A/N: Iä! Iä! Haruhi Fhtagn! *casts fic necromancy*

The Melancholy of a Normal Girl

by Netherwood

Part 5 – Dreaming Away the Ache

"You remember I can't give you full credit for this, right?" Mr. Okabe said.

"It wouldn't be late work if you did." Ah, that came out rather snarkier than it ought to have, didn't it? We're not supposed to be antagonizing the teacher here. Maybe I should just be quiet and let Haruhi do the talking.

"We realize there's a penalty for falling behind," Haruhi says, smoothly moving in before Okabe can get frustrated at me. "But the option for late work is there, for those who have to take it, and that's far better than just letting everything drop, isn't it? We're going to work hard here, Mr. Okabe, to make sure we finish all our assignments." Haruhi holds out the stack of papers once again, looking very serious.

Such fine sentiments. She even kept a straight face while delivering those lines. Truly an outstanding performance.

Bravo.

Okabe hesitates a second longer, looking like he knows he's got to upbraid us for something. After all, two students drop off the face of the earth, not participating in class, not handing in homework, not socializing with the others, and it's not like that can just go without being mentioned. Of course, if the goodly teacher had been at all interested in what was happening at any point, he could have just walked over at the end of class and asked. Or for that matter, made our class rep snoop around. That's what they're appointed for, isn't it?

Instead, it seems it was easier and less awkward for the staff to continue ignoring Haruhi on account of her reputation as a strange and troublesome student, and I—well, I guess I just sort of got swallowed up in Haruhi's little bubble. Or dove in. Whatever.

All the more reason to hold onto the people who do notice when you when it's inconvenient.

Eventually, Okabe settles for taking the stack of papers and adding a small, generic admonishment. "See that you two get the rest of your work in. What you do in this school will affect your future, you know." After all, there wasn't much in Haruhi's little speech that he could really object to.

As it turns out, three weeks of makeup homework is a pain in the neck. What, you didn't think the story ended with us embracing in the rain, did you? Two young lovers swearing to move onward is certainly poetic, or perhaps a little cheesy, and is probably the high point of interest. It would make sense to end the story there, because the rest is just the usual daily slog onward. But, the slog is the important part. The slog is the hard part. The slog is where Haruhi and I, and everyone in this world, fight the little battles that make up our existence in this dreary world. So I've heard, anyway.

And so, with class ended and our progress turned in to Okabe, we head back on to the school library, back to the stack of makeup work, and back to life. That rainy evening was last Friday, and here we are the Thursday after, having sacrificed a good chunk of our weekend and every afternoon after school to getting our work back in order. Honestly, I think I've spent more time in libraries since starting high school than I have in the rest of my life combined. This is really going to ruin my cultivated image as an apathetic and average young man.

Haruhi huffs angrily as we unload our textbooks on our customary little table-for-two at the back of the library. "There's something that pisses me off about an adult who thinks he can lecture me about responsibility when he can't even nag us about turning assignments in until we're already doing it ourselves. Seriously, as far as the school cares, we just turned into statues at the back of the room for like three weeks, and today was the first Okabe says anything about it!"

"You sound like you want to be nagged." Granted, I was thinking nearly the same thing. But still.

"Of course not! If I'm going to do something, then I'll do it, and if I'm not, I don't want to be pestered about it. It's just hypocritical of him, that's all. See how badly people will half-ass a job when it suits them?"

"Not like you, of course. Good job on that little speech to get him off our backs, by the way. Even I almost believed it."

She glares and crosses her arms. I have to smile in return—it's the same face she used to wear at the start of the year, when she was ready to strangle the whole world if it didn't get its act together. Haven't seen that in awhile, and I'm glad to have it back. "It's not that hard to figure out what they want to hear out of students. To them, it makes life easier when you can put little numbers in the boxes that want numbers. It's stupid, but that's how their world is made. Right now I'm thinking of homework as an entrance fee for actually getting to stick around without people bitching at me. Besides, it's almost break—my Mom'll freak out if she sees a report card that says I just stopped doing anything for a month. I bet she really will get me a psychiatrist if I bring that home."

"I hear a story in there."

"Hmph." Her eyes say she doesn't want to talk about it. I'll have to keep a light touch. "She's been going crazy since I started high school, I think. Whenever I got in trouble in middle school, she mostly just blew it off when she noticed at all, told people I'd grow out of it, that sort of thing. Lately, though, it's like she can't string two sentences together without one of them being 'Haruhi, you need to shape up!' or something like that."

