Disclaimer: I don't own anything here that you recognize. If you recognize anything as something famous or well known, it's not mine. Haruki Kobayashi is my character, but why would anyone want him yet?
The Biography of Haruhi Suzumiya
Although I have always believed trading card games to be a complete waste of time, money, and resources since I was very young, I have recently come to enjoy playing a certain card game which I set my eyes on. The rules of the game are surprisingly simple: two players start by deciding on how many points each player is allowed. Then, the players take it in turns to draw cards out of a custom made deck and play their different types of cards in order to make the other player lose points. The game continues like this until one player runs out of points or when some other condition is fulfilled. This particular game satisfies me because it involves a bit of skill as well as luck; involving luck when you open a box, pack, or sealed single in order to enhance your deck when building it; and involving skill when it comes to making a structure for your deck to reach your goal. Even though I've lost games and cards due to unlucky draws during the critical moment when I wager my own cards against an opponent, I've never failed to return to the games due to the fact that I've fallen in love with the game mechanics. You could say the game was almost addicting for me.
I've also found out recently that there were anime programs on television that specifically revolved around card games, computerized creatures, and beasts with powers granted from the earth. Thus, I became quite addicted to these anime programs as well as my games and fell ignorant that life all around me was continuing while I was stuck in my fantasy world. Consequently, I got into more trouble at school with my grades, and dropped significantly from my already poor class rankings.
It was at times like this that I had imagined myself as the main character in those anime programs. I would become the boy who miraculously beat a world champion of a famous card game by luck, and then be hunted down by greedy people who desired my cards due to my newfound strategy. This would escalate into many adventures through history and through present until I became the new world champion.
However, that kind of thing sounds like a whole lot of pointless action filler just to become a card game champion. And if the fate of the world or preservation of history depended on the turnout of a card game, what would happen if I lost?
So now I'm thinking: a world filled with creatures with special powers that humans have to capture, tame, and battle with until there is one ultimate master with the best taming skills out of everyone else in the world.
The downside to a world like that would be that it reminds me of rooster fights or dog matches, AKA animal cruelty. I'd rather not adventure in a dream world where daily life just happens to conflict with the moral standards of a large population of the people of reality.
Maybe I could just be a kid who finds a mysterious computer, gets trapped inside of the computer, and has to socialize with the local programs, and battle against viruses in order to get out, while at the same time, upgrade the programs so that they can become stronger while the trojans get more difficult. Then I would have to compete with others to make sure that my program society stays the strongest.
Then again, that idea sounds a bit like the previous idea in a virtual sense.
All fantasies aside, my third year of middle school had just come to a close, and I felt a good thirty years older than my current age. Perhaps looking at the fact that I was going to become a high school student bothered me, to the point that I started to fear not only for what could happen in high school, but after high school as well; however, I have never been the one to believe that you can be too cautious, so my fears stayed with me, unimportant, but there nonetheless. I had tested into the mediocre North High School, and my parents were not at all pleased when they had heard the news. My rebuttal: our neighbors' son, Kunikazu or something, had graduated from North High as well, and had managed to enter a fairly good university. The conversation however, ended with my parents giving me the usual light scolding, warnings about my future, and the recommendations to stop playing around after school and start studying. However, I have never taken heed to any of their warnings even though I know that that's going to bounce back and give me a big smack in the face when the time comes.
From incoming orientation, I found North High School to be a relatively normal high school inside and out. However, through my own experience I have come to the conclusions that normal does not mean uninteresting. There was a rather wide variety of clubs, and I decided to try every single one of them out. Unfortunately for me, I got on the nerves of some of the supervisors and the upperclassmen already in the clubs and received detentions before I became an official student in the school. Before I went home, I had already been presented with a detention paper, note how I did not use the word slip, filled with multiple reasons why I had received extensions on class duty:
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North High School Discipline Report
Name: Kobayashi Haruki
Punishment: Classroom duty extension; five-month period
Reasons for punishment: soccer team, broken goalpost
Tennis team, broken racket, ripped net, injured player
handball club, injured teacher
computer research society, destruction of new laptops
Tea club, second degree burn injury on student's leg
Kendo club, reckless tactics lead to student with a broken leg
manga club, destruction of property
Comments: Following the school bylaws, the punishment given is very minor because your son Haruki is a new student here, and the fact that every single code violation happened as an accident and was unintentional. We do advise, however, that your son be briefed with special safety recommendations for when he officially enters the school for his first year.
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There wasn't anything on the paper that required evidence of the fact that my parents had actually seen the note, so I threw it into a nearby trash can as I walked home. Oh yeah, I forgot to formally introduce myself. I'm Haruki, male, fifteen years old, first year high school student in the making. My name means something along the lines of sunny and lively, and though I may have caused a live ruckus back at orientation, I had created a mood that was anything but sunny.
As I reentered my house I started thinking about the most random thing.
I have often been described as carefree to a fault.
Although I was unaware, I would learn about something that would come to have a huge impact on my life.
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Notes: I hope that you, as the reader, are enjoying this so far. I'm not really a good writer, but I enjoyed watching Haruhi Suzumiya so much that I decided to write a fanfic involving it. I know you might be thinking how come none of the characters from the anime or novels are here, but that will come in due time. I hope you will return to read the next chapter when the time comes and that you will look forward to the beginning of Haruki's adventures.