The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya (9 page)

I was sprawled on my desk to cool off a bit.

“Yo, Kyon.”

That was Taniguchi. His flu mask was shifted below his chin as he flashed his usual foolish grin.

“Science is up next. The teacher’s gonna call on our room today. Give me some help.”

You’d be a fool to ask me for help. Shouldn’t you already know that we’re at the same academic level? I won’t know the answer if you don’t.

“Hey, Kunikida.”

I called out to the other member of their duo as he returned from the bathroom.

“Tell Taniguchi everything you know about sodium hydroxide. He’s particularly interested in knowing if it’s buddies with hydrochloric acid.”

“They should be friends, at the very least. Since you get a neutralization reaction when you mix them.”

Kunikida sauntered over and peered into Taniguchi’s open textbook.

“Oh, this problem. It’s easy. You calculate the answer in moles before converting to grams. You see…”

I felt pretty helpless as I watched a knowledgeable person solve the problem like it was nothing.

Taniguchi kept on nodding as Kunikida reached the climax of his calculations. Right then Taniguchi appeared to lose interest in learning the method. He grabbed a mechanical pencil from my desk and wrote the numbers and symbols, as dictated, into the margin of a page in his textbook.

Once that was finished, he flashed me a peculiar smirk.

“Kyon-boy, I heard from Kunikida during the soccer game. You made a lot of noise two days ago, huh?”

Weren’t you here two days ago?

“I was sleeping in the nurse’s office during lunch. And I was out of it all afternoon ’cause I felt like crap. I didn’t hear about it until today. You were raging about how Asakura wasn’t supposed to be here or something?”

“Pretty much.”

I flipped my hand to tell him to get lost, but Taniguchi merely smirked.

“I wish I could have seen it. We rarely get a chance to see you yelling and screaming.”

Kunikida appeared to remember something.

“Kyon seems to have recovered. Though you were still curt with Asakura. Did something happen between the two of you?”

Any attempt to explain would have them thinking I was cuckoo. So I kept my mouth shut. The logical course of action to take.

“That reminds me, you were saying something about Asakura replacing someone else. Did you find that person? Haruhi, was it? Who were you talking about anyway?”

Could you let it drop already? In my current state I’m jumping
reflexively every time I hear that name. Even if it were just a parrot repeating her name, I would jump.

“Haruhi?”

Look, Taniguchi has his head tilted to one side. And then he spoke.

“This Haruhi couldn’t possibly be Haruhi Suzumiya, could it?”

That’s right. Haruhi Suzumiya…

The bones in my neck made a creaking sound as I slowly raised my head to look up at the dumb look on my classmate’s face.

“Hey, Taniguchi. What did you just say?”

“I said Suzumiya, y’know? The psycho girl from East Middle. I was in the same class as her all three years. Heh, I wonder what she’s up to now.—So how does Kyon know her? What’s that crap about Asakura replacing her?”

Everything went white for a moment—

“Damn bastard! You and your gray hairs!” I shouted as I jumped up. I must have given Taniguchi and Kunikida a scare, as they took a step back in unison.

“Don’t talk about my gray hairs. You’re the one with hairline issues. Besides, white hair runs in my family. From a long-term perspective, you’re the one who should be worried.”

Shut up. That’s none of your business. I grabbed Taniguchi by his shirt and pulled him so close that my nose almost stuck into his face.

“You know Haruhi!?”

“You bet I do. Hell, I won’t be able to forget about her after fifty years. If you’re from East Middle and you don’t know about her, you’d better get your head checked for amnesia.”

“Where?”

I was practically growling.

“Where is she? Where is Haruhi? Where’d she go?”

“What’s with you? Where, where, where. Are you supposed to be a broken record? Did you happen to catch a glimpse of Suzumiya somewhere and instantly fall for her? Give up on it. I’m trying to be nice here. She might be fine to look at, but that personality ruins everything. For instance…”

“She drew a bunch of white lines on the school grounds to create weird shapes that made no sense. I’m well aware of that incident. I’m not interested in her past misdeeds. Tell me where Haruhi is right now.”

