The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya (10 page)

Koizumi shrugged.

“So it would seem. Who might you be?”

“Are you still considered a transfer student?”

“I transferred here in spring… why do you ask?”

“Have you ever heard of an organization known as the Agency, by chance?”

“Agency… you say? Is that supposed to be a name?”

The smile on his face, inoffensive and inane, was the one I knew well. However, his eyes were wary as he watched me. Just like with Asahina. He didn’t know me.

“Haruhi.”

Haruhi’s face twitched as she glared at me with her wide black eyes.

“Who gave you permission to address me by name? What’s wrong with you? I don’t recall requesting stalkers. Move, get out of my way.”

“Suzumiya.”

“You’re not allowed to use my last name either. Besides, how do you know my name? Did you go to East Middle? That uniform’s from North High, right? Why are you here?”

Haruhi turned away with a
humph.

“Don’t bother, Koizumi. Just ignore him. There’s no point in wasting time on such a rude jerk. He’s just another moron. Let’s go.”

Why were Haruhi and Koizumi walking home from school together? Did Koizumi take over my role in this world? That thought raced through my mind, but there was something else I needed to be concerned about right now.

“Hold on.”

I grabbed Haruhi by the shoulder as she tried to walk around me.

“Let me go!”

Haruhi flung my arm off. Her face was filled with pure rage. But that wouldn’t be enough for me to let her go without putting up a fight. My trip here would be for nothing.

“You don’t know when to give up!”

Haruhi suddenly crouched to deliver an admirable low kick in elegant form. I felt a sharp pain in my ankle and almost collapsed. I had to restrain myself from writhing around in pain. I managed to stay standing as my mind and body cried out in pain.

“Tell me one thing.”

I had no choice but to muster my last bit of courage. If this didn’t work, I had no chance. My last hope—the question I was about to ask.

“Do you remember the Tanabata from three years ago?”

Haruhi froze in mid-step as she was about to walk away. Her back, covered by her long black hair, was turned to me as I continued speaking.

“On that day, you sneaked into your middle school to draw a bunch of white lines on the school grounds to make a picture, right?”

“What about it?”

Haruhi turned back to me with a pissed-off look on her face.

“Everybody knows about that. What’s your point?”

I chose my words carefully before speaking rapidly.

“You weren’t the only one who sneaked into school that night. You were with a guy who was carrying Asahina… a girl on his back, and you had him draw the pictograph for you. It was a message to Hikoboshi and Orihime. The meaning was ‘I am here’ or something—”

I didn’t get a chance to continue.

Haruhi’s right hand shot out to grab my necktie and pull as hard as she could. Her fearsome strength pulled me so hard that I went flying forward and my forehead smacked right into Haruhi’s hard head.

“That hurt!”

I was about to scowl at her and lodge a complaint when I noticed her glaring back at me. She was right up in my face,
staring straight at me with a sharp glint in her eyes. Feels like it’s been forever since I’ve gotten to see Haruhi’s livid face.

The girl on the verge of snapping asked me in a puzzled voice, “How do you know about that? Who’d you hear it from? No, I never told anybody about what happened when—”

Haruhi abruptly stopped talking as her expression changed and she focused on my uniform.

“North High… it couldn’t be…. Say, what’s your name?”

Her hold on me was making it hard to breathe. Stupid girl. But I didn’t have time right now to feel nostalgic about the same old Haruhi power. My name. Am I supposed to give my real name, which she hasn’t used a single time, or the stupid nickname that’s managed to stick?

No, neither would mean anything to her right now. She wouldn’t recognize either one of them. In that case, there was only one name for me to use.

“John Smith.”

I tried to stay composed as I said it, but I mean, she was practically holding me up in midair. The pain was becoming so unbearable that I was really hoping she’d loosen her grip… but the next thing I knew, the strong pressure on my chest was gone.

“… John Smith?”

