Kyon opened the door.
He closed it immediately after.
He spun on his heel and retreated deeper into the room. His body was stiff, not acting in accord with his feet – he poured all his energy into not registering what he had seen and had none left to unfreeze himself from the artificial pose.
Merely walking didn't occupy his mind enough and so he started counting backwards from forty-two. The number was random. He didn't believe it to be the answer to life, the universe and everything, or anything like that.
Did you know that the stroke number for forty and thirty-nine in Japanese is the same? The number of kanji is different, though.
Oh, and thirty-nine is three times thirteen.
He tripped over some chance piece of the junk they had accumulated over the year. He was against keeping all the stuff in the first place: they no longer played half the board games and he could only pray the filming equipment would never again see use. The stuff now sought vengeance.
He wouldn't let it have it its way.
His hand shot out and caught the edge of the table set up against the wall. His body tipped forward, but his leg freed itself just in time for him not to take down the table down with him and, in a single huge half-bow half-step, he regained his balance.
An unjustified look of smugness appeared on his face and he straightened with affected nonchalance, reaching for a cup of tea lying on the table and raising it to his lips.
His satisfied expression wavered as he realized he didn't really want to drink that. It had already grown cold. Not that it had been a good drink while warm – he couldn't find sugar and some of the blessed substance was badly needed to kill the unpleasant bitterness of the liquid. After all, it was merely something he had prepared himself. Had it been the charming Mikuru who made it…
What was left of his mask crumbled away.
His game of complete ignorance couldn't even buy him ten seconds. Now he was staring into the ugly face of reality once more. Because Mikuru wasn't there to make tea for anyone.
He set the cup down carelessly and turned again to march towards the door. The foreboding thing was only four short steps away. The hard part, a task bitterer than the most ineptly made tea, was opening it.
"Suzumiya Haruhi might be God."
His hand moved.
"If so, whatever lies ahead will be the realization of her dream."
He opened the door.
"But she might also not be God, as she abandoned this world once and it went on regardless. And I thought, if what she left behind was the true world, God's world, what was the place she escaped to?"
Finally, he stepped outside.
"Her own world. A place where all her wishes would come true, the ultimate haven. Having tasted it once, why didn't she ever form it anew? How could she resist the temptation? But, after the snow mountain incident, when I found my powers couldn't always reach her, I understood she had simply relocated it, her-"
He gave the room a farewell glance.
"-divine space."
The door to the SOS-dan clubroom began closing behind him. The room's interior was an abstract shape of color on the omnipresent black – as the door closed and the final crack of light vanished behind the barrier, the room disappeared. From his sight and from the world.
He scanned his surroundings.
"You may or may not take my hand and go there. The decision is yours, sa. There is only one thing I can guarantee you."
Blackness, like paint splashed over everything. But he wasn't covered in darkness. There was light, tremendous amounts of light coming from pulsating and swirling blobs of goo, there simply wasn't anything for them to illuminate.
"I have no idea what awaits you on the other side."
Back then, he had felt strangely reassured, as if the thought that, for once, he was not the only one being kept in the dark was something to rejoice about. Now he wasn't so sure about it.
He made a courageous step forward, doing his best not to think about the fact that the light was also coming from below his feet, which meant there was no actual ground to support him.
He didn't fall, somehow. So he made another step and then another.
Taking a stroll amidst nothing, with no goal in mind and no longer a place to return to, he feared looking at the blobs and hated staring into the never-ending chasm of darkness. He was growing sick. Scared. He would turn around but, what was behind him if not more darkness?
He noticed it because it was so normal.
Reflecting the light, so very near to him. He walked up to the thing and lifted it to his eyes.
A slip of paper. Small, as if someone had torn a single page into twenty parts. Burned around the edges, dirtied with mud and oddly disfigured. As if it had hugged the sole of someone's shoe to escape total annihilation.
Kyon stared at the surface of the paper intently. When nothing happened, he only intensified his glare. Things sometimes worked like that. They did, now.
"If you are reading this"
The words appeared on the slip of paper, barely legible as the black ink mixed with the mud on the paper. Kyon didn't dare try to remove the dirt lest he damage the paper further. The words looked as if they had been typed on a computer, but Kyon knew.
This was Yuki's handwriting.
"a number of conditions"
The words replaced the previous ones to form a message.
"have been met. Suzumiya"
"Haruhi, Tsuruya, the Canopy"
"Domain no longer exist. Also"
"you are surrounded by an"
"infinite field of unstructured"
"energy."
