TMoHS: The Anagram of Suzumiya Kurumi 16
Title: The Anagram of Suzumiya Kurumi
Rating: PG
Length: 3500ish
Warnings: Time travel, spoilers, book canon, some coarse language and science fiction themes.
Summary: When things come full circle, Kurumi relies on an old friend. (Earlier chapters 01| 02| 03| 04| 05| 06| 07| 08| 09| 10| 11| 12| 13| 14| 15)
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
2014, A Café, Tokyo; 2014, Tsuruya Residence, Tokyo
I had known for some time that I would have to fulfil the recursive necessity of my induction into the agency, but I had been more concerned about presenting a fresh and welcoming face for my younger self and about whether or not the TPDD would work - if it was just an external aid for my own powers, how much suggestion would I need? - than I was about the hardest task of all. For a woman who had spent her entire life chasing down and being enthralled with the supernatural, Haruhi Suzumiya was much harder to convince of my identity as a time traveller than many of the other people in my life had been.
Hell, Kyon had been dead-set on denying the strange and unusual, but he'd taken me at my word. He'd absorbed my information and though he'd put up a façade of scepticism, he had trusted me and accepted my role in his life with equanimity. Compared to him, trying to convince Haruhi that I really was a time traveller and that I really did represent a large organisation was almost a full-time job.
I had been dubious of my orders when I'd been sent to this time-plane a week early, but now I knew why. When it came to her daughter, Haruhi was like a brick wall. I had approached her at work, had bought her lunches, had set out pamphlets and documents and rational explanations on tables before her. I had hinted that I might be able to reveal the nature of time travel itself to her. She, with a stern glare, had eaten the food I had bought and collected the papers and pamphlets into a tidy pile, and said quite succinctly that Kurumi was going to go to the same school that her mother had gone to, thank you very much, and that the Suzumiyas were not interested in cult activities in that way, no matter what the show's publicity sound bites may suggest.
She said it not with anger, but with resolute long-suffering familiarity. I wondered, as I watched her watching me suspiciously over a cup of coffee one lunch break, how many other nutjobs she had encountered like that. If she'd been brushing off idiots and fanatical weirdos my whole life, and I'd never known. I'd always assumed her job was all fun and indulgence, never that she was being exhausted and beset upon like this. She'd never shown this world-weariness at home.
I sighed, and bit my lip. What to do? I knew I had introduced myself under an assumed name, Mizuyasu Miruku - and what a terrible anagram that was! - but perhaps the time had come to give it up. Maybe if I could get Haruhi to recognise me as Mikuru, then I'd be able to convince her at least of the veracity of my occupation.
The other alternative was actually taking her along on a trip through time, and I wasn't too sure if I wanted to risk that. Who knew what she'd do if she was encouraged in that way; closed spaces might be the very least of our problems after that.
I had let my mind drift. Haruhi was making bored and irritated noises opposite me, her drink cold and forgotten. I sipped my own politely, but I couldn't hide a grimace at the lukewarm and bitter taste of it.
“It's just not the same without everyone else, is it?” Haruhi sounded more wistful than resistant, and her eyes were focused somewhere in the distance, outside the café window.
“What isn't?” I asked. I felt a flutter of fear in my chest, a very normal reaction to a change in Haruhi's mood.
“This. I mean, it's not just that we're down to two members of the S.O.S Brigade. It's that bastard Kyon! He left about the same time you did, you know? And who's supposed to pay for lunch when he's not here? What's happened to the idea of chivalry?!”
She ended her rant with her hands raised, and she emphasised the point by slapping her hands down on the table so that our drinks sloshed out of our cups and everything rattled about.
“I... what? You knew it was me?”
Haruhi snorted. “Of course I knew it was you, Mikuru. What do you take me for, an idiot? Who else would go missing for years in suspicious circumstances and then show up pretending they were a time traveller? Only a member of the S.O.S Brigade would have the gall to pull a stunt like that.”
She sounded, if it was at all possible, proud of me. I stared at her, and after a few seconds of shock remembered where I was and what I was supposed to be doing.
“No, really, I am one. That's where I went, when I disappeared. I went back, er, to the...”
Oh, I couldn't say it. I couldn't make such a lame pop culture reference at such a pivotal moment in my life. I distracted myself by using a napkin to sop up some of the mess on the table.
