Author's notes: As expected, I'm going to have to take another break after this chapter. My inspiration has been absolutely on fire for the past three weeks, but thanks to a combination of chapters 9 and 10 being longer than usual, lots of real world interference (all good things, I hasten to add), and most significantly, the usual difficulties of finding time to write between working a full-time job and preparing three meals a day, my lead has actually further declined, such that I only last night finished writing chapter 10. I really like to have at least a three-chapter lead; it gives me more distance when I'm proofreading, it allows me to maintain a regular posting schedule during busy periods, and when I make a spur-of-the-moment decision to have a gun go off, it gives me more opportunity to put that gun on a mantelpiece in an earlier chapter.

So, I hope you all enjoy this chapter, and I'll see you back here on March 23, by which time I will hopefully have rebuilt my rebuilt my three-chapter lead with room to spare. Otherwise, I'll have to consider dropping to a monthly schedule. (I've done that before, and I loathe it.) Thank you all for the continued reviews, and glad to have you aboard, A Drifter!

- Chapter 8: Time-folding -

"A very good choice, sir. Will you be paying with credit card?"

"Yeah, and paying off the bill over the next decade. Here you go." I slid the card across the glass display to the salesman and signed the payment agreement.

The transaction went smoothly. Even so, I found myself crackling with impatience, tapping my foot in anticipation of the moment when I could snatch up my purchase and leave.

You have to understand, I had been working towards this moment for a long time. I knew that Haruhi would never settle for an ordinary piece of rock. If she were going to even consider wearing a ring that marked her as promised to a man, she would want something that would also show that that man would climb mountains and scour the depths of the oceans for her, like some tireless mythological hero. On my salary, I could never afford that, so I subjected myself to working a second job as a driver three nights a week. It was humiliating and took away what semblance of free time I had, but there was no point in going half-measures on this.

After all those weeks slaving away towards the one moment where I would finally pop the question, I was in no mood to wait any longer.

The salesman returned my card, I snatched up the box containing the ring, and I was out of there. My heart was stupidly pounding with excitement as I dashed out into the cold air. I had it. I finally had it.

I opened the box to take a peek and make sure it was really there.

As soon as I did, I was slammed with a heavier buyer's remorse than a man with a hundred bars of fool's gold. My back hit the wall of the storefront as I slumped, staring at the ring.

This? This is what I toiled all those weeks and signed away all my earnings for the foreseeable future for? This insignificant little pebble set in a cheap circular sliver? Haruhi would laugh if I showed her this. "Is this supposed to be a joke? You honestly thought I would accept a low-end ring like this? I'm not some cheap tart; I'm Haruhi Suzumiya! If I'm going to let myself be tied down, I'm at least going to be treated in style. I'm not going to marry the first pauper who goes down on one knee."

...Okay, maybe that's laying it on a bit thick. Haruhi doesn't need to see an engagement ring to have a rough idea of how much money I make. Besides, money of itself doesn't mean that much to her. Any husband of hers would be expected to work his fingers to the bone for her sake and the sake of any children they might have, but if she honestly loved the guy, she wouldn't reject him just because of the size of his bank account.

That's the real problem here. There's an "if".

I ignored the cardinal rule of marriage proposals. You don't ask someone to marry you unless you're reasonably sure the answer is going to be "yes". I'm not even 50% sure. Haruhi and I have been dating for over five years now, but every time I try to get more serious about the relationship, she pulls away and shuts down. I don't pretend to understand her reasons, but my chances of rejection are high enough to make any sane man hesitate.

Even so... I have to take that chance. I can't just let things continue the way they have been. Haruhi might be perfectly happy living day to day, but I need more than that. I need to know that any time things get rough, I'll hear her resolute voice berating me not to give up. I need to know that whenever I wake up in the morning, the first thing I see will be her beautiful face. (Yes, even if she's yelling at me to get out of bed.) Most of all, I need to know that she won't one day get bored of me and drop me like a TV series which has started repeating the plotlines of previous episodes.

I don't want this to end. I don't want Haruhi to ever not be a part of my life.

And I need her to accept my feelings for her. I know I can't expect her to ever treat me fairly or even lighten my load, but I need her to stop taking me for granted, to realize that I don't obey her orders because I'm inferior to her or intimidated by her, but because I trust her and I want to see her dreams become reality.

I have to ask her. If she says no, I won't have really lost anything, since you can't lose something you never had, and at least then I'll know where I stand. And if she says yes, I'll -

"Wakey-wakey! Morning time for sleepy-deepy Kyon!"

