There was another me there, and he stared at me in total shock.
β—13
It was me.
“Who are you?” was all I could manage to say before losing my words, and the first thing that occurred to me was to wonder if I’d done another time jump.
It was an obvious thing to wonder, since by that point I’d traveled back in time several times. As far as Fujiwara and Kyoko Tachibana went, they seemed to be very surprised, and hadn’t yet recovered from their ill-posed statue states. Given that even Fujiwara was that way, this must have been a genuinely unexpected event.
But wait. Wasn’t there something wrong with that?
I was quite certain that I didn’t have so much as a scrap of memory in which I met my past self here in the clubroom. Which meant that if this was the result of time travel, I’d just met a version of myself from the future. So long as I hadn’t conveniently blown away my memories of the past, then I hadn’t yet experienced the reality of meeting myself face-to-face like this.
But if that were so, the other “me” was acting strangely.
If that “me” had really come from the future, there was no reason for him to appear so obviously, openly shocked upon meeting his past self. Because from his perspective, it was a fixed event. Back when Haruhi had disappeared, I’d traveled back in time with Nagato and Asahina, and saved the buggy Nagato myself. If that “me” was really my future self, he would have been ready for this. If he wasn’t, then was he some kind of impostor?
“Ah…” said the other me.
Given this voice and expression, he’d just gone through the same thought process I had. Apparently he really, truly was me. He hadn’t come from the past, nor from the future. Which meant this wasn’t time travel. This was something else, some other phenomenon.
Though I was speechless, my eyes went over to the girl beside “me.” Who was she? She was small, wearing a uniform that was too big for her, and had a childish smiley-face barrette in her hair… wait. Where had I—?
In that moment, I felt something like electricity shoot down my back. The mysterious girl I’d encountered in my room the previous day and the image of the single flower she’d left behind thundered through my head like an express train.
When I looked, I saw that same flower on the windowsill behind Haruhi’s brigade chief desk.
They were connected.
This world and the world I’d been in until now were not completely separate places. But if this wasn’t time travel or space-time alteration, then what was it?
“Heehee.”
Even in this moment, the girl smiled more softly and gently than the flower behind her ever could.
She was an anomaly, this girl… Who was she?
Did the other “me” know the answer?
α—14
I didn’t take my eyes off the other “me.”
He was me. Myself. And he hadn’t come from the past or the future. He didn’t differ from my current self by a single second. He was exactly the same as me.
He seemed to have come to the same conclusion. I could see perfectly well that he’d fallen down the same double spiral of shock and doubt. Just as I had.
Which meant this was what he had to be thinking.
—What the hell is going on here?
And also this.
—Who the hell is that Yasumi girl next to me?
I could tell that much from a single glance at “me.” After all, he was me.
The almost hilarious deadlock continued. Everyone was stunned. The still-unnamed time traveler, Kyoko Tachibana, me, and “me.”
Everyone seemed to have lost sight of what they were trying to do. Except for one.
“Kyon!” Yasumi hopped forward. With that childish face of hers she looked back and forth between me and “me,” then smiled again.
“Yasumi,” I said in a hoarse voice. “Who… are you?”
Yasumi giggled in a childish voice, then stood up and took my hand as I stood there uselessly.
Next, she reached her other hand out to the other “me,” who looked just as helpless as I did.
“I” raised “my” hand as though it was sucked up, and Yasumi continued to hold onto mine. As though it were the most natural thing in the world.
Yasumi pulled me and “me” close.
And then—
“I am Watahashi,” she said, and gently forced my hand onto “my” hand.
And then I understood everything.
β—14
It was as though everything had frozen, as though time itself had stopped, and the only one moving was the mysterious girl.
“Kyon!”
The girl hopped forward. With her childish features, she looked happily between me and “me,” then laughed again.
“Yasumi,” said my doppelgänger in a hoarse, strangled voice. “Who… are you?”
Evidently my other self only knew the name of this mysterious individual.
The girl named Yasumi giggled a childish giggle, and offered her hand to the other “me,” who stood there uselessly.
Next she reached her other hand out to me, who was only able to muster about the same reaction as “me.” Come, now—I almost heard those words, so natural was her welcoming gesture.
I raised my arm up as though it was pulled, and Yasumi the high school girl took it.
The soft, warm sensation of her fingers reminded me of something I knew.
Yasumi pulled me and “me” close.
And then—
“I am me,” she said, and gently forced “my” hand onto my hand.
She was Watahashi. And then I understood everything.
FINAL CHAPTER
“Huh?!”
I wasn’t even sure which version of myself those words came from. Probably both of us, simultaneously. But what reached my ears wasn’t unison or a duet, but rather the voice of a single person.
Immediately thereafter, a terrible flood of memories rushed through my head. They were unfamiliar-tasting, memories that I can only describe as being completely foreign. I closed my eyes and spun on. I put my hands over my ears reflexively, as my instinct was screaming at me to refuse any more outside information.
