The Wavering of Haruhi Suzumiya Page 8

  “Just let me go. This is no way to have a conversation.”

  Just as I was wrestling with Haruhi, a fourth person appeared, his or her timing seriously bad.

  “… Wha—”

  Asahina’s eyes were as big as saucers as she stood in the open doorway, then she covered her mouth elegantly.

  “… Um… are you busy? Maybe I should, er, come back later…”

  We were at each other’s throats, but that didn’t really count as “busy.” There wasn’t anything fun about wrestling with Haruhi, and if I had to wrestle, I’d take Asahina, thanks—so come on. I’d never once denied Asahina the right to enter, nor did I plan to.

  Anyway, Nagato was sitting right there doing nothing, so there wasn’t any reason why Asahina couldn’t come in too. And I’d owe her one if she could help me out of this.

  I tried to smile at Asahina as I grappled with Haruhi.

  “My goodness.”

  The last brigade member had arrived, and he stood next to Asahina.

  “Am I a bit early, perhaps?”

  Koizumi smiled brightly and brushed his hair aside.

  “Asahina, it seems we’re intruding here. It’s best not to interfere in domestic quarrels, so perhaps we should excuse ourselves for the time being and return once things are settled. I’ll treat you to a coffee from the vending machine.”

  Hang on, Koizumi. If he thought this was some kind of lovers’ quarrel, he needed to get his eyesight checked. And don’t use this to abduct Asahina either—this is no time for her to be nodding in agreement with you!

  Haruhi had grabbed my shirt with her madman’s strength while I gripped her wrist. At this rate I was going to tear a muscle, so I called out for help.

  “Hey, wait, Koizumi! Where are you going? Help me out!”

  “Hmm, what to do?”

  Koizumi decided this was the time to play dumb, while Asahina cowered like a scared rabbit, blinking rapidly. She didn’t seem to notice Koizumi putting his arm around her waist as though escorting her somewhere.

  When I looked to see what Nagato was doing, she was unsurprisingly reading her book, as though none of this had anything to do with her. This was all about her to begin with, so couldn’t she spare a few words of explanation?

  Haruhi’s grip tightened.

  “I’m such a dope, letting someone into my brigade who’s so stupid that they wrote a ridiculous letter like this. I should resign in shame! I feel like I stuck my foot into a shoe filled with roaches!”

  Despite her anger, Haruhi was still smiling incomprehensibly. It was as though she didn’t know what expression to use in a situation like this.

  “I’d already thought up thirteen different punishments before I got here! First, I’m gonna make you jump on top of a wall with a dried mackerel in your mouth and make you fight for territory with the rest of the alley cats! And you’ll have to wear cat ears!”

  Now if Asahina had worn cat ears with her maid outfit, that would’ve been something to see, but if I did it, I’d get hauled off in one of those legendary super ambulances.

  “We’re fresh out of cat ears.”

  I looked toward the open window and sighed.

  Sorry, Nakagawa. If I didn’t spill my guts, I’d wind up getting tossed out that window just like your love letter. It wasn’t what I’d wanted to do, but if Haruhi’s misunderstanding wasn’t cleared up, it could mean trouble for the whole of the natural world.

  I looked into the brigade chief’s eyes and used the same calm tone I used when trying to calm Shamisen as I trimmed his claws.

  “Listen. First, put me down. Haruhi—let me explain things. I’ll make it clear enough to get through even your thick skull, all right?”

  Ten minutes later.

  “Hmph.”

  Haruhi sat cross-legged on a folding chair, sipping a cup of hot green tea.

  “You’ve got some weird friends. I mean, he can fall in love at first sight all he wants, but the letter’s going too far. It’s so stupid.”

  Love could cause brain damage as well as make someone blind. Not that I disagreed with her last statement, though.

  Haruhi held up the wrinkled piece of notebook paper and waved it around.

  “I thought for sure you’d teamed up with that moron Taniguchi to give Yuki a hard time. It’s the kind of thing he’d do, and Yuki’s so quiet. She’d be easy to fool.”

