The strange appearance of Haruhi Suzumiya

Chapter 1
Football? Don't you mean Soccer?

Chapter Description: Haruhi interrupts Kyon's lunch.

It was a typical day at North High as I found myself alone on the school bleachers enjoying a sandwich and looking out at the soccer turf. For once, there wasn’t an activity that I had to perform that would make me miss my lunch with odd parallel worlds or pretty girls that shot laser beams from their eyes.

I enjoyed my egg sandwich and sipped on my fizzy drink as two players on the field practiced with each other and traded tips. The lead moved up the field, smoothly nudging the soccer ball with only his right foot, and tipped it up to hit it with his head into the goal. Perfect!

The other player, not as confident, nudged and skipped the ball in a jerky motion, missed the tip, attempted an oddly performed headshot, and ended up on his backside.

All this was amusing to me and made for good entertainment; the hot sun warmed my shoulders, and a cool breeze coming in from the field made the temperature bearable. I sat back with the sun on my face, enjoying the feeling of fullness and my stomach slowly digesting my meal when she approached.

“Hey, Kyon! Whatcha doin’?” she said by way of greeting. Upon hearing her voice, my stomach began to take on the sour feeling of indigestion.

My mind immediately changed gears from “relaxed” to “Red Alert” as I turned to greet her.

“Hello, Haruhi,” I said with tired resignation, “I’m just enjoying a little downtime before our first-afternoon class,” with the hope that she’d get the hint and move along.

As can be expected of Haruhi, while she’s very good at many things, one of them she’s not is empathy or the ability to “read the room”. She sat down next to me in one quick motion that both put her in my eye line and personal space.

The smile of delight on her face quickly became hooded as she became self-conscious of being too close and I must admit, having more than a little crush on me. A small amount of embarrassment crept up her face from her neckline to quickly subside as the more confident side of her nature took over.

“So, you’re just relaxing and watching the two soccer players, huh? Do you have an interest in the sport?”

I knew that if I just ignored her it would be rude and truth to tell, and while this girl had gotten me into more tough spots than I care to mention, I found myself interested in hearing what Haruhi had to say on the subject.

“I enjoyed it on TV as a child and still do. As for playing, while I’m not a pro, I’ve played my fair share of games with friends and even had a season in middle school on the North Middle School team.”

Haruhi seemed to listen to my every word. She devoured our conversation with great relish and stared at me with rapt attention as I informed her of my past experiences in the game. After a while, she calmed down, moved a few centimeters away from me, and relaxed. She leaned back and felt the warmth of the sun’s rays as she seemingly digested what she’d learned and somehow savored it.

“Wow! That’s really something, Kyon! It sounds like you had great fun and camaraderie as you learned the sport. What made you give up playing it?”

“As I started High School, I realized that my academic career was more important to me than playing a sport. So instead of having two masters, I only have one. I know that I’d never have made it into professional soccer anyway.”

“Huh!” said Haruhi, as visions of me playing for a professional team flashed through her head. That’s one of her nicer features; the ability to only think of the best of her friends and wish them to do well in whatever they did.

After a small period of delightful silence went by, Haruhi began to have one of her “ideas”. I could feel it in the back of my neck as the fine hairs there began to rise and a slight chill covered my shoulders. I shivered a bit nervously as I braced myself for what unimaginable horrors were to come.

A vision of being abducted by alien slavers and forced to play soccer in filthy rags on fields of strewn glass flitted across my mind as I looked to her and felt as though I were no more than a fly she was examining for science class.

As it turned out, I had worried for nothing! (Or so I thought at the time.)

“You know, it probably would have been neat to have met you in middle school. I wish I’d have known about you sooner!” she finally said.

Taken aback, I could find no reason that such an innocent statement would come back to haunt me as it did. For the present, however, I satisfied myself by saying “Yes, that would have been nice, Haruhi!”

She smiled and lapsed into silence again as we watched the two players continue their practice on the field. Eventually, the end of lunch bell rang and we got up and went to our first-afternoon class together.