I didn't even have time to recognize my sister's voice before I was yanked out of bed left leg first. I was fairly accustomed to this treatment, but there was a variable at work here: the bedroom I was sleeping in had a hardwood floor. The result: Instead of grunting at the impact and clutching my covers more tightly around me in an effort to grab a last 15 minutes of sleep, I yelled out at the hammer-blow to my nerves, just barely held back a word whose utterance in the presence of my little sister would surely dishonor my ancestors going back seventeen or more generations, and immediately sat up, eyes wide awake.

"What was that for!" I demanded. "It's Saturday, remember?"

"Ooops!" she giggled, lightly bonking herself on the head.

That should have made me even madder at her, but instead it made it so that I couldn't stay mad. Which is not to say that I was amused by any stretch of the imagination.

Her facial expression smoothly transitioned to serious. "Today's our hiking trip, remember? Miss Suzumiya says we need to get an early start. Hurry up and get dressed, or you'll miss breakfast!"

She marched off, humming a happy tune, without waiting for a response from me. I sighed and started to get dressed, reflecting the while on my latest vision. Or was this one just a vivid dream? I was asleep. Either way, it was mortifying, to say the least. Marrying Haruhi? What the hell was my dream self thinking?

I'll admit, there was a certain appeal to waking up to Haruhi's face each and every morning. And I have to take into account the benefits of merged bank accounts – no more of Haruhi's damn penalties. Plus, getting to enjoy her cooking on a regular basis would -

Damnit, I'm getting off track. The point is that marrying Haruhi would be way too drastic a change in our relationship. And it would throw my entire life into chaos, like picking up a dollhouse and shaking it.

I really need to find out what the deal with these visions is.

I thought of calling Koizumi to ask, but as soon as I picked up my phone I saw a text from Miss Asahina, saying simply "Call me."

Only an idiot would wait to fulfill that request. I got an answer in three rings.

"K-Kyon? Is, um, i-is anything strange happening with you and Miss Suzumiya?"

She sounded pretty agitated. I guess I should have anticipated that she wouldn't be texting me in the middle of the night because she knew I was missing the melodious sound of her voice.

"No," I answered, keeping it cool. "Things have been going pretty great, in fact. Haruhi seems like she's already coming out of the mood she was in."

"Oh, that's nice. It's just... Well, um, my superiors tell me that these folds in time have been popping up."

"Folds in time?"

"Umm. Maybe it's better if you think of them as wrinkles."

No, thank you. I read that book as a kid, so that will just get confusing.

"Anyway, basically what it means is... You remember when I told you how I'm like an extra slide shuffled into the slide show of your present?"

I remembered.

"Well, in crude terms, this is like a large scale version of that. Instead of just an individual person, entire chunks of reality are being shifted into this time from the future. We haven't been able to get a positive fix on what is shifting these chunks or the geographic location where they're being shifted to, but, um..."

"When there's trouble, Haruhi is usually the source," I finished for her.

She made an affirmative hum.

I was getting a bad feeling about this. There was no more sense in protecting Miss Asahina from the bad news. Not when it could be connected to her problem. "Well, there is one strange thing that's been going on. I've been having these visions of future events lately, both when I'm awake and when I'm asleep, and I'm pretty sure Haruhi experienced at least two of these visions at the same time I did."

"Th-that's it!" Her sudden volume was enough to make me flinch away from my phone. "Kyon, that's exactly the sort of thing someone would expect to experience inside a time fold!"

"Are you sure?" I pressed. "When we were having one of the visions we were on a train with my sister and Yui Ishigaki and a bunch of other people, but nobody but me and Haruhi seemed to even notice what was happening. Doesn't that mean it was all inside our heads?"

"Well... Most people don't experience a time fold when it shows up at their location. You see, a time fold isn't a chunk of matter; it's an occurrence. A piece of the future is temporarily folded into your present, and everyone who is going to take part in that future event lives through it just as if it were happening right now. But when you finish living through that fold, passing out the other end, you're back in the present as if nothing happened. Because physically, you haven't gone anywhere. Oh, I know I'm not explaining this very well..."

"Just keep going." This was giving me a headache, but that was preferable to not knowing what we were dealing with.

"I guess it's sort of like a virtual reality game. Oh wait, those haven't been invented yet, have they? Okay, it's like -"

"We have virtual reality games in this time, Miss Asahina," I said patiently.

