- Chapter 2 -

When the lunch bell sounded, I practically sprinted to Koizumi's classroom. Well, something like that. Let's just say I was fast enough to catch him as he headed out the door and towards the cafeteria.

"Kyon," he called to me, raising his hand in a half-wave, half-salute. "Come to join me for lunch?"

"I'd rather we had this out right here."

"As you like. I gather that there's a problem?"

"I'm not in the mood to play games, Koizumi. Yesterday I found a letter in my shoe locker. Did you write it?"

His jovial manner was unfazed. "If I did, I'm sure I would have signed it."

"You did. With Haruhi's name."

Koizumi framed his jaw with his thumb and forefinger. "Then what is it that makes you think she isn't the one who wrote it?"

"First of all, it's a love letter."

"An unlikely choice of missive for her, I'll admit, but not impossible."

"Second, she told me herself that she didn't write it."

Koizumi smiled. "Ah yes, your unwavering trust in your lady love. But revealing one's inner feelings can be so embarrassing. If Miss Suzumiya wrote such a letter, and had second thoughts about it, might she not then lie about it, even to you? No, never mind," he said, holding his hands up to ward off my furious glare. "You didn't ask me who wrote the letter; you asked if I wrote it, and I can see you're not interested in the possibility of Miss Suzumiya having written it. Very well. I am a bit hurt, though, that you think I would pull a prank centering on Miss Suzumiya's feelings. That would be most juvenile, and extremely risky as well."

"I wasn't thinking it was a prank. I was thinking you were trying to play cupid."

"That is even more insulting. I know I jest quite often about you and Miss Suzumiya, but you don't think I'm really so blind as to think either of you is ready for that phase in your relationship? You not believing she would write such a letter, and she categorically denying having written it, are just the reactions I would have expected."

He did have a point there. Koizumi may have been a jerk, but he wasn't stupid. Still, I didn't like the way he wasn't giving me a straight answer. "Yes or no. Did you or one of your 'comrades' write that letter?"

"No, unless it was done by a rogue. A possibility I'll be sure to look into. May I have a look at the letter?"

"I don't have it with me." Hopelessly warped and held together with transparent tape as it was, I couldn't see it holding together more than five minutes inside my bookbag.

"If you could bring it in tomorrow, that would be most helpful. I'm sure I can narrow down the possible authors much more effectively after seeing the work itself."

"I have a better idea. Come over my house this evening, and I'll show it to you there."

"You're very eager to have this resolved, aren't you?" He shrugged. "Well, that's fine with me. We need to finalize our White Day preparations, anyway. May I suggest you speak to Misses Nagato and Asahina as well?"

"Neither of them would ever write something like this."

"Agreed, but another humanoid interface or time traveler might, and if one did, they would likely know about it."

I guess that makes sense, even if he is probably just trying to redirect suspicion. "I'll invite them over too, then. But I think I'll see what Takuma knows first."

"Takuma? Why would he know anything?"

It was refreshing to have Koizumi asking me for information for a change. "He told Haruhi he wrote the letter."

He scratched the side of his forehead with one finger. "Then what makes you think -"

"Excuse me, but I've got to get this done before lunch break is over." I said this as politely as I could, but I can't deny it was satisfying to walk away with Koizumi looking at me with a quizzical expression.

When I walked into Takuma's classroom, he was having lunch with two cohorts, both almost as disgusting-looking as him. I immediately regretted not bringing Koizumi along for support.

Actually, it was probably best I didn't antagonize Takuma too much anyway. Haruhi might want him as drummer again when the time came around for the cultural festival. And as loathsome as Takuma was, I liked the ideas of Haruhi poaching some other band's drummer or putting Koizumi in front of a pilfered drum kit even less.

"Hey, Kyon," he greeted me, perfectly casual. "What's up?"

"I want you to answer me a question. Who wrote that letter?" I demanded.

He blinked. "What letter?"

His two friends were already smirking at me. Being in a club run by Haruhi Suzumiya doesn't do much for your reputation.