  I figured there wasn’t anyone less easy to fool than Nagato anywhere in the galaxy, but I listened without interrupting. Haruhi seemed to notice me exercising my self-control and gave me a glare before her features relaxed.

  “No, I guess you wouldn’t do that. You don’t have the cunning for this kind of thing.”

  I wasn’t sure if she was complimenting me or just being nasty, but at least she didn’t think I would do the kind of thing a thoughtless elementary school kid would pull. And even Taniguchi had a reasonable amount of discretion for his age.

  “Still…”

  It was the angelic pride of the SOS Brigade that lit the fuse.

  “… It’s lovely, isn’t it?”

  Asahina spoke in a dreamy voice.

  “If someone were like that over me, I think I’d be kind of happy. Ten years? I’d love to meet someone who would wait ten years for me. It’s so romantic…”

  She clasped her hands, her eyes shining.

  I wasn’t completely sure if Asahina’s definition of “romantic” was the same as the one I’d learned or not, but it didn’t seem to be. Maybe some words’ definitions have changed in the future. And she was the kind of person who didn’t understand how boats floated until you explained it to her.

  Incidentally, Asahina was just wearing her school uniform today. We’d taken the maid outfit, nurse outfit, and all the other costumes to the cleaners—even the frog costume. When Haruhi and I had gone to the cleaners with the stack of clothes all scented with Asahina’s fragrance, the old man behind the counter had given us both a stare so unnecessarily hard that I felt a little traumatized afterward.

  “True romance and Nakagawa are worlds apart.”

  I swallowed the last of the tea in my teacup and continued.

  “Trust me, he’s a big, thick guy who’d never in a million years wind up as the hero of a girls’ romance comic. In animal fortune-telling terms, he’d be a bear with a crescent moon on his chest.”

  As I spoke, I thought of ad copy to perfectly match the image I had of him from junior high.

  “Yeah, like a gentle giant,” I said.

  I didn’t have much to go on, but that was the image that came to mind. His physique was well-developed, anyway. In a different sense than Asahina’s, I mean.

  I should’ve apologized to Nakagawa for this, but soon Haruhi had given a dramatic reading of the words he’d dictated to me—I didn’t have the stamina for such a reading—and Koizumi’s impression was rather different from Asahina’s.

  “That was an excellent composition, I must say.”

  His smile was as pretentious as ever.

  “Above all, it was concrete. While it was a bit too idealistic, the honest way in which he’s clearly looking at reality is appealing. One does get the sense that he’s lost himself in the passion of the moment, but reading between the lines, one can feel his rising spirit and heart. If he keeps up the effort, this Mr. Nakagawa will become a formidable man indeed.”

  It sounded like something a cut-rate psychoanalyst would say. There was a limit to what you could say about other people’s lives, I thought. I could think of all kinds of things to say, as long as I didn’t actually have to take any responsibility for them. What was he, a bogus fortune-teller?

  “However—”

  Koizumi smiled again.

  “He certainly is bold, composing a letter like this. And you’re a good person, too, for writing it down. I’m afraid my fingers would’ve refused to do it.”

  Was that a roundabout way of giving me a hard time? Well, unlike you, I actually care about my friends. At least
enough to play part-time Cupid, even when I knew what the outcome would be.

  I shrugged and gave Koizumi my reply.

  “Nagato told me her response before you guys got here.”

  I spoke for Nagato, who was paying equal amounts of attention to Haruhi and Koizumi.

  “Ten years is too long, she says. I mean, of course it is, right? That’s what I’d say too.”

  Then, after having been silent the entire time, Nagato spoke.

  “Let me see.”

  She reached out with slender fingers.

  Now that was unusual, I thought. Haruhi seemed to think so too.

  “Oh yeah? So you’re interested, are you?” she said, peering past the unevenly cut bangs of the sole member of the literature club. “Kyon’s the one who wrote it down, but you should hang on to it anyway, as a memento. You don’t see this kind of half-direct, half-roundabout love confession much nowadays.”