"O-oh, I'm sorry. Well, in a virtual reality game, you don't actually leave the real world, right? Your body stays right where it is, and everyone who isn't playing the game can see you there. But at the same time, you aren't doing anything in the real world – everything you're doing takes place in the virtual world. And the people who aren't playing the game can't see the virtual world, or do anything to affect it. So if you think of the present as the real world, the future as the virtual world, and the time fold as the virtual reality equipment..."

"Then, you're saying only people who took part in the same future event will experience it with me?"

"Yes! So if your sister and Miss Ishigaki weren't part of the visions you saw, then it's completely normal that they didn't experience them with you."

"Okay, I think I'm starting to get it. But if we're hit by a time fold from a future where I was with my sister, then..."

"Yes. She'll experience the vision with you."

Not good. And I had an even bigger issue on my mind. "Then the things I've been seeing in these visions... they're going to happen?"

"Um, well, theoretically yes, but things haven't always been following our theories. I've told you, haven't I, how the past events my time traveler friends and I have been witnessing don't always match up with history, as if someone has been tampering with the timestream?"

Yeah... that sneering bastard and his allies.

"On top of that, Miss Suzumiya can do all sort of things to time that we don't even understand yet. So even if the physics don't seem to add up, apparently it is possible to change the future. In fact, my superiors think this could be the reason for the time folds."

"You mean, Haruhi could be bringing the future into this time so that she can play around with it and change it?"

"Oh, no. If Miss Suzumiya ever wanted to change the future, she wouldn't need to create time folds to do that. It wouldn't even help, really. After all, even people who aren't time travelers can change the future just by making different decisions. But if she wanted to check up on what effect her decisions would have on the future, without having to leave the present and time travel to the future, then creating time folds would be the way to do it. It's... It's sort of like golf. If you hit a long drive, you get out some binoculars to see where the ball landed. Then, if you don't like where it ended up, you have a better idea of where to aim your swing."

I know next to nothing about golf, but I'm pretty sure you aren't allowed do-overs like that. Then again, this is Haruhi. She thinks rules exist solely for other people.

"Anyway, it's just a theory. You'll keep an eye on Miss Suzumiya, won't you, and let me know if you see any clues that she's doing this?"

"Wait a second," I said. "That theory doesn't work. All we've been doing this weekend is hanging out with Haruhi's aunt. How would that change the future?"

"Hmm? Oh, I'm sorry... I didn't mean that anyone is changing the future right now. If it is Miss Suzumiya who is doing this, she is probably using the time folds to decide what changes she wants to make. You see, um... We know that she's folding in pieces of the future I come from, but it's possible she's also folding in pieces of alternate futures. There aren't really alternate universes, you see, but Miss Suzumiya can create a trial variation of our timeline, and classified information to get it to classified information. ...Oh, oh, I'm sorry, I thought they had cleared that bit..."

"Don't worry. I probably wouldn't have understood it anyway." I sighed in relief. "So these visions I'm getting aren't set-in-stone future, then? Just possibilities?"

"Not necessarily. Like I said, at least some of the time folds are from the real future. And there's really no way to tell if the time fold you're in is part of your destined future or an alternate possibility."

"I could tell you what I saw, and you could tell me if it's happened in your time," I suggested in desperation.

"Kyon, you know any information about the future is classified," she scolded. "Anyway, that wouldn't help you differentiate the time folds, because if Miss Suzumiya decides to change the future based on what she sees in the folds, then at least some of the folds that were destined would become alternate, and at least some of the alternate futures would become destined."

Of course. Come to think of it, even if it was alternate, that wouldn't change the horrifying fact that there existed the possibility of my one day buying an engagement ring for Haruhi. ...And the possibility of my being killed by a gunman. That was also horrifying.

"Alright," I said. "I'll see if I can figure out what's happening on this end. Though this is probably to do with Haruhi's worrying about death."

"D-d-d-death?! M-m-miss Suzumiya is thinking about d-d-d-"

Oh, right. None of us told Miss Asahina about Haruhi's latest fixation. Crud.

I was explaining the situation while emphasizing that it was pretty much resolved now by Haruhi persuading her aunt to write a book about her, and otherwise making every effort to not trigger a Miss Asahina fainting spell (which sounded imminent by the moaning coming from the other end of the line) when I was interrupted by footsteps thumping up the stairs and down the hall, the bedroom door slamming wide open, and a voice which pierced right into my skull:

"Kyon! What the hell are you doing? I sent your sister to get you up 15 minutes ago, and you're still in your pajamas?! Your breakfast is going to get cold, and the rest of us are going to have to wait for you! Geez, talk about inconsiderate! Who are you talking to, anyway?"