I leaned in close and lowered my voice; I didn't care to let the whole school know what was going on. People could come to wrong interpretations. "The love letter in my shoe locker. Haruhi told me about how you told her you wrote it."

"And you believed her?" Takuma's widened eyes and grin made him look even more chimp-like than usual. "Dude, that girl is nuts about you. We're talking batshit crazy. The whole time I was dating her, all she would talk about was you. Every other word she said was about how much smarter you are than me, how much more considerate, yadda yadda yadda. Do you know why we broke up? Because when I tried to touch her boobs, she said no one but you could touch her. If you got a love letter, Suzumiya's the one who wrote it."

I let my eyelids droop as I looked down at him. "You're the worst liar I've ever heard."

Actually, his delivery was pretty convincing. It was the lies themselves that were weak. Even if she were in love, Haruhi would never say things like that. Especially not to Takuma. She might have been dumb enough to make him her boyfriend, but she'd never have been dumb enough to make him her confidant.

"Look," I said. "You've had your little laugh at Haruhi's expense. And I'm not buying your story, because I know for a fact that someone else forged that letter and told you about it. They probably had you stick it in my shoe locker for them. So you have nothing to lose by telling me the truth. Who was it?"

"Why?" one of Takuma's friends chimed in. "Is the forger a secret government agent?"

The other one held a hand to the side of his mouth in the manner of someone whispering a secret. "Yeah, the SOS Brigade found a secret government lab where they're experimenting on aliens, and the government's trying to cover it up by sending them fake love letters."

All three of them started laughing their heads off. I guess I did walk right into that one.

I slouched away in defeat. Takuma obviously wasn't going to come clean, at least not in front of his friends, and even if he were going to answer my question I'd have to wait for his laughter to die down first.

Takuma probably didn't know much, anyway. Anyone who did such an excellent forgery of Haruhi's writing wouldn't have given their real name, rank, and serial number to him. And I had other people to visit.

As I expected, Miss Asahina was having lunch with Tsuruya and her other friends, so it wasn't a good time to talk to her. That left Nagato who, also as I expected, was in the clubroom reading.

"Hey," I greeted.

She gave me no acknowledgment as I approached. Getting closer, I saw that the book in her hands was a text on computer programming.

Well, that was odd. "I thought you already knew more about programming than humans have to teach," I said.

She turned a page. "Tetsuya Yanami loaned it to me."

"Yanami? Is he one of the guys in the computer club?"

A nod.

I guess that explained it. Nagato had no need for the information in the book, but she had accepted the loan so as not to be ungracious. I was getting an uneasy feeling. "Do you like him?"

She looked up at me as though asking for clarification.

"I mean..." I scratched the back of my head. "...did you give him something for Valentine's Day? Or didn't, but wish you had?"

"No." She blinked. "Why?"

Argh. It didn't occur to me that Nagato might still not be 100% clear on the nature of Valentine's Day. Haruhi must have given her a full primer on the holiday when they prepared the Valentine's chocolates for Koizumi and me, but maybe that wasn't enough for her to work out the finer points.

Still, there was no question that Nagato understood what love was. One incident in particular had proved that. "Okay, listen," I said. "When Nakagawa's feelings for you turned out to actually be inspired by the image of your boss, you said you were a little disappointed. If Yanami wrote you a confession like Nakagawa did, and it turned out to be false... would you be disappointed?"

I felt a bit silly questioning her about this so much, but I didn't like the idea of Nagato getting romantic with one of the Computer Society guys.

Nagato looked away. "Unknown."

Damn it. "What do you mean, unknown? You have to know what your feelings are, so just imagine how you'd feel about that."

"I do not wish to run further simulations of my emotions."

And there was another anomaly of sorts. Nagato had only recently begun expressing personal desires.

Screw this. I was getting nowhere. Maybe I'd learn more if I had a talk with the Computer Society members. I had other things to talk to Nagato about in the few minutes left of lunch break.

I explained to her about the love letter. She sat listening without comment. I finished, "Is it at all possible that a humanoid interface forged the letter?"

"Yes." She looked back to her book. "However, knowledge of this is not contained in open data stores."