“I went to junior high school in the year 5011. I um, didn't come from then, though. That was just, you know... student exchange? And then I travelled into what was for me the past to attend senior high school with you.”
Haruhi frowned at me, and raised an eyebrow. “You know? There's something about you that makes me want to believe you, but I just can't. It's only your word I've got, even if the words do come from the lovely lips of my dearly missed mascot.”
Panic rose in my throat. I really hadn't wanted to fall back on the dangerous and stupid plan of taking her through time. But then what other choice did I have? I only had a scant few days left now before my deadline, and I couldn't take any risks. I had to make sure that my past self entered the agency, or...
Or what? I had suspicions regarding some events in my own past, and I knew that I had helped nudge Kyon along the right path at some points in his life. But what was really so bad about failure? What would happen if I did not become a time traveller? Sasaki hadn't made that many closed spaces herself, so there was a good chance I wouldn't either. Right? Right. And the only real difference would be that I studied in my natural chronology rather than hopping around everywhere. Instead of being shoehorned into this career and lifestyle, I might have a chance at finding an occupation I enjoyed. Of course there could be bad results. If I did not go back in time to influence Kyon and Haruhi, then perhaps I would never have been born.
But I had been taught acceptance and stoicism and passive observance by the agency. Humans, all humans, had to die sometime. Sometimes my actions or the actions of others would cause entire time-planes to destabilise or change. Nothing, not even the hard points in the Ideal Timeline, really mattered in that sense. If I was not a time traveller, the world would not be a better or worse place on the whole. It might be better or worse on a case-by-case, person-by-person basis. But on the whole, life would be life.
I had almost thought myself into giving up on it all. Not out of exhaustion or depression, but simply acceptance that causality was strange and something I barely understood with my mental capabilities. Resigned and calm, I was simply going to enjoy the rest of my lunch with Haruhi and then go home to the agency. See what might happen, when I failed at a mission so central to my own existence.
But Haruhi didn't seem to want to enjoy my company. She stood and waved, eyes bright and mouth calling out a greeting to some passer-by on the street. I couldn't catch a glimpse of them, but behind my shoulder the door to the café swung open and I heard the wait staff welcome the newcomers. Two shadows - one much shorter than the other - fell across the mess of our table.
“Hey, Yuki-chan! Sit down, guess who I've got here!”
I didn't need to turn my head to see who it was. The frown on Haruhi's face was enough to let me know that it wasn't Aunt Yuki who stood beside us, but Nagato Yuki. I could also guess who was with her; Sasaki. I felt a bit defeated. There I had been, ready to see what happened when a time travelling secret agent tested fate, and I obviously would soon be skipping back in time to set up this convenient proof of my powers.
“Suzumiya, Asahina.” Nagato stood still and silent, wearing her old high school uniform. I kept my eyes on Haruhi, whose mouth was opening and shutting again. I crossed my fingers underneath the table and hoped that Haruhi wasn't observant enough to notice that Nagato was physically an adult. I could guess what had happened - after my visit here I would take a quick trip back to earlier today, and press Aunt Yuki and Sasaki into helping out. I sighed with exasperation at my own convoluted plan.
Sasaki giggled, and thankfully made a distraction out of herself. Nagato moved to tidy the table for us with mechanical movements, and Sasaki scrambled to drag some chairs over.
“You're... Kyon's sister, right?” I'd never heard Haruhi sound so astonished before. It made her seem younger and smaller and vulnerable, something that was incredibly creepy coming from her. “But you shouldn't be so young. I mean, you should at least be... what, eighteen years old, now?”
Sasaki shrugged, and I clasped my hands before me. I nodded my thanks to Nagato as she finished her task and sat down, pulling a book out of her jacket pocket and beginning to read.
“We, er, had to bring her out of time, to protect her. She's currently under my guardianship.”
Haruhi gaped. She clenched her teaspoon in a tight fist. “And... and... Kyon? He's with you, too?”
My heart broke inside me. The hope and fear in her voice, the way her face turned pale and solemn as she began to understand the truth - that I was really a time traveller - made me want to say that yes, Kyon was with us. Safe and sound, and accounted for.
