When school started on Tuesday morning I found Haruhi Suzumiya still subdued at her desk. She barely even acknowledged my greeting. The good times couldn't last of course.
"Kyon!" Haruhi shouted from the desk behind mine during the break after the first class, "Did you hear that? A great mystery has occurred!"
"What?" I turned in my seat. Perhaps if she saw me face to face, she'd turn down the volume. Not for my own doomed fate, but I do consider the nerves of the rest of the class. Some of them are my friends. Pity Haruhi doesn't seem to have the same problem.
"Ryoko Asakura, our class representative, has mysteriously transferred!"
"I thought you said that normal humans weren't interesting to you, but haven't most students transferred at least once in their lives?"
"Not like this! Not without warning! I'll go ask her friends." Haruhi stood and walked over to bother the other students.
Once again my best efforts had been in vain.
Haruhi grilled the students like bacon, and the result was that nobody reported having advance warning of Ryoko's move. Either Ryoko had planned on getting away with murder and staying in the class, or she didn't think enough of her so-called friends to let them know that she'd be moving on.
At lunch Haruhi set off to ask the school office about the missing student.
After she left, fellow SOS brigade member Itsuki Koizumi came to the door of our classroom and asked, "Kyon, would mind having lunch with me today?"
Eyebrows rose throughout the classroom as I replied, "Sure. Sounds like fun."
A group of girls gathered to follow us down to the courtyard and one of the girls even whispered to a couple sitting at one of the tables to make way for us, then asked us to switch seats please, before rejoining her crowd.
"Do you know what that's about?" Itsuki nodded towards the group of sketchbook wielding girls.
"It's the art club. I'm sure they'd appreciate it if you'd take off your shirt and jacket."
Itsuki turned back towards me. "And you make this request because?"
"I want to see if you're tattooed like a Yakuza."
"I'm afraid that my organization isn't anything like that." Itsuki raised his palm with his fingers curled towards the heavens.
The art club girls gave out a collective "Squee!", and one of them asked him to hold the pose as they all furiously scribbled.
"You have an organization also?" I asked him, "Let me guess. You've been forced into the service of some dread master and I'll need to ransom some fraction of my soul to free you?"
"No, it's nothing like that." Itsuki held his pose with no apparent effort. "Those of my kind who serve my master do so voluntarily and I feel very honored indeed to have been chosen for this mission."
"So why did you transfer to this school and join the club of a crazy girl?"
"Miss Asahina didn't bother us at all, but when Miss Nagato got so close to Miss Suzumiya it raised our hackles."
"The problem is solved then. Yuki now regards me to be her master, so that connection is severed."
"And that raises the question of you." Itsuki turned his eyes towards me, without moving his face. "We have checked your trail the best we can, and you've passed all the sniff tests. You are completely human. So what is your connection to the three girls, especially Yuki?"
"Since a Yuki-onna is much more likely to devour a man than serve him?"
"Yes, that."
"I don't know how I got into this mess, but this talk of eating reminds me that this is lunchtime, and that I should consider keeping my core body temperature up."
"Girls," Itsuki raised his voice without even moving his face much, "May I eat now?"
"Here!" Each art club girl held up her bento.
"Oh, but I already have a lunch." Itsuki opened his bento. There was tofu, aburage, and azukimeshi inside.
"What, no rice or meat?" I asked him.
"I'm on a vegetarian low-carb diet."
We all ate more or less together. Then I slipped away unnoticed, as each art club girl took the opportunity to personally thank Itsuki. And introduce herself of course.
I saw in passing that each girl had drawn a white fox in some sort of natural setting. I wondered if they had noticed this yet, or if they would be shocked when they discovered these masterpieces instead of the sketches they had thought they had made of a boy. The styles ranged from classical Japanese, to ancient Western, to modern abstract and postmodernist. But it was all great work. I doubted that we had so many geniuses at our humble school. They must have been truly inspired.
At the end of classes Haruhi ordered me, "Pack up, we're going!"
"Where?" I turned in my seat.
"Here! This is Ryoko's address," She slammed a hand written note with a familiar address, but a different room number, down on her desk. For a moment I was surprised that even the floors were different.
