The next week was somewhat interesting. Not due to the SOS Brigade meetings- they pretty much involved Suzumiya and occasionally Izumi interrogating Ayumu about her home planet. No, it was interesting because I was constantly looking around, trying to identify people that I could name off of the top of my head, people that I knew were from my universe. This, however, led to me looking incredibly paranoid, a condition noticed by my friend and constant harasser, Tamaguchi. He decided to confront me about it as we changed our shoes to go home one day. I think it was the 19th.

"You've been looking weirder and weirder lately, Kyon." He noticed. "I see you've seen looking at girls a lot- did Suzumiya finally let you out of her clutches?"

"I told you, I'm not in Suzumiya's clutches." I replied. "The setup's different to what you think anyway, Mr Rating System."

"Whatever you say, Kyon. You make it look like you're totally apathetic to the whole girl thing, but I saw you eyeing up Sakaki the other day, and don't get me started on that Madaraki girl you walk to school with every so often."

"Ugh, I can't even begin to tell you how wrong you are." I sighed. "Madaraki and I have been friends for quite some time. Ever since I started walking to school in the direction I do, anyway. And I happened to be walking with Sakaki, too. You're one of those people who thinks kissing gets a girl pregnant, aren't you?"

"All I can say is, it's somewhat of a drop in standards from Sakaki to Madaraki." Yamaguchi continued, totally disregarding everything I'd said. "Sakaki's an A+, whereas Madaraki comes in as a C. Sure she's cute, but she's got that eerie vibe about her, as if she's just risen from a grave or something. You're not a necro, are you Kyon?"

"Honestly, I don't see where you get all of these ideas about me and girls. Why you're measuring me against the same stick as a skirt-chaser like you, I don't know." I said, somewhat bitterly. I knew Tamaguchi wouldn't take offence.

"Well, we'll soon see, Kyon. Are you coming?" We had walked outside school, and I had paused to wait.

"I promised Fran I'd walk her part of the way home. She says she doesn't have her sister with her today." I said. Her sister had apparently broken her arm, and Fran had fixed her up with an operation.

"Oh, you're on first name terms with Madaraki, huh? I should've known. I'll go ahead then. See you later, Kyon."

"See you."

After Tamaguchi had left, I resumed my exercise of staring at students in crowds and naming them- probably not a good test of who was or wasn't from my universe, as I hardly interacted with anyone from the other years. I managed to name one or two- Haruhi Fujioka from 2nd year, as well as Jonouchi and Honda from the 3rd year- but others eluded me. In the end, I was only naming figures that had been talked about a lot recently, such as Mutou, the guy who constantly wore an Egyptian artefact around his neck, which was rumoured to give him otherworldly abilities. Kobayakawa also- the running back for the school's American Football team, rumoured to have almost demonic speed. Most names, however, simply passed me by, and I became more and more blurred about who was from my universe and who wasn't.

"Hey, Kyon~? I'm here, we can go now~" A dazed-sounding voice from beside me said. It was Fran.

"Oh, hey Fran. How did you find school today?" I asked, as we began to walk. Fran, like Sakaki, was one of the few people I actually tried to make conversation with, partly because she wouldn't speak first.

"It was busy...I had to change the pigment in someone's eyes for cosplay~, I had to convert someone's breast into a small holding pouch~, and Takino from your class booked her friend in for liposuction but she didn't have the money and I think she was joking...~"

"Wait, Fran...what about lessons?"

"Oh...~" Fran tilted her head to one side, in thought. "Well, lessons went kind of downhill after I was in biology...we were doing dissection, and I finished before everyone else, so I played around and made a Frog-Rat...~"

"I...I see." Fran liked to talk about her experiments. I figured that she was exaggerating most of the time, but I wasn't so sure. She liked to describe her projects in graphic detail, detail that often had me queasy by homeroom. I changed the subject a lot- love was a favourite of Fran's, so I usually mentioned couples I'd seen around school. When all else failed, I fell back on Urameshi and Yukimura, a couple rumoured to be steps away from dating, due to their "husband and wife" style squabbling. The only problem was that this made Fran even more enthusiastic, claiming she could think of a way to "help" them, should they wish it. From what she had told me, Fran's idea of helping wasn't exactly orthodox.

As much as I liked Fran as a friend, there was only so much of her I could take before I started feeling queasy. My current doubts about who was or wasn't from my universe only served to accelerate this queasiness. I felt bad about it, but I decided to take a different route home. Saying my goodbyes to Fran, I continued, reaching home only 5 minutes later than usual. I felt familiar with home, thank goodness. The universe collision must not have affected families- my sister was still my sister, as irritating as I sometimes found her. Still, home was a nice reprieve from my nagging existential doubts.

It was 2 hours later, at around 7, that I got the call from Koizumi telling me to go meet him, Miss Asahina, Nagato and Kujo at a park about 10 minutes from my house. As I had known when I picked the call up, it was another meeting about Suzumiya and Ayumu. Giving a flimsy excuse, I ducked out at 7:30 and reached the park at about 7:45. Judging by Koizumi's expression, it was bad news. He wasn't smiling.

"Glad you made it, Kyon." He managed a half-hearted greeting. I just told him to get down to business.

"Alright. I guess there's no time to mess around." He said. "I'll hand over to Nagato. She's the one who's experiencing all of this, anyway."

Nagato nodded slightly, then stepped forward.

"Universe collision has accelerated at an incredible rate. Around 10,000 universes have fused with Haruhi Suzumiya's original universe in the past week. The continents of North America and Europe have now been completely populated by beings from other universes. Further fusion may cause instability, leading to dimensional collapse."

I was shocked.

"C...collapse? But why? If it was alright a week ago, why not now?" I stuttered.

"It's the result of too many universes being fused with one universe. You'd think that the fusion would create a whole new universe, but instead it's more like other universes are attached to this one- the doppelganger of our original universe." Koizumi explained. "This causes the universe to become overburdened and unstable."

"And Suzumiya's doing this?" I asked.

"It's hard to tell. Given what we concluded about Ayumu, I think it's more likely that she's behind it. Then again, Suzumiya has no idea of what she's doing, so she's probably wishing for more and more interesting things, and Ayumu is knowingly allowing her to do so. Maybe Ayumu isn't collaborating with Suzumiya to create this universe, but she's enhancing Suzumiya's abilities. I think we can conclude one thing- Ayumu is an enemy."

"Of course, Ayumu might also be doing it because she wants more interesting things in the world." Kujo said. I'd forgotten he was there.

"That's another possibility, sure." Koizumi replied, nodding. "But nonetheless, it can only end in the destruction of the universe, and that's not a good thing."

Kujo nodded in agreement and we all confirmed that Ayumu had to be stopped...somehow. Nagato mentioned working on some sort of "program" to alter Ayumu's data makeup if things got to breaking point, and Kujo told us about "Star Platinum", his spiritual guardian that possessed super-strength. Of course, I didn't advocate punching out a meek, fragile-looking high school girl without an exceptionally good reason, so Kujo confirmed that he would only do it if things got desperate. We said we'd talk more about it the following day and went our separate ways.

Luckily, I got to walk home with Miss Asahina, who was terribly distressed about the whole situation and wished she could do more to help. I reassured her as best I could when taking her abilities into question, saying that if the universe did end, she could simply go back in time and reverse it. She then countered by saying that if the universe ended, there would be no past to go back to. On this depressing note, she apologised and thanked me for trying to cheer her up, and we departed. Although she was kind enough to thank me, it still sent me home with gloomier thoughts than I had come out with.