The Intrigues of Haruhi Suzumiya (6 page)

“Oh—wait—no, don’t—!”

Asahina grabbed my uniform’s necktie, and I was pulled forward. She drew me farther into the broom closet, then reached out her hand and closed the steel door behind me.

What the
hell
was going on? What was all of this?

“Shhh, Kyon—be quiet. Don’t make a sound.”

Thanks to a sliver of light, I could just barely make out Asahina putting her index finger to her lips. Even if she hadn’t said anything, I would’ve been speechless. I mean—just thinking about it.

Usually a person wouldn’t be able to cram themselves into a broom closet. Even one occupant would exceed its capacity—but now there were
two
people inside, and not just any two people either. It was Asahina and me. Asahina, whose curves were
generous enough to catch even Haruhi’s eye. Obviously, given the circumstances, we wouldn’t be able to avoid being pressed together, so pressed together we were. Even through the school uniform I could feel something soft and warm against the lower part of my chest.

Just as I was becoming lost in the sensation, I heard the sound of the clubroom door opening. Somehow, I didn’t care. Asahina clung to me like someone trying to keep warm in a frigid mountain shack, holding her breath. I didn’t know why, but she was. How was such happiness even possible?

Terrible premonition, my ass. The black smoke in my chest was transforming to crystal-clear ozone, beckoning me to a soothing paradise… No, words are unnecessary. I just wanted the moment to last forever.

But my intoxication was forcibly interrupted by the voice of the person who’d just entered the room.

“Huh? Nobody’s here… but the heater’s on. Oh, that’s Kyon’s bag. Maybe he went to the bathroom.”

I looked down at Asahina, who still gripped my necktie. She looked up at me.

Next, I craned my neck around in an effort to look behind me. The sole source of light in the closet was a thin slit in its door. While humans cannot rotate their heads 180 degrees, I was about to catch a glimpse of the room out of the corner of my eye.

“…!” I was too shocked to voice my surprise.

There was Asahina.

Yes, it was
Asahina
who warmed her hands in front of the heater, humming to herself before she moved out of my line of sight, then reappeared having taken her maid outfit off its hanger. She then smoothly removed her school uniform’s ribbon, hanging it neatly over the back of a folding chair, then undoing the buttons on her blouse as she began to remove it.

“…!” I continued with another stunned ellipsis.

Asahina laid her newly doffed top on the chair as well, then put her hands to the waist of her skirt—just as other hands touched my face.

“…!”

Holding my face between her two hands,
this
Asahina forced my head to turn back around and face her. Even in the dark of the closet, I could tell she was blushing furiously. Her lips moved.

“D-o-n-’t l-o-o-k.”

I didn’t have to do any lip-reading to know what she was trying to say, and realizing too late that I had already seen some untoward things, I hurriedly shut my mouth and reassessed the situation.

There were two Asahinas.

Now wait just a minute. If one of them had been Asahina the Elder, that much I could’ve understood. That sort of thing had happened several times, so her appearing again would hardly have been surprising.

But this was different. A perfectly matched set of identical Asahinas was now separated by a single flimsy steel door—one with her body pressed up against my own, and the other smack in the middle of changing into her maid uniform.

Both of them were the real Asahina. When it came to the ability to read Nagato’s expressions or judge Asahina’s authenticity, I prided myself on having a higher level of skill than anyone else. And if that skill could be trusted, then both of these girls were the genuine article. And two of the same person existing in the same space had to mean—

—time travel.

If I had to guess, it was probably the Asahina squeezed in the broom closet with me who was from a different time, one not far removed from the current time. The two of them were just too similar. Even identical twins would’ve been more different from each other.

But I was only able to consider it for a brief moment. Obviously, instinct precedes rational thought in such situations.

I mean, here in the closet Asahina was clinging to me, her eyes squeezed shut, and out there the sound Asahina’s clothing made as she removed it was stimulating my imagination, and it was only a matter of time before my mind’s defenses were completely overrun. Just as in the summer siege of Osaka Castle after the death of the great general Yukimura Sanada, there was nothing that could be done. It was just as impossible to tell me not to have any reaction in the face of this two-front psychological assault.

