The Indignation of Haruhi Suzumiya (Haruhi Suzumiya Series #8)

by Nagaru Tanigawa

Overview

Two stories continue the adventure in Volume 8 of the Haruhi Suzumiya series.
Editor-in-Chief, Straight Ahead!Since the beginning of the year, the SOS Brigade has been masking as the Literature Club to be recognized as an official high school organization. But when the new student council president threatens to disband the group, the members must write a collection of literature. Naturally, Haruhi assume the role of editor-in-chief and leads the team to publication with hilarious results.

Wandering ShadowFrom writers to detectives, the SOS Brigade does it all. When fellow classmate Sanaka comes to the club seeking help, the team (well, Haruhi) is up to the task. A well-trodden popular park path has suddenly begun to terrify the neighborhood dogs, and Haruhi suspects that its being haunted by animal spirits. It looks like the SOS Brigade is about to perform its first first canine exorcism!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316228695
Publisher:	Yen Press
Publication date:	11/20/2012
Series:	Haruhi Suzumiya Series , #8
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	4 MB
Age Range:	15 - 17 Years

About the Author

Nagaru Tanigawa is a Japanese author best known for The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya for which he won the grand prize at the eighth annual Sneaker Awards.

Read an Excerpt

The Indignation of Haruhi Suzumiya

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By Nagaru Tanigawa

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Copyright © 2012 Nagaru Tanigawa
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780316039000

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EDITOR IN CHIEF, FULL SPEED AHEAD!

“No good,” said Haruhi flatly, thrusting the manuscript back.

“It’s not good enough?” whined Asahina. “But I thought about it really hard…”

“Yeah, no way. Not even close. It’s got no punch.” Haruhi leaned back in the chair at her brigade chief’s desk and grabbed the red pen she’d stuck behind her ear. “Just for starters, this introduction is such a cliché. ‘Once upon a time’? It’s got no freshness to it at all. It needs a twist. The intro has to be super catchy, got it? First impressions are critical.”

“But,” said Asahina tremulously, “that’s how fairy tales are supposed to start…”

“That thinking is obsolete!” Haruhi’s rejection was haughty and total. “You need to transform your approach. If you think you might have heard something before, then do the opposite. That’s the way to bring something new to life.”

I got the feeling that the reason it felt like we were leaving the original point of all this activity far behind was thanks to the system Haruhi had just described. It certainly wasn’t like the threatening feint of a pitcher who’s trying to hold a fast runner at first base, but just doing the opposite wasn’t going to work either.

“Anyway, this is no good.” Haruhi deliberately wrote “rewrite” with her red pen on the copy-paper manuscript, then tossed it into a cardboard box beside the desk. In the box (which formerly had contained oranges) was a mountain of papers she’d decided was bound for the incinerator. “Write something new.”

“Ugh…”

Shoulders slumping, Asahina made her way back to her own seat. She looked truly pathetic. I felt violently sympathetic to her as she picked up a pencil, then held her head in her hands.

I cast my gaze over to a corner of the table from which emanated nothing at all, and there was that most important fixture for the clubroom: Nagato, who was not reading.

“…”

She stared at the display of the laptop computer in front of her, stock-still, typing something on the keyboard every few seconds, whereupon she would turn inanimate yet again.

Nagato was using the laptop we’d won in our battle against the computer club. Similar machines were in front of both Koizumi and myself, their CPU cooling fans spinning away despite the CPUs themselves not really having anything to think about. Koizumi’s fingers typed away deftly, the sound of each keystroke grating on my nerves. How nice for him, that he’d decided what he was going to write about.

Asahina, the only one of us to express a prejudice against using machines, was writing by hand on a sheet of copy paper, but she’d stopped, as though synchronized with me.

Of course I’d stopped. How was I supposed to type with nothing to write?

“That goes for everybody else too!” Haruhi alone was strangely energetic. “If you don’t hurry to hand in those manuscripts and get the editing done, you won’t make it in time for publication. Time to shift into high gear! Just think a little harder and you’ll be able to write something. It’s not like we’re writing epics or aiming for literary prizes here.”

As usual, Haruhi’s cheerful face bloomed with that strange energy of hers. Like she was about to devour an insect.

“Kyon, I don’t see your hands moving. Sitting there staring at the screen isn’t going to get a sentence written. Just write the thing, then print it out and let me take a look at it. If it’s good, it passes, and if it’s not, then it won’t.”

