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I’d tied up my fair share of temporal knots in the past, but those were mostly matters of when and where, and I always knew the what. To date, the most leeway I’d been allowed in the deed lay solely in the selection of the (“preferably small”) species of unfortunate turtle that I would be exploiting for the sake of spacetime.
A momentous decision, to be sure. But now for one slightly more open-ended: which species of gift was supposed to appeal to Haruhi Suzumiya, SOS Brigade leader and founder? This was what troubled me as I trudged back down the hill from that day’s brigade meeting, and there was probably—hopefully—no Latin name for the correct answer.
Oh sure, there were people to ask. Aside from the expert herself, I was sure that Koizumi would be happy to contribute a cryptic remark about following my instincts or radiologically searching the left atrium of my heart for ideas. Nagato would probably reference another fairytale, or possibly one of the old Datsun manuals I’d seen her reading lately. Even the Asahinas would have something to say, if only to simply restate the importance of my choice.
I arrived home all too quickly, still devoid of inspiration. The instant I stepped in, my presence was immediately made known. “Kyon’s home!” my sister yelled from within her room. “Kyooon! I found out Shami likes it when you pat him right on the—”
Such was everyday life, but I was happy to be back to it.
After greeting my parents and cautioning my sister regarding the ethical perils of veterinary science, I went to drop off my stuff in my room. Luckily I carried neither equipment nor contraband; Haruhi was insistent that we plan our…contribution…to Ms. Tsuruya’s flower viewing today, but we hadn’t really produced anything in the way of comedic genius yet.
My bag went by my door, which I shut an instant later. I collapsed into my chair. It was time to turn my brain off for the night; I’d trust Koizumi to make sure we didn’t accidentally step on some international toes at the Tsuruya estate. Dinner was probably happening soon. For now, I’d just close my eyes for a moment. Just…just for a…
—ow!
Something jabbed me sharply in the back. “Wake up,” a familiar, highly improbable voice hissed. “Snap to before Okabe turns your head into potato salad!”
I jolted awake, lurching forward and grabbing blindly for a pencil that wasn’t there. “Wha—” For a moment I was struck by the impression that my tiny standard-issue workstation had expanded three sizes, until I realized I was just in my bedroom, staring at my own desk.
Jeez. I’d heard of hypnagogic jerks before, but maybe full-on audiotactile hallucinations were cause for concern.
Well, hold on. I turned around, very slowly…
…and relaxed again, because an older, mature Haruhi was standing behind me with an impish grin on her face, and that meant I had to be dreaming.
“Man, I miss doing that,” she said, flipping the pencil in her hand into the cup on my desk in one smooth motion. “In university, they stop caring if you’re asleep. They don’t even care if you show up.”
Another reason this had to be a dream. I couldn’t imagine any teacher who would think like that, other than maybe Haruhi herself. Now there was a thought.
“Obviously I poke you awake anyway, but it just felt different when I was actually saving your ass. Now it’s just like tending to a very boring campfire.”
Was it a good idea to converse with a dream person knowingly? Even if I seemed to be entering this dream fully lucid, talking to a figure of my own creation seemed like a golden ticket to insanity.
“You’re the sanest person I’ll ever know, Kyon,” Haruhi said, shaking her head. “For better or for worse.”
Of course a dream character would also know every thought that crossed my mind. I tried to remember other things I’d heard about lucid dreaming—couldn’t you fly at will or something?—but since I couldn’t seem to levitate currently, I settled for the fact that even in my dreams Haruhi was the one driving the bus.
Her grin widened, and Haruhi crossed to my bed, sitting down on it. “Come here,” she said, patting the spot next to her.
Okay, now that was definitely a bad idea. I stayed rooted in my chair, watching her. Any minute now she’d morph into ‘Fujiwara’ or something, I just knew it. Or worse, Koizumi.
But no sneer spread across Haruhi’s face, and she didn’t say anything abstruse. Instead she wordlessly grabbed my pillow and began wrapping it into my blanket, forming a giant sort of temaki with raw pillow filling. A second later she was done, and she threw the whole mess into the corner of my bed. “Yum.”
Man, what a weird dream. All this from a single glimpse of a college-aged Haruhi a couple days ago. A round of applause, please, for the human brain and for…Yasumi…
Hold it. My thoughts ground to a halt, then started up at breakneck speed.
Why had Yasumi dropped me right in front of college Haruhi, anyway? At the time I’d written the whole thing off as a gratuitous vision, or some vaguely relevant hint—a way to goad me into getting my grades up for the college dream, at most. But what if there had been some deeper purpose to it all? Yasumi had made sure I stayed just long enough for Haruhi to notice me. What if that meeting hadn’t just been for my benefit, but for…
Haruhi was regarding me quietly, almost as if she was watching me figure things out.
What would a college-aged Haruhi Suzumiya have thought if she had suddenly seen high-school Kyon pop in and out of existence in front of her, complete with a North High uniform? Would her belief in the supernatural have atrophied enough at that point? Would she have written it off as another mirage? Possibly, though I had my doubts about whether she had even done that the last time. No. Maybe she would’ve concluded instead that a seemingly-ordinary high school boy could teleport and time travel, or at least knew someone who could. And maybe, if she thought about the set of North High boys associated with such things, she’d turn to the college-aged Kyon standing directly behind her, and start thinking of—
“John,” said the god sitting in front of me. “You awake yet?”
I barely heard her over the blood rushing in my ears. So that was it, then. ‘Yasumi Watahashi’ had gone merrily ahead and played my trump card for me, years in the future. I could only stare mutely at the girl—woman—god—in front of me. This was it, the worst-case scenario.
