The Afterlife of Haruhi Suzumiya

Chapter 7: Tension

"I'm bored!" I exclaimed loud enough for the club to hear.

We were in our official clubroom, a previously vacant room that Ryoko had been able to somehow acquire for our use. We would have used Ms. Asahina's room, but she had tutoring after school in there, and we wanted a room to ourselves.

"Then play a video game or something." said the irritant Kaiba Kunikida. After being forced to join my club with his cousin Terry, Kaiba had become a personal plaything of mine. I no longer forced him into cosplay during homeroom; I saved that for our club sessions. And I had decided that he would be the club's mascot and personal servant, meaning that he wore a(n utterly adorable) butler outfit I had prepared for him, and served us all cold beverages (Obviously the nonalcoholic kind) throughout each of our club's activities. But, of course, he still argued and whined over everything I did. And that was part of the fun.

"Video games cannot sate my boredom!" I shouted, "Only results can do that! Now WHY haven't we found any supernatural beings or occurrences, in all of the time we've been at it!" We'd only been at it for six days (including the week-end), but that seemed like plenty of time to me. I'd discovered Ryoko after six days, hadn't I.

"Maybe because there aren't any of those things?" Kaiba complained. "There's a reason people don't believe in any of this weird stuff! Even if it exists, it's bound to be hard to find, otherwise it'd be all over the news! Honestly, if you thought this would be easy, you should have..."

I already knew that. You don't have to tell me that, Kaiba. Shut up Kaiba, I know that already!
These thoughts ran through my head as Kaiba ranted on and on about how difficult it would be. Of course it would be hard! I expected it to be hard! But if I treated it like it were impossible, no one would put any effort into finding stuff, and there wouldn't be any point in searching! "Shut up, Kaiba, you don't know what you're talking about!" I yelled at him.

Kaiba glared at me. Needless to say, our friendship had been strained recently. I'd taken away his freedom and forced him into embarrassing situations, and now I was belittling his opinion. Of course he would hate me. I would hate me. But it's not like I could help it. The armband made me that way, and if I didn't wear it, Ryoko would kill me. But atleast I hadn't made him wear the maid outfit I suggested at first, I had some restraint.

"Look..." I said, trying to compromise with Kaiba, "I know that it's going to be hard. But the Open House is tomorrow, and if we don't find something, we'll be a laughing stock and a failure. We atleast need to find a fake rumor and prove it false! That's one of the two reasons that this club was made!" That actually wasn't the reason. But even I didn't know why this club was made. Ryoko still wouldn't tell me what the club was for, or why I needed to wear my armband at all times. She said she would tell me eventually, but eventually wasn't here yet.

Kaiba didn't say anything to respond. He was still a little angry, but he knew I was telling the truth. A club like ours was bound to be mocked, and an unsuccessful club like ours would be mocked even more so. And as any high schooler can tell you, being a laughing stock is the worst possible outcome of any action. This was an emergency.

"As much as I hate to admit it..." said Terry, who had become a sort of 'voice of reason' character in my club, "BB has a point. If we don't manage something now, we'll be seen as losers for the rest of this semester, maybe even the whole year."

Ryoko stood up to talk. "If we need to find something that badly, I'm sure we could fake it. It isn't that hard to imitate an apparition, and I'm a great actor~!" Trust Ryoko to be happy and smiley about something morally out of the question.

"O U T O F T H E Q U E S T I O N ! ! !" I exclaimed. "We will not be faking this stuff! If we did, we would be cursed by all of the true ghosts haunting the school! And then we'd never find anything weird! Besides, if others found out, not only would we be a laughing stock, we'd be hated by almost everyone! We need real rumors, and we need them fast!"

The answer came from, unexpectedly, the least involved member of our club. "Wonders." Yuki Nagato said. I looked at her, waiting for an explanation. "It is common for schools to have 'wonders', or myths, that are unexplained and often perceived to be supernatural. In Eastern countries, there are usually seven of these wonders, as seven is a number believed to express ill fortune, but the existence of myths themselves are not exclusive to these places."

I knew what she was talking about. As a fan of nearly anything Japanese (only Japanese, for some odd reason, I never felt the same connection with anything Korean of Chinese) I was familiar with the "seven wonders" scenario often used for plot device in many anime and reality shows. "Yes..." I said, excitement slowly building up. "...yes! That's a perfect idea! We'll go and find the school's myths! It's a perfect idea! Let's go; The Search for the Seven Wonders is on!"

