The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya (22 page)

However, Haruhi excelled at crushing other people’s opinions in an instant.

“Won’t there be enough time with an all-nighter?”

And who’s going to do that? Except I didn’t say that. Since I was the only one there and Haruhi’s ebony eyes were looking straight at me.

“You just have to stay overnight and finish the job.”

And then Haruhi said something that left me utterly speechless.

“I’ll help too.”

In hindsight, Haruhi wasn’t any help at all. She stood behind me for a while interfering, but it didn’t even take an hour before she was sprawled on the table asleep. Damn. I should have filmed her sleeping. Then I could have put a still shot of that face after the ending credits rolled.

And I should mention that I also fell asleep soon after. By the time I opened my eyes, it was already morning and the keyboard was imprinted into half of my face.

Which means that there had been no point in staying overnight. The movie remained unfinished. I managed to cut and piece the thing into something under thirty minutes, but the result was pretty pathetic. Just a wreck filmed on a whim by a bunch of amateurs who didn’t have the slightest clue about movies. I should have just defied Haruhi and only used the bunny Asahina shopping district commercials. When you consider that the objective of my editing was to match a story that didn’t exist, which would be like spurring on a failure, the result would have to be something awful. In the end, there had been no dubbing or visual effects added. Just a garbage movie so bad it was laughable. I couldn’t even show this to Taniguchi.

As I considered tossing the computer out the window, I squinted at the morning sunlight streaming in. I’d slept in an unnatural position, so my back was aching.

By the time Haruhi, who had woken up first, had shaken me awake, it was six thirty in the morning. Now that I think about it, this is the first time I’ve ever stayed overnight at school.

“Hey, how’d it go?”

Haruhi looked at the monitor over my shoulder. I had no choice but to move the mouse.

The film began playing.

“… Huh?”

As I listened to Haruhi’s soft cheering, I was astonished. A CG movie I had never made was magnificently displaying a moving title. At that point,
The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina Episode 00
began playing with a crappy story, dialogue you could barely hear, and shaky video; you could even hear the director yelling off the screen at times. However, the visual effects could be considered acceptable for a high school amateur film. Lasers were shooting from Asahina’s eye and strange rays were shooting from Nagato’s wand.

“Heheh—”

Haruhi was expressing her admiration.

“Not bad, huh? It feels a little lacking, but you did a good job.”

It wasn’t me. Unless another personality surfaced and did this while I was sleeping, there is no way I could ever accomplish this. Somebody else did it. Most likely candidate, Nagato. Possible contender, Koizumi. Out of the question, Asahina. Dark horse, somebody who hasn’t made an appearance yet. Something like that.

We spent the next period of time silently appreciating our autonomously produced movie. I might have felt something different if I were watching this on a big screen instead of this small monitor.

The video on the display shifted to the last scene. Koizumi and Asahina were holding hands as they walked under cherry blossom trees in full bloom. The camera then panned up to show a blue sky. Cheap-sounding music began playing soon after as the staff roll began scrolling vertically.

And at the very end, Haruhi began narrating.

The idea I had devised was to force Haruhi to deliver this narration. I convinced her that the director herself should deliver these closing words as a bit of an inside joke.

They were the magic words that canceled everything that had occurred.

“This story is a work of fiction. There is no relation to any real people, organizations, events, or other names and phenomena. It’s all made up. If anything seems familiar, it’s just a coincidence. Oh, the commercials are an exception. Here’s a shout-out to Ohmori Electronics and Yamatsuchi Model Shop! Give them lots of business! What? Say it again? This story is a work of fiction. There is no relation to any real people, organizations… Hey, Kyon. Why do I have to say this? Shouldn’t it be obvious?”

The cultural festival had begun and I no longer had anything to do.