My sympathy for Asahina turned into pity for myself. Why did I have to do this, anyway? And it wasn’t just me—shouldn’t the moaning Asahina beside me and the beatifically smiling Koizumi across from me be raising some kind of flag of mutiny?

All that said, the brigade chief known as Haruhi Suzumiya specialized in not listening to anything anybody said. Still, why had she decided on this particular role, of all things?

My gaze moved from Haruhi, who sat there just itching for people to toss their manuscripts into the cardboard box, to the armband wrapped around her arm.

Normally it read “Brigade Chief,” though in the past it had also been “Detective” and “Ultra Director.” But now a new title was scribbled on the cloth in large Magic-Markered letters.

It was: “Editor in Chief.”

This all started a few days earlier.

It was a day in the third term of school as the footsteps of the approaching New Year were starting to become audible. It happened during an otherwise peaceful lunch hour—a bit more warning would’ve been nice.

“Summons.”

It was Yuki Nagato who spoke. For some reason she was accompanied by the ever-composed Itsuki Koizumi. The two of them coming by my classroom together didn’t give me so much as a single micron of anything like a good feeling, and although I’d been the one who’d interrupted the business of stirring up my lunch to come into the hallway, I wanted nothing more than to get back to my own desk.

“What do you mean, ‘summons’?”

I could only think of my current situation. Taniguchi had been on his way back from buying some pastries and a melon drink when he’d called out, “Hey, Kyon, your cohorts are here,” which was why I’d gotten up and was now standing where I was. The particular pairing that confronted me was wholly unlikely, but as far as a suitable partner for Nagato to pair up with went, I couldn’t think of a single person I’d approve of.

After looking for about three seconds at the alien girl who stood there after delivering her mysterious “summons,” I gave up and regarded Koizumi’s handsome face.

“So are you going to explain?”

“Of course, that is why I have come,” said Koizumi, craning his neck to look inside Class 5’s classroom. “Do you think Suzumiya will be out for a while?”

She’d taken off right after fourth period ended. I figured she was munching away on her lunch in the cafeteria right about now, I said.

“Excellent. This is something I’d rather she not hear.”

I got the feeling it was going to be something I’d rather not hear too.

“Actually—” Koizumi lowered his voice.

It seemed like he was enjoying this, I told him.

“Well, whether or not one finds this enjoyable depends on the person.”

“Just tell me what it is already.”

“We’ve received a message from the student council president. We’re to appear in the student council room today after school. In short, it is a summons.”

Ah hah.

I suddenly understood.

“So it’s finally come, eh?”

An order to appear in front of the student council president—I wasn’t so naive that I couldn’t imagine why such a thing would happen. I was too good of a person to ignore the many misdeeds perpetrated by the SOS Brigade both in and out of the school this past year. Had it been the time we’d scammed computers from the computer club? No, wait, we’d settled that in trial by video-game combat the previous autumn. I’d heard that the president of the computer club had withdrawn his complaint with the student council after the loss.

Was it because we’d gone too far when we filmed our movie? That had been a while ago by now, and student council elections had been after the school festival. Had the current council suddenly remembered the business left to them by the previous administration? Or had the physical descriptions of the brigade members that had surely circulated among the neighborhood shrines and temples finally made it to North High? We’d visited a few too many places during our first shrine visit of the New Year, after all.

“Guess there’s nothing we can do about it,” I said, shrugging and looking back at my unoccupied desk next to the window. “I bet Haruhi’ll be thrilled to go mano a mano with the president. Depending on their attitudes, this could turn violent. I’m counting on you for mediation, Koizumi.”

“You misunderstand.” Koizumi pleasantly refuted me. “It is not Suzumiya who is being summoned.”

So, what, it was me? C’mon, that didn’t make any sense. It would be the height of injustice if I had to bear the full brunt of the backlash just because Haruhi was as defiant and stubborn as a mule. I knew the student council members were basically the school administration’s puppets, but if they were that cowardly, I’d be pretty disappointed.

“No, it is not you,” said Koizumi, even more pleasantly, like he was happy about something. “It is Nagato alone who has been summoned.”

What? That made even less sense. She was great as a target for lecturing, since she’d certainly sit there and silently listen to whatever you said, but I didn’t think it’d be very satisfying for the lecturer, since she’d just as certainly stick to her “no comment” policy.

“Nagato?! The student council president wants to see Nagato?”

“Your subject and object are both correct. Yes, the president has indicated Nagato.”

As for Nagato herself, she simply stood there, as though she had no thoughts of herself at all. She accepted the wave of surprise that emanated from my eyes, her hair fluttering minutely.

