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I fidgeted with the spoon that had come with my coffee, turning it over and over in my fingers. I couldn't think of a graceful way to begin what I had determined must be done that night, sitting with Haruhi Suzumiya in an innocuously charming cafe. Months -- years! -- of planning this conversation had made not a single dent in the imposing shadow it cast over my nerves. But there she sat, waiting with cheerful expectation for whatever it was that necessitated this holiday season rendezvous. And I supposed that as I was likely doomed to botch the whole thing no matter what I did, I may as well just start talking now and hope for the best in the end.
"Haruhi..." I put the spoon down and folded my hands on the table. "Do you remember what happened on Tanabata nine years ago?"
Her smile vanished. "Who told you about that? Taniguchi?"
"That night, you ran into some weird high school kid carrying a girl on his back. He was wearing a North High uniform. He helped you draw a message on the quad." I swallowed, suddenly nervous. "He told you his name was John Smith."
"What are you saying? I never..." She shook her head. "I never told anyone what happened that night."
"You didn't have to," I said. "I was there."
She scowled. "You were spying on me?"
"No! No...." I drew a steadying breath, steeling myself to push through the barriers of her skepticism. "I'm John Smith," I said. "I was the boy you met that night."
"That's ridiculous."
Haruhi, you have no idea how ridiculous my life has been ever since the day I met you!
"There are some things I need to tell you," I said. "Some things that you deserve to know."
She sat in shocked silence as I explained, the world around us going about its average, predictable business while I spoke of espers and time travelers and alien robot intelligences.
I talked for a very long time.
Approximately one percent of the Japanese population follows the tenants of the Christian religion, a tiny minority in a country where most live out the old saying of "Born Shinto, die Buddhist." Despite this minor setback, Santa Clause and his onslaught of Christmas cheer can be counted upon to make an appearance each December, every shopping arcade and department store covered in a dazzling array of lights and tinsel as children wonder what gift their jolly benefactor will bring, while adults scramble to find a sweetheart with which to share their Christmas cake.
However it may work elsewhere in the world, among the Japanese once we've outgrown our fantasies of a magical man in a red suit, Christmas Eve is a holiday set aside for lovers. Which was how I found myself standing beneath a canopy of tiny lightbulbs in a trendy jewelry store, a bewildering array of possibilities before me and a gently smirking Koizumi at my side.
"Is there a particular item you have in mind?" he asked, a finger laid along his jaw. "A charm bracelet, perhaps? Or a necklace? I'm afraid a ring might give the wrong idea…"
I scowled wearily at a display of pendents. They had all begun to blur together into an undifferentiated mosaic of glittering objects I couldn't really afford. "None of this looks like her at all," I said.
"What did she ask for?"
"Nothing specific," I said, which was partly true. Haruhi hadn't informed me of a single item that she'd had her eye on, or even a broad category of gifts she'd enjoy. She had pointed at me across a cafe table, her eyes flashing, and said it had better be the most romantic thing she had ever seen; the sort of Christmas gift that would make an audience weep with touched hearts when it was revealed at the climax of a holiday film. Requests for more specific guidelines were met with a scowl and an accusation of trying to ruin the spirit of Christmas tradition.
"I'm certain that when you see the right gift, you'll know in your heart that it's just the thing," said Koizumi. He picked up a sparkling barrette, rhinestones arranged into pattern of snowflakes. "I have to admit, I'm envious."
"Tough," I said. "That decision point was two years ago. You had your chance."
"Ah, but did I really, though?" Koizumi smiled enigmatically. Rather than grab him by the lapels and shake him around a little for being insufferable, I nodded toward the shop's glass door. We squeezed our way through a crowd of desperate-looking male students and out onto the sidewalk, where the dry cold of early winter pinched at our cheeks.
"So what are you plans for the twenty fourth?" he asked as we strolled along the arcade.
"No idea."
"I could help with reservations, if needed."
I waved him off. "Haruhi wanted to surprise me, I think. That, or she's worried I'll mess it up." I shrugged. "She's got everything planned. I'm meeting her at her apartment at five, and after that I'm at her mercy."
"Do you think she booked a hotel?"
Pervert. "I have no idea what she's doing, but whatever it is, I hope I can afford it," I said. I pulled out my phone to check the time. "When are we meeting Asahina again?"
"Five thirty this evening, in front of the FamilyMart. Given how much money Suzumiya collected for the beer fund, I'll be sure to have a taxi on hand." He shook his head, politely sympathetic. "A bonenkai and a Christmas date, two nights in a row? I will admit, I'm not certain I'd have the stamina for such a thing myself."
"I thought you were doing something with Asahina tomorrow?"
"A friendly evening out for coffee. Perhaps more compatible with recovering from a night spent forgetting the past year."
Damn you. "I suppose you've already gotten her a present?"
"Of course."
Ugh. I was obviously losing the race to perfect Christmas boyfriend, despite being the only one actually dating someone.
"So what did you get?" I asked, pausing to squint at a shop display buried in fake snow.
When Koizumi didn't reply, I glanced over in time to see him pressing his finger to his lips. He smiled, shrugged, and continued his unconcerned meander through the crowd.
That guy really was the worst.
Haruhi had sprung the idea of a bonenkai "forget the year" party only a few days earlier, after the rest of us had been lulled into thinking her date with me would satisfy her hunger for over-the-top festivities. Protests that only Asahina was old enough to legally drink left Haruhi completely unfazed; she had already decided, a vision of clinking glasses and overflowing plates of food dancing in front of her eyes.
As was usual for the SOS Brigade: University Edition, attempts to dissuade her from this plan failed universally, particularly as she'd been canny enough to ask if we were busy before her scheme was revealed. However, despite many years of Suzumiya parties, the potential extent of that evening's destruction did not occur to me until Koizumi and I rounded a final corner and the local FamilyMart came into view. Warm light spilled through the large windows and out onto the sidewalk, silhouetting the lone figure who stood there bundled in scarf and winter coat. Flanking her were two large plastic shopping bags, each suspiciously shaped like a case of beer.
Asahina met my gaze as we approached. The look on her face confirmed my worst fears.
"Koizumi, are there more than five people coming to this party?"
"No, I don't believe so."
"Then that's just under five cans a piece for each of us."
"So it would seem," he said. I thought I saw a flicker of panic on his face.
Perhaps fearing Suzumiya's wrath, Asahina had done exactly as instructed, furnishing we minors with more alcohol than any of us had consumed in our whole lives.
"I'm so glad to see you!" she said once we were close enough to hear. Her voice was trembling, not unexpectedly. "Haruhi started texting me a half an hour ago."
"It's fine, we're still on schedule," I said, although none of us were under any illusion that such things mattered. Early was still late, if Haruhi had gotten ahead of you.
Koizumi stepped out to the edge of the curb and lifted a hand, which summoned his customary taxi out of nowhere. The mustachioed driver silently helped us position our contraband in the trunk, then held the door open as the three of us slipped into the back seat, Asahina sandwiched between Koizumi and I. As we pulled out into traffic again, I took out my phone and found that Haruhi had sent me a half-dozen texts since I'd last checked the time. I had never really gotten the hang of number-pad typing, and pecked out a quick "Got beer, on our way." as I squashed myself against the window, reluctant to crowd poor Asahina more than necessary. I had barely pressed "send" when another text showed up on my screen: "ABOUT TIME. TSUKUNE GETTING COLD."