I felt lightheaded, as though some strange drug were working its way though my brain.
Somebody, do something!

At this rate I was either going to wind up embracing Asahina the Nearer with all my might or jump out of the closet and scare to death the Asahina in the room mid–costume change.

The sound of the clubroom door opening again brought me back to myself.

“…”

Whoever it was seemed to be standing there without saying anything. The door didn’t close.

“Oh, Nagato,” I heard Asahina say in her clear voice. “Wait just a moment, and I’ll put the tea on.”

I craned my neck around again.

Through the door’s slit I only caught the hem of her maid outfit’s skirt as it whirled around. I was left to imagine the now-changed Asahina quickly lighting the portable burner.

“…”

I didn’t hear any more sound from Nagato. While she’s certainly capable of moving quietly, the door certainly cannot close
without making noise, so I inferred that she was still standing at the room’s entrance.

“Um… is something the matter?” came Asahina’s uncertain voice. Again my imagination: Nagato held her bag in one hand, with the other holding the doorknob as she stared, I was certain, at the broom closet.

“…”

“Er—”

“We need to talk.” Nagato’s voice.

“Huh?” Asahina sounded surprised.

“Come with me.”

“Wha—?” said Asahina, her surprise growing. “G-go where? I… wha…?”

“Anywhere, as long as it is not this room.”

“B-but, what do you want to talk about…? Why can’t we do it here?”

“We cannot speak here,” said Nagato shortly.

“And… you really want to talk to
me
? Really?”

“Yes.”

“Wha—? Wait, Nagato, don’t—you don’t have to drag me like that—!”

There were no further words. I heard Asahina’s tottering footsteps, followed by the sound of the door closing. The two girls disappeared down the hallway beyond the door.

Thanks, Nagato
.

I clattered out of the broom closet, its door slamming open; Asahina tumbled after me.

“Fwaa—!” On her knees, Asahina cried out in a voice that could’ve been either relief or total fatigue. “Gosh, what a shock!”

I doubted she was more shocked than I was. “Asahina,” I said. “Just what is going on here?
When
did you come from?”

Asahina lifted her head up from its lowered position to look at me, blinking as she replied. “Huh? You don’t know, Kyon?”

Know
what
, I wondered. Just what was it that I was supposed to know?

“I mean”—Asahina continued, her expression like a passenger aboard a sinking ocean liner who’d just gotten to a lifeboat only to discover that it had a hole in it—“you were the one who told me to go to this time, weren’t you?”

Now wait just a minute
.

I racked my brain. I had said something like that. Definitely. It was on January second, when I’d needed to return to December eighteenth the previous year. We’d gone back, then returned to our time.

But that had wrapped things up, hadn’t it? At the very least, I had no memory of telling Asahina anything about a jump into the future. I hadn’t even considered the notion.

Which meant…

The future. This Asahina had come from the future.

“When did you come from?”

“Uh…” Asahina went blank for a moment, then looked down and checked her wristwatch. “Um… A week and a day, so… four fifteen
PM
, eight days from now.”

“For what reason?”

“I don’t know.”

She’d just up and admitted it.

“I really don’t know,” she continued. “I just did what you told me to do. And I want to ask you something: why are your requests always so quickly approved?”

Asahina pouted, looking a bit like Haruhi. It was cute, but this was no time to be thinking about things like that. I purposefully turned toward the clubroom door. “I told you to do this? The me of eight days from now did?”

“Yes. You seemed kind of nervous, and you told me that if I
went, I’d understand why. And you said to say ‘Hi’ to the you of the past.”

What the hell had the eight-days-later-me been thinking?

I struggled to understand. What had he sent Asahina into the past to do? “Say ‘Hi’ to me?” That didn’t tell me anything.

No, wait—something else was strange. This Asahina said she’d come from eight days in the future. Meanwhile, the Asahina who was wearing her maid outfit—the Asahina of
this
time—had been dragged away by Nagato.

