Chapter Text
"Just because you can't remember something doesn't mean it's gone."
– Namine, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories
Kyon's been having weird dreams lately. Dreams where he is dead but still living. Dreams where he answers to a different name, where he has a different face (but is still the only sane one in the group), dreams where a familiar girl with bows—a ribbon—in her hair (or is that just a headband?) is giving him orders; they're still in school but they answer to SSS not SOS—
Kyon wakes with a start.
Great. He thinks. Now Haruhi's even telling me what to do in my sleep.
He rolls over, ignoring Shamisen's indignant meow, and slips back into unconsciousness. He denies he ever dreamed it; Haruhi can't take away his last refuge, dammit.
But the dreams don't stop. If anything, they get worse.
" Have you ever met someone for the first time, but in your heart you feel as if you've met them before?"
— JoAnne Kenrick, When a Mullo Loves a Woman
Before it all started, things were simpler.
"Nice to meet everyone, I hope we all have a good year." Kyon sits down with a smile. Well, that wasn't too bad. He's glad he can just sit and watch the rest of the people in his class introduce themselves, free of a sense of impending doom or risk of embarrassment.
Then the girl sitting behind him starts talking, and the time when his life was even somewhat normal comes to an end.
"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."
Everyone stares, and as Kyon turns around his mouth drops open, because how are they supposed to react to that?
Their eyes meet, and for a second Kyon swears that he's seen this girl before, a slightly different hair color, slightly different eyes…but then she looks away, surveying the room, and the connection is gone. Kyon sighs in his head. Crap. Just like Kunikida all over again.
So he starts talking to her. Not because she's pretty, or he wants to know how eccentric she actually is (she is, and he does, but that's not the point), not really. It's because he feels like he knows her on some subconscious level, and because of that he can't stay away—because somewhere in the back of his mind they're friends; already are, always have been.
Taniguchi knows a lot about Haruhi. He should, Kyon supposes, he went to junior high with her. And it's fine—he doesn't really care. He wasn't trying to ask her out, no matter how much Taniguchi warns him off of doing so.
(Protective much?)
Kyon's never met this guy before and that's okay, but all of a sudden he's just there, eating lunch with him and Kunikida like he left a long time ago but now he's back, and Kyon wants to bang his head against a desk in frustration because he really doesn't know what's going on with him today and why he feels like he's already met these strangers before.
(But they're not really strangers. Not even close.)
"Have I met you before, like somewhere in the past?" Haruhi asks him once in that first month of school.
"Not likely, but believe it or not I've actually got the same feeling. First moment I saw you."
"Yeah, you seem familiar, but it's like it's more than that. Like…"
"Like we knew each other a long time ago."
She hits her hand with a fist. "Yeah, just like that!" she frowns, studying him again. "But I also feel like I've just seen you before. Physically, I mean."
As opposed to what?
(Either way—she has, but he doesn't know that yet.)
Ryoko Asakura (his class president) and Taniguichi (not to mention the rest of his class) are surprised by his newfound ability: getting through to Haruhi (because she pretty much ignores and/or blows off everyone else), but Kyon really doesn't know what it is. Everyone's turned into morons, he thinks as they interrogate him on his 'Haruhi-tactics', and the word makes him feel nostalgic for some reason.
Never underestimate the power of words, Kyon decides as he remembers one of the first full conversations he'd ever had with Haruhi. It had been about her bizarre taste in hairstyles; how each day of the week she came to class with a different number of places she'd pinned her hair up and different color ribbons—a color and a number for each day of the week. When he disagreed with her choices ('I kinda feel that Monday's more like a one'), she came to school the next with her hair cut short, and stuck to the same hairstyle from then on.
Anyway, with all this talking he's been doing with her, Kyon presumes it's kind of natural that he's the one who gives her the spark.
"I've got an idea! It's so obvious! If it doesn't exist I should just make it myself!"
"Make what yourself?" Kyon hasn't really known her for that long, but based on Taniguchi's stories, he almost doesn't want to ask.
"Make a club!"
And that's how it all started. The SOS Brigade.
And his life as one of Haruhi's minions, but that's not really all that important to anyone but him.