"So, what does that mean?"

"It means I can tell you nothing. Either the letter was written by an entity unconnected to the Data Integration Thought Entity, the letter was forged by a minority faction interface who has concealed their actions from the Data Integration Thought Entity, or the letter was forged at the Data Integration Thought Entity's orders and I must lie to you to conceal our involvement." She turned a page. "I may have even forged the letter myself."

"But you always said that you and your faction or whatever have agreed to only observe. You said you didn't want to risk causing a change in Haruhi."

"The consensus may change at any time. Ryoko Asakura spoke truthfully on that point."

Oh, boy. As if I don't have enough to worry about. "But you wouldn't act against us. Even if the rest of the humanoid interfaces and everyone else turned against Haruhi, you wouldn't betray her."

"The letter is not necessarily adverse to Haruhi Suzumiya. It may be intended to encourage the progression of her relationship with you."

"And you don't think that would hurt her?"

She looked confused by the question.

"I mean, when someone writes a letter like this to someone, they're taking a big emotional risk. If the person they're writing to doesn't return their feelings, it's painful and humiliating. And if the person who wrote the letter – I mean, the person who the letter is supposedly from, whether or not they really wrote it... If that person doesn't really feel the way the letter says they do, then it's embarrassing even if the person the letter is written to has feelings for them."

"I know," she said. But she still looked puzzled.

I sighed. "All right, what about your feelings? Doesn't the idea of Haruhi and I becoming lovers because of this letter bother you?"

"No."

Ouch. I can accept that you're not in love with me, Nagato, but couldn't you at least be a LITTLE bit jealous, the way I'm a little bit jealous because of this Yanami guy?

"Okay," I sighed. "Since you insist, I'll put you on the list of suspects. See you at the brigade meeting."

"I will not be there."

"Huh? ...Don't tell me you're going to be hanging out with the Computer Research Society again."

Nagato was silent.

After a few moments, I realized my mistake. "Okay, Nagato, forget the last thing I said. Are you going to be hanging out with the Computer Research Society while today's SOS Brigade meeting is going on?"

"Yes."

"Why?" A pathetic question, I know, but I couldn't help myself.

"To establish countermeasures against errors such as those which prompted the reconfiguration of worldwide data last December."

Forget it. I'm lost. "Okay. See you at my house this evening, then."

Happening to glance at the clock, I hurried back to see if I could cram in some lunch in what time there was left of break.

"REVENGE"

That's what the dry erase board said when I walked into the SOS Brigade clubroom. The other members were already present, except Nagato of course. Koizumi was warming himself in front of the space heater. Miss Asahina, already in maid costume, was looking at that word with great worry on her face. And Haruhi, of course, was the one with the marker in hand.

I sighed and sat down at the table. "This is about Takuma writing that note, isn't it."

"You got it!" Haruhi affirmed, and continued to write on the board.

"Note?" Miss Asahina echoed.

"Right. Takuma forged a love letter from me to Kyon. We have to get back at him to restore the honor of the SOS Brigade." It was apparent by now that she was drawing an ugly caricature of Takuma's face.

I should have seen this coming. Ordinarily, Haruhi would have just let the whole thing go, seeing the letter as just a childish prank, beneath her notice. But production of our movie sequel had been put on hold due to my suggesting that this time we really needed something vaguely resembling a firm script, and we were deep enough into winter that even Haruhi could tell that we needed to take a break from karate lessons until the weather warmed up or we found a good indoor location. Yesterday's poltergeist photos activity was a clear indication that the SOS Brigade was faced with its recurring crisis:

Haruhi was bored.

"Okay, first step." Our brigade chief began writing "1) own medicine". I couldn't tell whether her not using Miss Asahina as notetaker was a bad sign or not. "Mikuru, who's the most desperate, socially awkward, total loser girl in the school?"

"Ah, ah..." Miss Asahina just stammered, clearly uncomfortable with answering that question for reasons that should have been obvious to Haruhi.

"We're going to forge a love letter from Takuma to her. Kyon, you write it. You wrote all those stupid lyrics with him for the band, so you're more familiar with his handwriting and writing style than any of us."

