The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya (19 page)

Haruhi’s eyes were shining like prisms as she stabbed her finger at me again.

I’d managed to regain consciousness, but I couldn’t be discharged from the hospital right away. After a doctor raced over to ask me
some questions, I was taken to an examination room and put through all kinds of machines. It was so bad that I was wondering if they were trying to turn me into a cyborg. And since they blew the entire day running checkups and various tests, I had to spend another night in the hospital. Though it was really the first night for me and I’d never been hospitalized before, so this was an interesting experience.

Haruhi, along with Koizumi and Asahina, apparently just missed my mother and sister on their way out. I suppose they were trying to be considerate, in which case I’d be amazed by the fact that Haruhi knew how to be considerate.

While my sister and mother chatted, I pondered the recent events.

What would have happened if I had left everything the way it was? Nagato, Asahina, and Koizumi would be ordinary humans without any supernatural identities. Nagato would be a reticent book-loving literary club member, Asahina would be an upperclassman out of reach, and Koizumi would be a normal transfer student at a different school.

And Haruhi would just be a girl in high school with a slightly twisted personality.

That could have been the beginning of a new story. A story about an everyday life that had nothing to do with facing reality or how the world was supposed to be.

I probably wouldn’t have any role to play in that story. I would go through high school without any incident and graduate without any incident.

Which world would I be happier with?

I already knew the answer.

The “present” was more fun. Otherwise, my near-death experience would have been for nothing, right?

Here’s a question. Which would you choose? The answer should be obvious. Or am I the only one who feels this way?

Eventually my family left, and it was time to turn off the lights in my hospital room. I had nothing to do as I stared at the ceiling, so I closed my eyes and sought darkness.

My past three days. In this world, I’d been asleep for the past three days, apparently.

In that case—

The world had to be altered for that to be true.

This world had been altered twice. The other Nagato’s twisted world had been retransformed into the original world, the one I was in now. So who was responsible for the second retransformation?

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.”

Well, I thought.

Closing ceremonies were over and 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.