The Wavering of Haruhi Suzumiya (18 page)

“Hang on,” I said. “What about the fact that I saw Shamisen at three? He was sleeping on the cushion in front of the heater.”

“That wasn’t Shamisen!”

Haruhi glanced at Tsuruya, and after having confirmed that Tsuruya’s expression indicated agreement, she continued.

“It’s the logical conclusion. There’s only one killer, and the only time that killer could have acted alone was during a few minutes around two thirty, while moving easily between the main house and the shack was impossible for everybody else, no matter what time it was. Regardless of his or her alibi, that person is the killer. And what do we need to destroy that alibi? Don’t you see? You just need to show that Shamisen went missing around two thirty. Which means the only explanation for the Shamisen you saw was that it was a fake.”

Tsuruya butted in.

“So lemme just ask you, Kyon. The Shamisen you saw between two thirty and three—was that the real Shamisen?”

When she put it that way, I didn’t have an answer. I only saw the cat from behind—both when it was picked up and when it was sleeping on the cushion. That was all I saw.

But a fake? What kind of fake? Was she saying that Shamisen had been secretly cloned somewhere along the line? I asked.

“Who knows?” answered Haruhi calmly. “I told you, it’s the logical conclusion. The cat you saw on that cushion between two thirty and three was not Shamisen. It couldn’t have been Shamisen. I don’t know if it was a clone, or a doll, or just a look-alike. All I know is that it wasn’t your calico.”

“Hey, Haru-meow, I think everybody’s figured it out, so let’s
just say the name of the killer, ’kay? We’re not gonna get anywhere otherwise,” said Tsuruya excitedly, at which Haruhi nodded.

“Good point. If we wait for Kyon, he’ll be thinking about it all winter break at this rate. Together, then?”

“Gotcha. The killer is—”

The two girls smiled together at a certain individual, then with double-barreled synchronization, shouted out the name of the killer.

“—Koizumi!”

Koizumi raised both hands, like a suspect run down by two famous bounty hunters holding Winchester rifles.

“Right you are,” he said, his bitter smile looking a bit defeated. “I was the killer. I had hoped you would take a bit more time to think it through, but Suzumiya and Tsuruya were too sharp.”

Haruhi’s mouth bent into a smile.

“Why didn’t you give us free time starting at three, instead of four? It would’ve taken more time to pin down the culprit, I think.”

“That would have indeed made ascertaining the killer more difficult,” Koizumi explained. “If any one of you had left for more than five minutes starting at three o’clock—that’s the amount of time it takes to get from the house to the shack and back—and had been alone for that time, that would’ve made it impossible to exclude you from the list of suspects. In other words, there would be no way for you to plausibly deny being the killer, so I decided it would be better to remove everybody from being a suspect. The game would have been too difficult otherwise.”

That made sense, but I wondered if he hadn’t just thought of it.

“Where did you hide the body double for Shamisen?”

“In my room. I had Arakawa bring it there before the game began. That doesn’t make him an accessory—from the perspective of the story, I brought it in myself.”

With an expression like a day laborer reaching the end of his shift, Koizumi continued.

“After the murder, before returning here, I went and got the double out of my room. The rest, you’ve figured out.”

So that was the cat Koizumi had carried in a bit after two thirty. Still—

“So where’s the cat?” I asked again. “Where’d the fake go? It still hasn’t shown up, not since I spotted it last. Don’t tell me you were able to make it disappear again.”

The defeated Koizumi looked to Haruhi, whereupon our gallant brigade chief marched over to the heater in the corner of the room.

“Kyon, think back carefully now. Koizumi was next to the calico cat you saw sleeping on the cushion, right? You took the board game from him and then came back to the table, and we were all paying attention to you. Koizumi took the chance to stick the sleeping cat into his rucksack. So—”

Standing by the wall, Haruhi picked up the rucksack that was sitting next to the heater vent.

“—that’s where it still is.”

She tipped over the bag, and sure enough, a big ball of fur came tumbling out.

“Shamisen?”

I blurted out the name despite myself; the cat really did look like Shamisen. It was a perfect copycat, down to the body shape and pattern—save one big difference: it was female. Male calicos are incredibly rare, and if you want to know why, I suggest asking your biology teacher.

