Author's notes: The basic concept for this novel has been in my head for quite a long time. So long, in fact, that I've forgotten what my original premise for the new reality was and had to come up with a new one (I did take plot notes, but they were not sufficient to help me recall that part). While I was going to hold off on writing it anyway since it clearly works best as a post-The Surprise fic, after a year or so I started to worry that the plot for this one was never going to come together and I would have to discard it. Then shortly after I posted the last chapter of "The Ceremony" I started to think of how a certain character could be involved in the other reality, and from there the ideas started to flow into me. I think the trigger was a line from "The Social Gathering of Haruhi Suzumiya" (check it out anyway; it's a great fic).

Cesar Hernandez provided the cover art (the best he's done for me yet, in my opinion).

The characters and milieu of this fan fiction work are property of Nagaru Tanigawa, Kyoto Animation, and Funimation, except for Haruta, Inokuchi, Yamamoto, Nozawa, and Goro Mishima.

Just a Ghost from Another World

- Chapter 1: Our So-Called Leader Speaks -

"They deserve it, anyway."

This was Haruhi Suzumiya's latest no-preface, context-free declaration. She announced it to the back of my head as soon as I took my seat, seemingly assuming I could read her mind and know exactly what she was talking about.

The scary part was, at least the second half of that assumption was correct.

Despite that (actually, all the more because of that), I refused to play along. I sat at my desk in silence, staring into the space in front of me. When Haruhi was ready to start the conversation in a normal, intelligible fashion, I would be ready to respond.

Silence reigned. There was plenty of chatter from the other students, including some scattered comments on what had happened to Haruta, Inokuchi, Yamamoto, and Nozawa, but neither Haruhi nor myself said a word.

I glanced back. Haruhi was resting her head on her wrist, looking out the window. The expression on her face was almost totally neutral, with a just barely noticeable shard of disquiet.

So, apparently I'd misread her. Her comment hadn't been directed at me at all; she was just thinking out loud again. Although, she never seemed to do that at SOS Brigade meetings, or anywhere else where someone other than me might be listening. I alone was subjected to hearing every random thought that popped into Haruhi's head and passed out of her mouth uncensored.

"Okay," I said to her. "But why worry about it to begin with? It's just a few ingrown toenails."

She snapped her head towards me. "It's four ingrown toenails on four guys who hang out with each other. Don't you think that's too convenient to not be something supernatural?"

"Not really," I lied, crossing my fingers that Haruhi might have forgotten about our Seven Wonders project, even though it had been just a few months. "I mean, do we even know they really have them? They haven't been showing their bare feet to everyone, have they?"

"It wouldn't surprise me if they had," she returned. "The four of them are nothing but disgusting animals."

I couldn't disagree with that. Last year the four of them had shaved Nagato's head, manhandled Miss Asahina, and hit Tsuruya in the face with a shoe, forcing her to go home early with a bleeding lip. And those are just the highlights of the transgressions I know about. In fact, I'm willing to stake everything I've got that they would have continued such assaults if Haruhi weren't holding a video of some of their misdoings as blackmail.

"Besides, you only need proof for dubious claims! Why would they make something like that up?"

That's a stupid question. I refuse to answer it directly. "From what I heard, it wasn't them who have been telling that story. A girlfriend of one of them or something like that has been spreading the rumor." As much as it disturbs me that any of them might have a girlfriend, this was not a lie.

"Well, of course they aren't bragging about it. What difference does it make? If she's his girlfriend, she wouldn't make something like that up, either. There's a more logical explanation!"

If there is, I'm not going to hear it from you.

"The four of them snuck into the school at night and walked on that staircase with the extra step!"

I guess crossing my fingers was a waste of time. Even Haruhi's forgetfulness was inconsistent.

