Chapter 84: Elevated Highway, Rainy Night, Maybach, Closed Space, God

Rain pattered against the windows, leaving streaks of water.

The weather today was strange.

It had been sunny in the afternoon, but as the dismissal bell rang, leaden clouds rolled in from the southeast; within minutes, the sky turned black, followed by a thunderclap, and millions of tons of water crashed down like a dam in the heavens had burst.

After gazing out the window for a long while, the SOS Club president sighed, asked Yuki—who was still reading—for an answer, and upon hearing “The forecast said there’d be a heavy rainstorm, duration uncertain,” announced gloomily that going out was inadvisable and all activities were canceled…

——Not canceled!

The psychic boy Koizumi Itsuki found Asahina and invited Jia Qi along.

“There’s an opportunity to show you my psychic ability—come with me.”

“Me? Why am I included?” Jia Qi pointed at his own nose in confusion, wondering if Koizumi planned to show off and put him in his place.

“Things have become complicated—perhaps it’s connected to you. I’d be deeply grateful if you could come.”

Since he said that, Jia Qi no longer refused; after escorting Nagato back under his umbrella, he got into the Maybach that Koizumi had somehow acquired.

“This car… isn’t right?”

“What’s wrong with it? It’s pretty comfortable, isn’t it?” Asahina, likely not recognizing it, was lounging comfortably in the back seat.

“Right? Right, right—no, wrong, wrong.”

Though the unease in his chest grew stronger, Jia Qi still got in.

“It all started with a baseball game three years ago—I suddenly realized I’d gained psychic abilities, and for some reason, I knew exactly how to…”

“We’ve had enough of ‘baseball stuff’—take it away.”

The two other male members of the SOS Club, besides Koizumi, both waved their hands in polite refusal.

Both Asahina and Jia Qi knew the origin story well—the baseball game that made Haruhi realize her own insignificance, then set the entire fate of the universe spinning wildly.

“It all began with that baseball game—though I wonder if the bench Haruhi was destined for is Asahina.”

“Why am I a bench?”

“A stool would do.”

“Hey!”

“Ahem.” Seeing the conversation veer off again under the two comic relief characters, Koizumi interrupted, straightened his expression, and introduced a new topic: “Have you heard of the term ‘Human Principle’? The theory that ‘human observation is what allows the universe to be discovered’…”

“We’ve already reviewed that too.” Both waved their hands again.

“Then what the hell don’t you know?!”

Koizumi Itsuki finally lost patience—didn’t these two understand how to cooperate with his performance? Did they have to sabotage him?

“In short: Haruhi is a god. The world revolves around her. That’s it.”

Short and blunt, this summary cut off Koizumi’s planned monologue—evidence of Jia Qi’s value in this exchange.

Outside the window, visibility had dropped to near zero; beyond fifty meters, everything was a white blur. Raindrops collided midair and shattered into mist before hitting the ground.

The car sliced through the rain like a blade, speeding down the road.

The sky was pitch black—even with the storm clouds, it was far too early for nightfall.

“Is it really this far? Yuki’s waiting for me to go home and cook.”

“We’re almost in the next city, aren’t we?”

Asahina voiced his concern too.

With vision far beyond normal, Jia Qi saw many things through the chaotic window: side roads, thrashing branches, lightning, stalled vehicles—and finally, an elevated highway, its sign reading, “Elevated Highway Entrance…”

The driver didn’t look, simply drove onto it; the speedometer read 120 km/h—frighteningly fast, like a wind-chasing blur.

The road they entered was empty. The two adjacent lanes, choked with traffic moments ago, should have flooded onto this one—but now they were utterly deserted. A strange feeling, as if only they could see this road.

It was truly a night of torrential rain and wild flow…

Déjà vu grew heavier. Jia Qi scratched his head. Weren’t they supposed to be heading to a closed space? Why did it feel like someone was about to chase this Maybach down the elevated highway and knock on the door?

Suddenly, as if passing through some “wall.”

The clouds cleared, the rain stopped, the fog dispersed—all became suddenly bright, as if they had entered another world.

An endless, seamless plane stretched before them, dimly covering all surroundings.

A hazy, pitying light replaced the sun, glowing faintly in the gray sky, preventing the world from sinking into total darkness.

No one was visible anywhere.

The traffic jam that had filled the lanes moments ago had vanished entirely; apart from them, everything seemed to have disappeared.

The silence around them was so profound it made one wonder if even Earth’s rotation had stopped.

“We are in the fissure between dimensions—a closed space entirely isolated from our world. Whenever Haruhi’s psyche becomes unstable, this space appears.”

Koizumi opened the car door and stepped out first; his calm voice sounded deeply reliable.

“The radius of this closed space is roughly five kilometers. Ordinary physical means cannot enter it. One of my abilities is to enter such spaces.”

He gestured for Asahina and Jia Qi to follow, walking through this silent world where even the wind did not stir.

“I get it! Closed space is Niflheim, Niflheim is closed space, North High is Kassel, we’re all little monsters under Haruhi’s command! Haruhi’s Sorrow, activate!”

Jia Qi suddenly understood.

“Now we should fight the god-man Odin.”

“I don’t know who Odin is, but there really is a god-man.”

God-man—originating from the Japanese light novel series *The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya* and its derivatives.

A blue giant as tall as a thirty-story building. It appears in the closed space when Haruhi’s psyche becomes unstable and wreaks havoc.

Because it ignores physical laws, it moves freely despite its enormous size. Koizumi Itsuki said: “If the ‘God-man’ enters the real world, even the military could not stop it.” Their psychic abilities exist solely to eliminate it.

Soon, the three stopped atop an abandoned apartment building.

“BOOM!!!”

A distant crash echoed—the destruction of a building.

For the first time, Jia Qi, accompanying the psychics into the closed space, saw the God-man with his own eyes.

Overwhelmed by shock and awe, he couldn’t help shouting—

“This damn thing isn’t a Groundquake Titan?!”

① The destined bench—*Only You Like Me*, also feels like a nod to Haruhi.

② The Maybach—*Dragon Raja* (Now Jia Zihang is really Jia Zihang).

③ There should be () today.

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(End of Chapter)