The Wavering of Haruhi Suzumiya (13 page)

Lagging just behind the sight came the sound—a sound nobody ever wants to hear.

Thok!

If he was lucky, that dull crack was the sound of his helmet splitting—otherwise it was his skull.

The referee blew his whistle and stopped the game. Nakagawa lay still. He’d stopped moving, clinging to the ball as though it were some precious memento from his parents—no, he hadn’t moved at all. This wasn’t even funny anymore.

“Is he going to be okay?”

Haruhi clung to the fence, her brow furrowed.

“Eek—”

Asahina half hid herself behind Haruhi’s shoulder, as though turning away from a violent scene in a horror movie.

“Oh… there’s the stretcher…” she said, her voice tremulous.

Surrounded by his teammates, Nakagawa’s prone form was quickly moved to the stretcher and taken to the sidelines. His determination admirable, he still clung to the ball. The scene was so moving, it would be unbelievable if his team didn’t now rally and defeat their opponents.

Lying there on the stretcher with his helmet removed, Nakagawa seemed to have dodged the bullet. He opened his eyes in response to the calls of the people around him, nodding to answer their questions. He tried to sit up, only collapsed back down, but at the very least he was still breathing.

“Probably a minor concussion.”

Koizumi made his diagnosis.

“I doubt there’s much to worry about. These things happen in sports like this.”

I didn’t know where he got off making that call from a distance, and not being a doctor to begin with. Hopefully he was right, but the head is a bad place to take an impact. The coach and faculty advisor seemed just as concerned as I was, and soon the wailing siren of an ambulance approached.

“Your friend has rotten luck,” said Haruhi, sounding regretful. “He tries to show off to Yuki and gets injured instead. Maybe he got too eager.”

She sounded sympathetic. Did she really want Nakagawa and
Nagato to hit it off? Even though she’d slammed the door in the computer club president’s face when he’d wanted to borrow Nagato?

I asked her as much, to which she replied, “Listen, Kyon. I think that love is a kind of disease, but I’m not going to interfere in other people’s love lives just for kicks. Everybody has their own path to happiness.”

I shrugged, letting Haruhi’s overlong philosophy of romance go in one ear and out the other. Sorry—if Asahina’s boyfriend turned out to be a loser, I don’t care how happy she seemed, I wasn’t confident I’d be able to be happy for her. I might even try to interfere. I don’t think anybody could blame me, though.

“I hope your friend is all right.”

Asahina clasped her hands together in front of her fluffy fur coat, an expression of true concern on her face. She definitely wasn’t faking it. That’s just the kind of person she was. Her prayers could heal you in half an hour even if every bone in your body was broken. I was sure Nakagawa would be fine.

The ambulance finally arrived, and Nakagawa was loaded into it, as carefully as though he were a cardboard box marked
FRAGILE—HANDLE WITH CARE
.

As soon as he was inside the ambulance and the doors were shut behind him, the siren blared back to life, the almost painfully bright flashing lights winking red as it headed off into the distance.

“…”

Nagato had been at least 50 percent less voluble than even she normally was, and she watched the ambulance go, as though trying to confirm the existence of redshift with her own dark eyes.

So, what next?

Nakagawa’s demonstration was unavoidably canceled thanks to his withdrawal, but with his departure went our desire to
watch the rest of the scrimmage. It was freezing cold, after all, and our primary reason for standing here would soon be arriving at the hospital.

“Shouldn’t we go to the hospital too?”

Haruhi spoke suddenly.

“He was our whole reason for coming, and that’s where he’s going, so if we follow him, we can see how this turns out. It’ll be a great scene, with the worried Yuki going to visit him at his bedside! I’ll bet he’d be really moved. Plus, the hospital will be heated. Whaddaya think?”

She obviously thought it was a grand idea, but I didn’t really feel like entering a hospital for a while. I’ve been sustaining trauma ever since meeting Haruhi.

“Aren’t you worried about your friend? Let me tell you, when you got taken away in an ambulance, I definitely worried about you. You know, a certain amount.”

Haruhi dragged me along by the arm, her tone brusque.

“Honestly, you caused so much trouble.”

She walked a few steps with me, then stopped.

“By the way, which hospital did that ambulance go to?”

How the hell was I supposed to know?

“I’ll look into it,” said Koizumi, brandishing his cell phone with a smile. “This will just take a moment.”