You see, back in May Koizumi, Nagato, Miss Asahina, and myself – with help from some research compiled by the Mystery Club – devised the Seven Wonders of North High. We made them as innocuous as possible, so we weren't too worried about whether or not Haruhi's powers would make them real. Perhaps unwisely, after a while we also stopped worrying about whether the "Eighth Wonder", which Haruhi had insisted on coming up with on her own, would ever materialize. Now we had confirmation that Haruhi's powers had realized at least one of our Seven Wonders, which said that at night a staircase gets an extra step and whoever walked on it would get an ingrown toenail.

"I guess convincing you that that's just a myth would be out of the question," I sighed. "But why do you feel guilty about it?"

Her pupils dilated to twice their usual size. "Huh? How'd you know?"

I struggled over that one for a moment. "Um, well, you said they deserved it. It would be an odd comment to make if you didn't feel responsible." I hated that I had become this observant of Haruhi.

"Oh. Well, that's ten points for being a good listener, I guess. You still need to work on your initiative, though."

"Are you going to answer my question?"

"Oh, I don't know." This was clearly an answer to my original question, not the rhetorical one. She shrugged her shoulders. "Doesn't it just feel like, since we discovered those Eight Wonders, we somehow made them become real?"

That was frighteningly intuitive. "That's completely absurd. Are you also going to tell me that the Great Pyramid of Giza didn't exist until Herodotus wrote about it?"

"The atomic bomb didn't exist until Einstein discovered it," she retorted. Then her tone changed to be like the happy chirping of a mother bird. "Good reference, though. I see my history studying techniques are sinking in. You see how much better off you are with my help?" She turned her head away and her tone shifted for the second time in the space of less than ten seconds, this time to a sort of dull sourness. "Anyway, it's just a feeling I have. I didn't say it was logical."

Mr. Okabe walked in, and that sounded like the end of the matter anyway, so I turned to listen to him.

End of the matter, my foot. At that day's meeting of the SOS Brigade, Haruhi didn't even give me a chance to get one cup of Miss Asahina's tea before slapping her palm across the dry erase board and announcing, "Tonight, the SOS Brigade is launching a dead of night investigation!"

I wearily raised a hand. "Is there any serious purpose to this investigation? It's a school night, and some of us need to sleep."

"I believe what Kyon is trying to say," Koizumi cut in before Haruhi could deliver a reply that would be undoubtedly devoid of any sympathy, "...is perhaps this investigation would be better conducted on Friday night." This was Wednesday, if you want to know.

"Agh, don't you two know anything about mystery solving? You have to start the investigation as soon as possible, before the evidence decays, the culprits have time to cover their tracks, and the trail goes cold! I thought you would have learned a thing or two about detective work by now."

Ouch. That insult was as meaningless as rainfall against a sky window in my case, but as for Koizumi, even if he maintained a neutral expression and continued shuffling the deck of cards, I couldn't help but feel sympathy for him. Mysteries were one of his passions, and he had worked his butt off crafting the SOS Brigade's mystery scenarios solely for Haruhi's benefit.

Of course, it was comforting to have some company in the thankless ranks. But it was for his defense as much as mine that I said: "Haruhi, is this about the ingrown toenails?"

"Of course! We have to confirm that the wonder is real, and we have to find out what Haruta, Inokuchi, Yamamoto, and Nozawa were doing in the school at night."

"Then don't you think the trail's already plenty cold? It takes days for a toenail to become ingrown, and even then, they probably didn't notice that all four of them had it until weeks or even months afterward. Then it was probably at least a few days until one of them mentioned it to his girlfriend, and then who knows how long until she let the secret out. They probably walked on that extra step before we even found out about the Seven Wonders of North High."

Haruhi's teeth were gritting by the end of my speech. "So what? We still have to try! How can you want to give up when we haven't even started yet?"

"I'm not saying we should give up. I'm just saying another two days isn't going to make a difference."

"Good." She reached over and very smartly took the deck of cards out of Koizumi's hand, as if she thought he had been shuffling them just for her. "You're still wrong, of course, but I'm glad you're not thinking of giving up."

A mule could take a few lessons in stubbornness from Haruhi.

