The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya (7 page)

“Which class would you want?” Kunikida asked. “Nagato’s class? Oh, speaking of which, I saw her walking around in some kind of wizard getup yesterday. What’s up with that?”

Beats me. I sure don’t know.

“Nagato, huh…” Taniguchi turned to me with a look on his face like he’d just found out about a pop quiz in math. He sounded like he had just remembered something.

“When was that again? That time the two of you were all tangled up in the classroom. That was probably just something scripted by Suzumiya. Probably some kind of scheme to surprise me, right? Ain’t happening.”

I was feeling rather relieved that he’d arbitrarily misunderstood the whole affair… Wait, didn’t you come back to the classroom to get something you’d forgotten? How could we have possibly known that you would show up—but naturally, I didn’t voice this sentiment. Taniguchi was an idiot. Telling an idiot he was an idiot served no purpose. Good thing he was an idiot. I should be thankful.

“At any rate, this sure is boring,” Taniguchi lamented while Kunikida concentrated on his box lunch. I looked behind me. Haruhi’s desk was empty. Well now. I wondered where Haruhi was marching at that moment.

“I was looking for a good filming location around school,” Haruhi told me. “But I totally couldn’t find one. I suppose we won’t be able to shoot it around here after all. Let’s head out.”

Maybe she didn’t like the school atmosphere. But the fact that there wasn’t an exciting spot around was no reason to expend effort on an expedition in search of pizzazz. Apparently, her goal was to turn this into some kind of fiasco.

“Huh… A-am I going too?” Asahina voiced her query in a mournful tone.

“Of course. We can’t do anything without the star.”

“I-i-in these clothes?”

Asahina was balled up, trembling, in the waitress costume Haruhi brought yesterday.

“Yep, that’s right.” Haruhi nodded readily.

Asahina hugged herself with a reluctant look on her face.

“Isn’t it a pain to keep getting changed? Besides, there might not even be a place for you to change there. So you might as well just wear it the whole time, right? Right? Come on, let’s go! Everybody!”

“At least let me wear something over it….”

Asahina’s plea was met with…

“No.”

“But it’s so embarrassing.”

“It’s only embarrassing if you let yourself feel that way! You’ll never win a Golden Globe like that!”

Weren’t we trying to win first place in the cultural festival best-event poll?

All of the brigade members were assembled in the club room. Koizumi had apparently settled the issues with the script for his class’s play and was currently watching Haruhi and Asahina’s one-sided exchange. Nagato was also there. And there was a little problem involving Nagato.

“…”

She was always silent, so I didn’t really have any comments regarding that. But she was dressed rather oddly. For some reason, she was once again wearing the witch outfit she had shown us yesterday. You only need to wear it on the day of the festival. Why are you already on standby in the costume?

Haruhi was apparently quite pleased with Nagato’s black mantle and pointy hat.

“I’ll change your character to an evil alien magician!”

And she was already changing the script. Haruhi looked quite satisfied with Nagato holding the antenna-like pointer with what looked like a star off a Christmas tree attached to the tip. As I watched Nagato gripping the wand, I was finding it hard to argue against the closemouthed book lover being an extraterrestrial evil magician. Seemed to fit her character a lot more than being a terminal for data life forms. She definitely possessed magic-like powers. I’d seen it myself. No doubt about it.

Nagato unexpectedly raised the brim of her hat and looked at me with her usual lifeless eyes.

“…”

I doubted that it would be okay for Haruhi to arbitrarily use some other class’s costume in her movie, but her eyes were utterly devoid of hesitation.

“Kyon! Get the camera ready! Koizumi, you carry the stuff over there. Mikuru, why are you clinging to the desk? Come on, get a move on!”

Asahina’s feeble resistance lasted only a moment. Haruhi grabbed the weak waitress by the collar and dragged the squealing little girl to the door. Nagato followed with the hem of her mantle dragging on the floor. Koizumi was the last to disappear into the hallway after winking at me.

As I was wondering if I would have to go with them…

“Hey! We can’t go film a movie without the cameraman!”

Haruhi’s torso stuck through the open door. Her open mouth took up about half of her face as she shouted. I noticed that the band on Haruhi’s left arm now read
Great Director,
which only served to depress me.

Looks like she’s serious.

The self-proclaimed great director who had yet to film a movie led the way as the beautiful waitress followed with her eyes glued to the ground. The dark-clad witch trailed behind like a shadow. Koizumi carried the paper bag with an easy smile on his face. And I brought up the end, trying to put as much space as possible between me and the band of weirdos. We had already managed to become the center of attention while moving around campus, but this procession that resembled a Halloween party was doing a fine job of attracting interest off campus. Asahina, already the focus of much attention at school, was currently looking down twenty percent of the time, blushing thirty percent of the time, and dragging her feet like a robot fifty percent of the time.

Haruhi was cheerfully humming the melody of the
Heaven and Hell
theme like an impending disaster was on the horizon. No idea where they came from, but she was energetically carrying a yellow megaphone in her right hand and a director’s chair in her left, like Mongolian cavalry riding west across the plains. As I wondered where she was planning on making her assault, we arrived at the station. Haruhi bought tickets for all of us and handed them out. She then advanced toward the ticket gate with a prosaic look on her face.

“Wait.”

I objected in Asahina’s stead, seeing as how she had lost her ability to speak. I pointed to the miniskirted waitress drawing inquisitive glances from every direction and the vertically challenged girl dressed in black standing next to her like an attendant.

“You’re going to have them get on the train dressed like this?”

“Something wrong with that?” Haruhi replied, feigning innocence. “You might get arrested if you’re running around without anything on, but they’re fully dressed. Or what? Would you prefer the bunny-girl outfit? You should have told me earlier then. I wouldn’t mind changing it to ‘Combat Bunny (Tentative)’ if you’d like.”

