built on a tight budget. There was no air conditioning and the rooms were drafty, hot in the summer and cold in winter, and pretty much the only nice thing about the place was that it was surrounded by mountain greenery, and that come nightfall you could get a nice view of the city lights from up on the hill. And yet it was North High, my alma mater.

  This was the space where, along with Haruhi, Asahina, Nagato, Koizumi, Taniguchi, and Kunikida, I spent the greater part of my waking time. Seeing this outsider trample all over my territory like this was not something I could peacefully abide.

  Worse, Fujiwara was our enemy. Why did I have to let a guy like that lead me around? I knew it was the logical thing to do, but my irritation was spiking right off the charts.

  The most pathetic part of this was having to do everything the guy said. At that moment, I didn’t know what else to do. If unloading on him actually would have changed anything, I would’ve done it. But it seemed as if that time had passed.

  Without knowing what Fujiwara was going to do, I had no choice but to go along with it, whether it was a trap or not.

  This was Sasaki’s closed space. Koizumi couldn’t enter. Nagato was out of commission. The notion of Haruhi and Asahina abandoning their nursing of Nagato to burst onto the scene and help me was absurd. And worst of all, Sasaki wasn’t with me. I knew full well from the earlier incident at the café that she couldn’t touch the inside of her own closed space.

  Fujiwara, Kyoko Tachibana, and I were the only three people that existed within Sasaki’s closed space. Kuyoh Suoh’s absence did not come as any solace to me either. I might not have been able to see her, but I was sure she was around. The intuition I’d gained after so much time spent dealing with crazy supernatural phenomena was telling me so. I was sure she was somewhere on the palely lit school grounds, waiting for the worst possible moment to appear.

  —In other words.

  I was beset by enemies on all sides, and could see no way to fight back.

  With a gaze as though he were looking at a vanquished opponent, Fujiwara looked over his shoulder at me. “Shall we go, then? Or would you rather just crouch down with your hands over your ears? If so, I’ll carry you in on my back. Free of charge.”

  “Shut your mouth.”

  I’d go. And I’d teach him to underestimate the literature club room, the SOS Brigade room. That was our spot. If I could just get there, I could do something about this.

  Nagato wasn’t there, but maybe there was a key hidden there anyway, or maybe I’d notice something I overlooked before—.

  Fujiwara and Kyoko Tachibana had already started walking toward the school. They didn’t seem to care whether I followed or not. The hell with them. I wouldn’t be ignored. That room was ours. It was where Haruhi, Nagato, Asahina, Koizumi, and I all belonged. I wouldn’t stand by while enemies invaded.

  I smiled faintly as my willpower filled my legs with strength anew, and I followed after the two of them.

  CHAPTER 9

  α—12

  After a while, I heard someone knock at the door. It was slightly too forceful a knock to be considered reserved, which said something about the interpersonal skills of the person on the other side of the door.

  Reflexively I looked toward Yasumi, and saw a strangely satisfied smile upon the face of the mysterious freshman girl, as though she were the foreman of a large construction project that she knew was in no danger of falling behind schedule.

  … Just who was she, anyway?

  Did she know someone was going to follow after me? Or had she summoned someone? Did she know who was there?

  … But I didn’t have time for such questions.

  As no reply was forthcoming from inside the room, the doorknob turned with a click. The door started to open, and soon the room’s rectangular entrance was clear.

  The light of the setting sun in the west streamed through the clubroom window and illuminated three figures in the doorway.

  In a flash, the possibility that Haruhi had returned with Asahina and Koizumi vanished.

  The three figures had faces I knew. You could say that’s why I was so surprised. My astonishment at the three people was so profound that it brought about sudden-onset aphasia.

  “Wha…?!” was all I could say before my mouth froze open. If I’d had a mirror, I could’ve seen that the face I was making would probably have ranked in the top three all-time dumbest faces.

  But there was no need to go to the trouble of bringing a mirror.