"Um... Miss Suzumiya?" Miss Asahina, dressed in her maid outfit but not having presumed to serve tea during Haruhi's announcement, raised a hand to shoulder height. "I didn't sleep well last night, so it would be really nice if we could hold off until Friday... I just don't think I can..." She broke off for a long and wide but still adorable yawn. "...can handle staying up late tonight."

"That's fine," Haruhi said. "You can be excused. This mission doesn't require all five of us, anyway."

"Erm... but I want to come along on this one." She wrung her hands. "Even if I can't be very helpful, I... I don't want to miss my chance at seeing one of the Eight Wonders of North High."

"Oh, very well," Haruhi sighed, tapping the deck of cards on the table. "I guess we can do the nighttime investigation on Friday."

That was a relief. Besides not having to face walking that damned hill on four hours sleep tomorrow morning, we had two more days to figure out how to keep Haruhi from finding any evidence of the supernatural in those stairs. Miss Asahina, you have my gratitude.

"But we still have work to do today," Haruhi continued. "We need to split into groups and count the steps on every staircase in the school."

Oh boy, how exciting. "Dare I ask why?"

"How else are we going to tell which one has the extra step at night, idiot?"

Somehow, I hadn't expected Haruhi to think things out like that.

She held out the deck of cards. "Everyone take a card from the top of the deck. Those who draw the same suit go together."

I guess since we don't have toothpicks here, we can't just draw straws like usual. But wait, couldn't this method lead to us having lopsided groups?

Miss Asahina was already standing near Haruhi, so she drew first. She held up a heart.

Next, Haruhi held the deck out across the table to me and Koizumi. Koizumi, damn him, drew another heart. I crossed my fingers that I would get a heart too so that I could avert any cozy activities between him and Miss Asahina, but that technique failed me again. I got a spade.

Haruhi brought the deck to Nagato. She looked down at the deck, saying nothing. It occurred to me that she could easily manipulate the outcome of the draws without Haruhi being any the wiser, just by changing the information of the unseen cards. If only I'd known this was coming, I could have consulted with her ahead of time and told her what outcome to arrange, like I did during the adventure with the two Miss Asahinas. I wondered if she'd choose to be in my group.

After another moment of consideration, Nagato took a card, and held it up. A club. I honestly felt a little hurt.

That left Haruhi. She looked over the cards each of us had drawn, as though she were deciding for herself which group she'd go with. Scratch that; she probably was.

She pulled out... "Another heart?" she said. She looked back over the cards already drawn. "Hmm. That makes the groups much too lopsided."

Can I say, called it?

Haruhi shrugged. "Oh well, I'll just draw again."

Make Koizumi and Miss Asahina draw again too, Miss Change-the-rules-as-I-go-along. All three of you drew hearts.

This time she got a club. "Okay, Yuki, it's you and me." Then she thrust her finger at me. "Kyon, you'll be completely unsupervised. I'm trusting you to really count those steps carefully and not just make up numbers so you can be lazy! Don't you dare let me down, do you hear me?"

"I can handle counting a few steps, thanks for the vote of confidence." Ordinarily I wouldn't make a remark like that aloud, but what was with the sudden anger? She'd been less sharp than this when I got paired up with her personal toy Miss Asahina, back on the SOS Brigade's first citywide search.

Haruhi assigned each group an area of the school to cover, and we split up. I resisted the urge to glance in Koizumi and Miss Asahina's direction. By this time I had been forced to accept that, however attracted to our dear clubroom angel I might be, my selfish bastard of a heart – with total disregard for what my brain and my libido might want – wouldn't let me give myself to anyone other than Haruhi. And thinking over what another guy might do with a girl who I couldn't have anyway made about as much sense as sticking pins in a voodoo doll of myself.

I wasn't too familiar with the wing of the school I was assigned, but I found a set of stairs without too much trouble. Nagato or Koizumi could probably just glance at them and tell how many steps there were in an instant, but my head wasn't geared for that so I just walked down them one-by-one, counting as I went, and wrote down the number on a piece of notebook paper.

