The Rampage of Haruhi Suzumiya (17 page)

“Um…The bath is free now. Please take your turn.”

Asahina, fresh out of the bath, was flushed in the face in a rather sweet and innocent display of sensuality. A strand of damp hair clung to her cheek almost provocatively while her exposed legs, extending from the long T-shirt she wore, were absolutely captivating. If I had been in a normal state of mind, I would have immediately swept her off her feet and taken her off to the corner of my room.

“Where are Haruhi and Nagato?”

I looked down the hallway as I spoke, and Asahina giggled.

“They’re drinking juice in the dining hall.”

She must have sensed my penetrating gaze, as she tugged on the hem of her T-shirt in a fluster.

“Ah, you’ll find a change of clothes outside the bath. That’s where I got this shirt. There were also bath towels and other stuff like shampoo…”

It was impossible to describe how lovely she looked as she timidly spoke.

I turned back to Koizumi and gave him a look to stop him in his tracks before quickly moving into the hallway and closing the door behind me.

“Asahina, I have a question for you.”

“Yes?”

She looked up at me all goggle-eyed as she cocked her head uncertainly.

“How do you feel about this mansion? I find it incredibly unnatural, but I’d like to know your opinion.”

Asahina batted her long and beautiful eyelashes.

“Well, Suzumiya thinks that this might be…um, foreshadowing? For the mystery game Koizumi prepared. At least, that’s what she said…when we were taking a bath.”

I was fine with Haruhi jumping to her own conclusions, but I needed Asahina to stay alert.

“How would you explain the irregular flow of time? You witnessed Koizumi’s experiment, right?”

“Yes. But that was part of the gimmick…? Wasn’t it?”

I pressed one hand against my forehead as I tried to suppress a sigh. I had no idea how Koizumi could possibly pull that off, and even if this was just a trick to fool us, it wouldn’t be fair of him to hide that fact from Haruhi. Besides, doesn’t Asahina specialize in issues related to time?

I decided to go for it.

“Asahina, could you try to contact the future? Right now, right here.”

“Huh?”

The baby-faced upperclassman looked at me in surprise.

“I can’t talk to you about that. Hee hee hee. It’s classified information—”

She burst into laughter, but I wasn’t joking around or trying to be funny.

However, Asahina continued to giggle.

“Come on. Go take your bath before Suzumiya gets mad. Hee hee hee.”

And with that, the petite upperclassman turned and flitted toward the staircase like a butterfly fluttering around a field of flowers in spring, turning back once to send me an awkward wink before disappearing down the stairs.

No good. I can’t count on Asahina. That only leaves…

“Damn.”

I stared at the carpet and sighed.

I didn’t want to put any more strain on her. And yet, she was the only one capable of doing something about our current predicament. Koizumi was all talk and conjecture, and if somebody rubbed Haruhi the wrong way she might blow up on us. I still had an ace up my sleeve, sure, but after hearing Koizumi’s spiel, I wasn’t about to carelessly put it into play. That might be the goal of whoever it was who drove us into this situation.

“What am I supposed to do…?”

I was hoping that a bath might help my circulation and provide the inspiration I needed for a brilliant idea, but I was fully aware of the limitations of my brain and its inability to produce an idea that would improve our situation. It was kind of pathetic how I didn’t even feel disappointed by the obvious result.

As Asahina said, there were bath towels and a change of clothes outside the bath. Neatly folded T-shirts of every size and jersey pants hanging from the rack. I chose a set of clothes at random before joining Koizumi in heading to the dining hall.

The three girls who had gone before us were setting bottles of juice on the table.

“That was a long bath. What were you doing?”

I’m pretty sure that I barely took longer than a crow would to bathe.

Haruhi handed me some orange juice, which I drank as I glanced between Nagato and the window. Haruhi was in a much better mood after warming up her body as she chugged her bottle of juice with a grin on her face. Asahina was smiling like she didn’t realize the predicament we were in. Nagato looked even smaller than usual, but that may have just been an effect of her damp hair hanging down.

