There's a dragon hatching in the clubroom cupboard and I'm trying to placate Haruhi after the school council told her she couldn't run an official ghost squad. I can't believe I've come to think of this as a normal afternoon.

"So they weren't convinced that anyone was needed to take care of the ghosts? Or have they already booked the Ghostbusters to take care of that?" Sometimes I wonder why I humour her silly plans like this. Maybe I should just tell her that they're bad ideas from the start.

"No, worse! Those morons wouldn't even believe that the ghosts existed!"

Actually, that didn't surprise me so much. Humans, especially adult humans, will do their best to find explanations for things that don't make sense to them. When they can't find explanations, or they don't like them, it's easier to pretend that the problem doesn't exist. I certainly didn't believe in any of the things that happened in the SOS Brigade at first. I told myself that these things weren't really happening – for example, that Nagato was just an odd, shy girl who had read too many science fiction books and now thought that she was an alien. And even the most astounding thing that happened to me early on, being transported to an alternate world that Haruhi created, was almost too easy to explain away as just a dream. If it took a long time for me to accept that it is possible for these things to exist, why should I expect any better from the boring old adults who run this school?

"It's just stupid!" Haruhi raged on. "I could understand if they'd said 'we don't want students involved' or 'we want to get rid of the ghosts, not talk to them' but how can they deny that the ghosts exist? Almost everyone's seen them!"

This was pretty true, actually. Most of the students in the school had had at least some contact with the ghosts, and if they hadn't then they had heard a lot about them. It was hard to believe that the teachers couldn't see them at all – unless it was simply that they didn't want to. I tried to avoid the ghosts as much as possible myself, but that was a different reason – after someone said that they looked like Asakura Ryoko, I couldn't quite convince myself that they were harmless any more.

But the ghosts aren't actually doing any harm, even if they are a little disturbing to me personally. Why would the school want to assign someone to take care of them if they're not even a problem?

"Who said anything about getting rid of them or them being a problem? They're fantastic!" Of course Haruhi would say that. I was distracted for a moment as I heard another cracking sound from inside the cupboard, but fortunately for me, Haruhi was talking so much that she didn't notice. If there were a single moment of silence, though, and she happened to hear… but naturally, being Haruhi, she just kept going. "The reason we need to have someone to communicate the ghosts is because we should all learn more about them, and maybe we can even help them. After all, everyone knows that people only become ghosts when they die if they have unfinished business in this world and so they can't move onto the next life."

Everyone knows that, huh?

Suddenly I felt, rather than heard, a scratching noise on the inside of the cupboard door. Oh, no. Don't tell me the damn thing's hatched already. I opened my mouth to start talking again before Haruhi could hear anything, but she overrode me with a violent "OUT!"

Excuse me?

"We need to change! Get out of the room!" she shouted, throwing her hat at me. Damn you, Haruhi, becoming modest at a time like this? But really, they were going to have to get changed at some point – even Haruhi wouldn't honestly want to walk home dressed as a policewoman. So with a last, desperate look towards Nagato, I bolted for the door and stood in the corridor with Ryuk, fretting.

"Same old routine, eh?" he said, with a grin, but I was not interesting in talking with him at this point. I paced up and down the corridor, thinking that at any moment that damn baby dragon could come crawling out of the cupboard and all hell would break loose.

Everything was silent, though, and I wondered whether Nagato had grasped the meaning of that look I'd given her and made sure the door would stay shut. Even so, she probably should have thought of that herself, since she doesn't want Haruhi to find out about it. Wasn't she supposed to stop altering things, though? Was sealing the cupboard acceptable to the Integrated Data Thought Entity? Or had Nagato decided that I was in charge and my orders could override anything else? I never wanted to be anyone's boss! Although it would be useful if Asahina-san were as compliant as that.

Aside from this, though, what could we really do to control the damage? Right now I was just living from day to day, trying to deal with things as they came up – it's what all of us were doing. But it was wearing us out as it is, so that we're becoming even less able to plan ahead, especially since we're so divided. Koizumi spends so much of his time in sealed realities fighting avatars that he's rarely around any more, Nagato doesn't seem to know what she's supposed to be doing and Asahina is still refusing to co-operate, even if she does it as nicely as is humanly possible. And now Ryuk doesn't even want to co-operate any more. It's hard to get the SOS Brigade to work on this problem when we're not even together.