A love letter, from Takuma? I can't even imagine what that would be like. I don't even want to imagine what that would be like. "Hold on," I cut in. "I'm not sure where you're going with this, but have you given any consideration at all for the girl's feelings?"

"Of course I have." She sniffed in irritation at the interruption. "But then I realized that there's no way any girl could ever fall in love with Takuma, so what's the harm?"

"That's..." ...more or less dead on correct, actually.

"Glad we're on the same page!" she said with a sudden smile, even though I was still sitting with my mouth open, my sentence unfinished. "Now, naturally the girl is going to confront Takuma, either out of curiosity or to tell him off. Even a neanderthal like Takuma should figure out that we're behind it, so we're going to neeeeed..." She stretched the word out as she picked the marker back up and wrote on the board again.

Let me guess: Blackmail.

Haruhi stepped aside from the dry erase board, which now had written on it "2) blackmail". For a moment I felt pretty smug about having guessed right. Then it struck me that my knowing what Haruhi was thinking was more than a bit frightening. Either legally questionable activity was becoming more of a routine for us than I'd realized, or I was getting really mentally attuned to Haruhi.

"So!" She capped the marker in a dramatic fashion. "We're going to get some good juicy video footage of Takuma, but there's always room for improvement. Kyon, I want you to spend some time learning that video editing software. Your work on our movie was pretty good, but this is going to require different types of effects, like pasting one person's head onto another person's body, and -"

Good grief. As if I don't have enough on my plate right now. "Do we really have to go through all this trouble?" I asked, leaning my head back over the back of my chair.

There was a sudden feeling of electricity in the air. "What," Haruhi said, in a deadly tone.

Uh oh. I was right about her still being pissed about that grocery store encounter.

"The SOS Brigade has been the target of a blatant attack, and you want to sit around and do nothing?!" she spat out the words like they were something vile she'd swallowed by mistake.

She was reaching for a chair. I had to talk fast. "What I mean is, can't this wait a couple weeks? I have some important things I need to get done, so I won't be able to give this revenge project my full attention."

"What the hell is so important that you're putting it before SOS Brigade duties?"

"Well, uh..."

Tough question. I obviously couldn't claim to have any schoolwork beyond what Haruhi herself was dealing with. White Day preparations were what was really eating up my free time, but I didn't want to spoil the surprise for Miss Asahina, even if it was technically an obligation so there wasn't much of a surprise to be had. There was also my investigation into the love letter, but letting Haruhi know about that would run the risk of her learning that there are people out there with a professional interest in her emotional state. I'd already used Shamisen as an excuse, and she'd seemed a bit suspicious of that one anyway.

I was about to suggest that my dad needed help with a home improvement project when Haruhi's scowl suddenly melted into a knowing grin. "Oh, so that's it, huh? I forgot that that was coming up."

Maybe she was being vague for Miss Asahina's sake, but it was pretty obvious that she'd realized I was busy with White Day preparations.

Koizumi came to my aid. "Perhaps it would make more sense to postpone our revenge a couple weeks. That way Takuma will be lulled into thinking that we're not going to take action."

"Good idea!" she chirped, and the knowing grin she shot Koizumi's way was much wider than the one she'd given me. Not that that bothered me. "Well, that's all I had planned for today, so let's end the meeting early so that Kyon has plenty of time to do his important things. Mikuru, wipe down the board."

"Y-yes!" she said, catching the eraser Haruhi tossed at her. Don't ask me why Haruhi didn't wipe it down herself, seeing as she was standing right beside it.

"After that, you're bringing me and Yuki back to your place. We've got some redecorating to do."

Um. If anyone's place needs redecorating, isn't it Nagato's? ...Wait a second, I've actually never been to Miss Asahina's. Is it possible that her place is even barer than Nagato's apartment?

Speaking of whom... "Um, Haruhi? Nagato went to the Computer Society today."

"Oh, yeah?" She gave a thoughtful nod. "I kinda had a feeling we were a person short today." Oblivious to everyone but yourself, as usual. "Well, that's fine. I've been wanting to get a first-hand look at what Yuki does there anyway. We can all head to Mikuru's when she's done."

