Read Online The Intrigues of Haruhi Suzumiya by Nagaru Tanigawa - Free Book Online Page B

surprise that Tsuruya’s family owned their own mountain. Their villa had its own ski slope, so surely they had resources enough to furnish their home with a mountain or two.
    I didn’t even try to hide my sigh. “So did you even find a treasure?”
    “Um… no.”
    She seemed to hesitate before answering but eventually shook her head. “There weren’t any old treasure chests buried any-where.”
    I shouldn’t have asked. Despite it being a rare day off, I was going to have to waste the day playing treasure hunter while looking for a treasure we’d never find. There’s nothing worse than knowing in advance your efforts are going to end in vain.
    “Also, the day after that…”
    More digging? I asked. We’d be better off just boring a hole in the Tsuruya family garden. Who knows what we’d find. A hot spring, maybe.
    “No, on Saturday we—we did a city patrol.”
    Ah,
that
. The main activity of the SOS Brigade—wandering around town looking for mysterious phenomena. Now that she mentioned it, we hadn’t done that in a while.
    “Pff, not like there’s two straight days’ worth of stuff to do,” I said.
    “No… wait—yes, that’s right.” Asahina looked askance for some reason. “Since Monday was also a vacation day…”
    I remembered as soon as she said it. Next Monday they were holding the special class entrance examinations, so students were excused from school.
    “And did we find anything mysterious?” I asked, thinking that perhaps that was the reason Asahina had been sent back.
    “No.” She shook her head without hesitation. “It was the same as always. We drank some tea and ate some lunch…”
    It was getting more and more puzzling. As far as I could tell, there was no reason for my future self to send Asahina into the past. I could maybe understand if she’d come from a year hence, or even a few months. But what difference could traveling into this week from next week make?
    I watch Asahina vaguely as she fluffed Shamisen’s belly fur, the cat having rolled over on its back.
    Since we were only dealing with a week this time, there’d be no need to borrow Nagato’s power, and we could still use her method. At last year’s Tanabata, when Asahina and I had traveled to the Tanabata four years earlier, we’d been frozen in time for three years while we waited to return to our original time. I’d just apply that lesson here. I’d be able to return Asahina to her proper time frame just by keeping her out of sight for a week. There wouldn’t be any need for cold sleep, and while she’d age a week in the meantime, I didn’t think that would make much of a difference.
    But in that case, what was the point? There had to be a reason for this—a reason for my eight-days-older self to send Asahina into the past, and a reason for Asahina the Elder to leave another handwritten message for me.
    “How did I seem? Did I do or say anything strange?”
    “Mmm…” Asahina only continued to pet the squishy furball that was Shamisen, his eyes by now having closed dazedly.
    It was time for a different approach.
    “Tell me, just what was the situation when my future self told you to travel back in time?”
    “That much I remember perfectly, since from my perspective it happened today.” Removing her hand from the cat, Asahina drew several horizontal lines in the air with her finger. “We were doing a fund-raiser in the courtyard. A lottery to sponsor the SOS Brigade.”
    What the hell was that?
I thought.
    “It was a lottery where whoever pulled a winner would get…um, a grand prize of five hundred yen. Suzumiya was drawing people in with a megaphone, and…”
    No doubt she was trying to raise money for the club.
    Asahina continued her explanation, but with difficulty.
    “I was in charge of handing out goods. There were a lot of people, so it was kinda scary…”
    I wondered if Haruhi was trying to get revenge for the Se-tsubun event.
    “Asahina, what were you wearing? Was it by any