Read The Wavering of Haruhi Suzumiya Online
Authors: Nagaru Tanigawa
Tags: #Fantasy, #Young Adult, #Fiction
The Wavering of Haruhi Suzumiya (23 page)
Meanwhile, Koizumi wore a little half smile, as though he was going to enjoy sitting this one out. Wait a sec—did these two know everything? Were they just going to sit there?
“So?”
Haruhi spoke with an expression that looked like she’d just downed a finely crushed mix of chili powder and psychedelic mushrooms—that is to say, somehow bulge-eyed yet also like she was finding something indescribably funny.
“I want you to tell me exactly what you did and where you went with Mikuru yesterday. Don’t worry, I won’t get mad.”
I looked at Asahina out of the corner of my eye; she was turning so pale that if she went any further, she’d look like a tree frog drenched in blue paint; for my part, I was sweating like a toad surrounded by three dozen anacondas.
I seem to remember some kind of hallucination. Haruhi’s primary-colored aura taking some sort of fighting shape and slamming into an invisible wall behind Nagato, shattering into fireworks—or something like that.
“Pardon me.”
Koizumi stood up as if wanting to avoid the invisible fireworks, and he picked up his chair, moving it toward the windowpane.
Then, as if to say, “By all means, please continue,” he spread out his hands and gave a benevolent smile.
Damn you, Koizumi! I’d get him back for this. Maybe in a high-stakes game of Seven Bridge. Just you remember this.
“Um… er…”
So, what sort of lie did I need to tell? I didn’t have a lot of time, so any help would have been very much appreciated. A telegram would have been best; express mail would not have been fast enough.
As I muttered, Haruhi put it to me again.
“Spit it out! All the way through to the end, nice and simple so Yuki and Koizumi and I can all understand it. Or else…”
Haruhi took a deep breath, then assumed a deliberate smile.
“… I’ll give you two a punishment unlike anything you’ve ever seen before! Let’s see, how about… this!”
The punishment that Haruhi smoothly laid out made falling to
hell sound vastly preferable; Asahina and I could only look at each other and tremble.
There’s no need to waste words on what happened in the clubroom after that.
Faced with Haruhi’s unnatural, unpleasant grin, Nagato’s colder-than-usual gaze, and Koizumi’s amused spectating, I searched desperately for an excuse, any excuse, like a man trying to wring water from a sponge left out to dry in the desert, while beside me Asahina clutched the kettle and tea container, cowering desperately.
I really don’t think I need to say any more.
Originally this volume was supposed to be a long-form story, but that got unscrupulously abandoned, and this collection of short-and medium-length pieces wound up getting put out instead. The pattern so far is long, long, short, long, short, and the addition of another short collection means we’ve established a kind of heterogeneous repetition, but it’s a total coincidence, so don’t read anything into it.
It always bugged me that with all the buildup to the school festival, we never got to see the festival itself, so eventually the urge to turn the story I’d been thinking about into actual written words caught up with me. Either way, Haruhi is the main character in this one.
THE ADVENTURES OF MIKURU ASAHINA EPISODE 00
”
Will we do
The Revenge of Yuki Nagato Episode 00
, followed by
The Awakening of Itsuki Koizumi Episode 00
to complete the
trilogy? I can’t really say. I guess I just wanted to try my hand at directing. There’s neither hide nor hair of Haruhi in this story.
This happens after
Disappearance
but before “Snowy Mountain Syndrome.” I love American football, and I watch quite a bit of it, but it’s hardly ever on broadcast TV in Japan, so I often wind up knowing the results before I can see the games, which is too bad. Nagato’s definitely front and center in this one.
I wound up writing this story because Koizumi mentioned the cat in “Snowy Mountain Syndrome.” I worked seriously on this one because I wanted to give people something to think over. Somehow it feels like Haruhi and Tsuruya are the main characters here.
Chronologically speaking, the next long-form volume will follow directly after this story. Fortunately, thanks to my slaving away to connect the short magazine pieces to the longer stories I’d already written, this new long section is proving easier to write, but the important thing is whether or not it will be easy to read, and that’s all I wish for, truly.
Thus has the sixth volume of this series come to pass, and for that I am both honored and deeply grateful. It is only thanks to the assistance of many people, along with the ongoing support of the readers, that this book exists. They have my deepest thanks.
See you again.
Nagaru Tanigawa
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T
HE
A
DVENTURES OF
M
IKURU
A
SAHINA
E
PISODE
00
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Suzumiya Haruhi No Douyou copyright © Nagaru TANIGAWA 2005
Illustrations by Noizi Ito
First published in Japan in 2005 by Kadokawa Shoten Publishing Co., LTD., Tokyo. English hardcover/paperback translation rights arranged with Kadokawa Shoten Publishing Co., LTD., Tokyo, through Tuttle-Mori Agency, Inc., Tokyo.
English translation by Paul Starr
English translation copyright © 2011 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First e-book edition: September 2012
ISBN: 978-0-316-22866-4