And Thus Diogenes Pondered (1)

“Have you ever heard of a ‘vanishing club’ before?”

Evidently, today’s issue of the Kamijousaki-zaka was not intellectually stimulating enough for Haruhi. She folded the newspaper and placed it on the desk in front of her, before trying to revive the conversation that had begun two nights prior, interrupted by the fireworks.

The topic? The Seven Mysteries of Kamijousaki High, of course, although I hadn’t realised it at the time.

Engrossed as I was in the tribulations of that 19th century clergyman whose every waking moment was apparently being haunted by a demonic monkey, I knew that when Haruhi was in one of these contemplative moods then there was no recourse other than to humour her. Humourlessly, I reached out for my bookmark.

“Never,” I replied.

“It’s a club that doesn’t exist on the school register, and whose members are a complete mystery. Of course, this also means that it doesn’t have a designated clubroom either.”

“Then how does one find them?” I asked.

“You don’t,” the reply came immediately. “If they want you to join, they’ll find you. I’m thinking of paying them a visit, Watson.”

“Even though there’s no clubroom?”

“From what I can remember, they’ll use any empty room that they can find for their meetings. That’s why they’re called the vanishing club, because they can never be found in the same place twice.”

“Vanishing club…” I pondered the name. “Sounds more like a vagrants’ club to me.”

This quip elicited a cordial laugh from Haruhi. “That does sound more fitting.”

“Tell me, Holmes, how is it that you know so much about this mysterious club anyways? You’re talking about it like it actually exists, and not just an urban legend.”

“Oh, I know for a fact that it exists,” Haruhi said. “I’ve been to one of their meetings when I was very young. My brother founded the club, you see.”

“Takashi?” I thought back to the rough looking youth that I had met at Pokomaru World theme park.

She shook her head. “My older brother,” she clarified.

“Three kids? That’s a pretty big family, Holmes.”

“Four,” she corrected me cheerfully. “I’ve got an older sister too.”

In my mind’s eye, I was still processing what she had said about the vanishing club. It was a term that I heard before, although I could hardly recall the specifics. Haruhi was looking at me hazily.

Gathering that I must have been silent for an awkward number of seconds, I fumbled for something to say – and it is a miraculous thing that the brain, in the midst of something as trivial as trying to formulate a filler sentence, can recall another thing entirely.

This must have been how Newton felt when the apple dropped on his head; how Perseus felt when he realised the Gorgon’s weakness. Truly, an “aha!” moment to call my own…

“Isn’t the vanishing club one of the seven mysteries?”

Haruhi blinked, but she didn’t look in the least bit surprised. “Yes, of course, I thought you knew that already?”

“I did, but it took some time to put two and two together,” I admitted, a paragon of the old adage that honesty is always the best policy.

“It’s the reason I don’t dismiss the concept of the seven mysteries outright,” she told me. “I already know the truth behind one of them, so there might be a grain of truth behind all of them, right? OK, let’s move…!”

She stood up. It seemed as though all the theorising had tired her out, and now she needed to recuperate by moving about. It was a contradiction, but then again Haruhi was the very embodiment of that word.

“Where are we going?” I asked, also standing up.

“The Robotics Club,” she replied. “That’s where the meeting I went to took place. Well, it was about ten years ago, so maybe things have changed…”

She rushed out of the room. I chased after her down the corridor, and then down two flights of stairs to the ground floor. The Robotics Club, I knew, was in the same building as the New Wave Mystery Society.

“Ten years? The club might have disbanded already, Holmes. At the very least, the original members would have graduated years ago,” I said.

“Unlikely,” Haruhi stopped in front of a door marked ostensibly with a plate bearing the Robotic Clubs’ name. “To the part about the club having been disbanded, I mean.”

She knocked on the door. No reply.

“Hello?” she called out, as she slid open the door slightly and poked her head through the crack; after a cursory glance at the interior of the room, she slid it open fully and casually walked in.

It was devoid of life, but traces of the Robotics Club could be found all over. The paraphernalia of the hobby were sprawled on the floor and chrome countertops, and I could see Haruhi disdainfully pick up what looked to be a remote controller of some kind.

“Maybe they don’t meet on Mondays,” I suggested, hovering over to a five-foot robot that I had spotted from the corner of my eye. It vaguely resembled one of those giant robots from mecha anime, albeit less elaborate, and seemed to be practically welded to the side wall.

“Then why was the door unlocked?” Haruhi put the remote controller back down and turned to me. “Don’t touch that,” she noticed me eyeballing the robot.

“The janitor might have come in to do some cleaning and forgotten to lock the door again,” I guessed.