  After all—.

  β—12

  Led on by Fujiwara, we came to the door to the literature club room.

  I didn’t feel any kind of premonition. It didn’t seem as though I was going to be able to do anything here in this Sasaki-less, Sasaki-brand closed space, and the only person around who possibly could do anything was Kyoko Tachibana, and she was on Fujiwara’s side. Even if her weak-seeming self was more honest than I reckoned, I very much doubted she’d become my ally here and now.

  I mean, if she had been on my side, I wouldn’t have wound up completely trapped in this space.

  Fujiwara didn’t even bother looking at me as he roughly knocked on the door. The loud banging made it clear he didn’t think of the people within the room as his superiors, or even his equals.

  Without waiting for a response from inside the room, Fujiwara wrenched the doorknob and pushed the door open.

  The light coming in through the clubroom’s window was bright. I couldn’t easily make out the features of the people in the room, backlit as they were.

  But I could tell there were two people in there, and from their silhouettes I knew it was a boy and a girl, wearing North High uniforms.

  … But… wait…

  “Uh…?”

  The shocked mumbles came in stereo, from both sides of the room.

  “… What is this…?” Fujiwara said in a strangled voice.

  “… What is going on here…?” Kyoko Tachibana expressed her astonishment more honestly.

  Fujiwara continued, expressing emotion in a way I’d never heard him do before. “Where’s Kuyoh Suoh? Both of you—no, you, who are you…?”

  I was the one who wanted to know what this meant. What was happening here?

  Why did he want to know where Kuyoh was? Wasn’t this Fujiwara’s and Kyoko Tachibana’s plan?

  Wait.

  The setting sun?

  This place was supposed to be suffused with the same faint light that permeated all closed space. So why was the sun putting on a grand display of a sunset as though seeing us off for the weekend? The light that streamed through the glass of the clubroom’s window was a brilliant orange. Had this room alone changed?

  But such questions went flying out of my head the instant I recognized the people in the room.

  Because, there—.

  α—13

  I wasn’t the only one to turn speechless upon the entry of the trio.

  The three visitors all stood there with three different expressions of shock on their faces.<
br />
  “… What is this…?”

  “… What is going on here…?”

  One of the people whose voices I heard in a mismatched, crazy stereo was that time-traveling bastard whose name I still didn’t know.

  Around this last February, he appeared in front of (Michiru) Asahina and me, and just when I thought all he was going to do was spout off a bunch of arrogant nonsense, he’d been the last one to climb out of the car that had carried the kidnapped (Michiru) Asahina, before disappearing like some kind of magic trip. I definitely wasn’t senile enough yet to forget this delicate-featured bastard.

  The other one was a small-framed girl whose face I knew; this was the third time I’d met her. I’m pretty sure she’d introduced herself as Kyoko Tachibana. She was the perpetrator behind the kidnapping of (Michiru) Asahina, and worked for an organization that opposed Koizumi’s Agency. She seemed to be an acquaintance of my old friend Sasaki.

  She’d been one of the ones we’d happened to run into at the SOS Brigade’s usual meeting spot. The time traveler hadn’t been there then, but in her place had been a strange-haired alien girl. But that alien didn’t seem to be here. Naturally I didn’t want that alien girl here any more than I wanted to see bedbug corpses being left behind when I was drying my futon. But anyway—none of that mattered.

  What did matter was—.

  “… Who are you?”

  To be honest, I wasn’t sure exactly who said that line. The moment I said it, I heard the words in my ears, and I was certain there wasn’t any discrepancy.

  “Who are you?” I said it again. And across from me, with exactly the same timing and pronunciation, the same intonation and words, the question was put to me. There was no mismatch, no lengthening or shortening, no difference at all. It was perfect unison, the single voice too closely matched to even be considered stereo, resonating through the space.

  The last person to enter the room where Yasumi and I waited was—

  —Me.