Anyway, what time was it? I looked out the window, but all I could see was snow flying around. Still, it wasn’t very bright outside. But the fact that it wasn’t completely dark only added to the creepy atmosphere.

It seemed that Haruhi had also lost her sense of time—

“Let’s go play around in the rec room?”

—As she was suggesting that we seek entertainment.

“Karaoke’s fine, but it’s been a while since I’ve played mah-jongg. Bets will be pegged to the scoring and anything goes as far as rules are concerned. But I want to focus on building good hands so none of that bonus stuff is allowed. Double points for thirteen orphans and four concealed triplets, okay?”

I had no intention of getting picky about the rules, but I shook my head slowly. Right now we didn’t have time for karaoke or mah-jongg. We needed to brainstorm.

“Let’s get some sleep for now. We’ll have plenty of time to party later on. I’m pretty tired.”

We’d been trudging around with our skis for hours, half covered in snow. Haruhi would be the only one whose muscles weren’t fatigued after that excursion.

“That’s true…”

Haruhi looked around at each individual face to gauge everyone’s opinion.

“Well, I guess it’s okay. Let’s rest a bit. But when we wake up, we’re going to party hard.”

Her eyes were shining bright enough for two or three spiral nebulas.

Once we withdrew to our respective rooms, I plopped down on the bed and held a little conference in my head. However, these situations are when a person’s incompetence tends to be exposed, and I was unable to produce a single useful plan. The minutes ticked by as I lay on the bed in total silence, hoping that someone would say something, and I must have dozed off at some point, for I heard a voice.

“Kyon.”

Someone suddenly called my name, which made me jump up.

I hadn’t heard the door open or the sound of footsteps or rustling clothes that would be associated with someone’s entering the room. I hadn’t even sensed that there was another person there. Which meant that I was already surprised to begin with when I looked at the shadow standing in the middle of the room and doubled over in shock.

“Asahina?”

The only light in the room came from the window, curtains drawn aside, which was tinted by the snow. However, despite the dim lighting, it would have been impossible for me to be mistaken. It was Asahina, the SOS Brigade mascot who graced the clubroom with her presence like an adorable little fairy.

“Kyon…”

Asahina repeated herself as she smiled at me and hesitantly walked over to me. I sat back down on the bed in a hurry as she took a seat next to me with her legs exposed. There was something out of place that I couldn’t put my finger on, and then I noticed that she wasn’t wearing the same clothes as when she’d said good night in the hallway. She was no longer dressed in a long T-shirt. But she was still barely dressed.

Asahina was looking up at me, wearing only a white shirt, in a scene that could have come straight out of somebody’s fantasy. From an extremely close position.

“Say…”

Her lovely childlike face was contorted in a look of supplication.

“May I sleep here?”

A question that almost made my lungs jump out of my mouth. (This is weird.)

Her misty eyes looked straight at my face and her cheeks were flushed. Asahina slowly leaned against my arm. (What is this?)

“I’m afraid of being in a room by myself. I can’t fall asleep…If I’m by your side, I should be able to rest comfortably…”

I could feel her body heat through the flimsy shirt. It was so hot that I almost thought I was on fire. Something soft pressed against me. Asahina was hugging my arm as her face drew near.

“May I? Okay?”

A rhetorical question. No male or female could ever possibly refuse such a request when it came from Asahina. So it’s okay. I mean, this bed is too big for one person…(Hold on.)

She giggled and released my arm with a smile as she began to unbutton her shirt, which was already half-open to begin with, deliberately exposing soft curves that made my head spin. The same cleavage I had seen when I accidentally opened the door while Haruhi was putting Asahina into a bunny outfit, in the photographs that were slumbering in a hidden folder on the hard drive of our computer. (Wake up. You’ve got it wrong.)

