May was already hot enough, which made July utterly unbearable, and the humidity shot my unhappiness index to record high levels. There was no way the school would ever install air-conditioning in this cheap building, and the 1-5 classroom was just like a waiting room in Hell. I firmly believe that the architect had no concept of what a comfortable living environment was supposed to be like.
To make matters worse, this week was also the first week of the July end-of-term examinations, and any sense of joy in my heart had taken a long holiday overseas, perhaps never to return.
My midterm results were not too bad, but not as good as I had hoped, and I would probably only barely clear my end-of-term exams. I place the blame for this squarely on my involuntary membership in the SOS Brigade, which had too many strange activities for me to concentrate on my studies. Ever since Haruki came up with the idea this Spring, whenever he rushed off on some crackpot scheme, I had to follow close behind to make sure he didn't bother anyone too much. When did I become that idiot's keeper? I never wanted a life like this, and even worse, I was actually getting used to it.
It was just after school, and the sun was shining brightly from the west into the classroom. The guy sitting behind me poked at my back insistently.
"Do you know what day it is today?" Suzumiya Haruki asked me, without bothering to disguise the look of anticipation and glee, like a child waiting to unwrap his Christmas presents. This was a sure sign that he was up to something unwholesome again.
I turned the question over in my head with deliberate slowness. "Your birthday?"
"No!"
"Asahina-sempai's birthday."
"Wrong!"
"Then it's Itsuko's birthday, or Nagato-san's."
"How should I know when their birthdays are?"
"Incidentally, my birthday's on-"
"I don't care about that!" My, how rude. You should at least try to get to know the birthdays of your female classmates, especially the one sitting in front of you, whom you drag along everywhere without a thought. "Don't you know what an important day this is?"
It's a very hot and normal day for me.
"What's the date today?" Haruki demanded.
"It's July 7th. I'm going to guess that you're talking about the Tanabata festival."
"Of course that's what I mean! You should remember the importance of this date if you want to call yourself a Japanese."
In the first place, the festival originated from China. And according to the Chinese lunar calendar, it's next month.
Haruki stabbed several points on his desk with his mechanical pencil. "Look, Asia ranges from the Red Sea all the way to here."
What sort of geography are you talking about?
"They group all these places together for the World Cup qualifiers, don't they? It's like July and August are both summer months."
Are you sure?
"Whatever. Anyway, we have to do something for Tanabata. This is a festival that must be treated very seriously."
It's a festival, you don't have to treat it that seriously. There's a lot of other things you can concentrate that seriousness on. Besides, I don't want to know what you're planning to do.
"It'll be more fun if we celebrate it together. As the commander of the SOS Brigade, I hereby announce that we shall organize something big for Tanabata every year from now on."
"Don't decide this on your own."
As usual, Haruki wasn't listening. "Wait for me at the club room!" he said excitedly. "Don't go home on your own, or heads will roll!"
Whatever he said, I was planning to go to the club room anyway. It's not like I had anything better to do.
-
The other members were already in the clubroom, which was located on the second floor of the arts clubhouse building. It wasn't so much a clubroom that the SOS Brigade borrowed from the Literature Club, as much as the spoils of invasion and conquest, turned into a de-facto headquarters.
"Oh, hello!"
That was Asahina-sempai. Once again his smile and cheerful greeting lightened the heavy burden on my heart, and I could feel my troubles melting away at the sight of that innocently happy face.
Since the weather turned hot around July, Asahina-sempai had changed into a different outfit from his usual formal butler costume, something more suitable for summer, like some sort of cabana boy. Haruki was the one who got him the costume, and every time he did, Asahina-sempai would thank him very earnestly and nervously. I don't think I want to know how Haruki got Asahina-sempai's measurements. In any case, today Asahina-sempai was still the SOS Brigade's resident butler, serving perfectly-brewed tea for the others.
"Good day to you," Itsuko said politely, like a high-class student at a prestigious all-girls' academy. She was sitting in front of a chessboard laid on the table, and was holding a chess book in one hand while moving the pieces with the other.
"Yeah, um, good day to you too," I awkwardly returned the greeting.
