The Intrigues of Haruhi Suzumiya (31 page)

“You didn’t give chocolate to someone you have a crush on? Just friends?”

“No,” she replied, sounding a bit desolate. “Even if I did have a crush on someone here, I’ll eventually have to return to the future. Our separation would be inevitable. It would be so sad…”

It was an extremely honest view to hold. I couldn’t think of a single rebuttal. And yet it was the position’s obvious correctness that made me hesitate to agree with it.

“You could just stay here,” I said. “This time period’s not so bad. You could visit the future from time to time, but just keep your home here.”

Asahina giggled. “Thanks.” Her lips formed a soft smile that made me want to steal a kiss. “But I wasn’t born in this time. My
home is there, in the future. No—to me, this is the past. I’m just a visitor. The future is my present, my home. I must return someday.”

Just like the princess from “The Bamboo-Cutter’s Tale.” No matter what measures were taken to stop her, when the time came she had to leave Earth. It wasn’t where she belonged. I guess I agreed with Asahina. If I jumped a hundred years into the past, I might find it interesting at first, but I’m sure I would miss the culture and technology of home. I’d want to play video games with ridiculous graphics, heat convenience-store chicken bowls in the microwave, and send stupid text messages with my cell phone. More than anything else, I’d want to nap in my own room and enjoy my own time at my own pace.

Even if she could do all of the same things, Asahina would always be aware that this wasn’t her time. She was in the past. It was an unnatural place for her to be in, and I could imagine that she might never really feel comfortable.

“Oh, but—!” she began hastily, waving her hands. “It’s not that I don’t like being here! It’s very important, and I really have to do my best. I’m just really glad you’re here with me, Kyon.”

It certainly made me happy to hear her say so. I thought I’d try something out.

“So when you go back to the future, how about you take me along?” Not that Haruhi would keep quiet if something like that happened. “We could take everyone on a trip to the future. Ha-ruhi and Nagato and Koizumi too. I wouldn’t complain. Heck, I’m starting to think that moving to the future wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

“Wha—?” Her fairy-like eyes widened; she was totally taken aback. “N-no, definitely not! That is completely forbidden. It’s just…”

Asahina’s face looked surprised for a while, but eventually she noticed my own expression. She closed her mouth, and the tension drained from her tensed shoulders.

She giggled. “Gosh, Kyon. If you’re going to tell a joke, make sure it’s jokier next time. You really surprised me!”

“Sorry.”

Yes, of course it was a joke. This was my time, my era. I’d encountered terrible challenges, especially the repeated time travel to three and four years ago, but I always came back to this time and place, in the SOS Brigade’s clubroom. I hadn’t even been a high school student for a year yet, and I was sure Haruhi had a lot of things she still wanted to do here and now. I wondered if the day would ever come when she would finish it all. It was a bit too early to be planning an escape to the future.

The day would come when Asahina had to return to her own time. But for the moment, she was here. That was enough. So long as we kept having fun here, the future would surely become a fun place too. She had once compared different time planes to pages in a flip-book, and if I thought about it that way, if all the pages were full of gags, the last page couldn’t possibly be horror. I’d never accept that. I mean, who would?

I’d once lost my friends in the SOS Brigade and gotten them back. I’d never forget the determination I had then. Whatever happened from here on out, whether I stumbled or was defeated, I’d always face ahead. I wasn’t such a lightweight that I’d easily go back on a decision I’d made only two months before. But leave me my “Oh, brother.” That’s special.

In other words, no matter how cheap my pride was, it would have to be a little cheaper before I’d sell it off completely. As long as I faced forward, I could say, “Oh, brother,” if I wanted to. They were just words, after all. The same went for, “Haruhi, you idiot,” “Take me with you,” or even saying nothing, Nagato-style. In a three-legged race, you had to tie your leg to your partner’s leg. It was easier for five people to run a six-legged race than it was for one person to do three.

If there was one thing I’d learned this week, that was it.

I’d spent the last several days going back and forth between my house and the train station. I would probably enjoy a respite from that for a while. Haruhi continued to ignore me, her back turned, not so much as giving me a proper goodnight. Our honorable brigade chief took large, resolute steps, but I wondered what sort of expression she would wear tomorrow at school.

I gave my thanks to Asahina and Nagato as I reassured myself of the weight of their packages in my pocket. “I’m really sorry I couldn’t tell you. Suzumiya made us promise not to say anything,” said Asahina, looking particularly regretful, her head bowed. I was impressed that Haruhi had the ability to silence even Nagato. Although I suppose it wasn’t that difficult, since it was me who’d forgotten such an important day in the first place. Although things had been complicated for a while, it was as though I’d simply dropped the concept of Valentine’s Day entirely.

When I got back to my room, I immediately opened the three packages, though I did not intend to eat them in lieu of dinner as Haruhi had suggested. Inside were plastic cases containing chocolate-coated pieces of cake.

Haruhi’s was round, Asahina’s was heart-shaped, and Nagato’s was in the shape of a star. Each one sported white chocolate lettering on it.

Smack-dab in the middle of Haruhi’s was a simple, blunt, “chocolate,” while Nagato’s sported “Gift” in a neat serif font. Asahina’s said “Just Friends” on it, which seemed a bit uncharacteristically blunt to me until I noted another message hidden in the bottom of the cake’s plastic case, hurriedly scrawled out on the corner of a paper towel. “Suzumiya made me write that,” it said. I imagined the scene of the three of them having a lively time making the cakes in Nagato’s kitchen. I put the three cakes in the refrigerator. I couldn’t forget to tell my sister not to go and eat them.