Only two buttons remained fastened on her white shirt…no, make that one. This was more erotic than if she’d been completely naked. Since we were dealing with a quality model here. After all, this was Asahina. (Hey.)

Asahina looked up at me with upturned eyes as she flashed a shy and seductive smile. Her fingers lingered on the last button. I should avert my eyes. (Look closer.)

Her shirt was essentially split down the middle to reveal pale skin that rose and fell with each breath. A scene that was just as artistic as Venus on a shell (You’re doing it wrong.) with one side of her glistening bosom (That’s more like it.) adorned by a star-shaped…

I suddenly sucked in a deep breath.

“Grr…!”

I jumped away from the bed like a loaded spring.

“No!”

Take a closer look. How did I not notice? The method of verifying Asahina’s identity that I knew best. I used it just the other day. If I checked a certain spot on Asahina’s body, I would know.

“Who are you?”

—This Asahina didn’t have a mole on her left breast.

The half-naked girl looked up at me in distress.

“Why? Are you rejecting me?”

What if this was the real Asahina? (I already said that you’re wrong.) Would I still have been able to keep a firm grip on my libido? No, forget that. That wasn’t the issue here. Asahina would never sneak into my room to seduce me. She didn’t need to.

“You aren’t Asahina.”

I slowly inched backward as I stared at the tears welling up in those gorgeous eyes. Something’s wrong with me. Does it really matter if she’s Asahina or not when I’m making her look so sad? (Stop that.)

“Enough of that.”

I managed to get the words out of my mouth.

“Who are you? The person who made this mansion? Are you an alien or a slider? Why are you doing this?”

“…Kyon-kun.”

This Asahina’s voice was oozing with sorrow. She looked down and bit her lip before taking action.

“!”

Her shirt fluttered in the air as she raced for the door like the wind. She paused for a moment in the doorway and turned to me with teary eyes before dashing out into the hallway. The door slammed shut with a surprisingly loud sound that woke me up as I remembered that the door had been locked from the inside. It should have been impossible for anybody to get in without a spare key.

“Please wait!”

I yelled out in a polite voice as I ran over to the door and threw it open.

Bam.
Another loud sound. I certainly used a considerable amount of force, but opening a single door shouldn’t produce that much noise—

“Huh? You…”

Haruhi’s face was right in front of mine. Haruhi, in the room across the hall, had opened her own door at the same time and stuck her head out as she stared at me with her jaw dropped.

“Kyon, weren’t you in my room a second ago…or I guess not.”

Haruhi and I weren’t the only ones sticking our heads out in the hallway.

“Um.”

Asahina, wearing a T-shirt, was to Haruhi’s right as she stuck her puzzled face through a half-open door. On the opposite side—

“…”

—was Nagato’s slim figure. I also looked to my side.

“Well, well.”

Koizumi was scratching his nose as he gave me an odd look and smiled awkwardly.

That explained the loud sound at least. The five of us had opened our doors at virtually the same time. A quintet in unison, if you will.

“What’s up with everybody?”

Haruhi was the first to recover and glare at me.

“Why did everybody come out of their room at the same time?”

I was chasing a fake Asahina—or so I was going to say when I realized that Haruhi had said something rather odd.

“What about you? Were you going to the bathroom or something?”

Surprisingly enough, Haruhi looked down at the floor and bit her lip before she finally responded.

“I had a weird dream. A dream where you snuck into my room. You were talking and, um, acting completely out of character so I knew that something was wrong…Yeah, I punched you in the face and you ran away…Huh? It was just a dream…right? But something doesn’t seem quite right.”

If that had just been a dream, it would mean you’re still dreaming at this very moment. I watched as Haruhi’s brow creased and Koizumi walked over to me.

“I had a similar experience.”

He stared at my face.