From a practical standpoint, I would have to say that people have the most fun during the preparation stage of an event. Once the event actually begins, everybody is hurrying around and time just zips by. The next thing you know, it’s time to clean up. That’s why I’ll be lounging around until then. For the next two days at least, I can do whatever I want without anyone complaining.

By now, Haruhi, the only one who might complain, was probably standing by the school gate in her bunny-girl outfit, passing out flyers. At least until homeroom teacher Okabe and the executive committee show up to stop her. Well, I wonder how many she’ll manage to pass out.

I left the club room and headed into the school grounds bustling with activity.

The alterations to reality we had feared had been quelled. That’s what Koizumi claimed, and Nagato had confirmed it, so it must be true. I realized it when Shamisen stopped talking. He’s as silent as Nagato now. It’d be kind of mean to kick him out at this point, so I’m planning on keeping him. My sister also seemed pretty happy about having a moving stuffed animal. I’ll tell my family that “the former owner ended up moving to his travel destination.”

The calico meows every now and then, which always makes me wonder if he’s actually trying to say something else. Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter.

Speaking of stuff that’s no longer around, I hadn’t been able to find a program in the cultural festival that would have featured that group of people I’d seen walking around in bizarre outfits.

I even checked the pamphlet issued by the executive committee and had a peek at all the classrooms that seemed remotely relevant (such as the drama club), but they weren’t anywhere to be found. I wonder who those people were.

“Huh,” I muttered for no reason before marching through the school building.

What if there were sliders wandering around our school? And the people in their world happened to wear fantasy-like clothing. Yeah, like what Nagato’s been wearing.

Wouldn’t that mean that Nagato had purposely walked around in that outfit from the beginning to trick Haruhi? As if to give Haruhi the impression that such costumes were merely part of a cultural festival.

Nagato never says anything so I can’t be sure, but it’s possible that she’s engaged in some battle somewhere outside of my knowledge. She was awfully quiet this time. If she had to save the Earth from destruction or something, she would probably just silently do it. She might tell me if I asked, but it probably won’t be anything she can communicate through words and I doubt I have the brains to understand her if she did.

That’s why I decided to keep my mouth shut. Especially when Haruhi’s around.

On a slightly related note, the SOS Brigade–produced movie was screened in the A/V room. Our film was screened with the Film Research Society’s as a double feature. Haruhi basically forced the film society into doing it this way. It was the only classroom with a projector. The film society disapproved until the very last second, but there isn’t a human on this planet who can go against a decision by Haruhi, so in the end Haruhi had her way and the cruddy commercial-loaded movie was screened.

By the way, the organization known as the SOS Brigade doesn’t exist as far as the cultural festival executive committee is concerned, so there isn’t an item labeled “The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina” on the cultural festival program. We should probably give up on placing first in the popularity poll. Any votes we get will probably end up going to the film society.

And on another slightly related note, remember the movie that had been broadcast late at night and had given Haruhi the idea of making a film in the first place? Upon further research, I discovered that the movie hadn’t even won a Golden Globe. The movie was something called
Dake,
which had been screened at the Cannes Film Festival a fairly long time ago. Did she make some kind of mistake? Just to make sure, I rented it. I fell asleep after thirty minutes. Therefore, I was unable to determine if it was interesting or not. I’m planning on giving it another try before I return it.

I decided I might as well watch class 1-9’s play.

Koizumi had a smile on his face the entire time he was acting his odd role, which met a rather stupid death at the end. About as stupid as Haruhi’s film actually, but the audience seemed to enjoy it. Maybe I was just biased because the leading part had been played by Koizumi. And the fact that Koizumi looked like he was just being himself instead of acting definitely hurt.

When Koizumi came out in response to the applause after the curtain call, he looked at me and shut one eye. I left the classroom before his creepy wink could reach me. I figured I might as well check out Nagato’s class, but by the time I reached the classroom holding the fortune-telling convention, there was already a long line. I peeked in to see a number of girls dressed in black costumes. Nagato’s inorganically pale face was among them. She was saying something in a flat voice to a customer as she moved her hands above a crystal ball placed on the desk. Try to keep it to lost items and the like, Nagato.

