The Boredom of Haruhi Suzumiya (10 page)

I gave her a general rundown, abridging various spots. I must have spoken for five whole minutes as she impassively stared at me through her glasses. A summary of Haruhi’s story that lacks any real point, if I do say so myself.

…“And so. The you from three years later gave this to me.”

Nagato scrutinized the card I presented without batting an eye and traced her finger over the weird characters. Kind of looked like she was reading a bar code.

“Understood.”

Nagato simply nodded. Seriously? Wait, hold on. There was something else that bothered me.

I put my hand on my forehead as I did some thinking.

“I’ve known Nagato for a while now, but three years ago… Today for you… So in other words, the present you. Today would have been the first time you met us, right?”

I have to admit that I had no idea what I was saying. Nevertheless, Nagato responded as the edges of her glasses flashed. In a calm and indifferent voice she answered.

“Yes.”

“And so…”

“Requesting permission to access the memory corresponding to my time-divergent variant. I have downloaded reversible border regression data.”

No idea what you’re talking about.

“The ‘me’ in three years and the ‘me’ at this time are the same person.”

“So? Of course you’re the same person. That doesn’t mean the Nagato from three years ago would share memories with the Nagato from three years later.”

“We do now.”

“How?”

“We have synchronized.”

Yeah, I don’t get it.

Nagato removed her glasses without any further response. She looked up at me with her emotionless eyes and blinked. That was definitely the familiar face of the book-loving girl. The Yuki Nagato I remembered.

“Why are you wearing a North High uniform? Did you already enroll?”

“I have not. I am currently in standby mode.”

“Standby… You’re going to stand by for three whole years?”

“Yes.”

“That’s just…”

That’ll take a world of patience. Won’t you be bored? But Nagato shook her head.

“That is my role.”

She stared directly at me with clear eyes. “There is more than one method of time travel.” Nagato spoke in a flat voice.

“The TPDD is merely a device for controlling time. Both unreliable
and primitive. There are a number of theories concerning the process of movement through the time continuum.”

Asahina squeezed my hand again.

“Um… What exactly do you mean…”

“When transportation of organic life forms is conducted with the TPDD, noise may occur. We believe it to be imperfect.”

By we, she means the Data Overmind, right?

“You’re capable of perfect time travel?”

“The process does not matter. The transfer of identical data suffices.”

“Going from the present to the past or to the future, huh…”

If Asahina can do it, maybe Nagato can do it too. I assume that Nagato’s the one with an excess abundance of power. In fact, after doing some comparing to Nagato and Koizumi, I’m starting to suspect that Asahina’s the one who really has no idea what’s going on.

“That’s nice and all.”

I interrupted Asahina and Nagato. “Now isn’t the time to be discussing the finer points of time travel. We need to figure out how Asahina and I are going to get back to the future three years later.”

However, Nagato simply nodded.

“It is possible.”

She then stood and opened the sliding door that led to the room next to the living room.

“Here.”

It was a Japanese-style room. With tatami flooring. The fact that the room was completely empty except for the tatami mats was what you would expect from Nagato, but why were we being shown into this guest room? Could there be a time machine hidden in here? As I wondered, Nagato removed a futon from the closet and spread it on the floor. And then a second one.

“I’m pretty sure I’ve got the wrong idea… but are you telling us to sleep here?”

Nagato, still carrying a futon, turned to look at me. I could see Asahina and myself reflected in her amethyst eyes.

“Yes.”

I glanced next to me to find Asahina fidgeting with her face completely red. That’s how I’d expect her to react.

But Nagato didn’t seem to care.

“Sleep.”

Don’t be so direct.

“Just sleep and nothing else.”

Well… That was the plan. In any case, Asahina and I looked at each other uncertainly. Asahina’s face was bright red while I just shrugged. We had no choice but to rely on Nagato in this case. If she’s telling us to sleep, then that’s what we’ll do. Just hope that it’s as simple as waking up in the morning to find ourselves back in our world.

Nagato reached toward the switch on the fluorescent lamp next to the wall. Then she muttered something. I was wondering if she was saying good night when the light disappeared with a click.

It appeared that I had no choice but to sleep so I pulled the covers over myself.

And the next thing I knew, the light turned on. The fluorescent lamp made clicking sounds as it flickered and stabilized. Huh? Something feels wrong here. It was still dark outside.

As I sat up, Asahina also woke up, clutching the edge of her blanket.

The expression on her lovely, childlike face was one of bewilderment. She looked at me questioningly, but naturally, I had no answers.

Nagato was standing there. She had her hand on the light switch, just like before.

It didn’t seem like Nagato’s face. I could feel some emotion as I stared at the pale face. Like she had something she wanted to say but was unable to because of conflicting interests. It was the slightest expression of emotion that couldn’t be perceived without being accustomed to her poker face for a long period of time. Though I couldn’t be sure that I wasn’t just imagining things.

I heard someone suddenly inhale next to me and turned to find Asahina fiddling with the digital watch on her right wrist.

“Huh? No way…! What? Really?”

I glanced at her wristwatch. “Don’t tell me that thing’s the TPDD.”

“It isn’t. This is just an atomic watch.”

“One of those watches that synchronizes with the atomic clock through radio waves, huh?”

Asahina smiled cheerfully as she continued, “It’s wonderful. We’ve returned. It’s just past nine
PM
… on July seventh, the day we departed. I’m so relieved… Whew.”

She sounded like the world had just been lifted off her shoulders.

The Nagato standing at the entrance was our Nagato. If you were going to differentiate between them by saying one was bespectacled and one wasn’t, this one would be the latter. The Yuki Nagato who’d softened just a little bit. I could tell after seeing how she was three years ago. The Nagato before me right now had definitely changed from the Nagato I’d met in the literary club room when Haruhi dragged me there. I’m guessing it was so slight that she couldn’t tell.

