The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya Page 15

It wasn’t Haruhi. The Haruhi from those three days had no power and this Haruhi didn’t know that the world had been changed.

  So who did it?

  The person who stopped Asakura’s flashing knife bare-handed, someone capable of such a thing, someone willing to do such a thing—

  It could only be Nagato.

  And I had seen two Asahinas before I lost consciousness. The Asahina who wasn’t grown-up. That had been my Asahina, the one in this world. The lovely upperclassman from the future who I knew so well.

  And there was one more person, the one who had spoken. The one who talked to me at the end in a strangely familiar voice.

  I struggled to place that voice before I soon realized that there wasn’t any need.

  That was my voice.

  —I see. That’s what happened.

  So basically.

  I would have to go back to that time again. I would have to travel through time and arrive early in the morning on December eighteenth. With the Asahina and Nagato from this time.

  That would restore the world to its current state.

  Asahina’s role would be to take Nagato and me to that time. Nagato’s role would be to normalize the crazed three-day period and crazed Nagato. Though I didn’t know if she would be borrowing Haruhi’s power again or if the Data Overmind would handle it.

  And I also had a role to play.

  I mean, right? I heard my own voice at the time. That was part of the reason why I’m here right now. I needed to go back to the past and say something to myself so I could exist.

  “Sorry. There’s a reason we couldn’t save you from that. But don’t worry about it. It was a painful experience for me too. Well, we’ll manage to take care of the rest. Or yeah, I already know that we’re going to take care of the rest. You’ll understand soon enough. Just sleep for now.”

  I practiced my lines. Pretty sure that was how it went. Not sure if I got every word right, but it was probably close enough.

  It would be my job to use the injector in place of the me who had been felled by an assassin’s dagger.

  I could also understand why nobody had saved me from the psycho Asakura. Judging from my voice, I hadn’t raced over to myself because I’d been hiding somewhere nearby. I, along with Asahina and Nagato, had been waiting for the right time to show ourselves. We didn’t want to be too early or too late. I had to be stabbed by Asakura. Because for the other me there at that time, it was something that had already happened in his past. Or, as Asahina would put it—

  “Established information.”

  It was getting late in the night, but I still didn’t feel like going to sleep.

  I was waiting. Waiting for what? That should be obvious. There was one more person who was supposed to show up but hadn’t. Someone who was a guaranteed lock to come.

  I lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. My patience wasn’t rewarded until the dead of night. Long past visiting hours.

  The door to my room slowly slid open as the shadow of a small figure in the hallway extended across the floor.

  The last person to visit me that day was Yuki Nagato in her sailor uniform.

  Nagato was stone-faced as always.

  “All responsibility lies with me.”

  It was very reassuring to hear her flat voice for what felt like the first time in ages.

  “Punitive measures are being evaluated.”

  I lifted my head.

  “By who?”

  “The Data Overmind.”

  Nagato continued in her flat voice, as though none of this concerned her:

  Naturally, Nagato knew what she had done in the early morning of December eighteenth because the grown-up Asahina and I had gone to visit Nagato three years ago. She had known what would happen and done her best to avoid this outcome. But she couldn’t. There are times when you can know what’s going to happen in the future and still be unable to avoid it. No, if that were the case…

  I suddenly recalled how Nagato seemed to be acting differently after the summer.

  “In that case,” I interjected, “you would have known three years ago that you were going to bug out. In that case, you could have told me about this at any time, right? After the cultural festival or before the baseball game, even. I would have been able to act faster on December eighteenth then. Assemble all the members and go three years back in time.”

  Nagato’s face was grim, as though incapable of smiling.

  “Even if I were to have communicated that information to you beforehand, I would have erased all corresponding memories upon malfunctioning and proceeded to alter the world. Again, there is no guarantee that the above did not happen. I could only manage to preserve your original state when the eighteenth arrived.”

  “You also left the escape program, right? That was enough.”

  As I thanked her, I began to feel irritated. Not because of Nagato. Not because of me either.

  Her flat voice echoed softly in the hospital room.

  “There is no guarantee that I will not malfunction again. As long as I continue to exist, internal errors will continue to accumulate. The possibility remains. A significant risk.”

  “Tell them to go suck it.”

  Nagato responded to that curse by silently lowering her head two millimeters. Her eyes blinked.

  I reached out with my arm to take her thin and pale hand. Nagato didn’t resist.

  “Tell your boss. If you leave or disappear, okay? I’ll go crazy. I’ll do anything to take you back. I don’t personally have any special powers, but I’m able to set Haruhi loose.”

  I happen to hold the key for doing that. All I have to do is say, “I’m John Smith,” and that’s that.

  Yeah, that’s right. I have as much power as a loofah. However, Haruhi has as much power as a giant oak tree. If Nagato were to disappear, I’d tell her everything and convince her to believe me. And then we would head out to find Nagato. It wouldn’t matter what Nagato’s boss had done to hide or eliminate her. Haruhi would find a way. I would make it happen. And I might as well get Koizumi and Asahina involved. Who cares about some discarnate data entity that’s off somewhere in the universe? Screw that.

