Tainted Gestalt: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

There were long walks, and then there were long uphill walks. Just another day of his boring life, attending a boring school where boring people went to learn boring things so that they could lead much more productive boring lives.

And that was all fine as far as he saw it. After all, he had given up on wonder quite some time ago. He never believed in Santa Claus. He did believe in the supernatural - everyone did when they were that young. But eventually everyone works out that all that stuff is bunk. The supernatural does not exist. There are no such things as time travelers or aliens or psychic powers or anything like that. It just doesn’t happen.

The reason those ideas exist is simply because people think of their own lives as boring and try to spice it up a bit with a little escapism. Nothing wrong with that. Not by itself. Not unless you indulge just a little too much. There’s a clue in the description: You can have too much of anything eventually. There are always limits, and why would you want to push to find them?

That’s the trick, of course. We all want something odd to happen. Something that the laws of physics can’t quite explain. It’s part of why magic shows are so popular! So that we can all pretend just for a little while that the rabbit isn’t hiding in a bag attached to the side of the table. That he really did just reach into another dimension and pull it out. That he really did saw a woman in half and put her back together. We want that to be real! We need it to be real!

But this particular boy? He’d gotten used to that. As he might put it, he had grown up. Matured. Come of age. Realised that this was an ordinary, boring world… and there was absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Then he met… her.

“Nice to meet everyone,” he said at the conclusion of his class greeting. “I hope we all have a good year together.”

With nothing else to say he sat down and let the girl behind him rise to her feet. But before anyone could say anything, a rather loud gasp caught the attention of the class. As one, all eyes fell upon a girl towards the front of the classroom, who was staring directly ahead of herself with wide unblinking eyes. What was her name again? Asakura, wasn’t it? For whatever reason she looked like she had seen a ghost… But then she seemed to notice the attention and in an instant her face melted back into a cheery smile. “I’m sorry, don’t mind me! I must not have gotten enough sleep last night.”

Okay. Whatever. He turned his attention back towards the girl sitting behind him, who was giving Asakura a suspicious glare.

“I’m Haruhi Suzumiya, from East Junior High! First off, I’m not interested in ordinary people. But if any of you are aliens, time travelers or espers, please come see me. That is all.”

What kind of introduction was that? Nobody in the class seemed to know what to make of it either, and - Ah! He had left his pencils in his bag. How thoroughly careless of him! While Tanaguchi made his introduction, that was the perfect opportunity to correct this mistake. He reached into his bag -

And found a weird cube sitting amongst his belongings. How very curious. He’d never seen anything quite like it before, and - Ah! Best to put that away before anyone notices! Especially that strange (but stunningly beautiful) girl behind him! It was bad enough that it already seemed as though his lousy nickname was going to stick here as well without that sort of attention to worry about as well!

Kyon would have to worry about this weird cube later….

• written by Lumitiel