The Boredom of Haruhi Suzumiya by Nagaru Tanigawa

ya.”
    And then she stomped off. She didn’t even thank me for helping her. Extremely rude behavior, but that’s what I’d expect from Haruhi. And she never told me her name either. Though that works out better for me, I’d say.
    I couldn’t stay in this place forever so I attempted to wake Asahina up. This was after I’d returned the cart and lime stolen by Haruhi to the spot behind the storeroom.
    The sight of Asahina sleeping like a kitten was enough to make me lose control, but I resisted those urges and lightly shook her shoulder.
    “Mmm… Hmm. Huh? Wha—”
    Once Asahina had opened her eyes, she began looking all around.
    “Wha-Wha—!”
    She stood up.
    “Wh-Wh-Wh-Whe-… Where am I? What how when are we right now?!”
    How am I supposed to respond? As I racked my brain for an answer, Asahina emitted a short gasp before staggering. Even in the darkness, I could tell that her face had turned pale.
    Asahina began searching herself with both hands.
    “My TPDD… is gone. It’s gone.”
    Asahina looked like she was about to cry. Soon enough, she really was crying. She looked like a little girl as she cried with her hands to her eyes, but it appeared that this wasn’t the time to be in high spirits.
    “What’s a TPDD?”
    “Sniff… That would be considered classified… It’s kind of like a time machine. That’s what I used to come to this time… but I can’t find it anywhere. We can’t return to our original time without it…”
    “Uh, why is it gone?”
    “I don’t know… It should have been impossible to lose… Yet I lost it.”
    I recalled the other Asahina touching this one’s body.
    “Maybe somebody will come save us—”
    “That’s impossible…” she sobbed.
    Asahina began explaining as she continued to sniffle. Established events on the time plane were supposed to be predetermined, so if a TPDD were to exist, it would be on her person. The fact that it was gone would be an established event, which would mean that its “absence” had been predetermined… and yeah. I don’t get it.
    “So in other words, what’s going to happen to us?”
    She sobbed, “ In other words, we’re stuck. We’ll be stranded onthis time plane, three years in the past, unable to return to our original space-time.”
    We’re in big trouble, was how I felt in my heart, but I didn’t feel nervous at all. The adult Asahina hadn’t given me any particular warning about this situation. She was probably the one who swiped the TPDD or whatever and created the current predicament. I presume that Asahina (Big) came to the past for that very purpose. An established event, right? From the perspective of the Asahina who came from farther in the future than this Asahina, it was predetermined.
    I looked away from the sobbing Asahina to glance across the school grounds. The baffling jumble of white lines designed by Haruhi and drawn by me was sprawled across the field. The East Middle School staff and students who had no idea what had transpired would probably find this creepy when they showed up tomorrow. I’ll just have to pray that there aren’t any aliens out there who would consider this an insult… and that’s when I had a sudden revelation.
    After all, it’d been dark. The only lighting in the school was provided by a few flickering streetlights and the mess of white lines had been large in scale, so I couldn’t tell what the whole thing looked like until I was a fair distance away.
    Which is why it took me so long to notice.
    I pulled the card Nagato had given me out of my pocket. The one with a number of unintelligible figures on it.
    “There might be a way,” I said as Asahina looked at me in tears. I continued to stare at the card.
    The drawings on that card were exactly the same as the ones Haruhi and I had scribbled all over the school grounds.
    After leaving East Middle in a hurry, we came to a stop in front of a fancy apartment in front of the station.
    “Is this… Nagato’s