  Nagato was one of us. And Haruhi would be the last person to ever give up if someone in the SOS Brigade were to go missing. This wasn’t limited to Nagato. If Koizumi, Asahina, or I were to run off, even if we were to go willingly, she would never accept that. I guarantee that she would do whatever it took to bring us back. That’s how Haruhi Suzumiya was. Our selfish and self-centered troublemaking brigade chief who couldn’t be bothered to consider other people.

  I gave Nagato a hard look.

  “If any of you try to argue, I’ll join Haruhi in remaking the world. Into a world like the one I just spent three days in, where your Data Overmind no longer exists. That’ll leave you all in despair. So much for observing. How do you like that?”

  I was starting to get really pissed.

  I didn’t care about how advanced the Data Overmind was. Probably had plenty of brains. Enough to calculate pi to the trillionth digit within a couple of seconds. Probably capable of all sorts of fancy tricks.

  So then, my point was:

  You could have given Yuki Nagato an actual personality. You could have made her into something like pre-homicidal-maniac Asakura, someone cheerful and sociable who was popular with classmates and goes shopping with friends at the mall on weekends. Why did you turn her into a gloomy girl who spent her time cooped up inside and reading all alone? Because that was expected from a member of the literary club? Whose idea was it?

  I came to my senses as I realized that I was tightly gripping Nagato’s hand. However, the book-loving organic android didn’t say anything.

  Nagato simply stared at me before slowly nodding.

  “I will tell them.”

  Her voice was still flat as she murmured, “Thank you.”

  EPILOGUE

  Well, I thought.

  Closing ceremonies were over an
d homeroom teacher Okabe had handed out report cards. That ended my high school life for the year.

  Today’s date was December twenty-fourth.

  The members of 1-9 who had disappeared with their classroom were back and Koizumi, who hadn’t played much of a role this time, was also there. Asakura had disappeared from class 1-5 over half a year ago. Taniguchi was still in a celebratory mood. Haruhi was still positioned in the seat behind mine. There was no flu epidemic at our school. When I saw Nagato in the auditorium she wasn’t wearing glasses, and when I happened to run into the Asahina/Tsuruya duo after the closing ceremony, they both said hi. And on my way to school I’d checked to see that the private Kouyouen Academy was once again a school for rich high-society girls.

  The world was back to normal.

  However, I still had a choice to make. Nagato, Asahina, and I would have to return to the past—early in the morning on December eighteenth—again to preserve the restored world. That trip was what turned everything back to normal. However, I haven’t decided when to go. I haven’t told Asahina about any of this yet. I doubt that she’d heard anything from the adult version of herself. From what I’ve seen over the past few days, she doesn’t have a clue.

  “Man.”

  I sighed for no reason and stepped into the corridor that led to the clubhouse.

  Maybe there was a rule in place that I had to keep returning to the same point, like a race car on a closed circuit. The second and third laps wouldn’t feel very different. Even if they did, it wasn’t for me to decide. The opening and final laps would be set on the exact same path with the exact same scenery, yet hold completely different meanings. I just had to make my way to the finish line while being careful to avoid elimination. Yes, until the checkered flag came down.

  … Well, I realize that I’m going overboard with this line of reasoning.

  It was useless to try to make excuses, because I had chosen this world. This wasn’t like when Haruhi went on a merry rampage unconsciously. I had consciously chosen to live in a world where we ran in circles while making a mess.

  In that case, I had an obligation to see things through.

  Not Nagato. Not Haruhi. It was my responsibility, now that I’d thrown my lot in with them.

  “Serves me right, huh?”

  I tried to knock myself off my high horse. The end result was rather ugly, but I didn’t really care. Nobody was watching. Or so I thought when my eyes met the eyes of a nameless female student. She quickly looked away and scurried off as I watched.

  “Merry Christmas Eve,” I said softly, in a voice that couldn’t be heard.

  If this were the last episode of a hackneyed TV drama, a white flake would come fluttering down and land in my palm as I gasped, but it seems that we weren’t meant to have a white Christmas. It was an incredibly sunny day.

  I placed my foot on the first step.

  I had been completely transformed into an interested party. My role as an innocent bystander was a relic of the past, banished to the depths of the galaxy.

  “So what?”

  What was the point in realizing this now? I was one of them. I knew that a long time ago. After Haruhi dragged me to the literary club room and declared that she was taking it over.

  Like the other members of the SOS Brigade, I was on the side that was actively protecting this world. And I hadn’t been pushed into this. I voluntarily raised my hand.

