The Wavering of Haruhi Suzumiya (3 page)

Her voice was clear and bright—so clear and so bright it could’ve reached to the moon.

But her eyes never wavered from the sheet music.

I didn’t recover from my stunned state for the entire duration of the first song. I wondered if this was how a monster in an RPG feels when “Silence” has been cast on it.

Onstage, Haruhi was mostly still as she stood there belting out the lyrics, but I guess it’s hard to read sheet music and dance at the same time.

The first song wrapped up. Normally that’s when the audience would erupt into cheers and applause, but everybody else was just as stunned as I was.

I had no idea how this had happened. It was strange enough to see Haruhi up there, but I was even more amazed by Nagato’s melodious guitar technique, and no doubt the other members of the pop music club were filled with the same questions I was. And the people in the audience who didn’t know who Haruhi was had to be wondering: Why a bunny girl?

We were frozen like sailors aboard a tattered sailing vessel who’d just heard a siren’s song. When I looked more closely, I saw that the bassist and drummer were looking at Nagato and Haruhi with similar expressions. Apparently it wasn’t just the audience who’d been stunned.

Haruhi just stood there staring straight ahead, but eventually her brow furrowed and she looked behind her. The drummer, chastened, hastily counted off the next song.

Setting aside the various personages, the mysterious band was now on their third song.

Now that I’d finally gotten over the shock, I could appreciate the lyrics and music I was hearing. It was an up-tempo R&B number. The song was unfamiliar yet pleasant in my ears, and I had to admit it was pretty good. That might have been thanks to the absurdly good guitarist, but Haruhi was, well—how do I put this? Maybe I was too used to hearing her yelling all the time, but I had to admit she had an excellent singing voice.

The rest of the audience, too, seemed to have shaken off its petrifaction and were now genuinely drawn toward the stage.

When I thought to look around, I realized many more seats had filled up. My eye soon fell on one audience member in particular, who walked toward me wearing what looked like the civilian clothes of a knight of Denmark.

“Hi there,” he said, coming in close to speak into my ear, perhaps concerned his voice would be lost in the loud music. “What exactly is going on here?”

It was Koizumi.

How the hell should I know? I shouted back to him in my head, glancing at his costume. You’re in a festival getup too, eh?

“Changing clothes seemed like it would be a bit of a bother, so I came in my stage outfit.”

And what’re you doing here?

Koizumi looked over to Haruhi onstage pleasantly, then flicked his bangs.

“Oh, I just heard some rumors.”

So it’s a rumor already, eh?

“Oh, yes. She’s wearing that outfit, after all, so it would be stranger if there weren’t rumors. People do talk.”

Evidently, news that North High’s prize weirdo, Haruhi Suzumiya, was up to something again was already spreading like wildfire. I didn’t care if she added another incident to her reputation, but for once, I didn’t want myself or the SOS Brigade getting added to the report.

“But still, she’s quite good, Suzumiya is. Nagato too, of course.”

Koizumi smiled and closed his eyes as if enjoying the music. I turned my gaze back to the stage and tried to read something, anything, from Haruhi’s form.

My opinion of the singing and performance was much the same as Koizumi’s, save for the strange fact that the lead singer was reading her performance from sheet music on the music stand.

But all that aside, something nagged at me, something I couldn’t put my finger on. What could this ticklish sensation be? I wondered.

The next song was a slow-moving ballad, as if to throw the previous up-tempo song into contrast. I found myself moved by the music and lyrics. It had been some time since a piece of music had pierced my heart like that. As proof that I wasn’t the only one who felt that way, the audience was quiet, without so much as a single throat-clearing, and when the song ended, the auditorium fell totally silent.

The room was on its way to being a full house when Haruhi finally spoke into the mic.

“Uh, hello, everybody…”

Haruhi’s expression was rigid.

“Here’s where we should introduce the band, but the truth is…” She pointed to Nagato. “Nagato and I aren’t members. We’re just stand-ins. Due to various circumstances, the real vocalist and guitarist couldn’t be onstage. Oh, and they’re the same person—the real band is just a trio.”

The audience listened carefully.

Haruhi moved away from the center of the stage and walked over to the bassist, thrusting the mic at the girl. The girl shied away, whispering something to Haruhi, then finally squeaked out her own name.

Haruhi next walked over to the drum set and got the drummer to introduce herself, then returned to center stage.

“These two and the leader who’s not here are the real members. So… sorry. I really don’t have any confidence that I’m much of a stand-in. We only had an hour to rehearse before performing, so this is a little off the cuff.”

The bunny ears on Haruhi’s head flicked as she moved.

“How about this—if you want to hear the songs with the real vocals and guitar, bring a tape or minidisc over later and we’ll dub you a copy for free. Is that okay?”

The bassist nodded awkwardly in response to Haruhi’s question.

“Okay, it’s decided.”

Haruhi smiled for the first time since taking the stage. She must have been nervous—or nervous by her standards, anyway—but it seemed the curse was finally broken, and while her smile wasn’t as bright as the one she always showed us in the clubroom, it was still a good fifty watts.

After smiling briefly to the still-expressionless Nagato, Haruhi shouted as though to blow out the speaker cones.

“This is the last song!”

I heard the rest of the story from Haruhi later.

“I was handing out movie flyers at the front gate when I ran out, and I was going to head back to the clubroom for more,” she said.

“But then there was some kind of argument going on by the shoe lockers between the members of that band and the festival organizers from the student council. I wondered what was up, so I got closer.”

As a bunny?

“Who cares what I was wearing? Anyway, from what I gathered, the band wasn’t going to be allowed to go onstage.”