Koizumi turned his back to us and walked a few steps away, then pushed a button on his phone and had a quiet exchange with whomever he’d called. Maybe a minute later, he flipped his phone closed, then turned back to us and smiled.

“I’ve found his destination.”

I didn’t know who he’d called, but I’d bet it wasn’t 911.

“It’s a hospital we know quite well. I doubt I need to tell you how to get there.”

A wave of memory hit me, my mind recalling the white of the sheets and the red of the apples. Koizumi smiled at me.

“Yes, that’s the one. The general hospital you were taken to not so long ago.”

As in, the one where his uncle’s friend was the director. I glared at Koizumi. This had better be a coincidence.

“It’s a coincidence.”

Koizumi chuckled as he saw my thousand-yard stare.

“No, it really is. Quite unexpected. Honestly, I’m quite surprised myself.”

I didn’t trust him anyway, so his trustworthy smile was wasted on me.

“All right, let’s go to the hospital. Can we get a cab somewhere? With five of us, we can split the fare and it’ll be cheap.” Haruhi immediately started lining things up.

“Suzumiya, I was thinking that we should have a meeting regarding the upcoming trip to the mountains. We’ll leave the hospital visit to these two, while you, Asahina, and I nail down the details of the trip. We haven’t sorted out things like luggage, precise dates, and so on, and we need to finalize these details.”

Haruhi wobbled midstep at Koizumi’s statement. “Oh, really?”

“Yes,” said Koizumi, continuing. “New Year’s Eve is right around the corner. A holiday in a snowy mountain lodge is a big event. Honestly, I’d planned to hold the SOS Brigade’s winter trip meeting today, but some unexpected things came up.”

Well, excuse me, I said.

“Not at all. But in exchange, I’ll leave Nagato in your hands. You should hurry to the hospital and check in on Mr. Nakagawa. Regarding what to do there, I’ll leave that to your discretion. Asahina, Suzumiya, and I will be in our usual café. Will that do, Suzumiya?”

Haruhi pursed her lips and frowned.

“Mmm, I guess so. There’s definitely no point in me going to the hospital. Kyon’s friend only cares about Yuki.”

She looked a little irritated, though.

“All right, Kyon. You go with Yuki to see your friend. If he can write a love letter like that, he’ll probably jump right out of the hospital bed after he sees Yuki for five seconds.”

But then she pointed at me harshly.

“But! You’d better tell me everything that happens! Got that?” she said with a half-angry, half-amused expression.

We took a bus back to our rendezvous point, then split into two groups to go our separate ways—Nagato and I would change buses to head to the hospital, while Haruhi and the rest would continue to be regulars at the nearby café.

Nagato never looked back, so I was determined to. I saw Haruhi and the others watching us go, with Haruhi making some kind of strange gestures as she walked. Not wanting to imagine what her body language was suggesting, I soon looked to my companion, bundled up in her duffle coat.

So, then.

I’ll put it simply. Worries encrusted my mind like barnacles. I was worried enough about Nakagawa, who’d gotten injured just as he was trying to impress Nagato, but I was even more concerned about what Koizumi had said: “You certainly do have some mysterious friends.” The “mysterious” part especially bothered me. I didn’t have any friends who were particularly exceptional, and if I had to pick one, it would be Koizumi himself. What was it about Nakagawa that he thought was so “mysterious”?

And then there was the strange incantation that Nagato had been chanting. Nakagawa’s accident had happened immediately afterward, and even the dumbest person imaginable would be able to put the two events together, given the pattern so far. Yes, Nagato was quite an artist, if she could turn me into an ace reliever capable of striking out three consecutive batters.

“…”

Her face buried within the hood of her coat, Nagato said nothing—but the answer would soon be revealed.

Upon asking at the reception desk, we learned that Nakagawa had already been examined and treated, and he was now resting in a hospital room. Though not serious, his injuries apparently required observation. I headed to the room number we were given, Nagato trailing behind me like a ghost.

Hardly a “hospital room.” We found Nakagawa in a six-person ward.

“Nakagawa, you doing okay?”

“Hey, Kyon.”

My former classmate wore a blue hospital gown and lay there on the bed. He didn’t look especially injured with his close-cropped jock haircut. He sat up like a panda awoken from a nap.