Kyon blinked in worry as the text disappeared for a second with nothing to replace it. But then more words appeared.
"You wonder what you can"
"do. But there is nothing you"
"can't do."
This was all.
Kyon held the note in trembling hands. This wasn't like Yuki at all. This was some very bad joke! This was-
Lazily, the invisible writing hand formed a final message.
"If all else fails"
"pray."
That last word would remain on the paper forever. Kyon looked at it, as hard as he could, as long as he could, and his eyes were watering. The paper had become painfully bright. And not because it shined its own light.
Kyon raised his head to see that the hungry, demanding orange blobs had crept closer to him and had him surrounded. They wanted him, he knew, somehow he knew.
So he prayed.
Epilogue
…They Bring Light to the Dawn of a New Day.
Kyon chocked on the hot tea. His grasp on the plastic cup faltered and it fell to the table, bouncing merrily once as it landed bottom edge down. The contents sprung out of the cup and went for their entirely unsuspecting victim.
"Ouch!"
That unfortunate soul, Taniguchi, jumped in his seat, hit his knees on the table, withdrew his burned hands, and yelled in pain and surprise, whatever it was he was talking about (that tenth volume never coming out?) immediately forgotten.
Kyon's eyes flew over his friend without really noticing him.
"Haruhi!"
The cafeteria fell silent and all eyes went to him.
He wasn't about to start explaining his behavior, though. He didn't understand it himself. Why he had screamed out that name. Why his feet carried him oh so fast, regardless of any obstacle they might meet, out of the room and toward – toward what?
He threw the door open and rushed through the corridor, passing startled students, classrooms and message boards and barely registering any of them.
And then he halted with all his strength, a wild double take that took all sense of balance away from him. The people around him distanced themselves in a belated reaction, seemingly subconsciously believing he would break into a run again and smash right into them. But all of his attention was already on something else.
Alleviated with curiosity, his panic miraculously disappeared. He walked up to the newspaper clipping on the wall which had caused him to pause, looking it over and over without comprehension.
Nature-loving student activist group to perform at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poznan.
So it announced, happily listing the names of the youths involved. Kyon didn't have to read that, though. There was a picture, and he recognized the faces in it easily enough.
In a simple black dress with a white flower motif to lighten it up and with a violin resting on her shoulder, Tachibana Kyouko. Always willing to play second fiddle to her friends in everyday life, but here the one leading, escaping, captivating the audience and running away with the show, forever the type to make small mistakes but spare no expense of effort to make up for them.
On the opposite end of the picture, Fujiwara. Hair slightly messy, shirt unbuttoned and hands wrapped lazily around his cello. Rugged, full of angst, mysterious and taciturn. All that made him a sex magnet for females. All qualities that made males hate him with a passion. He himself seemed not to care about either.
A step or two further away from the camera, Sasaki. Always the backbone. The backbone of the environmental movement. The backbone of their instrumental quartet. Dressed in a womanly suit, Sasaki would sit in the back and do her job and do it well. The viola – its presence undervalued until it falls silent, leaving a chasm within sound in its wake.
Finally, Suou. Kyon could barely tell her form apart from the dark background of the picture. She sat behind a piano, only the upper part of her body visible and even that lost in the cascade of her long hair and melting into the wall behind her – black on black concealed by black. Her dark eyes pierced the space before her, her back was stiff, demeanor as mechanical as it always was, even when she would start playing. Except then her self would disappear into the piano in a different way altogether, conveying what was hidden, invoking what was desired, holding and releasing, rising and descending, relentlessly, adamantly and irrepressibly. In the waterfall of sound, she seemed to vanish completely and nevertheless there was no time when she was more visible.
They could do miracles with music, he remembered…
No, he didn't.
He took a step back away from the wall, breath suddenly stuck in his throat. It was wrong. No, it wasn't right.
"Hmph. A lecture about carbon dioxide and bam! people want to hear them play. Classical, of all things."
Kyon's head turned to trail the dissatisfied voice back to its source, to the girl standing beside him with her arms crossed and a deep frown on her face, to Suzumiya Haruhi.
XXX
What right does he have to state a desire?
XXX
Nothing had ever pained Kyon more than seeing Haruhi just two steps away from him.
Holding his own happiness in hands too weak to support it, knowing it will fall and shatter.
""It's not like we aren't two times better – and they'll have no choice but to admit that at the next rehearsal."