That meant I wouldn't be able to ask Miss Asahina about the letter until later. Oh well, Koizumi's organization still seemed the most likely ones to be behind this, and the most likely ones to dig up helpful clues if someone else were behind it.

Koizumi and I discretely separated when we left the school, of course. Less than a minute after we parted ways, I heard a voice behind me call my name.

My real name. Not Kyon.

That was unusual enough to make me turn my head. But the guy approaching me was someone I'd never seen before. He was short, with a haircut that probably looked very proper and militant when it wasn't wet with snow and tossed by the icy breeze. He was wearing a red scarf and glasses with tiny rectangular lenses. And a school blazer, but I couldn't place the school, though I was sure I'd seen the uniform around.

"I want to talk to you," he said as he got close. "About Haruhi Suzumiya."

I grimaced. "Pass," I said, and returned to my normal stride.

He kept pace with me, despite his shorter legs. "You should be taking this situation more seriously," he remonstrated.

"I am," I said, though I wasn't sure which situation he was talking about. "I just don't take you seriously."

"Maybe that's because you don't know who I am."

"I can take a guess. Time traveler, esper, maybe alien. It doesn't make a difference."

"You really flap your mouth like that about those things? What if I were, instead, a government agent investigating the paranormal?"

I didn't dignify that with reply.

"All right, so I'm an esper. But I'm not from the same organization as Itsuki Koizumi."

I kept my eyes forward. "Still not impressed."

"You don't have to be impressed." His voice was turning to a strained whine. "But you should be interested. Are you telling me that you simply trust whatever information Itsuki Koizumi feeds to you? You just got a love letter from Haruhi Suzumiya, and she told you that someone else forged it. Koizumi probably told you that she really did write it, didn't he?"

"What if he did? I know she didn't write it. What Koizumi says doesn't matter."

"Heh. So you're not a total fool." I risked a side glance at him. He was wiping the winter fog from his glasses. "But with your proximity to Miss Suzumiya, you really need information from a source you can trust."

"You're asking me to trust you? You haven't even introduced yourself."

"Goro Mishima." He held out a hand. I didn't take it. "And of course I'm not asking you to trust me, not yet. But like I said, you need information from a source more trustworthy than Itsuki Koizumi."

"I've got other sources." I buried my face in my scarf against the damn biting cold.

"Who? The upperclassman whose body and personality were obviously engineered with future technology to seduce you? The alien whose standards of communication are so different from ours that what she thinks of as love may be what we think of as hate?"

This was trying my patience. "If the point of this conversation is to bring me one step closer to trusting you, you're doing a pretty miserable job."

"The truth is harsh sometimes. But actually, we've gotten away from the point. Right now, I just want you to question what Koizumi has told you. Do you know what espers are capable of?"

"Sure. You can enter Haruhi's closed space and destroy the big blue giants who are trashing the place."

"Very good. What else?"

"What do you mean, what else? That's it."

"Hmmph. Is that what Koizumi told you?"

I whipped my head towards him. He was staring thoughtfully, almost sadly, at the air in front of him.

"Well," he said. "Maybe you should think about whether or not he's hiding something from you there. You need to be careful. If you make the wrong move with something like this letter, Miss Suzumiya could put an end to the world. You haven't done anything that would make her think you either return or reject the feelings expressed in that letter?"

"I already told you."

"Good. Then the forgery has done no damage."

This guy had my attention now. "You know for a fact the letter is a forgery? Who forged it?"

"I thought you said you couldn't trust me?" Mishima smiled. "Now you're saying that if I just tell you that Koizumi and his organization forged that letter, you'll believe me?"

I grabbed him by the scarf. "Who forged the letter?!"

"You'd better let me go," he said in a low voice. "I don't want to cause a scene, but if my friends think you're going to hurt me, they will make a move. Besides, no matter how much you threaten me, my answer is the same. Koizumi and his organization are behind this, whether you want to believe it or not."

