The Boredom of Haruhi Suzumiya (light novel)


 * You might be looking for the episode of the same name

The Boredom of Haruhi Suzumiya (涼宮ハルヒの退屈) (Suzumiya Haruhi no Taikutsu) is a Haruhi Suzumiya Light Novel.

Summary
This third volume in the Haruhi Suzumiya series is a collection of three short stories and one novelette that chronologically take place before The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya. A brief prologue serves to explain this discrepancy between the publication order and chronological order of the volumes.

The Boredom of Haruhi Suzumiya

 * You might be looking for the episode of the same name
 * In her latest attempt to give the S.O.S. Brigade more public exposure, Haruhi signs the group up for the city-wide baseball tournament.

The SOS Brigade joins a baseball competition, the members consisting of Haruhi, Kyon, Mikuru, Yuki, Itsuki, Tsuruya, Kyon's sister, Taniguchi, and Kunikida. The team easily falls on the losing side, which causes Haruhi to trigger a closed space. Thus, Yuki modifies their baseball bat to hit only home runs and causes the ball to easily fall into her mitt. The SOS Brigade wins, and since Haruhi is satisfied, Kyon decides to drop out of the running.

According to the afterword of the volume, this was the first published Haruhi Suzumiya story, appearing in The Sneaker shortly before The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.

Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody
笹 の葉ラプソディ
 * You might be looking for the episode of the same name
 * It's like Back To the Future! In order to prevent an impending disaster, Mikuru takes Kyon back in time, where he meets Haruhi as a seventh grader.

Haruhi starts a Tanabata event, but eventually gets lost in melancholy. Nagato gives Kyon a tankobon with something written on it. Mikuru asks Kyon to accompany her to the Tanabata of three years prior. Kyon agrees, but Mikuru is quickly put to sleep by the older Mikuru seen in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. The older Mikuru asks Kyon to go and help a certain someone, who turns out to be the Haruhi of three years before. Kyon ends up drawing the graffiti that Haruhi was notorious for drawing in middle school, at Haruhi's request. Haruhi then questions the existence of aliens, time travelers, and sliders, which Kyon does not deny, and Kyon begins to make references to someone like her at North High (referring to the older Haruhi). When Haruhi asks for Kyon's name, he gives her an alias of "John Smith". Kyon wakes up Mikuru, who finds that she has lost her time traveling device, or TPDD. Kyon then takes Mikuru to the Yuki of three years ago, who puts them into a room and stops time in there for three years, thus returning them to their original time. Kyon realizes that he was the one who inspired Haruhi to attend North High and look for strange things.

Mystérique Sign
ミステリックサイン
 * You might be looking for the episode of the same name.
 * The computer club president at school mysteriously disappears, and it's up to the S.O.S. Brigade to get to the bottom of it!

Haruhi makes a new logo for the SOS Brigade website. The SOS Brigade receives its first client, Emiri Kimidori, who asks them to investigate her missing boyfriend, the Computer Study Group's president. When the Brigade gets to his apartment, Haruhi quickly gets bored and leaves, but Yuki detects a strange presence. She takes the others to an alternate dimension, where a data lifeform in the shape of a cave cricket appears. Itsuki defeats it with a small amount of power, thus rescuing the Study Group's president. Yuki reveals that the lifeform, which had existed some billion years ago, had been in hibernation until Haruhi's logo had appeared on the internet. It had also kidnapped eight other people, and after the SOS Brigade saves them, Yuki modifies the logo to remove the danger. It is revealed that the Study Group's president never had a girlfriend, and Emiri was merely a pretend client set up by Yuki Nagato.

Remote Island Syndrome
孤島症候群
 * You might be looking for the first and second episodes of the same name.
 * It's vacation time when a relative of Itsuki's invites the S.O.S. Brigade to stay at his island villa. But then a dead body turns up, and Haruhi and the gang get mixed up in a thrilling murder mystery.

Itsuki takes the rest of the SOS Brigade to a mansion on a lone island owned by Keiichi Tamaru who he claims to be a distant relative. The SOS Brigade becomes acquainted with the various people around the mansion, including Yutaka Tamaru, Arakawa, and Sonou Mori. However, a storm encloses the SOS Brigade on the island, and Keiichi Tamaru's body is found on the ground with a knife in his chest.

At first, it seems that Yutaka killed him; however, when Itsuki devises an elaborate plot that ends up with Kyon and Itsuki being the killers, Kyon realizes that this was all a ploy meant to entertain Haruhi, and that there was never really a murder.

This novelette is the only story in the collection which had not been previously published.