“Kouyouen Academy,” Taniguchi said. As readily as if he’d been called on to give the atomic number for hydrogen.

“It’s the high school at the bottom of the hill near the station. Well, she was certainly smart. Ended up going to a prep school.”

Prep school?

“Kouyouen Academy is a good school? I thought it was a place for rich girls.”

Taniguchi gave me a condoling look.

“Kyon, I have no idea what they taught you in middle school, but that school’s been coed for a long time. And it’s famous in our prefecture for the percentage of graduates who go on to college. It’s pretty annoying when there’s a school like that in our district.”

Taniguchi went on to complain about always being compared to Kouyouen as I released my hold on him.

Why didn’t I realize it? I should shoot myself in the head.

I assumed that because Haruhi wasn’t at North High, she was no longer in this world. Obviously, I had less imagination than a cave cricket. Next summer when I go to the country to visit relatives, I should join one under the floor for a nice chat.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Taniguchi asked as he straightened his shirt. “Yeah, Kunikida, this guy’s still acting funny. Isn’t that a bad sign?”

Say whatever you want. I didn’t care at the time. I was more
pissed at a certain someone than Taniguchi, bashing away, or Kunikida, nodding solemnly.

What an incredible case of hard luck. If someone from East Middle had sat near me, if Taniguchi had been in the classroom during lunch two days ago, it would have been a lot easier for me to find someone who knew Haruhi. Did someone set this up? Show yourself, freak. Let me sock you once. But I’m willing to wait until later. I’m done asking questions. Which means that it’s time to take action.

“Where are you going? Kyon? The bathroom?”

I turned as I skipped toward the door to reply to Kunikida.

“I’m leaving early.”

As soon as possible.

“Without taking your bag?”

It’ll get in the way.

“Kunikida, if Okabe asks, tell him that I’m on the verge of dying after coming down with bubonic plague, dysentery, and typhoid fever. Oh, and Taniguchi.”

I expressed my heartfelt gratitude to the lovable classmate with his mouth wide open.

“Thanks.”

“Y-yeah…?”

I turned away from Taniguchi, spinning his finger around his ear, as I raced out of the classroom. A minute later I was flying out of the school building.

It was difficult to rush down the slope at a high speed. I was so charged up that I ran with everything I had, to the point where, my heart aside, my legs and lungs were objecting to the abuse. Now that I stopped to think about it, I could have waited for third
period to end and still be in time. Kouyouen Academy was probably on a half-day schedule by this point in the year, but I didn’t need to arrive until the final bell rang. It was only an hour-long stroll from North High.

I didn’t realize my failure until I had finished descending the hill that served as my daily mandatory hiking course and the private high school along a private railway was within sight. I took the silence inside the campus to mean that they were still in class. I checked my watch. Their school couldn’t be much different from ours, so it was probably third period. Which means I still had over an hour before the gates would open. I had no choice but to wait empty-handed in this frigid air.

“Or should I break in…”

That’s what Haruhi would have done and she would have been able to pull it off smoothly, but unfortunately I didn’t have enough confidence to do the same, so I moseyed over to the school gate before making a U-turn. There was a tough-looking security guard standing in front of the closed gate. That’s a private school for you. They know how to spend money.

I could have climbed over the fence, but it was pretty tall, with barbed wire strung across the top, so I’d be better off waiting quietly. It’d be all over if I forced my way in and got caught. I really didn’t want a game over after making it this far. Unlike Haruhi, I knew when to err on the side of caution.

And so I waited for almost two hours.

I heard the sound of a familiar bell and after a bit students began pouring out of the school gates.

I see. It was just like Taniguchi said. This place was a coed school now. The girls still wore the same black blazers, but the boys mixed
in were wearing a more traditional school uniform as they hurried on their way home. It was the opposite of North High, where the boys wore blazers and the girls wore sailor uniforms. Though I had a feeling that there were more girls than boys in the crowd…

“Well, how about that?”