"What I want to believe doesn't matter. Koizumi isn't stupid enough to have done something like that." But I let him go.

"You're right; he's not stupid. But do you really know what his goals are?" He shrugged and walked away. "Well, that's all for today. I'll let you do your own digging, find out for yourself just how much of what your 'friends' in the SOS Brigade tell you is the truth. Next time you see me, I think you'll be ready to hear some real answers."

I stood there and just watched him go for a minute.

What was that? This rival esper just comes up to me, tells me Haruhi's letter is a forgery, but acts like a classic villain type. Is he trying to use reverse psychology on me to make me think Haruhi really did write the letter? Did he write it himself, and that's how he knows about it? Or is he genuinely scared of what I'll do with Haruhi if I think that the letter is real?

This is all way too confusing. Why can't this be like one of Koizumi's mystery games, where all the possible suspects are laid right out for you? For all I know, the culprit is someone I haven't even met yet.

I turned and headed home. When I got there, I found a limo waiting. Koizumi was inside.

We headed up to my room. My sister voiced some curiosity about Koizumi's presence, but I got her to give us some privacy by promising to play the homeless bum the next time her friend Miyokichi came over to do their make-believe horror TV series.

Once the door was securely closed, I asked Koizumi, "What did you find out?"

He sat on my bed and clasped his hands together. "I hope you really weren't expecting me to find out too much in just a few hours. My associates have checked up on the usual suspects and found nothing to link them to this. The investigation is ongoing; however, it is highly unlikely that anyone with access to esper knowledge of Miss Suzumiya's state of mind would attempt something like this. It risks upsetting our young goddess, and to what purpose?"

I folded my arms. "Maybe to fix me up with her."

He smiled. "Why would anyone want to do that?"

"I'm not in the mood for games. You're the one who's always trying to convince me to tell Haruhi 'I love you.'"

"We went over this yesterday, did we not?"

"Yeah, but a guy named Mishima just gave me some fresh food for thought."

Koizumi's eyes widened with alarm. "Goro Mishima? He approached you?"

"Yeah. He said I should think twice about whether what's happened to Haruhi because of this fake letter isn't exactly what you want. What's the deal with him, anyway?"

His eyes and mouth both narrowed into grim lines. "He is an esper working for an organization that wishes to exploit Miss Suzumiya's powers for their own ends. Worse, he's a backup agent, assigned to a different school from Miss Suzumiya in an effort to keep his nature secret from other agencies. Logically, he must have orders to transfer to North High if something happens to his organization's point man, and remain inconspicuous otherwise. If he approached you, that suggests a rogue faction has split off from his organization. That makes him very dangerous."

"You think he might try to harm Miss Asahina?"

"I don't mean dangerous in that way. Whatever his goal, he wouldn't benefit by hurting those close to Miss Suzumiya. But without knowing his goal, there's no way of knowing what he's up to. You shouldn't trust anything he says."

"I don't. But he has a point. Why should I trust the guy who's been telling me to confess love for Haruhi all along?"

"Perhaps you might consider that I only suggested you say that because I knew you wouldn't do it. Maybe I even knew that suggesting it would make you all the more resistant to the idea."

"You're trying to confuse me."

"On the contrary," he sat his hands on my bed and leaned back, looking at the ceiling, "...as always, I want to make it clear to you that you cannot trust any of us. Even supposing our relationships with you are genuine, we cannot put you over the fate of the world, or our own stake in the power Miss Suzumiya represents. That said, you need not trust me to believe me when I say that no one in the agency, save perhaps myself, would want you and Miss Suzumiya to start up a serious relationship."

Presumably by "serious relationship" he meant something more serious than last November's boyfriend/girlfriend experiment. "Don't want to lose your jobs, I take it."

"Precisely the opposite. Think for a moment. When have Miss Suzumiya's powers been at their most active?"