“What do you mean? What business does the student council have with Nagato? Don’t tell me they want to make her secretary.”

I wanted him to just spit it out already. Was his infuriatingly roundabout manner carved into his DNA?

“My apologies. I’ll explain it as understandably as I can. The reason Nagato has been summoned is simple: they want to discuss the literature club’s activities, particularly in regards to its ongoing existence.”

“The literature club? What does—”

What does that have to do with anything? I was about to say—but choked back the words.

“…”

Nagato, still unmoving, looked down the hall.

Her pale, once-bespectacled face looked just as it had back then. I would never forget how she looked when Haruhi had burst into her clubroom, dragging me along, and Nagato had looked slowly, expressionlessly up at us.

“I see. The literature club, eh? So that’s how it is.”

The SOS Brigade’s long occupation of the literature club’s room for its headquarters was the very embodiment of the present progressive tense. Nagato was the only proper member of the literature club, whereas we were freeloaders at best, and possibly illegal occupants. Haruhi surely felt we’d long since asserted exclusive rights over the space, but the student council was undoubtedly insisting upon a different standard.

Koizumi must have read my facial expression. “They want to talk to the club president about exactly that, face-to-face, after school. The notice came to me first. I passed it on to Nagato.”

Why’d it go to him? I wanted to know.

“Perhaps because they knew it would be ignored if they gave it directly to her.”

Maybe that was so, but Koizumi and I were just about equivalent in our total lack of association with the literature club, I pointed out.

“That is true, but things aren’t necessarily so simple. That may make things even worse. Since we’re occupying the literature club’s space without doing anything even remotely related to literature, you wouldn’t have to be the student council to find that questionable. Honestly, given how infamous we are, I’m surprised they’ve overlooked it for as long as they have.”

Koizumi’s sensible position was accompanied by a smile that made me wonder which side he was on, anyway.

Put that way, I myself might’ve wanted to quibble with our arrangement, had I been on the council. But still—why now? The student council had thus far ignored the SOS Brigade like a lazy landlord neglecting to fix a leaky roof, I pointed out.

“They have indeed. However, the current council president may not be so easy to deal with.”

Koizumi smiled, showing his white teeth, then looked at Nagato out of the corner of his eye.

Nagato, naturally, had no reaction, but she shifted her gaze from the end of the hallway down to my feet. It sort of seemed like she was apologizing for causing the trouble.

I, of course, did not feel like she was causing the trouble at all. Obviously. I knew only a single entity who inconvenienced the very air she moved through. The inconvenience’s name was—

I exhaled and spoke the name.

“It’s Haruhi’s fault—like always.”

It had been, ever since she’d announced that the space would henceforth be her clubroom.

“I’d ask you to keep this a secret from Suzumiya,” said Koizumi. “I fear she would only complicate things. So after school, please make your way to the student council room without her seeing you.”

Yeah, sure, I started to say, then stopped short at a strange detail.

“Wait just a minute. Why am I going? I’m not the kind of Johnny-come-lately who just wanders into a situation uninvited.”

Of course, if Nagato asked me to go, I’d accompany her without a second thought, but Koizumi had no business asking me. Plus, if Nagato went alone, she’d be that much more likely to just scare the crap out of them, I figured.

“The council is well-informed. That’s why I was appointed as messenger. I would be quite happy to act entirely as Nagato’s representative, but should things go poorly, there could be problems later, and being her agent is not part of my job description. I suppose I can put it simply by saying: you are Suzumiya’s representative.”

“Why not just send Haruhi herself?”

“Are you being serious?” Koizumi exaggeratedly widened his eyes.

I answered his clumsy acting with a snort. If he wanted to know whether I understood the situation or not—yeah, I understood it. If we tossed a bomb like Haruhi in front of the student council, we’d be lucky if all we got was an explosion. Given the concern she’d shown for Nagato during the winter trip, if she found out Nagato had been called before the council, we’d only get as far as “Nagato’s gotten a message from the student council…” before Haruhi would leap straight to breaking down the council room’s door—or she might cut right to the chase and assault the staff room or the principal’s office. Which might make her feel better, but I’d be the one to suffer afterward. Unlike Koizumi, I had no desire to transfer schools without any good reason.

“Well, then, I’ll leave the matter in your hands.” Koizumi smiled as though he’d known from the start what my answer would be. “I’ll inform the student council president. We’ll meet in the council room after school.”