“Unggh…”
This confusion was far worse than time travel with Asahina, and it churned my brain. Unfamiliar scenes, unfamiliar actions, unfamiliar situations, unfamiliar history… they attacked me, becoming scenes, actions, situations, and history that I did know. They swirled like a yin-yang symbol, and it felt as though I had been tossed into the middle of that whirling maelstrom.
A series of flashbacks played against the insides of my tightly closed eyelids, flowing by like a revolving lantern.
—The entire SOS Brigade going over to nurse the fallen Nagato—the rage I’d spat out when I ran into Kuyoh, the revived Asakura, and the mediating Kimidori—myself, meeting several times with Sasaki, Fujiwara, Kyoko Tachibana, and Kuyoh—being taken by Fujiwara to Sasaki’s glowing closed space—myself, being tutored by Haruhi after class—the brigade candidates failing the entrance examination Haruhi was pushing on them—Yasumi Watahashi, the only one left behind—that same Yasumi learning how to brew tea from Asahina, then futzing with our website—the paper airplane saying she’d found the MIKURU folder—the mysterious flower—
Both of these were definitely me. All of these were my memories, without contradiction or incoherence.
What was going on here?
Haruhi’s recruitment efforts, fueled by her spring fever upon the start of the new semester. Nobody coming to the clubroom. The room overflowing with applicants. The phone call I’d received in the bath. The person on the other end of the line—.
That was where things split.
I now know it was Yasumi Watahashi, but at the time it was a voice I hadn’t recognized.
The phone call from Sasaki had been a serious matter for both me and the SOS Brigade.
That was the moment.
From that moment on, the world
had been split in two.
Into the foolish brigade entrance examination and the serious lecture from Haruhi. I had seriously agonized over the time line of the latter. Sasaki’s closed space and the cosmic horror of Kuyoh Suoh’s reaction. And then Asakura’s reappearance and Kimidori’s serious-business mode…
The sole successful applicant, the new brigade member Yasumi Watahashi’s mysteriously positive actions, with Nagato’s total lack of reaction and Koizumi’s vague statements.
Two versions of my memories of the past week now existed within me.
What was going on here? It wasn’t a question of which was true and which was false. Both were true, real memories. The only thing I could conclude was that I myself had split and experienced the same time line twice.
Because neither set of memories felt at all strange. It wasn’t like I had absolute confidence in my powers of recollection, but if we were talking about things I’d experienced, that was a different story. The only commonality in them was the phone call I’d received in the bath, where one was Sasaki and one was Yasumi—and from there, they were totally different.
From that moment until now, I’d been leading two lives. That was all I could imagine.
And then those two sets of memories were trying to fuse like elementary particles colliding at the speed of light. I could practically hear my synapses crackling; I held my head in my hands.
“Guh… rgh…”
My head didn’t hurt, nor did I feel nauseated or drunk; it was just that the speed at which my memories were revolving was—this is no way to explain it, but—they were like a spinning yin-yang symbol moving so fast all I could see was gray. Does that help? The differing colors of the two sets were blending into a single color. The spinning didn’t stop, and it just kept being gray…
“… Mmph… hngh… unh.”
I stiffened my body like a hermit crab, but finally the typhoon in my head slowed. Though I still felt confused, I’d recovered enough to open my ears and eyes; enough to steady myself against the brigade chief’s desk, and stand on slightly trembling legs.
I had barely enough energy left over to take a look around the inside of the room, however fuzzily.
And that’s when I noticed.
I was one again. The other me who had been here just a moment ago had disappeared somewhere. But that didn’t seem particularly strange to me. Why? The reasoning was quite simple. One plus one is indeed two. But I knew there were times when that wasn’t so. For example, if you add one pile of sand to another pile of sand, all you get is one big pile of sand.
Instead of addition, a more appropriate form of arithmetic for the occasion was multiplication. And even an elementary school student knows what you get when you multiply one times two. You get two.
The other me had disappeared. In his place, I now had two sets of memories.
In one set, Nagato was perfectly fine, Haruhi had conducted her brigade entrance examinations, and Yasumi had made her appearance. In the other, Nagato was sick, I had spent a lot of time talking with Sasaki and company, Kuyoh had attacked me, and Asakura had been revived.
The two sets lined up perfectly in my head. It didn’t even feel strange, somehow. I understood everything so well that that fact itself was mystifying. If you have two sets of memories in your mind at the same time, shouldn’t that be confusing?
—Not necessarily.
Yasumi’s voice answered. Only her voice.
—They’re both you, Kyon. It’s not that one is true and one is counterfeit. You just have two slightly different histories. Of the same time, in the same world.
I looked in the direction from which her voice was coming.
She wasn’t there.
Yasumi Watahashi had disappeared. Along with the other “me,” like smoke from a sparkler, as though she’d never been here in the first place, she had completely vanished.
Where had she gone?
In the case of “me,” I understood immediately.
Fusion.
When Yasumi had placed my and “my” hands atop one another’s, we had been unified within this time line. It was simple. We’d had the same personalities to begin with, because we were the same person. It was only because of someone’s speculation, or some strange circumstances, that I’d been split.
And now I’d returned to normal.
