- Chapter 11: Search through the Darkness -

I'll admit, I was frozen with indecision. I had said so many times that Haruhi should be allowed to know that she lives in a world of aliens, espers, and time travelers, and maybe even sliders. But now that the actual moment of truth had arrived, I felt a deep anxiety. Even though I didn't feel anxious at all when I myself told her about aliens, espers, and time travelers that day in the cafe. Maybe I knew all along that she wouldn't believe me. I mean, I guess I did know; Nagato told me beforehand. Maybe I only told her then because I wanted a clear conscience. I didn't want to be deliberately keeping it all secret from Haruhi.

Anyway, Haruhi seemed to believe it now. Seeing is believing, after all. And suddenly I wasn't sure I wanted her to learn the truth. At least, not like this. Not at this moment, either. Her powers were already at peak performance; a push like this could turn the whole world into chaos.

But the fear inside me was battling with... I hate to admit this... excitement. The sparkle in Haruhi's eyes at that moment seemed to illuminate every wonder and every adventure that lay within the infinite expanse of space and time. I felt a certainty that wherever Miss Asahina was, even if she had been taken halfway across the galaxy, we could find her with Haruhi in command. And we'd have a fun time looking.

Besides, what lie could I produce to cover this up? Right before Haruhi's eyes, disembodied lights had floated around, summoned Miss Asahina, and made her completely vanish. It might not be aliens, but every other possible explanation was at least as absurd. An unexpected summons from Miss Asahina's time-traveling superiors? An esper named Goro Mishima utilizing technology purloined from some top-secret agency? Beings from an alternate dimension hoping to lure Haruhi over to their world? I couldn't dismiss the paranormal nature of what we'd all just witnessed. So why not just embrace the insanity, accept that my world was never going to be remotely the same, and let Haruhi take us over the border between the mundane and the supernatural on the SOS Brigade's craziest adventure yet?

Then Koizumi stepped in front of us. "Indeed, Miss Asahina has seemingly been abducted by aliens," he said, holding out his hands. "The questions we are now faced with: What kind of aliens have taken her? For what purpose? And how can we secure her safe return?"

For a moment we all stared at him.

Does... Does he seriously think that will work?

"Koizumi!" Haruhi squealed with delight. "You did all this? So you did prepare a mystery scenario after all!"

Good grief. She won't take anything I say to her seriously, but she believes Koizumi when he tells her that a whole adventure in a mansion was a mirage and Miss Asahina vanishing before our eyes with a bunch of otherworldly lights was just a high school roleplaying scenario. I'll never understand Haruhi's mind.

"Of course," Koizumi smiled. "I felt it would be best if I surprised you."

"Well, you certainly did!" she said, leaping forward to hug him. "You've really earned the title of deputy chief today!"

Watching Haruhi's kimono-clad body embracing Koizumi, for some reason I found myself fantasizing that a prehistoric monster would rise up from the lake, stretch out its long neck towards us, and swallow Koizumi in one gulp.

"Yeah!" Tsuruya piped in. "Way to go, Koizumi! You had us all fooled!"

That seemed to ease the alarm the others were showing. "So the abduction was just a charade?" Yanami asked Nagato, who silently nodded.

"Man, you guys put on some weird shit," Taniguchi remarked, shaking his head. "Somebody should have warned the rest of us about this ahead of time."

"Yeah, Koizumi," Ishigaki said. "I don't like those kinds of surprises. I was really scared for a moment there."

"Hey, I'd have protected you."

I couldn't believe it. Everyone was really buying this? Tsuruya probably knew better and was just following Koizumi's lead, but Taniguchi, Yanami, and Ishigaki had no idea that the SOS Brigade wanted to keep Haruhi from noticing certain things, and probably wouldn't have cared if they did know. There was no reason for them to go along with this unless they honestly believed that Koizumi, who was an ordinary high school student as far as they knew, could pull off an illusion like that.