The shoe lockers are hardly the place for a discussion like that.

“It was because the band leader, who played guitar and sang, had suddenly come down with a fever on the day of the festival. Tonsillitis, I guess. Her voice was mostly gone, and she looked like she could barely stand.”

Rotten luck.

“I know. Worse, she’d sprained her wrist after getting dizzy and tripping at home. There was no way she could get on that stage.”

So why bother coming to school?

“Yeah, she was determined to do it even if it killed her. But the student council people just wanted to get her to the hospital right away, and she wound up getting carried off like an alien bound for Area Fifty-One. Push came to shove, and they wound up by the shoe lockers.”

How did she propose to perform in that condition?

“By sheer willpower.”

Sounds like something you’d do.

“I mean, they’d practiced so hard for this day. It’s one thing if she were the only one who was going to suffer if it went to waste—but wasting the efforts of your friends too? That’s awful.”

You make it sound like it was your own efforts.

“And the songs too—they weren’t generic cover songs, but originals the group had written and composed themselves. You’ve just got to perform them, right? If the sheet music could talk, it’d say, ‘Play me!’ ”

So that’s when you decided to roll up your sleeves and do something about it.

“Didn’t have any sleeves, but yeah. The student council festival committee is nothing but a bunch of incompetents who do whatever the teachers tell them, so you can’t just let them push you around. But… even I knew there was no way the band leader was going onstage in her condition. So that’s when I said, ‘How about I go onstage instead?’ ”

I can’t believe the bassist and drummer went along with it.

“The singing part was easy. The sick band leader thought about it for a second and then said, ‘Yeah, you might be able to do it.’ She had a tired-looking smile.”

There isn’t a North High student who doesn’t know who Haruhi is, and what kind of girl.

“But then a teacher had to hurry off to the hospital with the band leader, and I started frantically trying to learn the chords from a demo tape and the sheet music. I only had an hour, after all.”

So what about Nagato?

“Yeah, I wish I could’ve played the guitar too, but there just wasn’t enough time. It was all I could do to learn the melody, so I wound up asking Yuki to handle the guitar. Did you know she was such an all-around player?”

As a matter of fact, I do know that—better than you do.

“I crashed her fortune-telling stall, and when I told her the circumstances, she came right away. She just took one look at the sheet music, then played it perfectly! Where do you think she learned guitar?”

Probably right on the spot, as soon as you asked her to.

A couple of days later, on the following Monday—

The school festival, complete with its unscheduled events, had ended. It was the break before fourth period.

Haruhi sat behind me, happily scribbling something down in her notebook. I didn’t particularly want to know what it was, but I knew Haruhi was pleased by the audience the SOS Brigade’s foray into independent filmmaking had managed to reach, and she seemed to be plunging into the planning of the sequel as I agonized over how to banish such notions from her head.

“You’ve got visitors.”

It was Kunikida who’d said so, having returned from the bathroom.

“For Suzumiya,” he added.

Haruhi looked up and saw Kunikida point to the doorway, thus fulfilling his duties as a messenger boy. He returned to his seat.

Three female students stood outside the open door, poised and mature. One of them had her arm in a sling.

“Haruhi,” I said.

I gestured with my chin toward the door.

“Looks like they have something to say to you. Better go see.”

“Mmm.”

Haruhi seemed strangely hesitant. She stood slowly but did not immediately walk. Finally she wound up saying this:

“Kyon, you come too.”

Before I could protest, she grabbed me by the collar and hauled me with her absurd strength right out of the classroom. The three upperclassmen girls giggled at the sight.

Haruhi forced me to stand right next to her.

“Is your tonsillitis better?” she asked the one girl, whom I was just now meeting for the first time.

“Yes, mostly,” she answered in a voice that was just slightly husky. “Thank you, Suzumiya.”

All three girls bowed deeply in gratitude.

It turned out that practically the whole school (especially the girls) had requested copies of their songs. They said they were now going around to all the classes and distributing minidiscs.

“I can’t believe how many requests there were.”

When I heard the figure, I was surprised myself. There’d been quite a ripple effect indeed if people were going to such lengths to get the original songs instead of the one with Haruhi on vocals and Nagato on guitar.

“And it’s all thanks to you.”

All three girls had the same grateful smile for their helpful younger classmate.

“This means our songs won’t have gone to waste. We really appreciate it. You’re something else, Suzumiya. This was going to be our last memory as members of the pop music club, so I wanted to go onstage if I could, but this was way better than missing out entirely. We just can’t thank you enough.”

It felt a little embarrassing to have three seniors being so grateful, and I wasn’t even the one being thanked. Why do I have to stand here and be embarrassed along with Haruhi?

“We were hoping we could do something for you in return,” said the leader, but Haruhi waved her off.

“Don’t worry about it! It was fun for me to sing, and the songs were good, so it was like getting to do karaoke with a live band for free—you don’t need to thank me, really. I’d feel bad.”

Something about Haruhi’s tone was odd, as though she’d prepared the speech ahead of time—although it was very like her to speak so casually to upperclassmen.

“So really, don’t bother. If you want to thank someone, thank Yuki. I forced her into doing it, after all.”

The girls explained that they’d already been by Nagato’s class.

Evidently, after listening to the girls’ words of gratitude, the stoic Nagato had nodded once, then pointed to this classroom. I had no trouble imagining it.

“Well then,” said the leader. “We’re going to try to have a concert somewhere before graduation, so you should come if you want. With your…”

She looked at me and narrowed her eyes just slightly.

“… friend.”

But why had there been such demand for the girls’ original recording?