However ominous the evening might have seemed as an alcohol-saturated whole, at least that one beacon of light and goodness shone through: the promise of eating Haruhi's homemade yakitori. She had bought a portable electric grill and everything. My mouth watered just thinking about it.
Haruhi had gone directly to Nagato's apartment from her last class that day, having dropped off a large box of ingredients and equipment first thing in the morning. Four underage revelers meant an izakaya was out of the question, and we had decided — in a rare moment of genuine group deliberation — that Nagato's small kitchen and bare pantry were preferable to the square footage or proximity complications the rest of us had to contend with.
Nagato buzzed us in with no comment whatsoever, and Asahina looked on nervously as Koizumi and I hauled our alcoholic burden through the corridors, perhaps worrying some neighbor might report us for suspicious juvenile activity. All such minor annoyances were forgotten, however, when the door to Nagato's apartment swung open. The delicious fragrance of sizzling meat spilled over me, and as we rounded the corner into the kitchen we saw an aproned Haruhi, her hair pulled back by a bandanna, poking intently at a row of sizzling skewers. My stomach had slumbered peacefully since my strategically meager lunch; now it awoke with carnivorous vigor, and began issuing demands that I was eager to follow.
And on the subject of demands. "Is that all of the beer?" Haruhi asked, glancing over at me between adjusting meat on the grill. "I told Mikuru to clean the place out!"
We would have needed a truck, Haruhi. And a larger apartment. "This was as much as she could carry out on her own," I said as I hung my coat and scarf by the door. And more than we can drink, anyway, unless Nagato injects us with alcohol processing nanomachines or something similarly ridiculous. "Let's just try not to get too wasted, all right?" I smiled and crossed the kitchen to peer over her shoulder. "I'd like to actually remember our date tomorrow."
Haruhi side-eyed me as she turned the skewers with a pair of tongs. "Don't you have any faith in your teenaged vitality? I've seen how you eat! Your metabolism will burn right through everything I bring you, this won't even be enough to get you tipsy!"
Hey, come on, I don't eat that much. "I'll do my best," I said solemnly, in deference to the responsibilities she had laid on my shoulders. I lay an affectionate hand at the small of her back. "Do you need any help with-"
"Mikuru and I have it all planned out," she said. She looked up from the grill and flashed a wide, genuine smile. "Go stick your feet under the kotatsu and warm up, we'll be fine."
I had still not entirely adjusted to this strange new version of my relations with Haruhi, despite the small fact that several years had passed since our occasional two-person coffee meetups had evolved into something more deliberate. Perhaps my disorientation sprung from the fact that no bright-line devision existed between the two phases of Haruhi and Kyon. The transition had been a series of small steps along a spectrum, with awkwardly presented valentine chocolates at one end and emphatically grown-up sleepovers at the other. Every step had been easy enough at the time — inevitable, even, like a natural force that was carrying me along. But looking back on it as a whole, the thought of how the me of four years ago would have reacted was enough to make me snicker out loud. "You've got to be kidding me!" I would have said, had Asahina the elder ever hinted at such a thing. "I mean, yeah, she's an amazing girl, but she thinks dating is a waste of time. If I'm not an alien or a mysterious transfer student, why bother?"
Explain how I'm spending Christmas Eve, then. If I was being honest with myself, I had been kind of an idiot about a lot of things in high school, girls most especially and Haruhi in particular.
Koizumi and Nagato were already seated at the kotatsu, their legs tucked under the blanket as they sipped steaming cups of tea. Nagato poured another as I got myself arranged on the floor, and I accepted it gratefully. Asahina had taught her well; the fragrance was amazing, and I could feel anxious tension seep out of my shoulders before I'd even taken a sip.
"Nagato, are you sure you're okay with this?" I asked once I'd taken a swallow from the cup. "There's still time to kick us out."
"The plan is acceptable."
"You don't have to let Haruhi bully you into this stuff."
"Understood," said Nagato in her quiet monotone. "This gathering poses no inconvenience."
"We'll stay to help clean up, of course." said Koizumi.
"I'm surprised the two of you are going along with this," I said. "I'd have thought an out-of-control Haruhi was the last thing you'd want."
Koizumi chuckled indulgently. "I'm certain we can handle whatever may happen this evening. It's only a bonenkai."
I had rarely heard Koizumi use the word "only" with regards to Haruhi doing anything remotely out of the ordinary, and the lack of cheerfully ominous hinting at the possible consequences of a Suzumiya with lowered inhibitions struck me as dereliction of his usual duties.
"W-would you like a drink?" I looked up to see Asahina standing over me, a tray of glasses and cans in her hands. Haruhi had been a merciful dictator, it seemed, and allowed her to stay in the red dress and white cardigan she'd arrived in. But an apron had been tied over it, and a pair of fuzzy antlers strapped onto her head with an elastic band. At least it looked like I wouldn't have to play the reindeer this time.
Asahina carefully transferred her burden to the tabletop, placing an extra glass on my side of the table where Haruhi would presumably sit, and as she returned to the kitchen to collect the first round of yakitori we three kotatsu slackers served each other tall, frosty glasses of ill-gotten alcohol.
The next several hours swum by in a blur of fantastically delicious food and perfectly mediocre beer, the latter of which proved to be a dangerous combination of inoffensive and strangely refreshing, complimenting the salty savory taste of grill-seared chicken meatballs and bacon-wrapped asparagus. My perceptive powers dwindled by the minute, but it seemed that every time I looked away either Haruhi or Nagato refilled my glass, such that I had absolutely no idea how much I had actually imbibed.
Haruhi provided me with a clue just after nine, when she emerged from the kitchen with an empty cardboard box in each hand. "We're down to four cans!" she announced.
Congratulations to us?
"It's much too early to be out," she said with with unwarranted confidence, as if she were anything other than a total novice when it came to beer consumption. "Asahina, you'll have to go back to the store."
Asahina's already pinkened face flushed an even darker red. She glanced out the windows at the darkened streets. "B-but-"
"It's all right," I said. "I'll walk you." I pushed myself to my feet, and the extent of the damage I'd done to my infrastructure became much clearer as the room tilted inside my head.
Haruhi's mouth tightened into a little upside-down v. "Are you sure?"
"Totally," I said. The walls were staying put, now, and I tried for a reassuring smile. "I'll pay and everything."
The punch of chill night air when I opened the door of Nagato's apartment went a long way toward clearing my head. By the time Asahina and I were on the sidewalk downstairs, hands in our pockets as we trudged back to the FamilyMart, I felt like a moderately sillier version of my usual self.
"I'm sorry Haruhi keeps roping you into these things," I said, offering a sheepish sideways grin. "I keep thinking she's going to grow out of it."
"It's no trouble," said Asahina. "She's very...enthusiastic...but I don't really mind anymore. I would probably miss it if she stopped!"
"Was that part of the job description when they handed you the TPDD? 'Let Suzumiya dress you up in ridiculous outfits or time as we know it will come to an end!'"
Asahina glanced at me across the sidewalk, a small frown of confusion creasing her features. "Why would they say something like that?"
I laughed a little, surprised. "Uh...well, you know..." Because she's the kind of girl who might unravel reality if she loses a baseball game? "Anyway, don't let her push you around too much. Koizumi doesn't seem to be worried about her throwing up any closed space tonight no matter how trashed she gets, and the man usually knows what he's talking about."