Once the sun was down, I got on my bike and started to pedal.

The last checkpoint was a certain bench in a certain park near Nagato’s apartment.

The park was dark and deserted, and there sat the bench, unoccupied, beneath the streetlight. I stopped my bike, and as I pushed it into the park, I still did not see a soul.

I sat on the chilly bench and raised my voice to the empty space.

“I know you’re there, Asahina.”

The evergreen shrubs behind the bench rustled, and slowly around the bench came the person I was waiting for.

“May I sit?”

But of course. I expected this to be a long talk, I told her.

She giggled. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to tell you much.”

I confirmed that it was Asahina the Elder’s elegant form on the bench beside me. The winter-wardrobe version of adult Asahina didn’t look any different from a random person on the street—assuming you didn’t count her heart-melting beauty.

I breathed in the winter air, then spoke. “But you’ll explain things, won’t you?”

“Where shall I start?”

“The first errand Asahina and I ran—the prank.”

We’d pounded nails into the ground, then covered them with a can, and thereby sent a man to the hospital. It seemed like ages ago.

“There was a reason you had to do that.” Asahina’s face had a faintly visible smile that I could see from an oblique angle. “Kyon, I want you to imagine something. If you could go back into the past, years or even decades”—she sounded serious—“imagine that you could go back and witness history. But what if that history wasn’t the history you knew? What if it were different?”

“What do you mean, different?” I didn’t understand.

“For example, suppose you traveled exactly one year into the past. What were you doing then?”

Probably playing video games in my room, I told her. I certainly didn’t have any memories of getting chocolate from anyone.

Asahina nodded slightly. “Think about if that were different. If you went to your house of a year ago, but you weren’t living there. What would you do? Neither you, nor your sister, nor your parents are there. Strangers you’ve never met live in your house. And your family doesn’t live in the house you know, but instead live a totally different life, somewhere far away.”

That was absurd.

“When we come to the past and find that the history we’re expecting is subtly different, can you see what we in the future would think? Assuming that the past is constantly subject to intervention from the future. Assuming that if left alone, our future will never come to be, and instead a different future will happen.”

Asahina’s voice sounded distant. As though she were lost in thought.

“A past where a person dies when they were meant to keep on living. A past where two people who were supposed to meet never do. If we knew that, left alone, that past would never lead to our future.”

A shadow fell over her already lonely-sounding voice.

“I’ll get to the point. The man who injured himself kicking the can you placed will meet a certain woman at the hospital. They will get married, have children, and those children will have children. That is all because he went to the hospital. There is no other point in history where they can meet.”

My mind flashed back to the image of the man smiling pleasantly as he looked up at Asahina and me.

“That memory device was the same. The data on it needed to be sent in that form. The person you sent it to ends up acciden
tally discovering the same data. But in this past, that coincidence wasn’t going to happen. Perhaps it was deleted. So we had to send it to him. In as coincidental a form as possible.”

Someone picks up the device after it’s been dropped in a flower bed and happens to send it to a random address—
his
address, Asahina explained.

I didn’t know what to say. There was no way something like that could be a coincidence. Plus that jerk had shown up and
handed
us the data. What had been the point of his interference? I wanted to know.

“He wasn’t interfering. That data was necessary for his future too. That’s how he was able to come back to this time.” Asahina spoke very clearly. “For us in the future, that was a predetermined event. But for you, and the person who will receive the data, it was a mere coincidence. That’s just how time works.”

“…”

I felt dizzy, possibly because the limits of my imagination had been so easily shattered.

“The turtle and that boy—that was also a coincidence. The boy always remembered getting the turtle from the man and woman at the river. He remembered the ripples in the river when the man threw the turtle into the water, and how he flowed lazily along with the current. Turtles live long lives, and every time he looks at his turtle, he remembers that scene. That gives rise to… a kind of fundamental theory. Though it was the result of many other elements as well.”

Could it be—the possibility made me dizzy even as my imagination leaped forward. Was that boy going to be the inventor of the time machine? The near-miss traffic accident, the turtle. Had I changed the future—the future of that boy, and the future of the world? All because of a few insignificant things I had done…

Suddenly a different memory came back to me. A few days before the school festival, when I was in agony trying to finish our film’s climax, Nagato had said something to me.

“In order to stabilize the future, the correct values must be input. Asahina Mikuru’s job is inputting those values.”

My memory was pretty good, but this was not the time to relish it. No, what I was concerned about now was the phrase “in order to stabilize the future.” I could no longer assume that there was but one future.

Probably. I wasn’t sure, so I couldn’t speak with confidence. What understanding I had had gotten me as far as the following, though my mind was wild with question marks.

Was the future not a stable thing?

Were there other futures besides the one from which Asahina came?

I could admit the possibility. But just barely. If the future diverged into separate branches—that could mean there was a future in which that glasses-wearing boy lived and one where he died. Except that I’d erased the possibility of the latter.

Which meant I had single-handedly obliterated an entire future.

I didn’t know if that were really true. The basis for the conjecture was so shaky that I would be an idiot to suggest that the proof was “left as an exercise for the reader,” yet I could not easily dismiss the wild notion. I was mute, struck dumb. How else could I react?

“The divergence points were concentrated in this time period. While most paths would lead to the same future, everything you did in the past few days was connected to a divergence point—a path that would lead to a different future…”

Her lovely voice got quieter.