Haruhi turned to him with that expression of hers – inviting protest merely for the purpose of beating it back. Her own version of seeking acceptance. One could say it was horribly flawed. Kyon would say it was Haruhi.
Out of habit, his own features twisted into a patented look of annoyed incredulity.
A joke of what he really felt.
"Sorry, Haruhi."
She could only blink in surprise as Kyon hurriedly walked away, as if there was something he had to do that could justify ignoring even her.
But no. He was simply running away.
XXX
Which one?
The one question he feared.
XXX
Kyon's next destination was more of a coincidence than anything else.
The third year students had already started preparing to leave the school grounds after their last PE class, some disappearing inside the changing room while others loitered around the playing field, either collecting balls and other equipment or just gossiping and walking to cool off.
Kyon spied Tsuruya in one such group of laughing girls. He raised a hand hoping to catch her attention. One of Tsuruya's friends did notice him and pointed in his direction. He couldn't hear what was being said, but, after breaking into a shared giggle, the group left Tsuruya behind for her to meet him.
"Hi," he didn't know what else to say.
"Hi there, Kyon-kun-n," Tsuruya greeted him merrily with a friendly smile on her face.
He didn't respond to that. He waited for her to say something. That this was an illusion. Or that Haruhi had created this world to better suit her whims. Or that they were in an alternate dimension. Anything that would tell him how real the people he had passed on the corridor truly were. How real the Haruhi he had met was.
Tsuruya kept silent, her gaze becoming quizzical as the silence between them stretched.
"What did you do?" he finally blurted out to her questioning face "Today? Yesterday?"
For a moment, Tsuruya's expression didn't change and it seemed she didn't know what was really asked of her. Then her eyes widened, cheeks reddened and lips formed a small pout.
"The rumors spread so quickly, nyoro?" she asked, turning her eyes away from him "I passed the ball to Mizuki-chan, sa, I was a bit distracted, but I didn't intend to break her nose."
Tsuruya didn't look back up.
"Is that so?"
Kyon's voice was like iron – powerless anger the blade and pained disappointment the cold.
"Be careful next time."
He spun on his toes and prepared to leave, not bothering with goodbyes. He ignored the hurt look Tsuruya gave him.
"Kyon-kun… I…"
But he wouldn't stop.
"I… didn't destroy the world, did I?"
Now he turned.
He didn't know what Tsuruya read from his expression. He just saw her curl up, tremble; he heard her nervous laugh.
"That wasn't a dream, nyoro?"
Everyone had left.
There were the two. There was his anger, her pain, his disappointment, her confusion, his stiffness, her trembling.
There was their fear.
Whoever the person before him was, Kyon understood she wouldn't be able to answer to his satisfaction.
"What did you do?"
He kept staring at her, as if to peer deep inside her soul and grasp what she herself held only a wisp of.
She took her time answering his question – collecting herself, collecting the pieces, collecting the pieces of who she saw herself to be and who she thought herself to be, trying to match them like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, frightened of the image they would form, if they would form one at all.
But after a minute of this, she allowed herself an accepting sigh, flashed Kyon an apologetic smile, straightened, looked up to the heavens and answered.
"I made myself a crown of thyme."
XXX
"The evolutionary path taken by data entities thus created did subsequently lead to the establishing of an Integrated Data Thought System. However, this system lacks independent cognitive ability and is only a means of maintaining a data network between fully autonomous agents such as myself."
This was the second thing Nagato had told him since he entered the clubroom. The first one hadn't been 'hello' either.
Unsurprisingly, he felt right at home.
"Time travel retains its status as a marginally accessible timeline manipulation method that has yet to be invented at this point in the timeline. Notably, the processes required for it now only support the travel of objects backwards in time. No personnel sent to travel in time possess the ability to return home after having made the journey. Only information registered in a time traveler's mind is collected and transmitted forward to the future by self-maintaining wave-webs."
Kyon wondered whether he should be happy with the obvious implications of this for Mikuru.
"The esper organizations have existed for centuries, searching for people with unusual talents and incorporating them into their ranks. Their main objective remains the protection of individuals they consider divine."
"Haruhi?"
"No data creation or other significantly outstanding process has been observed in regards to Suzumiya Haruhi."
"And the Canopy Domain?"