The fake Shamisen sat dazedly on the floor for a moment, then eventually flicked her tail and walked over to my sister and sniffed noses with the real Shamisen, whom my sister was holding. My cat stared round-eyed at the female, then escaped my sister’s clutches and sniffed the female’s tail. The two circled
around in pursuit of each other’s tails, which ended about ten seconds later when Shamisen took a swipe at the female.

“Hey! Bad Shami!”

My sister scooped up the growling Shamisen, whereupon the female calico looked around, then for some reason decided to occupy Nagato’s lap.

“…”

Nagato looked blankly down, meeting the gaze of the cat that looked up at her with a demand in her eyes. Eventually, Nagato extended a hesitant hand.

Satisfied with Nagato’s timid petting, the impostor kitty curled up and closed her eyes. She certainly did resemble Shamisen, but there were differences. I’d lived with Shamisen for two months—more than enough time to tell the face of my own household’s cat from some other animal.

“Ah, so that’s why you said you thought my sister or I would have noticed first.”

“Yes. When you got close, I was breaking out in a cold sweat. If you’d actually noticed, I was planning to whisper into your ear to play along. But based on your expression, you didn’t seem to have noticed at all.”

Sorry, pal, I mentally apologized to Shamisen.

“The hardest part of all of this was finding that cat.”

What follows is Master Koizumi’s supplemental explanation.

“As far as cats identical to Shamisen go, when I started looking I had no luck finding one. I had naively thought that all calicos were equal—how wrong I was. After skipping all over the country, I finally found a stray with similar coloration, though not quite exact. Ultimately parts of her fur had to be dyed. But even that wasn’t enough. She also had to be trained.”

What kind of training? I asked.

“She had to learn ‘wait,’ like a dog. If she started wandering around, that would ruin everything, so I had to teach her to sit still
and feign sleep until she got a sign from me. If she moved or meowed during the half hour on the cushion, then during the hour and a half inside my rucksack, the trick wouldn’t have worked.”

Koizumi shook his head, thinking about it. If the cat had actually learned that kind of trick, it might have a future in showbiz—and showbiz would be even easier for the guy who’d learned how to hypnotize cats.

“I named her Shamisen the Second, Shami Two for short. I couldn’t think of anything else.”

Having given that strange excuse, Koizumi cleared his throat.

“So, our mystery game has come to an end. I trust no one will mind awarding both Suzumiya and Tsuruya the prize for correctly solving the mystery—said prize will be presented in a moment.”

Koizumi bowed slowly.

“This concludes the day’s entertainment. I thank everyone for their cooperation, particularly Tsuruya for the use of her family’s villa, Keiichi Tamaru for playing the role of the victim, Yutaka for acting solely as a misdirection, and Arakawa and Mori for all their help. Thank you all for your support.”

Haruhi and Tsuruya started clapping like monkeys, followed by my sister, then the baffled Asahina. Seeing even Nagato clapping quietly, Shami Two still in her lap, I wound up applauding as well.

Good job, Koizumi.

The prize was a small electroplated trophy. It was decorated with a stylized cat that actually looked a bit like Shamisen doing a headstand. Haruhi and Tsuruya held it up, their fingers flashing V-for-victory poses, so I gave up and snapped a picture—with Shamisens One and Two, of course.

Later, Arakawa brought out the traditional New Year’s Eve soba noodles a little early. Haruhi and Tsuruya immediately grabbed their chopsticks and went crazy, while Koizumi’s chopsticks
barely twitched. Now that I thought about it, I’d never seen him really tear into a meal.

“So, how did you like the game?”

Well now, this was a rare thing indeed. Even in the house of illusions the previous day, Koizumi hadn’t shown me the slightly uneasy smile he now wore. I didn’t really feel like complimenting the scenario, but…

“I guess it was all right,” I said.

I gulped down some onions in noodle broth.

“Haruhi’s mood is as good as ever. Aren’t you satisfied?”

“That’s good, if true. It means this was worth arranging—it was all for her amusement, after all.”

There was that—it’d been nothing but a pain for me, and I couldn’t say I felt particularly resolved. Asahina didn’t seem to have understood either, and she was busily drawing lines in a memo pad.

