- Chapter 10: Training Wheels -

There was an upside to living in a world without mobile phones, it seemed. If we had mobile phones, I wouldn't have had an excuse to call "Wylie" in private. I would have had to just call her up from the car, with Haruhi beside me in the driver's seat. As it was, it was only natural to leave Haruhi in charge of filling the car with gas and buying sodas while I went to the payphone on the side of the station to the make the call.

I made a different call first, though. After one ring, a lovely, warbling female voice answered, "SOS Detective Agency.

"Have your bosses and friends

left you to tend shop on your own?

I know where you've been, buddy

You're not all alone

Are they off on big adventures

while you're sweeping the halls?

Maybe next time you see them

you should kick them right -"

"Miss Asahina!" I interrupted. "Miss Asahina, it's me."

"Oh! M-m-m-Mr. Hayes! Um, h-how is the search going?"

"Great. Listen, can you put Mr. Koizumi on the line?" I hated to brush her aside, especially given how she'd answered the phone, but I had things to run by Koizumi and it wouldn't take Haruhi long to fill the tank and get a couple drinks.

"Oh... Oh, of course it's him you'd want to talk to." She called for Koizumi. As I waited, I watched Haruhi. She was humming a tune while watching the numbers roll up on the gas pump.

"Good to hear from you, Mr. Hayes!" Koizumi's voice came on. "Have you two cracked the case yet?"

"Um, yeah." I reminded myself that he needed to remain in character in front of Miss Asahina. "But I've got something more important. Koizumi, I've been breaking character left and right this whole trip, and Haruhi hasn't even grumbled. In fact, she keeps breaking character herself. But she won't admit to remembering Nagato or what happened Monday. What's going on here?"

"Agnes, could you please go somewhere else for a moment? Mr. Hayes needs to discuss some highly sensitive client information with me."

I heard a soft murmur of submission. "That's another thing. You need to tell Miss Asahina what's going on. She's obviously not enjoying the secretary bit the way you said she was."

"She'll survive." Koizumi was talking more quietly now. "As for your question, two theories spring to mind. One, the way you found her at the end of the previous case has convinced her that it's alright to be herself, even if it hasn't convinced her to return to the real world."

"That can't be it. She was more insistent than ever that we stick to the script when Nagato was at the agency. It's only on this trip that she's been letting things slide."

"It's not an all-or-nothing proposition. Sticking to the script while Nagato was here was probably necessary to establish a framework for the episode. Which brings me to my second theory. Perhaps Miss Suzumiya was planning to let us be ourselves all along, and the scripts and character bibles were merely a sort of training wheels."

"What does that mean?"

"Hmm. You like video games, don't you? Well, if you think of this pocket realm as a video game designed by Miss Suzumiya, then consider the Everett case to be the tutorial level. Things are on a linear, restrictive path. The game tells you to perform specific actions, and if you do not obey, then you cannot progress. As you reach later levels, the game opens up. More pathways and manifold possibilities are laid out for you. The game trusts that you have learned how to play it, and no longer gives directions. That is where we are now."

"I get it. If that's what's happening, is it a good thing or a bad thing?"

"Well, I'm tempted to think it's a good thing, since if Miss Suzumiya is not restricting us to a script, that makes it much less likely that she is engineering Miss Nagato's death. On the other hand, she can take the training wheels on or off at a moment's notice. I think we'd best keep our guard up. Has her mood improved?"

"Yeah, but I have no idea why. She was pretty irritable for most of the trip, but as soon as we started talking on the ride back, she got all bouncy and upbeat."

"Another thing you have in common with Miss Suzumiya is remarkable intuition. You always know what to say to make her feel better."

"I didn't say anything. I just asked a hypothetical question about me leaving the SOS Brigade. Shouldn't that have made her mood get worse, if anything?"

"I would have thought so, yes. This is why we rely upon you to clear away any storm clouds that form over Miss Suzumiya's head. You say the right thing even when you don't understand why it's the right thing."