"Okay, let's review the clues!" Haruhi shouted like she was sending a team of cartoon heroes on a mission. "First, there were those lights. Were they projected by the aliens, or were they the aliens themselves?"

"Hey, yeah!" Tsuruya's face lit up. "Everyone talks about carbon-based life forms and silicon-based life forms, but why couldn't there be photon-based life forms?"

"Right. They could also be carbon-based but too small to be seen by the naked eye. Ordinarily, to design technology advanced enough to let them visit other planets, you'd need a large brain mass. But theoretically, shrinking technology could safely make a being with a brain the size of a beach ball so small they could stand on the head of a pin."

"You sure come up with some wild ideas, Haru-nyan. It could totally be true, though. The only problem is, then we have no explanation for the light. D'you think maybe they need light that bright to see when they're that size?"

"Possibly, but we have other clues to consider. What about the summons Mikuru heard?"

While the two nerd detectives discussed the mystery, Koizumi took the rest of us aside. "While I am glad that my little alien abduction scenario is keeping our expedition leader occupied, we do have a problem here," he told us. "Chisuga is missing. I tried calling his phone earlier, but it seems he left it in the tent. Does anyone have any idea where he could be?"

For a moment, everyone was silent. Then Taniguchi, scratching the back of his head, said, "Now that I think about it, I did see him drop his dinner and run off, saying he'd spotted a friend of his and yours. That was a while ago, though."

"I see. How long a while?"

"Man, why are you asking me? You were there with us! Were you just not paying attention, or what?"

"Great," Ishigaki said, clutching her arms as though she were cold. "So you put on a show where one of us goes missing, and meanwhile, another one of us has gone missing for real."

"Look, we agree that he was having dinner with us, right?" I volunteered. "If that's so, he couldn't have been gone more than an hour."

"True," Koizumi said. "That being the case, search parties are likely to be productive. Chisuga seems to have taken one of the flashlights with him, but I believe we can persuade Miss Suzumiya to allow us the use of the remaining two. She and Miss Tsuruya can remain by the campfire and discuss the alien abduction scenario."

Chisuga being missing really seemed an inconsequential matter to me compared to Miss Asahina having outright vanished. (In fact, it seemed an inconsequential matter compared to the fact that Koizumi now knew what it felt like to be embraced by Haruhi in a kimono while I could only wonder.) The guy had probably just gotten a little lost and would wander back in time. Even if he were in actual trouble, I had little doubt that Mr. muscles all over, "moss always grows on such-and-such side of a tree", climbs trees for the fun of it could find his way out of it without our help. However, there was no reason why we couldn't search for Miss Asahina and Chisuga at the same time, and it did occur to me that this might even be Koizumi's way of organizing a search for Miss Asahina without letting anyone else realize she really had been abducted.

"Ehh," Ishigaki said, grimacing. "It's a good idea, but I don't think Suzumiya will go for the part where you leave her sitting by the campfire. She'll want to be part of the search for Chisuga, too. Why shouldn't she be, anyway?"

Because then she might find Miss Asahina and the aliens who abducted her. Heck, knowing Haruhi's powers of intuition, she probably would.

"While Miss Suzumiya generally has a calm, clear head," Koizumi said, taking his words so slowly that I could practically hear him constructing the lie, "...the SOS Brigade has had a missing person incident once before, and on that occasion she became unreasonably agitated. I fear she will only become more agitated if the missing person is an invited guest, rather than an SOS Brigade member, who theoretically has accepted the risks of searching for the paranormal."

"Really." Ishigaki sounded nonplussed, but credulous. "I would have thought she'd be the first person to keep a level head in a crisis." She put her hands on her hips. "Well, if we aren't going to tell her Chisuga is missing and we're looking for him, what are we going to tell her?"

"I believe the samurai swords you discovered provide an ideal excuse. We'll tell her we want to get one last look at them before we report them to the authorities in the morning."

