VOLUME 5
Chapter 6 – The school festival of destruction and rebirth
Part I
And so the day finally arrived.
A Friday late in November, the first day of the longest three-day period in Toyogasaki’s calendar.
The Toyogasaki school festival.
With the opening ceremony in the gymnasium finally out of the way, the various classrooms rang out with the sounds of good business, and the entire compound seemed to be at once consumed with a bustling atmosphere.
Toyogasaki prides itself on its status as an in vogue private institution and its culture of relative liberty, all of which attracts plenty of visitors from the city and other schools to a festival famous for its liveliness.
The pandemonium only ends with the folk dance on the last day.
“Hey, Tomoya! When’s your screening starting? I can’t find it anywhere in the pamphlet.”
“Didn’t I tell you I wasn’t doing anything this year? Sorry, but I’ve got to go.”
Within the maelstrom of activity I found myself running down the corridors while paying scarce attention to all the commotion around me… well, actually breeze-walking in strict accordance with the school rules.
With my eyes swollen red and skin puffy from four days’ worth of sleepless nights, I wasn’t in any condition to enjoy the festival.
I had other things to attend to anyway.
There’s someone I absolutely must find by today, talk to by tomorrow and satisfy by the day after… only that same person that had me running around the school all morning was nowhere to be found.
Unreachable by phone, unresponsive to my texts, and absent from my classroom.
It’s as if she’s disappeared completely.
“Oh, Ota-Tomoya? Megumi’s not with you? I haven’t seen her at all today…”
“She must have escaped when you weren’t looking, as usual.”
Just saying, but the person I’m looking for isn’t Katou.1
That aside, I’ve already wasted half a day and have every right to be feeling frustrated and exhausted. Despite wanting to meet her so badly, I still found myself unbelievably calm.
It’s because I know I’ll definitely meet her when the time’s right.
I won’t enjoy it when it happens, but I’ll still have to settle things then, once and for all.
I’m just a little early.
She’ll come, even if it’s a rerun.
There’s no way she’ll miss her baby on stage.
* * *
Quarter past three, the gym.
The building in intermission was buzzing lightly with commotion, but you could sense the pregnant enthusiasm even in the lull.
It was the overbearing expectation of the next item.
“Is this seat taken?”
“Yes… by you.”
While unable to find a seat at the first performance of the day, I was more fortunate this time around as I spoke softly to the long haired girl in the adjacent seat.
“It’s been a while.”
“Indeed.”
As we conversed, fast-paced preparations began on the set for the imminent performance.
Faithful to the original concept of a cultural festival, all the stage items of the day thus far had featured the pride of their respective cultural clubs. None reeked of the triviality typically found in this kind of self-organized concert.
“It’s really only been two weeks, but it feels like so much longer.”
“Indeed.”
Starting momentarily would be the most highly-anticipated main event, the performance by the Theatre Club.
“Speaking of which…”
“Hmm?”
“We watched this together last year as well, huh?”
“Hmm…I suppose we did.”
Then, as the build-up abruptly concluded, all the lights in the building went out, drawing the attention of the audience towards the stage now basking in the spotlight.
The MC began narrating the start of the performance right on cue.
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your patience. The play 「Harmony Rhapsody」 brought to you by the Theatre Club will be commencing shortly. The script of this play was written by Kasumigaoka Utaha, production…”
You guessed it.
The play which drew such great adulation at its inaugural run during last year’s festival – even receiving prizes for scriptwriting at certain competitions – also happened to be Utaha-senpai’s first and only attempt so far at theatrical scriptwriting.
The novelist who wrote this legendary drama in her spare time now sat in the seat next to mine and watched the stage expressionlessly.
* * *
While my anime marathon screening ran for most of the three days at last year’s festival, there was a brief two-hour pause starting from 3 PM on the first day called at the organizer’s discretion.
I was in this same place together with the same person watching the same drama then.
“Wow, I can already feel the tension at the very beginning, just like the last time.”
“If I recall correctly, the script was so thick and the lines so numerous it brought the president to tears.”
“…I don’t think that was the only reason they were crying.”
To my considerable misfortune, I had already gotten to experience the terror of working with Utaha-senpai – or perhaps more accurately the author known as Kasumi Utako – in advance of the festival.
Those three hours of rehearsals I had observed at the Theatre Club covered only about 10% of all the scenes in the play, but I will never forget how the devil-scriptwriter’s reserved, yet tempestuous whispers of “cut” presaged almost thirty re-takes in those five minutes of actual stage time, and eventually forced three club members to flee in desperation.