Asahina's footsteps slowed and stopped. We stood in the yellow pool of a street light, and she turned to face me at the center of its circle, peering up at me from beneath her white knit cap. "I'm sorry, Kyon. I thought I had explained...the details are classified, but..." She gestured vaguely with gloved hands. "The theory of Haruhi Suzumiya's omnipotence has been disproven. She's only a normal girl with a keen subconscious perception. She finds unusual things, but she doesn't cause them." She smiled again, apologetic. "Do you see?"
Asahina had said something like this to me one time before -- ages ago, when we were first years in high school. But that had been before the incident where Nagato siphoned off Haruhi's powers and remade the world in an instant; before the two Asahinas had knelt beside my dying body on the street, my blood a vivid reminder of the consequences we risked. Since that night, she had never again suggested that Haruhi's powers were a cognitive bias, our imaginations supplying causality where only correlation was apparent.
Standing on the sidewalk now, I wasn't sure what to say. Of course this was a joke, or perhaps a test of some kind, but how to answer either of those?
"Sure," I said, when nothing else occurred to me. "Of course! I'm just messing around." I made a show of laughter, flashing a grin as I resumed my trudge toward the convenience store. When I glanced back at Asahina, trailing slightly behind me, her expression was relieved.
When we returned from our errand a little while later, this time laden with only a single case of beer -- I didn't want the next day to begin with a trip to the hospital, after all -- Haruhi was setting up a portable karaoke machine. Questions as to its origins were brushed aside with an ominously vague reference to some poor university club. "It's a bonenkai!" she said, as if that were all the explanation needed.
She grilled another round of pike as the rest of us perused the song list, which was longer and more current than I would have expected. Despite my initial skepticism, this new twist to Haruhi's party plans was a thoroughly enjoyable one. My anxiety regarding the sidewalk conversation with Asahina faded as we built our playlist, alternating between duets and solos and progressing through our selections in a manner which Haruhi deemed maximally efficient for merrymaking purposes.
We sang. We drank. Koizumi and I performed an Enka duet. Asahina chirped through classic anime theme songs. Haruhi belted out an impressive take on a Shiina Ringo ballad, her pitch and delivery perfect as always. Yuki played the triangle.
From the outside, it would have looked like any five university students drowning the past year's sorrows. And for a couple of hours, as I watched the beautiful, radiant Suzumiya laugh and sing with our little knot of friends, I almost believed that illusion myself.
Just some kids being ridiculous together. Pass on by, mysterious powers of the cosmos. Nothing to see here.
In the end, body mass triumphed. As I swayed in front of the kitchen sink, downing glass after glass of water in an attempt to stave off tomorrow's miseries, Haruhi and Asahina lay in a warm, limp pile under the kotatsu. Asahina had slid down onto the tatami hours ago. Haruhi, despite repeatedly insisting that her eyes weren't drooping and she wasn't tired at all, had conked out during Koizumi's rendition of Chage and Aska's 1991 hit single, "Say Yes."
Pinching her face and shouting her name had essentially no effect, and as she and Asahina lived together, even if I brought her home there would be no responsible housemate to make sure she didn't walk off a balcony in the middle of the night. Koizumi and I were discussing what to do when Nagato quietly reminded us that she had an extra bedroom, and Haruhi and Asahina could easily spend the night.
Once she had made up a pair of futons on the bedroom floor, Koizumi and I carried the girls in, carefully pulled off their cardigans and tucked them under the blankets. As I knew that I would suffer a stern lecture if Haruhi awakened in the morning without anything drawn on her face -- this was her first bonenkai -- I had scrounged up a gel pen from my bag and wrote "I lost" on her cheek.
We collected the cans and glasses and plates that had formed a debris cloud around the kotatsu. We loaded up the dishwasher, rinsed and bagged the recyclables, packed away leftover food, wiped sticky surfaces, and broke down the karaoke machine so it could be returned to its rightful owners in an organized fashion. It was almost two in the morning when Koizumi pulled his phone from his pocket and asked if I wanted a ride home.
"It's not that long a walk," I said, trying to sound nonchalant. I had rented a place only a mile or so away from Nagato's building, and had in fact trudged between the two apartments on more than one late-night occasion when feeling too cheap for a taxi. Which of course didn't explain why I would pass up a free ride, but I hoped Koizumi would let me off easy tonight.
"The night air will do you good," he said with an innocuous smile. Lucky!
Ten minutes later, he was gone. And Nagato and I sat with our legs tucked under the kotatsu blanket, a teapot and two steaming cups between us, her watching me with expressionless patience as I tried to figure out what I wanted to say.
I took a sip from my cup. "So I guess that all went pretty well," I began, still holding it in my hands.
"Yes."
"No alcohol poisoning. Nothing thrown out the windows. No broken plates."
"Yes."
Another sip. "No rampaging celestials unleashed."
Nagato's hair stirred as she cocked her head to one side. "Yes."
Wow, this was incredibly awkward. What the hell was wrong with me? It's not like Nagato would care if I said something stupid. I downed the rest of my cup and plunked it back on the table. "I had a weird conversation with Asahina tonight," I said, putting on a show of nonchalance for absolutely no good reason. "Koizumi, too, actually. I mean, it's probably nothing."
Nagato stared at me. I knew better than to expect her to grease the wheels of our dialog, although she did pour me another cup of tea.
"Asahina told me that Haruhi..." I lowered my voice, although of course both girls were far beyond hearing me. "That she's only a normal girl. No powers. No closed space. No celestials. Just weird friends and too much energy."
"I see."
"And of course I know that's ridiculous, after all the crazy crap she's gotten us into. I mean, obviously Asahina was making some kind of a joke."
My voice trailed off. Nagato's mute stare was beginning to unnerve me.
"Because Haruhi's like a data-fountain demigod or something, right?" I barked out a nervous little laugh. "I mean obviously she is."
Nagato's head straightened. "Asahina is correct," she said in her quiet monotone. "The Haruhi Suzumiya hypothesis of data generation has been disproven. She is a normal human with no unusual abilities beyond a sensitivity to what you would label 'supernatural phenomenon.'"
I blinked, my face still frozen in a sheepish grin. "What?"
"I was sent by the Integrated Data Thought Entity to investigate the source of an explosion of spontaneous data generation on this time plane and in this region of physical space. An initial hypothesis concerning Suzumiya was found to be incorrect. I am currently in unstructured observational standby mode while I await further instructions."
"But...Nagato, if Haruhi is just...." I shook my head. "Why are you here?"
"I am in unstructured observational standby mode," she repeated, as if my confusion was simply a result of mishearing her the first time. "I am free to pursue individual interests until further instructions are issued. I have chosen to spend this period in the company of Suzumiya and her social unit."
"Ah."
"Do you require further clarification?"
I stared at the cup of tea she had poured. My mouth had gone completely dry, but I couldn't bring myself to drink.
"No, I'm fine," I said. I tried to sound cheerful. A sort of emergency autopilot kicked in, then, and it pushed me to my feet, moved my legs such that I crossed the room, and lifted my hands to pull my coat from where it hung. I tied my shoes, picked up my bag, told her to call me if she needed anything, and left.
Asahina and Koizumi were one thing. The two of them had their own, unfathomable politics behind whatever they did. The latter being a poster boy for perfect neutral, and the former always at the mercy of her own older self, the Asahina in pumps and miniskirt who withheld key knowledge to maintain the delicate chain of causality.
But not Nagato. Wonderfully, painfully, mercilessly straightforward Nagato, whose incomprehensible explanations were earnestly given. Nagato, who saw no information as classified and whose organization remained mysterious due to its inscrutable nature, as opposed to the whims of a teenaged esper or the helpless ignorance of a junior time traveler.