I couldn't. I didn't even have to say a thing, she could tell it just from looking at my face. Unable to meet her eyes, I turned my head to stare through prickling hot teary eyes at the cover of Nagato's book.
“Oh.” She sounded so small, so bereft and alone... and I could not do or say anything to help her. Sasaki moved to hug her tightly, and I should have been gathering myself and focusing on the task at hand, but all I could do was wonder exactly how much information Nagato had had about the future. Whether she'd known it all all along, and hadn't been able to do anything. Whether that had anything to do with the blank expression on her face.
“Kurumi,” I said once I had managed to force myself back into a professional frame of mind, “we need her. We have to train her. She'll be a capable time traveller and she will never give up on Kyon. I cannot see how things will eventuate, but I know that if anyone can find Kyon, it will be her.”
I spoke with a confidence I did not feel. I wasn't just trying to convince Haruhi or make her feel better, I was re-affirming that commitment I had made all those years ago in my childhood. I would do all I could to find and help Kyon. I wouldn't break any rules or risk the universe, but I would work my arse off to find him.
Haruhi met my eyes, and nodded sharply. “All right. Fine. I... oh wow. Talk about recursion!”
I blinked, confused at the sudden change in topic. “Recursion?”
Haruhi shrugged. “I ended up naming you after, well, you. You grow up well, Kurumi.”
I gaped. “You knew?! I mean, I had no idea! All those years, when I was training, and you sent me off to Miss Miruku every week... you knew?!”
Haruhi shrugged and laughed, a little sadly. “Well I know now, don't I? So I guess, yeah.”
She let go of the spoon, and reached her hand across the table to me. I clutched at it, feeling so strange to be before the woman who was just like my mother, and yet so young and resembling the friend of my youth.
The rest of the day passed in a blur. I gave Haruhi copies of the paperwork, and tested the phone connections so that she could contact the agency in synchronisation with her own time-plane and my past chronology. I shepherded Sasaki back to her dorm room and conveyed my thanks to Nagato with a polite inquiry as to when I was about to go back in time to. Hey, it never hurts to ask, and sometimes it can save a whole lot of chasing up loose ends.
I jumped around time, I collected Aunt Yuki and Sasaki, I explained it all to them, and then there I was, watching Nagato and Sasaki walk down the street towards a café in Tokyo in 2014. I didn't really want to watch, or go back to the agency in 2025 to debrief Sasaki. I wasn't ready to be alone, either. I set out to just walk and exist for a while in the crowds of the city, but very soon I was walking with purpose towards my neighbourhood.
Though I haven't spoken much of Tsuruya in my life, she had been my friend for years. To describe such a non-linear and confusing relationship as ours, that would take more words and time than I currently have to spare. The best I can do is say that from the day I was inducted into the agency as a child, Tsuruya has been there for me. As an adult in my chronology, as a classmate in her own, and in many other ways besides. Her family was caught up in the agency too somehow, and she'd always been aware of time travel. She'd always known about me, and so when I felt lost or alone or depressed I often found my way to her family compound.
I hadn't even had the time to raise my hand to knock on the door before it opened. Tsuruya was grinning, her mouth open on the verge of exclaiming something, but one look at me and her lips closed together so fast that her teeth clicked. Her hands closed comfortingly around my shoulders and I was ushered through the motions of removing my shoes, making my way down a corridor, sitting down on a cushion in the corner of her bedroom.
“What the hell happened to you?”
I sighed and picked up a bean-filled handsewn toy from her windowsill. I'd only made it a year ago, but it was faded in this time-plane from almost two decades of wear and tear.
“Nothing really. It shouldn't be that shocking or upsetting, not compared to everything else, I mean...”
“What shouldn't? Anyway, different rules apply to time travellers. Got all sorts of weird things to catch up with, I bet.”
I scratched at my scalp, fingers itching and feeling like they weren't my own. “Maybe? I don't know. I just... I learned today that Mum always knew it was me. Well not always, but you know? She knew about a lot of things before I did. It's just a bit... weird.”
Tsuruya nodded. She really was incredible, as a person. She had this ever present vigour and energy, but whenever I needed a strong silent shoulder to cry on or a willing ear, she was suddenly all patience and love. Right then she was nodded and making sympathetic murmurs. She sat down beside me, and gently pulled my hands away from my head.
“I can imagine.”
