The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya Read Free Page B

the teacup from the side.
    “Hey! Don’t interfere!”
    Interfere? If someone’s willing to stand still while hot tea is being poured onto his head, he’s either one hell of a nice guy or some kind of insurance scam artist.
    I remained standing as I drank the green tea Haruhi had poured and pondered why it tasted so different from Asahina’s tea when they used the same tea leaves. That was a no-brainer. The difference would be in the spice called love. If Asahina were a wild white rose in bloom, then this girl would be some kind of special rose that was all thorns and never bloomed. And bore no fruit, naturally.



Haruhi glared at me with chastising eyes as I silently drank my tea.
    “Hmph.”
    With a flip of her hair, she returned to the chief’s desk. Slurp. She made a face like she was drinking boiling, bitter medicine.
    Asahina, relieved, returned to her service, pouring tea into Nagato’s cup and placing it in front of the reading girl.
    Nagato didn’t even flinch. She remained fixed on her hardcover. You should have at least showed a little gratitude. It’d probably take Taniguchi three days to finish savoring that tea.
    “…”
    Nagato continued flipping through the pages without looking up. Since that was how it always was, Asahina didn’t actually mind and went to put her own teacup on standby.
    That was when the fifth brigade member walked in, despite the fact that no one would have cared if he never showed up.
    “Terribly sorry I’m late. Homeroom lasted longer than usual.”
    The one who opened the door with a seemingly harmless smile beaming on his face would be, according to Haruhi, the mysterious transfer student, Itsuki Koizumi. With a smile like that on his face, I would never introduce him, as a friend, to my girlfriend. That is, if I had one.
    “It appears I’m the last one. I apologize if I delayed the meeting. Or should I treat everyone to something?”
    “Meeting? What’s that? I didn’t hear anything about a meeting.”
    “I forgot to tell you,” Haruhi said as she rested her chin in her hands. “I told everyone else during lunch. Just figured I could tell you whenever.”
    “How can you have time to go to other classrooms yet not find time to tell the person sitting in front of you in your own classroom?”
    “Who cares? It’s all the same anyway. The issue isn’t what you heard or when you heard it, but what you’re doing right now.”
    Her words may sound impressive on the surface, but it has been well established that anything she does only serves to worsen my mood.
    “Moving on, time to think about what to do now!”
    Do a better job of distinguishing between now as in this very instant or now as in the near future. And would the subject of that sentence be a singular I or a plural we?
    “Of course, I mean all of us. This will be an SOS Brigade event.”
    “Event?” I asked.
    “Weren’t you listening? The only event this time of year is the cultural festival!”
    “That isn’t a brigade event. It is a school event. If you wanted to promote the cultural festival so badly, you should have run in the elections for the executive committee. You’d be flooded with pointless menial tasks to do.”
    “That would defeat the purpose. We need to create an SOS Brigade–style activity. I’ve spent too much effort building up this brigade! Not a soul in this school should be able to say that they don’t know about this super-hot group,” Haruhi said.
    What would constitute an SOS Brigade–style activity? I thought back on the SOS Brigade activities over the past six months and became a bit depressed.
    You have it easy since you just throw out whatever idea comes to your mind, but what about the suffering Asahina and I have to go through? Koizumi just smiles shrewdly and Nagato is absolutely no help when it comes to brainstorming. Ah, I guess Asahina isn’t exactly normal, but she’s cute, so that makes it all okay. She just needs to stand there as a treat for my eyes