The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya (2 page)

When I asked Nagato what kind of magic she had used, the humorless, alien-made organic android gave me an explanation using terms like “energy level” and “quantum leap,” which I appreciated, but seeing as how I had already given up on a career in the sciences and had chosen the path of liberal arts, I had no idea what she was talking about. Not that I wanted to know.

Once the crazy athletic festival was over, I eagerly anticipated the coming of a new month, only to learn that we had a cultural festival coming up. At this very moment, our lame prefectural high school was preparing for the event. Except that the only ones preparing were the teachers, executive committee members, and the members of any cultural clubs, for which this was their one opportunity to shine.

Of course, a club must be recognized before it can hold any club activities, and since the SOS Brigade had yet to be recognized, we had no need to engage in any creative preparations. Though I wouldn’t have minded picking up some stray cat in the neighborhood and throwing it into a cage with a sign saying
extraterrestrial beast
as some sort of exhibition. But the people who didn’t get the joke would probably make a fuss, and the ones who did get it would only ridicule us. Besides, there was no reason for me to stretch my mind to come up with something for the festival. I had no motivation to do it. A cultural festival at a typical high school like ours will always be dull. If you don’t believe me, go take a peek at any school that’s having a festival. You will then learn the reality that it’s just another school event.

By the way, if you’re wondering what 1-5, the class Haruhi and I are in, is doing, we copped out and went with some random survey. After Asakura ran off somewhere last spring, no other student in this class was crazy enough to take up the leadership position. The current plan only came after homeroom teacher Okabe strained to come up with an idea during an extended and uncomfortable homeroom period. Nobody was for or against it, so the matter was settled when class ended and we ran out of time. Nobody even knew what the survey would be about. Or who would have fun doing this. Though I doubt anyone would ever enjoy it. But that’s how it goes. Work hard, people.

And with that, feeling completely languid, I performed my daily ritual of heading to the club room. Why? Because the girl stomping next to me was saying the following.

“A survey is so dumb.”

She made a face like she’d accidentally poured sauce on her natto.

“Where’s the fun in that? I totally don’t get it!”

“Then you should have spoken up. Didn’t you see how Okabe looked like we were holding a wake in the classroom?”

“Doesn’t matter. I have no intention of participating in anything the class does. There’s no fun in doing anything with those people.”

“Except I vaguely remember you contributing to the class winning the all-around championship. Weren’t you the one who ran anchor and won the short, medium, and long medley relays? Or was that someone else?”

“That’s different.”

“How is it different?”

“This is a cultural festival. Or you could call it a campus festival. Though I suppose you wouldn’t use the word ‘campus’ when talking about a public school. Whatever. The cultural festival is the super most important event of the year, right?”

“Really?”

“Really!” she said as she nodded fervently. And then she announced. To me. The following proclamation:

“We, the SOS Brigade, will be doing something much more fun!”

As Haruhi Suzumiya spoke, her face was shining with resolve, like Hannibal deciding to cross the Alps during the Second Punic War.

Only on the surface, though.

Not a single time during the past six months has Haruhi’s “something fun” led to anything remotely pleasant for me. Almost all cases end with exhaustion. At least, Asahina and I end up exhausted, but we’re the only normal human beings here. As far as I can tell, it’s common knowledge on this planet that Haruhi is not a normal person. And I seriously doubt that Koizumi’s disposition can be considered normal human behavior. And Nagato isn’t even human.

Now that I’ve gotten involved with this bunch, how am I supposed to get through high school living like a complete stranger to myself? I really don’t want to repeat what I had to do six months ago. Never want to do something that rash again. Just thinking about it—someone give me a gun—makes me want to shoot myself in the head. I’d like to extract and burn the brain cells containing the memories of that incident. I don’t know how Haruhi felt about it, though.

Since I was busy with devising a way to erase those memories, I didn’t hear what the squawking girl next to me said.

“Hey, Kyon. Are you listening?”

“No, not really. What about it?”

“The cultural festival, the cultural festival. You should be a bit more excited. You can only experience the cultural festival as a first-year high school student once.”