I shook my head. "That won't fly. She'll wonder why we don't just do that in the morning. Why don't we tell her that now the aliens have abducted all of us, so she and Tsuruya have to solve the mystery on their own?"

"Hey, that's not bad," Ishigaki remarked. "Having just the two of them isolated makes the situation much more dramatic. She'll like that."

"Ha, leave it to Kyon to think like Suzumiya," Taniguchi threw in.

Koizumi's face twitched, but he said, "Very well. I see no reason why that wouldn't work. As for the search parties, let's have Kyon, Taniguchi, and myself in one group, and Miss Nagato, Miss Ishigaki, and Mister Yanami in the other group."

"What?" Taniguchi exclaimed. "You're going to leave the two girls and the shrimp in a group by themselves, with no one to protect them?"

Koizumi smiled. "Miss Ishigaki is quite capable to taking care of herself."

"Who are you to make that decision, anyway?"

"Deputy chief of the SOS Brigade," he answered. "Of course, if you have any objection to my decision, we can say that Miss Tsuruya has been abducted instead of you, and leave you alone with Miss Suzumiya."

Taniguchi growled, but voiced no more objections. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ishigaki looking at him and putting a hand to her mouth to conceal a giggle.

I guess, while I generally couldn't understand why she would be attracted to a guy like Taniguchi, I could see why he made her laugh. He was a pretty laughable guy.

While Koizumi delivered our excuse to Haruhi, I took Nagato aside. "Do you know where Miss Asahina is?"

"No."

Dammit. "You know who or what took her, though, right?"

"No."

I paused. "Okay, I guess I'm asking you to make deductions, and you don't like to make deductions because you like to stick with the hard facts, right?" Damn it, don't just look at me like that, Nagato. Give me some sign if I'm on the right track or just fumbling in the dark. "Okay, here's a better question. Were the lights we saw aliens, or something created by aliens? Or were they created by humans?"

"Unknown."

I had to fight the urge to do a face palm. "How can you not even know if they were real aliens or just a cheap trick?"

"I did not have sufficient time to observe."

"Can you at least tell me if Goro Mishima was responsible?"

She shook her head.

"I'll tell you who I believe to be responsible," Koizumi said. "You."

I wasn't in the mood to puzzle out Koizumi's cryptic statements. "What do you mean, me?"

"Is it not a fairly obvious hypothesis? I warned you beforehand not to seek out Miss Suzumiya for another of your private chats. You disregarded my warning. I don't know what you said to her, but she is now in a euphoric enough state for her power to summon up visiting extraterrestrials."

"I can think up at least ten problems with that 'obvious hypothesis'. Starting with, Haruhi would never wish for Miss Asahina to be abducted."

"Why not, when she can then use her power to enable us to find our lost time traveler? Besides, now that you have chosen Miss Suzumiya over Miss Asahina, she may have decided that Miss Asahina has served her purpose."

Haruhi having accepted the proposal that she and Miss Tsuruya were the only ones to escape alien abduction with good enthusiasm, we had split into Koizumi's two recommended groups once out of her eyesight. Our group had undertaken the task of circling the lake, while Ishigaki led her group farther afield. Taniguchi hung back from me and Koizumi, grumbling about not being allowed to go with Ishigaki, no doubt. Koizumi held the flashlight, to my personal misfortune. I was now feeling sicker than ever of the clubbing of branches and poking of twigs.

Not as sick as I was of Koizumi's insinuations, though. "Miss Asahina serves far more 'purpose', even to Haruhi, than you can possibly appreciate," I returned. "Anyway, second problem: As it happens, I didn't say anything to Haruhi. We were just chatting."

"Perhaps that is what you believe. However, I have noticed your knack for inspiring Miss Suzumiya with what you see as a mere off-hand remark."

"Fine, then I'll just stop talking to her altogether. Maybe ask if I can switch to a different desk in my class, and just stay the hell away from her in general. That's your solution, right?"