Uh huh. Or maybe something else changed her mood. Haruhi does care about things other than me, you know.

...Oh wait. The only thing on this trip that wasn't just following Haruhi's script is me. Crap. "Um, look Koizumi. I've got to call 'Wylie' and tell her we got Harbert's address, but we have to do something about the threat to Nagato. Haruhi may be happy now, but she's not letting us go back to the real world."

"I agree. Since Nagato is the villain of this episode, I believe we can learn more about the plot if I monitor her. However, I'll need orders from Mr. Hayes or Ms. Addison to do so."

"Right. I'll take responsibility."

"Also, something has occurred to me. Do you remember in the mansion, how Miss Nagato lost her connection to the Data Integration Thought Entity?"

I had no more time for this conversation. "The point, Koizumi."

"It stands to reason that if someone can block Nagato's connection to the Data Integration Thought Entity, Miss Suzumiya can, too."

"...So Haruhi isn't even trying to keep Nagato trapped here? Our worries were over nothing?"

"Perhaps. Or perhaps the normally intuitive Miss Suzumiya has failed to recognize the connection. Or perhaps she left that escape route open as a test for Miss Nagato; if she tries to use it, that proves to Miss Suzumiya that she has a guilty conscience, and justifies killing her. In any case, I would not again encourage Miss Nagato to use that means of escape."

We said goodbye, and I hung up. Haruhi was nowhere in sight, so she must have gone inside to get the drinks. I had little if any time to call Nagato, but if Haruhi came out I could just quickly change the subject to Harbert's address. I dropped another quarter in and dialed.

The phone stopped ringing almost immediately, but there was silence on the line.

"Nagato?" I tried.

"Yes."

"Um, well... First of all, I want to apologize for yelling at you before, and for doubting what you – well, for saying you were lying."

"Fine."

I sighed. "No, not fine. It must have been incredibly hard for you to tell us what you did, and the way I responded made it even harder. I didn't want to accept that you would really betray us."

"Your response was better than I deserved."

"No. If I had endured the things you did, Nagato, I don't think I'd have done better. Also, because of the way I've acted, I think I owe you something, something I've avoided talking to you about." I hesitated, but she said nothing. "It's something I haven't even wanted to think about, but Nagato... if your reasons for remaking the universe have anything to do with the fact that it would have been just the two of us in the literary club..." This was hard, but I couldn't hesitate, or Nagato might think I was lying to make her feel better. And believe me, I wasn't. "...I want you to know that when I decided to change things back to this universe, I wasn't choosing anyone over you. It's just that I wanted the excitement and magic back, the adventures. I wanted there to be aliens, espers, and time travelers. Do you understand?"

After that heartfelt speech, I half-expected Nagato to express at least a hint of feelings for me. But after a pause, she said simply, flatly, "You forgot."

"Huh? What did I forget?"

"I told you that it was not my intent that you keep your original memories when I recreated the universe."

"So? What does that have to do with... Oh." That's right. The reason I went to the literary clubroom was to find some trace of the SOS Brigade. If I hadn't kept my original memories, I would never have had any cause to go there. Nagato and I might never have met in that reality, apart from... "...the library. What about when I got you the library card?"

"A natural occurrence in the absence of information altering abilities."

"You mean... if we hadn't gotten involved with the SOS Brigade, we would have both been at the library that day? But I hardly ever read books. What was I doing at the library?"

"Unknown."

"You didn't manipulate things so that we would meet?"

"I did not know if I, as a human, would want to know you. I wished for my life to occur naturally."

"Damn..." I covered my face with my free hand.

"This has caused a problem?"

"No, no problem," I said quickly. Honestly, why was I so disappointed that Nagato hadn't attempted to fix me up with her human self? If there was any girl in that timeline who I'd like to be in a two-person club with, it's the same one I'd choose in this timeline: Mikuru Asahina. It was a good thing that Nagato's desires didn't conflict with my own, wasn't it?