I stared at my fingers as they lay limp in my lap. I shook my head slightly. “No, actually, that isn't it. It was odd at the time, but it's more what I was thinking about earlier on. And some other stuff. What if I never joined the agency, never went back in time, never interfered. Would Kyon still be around? What does all this have to do with my family, and with the world at large? Why do so many people care about what happens to Haruhi and Kyon?”
“Shh.”
I had become a little agitated in my rant, and Tsuruya was doing her best to calm me down. My head felt dense. Too heavy on my neck. I ached all over.
“Who am I?” I bit my lip, and pinched my fingers together. They didn't feel like they belonged to me. “I mean, I have all these names... but what happens if I change my own past? Am I still me? Will I be me? And if I never exist... if Haruhi made closed spaces and changed the whole world a thousand times over... if none of this happens, does it even matter?”
I cried then, feeling all the tension of the last few days bleeding out of me. All the pain burning out in heaving sobs. Tsuruya's strong arms around me were the only stable things in the universe. She rocked with me, making soothing noises. I'm not sure how much time passed before I was lying down, coming down from my panic and sorrow as I curled into a ball in the middle of Tsuruya's bed.
She sat on the floor beside me, a warm hand on my arm. She was frowning into the distance as I regained my focus, and when she spoke her voice sounded a little tense. “I'm not sure if this is the right way or time to tell ya, but I think it's important. So listen up.”
I was all ears. Tsuruya lay down and I straightened out, so we were parallel beside each other and staring up at the ceiling.
“So you know that I know some stuff about you, and your family. I know a bit more about some things than you do. I know when Kyon and Haruhi met, and I know a bit about them.”
“You mean, when they were children? I read something about that in a report once, I think.”
Tsuruya waggled her fingers in the air and shrugged. She let her arms flop back down onto the floor. “Dunno. I guess so. But the most important thing to know here? Is that this sort of stuff runs in the family. I bet your files mentioned something about transference, right? Between them?”
I frowned as I tried to remember. Usually my augmented recall was impeccable, but I was all jumbled with emotions. “I think so, yes?” I really wasn't sure.
“Right. So what you know yourself is that you can travel in time, Haruhi and Sasaki can make closed spaces. Koizumi can defeat what's in the closed spaces. Nagato... is just Nagato. I'm not sure anyone can really explain her.”
“Yeah, okay. I'm with you.” The familiar knowledge grounded me a bit, though I wondered why she had brought Koizumi and Nagato into the picture.
“So the only person who is odd, and that you don't know anything about, is Kyon.”
“Huh. You know? I'd never really thought about him much in that way.” I rolled onto my side to face her. “I mean, I've been fixated on how and why he disappeared, partly blaming myself. I've never really thought much about whether or not I've seen any evidence of his having powers or abilities.”
Tsuruya hmm-ed and rolled on her own side to face me. With an exaggerated wink, she raised a finger to her lips and said, “He connects everything.”
I blinked. I didn't understand. Tsuruya laughed and smiled broadly, nodding as if I wasn't lying there looking completely baffled.
“Exactly, my dear Kurumi! Think about it... there's more than one way for metaphysical powers to manifest. Closed spaces, time travel... why not connectivity?”
I let the idea sink into my mind. “You mean, he kept us all together? The S.O.S Brigade and Sasaki and everyone?”
Tsuryua shrugged. “Why not? I mean, you're too used to thinking of things as they relate to your job and your non-linear lifestyle. What if things happened chronologically? What if you were born as Kurumi because Kyon wanted you - Mikuru - to be there with everyone?”
“I think... this is a bit too hypothetical for me right now...” I said slowly. Tsuruya agreed with me readily enough and was her cheerful self within a few seconds, but her words stayed with me for the rest of my life. Sometimes Tsuruya accidentally leaked information to me - sometimes deliberately - that it might have taken me years to come across. I suspected my own future hand in many of the occasions, and Tsuruya's own generous heart in many others. If she was hinting carefully that Kyon may have had powers that affected the interconnectivity of people, it might explain the ways that all of our lives had been intertwining throughout time and space over the years. I fell asleep in the Tsuruya residence that evening, having sent a message to the agency that I would return once I had woken to resume my duties. I didn't feel completely stable, but I certainly had something new to discuss with Aunt Yuki and Uncle Itsuki.