“Well, yeah. No reason to make a fuss about it, though.”

“Yes, there is. Festivals don’t happen very often. It wouldn’t be a festival if people didn’t go wild. That’s what happens at all the school festivals I heard of.”

“Your middle school really went overboard, huh?”

“Totally not. It wasn’t the least bit fun. That’s why this high school cultural festival has to be more fun.”

“What would you consider fun then?”

“Real ghosts in a haunted house, stairs where the number of steps suddenly increase, the Seven Wonders of the World turn into the Thirteen Wonders, the principal’s hair tripling in size into an Afro, the school building transforms and fights with some monster that comes out of the ocean, or ‘plum’ becoming a seasonal word for ‘fall.’ That kind of stuff.”

Now, I stopped listening halfway, so I missed everything after the stairs part. Maybe someone who has the time could give me a rundown.

“… well, fine. I’ll give you a thorough explanation once we get to the club room.”

Haruhi apparently lost her good mood and fell into a sullen silence. We marched on, reaching the club room door in no time. Underneath the plate reading
Literary Club
was a scrap of paper with the words
with the SOS Brigade
scribbled on it. “We’ve been here for half a year. Nobody can say that this room isn’t ours.” And with that, she began arbitrarily asserting her occupational rights and started replacing the plate itself before I could stop her. People need to know when to be discreet.

Haruhi opened the door without knocking, and I was able to see a fairy standing in the club room. Her eyes met mine, and her face lit up with a smile like the personification of a lily flower.

“Ah… hello.”

Sweeping the room with a broom, dressed in a maid outfit, was the SOS Brigade’s tea-brewing pride and joy, Mikuru Asahina. As always, she welcomed me with a smile as though she were a fairy living in this club room. Maybe she really is a fairy or something like that. That seems more appropriate than saying she’s a time traveler.

Back when the brigade was established, Haruhi gave the incomprehensible reason of “I was thinking that we need a mascot character” when she dragged Asahina here. And then Haruhi forced her into a maid outfit, and ever since, she does a complete transformation into the SOS Brigade maid after school every day. Not because she has a few screws loose in her head, but because she’s such a sweet girl that it brings tears to my eyes.

Asahina has dressed up as a bunny girl, nurse, and cheerleader, but I have to say that she looks best as a maid. As for why, this outfit, while serving no purpose, avoids being suggestive in any way, and I’d rather it stay that way. And I might as well take this opportunity to inform everyone that the majority of Haruhi’s actions serve no purpose.

But they often lead to something else happening, and that something else usually ends up making trouble for the rest of us. I wish everything she did was meaningless.

One of the few good things Haruhi has done—actually, the only good thing she’s done—is creating this maid version of Asahina. She looks so good it makes me light-headed. This is the only time I can’t fault one of Haruhi’s ideas. I don’t know where she got the costume or how much it cost, but Haruhi has pretty good fashion sense. Of course, Asahina would look like a supermodel no matter what she was wearing.

“I’ll have tea ready at once,” Asahina murmured in her cute voice as she placed the broom in the closet. She then ran over to the cupboard and began taking out our individual cups.

I felt something hard drive into my side. Apparently, Haruhi had elbowed me.

“You’re squinting.”

Apparently, my eyes naturally squint when appreciating Asahina’s loveliness. Anybody else would do the same if they were in the presence of the adorable, graceful, and bashful Asahina.

Haruhi took the armband labeled
Chief
off the desk where the pyramid labeled
Chief
was resting, and put it on. She then plopped into a metal chair and leaned back, glaring around the room.

The other brigade member in the room was sitting at the corner of the table reading a thick book.

“…”

Staring at the pages without looking up even once was the first-year literary club member who was, as far as Haruhi was concerned, like “a bonus that came with the room after taking it over”—Yuki Nagato.