I put a hand to my chin. "Well, obviously when we were filming our movie was the big anime convention of Haruhi using her powers. After we had that fight and I made up with her, it was like we were filming the apocalypse..." I lowered my hand. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

"Exactly." He gave a pleased nod. "Miss Suzumiya's powers are clearly stoked far more vigorously by positive emotions than by negative ones. We had no way of knowing this before you came along, since during her middle school years she never had any positive emotions strong enough to trigger her power. Most of us believed that finding the right boyfriend for her would make her more manageable. After what happened during the filming of the movie, however, it was almost unanimously decided that the safest course of action is to keep you close by Miss Suzumiya's side while preventing your relationship from becoming intimate. After all, if you simply making up with her makes her powers run amok, imagine what a confession of love would do."

"So I'm like a tumor on the heart. Dangerous, but you can't remove me without killing the patient."

"That is a fairly insightful analogy, but please don't think you do only harm. Incidents of closed space have dropped dramatically since you entered Miss Suzumiya's life. And most of my associates recognize that whenever a serious problem does occur with Miss Suzumiya, you are the only one who can solve it."

I shook my head. "I don't really care whether your associates think I'm good or bad for the world. The point is, there's no chance that any of them would forge a letter like this?"

"I find it hard to imagine. But, may I remind you that you still haven't shown me the letter?"

"Oh, right."

I dug it out of the desk drawer where I'd hidden it and handed it to Koizumi. He held it delicately, as though examining a piece of evidence, and read it with no emotions betrayed on his face.

After a minute he said, "Well, this almost completely rules out the possibility that someone in the agency could have written this."

"What do you mean?"

"The letter references your secret outing with Miss Asahina. I made no mention of that incident in any of my reports, and if there were unauthorized surveillance on the SOS Brigade during that time, I'd expect it to have been uncovered by now."

"And you wouldn't have done it yourself, because you know Haruhi and I better than that," I sighed.

"There is one possibility. The time travelers and extraterrestrials undoubtedly have surveillance methods which we cannot detect with our own primitive technology. A rogue agent might have learned about it from one of them."

But in that case, why not suspect one of the time travelers or extraterrestrials who knew about it to begin with? Damn, now Koizumi's got me thinking like him.

"We can certainly agree on one thing," he said, still studying the letter. "Takuma, or indeed any ordinary human at North High, could not have done this. It's too good a forgery, and too versed on details that no one outside of the SOS Brigade is supposed to know."

"So maybe we need to start thinking about the SOS Brigade's enemies, like the ones who kidnapped Miss Asahina, or whoever attacked us at the snowy mansion."

"I assure you, we have already begun exploring those lines. However, it will take a considerable amount of time for us to get results. In the meantime, would you do me a favor?"

I regarded him with suspicion. "What is it?"

"Give some consideration to the possibility that Miss Suzumiya really did write this letter."

See, this is why you should never agree to do someone a favor before they've told you what it is. "No deal. She told me she didn't write it, and that's the end of it."

"She may have gotten cold feet. The letter itself says -"

"How would you feel if someone faked a love letter from you and not even your closest friends would believe you when you said you didn't write it?" I snapped.

He put the letter aside. "I'm not asking you to tell her your doubts to her face. Indeed, I would strongly advise against that. All I'm asking is that you remain attentive for any indication that Miss Suzumiya wrote the letter."

"Veto. I don't play your games."

Okay, to be honest, it was floating around in the back of my head that there was a slight chance, a very slight chance, that Haruhi might have actually written the letter under the influence of a sugar overdose or something. But that was all the more reason not to think about it. If I had written a love letter to Haruhi, put it in her shoe locker, and then belatedly recovered my sanity, I'd want her to believe me when I said I didn't write it, more than anything. No, even that is an understatement. Her not believing me would be on the same level as if I were drowning and she refused to let me onto the lifeboat.

And I had a hunch that Haruhi felt the same way. I had to believe her when she said she didn't write that letter. To not believe her would be outright cruel.

"Anyway, we have other things to deal with," I said, hoping to cut him off from arguing further. "We need to get our White Day plans firmed up."

"Ah, yes. But I believe we're actually on top of things as far as that goes." He took some papers out of his bag with a proud smile. "I've finished the script. Once the girls identify the thief, they can search his rented apartment for their White Day chocolates. If I may venture to boast -"

"Scrap it."