Not sure you should be saying that after dragging her all the way here in a waitress outfit…. Anyway, didn’t you say that this was the concept for the movie? Not that I would know, but are you supposed to be able to change the concept just like that?

I worked my brain to try to get a glimpse of the feelings of the Creator.

“The most important thing is your ability to adapt to the situation. That’s how life on Earth was able to evolve. It’s adaptive selection. If you aren’t careful, you’ll end up eliminated through natural selection. You have to adapt properly!”

Adapt to what? If the environment had a mind of its own, I could see Haruhi being ejected out of the atmosphere.

Koizumi was just smiling and carrying stuff. Nagato was maintaining her silence as mentioned above. Asahina apparently lacked the strength to speak up. Which meant that everyone else was keeping their mouth shut.

I wish someone would do something.

Haruhi apparently took the silence to mean that everyone had been deeply impressed by her words.

“Come on, the train’s here. Walk fast, Mikuru. The real stuff’s yet to come.”

Like a police detective leading away a female perpetrator who had committed a murder for sympathetic reasons, she put her arm around Asahina’s shoulders and walked toward the ticket gate.

And we were there. We got off at the same station as the other day and headed for the same shopping district. I was beginning to have my suspicions when we really did stop in front of the same store as the other day. The electronics store where Haruhi had haggled for the video camera.

“We came as promised!” Haruhi shouted as she cheerfully walked in. The middle-aged guy appeared from the store interior and rested his eyes upon Asahina.

“Ho-ho.”

The guy stared at our lead actress with a grin on his face that could only be considered sexual harassment. Asahina was completely motionless, like a fighting-game character after using a super-move.

The guy continued speaking. “Is she the one from yesterday? I didn’t recognize her. Ho-ho. Then I’ll leave it to you.”

Leave what to us? I was in the process of reflexively moving forward to defend the quivering Asahina when Haruhi pushed me back.

“Okay. We’re going to have a meeting now, so listen up.”

And Haruhi made her announcement with the same smile she’d had right after winning the interclub relay.

“We will now begin shooting the commercial!”

“Th-this store… um… has a very friendly owner. And he’s a nice guy. This store has been around since when it was owned by the grandfather of the current owner, Eijirou. They carry everything from batteries to refrigerators. Um… Also, um…,” waitress Asahina forcedly recited in a deadpan voice with a twitching smile on her face. Nagato stood next to her holding a placard saying
Ohmori Electronics
as I watched the two of them through the video camera viewfinder.

Asahina had an impressively awkward smile on her face as she held a mike that wasn’t actually hooked up to anything.

Koizumi stood next to me holding up cue cards with a faint mocking smile on his face. The cue cards were just a sketchbook Haruhi had scribbled on a moment ago without giving it much thought. Koizumi was flipping through the pages as Asahina went through her lines.

We were in front of the store, still in the shopping district.

Haruhi leaned back in her director’s chair with her legs crossed as she watched Asahina’s acting with an intense look of concentration on her face.

“Okay, cut!”

She whacked the megaphone against her palm.

“There isn’t any emotion. I’m not sure why I can’t feel the vibes. It just, like, doesn’t have any
oomph
to it,” she said while biting her nails.

My reaction as I stopped the video camera was along the lines of “good grief.” Asahina also stopped with her hands clutching the mike. Nagato was stationary to begin with. Koizumi just smiled.

Behind us, people passing through the shopping district chattered curiously.

“Mikuru’s expression is too stiff. Your smile needs to be more natural. Think happy thoughts. Yeah, aren’t you feeling happy right now? You’ve been handpicked to be the star of the movie. You’re never going to experience anything happier in your life!”

I’d really like to tell her to go shove it.

If I had to summarize Haruhi’s conversation with the manager from yesterday, it would probably go something like this:

“I’ll stick a commercial for this store in the movie, so give me a video camera.”

“Sure.”

I’m pretty sure there’s something wrong with the manager for going along with Haruhi’s sweet-talk, but there is definitely something seriously wrong with Haruhi if she’s planning on screening a homemade movie with commercials. I’ve never heard of a leading actress doing a commercial in the middle of a movie. Maybe if you casually sneak something in the background during a scene of the movie, but this is just a feature-length commercial.

“I got it!” Haruhi was shouting to herself.

Could you please stop having these revelations?

“It’s kind of odd for a waitress to be at an electronics store.”

Weren’t you the one who brought the costume?

“Koizumi, hand me that bag. The small one.”

Haruhi took the paper bag from Koizumi and grabbed the hand of Asahina, who was looking relieved. Then she barged into the store.

“Manager! Do you have a room in the back we can change in? Yeah, anywhere will do. The bathroom’s fine. Really? Then we’ll borrow your storeroom.”

She casually disappeared into the back of the store with Asahina in tow. It appeared that poor Asahina no longer even had the strength to resist. She obediently allowed herself to be dragged forward by Haruhi’s ridiculous strength. It might just have been that she was willing to do anything if it meant getting out of that costume.

The rest of us—Koizumi, Nagato, and I—stood around with nothing to do. Nagato in her black attire hadn’t stirred an inch from her position of holding up the placard. She just stared at the video camera. I’m amazed her arms weren’t tired.

Koizumi smiled at me.

“It would appear that I won’t be making much of an appearance in this film. You see, I’m actually also acting in our class play. It was decided by a class vote. Which means that I am currently struggling to memorize my lines. I would prefer a role in this film with a minimal number of lines…. Hey! Why don’t you have a go at the lead role?”

“In any case, Haruhi’s the one holding authority as far as casting goes. Direct your ideas to her.”