Still, what about Yasumi? Why had she been able to do such a thing? And where had she gone? The window and door were both still closed. To disappear from the middle of a group of people—had she teleported, or had she been an illusion to begin with?
But what I couldn’t explain was that Fujiwara and Kyoko Tachibana had apparently seen Yasumi. Their expressions of surprise were certainly not faked. And going by their reaction to me being in the room, they hadn’t expected that either.
Thus it was with a rare show of emotion on his face that Fujiwara spoke. “Defying the chain of fixed events…? It can’t be… Was there someone who released the prohibition ahead of me…? Who—who could possibly…?” he said in a voice that showed rage, bafflement, and irritation all at once. “What’s that? A nonstandard abnormality that’s not on the schedule? That’s the first I’ve heard of it. Whose work is this? Who called her here?”
He stomped on the floor in irritation.
“Dammit, this wasn’t part of my plan. Kuyoh, where are you? What’s going on here?”
A peal of thunder rang out.
The dingy window of the clubroom flashed, throwing shadows on everyone in the room. The sudden lightning that fell from the sky had an indescribable color to it. I reflexively looked outside, and was greeted by a scene that was even harder to believe, and groaned.
“… What’s happening with the sky…?”
The heavens swirled. The faintly glowing cream-colored sky was interrupted by an angry blue-gray swirl, colors intertwining like colliding galaxies in a bizarre display. Here and there, pale light and dark gray tendrils wriggled, as though fighting for control. The color was like india ink dropped into a container of light paint, stirred by the brush of some mad artist.
It wasn’t just the sky—everything framed by the rectangular shape of the window was being drowned by the two colors. The grass in the courtyard, the tall school building, the hallways, the leafed-out cherry trees—everything.
I could tell that this was still the palely colored world. I was still inside the closed space that Sasaki created.
But the other color that wriggled and squirmed as though fighting against those pale hues—I’d seen that before too.
It was Haruhi’s closed space.
Haruhi and Sasaki were struggling with each other, right here, right now.
Why? I knew that there existed a world I’d occupied with Sasaki up until a moment ago. I wondered if the reason Kyoko Tachibana brought me all the way back to North High was to somehow extract its essence.
But why had Haruhi’s closed space now appeared? Haruhi was supposed to be at Nagato’s apartment… no, wait—she was just on her way home from school—ah, damn. I didn’t know.
What were even less clear were the geometric patterns that flickered here and there throughout the world here as I saw it. I’d seen this before too. It was very similar to the data jurisdiction space that Asakura had created.
What was happening to this world I’d found myself in? It was like every weird phenomenon I’d ever seen was happening at once. Seriously, what the hell?
“—This is the beginning. The division point of every possible outcome…”
A gloomy voice reached my ears. I looked up and before my eyes was a figure with bizarrely ink-black hair down to her knees, dressed in a black blazer.
With less expression than a Roman statue, Kuyoh Suoh stood between Fujiwara and Kyoko Tachibana. There was no emotion in her eyes. Her pale lips moved minutely, vibrating the air.
“—Past and future, and even the present, do not exist here. Matter, particles, waves, and will. Consciousness of reality. The future becomes
the past, and the past, the present…”
I didn’t feel obligated to be surprised at Kuyoh Suoh’s sudden appearance. But would it kill her to at least pretend to breathe?
But before I could complain at her—
“Did you betray me?” said Fujiwara, his eyes those of a predator staring at its natural enemy.
Kuyoh smiled. Nobody could keep up with the sudden emotional changes of these extraterrestrial-made agents anymore.
“No. I have come here. That is the answer.”
“So what is this, then? It’s like the world is—” Fujiwara’s words cut off, and he went stiff, as though he were receiving some kind of divine revelation. Then, he continued in a strained voice. “—I see. I can’t believe it. So it’s already diverged, has it? Who in the hell…?”
And then, with timing as though not wanting to give Fujiwara a chance to finish his question—
Click.
The door abruptly opened.
“Hello, there.” With that easygoing smile as if it was any other day, he waved casually to the room, giving me an extra little wink. Unsurprisingly, my reaction was immediate.
“Koizumi?!”
“Indeed, it is Itsuki Koizumi, just as you say. The one and only, in the flesh. I was actually hoping to make a slightly more dramatic entrance, but it couldn’t be helped. You know, something like crashing in through the window. But there just wasn’t time to consider it.”
“Surprise” is the number-one word I don’t want to nominate for describing how I felt in that moment. “Shock” is number two. So, how, then, should I express it? I honestly don’t know myself.
Itsuki Koizumi strode grandly into the room, then glanced at me, Fujiwara, and Kuyoh, finally giving Kyoko Tachibana a look as though he were regarding a little sister.
Kyoko Tachibana looked even more stunned by Koizumi’s sudden appearance than I felt. “It can’t be,” she said in a high, shaky voice. “This is Sasaki’s closed space. Koizumi, you shouldn’t be able to enter it!” She sounded like an honor student who’d gotten a big fat X on a test she’d been sure she aced.
The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya Page 27
