[FFML] [SHnY] The Coin - Prologue

[Michael Clark]

To go with the recent flurry of SHnY activity here, I thought I'd chip
in the first snippet of my own.

The Coin
By Michael Clark

Inspired by the _Haruhi Suzumiya_ novel series of Nagaru Tanigawa.


Prologue


It was near the end of spring term my second year that they wheeled it
onto the school grounds.  Two men in blue uniforms with a handtruck
installed it beneath the overhead walkway.  They could've been anyone,
you know.  There must be at least ten places in town where you can buy
plain old uniforms like those.  Maybe we should add one or two to the
brigade's collection.

Bad idea.  They're not sexy enough.

The one the men installed was typical.  It was boring.  It just had cans
of soda.  You can get soda anywhere!  They should've brought something
interesting like a panty machine.  Or they could've filled it with
liquor.

"Please, this is a school!" said that stuffy person I know.  "Think for
a minute before you say something, will you?"

I think about everything I say before I say it, thank you very much.
And whatever you say about people's parents being antsy about even
having a vending machine at school--you can't have thought very hard
about that before you said it.

But that's fine.  I _do_ think about what I say, which is why I didn't
answer him.  I was thirsty, so at lunch I went downstairs for a drink
from the new machine.  That was the worst part--everyone else wanted to
try it out, too!  Honestly, had these people never seen something so
common?  I bet the schools in Tokyo have machines that take a few
hundred yen and spit out porn magazines.

Maybe that's what we should do.  We could sell some pictures of the
fairer brigade members to an outfit that runs one of those things.  Two
of us, of course, would sell easily, and if we dressed Yuki to play up
her cute bookworm appeal, she'd do well for herself, too.  Give her a
pair of glasses and a good hardcover to hold on to.  If she smiled just
a little bit, I bet the boys wouldn't be able to keep their eyes off
her.

What was I saying?  Oh right, the vending machine, the one _everyone_
and their dog had to go see.  Well, that was fine.  I'd been annoyed all
day anyway.  Some stupid people didn't seem to be concerned with our
recruitment problem.  We only managed one good applicant--a cute,
perfect little first-year girl, except she wasn't really a first-year
girl at all!  She was in middle school of all things!  At first I
thought that was terrible, but then I realized it:  she could start a
chapter of the SOS Brigade in her middle school.  That would work,
right?  I'd have thought so, but it didn't.  I went to find her, but she
just disappeared!  Like she never existed, like she went to "Canada"
with the old class rep, never to return.

So I was irritated enough with other things not to mind waiting in that
line for all of lunch period.  Of course, I was left at the end of the
line.  It wasn't until lunch was almost over and I got to the front that
I realized it.

"A hundred and fifty yen?" I said.  "That should be illegal!"

A couple of first-year boys--little mop-headed runts if you ask
me--glared like I greatly disturbed them from sipping their cans of
lemonade.  "What?" said one.  "Are you short?"

Well... yes, but that wasn't the point!  I held them between my
fingers--two silver fifty-yen pieces.  It's terribly inconsistent, you
know.  The five- and fifty-yen pieces both have holes in the middle, but
the five-hundred- doesn't.  The one-, ten-, and one-hundred- pieces are
solid.  Why the inconsistency?  Maybe, long ago, the five-hundred-yen
piece _did_ have a hole in the middle, but someone at the treasury
looked through it and got shot in the eye with a samurai's arrow.  It'd
be a one-in-a-googolplex shot.  I'm sure that's what it is.

"What'd you expect?" said the other first-year boy, leaning on the wall.
"You can't get a can of soda anywhere for just a hundred yen anymore."

"There should be an education discount," I said.  "The sugar and
carbonation are enhancing our ability to learn useless things, like how
Jupiter can't turn into an artificial sun even though the monolith
aliens can really do it!"

They stared.

"I see you haven't heard of me," I said.  "That's all right.  You're
forgiven for now."  I grabbed one of them by the wrist and tilted his
soda can toward me.  "Give me another fifty yen, and I won't tell the
student council how you spilled your drink all over me to peek through
my shirt."

"We know who you are," said the other one.  "You're in that weird club."

"Is that any way you talk to an upperclassman?  I'll get you for sexual
harassment, both of you!"

"Doubt it."  The second plucked the can from his friend's fist and
dropped it, letting it roll on the sidewalk.  "Heizo finished at least
ten minutes ago."

Damn kids.  "I'll get you both!" I said, letting them go.  "The wrath of
the SOS Brigade will follow you, and your children, and your children's
children and their little doggies, too!  Fifty yen builds quickly with
interest!"

They peeled down their eyelids and stuck out their tongues, and I admit,
I wasn't so mature yet that I didn't do the same.  It didn't matter.
The SOS Brigade was our creation, and little runts like them probably
couldn't understand it even if they wanted to.  They didn't laugh when I
talked about aliens.  They didn't smile or snicker.  They just stared.
It never occurred to them to think about it closely.  They never
seriously thought an alien could exist at all.

And that's fine. That's what the SOS Brigade is for.  We search for
those extraordinary beings and hope to have fun with them.  We all want
that, and anyone who doesn't--well, they can't be in the brigade.

Ever since that new girl left, it's just been the five of us again,
after all.

"Excuse me."

It was a voice behind me.  The girl was brown-haired and plain.  Not
very interesting.

"I don't mean to be rude," she said.  "I just... about the vending
machine..."

She was right; I'd let those two ungrateful first-years distract me.  I
put the first coin in the vending machine, and the little red,
seven-segment display said it:  050.  Not enough.  If only I could buy
something extraordinary from one of these things--then they'd see what
closed-minded people they'd been.  Too many people were like that--even
one specific member of the brigade who came to mind.

"Um, excuse me..."

Impatient, that girl!  I put the second coin in.  A lot of good that'd
do.  I was still fifty yen short.

CLICK!

I looked at the red display.  Something was wrong.  Something had made
it read 150 instead of the 100 that should've been there.

"Oi!"  A voice called out from the building.  That person I had doubts
about was holding a plain box lunch in his hands.  "I've been guarding
your food this whole time, and you're still here?"

"Who asked you to do that?" I said, watching the vending machine.

"Uh, you did?  Though I might confess I took a bite or two as payment,
no refund.  You almost done?  Class is about to start."

I hit the return button on the machine, and two coins rolled out.  One,
a hollow fifty-yen piece, the other a solid, silvery one-hundred-yen
coin instead.

"Let me guess," said the one with my lunch, "the coins are models aliens
will use for their flying saucers.  By the power of pocket change, they
will descend on planet Earth and announce that they come in fifty-yen
pieces, right?"

He's always mocking things, but he didn't see what I saw.  I knew those
coins.  They were the same, or at least they used to be.  Maybe it was a
machine malfunction or a trick of the mind, but I didn't think so.  I
closed my hand over both of them and made way for the impatient girl
behind me.

"What's this?" said the other one, the boy who'd eaten my lunch.  "All
that time and you didn't even get a drink?"

I shook my head.

"Good grief," he said.  "It's always something with you, Haruhi."