(part seventeen)
Rating: PG
Length: 3500ish
Warnings: Time travel, spoilers, book canon, some coarse language and science fiction themes.
Summary: When things come full circle, Kurumi relies on an old friend. (Earlier chapters 01| 02| 03| 04| 05| 06| 07| 08| 09| 10| 11| 12| 13| 14| 15)
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
2014, A Café, Tokyo; 2014, Tsuruya Residence, Tokyo
I had known for some time that I would have to fulfil the recursive necessity of my induction into the agency, but I had been more concerned about presenting a fresh and welcoming face for my younger self and about whether or not the TPDD would work - if it was just an external aid for my own powers, how much suggestion would I need? - than I was about the hardest task of all. For a woman who had spent her entire life chasing down and being enthralled with the supernatural, Haruhi Suzumiya was much harder to convince of my identity as a time traveller than many of the other people in my life had been.
Hell, Kyon had been dead-set on denying the strange and unusual, but he'd taken me at my word. He'd absorbed my information and though he'd put up a façade of scepticism, he had trusted me and accepted my role in his life with equanimity. Compared to him, trying to convince Haruhi that I really was a time traveller and that I really did represent a large organisation was almost a full-time job.
I had been dubious of my orders when I'd been sent to this time-plane a week early, but now I knew why. When it came to her daughter, Haruhi was like a brick wall. I had approached her at work, had bought her lunches, had set out pamphlets and documents and rational explanations on tables before her. I had hinted that I might be able to reveal the nature of time travel itself to her. She, with a stern glare, had eaten the food I had bought and collected the papers and pamphlets into a tidy pile, and said quite succinctly that Kurumi was going to go to the same school that her mother had gone to, thank you very much, and that the Suzumiyas were not interested in cult activities in that way, no matter what the show's publicity sound bites may suggest.
She said it not with anger, but with resolute long-suffering familiarity. I wondered, as I watched her watching me suspiciously over a cup of coffee one lunch break, how many other nutjobs she had encountered like that. If she'd been brushing off idiots and fanatical weirdos my whole life, and I'd never known. I'd always assumed her job was all fun and indulgence, never that she was being exhausted and beset upon like this. She'd never shown this world-weariness at home.
I sighed, and bit my lip. What to do? I knew I had introduced myself under an assumed name, Mizuyasu Miruku - and what a terrible anagram that was! - but perhaps the time had come to give it up. Maybe if I could get Haruhi to recognise me as Mikuru, then I'd be able to convince her at least of the veracity of my occupation.
The other alternative was actually taking her along on a trip through time, and I wasn't too sure if I wanted to risk that. Who knew what she'd do if she was encouraged in that way; closed spaces might be the very least of our problems after that.
I had let my mind drift. Haruhi was making bored and irritated noises opposite me, her drink cold and forgotten. I sipped my own politely, but I couldn't hide a grimace at the lukewarm and bitter taste of it.
“It's just not the same without everyone else, is it?” Haruhi sounded more wistful than resistant, and her eyes were focused somewhere in the distance, outside the café window.
“What isn't?” I asked. I felt a flutter of fear in my chest, a very normal reaction to a change in Haruhi's mood.
“This. I mean, it's not just that we're down to two members of the S.O.S Brigade. It's that bastard Kyon! He left about the same time you did, you know? And who's supposed to pay for lunch when he's not here? What's happened to the idea of chivalry?!”
She ended her rant with her hands raised, and she emphasised the point by slapping her hands down on the table so that our drinks sloshed out of our cups and everything rattled about.
“I... what? You knew it was me?”
Haruhi snorted. “Of course I knew it was you, Mikuru. What do you take me for, an idiot? Who else would go missing for years in suspicious circumstances and then show up pretending they were a time traveller? Only a member of the S.O.S Brigade would have the gall to pull a stunt like that.”
She sounded, if it was at all possible, proud of me. I stared at her, and after a few seconds of shock remembered where I was and what I was supposed to be doing.
“No, really, I am one. That's where I went, when I disappeared. I went back, er, to the...”
Oh, I couldn't say it. I couldn't make such a lame pop culture reference at such a pivotal moment in my life. I distracted myself by using a napkin to sop up some of the mess on the table.