You didn't need a degree in architecture to know that if Haruhi found out I was having a private conversation with Miss Asahina in the early hours of morning, she would bring the house down on my frail body and leave me buried in the rubble. I answered without a moment's thought: "It's Koizumi. I thought I should keep him updated on what we're doing."

"What, have you turned into Koizumi's majordomo now? This is not an SOS Brigade mission, so it's none of Koizumi's business! Now tell him goodbye and get moving!"

Bad guess. I should have said it was my mother checking up on me. Nothing to be done for it now, though. "I gotta go," I said into the phone.

I got no response from Miss Asahina before I hung up. Maybe hearing Haruhi yelling at me was enough to finally make her faint. I tossed my phone aside and had my pajama top pulled up to my armpits before I realized Haruhi was still standing in the doorway. She wasn't actually watching me – her eyes were cast disinterestedly into the hallway – but in a way, that made it worse.

"Do you mind?" I scowled.

She sniffed. "What, it's not like I haven't seen you stripped down to your trunks before."

Presumably she was referring to our summertime expeditions to the public pool and the beach. I don't think swimming trunks could really be put in the same category as boxers or a public pool put in the same category as a guest bedroom at your aunt's, but persuading Haruhi of that was probably a lost cause. I took a different tack. "I don't like the implication that you don't trust me to get dressed and come downstairs on my own."

"Well, apparently I can't," she retorted, but she walked off anyway, shutting the door behind her.

Privacy restored, I whipped out of my pajamas and yanked on my pants and shirt. Maybe I felt goaded on by her parting remark, but I was shooting to reach the breakfast table within 15 seconds of Haruhi.

I raced down the stairs, coming within sight of the kitchen while Haruhi was still pulling up a chair for herself next to Ishigaki.

Who looked a bit anxious at Haruhi's arrival, which I definitely couldn't blame her for. "Hey. Um, no hard feelings about last night?"

"Huh? Oh no, it's fine!" To my momentary shock, Haruhi gave her a reassuring wave. "I was kind of in a bad mood then, so I can see why you'd get upset at me. And you guys should be able to watch what you want, right?"

Ishigaki smiled with relief. "Well, I was worried that I overdid it a bit. I just don't like seeing you yell at Kyon."

"Oh, he's cool with it. Right, Kyon?" she said, looking up at me as I approached the table and took the seat next to my sister.

"Well, I didn't try to murder you in your sleep, so that's something." I returned her easy smile. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. If Haruhi were still acting as imperious and stubborn with her friends as she did with the SOS Brigade, she wouldn't have any friends left by now. For nice girls like Sakanaka and Ishigaki to want to continue hanging out with Haruhi, she must be taking a more reasonable, adaptable approach. It was hard to believe that she could do that, but then, practically everything Haruhi did was unbelievable in one respect or another.

I still couldn't convince myself that the cloud over us had passed, though. She seemed in a better mood at the moment, and the whole death thing was taken care of by her aunt's authorship, but Haruhi wouldn't have created this morning's time fold if she weren't still struggling against something.

"...and especially not when the whole thing was my fault..." Ishigaki continued.

"Hey." I reached across the table with my chopstick to poke her in the arm. "It's fine, okay? If something like that were a big deal, I'd have quit the SOS Brigade a long time ago. Haruhi yells at us all the time."

"Huh?" My sister gaped in surprised dismay.

Whoops. Maybe I should have chosen a wording that sounds less like abuse. "Ah, I mean, sometimes we aren't paying attention, so she has to really raise her voice."

Aunt Kanae dropped a plate of food in front of me. "Here you are, mister late riser. Enjoy."

"Good morning, Miss Suzumiya. Thanks."

As I started digging in, Haruhi spoke up, "You really need to work on getting up more promptly, Kyon. Your sister shouldn't have to drag you out of bed every morning."

"Yeah, I'll get right on that," I grumbled through a mouthful of food. But my sister and Ishigaki were smiling at us, seemingly satisfied that our status quo had been restored.

"You know..." Haruhi was looking at me strangely askance, like I might expect her to look at her parents if she were keeping an alien in her bedroom closet and wasn't sure if they had noticed the acidic drool leaking through the ceiling yet. "...To have this much trouble getting up, maybe you aren't sleeping well. Did you have strange dreams last night, or something?"

I involuntarily swallowed at the wrong moment, and started choking on a piece of food that I hadn't chewed nearly enough. Seeing me bent over my plate and violently coughing, my sister let out a wail of dismay, while Ishigaki leaned across the table and shouted, "Kyon, are you okay? Can you breathe? Can you breathe?"