So… what? There were two Asahinas. One was here in the clubroom. Nagato had taken the other one somewhere else in the school and hopefully wasn’t giving her too hard of a time.

“She took me to the emergency stairs and said all kinds of strange things,” said Asahina, cocking her head to one side. “Like how to use number theory to prove the existence of God, asking me how to conceptually refute that… or something. Nagato did all the talking, and I didn’t understand a thing. What was that all about? Oh—” There Asahina cut herself off. “I see.”

Just as Asahina seemed to figure things out, the Color Timer in my head began to flash an alarmed shade of red. At this rate, we were headed for big trouble.

As I silently prayed for Nagato’s crazy-talk to drag on, I said, “Asahina, you didn’t meet your future self anytime in the past week, right?”

“Er, no…” She shook her head meekly, looking flustered. In that case, we’d have to hurry.

I couldn’t let this Asahina meet her counterpart.

Nagato had realized this. She’d sensed Asahina and me in the broom closet and had taken steps to buy us some time. The reason she’d dragged maid-Asahina out of the clubroom was to give this Asahina and me a chance to escape.

Haruhi and Koizumi would be here before long. SOS Brigade members were like salmon returning to spawn—they always came back to the same place. I should know; I was the same way.
And if Haruhi were to see the fissioned Asahinas, it wasn’t hard for me to guess how likely it was that she’d buy the explanation that they were twins.

If I didn’t get Asahina out of here and fast, I had the feeling things could turn ugly very soon.

“Asahina, let’s go.”

I grabbed my own bag, opened the door slightly, and checked the hallway. Nobody was there. I beckoned Asahina to come over, which she did, looking tremulously out into the hallway. The countdown had already begun. There were two conditions. One: not letting the two versions of Asahina meet each other, and two: not letting Haruhi witness two Asahinas in one place. I thought about putting her in some kind of disguise, but a glance at the hanger rack in the clubroom revealed nothing but costumes that would’ve stuck out, so I gave up on that idea. Fortunately this Asahina was wearing her school uniform. Like the saying goes: the best way to hide in a forest is to be a leaf.

I took Asahina’s arm and hurried out of the room.

“You’re sure you came from eight days in the future, right?” I asked as we strolled briskly along.

“Yes, because you told me to go back eight days, to three forty-five
PM
.”

Asahina’s stride was longer than usual as we descended the steps two at a time. I prayed that Mr. Okabe’s lecturing of Haruhi would run long.

“So you know what’s going to happen for the next week?”

We reached the bottom floor, and I hesitated for a moment before picking a route that took us across the courtyard. If we had taken the covered pathways back to the main school building, there was the possibility of a direct encounter with Haruhi, and this path would get us to the shoe lockers more quickly.

Breathing a bit heavily, Asahina answered: “I guess so…”

“So was there some incident that made you have to travel into the past?”

“No, it wasn’t anything I could think of. You just dragged me over to that broom closet and pushed me in.”

So I’d pushed her in and ordered her to go to this time, today. That was strange, even for me. What the hell had I been thinking? I should’ve come with her. I would’ve saved myself the trouble of figuring all this out.

We’d just made it to the shoe lockers without meeting anyone we knew when I suddenly stopped short.

“Where should we go?” I asked.

We obviously had to get away from the school, but I had no idea where to hide Asahina after that.

So what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t very well do nothing and just have her return to eight days in the future, could I—? I asked.

“You can’t,” said Asahina, her upturned gaze sad. “I thought the same thing and asked about it, but they said no. The time when I’m allowed to go back is also classified, and I don’t know it myself.”

Which meant that this Asahina from eight days in the future had something she had to do today, or tomorrow, or soon. I’d just assume that much.

So?

So the number one thing I wanted to know was what that was. Why had my eight-days-later self sent her back without so much as a single note?

As I hurled curses at my future self, Asahina trotted over to the second-year students’ shoe lockers, and just as I was changing from my school slippers into my sneakers—

“Asahina!” I hurriedly looked around for the time traveler’s form. She was reaching up to her own shoe locker, which was located on a high row.