"Heh." Koizumi was still for a moment as he inspected the path ahead. "I suppose I have been unfair to you during this trip concerning your interactions with Miss Suzumiya. For as long as I've known you, your instincts with regard to her have consistently steered you well. You have made the occasional misstep, but you have enriched her life and improved her philosophy of dealing with other people far better than I, or any of those assigned to observe her, have ever managed." He bowed his head to me. "I apologize for my meddling. I have been under a strain."

Even with Koizumi's phony manner of speaking, it was impossible to deny the sincerity of the apology. I mumbled something about how he should forget it.

"Nevertheless," he said. "I don't think you should discount the possibility that Miss Suzumiya's power crafted Miss Asahina's abduction. Regardless of the cause, her use of power has been quite dramatic on this trip."

I had to agree with him on that last point. "If that's the case, how do we get Miss Asahina back?"

"Miss Suzumiya's creations have a logic to them." He ducked a branch. "For instance, the laser proceeding from Miss Asahina's eye during the filming of our movie was directed according to where she looked. Therefore, I am hopeful that the behavior of Miss Suzumiya's alien abductors will follow the usual pattern of capturing a human for study, then returning her when they are done with the examination. This would also explain why Mr. Chisuga is missing; the aliens would want both male and female specimens."

The idea of Miss Asahina being poked and prodded with otherworldly implements by grotesque creatures was not pleasing to me, to say the least. "Can't we rescue them first? Apart from everything else, you could be wrong, or they might not have been real aliens at all."

"If they were not real aliens, then this ground search is the best method available with our meager resources. I have alerted my comrades of the situation, but they will not be able to mobilize upon this location for a few hours. In truth, our best hope is Miss Nagato. She has scanning capabilities far beyond those of mere humans like ourselves, and I trust her to do everything in her power to find our lost comrades."

I wasn't so sure of that. Nagato always swore her service specifically to the protection of Haruhi and me, no one else. We'd told her to find Miss Asahina, and I believed she would obey us, but I couldn't be certain she would try her absolute hardest.

"I'm not saying I agree with Taniguchi," I said. "But was it really a good idea to leave her alone with just Ishigaki and Yanami?"

"Miss Ishigaki is quite capable of providing Miss Nagato with the same human guidance we give her. Miss Nagato, in turn, can defend her human companions from any threat."

"Hey," Taniguchi called ahead to us. "Which of you is making that annoying groaning noise?"

We both stopped. "I didn't hear any groaning," I said.

"Nor I." Koizumi held a hand up for quiet. "Perhaps we were too caught up in our conversation. I'm beginning to notice it now."

It was funny how simply paying attention could help you notice things. There was a sound like a bear growling in its sleep.

I looked around, but without control of my own flashlight, there wasn't much I could see. Koizumi headed roughly in the direction the sound had come from and waved the beam from his flashlight around in steady strokes, like it was a laser clearing away the brush. Eventually the beam fell upon a faintly moving figure.

"Chisuga!"

The three of us together rushed towards Chisuga's prone body. Koizumi gave him a firm slap on the shoulder. "Chisuga, wake up! What's happened?"

Giving a louder groan, Chisuga stirred and sat up, rubbing the back of his head. "Ah... Hello. I suppose I fell asleep for a bit."

I arched a brow. "In the middle of the woods?"

"Mmm. Let me think... Yes, I saw someone I knew, ran after him, and got lost. I was wandering about for so long, I felt a need to lie down and rest my limbs a minute. Then, I suppose my drowsiness must have got the better of me."

"Man, you are weird," Taniguchi said. "You just plopped down in the middle of this? You've got a thorn branch stuck in your butt, man!"

"Hmm. So I do." He reached behind himself and pulled it off.

"I mean, what are you, made of rock? And why didn't you bring your phone with you? Could have saved us all some time."

That gave me a thought. Miss Asahina surely had her phone with her when she was abducted. It was a long shot, but... I brought her up in my contacts and called.