“I went to junior high school in the year 5011. I um, didn't come from then, though. That was just, you know... student exchange? And then I travelled into what was for me the past to attend senior high school with you.”
Haruhi frowned at me, and raised an eyebrow. “You know? There's something about you that makes me want to believe you, but I just can't. It's only your word I've got, even if the words do come from the lovely lips of my dearly missed mascot.”
Panic rose in my throat. I really hadn't wanted to fall back on the dangerous and stupid plan of taking her through time. But then what other choice did I have? I only had a scant few days left now before my deadline, and I couldn't take any risks. I had to make sure that my past self entered the agency, or...
Or what? I had suspicions regarding some events in my own past, and I knew that I had helped nudge Kyon along the right path at some points in his life. But what was really so bad about failure? What would happen if I did not become a time traveller? Sasaki hadn't made that many closed spaces herself, so there was a good chance I wouldn't either. Right? Right. And the only real difference would be that I studied in my natural chronology rather than hopping around everywhere. Instead of being shoehorned into this career and lifestyle, I might have a chance at finding an occupation I enjoyed. Of course there could be bad results. If I did not go back in time to influence Kyon and Haruhi, then perhaps I would never have been born.
But I had been taught acceptance and stoicism and passive observance by the agency. Humans, all humans, had to die sometime. Sometimes my actions or the actions of others would cause entire time-planes to destabilise or change. Nothing, not even the hard points in the Ideal Timeline, really mattered in that sense. If I was not a time traveller, the world would not be a better or worse place on the whole. It might be better or worse on a case-by-case, person-by-person basis. But on the whole, life would be life.
I had almost thought myself into giving up on it all. Not out of exhaustion or depression, but simply acceptance that causality was strange and something I barely understood with my mental capabilities. Resigned and calm, I was simply going to enjoy the rest of my lunch with Haruhi and then go home to the agency. See what might happen, when I failed at a mission so central to my own existence.
But Haruhi didn't seem to want to enjoy my company. She stood and waved, eyes bright and mouth calling out a greeting to some passer-by on the street. I couldn't catch a glimpse of them, but behind my shoulder the door to the café swung open and I heard the wait staff welcome the newcomers. Two shadows - one much shorter than the other - fell across the mess of our table.
“Hey, Yuki-chan! Sit down, guess who I've got here!”
I didn't need to turn my head to see who it was. The frown on Haruhi's face was enough to let me know that it wasn't Aunt Yuki who stood beside us, but Nagato Yuki. I could also guess who was with her; Sasaki. I felt a bit defeated. There I had been, ready to see what happened when a time travelling secret agent tested fate, and I obviously would soon be skipping back in time to set up this convenient proof of my powers.
“Suzumiya, Asahina.” Nagato stood still and silent, wearing her old high school uniform. I kept my eyes on Haruhi, whose mouth was opening and shutting again. I crossed my fingers underneath the table and hoped that Haruhi wasn't observant enough to notice that Nagato was physically an adult. I could guess what had happened - after my visit here I would take a quick trip back to earlier today, and press Aunt Yuki and Sasaki into helping out. I sighed with exasperation at my own convoluted plan.
Sasaki giggled, and thankfully made a distraction out of herself. Nagato moved to tidy the table for us with mechanical movements, and Sasaki scrambled to drag some chairs over.
“You're... Kyon's sister, right?” I'd never heard Haruhi sound so astonished before. It made her seem younger and smaller and vulnerable, something that was incredibly creepy coming from her. “But you shouldn't be so young. I mean, you should at least be... what, eighteen years old, now?”
Sasaki shrugged, and I clasped my hands before me. I nodded my thanks to Nagato as she finished her task and sat down, pulling a book out of her jacket pocket and beginning to read.
“We, er, had to bring her out of time, to protect her. She's currently under my guardianship.”
Haruhi gaped. She clenched her teaspoon in a tight fist. “And... and... Kyon? He's with you, too?”
My heart broke inside me. The hope and fear in her voice, the way her face turned pale and solemn as she began to understand the truth - that I was really a time traveller - made me want to say that yes, Kyon was with us. Safe and sound, and accounted for.
I couldn't. I didn't even have to say a thing, she could tell it just from looking at my face. Unable to meet her eyes, I turned my head to stare through prickling hot teary eyes at the cover of Nagato's book.