“You also appeared in my room. At least, someone who matched you perfectly in outward appearance. However, the person who resembled you was behaving in a rather uncomfortable manner…Well, let’s just say that he did some things I would never expect you to do, yes?”

I was getting scared for no real reason. I looked away from Koizumi’s smirking face and focused my attention on Asahina. The real one. I could tell instantly. How could I have been fooled by that phony? Behavior, general aura, you name it. This was how Asahina was supposed to be.

I’m not sure how Asahina interpreted my gaze, as she suddenly blushed. I was about to ask if I had also shown up in her room.

“Suzumiya came to me.”

She twisted her fingers together.

“Um, a Suzumiya that was kind of strange…I’m not sure how to say this, but she almost seemed like an imposter…”

It was an imposter. That was clear, but what was going on here exactly? Each of us had a fake member show up in our room? Asahina in my room, me in Haruhi and Koizumi’s room, Haruhi in Asahina’s room…

“Nagato,” I said before asking, “who came to your room?”

Nagato, dressed only in a T-shirt like Asahina, silently looked up at me with a seemingly numb expression on her face.

“You.”

She responded in a barely audible voice before slowly closing her eyes.

And then—

“…Yuki?!”

—Haruhi exclaimed in the background as I witnessed an unbelievable sight.

Nagato, the one and only Yuki Nagato, collapsed in a heap as if an invisible hand had pushed her down.

“What’s wrong, Yuki? Hey…”

Every one of us was left dumbstruck, with the exception of Haruhi, who immediately ran over to support Nagato’s small frame.

“Whoa…She’s burning up. Yuki, you okay? Hey, Yuki!”

Nagato’s eyes were still shut and her head was limp. Her expressionless face suggested that she was asleep. However, I had a gut feeling that Nagato wasn’t simply slumbering away.

Haruhi put her arm around Nagato’s shoulder as she started to bark out orders with a stern look on her face.

“Koizumi, carry Yuki to her bed. Kyon, go find some ice bags. There should be some around there somewhere. Mikuru, go wet a few towels.”

Asahina, Koizumi, and I stood there gaping for a moment before Haruhi yelled at us again.

“Hurry!”

Once I saw Koizumi lift up the unconscious Nagato, I quickly headed down the stairs. Ice bags, huh? Where am I supposed to look…

That particular line of thought was probably a sign that I hadn’t recovered from the shock of seeing Nagato collapse. I still couldn’t believe what had happened. As a result, I could no longer be bothered to care about the mystery surrounding the fake Asahina in my room or the phonies that had appeared in the other rooms. Do whatever you want. It’s got nothing to do with me.

“Balls.”

We were seriously in trouble. Damn, I’d been hoping to let Nagato enjoy a normal and peaceful life for a while, but this would be the exact opposite.

As I wandered around without any idea of where to find any ice bags, I somehow ended up in the kitchen. In my house, we kept the cooling sheets in the fridge instead of the first-aid box. Was that the case in this mansion?

“Wait.”

I froze as I was about to grab the handle of the large refrigerator. I visualized an ice bag and concentrated as hard as I could.

Then I opened the fridge.

“…Knew it.”

A blue ice bag rested on top of a head of cabbage.

How considerate of them. A very convenient mechanism. But it was having the opposite effect—that of strengthening my resolve.

That we couldn’t stay here another second.

I left the dining hall with the chilly ice bag in my hand when I saw Koizumi standing by the entrance to the mansion. He was staring at the door, but I wasn’t sure why. Did Haruhi order him to gather snow or something?

I walked over to offer a few words of candid advice, but Koizumi noticed me and spoke first.

“Perfect timing. Could you take a look at this?”

He pointed at the door.

I saved my own remarks for later and looked in the direction he was pointing to discover something so strange that I was left speechless.

“What is this?”

Those were the only words I could manage.

“I didn’t notice this here earlier.”

“Yes, it wasn’t here before. I was the last person to enter the mansion. I checked the door when I shut it and this wasn’t there at the time.”