It went straight to voicemail. Not having anything better to do, I waited for the beep. "Um, hi, Miss Asahina. This is Kyon. I guess you've been abducted, so... give me a call back when you get a chance. We're all worried about -"

Everyone had now turned to stare at me.

"Um. Talk to you later." I hung up, and wished, just a little, that the ground would open and swallow me up.

"Shouldn't you be calling Ishigaki and the others?" Taniguchi said, still looking at me like Chisuga suddenly didn't seem like the weirdest person in this group.

"What do you mean?"

"We found the person we're looking for, you numbskull! Call the other group so we can go back to camp, wipe the sap off our clothes, and roast marshmallows or something!"

"Oh, right." I'd forgotten for a moment that so far as Taniguchi knew, we didn't have anyone we needed to find apart from Chisuga. I popped up Ishigaki in my contacts and called.

"Hey, wait a second." Taniguchi peered at my phone screen with suspicion. "Why do you have Ishigaki's phone number?"

I didn't answer, focusing on the call. "...It's not ringing."

"Unsurprising," Koizumi said, taking out his phone. "The service out here is quite spotty. I'll try Miss Nagato."

For a moment I wondered why I hadn't tried Nagato myself, instead of Ishigaki. I guess the trouble was that, though I understood Nagato better than anyone else, she still didn't seem to realize that when you don't say anything during a phone call, people can't tell if you're there, much less whether you're nodding or shaking your head. I didn't know Ishigaki as well as Nagato, and I wasn't ready to say she matched the gold standard Nagato had set for reliability, but she was definitely better at giving a straight answer.

Koizumi put his phone away again. "No luck, I'm afraid. We'll have to walk over to the area they were searching."

"Aw, man," Taniguchi groaned. "Hiking through the woods in the dark is the worst. I've got like a thousand twigs and pebbles in my shoes. And these rashes are not helping."

"Hmm," Chisuga mused. "There's really no need for all of us to go, since we have two flashlights. In fact, it's better that at least one of us head back to camp. If I'm hearing you all correctly, everyone is out searching for me. The site shouldn't be unattended."

Koizumi nodded. "I'll take Taniguchi back to camp. Miss Suzumiya will no doubt have settled on a solution to my 'mystery scenario' by now, so I should check in with her. Kyon, you are welcome to come with us."

I shook my head. "I'd better stick with Chisuga and make sure he doesn't fall asleep again." Besides, I was a little worried about Nagato. And it didn't seem right to leave Chisuga on his own after we'd just found him.

"As you wish."

I updated Chisuga on the situation as we walked, leaving out the part that Miss Asahina had really been abducted, of course. I still didn't know whether this guy was just Koizumi's friend of a member of the Agency. I guess I could just ask him outright, but that would garner me some queer looks if he wasn't with the Agency, so thanks but no thanks. People thought I was weird enough just for being in the SOS Brigade.

So, I just told him the official story. A member of Koizumi's Agency would have to question that story, since the Agency knew there were real aliens and rival espers.

"I see," Chisuga said. "I wonder why Koizumi didn't inform me about this alien abduction scenario ahead of time. I might have helped him."

"Don't ask me." I guess this meant he wasn't with the Agency. Or he was, but he didn't trust me with his secret, which didn't seem likely. Even Sono Mori hadn't kept that much hidden from me.

Chisuga dashed through the woods like a hound on the scent, making it hard for me to keep up with him. For a guy who had just woken up from an impromptu nap, he really seemed sure of where to go. I guess he was the true outdoorsman of our group, but you'd think the darkness would trip even him up. Instead, he always shone his flashlight in just the right spot to guide him.

We heard a scream.

Chisuga's flashlight found the source in an instant. A girl was darting away from us. I knew who it had to be.

"Ishigaki!" I lunged towards her, pushing my legs to the limit. I just managed to grab her arm before she could get away from us. "Ishigaki, calm down!"

"Kyon!" She stared at me wide-eyed for an instant, then buried her face against my shirt, sobbing with relief. "Oh... Kyon... I didn't realize... This is just so crazy, I don't understand it! I don't understand it all!"

