After school, Sora usually spent afternoons at his club’s meeting room.
He was in the literature club, getting invited after people found out his parents were Itsuki Hashima and Nayuta Kani, and he agreed to be part of their roster as long as he didn’t actually have to do anything. The club had six members, and for the most part it was a pretty chill scene, with people mostly just reading whatever books and magazines they wanted (or playing games). This laid-back atmosphere attracted Sora, and while he fully intended to ghost the club meetings at first, he now showed up at the clubroom almost every day. With Sora in the club, Yuu naturally followed soon after, but all the other members were mature, casual young men, so she often joined them reading in the clubroom as well, not feeling obliged to put up a tough front.
Today, as usual, they were both playing a board game that used a lot of fancy high-tech stuff with one of the other club members.
“Excuse me…”
A small, timid voice was heard from the door as a female student came in. She had long bangs that fully hid her eyes. From the color of her school-issued indoor sandals, one could tell she was in her third and final year of middle school. There was no dress code, but you had to wear sandals that were color coded by your school year, and that was why a lot of students wore baggy jeans and such. These were monochrome rubber sandals, not much different from Crocs, and you could only match them in so many ways with your outfits. Yuu was wearing a pair as well, although she constantly complained about it.
Regardless, Yuu and the rest of the club gave this girl puzzled looks.
“Um… Is Sora Hashima in here?”
Yuu immediately went into full alert. “Did you need his help for something?” she asked, eyeing her upperclassman sharply.
“A-are you Sora Hashima?”
“Huh? N-no!”
The unexpected reaction threw Yuu. She didn’t think there was anyone at this school who didn’t know Sora Hashima’s face, much less his gender.
“That’s me,” Sora said, standing up. The student jogged over to him.
“I, um, my name’s Kaede Mitahora from the drama club, and I came here because I had a favor to ask.”
“The drama club…”
Sora frowned a bit. The drama club had invited him to join once in the past, but he turned them down. He wanted a teenage school life where he stood out as little as possible, so acting in school plays was a nonstarter for him.
“What did you need…?” Sora asked, half-anticipating what it was.
“Would you mind writing the script for our next play?!”
“I’m sorry, but I—huh?”
He was expecting her to ask him to join the cast for something or other. But Kaede’s request threw him entirely.
“The script?”
“Y-yes! We’d like you to write the script for the play we’ll perform at the next competition.”
“B-but why me?”
“I read the playbook you wrote that won a prize.”
“Oh…”
Right, right, he thought, there was that. Right at the start of his second year in middle school, he had contributed a play to the local town’s middle school literary competition, mainly so his literature club could prove to the school that they were doing, you know, literature. The event had categories for novels, poems, essays, book reviews, and so forth, and Sora won the grand prize in the playbook category.
✦ ✦ ✦
Student: Teacher, what’s a playbook?
Teacher: A playbook is the script written for a play, or a literary work written with the intention of being performed on a stage—there’s no strict definition, but that’s pretty much it. People listening to the audiobook version of this will probably have no idea what’s going on right now, but sorry about that.
Student: Oh, right, most stuff by Shakespeare is in that format.
Teacher: Exactly. He was a playwright, after all. RPG replays are generally written in this style as well, a tradition adopted by Chronica Chronicle in this very series.
Student: Oh, but didn’t a lot of people who aren’t used to it write in to complain that it was annoying to follow and you should stop using it?
Teacher: They can shut the hell up if they know what’s good for them.
✦ ✦ ✦
This competition wasn’t held by a publisher or anything, so there were very few entries. The playbook category didn’t even have twenty, in fact. The grand prize, by the way, was a 3,000-yen gift card redeemable at any bookstore. The winning pieces were only published in a hard-to-find corner of the local town’s government website, too, which made Sora wonder why they even held the thing in the first place.
“Wow, someone actually read it…?” Sora asked, half surprised and half exasperated.
“It was such a wonderful play. The characters felt so alive, and the way the foreshadowing paid off at the end all at once was incredibly moving.”
“Y-you think so?” Sora said, flustered at how serious Kaede seemed about it. People had complimented his good looks many times, but nobody had ever personally praised his work before—and he had forgotten all about this one.
“So I’d love for you to write a script for us!”
“Wait a minute! Can you not proceed with this while ignoring his manager, please?!”
“Since when were you my manager?” Sora said, glaring at Yuu. “…By the way, do you know Itsuki Hashima or Nayuta Kani? The novelists?”
Kaede tilted her head slightly. “I’m sorry, I don’t really read novels much…”
“Ah.” Sora smiled a bit. “Well, I can write you something, sure. I’ve got the time for it.”
If he was the writer, not an actor, that wouldn’t attract too much unwanted attention.
“You can? Oh, thank you!” Kaede’s voice rose in volume, and she thrust her upper body down in a deep bow, her long bangs sweeping away to reveal the top half of her face. The usual trope would normally call for her to be an incredibly beautiful woman underneath that hair, but while Kaede was pretty run-of-the-mill, the tiny fire burning in her eyes left an impression on Sora.
✦ ✦ ✦
Once he accepted the job, Sora decided to watch the play they performed at last year’s school festival for reference. It was a science-fiction take on Osamu Dazai’s classic short story Run, Melos!, and the whole cast wore cosplay from Star Wars and Dragon Ball. The props and backdrops were handmade, not off-the-shelf, and, to put it kindly, they were built on a budget. The play itself pretty much followed the original short story as well, which made it unclear why they bothered changing the setting.
The acting ability of the cast was pretty average all around…but the kid who played Melos was clearly the best of the group; even an amateur like Sora could tell. The tone of voice, the emotions, the movement—everything was done at a high level, and the swordfighting scenes (performed with toy lightsabers) looked a lot more natural than anticipated.
“…It’s a pretty normal middle school play,” Yuu said as she watched. “Neither good nor bad, really. But I supposed the kid playing Melos deserves some praise.”
“Why are you acting like you’re so above them?” countered Sora. “But, yeah, I agree. I think the main actor is really great.”
Kaede blushed a bit. “Th-thank you…”
“…? Why are you blushing?”
Kaede averted her eyes. “Oh…you didn’t notice? I’m playing Melos…”
“Huh?”
Sora and Yuu were shocked. Their eyes swiveled between Kaede and the actor on the screen. Sora had been completely sure that Melos was played by a boy—one whose voice was pretty high, sure, but not unbelievably so if you assumed his voice hadn’t changed yet. The voice had real booming timbre, not at all like Kaede’s nervous warble, and even Melos’s body frame seemed different. The guy on the screen truly seemed a measure larger than the girl before them.
“Excuse me,” Yuu said. Then she moved Kaede’s bangs away from her face. Sora compared that face with the person in the video—Kaede, looking down in embarrassment, versus the bold Melos looking straight at the camera. The impression was completely different, but it was definitely the same face.
“Y-you’re really Melos here?” Sora asked, still not fully convinced.
“Y-yes.” Kaede nodded, voice barely a whisper.
“…Wow, you can change yourself that much? That’s great.”
The compliment came out of Sora’s mouth without a second thought. Maybe this girl was actually a natural genius at this. He had only just met her, but already Sora was very interested.