At that moment, the door slid open again and a student walked in, casually whistling a popular showtune. A generic looking tote bag was slung over his shoulder, filled to the brim with an assortment of snacks.

At first glance, I couldn't help but think that the stranger's face was familiar to me somehow...

He gave us a look-over, and then spoke: “What, you guys aren’t going in?”

“Oya? Going in? Where?” Haruhi raised an eyebrow.

An anxious look flickered across the boy’s face, but he quickly regained his composure. He seemed to be giving us a more thorough appraisal and, after concluding that he didn’t know us after all, took a less familiar tone.

“I asked if there was anything I could help you with,” the stranger repeated emphatically, but he wasn’t fooling anybody.

“You said ‘go in’,” Haruhi pointed out. “Isn’t that right, Watson?” she turned to me.

“You’re spot on, Holmes.”

“But you, dear sir,” she turned back to the stranger, “asked us whether we were going in. If you’re referring to this room, then we’re already ‘in’, no? I’d like for you to explain yourself.”

The stranger frowned, and then look at me pleadingly. “Your girl misheard me,” he said, acidly. “There’s nothing I can do about that, is there? Now, c’mon, why don’t you tell me what you’re doing here?”

It was clear that he had felt cornered by Haruhi’s straightforwardness and decided to turn his attentions to me instead. That quality of hers was certainly a double-edged sword but it did give me ample opportunities to defuse situations before they boiled over – my bread and butter.

“Why don’t we start by introducing ourselves, senpai?” I noted the pin on the stranger’s uniform which identified him as a third-year student. “I’m Tanizaki Seishi and this is Tsukishima Haruhi. We’re from the New Wave Mystery Society.”

“Don’t forget my title,” Haruhi snapped.

“Sorry, I meant to say Vice President Tsukishima,” I amended.

“Vice President Holmes, you mean?” .

“Certainly not…”

“Fujiyama Yoshio,” the stranger capitalised on a lull in our back-and-forth to tell us his name. “I’m a member of the Robotics Club.”

“Where are the other members of the club, Fujiyama-senpai?” Haruhi quizzed.

“I wonder?” he shrugged. “To be frank, attendance is down, and we weren’t able to get too many new members this year. You guys aren’t first years, but how about joining…?” he spoke beguilingly.

Another lie, surely. I found it hard to believe that the Robotics Club would ever be short of admirers; our humble New Wave Mystery Society, maybe, but not the Robotics Club. If anything, in light of recent developments, you’d have expected its popularity to have exploded.

Unconvinced, I looked at Haruhi who, to my amazement, seemed to have given up on questioning Fujiyama. She was looking out the window, as though it held answers of its own. I decided to persist, however.

“Then who are those snacks for?” I pointed at the loaded tote bag.

Fujiyama had a ready retort. “A growing man needs to eat, right?”

“Tch,” I made an annoyed sound. “You’ve got an answer for everything, senpai. Should we just go?” I addressed the latter part to Haruhi, who promptly ignored me in order to make a statement of her own.

“It seems like baseball practice has just ended.”

The irrelevancy of what she said seemed to catch Fujiyama off-guard, and he mumbled something that might have been agreement or confusion. But I knew there was a method to Haruhi’s madness, and her method included the occasional seemingly immaterial statement.

I encouraged her: “I wonder how Kazami is doing…”

“Oya? Have you figured it out too, Watson?” she shot me a conspiratorial look.

At this point, I had figured out nothing. Even so, I returned the look.

“There’s not much more we can do here,” she suddenly said. “Sorry, senpai, we’ll get out of your hair. For now, anyways,” she bowed slightly and then drifted out of the room.

I followed her. “Why are we leaving? That guy was really suspicious…” I began to speak.

“True, but we weren’t going to get anything out of him,” she explained, leading the way back up the stairs to the clubroom. “It’s a bit underhanded but we’re going to have him to trick him.”

“Trick him how?”

“And here I thought you figured it out,” she simpered. “Call your friend from the baseball club, Watson, and ask him to meet us in the clubroom. It’s integral to figuring out what Fujiyama-senpai was hiding from us.”

“Right…” I was admittedly confused, but still did as I was asked; after confirming that Kazami had seen my text message (he was fervent fan of the ‘thumbs up’ emoji), I put the phone away and looked forward.

While I was tapping away on the screen, Haruhi had skipped ahead of me and was now standing in front of the clubroom, a tranquil expression on her face as though she had already solved the mystery and that everything henceforth was merely a formality.

She slid open the door, and a scowl immediately besmirched her delicate features. Her words were churlish, and her tone scathing.