  As I climbed the stairs, I switched to thinking about the event that was scheduled to begin soon. Haruhi and Asahina had done the shopping in the end. I’d been excused from my assigned role of carrying stuff, since I was fresh out of the hospital. Though this really wasn’t an example of Haruhi’s being considerate, since her goal was to hide the menu until the very last second so she could surprise everyone—at least, that was her plan. She might be attempting to use her experience from the remote island. An economical mystery pot Christmas party.

  What would we find inside? Knowing Haruhi, her priority was to surprise, so we might end up with some kind of experimental and bizarre hot pot, the like of which hasn’t occurred in the history of mankind. Still, most stuff was edible if you boiled it long enough. Haruhi wasn’t going to throw in anything that her own stomach wouldn’t be able to digest, unless she had the stomach of a monster. But I would assume that Haruhi, master of defying common sense, still had a stomach that conformed to human standards. The only part of her that’s transcended human norms would be whatever’s inside her head.

  And I was supposed to perform in the reindeer costume as a sort of sideshow to the hot-pot party. Try to consider how hard it was for me to come up with material to work with.

  “Good grief.”

  I voiced the interjection I had determined to seal away last month, but yeah, whatever. The words may have sounded the same, but they might as well have been completely different words, since the meaning was different.

  And with that follow-up explanation, I added an item to my mental schedule book.

  That item was established information. Something I absolutely had to do to remain here in this present.

  —I would have to go restore this world in the near future.

  As I approached the clubroom, a fragrant aroma tickled the mucous membranes of my nose. That was enough to make me feel like my stomach was full, but I had to wonder why there was a sense of satisfaction. I still needed to travel through time soon. It was too early to feel satisfied.

  —But, yeah. Before that.

  There was still time. A future version of me would be handling that. Not that it would happen in the distant future, but it wouldn’t come in the immediate future.

  As I placed my hand on the literary club room doorknob, I posed a question to the world.

  Hey, world. Could you wait a bit? Hold on a little longer until I go to retransform you.

  —I mean.

  I should at least have time to enjoy Haruhi’s special hot pot, right?

  AFTERWORD

  I hope you’ll forgive my relating an old memory in place of an afterword.

  When I was in sixth grade, there was a boy in my class who was literally a genius. He was a central figure in our class with a sharp mind and good family background who was also gentle, with a smile that could brighten a room. He was shining with charisma. I happened to become friends with this boy because we shared the same interests. Fishing and foreign mystery novels. I wouldn’t know how to rate that combination.

  I was also assigned to the same group as him. Naturally, he was the leader of the group. Once there was an event in which a group from every class was supposed to perform before the entire grade. Our group was running out of time to decide on a performance when he said, “Let’s do a play,” and wrote an original script. I’ll never forget it. I was rolling around on the floor laughing with tears in my eyes as I read his script. I didn’t know it was possible for something so funny to exist.

  And we were able to faithfully perform that scenario under his direction. Our play had the sixth graders laughing. Even the teachers were laughing. Our group won the gold award and a wooden shield. I can still remember the role I played as though it happened yesterday.

  After that I enjoyed middle school with him before he went on to a high school far away, and a college that was even farther away.

  At times I would wonder if I could ever make people laugh the way he did—and if his script had flipped a switch somewhere in my mind—

  That feeling took root in my mind and became an unforgettable memory.

  … Guess that wasn’t long enough. I’ll continue with a second memory.

  In high school, I was a member of the literary club for a brief moment. I mainly focused on a different club, so I only went to the literary club once a week, if that. However, the club only met once a week to begin with. The first time I knocked on the door, I was greeted by an intelligent-looking girl with glasses who happened to be the only member, the president of the club, and an upperclassman. I can’t remember if
I said anything or if I even had anything to say. It’s entirely possible that we never spoke at all.

  After I joined the club, the two of us made a literary club magazine. I’d rather not remember what I wrote at the time. Not a story. I also drew the cover. Don’t want to remember that either. The two of us couldn’t fill all the pages by ourselves, so she asked a number of her friends to contribute articles. On an unrelated note, one of those friends had a very striking name that I can still remember.

  Once that upperclassman was a senior, she quit the club to focus on her studies. At the same time, around five new members joined. Not sure why. I was having much more fun in my other club, so I soon stopped going to the literary club.

  I ran into that upperclassman on the day she graduated. I don’t remember what we talked about. We probably just chatted idly for a bit before I watched her leave.

  I can’t remember the name of that upperclassman. I’m sure that she doesn’t remember my name either. But I would hope that she remembers the existence of such a person at the time.

  The way I do.

  … And so I more or less filled up the afterword with a couple sonnets about painful memories that don’t sound very real, but I have to admit that when I dug through my hazy memories, there were many more headaches than humorous episodes, enough to make me swoon… I’d find myself wondering if I could have handled something better, but that would accomplish about as much as wondering about the fate of a soccer ball floating down a river. I should probably focus on something else.

  Finally, I would like to offer a dance of gratitude to the publishers of this book, along with the readers. Until next time.

  Thank you for buying this e-book, published by Hachette Digital.

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