Utaha-senpai never did anything as pretentious as raising her voice or making the exaggerated gestures of a conceited director.
Adopting a nuanced approach and managing subtle changes in tempo, she relentlessly enforced training until the end product was exactly as she had envisioned it to be.
Utaha-senpai never once apologized for her obsession with detail or her stubbornness, the latter of which inevitably incurred the wrath of the club members. She never once made concessions for bad acting, a cosmetic appreciation of the script, or a clear lack of talent right from the outset; she would only softly, meticulously, venomously and unceasingly grind away like a blade of pure ice.
Those were only amateur actors and high-schoolers, hardly deserving of having their hearts broken repeatedly by the vocabulary of a Best New Author.
“Still, the script’s just as fascinating no matter how many times I watch.”
“That should be attributed to the skill of the actors. You should praise them if you’re going to praise somebody.”
Acting in the play they’ve now had a year-long relationship with, we should definitely commend these maso- I mean, elites for having made it through the hell of training.
At the same time, I would also like to compliment myself for sitting through an additional three hours of listening to the devil-scriptwriter’s complaints after the end of that training.
And perhaps also a certain main heroine for surviving Utaha-senpai’s roughing on devil mode.2
“…And so?”
“Yes?”
“Wasn’t there something you wanted to tell me?”
“Ah…”
“I trust you’ve come to see me with an answer?”
“…Yes, but right now’s a little…”
The excitement in the building was increasing palpably as action erupted. Tensions flared and lines fired rapidly back and forth across the stage.
The play was always good to begin with, but the new and improved product of a year’s worth of additional refinement had the other members of the audience completely captivated.
To turn away now would be an unforgivable waste of the spectacle unfolding in front of our eyes.
“It’s all right, we’ve seen it enough times.”
“…Really?”
So why have you been here since the first show?
“Besides, I won’t be able to concentrate until I’ve heard Ethics-kun’s answer.”
“Eh?”
Taken aback, I turned to catch Utaha-senpai’s profile.
Preoccupied with my own affairs, I had completely failed to notice her flushed cheeks, the thin film of sweat on her forehead and her rigidly alert body until now.
Add in the characteristic pointed tapping of her foot3 and it’s apparent that she’s obviously nervous about something.
“It’s alright, I’m prepared. If it’s a death sentence you have for me… deliver it swiftly.”
“…Death sentence?”
But I instantly realized that Utaha-senpai was clearly not exaggerating.
Because while senpai had put all her effort into creating those two scenarios, one of them was about to be erased into oblivion.
As a creator, seeing something you created unable to come into being may be as painful as losing as a part of yourself.
“Which did you choose, Ethics-kun? The original? Or the second?”
“…”
Now she’s even more agitated than before.
Though I had long since come to terms with the weight of the decision I made, I found myself slowly assaulted by an intense pressure as I began to consider the now-likely possibility of Utaha-senpai reacting more adversely to that decision than I initially anticipated.
“Did you choose Meguri? Or perhaps…Ruri?”
I certainly hope not, but even though senpai’s prepared herself to this extent… I might still end up wounding her deeply.
It’s because my decision’s more gutwrenching than choosing either one of the two – a rejection.
“My decision is to do a retake…to redo it over again.”
Not a death sentence, but forced labour.
“…”
“…”
Claps and cheers erupted universally across the gym.
The shock from the abruptness of the end of the first act and the immediate expectation of the second conspired to produce an air of almost abnormal tension.
Amid all the excitement, there were only two people in the gym passive and unsmiling.
“…Why?”
“Utaha-senpai…”
I only heard Utaha-senpai’s soft whisper after the cacophony from the surrounding seats died down several minutes later.
“What was unacceptable? Which parts of the scenarios were bad?”
“They were godlike. Both.”
And incredibly riveting.
The original was fun, interesting, refreshing – the quality of entertainment was awesome. And Meguri was very cute.
The second was tear-jerking, painful, gut-wrenching – truly an amazing read. Ruri was heartbreaking.
“So… so why?”
“Well, the thing is… both are fundamentally unsuited to being made into games.”
They would make really godlike novels.
Just not godlike “paper drama” galge.
Deadpan’s Wonderland:
1DAMN IT!
2Volume 1, Chapter 6. Patience, gentlemen, patience.
3Interesting aside for Western readers: The expression for tapping one’s foot in Japanese is “貧乏揺すり” which translated literally is something like “shaking your money away”. An Oriental superstition.