The Intrigues of Haruhi Suzumiya (24 page)

“Who are you? And how did you know we were coming?”

“Hm.” The man’s thin lips became still thinner. “Isn’t there something you should be asking before that? Why did you come here? Why is that? Don’t you need to know that first?”

Being lectured sanctimoniously by a guy my age really ticked me off. But I had to take the long view. I wouldn’t let my feelings get the best of me.

And I had to think of Asahina, who directed a terrified gaze at the stranger.

“I’m not the one you should be cross-examining,” he said, his dangerous eyes slipping from me to her. “Isn’t that right, Mikuru Asahina?”

Asahina flinched, her grip suddenly tightening. “Wha—what are you talking about? I don’t know you. Have we…?” she said, clinging to my coat.

The guy’s lips curled into a sneer. “That’s about it. We’ll just leave it that this is the first time you’ve said hello to me. You pass—very good. But
I’ll
be saying a different sort of hello to
you
. Do you understand what I’m saying, Mikuru Asahina?”

It would’ve been hard to forgive even a fraction of this, but now he’d definitely crossed the line. There was nothing but malice in his eyes for Asahina. He was her enemy.

It might not have been relevant, but he definitely seemed human to me. It had been a long time since I’d met someone so
obviously hostile. He hadn’t even pretended to be nice—he hadn’t tried to hide anything. Everything he said was just as nasty as he was. At least it saved time. Both Haruhi and I hated that kind of sneakiness.

“If you’ve got something to say, just say it.” I always found myself feeling bolder when shady characters showed up. I had enough vague double-talk with Koizumi around. I put a little bit more power into my voice. “If it’s business with me, then I’m listening. Or should I pass a message on to Haruhi? Hell, I’ll introduce you to her for free.”

“No thanks. Haruhi Suzumiya? I’ve no need to see her.”

Now that was unexpected. I’d been sure he was a member of some mysterious organization obsessed with Haruhi.

“I’m not like Mikuru Asahina.” He narrowed his eyes, glaring at the SOS Brigade’s token time traveler who peeked out from behind me, then directing the same glare at me. “You shouldn’t just blindly follow her directions. There’s not just one single reality. Of course, I’ve been under the same restrictions. That memory device is very important for the future. Whether you pick it up or someone gives it to you, the outcome won’t change. You have it. Isn’t that right?”

It wasn’t even close to right. My instructions never said a single word about a guy like him showing up, I said.

“You fool. Don’t you understand that the fact I came here makes no significant difference? Why do you think you’re even here?”

“How the hell would I know?” I said without thinking. I had an appointment with a brigade member who did that kind of thinking for me. If he wanted to ponder Zen riddles, he should’ve been bothering our lieutenant chief, I told him.

“I have no such plans. I’ll pass,” said the stranger, backing up as though blown by the wind. “Today was simply for introductions. Just a bit of fun. I have my own instructions to follow, you see. Though I don’t know if that was part of your little time traveler’s plans. And beyond that—heh—it’s classified.”

He turned on his heel and strolled off. The way he’d just showed up and said his piece without bothering to introduce himself made me want to teach him some manners, and for a moment I thought about following after him, but in the end I just watched him go.

That was because Asahina was standing as still as a bronze statue, still clinging to my arm. Rooted to the ground, the terrified girl watched the disagreeable bastard recede, and it wasn’t until he finally turned a corner that she fully relaxed.

“Whew…” said the petite upperclassman, the strength finally going out of her clenched hands as she slumped and leaned against me. I felt the warmth Haruhi was so fond of grabbing onto against my hand, but this was no time to be enjoying such things.

“You didn’t even recognize him a little bit, Asahina?”

Asahina somehow managed to straighten, and she spoke in a very small voice. “… I don’t know for sure, but… he’s probably from the future…”

That much I figured. His wording matched up with Asahina’s. My limited deductive capacity could get that far. But what had he come for? Showing up ahead of time and finding the object before we could get to it couldn’t be a good thing. He definitely hadn’t done it just to watch Asahina and me crawl around in the dirt for half an hour.