I waited instinctively for the buzz of a text from Koizumi, or the materialization of yet another inexplicable visitor (i.e. Nagato or Ms. Asahina), but instead there was nothing but silence. Even the sounds of the city had gone. It was as if the world was holding its breath, the moment was caught in amber, etc. etc. Then I looked at the hands of the clock on the wall and realized that at this moment—as always with Haruhi—such statements were more than metaphorical.
Well, either that or I had to replace the batteries on the damn thing again.
“That ‘damn thing’ follows you to college and beyond, so you’d better take care of it,” Haruhi (big) said, so casually you’d almost miss the fact that she’d just broken a cardinal rule of time travel. And basic privacy.
I blinked. “You just read my mind and flouted causality for the sake of a five-dollar SEIKO wall clock from a flea market.”
One corner of Haruhi’s mouth quirked up. “Oh right, the clock.” Before I could process that particular comment, she hit me with a million-watt grin. “And I didn’t read your mind. You just kind of said it with your eyes, you know?”
“…tell me which blink corresponds to ‘battery’; the Japanese Federation of the Deaf might be interested in that.”
At that comment, which I made sure to voice aloud, Haruhi’s grin dimmed. “Kyon, let me ask you something.”
I blinked in the affirmative, or so I hoped.
“Something’s got to be off about just snapping my fingers and granting hearing to everyone, but what about actually creating a hyper-efficient sign language, or just removing wax from everyone’s ears? What’s allowed?” She shook her head slightly. “I guess if I really wanted to, I could make myself smarter. I could wish for wisdom, like Solomon.”
“You’re smart enough already,” I said quickly, meaning it. I was also surprised I even had to say such a thing. What I didn’t say was that the Haruhi I knew would probably just try everything out and hit the Undo button whenever she saw fit. Which could be never.
“I don’t know if I can, Kyon,” Haruhi said, twisting her hands in her lap. “You can’t forget a nightmare, can you? The way my powers work, as long as I remember how things were, are they really ever gone?”
Now, this sounded nothing like the Haruhi I knew. Maybe that was why reality was still intact. Yasumi/Haruhi had decided that this Haruhi was ready for godhood, after all. I supposed it was true that in my vision, the Haruhi of the future had seemed softer in a way, kinder, but to believe that all of Haruhi had changed and that she’d grown enough for this …
There was a deep sigh. “A lot’s happened, Kyon. Not all bad, but now…I’m not ready to be a god, but I need to act like it.”
I couldn’t even begin to imagine the size of the crock of shit that must’ve been brewing in the future, for a sentence like that to come out of this Haruhi’s mouth! Suddenly it felt like I was on the eve of a giant test, the entrance exams for college perhaps, and I was miles beyond my ability to cram.
The tiniest of smiles returned to Haruhi’s mouth. “Don’t worry about any of this, Kyon. For now, just focus on that anniversary gift, and making everyone at that party roll on the ground and split their sides. Brigade business should be at the front of your mind—no, every cardinal direction! We’re sussing out the most sociopathic CEO there, and we’re making them bust out the first genuine laugh of their life!” She pointed a finger at me, and I was alarmed to suddenly notice the tears in Haruhi’s eyes, even as that tiny smile remained.
“Haruhi—” Finally I left my chair, and completely unprompted, completely unthinkingly…I pulled her into a hug. It was basic human decency, after all. She let it happen quietly, sinking into my arms.
“You’re probably wondering why I came here, to this time, when nothing is happening,” she whispered. “I guess the truth is, I just wanted this. And I wanted to say something else, Kyon.” And then she said something I barely expected to hear from anyone, but especially not the girl beside me.
Maybe I said a thing or two back.
But guess what? Those things are between Haruhi and me. Anyway, after a while, my mind had to return to the present. “I don’t know how I can possibly act normally around you after this,” I said to her, squeezing my eyes shut briefly at the thought. “And how am I supposed to do anything when I know something huge is happening a couple years from now?”
“Stay focused,” Haruhi said, punching me lightly. “All of this matters. Don’t you dare slack off, because death penalties are still a thing in the future! But…”
Uh oh.
“I do want things to happen between us just like they did,” she says, looking up at me with the faintest of flushes on her face. “And I don’t want you to worry too much about the future, even if that doesn’t actually matter as much as some people think. So…”
There was the gentlest of tugs in her direction. My eyes widened. “Wait a minute—”
“See you later, Kyon,” she whispered, her face moving closer to mine—
And—
I—
—crashed onto the floor as Isaac Newton finally took offense at the precarious angle of my chair. “Ow,” I groaned, too stunned to even rub my head in pain. Served me right for falling asleep while leaning back. There were probably brochures about that kind of thing.
My door slammed open. “Kyon!” my sister said, Shamisen dangling in her arms. “Dinnertime! Mom says I shouldn’t let you sleep too long, because that’ll ruin your appetite!”
Groaning, I managed to scrape myself off the floor and into a vaguely standing position. How long had I been sleeping anyway? It seemed like I had just closed my eyes and immediately reopened them without so much as a dream to pad the time. A quick glance at the clock confirmed that I’d only been out for about ten minutes. This was the worst kind of nap possible.
“Man, I don’t feel like I got any rest at all,” I grumbled, trailing after my sister as she turned and ran off to the living room. “My appetite’s just fine, thanks very much.”
I was itching to get a proper night’s sleep in a couple hours; my nap hadn’t done a thing for me. And yet, as I slogged towards my family for tonight’s feast of spaghetti and meatballs, I was somehow no longer quite as worried about the coming month. Maybe the Koizumi of my imagination was right—I just had to trust my instincts. Somehow it didn’t feel like it was actually a huge deal in the grand scheme of things, trying to follow in my own footsteps.
That was how the future worked, right? It came to you, one way or another, whatever you did.
END