The classmate who stands out as much as nitrogen in the Earth’s atmosphere has the strangest profile out of all of us. You could say that her background is even more eccentric than Haruhi’s. Haruhi’s makes absolutely no sense at all, but Nagato’s kind of makes sense—which just confuses me more. If I believe what Nagato says, then this silent-expressionless-emotionless-heartless-quadruple-combo short-haired petite female student isn’t human but an alien-made communication machine. Don’t ask me what that is. I don’t know. She said so herself, so I have nothing to add. Apparently, it’s true. But it’s a secret Haruhi doesn’t know about. Haruhi just thinks that she’s “a slightly odd bookworm” and nothing else.

Though from an objective standpoint, I’m thinking “slightly” is a bit off.

“Where’s Koizumi?”

Haruhi’s sharp glare shot to Asahina. Asahina unconsciously flinched.

“I-I don’t know. He hasn’t showed up yet. He sure is late….”

She carefully took tea leaves from the tea caddy and placed them into the teapot. I casually surveyed the garment rack in the corner of the room. It contained a number of outfits, as though this were a dressing room for the drama club. From left to right, nurse outfit, bunny, summer maid, cheerleader, yukata, doctor’s coat, leopard skin, frog costume, some fluttery transparent thing I didn’t recognize, et cetera, et cetera.

Each and every one of them has been graced by the warmth of Asahina’s skin over the past six months. There was no meaning in Asahina wearing any of these. It was solely for the sake of satisfying Haruhi. Maybe she had some kind of trauma from her childhood. Like her parents wouldn’t buy her a Barbie doll. Which was why she was playing with Asahina now. Consequently, Asahina’s trauma built steadily, and my eyes were treated to a divine feast. Well, if you add it all up, I guess more people ended up happy than not, so I just kept my mouth shut.

“Mikuru, tea.”

“Y-yes. Right away.”

Asahina hurriedly poured green tea into the teacup labeled
Haruhi
in Magic Marker before placing it on a tray and slowly carrying it over.

Haruhi blew on the hot tea before speaking like a master of flower arranging criticizing the ineptitude of an apprentice.

“Mikuru, I’m pretty sure I’ve told you this before. Do you remember?”

“What?”

Asahina clung to the tray nervously.

“What was it again?” She tilted her head questioningly like a java sparrow trying to remember the taste of the hemp seeds it ate the day before.

Haruhi set her teacup on the desk. “When you carry the tea over, you’re supposed to trip and spill the tea once every three times! You’re not acting the least bit like a clumsy maid!”

“Wha—Ah… I’m sorry.”

Asahina shrugged. This was the first I’d heard of such an order. So what, Haruhi thinks that all maids are clumsy?

“That’s fine, Mikuru. You can practice on Kyon. Make sure the teacup ends up flipped over on his head.”

“Huh?”

That was Asahina’s response as she turned and glanced at me. I was looking around for a drill so I could plug up that empty hole in Haruhi’s head, but unfortunately I couldn’t find one, so instead I just sat and sighed.

“Asahina, only people with mental issues find Haruhi’s jokes funny.”

You should have learned that by now. But I refrained from voicing that last sentiment.

Haruhi’s eyes narrowed.

“Hey, stupid. I’m not joking! I’m always serious!”

Then it must be worse than we thought. You should go get a CT scan. And if I get really pissed whenever you call me stupid, does that mean I lack a sense of humor?

“Fine. I’ll show you how it’s done. You go next, Mikuru.”

Haruhi leapt from her metal chair, swiped the tray from the babbling Asahina, picked up the teapot, and began pouring tea into the cup marked with my name.

As I watched in a daze, Haruhi set the teacup on the tray, spilling a considerable amount. She verified my location before nodding and heading toward my position, which was when I plucked the teacup from the side.

“Hey! Don’t interfere!”

Interfere? If someone’s willing to stand still while hot tea is being poured onto his head, he’s either one hell of a nice guy or some kind of insurance scam artist.

I remained standing as I drank the green tea Haruhi had poured and pondered why it tasted so different from Asahina’s tea when they used the same tea leaves. That was a no-brainer. The difference would be in the spice called love. If Asahina were a wild white rose in bloom, then this girl would be some kind of special rose that was all thorns and never bloomed. And bore no fruit, naturally.