Somehow, this was even worse than when she had rewritten herself to be a shy, human girl, abandoning me to a world fundamentally unlike the one I had known. This Nagato was as alien as ever. She simply spoke as if whole swaths of our shared history had never occurred. For years, I had relied on Nagato as a beacon of sense and reason in the chaos that roiled around Suzumiya and her cohort. Now I felt like I'd been robbed in my own home. I felt like a fool who had only just realized the joke was actually on him.
Later, I would barely recall the lonely walk back to my place. Taniguchi, Kunikida and I all had small rooms in the same apartment complex near campus, and they had told me I should stop by before I went to sleep that night. I tiptoed past their closed doors and unlocked my own as quietly as I could, wary of the cheap, thin walls of our building.
I left a trail of disrobement between the door and my bed, pulled on a pair of sweatpants that I'd left hanging over the chair at my desk, and flopped down on my back on top of the covers. I would have loved to drift off into a solid eight hours of blissful unconsciousness, but the talk with Nagato had sobered me right up. I stared at the ceiling with my arms crossed behind my head and replayed what I remembered of the evening's conversations, looping through each unnerving dialog in search of some clue as to what I should do next. I had the intense, unsettling feeling that the burden of action now rested on my shoulders. And that maybe I didn't have much time.
I'm not sure if it was the light or his voice that woke me. Neither were particularly distinct. I opened my eyes to a faint red glow that had spilled across the ceiling of my room. For a moment I assumed it had to be a peculiarly ruddy sunrise, but a glance at the clock beside my head informed me that it was only just past four in the morning.
"Hello?" came the voice again, now registering in my conscious mind. I sat up and turned toward the window. A small, dim red sphere of luminance hovered just beyond the glass.
I shoved the blanket aside and leapt out of bed, tripping over my discarded pants in my eagerness. I threw open the window, and an icy blast of air poured over my bare chest, raising gooseflesh along my arms.
"Koizumi?" I laughed, shaky with relief. "Damn, it's good to see-"
"Please forgive my bluntness. I don't have much time." His voice faded in and out as he spoke, like a bad cell phone connection. He sounded very far away. "The barriers between us are incredibly strong. Once she has sensed this breech, she will seal off the weakness I exploited."
"Who will?" Was this the return of Ryoko Asakura? Another glitch in Nagato's program? An all-powerful newcomer from a rival alien faction?
"Suzumiya," he said tersely. "You are in closed space. More precisely, you are in a Copenhagen bubble wherein objective wave function collapse has been delayed, but such technicalities are of little importance from your perspective."
Then why are you wasting time telling me!? "That doesn't make any sense," I said aloud. "Everything looks completely normal. There're tons of other people here, and no glowing monsters tearing up the place."
"This is an exceptional situation," he said. "Suzumiya's prior attempt to generate stable closed space resulted in chaos amongst my cohort and I, particularly with regards to our psychic gifts. In this instance, no such disruptions have occurred. The frailty of my current manifestation is due to the intensity of the barriers she has erected, not a decline in my abilities." The light flickered. When he continued, his voice had the muffled, modulating sound of a VHS tape too many generations removed. "Suzumiya appears to have removed herself from her native time plane without disrupting extant systems of power. And she has brought you along with her."
I crossed my arms and shivered, from the cold and from the note of foreboding in Koizumi's voice. "What do I need to do?"
"Continue normally."
"But you just…" I ground my already chattering teeth in frustration. "You just told me that this isn't normal!"
Somehow, his little ball of light managed to give off the impression of a shrug. "We're operating with something of an information deficit. Once we have more to tell you, we'll share it as best we can. We're attempting to establish a more reliable channel of com-"
Without warning — as if a switch had been flicked — the light abruptly disappeared.
I stared at the place it had been for almost a minute, stupidly hoping that Koizumi would find some way back through again and offer some hint as to what I was supposed to do with his various unsettling revelations. But the light did not reappear. And my fingers and ears were beginning to go numb.
I shut the window, grabbed a tee shirt off the floor and pulled it over my head. I had only managed a couple hours of sleep, but I knew better than to think I'd get any more rest that night.
I stared at my desk, piled high with notebooks and neglected class reading. Haruhi had tried to convince me to purchase a laptop for university, despite my having no money whatsoever, but I'd gotten by so far with just the school labs. Now I wished I'd found the cash somehow. Whenever I'd been stranded in some engineered alternate reality, I'd found a lifeline in our club room computer, rescued from ignorance by Yuki.N as her little white cursor marched across the screen.
For a wild, panicked moment I considered putting on my shoes, riding my bike across town and breaking into the North High cultural department clubhouse before dawn. But as desperate as I was, I knew that would be a waste of time, and potentially a pointless reason to get myself arrested. There was no guarantee that the Literary Club room's current occupants even had a computer, as the Computer Club had taken theirs back once Haruhi had graduated. And how long could I even sit there waiting for Nagato to find a way through? Surely missing my Christmas date with Haruhi would cause more problems than such reckless tactics were worth.
I sat back down on my bed and ran my hands through my hair. It seemed completely insane that twelve hours from now I'd be getting ready to go and pick her up. I still hadn't bought her a present. I had no idea what I was going to wear.
The absurdity of worrying about my clothes when I was trapped in a self-contained artificial universe wasn't lost on me. But really, when it came to my life since the moment I'd first listened to Haruhi introduce herself to our class, absurdity was the norm.
Whatever tortures I might have been subjected to, I wouldn't have been able to tell my interrogators a single thing that was said to me during class that day. Stress and exhaustion had left me a husk of my usual self, and a lunch break spent frantically scanning shop windows for gifts hadn't helped matters at all. I had fallen asleep midway through my afternoon lecture, woken to a drool-covered notebook and the impression of a wire spiral binding on my cheek, then rushed back to my place to shower and change into something halfway presentable.
Haruhi had refused all requests for information beyond dress code (slacks and jacket, no tie) gift requirements (romantic enough make a heartwarming story for her grandchildren) and timeline (in front of her building at five exactly, which meant half past four if I didn't want an ominous shadow cast over the remainder of the evening.) I had no idea what her agenda might be, aside from the assumption that at some point we would have to eat. Looking back over previous Yuletide adventures, I half expected her to present me with an elf costume and inform me she'd signed us up for part-time jobs in a department store. Last night's revelation that we were living in a world she'd created from scratch had done nothing whatsoever to alleviate that feeling.
The sliver of my conscious that still concerned itself with normal, rational thoughts was screaming at me while I got dressed that evening. How could I be standing here ironing pants when the very nature and integrity of the world I now navigated had been called into question? What was wrong with me, that I was going to let Haruhi drag me around downtown when I knew our friends were desperately trying to get ahold of me from outside this sphere of unsettling simplicity? I didn't know how much time remained before this alternate existence locked me into place, or what would happen to me if efforts to restore the status quo failed. Wasn't there some more useful way for me to be passing the time? Shouldn't I be doing something?
No red spheres of light, disembodied voices or digital intelligences presented themselves as I shaved and combed my hair. No entity, supernatural or otherwise, intervened to prevent me from fastening my belt or picking bits of lint off my seldom-worn blazer. No freak blizzards or unseasonal typhoons interrupted my walk across town to the little house Haruhi and Asahina had rented together. I decided to take this lack of interference as permission from the universe to go ahead with my date, however absurd that might appear to an outside observer.