Koizumi’s stride was light and long-legged as he walked away from classroom 5. When Haruhi wasn’t around, he really did have quite an attitude. I watched Nagato follow behind him, feeling somehow that the end of our first year really was upon us.

At any rate, maybe Koizumi and Nagato were perfectly comfortable being the faces of the SOS Brigade. We were all cooperating, but the number of secrets we were keeping from Haruhi was increasing by the month…

Maybe I was being pointlessly sentimental.

Thanks to my sentimentality, I didn’t get to ask Koizumi why he was going about normally as the student council’s carrier pigeon.

Incidentally, the ever-perceptive Haruhi immediately picked up on my suspicious behavior—though she didn’t realize it—during the break following fifth period.

A sharp object poked me in the back, and I turned around.

“What’s got you so restless?” Haruhi demanded, twirling a mechanical pencil in her fingertips. “It’s like someone’s called you out or something.”

I’d prepared a 100 percent unfalsifiable contingency plan for just such an occasion.

“Yeah, Okabe wanted me to see him. He went out of his way to call me over during the lunch break,” I answered casually. “I guess there’s some kind of problem with my grades. Depending on the final exam results, they might even be notifying my parents. He said that I have to change my ways now if I want to go on to college.”

Of course, it didn’t make sense to change my ways, given that nothing needed changing—not that I would’ve been able to anyway—but what I was saying wasn’t complete nonsense. For one thing, Taniguchi’d gotten a similar earful, though not in so many words, and the conclusion I’d drawn after comparing notes with him was that our homeroom teacher was proportionally compassionate enough to be worried about his students’ educational futures.

Of course, since I was pretty close to Taniguchi’s level myself, we each had a sense that if one of us was slacking off, the other could afford to do so as well, which tended to dilute the feeling of tension. It was enough to make me think that Kunikida—who was careful to get decent grades—was the weird one.

“Huh?” Haruhi held her chin in her hands, elbows resting on her desk. “Were your grades that bad? I thought you were more serious about listening in class than I was,” she said, gazing out the window. The speed of the passing clouds told of the wind’s strength.

I would’ve appreciated not being lumped in with her brain. My own head didn’t have anything to do with space-time distortions, data explosions, or monochrome parallel dimensions. Compared with Haruhi’s unprecedented conceptions, it was a cute little miniature dachshund.

“Listening without comprehension is a waste of time,” I said, without any particular conviction.

“Oh yeah?” Her eyes still fixed on the scenery outside the window, she spoke as though addressing the silent glass. “Should I help you out with studying, then? I don’t mind—we’d just be going over the class material again. And I can definitely explain language arts better than they do in class.

“The teachers suck, after all,” Haruhi murmured quietly to herself. She glanced at me, but then looked immediately away.

As I was trying to figure out how to answer—

“I mean, Mikuru’s been freaking out too, right? This school’s just a prefectural public school, but this time of year they get all weird and start acting like a prep school. It’s really hard on the juniors. They’ve got all those special classes and mock exams and everything, and it turns their big class trip into a total mess. If that’s what they’re gonna do, they should move the class trip to freshman year. And the school festival should be in the spring, not fall, am I right?”

Despite her rapid-fire delivery, her eyes remained fixed on the drifting clouds. As she seemed to be waiting for a reply, I gave her one.

“Yeah, I guess,” I agreed, looking at the clouds myself. “I just want to make it through the school year.” Then, on the chance I got held back a year, I played up to Haruhi’s ego and added, “Heya, Suzumiya-senpai.”

“Kyon, you dork. Just go buy me some rolls. I’ll pay you later.”

I resented the prospect of such mundane conversations making their way into the clubroom. There wasn’t anything wrong with getting Haruhi to make a test preparation guide in order to avoid that, right? Wait—it’d be good to have Nagato on the production staff too. I bet we could sell them for five hundred yen a pop, make a little money on the side. I figured I could cut Taniguchi a break and give him a bad-influence discount of 30 percent or so.

“No way,” said Haruhi, immediately nixing the profitable-sounding idea. “That wouldn’t really help your academic ability at all. It would just be a temporary fix. If a slightly different question showed up on a test, you’d have no idea what to do. If you don’t build up your knowledge properly, you’ll fall for all their sneaky tricks. But don’t worry. If you’ll just apply yourself, I can get you to Kunikida’s level in six months, easy.”

I didn’t really want her to get too enthusiastic about it. Despite my efforts not to, I found myself imagining the scene—sweating nervously as Haruhi thwacked me on the head with a yellow megaphone, happily yelling at me, “No! Why can’t you understand something so simple? What are you, an idiot?”