"Is that were she moved to?" I tried to keep a straight face, and fortunately Haruhi had too time for the likes of ordinary humans such as myself to notice.
"No, her old address. She moved to Canada. Can you believe that, Canada? Let's go check out her old place for clues."
"We know somebody who lives there."
"Who?"
"Follow me," I knew that if I just told her where we were going she would run there with my necktie or collar in tow, and I'd had enough of that. I even made her wait for me outside the boys' restroom. It wasn't that I was cruel, but rather that I still had some small faith in the concept of justice, even if I had to mete it out myself.
"The answer is in our own clubroom?" She walked in as I held the door open for her.
"Not yet." I saw that Mikuru and Yuki were already there, but I decided to keep Haruhi on ice for a bit longer. Perhaps it was in the forlorn hope that someday she would learn the virtue of patience.
When Itsuki arrived I asked Yuki to join us at the table, and indicated the seat across from me.
"Your note please," I asked Haruhi, then I slid it in front of Yuki, "Yuki, you knew Ryoko Asakura from what you call your hometown, correct?"
"Yes, Kyon." Yuki lowered her gaze to the note.
"So when you moved to this city, you asked her where you could stay, and she suggested you rent a room in her building, correct?"
"Yes, Kyon."
"Are you asking her this or telling her it?" Haruhi looked back and forth between Yuki and myself.
"I'm asking her to confirm it. I suspected the whole thing when I saw that the address matched what Yuki had written on her library card form. Now Yuki, please tell Haruhi what kind of human being your acquaintance Ryoko Asakura is."
"As you wish, Kyon."
"This is bullshit!" Haruhi jumped from her chair, "Yuki, I hereby promote you to chief researcher! That's a higher rank than Kyon's lackey status. You follow my orders here and not his."
Yuki just sat there, looking down on the table.
Haruhi walked around the table and knelt down by Yuki.
I tried to rise, but Mikuru grabbed my arm under the table.
Haruhi grabbed Yuki's hand. "Don't be afraid of Kyon just because he's a guy."
Yuki turned her face to Haruhi and even smiled a tiny bit. "I'm not afraid of Kyon."
"What happened to your glasses?" Haruhi stared at Yuki's bare face.
"She lost them and switched to her contacts."
"How do you know that?" Haruhi released Yuki, stood and turned towards me.
Yuki raised her hands to her chest, blushed and quietly sighed. She had fed again, so why hadn't Haruhi complained about the cold?
"Who did you think was looking after your precious brigade when you were sulking in the classroom?" I pointed at Haruhi.
"Okay fine, it's all my fault." Haruhi returned to her seat at the table, "But now I'm back on the job and we've got a mystery to solve."
"And the perfect way to solve it is for Yuki to contact her hometown tonight, and ask there about Ryoko." I turned back to Yuki, who nodded her confirmation of my order.
"So back to Brigade business. What can we do to get those contacts coming in?" Haruhi rose and walked to the computer desk. "Let's put Mikuru's breasts on our homepage."
"No! You can't!" Mikuru blushed and stammered artfully.
"If you going to embarrass somebody, embarrass yourself!" I rose and walked over to Haruhi's side.
"As brigade leader, I can't ask any member to do something I wouldn't do myself." Haruhi started pulling her blouse over her head, "Kyon, get the camera. My rack isn't as impressive as Mikuru's, but I guess it will have to do."
"Won't exposing yourself on the Internet shame your parents?" Itsuki asked, proving once and for all just how gay he was. Or more likely, he just wasn't into humans that way.
"So?" Haruhi had her blouse up high enough that her bra was showing.
"So they'll be forced to move and you'll be forced to transfer." I forced my eyes up to where Haruhi's face was hidden behind her blouse. "No more SOS Brigade." I wondered what sort of tragic event it would take to pound just a tiny bit of common sense into her thick skull.
"Very well." Haruhi pulled her blouse back down. "But what do we put on our webpage? The counter isn't even up to three digits yet."
"Well, put something other than a picture of a person on it." Maybe this would get her to finally write down her crazy theories. That should attract the attention of some 'interesting' people. But it shouldn't be a problem, so long as Mikuru kept her knife handy.
After the others left, it was just me sitting there, and Yuki reading by the window.