Unlike the majority of her peers, Haruhi had brushed aside the standard university student housing options of shitty apartments or crashing with one's parents, declaring that the former was intolerably dull and cramped and the latter an insult to her burgeoning independence. Instead, she had turned up to one of our train station brigade meetings with a set of keys to an ancient, drafty cottage in the shadow of Mount Kabuto, which she had found by spending an entire Sunday riding the bus around town in search of "For Rent" signs. She refused to tell anyone but Asahina what she was paying for it — and then only because she'd aggressively recruited the older girl as a housemate — but judging by her previous dealings with small business owners, I had a feeling that her rent was far less than market value.
Because of her somewhat remote location, Haruhi and I normally met up in town or on campus, and would go home to my place if a more intimate setting was required. But she had insisted that the occasion merited proper date-night etiquette, which meant the man was to pick his lady up at her home, logistical concerns be damned. So I marched right on by the nest of trendy restaurants and holiday displays that were almost certainly our final destination, turned off the main street onto the little road that twisted its way up and out of our civilized valley, and walked along a mile of treacherously narrow shoulder until I reached the little wooden marker that indicated the path up to their house.
They'd actually done quite a bit to fix the place up since moving in that summer. The path was swept clear of branches and leaves, the little garden had been covered in a neat pile of straw for the winter, and the bushes out front had been cut back into tidy bundles. Since my last visit in late November, lights had been strung in all the front-facing windows, and a homemade wreath of holly and evergreen had been hung on the worn wooden door.
I checked my watch. Four thirty-one. Nice.
My fist was poised to rap on the door when it slid open to reveal a slightly harried-looking Asahina. "Kyon!" she said. "You're early!" She glanced over her shoulder, a little crease of worry between her brow. "Suzumiya isn't ready quite yet…can I get you some tea?"
I could feel my own brows shooting up in surprise, but I swallowed my questions and followed Asahina into the cozy little kitchen. I waited sheepishly in a chair by the window as she put a kettle on and arranged teacup and leaves on the counter. She looked to be halfway dressed for her own Christmas plans — immaculate hair and makeup, but still wearing an old pair of jeans and an overlarge hooded sweatshirt — and had better things to do than entertaining a man a half-hour early to pick up her roommate for a date.
I scratched the back of my neck, feeling awkward. "So…what're you and Koizumi doing tonight?"
"Oh! Just dinner…an Italian place I like." She looked back at me and smiled, although not as radiantly as usual. "We're only going as friends, after all."
Yes, that's it, sit your ass down in her kitchen and quiz her on her friendly consolation date. "You can go back to getting ready," I said quickly. "Really, I'm fine just waiting down here. I don't want to mess up your plans!"
"I have time to make tea," she said quietly. She stood with her hands folded in front of her, leaning back against the small kitchen counter. "Are you feeling any better today? You were saying such strange things last night…"
"Yes. Fine." Who am I, Nagato? "Sorry, probably just the beer. Hope I wasn't too much trouble."
She smiled again, a little warmer than before. "Not at all."
Once she'd poured my tea and exchanged well-wishes for the evening, Asahina jogged up the rickety wooden stairway and out of sight. Immediately afterward, my cell phone began to vibrate.
Relieved that I'd remembered to put it on silent for once, I pulled it out of my blazer's inner pocket and checked the screen, half-expecting it to be an across-the-house text from Haruhi.
YUKI.N CAN YOU SEE THIS?
I froze. The ceiling creaked as someone moved around above me, followed by the hiss of running water. I could feel my pulse quickening as I tapped out a quick "yes" and sent it out into the unknown.
ATTEMPTS TO REESTABLISH ANALOG AUDITORY COMMUNICATION HAVE FAILED. ATTEMPTS TO SYNCHRONIZE WITH THE YUKI NAGATO NATIVE TO YOUR TIME PLANE HAVE FAILED. DIGITAL TEXT MUST SUFFICE. STABILITY OF THIS CONDUIT IS UNCERTAIN. CONNECTION MAY BE SEVERED WITH NO NOTICE.
Definitely my Nagato, then. I felt a wave of relief pour through me as I pecked out another response on the number pad, one character at a time.
What's going on?
UNCLEAR.
Where am I?
UNCLEAR.
I ground the heel of my palm against my eye. So far, this wasn't going at all how I'd hoped. And I was wishing more and more with every word I typed that I'd listened to Haruhi and splurged on a goddamn smartphone.
I thought this was closed space?
NORMAL CLOSED SPACE OCCUPIES A VOID WITHIN A DIMENSIONAL FAULT. THE PRECISE NATURE OF THE SPACE YOU CURRENTLY OCCUPY REMAINS UNCERTAIN. SUZUMIYA APPEARS TO HAVE CREATED A PARALLEL TIME PLANE THAT IS ENTIRELY SELF-CONTAINED.
Like an alternate universe?
THIS SPACE WAS NOT GENERATED VIA BRANCHING CAUSALITY. RATHER, IT IS AN ARTIFICIAL CONSTRUCTION.
Upstairs, the water shut off. The little clock on my phone told me it was four fifty-one. I abandoned kanji entirely and banged out my reply in hiragana like an elementary school kid.
What do I need to do?
UNKNOWN.
Are you serious?!
Don't know or won't tell me?
OBSERVATIONAL ACCESS TO YOUR CURRENT TIME PLANE IS LIMITED. INSUFFICIENT DATA TO SUGGEST CORRECTIVE ACTION.
More footsteps in the second floor hallway, followed by a muffled conversation between the girls.
What if I just explain to this Nagato or Koizumi or Asahina what's happening? Could they fix it?
CONSEQUENCES OF REVEALING AWARENESS OF CURRENT CIRCUMSTANCES ARE UNKNOWN. SUZUMIYA MAY REINFORCE BARRIERS TO PREVENT FUTURE COMMUNICATION. YOUR CONSCIOUS MEMORY OF PRIOR CIRCUMSTANCES MAY BE FURTHER ERODED OR REWRITTEN.
Four fifty-seven. I typed with sloppy urgency.
Further?!
The final text came through as someone descended the stairs.
CONTINUED INTERFERENCE INADVISABLE. STANDBY.
Well, that's ominous as hell. My fingers twitched to stab out further demands for explanation, but previous experience suggested that Nagato would not answer until she was ready to, no matter how persistent I might be. In the meantime, absurdly, I was scheduled to spend the remainder of my evening escorting the lovely Miss Suzumiya through whatever holiday gauntlet she'd concocted, and staring at my phone was pretty solidly in the "Unacceptable" column of dating dos and don'ts. I shoved it back into my jacket pocket just as my companion swept into the room.
For a moment, all worries were blasted from my mind. Haruhi was a gorgeous and charming young woman on any day, but tonight she looked absolutely fantastic. She was wearing a simple red dress in a flattering cut, black tights and black shoes with a low heel, and a cropped black jacket with red trim. She'd pulled her hair back into a low ponytail and tied it with a red ribbon; as she crossed the kitchen toward me, I saw she'd pinned a little sprig of holly to one lapel. Criminally adorable.
"Hey," I said. I stood and leaned in for a quick kiss, my hand gently clasping her upper arm. "Ready?"
She fixed me with a measured look from under her eyelashes, her lips pursed in a moment of somber consideration. Then she smiled, took my hand, and pulled me toward the front door.
"Are we walking?" I asked as she lifted her winter coat off its hook and slipped it on over her jacket.