It stood to reason that every staircase in North High had the same number of steps, but not wanting to risk the wrath of Haruhi, I set off in search of the next one.

Then my phone rang.

I answered it with a sigh. "What is it now?"

"'What is it now?' Is that any way to greet an old friend?"

Surprise made my lungs miss a breath. "Oh, hi, Sasaki. Sorry, I was expecting someone else."

"I had a suspicion you were. Are you in the middle of something? Should I call back?"

"Please don't. I'm currently engaged in the most boring task since someone was paid to watch paint dry. What's up?" It had "only" been four months since we last spoke, and our previous reunions had all been either by chance or arranged due to the fate of the world being at stake. Sasaki simply calling me out of the blue was pretty rare, and while I was in a perfect mood to just listen to her ramble on, I highly doubted she was calling just to chat.

"Nothing new," she said. "It just occurred to me that I'd like you to meet someone. Do you remember when we spoke last? I had a question which I wanted to ask you, but I decided it was better to handle it myself."

I thought it over. "Nope, can't remember. Sorry."

"Don't be. Actually, I'm relieved that it didn't stick in your head at all. It means you weren't worrying about it. The last thing I wanted was for you to take it upon your shoulders as a burden. Anyway, I asked you about a guy who had confessed feelings for me. I made a decision about him, and we've been dating for a while now."

That was a surprise. Not that Sasaki had a boyfriend, but that she would tell me about it like this. ...Well, maybe her having a boyfriend was a little surprising. She always seemed to avoid getting romantically entangled with guys. Maybe she had changed more than I thought.

"Congratulations," I said. "He must be some guy."

"Well, he's not exactly run of the mill, but I don't think you should make too much of a deal about our relationship. We're taking things slow, which works for me, since I like to keep a level head in these things, but it could also mean that we'll never end up getting anywhere. Still, he is the reason I'm calling. I'd like to introduce you to him."

"Sure. I'd definitely be interested in meeting him."

"Great. Would this Friday work? If you like, you can bring a girl and we can make it a double date."

Why is it that suddenly everyone wants me for this Friday night? And a double date? Who would I bring with me, anyway? About the only girl who might be willing to go with me is Miss Asahina, and Haruhi would never let me borrow her for an occasion like this.

And then it hit me. This was more than just a meeting with an old friend and her boyfriend. This was a golden opportunity. A plan materialized in my head.

"I'm kind of busy Friday," I said, keeping my voice casual. "How about tomorrow? If you drop by my house around 4:00, we can hang out."

"That sounds fine. I would like to meet your girlfriend, though, if you have one."

"I can't say that I do."

"Oh, well. It would be more of a fair exchange if you did, you know." I wasn't sure what she meant by that. "I suppose it can't be helped."

"Hey, one other thing. It would be less awkward for me if this seemed like just a chance encounter instead of an arranged meeting. Could you not tell your boyfriend about this, and just make it so you and him are walking along the route I take home from school at around that time?"

"Boy, you're really into the cloak and dagger stuff, aren't you?" Her tone was faintly amused. "But I guess that's to be expected of someone who hangs out with Suzumiya. Anyway, I think I can manage that."

"Thanks."

"I'll see you tomorrow, then."

We rang off.

Phase one of my plan was a success. It was a plan so simple, so perfect, that I had honestly amazed myself. Tomorrow I would tell Haruhi I was having trouble with my studies. With the next step of the SOS Brigade's investigation not happening until Friday night, she would have nothing better to do than come over my house and crack the books with me. Sasaki would show up with her boyfriend, and we'd just happen to bump into them. Haruhi would then see first-hand that Sasaki has a boyfriend and that it's no big deal to me, and then she would finally stop this nonsense about thinking there was something between me and Sasaki.

Simple, and perfect.

Or so it seemed at the time. In fact, I had overlooked several key variables, one of which would make my meeting with Sasaki more disastrous than I could have possibly imagined.