  “Here you go.”

  Koizumi took the wrinkled paper from Haruhi and passed it to Nagato.

  “…”

  Nagato lowered her eyes and read the words I had written, over and over, her eyes flicking up and down over the same lines, as if silently digesting their contents.

  “I cannot wait.”

  Well, of course.

  But Nagato continued.

  “I will see him.”

  The room fell silent at her statement, and then, as if to deliver a final blow to my slackened jaw:

  “I am interested,” she said, looking at me. Her eyes looked the way they always did.

  I knew those eyes well—honest, pure, like handcrafted glass pieces.

  The big cleaning day wound up being a normal cleaning day. When I suggested we dispose of the books on the bookshelves, Nagato didn’t give me a straight “yes” or “no,” but just stared at me with a vague sadness that left me unable to say anything more, and the only game from Koizumi’s collection we threw away was a cheap dice game from a magazine that we’d played only once anyway.

  Asahina didn’t have any personal items save her tea set. And the disposal of anything that Haruhi had brought in was met with a flat “No!”

  “Now listen here, Kyon. I don’t ever waste anything I can use. If it can be reused, it should be, and so long as it’s holding together, I won’t throw it away. That’s the spirit of environmentalism!”

  I wondered if this was how hoarders got started on their hoarding. If you wanted to be an environmentalist, you shouldn’t do anything but the minimum for survival, I thought.

  Haruhi tied a kerchief over her hair and had Nagato and Asahina do likewise, giving them a mop and a duster, while Koizumi and I got buckets and washcloths along with orders to wash the windows.

  “This will be the last time we’re here this year, so in order to face the new year with a nice, clean feeling, we’re going home with the place sparkling.”

  Thus ordered, Koizumi and I got to work on the windows. After a while, I glanced at the trio of girls, wondering whether they were cleaning the room or just spreading dust around, when my cleaning partner spoke quietly.

  “This is just between you and me, but there are other organizations besides the Agency trying to get close to Nagato. Right now she’s every bit as important as you and Suzumiya. Nagato is in a unique position even among her fellow humanoid interfaces, which is probably a recent development.”

  I sat on the windowsill and breathed on my wet hand to warm it up while washing with the other hand; the winter chill robbed them of warmth all too quickly.

  What the hell was this—

  It was easy to play dumb. Recently I’d had experiences with both Nagato and Asahina that had nothing to do with Haruhi or Koizumi, and as a result I was still here, so I couldn’t just ignore this.

  “I’ll figure something out,” I answered casually.

  This whole situation had been caused by me. I’d have to be the one to fix it.

  “Indeed. I’m counting on you. I have my hands quite full with planning the SOS Brigade’s winter mountain trip. And may I just say that while you can release stress by quarreling with Suzumiya, I have no such sparring partner.”

  Who was the tomcat now?

  But the handsome smile on Koizumi’s face twisted.

  “Isn’t it about time for me to take off this harmless-looking mask and change the character I’ve been playing for so long? It’s quite tiring being so polite to my classmates all the time.”

  If it was so tiring, he should’ve just stopped. I have no desire to control how he talked, I told him.

  “That won’t do at all. My current self fits with the image Suzumiya wishes. I’m quite a specialist in her psychology.”

  Koizumi gave an exaggerated sigh.

  “On that count, I am rather envious of Asahina. After all, she needn’t change a single thing about herself.”

  Didn’t he once say that Asahina’s manner might be an act? I asked him.

  “Oh, did you really believe what I said? If I’ve actually won your trust, perhaps there’s been some value in all this effort.”

  As evasive as ever. His untrustworthy speech patterns hadn’t changed all year. Even Nagato had undergone some internal changes, but Koizumi was the same as always. For Asahina’s part, she didn’t need to change. I’d met the other Asahina, so I knew for certain that she’d mature both physically and psychologically.

  “If I were to change somehow…”

  Koizumi wiped more vigorously.