She laughed. "I called a taxi!" she said. "We have a schedule to keep! We can't waste time hiking along mountain highways."
I didn't even have a chance to work up some base-level irritation at having my trek up the hillside brushed off as a pointless endeavor. She grinned at me as she slung a fuzzy white scarf around her neck, her eyes sparkling with excitement and her skin still pink and soft from the shower; my grip on irate indignation was utterly destroyed.
The taxi dropped us off outside of Nishinomiya Gardens, and thus the first stage of our Christmas Plan was revealed: a stroll through the lavishly decorated mall, which in retrospect should have been obvious. Every year, the long entrance corridor was transformed into a festive tunnel of light, with thousands of perfectly arranged bulbs that twinkled down at visitors. This particular season, they'd opted for a pattern of stars against strings of lights that were draped in undulating white curtains, evoking the aurora borealis. A series of moving sidewalks could carry you through the display at a leisurely pace, but Haruhi scoffed at the very idea, and so we toured the manufactured night sky under our own power, making appropriately charmed noises and watching as other couples went trundling by on their human conveyer belt. She held my arm as she walked, her hands folded together at my bent elbow.
We strolled past holiday-themed store windows and fat Christmas trees in birch log boxes, winding our way to the central atrium. The high, open space was hung with silver stars and translucent snowflakes, precisely aligned such that they formed the sparkling outline of an enormous tree. Haruhi rushed to stand at the railing, leaning over to see something down on the ground floor. When I caught up with her, I saw what she was grinning at: on a stage two stories below us, a handbell choir was arranging itself on tired risers.
A sign beside the stage advertised the show would begin at five-thirty, precisely five minutes from that moment. I chuckled a little to myself as I watched Haruhi follow the choir's preparations, one foot bouncing up and down behind her. Only she could plan a date so precisely and actually manage to wrestle the world into complying.
"I hope they play the theme from 'Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence,'" she said. "I bet it'd sound amazing with bells!"
I wasn't as confident that a shopping mall holiday concert would stray far from "Jingle Bells" standards, but I didn't much mind. Viewing a bell choir under a dazzling snowflake tree in the company of a beautiful girl was pretty much a perfect Christmas Eve activity, however predictable their setlist might reveal itself to be.
The lights in the atrium dimmed very slightly, the stage lit under cool spotlights patterned to look like falling snow. The conductor, now positioned in front of the risers, raised his hands to signal the performers. Moments later, those hands swooped down through the air, and the opening refrain of the "Carol of the Bells" echoed up through the atrium with crystalline clarity, the acoustics of the the space surprisingly complimentary to the handbells' pure metallic tones.
The half-hour concert was densely populated by Suzumiya favorites, many of them classic carols I didn't actually know but had heard her hum to herself at various SOS Christmas parties over the years. The grande finale, a lavish rendition of the Ryuichi Sakamoto film theme that Haruhi had confessed her desire to hear, was accompanied by a projected silhouette of Santa and his sleigh that soared across the walls and ceiling. I watched with shameless delight as it swooped and whirled dramatically over our heads, each maneuver perfectly in time with the music, feeling more wholeheartedly caught up in Christmas spirit than I had since I was a small child waiting for his elf-constructed present.
Without a doubt, the concert had lived up to every ridiculous standard of festive perfection that Haruhi might have dreamed up. I glanced over at her as the lights came up, expecting to see her face lit up with a radiant smile. But a small frown had pulled down the corners of her mouth and crinkled the spot between her eyebrows.
She brightened again once she realized I was looking, uncharacteristically self-conscious of her dissatisfaction.
She grabbed my arm again and dragged me off down another corridor, one which would spill us out closer to Nishinomiya-Kitaguchi station. "Let's see if we can get the six-ten train!" she said, by all appearances back to her usual self. "Maybe they'll seat us at a better table if we show up early!"
By "train" I'd assumed she meant the quick ride west into Kobe, which we'd done many times before on brigade or personal business. But the platform she hauled me onto was on the opposite side of our usual track, and despite her continued refusal to answer any questions I had a feeling I knew what she had in mind.
These suspicions were confirmed when we stepped off the train at Umeda station about a half hour later. I didn't think that Haruhi had spent much time in Osaka, at least not since I'd known her, but she marched toward the southern exit with all the confidence of a local, the end of my sleeve clasped tightly in her hand.
I had only a passing familiarity with the city myself, but the abrupt uptick in nightclubs and hostess bars were enough to hint that our destination lay at the heart of Kitashinichi, perhaps the absolute least appropriate place for two underaged students to be spending their Christmas Eve. We were surrounded by cheerful couples dressed in wintery formal wear, the stream broken only occasionally by a roaming pack of irritable singletons determined to enjoy a night out. Many of them appeared to be drunk, an impressive feat for not-quite-seven in the evening.
Haruhi steered me through the doorway of a nondescript building, pushed the elevator's call button, then briefly consulted the directory beside the doors. The business names were all engraved on small metal plaques, and the majority appeared to be restaurants titled with gorgeous classic calligraphy or dramatic-sounding foreign words.
I picked self-consciously at the hem of the tee shirt I wore under my blazer. "Are you sure I'm dressed for this place?"
Haruhi looked me up and down, brushed a bit of lint off my sleeve, flattened one lapel of my jacket, then nodded. "Perfect," she said. She flashed a quick, unusually shy smile. "Very cool."
The elevator whisked us to the sixth and topmost floor, then opened onto a short hallway with a coat check and hostess stand at the far end. A smiling older woman in a black kimono took our jackets and scarves, checked our names against her list, then guided us through wooden doors.
We stepped into a scene straight out of Toei Kyoto Studio Park. Worn wooden tables were arranged in what looked to be a small village square, the walls lined with charming recreations of Edo-era shops and stands of real bamboo. Strings of red and gold lanterns had been hung between their tiled eaves, and small ornaments dangled from the bamboo's upper branches. The ceiling twinkled with small shards of mirror against a deep indigo blue. The hostess smiled indulgently as I gawked at the scene before us, simultaneously more enchanted and intimidated than I had ever been before by a dining establishment.
Haruhi insisted on making a full circuit of the restaurant before we were seated, exclaiming with delight over each carefully considered detail and remarking on the research and craftsmanship that it all must have entailed. Fortunately, the hostess seemed to find her enthusiasm charming, and when Haruhi's village tour was complete we were lead to a quiet table beside a little bamboo grove, obviously one of the better vantage points for watching the bustle of the dining room with some degree of privacy.
The service was flawless , attentive and kind; the food, all gourmet re-imaginings of classic Osaka dishes, forever altered my standards for how amazing Okonomiyaki could taste; the ambiance made me feel like a small child visiting Tokyo Disneyland for the first time. Haruhi looked fantastic, her black hair gleaming in the soft lantern light and her face animated with delight. We talked of our plans for New Year's Eve, of books we had read, of concerts we hoped to attend, and all the other trivialities with which we young people occupy ourselves.
But when I watched her in quiet moments, as she looked out at the dining room with the unfocused gaze of deep thought, the smile fell away from her lips. In those brief snatches of lost time, she looked hopelessly sad and alone.
The streets of Kitashinichi were dense with revelers as Haruhi and I once again rejoined the modern world. She'd admitted, as the hour of the final train departures grew near, that she'd made arrangements for us to stay in Osaka overnight, so our meandering progress down the sidewalk was unhurried. When I suggested finding a place to get coffee, she regarded me for a long, unsettling moment and then turned with intent down a narrow side street, leaving me to wonder how much time she'd spent memorizing city maps. I said as much, but in place of the embarrassed frown or affectionate eye roll I would have expected, she fixed me with a look so intense that it shocked the hairs along my neck into full alert.
