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"In other words, she does hope for the existence of aliens, time travelers, and espers.
Her common sense, however, is telling her that these things don't exist, and this creates cognitive dissonance."

—Koizumi Itsuki

유웃

—Thluck—

—Thlock—

—Thluck—

( "There has to be someone who's living an extraordinary, exciting life." )

—Thlock—

( "But why isn't that person me?" )

—Thluck—

"Mmph!" Haruhi's eyes jumped open. Her grey ceiling was staring back at her.

—Thlock—

—Thluck—

Shock simmered into irritation. She grunted and bent her elbows, dragging her body up into a sitting position so that she could wipe her eye properly. "What on Earth is that awful noise?"

—Thluck—

—Thluck—

—Thlock—

—Thluck—

—Thlock—

—Thl—

Haruhi's hand turned the knob of her leaking bathroom faucet. "Mmm," she growled under her breath, her eyebrow twitching. "Stupid faucet. He never got this stupid thing fixed." Her grip on the knob weakened. "But," she softly began, "this isn't what woke me up, is it?" Feeling melancholy, she touched her lip in contemplation. "I could've sworn that I heard..." The gleam in her pupils quivered as her frown deepened. 'Me.'

Something red and fuzzy darted past the window in the corner of her eye.

Haruhi jerked her head around to her window in record time. The sweat beads on her forehead rolled down her eyebrows. Her fist came up to her heart as she blinked gingerly. "What was that?" Excitement didn't color her astonishment—only ambivalence.

—Click—

Haruhi unlocked her front door and threw it open. She jogged outside, hoping to find a red beam zigzagging between the stars. Her pajamaed legs felt like algae once her feet got them to the middle of her residential neighborhood's cul-de-sac. "Wh…What is this?"

The entire district was grey. Stars and moonlight were nowhere to be seen, yet a pale blue light umbrellaed the dark sky like daylight feeding on smoggy air pollution. The underside of Pluto's body was bulging through that smog.

"...Nuh!" The back of Haruhi's risen foot trembled as she repositioned herself to step back. "What's going on?!" A memory struck her. "Wait. This is...just like that dream I had when Kyon—"

The sound of flowing lava stopped her words dead in their tracks. She was too petrified to turn around, but she could feel whatever it was taking shape as it grew taller behind her. Her hands gripped the pajama blouse shirting her sternum. A smile curled on her face. Then—

"Suzumiya!"

She didn't have time to look at her caller because her body was snatched off the ground like a hamster being lifted by a falcon the second after she'd been called. This body-snatcher came with firm arms that held her tightly against a thumping heart. The ear-popping pressure inside her head was more deafening than both of their pulses combined, and she was already too dazed from her own whistling blood pressure to open her eyes. Everything except her heart rate slowed down when her feet touched a solid surface. Her moist eyes finally opened against a yellow dress shirt, but she didn't move because she was processing her body-snatcher's scent.

His cologne, peppered with his body's warm sweat, smelled familiar, and his embrace was as gentle as it was apologetic—

"So it's you, after all." What a grave and disappointed way of confirming her safety.

Haruhi's confused glare jumped up to her body-snatcher's face after she'd pulled him back by his forearms. Her pupils shrank into dots. "Koi...zumi?!"

Yet in so many ways he wasn't Koizumi. The skin fleshing his face was clenched with anger, sadness, exhaustion, and disturbance. His hands shook like he was a volcano due for eruption.

"Koizumi," she said hesitantly, gripping his sleeves to pull him closer as she leaned forward. "How did—"

Koizumi's eyes flicked to the side before narrowing. "There's no time."

Haruhi looked and felt queasy. "Huh?!—WAAAAAAH-OH!"

They rocketed into the stratosphere without warning. This time, Haruhi opened her eyes. Koizumi's body had transformed into a red silhouette that glowed with mosaic light from the inside. That body was transporting them across the sky in a red orb.

'I can't believe all this is really happening!' Haruhi's eyes were watering from the adrenaline rush. 'This isn't a dream; this is real! And he's been right in front of me all along!' She wanted to bear-hug him, kick him, dissect him, interrogate him, slap the stew out of him, cry against his shirt, and then beat his chest until her fists made bruises all because he was finally here. She had found one of them. An esper.

Below their feet waddled a blue giant with extraterrestrial plasma cells glittering inside its own translucent body. A few glowing red dots that weren't around before flew around it. Compared to the giant, the red dots were like sesame seeds. There were five of them in total, but because they were flying so quickly, her eyes couldn't catch up with them. Like satellites, the red dots orbited around the giant as though they were trying to stop it from moving further ahead.

No matter how the red dots attacked, the giant didn't seem to be stopping. Red laser-like beams now penetrated the giant's body nonstop, but as she was too far away, she couldn't make out the extent of the damage it had sustained. One thing was for certain: the red beams didn't create any holes in the giant's body.

Fear and excitement intoxicated Haruhi as she shouted, "Koizumi, do you know what's happening?! This weird world—your powers—and that giant! Look, there's more!"

But more meant trouble for them because they were blocking Koizumi's flight path. These specific amoebas were taller and burlier than the one Koizumi's red counterparts were attacking. Determined to do the impossible, Koizumi flew through a narrow exit between their swinging arms without grazing them.

Haruhi laughed manically—"Aw'right, Koi-zumi!"—until a blue arm batted them out of the sky.