I could breathe fine, but as is often the case when you're coughing and have a mouthful of food, I failed to immediately respond. Haruhi took that as her cue to vault over the table like an Olympic hurdler, yelling, "Stand back! I'll Heimlich him!"

I didn't know what a Heimlich maneuver delivered by Haruhi would be like, and had no desire to find out. I lurched out of my chair, still coughing, in a desperate bid for escape. But Haruhi was slow to take the hint, and within two seconds she had reached me and wrapped her arms in a stranglehold around my gut.

"I've got you, Kyon!" she blasted right into my ear. "One, two -"

By a miracle, or perhaps desperate survival instinct, I finally coughed up the bit of food that was giving me trouble, and got out, "I'm fine! I'm fine!"

Thankfully, that hint was not too subtle even for Haruhi, and she let go, ensuring the continued safety of my kidneys. I breathed out a relieved sigh.

But Haruhi wasn't quite done with me. "Damn it, Kyon, don't do things like that! You scared your little sister half to death!"

Admittedly, I could see for myself that what could reasonably be described as a look of terror was just disappearing from my sister's face.

"I didn't do any of that on purpose," I muttered.

"What difference does it make whether you did it on purpose or not? What matters is that you had us all worried about you! And getting yourself killed is behavior that I absolutely will not tolerate from my brigade members!"

"You said this wasn't an SOS Brigade trip."

"You're an SOS Brigade member no matter where you go! And stop trying to change the subject!"

"Okay, okay." I heaved a sigh, and summoned the most sincerely contrite face I could manage. "I'm sorry I worried you."

"That's not good enough!" She was trembling. I was hit with the rude shock that my sister wasn't the only one who had been genuinely scared. "You need to promise that something like this will never, ever happen again! Ever!"

"...And how do you expect me to prevent it?" I could relate to Haruhi's feelings here, but as was so often the case, her logic left a lot to be desired.

"You could chew more carefully," Ishigaki offered.

Okay, that's actually a good point.

"Ugh, that's not even what I was talking about!" Haruhi flung her hands up in the air and walked away, out the front door. "Forget it, let's get moving! We're wasting sunlight."

Not even what she was talking about? Did she change subjects without the rest of us noticing? Oh, whatever.

"Are you sure you're okay, honey?" Aunt Kanae asked, laying a hand on my shoulder.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Something just went down the wrong pipe, that's all."

And I could at least be grateful that my little choking incident had made Haruhi forget all about her question in regard to last night's dreams. Though of course, now that I think about it, it was stupid of me to get scared by that. Miss Asahina already explained to me that if a person isn't a part of a time fold, then they won't experience that time fold. So Haruhi couldn't possibly have dreamt about me buying her an engagement ring, because she wasn't there. Or... won't be there. And she couldn't have dreamed about me proposing either, because if she did, I would have experienced that time fold along with her.

Still, I'd rather not lie to Haruhi if I don't have to. And I definitely don't want to tell her I dreamed about wanting to marry her, either. Avoiding the question entirely was a blessing.

But then, if Haruhi was in a time fold without me, what did she see? More concerning, what did she see that was so striking that she had to ask what I had "dreamed"?

Could she have seen something that made her suspect I was going to propose, and realized my vision could be the other piece of the puzzle? Or -

"Oh, I almost forget." Haruhi popped her head back in the door. Her facial expression was friendly and moderately excited, as if the emotional confrontation of a few moments ago had never happened. There were slight but unsettling red marks under her eyes that I was sure hadn't been there before, though, as if she had been crying. "While I was waiting for you to get your lazy butt out of bed, I packed up all of our hiking supplies and snacks into that backpack right there. All you have to do is carry it!"

I took a look at the backpack. It was one of those huge metal-framed things you see mountain climbers use, and it was loaded with enough food, magazines, and water bottles to last us three or four days should we get stranded up on the mountain, not to mention rope and extra clothes. An ox would have a hard time carrying it.

I took a look back at Haruhi. She was smiling like she'd just done me a huge favor.

"Ah..." I said. Ordinarily I'd have straight-up suggested that we should split the load between all of us minus my sister, and maybe explained to her that if you want people to carry your burdens you should ask them nicely, not just assume they'll do it, but I was still a bit on edge about what vision Haruhi might have seen – and okay, maybe a little bit feeling like I should handle Haruhi with care in the wake of that emotional outburst of a minute ago. So that was all I managed.

"Geez, don't thank me or anything. Come on, this is going to be a fun expedition!" She flashed me a smile and was gone again, leaving me with a few dozen kilos of supplies to latch onto my back.