“Oh.” She sounded so small, so bereft and alone... and I could not do or say anything to help her. Sasaki moved to hug her tightly, and I should have been gathering myself and focusing on the task at hand, but all I could do was wonder exactly how much information Nagato had had about the future. Whether she'd known it all all along, and hadn't been able to do anything. Whether that had anything to do with the blank expression on her face.
“Kurumi,” I said once I had managed to force myself back into a professional frame of mind, “we need her. We have to train her. She'll be a capable time traveller and she will never give up on Kyon. I cannot see how things will eventuate, but I know that if anyone can find Kyon, it will be her.”
I spoke with a confidence I did not feel. I wasn't just trying to convince Haruhi or make her feel better, I was re-affirming that commitment I had made all those years ago in my childhood. I would do all I could to find and help Kyon. I wouldn't break any rules or risk the universe, but I would work my arse off to find him.
Haruhi met my eyes, and nodded sharply. “All right. Fine. I... oh wow. Talk about recursion!”
I blinked, confused at the sudden change in topic. “Recursion?”
Haruhi shrugged. “I ended up naming you after, well, you. You grow up well, Kurumi.”
I gaped. “You knew?! I mean, I had no idea! All those years, when I was training, and you sent me off to Miss Miruku every week... you knew?!”
Haruhi shrugged and laughed, a little sadly. “Well I know now, don't I? So I guess, yeah.”
She let go of the spoon, and reached her hand across the table to me. I clutched at it, feeling so strange to be before the woman who was just like my mother, and yet so young and resembling the friend of my youth.
The rest of the day passed in a blur. I gave Haruhi copies of the paperwork, and tested the phone connections so that she could contact the agency in synchronisation with her own time-plane and my past chronology. I shepherded Sasaki back to her dorm room and conveyed my thanks to Nagato with a polite inquiry as to when I was about to go back in time to. Hey, it never hurts to ask, and sometimes it can save a whole lot of chasing up loose ends.
I jumped around time, I collected Aunt Yuki and Sasaki, I explained it all to them, and then there I was, watching Nagato and Sasaki walk down the street towards a café in Tokyo in 2014. I didn't really want to watch, or go back to the agency in 2025 to debrief Sasaki. I wasn't ready to be alone, either. I set out to just walk and exist for a while in the crowds of the city, but very soon I was walking with purpose towards my neighbourhood.
Though I haven't spoken much of Tsuruya in my life, she had been my friend for years. To describe such a non-linear and confusing relationship as ours, that would take more words and time than I currently have to spare. The best I can do is say that from the day I was inducted into the agency as a child, Tsuruya has been there for me. As an adult in my chronology, as a classmate in her own, and in many other ways besides. Her family was caught up in the agency too somehow, and she'd always been aware of time travel. She'd always known about me, and so when I felt lost or alone or depressed I often found my way to her family compound.
I hadn't even had the time to raise my hand to knock on the door before it opened. Tsuruya was grinning, her mouth open on the verge of exclaiming something, but one look at me and her lips closed together so fast that her teeth clicked. Her hands closed comfortingly around my shoulders and I was ushered through the motions of removing my shoes, making my way down a corridor, sitting down on a cushion in the corner of her bedroom.
“What the hell happened to you?”
I sighed and picked up a bean-filled handsewn toy from her windowsill. I'd only made it a year ago, but it was faded in this time-plane from almost two decades of wear and tear.
“Nothing really. It shouldn't be that shocking or upsetting, not compared to everything else, I mean...”
“What shouldn't? Anyway, different rules apply to time travellers. Got all sorts of weird things to catch up with, I bet.”
I scratched at my scalp, fingers itching and feeling like they weren't my own. “Maybe? I don't know. I just... I learned today that Mum always knew it was me. Well not always, but you know? She knew about a lot of things before I did. It's just a bit... weird.”
Tsuruya nodded. She really was incredible, as a person. She had this ever present vigour and energy, but whenever I needed a strong silent shoulder to cry on or a willing ear, she was suddenly all patience and love. Right then she was nodded and making sympathetic murmurs. She sat down beside me, and gently pulled my hands away from my head.
“I can imagine.”