“But how?” Asahina asked in a daze.

Nagato responded in a flat voice, “I froze liquefied data within the selected space-time and unfroze the data once there were corresponding points from an already known space-time continuum.”

Was that even comprehensible? After a brief pause, she added, “Which would be now.”

Asahina attempted to stand before falling to her knees.

“You couldn’t have… Impossible… How could you… Nagato, you…”

Nagato remained silent.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Nagato—stopped time. She probably stopped time for the whole room we were in, for three whole years. And then at this time today, she unfroze us…?”

“Yes,” Nagato confirmed.

“That’s unbelievable. She stopped time… Whoa…”

Asahina sighed as she remained bent over. That’s when I thought of something.

It appeared that we had safely returned to our time three years later. After seeing Asahina’s reaction, that was certain. She’s incapable of hiding anything. Which is fine. The theory behind our return from three years ago involved stopping time—I can believe that. I have developed enough tolerance to accept just about anything at this point. That’s fine too. Just fine and dandy—but.

This wasn’t my first visit to Nagato’s home. I’d been invited inside just a little over a month ago. But I stayed in the living room the whole time and never entered the guest room. I didn’t even know about its existence. Which means, uh… What does it mean?

I looked at Nagato. Nagato looked back at me.

—So basically, when I visited this place to hear her crazy spiel, another me had been sleeping in the next room.

What the hell? Isn’t that what this means?

“Yes,” Nagato replied. I felt dizzy.

“… Hey. So in other words, you already knew everything back then? About me? About what happened today?”

“Yes.”

From my perspective, my first meeting with Nagato had been on that day in the season of newly green leaves when Haruhi came up with the idea of establishing the SOS Brigade. However, Nagato had met me earlier, on Tanabata three years ago. As far as I was concerned, that meeting had occurred just a moment ago, but three years had passed since. I’m going to go insane.

Asahina and I stood in a daze together. I’d known that Nagato was capable of many things, but I never would have dreamed that she could stop time. Doesn’t that make her invincible?

“Not exactly.”

A motion of denial.

“This was a special case. An exception. Emergency mode. Rarely engaged. Unless drastic measures are required.”

And we warranted those drastic measures.

“Thanks, Nagato.”

I thanked her. That was all I could do.

“Not necessary.”

Nagato nodded without a shred of amiability. Then she held out the card that had various geometric shapes on it. As I took the card, I noticed that the quality of the paper had deteriorated. As if it had been sitting there for three years.

“By the way, can you read what the writing on the card says?”

I didn’t expect anyone to be able to read Haruhi’s made-up message. So I was merely joking.

“ ‘I am here,’ ” Nagato answered.

I hadn’t expected a reply.

“That’s what it says.”

I was getting confused.

“Don’t tell me that… those pictographs or symbols or whatever actually ended up being the language of some alien race somewhere?”

Nagato didn’t respond.

After Asahina and I left Nagato’s room, we walked under the twinkling stars.

“Asahina, what was the point of me going back to the past?”

Asahina earnestly thought for a moment before looking up and speaking in a faint voice.

“I’m sorry. I, well… The truth is that, um… I don’t really know… I’m at the bottom of the chain… No, a peon… No, something like an intern…”

“Yet you’re close to Haruhi.”

“That’s because I never expected to be caught by Suzumiya.”

She pouted as she spoke. Your face looks adorable like that, Asahina.

“I just follow orders from my superiors… or I mean, the people at the top. So I don’t know the meaning behind my actions.”

As I watched Asahina speaking bashfully, I wondered if those superiors included the adult version of Asahina. I had no basis for that assumption. It was simply because she and the normal Asahina were the only time travelers I knew.

“I see.” I murmured, tilting my head.

I still don’t get it. The adult version of Asahina had come to give me a hint, so she should have known what would happen to us. But she didn’t tell anything to the present Asahina. What does that mean?

“Hmm.”

After some groaning, I decided that there was no way for me to understand something Asahina didn’t. Like Nagato said. There are many processes for time travel. Time travelers have their own rules and regulations to follow. Someone will explain it to me one day. When this is all over.

I parted ways with Asahina in front of the station. Her tiny figure bowed to me over and over as she reluctantly walked away. I also began heading home, which was when I realized that I’d left my bag in the club room.

The next day. Which would be July eighth. It felt like the next day to me, but physically, it’d been three years and a day since I’d gone to school. Empty-handed, I went straight to the club room, grabbed my bag, and headed to my classroom. I assumed Asahina had come before me since her bag wasn’t there.

Haruhi was already in the classroom staring out the window with an impressed look on her face. Like she was ticking off the seconds before the arrival of aliens.

“What’s wrong? You’ve been awfully melancholy since yesterday. Did you eat a poisonous mushroom or something?”

I sat down in my seat. Haruhi sighed in an exaggerated fashion.

“Not really. Just remembering something. The Tanabata season holds some memories for me.”

I felt a chill down my spine. But I won’t ask—what those memories might be.

“Really.”

Haruhi turned back to stare at the clouds. I shrugged. I have no intention of playing with fire around a bomb fuse. That’s how a person with common sense would act.

After school in the literary club room that had been turned into the SOS Brigade’s hideout, Haruhi simply delivered the order, “Clean up the bamboo leaves. We don’t need them anymore,” and
left. The “Brigade Chief” armband lying on the desk looks lonely. Oh, well. She’ll be back to her usual crazy self tomorrow and telling us to do impossible things. That’s the kind of person she is.