"You haven't been here?" she asked quietly.
I laughed out of nervousness. "No?" Haruhi, you should understand by now that you're the only reason I ever leave town at all.
She held my gaze for another moment, the furrow between her brows deeper than ever, before silently taking my arm again and continuing down the street.
The panicked feeling I'd managed to shove into subconsciousness began once again to make its presence know. Something was definitely up with Haruhi, but I hadn't the first idea what to do about it. Toward the end of our meal, I had briefly excused myself to use the restroom and sent a series of increasingly desperate texts to YUKI.N, but they had gone unanswered. By all accounts, my trans-time-plane allies had abandoned me for the night. I was entirely on my own.
The coffee shop Haruhi eventually pulled me into was small and cozy, with a little pastry case in the front and a half-dozen two-person tables. The owners had thoroughly decked the place out for the holidays, with holly garlands and pine wreathes hung along the walls and a tasteful collection of wooden Santas on a shelf behind the register. The moment I stepped through the entryway, an unsettling wave of deja vu passed over me. I tried to shake it off as a waitress led us to an empty table and handed us a pair of seasonally themed menus. But I couldn't help but recall the last time I had felt a similar, ineffable certainty of having done something before. Hopefully, whatever the cause of the feeling might be this time around, it would take me fewer than five hundred and ninety-five years to figure out how best to react.
We had already eaten an immense, cloud-like slice of spectacularly delicious Christmas cake at the restaurant, so we only ordered coffee and a plate of small cookies. As Haruhi had withdrawn into ominous reticence, I occupied myself by examining the details of the cafe's interior, which I could tell had a sort of country charm even without the festive details. I liked the casual but classy atmosphere, with decor that managed to be artful without sacrificing comfort. It seemed like the kind of place I would frequent if I lived closer by.
All at once, like a slap across the face, the sensation of intense familiarity was no longer at all vague.
Haruhi and I visited this particular cafe whenever we had the chance, which was frequently these past few years as this neighborhood was only a quick train ride away from the suburban campus of Osaka University, a top-ranked school to which I had miraculously been admitted after Haruhi's intense and merciless tutelage in my final year of high school, as she had already set her sights on it due to its proximity to her family in Nishinomiya and refused on principal to attend a different university than the boy she was dating, particularly since Yuki's superiors wanted her to stay in her existing apartment for unfathomable reasons and Asahina had been disappearing more and more frequently on Classified business which only allowed for her to take online courses in her free time, and Koizumi's Organization insisted he continue his surveillance of Haruhi from afar at Tokyo University once his test scores qualified him for admission, which meant that Haruhi actually saw very little of the other Brigade members anymore and hated the idea of being entirely alone in a new city, often talking nostalgically about the days when we'd all lived in the same little boring town and could spend every afternoon messing around in the club room and having adventures and making me pay for all of our coffee at the cafe by the station.
But not this cafe. Only Haruhi and I had ever been here together, as all of our SOS reunions seemed to take place back in Nishinomiya over the New Year holiday. This cafe was for the two of us, a young couple distinct from the rest of our friends. This cafe was where I had brought her several days ago, to tell her my seemingly impossible alias, and when she had actually met me for the first time.
I found her eyes with mine across the table. She had been watching my tempest of recollection and mental reshuffling with a sharp, anxious intensity. And as all the parts of our university narrative bubbled up to the surface of my consciousness, I could see by her weary expression -- the slight fall of her shoulders, the dimming of the fire in her gaze -- that she remembered all that I'd told her. And that she knew the shape and nature of the space we had found ourselves in now, adrift from the moorings of a timeline I had so easily forgotten ever existed.
"Haruhi," I said, my voice low and quiet. "What's going on?"
She averted her gaze, staring down at the wooden table top. "We're having coffee."
"Okay, but where?"
"In Osaka on Christmas Eve," she said. Given that she hadn't frowned at me, or implied that I was some kind of an idiot for asking such stupid questions, I was certain she understood what I meant. But clearly she wasn't going to allow a dialog of vague implications...at least not on my part.
"Haruhi, you know this universe isn't where we belong," I said. "Did you bring us here?"
She inclined her head in a barely perceptible nod.
"On purpose?"
She slouched down in her chair, still not looking at me. "Mostly." She paused, then continued in a softer tone. "I wasn't sure if it would work."
For almost a minute, I sat and regarded her in thoughtful silence, my mind churning with the effort of overcoming what I would later realize was a state of mild shock. I had known Haruhi for years, now, and for nearly that entire time I had been part of an electron cloud of concerned Suzumiya wranglers, orbiting around her as she tore through life without a grain of awareness as to her effect on the world. My one attempt to try to explain to her the realities of our situation had been taken as an unfunny and moderately insulting prank.
Until you sat her down and spilled the whole damn thing in this coffee shop.
Now, for the first time in our entire extended acquaintance, Haruhi and I were going to discuss matters of closed space and time planes and her unfathomable powers as adults of equal insight, a conversation that my inner Koizumi insisted might result in the complete dissolution of the universe as I knew it.
I told my inner Koizumi he could fuck right off.
"I talked to Asahina and Koizumi and Nagato," I said. "The ones here. They said some pretty weird stuff."
"They would," she murmured. "I guess."
The waitress returned with our coffees and a small plate of cookies, sugar-dusted and cut in the shape of stars. Haruhi picked up her mug in both hands but didn't drink.
"Since I was in sixth grade, all I've ever wanted was to be special," she said. "I wanted the things I did and the person I was to be different." She sipped her drink, the steam curling around her face. "And then the minute I found out I was, this is what I do."
I made a small, noncommittal sound of "I'm listening."
"You must think I'm crazy," she said.
I shrugged. No more than usual.
"I guess I just thought it would be easier this way," she said. "For you."
Having Nagato say nonsensical things to me doesn't make anything easier, Haruhi!
"I'm pretty sure I can make this place real," she said. "I almost have it figured out. But even if I can't..." She looked up at me again, her expression fierce and sobering. "You don't have to babysit me anymore. I can keep myself under control."
Babysit?!
"I don't think I understand..."
"You can leave," she said flatly. "I won't cause you any more trouble."
I stared at her, my mouth hanging open in what must have been an idiotic expression. "What are you even talking about?"
Haruhi slammed down her mug with a bang, splashing drops of liquid out onto the table. The other customers were beginning to stare. "I'm not stupid!" she barked. "I always wondered why you put up with my shit for so long, and now I know. So fine. Thanks for your help, but I don't need it anymore. You can go do whatever you want, and if any crazy stuff happens I'll deal with it on my own."
I licked my lips, a half-considered reply already forming. But I caught myself in the crucial moment before articulation, snapping my jaw shut as new comprehension took root in the spaces between what she'd said.
It seemed ridiculous, on the face of it, that Haruhi would be saying things like this midway through an objectively above-average romantic Christmas date with her long-term boyfriend. Surely it was obvious, after all the time we'd been dating one another, that "burden" was the very last word I would ever use to describe her, coming in after "dull" and "ugly" and "low key." Surely she knew how much she meant to me, and what a sorry state my life would be in if she suddenly vanished from it.