Itsuko had said that she was tired of Othello, and so she brought a chess set last week. Despite owning it, she didn't know how to play the game, while the rest of us were just as clueless, and so she had to play all by herself. Even though exams were coming up, she still looks so relaxed. She wasn't even sweating in this heat.
"To tell the truth, I'm not really that relaxed," Itsuko confided. "I'm just making use of the time spent not studying exercising my brain. For every problem solved, the blood circulation in the brain will improve. Would you like to play?"
No thanks, it's too hot to exercise any part of my body. If I think too hard, my brain might overheat and shrivel up in its own steam.
"Pity. Perhaps I should bring something simpler next time? Monopoly, or Battleships? Ah, maybe something all of us can play with? What do you have in mind?"
Do what you want. This isn't the Board Game Study Group, but the SOS Brigade. Well, I still have no idea what kind of activities the SOS Brigade are supposed to have, other than randomly causing trouble for other people. I also didn't want to find out, because ignorance is bliss, and this way I can have plausible deniability. Thus, I could remain in my perfect state of inactivity through the help of faultless logic.
Itsuko shrugged, and went back to study her chess maneuvers. She picked up the white knight and moved it across the board.
Sitting beside Itsuko was Nagato Yuuki, the permanent fixture of the SOS Brigade club room. The emotionless and cold alien had shifted his reading repertoire from translated novels to original foreign-language novels. Right now he was reading a books scribed in a language I could not identify, like one of those ancient spell books used by magicians to summon demons. Please don't try to summon anything, Nagato-san, we already have an evil demon king in our midst.
Asahina-sempai brought me a cup of tea as I sat down. I'd have preferred iced tea, but complaining now would not solve anything, and I didn't want to trouble Asahina-sempai anyway, so I gratefully sipped my wheat tea. As expected, it was boiling hot.
In the corner was a standing fan which Haruki had stolen from somewhere, but all it managed to do was to move the hot air from one place to another. If you want to steal something, why not steal one of those vertical air coolers from the staff room instead?
I rubbed my eyes in exhaustion as the words in my English textbook swam around like tadpoles. I had wanted to see if I could study more effectively at school than at home, but it was simply far too hot to do anything other than lie down and dehydrate myself as I sweated away enough water to fill a swimming pool. There was no way I could concentrate in this sort of weather, and so I decided not to try. After all, it's not good to force yourself to do something you don't want to. I needed something to rest my tired eyes on, and the answer was sitting right in front of me.
Asahina-sempai was looking intently at his math questions, thinking about them seriously for a long while with his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth, and then, as though inspired by a flash of brilliance, suddenly writing the answers with enthusiasm into his notebook. He repeated these actions over and over, and I found myself smiling as I watched him. He's really like a little kid, learning for the first time that two plus three is five.
He looked up, and our eyes met. Asahina-sempai immediately blushed bright red. "Ah, um, is something the matter? Did I do something strange?" He tried to straighten his outfit, tidying himself all over. I could watch him and his cute little expressions all day, and still be willing to continue watching tomorrow.
Just in time to interrupt my peaceful interlude, the door slammed open. "Hiya everyone!" the violent idiot shouted. "Sorry I was late!"
There's no need for you to apologize. In fact, it's better if you didn't come in the first place.
Haruki was carrying a piece of bamboo shoot over his shoulder, a long piece of recently-cut bamboo, with green leaves still growing all over it. Why do you even have such a thing?
"For hanging wishes, of course!" Haruki said proudly.
What for?
"I thought to myself that I haven't hung any wishes on a bamboo stick for a long time, so we might as well do it now. After all, it's Tanabata today!"
I should have expected something like this. "Where'd you get this anyway?"
"The bamboo forest at the back of the school."
Isn't that private property, you bamboo thief?
"It doesn't matter! The roots of the bamboo are underground, so they won't be affected if I just take the top half. I made sure I didn't steal the whole shoot, though, since that's an offense. I got bitten by so many mosquitoes, though. Man, so itchy. Oi, Mitsuru-kun, do we have any anti-itching cream?"
"Um, yes, right away!" Asahina-sempai handed him the first aid kit respectfully. Like I said before, don't blindly follow everything Haruki tells you to do.