Haruhi loosened her grip on my necktie as she stood with a dumbfounded look on her face and her arm frozen in midair. Now, this is a really rare sight. Haruhi Suzumiya had her mouth opened in surprise as though her soul had just been taken by the reaper.

“You? You mean to say that you’re that John? The weird high school student… who helped me out… at East Middle…”

Haruhi suddenly staggered back. Her long jet-black hair flew across her face as she swayed before Koizumi grabbed her arm to steady her.

I’d found the link.

Helped you out? I’m pretty sure that I basically did all the work—but I had no intention of wasting time on arguing that point. I had finally found a lead. The one person in this messed-up world who remembered something the way I did.

So it really is you, huh?

The one and only Haruhi Suzumiya.

If this Haruhi had met me on Tanabata three years earlier, this current present would have to be connected to that point. This wasn’t a total reset. Asahina and I had traveled back in time three years and returned to the present with Nagato’s assistance. That part of history remained. I still didn’t know when the world had begun to change, but this world had been the world I knew three years earlier.

What could have happened to leave me the only sane person in this world?

Still, I’d have to wait till later to think about it.

I enjoyed the unusual sight of a speechless Haruhi as I continued to speak.

“I’d like to give you a thorough explanation. Do you have time right now? It’s a pretty long story…”

The three of us were walking along when Haruhi spoke.

“I met John Smith twice. Afterward, while I was on my way home, he called to me from behind. What was it that he said… oh, right! Yeah, ‘Cheers to saving the world by overloading it with fun with John Smith!’ was what he shouted. What was that supposed to mean?”

I never did that. Once I made sure that Haruhi was out of sight,
I woke Asahina up and we hurried off to Nagato’s apartment. Was there another John Smith? Still, why did that John Smith have to pick those particular words?

It was almost like he was trying to give Haruhi an unnecessary hint.

“Was it the same guy you met at East Middle?”

“He was far away. And it was dark. I don’t remember either of their faces. But in terms of voice and demeanor, yeah, he was similar to you. Plus, he was wearing a North High uniform.”

This was getting complicated. I thought I’d found a link, but was it still off?

In any case, we went into a nearby café for the moment. It would have been more appropriate to use the usual café in front of the station where the SOS Brigade always met up, but it was too far away.

“The you I know goes to North High and said the following on the first day of school…”

I introduced myself with my real name, not the silly moniker “John Smith,” and began my explanation before our order had even arrived and managed to finish my comprehensive digest by the time our café au lait had cooled down enough to drink in one gulp. The SOS Brigade with its alien, time traveler, and esper. The literary club room.

I made sure to give an extensively thorough explanation of the trip through time on Tanabata, since that seemed to be the most critical part.

I glossed over the stuff about Haruhi’s being a god, a time warp, or a girl who had the potential for autoevolution, since I wasn’t sure about which one was true. I simply said that Haruhi had this odd latent power, an irregular ability to change the world.

Still, it appeared to have been enough to grab her attention, as she sat in deep thought before finally opening her mouth.

“How were you able to read the alien language I came up with? Though it’s true that I meant to say that I am here so show yourselves already.”

“There was someone to translate for me.”

“Was it the alien?”

“An alien-made human contact–purpose humanoid interface… to be exact, I think.”

I told them everything I knew about Yuki Nagato. I first thought her to be a bonus thrown in with the literary club, but it turned out that the impassive bookworm had a surprising secret. I also told them about Asahina, the life-size dress-up doll/mascot/PR machine/clubroom maid who was actually from the future. I’d traveled through time with her to that Tanabata night three years ago. Nagato had taken care of our return.

“So the John I met then was you, huh? Yep, I’m willing to believe that. I see. Time travel, huh…?”

Haruhi stared at me as though she wanted to see what a time traveler looked like before nodding.

She was being awfully reasonable about this. I hadn’t expected her to believe me so readily. I mean, back when the two of us did magical mystery searches by ourselves, you didn’t believe a word I said when we met up in the usual café.

“That version must have been really stupid. I believe you.”

Haruhi leaned forward.