Admittedly, I don't know much about her mother, and I'd like to hold off on judgments until I do know more. But, as a tentative and rather obvious hypothesis, I'd say she was worried about her daughter. I remember all those bento lunches Haruhi asked me to finish off for her because she didn't want her mother to know she couldn't force down lunch on some days, after all.

Actually, that makes Haruhu's mother one of the people who notices, doesn't it? Sometimes we're fortunate in ways we don't even realize because we're just used to that being the way it is for us.

"Well, let's not give her anything to freak out at you about, then," I say, and pull open my school folders to see what's next. "Chemistry. Wonderful. Whoever designed these lessons just wants to see how many random letters stringed together we can swallow. Have you ever sat down with a list you're supposed to memorize and felt your brain die from preemptive boredom?"

Haruhi gives a little sound of assent, sighs, and stares at her pile, tapping a pencil absently on the table. Is she zoning out again? She still does that a bit too often. But after a moment she shakes her head to clear it. "You and me. Older, after graduating from college. We go all over to see the world on vacations. Like, we can start with diving the Yonaguni monument off Ryukyu, and then go to Lake Baikal in Russia and Machu Picchu and the Grand Canyon. And when we're tired we come home to a little house in the countryside, maybe in that village your aunt and uncle live in, and we have it all to ourselves and no one bothers us there."

"I… what?"

Haruhi smirks at me. "I told you I'm doing this so I've got permission to stick around without people bitching at me, didn't I? It helps if I think about something I want. I can't get my reward if I don't take care of the things that I need to do to get it."

"I…" I can feel my face heating up, and I'm probably grinning like an idiot. "Thank you."

She grins again, and pulls her homework toward her. "We just need to be able to fill out a chart with the first fifty-four elements for the midterm, and that's all the memorizing we need to do. There are some trends across the table that can help..."

And with that, our noses are to the grindstone once more. Farewell, careless afternoons spent wandering the city parks with Haruhi. May we meet again soon.

After almost an hour drilling on which abbreviation belongs to which element, hindered somewhat by the way the abbreviations don't use any letters from the element's name, I develop a headache. We move on to using calculus to optimize volumes of solid geometric shapes, and that's when Haruhi starts to flag. We dabble a bit in national history before Haruhi throws the book across the room and we decide to save it for another day, and, last, on to our English grammar and translation exercises. Which is a nice refresher, because languages may be the only subject where Haruhi's blazing mind doesn't leave me pathetically in the dust. Well, literature too, but that's a bit harder to measure than whether a sentence is grammatically correct. Honestly, when I manage to forget that it's assigned labor, I actually enjoy translating an English text. It's nice to know you're good at something, after all.

In the end, we manage to clear out another chunk of makeup work by the time the bells chime the final closing for the day. Who knows, we might even finish catching up this weekend.

It's almost 7 PM, and I've been trying to at least be seen by my family once a day, so Haruhi and I prepare to part ways at the school gates. Before we do, though...

"Oi, Haruhi. My family's planning on going hiking for a day in the Rokkou Mountains the weekend after this one. You're invited, if you'd like to come." My parents nearly had a heart attack from shock when I suggested it, but they agreed it was a good idea. Once my little sister stopped jumping up and down shouting "hiking, hiking, hiking!" until my parents gave in, she immediately ran up to her room to fill a pack. Despite, of course, little considerations such as "We're not going for over a week, you don't need to pack yet," or "That tent doesn't fit in your backpack!" or "It's just a day trip, why are you even trying to bring a tent in the first place?"

Have I mentioned how much I look forward to throwing this little munchkin of mine at Haruhi? My sister is unnaturally cute, but she moves at a velocity sufficient to cause sonic booms, and I will happily point her at anyone who will put up with her if it means I get a minute to rest.

"You're... sure it's fine if I come?" Haruhi asks. "I mean, I won't be getting in the way of family time or anything, will I?"

How uncharacteristically tactful of her. Nevertheless... "Trust me, Haruhi, it's perfectly alright."

"Well... okay then. I'll look forward to it." She stops, and rifles through her schoolbag. "Hey, Kyon, before we split up... here. Do me a favor and take a look at this tonight, will you?"

She's handing me... a small sheaf of papers, held together with a binder clip. I have no objection to reading it if Haruhi wants me to, but... what is it?