We got to work planning our course of action right away. We would split up into three groups, Terry and Kaiba together, Ryoko by herself, and Yuki with me. Yuki and I started our search in (where else?) the library.

"Excuse me, miss?" I said to the librarian. "Would there happen to be any books on common school myths? Or maybe an old yearbook with pictures of students that never attended, or something along those lines?" Yuki wasn't paying attention; she was instead reading a book she picked off of one of the shelves when we walked in.

"School myths?" the librarian asked, "Well, if they were anywhere, they'd be in the Folk Lore and Urban Legends sub-section, just follow the left wall there and you'll get to it. As for the yearbook thing, I don't think we have any like the one you want. If you're looking for urban legends, I recommend asking Mrs. Lockley, she's taught at this school the longest, and she's a well known gossip. But don't tell her I said that."

Yes! Already, we were getting somewhere! "Thank you!" I said ecstatically. I turned towards Yuki and puffed up to give her my orders. "Alright, Yuki! This is your first test as a member of my Brigade! I want you to search through all of the books on common school myths and make a list of any that are possible here in this school and can be easily investigated! Meanwhile, I'll go look for this Mrs. Lockley and find out what she knows! I'll be back soon, so hurry and get started!"

Yuki stared at me with her vacant yet somehow determined eyes, and nodded in confirmation. "Understood." she said, and then moved across the room so quickly that the air rushed to meet her, and a few of the students that were studying in there had their papers go flying as she flew by.

"I like her enthusiasm..." I said, impressed, but somehow not surprised. "Do you know what room Mrs. Lockley is in? Or if she's in the teacher's lounge about now?" I asked, turning towards the librarian once more.

"I'm not sure, but she's usually hanging out with Ms. Aria and Mrs. Simpson around this time. They should be in the south side of the building, bottom hallway. Around room 148, I believe."

"Thank you!" I said, rushing out of the library.

"You're welcome!" she called after me. "Such sweet kids..."

As I found the right hallway (at the opposite end of the school,) I slowed to a stop. There was a group of old ladies standing together, and Kaiba and Terry were asking one of them questions.

"You're such a cute kid, Kaiba; you look just like your father!" The oldest of the three teachers said. "You know, in my day, I was quite the catch. All the guys wanted me, and I never would have settled with someone as childish as your father. But oh, how I wish I had. He ages just so well! Can you believe he's thirty-three? He doesn't look a day over eighteen! Why, if my Hubert looked that young, I'd..."

"Yes, yes." said Kaiba irritantly, "But could you please answer the question? We're looking for urban myths, and it's very urgent. If you know any, can you please tell us?" He looked like he'd been trying to get answers for a while, now. He must have gone straight to his dad to ask about school myths, and his dad probably pointed him here, to Mrs. Lockley.

"Oh, right, right. You wanted myths. Now let's see... hmm... If I recall, there's an old story about a janitor that committed suicide by jumping off of the Arts Building..." Kunikida's eyes widened.

"You mean to say that his ghost haunts the Arts Building, forever wiping graffiti off of its walls?" Kaiba shouted, as if he were a small child questioning a bed time story.

"What?" Mrs. Lockley said. "No, no, that's not where I was going! You see, apparently he was really stressed at home with his wife, and had just recovered from serious leg surgery, so every time he walked, he felt a shock of pain up his left leg. It made his life unbearable, and they say it made him high-strung and very stressed." As she was telling the story, I snuck up next to Kaiba, who was too engrossed to notice. "The real thing I was getting to was the thing that had scared him into doing it! You see, they say it was sometime after school, and he was cleaning the girl's bathroom. He was about to knock on one of the stalls to see if anyone was in there before going inside, but he heard a mysterious girl's voice screaming, 'There's blood everywhere!'"I cast a sideways glance at Terry, who was hiding a snicker. Kaiba, however, was completely oblivious. "He was so shocked that he gave up on life. It's quite sad, really. And no one ever heard from that girl again."

"Gasp!" he said, his hands moving to cover his mouth. "That's horrible! That poor little girl, I wonder if she was a ghost... Did she die? Was she murdered!" At this point both Terry and I burst into laughter, which shocked Kaiba a little. "Wha-? Chief, when did you get here? And why are you two laughing like that? It's not funny! That girl could have died in a really serious way!"

It was Terry who managed to stop laughing long enough to manage a full sentence "I think you may have misunderstood, Kaiba."

"What's there to misunderstand?" he yelled, "There was blood everywhere!" This, of course, sent Terry and me into even more violent throes of laughter, and we didn't have it in us to tell him why the girl was probably bleeding.