“This is two o’clock, and this is three, and the cat was here from two to three… wait, no, half an hour? Huh? Kitty, kitty…”

Asahina muttered away, slurping up her noodles with a confused-looking face. The person who understood the least was my sister; she hadn’t heard a single thing, but there she sat, happily stirring up the contents of her bowl.

I breathed a sigh of relief to see Nagato’s appetite returning to normal, with the female calico still in her lap. Basically, it was good to see everybody acting like themselves, save Koizumi, who seemed to be trying to elicit sympathy.

“I’ve been totally preoccupied by the planning for this ever since the winter field trip was announced. Thanks to everyone, I’m finally free. I don’t think I’m really cut out to be the killer or mastermind type. I’m happy to leave the detective role to others too. I think being a commentator suits me best.”

If it were up to me, I’d have the commentator role abolished—I didn’t want any more crazy things happening that needed
commentary. Just as I was making that wish, an idea flashed through my mind.

“For the next murder mystery, why bother doing a whole performance? If it’s all planned, wouldn’t it be easier to just hand out booklets with the script?”

Koizumi made a face like noodles were stuck in his throat, then spoke like a boxer, bleeding because of an accidental head-butt and being told by the doctor to forfeit.

“… That’s a good point,” he said unwillingly.

“So hey, Koizumi—”

Haruhi spoke up as she got a refill on her noodles from Mori.

“We’re leaving next summer’s event to you! We’ve done an island and a snowy mountain, so next we’ll need someplace even weirder. Like someplace with a weird name! Someplace overseas might be good. Yeah, like a castle! An old stone castle would be perfect!”

Haruhi destroyed my dreams and Koizumi’s as she whipped her chopsticks around like a baton.

“I know the perfect place—my dad’s friend owns a castle overseas!”

Tsuruya joined in, unfortunately, and seemed even more excited than Haruhi.

“Hey, guys, did you hear that? Get your passports ready for summer!”

Koizumi and I exchanged a glance and a sigh, proof that neither of us had the strength to withstand the tag-teaming of Haruhi and Tsuruya. I was just the guy who was going to try to get Haruhi to give up on her overseas travel plans, and Koizumi was the SOS Brigade’s drama producer of last resort. The way things were ending up, battling unseen opponents was starting to sound pretty good.

If I didn’t do something, we’d wind up opening an overseas
branch of the SOS Brigade. I really didn’t want things to get too out of hand, or so I told myself as eloquently as I could.

This was probably the first New Year’s Eve I’d ever passed without a single glance at the television.

We played another round of Haruhi’s board game, this time including Mori and the others. As Haruhi had fun and I got worn out, the luxurious dinner and evening conversation came to an end, and eventually we realized that the hour was getting late.

“Once we wake up tomorrow, we can write our New Year’s resolutions and play hanetsuki in the snow!” Haruhi shouted.

Hey, at least let us eat some zouni first before we go play badminton in the snow, I thought.

“It’ll be the new year, after all, so we gotta do the basics. Although we already played fukuwarai and my board game a little early.”

Haruhi looked at the wall clock as she continued.

“It’ll be bad if we don’t do the first shrine visit of the year too.”

I didn’t think it would be particularly bad. I didn’t care how generous the gods and Buddhas were; I doubted they really wanted Haruhi coming around their temples. The shrine where we did our location shooting was probably sending out letters saying we were banned from entering ever again, I told her.

“What’re you talking about? We’re lucky enough to live in a country that mixes up all kinds of religions, so it’d be a waste not to do everything! Celebrating Christmas without doing New Year’s would be like ordering a gourmet meal and then leaving after just looking at the utensils! We can’t miss doing the first shrine visit!”

Well, in that case, why not just build a snow temple out in the yard and stick an offering box in front of it? Of course, we’d dress up Asahina as a shrine maiden and put her inside the temple.
That way we wouldn’t have to slog all the way to some existing shrine, and for my part I’d pray there day and night. Eventually word would get around, and we’d get people making the pilgrimage to see her all the time—and I promise the donation box wouldn’t run empty, I said.

“Idiot!”

Haruhi clung to Asahina’s shoulder.

“Although it’s hard to give up on the idea of shrine maidens, I want to see Mikuru in a full kimono! We’ll do shrine maidens after we get back from the trip. We’ll find some temple or shrine to go to. Oh, obviously Yuki has to dress up too—and so will I!”