Another time traveler. And he was Asahina’s enemy.

I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold winter wind. So, just like there was a rival faction of cosmic entities, there were also people from the future with different priorities. Come to think of it, even Koizumi had alluded to organizations that were rivals to his Agency. I didn’t know what they’d been doing all this time, but it seemed like they were starting to show themselves.

“Looks like there are all kinds of people in the future.”

“Yes. Er…” Asahina began to respond to my plaintive-sounding statement, but after opening and closing her mouth she just
looked away. “It’s classified information—I tried to say it, but I can’t.”

It was enough. I told her that I wouldn’t worry about it, so she shouldn’t worry either.

“But this is definitely important. I knew we’d meet someone like him eventually. But… this is such an unstable time, so…”

“Unstable?”

“Yes. Because the original ‘me’ is with Suzumiya right now.”

That might actually be why this other guy was here.

I put the letter back in the outside pocket of my coat. Assuming that Asahina’s and my encounter with that guy was a predetermined event, it would’ve been impossible, given that Asahina the Younger was now with Koizumi and Haruhi. The only thing that made it possible was the fact that (Michiru) Asahina had come back from eight days in the future to work with me.

I suddenly became aware of the memory device, still clasped in my sweaty hand. It was the object of today’s mission, but now I was more worried about another matter entirely. I put it in the same pocket with the letter, feeling a fresh surge of anger at the recently departed stranger. I wouldn’t forgive anyone who gave Asahina a hard time, be they from the past, present, or future. Neither would Tsuruya. Come to think of it, neither would Ha-ruhi, and I doubted Nagato or Koizumi would let it slide either.

“I get the feeling we’re gonna see him again.”

“Probably.” Asahina nodded surprisingly readily. Her fearful expression was shifting into confusion, as though she was thinking about something. Happily, she didn’t seem to have noticed she was still clinging to my arm as she said, “He also said something about a predetermined event. He’s probably not much different from me. And—”

She cut herself off. More classified information? I asked.

“No,” said Asahina, finally detaching herself from me. “He didn’t seem like that bad of a person to me. What did you think, Kyon?”

What did I think? I thought that anybody who would talk to
Asahina and me like that was the worst. There were only a few people who could get away with that, and a mouthy jerk I’d just met for the first time definitely wasn’t one of them.

Of course, I wouldn’t have been exactly pleased if he’d used my nickname either.

We’d wasted a lot of time mucking around in the flower box, then being sidetracked by the mysterious stranger. We had to meet back up with Haruhi in front of the station at four o’clock, and it was already past three. There was enough time to go to the library and drag Nagato away from the bookshelves, then go to the station, but I couldn’t very well leave Asahina on her own. Even if I called her a cab, there was no guarantee the driver wouldn’t be one of our enemies, and the cold smile of the stranger only worsened my worry.

It would destroy my wallet, but there was no other way—I’d ride in the taxi with Asahina to Tsuruya’s place, then continue on to the library.

I hailed a passing cab and got in with Asahina, closing the door behind me.

“Do you remember Tsuruya’s address?”

“Oh—um, I don’t really know,” she said. “What ward was it again…?”

“You mean the big Tsuruya mansion? If that’s what you’re talking about, I know the place,” the middle-aged cab driver interjected affably.

The talkative driver wanted to know what school year we were in, how high school was going, and was furthermore happy to tell us about his own son, who was in elementary school, and by the time he’d told us he was thinking of sending said son to a nice private middle school, we had arrived at the front gate of the Tsuruya estate.

Getting out of the car, Asahina thanked both the driver and me profusely before disappearing behind the gate. I could breathe a sigh of relief. No new time traveler would be able to mess with her in there. It was good to have classmates you could count on.

“The library, and step on it,” I said, leaning back in the seat and feeling some of the tension finally drain out of me.

When I got back to the library, I saw Nagato there, still standing and reading. I was impressed at her ability to hold a big hardback book for so long.

“Sorry I kept you waiting.”

“It’s fine.”