"Screw you guys!" Kaiba shouted, "I'm going to find this out on my own!" He ran down the hallway in the direction I had come from, and he didn't seem to know where he was going. I thought I saw him cry a little as he ran by.

I felt a little guilty, and started to follow, but Terry grabbed my shoulder and shook his head. "Leave him be." he said, still holding in a bit of laughter. "This happens all of the time. If you let him cool down, he'll be back to normal." I stared at Terry for a minute, then towards Kaiba, who had just rounded a corner. I was going to give him time to cool off, like Terry suggested, but then something occurred to me.

"You said that this happens all of the time, right?" I asked Terry, who nodded in response. "So... that means that it doesn't really get better, like you think. He cools off and puts on a smile... but the problem is still there, it hasn't gone away. Whatever is bothering him has been building up for a while, otherwise something like this wouldn't be such a big deal." I made up my mind on what to do. "I'm gonna follow him! You stay here and learn more from Mrs. Lockley, okay Terry?" I said as I started to run after Kaiba. Terry tried to stop me, but I was out of sight before he could say a word. It wasn't for nothing the track team begged me to join.

It was a while before I found Kaiba. He was curled-up in a corner by the stairs to the second floor, with his face buried in his arms. Since school was over except for various extracurricular programs, the stairwell was completely empty.

I called to him, but he didn't respond. I sat down next to him, and he made no actions to confirm my presence. The thought to do something naughty to him ran through my head, and I tried to suppress it, which sent a jolt of pain through my arm. I took the armband off and threw it to the floor, and the pain went with it.

We just sort of sat there for a while, until Kaiba finally said something.

"I'm not really naïve." he said, almost as if to himself. "It's true, I'm not. People just don't tell me anything."

I mulled over his words a bit before responding. "I take you found out why she was bleeding?"

He nodded, not lifting his face from the cover of his arms. "I went to the nearest restroom, but then I realized that I couldn't go into the girl's room, so I waited for a group of girls to come by. When they did, I told them if they could go check for the ghost, and they laughed at me. I told them about the girl that was bleeding, and they laughed even more. That's when they told me about PMS."

I felt bad for him; that must have been pretty embarrassing. "It's not that bad that you didn't know what it was. I mean, you aren't a girl." I said, trying to cheer him up. "And you were bound to learn about it eventually. Early on in your first year of high school isn't that bad, some guys don't learn about how women work until... actually, they probably don't learn at all. So just 'cause a couple of guys like me or Terry knew before you means nothing, it isn't that big of a deal."

"It isn't just that." he said, "It's the other times, too. No one tells me anything anymore, everyone treats me differently. Looking like a kid isn't as great a thing as that old lady put it. I used to be normal, I used to fit in. All through elementary school, I was just another kid, having just as much fun as everyone else." He lifted his head and took a deep breath. "But that all changed when I got to middle school. When you get to that point, people start to notice when you look young. It started out with a bunch of older girls calling me cute and saying random stuff like taking me home with them. That got my old friends to make fun of me, and I dealt with it for a while. But then it progressed as people around me started getting growth spurts and I was the only small one left. Bullies started picking on me, but soon even they thought I was too weak to deal with. Pretty soon, everyone left me alone, and the only thing people would say was, 'Don't worry, you'll get it someday.' or, 'We'll tell you when you're older.' or, 'Sorry, you're too young for this, come back when your balls have dropped.'" I stared at his spaced-out face, and could see just how much their words bothered him. "It really sucked, being left alone like that. No one talked to me, except to comment on how adorable I was. And girls would just treat me like some sort of accessory, it never occurred to anyone that I had a mind of my own."

He cast a sideways glance at me and smirked, letting out a small laugh. "Hey, you wanna see something stupid?" he asked, but didn't wait for a reply. He pulled back the sleeves of the butler suit he still had on to reveal a checkered wristband on his left wrist. He pulled it back to reveal several scars on his wrist, some of which looked fairly fresh. "I don't cut myself because the pain makes life more durable." he said, pausing for emphasis. "I do it to try and kill myself." He put the wristband back over his wrist and pulled his sleeves down. "I figure that I can slit my artery and bleed to death, but it always hurts too much and I can't go through with it. I even started using my allowance to buy medical tape from the pharmacy to cover up my attempts. It worked, no one has ever notice what I do to myself, not even Dad or Terry." I stared at him sadly, wondering if there was something I could do or say that would fix all of this.

