Free The Intrigues of Haruhi Suzumiya by Nagaru Tanigawa Page B

different. In the foyer of her apartment building, I punched her apartment number into the now-familiar keypad and hit the buzzer, to be greeted with—
    “…”
    The same wordless reaction as always.
    “It’s me. Asahina’s with me. There’s a problem.”
    “Come in.”
    How many times had we had this conversation? I’d brought both the large and small versions of Asahina here, let’s see… four times. The first time was during Tanabata four years ago, the secondwas also that day. The third time was January second, just last month.
    Asahina had the same anxious look on her face, and I’d gotten used to it remaining all the way down the seventh floor hallway on the way to Nagato’s apartment. She clung to my sleeve looking for all the world like some small, frightened animal, and if that sight wasn’t enough to make me want to protect her, then surely nothing else in the world ever could.
    “…”
    Nagato’s apartment door was open, and she leaned partway through it as she waited for us. She was wearing her school uniform, as usual. The first time I’d seen her in street clothes was during our summer trip, and the last time was during our winter trip. She looked at us, and although her gaze didn’t seem to carry particular meaning, Asahina still shrank away from it.
    “Um… excuse us, Nagato. It seems we’ve come to trouble you again…” she said.
    Which was quite true.
    “It’s fine.” Nagato gave a cool nod. “Come in.”
    Asahina’s total fright indicated that she was about as close to getting used to Nagato’s manner as our solar system was to Barnard’s Star. I put my hand on her shoulder and gently urged her forward, at which she finally stepped inside. She was so reluctant that it was hard to imagine that she’d ever slept in this very apartment’s guest room.
    “Excuse us…” she said.
    Nagato’s apartment had once been completely bare of anything but the basic necessities for living. But now, for the first time since I’d first visited last spring, there hung a set of paisley-patterned winter curtains in the large living room window. That alone would’ve been enough to make an impression on me. The Twister game mat we’d used at Christmas was rolled up and leaning against the wall, although there was still no television orcarpet. As we passed through the living room, the only other furnishing was a low, bare table. For a moment I really wanted to get a look in the bedroom to see what, if anything, there was in there, but then suddenly I felt like that was a bad idea. If it was fancy wallpaper or lacy ornamentation, or a canopy bed with big pillows and a fuzzy stuffed animal like a lamb or something, I’d have to reset all preexisting data I thought I had on Nagato. On that matter, the comment I can give is that you could go all the way back to the Mesopotamian era and you still wouldn’t find any trace of anything like that. And when tomorrow came, I already had good intelligence from Asahina.
    What I needed to ask about was something else.
    “So, Nagato, you know that Asahina here is from the future…” Well, that was a stupid thing to say—obviously she was from the future. “No, what I mean is, you know that this is another Asahina, who came from eight days in the future. Right?” I asked, sitting at the low living room table.
    “I know.”
    Nagato sat directly across from me, looking up at Asahina, who was still standing. Asahina flinched, then hurriedly sat next to me, her eyes downcast.
    “Apparently Asahina herself doesn’t know why she came to this time,” I explained. “She says that I told her to come. So—do you have any idea what this is all about, Nagato?”
    Even if she didn’t know, there was a high probability that she’d be able to tell me something about the future.
    So when she quickly said, “I don’t know,” I wasn’t worried. So long as she would find out for me. I asked her to just do that synchronization-whatever thing.
    But Nagato