Honestly, it was a relief to see that Ishigaki was alright. But there was another person I was more concerned about. "Ishigaki, where are Nagato and Yanami?"

"Oh..." She had knotted a piece of my shirt into her fist, and now she began to tug on it. "Oh no... I left them! I just left them!"

"Left them where?" I demanded.

"I'm sorry... I was just so scared, I didn't think, and I just left them..."

My patience ran out. I took firm hold of her arms, pulled her off of me, and handed her over to Chisuga. "Take care of her." I dashed off into the darkness, wielding only my cell phone for light.

I don't know for sure why I didn't try calling Nagato and Yanami. I was so worried about her that I wasn't really thinking, but maybe I figured that if the SOS Brigade's decorated super-alien was in actual trouble, then it wouldn't be a good idea to call the attention of whatever menace she was facing.

For that matter, it wasn't a good idea to run off alone to confront that menace at all. But like I said, I was too worried to think straight.

I came up the side of a hill that the elements had eaten away at. It wasn't as overgrown with vegetation as the rest of the area, and I figured it was as good a path to follow as any other. Near the top, I flashed my cell phone's light into the shadow of the crevasse eaten into the hill. It seems to glint off something, so I leaned closer. There I saw them.

Nagato and Yanami. Kissing.

Actually, I think he was kissing, while she was just sitting there. I couldn't make out much detail with just my cell phone's light, but he was definitely leaning into her, one arm around her shoulders, while she was in a neutral seated position, hands in her lap, holding a book open. I guess none of that really means that the kiss was one-way, but that's the impression I got. I was also relieved that, though their lips were touching, neither of their mouths were open so far as I could tell.

Not that any of that was enough to turn off the burner under my boiling rage. I'd been right about that slimy toad all along.

But. Maybe it was enough to allow me to fight down the urge to jump out and give Yanami a bloody nose. Haruhi's surprisingly convincing argument to trust Nagato to take care of herself aside, if Yanami had dared to stick his tongue into Nagato's mouth, I doubt any force in Heaven or Earth could have saved him. As it was, I was willing to give Haruhi's way of doing things a chance.

After a few painful seconds, Yanami pulled away and looked into Nagato's eyes. With the darkness, there was no way for me to make out what was in either of their eyes, but Yanami suddenly hid his face from her and burst out, "Aaah! I'm sorry! I-I-I don't know why I did that!" He started babbling and blubbering. "It's just, we're lost, and I'm a little scared, and I thought you might be really scared, and, and, and you just looked so beautiful... I'm really sorry! It won't -"

"Tetsuya Yanami," she said, her voice inscrutable and quiet, but firm, and impossible to ignore.

"Y-yes?"

She had been facing straight forward, just as if Yanami weren't there, but now she turned to face him. Damn it, I wish it were light so that I could read the look in her eyes. "I like you," she said. "Your presence decreases the level of chaos in my emotions. However, I have not yet experienced stimulation corresponding to contemporary definitions for love."

"I know, I know, of course you wouldn't, a girl like you could do so much better than me," he lamented.

"That is not the issue. My present interest is only in the feeling of love. The quality of the target male is irrelevant. My lack of romantic stimulation is a shortcoming of my emotional matrix or my emotional configuration. I had hoped for better from myself."

"Don't say that... You, you're perfect."

"I am not." She said this with such firmness as to suggest that she was as far from perfect as one could get. "This failed attempt at a romantic encounter has made you uncomfortable. I apologize for that. Also, while it is possible that my feelings with regard to love may evolve in the future, logically, we should abandon further attempts at romantic interaction between ourselves. Therefore, I ask that we resume our relationship as friends."

Ouch.

Yanami slowly took his arms away from his face, looked at Nagato, and said what I am fairly confident no other male in the history of humankind has said in response to the "Let's just be friends" speech: "R-really? You mean it? We can still be friends?"