"Similarly to the Entity, the Canopy Domain does not exist on its own – it is believed that all of its probability manipulation potential became a subset of Suou Kuyou's consciousness. Contact has been made with Suou Kuyou herself. However, she is currently focused on mastering the manual ability of playing the piano and has not sought interaction with us."
That's some improvement, right?
"Who knows that there was a world before this one?"
"Conceivably, only you, me and Tsuruya are aware of any changes that occurred."
"Why's that?"
"Likely, your awareness was transported rather than recreated in the undetermined processes that led to the creation of this world."
"And you two?"
"The letter you recall could have been a batch of backup programs set to use up its energy reserves gradually depending on circumstances. One part of the program would then be personality data transmission. As the letter was heavily damaged, neither me nor Tsuruya possess perfect recollection of the previous world. Nevertheless, one thing is certain."
"That is?"
"Of the transferred personality data, every bit is a perfect match to the personality data currently in use. Despite all the differences, people's personalities have remained unchanged."
Having said the good news, Nagato rose and prepared to leave.
"Where are you going?"
The interface stopped just for a second to answer this question.
"To the airport. To welcome Asakura Ryoko back from Canada."
XXX
He didn't come back home until late.
It wasn't that he had errands to run or anything. He hadn't met with Mikuru or Itsuki yet, but he didn't really feel the need to confront them immediately. They were the same old people, Nagato had assured him, except that in this world they didn't know he knew about them and their real missions. Either way, he didn't have the fuel left in him for more reintroductions.
Haruhi had called, and some dozen times at that. It convinced him to turn his cell phone off. How he would answer any of her questions was entirely beyond him.
Or maybe he would say he felt unwell that day, which was most certainly the truth, and keep silent about the rest of his troubles. This Haruhi had no idea who she had been or who she could be.
"Tadaima," I'm home. He said this while entering his house, half out of habit and half with full awareness of what he was doing – attempting to tame the strange place and make it his again.
Nobody answered him. Somehow, he knew his parents were spending the afternoon at their neighbor's. this knowledge was raw, with no memory of how he acquired it connected to it.
He took off his shoes and entered with a sigh.
He had passed the day wandering in circles and even now the idea of busying himself with more productive activities seemed somehow preposterous. He thought about sleeping, but the calm of his bed would merely foster his doubts and misgivings.
Finally, he decided on having a snack. Nothing occupies the mind like the intake of food does. He would drop off his bag in his room first, though. Skipping half of his classes was enough disrespect for his duties for one day.
He reached the staircase to the upper floor with all those thoughts swirling in his mind and looked absently upward while making the first step up.
The top seemed distant.
Distant like nothing else.
Kyon lurched forward. It was not an immediate blackout. The headache worsened gradually, it was simply too sudden for him to have time to move elsewhere or cry for help. He could only grab his throbbing head, lie on the stairs and fall into the darkness.
XXX
Kyon entered the Hive.
He held his eyes closed. He simply knew opening them would enforce a lie upon him, like a man with bound feet falling over as he tries to run against all odds. No, there was no need for sight at all. He was experiencing the world fully even without it: the colored clusters around him, the buzzing and humming, the sweet scent, the warmth and the delicate hand holding his own. They were all in his mind, undiluted by his senses. To open one's eyes, to spitefully demand proof for what was real enough, would be both foolish and a crime.
Instead, he listened in to the flow of sounds encircling him. He let himself be carried by what he did and did not understand. The melody came and went, flashing a vibrant hue there to be drowned out by a morose shade elsewhere, sending ripples through his consciousness, growing more and more detailed, or was it merely him understanding it ever deeper? Already, this requiem for everything lost revealed itself to him as a debate, creation rising from chaos.
And then, when he was about to grasp its meaning, the song fell silent, abandoning him.
Single voices picked up where the choir had left off, delivering what seemed to be a single line of incomprehensible buzzing each before growing quiet.
"What makes it different from us?"
The human voice of whoever was holding his hand translated for his benefit.
"Abandon it!"
"The last semblance of meaning?!"
"If it was flawed?!"
The words themselves sounded intimidating, but his companion repeated them with an air of calmness and soothing confidence. At least, Kyon knew he was not alone.
And to his surprise, the moment the last of the buzzing comments died down, his new friend spoke up.
"What if it doesn't stop at all?" for the first time, he felt the texture of this voice. He found it to be like honey: thick, teasing, golden within, where it enslaved luminescence, and silver on its edge, where reflected light painted the boundaries of each falling droplet, its scent permeating air, taking it as its own demesne "If we were to leave it in his hands? He is one in this world. Doesn't that make him the God of this world?"