After vigorously rubbing the ointment on his arms, Haruki placed the bamboo shoot beside the windowsill, and stood at the commander's desk. He took out several pieces of paper from somewhere, and said, smiling broadly, "Now let's write down our wishes!"
Nagato-san slowly lifted his head, Itsuko smiled politely, and Asahina-sempai widened his eyes. What's going through that idiot's mind now?
"There are conditions," Haruki added.
"What conditions?"
"Kyon, you know who it is that grants people wishes on Tanabata?"
"Orihime and Hikoboshi."
"Correct, that's ten points. Do you know which stars represent Orihime and Hikoboshi?"
My astronomy is not that good, sorry.
"Is it Alpha Lyrae and Alpha Aquilae, otherwise known as Vega and Altair?" Itsuko answered.
"Right! Eighty-five points! In other words, you must point the bamboo shoot carrying the wishes at those two stars, understand?"
So where do the remaining points come from?
"That's a simple explanation," Haruki said, with an expression like he was about to answer a tricky riddle. "The Special Theory of Relativity states that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light."
I hope there's a point to telling me this.
Haruki took out a note card from his pocket, and said, "The distance between Earth and Alpha Lyrae and Alpha Aquilae are twenty-five and sixteen light-years respectively. This means that it would take twenty-five and sixteen years to send a message from Earth to those stars. You got that?"
You're assuming that wishes travel at the speed of light. I'm impressed that you even bothered to research all that.
"So that would equal the time for the gods to receive our wishes, right? We'd have to wait for that long in order to get our wishes granted. So write down what you would wish for in twenty-five or sixteen years' time! Writing nonsense like 'I wish to have a big-breasted girlfriend by Christmas' is not going to work, since it won't be granted on time!"
Well, sorry I don't have big breasts. Idiot. "Won't it take just as long for the wishes to come back? That means we'll have to wait fifty and thirty-two years respectively for our wishes to come true instead."
"They're gods, so they'll think of something. It's like a fifty-percent sale every year."
So much for logical consistency.
"So, does everyone understand what I'm saying? There are two types of wishes, one for Alpha Lyrae, the other for Alpha Aquilae. Write down what you want to look forward to in twenty-five and sixteen years' time."
Don't you think asking for two wishes at once is too greedy? Besides, it's not like we'd know what we'll be doing so far into the future. The best one could do is wish that their retirement scheme or investment funds don't go wrong, and that they'll be working productively then, I suppose.
If Orihime and Hikoboshi had to hear such wishes, I pity them. They only get to meet each other once a year, and yet they're getting bombarded with such silly wishes. If I were them, I'd tell the wishers to solve their problems themselves, rather than asking gods to help.
Haruki must have some sort of interdimensional portal in that head of his. There's no way his idea of common sense came from this universe.
"That's not entirely true," Itsuko said softly, so that only I could hear. Don't lean so close to me; you're looking very suspicious to others. "It is true that Suzumiya-san's speech and behaviour are unique among normal humans, but judging from the present situation, it is clear that he knows what common sense is."
I highly doubt it.
"If his thought patterns are truly abnormal, then this world wouldn't be so stable, and instead would be a strange one dictated by exceedingly peculiar rules."
"How do you know that?"
"Suzumiya-san possesses the power to reconstruct our reality from scratch. You of all people should know that."
Don't remind me, please.
"Yet so far, the world has not become completely irrational, which means that Suzumiya-san values common sense over his own desires." Itsuko spread her hands out. "For example, let's say that Suzumiya-san wishes for Santa Claus to truly exist. Common sense tells us that there is no way for anyone to enter a locked house in the middle of the night, leave a present, and then depart, all without being detected, and to be able to do this multiple times for every house in Japan, much less the world. How can Santa Claus guess what every child wants for Christmas? And there is no way for him to perform all these accomplishments in one night. It is physically impossible, in our universe as we know it."
You're thinking too hard about this.
"That is why Santa Claus cannot exist."
"If you're right, doesn't that mean that it's impossible for aliens, time-travellers, and ESPers to exist? What would that make you all?"