“I’ll just ask you about the places I don’t know,” I said, “and all you have to do is explain those. I’ll handle the rest myself somehow.”

“If you can handle it yourself, why haven’t you done that already?”

She certainly knew how to figure out the most annoying thing to say. She was dead right, I told her.

“Why’re you being so stubborn?” Haruhi faced me, her lips tight with frustration, then leaned suddenly forward. “I won’t allow the kind of scandal that would come from a member of the SOS Brigade failing out of school. That’d give the student council all the ammunition they’d need to come down on us. I need you to be just a tiny bit motivated so they don’t get that opening. Got it?”

Haruhi’s words were delivered with her brow furrowed in irritation, her mouth curving into a keen smile, glaring at me until my face showed acceptance of her demands.

Classes were over for the day.

I took my leave from Haruhi by pretending that I was headed for the staff room, then proceeded to the student council room. It was right next door to the staff room, so there was no need to take a detour, and soon I’d arrived at my destination.

Truth be told, now that I was here, I was feeling pretty nervous.

I didn’t remember the student council president’s face at all, even though I would’ve seen it during the council elections that came right after the school festival. I remembered hearing the candidates’ speeches in the auditorium, but as a completely unaffiliated voter, I just picked the most mundane-sounding name on the ballot and immediately forgot it. What kind of person had it been? Whoever it was had to be at least a junior, since to be called “president” I figured you’d have to be an upperclassman of some kind. And surely it had to be someone with more dignity than the computer club president.

As I stood there hesitating in front of the door—

“Heya, Kyon! Whatcha doin’?”

A familiar long-haired figure popped out of the staff room. It was Asahina’s classmate and an honorary adviser to the SOS Brigade, a junior girl who I knew by now was no ordinary individual.

No matter who you were, you had to tip your hat to her.

“ ’Sup,” I said.

“Ha ha ha—’sup!” she replied to my jock-ish greeting.

Tsuruya raised both hands and smiled brilliantly, then looked at the door in front of which I stood.

“What’s this? Got business with the student council?”

I was here to find out exactly what that business was, I explained. I’d never have business with them myself.

“Whaa?”

Tsuruya strode toward me vigorously—it was hard to say whether she or Haruhi was better at that—and despite my flinching away, put her mouth in close proximity to my ear.

“Hmm? Are you by some chance a student council spy?” she asked, in a quiet (by Tsuruya standards) voice.

I detected a hint of seriousness in Tsuruya’s close-range smile. It was an expression I wasn’t used to, given her standard of constant optimistic mirth. For some reason I felt compelled to explain myself.

“Um, well…”

What do you want me to say, Tsuruya? I pointed out that if I were a spy under orders from someone, I wouldn’t be going to all this trouble at the moment.

“I guess that’s true.” Tsuruya stuck out her tongue. “Sorry for doubting ya! I just kinda overheard something, y’know? Know anything about the rumor that the student council’s been overrun with people making secret deals behind the scenes? I hear it even goes back to the last election for council president. Not sure I buy it, though.”

That was the first I’d heard of it. It was hard to imagine that kind of intrigue happening at our shabby little public school, so it was probably nothing more than a rumor. Although it did seem like the kind of academic drama that Haruhi would’ve loved.

“Tsuruya—what kind of person is the student council president?” I went ahead and asked her. It seemed like she might know more about the subject than I did.

I hoped she’d tell me something about his personality or something, but—

“I don’t really know him very well. He’s in a different class and all. He’s sorta stuck up but also handsome, and pretty smart, from what I hear. If he were a character in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, he’d be Sima Yi, that cunning army general. He’s constantly working for more student independence, I hear, since the last student council was out of touch—total pie-in-the-sky.”

It was troubling that despite the reference to a famous historical figure, I couldn’t easily imagine his personality—and the comparison to airborne pie was suspicious, as well.

“Uh, by the way—why were you in the staff room?”

“Hmm? Oh, it’s my turn to deliver the weekly reports, so I came by to do that,” she said easily, slapping my back and purposefully raising her voice. “Anyway, Kyon, good luck! If you’re gonna wrestle with the student council, I’ve got your back! I’m an ally to all in Haru-nyan’s club!”

It was certainly reassuring. However, I didn’t want things to go that far. There was no telling what methods the ecstatic Haruhi would employ upon the appearance of a truly worthy adversary. It exhausted my mental capacity just thinking about it. And as things stood, I already had enough to worry about.