His mind froze in surprise.
The hues disappeared.
Then they exploded anew, noticing him for the first time, examining and assessing him. It was a tangible and distressing pressure bearing down upon him. He wanted release from their judgment, to escape, to open his eyes even if it would mean losing this world forever.
The hand grasping his gave him a reassuring squeeze. The colors retreated and regrouped. A second of uneasy silence and another low hum.
"What right does he have to state a desire?"
Kyon's companion repeated the question for his sake before launching into a retort.
"And what else do we have left to rely on?"
Kyon didn't understand it, but the counter-question seemed to give the voices pause.
"What is your desire?"
The voices addressed Kyon directly. Now he understood every word. Impulsively, he wanted to respond with the first thought that came to mind. The logical part of his mind held him back, gave him time to question the hasty decision. But at the same time, he knew the resistance was meaningless. There was only one thing he wanted to do – fix the mess they had allowed to happen. And there was only one way of going about it right.
"I want Haruhi to be happy."
Invitation for a storm.
"No such girl exists."
He wouldn't wonder what could be, because there was nothing that couldn't be.
"This, to decide everything?"
What else even counted?
"When you know not what the desire entails?"
As if one man's selfishness could ever be preferable to another's happiness.
"Which one?"
The one question he feared.
If, despite all his efforts, the new Haruhi were to be created to his liking, her qualities forming a shadow of her former self, it would be nothing but his ultimate loss.
But if this was his greatest fear, then it was a small one. How could he hesitate now, with a reliable guardian by his side and the faith of Tsuruya, Nagato and Haruhi behind him?
"Suzumiya Haruhi. The one whose existence now lets me say her name."
Like studio lights after a shooting ends, all the colors suddenly disappeared.
"That were two wishes, you know," a whisper directly into his ear "To have a happy world and to have it feel like the old one," and then the voice transformed into one with a trickster's edge to it "What would your third wish be, then?"
There, at arm's reach, recognition, but-
He stopped feeling the world. The subtle sensations died out, overwhelmed by the sense of a chasm pulling him into its depths. The warm hand released its grasp on him and he flew back.
He gasped. His eyes snapped open.
A face framed in golden and brown.
But he had opened his eyes.
XXX
The wood of the staircase had dug unpleasantly deep into his forehead and the resulting red mark would take some time to disappear. Kyon guessed some repercussions were in order for choosing that specific napping place.
Or maybe it was just a trade-off for regaining that last invaluable memory.
He picked himself up, lifted the dropped bag and laughed.
The quiet sound carried well.
He went up the stairs enjoying the feeling of the vile headache leaving him be. Had Tsuruya remembered as violently as he had? Destroying the world. Saving the world. Both were good enough reasons for being a bit shaken. Their sweet burdens. But the truth offered more freedom than it did chains.
He noted the room to his room was halfway open and quickly guessed the cause behind that. He could have been careless in the morning and left it that way, of course, but there was an even more likely version of events.
He entered the room to see his sister hunched over their, now greatly distressed, cat.
While both noticed him, their reactions were nothing alike. The girl froze in embarrassed surprise; the feline bolted with all the speed it could muster, slipping between Kyon's legs and into the corridor. Kyon's eyes trailed after the retreating pet with full sympathy for its predicament.
He approached his younger sister with a soft sigh and an affected look of displeasure on his face. The young girl let out a nervous laugh and took half a step back as her brother reached out a hand toward her.
Kyon rested his hand on her head and ruffled her hair affectionately.
She looked up at him in surprise. The glittering light of the dying day fell on her wide eyes and caught her delicate features in its golden rays.
"It's fine if you don't answer."
He let his hand fall to his side and slowly smiled at her. She only blinked, not understanding what he meant, but a return smile found its way to her lips.
Kyon took a step back.
"It's fine if you don't know."
That divine smile a divine lie?
He fell to his knees.
The birds sang deliciously to say goodbye to the setting sun.
"Who are you?"
Ten Hundred Thousand Suns Rising to Hail You
END
AN:
Thank you.
Thank you to Theos Amneos, Mercedes no Inuarai, BrazeRancor, Aphotic Bandit and everyone else who showed support throughout the making of this story.
Thank you to my shadow readers. It's your last chance to comment on this, now ;).
This is the end, but ends are merely new beginnings, right?
Until we meet again.
~ Cytrus