An object that was difficult to describe had been attached to the inside of the front door of the mansion. I guess the closest comparison would be something along the lines of a console or panel.

A shiny metal plate—or I guess that “panel” would be the most appropriate word here—around twenty inches long on each side was affixed to the wooden door, sporting symbols and numbers that made my head hurt.

I sucked it up and focused my eyes. First, at the very top:

x – y = (D – 1) – z

And then a little below that:

x = □, y = □, z = □

The boxes were actually indentations, as if we were supposed to place something in them. I stared at the three holes in bewilderment.

“The pieces are over there.”

Koizumi pointed at the floor, where there was a wooden box with an assortment of numbered blocks inside. On closer look, there were three sets of blocks numbered 0 through 9. I picked one up. It was shaped like a mah-jongg tile and was about the same weight. However, the difference was that the surfaces of these tiles were engraved with Arabic numerals.

Blocks for the ten different digits with three of each, all stored in the flat wooden box.

“The numbers that correspond to the solution for this equation,” Koizumi said as he picked up a block and examined it, “should be placed in the open spaces, I presume.”

I looked back at the formula again. My head began to hurt. Math was one of the many subjects that gave me considerable trouble.

“Koizumi, do you know the answer?”

“I believe that I have seen a similar problem before, but I’ll need more information before I can try to solve it. If the goal is to simply make both sides of the equation equal, there are a multitude of possible combinations. But if this puzzle only has one correct solution, we will need additional conditions before we can settle on an answer.”

I turned my attention to the letter in the equation that didn’t quite fit.

“What’s with the
D
? It looks like we aren’t required to solve for it.”

“And it’s the only letter that’s uppercase.”

Koizumi toyed with a number 0 tile as he lowered his voice.

“This formula…I have a feeling that I recognize it. It’s on the tip of my tongue…What was it? I’m pretty sure that I saw this recently.”

He stood in place with his brow creased. That’s unusual. You rarely ever see Koizumi with a serious look on his face, deep in thought.

“So, is this supposed to mean something?”

I returned the tile in my hand to the box.

“I can see that a math problem suddenly popped up on the inside of the door, but why does it matter?”

“Yes.”

Koizumi seemed to snap out of it.

“It’s the key. The door has been locked. There is no way to open it from the inside. I spent some time fiddling with the doorknob to no avail.”

“What?”

“You’ll understand once you give it a try. As you can see, there is no keyhole or lock on the inside.”

I gave it a try. The door wouldn’t open.

“Who locked the door and how? If this is an automatic lock, we should be able to open the door from the inside.”

“More proof that common sense does not apply in this space.”

Koizumi went back to his mindless smile.

“I do not know who is responsible, but someone is trying to trap us in here. The windows have all been sealed shut and the door at the entrance is locked tight…”

“So, what about the formula on the panel? A quiz for killing time?”

“If I’m not mistaken, this formula is the key to opening the door.”

Koizumi sounded rather calm.

“Our only means of escape, provided to us by Nagato.”

Koizumi paid no heed to the rush of nostalgia I was experiencing after recent memories had resurfaced as he continued to rattle away.

“You could call this a war of data. A form of limited conflict, if you will. Someone has trapped us within this alternate space. Nagato has countered by providing us with a means of escape. I assume that this formula would be the result. If we solve this equation, we will be able to return to our original dimension. If we fail, we’ll be stuck here. Simple as that.”

Koizumi rapped on the door.

“We have no way of knowing the basic details of this war. As this is a war of data between elemental entities, it is beyond our understanding. However, their struggle is manifested through such practical measures. This panel would be one such example.”

A math problem didn’t seem to fit in with this bizarre mansion.

“This is no coincidence. Each of us experienced a rather peculiar dream, which was immediately followed by Nagato’s collapse and the appearance of this panel on the door…This sequence of events did not occur by accident. They must be related somehow.”