I stared at my fingers as they lay limp in my lap. I shook my head slightly. “No, actually, that isn't it. It was odd at the time, but it's more what I was thinking about earlier on. And some other stuff. What if I never joined the agency, never went back in time, never interfered. Would Kyon still be around? What does all this have to do with my family, and with the world at large? Why do so many people care about what happens to Haruhi and Kyon?”
“Shh.”
I had become a little agitated in my rant, and Tsuruya was doing her best to calm me down. My head felt dense. Too heavy on my neck. I ached all over.
“Who am I?” I bit my lip, and pinched my fingers together. They didn't feel like they belonged to me. “I mean, I have all these names... but what happens if I change my own past? Am I still me? Will I be me? And if I never exist... if Haruhi made closed spaces and changed the whole world a thousand times over... if none of this happens, does it even matter?”
I cried then, feeling all the tension of the last few days bleeding out of me. All the pain burning out in heaving sobs. Tsuruya's strong arms around me were the only stable things in the universe. She rocked with me, making soothing noises. I'm not sure how much time passed before I was lying down, coming down from my panic and sorrow as I curled into a ball in the middle of Tsuruya's bed.
She sat on the floor beside me, a warm hand on my arm. She was frowning into the distance as I regained my focus, and when she spoke her voice sounded a little tense. “I'm not sure if this is the right way or time to tell ya, but I think it's important. So listen up.”
I was all ears. Tsuruya lay down and I straightened out, so we were parallel beside each other and staring up at the ceiling.
“So you know that I know some stuff about you, and your family. I know a bit more about some things than you do. I know when Kyon and Haruhi met, and I know a bit about them.”
“You mean, when they were children? I read something about that in a report once, I think.”
Tsuruya waggled her fingers in the air and shrugged. She let her arms flop back down onto the floor. “Dunno. I guess so. But the most important thing to know here? Is that this sort of stuff runs in the family. I bet your files mentioned something about transference, right? Between them?”
I frowned as I tried to remember. Usually my augmented recall was impeccable, but I was all jumbled with emotions. “I think so, yes?” I really wasn't sure.
“Right. So what you know yourself is that you can travel in time, Haruhi and Sasaki can make closed spaces. Koizumi can defeat what's in the closed spaces. Nagato... is just Nagato. I'm not sure anyone can really explain her.”
“Yeah, okay. I'm with you.” The familiar knowledge grounded me a bit, though I wondered why she had brought Koizumi and Nagato into the picture.
“So the only person who is odd, and that you don't know anything about, is Kyon.”
“Huh. You know? I'd never really thought about him much in that way.” I rolled onto my side to face her. “I mean, I've been fixated on how and why he disappeared, partly blaming myself. I've never really thought much about whether or not I've seen any evidence of his having powers or abilities.”
Tsuruya hmm-ed and rolled on her own side to face me. With an exaggerated wink, she raised a finger to her lips and said, “He connects everything.”
I blinked. I didn't understand. Tsuruya laughed and smiled broadly, nodding as if I wasn't lying there looking completely baffled.
“Exactly, my dear Kurumi! Think about it... there's more than one way for metaphysical powers to manifest. Closed spaces, time travel... why not connectivity?”
I let the idea sink into my mind. “You mean, he kept us all together? The S.O.S Brigade and Sasaki and everyone?”
Tsuryua shrugged. “Why not? I mean, you're too used to thinking of things as they relate to your job and your non-linear lifestyle. What if things happened chronologically? What if you were born as Kurumi because Kyon wanted you - Mikuru - to be there with everyone?”
“I think... this is a bit too hypothetical for me right now...” I said slowly. Tsuruya agreed with me readily enough and was her cheerful self within a few seconds, but her words stayed with me for the rest of my life. Sometimes Tsuruya accidentally leaked information to me - sometimes deliberately - that it might have taken me years to come across. I suspected my own future hand in many of the occasions, and Tsuruya's own generous heart in many others. If she was hinting carefully that Kyon may have had powers that affected the interconnectivity of people, it might explain the ways that all of our lives had been intertwining throughout time and space over the years. I fell asleep in the Tsuruya residence that evening, having sent a message to the agency that I would return once I had woken to resume my duties. I didn't feel completely stable, but I certainly had something new to discuss with Aunt Yuki and Uncle Itsuki.
(part seventeen)