The Intrigues of Haruhi Suzumiya by Nagaru Tanigawa

something: why are your requests always so quickly approved?”
    Asahina pouted, looking a bit like Haruhi. It was cute, but this was no time to be thinking about things like that. I purposefully turned toward the clubroom door. “I told you to do this? The me of eight days from now did?”
    “Yes. You seemed kind of nervous, and you told me that if Iwent, I’d understand why. And you said to say ‘Hi’ to the you of the past.”
    What the hell had the eight-days-later-me been thinking?
    I struggled to understand. What had he sent Asahina into the past to do? “Say ‘Hi’ to me?” That didn’t tell me anything.
    No, wait—something else was strange. This Asahina said she’d come from eight days in the future. Meanwhile, the Asahina who was wearing her maid outfit—the Asahina of
this
time—had been dragged away by Nagato.
    So… what? There were two Asahinas. One was here in the clubroom. Nagato had taken the other one somewhere else in the school and hopefully wasn’t giving her too hard of a time.
    “She took me to the emergency stairs and said all kinds of strange things,” said Asahina, cocking her head to one side. “Like how to use number theory to prove the existence of God, asking me how to conceptually refute that… or something. Nagato did all the talking, and I didn’t understand a thing. What was that all about? Oh—” There Asahina cut herself off. “I see.”
    Just as Asahina seemed to figure things out, the Color Timer in my head began to flash an alarmed shade of red. At this rate, we were headed for big trouble.
    As I silently prayed for Nagato’s crazy-talk to drag on, I said, “Asahina, you didn’t meet your future self anytime in the past week, right?”
    “Er, no…” She shook her head meekly, looking flustered. In that case, we’d have to hurry.
    I couldn’t let this Asahina meet her counterpart.
    Nagato had realized this. She’d sensed Asahina and me in the broom closet and had taken steps to buy us some time. The reason she’d dragged maid-Asahina out of the clubroom was to give this Asahina and me a chance to escape.
    Haruhi and Koizumi would be here before long. SOS Brigade members were like salmon returning to spawn—they always came back to the same place. I should know; I was the same way.And if Haruhi were to see the fissioned Asahinas, it wasn’t hard for me to guess how likely it was that she’d buy the explanation that they were twins.
    If I didn’t get Asahina out of here and fast, I had the feeling things could turn ugly very soon.
    “Asahina, let’s go.”
    I grabbed my own bag, opened the door slightly, and checked the hallway. Nobody was there. I beckoned Asahina to come over, which she did, looking tremulously out into the hallway. The countdown had already begun. There were two conditions. One: not letting the two versions of Asahina meet each other, and two: not letting Haruhi witness two Asahinas in one place. I thought about putting her in some kind of disguise, but a glance at the hanger rack in the clubroom revealed nothing but costumes that would’ve stuck out, so I gave up on that idea. Fortunately this Asahina was wearing her school uniform. Like the saying goes: the best way to hide in a forest is to be a leaf.
    I took Asahina’s arm and hurried out of the room.
    “You’re sure you came from eight days in the future, right?” I asked as we strolled briskly along.
    “Yes, because you told me to go back eight days, to three forty-five PM .”
    Asahina’s stride was longer than usual as we descended the steps two at a time. I prayed that Mr. Okabe’s lecturing of Haruhi would run long.
    “So you know what’s going to happen for the next week?”
    We reached the bottom floor, and I hesitated for a moment before picking a route that took us across the courtyard. If we had taken the covered pathways back to the main school building, there was the possibility of a direct encounter with Haruhi, and this path would get us to the shoe