"Don't look at me like that." He said in disgust. "I didn't ask for your pity. That's the one thing I don't want, I have plenty from all of the giddy fangirls that fawn over me as if I were a puppy." I looked down, trying to avoid eye contact. I couldn't show him my face if all it did was bug him. While I looked down, he continued his story.

"In about seventh grade my parents realized something was wrong with me. When they finally asked me about it, I bawled my eyes out and told them what life was like for me at school. My dad was sympathetic; he said that both he and Ojji-san had to deal with the same thing when they were young. But saying that didn't help anything. It wasn't until mom decided to transfer me to the same school as Terry that I started to get better. Atleast I had one friend, even if it was only family." I was still looking down, but I could hear him sniffling, he must have started to cry. "It was so great having a friend for a while. I was so happy. But even Terry treated me like a child. And he would go off on his own to play with his friends a lot, leaving me by myself. I had hoped, when High School started, that I would get a growth spurt, or that people would stop treating me like a kid, or that someone out there just might be the same as me. None of that happened. The closest I got to any of it was you, who treats me like a doll for playing dress-up with, only useful for that, and nothing more. When I tried to say something today, you told me to shut up, and said that I didn't know what I was talking about! I thought someone as weird as you would be different. You're different alright, different everyday. But no matter what you act like, you always treat me like a kid. When it comes to that, you're the same as everybody else."

I was utterly speechless. Had I hurt him that badly? Had his life really been that horrible? It took me a while to calm down and think straight. He didn't get up or leave, he was too melancholy to move a muscle.

"I'm sorry." I said, trying to think of what to say. "I didn't realize that what I could say would hurt you that much. If it makes you feel any better, I didn't disagree with you at all today." He looked at me, and I couldn't tell whether he was annoyed or curious. "I was frustrated that we hadn't found anything, and was worried about the Open House. I already knew what you were saying about it being hard to find, but I thought that if I let everyone think that I didn't expect results, they would laze around and not do anything. It's not that you were wrong, I just couldn't let them know you were right."

Kaiba scoffed. "Gee, thank you for that. Do I feel special!"

"And... I think I know what you've been going through a little. I don't have to deal with the kid thing nearly as much as you do, but I still have people call me that. And I know what it's like to suddenly be alone, and friendless." Kaiba raised an eyebrow at me.

"I actually used to be normal, too, you know? Back when I was in elementary school, I was perfectly happy. Sure, I still had mood swings, but I just went from normal little boy to happy little boy, maybe even mischievous little boy every once in a while. That all changed three years ago, when I was sixth grade. Suddenly my mood swings became drastic. I'd go from a normal, apathetic guy to a mindless robot. Or from a creepy little liar to a helpless little girl. I didn't know who I was, and neither did anyone else. Everyone thought I was crazy, and stayed away from me. Mom wanted to get me medication, but my step-dad wouldn't let her, he said it was normal for growing boys to have mood swings, and since he made the money, he made the decisions. Meanwhile, everyone abandoned me, and I couldn't stay the same person long enough to even feel sad. But I was plenty lonely. I started to read a lot more than usual. Sometimes I would read sci-fi and fantasy novels, sometimes comic books, and sometimes college level philosophy. It all depended on my mood. One day I found some manga in the bookstore, and I started to read it. It was a shoujo manga, a girl's manga, and a pretty bad one at that. It was all about some girl falling in cliché love with the boy of her dreams, totally boring. But when I read it, it felt familiar. The way it was drawn, the way everyone acted, and every little editor's note about Japanese culture just pulled me in and made me feel nostalgic. After that, I became a Japanophile. Video games, anime, and manga were the easiest to get, but I wanted more. I convinced my step-dad to get me enrolled in a Japanese learning program, and studied my ass off learning the language. Pretty soon I was fluent, and I could get that nostalgia feeling back whenever I wanted to. But it wore off, eventually, and it didn't help the main problem at all, I was still lonely. So I trained my body as best as I could, until I was physically perfect. Still lonely. I did everything I could, anything I could think of, and I was still lonely. I eventually tried making friends, but everyone was still afraid of me. I had no friends, and no one offered to become one. Everyone was exactly the same; I had only myself to keep me company. I grew to hate everyone around me, all of the people that scorned me for not being normal. I decided to look for other people that weren't 'normal', and make them my friends. I might have been a little infatuated with the paranormal before then, but that was when I really wanted to see them. They were different, so there was hope in them. Hope that I wouldn't be so lonely anymore, that I wouldn't fade away and become 'just like everybody else'. Because it was 'everybody else' that I hated the most." I hadn't meant to drag up old emotions. Or maybe I had, I didn't know anymore. I just knew that there was so much I wanted to say, and I was glad to have the freedom to say it, especially if it meant making my friend feel just a little bit better.