The impact caused little more than a dent in Koizumi's orb, but the deflection had bounced back against their bodies and jolted them like electricity. Another giant caught them in its palm and swung them to the ground. Haruhi's vocal chords were pushing out a genuine cry of fear. Koizumi's glowing red body managed to wrap its arms around her and change the angle of their fall so that he would suffer the repercussions. The orb that protected them as they corkscrewed earthwards became staticky. Dust and concrete exploded under and around it upon its collision with the street.

Haruhi heard a piercing ring in her head as darkness consumed her vision. Her body felt like an egg that had been cracked open on the edge of a tiled kitchen counter. Consciousness danced back to her in a blurry fog of monochromatic colors. "M-Mmph..." Trembling, she weakly peeled herself off the orb's base with her hands and knees. Her dizzy eyes searched for Koizumi.

Lying flat in the chasm of the cratered street, Koizumi's body blinked like a red traffic light beside her.

Horror replaced Haruhi's pain. "Koi...z-zumi?"

Koizumi didn't budge or respond.

"KOIZUMI!" Haruhi touched his back and shook him with all the strength she had left. "Get up, Koizumi!" Her tears browned his yellow shirt as she rocked his body. "You have to get up right now!"

Koizumi didn't budge or respond.

Whimpering, Haruhi paused to soak in the reality of the situation. When she couldn't accept it, she went from crying to growling. "I said get UP!" she sobbed angrily, shaking him harder. "Get UP, I said! You're not supposed to die!" Her voice was getting stuffier. "You can't!"

Koizumi didn't budge or respond.

Haruhi bent over his face and wailed, "Please, Koizumi!"

The orb around them faded. Haruhi noticed this and immediately looked up to see if the giants had noticed, too. They did, and in reaction, lifted their blue feet above the two humans.

Haruhi froze in terror as she watched them bring their soles down. She fisted Koizumi's shirt and roared to the top of her lungs, "Stop it! STOP IT RIGHT NOW!"

Silence.

She flinched. The blue giants, who were frozen, started crumbling from the head down. When their upper torsos fell off, their remaining limbs also began to disintegrate, finally dissolving into beads smaller than dust and spreading over the debris.

"Th...They're gone..."

Her neighborhood was quieter than her chronically empty house now. The red dots that had been fighting the first giant scattered after their enemy decomposed. They shot over to Haruhi and Koizumi, tripling in size as they got closer.

If it had been any other time, Haruhi would've invested every ounce of her attention into them, but this wasn't the time for that. She was reminded by their red orbs of Koizumi's unconsciousness and went back to him without a second thought. "Koizumi! They're gone now, Koizumi," she spoke with the sweet-toned desperation of a child who knew Koizumi would awaken at any moment. "You can wake up now! It's safe!"

Koizumi didn't budge or respond.

"..." Haruhi's shoulders sagged.

Koizumi's body shuddered suddenly.

Haruhi gasped. "Koizumi!"

Koizumi used his hands and knees to lift himself off the ground halfway. The faint glow sheathing him dimmed until it was his normal body that she saw. His face was drained of all health, but in spite of its sickliness, he still mustered a feeble frown as he looked at her through the narrow gaps of his vision. "Are you alright?" he said tightly, resisting a cough.

Haruhi whimpered in happiness at his ability to speak. With shining eyes, she nodded. Koizumi smiled weakly. A rill of light fell between them.

"What?" Haruhi looked up and saw a break in the sky, like someone had punched a hole into a plastic wrap with a pencil.

The hole multiplied into five, and soon the whole sky was cracking like an eggshell.

"What's happening?!" Haruhi asked, expecting Koizumi to answer. Instead, she heard a tearful—

"I'm sorry about all this, Miss Suzumiya."

—and felt Koizumi's hand caress her hand. Then something sharp knifed through her brain. Suddenly, she lost her balance and fell downwards. Everything cartwheeled. A hard impact came out of nowhere and rammed against her left side.

When Haruhi tried to sit up and open her eyes, she saw a familiar ceiling above her head and was stunned. She was in her room, and turning around, she realized she had fallen out of bed with half of her blanket tangled around her waist.

—Thlock—

—Thluck—

—Thlock—

Revulsion blued Haruhi's face as her eyebrow ticked. It was some time before she could think or breathe again. Under a half-dreamlike state, she wobbled off the ground, flung herself against her window, and looked outside. She saw a few twinkling stars and the shining street lamps. Lights were coming from other people's windows and occasional silhouettes moved behind them.

Overwhelmed, Haruhi stumbled backwards and sat wearily on the floor, thinking that if all this had been a dream, then why did it feel so real? The giants slamming her down, the salty taste of her tears, and the warmth of Koizumi's glowing red body...

Usurped by the emotions and sensations it remembered from that event, Haruhi's body ordered her hand to snatch her cellphone off her lamp table and dial Koizumi's number between her legs. She held her breath as the ringer purred, blinking only to keep her eyes dry. Koizumi's voicemail answered in place of him. Haruhi's shoulders slumped as real dread washed over her wide eyes. She dropped her back against the side of her mattress, trying to make sense of her conclusions.

What on Earth was her subconscious thinking? Even Sigmund Freud would laugh out loud.

One hundred eighty seconds later, a text message bannered her screen:

Deputy Chief

I hope you'll forgive me for missing your call earlier, Miss Suzumiya. Given the time, I wasn't sure if I should call you back or if you had called me by mistake. Is everything alright?

Relief melted Haruhi's heart so thoroughly that she almost cried.

Koizumi was still Koizumi.

Author's Note:

I don't know when or if I'll be continuing this project, but thank you to all who read it.