If I remember rightly, it was a dull, summer day when the whole event kicked off.
About a year had passed since I'd transferred to high school, hoping it to be a rather uneventful experience. Maybe I would find some new friends, a girlfriend even. Hopefully, everything would go easily enough that I'd get the grades to enter the university of my choice, and life would pass by quite happily, with me living it without a care in the world.
I didn't, however, wager on meeting Haruhi Suzumiya. I'm sure I've relayed to you the story of my meeting her, and the tales of her eccentric behaviour in searching for Espers, aliens and time travellers to "hang out" with. My high school life, predictably, was turned completely upside-down as I was drafted, against my will, into the Save the World by Overloading it with fun Haruhi Suzumiya Brigade. Or SOS Brigade, for short. Pretty soon, the magnetic pull of Haruhi's personality was enough to draw all three oddities to the club- an Esper, Itsuki Koizumi, an alien, Yuki Nagato, and a time traveller, Mikuru Asahina. Oh, and I forgot to mention my name. Well, in light of recent events, I think it's safer for you to refer to me as "John Smith". It's better that we prevent another catastrophe from happening, rather than try to solve it when it does.
Ah yes, of course. I must tell you. Suzumiya is...well, there's no easy way to say this...basically she's...well, God. Suzumiya has the power to make whatever she wants to happen...happen. I know, I never believed it at first- possibly because I gave up on such wild flights of fantasy when I was younger- but the more I see of her, and the more that the other SOS Brigade members explain to me...the more I believe it. I'd rather be completely clueless, if I'm to be honest, but then I suppose that would have helped none on this particular occasion.
Well, I think it's best we got started.
As I was saying, it was lunchtime, on a summer day at school- that period where everyone's just waiting, tired and ready for the summer vacation time to roll around- where everyone just wants to fall down, exhausted, and declare "I surrender". There was no sign of Suzumiya in class three, and I was quite happy staring out of the window, relaxed and calm. I was glad to see the girl in front doing the same, a tall, dark-haired girl who often muttered things like "Maybe he got into a fight..."
I was enjoying my peace for about 5 minutes, when I suddenly heard a loud crash from the other side of the room. I looked over in shock, to see a tall, bespectacled, brown-haired girl hitting a smaller girl on the head.
"Dammit, Tomo!" The tall girl yelled. "Why'd you have to go and do that?"
"Yomi, you're so booooring!" The smaller girl laughed. "You've never tried eating noodles while doing a handstand before, have you?"
"Do it on your own time, not when I'm eating on a desk beside you!" The taller girl hit her again, causing the smaller to wince in pain and retaliate by pinching the tall girl's cheeks. This continued for a short while, as an even smaller, pigtailed girl tried to break up the conflict, and another girl simply stared off into space, blankly.
I began to wonder why I hadn't taken much notice of the girls before- they certainly seemed like characters. Now that I thought about it, I'd often seen the dark-haired girl hanging around with them before. In my head, I began to go over their names, just to make sure I hadn't totally lost my mind. The tall one with the auburn hair is Koyomi Mizuhara. The shorter one with the magenta hair- Tomo Takino. The even smaller, younger looking girl was called-
"Kyon! Hey, I'm back!"
-Chiyo Mihama. The spacey-looking girl with the shoulder-length brown hair is-
"Kyon? Kyon, wake up already!"
-Ayumu, I think. Kasuga Ayumu, the transfer student from Osaka. And, finally, the tall girl with long hair, sitting in front of me, is-
"KYON!!"
"SAKAKI!" I yelled out loud. The girl in front turned round, slightly shocked, and it was only then that I realised Suzumiya had been standing beside me, trying to get my attention. As soon as she realised whose name I had yelled out, her face contorted into an expression of fierce superstition. Quickly, I apologised to the girl in front, who nodded and turned back round. The bigger challenge was explaining myself to the girl next to me.
"And what was that, Kyon?" Haruhi addressed me by my nickname, grinning evilly. "Are you acting out your kinky little fantasies in schooltime, now?"
As soon as she said this, I heard a gasp from in front, as Sakaki stood up and ran out of the classroom. I noticed her face had turned red with embarrassment. I went to follow her, to explain the misunderstanding, but she moved surprisingly fast.
"I hope you're pleased with yourself, Suzumiya." I said, bitterly. "I don't think Miss Sakaki's exactly known for her self-confidence."
"Hmph! I don't care!" Haruhi declared, her face brimming with the self-indulgent smirk she gets whenever something goes her way. Which, considering the fact that she's God, occurs surprisingly often.
"Anyway! Now I've got your attention, Kyon, I need to tell you something that I've told every other Brigade member so far!" She boomed, with the audacity of a town crier. She then cleared her throat, before changing her voice to a whisper.
