“If it were a fight between students, then they’re all guilty, and they all lose out. If a teacher unilaterally beats up students, the one facing immediate punishment would be Mr. Uzui alone. If Mr. Uzui is prohibited from playing, then Tanjiro, Zenitsu, and Inosuke will inevitably also not be able to get up on stage. Collective responsibility.”
The rest of the committee stared at her in silence.
“Right? Perfect, all settled.” Shinobu clapped her hands. She was saying some fairly unpleasant things, and yet her face was as sweet as ever with her usual smile.
That smile made you think that this was one person you never wanted to make an enemy of, even if it meant your life.
The next morning …
The festival commitee received the shocking news that the Shabana siblings had been found collapsed in front of the music room after school and taken to the hospital.
“Apparently, they were both vomiting, shaking, and complaining of headaches,” Kanao reported.
“To be honest, we underestimated the destructive power of their performance.” Shinobu sighed, and now, at last, her face clouded over. “We don’t have a second to spare.”
Meeting after school once more, it was basically the same group in the academy meeting room as the day before. However …
“Umm.” Senjuro raised a nervous hand. “Why is my brother—I mean, Mr. Rengoku here?” For some reason, the history teacher Kyojuro Rengoku had joined their number.
Incidentally, the teacher sitting on the festival committee was someone else.
“Mm. Kanao asked me!” Kyojuro replied cheerily. “She said she has a favor that only I can do! What am I helping with?”
“The truth is, there’s this band Seedy Style Democracy …” Shinobu briefly explained the events so far.
Kyojuro nodded as he listened. “I see. You want me to go and tell them to stop this unpleasant and physically harmful performance? To save the academy?”
Kyojuro …
Senjuro felt dizzy at the way his brother did not mince words. He wasn’t being malicious. Not in the slightest. He just was completely, utterly, innocently tactless.
“You’re the only one we can turn to, Mr. Rengoku. Please persuade them somehow.” Shinobu bowed neatly.
“Don’t you worry about it! It’s a teacher’s duty to keep the peace of the academy!”
“Um, Mr. Rengoku. Could you please do it so you don’t hurt their feelings?” Senjuro said, half in prayer, as he looked up at his enthusiastic older brother.
Kyojuro responded with a brilliant smile. “You got it! Students are like my own children! There’s no way I would hurt them. You just leave this one to me!!”
Two hours later …
“Hey gang! I’m back!” Kyojuro trotted into the room.
All eyes were on him at once.
He nodded with satisfaction. “The ramen was delicious!”
“Kyojurooooo?!”
“They bought you off?!”
Senjuro and Aoi cried out automatically.
Without a care in his heart, Kyojuro smiled and shook his head. “They didn’t buy me off. I got there when they were just taking a break, so we ended up going for ramen. They asked me, and I just went with them!”
That’s being bought off, Kyojuro. Senjuro sighed in his heart.
“I spoke with Kamado and the boys while we shared ramen from the same pot.” Kyojuro stopped briefly and smiled admiringly. “Their eyes actually shone! They want to make their major label debut someday and reach out to the world!”
“Hrrk!”
“Urrp!”
Having experienced firsthand the fearsomeness of Seedy Style Democracy, Aoi and Senjuro both heaved unconsciously. Kanao quietly rubbed each of their backs in turn.
“They can’t possibly have such grand aspirations.” Even Shinobu paled at this, and she wrapped her arms around herself like she’d felt a sudden chill.
“Did you manage to get them to give up on performing?” Senjuro could basically picture the answer, but he asked his brother anyway. As he feared …
“After seeing students so serious about something, all I can do is cheer them on!” Kyojuro declared.
Silence greeted these words.
“I can’t stop that passion!!” he cried emphatically. “I would have to commit ritual suicide right here and now!”
Basically, he’d been moved by his students’ passion. Phew … At least he wasn’t bribed by a bowl of ramen. Senjuro let out a secret sigh of relief. As a little brother who loved and respected his older brother, this was a reason he could accept.
Still, the situation remained unresolved. With Kyojuro Rengoku’s attempt at persuasion ending in failure hot on the heels of the Shabana siblings, the members of the committee were increasingly at a loss.
Although they continued to fight fiercely to try and somehow stop the band from playing, none of their efforts bore any fruit until they were down to just one week before the school festival.
“What about making it so that only they can’t use the mics and sound system—”
“Even unamplified, they have a fairly lethal potential.”
“We could have a more potent curative to neutralize …”
“Why don’t we let dogs and cats run free in the venue?”
“Those dogs and cats would die. Probably.”