"If that is your wish."

"Th-thank you so much!" he stammered out, bowing to her. "I... I won't deny that I have felt some attraction to you, Miss Nagato, but your friendship alone has meant so much to me! I can't tell you how relieved I am that you forgive my momentary lapse!"

Oh, come on. I might believe that you'd rather be friends with Nagato than have no relationship with her at all, but you are laying it on way too thick.

"If I might ask more of your graciousness," He got to his feet and bowed to her again. "Could you please not mention my momentary lapse to anyone else? Especially not to the Society Prez, Miss Suzumiya, or Kyon? I fear they could be less understanding of my intentions than you have been."

Alright, now you're showing your true face.

"If they ask, I cannot lie to Miss Suzumiya or her chosen one, even for your sake. However, if they do not ask, I will not tell them."

"That is all I have any right to ask of you." He bowed again. "And, Miss Nagato? Please, don't think less of yourself for not having romantic feelings for me. I've known you long enough to tell that you are a warm person, however it might seem to others. I know that when a boy who is worthy of you comes along, you will feel those feelings you think yourself incapable of."

Nagato seemed to have no reply to that, and I figured since I'd already allowed her to tell him off like Haruhi said, there was no reason for me to stay in hiding anymore. I stepped forward, shining my cell phone light before me. "Nagato? Yanami?" I said, as though I'd just found them. "Are you guys alright?"

"Y-yeah, fine!" Yanami sounded a little nervous at my arrival, but not afraid. "Ishigaki got freaked out by something and ran, and we couldn't keep up with her so we were just waiting for her to come back to us. It's hard to find your way around with just a cell phone light."

Heh. That wouldn't have been a problem for Nagato, but of course she couldn't let him suspect that she's a super-powerful alien.

...Wait a second. How could I have possibly managed to sneak up on a super-alien? Shouldn't Nagato have been able to detect the information or whatever and realize I was spying on her and Yanami?

Even as that thought ran through my head, though, I had more immediate concerns. "What freaked Ishigaki out?" I asked.

Yanami shrugged. "Maybe something crawled up her pant leg."

That wouldn't explain Ishigaki's state when I saw her. Still, Yanami didn't seem to be lying, and I couldn't think of a reason why he would, anyway. Nagato was just giving me a blank look. But how they could have missed whatever spooked her so badly when they were right with her?

"Come on," I said. "Ishigaki and Chisuga are both waiting for us this way."

As we walked back towards Ishigaki and Chisuga, I couldn't help but feel a little... for lack of a better word... proud of Nagato. She had handled Yanami with dignity, more than most girls would have managed in the same situation. I might have to tell her to be more careful about the "Let's just be friends" thing, but Yanami seemed to be taking it pretty well, so maybe she just knew him better than I did.

For a moment I felt afraid that I might not be able to find my way back, but then I spotted Chisuga's flashlight glinting in the night. We headed over to meet them.

Ishigaki looked a lot calmer than she was when I left them – surprisingly so, in fact. "I'm sorry, guys," she said, blushing faintly. "I shouldn't have abandoned you like that – or fell to pieces like that all over you, Kyon. It's just, I'm so on edge, when I felt something crawling up my leg, I just lost it."

Pretty good guess there, Yanami. But what does she mean by "on edge"? Does she actually realize that Miss Asahina's abduction was real?

"I appreciate the concern," Chisuga said. "But you can't allow yourself to become so unnerved just because someone has gone missing. I simply got lost."

"It's not just that," she said, and shivered. "I... When Koizumi mentioned using the swords we found as an excuse, I got a bit worried about them. Not anything concrete, it's just, they're priceless artifacts, and with Chisuga being completely missing, I started to worry about something happening to them. So I figured, since we're looking for him in this area anyway, I might as well stop by the cave and check up on them. And when I went in, I saw..."

She swallowed, and I saw a deep fear welling in her eyes.

"One of the two swords... is gone."