Koizumi looked struck to the heart. "What?"

"Or save it for another occasion. Haruhi isn't going to be impressed by yet another mystery game. We need something new."

"This is awful sudden, isn't it? You've known that I've been working on this for the past few weeks."

"You saw her today, didn't you?" I scrounged around for a notebook and pencil. "She's in a terrible mood. I can tell she's blaming that fake love letter on me. A disappointing White Day might be the straw that breaks the camel's back. If you want me to keep on cooperating with you and your agency, we've got to fix this." I started writing. "You're part of an ultra top secret organization, aren't you? It should be easy for us to come up with a spy mission for the girls."

Koizumi sighed. "Membership in the agency is my duty and birthright, as an esper. It's not my favorite pastime."

"Are you going to complain, or are you going to help?"

We managed to make some pretty good progress on the White Day scheme before Nagato arrived. I even contributed some ideas myself, though I'm not good at that sort of thing.

With Nagato on the scene, I became a sort of third wheel. She and Koizumi immediately started discussing methods of tracing the love letter's author, and while I'm sure they meant for me to benefit from knowing their plans (or at least, Nagato did), once they got into discussing the wave patterns created by the introduction of unfamiliar entity data into the domain of my shoe locker I lost track of where the conversation was going and even what the topic was.

Miss Asahina never showed. I hadn't gotten to inviting her, and I guess Nagato must have showed her usual initiative – in other words, no one told her to say anything to Miss Asahina, so she didn't. Thinking it over, though, it was probably best she didn't know the details about the letter. Koizumi really seemed to believe Haruhi might have written it, so Miss Asahina might believe that, too. I'd rather prove it was a hoax first, and avoid damaging any chance I might have of dating Miss Asahina.

I loaned Koizumi the letter so he could check it for fingerprints and other traces, and we all said goodnight.

The next morning I walked into classroom 1-5 to see Haruhi looking... If I didn't know better, I'd say troubled. She was staring very fixedly, very thoughtfully at my empty desk, while holding a pencil in her right fist and pulling it back and forth with her left hand.

"Hey," I said, taking my seat. "What's with you? Did the redecorating not go well?"

"It went fine." Her eyes narrowed at me in disapproval. "Didn't I tell you very clearly that I didn't write that letter to you?"

"Huh? Yeah, you did, and I believe you."

"Then what was this doing in my shoe locker yesterday afternoon?"

She shoved a sheet of paper in my face. I read the writing on it, with increasing horror:

Hey, Haruhi. I feel really stupid for writing this, but I don't know what else to do. Obviously I can't say any of this to your face.

You're right about my feelings, though I wish you didn't gloat about it. It almost makes writing this pointless.

But – I'm glad you told me. There have definitely been times, like, oh, when you broke up with me, when I thought you didn't return my feelings. For a while I even thought that you couldn't fall in love, with anyone. I'm telling you straight up, you're not the easiest person to get along with, much less be in love with. But you've been getting better, and you telling me how you feel helps a lot. Even if you backed out on it at the last minute, and tried to blame it on Takuma. How dumb do you think I am, anyway, to believe he could have written something like that? I know your words when I read them.

Anyway, it doesn't matter, because I'd rather keep this secret anyway. For now, I mean. I'm not ready for that sort of relationship and apparently you aren't either. Besides, people will misunderstand. They'll think we're like one of those idiotic couples you see on TV, all blindly lovey-dovey to the exclusion of everything else, or denying their feelings for each other in a way that brain-dead viewers think is cute, no matter how bad it is for their mental well-being. We're better than that.

I know you usually don't care what I want, but one of these days I'm going to ask you out on a date, and until then, I'd rather we didn't talk about any of this to each other's faces. If you do, I'll just deny that I wrote this. Then we'll be even.

But write me back if you want. And that White Day signal you want to see – you'll see it.

I guess this isn't a very romantic letter. That makes me less afraid to put it in your locker. I just had to let you know. You turned my grey boring life into a big adventure, and you understand things about me that no one else ever has, and I had to let you know.

- Kyon