“You’ve got great timing. They just finished examining me. I’m gonna stay the night for observation. I kinda tweaked my neck and got a concussion when I fell, which is why I felt like I wanted to throw up. I called my coach and told him I’d be out tomorrow, so he didn’t have to come visit—”

As he was talking, he noticed the ghost standing behind me. His eyes widened.

“Is that… could it be…?”

It was indeed.

“This is Nagato. Yuki Nagato. I brought her along to cheer you up.”

“Aaahh—!”

Nakagawa suddenly straightened his sturdy frame, sitting bolt upright. Well, aren’t you feeling healthy? I thought. Apparently his head was well enough.

“I’m Nakagawa!” he shouted by way of self-introduction. “ ‘Naka’ as in ‘Chuya Nakahara,’ and ‘kawa’ as in the Yellow
River! Humbly at your service!” He sounded like a rural daimyo at his first audience with the shogun.

“Yuki Nagato.” She gave her name, her voice unmoved. She hadn’t bothered to take off her duffle coat or even to pull back the hood. Unable to watch any longer, I flipped back the hood. We’d come all the way out here to meet him—it would’ve been a waste if he never got a proper look at her face.

The silent Nagato just stared at Nakagawa. After about ten seconds, he finally cracked.

“Huh? Um…”

Nakagawa’s expression turned somehow dubious.

“You’re Nagato… right?”

“Yes,” said Nagato.

“The one who was walking with Kyon this spring…”

“Yes.”

“At the supermarket near the station?”

“Yes.”

“I… I see…”

Nakagawa’s face darkened. I had expected him to cry tears of joy or faint dead away, so what was this sudden unpleasantness?

Nagato looked at Nakagawa as though he were a motionless flatfish in an aquarium, while Nakagawa regarded her as he would a manhole cover in the middle of the street.

Such a staring match can only go on so long, and sure enough, the first to turn away was Nakagawa.

“… Kyon.”

He tried to speak quietly, but all the other patients in the ward would have easily heard. But he was gesturing with his finger to quietly call me closer, and I couldn’t very well ignore him.

“What?”

“Listen, uh… we need to talk. About… y’know…”

I could see him constantly glancing over at Nagato. Evidently he wanted to ask something about her.

I looked over at Nagato to confirm.

“Yeah,” he said.

Despite the lack of telepathy, Nagato turned around and walked out of the room as though carried by a conveyor belt.

Once he saw Nagato slide the door shut behind her, Nakagawa sighed in relief.

“Is she… really Nagato? The real one?”

I’d never seen a fake Nagato, that was for sure. I’d seen her act rather differently sometimes, but that was ancient history.

“Hey, be happier,” I said. “Your future bride came to visit you—can’t you show a little gratitude?”

“Uh… yeah…”

Nakagawa muttered and nodded.

“That… that was Nagato. Not a twin sister or a look-alike.”

What was he trying to say? Don’t tell me you need her to wear glasses, I told him. Hadn’t he bumped into her recently? She quit wearing them at my request, so if he had a glasses fetish, I didn’t want to hear about it.

“No, that’s not it.”

Nakagawa looked up at me with a pained expression.

“I can’t explain it… just give me a second to think, Kyon. I’m really sorry…”

He just sat there on his hospital bed, groaning. Had that blow to the head really messed something up, after all? His reactions were incomprehensible. No matter what I said to him, he just groaned and looked up at the ceiling, as though deep in thought. Eventually he even clutched his head as though in pain. I gave up and decided to leave.

“Nakagawa, I’m gonna want to hear a reason for this eventually. What am I going to tell her?”

My report to Haruhi was going to be pointless too. If I told her the truth now, a flinty-eyed glare would be all that greeted me.

I left the hospital room, where Nagato was leaning against the hallway’s wall, waiting for me. She turned her dark eyes to me for a moment, then looked back at the floor.

“Let’s go.”

Nagato gave a slight nod, then fell in step behind me.

Just what the hell was that all about?

I stalked tiger-beetle-like ahead of the quiet Nagato, heading for the bus terminal.

The scene that followed at the café barely merits explanation. Haruhi talked merrily away about her plans for the winter vacation, while Koizumi mechanically agreed with her. Asahina seemed to be enjoying her Darjeeling tea as she sipped it, while I sat there, discouraged, and Nagato played the role of silent listener as she watched the proceedings.