Nagato closed the book—it looked like a dictionary—with a
thwap
, then replaced it on the shelf in front of her. She kept pace with me as we strode toward the exit.

“Nagato, do you know what this is?”

Outside the exit, Nagato slowly turned her head to face me, still walking as she looked at the object I held up.

“It was like this—” I started to tell her the story as we headed north to the station. I didn’t have to keep any secrets from Nagato. I told her everything, from the letters in my shoe locker to the events that had just transpired.

“… I see.” Nagato nodded expressionlessly as she answered in her usual flat voice. “There is damaged data recorded on that device,” she said, staring at the small chip as though she were performing a CT scan with her eyes. “Over half the data has been destroyed. In its current form, it cannot be interpreted.”

What kind of data? I asked.

“Insufficient information. The degree of damage is too high, the omitted portions too numerous.”

So it had something on it even Nagato couldn’t make sense of. That had to mean that no normal human would be able to interpret
it either, but that I was going to have to send it to someone who could.

“If a restoration process were applied, it is possible that entirely different data would result.” Nagato looked away from the chip, as though having read the entirety of its contents. “A conjecture is possible.”

The hood of the duffle coat shook slightly with each step she took.

“There are two hundred and eighteen sectors of the damaged data where a variant input method was used, and if read on a different device than was intended for that storage medium, it would be possible to extract the fundamental principles underlying a new technology.”

Before I could even ask what that meant, Nagato faced me and continued.

“The time travel technology utilized by Mikuru Asahina.”

However—Nagato explained to me.

Even if someone were able to obtain that data, human science and technology were at present insufficient to interpret it, and it would not lead to the immediate development of a time machine. But it was still crucial data. Without it, a time machine would never be built, and humanity would never unlock the secrets of time travel. Asahina’s method of time travel depended on thousands of accidental discoveries and developments. And at the root of them all was—

“—This? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes.”

Her flat expression seemed disinterested, and Nagato didn’t even slacken her pace. I couldn’t help but slow down, though. The fate of the future lay in the palm of my hand, and having been entrusted with it I felt an indescribable pressure.

“It could also be a dummy,” said Nagato, unwittingly throwing cold water on my emotions. “It is unlikely that is the only copy of the data. It would be natural to have several backups.”

That made sense. That’s how it always went—when something really valuable was being transported, there would be an original and a dummy, and each would take separate routes. A vision of Asahina the Elder appeared in my mind; she winked and put her finger to her lips, smiling softly. But even she had a weak subject—and it was standing right in front of me.

“Oh, that’s right, Nagato—” I said to the back of the rapidly advancing girl. “Sorry about today.”

Nagato’s progress slowed, and she looked over her shoulder with a blankly questioning expression.

“No, I mean, yesterday I didn’t tell you I was going to bring Asahina along today, right? I just asked you for a favor with no explanation, which was kinda… yeah.”

“…”

Nagato continued walking while looking at me. After ten seconds under her searching gaze, I finally cracked.

“Asahina told me I should apologize. Anyway, I’m sorry.”

“… I see.”

She finally looked ahead. Nagato kept walking, speaking again after about five seconds.

“I see.”

In front of the station, Haruhi and Asahina leaned on each other like puppies exhausted after a day of playing, while beside them Koizumi stood, a beatific smile on his face.

After meeting up, we found ourselves piling back into the café in order to report our findings. Of course, nothing I could report to Haruhi had happened since the last time we’d done this, and I wasn’t going to tell her about the weird guy who’d shown up
either. Fortunately, when I reported “We found nothing mysterious or mysterious-seeming,” Haruhi’s mood didn’t take an instant turn for the worse, unlike last year.

“Oh, well—you win some, you lose some.”

Had we ever won some?

Haruhi was in surprisingly good spirits as she sipped her cappuccino. “Let’s meet up again tomorrow. Those mysterious phenomena won’t expect us to be on the lookout two days running! We gotta preserve the element of surprise, then grab ’em by the tail. They’ll probably pop out from the strangest places. We might just run right into ’em!”