"Do you see that girl over there, next to the one with the pigtails?"
I looked. It was Ayumu.
"Yeah. Her name's Kasuga Ayumu. I would've thought you'd known that, Suzumiya."
"I don't care!" She hissed, then continued. "Well, I was talking to Izumi from class two, and-"
"Izumi who phoned in sick three times last week complaining about a summer cold? Friends with those purple-haired girls?"
"Stop interrupting me, Kyon!" She huffed again. "Yes, that Izumi! She told me that she thinks she's an alien! Isn't that awesome? A real alien!"
I sat back in my seat and rolled my eyes. Of course, anything was possible with Haruhi, but I still didn't believe this anyway. I had clearly learned nothing.
"So you're believing Izumi? The girl who plays so many video games and watches so much anime that she can't even tell real life from fiction anymore?" I said, cynically.
"Anything's worthy of investigation, Kyon! Summer's almost here, and the SOS Brigade doesn't have long to go! Soon we won't be able to meet after school anymore, and who knows how long that alien's gonna stay here!"
"Ugh. You could at least call her Ayumu until we get confirmation of her really being an alien..." I sighed, rolling my eyes. "I'm guessing you've called an emergency meeting of the SOS Brigade?"
"Oh, Kyon! You know me too well. Maybe your dedication will make up for that embarrassing incident earlier..." Suzumiya checked her watch, saw that lunch was about to end, and sat down in her seat behind me. I looked over to the other side of the classroom, to see Tomo trying frantically to clean up Yomi's spilled noodles, as the latter stood behind her, wielding a rolled-up book and ready to thrash her if she did anything other than clean. A moment later, Miss Sakaki walked back into the room, her face now back to its normal colour, and spoke briefly with Chiyo and Osaka as the bell rang.
Minutes later, the door suddenly slammed open as the English teacher, Miss Tanizaki, stomped into the room.
"SIT DOWN, ALL OF YOU!" She yelled, and the class hurriedly took their seats. I tried to steal a glance at Sakaki, to see how she was, and our eyes met for a moment. She paused, then smiled at me and nodded, as if to accept my silent apology. I smiled back, relieved, then suddenly heard a malevolent hissing in my ear.
"Careful now, Kyon...your Brigade Chief doesn't take well to traitors." I heard Haruhi whisper from behind. Rolling my eyes, I turned my attention back to the front, to see Miss Tanizaki scribbling a passage in English on the blackboard.
"I know that's you, Suzumiya! SHUT UP!" She yelled. I heard Haruhi huff, them lean back in her chair. Tanizaki finished and turned around, her face dark and sinister.
"Heh heh heh...now, all of you are to copy that passage and translate it directly into Japanese!" She yelled, and was greeted with a collective "what?" "she can't seriously be..." "are you kidding me?"
"SHUT UP!" She yelled, again. "It's not my fault that a bunch of freshmen dweebs were all clogging up the streets around the gaming store when I went out there! Ohhh, look, it's a stupid high school teacher! Let's make a line so big she'll NEVER BE ABLE TO GET IN! ALL I WANTED WAS STREET FIGHTER, YOU HEAR? STREET FIGHTER!"
I glanced around the room, to see the class staring at her- half with bemused expressions, and the other half with exasperated ones. In the process, I glanced a girl with long, pink hair and glasses. I swore I'd never seen her before...
"AND SO! To pay for what your useless, horrible brethren did, you will be carrying out this task until I am satisfied!" She yelled. A silence fell over the room, which was broken a moment later by a slim, nervous-looking girl with short-ish hair. She was quite pretty, I thought.
"Um, M...Miss Tanizaki, I was just thinking...what about the announcement...?"
"Eh?!" Miss Tanizaki replied, staring at the girl in thought. Suddenly, she realised, her mood seeming to dip lower in the process.
"Oh yeah. Kaorin has something to announce from the astronomy club, or something." She slumped down on her desk, as the girl smiled, stood up and walked to the front of the class, before being joined by her fellow astronomy club member, someone who I remember as being named "Chihiro". She cleared her throat and spoke.
"The Astronomy club is pleased to announce that late last night, we discovered what we believe to be a new planet." Her smile grew wider as the class began to excitedly murmur amongst themselves. I heard an interested sound from Haruhi- figures she'd be interested in something like this. Chihiro was the next to speak.
"We believe the planet to be twice the size of Jupiter, and orbiting close to the planet Neptune. P...please check the news tonight for further details. Thank you." Chihiro said. The two girls then bowed, before walking back to their seats, to the sound of quiet applause. I thought Haruhi would try and get my attention, but this prospect was shattered by Yukari yelling at us to shut up and get on with the translation. It would have to wait until later.