  “… that would not be a good sign. The status quo is my duty. I can’t imagine you’d want to see me look serious.”

  You’re right, I wouldn’t, I told him. His grinning face was perfectly suited to cleaning up Haruhi’s messes or setting things up for her in advance. I was really looking forward to whatever play waited for us in the snowy mountains. That is enough, right? I said.

  “I can’t imagine a finer compliment. I’ll accept that.”

  I didn’t know whether he meant it or not, but in any case his words ended up as white condensation on the window.

  Later that evening.

  Shamisen was curled up on my bed, and I looked at his sleeping face, feeling warm and pleasant. I wondered where this pleasant feeling came from and pondered the particular distinctions between love and lust. Just as I felt I was upon an answer—

  “Kyon, telephone! The boy from yesterday!”

  Once again my sister opened the door to my room, holding the receiver.

  She handed me the receiver, which was playing some easy listening version of a famous classical tune, then she sat on the edge of the bed and began tugging at Shamisen’s whiskers.

  “Shami, Shami, Shami’s so furry, Mommy’s gonna…”

  I watched Shamisen open his eyes slightly to glare at, then ignore, my sister, then watched my happily singing sister as I put the phone to my ear. What had I been thinking about earlier? I wondered.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s me.”

  My junior high classmate Nakagawa couldn’t hide the urgency he was feeling.

  “How did it go? What was her answer? You gotta tell me. I don’t care what it was; I’m ready to hear it. C’mon, Kyon, out with it…!”

  He sounded like a politician up for reelection, desperately listening to the news of the results.

  “Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a favorable answer.”

  I looked to my sister and shushed her as I tried to sound grim.

  “She said she won’t wait. She said that she can’t imagine what will happen in ten years, that there are no guarantees.”

  Since I was just relaying the facts, the words came smoothly. But just as I was wondering what to do about Nagato’s problematic statement that she would see him—

  “I see.”

  Nakagawa’s voice was surprisingly calm.

  “I guess I’m not surprised. I didn’t think she would agree that easily either.”

  I kept waving my head, and my strangely singing sister groaned her irritat
ion before hauling Shamisen off the bed and leaving the room. She was probably going to go sleep with him in her own room, but give it an hour and Shamisen would probably come slinking back to my room. Cats didn’t like being given too much attention.

  Once my sister left, I put my question to the phone.

  “That’s all you have to say after making me read out that humiliating letter?”

  If he had anticipated that reply, he shouldn’t have asked me to deliver the message.

  “I realize that getting a heartfelt declaration of love from a complete stranger is bound to be difficult,” he said.

  If you realized that, then don’t do it! You had to have a pretty obscure hobby indeed to go around knowingly stepping on land mines.

  “But this should have at least piqued her interest a bit.”

  You have to be at least a little impressed at Nakagawa’s plan. It was true that he was the first one to get Nagato to say she was interested. His message had had enough power to do that much, anyway. It’s enough to make me want to guarantee that he’s currently the most shameless guy on the planet.

  “So about that, Kyon. I have another favor to ask.”

  What was it now? My spirit of community service was at low ebb.

  “Did you know I joined the football team when I started high school? I mean American football, not soccer.”

  “That is the first I’ve heard of it,” I said.

  “Ah. Well, I did. And that’s the favor I need. My team is going to host another school’s team for a game. I want you to bring Nagato to watch. I’m a first-stringer, of course.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  I really didn’t need another person like Haruhi in my life. Why were their schedules always so cramped?

  “If Nagato won’t wait ten years for me, there’s nothing I can do about that. If it’s come to this, I’ll have to show off some heroics and get her attention that way.”

  Such a simplistic notion. He could’ve given a little thought to my position, at least—or at least thought about how busy the end of the year was.

  “Is it not convenient for you?”

  It wasn’t inconvenient. I had no plans tomorrow at all. Nagato probably didn’t either. It wasn’t inconvenient at all, so at this rate I was probably going to get sucked into watching his “heroics” or whatever. I told him as much.