Tsuruya waved her hand in a good-bye gesture, and having said everything she wanted to say, strode off briskly.

As usual, she’d gotten to the heart of the matter without my saying anything. In that sense, her cognitive abilities rivaled even Haruhi’s. She was probably the only person at North High who could demonstrate power equivalent to Haruhi’s in a matchup. The difference between her and our pain-in-the-neck brigade chief was that Tsuruya hadn’t left her common sense behind.

Given the thin construction of the wall and door, though, it was a safe bet that her last words had been audible on the inside. There was something Haruhi-like hidden within her, in the end.

Oh, well—it was time to gird my loins and do this.

I gave the door a polite knock to avoid offending whoever was inside.

“Enter,” came a sudden voice from within the room.

It was surprising to hear somebody actually commanding me to “enter,” especially in a voice so deep and severe you’d expect to hear it overdubbing some famous veteran actor in a foreign movie.

I slid the door open and entered the student council room for the first time in my life.

While it boasted a slightly larger size than the literature club’s room, it wasn’t that much different than any other room in the old building. In fact, without a triangular plaque reading COUNCIL PRESIDENT on one of the desks, it felt a little drab compared with our room. It was really nothing more than a meeting room.

Koizumi, having arrived before I did, greeted me. “I’m glad you made it.”

Standing next to Koizumi, evidently also having waited for me, was Nagato.

“…”

Nagato cast her clever gaze toward the window, in front of which stood the president.

He was… how to put it?

It was obvious enough that he was a tall male student. For whatever reason, he was looking out the window, his hands clasped behind him, not so much as moving a muscle. His form was indistinct, backlit as it was by the afternoon sun that streamed through the south-facing window.

There was another person, sitting at one corner of the room’s long table. It was a female student, face downturned over an opened notebook, mechanical pencil in hand, poised for recording the proceedings. Apparently she was the secretary.

The president did not move. I had no idea what was so fascinating about the scenery visible from the window—all you could see from there were the tennis courts and the totally abandoned swimming pool—but the meaningful silence dragged on.

“Mr. President,” Koizumi finally said after an appropriate interval, his voice brimming with fresh solicitousness. “All the individuals you asked to come have arrived. Feel free to proceed with your business.”

The president slowly turned, at which point I finally beheld his face. He was a second-year student, and he wore a slim-framed pair of glasses. He was a pretty handsome guy, but not like Koizumi’s dime-store-teen-idol good looks. There was a callous look in his eye, like a young and upwardly mobile professional whose every thought was turned toward improving his own position. I reflexively anticipated that I would not get along with him very well.

His face expressionless—but not like Nagato’s—he spoke. “I believe you have already heard this, Koizumi, but I’ll state it again. The reason all of you are here is quite simple. The student council is giving the literature club its final notice.”

Final notice? Had we ever been given a notice at all? If we had, I couldn’t imagine Nagato had meekly complied with their summons, which was what had allowed us to continue using the clubroom as our base of operations.

“…”

Unconcerned with Nagato’s lack of response, the president coldly continued.

“Currently you are the literature club in name only. Is this correct?”

I guess holing up in the clubroom and reading books wasn’t good enough.

“…”

Nagato said nothing.

“You are no longer a functioning student organization.”

“…”

Nagato silently regarded the president.

“I’ll be clear. The findings of our inquiry are this: we of the student council do not currently see any purpose in the existence of the literature club.”

“…”

Nagato was very still.

“Thus, I am informing you of the immediate and indefinite suspension of the literature club. You will promptly vacate your clubroom.”

“…”

Nagato remained silent, as though she didn’t care one way or another. But I knew better.

“Miss… Nagato, was it?” The president calmly returned Nagato’s tangible gaze. “There are non–club members in your room, and you’ve allowed them to stay there. And I wonder what you’ve done with the budget provided to the literature club this year. Would you suggest that your film counts as a literary activity? According to my investigation, that film was produced by and credited to the SOS Brigade, an unauthorized organization, and the literature club’s name appears nowhere on it. And the film itself was made without the permission of the school festival’s organization committee.”

It was painful to hear. Perhaps because Koizumi and Nagato never had any intention of stopping Haruhi, the responsibility of restraining her tyranny fell solely to me. And there was Asahina to think about as well—forced to play the powerless heroine.

“…”

Continues...

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Excerpted from The Indignation of Haruhi Suzumiya by Nagaru Tanigawa Copyright © 2012 by Nagaru Tanigawa. Excerpted by permission.
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