“What if we lie to them about the starting time? Say it’s like two in the morning or something.”
“I feel like they’d actually catch on to that.”
“And we’d be flooded with complaints from the neighborhood …”
At wits’ end, the members of the group were discussing various possibilities when, without a knock or greeting, the door flew open.
“Time to go home.”
They all turned to look in that direction.
Standing there was the gym teacher, Giyu Tomioka, wooden sword in hand. The whistle he used to instruct students shone brightly on his chest against the fabric of his favorite tracksuit. He was also a friend of Senjuro’s older brother from their school days.
“What are you doing here so late?” he demanded.
“If it’s about the meeting request form, we did—” Shinobu started and then stopped herself with a gasp.
Followed by Senjuro.
Most likely, Aoi and Kanao had also had the same thought.
This was the head of the disciplinary committee, Giyu Tomioka. Known for instructing his students so strictly that the PTA had their sights set on him, he was also referred to as Kimetsu Academy’s lethal weapon. If anyone could stop Seedy Style Democracy, it would be him.
“Mr. Tomioka,” Shinobu said quietly.
“What, Kocho?”
“There’s been a violation of school rules.”
The gym teacher’s eyes glittered at Shinobu’s words. Normally, his eyes were reminiscent of a dead fish, but the instant he discovered a student in violation of the school rules, they sparked to life like a beast catching sight of its prey.
“Behavior that causes significant trouble for others is not permitted on school grounds. Physical or mental injury to others is not permitted,” she recited. “There are students and a teacher who have violated these rules.”
“Who?” he demanded.
“Mr. Uzui, Tanjiro Kamado, Zenitsu Agatsuma, and Inosuke Hashibira.” She also informed him that they were currently using the music room.
That was enough to sort the whole situation out. Or at least, it should have been.
An hour later, Tomioka made his silent return.
“Mr. Tomioka, you’re ba—” The reason Aoi stopped abruptly was because she had noticed the fat tears sliding down Tomioka’s cheeks.
Tears from the gym teacher, who was feared by students as having a heart of stone, made Senjuro, Kanao, and Aoi freeze on the spot, and even Shinobu looked surprised.
“What’s the matter, Mr. Tomioka?” she asked gently.
“… moving.”
“Did you have a fight with Mr. Uzui?” she pushed quietly. “Is that why you’re crying?”
“It was so moving.”
“Pardon?”
This was entirely unexpected. Shinobu and the others furrowed their brows.
“It was so moving.”
“Um, excuse me. I couldn’t quite hear that. What did you say?” Shinobu lowered her eyebrows and queried softly.
“I’ve never heard such powerfully emotional lyrics in my entire life,” Tomioka said. He closed his eyes as if trying to grab hold of the lingering memory of the song and began to cry hot tears once more.
“Why do you have a girlfriend and I dooon’t? What’s wrong with meeeee? Past life? What crime did I commiiiiiiit?”
On the stage inside the gymnasium, which was closed off more than strictly necessary as a countermeasure against noise complaints from the neighborhood, the murder-weapon-level performance by Seedy Style Democracy was unfolding at that very moment.
“Senjuro! Get the stretcher! Hurry!”
“Okay!”
“The first-aid tent is full.”
“We’ll use the gym storage room. Push everything inside to the back.”
With earplugs firmly in place, the members of the festival committee devoted themselves to rescue operations while stu-dents dropped one after the other, as if sneering at their efforts.
Groans rose up all around them. And then the screams.
The music festival had turned into a living hell.
“I’m totally cool being kicked by hooves and sent flyiiiiing! Because I’m stuuuuupiiiiid!”
“We need more water!”
“The washroom! Go!”
“Kocho, this person’s eyes are rolling back in their head! They’re raving!”
“I’m coming!”
“Could you turn the air conditioning down a bit?”
The strained voices of Senjuro, Aoi, Kanao, and Shinobu were drowned out by the explosive sound. In the midst of all of this, Tomioka alone wept tears of deep emotion.
“Don’t be so cold. We’ll be together with a shot in the gut from this guuuun! Stop with the creepy and the impossible. Don’t say you’re stabbing me with a kniiiiiife! I can guess! I can read a rooooom!”
“I can read a room …”
What must Tomioka have looked like to his students as they dropped like flies, standing there in the center of the bloodshed, crying hot tears and singing along to the band?
After that, Giyu Tomioka’s students feared him even more, and the destructive Seedy Style Democracy became an even greater source of terror, but that is a story for another time.
What on earth about those lyrics spoke to his heart like that? How they conquered his steel tear ducts remains a mystery to this day.