"I... I'm sorry." Kaiba apologized, "I didn't realize. Here I am, moping about myself, and you have your own problems to deal with. I didn't mean to complain."

I almost laughed when he said that. "What are you talking about?" I said, "You're story is way sadder than mine, don't you think?" I punched him lightly on the shoulder, and he let out a laugh, this time it seemed to be a happy one.

"I guess you're right." he said, "Anyways, we've been angsting over our pasts long enough, it's time we got up and got to work, we still have a load of work to do!"

"Yeah!" I said, and we both got up and were about to leave when the worst person possible showed up.

"There you are~!" shouted Ryoko from the top of the stairwell. I looked up at her and felt like I was in trouble, somehow.

She jumped lightly down the stairs, the entire flight, and twirled upon landing, facing me and Kaiba. (And consequentially, sending Kaiba into a state of shock.)

"So this is where you've been hiding~!" she said lightly, smiling at me and Kaiba, who appeared to be recovering from a heart attack after seeing Ryoko defy gravity. "I've been looking all over for you guys! Yuki and Terry have already found all of the superstitions, we need you guys to come back and approve~!"

I waited until Kaiba could breathe again before saying, "That's great, let's go check it out, Kaiba!" He nodded, and we started to head for the club room, when I heard Ryoko behind me.

"Ahem." she said, causing me to stop in place and turn around in apprehension. She was holding the armband out to me. "I think you'll need this." she said, making me grab it and put it on hurriedly. A jolt of pain went through my arm again, had that happened when I put it on the first time?

"Don't forget..." she whispered as she walked past me, "Take it off again and you'll lose that arm." A chill ran down my spine as she skipped away, off to the clubroom.

Kaiba must have noticed my reaction, because he looked a bit worried. "Is something wrong?" he asked.

"Nothing to worry about, I- I'm fine." He obviously didn't believe me, and he looked off towards Ryoko with a suspicious look on his face. I hope he doesn't get wrapped up in all this; he didn't need to deal with a sociopath like her.

When we got to the clubroom, both my and Kaiba's jaws dropped. There were three and a half stacks of papers that reached the ceiling, one small horse statue, and one giant birdcage with what looked like a little kid with a bed sheet over his head in it. A floating little kid with a bed sheet over his head, I might add.

"So what do you think~?" Ryoko asked. "Aren't we awesome~?"

"We sooo are!" shouted Terry. "Look at this statue I found! Mrs. Lockley says that it's been haunted ever since it was made, and that at midnight, it makes neighing sounds! Can you believe the school even HAS something like this?"

"I did research as you requested." Yuki said. "I have compiled a list of possible urban legends and myths with which to further research. There are 543 possible ghost hauntings, 389 possible mysterious noises, 862 possible demonic possessions, 444 possible mysterious deaths, and 2 alien sightings."

"Mine is the best~!" Ryoko said, "I made a fake ghost! Doesn't it look so real?"

"You still haven't told me how you did it!" Terry pestered her.

"Drama club." she said, as if that solved all of his questions. It might as well have, he didn't think any further of it.

"I told you, no fakes!" I shouted at Asakura. If I wasn't wearing the armband, there was no way I could have stood up to her like I was now.

"Aww..." she said, "But..."

"NO FAKES!" I repeated.

To tell you the truth, I wouldn't have minded at this point, but... it disturbed me. Could a fake have eyes that looked so... real? If not for the fact that it didn't have feet, I could have sworn that there was a child under there, looking at me, ready to ask, "Trick or Treat?" and get some candy. Kaiba must have been a little disturbed, too, because he looked at me in a way that pleaded for answers. I shook my head slightly, just enough for him to see, but he didn't quite get the message. Instead, he stared at Ryoko, as if she were somehow responsible for the way I was acting. She was, but he didn't quite realize how responsible. I hope to whatever God is listening that she doesn't get anyone else involved.

"Well~!" Ryoko said, getting everyone's attention. "I'll do the decorating for the Open House tomorrow, you can all go home and get some rest. Besides, I need to get rid of the fake ghost, don't I Chief~?" When she said that, a chill went up my spine, and I was afraid I had insulted her.

"Of course, ma'am." I said, accidentally being polite and shy, something that didn't go unnoticed to anybody in the room.

"Well then, goodnight everyone! Sleep tight! And look out, there might be a monster under your bed!"

I hate subtle threats. Don't you?