There were a few familiar faces among the boys. They were from class 1-9. I thought they’d all vanished, but they’d actually ended up in this school. It may have been pure coincidence, but I didn’t see anybody from my middle school. The people I knew didn’t show any signs of recognizing me as they gave me suspicious glances before looking away. They were living in a different history. They might even have been living a happier life than when they were students at North High, since they never had to climb this hill.

I continued to wait. There was a fifty percent chance of running into her here. On the off chance that she had joined a club of some kind or was just lounging around inside, I’d have to play scarecrow until she was finished. Please. Start heading home. And appear before me.

What if there was a different SOS Brigade at Kouyouen Academy, with members to replace me and the others…

That thought made my organs churn. She’d have no more business with Asahina, Nagato, Koizumi, and me. That would reduce me from a minor character to a complete outsider. Anything but that, seriously. Who do I have to pray to? Christ, Buddha, Muhammad, Mani, Zoroaster, Lovecraft, anyone will do. I’m willing to believe any myth or folk legend if it removes this anxiety. I’m willing to join one of those shady cults if that’s what it takes. A drowning person will grasp at any straw, even if it leads to his sinking in a swamp. I was finally able to understand that sentiment.

I was consumed by irritation, impatience, and gloom for the next ten minutes or so.

“Whew…”

I wasn’t entirely sure of the reason behind that sigh. Why would I express myself in such a clear fashion?

There she was.

A face I wouldn’t forget for the rest of this lifetime was mixed in with the crowd of black blazers and school uniforms shooting out of the gate.

Her hair was long. Down to her waist, as long as it had been on the first day of school when she paralyzed the entire classroom with her unexpected introduction. After a brief moment of bemused staring, I counted on my fingers to check what day of the week it was. Today wasn’t the day to wear her hair straight. I would guess that she wasn’t changing hairstyles in this world.

The Kouyouen Academy students were passing by on my left and right as they shot me annoyed looks. I wonder what they thought of this boy from another school standing still in the middle of the path. Not that I really cared. I didn’t have time to care.

I remained frozen in place as I watched the blazer-clad girl approach.

Haruhi Suzumiya.

Finally—I found you.

I couldn’t help smiling. Haruhi wasn’t the only person I’d found.

The student walking next to Haruhi while engaged in conversation was none other than Itsuki Koizumi, with that smiling face I couldn’t stand. I’d managed to net an unexpected bonus.

Were they close enough in this world to go home from school together? If so, Haruhi didn’t seem very happy about it, as she appeared to be in the same state as when she had first entered high
school, according to my memory. She occasionally turned to give a short response before her head swiveled back to glare at the asphalt.

This was how she used to be. Before she came up with the idea of starting the SOS Brigade, when she roamed the school like an irritated martial artist searching for a strong opponent. It’s been so long. This was how Haruhi was back then. Bored with ordinary everyday life and desperate to find something more without realizing that she could create her own fun.

No, I can reminisce later. The two of them were getting closer. They hadn’t noticed me yet.

It embarrasses me to say that I couldn’t keep my heartbeat from racing. If a doctor had listened to my heart, he’d have heard a punkish two-beat that would have made him rip the stethoscope from his ears. I was sweating in this cold air. I hoped I was only imagining that my knees were trembling. I couldn’t be that much of a coward.

—Here they came. Haruhi and Koizumi were right before me.

“Hey!”

I managed to make my voice work.

Haruhi looked up and met my eyes.

Her legs, clad in black socks, came to a halt.

“What?” She shot me a look as cold as the frost in a freezer. Her eyes looked me over before she turned away. “What do you want? And who are you anyway? There’s no reason to deal with strange men calling out to me. If you want to pick up girls, try someone else. I’m not in the mood.”

I had been expecting this reaction, so there wasn’t much of a shock. This Haruhi had never met me before.

Koizumi was also standing there as he gave me a neutral look. His face suggested that he’d never seen me before, so we couldn’t possibly be acquainted.

I spoke to Koizumi.

“I suppose this would be our first meeting.”