"I thought... well, I thought I'd try my hand at writing a story," she says. "I had a dream that was pretty cool, so I decided to write it out."

"If you don't have extraordinary things dropping out of the sky, you make them yourself?"

She smirks. "Something like that. But don't make it sound like dreams aren't extraordinary on their own, Kyon! A sage should know that already."

OoOoO

With those parting words, we wave and finally head our separate ways. I make it home in time for a late dinner with both parents and my sister, and when was the last time that even happened? Dinner eaten, my sister and I drag out our decrepit playstation for a few rounds of a racing game. After being soundly trounced a few times, I take my leave and ensconce myself in my room, with Haruhi's manuscript spread out on my bed.

Within a few lines, my bed and my posters and all the rest of my room fade from reality, and the printed ink takes me elsewhere. The pages confide in me the story of a godlike, sufficiently-advanced alien who makes its throne in the tidal gravity around the singularity of a black hole. Above it, the light of the universe eternally spins on, and the alien watches the everything, always delighted and comforted by the wonders it observes, yet melancholic because its chosen point of observation, where only a being such as it could survive, means that all those wonders also remain eternally out of reach.

Have I mentioned already that this girl is absurdly good at anything she tries? I know she spent the first month of school turning down every club that begged for her permanent membership, and I bet the literature club was on that list too. I won't start comparing her prose to the classic masters, but it's just as good as what you'd find if you grabbed a random paperback off the library shelf. There's a bittersweet mood to the piece that draws me into the company of this eternal watcher she's written about, and I can't help but think that Haruhi would do well as an author.

Although... well, it feels incomplete. I read it through two or three more times, scribbling here and there and suggesting a few line edits and trying to pay closer attention to the grammar and spelling that I didn't even notice the first time through, but pretty soon I have to grab my phone and call Haruhi.

She answers after the secondd rings. "Kyon! What's up?"

"What happens next?"

"Well… I was thinking about a shower, but that's probably not what you mean."

"No, in your story. It feels like…" I struggle for the words for a minute. It feels like when Haruhi wrote her dream down, she thrust her authorial finger up above and shouted "Behold!" and then forgot to let us know what she's pointing at. Except that doesn't make any sense, even in my head. "I love the image of floating in the void with this alien, observing a universe it's cut off from. But it feels incomplete."

"Yeah, but that's all I dreamed about."

"Maybe, but it's still… like a single still frame in an animation? Part of a larger story. It doesn't feel like it's saying anything coherent yet. It's just a starting point, or maybe an end."

"I can see that." Haruhi goes quiet for a bit, thinking about it. "Do you have any ideas?"

"Not even one. I'm too dull for that, and it's not my story anyway. Just keep asking yourself questions about what's happening until you get some good answers. Like, why did the alien decide to get stuck just above a black hole anyway? It seems kind of extreme as life decisions go."

"Because… the rest of her species are really hierarchical and don't like emotions, and they didn't want her reaching above herself because she was always too curious, so they told her to either stop looking at the stars or they'd lock her up."

"And so she went for the black hole instead, where at least she could see everything? Is that where the story ends?"

"Pfft, as if! That's way too sad, Kyon! No, this is all backstory! The story starts when a human ship shows up and they realize there's something living in the black hole."

"Now you're getting somewhere."

We keep going like that for another fifteen minutes, and when we hang up so Haruhi can get her shower, the memories start to leak in. I used to harbor aspirations like this of my own. Crafting stories, taking all those strange thoughts bouncing around my head and getting them onto paper... As a kid, I was always the sort to tell stories about my toys while playing. Back in middle school, I worked on a manga for awhile, before I realized that I was really bad at drawing. I had a whole series outlined and ready. It was definitely the product of a thirteen year old boy, though. The tournament arc I planned halfway through, for example, will have to go. Just... no tournaments. Thinking back, my villain was pretty one-dimensional—I think I just tacked him in because heroes fight villains, and they can't fight villains if I don't supply one.

Why is it that no matter what happens, we tell stories? In the beginning, there was a human. That human had to stay alive, so they hunted and gathered food and built shelter, and realized this wasn't enough. They were still just like the other animals, and there were still two holes in their heart. To close off the first hole, they found another human being and the two of them clung tight to each other. To close off the second hole, they told each other stories.

You know what? Maybe it's time to dig out my old notes.

OoOoO