I studied her out of the corner of my eye. Ever since the incident in the schoolyard, she had become acutely aware of my attention and froze whenever I looked at her too directly. I stood up. "Let's go to your place."
"As you wish, Kyon." Yuki closed her book and stood.
On the way to her apartment, I remembered seeing something once. I turned down a different street. Yuki followed without comment, as always two steps behind me.
I held the store door open for Yuki and then she waited inside to follow me. That was getting a bit awkward, so I considered how I might order her to act more naturally as I walked to the back of the store. I pulled out the item I had remembered and showed it to her, "You like pictures of mountains, don't you? Let's put these posters up on your walls."
"Am I allowed to do that?" She reached her hand halfway towards the package, then dropped it to her side.
"We'll use sticky clay." I picked up a package of it. "That's always allowed."
At the checkout counter I noticed the price tag on the poster set, and turned to Yuki. "I'm sorry, but I don't have quite enough money on me today. I'll bring these by later."
"I have the money." Yuki pulled a roll of bills out of her pocket and placed it in front of the old man behind the counter.
The old man pulled off the correct amount, pushed the roll back with some change and then stopped to examine the bills he had taken. "Say."
"Is there some problem?" I asked him.
"It's just that some of these bills are more than thirty years old."
"Are they expired?"
"No, you just don't see them around very much anymore." the old man put the posters and the sticky clay in a paper bag.
"She gets her allowance from her grandmother in the mountains."
Yuki took the sack and stepped back.
"She's so pretty and refined," The old man said, "Someday you should make her yours."
"She already is."
Yuki blushed and turned away with head bowed.
The old man raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"
Yeah, another store I could never enter again. Someday I'd have to learn to turn off the snark.
Yuki made tea as I started putting up the posters around her living room. I noticed that her kotatsu had the picture book I had selected open, and two new books from the library next to it. She must have read and returned the other three already. Since one of those was checked out on my card, that only left her two slots. I guess I'd need to save up to buy her a copy of her favorite book. No point in showing her how to order books online, as she needed money for rent, if not for food. And that reminded me of something.
I set down across the kotatsu from Yuki.
She poured me a cup of tea, then she looked up around the room and said, "Thank you, Master Kyon! They're so beautiful."
"It's just Kyon and it was your money." I looked out through the glass on her patio doors and then back to her, "I'll get you some drapes with reproductions of mountain paintings so you can have some privacy in here. A curious thing happened today, Haruhi touched you and didn't complain about feeling cold."
"She shares her warmth with us all, and there is always more than enough for everybody."
Yet another riddle instead of a straight answer. And Yuki, who froze people with a touch, had ten times the human warmth of Haruhi. "Ryoko said that you could not control your hunger, is that correct?"
"Yes Kyon, your servant is defective."
"She said you had not yet learned how to do so. So you can learn this?"
"Yes, I should have by now."
"Okay, you must learn how to do so quickly or you will not be able to continue in your current situation. Do you understand?"
"Yes Maste- Kyon. I will try." she bowed her head almost down to the table top.
"Let me know when you are ready, and we can try holding hands. If that is okay with you?"
"Oh no, Kyon." She looked up blushing. "I don't deserve."
"None of us deserve our situation. We just have a responsibility to make the best of it."
"Yes, Kyon."
"Now let's go over what you will tell Haruhi about Ryoko tomorrow."
As I was having Yuki go through her spiel a second time, my phone rang.
It was my sister. "Kyon, I tried to cover for you, but Mom's getting suspicious. So kiss your boyfriend goodnight and get back here now."
"Thanks!" I hung up on her and rose. I really did need to review her reading material. At least she wasn't astute enough to figure out that I was keeping a mass murdering monster girl as a pet.
I looked around and asked, "Yuki, do you have a phone?"
"No, Kyon."
"Lets go after school tomorrow or the next day and get you one."
"Thank you, Kyon."
Wednesday afternoon in the clubroom, Haruhi listened to Yuki's carefully scripted explanation for Ryoko's transfer with a scowl.
"That sounds like a perfectly reasonable explanation to me," I offered.
"That's because you're an idiot, Kyon!" Haruhi slammed her fist down on the table, causing Mikuru to oh so carefully come close to, but not actually, spill any of the tea as she refilled Haruhi's cup.