“Because it’s a lot more fun that way!” she added.

The familiar sight of a smile blossoming on her face. The first smile I’d ever seen from Haruhi. The hundred-watt smile she’d displayed during English class when she came up with the idea of starting the SOS Brigade.

“Besides, I checked out all the students at North High afterward. I even staked the place out. But I never saw anyone like John. I was a little upset with myself for not paying more
attention to what he looked like. Right, you weren’t at North High three years ago…”

There were two versions of me at the time. One was living an aimless middle-school life. The other was frozen in time with Asahina in Nagato’s guest room.

I figured I might as well tell them about the guy here while I was at it.

“Koizumi over there was an esper. You were a pretty big help. Though you also caused a lot of trouble.”

“If what you say is true, I would have to be shocked.”

Koizumi was holding his cup elegantly as he gave me a skeptical look.

I turned back to Haruhi.

“Why didn’t you go to North High?”

“There wasn’t any particular reason. I was a little interested in the place after what happened on Tanabata, but John would have graduated by the time I got there. Besides, I wasn’t able to find him. And my middle-school homeroom teacher kept bugging me to go to Kouyouen because of the higher percentage of college-bound graduates. I was getting sick of it so I agreed. Any high school would have worked, as far as I was concerned.”

I switched my attention to Koizumi.

“What about you? Why did you choose to transfer to this school?”

“My reason would be the same as Suzumiya’s. I chose a school that was appropriate for my academic level. I don’t mean to speak ill of North High, but Kouyouen Academy has superior facilities.”

Since North High doesn’t even have air-conditioning.

Haruhi sighed.

“The SOS Brigade, huh…? That sounds really fun.”

All thanks to you.

“If we assume that your story is true,” Koizumi interjected with
a smug face that attempted to suppress a shrewd smile, “there can be only two possible explanations, given the information you’ve told us.”

That really sounded like Koizumi.

“The first would be that you’ve moved to a parallel world. From your original world to this one. The second explanation would be that the entire world, aside from you, has somehow changed.”

I already considered that.

“However, both explanations leave unanswered questions. In the case of the former, the mystery would be the whereabouts of the other version of you, while in the case of the latter, it wouldn’t make sense for you to be the only person left out. It might make sense if you happened to possess some kind of magical power.”

Nope. I can assure you of that. I got nothing.

Koizumi shrugged with an irritatingly stylish flair.

“If you have moved to a parallel world, it would be necessary for you to devise a plan for returning to your original world. If the world has been changed, you must find a method to return this world to the way it was. In either case, the fastest way to solve this problem would be to find the person who made it happen. After all, that person would most likely know how to return everything to normal.”

Who would there be besides Haruhi?

“I wouldn’t know. Invaders from another world may be using the Earth as the stage for their little game. It’s entirely possible that an evil-looking enemy character will make an appearance.”

It was obvious that he wasn’t serious about what he was saying. Koizumi was talking in a clearly insolent tone. However, Haruhi must not have noticed, since her eyes were shining, blazing even.

“I want to meet these Nagato and Asahina people. That’s right. I also want to check out that clubroom. I might be able to
remember something there if I was the one who changed the world. Right, John? You’re fine with the idea, right?”

Well, I guess. I have no reason to object. If she was actually the one responsible for this phenomenon—that’s what I wanted to believe—then she might be able to learn something. Nagato or Asahina might remember me as well. If the alien and time traveler came back to their senses, we’d be able to deal with this current situation. And was that John supposed to be me?

“Kyon, was it? Isn’t this one a lot better? At least John sounds like a human name. It’s found everywhere in Western countries. Who came up with that name? Kyon is such a lame nickname. You must have a lot of people looking down on you.”

The name came from an aunt, and my sister spread it around. Still, why does Haruhi’s abuse feel so comforting? It hasn’t been that long.

“Well, let’s get going.”

Haruhi paid no heed to the Darjeeling tea she had barely touched as she grabbed her Kouyouen Academy schoolbag.