But if being separated is the problem, then perhaps I should start by just trying to work with Haruhi. After all, she is the reason that we've become so separated. And she's the reason that these events are occurring at all. Surely if I were to talk to her it could have some positive effect? Thinking about what Ryuk said, it seems she's confused, although I don't completely understand all the things that he implied. I don't know whether I could convince her to give up the Death Note. In fact, it seems highly unlikely. But maybe if I could talk to her I could make her see what's happening to the SOS Brigade, and make her come back…

Before I could think any further along those lines, the door had flown open again and Haruhi was striding out without a word or a backwards glance.

"Haruhi…" I wasn't sure how to begin this, but I had to say something. "Where are you going?"

"Home, of course. Don't be an idiot."

"But what about the Brigade meeting? We've barely even started."

"Well, I've had enough. There's nothing else to do here today and I'm fed up with all this anyway. I'm just going to go home and have fun with Ryuk."

"You're never around any more."

She looked at me curiously. Damn, that was a stupid thing to say. But it was a start, perhaps.

"Are you giving up on the SOS Brigade? We hardly do anything any more – you're our Chief, but you spend all your time with Ryuk."

"Well, he's a member of the SOS Brigade."

No he's not. He's not a student, and we haven't registered him.

"Shut up. He's still a member. I'm the chief, after all, and I say he's a Brigade member, so he is."

Okay, so he is a member. But what about the rest of us? We don't do anything any more. Are you and Ryuk all there is to the SOS Brigade now?

"It's too hard to plan club events when my assistant chief doesn't even come to meetings!"

The only reason he hasn't been at meetings is because he spends all his time cleaning up the mess that you make. "Maybe you should demote him, then. You could make me assistant chief instead."

"You can't be assistant chief. I need you to be my minion."

Oh, hell, I don't know how to turn this conversation into something helpful. I can't make Haruhi give up the Death Note – I can't even make her see what she's doing to us. All I'm doing is complaining about how frustrating all this is for me.

"But the club isn't working any more," I went on, desperately. "Things aren't going the way they should… we're not the SOS Brigade any more, we're turning into just a bunch of people…"

"Maybe I don't need the SOS Brigade any more," she said, folding her arms across her chest. "The whole purpose of the SOS Brigade was to find aliens and things, and now we've found someone, so does it really matter any more?"

Of course it matters! How can you say that? The SOS Brigade was yours, you invented it, and now you're keeping Ryuk all to yourself and just letting it die. Don't you see that I care about it, too?

"What do you want from me?" she shouted, suddenly. Her hands were balled into fists and the look on her face was something I'd never seen from Haruhi before. She looked confused and frustrated and… desperate, I think.

I didn't know what to say. I don't think anyone who knew Haruhi would know what to say when she behaved in such an unexpected manner.

"I don't know what you want! I made the SOS Brigade to find exciting things like this, but you always complained." Wait, you really did listen to me? Maybe I should complain more often. "And now that exciting stuff is really happening you want the SOS Brigade to be together. But you don't even care what's going on around you. You don't care that you're seeing things that nobody's ever seen before, and you don't care that you're…"

She had walked up to me by now and grabbed the lapels of my blazer, dragging me down so that she could shout in my face. But suddenly, she seemed to run out of things to say. She let go, suddenly, and I stumbled slightly at being released so quickly. Her head was drooping now, and she stared only at the floor.

"I don't get it," she said, at last, and then turned away without even looking at me. "I'm going with Ryuk now. At least he understands."

For someone who had found someone so special and exciting as Ryuk, Haruhi didn't seem very happy. I had a feeling that maybe I should have said something to her right then, but I didn't know what to say. So I just stood and watched as she walked away, hoping that she would come back or turn to look at me. She didn't. She held Ryuk's hand as she walked along, but I had a feeling that didn't make her feel any better.