Haruhi paid no attention to Mikuru's maid-suited performance. She just grabbed the cup of scalding hot tea and gulped half of it down. I had no clue how she managed to not injure herself with her complete lack of common sense.
Haruhi pointed at me with her cup. "Ryoko got the call to move over to her parents in Canada, and just barely had time to pack her bags before the plane left?"
"As she told Yuki later, it was a dying grandmother. That's not a situation where you can wait a few days." As I had come up with the scenario, I had it well memorized.
"And she had no time to call anybody on the way to the airport?"
"Who would she call in the middle of the night?"
"She was obviously abducted by aliens, time travelers or espers, and you're obviously covering for them. Kyon, you are behind all this."
"Me? This is Yuki's story."
"I've seen how she works for you, following your every order. What's your hold over her?"
"I helped her get a library card. It's the first kindness any human being has done for her. What have you ever done, but order her around yourself?"
Haruhi opened her mouth and closed it. She knew I had her and was trying to think of a way out. I was going to give it to her, in order to toss her off her too astute observations.
"Yuki," I turned to the shorter girl, "Do you even own any clothing other than North High School uniforms?"
"I have some kimonos."
"See," I turned back to Haruhi, "She's useless for undercover missions. The brigade is crippled because you're not thinking things through. All this time you've been dressing Mikuru up as a bunny or a maid for your amusement in the clubroom, and you haven't done one thing to improve our fieldwork."
"Brigade dismissed. Yuki, come with me." Haruhi grabbed Yuki's hand, who took one glance to see my nod, before she was dragged out of the clubroom.
A moment later I realized my deadly mistake and rose. "She's going to pop Yuki like a bubble!"
Mikuru grabbed my hand. "No she isn't."
"What, but I thought you said you had to be extra careful to avoid that, and careful just isn't in Haruhi's vocabulary."
"Even in her sleep, my queen truly wishes harm to none, not even a mass murdering demon. I am sure that she will push away any salesgirls, and dress Yuki with her own hands, as she does myself."
That sleep metaphor again. I thought about it for a moment then asked Mikuru, "Who exactly is Haruhi's brother?"
"Haruhi is an only child and a human being."
"So who is Yuki's former master?"
"Susanoo, lord of snowstorms and other storms."
"Sure, why not. I'm willing to accept anything at this point. And so where is Amaterasu?"
"She sleeps inside the soul of Haruhi."
"Go wake her up already. What are you waiting for?"
"No human can look on the true face of Amaterasu and live. My love has enough woes to weigh her down already, without tossing the death of a young girl on the pile." For just a moment the shadows of millennium of sorrows crossed Mikuru's face.
I took half a step back. "Even if I believe all of this. Why shouldn't I suspect that you are somehow aligned with the forces of darkness to keep the goddess of light incapacitated, my dear lady Ame-no-Uzume-no-mikoto? What's with all the secrets?"
Mikuru smiled at this and said, "We three non-humans could convince Miss Suzumiya in a few minutes of our own natures, and in another few minutes we could convince her of what we know to be true about herself. What do you think would happen then, once she knew of the powers at her fingertips? Is there anything we might tell her that would convince her to wait quietly until we have a way to safely depower her?"
"Hell no," I responded, "Haruhi would be running around shouting things like 'Let there be light'."
"Perhaps I might offer a way out of this." Itsuki returned to the table, after pouring himself a cup of tea. He knew full well that Mikuru's pretense of being our maid only extended to those times when Haruhi was present.
"Yes?" I turned to him.
"My cousin is getting married this Saturday. I will get you an invitation. Since this is a social event, there will be those of my kind of my organization, those that follow the lord of storms, and others. I will meet you in front of your house at seven that morning. Do bring a raincoat."
"I already looked up the long range forecast," I stood and grabbed my jacket, "It's going to be clear through the weekend."
"Oh, it will be both clear and rainy on Saturday morning." Itsuki made his usual irritating, closed eyes smile. "Come alone, as your slave is most certainly not welcome. But you can bring your sister, if you like."
I was halfway through the door before I turned and responded to him, "Don't threaten my family!" Then I closed the door and walked away.
-HJC