"I theorize that Suzumiya-san feels uncomfortable with what his common sense tells him is the way the world should be, rejecting his wish to live in a world where supernatural occurences are commonplace. However, he is unable to fully suppress those thoughts, which is why Nagato-san, Asahina-san, and I were gathered to his side, and why I was granted supernatural powers. What do you think?"
I think I'm thankful that I'm just a normal human being, and that I don't have a brain crazy enough to think about all that. Although whether that's a blessing or a curse, I'm still not sure.
"No talking in private!" Haruki yelled at us. We obediently received our tanzaku paper and pencils from him, and returned to our seats.
Haruki started writing in large, broad strokes, humming off-key. Nagato-san stared at the tanzaku paper without moving, while Asahina-sempai had the troubled expression of someone encountering something more difficult than a math problem. Itsuko breezily said, "Hm, I wonder," to herself, tilting her head in thought. This is not something you need to think about so seriously; just write whatever you want to. There's no way the wishes you write are going to come true.
Are they?
The bamboo shoot that Haruki had appropriated was leaned out of the open window, its leaves rustling in the occasional breeze. I tapped my pencil on the table in thought, letting the gentle sounds soothe and relax me.
"Done! Anyone else?" Haruki's voice brought me back to reality. On the table in front of him were two wishes that read:
- Let me be the centre of the galaxy!
- I want the earth to rotate backwards.
I thought you wanted to take this seriously? This sounds like a bad joke a spoiled kid would attempt. But Haruki really did look serious, as he hung his tanzaku papers on the branches of the bamboo shoot.
Asahina-sempai's wishes were written in a slow, careful hand:
- I wish my athletics would improve
- I wish my singing would improve
Asahina-sempai's wishes were just too innocent and adorable. He hung his tanzaku papers on the branches, clapped his hands three times, and prayed. I think he must have got something wrong.
Nagato-san's wishes were written in a neat printer-like font, and consisted of just two incomprehensible words, "harmonize" and "reorganize".
Itsuko was no different from Nagato-san, with "world peace" and "enlightened humanity" written gracefully.
As for me, I would be an old woman by the time sixteen and twenty-five years came around, and so I guessed that the future me would wish for the following:
- I want lots of money
- I want a large detached house with a garden near the city that I don't have to clean myself
"Boring!" Haruki declared upon seeing my wishes. You're not qualified to comment on my wishes! They're nice and healthy wishes, much safer than wanting the world to rotate backwards! "Never mind! Everyone, remember what you wished for! The first key period will be sixteen years from now. We'll have a race to see whose wish gets granted first!"
Asahina-sempai nodded, a serious expression on his face. Actually, since he's already from the future, maybe he can tell us if our wishes will come true? That would ruin the suspense, though.
Meanwhile, Nagato-san had already returned to the world of books, and Itsuko was back to contemplating her chessboard. Haruki carefully positioned the bamboo shoot pointing out of the window, and set it firmly. He pulled a chair next to the window, and sat on it, elbows on the window frame, looking at the sky. Looks like he's run out of things to do, and his expression was just a bit melancholic.
I opened my textbook again. As I went back to tackling the different types of adjectives, I heard Haruki mutter softly:
"Sixteen years, huh. That's a long time."
-
Nagato-san was silently reading his foreign-language novel, Itsuko was busy with her chess problems, and I was trying to memorize my English translations. Haruki simply sat quietly by the window, looking up at the sky. If he just keeps sitting there without moving, he'd actually look very handsome. Even so, the thought of Haruki behaving himself made me even more uneasy. If he's quiet, that just means that he's coming up with more ways to cause headaches for the rest of us.
Haruki looked particularly depressed today. Occasionally, he let out a great sigh, and I shuddered every time. This is the calm before the storm, and I don't want to be here when the hurricane hits.
The rustling of paper drew my attention. Asahina-sempai placed a finger on his lips, winked, and gave me an extra slip of tanzaku paper which he had taken earlier. He glanced at Haruki nervously, and then went back to his math problems, with an expression like a mischievous boy who had just successfully pulled off a prank in front of the teacher.
If he was going through all these lengths to keep Haruki from finding out, it must be important. I quickly read the message on the note:
"Please stay in the club room after today's activity has ended. - Mitsuru"
Of course I will. There's no way I can refuse to help Asahina-sempai.