The film and the trouble caused by the film were dealt with by making Haruhi realize that “it’s all just fiction after all.” However, you can’t just say that the real world is fiction. You can’t say that “people like that can’t exist” when Haruhi, Asahina, Nagato, Koizumi, and I are all here. Eventually, we may all go our separate ways, but for now the SOS Brigade exists and the brigade chief and members are all together. That’s the world as I know it. Or as Nagato put it, “For me, at least.”

Well, what can I say? I have to wonder sometimes if this whole thing is just one big lie. Haruhi has no power. Asahina, Nagato, and Koizumi have just been putting on a grand show of lies. The white doves were painted. Shamisen was the result of ventriloquism or a hidden mike. The autumn cherry blossoms and the Miracle Mikuru Eye attack were all just tricks of some sort. Something like that.

Even if that were the case, I don’t think I would really care.

“Guess there’s no chance of that, though.”

At any rate, none of that matters right now. Simple arithmetic will tell you that there’s less strain on a person’s head when we’re all in this together instead of Haruhi and me being locked up somewhere by ourselves. The silver lining here would be that I’m not the only SOS Brigade member.

I’m the only normal one, though.

My eyes went to the clock in the classroom that was being used as a rest area, similar to 1-5.

Oops, this isn’t the time to be sitting around. It’s almost time. It’d be a waste not to use these coupons after they were given to me. And I’m also curious about what kind of costumes they’ll be wearing.

I hurried to the spot where I would meet with Taniguchi and Kunikida to head to the yakisoba café where Asahina awaited.

As the convenience stores in my area have been going out of business one by one, I now have to walk approximately fifteen minutes to reach the nearest one, and there is a relatively large pond on the way that hosts migrating birds during winter.

I was passing by a while back and happened to see a male mallard duck drifting around the pond, even though it was already summer.

Well,
I thought to myself,
what reason would a mallard have to part company with his brethren and isolate himself?
I pictured him being shocked after waking up one spring morning to discover that everyone was gone and he had been left behind and felt my heart ache as much as it would for the next person, but the other day, I went out late at night to buy something and saw the mallard quacking and splashing around in the middle of a river. It left me feeling relieved. So he’s just an oddball.

Perhaps he was merely a rebellious duck like the humans who dislike moving around in groups for no particular reason. I daresay that when his brethren invited him to go north with them, he responded by saying, “No, I’ll stay here. No real reason,” and chose to deviate from the routine work of duck society. After all, he was weird enough to wander around in the middle of the night, so floating around in a pond by himself couldn’t be a big deal. In fact, I surmised that he happened to prefer to be alone.

And so I convinced myself. But after a slight bit of research, I discovered that many migratory birds choose not to go north when spring comes. Basically, humans stop by the lake to feed them so they can live a comfortable life without having to worry about finding their own food. That would mean that he wasn’t an oddball but rather a lazy bum, which shattered my arbitrary dream and left me dejected, which is why I wrote about it in this afterword. Of course, none of this matters to the mallard, as far as he is concerned.

Moving on to a different subject, there is a rumor that the next volume will be a compilation of short stories from
The Sneaker
(as of summer 2003) with the addition of a new original story. At the moment, I believe that the title will be
The Boredom of Haruhi Suzumiya,
but it is still subject to change. Of course, spending only three seconds to come up with the title
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
has left me with a series title that doesn’t seem quite right. I didn’t expect this to become a series. I apologize.

On another note, I would like to thank the people who spent a great deal of time playing mah-jongg with me the other day. I would appreciate it if you could hold yourself back or show mercy… no, never mind.

Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to my editor, Mr. S, and the illustrator, Ms. Noizi Ito, along with everyone involved in the publication of this book, as well as all of the readers. I hope to see you again.