Maybe it was just knowing that she'd meant to set me completely adrift, without any of them. Even Haruhi hadn't done that. I remembered, when we were in closed space together, she'd assured me that Koizumi, Nagato, and Miss Asahina would all be there with us in the new world she was making. She'd wanted a world that would make us both happy, not just herself.

Of course, Haruhi was completely selfish a hundred times a day, and I forgave her. I could forgive Nagato for being selfish once in her life.

"Nagato, the important thing is, you don't deserve to die for what you did."

"I leave that for Miss Suzumiya to decide. It is her right."

"Just because she has powers?"

"Because though I wronged many with what I did, I wronged her more than anyone else."

This was so frustrating. "Don't you realize that it's just her subconscious that's running things here? If you're killed in this world, Haruhi will be more upset about it than any of us. Do you want to do that to her?"

"If she kills me here, logically, she will also erase all memory that I existed."

Oh no. And Haruhi's already been saying she doesn't remember Nagato.

"Give me Frank Harbert's address."

Would you do that to Nagato, Haruhi? Would you really? "Maybe we should call this off."

"You must trust Haruhi Suzumiya."

"Why? You just said yourself that she may be planning to kill you!"

"Because that is what you do."

...Right.

I gave her the address.

When I hung up, Haruhi still hadn't reemerged from the store. Maybe she was killing time in hopes that I'd come in to check on her and she could rope me into paying for the drinks. Or maybe she was having a confrontation with the proprietor. Whatever was happening, it was probably best if I just went back to the car and waited for her. I couldn't imagine that this was a serious plot point, and if I were in the car, I could easily claim that I'd been waiting there the whole time she was in the store.

I opened the car door.

"What took you so long?"

I nearly jumped out of my skin. Haruhi was there, slumped down so far in her seat that her neck was bent at the point where your buttocks are supposed to rest, while her legs were chaotically twisted and propped up here and there among the pedals. No wonder I hadn't spotted her as I approached the car. How she'd gotten back to the car without my seeing her was harder to guess, but I was distracted enough by Nagato's revelation that I could have missed her.

"What are you doing down there?" I demanded.

"This is a very relaxing position. You should try it some time."

Relaxing? You look like you're practicing to be a contortionist.

"Now you have to answer my question! What took you so long?"

A dozen plausible lies came to mind. I could say that Barbara Wylie's husband answered the phone, and I had to wheel and deal to get Barbara herself on the phone. I could say I lost her phone number and had to try several permutations of the digits. I could say I figured while I was on the phone, I might as well pay my parents a call.

But in the end I just sighed and said, "I called the agency to let them know how things were going." It wasn't the whole truth, but it was the truth. As good as I could give her without getting into the fact that we were all visiting here from another dimension.

It didn't appease her. "And you spent a long time talking to Agnes, huh?"

"What? No. She said her little rhyme, and then I asked her to hand me on to Koizumi. He had a bunch of things he wanted to go over."

"Hmm. Okay." She sat up, revealing that the sodas were on the seat underneath her, and handed one to me. "But let me know next time. You shouldn't just keep a lady waiting!"

It was a relief to see her good mood so quickly restored, but as I took a relieving drink of soda, I couldn't help but worry about how sensitive she was being about the idea of me talking to Miss Asahina. I'd just spent the better part of a day with her (well, a day in this weird dimension, which I'm sure involved lots of scene jumping, but nonetheless), and she was acting jealous over what would have been a ten minute phone conversation with Miss Asahina.

Well, not jealous exactly... It was just like the look she gave me and Miss Asahina before storming out of the clubroom on Monday. The closest thing I could compare it to was the look on a kid's face when his parents tell him that he can't come along on a fun family outing because of bad behavior. But that analogy sounds as uncomfortably off as calling it jealousy. I just couldn't define it.

Whatever it was, it couldn't be healthy.