However, once I'd swallowed that bitter mouthful of knee-jerk defensiveness, a feeling of embarrassed dread settled into the customary corner of my stomach, normally reserved for public speaking and posted test scores. The more I considered the evidence from her perspective, looking back over the things I'd said and done since her legendary self-introduction to Class 1-5, the more I realized that such concerns weren't ridiculous at all.
It occurred to me that I had never actually asked Haruhi out.
I had never actually confessed.
I had never, on even one occasion, taken any initiative whatsoever with regards to clarifying my interpersonal intentions, romantic or otherwise.
One thing had simply lead to another, friendly coffee becoming date coffee becoming chaste kisses goodbye becoming nights spent together. I may or may not have even been the one to initiate that first kiss, as in my mind I'd sailed over that hurdle in high school during our late-night closed-space ponytail-complimenting celestial encounter.
Suddenly I could see, with painful clarity, how it must all look to her in aggregate. How it would seem like I had fallen into step beside her like an afterthought; an old habit extended by momentum and nostalgic affection.
And that would absolutely not do.
"Haruhi," I said. "I'm sorry."
"It's fine," she said in a heartbreaking monotone. "Just go."
Critical misunderstanding! This is what happens when you go off on extended interior self-lectures!
"There's something I should have asked you a long time ago," I said. Heads turned at tables all around us as I pushed my chair back and stood, my palms laid flat on either side of my coffee cup. I drew a fortifying breath down into my chest, then launched into my next sentence at crowd-alarming outdoor volume. "Haruhi Suzumiya, will you please be my girlfriend?"
Her head jerked up, her mouth tightening into a wary version of its signature upside-down v. Every other conversation in the cafe had come to an alarmed, gawking halt. "What?"
"You're an amazing girl," I said, my volume still at completely inappropriate levels. "I want to spend as much time with you as I can for as long as you let me. So please go out with me!"
Haruhi glanced around at the other customers, who were now muttering to each other in low tones as they tried to figure out how best to handle my sudden outburst. "Are you crazy?" she hissed.
But I was long past giving a shit about making a scene in a coffee shop, particularly in an alternate universe Osaka, the very existence of which I hoped to convince this girl to shatter forever. "I had the chance to live in a world like this one, you know. I woke up one morning to a universe where you didn't sit behind me in class, where you'd never started the SOS Brigade, where no robots would try to kill me or time travelers drag me into closing stable loops or espers drive me around in cabs being insufferably goddamn smug. I was a completely normal kid with a normal life." I slammed my hand against the tabletop, leaning in closer to Haruhi's startled face. "It was awful! And the best thing that happened to me in that place was when I finally figured out where you were, and chased you down, and got to see your face again and hear you call me an idiot! I was tackled to the ground by a guard and had my face mashed into the asphalt, and I didn't care because I'd found you! And that meant things were going to be okay!"
Haruhi stared at me with wide, shining eyes. "Kyon..."
I reached across the table and took her small, slim hand in both of mine, my gaze never straying from hers. "Haruhi, I literally almost died to live in a world where you're always dragging me into crazy shit because that's what I want. I want that basically forever, because I love you." I squeezed her hand even tighter. "I love this you."
I had been shouting at full volume for almost a minute, now; the waitresses had clustered in a nervous huddle by the pastry case; an older woman whom I assumed was the manager had emerged from the back room, and was now striding across the cafe with the grim look of someone steeling themself for an unpleasant encounter.
Without looking away from me for a moment, Haruhi raised her free hand into the air and made a small, precise gesture with her fingers. A blanket of frozen silence fell over the world -- the coffee shop, the street outside, aircraft passing overhead. All color and movement drained away, except for the two of us and our small well-worn table. In the dim gray stillness that followed, Haruhi shone like a beacon, radiant and alive and more beautiful than I had ever seen her.
"I don't know if I love this me," she said, her quiet voice echoing in the sudden aural void. "I don't know if I love being this way. It's..." She shook her head with a small, soft laugh. "It's kind of terrifying, actually."
"You can change it if you want to," I said.
"I don't know if I do," she whispered. "I feel like I don't know much at all right now."
"You'll figure it out," I said. "There's time for all that." I sat down at the table again, still holding her hand in mine. "Whatever you decide...seriously, Haruhi, I don't even care. I just want to be there with you."
A tear fell down her cheek. "Why?" she murmured. "I'm impossible."
"Because..." I paused, then, remembering something. "Wait. You haven't opened your gift."
Another laugh, surprised and a little incredulous this time. "Uh...no, I guess I haven't?"
I fumbled through the contents of my jacket's inner pocket as she watched, finally extracting a small, flat box wrapped in gold paper. I straightened the jaunty red ribbon, which had been squashed somewhat, and then held it out for Haruhi to take. "Merry Christmas," I said.
"Thank you..." She took the box from me, still frowning in confusion at the wild shift in conversational tracks, and carefully pulled the ribbon and paper aside to reveal a black, hinged case. She paused, then, as if steeling herself for the worst before she lifted the lid.
The necklace twinkled in the soft, misty light of a dampened world. The design was simple: a linked chain, hung with alternating charms of silvery bamboo leaves and colorful enamel rectangles.
She touched a blue rectangle with her fingertip. "Tanabata," she said.
"Nine years ago, you hijacked a weird kid from North High into helping you write a message to the stars," I said. "On the night when we send our wishes to Vega and Altair, you stole a line painter and filled the entire quad of your middle school with a single declaration: 'I am here.'"
She looked down at the necklace, her expression wholly unreadable. "Kyon..."
"I am here," I said.
Haruhi met my eyes again.
"That message will reach Altair in seven years," I said. "I want to be around to see what happens."
She sniffed, and a smile twitched up the corners of her mouth. "What if nothing does?"
"Then we can gripe about it together."
Our train arrived just after six in the evening, exactly on schedule despite the tremendous New Year's Eve crush of students and young professionals coming home to visit family for the holiday. The train had been completely packed before we'd boarded, so we'd stood the entire ride; and as our afternoon had been spent pounding a huge tub of mochi by hand, a tradition upon which Haruhi insisted, I was ready to fall asleep on my feet by the time we stepped out onto the Nishinomiya platform.
And yet, as we passed through the familiar turnstiles and rejoined the bustling crowds of our home town, I felt a sudden surge of energy pull my back up straight again. Asahina, Nagato and Koizumi were waiting in a little knot just outside the station, bundled up against the cold snap that had rolled down over the Kansai region. My Asahina, Nagato, and Koizumi, in the weirdest and the best of all the time planes I'd experienced.
None of them had actually seen me since my jaunt into Haruhi's offshoot world, and so Asahina's first move was to pounce on me with a tremendous hug of relief. Once she'd released me and moved on to Haruhi, I offered Koizumi a quick, manly bow of acknowledgement; for Nagato, a smile of thanks and no small amount of relief.
After so many years, our New Year's Eve schedule had been honed to idyllic perfection: a delicious dinner at Tsuruya's mansion of her chef's toshikoshi-soba, followed by the festival at Hirota Shrine, where we'd eat grilled squid and mochi and taiyaki stuffed with chestnut and red bean until we were sick. At midnight we'd wash it all down with cups of amazake, throw coins into the offering box, take a moment for our first prayers of the New Year, then meander through town as the monks of Kanno-ji rung their cast-bronze bell for each of our one hundred and eight earthly desires.
Of course, on that night in particular, one hundred and eight sounded like an absurdly high number. I could only think of a handful of things that I really wanted.
As we walked along the bustling, darkened street, the first among them held my hand in hers.